Japan Disaster and my reaction

Smoke seen from another explosion from the power plant in northern Japan.

Another explosion and now radiation is leaking out and becoming a hazard...

The Chief Cabinet Secretary has made this ominous warning: Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight. Don't turn on ventilators. Please hang on your laundry indoors.

People have no food or water or power. Elderly sick have been left to die in hospitals. Thousands of bodies washed up on shore up and down the coastlines. Now, they face radiation poisoning.

This disaster has affected me a lot more than I would have expected. I think about it all day. Looking through images, I found this image showing before and after at Sendai. It's just so horrible.

Steve and I were talking about why this is affecting us so much more than other tragedies in the recent past, like the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean which claimed more than 230,000 lives. (click on the link for an article from National Geographic) Or the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. (click on the links for Before/After galleries)

We think part of it has to do with the fact that we don't play WoW anymore. We have more attention for things like reading the news and seeing what's going on in the world.

Also, almost every new camera out there can now shoot video, and cameras shoot much higher resolution images. The internet is better than ever at allowing people to communicate quickly, so there is a lot more information. More than any other non-local tragedy, this one really seems to be right in my face. It's impossible to ignore.

One last thing: tsk, tsk to people like Gilbert Gottfried and 50 Cent who were so totally out of line to make jokes about Japan's disaster. I'm very happy to know that Gottfried lost a job over his insensitive Tweets. Once he realized he might have made a very poor judgement call, he pulled the commentsm but not before Buzzfeed got them first. 50 Cent later apologized for his insensitive remarks but why would ANYONE say something so awful in the first place? It really boggles the mind.

Can you even understand this? Those are all cargo containers, which stand about 7 feet tall by about 20 feet long. Do the math. I can barely wrap my mind around this reality.

A Note to WoW Detox Visitors!

I just wanted to say hi and thank you for visiting my blog! You'll notice that I have moved on very successfully from playing WoW, so there aren't many posts about the game these days. I am now concentrating on brushing up on my design skills as my husband and I head back to our print and web design careers and are planning to leave our failing company and begin a new web and print design company.

Please feel free to leave comments or questions about your gaming addiction--I'd love to help if I can!

This blog is now more of a public journal of my daily adventures, so you'll find posts and pictures about my daily routine and about movies I've watched and things I'm thinking about. Hopefully it's interesting! If you leave any comments I'll see them and will reply to them as well.

For those of you who have been able to stop playing, CONGRATULATIONS!! It's not easy to do and you should feel really proud of yourself. For those of you who are trying to stop but are having trouble, please leave me a comment if you want, maybe I can give you some advice.

I would like to think that I'm making a good example of a success story. I don't have any desire to play anymore and believe me, I was seriously addicted to WoW. I can safely say I'll never play WoW again. All I really needed to do was to STOP and STAY AWAY for a while and it was enough.

There really are so many great things to do with your time. Personally, I don't even play computer games anymore except for Spider Solitaire. It's just so much more fun to do ANYTHING else! :)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my blog! And good luck to each of you!

More Trouble in Japan and Damage in Crescent City

Yesterday's explosion at one of the nuclear power plants in northern Japan caused this fire.

Today's headline in San Francisco Gate screams loudly, "Race to avert multiple nuclear meltdowns in Japan: More than 180,000 people have evacuated in the northeastern coast, where fears spread over possible radioactive contamination..."

I really wish this was being blown out of proportion. Even if it was, the truth is absolutely horrible. Japan has declared states of emergency at six reactors, although three of them are reported to be under control. The estimated death toll exceeds 10,000, and even though you can ask yourself how they could come up with any accurate number, I can totally believe that number judging by what I have seen in images and videos. How do you come to terms with that?

My original comments about relatively minor damage at Crescent City's harbor have turned out to be understated in regards to boats being sunk. Not a couple but 17, ouch. Several boats have been grounded as well. San Francisco Gate had a news story about the damage in Crescent City and has a series of pictures to look at. You'll notice that many of them are the same scene as I showed the other day, only from different angles.

Junco Fest!

After the raptor flew away, disappointed that all the little birdies didn't just fly directly into his beakie, the bird feeders were a ghost town for about 20 minutes. Then, as if someone signaled, "ALL CLEAR!!!", the little birdies came back to continue wolfing down seed and arguing over the best spot to eat.

It occurred to me that I haven't posted much in the way of Juncos, and that's a tragedy! These cutie pies are so adorable that I just gotta share some images! Behold!

Here are a couple of males on a feeder. I like the way the one on top is peering down to see what the one below is doing! "I'm eating seeds and there aren't any for you!"

This is a female; notice her subdued but still beautiful coloring.

I got an image of two Juncos in flight!

