We call the blossoms Kona Snow because it looks like snow on the blossoms.

here is a photo http://www.konacoffeefarmers....

Lately the state and especially the Big Island has been covered by a volcanic smog locally called VOG. In the human scheme of things, the volcanic vent has been inactive but recently decided to spew smoke and fumes into the air, blanketing the state. The explosions inside Halemaumau are the first in the crater since 1924. Many people are having problems breathing.

The Hawaii Volcanos National Park has closed a number of times in the past month or so and the volcano has thrown some rocks over a 75 acre area. Recent news is on the Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and more info is available at http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilaue...

My friend has been strickened with breathing problems lately so I have been caring for her 25 (or so) dogs. She has 2 new litters of puppies and her existing dogs and they are all eating like horses!

She loaned one older chocolate Labrador dog out to a couple thinking of buying it. However, a loud noise spooked the dog and it ran off near the Lanihau shopping center. We looked for hours yesterday to no avail. Hopefully Edward will show up soon. He has a microchip, and a phone number on both his leash and collar.

I have been working 4 days a week at the Kona Reef where I check people in. In and around the dog and people sitting, I was able to finally get my 4 water tanks in on the farm. I now have the capacity for 80,000 of rainwater to be held for irrigating crops. I have had 1500 holes punched and are waiting for coffee plants. My next step is to have a pipe laid under the road to connect the 3 top tanks to the bottom one. I can then install the pump and connection lines to integrate all 4 tanks into the system. All that will be left to do is to fix the roofs and gutters and make it all work together.

I am still planning on getting 1500 trees planted in the next month or so. It has been a long time coming!

While up in town, I have had little time to gather photos of the project or set up coffee sales. I really need to sell some coffee and start paying for all this! Watch for a possible Mothers Day sale any time now!

My dog Koa will be 1 year old at the end of the month. I have some treats and a toy for him. What he doesn't know yet is that when he reaches his birthday, it is no longer necessary to feed him twice a day, so his breakfasts are soon coming to an abrupt end!

More later as the saga continues!

Between illness and work and the farm, I have had little time for much else.

I'll try to get an update posted today with all the details. That is, if it is a quiet day. Oftentimes Sunday is almost as much a zoo as Saturdays.

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Here is a link to a copy of our KCFA 100% Kona Coffee video. It shows why we say people should read the labels carefully and ask questions.

By the way, my coffee is shown in the video at the 1 min 44 sec point, in the upper left corner (copper bag with a blue ribbon on the top).

Our group has no isues if people want to buy a blend, as long as they know what they are buying. Trouble is, most people are buying these blends thinking they have Kona Coffee in the bag. Coffee experst agree that you cannot taste 10% Kona against 90% foreign coffee.

The blenders say that people buy the coffee for the taste. However, they also fight tooth and nail to keep the limit at 10% Kona saying that if the percentage is raised or they must remove KONA from the packaging, people will stop buying the blend. Doesn't it make sense then that people are buying the product thinking it is a product of Hawaii and not foreign coffee?

I see people in the stores here all the time buying blends and ask what they are buying. When they tell me Kona Coffee, I tell them what they are really buying and almost every person puts the blend back on the shelf and buys a 100% Kona.

Anyway, enjoy the video and pass it along to your coffee friends. An Informed consumer is our goal.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=D8...

While my co-worker was away I took over extra hours at the condos, checking people in and performing island orientation duties. Each Monday we hold a breakfast event where we serve a breakfast and tell our guests some island history and what to see and do here. I serve my Kona Coffee, we prepare baked goods and offer fruit and juice.

Our Kona Coffee Farmers Association put on a fair at the old airport pavilion, offering information to farmers and allowing local vendors a place to talk about their products and services. Although I was working that day I did attend long enough to drop off a membership list and grab a quick slice or two of pizza! It was very well attended. There were some demonstrations and handouts and discussions.

Just after Thanksgiving, my friend Sandra went to Australia and visited a kennel there. She purchased two chocolate female puppies and recently went to Honolulu to pick them up. Unfortunately she had to make a second trip because the breeder miscalculated their age by a day and thus the airline would not carry them until they were older than 8 weeks. The dogs are named Franny and Zoe and are very cute, as you can expect with puppies and especially chocolate Labs. Their photos are now up on the AlohaLabradors.Com website. Also there are other dogs from the recent litters. A few of the puppies are about ready to be adopted.

My dog Koa is doing fine. I don't think he will get much taller but now will start to fill out. I have not weighed him recently, but is over 55 pounds. He still can't get into the truck easily because of the door height, so I continue to lift him in!

At the condos the corporate types decided they wanted to come out and fix up the office. They decided that there should be a local server to hold our shared documents. To accomplish this they installed a 3 foot rack on the wall in the office at eye height. You have to envision this, a giant black rack on the wall of what looks like a living room with 2 desks. They are now talking about putting in a counter just like a hotel lobby. What used to look like a nice living room where we greeted out quests will soon look like the smallest hotel lobby in the world. You would think they could have hidden the rack under the soon to be installed counter. The back room (what would have been a bedroom, will be turned into an office. There was not enough airflow there to put the computer and equipment.

Rather than use a giant server for storage, and when I say giant I mean PC sized; they COULD have done what I did at home and just added an external disk drive. Because I keep losing disks to heat, I purchased 3 external network disk drives which connect to a router or switch or hub. I'll place them in the coffee bean storage room where the air conditioner is. Then all I need to do is run a LAN cable upstairs to be able to access them. The computer does not care if they are 3 feet away or 30 feet away.

I was finally able to get a lot done on the farm. It has been a long time coming and hopefully I can shuffle enough money around to get everything finished.

As many of you know, I am part of a project which offsets part of my cost to install water catchment tanks; thus keeping me from having to use locally supplied county water for irrigation. The funds have specific purposes and must be carefully accounted for. Meanwhile, I am having other projects simultaneously performed here which are outside the contract. All of them are geared towards getting lots more coffee planted and becoming a real coffee farm.

