Lately, there has been quite a bit of advertising for a 'World Trade Center Commemorative Dollar.' The way the ad is worded makes a potential buyer think that the coin is legal tender. It isn't!

The ad states that it is a government authorized issue. Not the US Government, that's for sure! The US Mint is the only authorized striker of US coinage & it isn't their material. I took a brief look at the National Collectors Mint website, who are selling this coin. I clicked on the 'About Us' link, which only gave me 'testimonials' of past purchasers of their products. Just who are they anyway?

Who's capitalizing on the horror of that day? I can state who I think it is, but I'd just piss off a bunch of people.

I had run a search for the seller, which also turned up the website for the online newspaper for the teritory who's supposedly minting this coin. Their article about it leads me to believe that it ISN'T coming from them at all! http://www.saipantribune.com/newsstory.aspx?cat=1&newsID=40282

Silver extracted from a bank vault under the World Trade Center, as per their ad? I think NOT! They'd play hell getting anything that valuable from Ground Zero. There's alot of bureaucratic red-tape involved with ANYTHING removed from that site!

Caveat emptor... BUYER BEWARE!

As per the US Mint's website:  http://www.usmint.gov/consumer/index.cfm?action=consumer

"Does a "certificate of authenticity" ensure that the product that I have purchased is a genuine U.S. coin?

No.  Some businesses that manufacture and sell coin replicas of U.S. coinage create their own "certificates of authenticity" with their replica products.  Thus, consumers wishing to purchase genuine U.S. coins will need to look very carefully at the Certificate of Authenticity accompanying the product.  A United States Mint Certificate of Authenticity bears the signature of the current or former Director of the United States Mint and contains an image of the official U.S. Government seal and/or the United States Mint seal.  If you are still unsure, you should contact a reputable coin dealer or coin grading service before you purchase the product."

Incidentally, the last I heard, they STILL haven't selected the replacement buildings architecture Every time they think they have a 'winner,' the public of NYC shoots it down. Most feel it should remain barren, except for a simple memorial, as a park. Nothing can ever replace WTCs 1,2 & 7.

I'm wide awake now, at nearly 1:30 in the morning, when I could hardly keep my eyes open this evening.

My son went into Hilo Saturday morning with some friends to skateboard. I didn't hear from him all day & he wasn't clear about when he'd come back to Pahoa for me to pick him up, so when I hadn't heard from him by 9 PM, I call & leave a message on his cell phone (it was turned off). During one of my nod-offs, he calls me back to say he'd be coming back with one friend who would be getting off work in about 15 minutes, but would probably want to get something to eat before leaving Hilo & they'd be dropping another off at his home on the way, which would be about 7-8 miles out of the way.

About 11:15, he calls again, saying for me to leave to pick him up in 10 minutes. So a bit later, I go out to the car & find out the parking lights had been left on! My fault. I had turned them on during my trip back from dropping him off, thinking they were the emergency flashers when I stopped up the road to pick some guavas (sweet & crunchy!). I had wondered at the time how come my flashers weren't working. I forgot to turn them off & didn't notice them on when I got out. My car is a 1997 Subaru Legacy. In Subarus, if you leave the headlights on when you turn off the ignition, they turn off. Now I know that the switch I used was for the PARKING LIGHTS, which by-pass the ignition! Shit... my battery was too low to start the car!

So I come back inside & call my son's cell... it rings but he doesn't answer. If it goes straight to his voicemail without ringing, the phone is off. If it rings & the voicemail picks up, he either isn't hearing it or he's on a call & didn't bother to answer with the call-waiting. I kept dialing & dialing, hoping I could get him to hear the phone & pick up. I do leave a message on his voicemail about the car problem. Then I call the 7-11 where he was going to be dropped off at to find out if he was there yet & leave a message with the clerk. The clerks at that store have been wonderful every time I've called in regard to my son!

Then I try the home of one that they were dropping off... busy, busy, busy. Shit! Back to trying his cell. Still no answer. Go back & try the car again. Still no starter engaging. Damn, damn, DAMN! Come back inside & try the cell again & again. His voicemail picks up right away, so I leave a message on it again... "Didn't you get the message?" Try again, then think maybe I should just wait for him to call back, that tying up the phone by dialing could block him from getting through, since the call-waiting feature doesn't work when the phone is in the dialing process & I was speed redialing. I hold the receiver in my hand for a few minutes, holding down the hookswitch button, then finally set it in its cradle. In just a few more minutes, it rings. My son tells me that the friend driving decided he was too tired to run everyone home, which would add at least a half hour to his trip, so they're all going to his house for the night, in Kapoho.

