Monday, March 15, 2010

I Still Can't Believe I'm Here


I'm still amazed by this place. I live on that skinny strip on the right side. But what amazes me is this big bright green thing in the middle. I'm thinking, "is Google Earth pulling my leg?" I had no idea.

Trust me, the bay goes all the way over to the the far right, pretty much. Odd looking brown blobs near the bottom of the map. What the hell are those? Bahia Grand dust bowls?

I'm starting to wonder if I was stark raving mad to move down here.

Hey no comments from the peanut gallery! But what amazes me is how well we've done here, especially Lori with her PHD stuff and all. My businesses didn't dry up and blow away. And in spite of all those green masses and brown blobs, we still really like it on the Sandspit.

Saturday, March 06, 2010

No Parking Wars on SPI


Yes that is the infamous Fail Whale from Twitter. I though that was fitting because of a boondoggle about parking to be able to walk to the beach here on SPI. Right now, it is against the law to park in any east-west streets connecting to Gulf Blvd unless you have a hurricane permit or some special permit chit.

None, nada, only us locals I guess.

Many of us local are mad about this. Only a few really pissy property owners complained about this problem, perhaps a half dozen John Birch Society old farts.

So the deal was supposed to be, parking near the beach would be curtailed but the Town would get us some remote parking with a free WAVE bus system. Well there's no remote parking. The deal was broken right there. There are no immediate plans for where all you nice visitors could park.

Now that's a heck of a message. I mean who had the brain fart here? It sure stunk up the room and that kind of attitude is going to run off all the tourists. BAD DOG.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Demise of the Bloggies

I started this blog in 2004 before moving from outside Austin to South Padre Island. Over the last year, I have seen a lot of bloggers simply stop posting. I find this curious, although people like communicating in 140 letter phrases like Twitter - and that includes the blanks between the words! It became more like "Oogga-boogga WTF, LOL" and you're supposed to understand that.

Worse yet, many forgot how to spell simple words like the contraction YOU'RE and would write YOUR or worse yet UR, the latter a convention from phone texting.

And people wonder why our country is going to pot. To me, there is a directly correlation between good writing and good thinking. I even see it in these younger kids who are my bosses now, who simply cannot read unless you put in lots of bullets - of no more than 140 characters!

For the same reason, those who think the "social networks" like Twitter and Facebook are good, are somewhat twisted in their thinking. Another passing fad I suppose, because I know there's no profit in it other than for some geek programmers. People are leaving Twitter too, and joining Facebook in droves. I see another bubble there too.

I guess I feel sorry that the blogs are no longer in fashion. I'll keep at it especially if I find some interesting stories or pictures, but it's not like the past when it was a point of pride. Such is life, I guess, and things come and go.