Last December I had 500 macadamia nut trees removed, which left about 5 acres clear of anything but rocks. I had a new driveway cut in, but it is not working as well as I had hoped. It is not packed down and has no dirt on it. Thus, when I use it, rocks move and bunch up. I'll have to figure out some other cure. Also, in the past year, I got a lot of brush growing in that 5 acre area. Included were probably 50 or more papaya trees which in the past year grew to 12 feet tall and have produced some of the largest papayas I have ever seen! Some papayas were larger than large grapefruit! I have been feeding some to Koa and giving some away. I had a guy come in and clear the rest of the growth (except for the papaya trees) and am starting fresh again.

The excavator guy came by and laid the foundation for 4 water tanks (each 25' by 6' tall). There is a base course and then small gravel on top. When the tanks are assembled, there will be a sand cushion in the bottom of the case on which the water liner will sit.

When the pads were done, some workers came by and laid out a grid on two acres for my coffee. They are spraying orange dots in a 5 foot by 10 foot grid and the excavator uses a rock crusher (like a long finger) to poke into the rock, crushing it in a cylinder so that a coffee tree will plant there. There are currently 1200 of the needed 1500 holes dug as of today. I have been taking photos, but have had no time to put them online.

I finally got a quote from the water tank people and need to order the tanks. I have to have the pad part and the tank part completed and paid for before I can request reimbursement for it. The hole punching part comes out of my own pocket, but had to be paid upfront. Thus I have lots of money paid out but still have more to pay before I get that nice payment back!

The coffee plants I was starting in the nursery did not get the attention they needed and besides are pretty well root bound. These are plants I was raising from existing coffee trees that were on the property. With only me to schedule all the projects and work on them, some items just get left behind or never finished. New trees from a grower will cost at least $4 each and I currently need about 1200, so $5000 out of pocket for something I hoped to get for free. I decided on a type of planting and pruning which should be easier than old Kona-style pruning. I'll plant in hedges and stump 1 row out of every three each year. Because the plants are closer together, The yield is about the same, but pruning is lots simpler. To get started however, I don't plant all the rows the first year, I plant 2 and leave the 3rd one empty, then fill that row in the next year. That gives me a fuller crop to start than what would be even more obvious, that is planting the 1st and 4th rows the first year, the 2nd and 5th the next year and the 3rd and 6th the last year. It gets complicated so don't expect to fully understand it. It is just that if I'm going to stump every 3rd row each year in rotation, I get into trouble if all the rows start out at the same height the first year. In the first and second years no tree is high enough to be stumped and the in the third year, all the trees are read but the cycle of trimming would have me wait another two years to stump that 3rd row and by then it would be very tall. Anyway, suffice it to say, not all rows get planted right away.

I have been helping the Kona Outdoor Circle on their website and doing a bit of work in their front office. Hey are in process of getting new office staff. Also they are about ready for their Pua Plantasia event which is a giant plant sale, auction and dinner.

At the condos, my co-worker Courtney is moving up north to Hawi and just gave her notice. My manager is out on disability and I am fighting a bout of sore throat. I am current resting at home and on antibiotics. I can barely talk and those who know me can attest, that is a very difficult time for me :-)

I have been helping a neighbor with his website and a friend recently called me to ask for help with one he wants to set up.

By now you have heard (or perhaps watched) the Georgia/Hawaii bowl game. I guess it was too much to have hoped that the Warriors could have come from such a low rank to get into the bowl to begin with, then to suffer such a defeat. They kept their heads up even when their star player was pummeled from every side by Georgi.

The state and county and others are all investigating the water distribution channels on the island. Next to my property the road was covered with water when we got 7” of rain in a few hour period last year. Although there were many problems because of the flooding, still, if this had happened anywhere else but here, it would have been a disaster. Our island is quite porous and it will drain quickly straight down if given half a chance.

We had a guy in shorts up on Mauna Kea go out hiking at the 10,000 foot elevation and hours later a blizzard and many inches of snow fell above him. They never found him.

It is a unique place in which I live. We have 2000 degree lava flowing just 45 miles away from where a guy froze to death in a blizzard. We have 11 of the worlds 13 climate zones and it seems like Disneyland when you drive around the island, passing from one climate to another as quickly as you would go from Frontierland to Tomorrowland. We could just as easily have a massive earthquake as a tsunami. We are in the middle of the Pacific and the most remote landmass in the world.

And we would rather be in no other place!

Until next time.... Aloha!

I realized that this was a a checking account and that I would not be getting interest and deposited perhaps $2000 many years ago. I kept the account and sometimes removed a bit of money if I needed it. Meantime, BOH loaned the money to others and made a lot of money off me. OK, I was fine with that.

Then Friday I received my statement with one addition. They charged me $5 as an inactivity fee! I went into the bank and asked them to remove the fee. They did not. I immediately closed the account!

For $5 they lost a customer for life. They didn't seem to be worried because many other people just leave their money there. As you know, banks in general don't care about their customers. Many banks pay less than 1% unless you have hundred of thousands of dollars there.

I take this moment to ask those who have an account with any brick and mortor bank to consider the following. If you are getting less than say 3 percent on your money, you should immediately move your acoount to somewhere you get a real rate of return.

Look at credit unions or even online banks. You do not HAVE to have a local bank if you can use an ATM for deposits. I switched my checking to an online bank (INGDIRECT)that pays me 3% for checking and higher for savings, thus getting over 10 times the interest of the local bank. You can go to a site like bankrate.com and compare checking and savings rates for many online banks and credit unions.

I just came across a newspaper article which is quite appropriate for this time of year. Perhaps you have heard that the University of Hawaii football taem, the Warriors, are headed to the Sugar Bowl this year? They will be playing my old local team, Georgia. While I don't follow football normally, you can bet the I'll be rooting for my new LOCAL team, Hawaii this year!

Well, many cannot believe that Hawaii would make it, yet they did. They did it with a good team and a driving force. That force comes down t oone word, "Believe".

Here to warm you up a bit during the cold weather is an article about how they believe they accomplished their feat... http://honoluluadvertiser .com...