Grrrrr!

I go outside & grab the extension cord I had already dug out during my second trip to see if the car would accidentally start. I begin to unroll it, unplug a household extension cord that has a nightlight plugged in over my deep freezer under the house, plug in the outdoor extension cord & finish unrolling it on the way to my car. I had already popped the hood on the second trip, so only had to prop it open. I take the charger off the driver's seat where I had set it earlier, planning to set it up in the morning, & place it in the engine compartment, pop open the battery cells covers & clamp the leads onto the battery posts, then plug it in. It zipps to almost the full 6 amps charge. But at least when I need to go to the farmers market late morning, it will be charged.

Because it's been raining (yay!... we've been TOO dry this summer!), sometimes very heavily, I couldn't leave the hood propped open, so I stick a 2" x 4" on its edge near the latch & let the hood down on it. This way, the hood's not directly touching the charger & it won't get wet & possibly short out.

Incidentally, my son's in the doghouse. He has a girlfriend he met online in Colorado & over the summer, ran the phone bill up with long distance calls as well as his cell phone bill with text-messaging. He's grounded for 2 months plus from using my car & I'm taking his SS money away until they're all paid up. The long distance on his part for 2 months so far is over $425! I pay his cell phone bill every month with his money. I don't think all his long distance calls have showed up yet. And my long distance rate's only 5¢/minute! He had one call for over 6 hours straight!

It's now 2 AM & I'm still awake. My rooster's crowing. SHUT UP! My TV's set to TheWeatherChannel & I'm watching the stuff about Hurricane Jeanne. They've changed its path several times, from zipping up from the eastern Bahamas, missing Florida, with US landfall near Charlotte NC to skirting along the eastern Florida coastline & on up along Georgia, Alabama, then South & North Carolina, to making landfall near Port St Lucie & continuing up the centers of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South & North Carolina. The latest projection is for the center to make it to the Gulf Coast of Florida & tracking through the centers of Georgia, Alabama, South & North Carolina.

Personally, I think that Jeanne will track across Florida & into the Gulf of Mexico, regain strength & head toward Texas. (UPDATE evening 26 Sep 04: It appears I'm wrong on this. It must have been wishfull thinking, not wanting Jeanne to track into areas already badly affected by Charley, Frances & Ivan. Plus, I don't want Jeanne to go into Cheryl's back yard.)

Jeanne's hurricane & gale-force winds extend out double the distance they had when she went over Haiti. She also was only a cat-1 storm then, but was a cat-3 when she hit Florida. Another thing... she's given the US plenty of time to get ready, since she made a complete loop in the Caribbean AFTER hitting Haiti. Most understand that a hurricane gains strength if it spends time over open warm waters, which is what she did before heading for Florida. I'm sure people got tired of waiting for this storm. She surely took her time getting to land once they labled her a tropical depression.

Some tips for you who live in areas where you can lose power, no matter the cause (in addition to those you're constantly barraged with):

1. Be sure to have a corded phone. Once power goes out, the base to a cordless has NO power to transmit your phone signal! When my personal phone quit last week, my son asked me why I didn't buy a cordless to replace it with. I told him that if we lost power, we wouldn't have any phone service with 2 cordless phones!
   
2. Once power's out, don't flush the toilet. If you thought to fill your bathtub with water, you can scoop about a gallon out with a bucket to use, pouring the water directly into the bowl to force the contents out. With extensive power outages, pumps are out that carry water back up into water towers, so there's no water pressure to homes & businesses once the reservoir tanks drain. Collect as much water as you can in jugs, bottles, extra ice chests & plastic tote boxes. Have enough bottled water to last at least a week for everyone (a gallon per day per person). Don't forget to have water enough for your pets!
   
3. Power outages from severe storms can take days to weeks to fix, due to the number of lines broken & utility poles knocked down. Hurricane Iwa in Hawaii caused a loss of power for a week on Oahu, when Iwa's eye hit Kauai! Some areas of Kauai were without power for months! For refrigeration, buy block ice. This lasts longer than cubes & will work in your refrigerator (don't forget to put an additional block in the freezer compartment!) & deep freezer like old-fashioned 'ice boxes.' Place the block in a plastic tub just large enough for it to keep from having water ruin your food. Place it near the top, since cool air sinks. Reduce the number ot times you open the refridgerator or freezer to keep the cool air from escaping. Place frequently accessed stuff like beverages in ice chests with your cubed ice. Contrary to what I've often heard, stuff solidly frozen in the freezer or deep freezer will stay frozen for several days, as long as the door/lid isn't opened more than once or twice in a day very briefly.
   
