Oceana

Oceana, originally uploaded by captainjay.

We went to Oceana in Frenchtown tonight for Shaunda's birthday. It was awesome! Great view, great service, great food, definitely a must do if you're in St. Thomas. They even brought out a desert with a candle and sang happy birthday, but quietly so not to bother anyone elses
dinner. You say its your birthday.....

More about the Haze

(Webcam on St. John looking over at St. Thomas)

There are still conflicting stories on the haze, but here are a few ideas:

One explanation from Montserrat Volcano Observatory http://www.mvo.ms/
Activity Report – 5 May 2008

There was a small pyroclastic flow on the eastern flank of the Soufriere Hills Volcano at 2 am on Monday 5th May, 2008. Light ashfall was reported in the Old Town area.

The flow may have been triggered by very heavy rainfall at the time, which also generated lahars.

A brief swarm of volcano-tectonic earthquakes occurred at the same time as the flow. These were located at a very shallow depth beneath the dome.

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Another explanation from Caribbean Hurricane Network http://stormcarib.com/

Saharan Dust has spread across over half of the Atlantic hurricane belt but only smidges have reached the Eastern Caribbean while some Soufriere Hills volcanic ash has made it's way to the northern islands.

Overall, it's getting hotter and muggier with ocean temps slowly rising as well. 'Tis the season!

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And finally, from the Source
Spring-Summer Sahara Haze Hangs Over the Islands
http://www.onepaper.com/stthomasvi/?p=1212897610

So who knows, I just hope it ends soon.

Hazy Days

Its been hazy here the last couple of days. There's several theories, Sahara sand storm (yes that actually happens), ash from the volcano erruption in Montserrat or maybe its just plain old humidity.

The cistern runeth over

The cistern runeth over, originally uploaded by captainjay.

After two heavy rains, last night and night before, the cistern has had enough so its running out the overflow.....which is a good thing.

Day Off and Doing Chores

Well I was off today. So I caught up on some chores. I installed the vanity in one of the apartments downstairs that I had promised Shelba a few weeks ago. I also did a little work on the roof and continued to get the pool a little closer to usable. Lower pH soon come. I also managed a trip to the mailbox, sent out the last of the tax stuff to the accountant so he can file my taxes, extension of course. Plus I stopped by the gourmet gallery as well to grab the odds and ends that I couldn't get on the last Cost You Less trip. Oh the glamour of the island life.

The laptop is still on the blink so I am doing this from Deb's work one that she brought home. The Disk image BS installed by Dell was a total and utter failure for recovery. So one of the guys at the University has it now and will try a full reformat and re-install of the operating system. We did manage to back up most of our files on the portable hard drive prior to total meltdown.

More on the laptop

Well, we tried hooking up an external monitor to the laptop to see if it was just the LCD that went bad, but that didn't work. I didn't think that was it because when you boot up the computer, it displays the Windows splash screen, but then that goes away and just goes to black. We are running Windows XP and Dell didn't send the XP disks. It came with some restore software and said you didn't need the disks. Well, we ran the restore and it did nothing. We ran all the bios tests, hardware, screen, etc and everything passed. So I guess we get to spend the evening calling Dell help desk.....that should be fun. Any other suggestions before we burn a whole evening on the phone?

At least I finally got my new work laptop (it only took 2 1/2 months), so I'm going to start bringing it home every evening.
Deb

Dead Dell

Dead Dell, originally uploaded by captainjay.

We don't know what went wrong but the laptop has died. We ran Dell's
restoration software that came with and all we get is a black screen
on start up.
Jay