Some new six-figure jobs

(This is gonna get me in trouble. I just know it.)

According to the Rehava Realtors blog, here are some careers one could consider if he's interested in making the big bucks. All of these have a top range of better than $100,000 per year:

- Actuaries
- Dental hygenists
- Marketing managers
- Computer software engineers
- Medical and health service managers
- Human resources managers

OK. I can understand the dental hygenists and computer software engineers, but I'm thinking about the others on the list: Do they actually do anything useful?

I guess that's a key to riches these days, with apologies to BT Overdrive: Work hard at nothing all day.

Ain't love grand, part 2

(Photo by Dawn Quinlan)

While I'm on the subject, we caught a little in flagrante action at work the other day. My coworker, armed with a camera phone, captured the moment (I assume the bugs asked for a cigarette afterwards).

And no, this is not turning into one of THOSE sites -- don't even think about that.

A living example of 'Fly United'

It's October and love is in the air in the Southeast -- with a cloud of particularly amorous flies.

Known as the lovebug (Plecia nearctica) and actually a fly (kin to the May fly), they're out in full force for their twice-a-year (sometimes) stage show. Lovebugs travel in pairs, locked together at the end of the abdomen, and spend their adult lives in a sort of airborne ecstacy -- not even bothering to eat.

This week they've been everywhere, doing the thing that they do. And getting in the way. And spreading scandal everywhere. Copulating on my shirt. Boffing on my head. Fornicating on my work equipment. As if I'm not even there.

I did see one unattached lovebug land on the bench at work, but it didn't stay in that condition for very long. While I pondered where the wheels might have fallen off my own love life, a second unattached lovebug dropped down, and in one smooth motion they coupled. He didn't even bother to buy her a drink first.

According to Wikipedia and other sources, these lovebugs spend most of their lives as larvae, living in tall grass, well hidden. As adults, the females live only two days, but they make the most out of that short time.

I first saw these lovebugs within days of my arrival in Charleston back in 1997. I'd never seen anything like that before, and of course I had to ask around. Strangest things I've ever seen.

Lovebugs have two mating seasons, in the spring and the fall. Sometimes they keep a lower profile; one year you might not see any while the next year you could see a lot of them. Their off-and-on appearance -- not to mention their oversexed behavior -- lends itself to its share of urban legend. One story has it that they're not a real species; they're a genetic experiment gone bad at the University of Florida. A variation I've heard is that they're created by Monsanto to keep mosquito populations down. Untrue, say the folks at snopes.com. They are a real species, indigenous to Central America, and may have stowed away on a ship (in the champagne suite?) and landed here. Now, they can be seen along the Gulf coast and lower Atlantic coast, as far north as Wilmington. But they're susceptible to weather patterns -- in the wake of Hurricane Ike there has been an incredible number of sightings along the Texas coast.

Generally, lovebugs are considered harmless. About the only (other) obnoxious quality they have is that a bunch of them may splatter themselves on cars, and their slightly acidic guts can etch the paint job. And yeah, they do get in the way.

Other than that, they're more entertaining than sea monkeys.

Campaign rhetoric is like an ax; it swings both ways

As Eric Clapton used to sing, 

"Before you accuse me,

Take a look at yourself ..."

ATLAH Daily Webcast - Manning Fierce Prayer for Bristol Palin

By the Hon. James David Manning of atlah.org.

All I can say is ... ouch!

(From atlah.org, posted using ShareThis)

Charleston rated friendliest city (again)

Charleston seems to have a lock on this "friendliest city" title -- this time it's Travel and Leisure giving it top honors.

The publication ranked 25 cities for its America's Favorite Cities 2008 feature, looking at several criteria. Here are the top performers:

• Friendliest: Charleston
• Smartest: Seattle
• Most diverse: New York City (which also took the top spot for shopping, the arts, and best skyline).
• Best weather: Honolulu
• Cleanest: Portland, Ore.
• Dirtiest: New Orleans

And an overall look at Charleston:

"Charlestonians are America's friendliest people. The city got
second-place rankings for its noteworthy neighborhoods, vintage stores,
flea markets, and peace and quiet. Not surprisingly, many travelers
found the club scene (No. 24) disappointing."