4. If you find a store suddenly overcharging for hurricane relief supplies, report them. It is against the law! Since Hurricane Andrew's devastation & resulting price-gouging, a Federal law was enacted to prevent this from happening again. But people are greedy & prey upon the needy. If you have extra stuff, help out a neighbor.

Bush wants to privatize Social Security (incidentally, an agency about which he stated: "The Social Security Administration is NOT a Federal Agency" when stepping off a plane during his first campaign! I'm guessing with his proposal that he's trying to make his false statement then into TRUTH now!). Here's what a non-scientific poll on MSNBC currently says about what PEOPLE want in regard to privatizing Social Security:

Live Vote
Where do you stand on privatizing Social Security?   * 23152 responses None at all. 60% Up to a fourth of my Social Security withholdings should be under my control. 8% Up to half my Social Security withholdings should be under my control. 15% Social Security should go completely private. 17%

Guess what I chose! The Social Security changes implimented recently have already swung large amounts of YOUR Social Security monies into privatization. It's taking control away from those on Social Security/Medicare. To receive $5250 worth of prescription medication, it costs the patient about $4175, including their prescription benefit premium. Hardly a savings to those of very limited incomes! This is because when someone gets to a certain dollar figure in Medicare covered prescriptions, Medicare STOPS PAYING, until they go over the figure I mentioned above. Each year after the first, the Medicare-paid cutoff is lowered & reinstated paying raised! Again... What help is this really? I don't know anyone relying solely on Social Security who can afford over $4k for meds, on top of the deductible for the doctors/hospitals & co-pay. Do you? Something has to not get paid & most of the time, this is FOOD!

Also... the way they worded the poll is misleading, saying "under MY control." That would hardly be the case! It WOULDN'T be under the individual's control. It would be like an HMO, in which you're forced to go to one of few selected providers. Ask anyone who's stuck with an HMO through work how they feel about their health care. I'd bet most are less than satisfied! I know my sister's thoroughly disgusted with her family's, under the Texas Blue Cross - Blue Shield as a state employee (her husband)!

I had been watching the storms roll through the Caribbean & on into the US in the different areas over the past few weeks. I finally stopped for a few days, only catching brief updates off TheWeatherChannel on TV & local news. It is very dismaying to hear about the devastation that has occurred, not only to property, but also the toll in human life. Hurricane Jeanne has so far killed more people than all the others combined this season. And that's just in the Caribbean... particularly Haiti!

I'm back to running the GOES infrared satellite loops in one browser to keep watch. I don't like what I'm seeing. I've already noticed that Hurricane Karl has come further west than what the meteorologists at NOAA had predicted when I stopped monitoring the storms' progress. Currently, their 5-day track prediction has it curling north from its 5PM EST position, to carry on north & east, away from the continent. I hope they're right. Hurricane Jeanne is currently tracking to the southwest, not as their track prediction states of west-northwest.

Incidentally, the GOES links I put in an earlier blog are RAM hogs. Don't leave the browser on the java loop page for long. Also, the main tropical storms page meta-refreshes (it refreshes itself at certain time intervals), so you can't leave the browser there either. The java loop images will eventually lock-up the browser. (I've had it happen several times.) When that's happened, I hit ctrl/alt/del to open up Windows' Task Manager, to the "Processes" tab. I noticed one IE browser listed utilizing over 125 MEG memory (I had 4 GOES loop pages in the browser history along with the main tropical storms advisory page & one or two storm information pages)! So should you have an issue such as that where a browser locks up, once you get the Task Manager open to that tab, select that application & click the "End Task" button. You'll get the warning stating that closing an application may cause errors... just ignore that warning, clicking ok. You'll have to reboot your computer afterwards to free up the memory again, but once you do, everything should run fine.

The former hurricane, downgraded days ago to tropical storm, Ivan, is another matter. After Ivan made landfall, farther west than their original predictions, I checked where they predicted it'd go & found they thought it was going to go only as far north as Tennessee, then curl back to the south-southeast, through the Carolinas. From what I heard in the weather reports, Ivan kept going north, into Maine. BUT... it's made its way back south again, into the Gulf of Mexico. Where's Ivan headed right now? BACK INTO THE DEVASTATION AREA WHERE IT FIRST MADE US LANDFALL!!! The last thing the people of these areas of Louisiana, Alabama & the Florida panhandle need is MORE RAIN & the 'lesser' winds of a tropical depression (up to 38 mph sustained, with gusts of 50+)! NOAA forecast has the remnants of Ivan going into Texas. HAH!!!

