SUPER-METEOR: Last night, a fireball reported to be 100 times brighter than a full Moon streaked over Finland. Witnessness say the meteor exploded in mid-air, but it is not yet known if large pieces of the space rock fell to the ground.

I guess I won't have time to help with the Harvest Fest this weekend. I'm too busy to play. I've got higher priorities lately. Have been over at Mom's everyday, going through stuff.

We'd like to sell the house with everything in it, and with the least amount of fuss, if possible. Lots of memories. They owned the house for 50+ years, and we all grew up there. Nothing that's really worth anything, but it's hard to choose just a few things to keep. Pictures, piano, an old classroom desk, a few little trinkets, and the rest either goes with the house if we can do it that way, or in the dumpster if not. It's very hard.

I was splitting some kindling earlier today. Well, I guess that's not exactly news, you know me and my firewood addiction. But, I was using my new, still too sharp, ax. Due to a number of very stupid moves on my part, a chain reaction occurred. That chain reaction ended with the ax across the thumb and pointer finger of my left hand where they meet my palm.

I'm pretty goddamn tough when it comes to silly things like that, if I say so myself. I wasn't even going to do anything about it, just continue to fill my kindling bucket, but the blood was making the handle slippery. So, good old duct tape. Except that the tape wouldn't stick to the blood. Couple staples were required to hold the tape in place, then I could finally hold the handle enough to finish my splitting. I hate being slowed down by goofy complications.

Hello, is this the Sheriff's Office?"

Yes. What can I do for you?"

I'm calling to report 'bout my neighbor Virgil Smith.... He's hidin' marijuana inside his firewood! Don't quite know how he gets it inside them logs, but he's hidin' it there."

Thank you very much for the call, sir."

The next day, the Sheriff's Deputies descend on Virgil's house. They search the shed where the firewood is kept. Using axes, they bust open every piece of wood, but find no marijuana. They sneer at Virgil and leave.

Shortly, the phone rings at Virgil's house.

Hey, Virgil! This here's Floyd.... did the Sheriff come?"

"Yeah!"

"Did they chop your firewood?"

"Yep!"

"Happy Birthday, buddy!"

You might think your anonymous online rants are oh-so-clever. But they'll give you away, too. A federally-funded artificial intelligence lab is figuring out how to track people over the Internet, based on how they write. Full Story

Here's a post made by JR to my old discussion board one year ago. This scene hasn't changed, except that I think I demoted that shirt to grease rag:

Here are a few pictures of Retired Daena hard at work

The Famous Exploding Whale of Florence

It’s November 1970. A massive whale carcass washes ashore on a Florence beach, bringing quite a media frenzy, hordes of onlookers and a nasty stench, despite the cold winter air.

At this time, Oregon Highway Division is in charge of the proceedings. It’s still called that. The name of Oregon Department of Transportation – or ODOT – hasn’t been mandated yet.

But a state agency is a state agency by any other name, and the division makes a historic blunder of, well, whale-sized proportions. To take care of the creature, they decided to stick dynamite next to it and blow it to bits. It was, to say the least, a learning experience.

The idea was that if they exploded a device from one side of the whale, in just the right angle and spot, it would blow the whale apart into a myriad of smaller pieces. Those would theoretically be more manageable and could be buried in the sand, while smaller bits would be gobbled up by birds and such.

In one extremely famous film clip, still available on the Net, a very young Paul Linneman from Portland's KATU-2 comments as the whale is blown up. He is suddenly forced to run as it rains various sized chunks of blubber onto a cheering - then panicking - crowd. One flying slab wrecked a car a quarter of a mile away.

Meanwhile, you could hear chunks making squishing noises in the background as they hit the ground.

Linneman’s most famous line: “….blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.”

A man named Thornton, who was the Highway Division's head of the project at the time, will still not speak to the press to this day. Back in 2000, the Eugene Register-Guard did a thirty-year retrospective on the infamous event and he still refused comment.

Footage of this is still one of the hottest Internet downloads around. Simply do a search on "exploding whale" and you'll find film footage of it and various articles, including one by humorist Dave Berry.

