It’s been a long time since my last post here so let me bring you up to date.

In early September wife Marty and I traveled back to Oregon for what was supposed to be a 4-week stay. We had some administrative things to deal with but my main task was to help a client with a huge software conversion project. Sandwiched into the middle of my stay was a scheduled 4-day trip back to Joliet, IL for my 46th high school reunion. Marty returned to La Paz in early October but my stay was extended 3 weeks at my client’s request. We are now both in La Paz and in the middle of a move! While I was busy in Oregon, Marty found us a new house just 4 blocks from the beach and we’re excited about all the extra space we’ll have in our 3-bedroom, 3-bath house. Our new office/studio is going to be AWESOME!

Since I put this blog on hiatus last June I’ve become very active on Facebook, so I’ll be moving all my Morning Coffee activity over there and deactivating this blog for the foreseeable future. Please visit me at http://www.facebook.com/BajaDude. If you’re squimish about joining Facebook, you should know that you are only required to provide minimal information to set up an account and you don’t EVER have to post anything if you don’t want to. Again, that link is:

http://www.facebook.com/BajaDude
(if you are taken to a mostly blank page, click the blue Facebook box)

See you on the other side!

This morning’s big surprise in La Paz was the first real rainfall of 2010 – a whopping 1 millimeter accumulated over a 2 hour period! For those of you who live where rainfall is often measured in inches per hour, our “downpour” this morning translates to about 0.02 (2/100) inches per hour, so we probably don’t need to worry about flash flooding just yet.

However, this morning’s “weather event” is a subtle reminder that storm season isn’t far away. The lower Baja peninsula is expecting 3 to 4 tropical storms and/or hurricanes to come ashore this season, and the season begins just 3 short weeks from today, on September 1^st. Last year we were hit with 2 tropical storms and 2 hurricanes. The worst of these was Jimena, which made land-fall about 120 miles north of La Paz as a strong, Category 2 hurricane. The Transpeninsular Highway, that connects us to Tijuana and the United States was closed for days and some communities north of us were without basic services for weeks.

After two near-miss tropical storms that brought significant rainfall but little wind, Hurricane Rick grew from a weak tropical depression to a category 5 hurricane in just 2 short days. When the forecasters predicted a direct hit (literally!) on our house in Todos Santos, we fled north to La Paz and the relative safety of son Mike’s solid concrete house. Fortunately, the forecasters were wrong in almost every way and Rick weakened almost as fast as it had strengthened and veered east to make landfall on the Mexican mainland near Mazatlan.

The image belows shows what the 2009 storm season looked like – it will be interesting to see what develops this year!

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According to the Washington Post, Facebook signed up its 500 millionth user last week, a mere 6 years after the site was launched. There are now more people on Facebook than live in the United States, Canada and Mexico combined!

Facebook and other social networking sites, such as Twitter and LinkedIn, have changed the way many people communicate, including me. I don’t have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook, the way some folks do, but I communicate frequently with the ones I do have. I don’t update my “status” every time I change rooms in the house but I do update it several times a week with information I wish to share with my relatively small circle of Facebook friends. And I actually take the time to read what my friends are posting on Facebook, too. I extended a friend request (or responded to one) because I was genuinely interested in what that particular person had to say, so why wouldn’t I read their posts?

Facebook is frequently used for commercial purposes and they created the concept of Pages to accommodate those who want to promote their business, organization or non-profit. For these users, a large “fan” base is important but for a personal page, like mine, a more select group is a much better way to go.

So who are some of my friends? Well, my family, of course, and all my business contacts that are on Facebook. But I also have a number of author friends, including a talented young woman from Ireland and Robert J. Sawyer, the author of the book that spawned the “Flash Forward” TV series. Others include our local tourism department, several book stores and scuba shops around the globe and the TV shows Big Bang Theory and Chuck.

Facebook certainly isn’t perfect, but it provides a robust venue where I can share pictures and thoughts with real and virtual friends all over the world. There have been plenty  of scary stories about Facebook in the press lately, but I believe if you manage your personal information carefully and select your friends even more carefully the risks are minimal.

See ya out there in cyberspace!

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If you think we’re winning the “war on drugs” you’d better think again! The Cocaine Sub pictured to the left was seized in Ecuador, just south of the Columbian border on July 2, 2010 prior to its maiden voyage. The 98-foot-long (30-meter-long) fiberglass sub was big enough to hold 6 to 10 tons of cocaine and a 6-member crew. The remote swamp camp where it was built was outfitted to support 50 workers, though only 1 was present at the time of the raid.