One thing I've often wondered... what if 2 deadly storms like these come together & join up? Is there such a possibility? What would the combined storm be called; a Super Hurricane? Is it possible for a storm to develop higher than a cat-5 Saffier/Simpson?

For those in the eastern & southern continental US who've suffered tragic losses, either property or life/health, my heart is with you. My thoughts focus on keeping the current storms out of your lives. You seem to be getting the rains we in Hawaii are lacking.

Last night, while watching a noisy action movie "Frighteners" (with Michael J Fox), I heard that familiar 'thump' as a car went by my house. It was about 7:30. I charged outside with my flashlight & found one of my cats dead, having taken the full hit in his head. This one was one of 3 of the last litter another cat had who died apparently while pregnant.

This litter, although handled by me while little, turned wild. I was working with them to get rid of their wildness, so I could find them homes, although they were fully grown by now. I would pet them when they would come to eat. The one killed last night was the most wild of them & when I fed them supper, I had my son pet him, causing the kitty to arch into the petting. I had already been able to pet him a couple times, so it wouldn't have been long before he would have become as friendly as his brothers, who now get under my feet, even though they still tear away like wild cats sometimes.

I hadn't found a name for this one yet, although I'd named his brothers "Brushy" & "Bobby." The unnamed one is the only one who had a full length tail. Bobby's a brown tabby shorthair with a half tail. Brushy's a longhair grey tabby who's tail is very full. So was the unnamed one's. They take after their dad in appearance (not my cat!).

Odd thing... the dad showed up soon after & started attacking a couple of my fixed males. Also, the dead cat was moved from where I laid him down until I could bury him (need daylight). He did get along with his dad, even though they're both not fixed, yet the dad attacks my FIXED males!

One less kitty to try to find a home for. I'm now down to 17, including 2 kittens. A friend knows of a special cat shelter near her, where the cats virtually own the home. A woman bought it for them & takes in strays & unwanted kitties. She 'talks' to them, asking them if they want to stay outside or inside. She comes to take care of them a couple times a day & makes sure each has the veternary care required. They're all fixed. I have plans for at least 8 of my kitties to go.

Nothing's stupider than a weather reporter saying that there hasn't been landfall yet with a hurricane. This is the most inane, stupid remark they can make & it irritates me to no end! Point being that what they're talking about 'making landfall' is the EYE of the storm! This is the part of the hurricane that is subtle, calm... You can even see the sunshine!

With hurricane Frances, the eye alone is now figured at 80 miles across... almost the width of Florida. By the time the eye hits land, hurricane-force winds have already done extensive damage to the areas it has touched. Not less than that are the tornadoes the storm produces at its extremities.

How the 'meteorologists' report the current location/effects of the storm often cause people to think they still have plenty of time to do what they need to to prevent injury/deaths. NOT SO! With hurricane Frances, hurricane-force winds extend, as I write this, 75 miles out from its eye! Hello, people! That's nearly the entire width of the state of Florida! They are saying this storm is nearly the size of Texas!

I've been watching the IFR loop on this storm. From what I see, the eye's most western border is right at the shoreline. They're now saying the eye is stalled at West Palm Beach. 

They are stating that the eye is about 80 miles across & is moving WNW at 5 mph. Personally, I'd think that once the eye enters an area, people who've decided to ride out the storm would have time to go outside & secure any loose objects/debris, to prevent this debris from doing further damage to homes, etc. In fact, they're saying that it'll be a 4-hour lull.

One thing to be cautious of is fallen power lines. These can kill! I personally wouldn't worry much about bacterial problems, because it takes time for these to become life-threatening in the face of such a storm. They'd be more likely to infect people days after the storm.

If I lived there & stayed, I'd be out doing cleanup during this massive & slow eye & 'battening the hatches' for the recurrence of hurricane-force winds as they come again, going in the opposite direction!

Links:

• Storm loop, Florida:  http://radar.weather.gov/radar/loop/DS.p20-r/si.ktbw.shtml
  
• Storm loop. East Coast:  http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/RT/watl-ir4-loop.html
  
• Hurricane Frances Advisory:  http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPAT1+shtml/042038.shtml?

People of Florida, I wish you well... Stay safe, our prayers are with you as you ride out this storm. The worst problem with this storm is the duration... how long it'll hang with its hurricane-force winds over land, along with its rainfall & storm surge causing flooding. Blessings to all in Florida.

I believe that even after it's left Florida, that won't be its end. I'm concerned that it will enter the Gulf of Mexico & regain what strength it may have lost, moving as slowly as it is, & continue its devastation in Alabama, Louisiana & especially Texas.