I would like to take some images of birds in flight where the wings are crisp, but sometimes the soft blur of wings is really cool and artistic.

Look Who Came To Visit!!!!!!!!!

While I was finishing my post about the earthquake in Japan, Steve ran into the room and yelled, "COME QUICK!! LOOK OUT THE BATHROOM WINDOW!!!"

Sitting on one of the wrought iron poles we use to attach the bird feeders was a raptor!! It looked like one we'd seen a couple of years ago but we weren't sure.

Steve and I creeped downstairs quietly and he grabbed the camera. Happily, it stayed long enough to be photographed!

This is an adult Sharp-Shinned Hawk. "Come to eat your seeds little tasty birdies! I would like you to be my LUNCH!"

This is the bird Steve photographed a couple of years ago. This is also an adult Sharp-Shinned Hawk. I would like to thank Louise Shimmel from the Cascades Raptor Center and Lynn Tompkins from Blue Mountain Wildlife for their help in identifying these birds! I emailed them to ask if they knew what type of raptor these birds are and each wrote back with excellent descriptions. THANKS SO MUCH!

Japan's Earthquake & Tsunami and Oversensationalizm

This is not a child's toy box. There are so many images like this one, that defy understanding. My heart goes out to Japan.

What a horrible tragedy. I was looking at footage yesterday when I found out about what happened and it made me cry as it sunk in how much life was lost and how much devastation was caused. This video did a very good job at showing footage and describing the disaster's scope. (This link also brings you to an enormous collection of images and videos if you are interested.)

I have a friend (HI LAURA!!) who is currently traveling in Thailand and just arrived at Laos. When I found out about the earthquake and tsunami, I immediately searched the news and was relieved to find that those areas were not affected. As horrific as the damage is in Japan, it's good to know that the tsunami had a minimal effect on the rest of the world.

It is truly disgusting how far the media will go to oversensationalize a disaster for its own benefit. If you believed every report you read, you would think that the entire coastline from Mexico up to Washington was destroyed. Literally, I was reading report after report of "MASSIVE DAMAGE" up and down the coast, but when I took a closer look and found nothing to back up the stories, I became suspicious. Why weren't there millions of pictures of this destruction on our coastline? Why wasn't I reading stories from countless people recounting what happened?

For the most part, the US was unaffected. We got 1-2 feet swells. There was some damage to boats bumping into each other, and a few boats pulled free of their moorings and caused some damage. There was some harbor damage and a few boats sank.

I was very alarmed to read stories about people being swept out to sea, but that was more about people being stupid than the minor swells that were caused by the tsunami. Without reading what actually happened, your mind would picture huge waves ripping the people off a high cliff and dragging them away to their doom. They stood too close to waves and got pulled in. The event of the tsunami brought them to the edge of the ocean but that's the only connection.

Now there's a threat of a nuclear meltdown at a reactor in Northern Japan. While the threat is real and there has been an explosion, I refuse to be drawn into stories screaming in so many words, "JAPAN'S CHERNOBYL IS HAPPENING NOW!!!" Media in all countries is blowing everything out of proportion, so I'll watch the news with a jaundiced, critical eye.

The media has been oversensationalizing news and events from the dawn of time, but it seems like it's worse than ever now. The internet turns news into a version of "the telephone game": you start with a story and call someone to tell them about it. That person calls another person and tells them. And so on...until, for example, the fifth person calls YOU to let you know about the story, but by that time it's turned into a story that isn't even remotely similar to what you originally said.

Keep this in mind when you are reading about this terrible disaster. It has affected so many people, so many lives. But read reports with the understanding that if it sounds incredible, you may want to read more accounts to get the true facts. Information is more accurate regarding stories at the epicenter of the earthquake and tsunami and begins to skew as one gets further away. Every news agency wants to be in the limelight and they will do anything to get attention, which means it's up to you to read between the lines.

The worst hit harbor in the United States was in Crescent City. This is terrible but as you can see, it's not a total disaster. If you look up images in Google, you'll find this spot photographed in different ways and called a total disaster. It is misquoted many times as being in Southern Oregon. There is one prominent picture of a sunk boat, and a few other submerged vessels shown at a distance.

Yay, Getting Things Done!

I'm not posting so much now because I've been spending almost all of my time working on design mockups! I have two website mockups with secondary pages finished now and working on a new one today. I think it's a little too ambitious to try to do one pair of page designs every day but I can get them done in two days including any tweaking. As I relearn my skills in Photoshop my speed will increase and I should be able to do a lot more in less time.

Two great things about this is that I'm getting a lot of practice in Photoshop, which I really, really need; I'm also helping to build our portfolio, which we must work on as much as possible so we can start advertising for jobs.

Well, I'm working on another mockup so I have to cut this short!