Today, Rusty started bringing in material to fill the trench. He and his crew will start filling in the trench in the morning. I also will have one other small trench dug so that one other pipe can be buried.

A neighbor asked me to look at her old computer, as it would not boot. The problem was pretty easy to find, and it took all of 5 minutes. The system has 1 memory card and it was in the wrong slot. I dunno how, but she thinks her son may have done it. It looks like they did a backup to DVD and them shut down the system. I saw some popup ad software and I’m sure their system was very slow. Perhaps they bought the new computer, the son tried to add more memory from the old system and it was not the same type. Then he may have put the memory back in the computer in the wrong slot. That is my guess. There is yet another system she wants me to look at, but it will be a day or so before I can get to that one.

Recently, I had coffee roasted for a Halloween special I am running on my website. I am offering 10.31% off roasted coffee beans (not ground). I have a small grinder but prefer not to use it for customer orders. On occasion I have coffee roasted and ground and offer that on the website, but when you grind your own coffee it can be a bit fresher.

Speaking of the website special at http://ItsKona.Com, the woman who roasted my coffee roasted all I gave her. I was hoping she would hold off a bit, but y message missed her. Thus, I have LOTS of freshly roasted coffee at the moment and would love to have it enjoyed while it is fresh. So please consider stopping by my website and take a look. I know you will be happy with any purchase. Make sure that y use the checkout coupon HALLOWEN in step 2 and that it reduces your price.

Next year I will begin to have a lot of coffee to sell and will start going to farmers markets here and selling in stores. I will need to pay pickers and buy lots more fertilizer, etc. The cost of the coffee, which has pretty much remained the same for 4 years, will have to be increased!

Speaking on coffee prices, the Kona Coffee Farmers Association (which I helped form), performed a investigation of coffee prices around the islands. The prices ranged from $31.95 to $78.00 PER POUND! Granted, the higher prices are for Peaberry, and any of the prices were captured at the airport or resorts. Still, you get 100% Kona Coffee from me at less than $22 a pound!

Those of you who have never tried 100% Kona coffee, it is mild and smooth and unlike the coffee you drank all your life (unless you grew up here). In my other job I often had a chance to have people try Kona coffee for the first time. Many said they don’t like coffee because it is bitter and has an after taste. They tried my coffee (without cream and sugar) and most ended up buying a bag and going back to drinking coffee. That is a great testimony. I have a couple comments on the website from customers:

KH: Best coffee in the world!! I was not a coffee drinker although I have tried many different varieties. I bought Pele's Passion for my husband last Christmas and tried it myself...and love it!! Shipping to Texas was unbelievably fast, and Mark is a sincerely nice person with excellent customer service! Thanks so much - I will be back again and again!

HM: This is by far the best coffee in the world. I have choked down many cups of store bought coffee just to stay awake for a long drive, and even gone to starbucks to get the 400 calorie cups of whatever it is they put in there with espresso to make it taste good, and now that we visited Hawaii and got turned on to Kona I will never again do anything but thoroughly enjoy every last drop of my coffee. If I go out to breakfast I take my own Pele's Passion with me in a travel mug because I won't drink anything else. We toured around the entire big island trying coffee from every regional Kona farm we could find (all of them better than any coffee I had ever had in my life) and Pele's Passion was leaps and bounds above even the best Kona coffees. Buy with confidence that you will soon be enjoying the best coffee of your life!

BW: My husband was strictly a "Maxwell's House" coffee drinker for many, many, MANY years until I introduced him to Pele's Passion! He now begs me to find him Kona coffee. Of course his taste buds have been forever spoiled by Pele's Passion. Though he will drink other "premium" coffees, it is Pele's Passion he longs for!

So there you have it :-)

Tonight I was switching channels and I saw a scene that looked familiar. As mentioned in another blog today, I sometimes see scenes that trigger a memory. The show was Super nanny and the background was very familiar. It looked like Georgia with pine trees and mountains in the background. It looked like up near Cleveland Georgia. Guess what? It WAS Cleveland, home to Babyland Hospital (where Cabbage Patch Dolls come from). I used to go to the Cleveland area to go gold prospecting. I learned about gold prospecting on the same satellite system. The Gold Prospectors Association and the Lost Dutchman Mining Association had a "Gold Fever" show up on one of the channels each week. Soon they created their own channel and now it is the Outdoor Channel, available on cable systems and certain satellite system.