HARVEST MOON: There's a full moon tonight and it has a special name--the Harvest Moon. In the days before electric lights, farmers relied on moonlight to help them gather ripening autumn crops. The "Harvest Moon" rising brightly in the east at sunset allowed work to continue late into the night.

U.S. consumers are expected to pay record prices for heating oil, electricity and propane to warm their homes this winter, and low-income families will need government help to cover those bills, government energy officials said on Tuesday.

Heating fuel expenses this winter will be highest for heating oil, with the average family paying $1,834 for the season, up 28 percent or $402 from last year, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association.

The group expects propane costs to average $1,732, up 30 percent or $384. Consumers that rely on electricity for heat will pay $883 this winter, up 7 percent or $58.

Natural gas expenses will be the cheapest of the major heating fuels, averaging $881, up 5 percent or $50, the group said.

My garden is done for the year. I've got a lot of onions yet. I won't have to plant any next year. I've also got a lot of pumpkins this year too. None of them real big. I like to have one big Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween, so will have to buy one:

My Hawkeye with the old windshield mounted on it and a load of wood behind it. The little Hawkeye does a great job pulling the loaded trailer around in the woods. Front end gets a lot lighter than the heavy Sportsman did, but it still turns eventually:

A normal load of wood. I call it the $25 size. Three of them in a face cord, and three face cord in a full cord:

These bald-faced hornets built their nest right above my main trail between my house and the woods. It's only a couple feet above my head when I ride under it. So far they haven't paid any attention to me. It's about the size of a basketball:
The milkman happened to come by while I was taking the other pictures. He was really late for some reason. About 5 or 6 hours late. I didn't go down and talk to him, figured by then he was in a hurry and didn't need me distracting him:

Alien towns. Lost 19th-century cannons. Lake monsters. Frozen bodies swimming at the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Nevada is a vortex for the unexplained.

And it appears at this writing that we have another whopper of a puzzle to add to the list. Full Story

On October 12, 1983, an explosion at a power station plunged two square miles of Los Angeles into total darkness.

The Griffith Observatory on Mount Hollywood was inundated with calls asking what was wrong with the sky: It had a bright band of light streaked across it.

What people were seeing for the first time was the Milky Way, billions of stars that appear clustered together in a great hazy band of white.

In Vancouver, a similar thing happened during the last week of August. The R.H. MacMillan Space Centre (Vancouver Planetarium) was flooded with calls from people asking what the great orange ball was in the eastern sky. Was it a giant weather balloon? A UFO?

"They were seeing the moon, a big beautiful full moon," says Wanda La Claire, astrophysicist and show producer at the Planetarium. "Can you imagine people asking such a thing? But many people are not used to seeing the night sky and the moon in all its phases." Full Story

It's over. Mom is in her final resting place now. With my shovel, I carefully dug a hole next to Dad while the other relatives looked on, placing the dirt on my small tarp to minimize the amount of cleanup. Then I lowered the urn with her remains into it and gently covered it up. I did not tamp the dirt, even though I know that I need to, so as not to leave the onlooking relatives with the memory of me packing the dirt down around Mom. I will take care of that at a later time.

I do the things that I need to do, not because I want to, but because it's the right thing to do.

Yuck, the funeral is over. It's just so creepy, everybody parading by to see if she's really dead. They say it's for the family, but how does additional trauma heal the original trauma? It's almost ghoulish. Then they tell you that their god gives you life on Earth just long enough to take it away again, causing extreme sadness to you and all those around you, and now you will be spending eternity with this god. What kind of a cruel joke is that? No thanks, I'll pass.

Today we dig a hole and bury her ashes next to Dad.

PERUVIAN METEORITE: Evidence is mounting that a meteorite really did strike Peru last Saturday: A scientist from Peru's Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute says that a chondritic space rock lies at the bottom of the water-filled crater near the Peru-Bolivia border. In a related development, Peru's Regional Health Directorate reports an outbreak of dizziness, nausea and dermal injuries among people who have visited the impact site. The injuries are "not serious," according Regional Health Director Jorge López.

