Glass Float Giveaway Begins on Central Oregon Coast

Glass Float Giveaway Begins on Central Oregon Coast: "Their next trip to the Oregon coast could be one of a kind, just like the original commemorative glass floats given away by Newport merchants this winter. No stormy beachcombing or wave dodging is required to find one of these 200 luminous artisan collectibles, blown by Pyromania Glass Studios."

4 YEARS - drummer Falecki Igor

Salmon Fishing

Hilarious Cat Sleeping With Tongue Out

Newport News-Times: Newport residents advised of fire flow test scheduled for Monday morning

Our thanks to Marlene Crites and Dan Wilson for this heads up!

Newport News-Times: Newport residents advised of fire flow test scheduled for Monday morning: "Newport residents advised of fire flow test scheduled for Monday morning


The Newport Fire Department will be performing 'fire flows' in the north part of the city at around 10 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 30.

The fire department is working in conjunction with a private contractor to perform the tests.

Newport residents who live north of 32nd Street are advised to not run any water, if possible, from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. on the day of the tests. These water flows may cause low water pressure, discolored water or a short interruption of service. The city's public works department will be on site to flush water lines in the area, if necessary.
Residents in the central and southern parts of the city should not see any change in water service, according to city officials.

Anyone who experiences discolored water is advised to run only the cold water in a bathtub for around 20 minutes. If the water is still discolored, they should contact the public works department at 574-3366.

Residents are urged not to wash clothes while water is discolored. And, if possible, it is advisable to not do laundry for 48 hours after the Monday morning flow test. Those whose laundry becomes stained are advised to call the public works department."

Help is on the way!!!

Trouble learning how to use your radio? A week of fun comming up for you?

Remember we (The CERT Team) asked everyone to buy the FRS (family radio service) radios at Wal-Mart for $16 a pair and sell one to your neighbor or friend for $8.00?

A lot of folks did! Some did not. Of those that did many don't understand how to operate them. We are going to address that issue all next week and into the future. Here is the plan....

Starting Monday and every day therafter, for 1 week, CERT will broadcast a test alert for 5 minutes on CH5 at 11:00AM. You can turn your radio on, tune in to CH5 and listen. At the conclusion of the Broadcast you can call for a radio check on ch5 to learn how to talk and a CERT person will answer until 11:30AM.

For those of you who can't figure how to get the darn thing on or tune it let alone speak over it.. There is Help. All CERT members will be wearing their green ball caps emblazoned with the letters CERT in gold all week while out in the park. If you see one .. flag-em down and they will lend you a hand.

CERT Members are:

• Rod McCready

• Marlene Crites

• Ed Simon

• Kay Simon

• Bill Furgason

• Mike Larsen

• Greg Pfalmer

• Wayne Hill

• Ron Thomas

Once you learn... Practice and call every day during the test week. At the end of test week From that time forward we will test broadcast every week at 11:00 am on Wednesday and be available for radio checks. At some time between 11:00AM and 12:00 PM every Wednesday your NOAA Emergency Alert Radio will also broadcast a test alert and you can get used to listening to that too.

Help us serve the community by becoming proficient with your radio... I'll be listening for you!

Flu Shots at the Clubhouse

An email from Larry Henson

Hi Ron,
Heidi from County Health called and set the Flu Shot Clinic for Friday November3rd from 2 to 3 PM.

Tales of Haunted Oregon Coast Lighthouses

Tales of Haunted Oregon Coast Lighthouses: "Yaquina Head Lighthouse

A bevy of rumors and ghost stories have surrounded this beauty, the tallest on the Oregon coast. But none are as wild as the truth behind the place.

The big tale involves a lighthouse keeper named Higgins who supposedly got drunk, then fell and broke his neck on the spiral staircase. Another version has the man deathly ill, and forced to work on the lens until he passed out and died, because of the negligence of a co-worker who didn’t attend to his duties. In any case, Higgins purportedly haunted the place thereafter, and his old coworker refused to go near the staircase at night for fear of running into the ectoplasmic Higgins."

Stephen Colbert interviewing Eleanor Holmes Norton

Updating Ben Davi

Ben is home again. This morning I see he is poking around with his computer. Welcome back Ben!

Bare Necessities-For Kids Only

La siesta du chat !

Update on Charles Burke

via phone conversation

Charles called today and reports he is in Lincoln City Rehab located next to the hospital. He can receive visitors and phone calls. He doesn't know how long he will be there but they went to work today strengthening his leg. He says he can't stand on it. However, he assured me he could probably play a mean game of hop-scotch.

He would like to get his computer there so he can work on the websites but is worried that it might get stolen. So for now it's TV.

Update on Ben Davi

Jacky spoke to Ben yesterday via phone. He is out of ICU but his circumstances remain about the same. She said he can have phone calls and visitors now. The Bellingham's visited him yesterday. He is in the Corvallis Samaritin Hospital.

Just got a call from Dick Bellingham and he said that BEN will be getting an Angiogram tommorow (Tuesday) at noon so that would not be a good time to call or visit.

Communicating an Ala

Communicating an Alarm or Warning...