Around Thanksgiving I was caring for my friends dogs while she was in Australia. We received 7" of rain down by my farm in 1 day! The road between my farm and the next one down was unpassable and Painted Church Road was closed due to runoff above us. Up at my friends, we made it through pretty easily; the electricity, cable and phones only being out for a day or so. However, down at my farm I hear the power was off for 4 days. What a difference 10 miles can make. Then we also had a 2.9 earthquake just to liven things up a bit. That quake was centered about 3 miles from where I was staying.

As ypu know, I work part time at a condo place in Kona, checking people into rooms and booking them for luaus and snorkle adventures and so on. Many of the excursions want me to come experience them so that I can tell your guests just how great they are. Naturally I get to do these things for free. I am being asked to attend another luau and take a helicopter ride around the island. As a Christmas present I received many boxes of cookies and chocolates and even a gift card with some spending cash.

And people wonder why we call it paradise?

First, I love Christmas as much as the next guy, but they took my oldies station and changed over to Christmas music along about Halloween! I was not happy. It is unfortunate that I have no other stations in range wirth listening to. I hate to admit it but I am awaiting December 26th with more excitement than the 25th.

I had the property cleared of trees in December, then let things go while I was on the mainland a couple of times. Before I knew it, there were 3 to 4 foot bushes and trees where my coffee needs to be. I have been trying to clear that area up since.

I found someone to put in the base for my water catchment tanks and he is about to begin. He will also clear the above described brush from two acres and punch holes in the rock for coffee trees. I'll be planting up to 1500 or so trees this year.

In the brush I also found many papaya trees had grown. I've tried to save them for now, their fruit selling for .99 a pound in stores here. Some of these papayas are gigantic (the size of grapefruit)! I don't know which variety they are (as they are wild), but they can't be too bad. In the worst case, my guard dog Koa will eat them :-)

Koa is now 50 pounds or more and still growing. He was officially registered with the AKC as “Aloha Kokoleka Kope” (Aloha Chocolate Coffee). As he has matured, we have determined that he may be from different father than first suspected (dogs can have multiple fathers in the same litter); so I'll submit his DNA swab to AKC to verify his parents.

There is some happy and sad news to report. Koa's Mother had a litter and so did another female at the kennel. Both litters were premature and 3 puppies did not make it. One was so small that he had to be hand-fed as he could not nurse. I snuggled a bit with him over the few days he was with us. He hung on as long as he could, but was just not strong enough to make it. It is a reminder to me that it can be a very cruel and unforgiving world out here. However, the rest of the two litters are doing great and we are thankful they made it.

I have been selling quite a bit of coffee and am currently out, so I closed the website for a short while. I have been very busy with so many projects that many others have not gotten the attention they need. The coffee plants are the most important at the moment and I am still trying to get them in the ground before my self-appointed deadline of December 31st. At least it is not my holdup at the moment.

I also am waiting for my quote to be delivered fro installation of the catchment tanks. I hope it comes in under budget.

Recently I replaced my trucks brake disc pads. I must not have cranked a couple of bolts down tightly because they fell off and I lost ½ my front braking power. It was an easy fix on my part with one exception. This is a VERY COMMON truck on this island and I understand that the bolts are very common parts that often are not tightened properly and thus, weekend mechanics like me often lose them. Still, there were not any bolts to be had on the island and I ended up waiting almost a week for them to be airlifted in.

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I changed from a regular hardwired telephone at the farm to a voice over IP phone which costs me about 1/3 of the price of the one from the phone company.

I also signed up to a stock purchase plan that uses dollar-cost-averaging to help you save. That company was just purchased by ING.

Speaking of ING and their website INGDIRECT.COM, they now offer a checking account which pays almost 4% interest! Compare that to regular banks that barely give you a tenth of that in a savings account. If you are into saving money, please consider putting your hard-earned money to work for you.

I'm not sure if I'm working this Christmas, but in the hospitality industry, it is not unusual to work holidays.

It's not a New Years resolution or anything like that I'm passing along, just a helpful hint... back Up That Computer!

If you are a taxpayer, it is about time to buy and sell those stocks, print off your account transactions and yes, even check to see how many miles are on the odometer.

If using the end of the year as a guide, it may also be time to change out those smoke detector batteries.

If I remember correctly, I think January starts the flood of discount certificates to get you to scrap your perfectly good TV and switch to HDTV.

And the countdown begins....

I think this is the second quake I have felt since the big ones on October 15th of last year. That seems so long ago and so much has happened since then. It is interesting to note how these quakes are centered and the vibrations extend out in circles from the epicenter.

Our Coffee Farmers Association is running fairly smoothly. It is Coffee Festival week and we are participating. We have our coffee label and website (http://konacoffeefarmers .org) entered in the label and website competition. We continue to teach people about why farmers hate blends and what a blend really is.

We just had our annual dinner and auction and did pretty well. I was the auctioneer for the live portion.

I found a deal on having holes punched for more coffee and the same guy can put in the base for my catchment water tnks. If his specs are correct, I might have these items completed in the next week or so. I have to get some more coffee in the ground this year!

Speaking of coffee, my friend Sandra is having holes punched on her new farm for both coffee and shade trees. her land is better suited than mine as she has a nice flat area, but her slope is considerably more than mine. She has grass (actually a lawn) and I don't.

My neighbor Ginnie sold her farm and she and her husband will be relocating to Alaska! I wonder just how long that will last? We has a guy on the Konaweb site that moved here, then moved back t othe mainland and just 1 year later has moved back. He realized just how much he missed the place here.

Some friends are visiting the island again this year and we will be having dinner tonight with some neighbors too.

A friend and ex co-worker from HP was on Oahu last week organizing an air show. He called to tell me that he will be stationed on Oahu for a year or so soon. Pete is the guy who years ago, get me to fly a T-34 trainer. Although the plane can and does fly upside and sideways, Pete said that when I was at the yoke, he had to keep checking if he had the autopilot on, because we were flying so level and true. In reality, I was scared that if I deviated from level, we surely could have died :-) Although many people fly these things upside down and so on, they usually have more than the 5 minutes of preparation time than I got before my first flight!

Speaking of first flights, oh wait, I just told you that story...

