8/17/08 Captain Jack's Repossession Repo Cruise to PC thru TPC Part 16

[PBader]

Well that's deep enoough for me!

 

[dahuffy]

Back on the UW housing topic........

On our last cruise I hauled the housings for the HD camcorder and the digital camera. The housing's themselves are not to bad, but the prep/maint work is a PITA - have to travel with spare o-rings, lube, silica gel etc.

This past cruise, we left them (the housings) at home, and I bought an Olympus Stylus 770 SW onboard the Magic. It's good for depths upto 33ft with no housing - which is plenty good for snorkeling.

These were my first attempts with it (all taken at Castaway Cay):

Andy

Oh my, Andy, I'm jealous. The colors are wonderful and so true to life!

 

[dahuffy]

The shoes she is wearing belong to Angelina's cousin, they will be going back today, we don't want anything to happen to them..........

I thought the same thing when I saw them! It's a Wench Thing, what can I say?

 

[tom31b]

I was just reminded of this one, from posting elsewhere, one from the repo of 2005, this was a great port, hope Aruba is as good.

The island put on great fireworks as we left and before the Pirate night fireworks on ship.

Great Pic of the kids Andrew! They put on fireworks for the Magic? Wow that must've been a real treat! What else did you like about that port? I wonder why we're not returning?

From what I read, they are 'sister' islands (less than 50 miles apart). Aruba is the better known of the two. Perhaps DCL is looking to develop a new port and this is the test?

 

[allshookup]

Happy Birthday Lauren!!!

 

[jhryb]

Sorry the photos are so big! They looked fine on the 'puter and Photobucket, I thought they would have been scaled to fit the DIS page. Guess I have some more learning to do.

Such a beautiful neighborhood. If there is a card company still looking to design their Christmas cards, they should have shown up to take pictures of your street this morning. I believe that we reached record high temperatures in Toronto today. My kids were playing outside in shorts.

 

[allshookup]

From what I read, they are 'sister' islands (less than 50 miles apart). Aruba is the better known of the two. Perhaps DCL is looking to develop a new port and this is the test?

Could be you're right Tom! I've always wanted to go to Aruba, but Andrew made Curacao sound wonderful. Too bad we can't do both. I'm not too greedy am I?

 

[dahuffy]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAUREN!!!

 

[dahuffy]

oops, double post.

 

[tom31b]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAUREN!!!

That cake just looks too good!!

I'm ing the Happy Birthday wishes!

 

[GoofyontheHiSeas]

Happy Birthday Lauren!!!

this birthday wish!! Have a good one Lauren

 

[captaincrash]

Here you go Crash, one for DSLR with zoom

Hey!?

.... there's no space for the flash gun. However, it loks to have space for the accessory grip with extra battery capacity. Otherwise .... it looks pretty cool.

And Tracy! Congrats on the two new toys. The Nikon and Oly should serve you well.

SO - this morning we attended/visirted a new congregation. It was a strange sort of day - it has a moderate sized congregation and excellent band/vocalists - compared to our usual place of worship it was a large group.

Aside from that we caught the preview sneak peak for InkHEART - however our lunch after churach ran so long we were among the last in line for the movie preview... so they didn't need us in the end and gave us free passes to any other movie... so we saw something I knew nothing about in advance - a flick called Rendition:

By Roger Ebert

This is being done in our name. People who are suspected for any reason, or no good reason, of being terrorists can be snatched from their lives and transported to another country to be held without charge and tortured for information. Because the torture is conducted by professionals in those countries, our officials can blandly state that "America does not torture." This practice, known as an "extraordinary rendition," was authorized, I am sorry to say, under the Clinton administration. After 9/11, there is reason to believe the Bush administration uses it frequently.

Director Gavin Hood's terrifying, intelligent thriller "Rendition" puts a human face on the practice. We meet Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), an Egyptian-born American chemical engineer who lives in Chicago. He and his wife, Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), have a young son, and she is in advanced pregnancy with another child. After boarding a flight home from a conference in Cape Town, South Africa, Anwar disappears from the airplane, his name disappears from the passenger list and Isabella hears nothing more from him.