Didn't cut any wood today. Spent the morning ordering flowers. Then part of the afternoon going through insurance papers and looking for phone numbers. And finally I worked on my porch woodpile a little bit. (Didn't think I'd go a whole day without touching firewood somehow, did you?) I normally pile it between a pipe I drove in the ground and the side of the house. The pipe has been leaning more and more every year, so I decided to try to strengthen it somehow. I thought about putting an eye bolt in the side of the house and run a rope to the pipe, but it would probably just pull the crappy siding off, or the whole crappy wall. Anyway, I decided on putting a fence post in next to the house and running the rope between that and the pipe. I think it will hold the pipe up well.

I put my old windshield on the Hawkeye a few days ago. I had to readjust it from the way it was on the Sportsman, but I got it on there. Then I tried to open the front storage compartment and it wouldn't open because it hit the windshield! Had to rearrange things again. Now it works good. I'm not sure if it will go in the garage while on the back of my truck anymore though. I like to keep it loaded up in my truck and in the garage the night before a ride, and sometimes afterwards if I get home late. But, it looks like it might be 2 or 3 inches too tall to fit in under the garage door now. If so, I'll probably take the windshield off.

Cancer really sucks. On my mom's side of the family it got my grandma (in her 40s) and my grandpa (in his 80s) and now Mom (76). On Dad's side it got my grandpa (in his 60s).

Diabetes sucks too. On Dad's side it got Grandma (in her 70s) and Dad (54).

Not much for heart problems thankfully (except for me), but the other two are enough to worry about.

Am I worried about crashing my ATV? No. I'm far more afraid of the stuff that's killed the rest of my family. Where's the helmet for that?

Cut another load of wood today. Yup, life goes on. Well, at least for the rest of us it does. The cows still need to be milked, the birds still sing, and the wind still blows. Fortunately Mom will be the last one I have to bury. Next time will be my daughter's generation burying me. I am the old generation. No more grandparents and both my parents are gone now too.

We took care of everything with the funeral director yesterday. To the tune of over $4000. Mom always said she wanted to make sure she had enough money to cover the cost of her own funeral, so we wouldn't have to. So far we found a piece of paper with a life insurance company name on it, that Mom wrote "$5000 policy" on, but no policy number. Can you see the sweat beginning to bead up on my forehead? I'm sure everything will turn out ok.

Goodbye Mom.

February 6th, 1931 - September 15th, 2007
Online Obituary

*

Preceded by Dad 22 years ago, also in September.

April 27th, 1931 - September 26th, 1985

Another day of cutting wood with JR and Russell! It's a good thing Russell is a carpenter. The roof of the house needed a little attention after this. Never a dull moment, ha ha. Other than that, a nice jag of firewood. Thanks to Deena for filming this for me, while I stood way far away! The whole video was 89 MB, but I trimmed it to show just the last 1.1 MB of the tree hitting the ground/roof.

The growing season came to an end a little early this year. But only a couple weeks. Normally the killing frost comes the first or second week of October here. I had 31 this morning up on the hill. It looked like snow on the ground when I headed down to the barn, and the grass was even a little slippery.

Hey JR, did your corn reach maturity yet? Record cold tonight. Is this a sign of things to come? I hope I got enough firewood!

It's funny how Winter comes every year, but so many people act surprised when it does. I actually like the changing seasons. Winter used to be my favorite season of the year, then it fell out of favor with me for a long time. Now it's kind of coming back into favor again. I still don't like plowing snow, but we don't normally get a lot of snow anymore. I do like puttering with the stove and cutting firewood. And then putting all my hard work/firewood to use.

A conversation I once had with the laziest man I know:

"I don't do much work because I'm too depressed."
"Why are you so depressed?"
"Because I have too much work to do."

Well DUH. A little dimwitted too.

How does she manage to plug the kitchen drain so much?! ARGH! I'm pretty sure she thinks we have a garbage disposal (which we do not) and that's how she does it. Plugs it so tight that I have to take the pipes apart, seal the vent pipe off, and use the air compressor to blow the drain out! She just plugged it last week too. Otherwise, at least once a year. Hopefully we're good now for a couple years after this. I used enough very loud swear words that I think the drain, the wife, and any neighbors within ten miles got the idea.

