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2014 January

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

CT-Banner7.3.13No Saturday Edition

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day_gecko00[“Lizards”] We do have several non native geckos living in the Keys. The Tokay and the Madagascar “Day Gecko”. The Tokay grows to over 10 inches and will BITE if cornered (I have a nice scar). They are from SE Asia and are very vocal. It is the one that the word geko was coined from as it has a call that sounds like gec-ko. The Day Gecko is the one that the GEICO mascot was loosely patterned from. They are beautiful, with bright green coloring accented with orange dots on the back and an orange stripe on the face. They too eat plenty of bugs and I do enjoy having them in and around my house. I have not heard of any detrimental effects of these beautiful visitors.
isaksen-flood-roof 4.23.13
[Microsoft Almost Admits Defeat] Due to poor sales of it’s Windows 8 operating system Microsoft has announced that the wildly popular Windows 7 OS “End of Sale” date has been extended from October 2014 to “To be announced”.

weather girl

 

Is there a good live video, up to the hour, weather video link for the Keys?

[Crooks] “This contract didn’t go out to bid,” Commissioner Dick said. “I didn’t have a good feeling from the beginning.” Now the City of Key West is suing the Miami contractor of the $37 million cluster f**k high school for not cooperating with an audit.

Seafood-FestThe annual Florida Keys Seafood Festival is coming this weekend. Come down and enjoy the fest. Fanci Seafood will be serving delicious conch fritters! FKSF_Poster-2014 2 

Kwanza

 

Anyone else notice that this alleged holiday came and went with little to no mention by the media?

I’m one of those dreaded snowbirds I keep reading about (although I’ve owned my home here since ’98) and here’s a report on the new Tiki Bar restaurant: Three of us waited 40 minutes for three sandwiches, which with tip was $63. They better pray for snow (birds) because the locals won’t pay those prices. Food was only mediocre. There are plenty of good restaurants in Key West or Marathon where you can get three complete meals for $63. Good luck this summer with no snowbirds. ~robtgornall@yahoo.com

s-pine-ch-br stanchions (1)

 

[Pine Channel Bridges] What are those short, galvanized protuberances along the tops of the barrier walls?

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Flea-Market-ad10.9.13

marx15[Spies Like US] “I have nothing to hide.” That’s the way most of you think. If you thought it through you’d realize that spy agencies have no morals or conscience. They don’t think about that.

The little thing you do or say or write can get blown out of proportion to the point where you’ll be arrested or harassed for the rest of your life. I learned this early on. In the late 60s there was turmoil in America because of the Vietnam war. A friend got arrested for smoking pot and when they searched his apartment, they didn’t find any pot, but they did find his copy of The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Marx (no relation to Harpo) and Engels. The papers said he was a Communist and should stay in jail or something awful. The kid also had a bible and some book on Indian thought in the same place, but nothing was mentioned about that. He wasn’t a communist, he was just young and open-minded.

Lesson learned: “I have nothing to hide.” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Don’t ever trust a spy agency they’ll never be satisfied until everyone is wired or arrested. Google, move aside, the NSA is here!

I realize there is a routine to my life. I never thought about it before but it just dawned on me. I wake up, feed the dogs, turn on our espresso machine and walk out onto the porch and open the shutters to the ocean. There is a definite order to this group of activities and for good reason. The puppies will not wait to be second to any other activity when it comes to food. This is their time and in their loving cute way, let you know that.  Turning on the java machine is important because it takes a minute or two for it to warm up before I can actually extract that frothy cup of love. Perhaps the most important of these early morning duties is the opening of the shutters. This happens without hurah or ceremony but is as important as anything I have ever done. As I slide the shutters open the porch transforms from a dark shadowy space to a magnificent tropical view post card. To say the least it is an incredible transformation. It always transforms me as well, I immediately stretch my arms out and stare at the beautiful ocean occasionally closing my eyes in the process and giving thanks to another incredible day. ~Howard Livingston

find15

 

Find the Canadian.

[Marathon City Manager] I’ve been listening to the ‘mayor’ speak on the radio and he sounds a bit bitter over this whole thing with Roger H. I have to say, I’d do exactly what Roger did. His term is expiring in about a year, he needs to have a job, along comes an opportunity … This is the law of supply and demand in the workplace. We all need to chart our own course and provide for our families. I’m not sure why the mayor would think someone would stick around until the near end of their term to guess whether they’re being extended or not. That would leave no time to search for a new job.

Politicians have a place in this world, but it’s not in the working/private sector world.

ad-manley-deboer6.27.13

barrel15

 

Annie Edison Taylor (1838-1921), the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She did it in 1901 because she needed money, and after doing it said she wouldn’t recommend it to anyone!

