I got pretty burned today, as did my oldest daughter. I’m hoping that it is just red and not going to peel…but that is the price of being in the sun too long. I did have fun swimming with the possible crocs in the lake. It is probably unlikely they would let people swim there constantly if they believed that their lake had a crocodile population in it, but still the idea of it freaks me out a bit. You can see by our photos that it didn’t stop us from swimming, apparently.

We take off for the airport tomorrow early, and will be back in Missouri by late morning. It has been fun, but I’ll enjoy being home again. Thanks for the fun, Florida!

Photos from today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/unconfused/20100717#

My favorite attraction at Universal Studios was The Simpsons ride, though I realize now that I didn’t take a photo of that attraction at all. It was a multimedia sort of ride, where you get in a rollercoaster car, but it just raises into a room with a huge screen that encompasses your field of vision, and the car moves with the action. It is fantastic though how well it convinces your body that you are actually moving. Great ride!

I’m looking forward to my ‘day off’ tomorrow where I get to just kick back by the pool and relax (i.e. no theme parks!)

Photos for the day are here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/unconfused/20100716#

You can see videos from today, or any of my others here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/unconfused

Day 3 here in Orlando was quite a bit more lazy than our previous two days since I’ve been here. We slept in, once we woke the kids did a t-shirt painting activity here at the clubhouse, and then once we had some lunch we got on the road for Honeymoon Island and Caladesi Island (click for map) which are both near Dunedin, FL just west of Tampa. I have a lot of videos for this blog entry.

Our first stop was Caladesi Island State Park, which is only accessible via boat. We took a ferry. It was nice to just lazily walk along the beach, look for shells, and have the waves rush in by your feet.

After the last ferry came back from Caladesi Island, we drove up Honeymoon Island to the north beach there had some dinner and enjoyed that beach. Of course the gulls wanted in on our food.

The ocean was beautiful here as well, and there were quite a few cool shells to be found here too. We’ll be bringing back quite a few!

We rushed to a clubhouse to change into dry clothes, and got caught by huge rainstorm. I took an opportunity to try to move the car closer while the rain seemed to let up a little, but instead as I was getting into the car the wind caught the car-door, and I got hit in the forehead by the corner of the door. So, now I have an interesting souvenir from our travels…a possible scar in the middle of my forehead.

We figured we would just have to make a dash to the car and take off, because the storm didn’t seem to be letting up. Sure enough…as we headed back into Dunedin the rain did lighten up significantly. Oh well. It was still a very nice day at the ocean.

Here is the link to today’s photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/unconfused/20100715#

Universal Studios – Islands of Adventure and surrounding area

Of course everyone’s first destination was the Harry Potter area…but as we passed Poseidon’s Fury and rounded into the Jurassic Park area…we could see the line just to get into the Hogsmeade’s area…which was roughly 1/4-mile in length. We overheard one gentleman say that they were 7-hours from getting in!!! That was a bit discouraging at the time, though we couldn’t have known his estimate was not at all accurate. There was a long line nonetheless, so we didn’t get in it then, but moved on to enjoy the rest of the park.

My favorite areas were the Marvel Superheros area and Hogsmeade, which we did easily get into later in the day. The Marvel area had a great ride called The Amazing Adventures of Spider Man. It was 1/2 a ride, 1/2 a 3-D multimedia presentation…but excellent. In Hogsmeade we did the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride (also 1/2 ride, 1/2 multimedia) and the Dueling Dragons rollercoaster. Both of these were also excellent.

While in Hogsmeade we had to try the butterbeer and the pumpkin-juice. It was pretty expensive, but was a nice part of the whole experience. And it made for a nice break to sit down and just rest. The whole Islands of Adventure park is a 1-mile loop, which was circled at least 5 times during the whole day. My feet hurt, needless to say. It was a fun day, but tiring…so I was glad to get back to the condo to shower and rest!

Link to all the pictures in today’s photo album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/unconfused/20100714#

Didn’t end up doing too much today…I painted a sand-dollar with the kids. It was fun….really….it really was.

After a little bit of dinner we set off to see Cocoa Beach. But we took off way too late and figured out that the sun would have set before we ended up getting there…so we nixed that idea and took a detour through the “Kissimmee Historic Downtown” where we found Pure Magic Ice Cream. Fantastic place and I definitely recommend their ice cream if you are here. Check out this video of them making our ice cream:

Tomorrow we head off to Islands Of Adventure!

update: forgot to add a link to this day’s photos –
http://picasaweb.google.com/unconfused/20100713#

So, this is a list of things that drivers should be aware of to help with the driving problem…not just here…but anywhere.