Well, the short story - the ax doesn't work nearly as good as the 6# maul. The 6# maul is the only tool to use for splitting wood. It's the right weight, the right shape, swings at the right speed, and does a great job.

The long story - yes, the ax is too sharp and sticks in the top of the block the first couple swings, but that will cure itself eventually. The real problem is the exact opposite of what I said the only advantage of the 8# maul is. The ax gets the block to the point where it's opening up and getting ready to bust apart, but then it just doesn't seem to have the momentum to carry it through and complete the split. And since it doesn't carry through, it gets wedged way down in the block. So, it's swing-stuck-bend over-wiggle wiggle, swing-stuck-bend over-wiggle wiggle, swing-stuck-bend over-wiggle wiggle, over and over again until the ax finally gets the block to finish busting. Good thing I brought my old reliable 6# maul along or I would have still been splitting. The maul cracks them right open. But anyway, I now have a real good quality full size ax. Not sure what I will use it for, but it looks nice hanging on the wall with my collection!

Now that I'm done fixing that drain maybe I'll run out and cut another load of wood.

When I was helping JR and Russell cut wood on Sunday, we were comparing an 8 pound and a 6 pound splitting maul. It was really surprising how much you noticed that extra 2 pounds. It seemed like they both split with about the same number of swings, but I couldn't swing the 8 as fast. Therefore, it took a little longer to split the same amount of wood and was more work. I'm sure if I was used to the 8, I could swing it faster than I was, but in the meantime I really noticed the extra weight. The 8 would hit the wood with a THUMP, whereas the 6 would make a CRACK when it hit, but both split it. The only advantage to the heavier maul that I could see is that sometimes when you get a stringy piece that hangs together, the 8 acted like it would carry through it and split it more often than the 6. The 6 required an extra swing to finish it off, or you had to pull the pieces apart.

This got me thinking about how my dad always used a double bit ax for splitting. He didn't like the maul. I always liked the maul for splitting. The double bit ax stuck in the wood too much for me (which I have learned the reason for that over the years - too sharp). Plus, the shape of the double bit didn't make sense. Too thin and why have an edge on both ends? But, after our experiments on Sunday, I bet that double bit ax could really swing fast!

Ah ha! So how about a single bit ax for splitting? Never tried it really. More of a wedge shape than a double bit, like a maul, and it doesn't have that extra "forehead splitting" edge on it. Had one once when I was a little kid, but it's been lost somewhere through the years. I've got a little one with a short handle that is pretty much useless except for the occasional kindling duty.

I was at Tractor Supply yesterday and got a nice full size heavy single bit (3.5#) with a long fiberglass handle. Now if I get time today I am going to try it out on a couple loads of wood. It's too sharp and will stick some for awhile, but aside from that I'll see how it works. Splitting is my favorite part of the job, and I really love my old 6 pound maul, but maybe I can split even more wood faster with my new 3.5 pound ax! We'll see.

On a related note, Tractor Supply had the ax marked for $15.89. When I got home and looked at the receipt, they had charged me $22.89. Which is kind of a typical shopping experience at Tractor Supply. I think I know what happened though, and I guess it really doesn't bother me too much. I'm not so cheap that I have to worry about a few bucks, and I wasn't price shopping anyway but was looking for the quality and features. I would have paid $22.89 for it regardless. My guess is the ax had been there probably since the store opened, and the price has gone up. Many people are either too puny or too rich to ever worry about splitting wood or swinging an ax. I am neither, so I'm the perfect ax customer. And apparently the first one to purchase that ax from Tractor Supply!

I took my Hawkeye to my ATV dealer (http://www.countrysportsinc.com/) this morning (Monday) at 9:00 am to have the recall work done. He told me to pick it up Wednesday at noon, but call first. I no sooner got back home from dropping it off and at 11:45 am the phone rings. It's my ATV dealer (http://www.countrysportsinc.com/) and he tells me it's finished and I can pick it up anytime I want! Talk about service. I am very pleased. Looks like a job well done too. Since I normally don't trust anyone else working on my stuff, the first thing I did was look it all over. (I even took pictures of everything before I took it up there.) He said he checked everything for potential problems too, since this is the last week of the warranty and he found nothing wrong. They gave it a bath, and it even looks like they greased it! Thank you http://www.countrysportsinc.com/ for such prompt service!

