last Thursday Mother Nature called

water covering a highway and new water park I've been to with grandkids

I was sleeping. My wife woke me up and told me the downpour was really bad and kindly suggested (her version, my version was more of an order) that I adjust the drain hose on the downspout.

Bear with me while I take a brief tangent to explain some background. Our house is not very large nor expensive (I’m sure those are related) so my wife swaps the seasonal coats around in the limited 1st floor closet space. Second notable item, we are experiencing a delayed winter. Before I could dash outside I had to wake up and get my rain jacket from its basement storage area (also I’m not a morning person).

As I lumbered down to the basement I saw the message Mother Nature left (so nice to leave messages). Mother Nature called to tell me our sump pump was dead. She displayed the message all across the basement floor. 

extracted dead pump - could be from a sunken treasure find

When water starts flowing across a basement floor you notice all types of cardboard boxes that you didn’t realize were there. The morning was spent moving, clearing, dumping, wet vacuuming, and squeegee pushing. By mid afternoon I had extracted the dead pump.

Our problems were minor compared to others in our village and surrounding area. If you lived near a small stream, you discovered the now river strength water was asking to take you house along with it. A section of major highway through our village was completely under water (see pic below). A parking lot at a nearby grocery store had become a good size lake with cars forming islands.

According to regional weather forecasters more rain has fallen in this month of April (still more that a week left) than during ALL of last summer. Our village of Lisle made the top of one list of rainfall measurements on the local news. It was over 6 inches. Lisle was also mentioned by Brian Williams on the NBC national news.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Photos from Chicago Weather Center Blog and Huffington Post. You can find more photos by following the links back to those sites.

retirement home rescue

Every Sunday since my blog started getting visited by Unknown Mami there has been a photo sharing/linking post at her blog. Check it out.


 

not paid to think

Just a quick post. I got a laugh from this. This short clip shows that reporters are not paid to think. Looks like the kid was OK.

I have some ideas of what they should do to the reporter. Any suggestions?

Sesame St. Main St. Wall St. Brawl St.

What street?

"Stand in the place where you live" (REM song)

It all does get too confusing, all too often.

Sesame St. was in the news last week because it too has been hit by this economic crisis. Here's a headline from the examiner web site:

Can you tell me how to get to the Sesame Street unemployment office?

I suggest that maybe they rent space in Oscar's trash can since more people will be on the street.



Last Thursday night I heard of another street - Brawl Street.

I watch CNBC and the Daily Show, so this battle/interview was hyped for a few days. Jon Stewart grilled Jim Cramer for CNBC's coverage of the economic crisis. Jon threw some good serious questions at Jim. You can watch the whole interview at the Daily show site.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Intro - Brawl Street: Get Ready to Buy Low! And Sell Die

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Another explainer of confusion is Uncle Jay. I found this "Uncle Jay Explains the News" show awhile back and I get a laugh from it everytime.



Oh don't forget -
"Your feet are going to be on the ground"

a green day of shamrocks

St. Patrick's Day will be here in a few days. Most of the celebrations will be this weekend. The Chicago River (the part in the loop area) will be dyed green.

Parades, music, wearing green, and raising a few pints can be expected.

I had a very special St. Patrick's Day back in 1989. It was a Friday that year and by a strange coincidence I finalized a deal with my employer to join the group they recently had acquired in Shannon Ireland.

For those familiar with Ireland (I was not then), Shannon is a river and an airport. It has an office park near the airport.

The deal hammered out included a bonus, transportation of my family (all 7 of us), a car lease in Ireland, and lodging for 3 months. I felt like a won a lottery.

What a difference 20 years make. The group and company's presence there is long gone. But enough of that, I am enjoying the good memories of some great Irish friends.

County Clare is a wonderful place. I don't know if anyone has done a study on this (someone somewhere probably did) - but I think there is some generic trait of music ability within the Irish.

The music ability failed to rub off - but I picked up a liking to Guinness.

Here's a trailer and a clip of music from a great Irish movie called "Waking Ned Devine"

Happy St. Patrick's Day - Sláinte

911 calling education needed

Two recent 911 calls - very different

1) A lady in Florida calls because McDonalds refuses to give her money back.

2) A lady in Texas calls while in pursuit of a purse snatcher.