Cocaine subs have been used along the Pacific coast and in the Caribbean for several years but earlier versions could only dip just below the surface to avoid detection. With a ballast system never before seen in a cocaine sub, this “new and improved” model appears capable of diving as deep as 65 feet (20 meters) and suggests smugglers are rapidly improving on the more common, semisubmersible designs, which are already difficult to detect.

The earlier versions cost up to $1 million USD to build and were designed to be scuttled if approached by the authorities or when they reached their final destination. In other words, they were built to make a single voyage! It’s unclear what the plans were for the newest design but their relatively small cost, compared to the $100 million cargo they carry, may mean that they are also single-use vessels.

For more information, Google “narco sub” or visit this Wikipedia page.

Environmentalist Andy Brandy Casagrande wrote a little ballad aptly titled The Great White Shark Song to raise awareness of Great White shark conservation and he decided the best way to promote it would be to sing it directly to one of the fearsome underwater beasts — without using a cage!

Andy’s quirky lyrics begin with the line: “If I was a great white I wouldn’t bite you, but I’d swim right next to you.” To watch the video, click here.

The footage was recorded at Guadalupe Island, off the Pacific coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, an area known for its large population of Great White sharks. For more information about Guadalupe Island and its shark conversations projects, read my article on my BajaDivers.com website.

More than 6,000 bottles of sparkling wine were pulled from the deep by divers this week after aging for a year more than 200 feet below the surface off the coast of Chiavari, Italy. The winemakers have dubbed the vintage “Abyss” and they believe the gentle rocking caused by the local currents and the natural temperature changes of the water have enhanced the wine’s fruity taste.

“It’s delicious!” declared one diver after cracking open a bottle.

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Yesterday morning at 8:27 am our family lost our beloved Dessie Olver. She passed away peacefully at the age of 93 surrounded by her 2 daughters, 2 granddaughters and 2 grandsons.

Dessie was my mother-in-law for almost 20 years and she was my only “mom” for the last 12 years. It was an honor to know her and to love her and I will miss her a lot, but I take comfort in knowing that my wife, Marty, was able to get to Portland in time to spend one final night with her mother. Marty frequently reminds me that God has a Plan, and this week has certainly been proof of that!

Dessie will be buried Friday, June 25, 2010, at the New Tacoma Cemetery, Tacoma, WA, after a private grave-side service.

“To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.” - Thomas Campbell

I read the other day that Portland, Oregon had already received 4 inches of rain during the month of June, making it one of the city’s wettest Junes in recorded history. Here in La Paz, we average 0.01 inches during the entire month of June, and so far we’ve had zero. In fact, we haven’t had any measurable precipitation in months – literally!

I’ve included a link to the current MSN 10-day forecast for La Paz, along with these statistics from The Weather Channel:

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Warning - graphic image

Ocean correspondent Frank Pope, in London’s Sunday Times, reports that conservationists are concerned that the decline in the world’s shark population will prompt chefs to turn to the slaughter of manta and devil rays to satisfy the Asian elite. What the Hell is the matter with these people? The only explanation is that they must have far more money than brains!

Shark fin soup is NOT a basic necessity and it’s not a dietary requirement. It’s expensive ($10 to $65 per bowl) and it continas high levels of mercury so it may actually be a health hazard. If you haven’t seen the pictures of what the butchers (and I mean that literally) do to the sharks to meet their clients’ demands, I suggest you Google “shark finning” but here’s one rather graphic explanation I ran across:

“Finning” refers to the practice of cutting off only the shark’s fins and discarding the body. Sometimes sharks are dead when they’re pulled into the boats, but often, they’re still alive as their four fins are cut off with a knife. When they’re thrown back into the ocean the sharks either bleed to death, or they drown, because sharks can’t swim without fins, and they need to go forward to get oxygen. Divers have discovered hundreds of dead finned sharks at the bottom of the ocean in huge shark graveyards.

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Nice, huh? And now these bastards have their ghoulish eyes on the graceful and majestic manta rays as their next victims. Between the Asian appetite for endangered species and the American appetite for illegal drugs, you have to wonder how long the human species will survive – or if it even deserves to.

In the United States, Memorial Day is a day set aside to honor those men and women who died while in military service. Now it’s a federal holiday and it ocurrs on the last Monday in May but it was originally called Decoration Day and it was established on May 30, 1868 to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the American Civil War.

Today, we have our own war dead to remember, along with all those who gave their lives in previous wars, campaigns and conflicts. Just this past week the U.S. Military announced the 1,000th death in Afghanistan and more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died in the Iraq War. It’s a sad statement of our times that almost everybody knows someone, or knows of someone, who has given his or her life in the defense of freedom. But Memorial Day isn’t a time to debate the evils of war – it’s a time to remember those who have died in service to their country.

