Tag Archives: R.I.P.

Michael Jackson rules the iTunes store.

Posted on June 28, 2009 | 2 comments

It’s a shame to become so popular after someone dies. I guess in Michael’s case so extra popular (since he was so much more famous in the past and not so much lately).

And it’s always shame for someone to die so young.

michael-jackson-itunes
This is from just a few minutes ago at the iTunes store.

Rest in Peace Michael!

2 Comments

Tagged , , , ,

The Earthquake in Costa Rica

Posted on January 16, 2009 | 1 comment

It’s been a week since the 6.2 earthquake in Costa Rica (Jan. 8, 2009) and while I’ve been updating my original post with info I thought I’d post another entry.

The death toll is at 23 people with 11 missing. Over 2000 people living in shelters and abut $100 million in estimated damages. This really sums up the whole tragic disaster.

There is a nice graphic of the area up at The Tico Times to give you some idea of location and details.

Speaking of The Tico Times, the latest issue came out today (it’s a weekly paper) and has a lot of information in it (they do sell a pdf of the paper on-line), they generally don’t publish very many full stories on-line other than by subscription but they’ve had a lot up there this week. The first 11 pages of the January 16, 2009 issue of the Tico Times is full of info on this earthquake, including a history of earthquakes in Costa Rica, info/diagrams of seismic plates in Central America a safety quiz and more. I’m not trying to sell you the TIco Times but it’s really got a lot on the earthquake this week and I do like The Tico Times.

I didn’t realize that this was the biggest quake in 18 years. Lately, I’ve heard mention of earthquakes, but I didn’t think I’ve heard much about them before a year or so ago. But I’ve spent more time there lately (4 trips in 12 months) and I’ve been getting The Tico Times delivered to Michigan so I’m catching more news that I would have missed before. I’m assuming it was my lack of information that led me to that misconception and not that they’ve had more in the past year.

There are volcanos in the area of the quake, the closest is the Poás Volcano which is about 10km from the center of the earthquake (about 90 km is the Arenal Volcano, the worlds most active volcano. Volcanos tend to follow fault lines and Costa Rica is right off of the one that becomes the San Andreas fault (if you follow it up a map you’ll see it). . Volcanos and earthquakes in the same place make me extra nervous but that doesn’t seem to have caused any issues. On a side note, the Poas Volcano National Park is closed through Monday due to some unrelated volcanic activity; it seems coincidental but maybe it closes all the time, but I haven’t noticed it in the paper before…

If you haven’t read it since I first put it up, I have added more links and news to my post from last week.

1 Comment

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

The Funeral Was Interesting…

Posted on October 25, 2007 | Leave a comment

So the funeral last week was really interesting. There were a lot of Native American Indian portions, I wish I had written this up earlier (or taken notes) since I don’t really recall many specifics. There were bits of singing and chanting and dancing and talking about the Indian ways. There were a lot of people speaking about him too, most funerals in my family no one ever speaks (other than reading a few verses) so I liked that part a lot. It went about two hours, and it certainly didn’t feel that long.

There were tons of people there, lots of family, friends and coworkers the place was jammed and they had to keep adding more and more chairs. It’s always nice to see that a lot of people show up for a funeral, but this was just huge.

Of course, there was all the (obvious) sadness and all that goes with that, but I’m not going to get into those specifics here…

Leave a comment

Posted in general

Tagged , , , , ,

Kurt Vonnegut – RIP

Posted on April 12, 2007 | Leave a comment

KurtvonSince it’s Kurt Vonnegut who passed away yesterday we’ll link to his Wikipedia entry since there should be some content about him. He was an interesting and bizzaro author, you should try a few of his books if you haven’t. But what inspired this post is two things, both of them odd and very unrelated.

I hadn’t realized he died yesterday until I got an ad from Border’s Books today trying to sell books in his memory (there was more but it had this at the top of the e-mail ad). I’m not sure if it’s in good taste or not and I remember them doing a few other things like this and while it might be good marketing I’m not sure about the taste part.