Call #1 - I give the 911 operator a big plus for handling this professionally, I would have either yelled at her or started laughing. Sure you angry about feeling ripped off but 911 is NOT the way to handle it. Get the names of the workers, call McDonalds' HQ or the police non-emergency line later. Ok you're a dissatisfied customer is THAT AN EMERGENCY?

Call #2 - Maybe the wisdom of age helps here. This lady was a quick thinking grandmother. This was a robbery not some fast food dissatisfied customer. This one sounds much more intense than some missing McNuggets.

Have a listen:
911 call

Here's a link to a reenactment of it.


I suspect the call #1 will get much attention than call #2 because it's stupid.

Maybe we need 911 calling education.

Oh I've just been laid-off - I'm calling 911.

Try this link to listen to call 2

Southwest wi-fi SI models

Wi-Fi and SI

Southwest Airlines has been busy creating some buzz. Maybe some would say involving tech and sex.

Over on Southwest Airline's blog - yes they have a blog.
You'll find this video and more posts about their wi-fi equipped planes using the system from Row 44. These planes will offer internet services for passengers.

Also over at the blog you'll see some pictures of there latest decorated plane SI-One. The "SI" stands for Sports Illustrated and their latest cover girl, Bar Refaeli, covers the plane really well. (I wonder if they ever thought of writing their name "Sports ilLUSTrated" for the swimsuit issue)

size matters with sausage

Bucharest - Romanians must like record setting. Longest smoked sausage, heaviest fruit cake, largest Santa give away,

Do they have a category of dumbest record event?

You know Romania is next to Serbia which the home of bleeping Blagojevich's ancestors. Maybe we could arrange some record setting event for him over there. Anything to get him out of Illinois.

float vs. fly enter new zeppelin

A Zeppelin come back?? - If you are as old as me, your first thought might be the Led one not the blimp type one. BTW Led Zeppelin has a good web site (40 years and I'm still dazed and confused)

No the video above is a report on a company offering air travel from the pre-WWII era. The company Airship Ventures offers 1 hour tours floating around San Francisco for about $500. I don't know what helicopter rides go for but I think those run much shorter. Either this or a helicopter ride would offer those great views but floating might be more enjoyable.

I think one of these in Hawaii would be a big hit. I would have rather gone between islands on this than a regular jet airliner.

row44 news clip

Well xfoners, you should be able to spot an RF engineer sitting in the row44 plane doing some testing that you might remember.

I must say the row44 test plane has much more room inside than the one Airfone used. It's a Grumman Albatross flying boat.

Here's the MSNBC story this came from.

new meaning to tune your car

I heard about this on NPR. It's unusual.

Apparently Honda created this stretch of road in California that plays the William Tell overture when a Honda drives on it at 55mph. Now the video clip above sounds like music but I couldn't recognize the song.

The more recent story of this is that the piece of road was paved over. The NEIGHBORS complained. You know just when you crank up those tunes some neighbor has to complain. Come to think of it - that same tune over and over again with each car - this is not a great idea.

However in checking this out, I found another clip about Korea doing this for highway safety (see below). Well maybe in the right place, but the weather (snow?) would probably mess it up.

Really I'm happy if one the traffic is moving and two the pot holes are fixed.

winging it jet style

I suspect you may have seen a report of this. It's very interesting and I suspect it will be widely covered. A swiss pilot flew a jet powered wing across the English channel (22 miles of open sea).

After checking the various reports and video, I have an idea of how it works but still a few questions. Since turning his head alters the flight direction, how does he check on where he is headed?? Does he have radio contact during the flight?

One more - did 007 do this already in a movie??

Here's more info from the web:
The CNN report video below has most of the details of the channel crossing.

The National Geographic Channel has a special page with a collection of pictures and video.

Also there is the BBC report.

get back

I first read about this last Wednesday in Mary Schmich's column in the Chicago Tribune. Paul McCartney and his girlfriend are traveling the mother road, route 66.

It was especially interesting because Joliet is my hometown and I have been on parts of route 66 since I was a kid. I also like the song. The one siting was at the route 66 museum in Joliet. Now I need to check that place out.

Mary Schmich wrote about it again in Friday's paper. I called my sister in Oklahoma (which in on route 66). She heard about and told me it was reported on their local radio station.

A quick internet search of the news turned up more stories about the trip including the above video. One of the funny parts of the video is the newscaster telling the guy to speed up his story.

Here a good site that is covering the trip.

I'm wondering if they will return the same way. With all his money he could get back just about anyway he wanted.