[K9] Kennel Club

K9's Final Days?

The time has finally come for me to make a decision regarding the [K9] Clan. K9 membership has dropped off and the forums are getting very little attention. I know there is still a small group of avid members who still play on the Dogpound and who play DOD, but I no longer have the resources (mostly time) to help maintain this group.

It has been a good run! K9 has been one of the longest running gaming clans around with its approx. 10 year history. Members who joined in their teens are now in their 20's. We, as a group, have experienced many milestones together, including the death of one of members (Kibbles) and new life as some of our members' familys grew.

We set the standard for family oriented servers and, during our heyday, players from all around sought us out. You all should be very proud to have been a part of this grand experiment.

I am preparing to cancel K9's web hosting account by the end of the year. If someone has a webhost that they would like to use to host this site, please get in touch with me. The domain name will be open until February 2009, but is not set for auto renewal at this time. If no one wants to take this over, then it will die off.

My apologies to all for not staying in touch. Interest in other games, some minor hand injuries, and a new business have all kept me busy and away.

Reference the new business, you can check it out at www.preciseteam.com if you want. I am the "webmaster" for this venture and can be eached via the email on that site if the k9 mail goes down. Be kind if you visit the in the near future...it is still under construction.

Rock On Scotty!

Scotty on Myspace

Official Website

Scotty Bratcher began playing guitar at an age that it became second nature to him, he was 2. By this time, Stevie Ray Vaughan was impressing the world, and when the 1989 release of Austin City Limits was aired, you can imagine where Scotty was-in front of the television.

Eventually Scotty's father had acquired a few electric guitars that he let Scotty play as long as he was careful with them. He ended up, after a while, going to some open mic nights at clubs in the Cincinnati area. This was where he began getting on-stage experience and eventually found band members to support him In the next several years, Scotty sat in with various bands, one of which posed the opportunity to open for hero Lonnie Mack.

In 2000, he entered the National Jam with Kenny Wayne Shepherd Contest. In this contest, contestants were to download via computer, KWS’s new single of which the lead solo was to be made up by the competitors. Out of 1,200 entries, Scotty received 1st runner up.

Scotty has played with and opened for names like Ted Nugent, Little Texas, Buddy Guy, Joe Bonamassa, Chris Duarte, Anthony Gomes, Foghat, Lonnie Brooks, Ronnie and Wayne Baker Brooks, Bob Margolin, Eddie "the Chief" Clearwater, Dickey Betts, Lou Graham, and many more. Scotty is also an accomplished studio musician who has recorded with many blues, rock, country, gospel, funk and even heavy metal artists.

Scotty's first album was recorded when he was 13, and his second when he was 17. If you ever visit central Ohio, take the time to catch one of his shows.

Your Gas Money For A Flatscreen

By Glenn Beck - CNN

1.733

This number should put our skyrocketing gas prices into perspective. To explain: In January 2007, gas prices were at a measly $2.17 a gallon. Since then they've skyrocketed to more than $4. Considering the average amount of gas used per household, the rise has cost us approximately $1,690. With the average 42-inch plasma screen going for $975, just the extra cash you've forked over for gas in the last year and a half could have bought you 1.733 plasma TVs. And that number just keeps rising.

Of course, there are a lot more serious issues than the "flat screen factor." Gas prices have changed families who were once able to save a little into families breaking even. Families who used to break even now run up credit cards. Families who ran up credit cards now dodge calls from creditors. And families who dodged calls from creditors are now families in full-fledged financial crisis. (Like Ed McMahon, I've heard.)

So, the question is: What do we do?

President Bush and many Republicans argue that increasing domestic production of oil is the right strategy. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has become a recent convert to this philosophy as well; at least as far as offshore drilling is concerned. (His lack of support for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge [ANWR] is a distinction I can't understand. If we can drill safely without environmental harm under thousands of feet of water, why not on a small patch of ice in the middle of thousands of desolate square miles?)

Those who disagree with drilling here usually cite one of a few standard arguments:

"It's not going to help for another 10 years!"

Here's the thing. America is a long-term plan for me. I don't know where these people plan to be in 10 years, but I plan to be here. This is, of course, the same argument heard around President Clinton's veto of ANWR drilling in 1995. Among other things, if we had started drilling ANWR then, oil would be already flowing. At its peak, ANWR could supply 1.45 million barrels per day, enough to tell Hugo Chavez and all his Venezuelan oil to shove it (with a little change left over). Of course, Clinton didn't have Chavez to deal with back then. If only he were thinking 10 years into the future.

