September 2011

Dear Client,

August saw another month with very little to go wrong here. We upgraded the memory on a server which will hold it for the next year or two. A couple of evenings we saw our connection drop for about 10 minutes, but by the time we reported it, the problem had cleared itself up.

With elections right around the corner, a lot of rhetoric and claims get thrown around this time of year. One site we like to go to for verification of the truthfulness of these statements is www.politifact.org. One of the nice things we like is they are equal opportunity roasters. Just the facts, ma’am. They even group claims by candidate so you can see which ones should have been fiction writers.

Hurricane Irene certainly took a toll on the eastern seaboard last week. The storm’s track was accurately predicted through the use of weather satellites we have circling the globe. The problem is…they wear out. We can send up more easily enough to replace them, but some members in Congress don’t want to do that. Why? These same satellites also accurately measure other things as well such as temperature, which can upset those who don’t believe we have global warming. So we likely won’t be getting new satellites soon enough. And our ability to track huge storm events and warn people appropriately will suffer.

Speaking of warming, it’s been really hot here. Brownouts in the grass and what’s left in the garden is just hanging on until it starts to cool down. You know it’s bad when even our dog refuses to go outside and pee until dusk.

We were able to get away from it for a week last month. Visited relatives in Florence, Oregon which is right on the coast. Had an excellent time and experienced several firsts. First time I’ve ever been cold in August. First time I went crab fishing That was interesting. You put cages in the water off a pier (or boat) and crabs wander in through trap doors and can’t get back out. Every so often you pull the cages up with a rope and check to see what you caught. You can only keep males over a certain size.

And how do you tell the difference between male and female crab? I looked for lipstick but that wasn’t reliable, so there is a different marking on their underbelly to distinguish them. Was a lot of fun, and quite tasty that evening. These were Dungeness crab we caught.

Finally, I can’t fail to mention the male equivalent of Nordstrom’s for guys: Jerry’s Hardware store in Eugene, Oregon. Jerry’s is about as big as a Nordstrom store as well. Your typical hardware store runs 10-20 thousand square feet. Jerry’s is about 120,000 square feet. You know you are going to somewhere different when there’s a playground for kids outside because the parents don’t want to leave.

Best wishes!

Sincerely,

Ben Conner