Our Raptor Came By For a Visit!

Steve ran up to tell me there was a surprise outside to see, so we ran down and creeped into the kitchen to look out. Sitting on a power box was our Sharp-Shinned Hawk, hanging out in all of its majesty! Behold!

Isn't this a gorgeous bird?! It's very relaxed here, fluffy and with one foot tucked up under its feathers! Aren't we lucky to see this beauty again!

Japan's Nuclear Plant Turning into a Disaster

I've been watching the news and it's just getting worse. (By the way, I know that those of you who are reading this are probably saying, "DUDE! I can read this stuff for myself!" But this is also a journal for myself, and I want to put my feelings down about what's going on.)

Early reports suggested that problems with the power plant wouldn't approach that of Three Mile Island, and most certainly not Chernobyl. Well, as the days go by and the issues have mounted, they are now saying it's on par with Three Mile Island. Experts in the field said days ago that this crisis could never approach the disaster of Chernobyl. I wonder if they are right.

In SF Gate today they reported, "Nuke crisis raised: Level 5. Japan's nuclear safety agency ratcheted up its rating for the Fukushima crisis, reclassifying the nuclear accident from Level 4 to Level 5 on a seven-level international scale. The International Nuclear Event Scale defines a Level 4 incident as having local consequences and a Level 5 as having wider consequences. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster was rated as 7."

I am simultaneously not surprised and horrified to find out that Japan has been understating the problems they've been having. Furthermore, reacted slowly and kept everyone in the dark, purposely. Then we come to find that their facilities were not prepared for a disaster like this. They've been negligent for YEARS with all kinds of serious problems that have not been addressed or fixed. They knew it and didn't say anything. They are finally being forced to admit that they've had many grievous problems and that they weren't prepared for this disaster. That's great.

Now that they've finally admitted that they have a serious problem, Japan is allowing outside nations to help. Things will hopefully begin getting better in the coming days; I hope they will soon be able to reduce the amount of radioactive particles being released into the environment.

Looky Who We Have Here!

I saw a Nuthatch on the feeder and grabbed the camera. In the time it took for me to raise it up, the Hut-Hut Bird left and a SCRUB JAY landed! YAYYYYY!!!!

Isn't this a magnificent bird?! They are much larger than Juncos and finches and much noisier too. I have a tough time getting pictures of these birds too because like Nuthatches, they fly in, nab a seed, and zoom off again. I was lucky to get such a nice, clear image!

How could I resist taking this picture? And it may be the clearest close-up yet!

Movie: WALL-E

Gotta love Pixar for slick animation. We hadn't seen WALL-E until now and it was a very nice surprise, full of laughs and wonderful moments. To be honest, I don't think it was quite as awesome as some of their other movies but it was really good. My only real issue was that I am used the usual Pixar film where you meet and get to know many characters extremely well. This movie focused on just two characters with a number of sub-characters to fill in here and there; WALL-E, of course, was the spotlight most of the time.

That being said, WALL-E was an AMAZING character. From my point of view, it appears that they took all the effort used in other films for fleshing out a host of equally-weighted co-stars and they poured it all into WALL-E's personality. He basically couldn't talk, so everything needed to be conveyed by gesture, sound, and expression. The cool thing about this is that it occurred to me that little kids would be able to understand this movie easily because there is so much less language than other films. I loved WALL-E and I thought they did an incredible job with him!

I was pleased to see that WALL-E got the Academy Award for Best Animated Film (though it really didn't have much competition with only two other entries). It was a fine film, but I would have to say that if it were compared to other Pixar films, I expect it wouldn't be at the top of the list--only because the other films had more characters you got to know better. I just wanted MORE!

At the end of the movie, we noticed that the film was dedicated to Justin Wright, and we wondered who it was. I looked him up on Wikipedia and found a very touching story about a man who died doing something he loved. I feel sad that this talented man died at such a young age, but how lucky he is to be immortal because his work will be loved forever.

I'm having fun being a geek! :)

I'm almost finished with my Joomla training, and then I'll build a website using one of their templates. It should be easy and lots of fun! :) I'll post my practice website when I'm done with it and you guys can check it out!

It's pretty exciting to me that I will be able to build a website by myself. Joomla allows you to create websites without being a programmer, which is very cool. I mean, I know how to build a basic website with html code, but nothing like what Joomla can do. It's pretty awesome.

Steve is busy working on PHP and SQL...those are database and back-end website programming stuff that lets you put shopping carts and custom forms in a website. He's having a great time too!

It's funny...when we decided to stop playing WoW, we felt a little lost and our confidence was shot. But since we decided to get back into design, we are having so much fun and feeling so much more confident about the future!

Power Plant Workers are Abandoning the Site?!!!

Associated Press has released this information: Japan suspended operations to keep its stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after surging radiation made it too dangerous to stay.

On SF Gate, a U.S. nuclear expert, David Lochbaum, said he feared the worst, commenting, It's more of a surrender. It's not like you wait 10 days and the radiation goes away. In that 10 days things are going to get worse. It's basically a sign that there's nothing left to do but throw in the towel.

140,000 people in the area have been ordered to stay indoors. Tokyo, which is 150 miles away, is beginning to detect radiation. People there are beginning to buy food and water in a premature panic.

This feels is very ominous and extremely scary to me. Some of the rods are suspected to have partially melted, there has been another fire, and they have not been successful at lowering the water temperature to stop the progress of damage.

What exactly does this mean???? Apparently there are a lot of people from many countries working very hard to come up with a solution, but in the meantime, the fears are that there's been a breach and a lot more radiation is leaking out.

I'm worried for Japan and I'm worried for the environment.

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