I often tell people that gold prospecting is interesting and that there are some things I can tell them that can make finding gold very easy. I'll pass those suggestions along to you, not that I expect you to go look for gold, but more of an experiment in learning. I usually start by telling people that there are two places to look for gold. They are: where it is and where it isn't. "Is there gold on this table here?" I ask. They say, "Of course not" and I say, then don't look for gold where it isn't, look for it where it will be, or at least CAN be".

Gold is very heavy and is often found in streams where the water carries it downstream. So, if it is heavy and is carried by water, it will get pulled along until the water slows enough that it will drop. There are parts of a stream where that happens and if you watch a stream it will be obvious. Look at curve in the stream. Think of it like a bicycle wheel. The outer side turns very slowly while the part near the hub turns very quickly. So if you were to look at a curve, you would want to look at the outside of the curve. Then since gold is very heavy, it will drop to the bottom muck and over time, drop down until it cannot go any further. That is usually something like bedrock. So there you have it, I have, in a minute or two, helped you understand how to start reading a stream that might carry gold, and determine where it MIGHT be, if there is any.

You should now be able to answer the question; "I have two American coins in my hand. The total value of them is 35 cents and one coin is not a quarter. What are they?". Think about the table and the gold. The correct answer is that I have a dime and a quarter in my hand. You may say "But you said one coin was not a quarter..." and you are right. One coin was not a quarter, it was a dime. The OTHER coin was the quarter.

I used to watch other satellite channels and my favorites were the raw news feeds. After a massive earthquake in San Francisco, I watched hours of raw video of cars lining up to cross the bridge when it reopened. Often I could watch news feeds and see how they were edited before they made it to air. This is a far cry from what people now see on the small tv dishes.

I gave a somewhat technical explanation of satellite TV to Sandra on our way back from the Vet the other day. It probably would have made more sense if I had been able to draw diagrams.

For those who don't know, your TV signals come from satellites in geosynchronous orbit where they appear to hover in a specific spot in the sky. A signal is transmitted to that spot in space, the satellite copies the signal and sends it back down to recipients. Depending upon the satellite, those recipients may be consumers or TV stations or one specific site, depending upon the "footprint" the signal transmits onto the earth. The location of the geo satellites has a name; it is the Clarke Belt, named after Arthur C. Clarke, the famous sci fi writer who described such a system of orbiting satellites in a book. It appears another person originally described the idea in 1928, but it did not receive wide publication at the time. The belt is 22,000 miles above the equator. Since the area in the sky is small, expired satellites must be moved out of this orbit to a parking area and then either ejected into space or allowed to re-enter the atmosphere. To move a satellite into another orbit must be a very careful dance involving moving it into another orbit (allowing it to speed up or slow down) and then drop back into proper orbit.

Although the satellites in geo orbit appear to be exactly in the same spot in the sky, there is actually a bit of slop there. If you were to accurately track each satellite, you might notice that they actually do a figure-8 in the sky. I'll explain why that is in a bit down below, so read on.

Once that I remember, there was a major problem moving a satellite. They forgot to turn it off first. As it moved in the other orbit, its signal wiped out the channels on other satellites as it passed. This is kinda like driving along the highway listening to classical music when a car passes you playing loud music with that deep bass thumping going on.

You know that although I get a bit technical here, you will not be tested on any of this (well, except for the quarter thing above). I mention things to get you to think about things you might not otherwise think about. Once I was listening to a TV show and heard part of an explanation of Quantum Physics and actually followed some of it.

Sometimes the idea of measurements comes up. In some cases, measuring something affects the outcome. (This is not a discussion of Schrodinger's cat by the way). Assume a test tube of cool water is somewhere near 35 degrees. You know this because it was frozen and recently melted. Now assume that in it you place a thermometer. The thermometer reads 35 degrees. If you think about it, the water was not at 35 degrees when you first started measuring it, especially if the test tube is small and the thermometer was not near 35 degrees when put in. In an extreme example, assume you place a thermometer probe, which is 200 degrees, into water that is very cool. The thermometer will warm the water and the water will cool the probe, until they come to equilibrium somewhere in between. Thus the act of measuring the temperature affected the answer. If you wish to not effect the outcome by much, have a large item to measure with a small probe, or have them approximately at the same temperature if possible.