And this act of rememberance isn’t reserved just for Americans. Men and women around the world have died to protect the freedom of their families and friends. More than 4,000 Canadian troops currently serve in NATO’s ISAF Coalition and right here in Mexico thousands of military and civilian warriors have died defending their country against the drug cartels.

So regardless of where you’re from, stop and take a minute today to say a silent “thank you” to those who served – and died – while in the service of your country.

My personal "Thank you" to those who served under this flag

(click for ABC site)

This may be old news for those of you who live “north of the border” but here in Mexico we got to see the final episode of Lost last night and all I can say is, “Wow!” I won’t spoil the ending by going into any details, but as an avid TV watcher I was very satisfied with the way the writers decided to end the 6-year run of the series. There were times during the series when I felt as though the writers had lost their way, but they managed to pull the confusing sub-plots, alternate realities and multiple timelines all together in the final, 150-minute episode and even left viewers with a few questions to ponder about the nature of life and death.

We watched the final episode (“The End”) on the AXN Network and they chose to show the 2-hour recap called “The Final Journey” immediately before the final episode, just like ABC did when these shows first aired last Sunday. That meant watching 4.5 hours (with the commercials) of Lost in a row, but I highly recommend doing this. The lead-in reviewed the first 129 episodes and filled in some missing information from the few episodes I missed during the 6-year run. As a result, I was up to speed and fully prepared for the final episode. And like the rest of the series, Episode 130 was filled with surprises and “ah-hah!” moments. It’s always sad when a really good series comes to an end, but – in my opinion – the writers of Lost handled their final episode as well as any series finale I’ve ever seen.

Yesterday (May 24, 2010) was a monumental day, of sorts, around my house. It started with yet another trip to the local immigration office to find out what was wrong with our visa renewal application this time. On May 1^st Mexico instituted a new “online” system for handling visa applications and renewals and, among other things, it allows you to follow the status of your application – or at least that’s the theory! We initially submitted our paperwork on May 6, again on May 7, and again on May 17. Our completed visa was supposed to be ready by Friday, the 21^st but when we checked the status it showed that we had a “notice at the office” (a fancy way of saying that nothing had been done yet) so yesterday morning we headed down to find out what obscure piece of information they need this time. We never were told what was actually wrong, but after nearly an hour of playing questions and answers with the INM clerk I was handed my completed visa – a plasticized piece of paper similar to a driver’s license that makes it legal for me to remain in Mexico for another year! Marty’s application folder, which has been “lost” more often than not, was once again lost but after 30 minutes of searching the clerk finally located it and soon Marty, too, had her new document. It was our 6^th trip to the immigration office in 3 weeks.

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Yesterday’s other big event was the arrival of my new Dell laptop. As you may remember, my 4-year-old laptop fried its video card back on May 11^th and I’ve been limping along using borrowed systems for nearly 2 weeks. I’m very happy with my new Inspiron 15z, even though the screen is smaller than my old 17” work horse. The new machine also has 4 gig of RAM and a 7,200 rpm, 500 GB hard drive. My last system only had an 80 GB drive! And, of course, it has Windows 7, but I’d been running that on my old system. The biggest difference with the new unit is its 8 hour battery life, which means I’ll be coming to you from the deck (or the couch or the beach) a lot more often. My thanks to Luc from Newport Beach Brewing Company (Newport Beach, CA) for bringing the new laptop across the border and down to La Paz.

Wow, this past 10 days has been a real eye-opener for me! I never realized how totally dependent I’d become until my laptop died last week and I was forced to find something else to do with the bulk of my time. I feel cut off from the outside world and I wander the house aimlessly looking for things to do. I even read a book (see earlier post) for the first time in more than a year!

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And I’m not even entirely computer-less…son Mike has loaned me his old (slightly broken) laptop and I use wife Marty’s Dell for short bursts during the day and after hours. If it wasn’t for their generous support you wouldn’t be reading this blog post and I’d be locked up in a padded cell reserved for computer-deprived crazy people!

My problem with loaner computers is that I don’t feel “at home” so I just can’t get motivated to do much. I don’t have ready access to my old email, contact list or calendar and my documents are no longer just a click away. All of my shortcuts and computer “cookies” are gone, so I not only have to remember how to access my banking but I also have to look up passwords every time I want to do something. Familiar software that I use every day isn’t installed on these loaner computers and I don’t want to make changes or additions to somebody else’s system.

A new machine has been ordered and, thanks to friends at Newport Beach Brewing Company, it should arrive here in southern Baja by Monday, so at least there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. Until then, I’ll be the guy drifting through cyberspace with a glazed look in his eyes mumbling, “Error, system failure!” over and over again.

