I’ve been wondering around YouTube a lot lately, I’ve found that there is a ton of junk on there, (I wanted to use another word but I’ll keep it clean.) but if you look a little closer there is also a lot of really cool things. I have found some amazing guitar players who put up new videos quite often. There are also a lot of cool music things, like today I did a search for Jerry Reed and all of these videos of him and Chet Atkins performing on TV shows came up. But tonight I found something that I think is so cool that I had to share it with you. Not only for the video, but also for the organization that put it together.

This video is put together by an organization called The Striking Viking Story Pirates.
Here is a section of their mission statement,

The Striking Viking Story Pirates adapt and perform stories written by kids as a way of celebrating the words and ideas of young people, to promote literacy as a vital part of early childhood education, and to preserve the spark of youthful creativity often lost in the transition to adulthood.

Founded in 2003 the Pirates’ programs have grown to reach tens of thousands of children each year. By focusing on the power of communication and self-expression, SVSP gives children the tools to become confident, literate students, and encourages kids to become more thoughtful and passionate writers and speakers— in and out of school.

I think that these guys are doing some amazing work. I love the way children write. It is so truthful and in many cases so wise and thoughtful. And this group is working to keep the art of writing alive and well.

So check out this video, it’s hilarious. And when you’re done click on the link above and check out their web site. Also, here is their link to YouTube where you can find all of their videos. Story Pirates on YouTube

The video is called The Day I Got My Head Stuck in a Barstool and was written by elementary schooler Russel Kay. You will laugh and you will be singing the song for the rest of the day

Totally cloudy in Bishop this morning and the smell of rain is in the air. Just checked the radar and it looks like there is rain all around us at the moment. Checking out the web cams it’s raining in Mammoth, Mono Lake and June Lake. Looks like a wet day in the Sierra today. That’s awesome.

Over the last couple of weeks  I’ve been notified by a few people that they couldn’t post their comment. They’d click the Add Comment button and the comment didn’t go up.

I just discovered what happened to these comments, they were looked at as spam and put in the spam folder. I see that there are a few other comments left by you guys in there too. So if you’ve left a comment and it didn’t get posted, that’s why.

Until I can get this figured out I will check the spam folder each day for comments that don’t belong there. If I find one in there I will de-spam it (that’s what they’re calling it) and it will go on the site. So if you post a comment and it doesn’t show up I should catch it now and get it posted.

Don’t you just love modern technology?

I can’t complain to much though, ’cause this anti spam program works and catches all of those porn sites and other crap that tries to post in the comments.

Ok, I just did some searching and I guess this is something we’re just going to have to live with. It looks like my newest job on SierraVisions will be checking my spam daily to pull out the “good comments”. Oh well, we’ll get by. Don’t let this keep you from commenting, I love hearing from you guys and if it means a little more work, then it’s fine with me.

I think I just fried my desktop computer.

I was unplugging a USB device and the plug didn’t want to come out, it seemed stuck. So I gave it a harder pull and it came out. But my computer turned itself off at the same time. Now the computer won’t turn back on. Nothing, it’s dead. I just did some searching on Google and it seems that this is a fairly common problem. You unplug a USB plug with the computer running and it shorts out your motherboard and power supply. DAMN!!!

So my word of warning is that if you are unplugging anything from your computer, turn it off first. I know that you’re supposed to be able to unplug and plug in USB with the computer on, but I will never do that again.

I still have the laptop, but I have to figure out what I’m going to do about the other computer. Luckily I have all of my photos and graphics on an external hard drive, so I can plug that into the laptop and still have access to them. They are also backed up on DVD’s.

Well needless to say, I won’t be putting up my new pictures today.