MARS UPDATE: Two months after sky-darkening dust from severe storms nearly killed NASA's Mars exploration rovers, the solar powered robots are alive and well and ready to continue their missions. Next up: Opportunity begins its risky descent into Victoria crater on Sept. 11th: more.

U.S. Astronauts reveal encounters with apparent Extraterrestrials and UFOs

Cooper's mention of a "UFO on the ground. apparently was a reference to his own experience at Edwards Air Force Base on May 2, 1957. In 1993, Cooper gave this account of the incident: "I had a crew that was filming an installation of a precision landing system we were installing out on the dry lake bed, and they were there with stills and movies, and filmed the whole installation and they came running in to tell me that this UFO, a little saucer, had come down right over them, put down three gear, and landed about 50 yards from them, and as they proceeded to go on over to get a closer shot of it, it lifted up, put the gear in, and disappeared in a rapid rate of speed.

"And so I had to follow my directions as a military... I had to look up the regulations on who I was to call to report this, which I did, and they ordered me to immediately have the film developed, put it in a pouch, and send them by the commanding general's plane to Washington, which I did. And that was the last I've ever heard of the film."

It is interesting to note indicates Mr. Marrs that, "despite the continued protests that there is no government secrecy regarding UFOs, there is no public report on this incident. Although the event was listed in the Project Blue Book index, a full report and clear photos are suspiciously absent." Full Story

Yuck! Pictures of me! Thanks a lot JR. Ha ha! I try to avoid that side of the camera lens as much as possible. But, since JR knows that, he tries to be sneaky about it. If I was still the young stud that I once was, I guess I wouldn't mind it so much:



Can't tell for sure, but I'd bet that was a beer in my hand. Used to drink a hell of a lot of it. Those spots on the deer are glue on the picture:

This was one of our many Halloween parties! (I'm the football player with horns - don't ask.) JR is seated in the center of the picture with the sweatband around his head. Not sure what he was supposed to be that year. There was sure a lot of drinking and sex that night. Bunch of puking too, eventually:

Rain! It's ok here though because we can always use it in the sand. Usually we don't have enough. It was starting to get quite dry again. The forecast sounds like next week will be excellent for cutting wood. But, my ATV will be in the shop for the recall work. Hopefully doesn't take them too long, or I'll bitch. I'd fix it myself if I thought they'd let me. I use it almost everyday for something. I use it so much I can't even remember how I got along before ATVs!

I was just watching a segment on ABC news about a 76 year old lady that got lost in the mountains for two weeks! Her and her husband were hunting, got stuck, husband broke his wrist, and among other things they got separated. He was found and she was not. She survived all by herself in the mountains. Could you? I'm pretty sure I could, barring any major injury or something like that.

The first photographic evidence that the yeti, or abominable snowman, might be more than a flight of Himalayan fancy has surfaced in public and is to be offered at auction later this month.

Four photographs of large paw prints in the snow beneath Mount Everest are to be sold at Christie's in London on September 26.

The images were taken by the legendary British mountaineer Eric Shipton on a reconnaissance trip to Everest in 1951, in preparation for the first successful ascent of the 29,028 ft peak two years later. Full Story

THE PHANTOM CAR

In the August issue of FATE Magazine, Brad Steiger recounts several cases of Ghosts and Phantoms on the Highways. One incident took place outside of Albany, NY in 1991-- a man named Max was rushing to return home to finish some work. Along the highway, he became stuck behind a slow moving vehicle-- what he guessed to be a 1941 Chevrolet sedan. Upon blasting his horn at the car, the sedan's driver turned to look at him with an expression of shock. Then, right in front of Max and his family, the old car began to disappear. "It was as if there were some old photograph dissolving bit by bit before us, just fading away until there was nothing left to prove it had ever been there," Max said.

I think the hot and humid days are about to come to an end. We'll have more warm days, but very few humid ones. That's ok with me. I like to run my woodstove anyway. I don't much care for plowing snow (which, by the way, I still have to figure out what I'm going to do to replace the old Sportsman for plowing this winter). But I do enjoy fiddling with the stove and putting my feet up by the fire. It's a good feeling when you're heating your house all with your own labor and not depending on the gas and electric companies.