I took the dog out for his morning "exercise" and I got 2 or 3 mosquito bites. I'm still itching. I don't know how they find me so quickly. Also, whomever told me that after being here a year or so the pesky thhings would steer clear of me, was completely wrong. perhaps I have not sufficiently changed my diet enough.

Well, it is now 6am and time for me to either decide to stay up, or go back to sleep for a few hours. yesterday I got up early, sprayed some Roundup (actually the generic) on weeds and then settled down to work ion the computer. Hours later it rained and then poured for hours at a time. That was a waste of about $30 worth of weed killer. Most other times it looks like it will rain and does niot. I don't even have to wash the truck here to get it to rain; just spray the stuff and in comes the rain.

I have to clear the brush and tall grass so that I can spray the ground where the holes for the coffee plants will go. They will bring in a machine to poke holes in the rocks. I'll post a photo or two later on the http://ItsKona.Com website. I have some photos of Sandras farm having the same procedure, but just as I zoomed in for a close up shot of a hole being opened, they guy took a break and I was late for work.

By the way, if you are a reader of my past blogs you will know that I usually thread a few items on the same topic together; whether by similar vein or function.

So speaking of quakes (shakers), the Shakers were a Protestant religious denomination officially called The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, At one time they numbered in the thousands but now number very few. The reason? They were strict believers in celibacy. Shakers maintained their numbers through conversion and adoption of orphans. Turnover was very high.

Part of their religion here in the US had men and women divided (using different staircases and eating apart (not unlike part of the Hawaiian custom of men and women having a kapu about eating together). In reading about their customs, you will learn how they came to make their famous furniture. Their Hancock Shaker barm was featured on a "This Old House" (or similar program). Among inventions were the screw propeller and circular saw.

New laws prevent religeous organizations from adopting children and thus, with their desire of celebracy, it is assumed that unless many people decide to embrace the religon, it may well cease to exist during out lifetime.

So there you have it, a fresh nwe blog. I tied two ideas together and filled yeat another blank space. The obvious link between the two stories might be the word "shaker" as in the religous group and the earthquake. You may be correct but also note that I spoke about a group dying out and planting new crops... kind of a circle of life.

Speaking of circles, epicenters and waves form circles, the coffee holes are circles and then there is that "circle of life" thing.

I would love to draw more analogies, but I am running out of time. Perhaps later I can get back around (a ROUND) to it :-)

http://snow.itskona.com/

It's all true!

Of course you have to go up 14,000 feet to play in it, but yes, Hawaii does get snow!

http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/G...

When I was in George (before moving here, I signed up for Packet8 (http://Packet8.net) and their Voice Over IP telephone system. I am very happy with the service. I have high speed internet connection which, along with their service, gives me telephone service will all sorts of options and unlimited long distance to the US and Canada, all for just over $25 a month. I was able to prepay for a year and get a lower rate that that.

You get either a phone or an adapter that plugs into your router and an inbound telephone in the area code of your choice. There are just a few exceptions like Hawaii, Alaska and a state in New England or so. I chose one in Florida so my Mom could call me as a local number. She dials a 7 digit number in her town and my phone rings in Hawaii. I seem local to her even though I am a quarter of the way around the world from her. My outbound calls show a Florida origination, but I don't care. If I had wanted, I could have ported my local Atlanta regular telephone number and dropped service with Bell South and used the VOIP line for my local inbound calls too.

Recently I discovered 808NetFone (http://808NetFone.com) which offers VOIP service AND a Hawaiian inbound number. This means that I can have service which replaces the local phone company and gives me my current telephone company provided number which is on my business cards already. I could upgrade the service to take the place of Packet8 but for now, I'll keep them both.

808NetPhone offers unlimited local calling (the Big Island) for $12 a month but also includes many of the functions I paid extra for with the phone company. This includes: Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Transfer, 3 Way Calling, Call Back - Busy, Voice Mail, E911, Call Forward, Follow Me Service, Last Number Redial, Unlimited Local Calls and a few functions which would work if I chose statewide or countrywide dialing plans. If I had chosen to be able to call all over the state, the cost would have been $18 a month and to replace my unlimited countrywide service it would cost just $28 a month. I don't call overseas, but for $50 a month you can add a ton of foreign countries for free.

So I am replacing $36 a month service with $12 a month service and get to keep my current telephone number since my local service was just that, local to the island.

My friend Jeff has been playing with PBX software which allows him to duplicate the telephone system which big comapies use. It uses the same technology as Packet8 and 808NetFone and in fact, can use the same adapters. I am currently using an old Packet8 box to connect to Jeff's computer. We have 4 digit dialing to reach anyone on his service, but he could just as easily change that to 2 digits or 7 digits. He configured groups of numbers like the 42xx numbers being people in Florida, but it would be easy to actually create an "area code" for that and assign 7 digits to each number. That is possible but totally unnecessary. There appear to be plug-ins which allow you to connect to the outside world by regular telephone lines (a modem card) and/or the internet (using a LAN card) and perhaps link into Packet8...

He configured voicemail for each of us, we can log in to a web interface and manage out accounts. We could create a conference line and have all of us in a "meeting". We can forward and transfer calls, etc There is even a "What time is it?", "What is my weather forcast" and "wake me at" options. The software is all open source (read that as FREE) and needs either a Linux-type computer or a Windows PC which runs VMware (which simulates a Linux box on your PC). The installation I tried of the Windows version required 2 downloads and about 15 minutes to set up and I had a similar system running here.

So it appears that the technology is becoming very commonplace and many people are replacing their hardwired telephones from the phone companies with VOIP or even what they call soft phones. A soft phone is a program which runs on your PC and connects to one of these services on the internet and allows you to place calls between other users of the same service, or people with internet connections or even to people with a telephone somewhere in the world.

Many of these services bypass traditional telephone companies completely and that can be a problem. In some countries the telephone company is owned by the government and they don't like losing that revenue. In some places the telephone company may be owned by a ruler of that country. Luckily, here in America, we are very open with our telephone services.