None of this is any real great surprise, save one thing. Charleston ranked first for traffic. OK, there are a lot of megalopoli in this list (Charleston is among the smallest towns considered), but come on! Just hang around during rush hour sometime, especially in some of the outlying areas.

Myself, I really don't care that much what the publications say (and now that I'm out of the taxi business it makes less difference in my world), but suffice it to say I do like this crazy ol' place.

How misinformation gets up and around

It didn't start with much here in Charleston. A few local gas stations posted signs asking customers to limit fuel purchases to 10 gallons.But it started a short-lived panic Thursday, with talk of $5 gas by late afternoon.

The rationale sounded good, anyway. Fuel suppliers were watching as Hurricane Ike hunted for a spot along the Texas coast to hit, and some refineries shut down in anticipation. Offshore rigs were hanging out in the Gulf with all kinds of potential for damage, and things were just plain uncertain.

It's when times are uncertain that rumors really grow legs. In this case, word went out via phone calls, text messages, email, and mouth to ear.

I heard this rumor shortly after 3 p.m. Thursday while at work, and already my coworkers were in panic mode. Nearly all made plans to stock up on gas as soon as they clocked out (I didn't have to worry about it, being on a bike). One of my youngest crewmates lives a fair distance away, recently got an SUV (which never met a gas station it didn't like), and asked to take off for a few minutes to fuel up. Permission granted.

It turns out my coworker got a phone call from a friend who said her uncle's friend's concubine's dog's boss (or something) got an email warning that gas would go up to $5 or $6 a gallon by 5 p.m. That was the gist anyway.

All of which smelled like misinformation, like urban legend to me, and I expressed my doubts.

On the way home I checked out all the gas stations on Rivers Avenue, which is the main drag in North Charleston. We're talking 4:30 to 5 p.m., the front edge of rush hour. Some of the stations were crowded, a little more than usual, but no gigantic lines. Gas stayed at the area's norm, around $3.50 for unleaded. Nothing unusual there. I stopped at a BP on Rivers and I-526 for provisions, and it was the normal level of business there. The normal clientele. As many folks came in for quart bottles of malt liquor as they did for gallons of gas, making it a fairly typical day at that BP.

In other parts of Charleston, my coworkers reported, the gas stations were pretty well crowded Some long lines and a lot of waiting to get to a pump. At least one popular station in the West Ashley area had run out of unleaded fairly quickly. But the prices held steady throughout, which did surprise me.

I can understand, again, the panic. Gas hit a (then) all-time high while Hurricane Katrina was killing people in New Orleans. For the first time here, it topped $3 a gallon, while it was up to $4 in parts of Georgia during the storm.

And, yeah, some of my more conspiracy-minded friends noticed that this was on the seventh anniversary of 9/11, therefore it meant something. I don't buy that one, though.

This one was, to all intents and purposes, pretty harmless. So folks were in a hurry to fillk their tanks? No problem; they're going to use that gas sometime anyway.

Generally, though, this was instructive in how misinformation starts, is disseminated, grows legs, and eventually fades to black.


Here's another take, from a Realtor in Georga:

Seven years after 9/11, we still scare ourselves

9/11 was one of those once-a-generation moments that freezes time. Like Pearl Harbor and the JFK assassination, anyone old enough to remember can tell you exactly where he was and what he was doing.

Seven years ago my then-girlfriend and I were getting ready for a rare day off together. That's when we got a phone call from her Mom: Turn your TV on.

CNN showed live footage of the World Trade Center, with a yawning smoking hole punched in one of the towers. Too big, I thought, for a wayward Cessna. I was pondering this when a second plane slammed into the other tower.

"We're at war," I told the girlfriend once I got over the shock of what I'd just seen. "Two times is no accident."