“We can't drill ourselves out of this problem!"

Maybe not solely, or forever, but it sure can help. With new technology, who knows what we can do over time? The government estimates that the outer continental shelf alone has 76 billion barrels of oil that are recoverable, and that's just with today's technology.
To put that number into perspective, it's equal to every barrel of oil that we'd import from everywhere outside of North America for 31 years at our current pace. But instead of developing these resources, we throw up endless roadblocks. If you don't think that pumping more of our own oil would affect prices, ask yourself what would happen if we did the opposite. What if we announced today that we were turning all of our existing pumps off?

"What about the environment?"

This may surprise those who think I'm the pre-eminent murderer of the Earth, but the only real argument against owning our own oil destiny is an environmental one.
Under this theory: High gas prices equal less gas usage, which equals a saved planet. Thomas Friedman, in a recent column, laid it out in an honest fashion: "Now that [gas] is $4 a gallon, the government should at least keep it there, since it is really having the right effect."

He went on to describe Chrysler's promotion that guarantees cheaper gas as "the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounted cigarettes to teenagers." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, apparently agrees, saying that coal and oil are making us sick along with "ruining our country" and "ruining our world." If you believe such nonsense, then it's perfectly rational to ignore our ample energy resources. (It's not rational to combine that with complaints about high gas prices, sorry Harry Reid.)

For the rest of us, while visions of the Exxon Valdez may dance through your head, the National Academy of Sciences found that the offshore industry is among the safest industrial activities in the United States. And please, next time you hear someone complaining about environmental risks of drilling at home, remember this from a 2003 speech from the director of the US Minerals Management Services: "Imports present an environmental risk of spills about 13 times greater than domestic production" and "natural seeps account for 150-175 times more oil in the ocean than outer continental shelf oil and gas operations." NATURAL SEEPS? Now we know who the real polluter is -- that evil wench -- Mother Nature.

"It's all the speculators"

Speculation has a place in all markets, but as usual our lawmakers and much of the media are focused on the wrong thing. Speculators don't make money when the markets go up, they make it when they are right. The proper question to ask isn't, "How do we stop the speculators?" It is, "What are the speculators speculating about?" They are trying to predict oil prices in a world they know will have increased demand, with the explosive growth in developing economies like China and India and where the No. 1 oil consumer refuses to take drilling seriously. Which way would you bet oil prices were going? Think what would happen if our government acted decisively and let the world know that we will fully develop our own energy resources - From oil drilling, to coal to liquids, to shale, to new refineries, to nuclear power, to alternative fuels.

What if nothing were off the table and the hurdles were removed? What if we let the world know that we will not sit idly by and let two-faced friends and stone-faced enemies determine the lifeblood of our civilization?

What if we demonstrated that with real action instead of empty words?

I'd like to find out. It's time for a new flat screen.

Migration Completed

Well, that didn't take long! Coolie migrated all the files and redirected the DNS, and voila, the site works. I know Startlogic sucks, but at least we should have our clan emails back again.

Let me (and more importantly, Coolie) know if you encounter any problems.

BD

Website Migrating Back To Startlogic Host

Coolie is in the process of backing up and transferring the website files back to the original host. If you remember, we had some speed issues with Startlogic and Coolie fixed it by transferring the site to a temporary host.

There is no real way of testing to see if the original host has worked out the issues other than just giving it a try.

Once Coolie has backed up the files, nothing else posted will transfer. I could take Startlogic several hours, or even into tomorrow, to resolve the DNS. I will keep an eye on that and post a new item here to let you all know that it has been taken care of.

Good Luck, Coolie!

Climate Facts To Warm Up To

Christopher Pearson | March 22, 2008

(Related Story Here)

CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs.

Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is etraordinary."

Web Host Having MySQL issues. Website Slow

Thank you for contacting Support.

We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. I checked your Web site http://k9clan.us/Nuke/ and noticed that you had created it with MySQL database. Currently we are experiencing an issue with our server. We have received many complaints from the customers all around. By looking at the serious of the issue, our engineers have put forward a fix by adding additional MySQL servers.