One thing I forgot to mention, and it is neat. The boxes (or softphone software) can be carried around with you; somewhat like a cell phones. When I came to Hawaii, I brought my adapter with me. I plugged it into the high speed internet at the hotel here nd had a telephone in the room that did not connectto the hotels PBX and thus they did not know I had it. I also did not get charged for calls in or out, because it had nothing to do with the hotel. What becomes even neater when you think about it is that this was my unit with the inbound number in Florida. Thus my Mom continued to call the local number to her and it rang my phone in Hawaii. She did not even know that I took a trip here :-) My outbound calls originated in Florida too, but since my calling plan included all 50 states and Canada, I could pick up the phone in Hawaii, use an outbound call in Florida to call back into a phone across the street. All for that same $25 a month. very much lik a cell phone but with a wire.

I wanted to go into a detailed explanation because I'm sure there are some people out there who might be able to benefit from this type of techology but didn't understand or know of all of the options and costs.

If you want to read up on GrandCentral.Com, they have some neat features for a system that is phone free. It is in test mode at present, but those of us with the service already can refer others to join instantly. Otherwise you have to wait.

I can also refer people to both 808NetPhone and Packet8 and I get a small kickback (a free month or a dollar or something). If you are really into it and want a referral, let me know. Otherwise strike out on your own with one of these services and see how things have changed over the years.

I actually was thinking about posting last night, but fell asleep at 10-pm and woke up at 9am.

Last night, Sandra treated me to a play at the Aloha Theater as a thank you for feeding the dogs while she is away. The play was "Little Shop of Horrors" and quite appropriate as we near Halloween. I met one of the actors a few days ago and it was fun to see him on stage. As the stage is quite small, the crew must move scenery often and did an excellent job with the lights down.

The last time I was at the theater, they had a surf week with lots of surf-related movies.

Speaking of surfers, after my High School graduation, a few of us went from up north to Virginia Beach. I think all but me were surfers and I sat on the beach while the rest were in the water. One of those guys called me the other day. He wanted to escape the smoke and fires on the west coast and head to the Big Island. I’ll meet him today after many years. I believe the last time I saw him was at a reunion.

Koa (the guard dog) is doing well. On my recent birthday I took him down to the Place of Refuge and tried to get him into the water. “Like father like son” comes to mind as he would not. The waves lightly tapped the shore, but it was his first time on sand and rocks and I’m sure he needs a bit more time. After all, he IS a water dog!

My Mom has been fighting a mysterious high blood pressure problem where it spike high and then comes down. She is not enjoying the 9 prescriptions she is on. Hopefully the doctors will find the reason for her discomfort.

I still fight with trying to find someone who can inexpensively install my water tanks. I may have an idea for getting holes punched in the rock for a few acres of coffee, but need to do a bit more research. I WILL have an acre of new coffee by the end of the year. It WILL happen, I’m just not quite sure how and when J

Speaking of coffee, I have been selling a bit back at my part-time job. I serve my Kona at the island orientation on Mondays and often sell a few pounds during the week. This means I have to be more careful how much coffee I get roasted and when, as I hate to store coffee for long after it is roasted. Since I don’t do the roasting myself, I have to work my stock around the roasting days.

Speaking of roasting, I got a call last night from someone who wants a bit of green to roast herself. Not everyone wants it already roasted.

My organization worked with many others to object to the Ironman disaster. As you may know, Kona hosts the big Ironman race (swimming, bicycling and running). It’s an all day event that pretty much affects the whole west side of our island. Roads and stores are closed; people can’t get to and from the airport without having to drive all over the place, etc. So just before the race, Ironman officials announced that because there was not enough quality coffee around, the official Ironman coffee is from Guatemala!

Imagine the revolt that started here. It is as though the official cola of the Atlanta Olympics was announced as Pepsi (Atlanta is the home of Coke). It took no less than 2 days for the officials to offer full-page apologies and radio ads.

Our coffee organization has submitted entries for our coffee label and website to the Kona Coffee Festival contest. It would be great if we win. Last year we won prizes for our float and donkey.

We also have a new handout, bumper stickers and a DVD we will be displaying to visitors. That is in addition to the t-shirts, caps and items we already have.

I just purchased 2 TVs, which we will use to display the DVD. I have to find the best way to hook them together so that the same DVD plays on both on alternate sides of the table.

Working with a local environmental organization, I will be offering an award-winning cookbook with gift baskets this holiday season, so keep those credit cards out and ready!

Speaking of gifts, on my ItsKona.Com website on the shopping tab, you may notice a new ad which allows you to get a discount for Hawaii’s Best Attraction Passes “Go Card”. It will show at the top of the page along with other sponsored ads and offers discounts on Oahu.

My friends Ginnie and Dick are moving to Alaska and have sold their farm to a recent resident from Carolina. I will be personalizing the website to his specifications over the next few weeks and will help him run it. The new owner knows construction and I have this old kitchen and bathrooms I want to fix up. Perhaps we can make some kind of deal J

I hope that this update keeps you busy fro a while. It is a busy time here in Kona, and the fun is just beginning (or is it continuing, I always get those two confused) J

In 1878 Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Then came Bell Telephone and in 1885 AT&T connected to those bells. In 1913 they bacame a monopoly. If you wanted telephone service, they were it.

In 1956, Tom Carter won a small victory when the courts agreed that he could make and sell a device that could attach to the telephone. Soon that would allow acoustic couplers like modems where you would place the handset in a device without modifying the telephone or touching the wires.

Then Tom went back to court in the famous Carterphone Decision case which found that devices could be attached directly t othe telephone line, devices not owned by Bell and/or AT&T. This led the way to fax machines, answering machines and cordless phones, etc. I cannot imagine how the would would be if those devices were all owned and controlled by one company.

I was always fascinated with phones from my earliest years. I remember having direct dialing in one town where I grew up and then moving to Princeton where you had a operator answer the phone to direct your call.

Years later I was at a hamfest and saw someone inside selling telephones (Stromberg Carlson as I remember, from Canada). This was a first and I bought 4 new ones a discount and took them out to show friends. I set them on the table and a guy asked me how many more I had and in what colors. That day I sold about 20 by going inside to a buy them in bulk and carrying them outside to sell.

My first answering machine/message announcer was a large thing similar to what we used in the radio station.