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usb15

 

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks. The software is sometimes implanted in the ubiquitous USB cable or at the manufacturer. NSA can now see your computer even when you are not online.

What’s new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency’s ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before. Link 

[Wee Hours Noise] They were erasing the lines painted on the Pine Channel Bridges with a grinding machine.

advert-dennis-ward8.16.13

sugar15

 

Okay then, what is it?

How come the local guys aren’t putting in the sewer lines?  They know everything.
tons15

[Fisherman Defends Crew] A Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council mem­ber and commercial fishing boat owner defended his crew members who were convicted last week for taking fish from one of the most protected areas in the Lower Keys.

“They absolutely will remain the subcontractors on my boat,” said Martin Fisher, the chair­man of two advisory panels with the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council – the Reef Fish Advisory Panel and the Coastal Migratory Pelagics panel. “They’re positions are no way injeopard”.

Fisher told The Citizen that neither man on his boat had any intention of breaking any laws, and that Redden has been running the Sundancer for 11 years and has never had any previous fishery infraction. In fact, Fisher and Redden have long taken FWC scientists out to do research aboard the Sundancer, Fisher said.

~by Adam Linhardt, Citizen Staff

Radio-Shack-1.2.14
Why spend the money and hassle to go to Cuba for sex? Just drive to Miami. No passports or visas needed, but you might need an interpreter.
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secondlife15

 

[Gamers Beware] NSA is spying on online players of World of Warcraft, Second Life and perhaps others because of something something terrorists! Second Life Game Free

[Jury Selection] I’m surprised none of you actually looked it up! Your drivers license is the basis for all jury lists.

Title V Chapter 40 Of the Florida Statutes. 40.01Qualifications of jurors. Jurors shall be taken from the male and female persons at least 18 years of age who are citizens of the United States and legal residents of this state and their respective counties and who possess a driver’s license or identification card issued by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles pursuant to chapter 322 or who have executed the affidavit prescribed in s. 40.011.

A clerk of the court shall generate a set of juror candidate lists derived from the source lists described in s. 40.01. The source name lists and the juror candidate lists shall be maintained as specified in this chapter and in accordance with the juror selection plan approved in s. 40.225. Jury lists. (1) 40.011

Pursuant to s. 40.01, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles shall deliver quarterly to the clerk of the circuit court in each county a list of names of persons who reside in that county, who are citizens of the United States, who are legal residents of Florida, who are 18 years of age or older, and for whom the department has a driver (2)’s license or identification card record.

The clerk of the circuit court shall add to the list of licensed drivers and identification cardholders the name of any person who is 18 years of age or older and who is a citizen of the United States and a legal resident of this state and who indicates a desire to serve as a juror, but whose name does not appear on the department list, by requiring such person to execute an affidavit at the office of the clerk. 

coconuts-ad-11.13

house15

 

Rising seas, sinking coasts for Eastern U.S.  The devastating impact of global warming induced sea level rise has become increasingly clear as powerful surges, coastal flooding and rapid erosion are more and more frequently wreaking havoc along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Link 

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classified ads sm

 

Thank you for placing the following classified ad for us…it worked!!! SOLD. Please remove the ad: “Outdoor furniture”

[Citizen Of The Day Says] Though I’ve lived here all my life, I’ve travelled enough to know how great our weather is here in the Keys.
springers-ad12.30.12

chicken-fried-steak

 

Happy Wednesday from Springers Bar and Grill. It’s comfort food day, and today’s special is country fried steak in white gravy. So come on in and fill that tummy with some great food. It’s a hug for your insides.

Thank god for the ignorant as I would have no chance otherwise in a land of the wise.

sorry_purple_orchid

 

Orchid Dreams is almost here.  KW Orchid Society’s big biennial AOS judged orchid show is coming at the end of next month. Michael Coronado from RF Orchids will be here on Sunday, January 19  to give us the lowdown on just how to prepare our orchids for exhibition.

Putting on the show is a big job, so we hope to get lots of volunteers. With everyone’s help we’ll once again make it a successful event. Menu > Ongoing Events

[No Class] This morning I saw my first, and I hope only, dog poop bag lying on the side of the new bike path. It was there when I went out and when I came back, so it was left there for someone other than the dog owner to pick up.

johnsons-ad-7.25.13
The posts about grinder pumps and what the FKAA is going to do or not do come from an anonymous source, so their validity can’t be checked. The FKAA has been weirdly silent so that most of us can do nothing but assume that the negative grinder pump posts are accurate. The FKAA owes us, at the very least, a FAQ list. How can a public agency ignore the public and communicate only with the BOCC. Isn’t that why we voted to have an elected rather than appointed FKAA Board of Directors. The FKAA leadership acts like an occupying army.
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Palliative-Care-Open-House-001Visiting Nurse Association & Hospice of the Florida Keys announces the grand opening of Palliative Care of the Florida Keys.  This newest program of VNA/Hospice was made possible by a generous grant from Matthew Helmerich and the Helmerich Foundation.