Speaking of my own labor, I just got done with one of those ten minute projects that turned into most of the day and two trips to town. I'm no plumber and I'm certainly no carpenter, but because of a crappy old shack, I've had to teach myself things that I never wanted to know how to do. A simple replacing of a toilet wax ring turned into a broken flange repair, which turned into a floor rebuilding! But, I did it all by myself, all in less than a day, and for under 20 bucks!

Anyone looking to purchase a real nice place? It even includes a bridge in Brooklyn.

Lucky Images

A new 'adaptive optics' system developed by astronomers is offering some of the clearest photos of space ever seen. The system, known as "Lucky," is able to determine when atmospheric distortion starts and stops, as it gathers its images. Pictured above is the Cat's Eye Nebula as imaged conventionally by the Palomar telescope (l) and with the Lucky Camera (r). For more, visit BBC News.

DP says to me; "We thought you were a professional."
To which I responded; "And I thought I wasn't. Guess we were all wrong."

I broke my record by two miles today! The record that I set last Saturday. The 25 of us rode 117 miles in Sasquatch country. I was looking for him, and I know he was there watching me, but he kept just out of sight. Maybe next time!

That's what recreational is supposed to mean. I ride, I smile, I spit the dust out. That's all. I don't care about the stupid non recreational details anymore.

I see more people have been posting to my calendar. Thank you! Don't worry if you can't figure it out exactly, just get the info on there and I'll process it later if necessary. Thanks again!

After my previous post, I started thinking about my little cory catfish. I wonder how long they live. We got them about 10 years ago. We started out with six (two spotted and four albino) and are now down to one of each. But these last two have outlived the others by a long time. I don't know how old they were when we got them, but they were pretty small. Of course they don't get very big full grown anyway. The albino ones are more energetic and fun to watch. The spotted ones are timid and hide all day long.

We've also got a couple Harlequin Tetras that are getting old. Not as old as the catfish though. The Harlequins live a lot longer than the Neons. The Neons only last a couple years before they float to the top!

Ahhhh, finally no headache this morning. Should be gone for awhile, hopefully longer, but it will definitely be back sometime. Wish I could have stayed in bed a little later, but I'm so used to getting up early.

Looks like a great day to go for a ride! Probably a little dusty, but unless there's snow on the ground it usually is. Nothing new about that.

Yesterday afternoon we went to the Rapids to go to Wal-mart. Had to get some pellets for my little catfish and other boring crap like that. On the way home they were going to close off Hwy 13 by Dyracuse Park to land the Medflight helicopter. Someone must have gotten hurt on their dirt bike or ATV. I hope they're doing ok.

If you hate creepy-crawlies, you might want to avoid Lake Tawakoni State Park, where a 200-yard stretch along a nature trail has been blanketed by a sprawling spider web that has engulfed seven large trees, dozens of bushes and the weedy ground. Full Story

Headaches, headaches, headaches! As far back into childhood as I can remember, I've suffered from cluster headaches. They wake me up in the middle of the night, I wake up in the morning with them, and they come on at any time whenever they want. Seems like the least little thing triggers them, or nothing at all. Lately I think it's been allergies, as I've been sneezing quite a bit.

They'll come on for days at a time and the only thing that helps is a combination of allergy pills and a little more than the recommended amount of Ibuprofen. Tylenol does nothing. And I was warned once by the doctor not to take Ibuprofen anymore, because it was giving me problems with my stomach. Well, that's how I decided that Tylenol does nothing. I've experimented with a lot of different combinations of things and remedies. (I'm not sure if the marijuana helped, I don't remember!) I had to go back to Ibuprofen, stomach trouble or not. It's better than the headache pain. And eventually the headache goes away. What's really nice is when it occasionally goes away for a month or two, or if I'm really lucky, three. But then it always comes back again.