When I was a ham radio operator, I hooked up a touchtone pad to my walkie-talkie and made phone calls (we hams were at the forefront of the cell phone revolution).

Once as a demo, we transmitted a telephone call from my walkie-talkie through radio to a repeater to a phone line which dialed COMSAT. There a friend and fello ham linked my call into the upstream data to the ANIK satellite. My audio went up and back and back to me. I showed the Boy Scouts assembled that in an emergency, we hams could even grab satellite time and make a walkie-talkie be heard through 1/2 the world.

Over the years I have had my share of fun with phones, figuring out neat things to do with the equipment and lines. I would get two phone lines, couple them together and dial Operator on both and let the Operators talk to each other wondering what was up. I once took a desk phone apart, wired the switchhook with 110 volts and put a lamp on top. You would lift the receiver to turn on the lamp!

A company I worked for installed an MCI circuit for long distance. MCI was a railway company (or associated with one) and had microwave towers all along their tracks. This was very similar to telephone wires but seperate. They hooked them into phone lines and made their own telephone company. The MCI box sat between our phones and the phonecompany. If you dialed a long distance number, it detected that, intercepted the call, dialled locally into their DC office and dumped the call into their equipment, bypassing the phone companies long distance circuits. The phone company was less than thrilled and did little to quickly install lines to these boxes, even though they were legal.

I started using calling cards to redice long distance charges and found that things like the MCI and other calling cards were 5 cents a minute or less, well below the dollar or two a minute of the AT&T card. I then signed up for a calling plan called Big Zoo, where I dialled a local number (or toll free number) entered my codes and was calling long distance for 2.5 cents a minute.

Then I signed up with a company called Packet8 which used the internet for service. They get you an adapter (or a telephone) that plugs into the internet and gives you unlimited outbound calling for about $20 a month. My inbound number for that service is in Florida so my Mom can call me. Since the inbound number is in her local dialing area, it is a local call for her and free! So she can call me anytime free and I call all over the US for $20 a month.

Just when you think that is a good deal, along comes "soft phones" whereby you load software on your PC and talk PC to PC for free (worldwide). If you want to talk to someone not on a PC, you need to pay a fee to connect to a telephone line somewhere. Yahoo messenger and programs like that have soft phone ability.

Entering the scene is Asterick, a software PBX (private branch exchange or switchboard). This software simulates the telephone company with all of the bells (a bad pun) and whistles. It runs under Linux and allows you to have your own telephone company. You can create extensions, have voicemail, announce the time and weather to users, have music on hold, transfer calls, have conferences, and so on, all without any actual telephone equipment. Did I mention that the software is free. So is the operating system, just supply a PC and if desired, a telephone card to attach to the phone company. You can create a business telephone system and run it yourself! Your users may be in the same building, or they may be scattered around the world. They only need an internet connection and some software and perhaps a headset and mike.

There is a version of the software already configured and supplied with VMware so that you can run under windows! You take your PC, load VMware as a Windows application and within that window, run the PBX software. I set the thing up last night and had it running. I have to admit that I have a bit more expertese than most, but there are some simple directions.

If you want to play, go to http://nerdvittles.com/index.... and download the software. I had to download the older versions as I could not find a "torrent" copy. TRhe hardest part was doing the downloads.

When I upgraded my Packet8 service to a whole-house phone, I was left with the original adapter. I was able to flash the software in that box to create a unit that plugs into my network and connects to this software just mentioned above. Thus I have a real telephone on the wall (I call it a wall telephone :-) that is an extension off my own telephone system. It currently has no regular connection to the telephone company, but rather when it rings, I know it is one of my friends calling.

I could connect the computer to a regular telephone line and accept inbound calls (and use it as an answering machine/PBX) or to make real telephone outbound calls. With the Carterphone Decision, I guess I could let my friends have a local Big Island Hawaii dial tone, not that there are many people here to call. My friend Jeff has a similar setup in Florida and I have an extension off his PBX here in Hawaii, Without too much work we could link the systems together and I could forward him voicemails to pass all outbound Florida telephone calls to his system to be dumped into the phone lines there.

Now if only I had access to that satellite uplink again....

Anyway, communications have always fascinated me, starting with telephones, CB, Ham radio, the internet, satellites and even this blog.

We started out having to pick up a telephone and say "Hello Central", now it is "Hello World" and beyond!

Then I went to Sandras to pick up my dog and fixed her printer.

This morning I go back to work for the day and then again Monday. Then I'm off for 4 days again and can work on the farm.

By the way, for breakfast today, he had:

I bought a pulper a few weeks back and tested it at a friends farm last week. Today was my first opportunity to pulp some of my own beans and it went quite well.

Coffee grows on new growth and when ripe looks like a small cherry. When it is very red, we pick it, wash it off and then pulp it. Pulping is the removal of the outer skin and can be done by squeezing the cherry by hand or in larger quantities by using a pulper. The pulper I have is a heavy box with a wheel inside. The wheel looks like a round cheese grater with little nubs all around it. The cherry goes down a chute where the nubs rip te outer covering off the beans. The outer covering goes down one way and the beans go down the other. The beans look like wet peanuts at this point and are covered by a sweet sticky muscilage.

The beans will be left in a water bath over night where the sugar begins to ferment and break down. In the morning I'll wash the beans off again and spread them out to dry. They have to have a cover over them if it rains. Some people have a permanent roof and others have a sliding one they can draw over the beans. These beans will be left to dry until they get to about 12-15% moisure content. At that point, they are called parchment and if stored property, will be good for perhaps a year and a half.

When it comes time to roast, the parchment will be milled where the outer covering is removed and the green coffee bean is left. You could store the green beans, but they won't store as well and must be used in about a year.

Green beans are then loaded into the roaster and the temperature raised until the beans start to expand. The internal moisture will cause steam, the oils and caffeine and such will come out of the bean and they will darken. Depending upon the roast, they may crack one or twice. The crack is a bit like popcorn exploding except not as dramatic.

Kona coffee tastes best at a medium or slightly darker roast; certainly no where near the type of roast that Starbucks uses. As coffee beans start getting oily and really dark, you begin to taste the charcoal rather than the taste of the origin of the coffee. Why buy a premium coffee only to charcoal it?