1. Understand right-of-way or priority at a stop-sign.  In the case of a stop-sign typically you give priority to the first person stopping at the intersection.  If two vehicles stop at the same time, yourself and a vehicle to your right…the person to your right has priority.  If two stop at the same time, yourself and a vehicle to your left…then you have priority.
2. Come to a complete stop at a stop-sign.  No rolling stops…or just slowing down.  Stop signs mean that you need to come to a complete stop regardless of other traffic or pedestrians at the intersection.  Coming to a complete stop also helps with understanding who has priority at the intersection.
3. Yielding on merging lanes is important to the flow of traffic on main trafficways.  If you cannot merge into traffic, then you need to yield to it.  Never force someone to slow the flow of traffic to let you squeeze in.
4. FOLLOW POSTED SPEED LIMITS.  That is a hugely important one…and not just for safely concerns, but also for the flow of traffic itself.  Most roads or trafficways will only accommodate so much traffic in the first place, and speeding almost always makes congested traffic worse.  This issue is the worst on roads with stop-lights every few blocks.  What happens is that a bunch of people speed in their vehicles to beat the next light and end up putting more cars in an area of road than it can accommodate effectively, so congestion occurs, which is what drivers (in their mind) were trying to avoid by speeding.  Speeding usually ends up being a counter-productive action…both in terms of safety to yourself and other drivers, but also for efficiently getting from location to location.
5. Don’t tailgate.  Follow the 3-second count rule between you and the vehicle in front of you.  Pick an object on the side of the road…like a telephone pole or a sign.  As the vehicle in front of you passes it, start counting (one-thousand one, one-thousand two, one-thousand three).  If you pass the object within that time, then you are too close.  Huge numbers of accidents are caused by people tailgating when the vehicle needs to stop suddenly and there isn’t enough space to react to that and also stop.
6. Stay in your own turning lane.  This might seem like an obvious rule, but nearly every day here I see people at intersections with designated lanes for turning turn into someone else’s lane, causing the other lanes to have to brake suddenly to not run into the stay driver.
7. If there is a single turning lane turning onto a road with multiple lanes, turn into the nearest lane.
8. USE TURN SIGNALS.  Another neglected, but very important communication tool in your vehicle.  This is important to tell other drivers where the heck you are going.
9. The turning lane on a street is NOT a merging lane.  If you cannot turn into a traffic lane on a street, it is NOT acceptable to turn left into the turning lane and accelerate to merge into traffic.  That is for people attempting to get out of traffic to turn off the street only.
10. At stop-signs and stop-lights there is typically a thick white line painted on the road.  This is the place where the front of your car should be stopped at.  I’ve seen people stop one and two car-lengths from the stop-line.  Likewise this is important not to pass just because you are turning from the stop…and wander into the pedestrian cross-walks.
11. When turning left at a green-light without an arrow, do NOT enter the intersection until you are able to safely make the turn.  If you are waiting for that opportunity, you are not to enter the intersection.
12. The shoulder of a road is NOT a turning lane.  Don’t use them as such.
13. Employ patience.  If you can’t drive 45 MPH on a road because the person ahead of you is only driving 40 MPH…that shouldn’t be a big deal.  You will only lose perhaps a portion of minute in the city from that little annoyance.  Get over it and just be patient.  Same with highway driving…as there have been numerous times when the road is two-lane at 60 MPH where I’m passed, though it was very dangerous to do so….and I end up right behind them in the next town on that road.  So, they endangered people around them for no gain to even their drive (obvious endangerment is only a detriment to everyone else too).

Anyone else have driving tips or annoyances they would like to share, along with the appropriate response to those issues?

Unfortunately it is a private, corporate gig this time…so I can’t encourage anyone to come out and see us. But on May 15th, we’ll be playing a gig at Cartoons in Springfield, MO, so if you are interested in some fun funk, pop, and rock music. Come on out.

A home water testing kit that tests for bacteria, lead, arsenic, iron, etc. will cost about $35-40 online or from your local hardware store. You might also check with your city’s utilities to see if they have a general analysis that is done for your city’s water supply.

This morning I changed the main relay in my car, which I believe has been the trouble all this time with it quitting randomly while driving. Yeah, fun issue, eh? Also, I got my wife’s car’s inside door handle fixed. After that I spent some time with my new guitar delay pedal. It is the Boss DD-20. I’m pretty impressed, honestly. It is replacing a Line6 delay I was previously using.