Forget the day off. Rather than taking some day trip, we stayed glued to the television until after midnight. It isn't every day you see the wheels come off the whole world. We followed the news dispatches -- some erroneous, some not, and commented on them. A plane hit the Pentagon. Another bound for what?The Capitol building?The White House? Another plane down in some Pennsylvania field, no survivors. Other planes still up in the air and no one knows anything. The President crisscrossing the country. A very stressful time.

In the seven years since then, America has changed. Not for the better, either. I find it hard to recognize the place. Life has changed, too, and not necessarily for the better.

We are currently mired in two wars. One, in Afghanistan, was declared days after the 9/11 bombings. Now, that action was justified. I'd said it then and say it today. You can't let such mass carnage as New York and D.C. go unanswered. You are perfectly within your rights to go whip some tail -- in fact, if you don't respond, there's something seriously wrong with you.

Iraq, though, is another story. That had nothing to do with 9/11; even the governmental hearings and final report had to really stretch some imaginations to forge any link between Iraq and 9/11. True, Saddam Hussein was a monster who had no business living, let alone governing. You can say the same about most of the dictators and generalissimos all over the globe. If it wasn't for the fact we didn't complete the job in the 1991 Gulf War (and if not for our massive oil addiction), Hussein might have been just some other tinhorn dictator we hear about every once in a while.

But wars and rumors of wars are merely peripheral. The biggest threat to the American way of life is from within, not without. Terrorists don't have to worry about scaring the spit out of us or messing us up, as we're doing a fine job of that ourselves.

Things like extra scrutiny before boarding a plane, showing identification a few extra times, additional police powers here and there, and jumping through more hoops when entering a federal building are more or less accepted now. Are we any more secure than we were eight years ago, despite all these post-9/11 measures? The public perception says no.

Strange things happened when the World Trade Ceter became Ground Zero and the Pentagon a target. The girlfriend and I took a short break from CNN to go outside, and though the streets were quiet a lot of flags were out. They stayed out for months as people showed a) their patriotism or b) their ability to follow the crowd. I have never seen this much flag-waving before or since. A good thing? Maybe. While it was great to see folks pulling together like that, what wasn't so great was the accompanying hysteria.

Americans started looking to their government for answers and got that great Constitution-weakening travesty called USA PATRIOT Act instead. Even the name kills me; it implies that if you weren't for it obviously you were not a patriot. It's certain the Founding Fathers would scream out their opposition to such rationale. But the American people take their freedoms for granted, and have proven again and again that they would gladly trade them for peace and safety. Of course, as it was suggested (I think by Ben Franklin, but I could be wrong), the end result of such a trade is fewer rights, and no peace or safety.

None of this is unprecedented. Years ago, ex-President Harry Truman sat down with writer Merle Miller and gave his opinion on just about every subject under the sun. The resulting book, "Plain Speaking," has a chapter on hysteria in American history. Things like the Alien and Sedition Acts (during the time of John Adams), the Know-Nothings (an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant political party), and Red scares through the 20th Century were, Truman said, some of our moments in history when folks were so frightened they took leave of their senses. (If you can find the book, I highly recommend it.)

Ol' Harry S. would have a lot to say of post-9/11 America if he was alive to see it. So too would the founding fathers. They might not recognize the place either.

Examples of spin made public

The toughest part of reading -- let alone reporting -- the news is separating the event from the spin, the wheat from the chaff, the pearls from the ordure. Or something.

Here's a website I found that might be helpful, or amusing at the very least. Here are some samples from the site, and what is really meant when the spinmeisters do their thing:

==========

"according to industry experts" "industry leaders acknowledge" — displaced former executives

"it's widely thought" "it's common knowledge" — constant repetition in the media has folks thinking it is the truth

"experts generally agree that" — some previously unknown college professors

"according to official sources" — two gals from the secretarial pool

==========

Enjoy, and don't get too dizzy watching the spin.

Just a century ago ...

My mom sent this as a "fw:" email, and I found it real interesting. A bit of perspective here: All of my grandparents were around at this time (though my maternal grandmother was one year old then). Anyway, enjoy this side trip down Memory Lane:

THE YEAR 1908
This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!
The year is 1908. one hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!