Anyway, speaking of roasted coffee, I have some freshly roasted medium roast I'd be happy to ship to you (US only). I just picked it up yesterday at the roaster. Just go to http://ItsKona.Com and buy away!

For those wondering how Koa the farm dog is doing, just fine, thank you! He loves his fresh food diet and this afternoon I gave him an avocado which he devoured! I'll uplod more photos of him to the website soon.

Although Hawaii was prepared and the strike zone was almost directly at Hilo on the east side of the Big Island, we were spared wind and rain. Here is how.

First, the storm began to slow and the winds diminish as it hit cooler water. If you have ever played "rock, paoper, scissors) then you will understand what happened in a contest between a giant mountain and a bunch of wind and rain. The mountain won!

Actually, the hurricane slowed near Hilo and upper winds pulled the top part of the storm northward and the trade winds pulled the bottom of the storm to the south. It soon broke apart and the island got very little of the storm.

In fact, here on the west coast we didn't have any rain or wind until this afternoon and then, just a bit of rain.

While Hilo was poised for the storm, we had a beautiful sunset here on the west coast. KHON TV on Oahu was asking people to send weather photos of the storm. Since we didn't have a storm here, I took sunset photos. It appears there were so few storm photos that I was amazed t ohear that the channel opted for my sunset photo for their 6pm news. I missed seeing it, but then again, I have the original :-)

Another 15 seconds of fame!

Then if you live at the end of the earth, like I do, the time convenient for you to log in to enter said codes, the system is down for maintenance.

Then they force you to have flash, so you can watch the stupid ads and flashy crap on the site. Many of us hate flash and only have it on certain computers. That computer is not always powered up here.

So I have some number of points and I am almost ready to be able to ash them in, and the site says that I have not been back in a while and they deleted all my points! Now I am sitting here with a few 24 packs of codes and I have nothing to add them to.

I send a message to “the powers that be” on their website and ask how I can recover these points. They do not respond while I wait days and days.

Well, the story can now be told. I do not forget! I get even! I will not buy Coke products again. It is not a hollow threat, just a fact. As proof, years ago I was looking for my first credit card and I applied at Sears. They turned me down because I had no credit history. Montgomery Ward immediately gave me a card and just two weeks later I get a call from Sears Credit. It appears that since NOW that I have a credit card with Montgomery Ward, they will now “allow” me to hold a Sears card. I told them I would never have a Sears card because it appears I was not good enough for them. In the decades since (too many that I care to admit to), I have NEVER purchased anything from Sears! As I say, I don’t forget!

So in my own small way, Coke thinks they won when they took my points away minutes before I got my free liter of Coke. They appear to no want my business, so I’ll take it to the competition.

Thanks for nothing! And people wonder why I left Atlanta…

My friend had 3 dogs run off and a week or so later were recovered at the Waimea pound. They had been taken there because the closer pound was closed because of a nearby fire. There was also a fire up mauka, but that one was further from the other pound.

While the dogs were missing in action (so t ospeak), their owner took ill, was admitted to the local hospital and then shipped over to Oahu to a hospital there. It appears many people prefer not to be operated at the local hospital. well, just after the dog came home, so did their owner.

While the owner was in the hospital, I stayed at her house to watch the dogs. I now have a part time day job, so could not be there at lunchtime to feed the puppies. In a strange twist of fate, I had t osend the puppies elsewhere for daycare so they could get lunch. Thus I could watch and care for all of the dogs except my one (and his brother and sister). Once my friend came home and I moved out, the puppies came home and I began taking my dog back to my home. I still have to take "Koa" up there on workdays, because he still would miss lunch.

In an even stranger twist of fate, I relate the following.

A month ago I lost my wallet. I had gone to the Post Office to mail coffee to a customer. Then I went to the local grocery store, bought a couple items, paid by credit card and came home. The next day at noon, I had to help a neighbor and whil dressing, discovered I could not find my wallet. I could swear I had put the wallet in my back pocket at the store, but that was the only place I could have lost it. I called the store and stopped back there twice in the next week and they did not have it. I odrered a new license, COSTCO card, new credit cards, reported the wallet lost to the police, and so on.

Fast forward one month (to yesterday, and I KNOW that you are ahead of me for a change). The supermarket called and said that they had my wallet for quite some time, and was I going to come get it? I stoppe dby last night and sure enough, was presented with the wayward wallet. All looks intact and no one had tried to use any of the cards. There were a couple of cash cards (gift cards) that could have been used with little or no chance of detection, and they were still there. There was no money in the wallet, but I don't think I had any in there that dat as I was going to use the credit card for the food and the package was already stamped.

My boss went bck home to Kauai because a relative had passed away and it is almost Saturday when our resort guests check out and many head home from their vacation.

One of my neighbor coffee farmers is on vacation on ythe mainland. She called and let me know that they need to move back to the mainland and that will necessitate them selling thier coffee farm. It has trees, a pulping and drying eck and even a website. It's a turnkey operation with a fantastic coffee and website and domain. Contact me directly for details before she contacts an agent.

Finally, in order to install my water catchment tanks for irrigation, I needed to borrow a substantial amount of money for a short time. The majority of the principal of the loan will be repaid through a cost-sharing arrangement with a contrct I have for water conservation. Rather than go to a bank, I went to my self. I set up a "Solo-401K" type account, as a small business with no other employees. Thus I have my own 401K plan with one member. For a $75 check fee, I was able to borrow from my 401K with no penalties. The 5 year loan comes with a interest rate of Prime plus 1% or about 9.5%. However, the interest does not go to the bank; rather it goes back into my own 401K. Thus, I am borrowing from myself I borrow money and it comes back to me. Although the interest comes back to me and is reinvested, if the money is not needed right away, I'll transfer much of it to ING Direct at something like 4 to 5 % interest. That means that part of the money will only cost me about 5%.

All in all, a very strange time when a number of items returned from whence they came.

