shaving your wit's pencil

I have shut off comments to posts for the time being. Some script kiddie has discovered the site and is attempting to slam it with comment spam. I had comments on only with moderation, but I’m going to look for a better way to kill the spam altogether. I’m tired of all the spam notice e-mails I’m receiving.

I’ll let everyone know what I have comments turned back on.

Moms and dads out there, we all know what this is like…that first day of kindergarten for the kids. Ellen sent me some photos of Justin’s first day, so I though it would be nice to see him at his “desk,” ready to go to work. Work hard, kiddo!

The girls and I made it through Jeanne okay. In fact, Kelly and I actually enjoyed our planned weekend at the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island before Jeanne came though on Sunday. Rather than repeat the whole story here, you can read about it on the other blog.

Speaking of Florida, don’t we also have some other family down here? Uncle Dom and Aunt Delores? Any news on how they’ve been faring through all this? Inquiring minds want to know.

Any of you all out there….?

I posted something about these events on my blog, but I wanted to just say it again for the benefit of the rest of the family. Kelly and I celebrated our 25th anniversary on September 15. I wrte a little something about that here. Kel and I will be spending a nice long weekend up at Amelia Island this week. We believe the current tropical conditions remain favorable.

On September 10, our Kaitie turned eighteen, a pretty significant milestone which I publicly noted here. She noted that she would celebrate by doing some of the things an 18-year-old could do, such as legally buying a lottery ticket. We just want her to vote.

The Macioce and Perez families took a trip to Ireland in July. Donna Macioce was kind enough to send a mail with links to some beautiful photos. From her e-mail:

…here are two web galleries from our trip. One is from Darragh
Cottages where we rented two cottages, side-by-side, and the other is from
the Cliffs of Moher.

The Cliffs of Moher were awesome. For the most part it was climb at your own
risk!

Click and enjoy.

Darragh Cottage
Cliff’s of Moher

Here are a couple of interesting thins about this blog that you might not know.

• The style you see when you visit (the picture of Tom, the other page formatting) is the default style for the site. However, you can try a different look by clicking on one of the Style links in the column on the right. There are a whole bunch more available, but you might find there that you like.
• You can upload pictures to go along with your posts, but you have to register first (naturally) and I have to bup up your user level before you can. If you want to be able to attach pictures to your posts, mail me and I’ll explain how to do it.
• There are a couple of different categories for posts. You have the option of checking off one or more, or just leaving them in “General". If you want me to add another category, let me know.
• If you’re one of those people (like me) who sit in front of a computer all the time, you might want to find a way to keep up with changes to this and other blogs and sites without having to continuously browse them. You might look into an RSS newsreader to assist you. RSS is a special Internet protocol that allows a site (like this one) to send out “feeds” of its content, in a summary format. Some web browsers (like Firefox) have RSS tools built in, or as add-on modules. This is a little too complicated to get into here, but you can file a lot of information on the web. Just do a Google search on “RSS readers.”

That’s it for now.

Many of you who responded to my initial e-mail asked how the girls and I were making out down here in Florida with the recent wrath of hurricanes. Actually, I can’t tell you enough how lucky we are to live where we do. I thought perhaps the above graphic would give you a visual idea of just how lucky.

The girls and I live in a suburb of Jacksonville called Orange Park. The St. John’s River is just a few blocks from the house, but the Atlantic is about 45 minutes to the east. Even if a storm were to come ashore on the coast east of here, we’re far away enough from the ocean to avoid being affected by a storm surge. That’s not to say the river couldn’t surge, but a storm coming this far inland would have to be one monster to stay that powerful this far in.

As you can see by the graphic (which you can click to see a larger version), each of the four storms that affected Florida pretty much passed us by. The worst of them for us was Frances. We had pretty heavy tropical storm conditions on Sunday of that weekend, and we did lose power for about 17 hours into Labor Day. Other parts of this area, mostly near the water (Jacksonville Beach, St. Augustine and to the south) were hit pretty hard by Frances, and some people went for over two weeks without power.

One of the reasons we don’t normally take direct hits from these storms (at least those coming in from the open Atlantic water) is said to be because of that curvature in the shoreline that runs from the Georgia line down to St. Augustine (it’s under the white arrowhead in the graphic). I didn’t realize this, but a storm moving west from the ocean hasn’t hit the Florida coast from Jacksonville to Melbourne since they began keeping records around 1885. Hurricanes have hit the area, but from other directions. In fact, the last storm to hit Jacksonville directly was Dora. That was in 1964.