Palliative Care of the Florida Keys focuses on helping those with life-altering or life-limiting illnesses that are still actively seeking treatment.  Palliative care seeks to improve quality of life for patients and their families with a concentration on symptom management, as well as emotional, social, and spiritual concerns.

“We are thrilled to extend our services to the members of the community that need palliative care,” stated Jody Gross, president & CEO of VNA/Hospice.  “There has been a gap in care for those with life-altering illnesses that are neither home-bound nor hospice appropriate.  We are able to close that gap with Palliative Care of the Florida Keys.”

Palliative Care of the Florida Keys is located at 3426 North Roosevelt Boulevard in Key West.  For more information or to set-up an appointment, please call 305-294-8812 or email info@VNAHospiceKeys.org.

advert-accurate-home-insp8.14.13
[Blackphone is coming] A cell phone built for security and privacy by the best security conscious minds in the industry, based in Switzerland. GSM/unlocked. Video
ttltltltl  ([?] Ed: You send ‘em, we’ll print ‘em.)

jury verdict read[Jury Duty] I can’t speak for the whole state of Florida, but Monroe County does use DMV records to select folks for jury duty.  As I understand it, they’ve used this method for several years now and it has caught some folks off guard.  I know this to be fact because of my call to that duty last year. On that day the judge was going through his process of permissible excuses for dismissal.  One individual stood up and stated he was not a resident of the state of Florida and was licensed in his ‘home’ town.  The judge explained to the individual that he was selected based on his Florida DMV record as having a Florida drivers license issued from Monroe County and since it’s against the law to have a license in more than one state, the individual might not want to continue with his ‘excuse’ discussion while in the court room.  

The laughter in the courtroom because of this individual made it worth the trip. I guess I was overdressed.  I wasn’t selected anyway and was sent on my way after the first morning.

Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do practice?  ~George Carlin

chamber-ad10.17.13
More “modern” thinking, more “good” kids among us who just happen to do lots of disruptive bad crazy things that nobody can do anything about and we have to accept and try to go on with life, hoping we are not damaged while they thrash around next to us.
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router d-link[How to secure your home router] Your router is your main protection from the horrors of the Internet, it must be iron clad secure. 1: Use a computer and network you know to be secure to download any firmware updates for the router and apply. Set a new password each time a firmware update is required. 2: Use WPA2(AES) Personal as the Wifi standard. WPA and WEP Encrypted are cracked. WEP is open and of course insecure. 3: Turn off PING and remote management (unless you really know what you’re doing). 4: Don’t bother to enable a hidden network or MAC address filtering, both are essentially worthless against hackers with sniffers. 5: Create a admin account with a extremely random and lengthy password as possible. 30-40 or more characters using at least one from each character set on the keyboard to thwart brute force hacking techniques. Write the password down as legible as possible, crossing the zeros, store in a very safe place out of others hands. Never use this admin password to get online or store this password on any machine which later can be gleaned by malware. Only use for accessing the router as admin using a secure machine. 6: Create Internet access only guest accounts on the router and assign a different random character password to them that works best with the lowest common denominator machine. For instance if you have a older phone that only accepts 10 characters as the password, then that’s what you use. The guest Internet access password is what is used on all machines to get online and has no admin access to the router. A second guest access account can be used for real life guests and the password rotated without affecting other machines. 7: If possible, have a geek friend run a complete port check on your router from another location, all should be Stealth (no answer to PING) unless you have a specific purpose for a port to be open. 8: Avoid Apple’s Airport routers, they are unable to turn off PING and announce themselves to war[?] drivers that one has a household full of expensive Apple gear inside, also they are a pain to maintain. 9: AT&T router/modem combos come setup, but their passwords consist of numbers only and then not enough characters. 10: Avoid routers that requires a cloud type setup or maintenance (Linksys), there is absolutely no need for it and the expanded rarely used features enables them to record your web traffic, more angles for hackers to get into the router and thus into the rest of your machines via tainted updates. 
nira tocco realtor 9.12

Road noise is the penalty for living in an urban environment. Asphalt wears out from millions of car tires rolling over it, and must be replaced from time to time. If this is new to you, I assume you must have never lived in an urban environment (Now you do because of overpopulation of the Keys), so get used to it – it will only get worse … much worse. Remember the Florida Creed, ‘Come on down!, sunshine, low taxes and wide open spaces, life is always good. Things are different here!”

We real Floridians all know this is crap, but we are powerless to control the politicians and developers (likely the same). Enjoy the asphalt grinder machine.It is only the beginning of your disenchantment with what was the Keys.