He was taken from the plane by the CIA, we learn. His cell phone received calls from a terrorist, or perhaps from someone else with the same name, or perhaps it was stolen or lost and used by somebody else. His background is clean, and he passes a lie detector test, but he's hooded, flown to an anonymous country and placed in the hands of an expert torturer named Abasi Fawal (Igal Naor). Anwar's frantic wife is told he never got on the flight, although she later discovers his credit card was used for an in-fight duty-free purchase.

If there is one thing history and common sense teach us, it is that if you torture someone well enough, they will tell you what they think you want to hear. As successful interrogation experts have patiently explained to Congress, much more useful information is obtained using the carrot than the stick. Yet Anwar is held naked in a dungeon, beaten, nearly drowned, shocked with electricity, kept sleepless, shackled. Does it occur to anybody that he is more likely to "confess" if he is not a terrorist than if he is?

The movie sets into motion a chain of events caused by the illegal kidnapping. Isabella, played by Witherspoon with single-minded determination and love, contacts an old boyfriend (Peter Sarsgaard) who is now an aide to a powerful senator (Alan Arkin). Convinced the missing man is innocent, the senator intervenes with the head of U.S. intelligence (Meryl Streep). She responds in flawless neocon-speak, simultaneously using terrorism as an excuse for terrorism and threatening the senator with political suicide. Arkin backs off.

Meanwhile, in the unnamed foreign country, we meet a CIA pencil-pusher named Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has little experience in field work but has taken over the post after the assassination of his boss. His job is to work with and "supervise" the torturer Abasi. This he does with no enthusiasm but from a sense of duty. He is not cut out for this kind of work, drinks too much, broods, has discussions with Abasi, who is an intelligent man and not a monster.

How this all plays out has much to do with Abasi's daughter, Fatima (Zineb Oukach), who is secretly in love with a fellow student not approved of by her family. All these human strands, seemingly so separated, eventually weave into the same rope, in a film that builds its suspense by the uncoiling of personalities.

It is now so well-established that the United States authorizes the practices shown in this film that when President Bush goes on television to blandly deny it with his "who, we?" little-boy innocence, I feel saddened. He may eventually be the last person to believe himself. What the film documents is that we have lost faith in due process and the rule of law, and have forfeited the moral high ground. Reading some of the reviews after I saw this film at the Toronto Film Festival, I was struck by a comment by James Rocchi on Cinematical.com: "Anytime someone tells you that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, immediately demand to see the omelet."

Gavin Hood, the South African-born director of "Rendition," first came into wide view with the wonderful "Tsotsi" (2005), which won the Academy Award for best foreign film. Now comes this big, confident, effective thriller with its politics so seamlessly a part of its story. Next for him: "Wolverine," based on the "X-Men" character. I hope we don't lose him to blockbusters. A film like "Rendition" is valuable and rare. As I wrote from Toronto: "It is a movie about the theory and practice of two things: torture and personal responsibility. And it is wise about what is right, and what is wrong."

This movie was an interesting flick - not the usual sort I would pay to see though.

Aside from that - we've had very very high winds out here. Gusts up to 100 MPH - and as such we've had terrible fires kick up - thousands have been evacuated in near by malibu where a church and 6 homes were destroyed. No loss of life has been noted - but the skies are thick, dark and ugly with ash falling out of the sky. We're really pretty far from any fires here - and the fact we had a bad fire just a few dozen yards from my home suggests we are not at tremendous risk unless a bunch of HOMES start buring out of control. In the past there have been California neighborhoods where 100s of homes burned! Below is a link to a recent article and video on the conditions here. It speaks of a $17 million 10,000 sq foot mansion (actual Castle design) that burned down. edited in The TV news is saying this castle home is owned by a princess - the late Leila Pahlavi, daughter of the shah of Iran. Plus it looks like the TV news is showing another home burining live right now.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=local&id=5718472

So we are watching the news with great interest. The skys are particularly bad - worst I've seen in many years - and that's because the fires in Malibu are but ONE of several fires buring in the area - supposedly. So we are getting a mixture of smoke from Camarillo/Moorpark, Malibu, Lake Castaic & Chatsworth. All within about a dozen to 40 miles of us.