They say that a small magnet in your hand can affect the magnetic flux of the planet. HOWEVER, the flux of the earth is very strong compared to the flux of the magnet in your hand. Thus you will not affect things by any measurable amount. With that said, and believing that a magnetic flux so strong that it can twist the needle of a compass, some people believe that the minerals and moisture in your body might be affected by the magnetic force of the earth. They suggest sleeping in different compass positions until you find that you are healthier and sleep better. I'll leave that experiment up to you.

Often on the C.S.I. episodes, they may not know what caused a death, but they can tell you what didn't cause it. Sometimes when you eliminate things, the answer comes to you.

Back to the satellites and why they do a figure-8 in the sky. Any idea why? If you don't know, think about the quarter and the dime. The satellites are not doing a figure-8. The earth is wobbling on its axis below them!

Keep thinking and I bid you Aloha for now!

What I HAVE noticed is that it appears that Astro Boy looks alot like (drum roll) Bob's Big Boy.

Am I the only one who has noticed this?

Speaking of looking like someone else, there is no one who looked like, or acted like Soupy Sales, whose passing I note this week. This comedian was mostly known for getting a pie in his face. He always pressed the envelope of comedy and was even taken off the air for a while when he jokingly asked kids to open mom and dads wallet ot purse and send him the green paper with the pictures of presidents on them.

There are many people who made me laugh over the years, but yours were one of the first. rest in peace.

Here is a snippet of something I just wrote.

Calling it a fence was quite a stretch. Wind would blow sand past it like water around a pier post. Rather than standing upright, many parts leaned back and forth and some parts would move with the relentless breeze. A lone seagull rode the wind, sometimes dipping towards the ocean waves to catch a fish. In the distance, just out of reach of the waves, a dead seagull lies on the beach. Soon, the tide will arrive to carry the body away. Carefully watching the waves, you could see the constant movement of flotsam slowly drifting towards the north.

The sounds cutting through the sound of the surf were unmistakably from a nearby boardwalk. From the beach you can see round telephone pole-like pilings rising to meet the horizontal, very weathered grayish boards crisscrossing between the beach and buildings. Some boards have obviously been replaced recently as they are blond and lack decades of trash, spilled drinks and gum which has been ground into the older wood.

There are a number of rides, each with their own musical themes and each offering an urgency of their own. The tilt-a-whirl spins passengers while a nearby car race offers thrills with exaggerated car noises. The smells of burning tires spreads from the ride and mixes with that from caramel popcorn.

Laughter and screams fill the air and to the uninitiated, it appears everyone is having a great night. That is all but the guy whose body rests under the boardwalk, dead as the bird on the beach.

As you can see, perhaps I watch a few too many C.S.I. shows :-)

After a quick stop at COSTCO for gas we headed to Waimea (which is about 3000 feet above sea level, has over 7,000 people and is a big cattle and ranching area. About half way up the mountain the dogs woke up and started howling. I'm sure their ears were popping.

Since it is over an hours drive, we over planned and got there 45 minutes early. I had already eaten a double cheeseburger on the way to Sandras, but she was hungry, so we stopped at the Waimea McDonalds. The dogs were a bit rambuncious and we didn't realize that we didn't have our full meals until we stopped at the park nearby to eat. So it was back to the restaurant and through the drive thru again. We could not get out of the car because all 6 dogs would have pushed out to follow us.

You may be thinking "Why couldn't they go to a closer vet?". Well, the particular optical Vet only comes to this island twice a year and visits many Vets. You need to find one who has room for you because this traveling Vet only stays a few hours at each regular Vet office. Waimea was our only choice for 6 dogs and only 1 other person was scheduled for an eye exam.

While in the office, we heard a woman with a yellow Lab talking about her do having hot spots and allergies. She was feeding her dog kibble (that dried dog food in the bag). Sandra and I looked at each other because we know one of the main cures and it is real raw food (like hamburger, meat, chicken, etc). This woman has not read the literature and the Vets don't appear to know any better. They prescribed antihistamines or the dog.

Sigh!