Outside of those thing…since I finished Mass Effect 2, which is an excellent sequel, I’ve moved on to playing Assassin’s Creed 2. Again…an excellent sequel to the first one, just like Mass Effect. I would highly recommend all four of those games.

It snowed here last night, after having been 60 degrees F the previously day. It is just rainy now, but I’ve stayed in for most of the day. My wife is bring home Chipotle and a movie on her way back from the university. Nice, lazy day.

I’ve said in the past that the Senate bill contains too many concessions to Republican interests, too many concessions to the insurance and pharma industries, and too few moves to actually address all the complexities of health care in the United States (despite the ridiculous Republican argument that the bill has too many pages). Though > 70% of the American population wants health care reform, < 25% think the Senate bill is any good.

It seemed to me at the time that the Republicans were gearing up to propose good and needed changes to the Senate bill, and that they would work with the majority to hash things out. None of this occurred.

Instead, the Republicans started to be myopic in their quest to stop all progress on everything, inciting clever names for their maneuver, like “The Tarentino” because they “kill bills”. All their ideas were summed up (as seen largely in the bipartisan health care summit recently) in proposals that have been rejected as counterproductive by independent analysis available to the Senate and the President, expansion of ideas that we have today already that aren’t helping, supposed promotion of competition from markets that are too small to actually compete, loosening regulation of insurance though public participation in insurance is failing while insurance industry profits soar, etc. Essentially the Republicans have suggested everything that we have already tried and failed with historically, or ideas that are antithetical to reforming the problem that is occurring.

And that is the reason why I felt my position on the issue needed to take a 180, and support a not-so-good bill with the understanding that reconciliation will happen afterward. And there are a number of parts that have been established to hold insurance companies accountable as well as protect the public in general. Some of which include:

• Review process of unreasonable increases in premiums
• Appeals process for people denied on a claim
• Rebates for policy holders from insurance with high administrative costs
• Public disclosure of administrative costs
• Sweeping requirement of preventative services
• Deficit neutral

I think that despite the initial obvious shortcomings of the Senate bill, the benefits to the public are good compared to a doing absolutely nothing and opposition to everything.  So, thus I find myself supporting reconciliation of the bill under the current sociopolitical environment.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks to DailyKosTV for the video feed.

• Convoy of Hope
• The American Red Cross
• Habitat for Humanity
• UNICEF
• Oxfam America
• World Vision
• The United Way
• Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
• Haiti for Christ

If you live in the Springfield, MO area, it may interest you that Convoy of Hope, listed above is from this area.  Also, there is a fantastic organization that packages nutritious meals called Kids Against Hunger.  They are in need donations to help pay for materials to make meals as well as other additional items that they can send to Haiti.  There is a list at their website.  Also, they are always looking for volunteers to help package meals.  Please visit their website for donation needs, drop-off sites, and volunteering information:

• Kids Against Hunger

Running barefoot is better, researchers find
Katherine Harmon (2010, January 27). Scientific American.

If Rush Limbaugh or Gretchen Carlson or Dick Morris would accurately depict the news in commentary, I would find it just as valid to link to their work. But equally, Maddow and Olbermann do not always represent reality either. For example, recently Keith Olbermann had a number of defamatory comments to say about Scott Brown, the new Senator in Massachusetts…of which I think most of those comments are baseless, regardless of what Brown’s background or ability as a Senator may be.

So, the point is that in politics I’m looking for reason, and reasonable explanations for issues, as well as actual straight talk…and not double-standards. So, when certain Republicans talk about free-speech for the middle-class, but then legalize free-speech for a non-person (a corporation)…that is double-speak. It should be obvious that allowing a company to advertise about political issues has nothing to do with a middle-class individual’s rights. Or take people who talk about health care legislation and refer to it as “Obamacare”, even while Obama has no hand in authoring any of it…I’m less inclined to accept as authoritative much that those people say about health care reform. As a third example, when a politician just simply has his or her facts incorrect, as John McCain recently did talking about the one-way ticket of the “Underpants Bomber”…when in fact the ticket was a round-trip ticket…and gets angry when he is corrected, then I’m less likely to trust him on what he has to say about the situation considering that he is regurgitating inaccurate reporting from a news organization, and not sticking to the facts the the DHS actually has.

So…just looking for reason in the midst of the rhetoric and chaos. I can already hear many of you saying “good luck with that”. If my alternatives are to buy into punditry, to just not listen at all, or to listen and seek the truth…I’ll pick that last choice.

Catch his last show in its entirety at NBC.com:

http://www.tonightshowwithconanobrien.com/video/episodes/#vid=1196131