Here are some statistics for the year 1908

************ ********* ********* ******

The average life expectancy was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average wage in 1908 was 22 cents per hour.

The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year .

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .

Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard. '

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.

Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars.

The population of Las Vegas was only 30!!!!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented yet.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.

Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.' (Shocking? DUH! )

Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.A. !

Editorial comment: Anybody want to try to guess how things will be in 2108? Kind of blows my mind when I think about it.

Despite losing wireless, tropical storm wasn't bad

OK. Survived Tropical Storm Hanna without any problems Friday night. A lot of wind and rain. The whole region basically shut down at 1 p.m. We were taking this thing seriously in Charleston.

I knocked off from work at 11:30, but not before some of us tied all movable things down (I still wonder if any of our guys checked the porto-let to see if anyone was using it before roping the door shut and lashing it to a concrete barrier? Would have been a long weekend for somebody!)

Stayed home that night and monitored the storm's progress on the radio. What didn't help was that around 1:45 p.m. the emergency broadcast warning tone sounded on the local radio station. I kind of sat upright, notebook out, waiting for a new dispatch on the storm. Not quite. This was only a test of the emergency broadcast system.

A great time for the monthly test, I thought.

About the only possible effect I could point to was that my wireless Internet was out of commission until Tuesday. Could have been from the storm, but possibly not, too. May have just been one of those things, like the monthly emergency broadcast test.

Had the usual flooding downtown, and a lot of rain everywhere else. But it wasn't bad here.

How to recycle an old Navy Base 101

Before -- Not long after the Navy base shut down



After: Now part of Riverfront Park





Anyone who knows me will tell you that land developers are among my favorite people, right up there with politicians and lawyers. I have this inability to keep my mouth shut or pen still when I feel a project or subdivision is being built to everyone's detriment except maybe to a few people's bottom lines. Unfortunately, that's what happens more often than not.

Let's be fair about this, though. When a developer does something to truly upgrade a community, I'm right there in line to say, hey, good job.

I'll let these photos do the talking. Same spot, a few years apart. The site: Charleston's old Navy Base, which shut down in the late 1990s, and is now home to the ambitious Noisette Creek project in North Charleston. The photos were furnished by Jim Augustin of Noisette Company.

A few months ago I took a bike trip through the old Navy Yards and Old Town in North Charleston, and was properly impressed by what I saw.

Good job!

Did I mention that dogleg right turn?

For those watching what Hanna is doing, here's the latest as of 5 p.m. A lot more encouraging, anyway:



But the folks in my neck of the woods are not in the clear yet. A whole lot of slop is expected in the South Carolina Lowcountry tomorrow. To my understanding, the ports may remain open.

Encouraging news, yes?

But no overconfidence just yet.

There's more.

Meet Ike.




So the topic of conversation in my part of the world has switched, though from one storm to another.

Stay tuned.

(Graphics from the National Hurricane Center)

Today's freshmen don't recall life without Pearl Jam, Favre

Today's college freshmen would have to ask their elders about X-rated movies, IBM-made typewriters, or stopping at the gas station for directions.

And this thing called DOS? Forget it,. There has always been some form of Windows.

This is according to the annual Beloit College Mindset List, put together to see where new college students are coming from. Interesting, especially to us oldsters who may think the world is indeed in the southbound handbasket.

====================

According to the mindset list:

Students entering college for the first time this fall were generally born in 1990.

For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.

1. Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.
2. Since they were in diapers, karaoke machines have been annoying people at parties.
3. They have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego.
4. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
5. Coke and Pepsi have always used recycled plastic bottles.
6. Shampoo and conditioner have always been available in the same bottle.
7. Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
8. Their parents may have dropped them in shock when they heard George Bush announce “tax revenue increases.”
9. Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.
10. Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.
11. All have had a relative--or known about a friend's relative--who died comfortably at home with Hospice.
12. As a precursor to “whatever,” they have recognized that some people “just don’t get it.”
13. Universal Studios has always offered an alternative to Mickey in Orlando.
14. Grandma has always had wheels on her walker.
15. Martha Stewart Living has always been setting the style.
16. Haagen-Dazs ice cream has always come in quarts.
17. Club Med resorts have always been places to take the whole family.
18. WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
19. Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
20. The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.
21. Students have always been "Rocking the Vote.”
22. Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.
23. Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.
24. We have always known that “All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”
25. There have always been gay rabbis.
26. Wayne Newton has never had a mustache.
27. College grads have always been able to Teach for America.
28. IBM has never made typewriters.
29. Roseanne Barr has never been invited to sing the National Anthem again.
30. McDonald’s and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries.
31. They have never been able to color a tree using a raw umber Crayola.
32. There has always been Pearl Jam.
33. The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno and started at 11:35 EST.
34. Pee-Wee has never been in his playhouse during the day.
35. They never tasted Benefit Cereal with psyllium.
36. They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib.
37. Authorities have always been building a wall along the Mexican border.
38. Lenin’s name has never been on a major city in Russia.
39. Employers have always been able to do credit checks on employees.
40. Balsamic vinegar has always been available in the U.S.
41. Macaulay Culkin has always been Home Alone.
42. Their parents may have watched The American Gladiators on TV the day they were born.
43. Personal privacy has always been threatened.
44. Caller ID has always been available on phones.
45. Living wills have always been asked for at hospital check-ins.
46. The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.
47. They never heard an attendant ask “Want me to check under the hood?”
48. Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.
49. Soft drink refills have always been free.
50. They have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about “nothing.”
51. Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
52. Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs.
53. The Royal New Zealand Navy has never been permitted a daily ration of rum.
54. The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.
55. 98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear.
56. Michael Milken has always been a philanthropist promoting prostate cancer research.
57. Off-shore oil drilling in the United States has always been prohibited.
58. Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.
59. There have always been charter schools.
60. Students always had Goosebumps.

=============

No wonder I feel ancient.

Getting conked by bunya bunya can hurt

Some of those tree-lined streets in my home town might as well be a hard-hat zone right now.

On second thought, leave the hard hat at home and just take another route. Or pack plenty of Goody headache powder (those not from the South, ask me what that is). You'll need it.
Blame it on the bunya bunya.

It seems nearly every area in the United States has some flora or fauna that was imported and no one's sure why. Out here in the Southeast we have fire ants (which I'm sure are not from around here), kudzu (which chokes off every living plant and nothing can kill it), and the land developer (see: kudzu).

In Riverside, California, where I spent my formative years, the oddball species is the bunya bunya tree.

They're from Australia, and you might remember those Foster's Lager ads. Great White Shark = Australian for guppy.

Now, the bunya bunya is a pretty nice tree. Nice enough to be planted several places in downtown Riverside, which is too arid for a lot of plant life. It's a conifer, like the pine tree.

When pine trees drop their cones, it's not a big issue. The problem with the bunya bunya is that, when it drops its cones, everyone knows it. These babies are about the size of a pineapple, and weigh about the same as a bowling ball.
Ouch! = Australian for pine cone.

And this is the time of year when the bunya bunyas drop their cones. The parks department in Riverside is ready. Barricades. Signs. Probably some of that yellow crime-scene tape. Part of it, I'm sure, is a litigation thing. Getting conked by a foot-tall, 10- to 15-pound cone from a tree owned by the city would be a bonanza for someone, especially if he has the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe in his corner.

(Personal footnote: My mom swears to this day that I was not dropped at birth, but who knows? Maybe I had an encounter with a bunya bunya and didn't tell anybody? Sure would explain a lot of things.)

If you go traveling in Riverside, enjoy the sights and the great weather. But watch out for the bunya bunya.

(Photos from the Riverside Press-Enterprise)

Global warming + Hurricanes = Disaster?

Mention global warming to some folks (including some readers of this blog) and they'll tell you you're totally full of it.

Sorry, folks. It's real stuff, though the projections of how warm we'll be in 50 or 100 years may or may not have anything to do with reality. But it is happening.

This is from USA Today, which suggests the strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic are more intense than they used to be, because the prevailing temperature is a bit higher than it was.