Nobody dislikes government red tape more than me and it seems that I now live at the center of the bureaucratic universe – Mexico! As an example, let me describe the process we’re currently going through to renew our Mexican FM3 visas for another year.

On Thursday, May 6, 2010, we presented ourselves at the immigration office with a complete set of the documents that had been described on the government website just a week earlier. Much to our chagrin, we were told that everything had changed, effective May 1^st, and that we now had to “pre-register” online before coming to the office. We were given a website address and told, “Everything you need to know is there.”

We went home, completed the online registration, printed the necessary documents and trudged back down to immigration the next day where our packets, including the manila folders that we must provide, were accepted and stamped with a smile. Since Mexican federal law now prohibits local offices from handling cash (that’s a good thing!) we were given an “invoice” document to pay at any Mexican bank. The bank provided us with an official receipt, which we immediately returned to immigration. They added the receipt to our folders, updated the computer and told us to return in 5 days to pick up our new visas.

A week later we returned to immigration in the naive belief that we would be done with this process for another year – yeah, right! It seems that the checklist on the new website had failed to mention a couple of things and so had the clerk who had reviewed and accepted our folders a week earlier. In addition to everything else in our rapidly expanding folder, we each needed to provide 5 photographs and a hand-completed form before our application could be sent to Mexico City! Since it was too late to do anything that day (Friday, May 14, 2010) we had to wait until Monday to drive back downtown, get our pictures taken at a nearby studio, wait for them to be ready and return them to immigration, along with the completed form.

Our immigration status is currently unknown, since our initial visa expired on May 13th and it’s now May 18^th. The immigration clerk assured us that  “No hay problema” because we’re “in the computer” – that’s the same computer that forgot to tell us about the photos and the form!

The bottom line is that the new online procedure that went into effect on May 1^st has increased the number of trips to immigration from 3, last year, to at least 6 this year – and that’s assuming nothing else goes wrong!

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg!

I used to read a lot. It started when I discovered the huge library my first days as a freshman in high school. For some unexplained reason I happened to pick up a book about deep sea diving (aka helmet diving) and soon I had read every book in the library on the subject, both fiction and non-fiction. When there were no more diving books to read, I moved on to another subject but it didn’t take me long to discover the science fiction section and soon Asimov, Barr, Clark, Dick, Heinlein and others were some of my closest “friends” at school. The list continued to grow as I read through high school and during a 4-year hitch in the Air Force.

 I returned to college when I got out of the service and my reading necessarily turned to non-fiction for a while but quickly flipped back to sci-fi as soon as I graduated. However, since I’ve started writing my own novels, I find that I hardly ever read. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t allow myself the time or if it’s because I’m afraid I’ll unintentionally incorporate another author’s idea into one of my stories, but I don’t think I’ve read more than a dozen books in the past 9 years. However, I recently finished a great book by Sean Ellis and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes mystery, adventure, action, and/or speculative fiction.

The Shroud of Heaven (Samhain Publishing, 2009) takes place primarily in Iraq but it’s not a war story – not quite. It incorporates military action, to be sure, and Ellis’ years of service in the National Guard are apparent, but at the heart of the story is a search for ancient artifacts – both real and imagined. A quote from the book’s cover sums it up best:

 “Driven to uncover secrets that have haunted mankind for millennia, pursued by a mysterious assassin and an enemy consumed by hatred, Nick [Kismet] and [his mentor] Pierre journey into the desert to find the terrible truth that lies behind…The Shroud of Heaven.”

 Available everywhere books are sold: ISBN 978-1-60504-097-4

It seems that we’ve fallen into an electronics vortex lately – my 4-year-old Dell laptop started acting up last Saturday and on Tuesday it finally failed for good. I took it to a local repair shop Wednesday and they tried a fix, but it didn’t work and the replacement video card is about $300 on eBay – way too much money to put into an old laptop. I’ll have a new unit brought down the next time our landlord makes a trip to Newport Beach, but that won’t be for at least a month. In the mean time, I’m using an old “beater” laptop for email during the day and I’m using Marty’s laptop at night for my “production” work. It’s a pain, but I’ll get by until my new system arrives.

Good-bye, old friend

And if losing my laptop wasn’t enough, our Vonage telephone adapter started acting up and I missed several calls because of it. I think I’ve come up with a work-around for the Vonage problem but the permanent solution is to acquire a new adapter and they only ship to US addresses! I’m beginning to understand why most full-time residents of Baja return to the USA a couple of times a year – the heat takes a toll on electronics as well as on people!

Tomorrow is my “day of rest” so I’ll see you back here  Monday morning for our regular cup of virtual coffee. Have a good week-end!