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!

To find all my eBooks, browse to www.Amazon.com and select Kindle Store from the Search drop-down list. Enter “Seeds of Civilization” (include the quotes) in the box to the right of the drop-down and click the small orange “GO” ball.

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Tsubute takes place almost entirely on the small Japanese island of Yonaguni where a real underwater “pyramid” was discovered by a scuba diver in 1987. Now commonly referred to as the Yonaguni Monument, this megalithic structure appears to have been built before the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, when the world’s sea levels were much lower than they are today.

Those of you who have read Tractrix will be happy to know that Frank, Tony, Linda and Jim are back! This time, a trip to Yonaguni to investigate the mysterious underwater pyramid involves the four friends in a case of murder and international kidnapping.

The maiden voyage of the team’s newly acquired Learjet begins with a dramatic landing in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. After a run-in with Department of Justice agents in Tokyo, the team begins to think they should never have left home. When they finally touch down on Yonaguni, a Japanese-American exchange student befriends them and helps them get to know the tiny island of 1,200 people—and the dark secret being protected there. When a  tsubute discovered outside the NWIDI headquarters in Seattle reappears on Yonaguni, it leads the NWIDI team to a startling discovery about the true nature of the island and its original inhabitants.

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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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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There are actually several reasons why eBooks hadn’t been taken seriously by either readers or authors until fairly recently:  the market was a free-for-all, prices were all over the map and delivery and security issues made it a risky place to put a year’s worth of your work.

In the past, commercial reading devices were expensive ($300+) and each one used a different format so your book selection was limited to only those titles that had been published in your reader’s format. This is still true, to some extent, although Sony offers a device that supports Adobe PDF and Microsoft Word formats along with their proprietary format. Of course no author in his or her right mind would release a novel in Word format if they intended to derive any income from the title!

You can say what you want about giants like Amazon, but until they began their big push the eBook market was a real mess. Titles ranged in price from zero to amounts rivaling print books and author royalties covered an equally wide range. For most authors, including me, it seemed about as appealing as jumping into a swimming pool full of piranhas. Amazon (and others) has finally created the perception of “value” for eBooks and royalties are more realistic and consistent.

An author’s biggest fear is (or should be) losing his or her work to the public domain. I personally spend a year of my life writing a novel and if a pirated version of it suddenly started appearing all over the Internet I would be crushed. In fact, I think  I’d quit writing altogether. Today, eBook publishers such as Amazon offer Digital Rights Management (DRM) security, which locks your purchased title to a specific reader device or reader application. DRM is optional, but I refused to publish in eBook format until it was available.

Why did I pick Amazon’s proprietary Kindle format for my novels?

This question also has several answers. Because the Kindle is owned and sold by Amazon, there’s a certain amount of marketing leverage there. The print versions of my novels are also available through Amazon, so when you go to Amazon.com and search for “Tractrix” you’re going to see both the print edition and the new eBook edition listed on the same page – take your pick.

As mentioned above, the security provided by DRM was an absolute must for me. Contrary to popular belief, eBook does not mean “free book” so I waited until this issue was resolved.

However, the primary reason I chose the Kindle format was because I wanted to make my eBooks available to the largest possible market without spending a huge amount of time reformatting the 130,000 word manuscript for a dozen different readers. And what about the millions of people – LIKE ME – who don’t own any kind of reader? Once my title was published in Kindle format, it was instantly available to anyone who owns a PC, a MAC, an iPhone, an iPad, a Blackberry or the new Android. And this required no extra work and no extra expense thanks to Amazon’s FREE eReader software for the above listed devices. So if you own a Sony Reader or a Barnes & Noble Nook you can’t download my Kindle title directly to your device, but I’m betting you also have one of those other devices, too, so you can still read Tractrix in electronic form if you really want to.

Ready to buy? Click here to purchase the Kindle version of Tractrix from Amazon.

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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.

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.

Lin’s project is groundbreaking, because they never break ground. He uses noninvasive computer based technologies to gather, synthesize, and visualize data without disturbing a blade of grass and that’s where you come in. By visiting the website hosted by NatGeo at

 http://exploration.nationalgeographic.com/mongolia/home

you can sign up to tag clues and artifacts on satellite images. Your discoveries are transmitted in real-time to the team on the ground in Mongolia and they physically visit the most promising finds. Once onsite, they use modern digital tools from a variety of disciplines, including nondestructive surveying, ground-penetrating radar and on-site digital archaeology. The goal of the search is to identify archaeological sites without disturbing them–in the area of Mongolia’s most sacred heritage–Genghis Khan’s homeland.

If you’ve read my novels or follow my blog, you know that satellite imagery is becoming an important tool in many areas of research, including underwater archaeology. One of the “pioneers” in this field is Angela Micol, of Satellite Discoveries, and she has recently teamed up with our friend William M. (Bill) Donato and his APEX Institute to continue the amazing research taking place off the coast of Bimini, less than 60 miles from Miami Beach. Here, Donato and others have discovered conclusive, physical evidence of an advanced maritime culture that existed in the “new world” more than 12,000 years ago!

“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