I'll have to admit, this does make for edifying reading while I wait for Hurricane Hanna to create some new gullies in the Charleston area.

Florida State University geography professor James B. Elsner, after studying some 2,000 hurricanes and cyclones worldwide from 1981 to 2006, said the strongest hurricanes were around 140 mph in 1981 to 156 mph in 2006. The sea-surface temperature where these storms blew also showed an increase, from 82.8 degrees to 83.3.

OK. In my own mind, an increase of less than half a degree in 25 years isn't all that much.But maybe that's enough to breed stronger hurricanes, as Elsner suggests.

"As seas warm, the ocean has more energy that can be converted to tropical cyclone wind," he said.

National Hurricane Center scientist Christopher Landsea (love that name) challenges these findings, though.

"The paper has some elegantly calculated
statistics, but these are generated on data that are not, in my
opinion, reliable for examining how the strongest tropical cyclones
have changed around the world," wrote Landsea in an e-mail.

Elsner does acknowledge that "we still do not
have a complete understanding of why some cyclones intensify, sometimes
quite rapidly, and others don't."

But global warming? You bet it's real, although the causes are murky. Right now the favorite culprit is carbon dioxide emissions from industry, from cars, from people.

Maybe. But in my book, the chief cause of global warming is from all these blasts of hot air emanating from Washington, D.C. All this governmental bloviating has to cause some damage.

Poll: Where do you get your news?

You know where most of your information comes from. Or not. Or maybe you won't admit it. Or something.

But please take a moment to reflect on this, check out The Column, Reloaded poll, and fill in your answer(s). I'll probably have something to write about when the results are tabulated.

OK. I'll start it off ...

Notes while waiting for a hurricane

(graphics from the National Hurricane Center)

It was deja vu all over again Monday as I sat in my so-called home-office, one eye on my news feeds and NOAA maps, one ear on the radio, waiting for a hurricane to hit New Orleans.

I did the same thing a few years ago when Hurricane Katrina rolled into the Crescent City. I watched the the first footage from the Weather Channel, which showed a casino riverboat thrown across a parking lot somewhere. I waited for the first word from New Orleans, knowing this was The Big One.

New Orleans was taking no chances with Gustav. Mayor Ray Nagin called it "the storm of the century" and told residents they "need to get your butts out of the city." A little heavy on the hyperbole, I thought, just a few years after Katrina.

I don't even live in New Orleans. I've never been there (though I wouldn't mind going sometime). I have no connection with the place. In fact, I've never seen a full-blown hurricane before.

Let me repeat that, especially in light of the fact I've lived in the South Carolina Lowcountry for 12 years. I've never seen a full-blown hurricane before.

Out west they don't have that kind of thing. They have earthquakes. They have Santa Ana winds, those hot dry blasts that gust at better than 70 mph. They have brush fires, which come in abundance after the Santa Ana winds dry everything worse than it already is. But no hurricanes.

Out here, they still talk about Hugo. It's been 19 years -- one of my co-workers told me today that she was born the same year as Hugo, which made me want to look in the mirror for wrinkles (that's another story). It wasn't until a few years ago that the rebuilding job was complete in Charleston. There are still reminders, such as that lifeboat on Folly Road as you enter Folly Beach. It's stayed there, and people paint new messages on it every day. Call it the Folly Beach Daily Tribune.

My first almost-hurricane was Earl, back in 1997. It hit Beaufort, corkscrewed back out, and hit the Atlantic over Charleston. By that time it was merely a tropical storm (sustained winds of less than 72 mph). I was in my taxi, driving over the old spaghetti-thin Grace Memorial Bridge when it blew overhead. My passengers were convinced they were going to die, and I was absolutely convinced I should gag said passengers. I watched the rain fall sideways, watched the bridge wobble back and forth in my rear view mirror, felt my bowels lock up. We did get where we were going, and my passengers were grateful to be alive. They were most generous in the tipping department.