Ardvil-22So I never (rarely) watch television previews for next week but last night I did watch them during Lost. As usual they jumped around a lot during the preview and I saw it something for an instant and something seemed off. So I rewound the TiVo, this took about 5 tries since it was only a few frames but I saw a cover of a book. The book was “Ardil-22” (which is Catch-22 in Portuguese) which was written by Kurt Vonnegut Joseph Heller. I’m not sure if this was a coincidence or someone had time to edit it in yesterday at ABC or what. But in hindsight it’s a pretty odd coincidence that it was just a few frames of the preview. I can’t recall if Lost has ever mentioned Kurt Vonnegut (or Joseph Heller) before…

LATER – SO I TOTALLY SCREWED THIS UP: Since it turns out Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 and not Kurt Vonnegut (Sorry Kurt) but while I’ve read several of Kurt’s books, I don’t think I ever read Catch-22. Plus it turns out that “Catch-22” is the title of the next episode of Lost so that’s the reasoning for that. So I’ve totally goofed up the second 1/2 of this message. There were no coincidences for me to see. And I thought I had tied this together all pretty good too :(

Leave a comment

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

37 people killed and 700 wounded

Posted on July 7, 2005 | Leave a comment

In case you’ve been in a cave today here are some headlines.

  • London attacks kill dozens as world leaders meet 
  • London Bombers Hunted
  • Bush orders U.S. vigilance after London blasts

    So just three days after I mention we haven’t have to raise the terror alert level and how happy that’s made me. Here we are…

    These attacks bother me more than they used to. Ever since the 9/11 attacks deaths of larger proportions have bothered me more and more (a lot more). As a child I wasn’t generally bothered by disasters. If a plane crashed I understood it was still safer than driving. If there was some disaster a flood or a hurricane I still knew more people than that probably died in traffic accidents (Google-ing finds me about 40,000 per year); it didn’t make it okay, it just helped me to compartmentalize it. I’ve always understood that the TV sensationalized the disasters and basic things like car crashes were old news and not covered and it’s always annoyed me and helped me to not get to stressed about these things; I knew there was so much more that I wasn’t hearing about.

    Continue reading →

    • Leave a comment

    Posted in general, me + myself + i

    Tagged , ,

    We Luv Ya Harry

    Posted on March 20, 2005 | 1 comment

    Harry F. CarswellHarry loved the Harrison Roadhouse so after the funeral (see my earlier post) we went to the Roadhouse to eat and drink (and be merry) and they had changed the sign out in front of the restaurant to read “We Luv Ya Harry”.

    The funeral was at the MSU Alumni Chapel and it was packed to capacity (standing room only). Harry seemed to know everyone and everyone seemded to really care about him. The service was great and Darren gave an excellent speech on Harry meeting Melissa (Mom) and becoming part of their family and Harry becoming his and Rebekah’s Dad. A few others had things to say up on the podium but we weren’t really sure if we should applaud but when Darren was done we knew we should…

    1 Comment

    Posted in friends + family, holidays + events

    Tagged , , , ,

    More funerals

    Posted on December 11, 2004 | Leave a comment

    So I made a visit to the funeral home today. I forgot how many people show up when the person is so young. He was about 24 and he had been a student in the school district where I work and his mother works there (in a position where many many people know her and trust her) so there there were just bunches of people. There were teachers who don’t even work there any more, people who knew mom and whose kids knew mom and it was really sad to see how many people were there. It was an automobile accident and there had been another death of a former student this past week (also an auto accident related) so everyone was even sadder than usual.

    Continue reading →

    Leave a comment

    Posted in general, holidays + events

    Tagged , ,

    Family Funerals

    Posted on December 7, 2004 | Leave a comment

    So my grandfather passed away last week, just days after I commented on not seeing him and my grandmother enough. We’ll work out the guilt on that later (and we will). I’ve never done a funeral before with that side (my father’s) of the family. I had volunteered to do a reading at the church, I’m glad I did especially since no one else had volunteered to do any readings I got to do all three reading…

    So it was pretty much the same as most funerals but a little more boring. Same church as usual, same place for food after (as usual), but less fun, I know it’s a funeral but I usually feel a little more like it’s a celebration. Nothing super different, just a few more jokes and stories and such afterwards (or even during). I was really ready for a drink by the time we got the restaurant, but they did the no smoking no drinking option; I’m not really sure why I’m mentioning the drink part but it’s days later and it’s stuck in my head so it’s out on this virtual “piece of paper”.

    My cousin’s 11 month-old there and I got to play with her (once she warmed up to me) so that was great, she loved playing with the christmas ornaments on the wall and looking in the mirror. And I got to see all sorts of people that I hadn’t seen in a while and that was nice, I just wish we could do it more often than funerals and other obligatory days.

    Leave a comment

    Posted in friends + family, holidays + events, me + myself + i

    Tagged , ,