This has been a pretty tough season on this state. And it’s not over yet; the hurricane season doesn’t officially end until November 1. I have a great advantage working at a Naval weather facility. I don’t know much about the science they use, but I do have access to information faster than the public usually does. I also get to see some very smart people hard at work during some pressure times. The movement of these storms through the region force them to make decisions on base closures, aircraft and ship movements and evacuations. This can cost a lot of money. I’m glad I’m not the one who has to make those choices.

i think the blog is a great idea and i hope it fosters communication and sharing. i’ve thought a lot about tom recently, as summer has just come to a close and that was “his season.” lee and i talk about tom often during the season, particularly when things are super-stressful and we imagine what colorful things would spew forth from tom’s mouth!!! anyway, things here in westhampton beach are pretty much the same as always. i’ve moved to a little cottage in the village with a friend of mine, emily. i am still in school but looking so forward to finishing, hopefully at the end of this school year. hope everyone out there is doing well, particularly you florida dwellers who have been battling charleys, franceses and ivans. and joe, your jags won, but i wouldn’t exactly call that a stomping. at least we can share yankee glory over taking this series from the much-abhored red sox. anyway, i hope i’ve done this right! xoxo

So you clicked on the link for Tom’s site, and you arrived here. And you’re probably wondering what the heck this is. Keep reading.

I have neglected updating Tom’s site for a while because I was trying to come up with something better to add to it. One of my motivations for putting the site up in the first place was to create a site the family and circle of Tom’s friends could contribute in some way. Donna created the great graphic that greets you when you come here, and for a while, I had the bulletin board/forum up and running.

That feature initially had a lot of activity, but as with other things, it kind of fell by the wayside. Some people stayed pretty active in it (like MaryJo, who was always posting something). I still like the idea of a site where you can contribute something written, or a photo or whatever. The problem with the forums was that they are not particularly “lively,” in the sense that you have to bounce from category to category to see what people are saying. That’s more suited to a site that has discussion groups about computers or cameras or games. A site dedicated to someone that invites input from that person’s friends and family needs to be a bit more…alive.

I’m not quite sure how to define what I’m trying to say. But I believe this new sitee, a weblog, or a blog as they’re commonly known, is a bit more current and allows for more interactivity. You see everything in reverse chronological order, with the most recent entires first. You can scan back, link to other entries here or anywhere else, post a photo, and pretty much write anything you like.

Those of you who follow the political news know that the blog world is responsible for pointing out what a lying bag of manure Dan Rather and the folks at CBS are. (Sorry. I’ll save the politics for my blog). Blogs are everywhere. Some are good, some are stupid. Some are for everyone, and some are very personal.

I actually first had this idea in late 2002. I put a blog on Tom’s site, and I seem to recall that I asked some people if they wanted to participate, but I didn’t get any initial response. I kept it going and it eventually turned into Attaboy, a site filled with my rantings on everything from politics to the Yankess to culture to whatever. I’m pretty sure some of you have seen it, as I see links from Tom’s site to there all the time.

Now, I’m going to try again with a family/friends blog. I’m going to try to make this as easy as possible for everyone to participate. I’m inviting everyone in the family and circle of friends to register (you have to register before you can post entries like this one) and to come in when the mood strikes and post something. I don’t care what you say…tell us a story, send a greeting, bitch and complain, tell us what’s up, whatever. I’m hoping some of the talented among us (like Dan, for example) will shower us with some poetry or prose. This is self-publishing at it’s best. Who knows? Maybe something you put here will be praised enough to have someone take it really seriously.

(By the way, the title for the blog is taken from the poem Dan wrote for Tom. There’s a link to that poem on the bar at the right).

Now, let me set up a couple of ground rules. The software I’m using for this normally allows new users to register and post immediately. When you vist the blog, click on the “register” link on the toolbar (to the right) to create an account. After you have an account and you login, you’ll arrive at a special screen where you can write entries to the blog, tweak your account, etc. You must login to post an entry. You must also provide an e-mail address to create an account.

You’ll notice that there’s a Comments area below each entry. If you want to comment on something that someone else has written, you can add a comment, and people can read what you had to say. You are not required to register to post comments, but you must supply an e-mail address to add one. (Click on the Comments link below this entry to see them. the number in parentheses indicates how many comments have been created for this entry).

I’ve been running the other blog for a couple of years, and one of the biggest problems I have had is something called comment spam. This is similar to the spam you get in your e-mail, expect that it shows up in the comment sections of weblogs. Last week, I had to upgrade the other blog with software that permitted commenting only if you registered at a special website first. This was unfortunate, but I had no choice…the blog was being bombarded with junk spam selling Viagra, poker sites and porn. There are a couple of features on this site’s software that will (hopefully) prevent that from happening here. Since I want to keep this a “private” blog (just for family, close friends and those we specifically invite into the circle), I’m going to allow the account registration and commenting to remain “open.”

However, the moment I see outsiders trying to invade this site, I’m going to put the hammer down. This site won’t be “pinging” other weblogs to let them know there’s new material here, since the only people I care who see this is our little group.

Okay, I’ve set the table. Now it’s time for you all to eat. I expect to see all of you jumping in here as quickly as possible. This blog software does a lot of stuff, but if you get confused, or want some explanation of how stuff works, mail me and I’ll help you out.