If you have a dog and it has itching and are feeding dry food, try switching to meat for a few days and see if the dog doesn't have more energy and less fur falling out. I also give Koa some fish oil tablets (from COSTCO). He gets like 7000 mg (with is about 7 capsules) and actually will eat the capsules out of my hand. It would be better if I had tuna or something fresh, but at least the oil helps his coat tremendously too.

After the Vet we headed back home. Sandra wanted a milkshake so... back to the Waimea McDonalds drive-thru for the third time in 3 hours. That is some kind of record, at least for me.

By the way, Koa's eyes checked just fine!

It looks like I'll be up in town again tomorrow. I need to hand out more resumes. You can't get unemployment checks unless you can procve that you are looking for work.

The big problem appears to be that the pet food companies donate millions of dollars to vet schools, which appear to not do any independent reearch into nutrition. Why would you look to see if your benefactor is doing wrong, report it, and lose tons of financing?

That soon will change, but that is another story.

Anyway, Sandra posts a blog over on Blogspot and I wanted to give you a look at one of her posts. If you are interested, she has many other posts and will continue over there.

If you have a dog, you might read a few postings and think. Sandra is well known, well respected and unlike the Vets, has actual research she can cite.

You may ask why Vets recommend dry dog food? Well they don't have freezers, just stock space in the front office to sell pet food. It is a major source of income to them. Also, few know better. A raw meaty bone (like a beef rib) once a week cleans a dogs teeth better thn putting them to sleep and scraping their teeth. I can tell you that for humans, anesthesia complications can be more serious than the thing they are operating for.

Anyway, here is her post for today. As I say, read more if it interests you at http://rmb4healthypets.blogsp...

BEGIN TEXT

An amazing story comes from a police officer with a drug-sniffing dog. The local police department uses Labrador retrievers to sniff for illegal drugs at the airport, in shipping facilities, and in suspected drug-dealers' residences. Research shows that dental plaque and gum diesase reduce dogs' ability to smell. When I showed the officer a research study, she immediately started her dog on an RMB diet. Within two weeks, his breath smelled better, and his gums were less inflamed. Within a month, the dog's mouth was repaired, and his scenting ability was back to normal.

Trained police dogs are expensive investments (cost = $8,000 to $15,000). They receive excellent veterinary care, except vets don't know what to do about foul mouths, because all their kibble-fed patients have it. Annual cleanings under anesthesia do not prevent foul mouths.

The fact that pet owners recognize that foul smell as familiar "doggie" breath says we accept the inevitablity of dogs' developing diseased mouths. Diseased mouths are inevitable for pets fed kibble and canned mush. Even if owners get their pets teeth cleaned annually by a veterinarian (at about $250 to $300 per cleaning), the infection process begins again with the next junk pet food meal.

Accepting "doggie" breath as normal in adult dogs is like accepting rotting teeth and infected gums in ourselves. No, you say, of course, we don't accept bad breath, rotting teeth, and infected gums in ourselves! We clean our teeth daily or more often by brushing and flossing. Exactly, and your dog cannot brush or floss his teeth unless you give him Nature's tooth brush -- raw-meaty-bones.

Veterinarians pass responsibility for pets' foul mouths to owners, by mandating daily brushing of pets' teeth and by approving, and selling, manufactured dental products. The American Veterinary Dental Association has a panel of experts that review and approve various kibbles, treats, and chews that allegedly retard the development of periodontal disease. Greenies, rawhide chews, and kibble formulae with grittier textures are supposed to help, but they are inadequate solutions to the massive problem of poor pet dental health.

Veterinary dental experts know that raw-meaty-bones clean wild canids' and felines' teeth. Wolves and wild cats do not suffer from foul mouths until they are very old, very ill, and ready to die. Dogs and cats suffer from periodontal disease from puppyhood, because they do not have raw-meaty-bones to clean their teeth, as Nature intended.

Foul mouth "doggie" breath is no more normal for pets than it would be for you. "Doggie" breath is the sign of a diseased mouth.

When I was going to college, I applied for a Sears credit card. They turned me down. I went to Montgomery Ward, applied and was instantly approved. A very short while later, a representative of Sears Credit called me to say they just reviewed my credit report again and were now happy to grant my application. I asked them if they saw the Montomery Ward account and they said yes. I told them that Montgomery Ward was willing to take a chance on me and since Sears didn't care about me, I didn't care about them. I didn't want their card and would not shop at Sears. In the ensuing decades, I can honestly say that I have probably only shopped at Sears 3 times in 40 years...

