Monthly Archives: August 2006

Do you know Praying Mantis?

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Well I sure do! In fact I had a close encounter with one just this morning. Around 7am this morning I was leaving work like normal, and I have to admit that I wasn’t really paying attention to much as I was trying to get my keys out of my pocket, when something startled me. I was walking up along the passenger side of my truck when some movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, when I looked over to my left imagine my surprise to see a Praying Mantis on the side of my truck just above the wheel well. So I did the only thing I could do, I took pictures of it. I then went back inside and got my co-worker Cory to come out and take a look with me. We found a stick to let it walk on and off my truck, took some more pictures and admired this fascinating insect.

More Images are available in the above link to the gallery, or by navigating to the gallery via the link in the navigation panel on the side.

More picture work

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I just got done tagging all of the new pictures I put up in Kylie’s gallery the other day. So now all the pictures should have the appropriate information on them. I also moved all the individual albums for her first year into a new album for her first year. It’s pretty straight forward and more organized, and we all know I like to be as organized as possible. Plus this will also make it much easier to distinguish between her first and second year pictures. Now that all that is done I am going to attempt to start getting up the few year two pictures that we have. Hopefully those will start to go up this week, depending on how much free time I have to process files.

All pictures are in

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I finally got all of Kylie’s first year photos up on the web site. I know they are well over due, but with everything that has been going on and the old server having issues, I guess better late than never. They are all up in Kylie’s gallery, the information on the pictures has not been updated yet and that will most likely take me some more time to get to, but at least the pictures are up.

We’re Back

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After some down time for a systems upgrade and migration we are now back up and running smoothly. The new systems’ processor is roughly four times faster than the old and the RAM has been quadrupled, so I am hoping this will alleviate some of the loading time and such. Over the next few days I am going to attempt to finish uploading pictures of Kylie’s first year, hopefully that will go smoothly as well.

After 73 years, it ends

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The Catskill Game Farm back home in Greene County has announced that it will be closing October 9th after 73 years of hands on petting zoo fun, reports the Daily Freeman:

The Catskill Game Farm, a combination zoo and hands-on animal farm in Greene County, will close for good in the fall, bringing a 73-year tradition to an end.

Owner Kathie Schultz said the Catskill area simply doesn’t have the drawing power it once enjoyed and young people don’t enjoy visiting a farm as much as children of previous decades.

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The farm – on Game Farm Road in Catskill, near the Cairo town line – currently is home to about 2,000 animals in 150 different species, including zebras, giraffes, deer and reptiles. It also features circus-style animal acts and children’s rides.

It’s really kind of sad to see a place like this close. I have memories of tacking field trips here when I was in elementary school. It was always fun, and i always seemed to learn something new. I never realized it, but a part of me was hoping to maybe take my kids their someday, now I guess that won’t happen.

Telephone bills to be 3 percent lower

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Finally after 108 years a tax imposed to help found the Spanish-American war has been eliminated. According to this article on ZDNet “as of Tuesday, all phone companies selling long-distance phone service are legally required to eliminate the 3 percent federal excise tax on long-distance service, which had been established in 1898 as a luxury tax on wealthy Americans who owned telephones.”

After a long legal battle and strong urging from Congress, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of the Treasury decided in May to discontinue the federal 3 percent excise tax on long-distance telephone service effective Aug. 1.

It also decided not to apply the tax to wireless, voice over Internet Protocol service, prepaid telephone cards and other bundled services. The IRS also said it would allow taxpayers to claim a refund in 2007 for taxes collected on those services retroactive to February 2003.

The last portion of the tax, pertaining only to local telephone service, remains in effect. But Verizon and other telecom companies are urging Congress to repeal the tax in total this year.