|
December
No WOM this month.
November
Deaf NC Events
Website of Events for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing by Ches B. has been
closed down and left
a gap for Deafies in North Carolina. With the collaborations of two
anonymous sponsors, we decided
fill this gap with a new and expanded version of Website of of Events for
the Deaf and Hard of
Hearing for all of North Carolina. This website takes the place of
our own
Events page on this
website which featured fewer Events but mostly serviced the Piedmont and
Eastern North Carolina.
Our
Events page is now being reworked back to it's purpose of featuring
recent Class get-togethers,
Reunions, and Min-Reunions as it was originally intended for.
So here we are, tooting our own horn and invite you to our sister website, a
new service for the
Deaf and Hard of Hearing for all of North Carolina.
www.deafncevents.com
October
Randy has sent me funny videos and they are still available online and I
thought I share them here:
Why you don't hit your office computer
If you are a frequent visitor to this page, then you should know that I'm a
space nut;
Here's a new site from NASA:
www.nasaimages.org
September
Jigsaw Puzzle Paradise
You like puzzles? We like puzzles.
How about going to Jigsaw Puzzle Paradise. You can select pictures
to
puzzle AND you can select the difficulty of the puzzles. Don't like the
pictures they offer? Upload
your own and make your own puzzle. It's
puzzling that we haven't found this puzzling site earlier.
This site is
neat. You can e-mail a puzzle post card, sign up for Puzzle-of-the-Day and
you can
compete with your buddies' solve times. It's a puzzling site to
enjoy!
http://www.jigzone.com
Space Stinks or Astronauts Say Space Smells Funny
Former NASA astronaut Thomas Jones, a
veteran of three spacewalks before retiring from spaceflying in 2001,
thinks the odor could stem from atomic oxygen that clings to spacesuit
fabric.
"When you repressurize the airlock and get out of your suit, there is a
distinct odor of ozone, a faint
acrid smell," Jones told SPACE.com,
adding that the smell is also similar to burnt gunpowder or the
ozone
smell of electrical equipment. "It's not noticeable inside the suit. The
suit smells like plastic
inside."
Did I break after wimmimg?
August
40 years later, Woodstock still fascinates
Woodstock remains
one of those events — like the moon landing earlier that summer — that
continues to define the 1960s culture in the popular imagination.
Consider the bumper crop of Woodstock nostalgia marking the
40th anniversary. There's a new cut
DVD of the concert
movie, a remastered concert CD, director Ang Lee's rock 'n'
roll
comedy
"Taking Woodstock" and a memoir by promoter Michael
Lang. There are also performances
scheduled by Woodstock
veterans at the old site, now home to a '60s museum and an
outdoor
concert pavilion.
The Woodstock legend
stems from big names such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin
and
more
and
more playing at a show where everything went
wrong but turned out right.
The town of Woodstock
didn't want the concert and promoters were bounced from
another site at the
11th hour. Lang settled on a hay
field in Bethel owned by a kindly dairy farmer named Max
Yasgur.
The concert did come off Aug. 15-18, 1969, but
barely. Fences were torn down, tickets became
useless.
More than 400,000 people converged on this rural corner 80
miles northwest of New York
City, freezing traffic for
miles. Then the rains doused everything.
It should
have been a disaster. But Americans tuning in to the evening
news that weekend saw
smiling, dancing, muddy kids. By
the time the concert movie came out months later, Woodstock
was
a symbol of the happy, hippie side of the '60s
spirit.
It still is. Woodstock may have ended the
1960s with a bang but it is still part of our generation.
If you google just the word woodstock, you will come up with
over 27 million pages of references to
this event...so
instead of featuring a website of the month, let's just say
this a feature of our
generation.
www.woodstock69.com
www.peacefence.com/woodstock.htm (Photos)
www.squidoo.com/woodstock_69 (Commentary and Photos)
www.woodstockny.org
(The town of Woodstock, NY)
www.bethelwoodscenter.org (The community location of the
festival)
www.yasgurroad.com/history.html (The farmland's owner of
the location of the event)
July
Apollo 11 images featured on the home page this month are courtesy of
NASA
and/or
apolloarchive.com
Lakes Umpire
Umpires has rules to live by when umpiring games, in this case baseball
games. John set up this
blog site for a friend explaining how baseball umpires should signal their
calls properly. Although I
have admitted in the past that I'm not into sports, I did read this blog and
now when I run across a
baseball game on TV, I will understand what the umpires are signaling.
