July 4th Fireworks Video
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I thought I would share some of the video I took at our 4th of July party last week. We went to a friend’s house for a party they have every year. Five homeowners on a cul-de-sac buy fireworks all year long to shoot off on the 4th. It’s amazing! At the beginning of the video, you will see the “fireworks table” that does not even include one homeowners’ stash! We watched for an hour and a half, before we had to leave and they had just reached the half-way point. You will see one style of firework that was new to us this year called a “Finale.” It was a box that was about 3′ long by 2′ wide with one fuse. You will know them when you see them in the video, as they look like a machine gun going off on the ground. We all had a great time and can’t wait for next year.
I also decided to try Amazon’s new video widget with this video. With this new feature, Amazon lets you upload video to your associates account and add products into the video with your associates ID built in. I chose to add in the Flip video camera, since I took the video with my Flip and some other products that seemed to fit the occasion. 
New Blog Theme
I decided on a whim yesterday to change the blog theme. I just did not like the darkness of the Modernpaper theme and I wanted a place for a banner in the header. I forced one into Modernpaper, but it looked one way in Firefox and a different way in IE.
I really like the new, cleaner look, thanks to the free Revolution blog Wordpress template from Brian Gardner. Brian has really increased his free template offerings and just recently came out with a new paid theme, called Revolution City. Brian hopes to see this theme used for city portals that look to monetize their sites, as well as include more current web content like video.
Drill Here, Drill Now
Once again, Noel Sheppard has put a fine point on the oil discussion with his most recent post, Planet Gore, on National Review Online. This is a must-read article about our oil supply situation, but just to highlight some of the points of the article, Sheppard says we only have ourselves to blame for $4 gas, due to our unwillingness to buck political correctness and a vocal-minority of environmentalists on the left and drill for our own oil in our own waters and our own land. The current crop of Democrats controlling the House and the Senate both use the tired “it will be years before we have oil coming out of the ground” excuse, completely ignoring the speculative nature of commodities trading; current speculation that expects American policy to continue in a decreasing production state, exacerbating our current supply issues.
Noel rightfully notes that we’ve had at least two warnings that we must increase our oil production and refinement, starting 35 years ago.
“– the first coming in 1973 when OPEC decided to ban sales of oil to nations that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and the second in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution in Iran — the U.S. seems determined to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
Additionally, Sheppard goes on to discuss the many opportunities we have for oil exploration in our own country that go far beyond the field in ANWR.
This discussion expands on my post about the Real Cost of Gasoline and the profit margins of big oil. The major component of the cost at the pump is in the commodity price. This is a commodity that is in short supply due to liberal policies that have decreased production by 22% in the US for the last 35 years, while countries surrounding us have increased production (Canada by 85% in the same period and Mexico by 64%) and other nearby countries have become totally oil independent, such as Brazil. This decline comes in the face of high increases in demand. Politicians keep talking about gaining oil independence, but it sure looks like a lot of talk when our production continues to decline and road blocks to exploration and production are thrown up as recently as last week. In the meantime, liberals want us to find alternatives for oil to fuel our economy. As the cost of gasoline continues to rise beyond what Americans can reasonably afford and Democrats keep hindering our own oil exploration and production, we’ll get those “alternatives,” but at what cost to the US people and economy?
Host Gator
As you may have noticed, I am missing a few posts from my blog. Yesterday, I accidentally deleted almost all the folders from my site, including all files for this blog. I FREAKED to say the least. I expected to have to re-build my entire blog from memory. Needless to say, I have a whole new philosophy on backing up my data. Fortunately, my host company, Host Gator keeps a backup of my account and for a very small fee they would restore the site to the most recent backup. I expected this would take between 12 and 24 hours, maybe more. It took less than 15 minutes! Needless to say, I was shocked! Host Gator
has provided fantastic customer service since day one and this one incident just continued to astonish me. People often harp on the negatives and complaints, but after saving my butt, I thought Host Gator
deserved a hearty “Atta Boy!”
Most importantly, taking a page from the Democrats voting play-book, backup your stuff early and often!
Welcome to The Real Tim Jones
The name of this blog pretty much says it all — this is the real Tim Jones. This is me. I have WIDE and VARIED interests and this blog will reflect that experience. Here is my About Me page to give you a starting foundation for the blog:
My name is Tim Jones and this is my blog! I am a dad, a husband, a Florida Gator, an outdoors enthusiast, an affiliate marketer, a travel agent, a general contractor, a serial entrepreneur, conservative, a writer, and on and on. This blog is for me to post whatever catches my fancy at the moment. This could be politics, technology, affiliate marketing, travel, construction, religion, the outdoors, and anything else. You never know what you might find here, but you better keep checking back, because it could get interesting!
