CFZ Cryptoshop

I just took a look at Jon Downe’s new venture, a CFZ Cryptoshop, and there are some great t-shirts and mugs on sale. But I do have just one “gripe” – you need to take a careful look at the items to see other colours and designs for the same product. It’s also a shame that there are no t-shirts on the storefront showing women modelling them. And, even having taken a good look around, I couldn’t find the design that I always wear, i.e. a v-neck with short sleeves. But very good luck to Jon and the CFZ and I hope it raises some badly needed finance for the CFZ. Personally, because I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, and I don’t use such large mugs, I’m just going to make a donation instead. It will only be a small one as I’m an OAP these days, trying to survive on a State Pension, but I visit the blog each day and I know that every little helps! However, on visiting the PayPal Donate page it’s all in US dollars, and I’ve not been able to find any way to convert it into pounds sterling. So it looks like I’ll just have to send a cheque by good old snail-mail instead. Unless, Jon, if you’re reading this, you can tell me how to do it online?

As Jon says: “It isn’t about the money.” But money is always needed to help them stay afloat and continue the wonderful work that they do. And, if you support them but can’t spare any cash then maybe you could do something else for them, such as donating your time, or equipment you no longer need but is still in good working order, or anything you think might be useful. For details of how to contact Jon visit his blog post here then scroll down to the very end for ways of getting in touch with him.

I’d actually join the CFZ but I’m far to frightened that their magazine might have arachnids in it. And that’s a really bad phobia of mine :)

UFO over Cleburne, Texas on Xmas Night

Back in September 2004 I wrote an article for my web site about UFOs that were seen over Cleburne, Texas in June 1995. These objects were filmed by my very good friend Jason Leigh, and you can read my commentary on the story here.

So, with that in mind, I was extremely interested to read today that Jason has had yet another sighting. This time he saw what he describes as being akin to a “Triangle-shaped UFO” flying over his hometown of Cleburne on Christmas Night. He first reported his sighting to Frank Warren’s “The UFO Chronicles” web site, and included a drawing of what he had seen. (If you click on that particular image at the link it will enlarge it for a better view.)

Now, Jason has also posted the account to his own web site, and has added a second drawing. This second drawing can be seen here.

I’ve known Jason for almost a decade and I have no reason to disbelieve him. I am also impressed by the way in which he describes his sighting. He doesn’t say that it was “definitely” a UFO; he simply points out the similarities and the possibilities. He has no reason to lie, and his report deserves to be taken seriously.

Climate Change Warning

I’ve been meaning to write this for the last few days, but more computer problems have been holding me up. I’ll blog about those another day when I’ve finally managed to sort them out. At least this time they’re not keeping me off-line!

However, this is what I wanted to say: Here in the UK, across many parts of Europe, including southern countries, and also in the USA, there has been an unseasonable amount of snow and ice even for the winter months. In some places the amount, along with low temperatures, have been at record levels for recent history.

It strikes me that this is Nature taking her revenge for the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. How very apt that just when the politicians have been unable to reach any real agreement the weather should suddenly become so very intemperate for so many of us. Not only is it causing travel chaos, but people have died due to the cold. And that’s totally unacceptable in such rich countries.

Our children and our grandchildren, (of which I have five), will not forgive us for our lack of willingness to agree on reaching a legally binding agreement about what should be done. It’s an absolute disgrace.

Let’s hope that the current weather conditions are not the start of another ice age.

An Expensive Lesson

After a couple of days of “downtime” I’m back online, yet again. I thought my ISP was suffering from an outage but, no, the problem was with my computer. Well, at least, I thought it was. So I spent almost two hours on the ‘phone to the ISP technical support people, who said: “try this, try that” ad infinitum.

Amongst other ideas, they talked me through finding the place where the Internet protocols are written and said what should be written there. They made me open endless Internet Explorer windows – which I hate because I use Firefox – and kept telling me to write in a certain number, instead of a link address, only for the page to keep saying it couldn’t open the page. Naturally it couldn’t, there was no net connection to access any page – idiots!

They told me to reset the router/modem, and I kept explaining that there simply wasn’t a reset button on it, or any little hole that could be for resetting. They made me take a good look around it, three times, to make absolutely sure that I hadn’t missed anything. I said the only thing I could see that I didn’t understand were two little buttons on the side of the equipment, neither of which said reset.

Of course, I guess that they work from a script, so nothing they suggested, or talked me through doing was of any help at all. In the end they said the equipment was faulty and they’d send me a new one that would hopefully arrive in three to five days.

Having hung up the ‘phone, unplugged the router, and all the wires, and took a good look at it. Well I never, on the underside it showed a diagram of those two little buttons that neither they, nor I, had known the purpose of. Those two buttons were to reset it, by holding both in at the same time; a difficult task as they’re extremely small and my arthritic fingers don’t work as well as they used to. However, I finally managed to press both at the same time and the reset duly happened. But …… it didn’t make the slightest difference; I still had no Internet connection.

Thankfully, Dawyth, a good friend of mine still had the addresses from a recent blog post, so he was able to let the people on my blog-list know that I’d probably be offline again for a while. At the same time he told me of a couple of local computer repair businesses that were listed in the local weekly newspaper. Very many thanks to him.

So, out of sheer desperation I made a call to one of them and was lucky to find that the engineer was able to come out early this afternoon. He was here for less than a quarter of an hour, and that cost me £35 ($70), but he put things right immediately. It seems that the router hadn’t been properly set up in the first place with the username and password, as given to me by my ISP. Once that was done the net connection came back on and has been running ever since.

I would have thought that my ISP would have known how their routers worked. A free one was sent to me when I went “live” recently. But obviously they don’t have the first idea. For a start they didn’t seem to know about the different buttons on the side of my router, and when they asked me to open that IE window they didn’t give me the right number to type in. They guy who came today typed in the correct number and the router immediately showed up, where he was able to enter to data that was needed to configure it.

It’s been an expensive lesson, but one that I won’t forget, and I made a note of how he did it just in case I should ever need to go through the process again! But, at least I’m back online without having to spend days “climbing the walls” from sheer frustration and boredom!

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Doctors demand formal inquest for Dr David Kelly

As many of you may know I’ve been following this story since the sad event happened. I’ve even read the MP Norman Baker’s book entitled: “The Strange Death of David Kelly.” And a fascinating, very convincing, book it is; one that I’d recommend to anybody who is interested in this subject.

So you can imagine how pleased I was to read an article on the BBC news website about a group of medical doctors who want the case to undergo a formal inquest, unlike Lord Hutton’s inquiry that reached the conclusion that this government scientist had committed suicide. However, I strongly suspect that the request for such an inquest will be denied.

This new article, dated 5th December 2009, can be found here.

Personally, along with many other people, I believe that David Kelly was assassinated. The evidence, or rather the lack of it, in this case simply doesn’t add up and, along with all of the other inquiries that Tony Blair instigated during his years as Prime Minister, the outcome was a fudge. In all of them many of us believe that the conclusions were already decided before the “investigation” began.

I’m not a believer in all of the conspiracy theories that can be found on the Internet, but this one I do believe in!