The letters K O A are interesting in that they mean many things. K.O.A. is a abreviation for the Kampgrounds of America, a place to camp or RV. Although I don't remember staing at a KOA, I used to go camping in Georgia when I was gold prospecting.

KOA is also the call letters of a radio station, 850 on the AM radio dial, in Denver. I used to be a radio DJ in Kentucky (WREM).

Closer to Hawaii, KOA is the airport designator for the Kailua-Kona airport right up the road from me and a popular destination for visitors to this island.

Koa is also a beautiful wood, commonly found in Hawaii. The trees were often used for making canoes and are still used to make guitars and ukuleles.

Koa is the Hawaiian word for brave, bold and fearless.

Finaly, Koa is the name of my new guard dog for the farm. As mentioned in a previous blog, I reviewed many meaningful names and once I brought the little guy home the other day, I tried each name to see which one he responded to. Although I love to report that when I called him Koa, he jumped and acknowledged his name, alas, he was too busy playing with toys. I decided that Koa was a short and forceful name and that is what he will be called.

Now, I have to tell you that since he is A.K.C. registered, I also have to give him an official name and that may be a bit easier, because it will not be a common name he will need to respond to, just one for the paperwork.

His Farther is "Mikelli Darkn Stormy" and his Mother is "Avokah Choclyt Brownie". I think the registered name may include "Kope" (coffee) and "Kokoleka" (chocolate).

I will be picking up my new "guard dog" on Saturday. I still need to puppy-proof the house and parts of the farm where there are lava tubes.

Speaking of lava, the Big Island was struck today with over 230 earthquakes, all near the volcano and the largest being about a 4.0. If you care to look, go to http://tux.wr.usgs.gov/Quakes... There is probably a lot of magma movement.

I finally received the Kona Honey and was able to ship an order that was on hold for two weeks. then today I me ta couple who are probably going to purchase 8 pounds of it. At this rate, I may be out of it again. It *DOES* help if someone was to order 3 or more pounds, because then I can put it in a box to ship it.

More later.

All of the puppies are cute, so it was quite difficult to choose one, but I think this one has the best disposition for me (although it is still early to really know them).

Just as difficult is the choosing of a name for the guy. Here are a few of the ideas I have and their meanings. You have to remember that the pronunciation in Hawaiian is different from English. The vowels are pronounced Ah, A, E, Oh and Ou [bah, bay, bee, bow, boo] so punahele is pronounced "poo nah hay lay"

Koa (brave, bold, fearless)
Maka (favorite one)
Kope (coffee)
Kokoleka (chocolate)
Punahele (favorite one)
Laka (gentle)
Wiki (quick)
Kupa`a (Loyal)

Years ago I learned a lesson with animals. I adopted a dog from a teacher who named it Poo (as in Winnie the Poo). I am sure it sounded great at the time, but imagine chasing a dog through the neighborhood, calling out "Poo! Poo! Come here Poo!".

Some of the above don't sound so bad!

The project calls for creating a gravel and sand base, or concrete ring, for 4 large steel water tanks. The tanks are corrugated metal in a band with a liner inside. They will look like above ground swimming pools, 25 feet across and 6 feet tall. Each will hold 20,000 gallons of water. There will be one at the bottom of the property and it will be filled from the gutters of the house and garage. The 3 at the top of the property will be filled with water pumped from the bottom tank.

I am still waiting on the honey to be bottled and then can make a couple of pending shipments. As soon as I have it, I will try selling it at a local farmers market along with the coffee. I just had more roasted to medium and have both medium and dark roast in stock for a while.

A couple weeks ago, my friend Sandra and I were selling coffee and honey at an orchid show. The next day I went to the Post Office, the supermarket and then home. The next day I went to help a neighbor with his computer and discovered that I could not find my wallet. I am sure I had it at the supermarket because I used my credit card at the market. I went nowhere between there and home. I called the store twice and even stopped in, to no avail. I can see myself putting the card into my wallet that day and would have been home in 10 minutes. I have looked all through the house and even walked the property.

It does not appear that anyone attempted to use the credit cards and I have gotten replacements. I also like to think that if someone found the wallet here, they would have returned it. It is a small town and we are known to be pretty friendly.

Sandra went to DC to receive an award and I was one of the people to stop by her house to feed her new puppies. She has promised me one of the current litter because I have been such a help to her. I guess I should now tell you the tale of the dog.

Sandra gets some of her older dogs from Australia or New Zealand. This is because the dogs are high quality and free of rabies. Hawaii and a the aforementioned countries are rabies free and thus the dogs can be easily shipped between them. She bought a girl and when the dog got here it appeared to be anxious around men. This is not good and no amount of testing by Sandra or I could determine what the dog was afraid of. She would hide behind the couch when I came in and would shudder and shake a bit. You could tell she just was afraid.

Her vet suggested trying an anti-anxiety drug which has been used for decades on humans. Sandra tried it and at first noticed no difference. As the dosage was increased a bit, all of a sudden the dogs behavior changed and I mean it was like day and night! I was sitting talking with Sandra and all of a sudden, the dog came over to me and put her nose under my arm, trying to lift it to encourage me to pet her head! WOW! I could pet and scratch her and she she came back for more.

We wondered if the effect would last without the drug and yes, it seems permanent. This change was so dramatic that I still think that someone switched dogs when I was not looking.

Now when I go visit, this dog seeks me out (although she likes other men too now). I can be walking and she all but heels near me, walking next to me. If I start playing with another dog, she will come over and position herself between the other dog and me. I think she is jealous that I am giving attention to another dog.

Recently she got pregnant and had 8 puppies. Sandra feels that I should have one of the puppies and I am reluctantly giving in. It has been a long time since I had a dog, the last one being a collie and golder retriever mix.

I am learning a lot of things about dogs that I didn't know. It appears that a single litter might have dogs with multiple fathers. There are some traits like color that can help determine fatherhood. If the mother is a brown lab and the father is a brown lab, the puppies will be brown. If the father is a black lab, statistically half the puppies would be black and half brown. However, it could happen that most of the puppies could be brown, as is the case with this litter. In the case of questions, a DNA test can be performed on dogs, pretty inexpensively.

So that is what is happening "Down on the farm".