We have lots of customers in the queue and the additional MySQL servers are added on a random basis. We do not know the exact time frame when your account will be upgraded to the additional MySQL severs. Believe us, once the additional MySQL servers are in place, you will not experience any MySQL slowness or MySQL issue.

We do understand the importance of your business to you and we are doing our level best to provide you with the maximum support as we can do to resolve your issue. We need your kind co-operation until this issue is resolved.

Welcome To The New Ice Age

This is for [K9] Cerberus - with love and affection :)

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Read full story here

Bugatti Veyron vs. Erofighter Typhoon

Its a one mile out and back drag race between the worlds fastest production car and a Eurofighter Typhoon jet.

Bugatti Veyron

The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is a mid-engine sports car produced by Volkswagen AG subsidiary Bugatti Automobiles SAS. It is the quickest accelerating and decelerating street-legal production car in the world, and it was the world's fastest car until it was beaten by the SSC Ultimate Aero TT.

Powered by a 1,001 PS (987 hp/736 kW) W16 engine,[2] it is able to achieve an average top speed of 408.47 km/h (253.81 mph).[3] The car reached full production in September 2005, and is handcrafted in a factory Volkswagen built near the former Bugatti headquarters in Château St Jean in Molsheim (Alsace, France). It is named after French racing driver Pierre Veyron, who won the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1939 while racing for the original Bugatti firm.

(Complete story here)

Eurofighter Typhoon

The Eurofighter Typhoon is a twin-engine multi-role canard-delta strike fighter aircraft. It is being designed and built by a consortium of three separate `partner companies' - Alenia Aeronautica, BAE Systems and EADS - working through a holding company Eurofighter GmbH which was formed in 1986. The project is managed by NETMA (the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency) which acts as the prime customer.[3] As early as 1979, studies began into what would become the Eurofighter Typhoon.

(Complete story here)

The Bugatti and Typhoon start out on a runway side by side. The bugatti does a straight mile out, has to break and turn around, and then end at the start point.

The Typhoon takes off from a dead stop beside the Bugatti, lifts off as quickly as possible, climbs one mile straight (or as close as possible), turns in mid air, come back down along the runway to cross the starting point. The jet does not land on the runway but finishes the race in the air.

Which one will win? Vote in the poll before viewing the video. No Cheating!

Gamer uses virtual training to save lives

Think playing video games is little more than a great way to waste time? Then you haven't met Paxton Galvanek. Last November, the twenty-eight year-old helped rescue two victims from an overturned SUV on the shoulder of a North Carolina interstate. As the first one on the scene, Galvanek safely removed both individuals from the smoking vehicle and properly assessed and treated their wounds, which included bruises, scrapes, head trauma and the loss of two fingers.

His medical background? None - other than what he's learned playing as a medic in the computer game America's Army.
The first-person shooter is developed and distributed by the U.S. Army. Though part of its mission is to promote its military namesake, America's Army is a fully-featured game that takes players through a virtual representation of real-life soldiering, from basic training to the field of battle. To play as a medic class, players must sit through extensive medical training tutorials based on real-life classes.

Lucky for the two survivors that Paxton Galvanek didn't zone out during the training, as the gamer credits this experience with teaching him how to handle himself in an emergency situation.

"In the case of this accident, I evaluated the situation and placed priority on the driver of the car who had missing fingers," he said. "I then recalled that in section two of the medic training, I learned about controlled bleeding. I noticed that the wounded man had severe bleeding that he could not control. I used a towel as a dressing and asked the man to hold the towel on his wound and to raise his hand above his head to lessen the blood flow which allowed me to evaluate his other injuries which included a cut on his head."

By the time help arrived in the form of -- ironically enough -- an Army soldier, the individuals were in stable condition and awaiting the paramedics.

Galvanek's decisions were lauded by game project director Colonel Casey Wardynski. "Because of the training he received in America's Army's virtual classroom, Mr. Galvanek had mastered the basics of first aid and had the confidence to take appropriate action when others might do nothing. He took the initiative to assess the situation, prioritize actions and apply the correct procedures... Paxton is a true hero."

According to the developers of America's Army, this is the second time one of their users has reportedly applied techniques learned in the game to real-life emergency situations. You can find more information about the game at www.americasarmy.com.

http://us.i1.yimg.com/videogames.yahoo.com/feature/gamer-uses-virtual-training-to-save-lives/1181064