A number of years ago, a guy I considered a friend, involved me in a scheme whereby I was the alibi when he cheated on his girlfriend. When I found out, I told him to stop. When he did it a second time, I walked away and have not spoken to him since.

When I moved to Hawaii, I opened a checking account with the bank of Hawaii, I put many thousands of dollars in the account. I did not get interest on that account. Eventually, the bank charged me a large fee for not causing transactions (just taking out a dollar or putting in some money would have done it). When I went in to ask them to reverse that charge, they would not. This was even though I had about $35,000 ready to deposit from my farm contract. I immediately closed the account and took my money across the street to my credit union. I also contacted the feds and gave them the new account information for my deposit that week.

A couple days ago I noticed E-trade (where I have had an account for decades) decided they needed to charge me $40 a quarter year, because I was not trading stocks. I had thousands of dollars there, which they paid me some interest on, but because I was not generating fees, they appear not to want me as a customer. I sold what stocks I had there and called today and told them to close the account. When they told me they had to charge me to send me a check I complained. I had direct bank transfers, and the customer rep finally agreed not to charge me. It was like pulling teeth to stop these charges. I won't be using them again.

I can understand their business decisions to generate income, I just won't let them do it to me.

Recently, a newcomer airline (Mesa) came to town and investigated buying one of two interisland airlines who were having financial problems. They appear to have used internal information to determine how much the airlines had in reserve, then decided to not buy the airlines, but rather create a new airline, Go Airlines.

They entered Hawaii with cut-throat prices (I am talking about free flights and flights for just dollars). After many months of the other airlines fighting to stay in business, Aloha Air finally shut their doors. The next day, mesa announced they were filing bankruptcy (reorganization). This is because they had lost so much putting Aloha out of business. At the Aloha bankruptcy hearing, Mesa twisted the knife a bit further into the now dead Aloha, by asking the judge if they could buy the name ALOHA AIRLINES from the court. They sid the money would help thos epoor ex employees, etc. BULL!

I wrote to mesa/Go and told them this was a marketing nightmare and that I would never fly them. Period. I wrote the bankruptcy judge and told him that if he allowed this, I would never fly them and would encourage everyone I talked to, not to fly mesa or Go!

Recently, my health care provider sent me to Oahu for tests and put me on Go. When I fould out, it was too late to change the tickets. HOWEVER, now I know to tell them that I refuse to fly Go and they will accomodate me on another airline.

The other day, Go announced that they were merging with Mokulele Airlines. Since they will be using the Go name, it makes it easy for me not to fly with the new merged airline. I feel sorry for Mokulele, whose pilots were reassigned to the mainland the next day or laid off...

If you are interested, you might read the information on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Also noted is the item about the Go pilot and co-pilot falling asleep during the 45 minute flight from Oahu t oHilo Hawaii, and passing the airport by 15 miles, at 21,000 feet elavation. Thank goodness they passed Mauna Loa mountain. The pilotes were finally fired after much bad press.

There will be some people who think I take these stands too far. Fine, you stand by your principles and I'll stand by mine. At least I am not asleep at the switch (so to speak).

I have a neighbor who send me the latest on what the President is doing and calls to action to back him. Unfortunately, I do not want these emails and delete them unread.

Unfortunately, much of what is passed off in email frowards if bogus (either completely or partially). Some of it is decades old and repackaged.

The latest email was from a different neighbor who sent along a well-meaning email about Ben Stein who made an impassioned speech on TV. The text is well written and cause for reflection. It COULD have been written by Ben, however, much was not. Ben only wrote half of it and someone else added their 2 cents worth.

Here is a link to the Snopes explanation with the differences in what Ben Stein said and did not say.

http://www.snopes.com/politic...

A quick check would have revealed that a great part of the document is bogus and I encourage all of you to do a quich web search before forwarding an email, believing something, replying to a scam.

This time of year people prey on unsuspecting. There are people who stand beside the street asking for money. In Atlanta a woman used to show up all over town and tell stories about needing to see her children in Virginia (via train). I saw here in my town and a few weeks later at another offramp across town. She was driving 45 minutes to visit other offramps so that she could fleece others. She said she was homeless andusing the money to travel. Once when I confronted her tha tshe wads scamming people and I was going to ask IRS to investigate whether she was paying taxes, she replied that she DID pay her taxes. Hmmm, homeless people generally don't hve income so they would not need to pay taxes... Did she just admit that she is working THIS begging as a job?