SunNoShine

 

[Captain Doom and Gloom] Kids and babies in expensive restaurants — not on my watch. When I pay a small fortune to fine dine, I do not want some uncaring mommy and daddy sharing their suffering of their malicious mutant screaming in my freaking ear! Enough of the stink and noise I say. This is what drive through chow halls were built for. Company does not love misery. Link

Could that high pitched noise from the other night be a Jersey girl playing with her new sybian?

politics-zone2
from the right

rock hard placePart 1) The upper echelons of the Democrat party are stuck between a very large rock and a very, very hard place.   That rock is Iran and the hard place is Israel. While Obama and Kerry are bragging about a substantial breakthrough in their attempts to convince Iran to scrub their nuke plans and aspirations, Iran’s leadership is continuing to show their respect for Team Obama by giving them the single digit salute, and peeing on their shoes.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani took to Twitter to gloat about the nuclear deal his country struck with the U.S. and other Western countries. He tweeted: “Our relationship w/ the world is based on Iranian nation’s interests. In #Geneva agreement world powers surrendered to Iranian nation’s will.”  In Rouhani’s mind, Iran defeated the US.

In a recent interview, Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s chief negotiator for the nuclear deal also claimed victory. “No facility will be closed; enrichment will continue, and qualitative and nuclear research will be expanded,” the chief nuclear negotiator said. “All research into a new generation of centrifuges will continue.” It sure sounds like he believes Armageddon is just around the corner. Remember that it is an article of their faith that when Armageddon is upon us, the 12th Imam, Muhammad al Mahdi,  will return to earth and will rule the earth according to Muslim law. Non Muslims will be killed.

Iranian Army Commander Major General Ataollah Salehi, stated that the United States and Israel have no capacity to defeat Iran militarily. “Had the enemy been able to confront us militarily, it would have already taken action,” Salehi stated. He said that the talks proved that the West was unwilling to confront Iran: “Given their weakness in the military dimension, they have opted for the political arena and we will certainly succeed in this area too.” Please take careful note of the fact that Salehi referred to the US and to Israel as “the enemy.”

While Iran is crowing about besting the US, Israel seethes at the putative deal. Polling has revealed that 2/3rds of Israelis oppose the deal. A substantial majority of Israelis believe that their military has the capability of neutering Iran’s nuke establishment. A substantial majority feel that they do not need the US to defeat Iran.

Israel’s PM, Netanyahu, has been vocal in his opposition to the deal.

All of that sets up a huge problem for Democrat politicos.  Especially Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, Chair of the National Democrat Party and vulnerable Democrat candidates nationwide.  Wasserman-Schultz has been caught talking out of both sides of her mouth on the issue.  Her largely Jewish constituency in her home county, Broward, is hugely opposed to the deal and supports new sanctions against Iran.  She is up for reelection in the mid terms, so, she has been telling her constituents that she too opposes the deal and supports new sanctions. But, in DC, she tells national reporters that she supports Obama’s efforts. A nasty fact is that she is leading a charge in the House to kill a bill that would impose new sanctions against Iran. Support for a  Republican backed bill to increase the sanctions on Iran grows stronger every day, bi partisan support is expanding expotentially.

Wasserman-Schultz is not the only Democrat pol who is very, very, worried about the deal and the sanctions.

North Carolina Senator Kay Hagen intendeds to avoid Obama’s planned visit to Raleigh N.C. She is trying to distance herself from the president as she faces a tough reelection bid last this year. The Iranian situation and the Democare mess is becoming increasingly toxic to Democrat candidates.  More and more will distance themselves from Team Obama.

trainwreck head-onPart 2) Team Obama released some interesting stats on Democare the other day.

As of December 31, only about 2.2 million have “signed up”. Team Obama will not tell us how many of that 2.2 million now actually have health insurance. Those who “sign up” do not have health insurance until they start paying premiums. Originally officials had hoped to sign up more than 3.3 million people through the end of 2013, so as to be nearly halfway to the goal of 7 million enrollments by the end of March. That flopped.

Nor will Team Obama tell us how many of those enrolling for coverage had been previously uninsured. Many certainly were among the more than 4.7 million insured people whose previous policies were canceled because they didn’t meet the law’s standards.

It is troublesome that only about 24% of young adults from 18 to 34 have “signed up”. The actuaries tell us that the “pool” of insured must contain about 40% of young, healthy adults in the premium paying mix because they pay more into the system than they take out, thus subsidizing older adults.

It’s interesting to note that 4 out of 5 of those who “signed up”, will be receiving tax paid subsidies. It’s also very interesting that the single largest group who have signed up are those who are very near Medicare age.

This Democare choo choo train is on a fast track to a huge wreck.

Please send me your comments at 1776ftr@gmail.com