Thanks, John!
http://lakesumpire.blogspot.com
Planetary Science Misconduct
Huh? A list of scientists who have committed scientific misconduct and
fraud? Wow! You wouldn't
think scientists would do such a thing and go so low as to commit
falsification in order to receive
funding and grants. Then again, for all we know, this has been going on "in
the name of science"
for ages. Anyway, the new age of the internet now exposes these horrific
waste of funds and the
scientists who do mankind wrong earns the right to be placed on this
listing. Hopefully, those who
commit fraud by releasing funds to these so called scientists aught to be
included on this same
listing...you would think?
http://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html
June
DTV Transition
Well, the historic DTV transition has come and gone. A non-event really,
unless you were watching
TV with rabbit ears or an antenna. At a specified time, if...and only if
your TV station mentioned it,
your tube went snowy/dark/blue when the TV station's analog signal was
powered off. If you were
watching on a satellite network when the local
station's analog power off switch was pushed,
your screen probably went pink for maybe 20 minutes or so until the provider
scrambled to find the
signal they were supposed to use. Still have questions? this site sponsored
by
DTV Transition
Coalition may have your answers.
http://www.dtvtransition.org
May
NASA Links to the Hubble Telescope Repair
Extensive repairs are now in progress for the Hubble telescope
and NASA has provided links on their
website to other locations in the internet for more information and
pictures. Of all the space
missions to date, this STS-125 Hubble mission is probably the most attention
grabbing mission so
far...with exception to the moon landing in 1969. Go to this page and click
on Hubble Links, located
near the top right corner of the page.
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/hubble_servicing
Hubble Telescope Gallery
Visitors to this page know that I'm a outer space junkie. There's tons of
pictures accumulated over
the years and are now collected all together on this website. I've collected
many pictures to use as
you can guess, screensavers and wallpapers. I go to this site several times
a week and still can't get
enough.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/solar_system
April
Possible feature here called TV show of the Month?
TV show produced in 2002 titled "Sue
Thomas F.B.Eye" is rerunning on the Animal Planet channel.
The original 2 hour pilot episode aired Monday, April 6, 8pm and again
Tuesday morning 12am. Her
dog Levi is the reason that we now have a second chance to catch these past
episodes. Remember,
the remaining shows airs on Mondays at 9pm EST/PST (8pm Central/Mountain).
And repeats after
midnight.
FBI 100: Celebrating a Century
Celebrated in 2008, the history of the FBI is so expansive, their website
has broken down their
history into "periods". Everything you wanted to know about the FBI...it's
all here.
www.fbi.gov/fbihistory.htm
March
Busy is my magic word these past two months, so I'm thanking John for
doing the research for me:
Now this is cool!.....incredible animation!!!!
This is a great animation showing all the segments of the Space Station, the
modules and the
international partners that have helped create it. Keep an eye in the lower
left hand corner and you
will see the date of each event.
www.tietronix.com
1974 Volkswagen Beetle & Camper - road test
Just simply cool...I want one!
(Ignore the first 25 seconds and watch the video).
www.youtube.com
Newspapers of the World
Just put your mouse on a city anywhere in the world and the newspaper
headlines pop up... Double
click and the page gets larger...Then you can either read the pdf version or
click through to the
paper itself in the upper right corner..
Also, if you look at the European papers, the far left side of Germany will
pop up as The Stars &
Stripes (European edition, of course). AND this site changes everyday with
the publication of new
editions of the paper. Hope you enjoy this.
www.newseum.org
February
Sorry, no selections this month.
January
As promised, here is my CSDVRS review:
www.csdvrs.com
Well, this one is not a website of the month but a disappointment and a
grief about the
company
behind the website.
I've put off getting VRS because I just didn't want a another TV waiting to
be
used. The CSDVRS folks
at the ASL Expo in Greensboro, NC back in
September 6,
2008 convinced me
to sign up for Z30
(Z340) on sale for $80. Although it has a small screen, I really liked this
unit
because of its laptop like portability. It would serve its purpose very well
as I could take it with me
on my road trips as well as being able to connect this unit in any room in
my house as well as inside
my workshop separate from my house. Really, a perfect and ideal VRS unit for
me.
OK, so weeks go by...no e-mail, mail, or any communications from CSDVRS. I
go to NCSD's
Homecoming and eureka! CSDVRS has a booth! I asked about getting Z340. Their
representative said
I will get e-mail in three weeks. So again, I waited and waited. No e-mail,
nothing, nothing, and
more nothings. So, on January 6, I contacted them through their website and
basically I wrote: "It is
now 2 and half months OR 4 months since September 2008! WOW. I waited and
waited. No e-mail,
nothing, nothing, and more nothings".
And now, finally, I received a response, albeit a manufactured
response...you know...the same
response sent to anyone who's asking. Here's what they said: "We are
completing the final stages of
testing the new Z phones. The Z-340 has started being shipped to customers,
and there is still no
release date of the Z-150. This has been due to an overwhelmingly high
volume of requests we have
received for the Videophone. CSDVRS will be contacting you once the Z
becomes available, and the
current units we have will be assigned on a first come, first serve basis."
Oh, wow, whoopie doo! Geez, I didn't ask about the Z-150. Here was my
response:
Same old, same old.
That's the same story the rep said at the NCSD Homecoming on Oct. 18, 2008.
So in effect, nothing new, nothing changed.
Sigh,
Lester Latkowski
So the moral to any company offering any product: Don't offer products until
it has come off the
assembly and testing lines. DUH! |