This week our police suggested people be careful because there were people asking local businesses for help raising funds to fix the nearby playground. There is no fund set up and the police state fraid!

Someone else is issuing false Amber Alerts to cellphones. Who knows why.

every few years we hear about people being arrested for fraud because they bought into an idea that the Income Tax system is illegal and they don't have to pay taxes.

Others buy into scams that offer tremendous profits for an investment.

In any event, it does not hurt to be skeptical about ANYTHING you hear or read.

Here is an example of a scam. On the public side all seems great, until you know the secret.

You are contacted and told that the person has a great new system that allows you to make a killing in the stock market. They will prove it to you three times, just so that you can see tha tthey are experts. They tell you that tomorrow, the stock market will go up. The next day it does. Then they tell yo that the market the next day will again go up. It does. Then they tell you it will go down, and it does.

This is unlike betting on a race or game which has already been run and delayed. It is too easy now-a-days to fake the stock market direction.

So this person, let's say, has shown you 4 times which way the stock market will move, and he showed you in advance and you independantly determined that his information was in fact, correct. he asks for $5,000 to give you the program which you can now use to make millions in the market by knowing (in advance) which way the market will go.

SCAM! and here's how. On Day 1 the guy calls 100 people. half he tells the market will go up and the other half he tells the market will go down. When the market goes up the next day, he knows that 50 people already think he is an idiot. he does not contact them again. Of the 50 people left he again tells hal that the market will go up and the other half left are told it will go down.

When he is done, he has 25 people who think he is a genius and 75 who think he is a nut. Still, some of those 25 will give him $5,000 because from their perspective, the guy is smart and they have no idea that 75 other people KNOW he is a scammer.

So always take information with a grain of salt. Investigate and search the internet.

There are many organizations this time of year who collect funds for neady people. In some cases (and many too often), less than 10% of your money goes to the charity. There are websites to help you see which are the good charities and which are not.

I have applied for unemployment as the farm is not yet self-sufficient or genering enough income for me to no longer have another job. Hopefully that will change perhaps late next year.

Still, it has been a while since my last unemployment when Hewlett Packard laid off 1/3 of their workforce and I was one of 40,000. Talk about a layoff! However, that change in status also allowed me to move to Hawaii and here I am, happy that I am in a nice climate with a low crime rate and no tornados (to speak of). Oh, we have our problems, tsunamis (2 watches in the past month), the occasional 6.8 or 6.2 earthquake, an active volcno, an occasional hurricane, we once thought we might be the target of Korean missles, and so on. STILL, it is a great place to live and I have no pland of going back to the mainland to live.

So, I applied for unemployment insurance and have to admit, so far the process is pretty easy and painless. The workers I have encountered are cheerful (well I would be too if *I* had a job too :-).

I know that many people are out of work and I feel for them. Over the years I have worked many jobs and learned many skills. I believe that I will be able to use them to acquire my next job. I'm not looking fro a career, just a job to tide me over till I get the farm in full production.

Today, Rusty is supposed to come by and talk to me about filling in my water pipe trench. That will allow me to request the last payment from the USDA/NRCS contract I have for water catchment systems. I have already spent most of the money myself, I just need to get paid back.

He also will take my tractor up into town for some maintenance. There is a small presure leak in a seal, and the mower needs different bolts installed.

Then with the trench filled in, the mower and tractor working to perfection, I will be able to quickly and efficiently mow between the 41 rows of trees and get most of the weeds out of the way. I may still have to hire someone to weed for me, as I have some problems doing it myself at the moment. I sprained a leg muscle that makes a lot of bending a problem at present.

I now have a new freezer and have started stockpiling frozen foods for me and meat for Koa. That dog really does eat better than I do! Although half my weight, you don't want to keep a Labrador from his food!

So, I just finished up on the phone with the unemployment peple and got talked into listing myself as being available for all 3 shifts. I stayed away from cashier (as that usually entails staning and/or sitting at one place for long periods. Time will tell if and when I get a position. I just wish I was about a year further ahead on the farm.