Oh well... so what's new in YOUR neck of the woods? hopefully nothing as uncertain as what we're seeing in SoCal.

 

[GoofyontheHiSeas]

We had a very hectic day today. We have had local winds up to 40-60mph since last night. We have been without power all day. Then this afternoon we had Austyn's Birthday party and realized that there are fires all around us. Without TV or 'puter we did not know any of this was going on. We got to where the party was and started seeing smoke. The wind changed this afternoon and we are now inundated with smoke. None of the fires are close enough to cause alarm 15-20 miles away. The wind is still blowing and the air is full of smoke but we do have our power back on.

Austyn's Party

This is what it looked like at 4pm this afternoon.

 

[arlenesp]

Happy Birthday John!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN!!!

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY
Darn it! see what happens when I let the kids commandeer the puters!!!!
And I told Cheryl I would learn to post my own cake for your Birthday.
Hope it was a better day for you than it was for us

 

[captaincrash]

We had a very hectic day today. ... None of the fires are close enough to cause alarm 15-20 miles away. The wind is still blowing and the air is full of smoke but we do have our power back on.

This is what it looked like at 4pm this afternoon.

Here are some images of the local fires. They all seem to be largely out of control - and the firemen are presumed to be stationed to save homes and property. With the winds blowing at 40-60MPH and gusting over 100MPH it obviously is an extrememly dangerous state of affairs. I'm amazed to hear of fire fighting helicopters being used somewhere out here!

These images are of Castaic Lake - 35-40 miles north of Rodger and I.

You see all that smoke? It's blowing over towards Los Angeles.

 

[tom31b]

Here are some images of the local fires. They all seem to be largely out of control - and the firemen are presumed to be stationed to save homes and property. With the winds blowing at 40-60MPH and gusting over 100MPH it obviously is an extrememly dangerous state of affairs. I'm amazed to hear of fire fighting helicopters being used somewhere out here!

These images are of Castaic Lake - 35-40 miles north of Rodger and I.

You see all that smoke? It's blowing over towards Los Angeles.

Friends in that area, keep an essentials bag packed (change of clothes, need prescriptions, cash and credit cards) and go if they tell you to leave.

Hoping and praying to keep you safe!

 

[tom31b]

Hey Crash!

You wanted a flag, right?

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How about this one?

 

[GoofyontheHiSeas]

Hey Crash!

You wanted a flag, right?

..
How about this one?

 

[captaincrash]

Friends in that area, keep an essentials bag packed (change of clothes, need prescriptions, cash and credit cards) and go if they tell you to leave.

Hoping and praying to keep you safe!

Funny you should mention this. Even though the fire is so far from us - I asked Alicia if she had a short notice evacuation pack and run list in mind? We could be awakened in the middle of the nite to evacuate. Ya never kno with 40-60 MPH winds. Of course, it is extremely unlikely - but they did evacuate 1500 people in Malibu supposedly. Plus - several hundred folks from other areas.

The burning house on TV right now is actually in Canyon Country - and this is in addition to 6 or 7 other structures which burned down in that area. It's off highway 14 I think... so quite a distance away but in the region.

We can hear the winds outside shaking our windows every now and then. I don't think I mentioned that on our way to church we saw a dozen tress or branches felled by the road side. Plus - when I came OUT of church - the car next to our minivan had a huge tree branch that had fallen through the front windshild - shattering it.

Hey Crash!

You wanted a flag, right?

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How about this one?

Ooooooo ....
I like it!!

Let's just immortalize the ONE image I was "called out" on! I like it!

<chuckles>

Thanks Tom! ​

 

[eeyorelvr10]

Hey Tom - I was wondering if you were affected. Glad to hear it isn't so back yet. I have been on the run all day and this is the first I've had to check in today. Hope all continues to go well for you and prayers and good wishes to all those that will be needing it.

Let's hope that this will be contained or at lest put into some semblance of control pretty soon w/o any more losses.