Ron Thomas

As you know, I have been researching a doable system for our community. It occurs to me we have many features in place. We could use what we have if it were not for bottle necks.

First off, let me talk to you about the Neighborhood Watch Phone Tree operation. This system has been a hit and miss situation since it began. Why? Some are notified and others are not and that cannot be helped. The reason is it starts with the block captain coordinator being notified about something. That person calls either all the block Captains (36 ... a two hour process) or calls a few who call others and so on. The block Captains reached call their neighbors. More time.. Block Captains find it hard just to take the message and move on .. They ask questions further slowing the operation. If that weren’t enough the tree begins to lose branches as it runs into people not at home. This often leads to whole segments of the community not being notified. So here we have identified two bottle necks.

Enter the concept of the two way radios we asked everyone to purchase. This has it’s drawbacks and advantages. The advantage is everyone could turn on their radio and hear a continuous announcement about what the emergency is and what to do. The disadvantages are two. Keeping the radio on all the time is not feasible without an expensive battery charger and battery. Worse than that people coming to the beach yak on them enough to make it a nuisance to leave them on all the time. Still there is an offset here if everyone would buy the more expensive models with recharging systems and privacy channels I believe the radios could be left on continuously without local visitors jamming them up. That would allow one person to broadcast the alert continuously for say half an hour. We could even give the person a small tape recorder to do it with.

Now you may begin to see other possibilities. Say you don’t want to turn the radio on unless you know there is an alert you don’t want to go to the additional expense of buying more expensive equipment and leaving it on all the time.. That would mean there would have to be something that happens to cause you to turn on your radio. Phoning isn’t quick enough as we have demonstrated and leaves a lot of people out. The dialer system has merit unless the phone systems are down or the electric power that runs the dialer is out. The radios will work but something has to get you to turn it on. Now there are some solutions we have thought up to get you to turn the radio on at the right time but each has it’s drawbacks.

You will recall the idea of getting people to turn on their car horns through out the park which would be the signal for you to turn on your radio? This was not enthusiastically received through out the community and suffers from the drawback of what if the phones are out? How do you tell folks to turn on their horns? Then an idea came forward that the CERT team using Cell phones would alert each other (there is only 8 of them) and they would have bullhorns with sirens and would drive throughout the community announcing the emergency and telling everyone to tune to CH 5 for information and instructions. This idea seems like it would work. They think they could get everyone notified in less than 20 minutes. But there are complications that need to be worked out so let us set them out for discussion here.

First, what would be so important that an alert like this would be called? Would we need rules of the road? A tsunami coming is one end of the spectrum vs. a water outage at the other end. You can see there are degrees of importance here?

Next, Bullhorns with sirens cost $30. To do this the CERT team would like 5.

During the announcement phase the mike of the announcer will be keyed continuously to keep people from butting in on CH5 and interrupting the emergency broadcast... All will be advised to use CH6, CH7 and CH8 to communicate with Neighborhood Watch and CERT about problems they have or help needed... After everyone is notified CH 5 will again be the prime communications frequency ..two way.

cats and dogs

Attack!

Just for fun

Be Happy Folks!

News - StatesmanJournal.com

News - StatesmanJournal.com: "39. Samaritan Pacific Community Hospital, Newport: 43 percent, 1 star."

NewsGator Online

NewsGator Online: "'I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.'"

Researching an Emergency Contact System....

We have come up with an interesting partial solution for really bad emergencies and weather related stuff. Now It isn't perfect and it won't cover a bunch of what-ifs but it is free and can be used in different ways to be ok to pretty effective. Some of you will be able to take advantage of it and some won't.

The system is called the Emergency Email Organization.

http://www.emergencyemailnetwork.com/

All the emergencies broadcasted on the NOAA Emergency radio for Lincoln County, Oregon can be sent to your computer as an email and to your Cell phone for free.

You go to the above website and sign up..

Sure, if you don't have a cell phone or a computer it won't work for you. If you use it exclusively as email then you have to get a habit of checking your email on a regular basis like before you venture down the road. Of course the cell phone would be a good deal if you have one and could keep your charger by your bedroom nightstand.

I signed up for the email part. There are choices for you to pick. My advice... If you have a computer or a cell phone.. get signed up.

Ben Davi is in the Hospital

as told to me by daughter, Lisa...

Today finds Ben in the local Newport Hospital. The current diagnosis is he has an infection which has lowered his blood pressure to very low levels. He had gone in for a potential angiogram. They think he has pneumonia on top of it. Today he will be transfered by ambulance to Corvallis. Lisa says he is not in any condition for calls or visiting at this time and requests you hold off on that. She asks that everyone keep an eye on Ben's home while he goes through this ordeal.

Park visitor finds 5.47-carat diamond - CNN.com

Park visitor finds 5.47-carat diamond - CNN.com: "MURFREESBORO, Arkansas (AP) -- A Wisconsin man visiting a state park took home the ultimate souvenir: a 5.47-carat canary diamond.

Bob Wehle of Ripon, Wisconsin, found the diamond at the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro October 14. The park is the world's only publicly operated diamond site where visitors are allowed to search and keep any gems they find."