I missed Gilbert, back in 1999. That one was more false alarm than anything. It buzzed the coast and spurred the most bollixed-up evacuation you'd ever want to see. OK, where was I? Living up in Johnson City, Tennessee. I worked for a cab company, and between calls watched the big-screen TV in the dispatch office. That's when I knew I belonged here; I referred to Charleston as "back home."

I almost caught Isabel. A few friends and I were playing at an outdoor hurricane party, and we took a hasty break to put plastic sheeting behind us on the gazebo so the keyboards wouldn't short out, and grabbed a bunch of extra towels. But Isabel kicked up some wind and waves here, but not much else.

I also missed Gaston, which assembled itself out of spare parts and slammed into Charleston. Wasn't even a hurricane; the only thing it had going for it was the element of surprise. But most hurricanes form deep in the Atlantic, and radar follows its path the whole way. Projections are made the whole route. A few had Charleston lined up in the ten-ring before taking a dogleg right and hitting Wilmington instead.

Now, I'm watching the NOAA website and tracking Hanna. As I write this, it's temporarily dwindled down to tropical storm status but is expected to perk back up. It's expected to make landfill around Friday, and the odds-on favorite target is ... Charleston.

We're talking about it at the train yard. If it hits Charleston we'll probably get an unscheduled day off. And that's the way it should be. We have all these shipping containers around. The ports usually close in a sotrm like that, and the containers are restacked (none of this seven-high stuff you see on normal days). Everything kind of shuts down.

Meanwhile, I watch. And wait. The NOAA map isn't carved in granite, or even in bologna. But one would be a fool to be unprepared.

Tech matters and penguin dust in new blog

As you may have noticed, I'm very interested in technical matters. One only has to run through a few headlines in this space to figure that out.

Sometimes -- just like computers themselves -- it gets in the way.

My emphasis with The Column, Reloaded is in news and commentary. Of course, that covers a lot of bases, but with all the tech stuff in here one kind of wonders what this blog is all about. Like, where's the focus, man?

Because of this, The Column, Reloaded has its own spin-off, its own sister publication. Say hello to The Workbench, Reloaded.

In Workbench, you will find all the geeky things that I have this tendency to write about, and then some. A few hacks. Maybe a review or two. Some stuff that makes you want to put on the ol' tinfoil hat. Some tech toys coming down the pike. Ways to make a computer that should have been retired functional again. My own garden of how-I-dunnits. It'll all be there.

Be warned, though. I'm not big on Microsoft Windows. This is not for political reasons; I don't have any particular ire toward Bill Gates or MS. Instead, I like choice. I like my system my way, customizable to the hilt. So Workbench will have a definite Linux slant to it.

Yes, I've been snorting too much penguin dust. Don't tell anybody.

But there will still be stuff for the Windows user, particularly the one who wants the most function for that old computer you found at the yard sale.

Anyway ... enjoy!

These tools better than a tinfoil beanie

(Disclaimer: I just love these mailbag requests. It indicates someone's reading, paying attention, and maybe doing something. Or making suggestions. This one came from Kelly Sonora, who has a tech blog, "All Things Internet/Web World Wide." The article she sent me was interesting -- especially 'cause I'm interested in Internet security and I like free stuff.)

In the past I'd written about how public the Internet really is. In cop-show parlance, every time you surf, your business is hung out on the street.

This is indeed true. To illustrate, scroll down to the bottom of this site and check out the box called "About You." (For those who are reading this in RSS-land, hop over to the blog site and scroll to the bottom.) You'll probably see your approximate location,your IP address, and your operating system and browser staring right at you.

Us oldsters remember when things were a lot more private. Plus, the world has changed since 9/11, Homeland Security, and all these other events that changed our world. Civil liberties just ain't what they used to be. Even if you're a normal Joe, not any more paranoia than the next fella, one quick dip through the news may make you think a tinfoil beanie is a pretty good idea.

Paranoia or not, it's just good sense to surf defensively when you go on line. A lot of valuable information -- credit card and bank account numbers float around in cyberspace all the time. Weirdos lurk all over the place, and that nice fella on myspace could well be a 55-year-old Michael Moore lookalike, sitting buck naked at his terminal (for the visually minded, "buck naked" means he's not wearing any socks, either). People work overtime to put together worms, viruses, Trojan horses, and spyware to either cripple your computer, mine it for information, or just scare the spit out of you. Every time you surf, you leave little bits of code on the hard drive telling exactly where you've been, and those pieces of code are as good as a fingerprint.