Quite often the pain is so bad that it makes me feel sick to my stomach (even without the Ibuprofen causing it). Sometimes it's hard to function at all. You'd think after living with it all my life that I would get used to it, but it never seems to hurt any less. I was reading once that one of the symptoms of cluster headaches is that you get ornery and grumpy. I told Mrs. that I'm glad I never get that symptom. She gave me a very strange look, like she wanted to say something but was afraid to. Hmm. I wonder why.

So here I sit again, popping pills and cursing the damn headache for the third, or is it fourth day in a row, I can't remember. I once started writing down in a notebook every time I took Ibuprofen or some other pills, because I sometimes lose track, but I gave that up. It was depressing to see the notebook fill up so fast, and then I'd forget to write it down anyway and confuse myself even more!

If you're out ATVing with me and happen to see me reach into my pocket and pull out a little old worn pill bottle, now you know what I'm doing.

Suggestions for a Successful Web Site

I have compiled a list of things to help you create and maintain a successful web site. I am only an old farmer that taught myself html and tried to teach the basics to anyone that asked me along the way. The basics are the only thing (and sometimes the best thing) needed to convey your site's message to the world.

With that in mind, here's a few things I have discovered over the decades, in no particular order. I hope they are helpful to other web masters as well:

• INFORMATION: The information contained on your pages should be accurate and current. Update it with new info frequently, whenever available, and as soon as possible. To your viewers, the information is old as soon as it changes, or the day the event is over. If you have a calendar or list of events (which almost every site should have), and you want to keep past events on the list for "bragging rights", by all means go ahead. People do like to look over your past. But, make sure that your coming events are on the top of the list. And don't list a past event as if it was still upcoming. Whether it's two months, two weeks, two days, or even two hours past, it's still old news. Let it slip into the archive as quickly as possible and list your next upcoming event at the top.
• WHO, WHAT, AND WHERE: Be sure you have some kind of contact shown on your home page, a description of your site's purpose, and where you are located, if applicable.
• PICTURES: People love to look at pictures. But, only a few at a time. Don't display more than a dozen or so pictures on each page. If you want to have more pages, great, but bear in mind my statistics have shown over the years people will look at the first page of pictures, the second page of pictures to a lesser extent, and rarely ever any picture pages beyond that. If you have unlimited web space, go ahead and keep your old pictures posted to the last pages and put your new pictures on the first page. If you are limited to the amount of storage space you have, keep the first page or two updated often and delete all the older pictures. By the way, I have CDs full of pictures from many, many events and of just about anything in general. $50 each.
• SEARCH ENGINES: You control your own listing. Make sure people can find you the way you want them to. Send me $200 and I'll tell you how!
• YOU: Yes, you. You, as web master, are the single most important thing to your web site. If you depend on your viewers to tell you what to do and how to do it, forget it. If you're getting paid to do a web site, you better damn well sure be able to do a good job without anyone's help, and seek out the information you need on your own. If you aren't getting paid, then do what you want and tell everyone to piss off. But if you don't take care of your site and show some enthusiasm, don't wonder why your hit counter isn't climbing.
• THE BASICS: Start with a basic html document. It's guaranteed to display properly in every browser. The more people that can view your web pages, the better. Work up from there, but always keep in mind that the fancier you get, the fewer viewers you are limiting yourself to. If your web site doesn't display legibly in someone's browser, begs for the downloading of a plug in, or especially if it crashes their machine, they won't be back. Frequently check your pages in as many browsers, with as many different display properties, and on as many different machines as possible. And remember, it's never a server problem. The server doesn't care, it only passes the data through it to your viewer's browser.
• DON'T CREATE A HIDDEN PASSWORD SECTION: It gives the impression that you have something to hide, and most of your viewers will frown on it. Some web masters do it to try to generate money, or increase registered members, or to feel powerful, and some even really do have something to hide. No matter what reason they create a password protected section (or some whole web sites), it always has the opposite effect. If you have something to hide, that's what e-mail and private messages are for. Do not advertise the fact that you have something to hide by stating it publicly on your web site. Bad for business. If you have a forum, blog, calendar, or whatever, your web site's traffic will increase if you allow anonymous guest posting - guaranteed. You may have to watch your site more for trouble makers, but frequenting your own web pages is something you should be doing anyway.