But you get the point. It's a jungle out there. But there are tools to hide you, to cover your tracks, and to protect your information. And if you're feeling paranoid without reason, there are tools and sites guaranteed to give you something to be paranoid about. Whether you're normal (whatever that is) or a screaming nut job, there's probably a tool for you, too.

Here are some of my favorites from "50 Free Internet Tools for Tin-Foil Hat Wearers", written by Alisa Miller:

Portable Firefox: I love this one. I used it quite a bit when reduced to library computers, which ordinarily means being stuck with the porous Internet Explorer. Portable Firefox comes with a suite of open-source applications which I use a lot anyway -- the AbiWord word processor, Audacity sound editor, and a handful of others. I carry them on a thumb drive with some of the documents I'm working on, which basically gives me a computer in my pocket. Ad I leave no trace on the host computer. My bookmarks and cookies -- those little bits of code that can tell you where I've been -- also stay on the thumb drive. And surprisingly, I've been able to download stuff using a library computer. Good luck doing that with the as-is system. I highly recommend this one.

Bugmenot.com: Of course I resent the idea of having to register (and get on a mailing list) just to read a few news articles, so of course I swear by this one. I use it via a Firefox extension, and I can't think of the last time I've registered for anything.

GrandCentral: It's by Google, and supposedly it consolidates all of your phone numbers into one that's untraceable. Sounds intriguing, but it is by Google, so take that any way you want.

Clusty and Scroogle: Search engines. Clusty is supposedly highly secure. To my experience it's also slow. Scroogle is a front-end for Google, which uses encryption and a few other things that supposedly mask your existence while you use Google.

ShieldsUp! and Junkbusters: Both will let you know how secure your computer really is. The more information your computer puts out, the more vulnerable you are to attacks and attempts by nefarious types to sip into your information. ShieldsUp! tells me my computer is practically invisible.

AVG Anti-Virus: It's virus protection. They update regularly -- more often when some real baddie comes down the pike. And it's free. That was my guardian during my Windows days (viruses are not an issue with Linux). The on-the-fly virus protection is, last I looked, somewhat lacking, but the program picks 'em off the hard drive with ease. Virus protection is big business, and it's a cash cow for some large software companies that play on people's fears, so if a free one does the job for you, go for it. I understand they've added spyware protection since I last used it; a good thing.

Avast! Another free virus protection program. I tried it years ago, and found it to be slow but thorough. For ease of operation -- based on my tests then -- I'd give the nod to AVG. But unlike spyware programs, you can only run one virus checker at a time.

Ad-Aware: By Lavasoft. One of only about two spyware-sniffing programs that is worth anything. The other one, which is not mentioned in the article, is Spybot Search & Destroy. And unlike virus scanners, you can have several spyware checkers on your system. In fact it's recommended, because each of these two will occasionally miss something. Whatever you do, DON'T order spyware protection from any Internet source that plugs its product through a pop-up box on your browser. Not only will those not work, they're probably not free and they're usually spyware themselves. I told you it's a jungle out there.

SiteAdvisor: Haven't used this, but heard good things about it. Supposedly lets you know that you're going to a site that is loaded with spyware or harvests your information. Worth a look.

This isn't on the list, but if you really want to play it stealthy, you can try one of the small Linux systems loaded via QEMU, an emulator. I have one (with the ultra-small Puppy Linux) on a USB thumb drive. Plug it in to a USB port, click on the icon, and you're running Linux on top of Windows. it's so secret even the host computer doesn't know what you're doing. There are some real drawbacks -- it's extremely slow, and you really need to be fluent in Linux to use it well. And it can't print or play music, but I can surf on a library computer and leave absolutely no traces.

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Anyway, that's my own list. Some things worth checking out there.

In fact, I recommend the whole blog. It's full of good security information.