Tom_Johnson's Blog

Had a great time this weekend hanging out with 2,000 or so of my closest friends at the 16th Annual March of Dimes Mud Volleyball Challenge.  A record 168 teams entered and what a great day it was.  The rain from Fay cleared just before everthing got rolling at 8 a.m. making for perfect conditions to get muddy!

If you did not know it... I volunteer as a member of the March of Dimes Board of Directors and I am so proud of that... especially when I go to kickin' M.O.D. events like the Mud Volleyball Challenge.  We raised around $200,000 to help babies and try to put a stop to premature birth.  Check out the photo gallery by clicking on the MORNINGS tab above.

If you were there... thanks!  If you were not... make sure you become a part of it next year... it really is a muddy blast!

Well... here we go again... right?  I really could've gone the rest of my life without experiencing another tropical storm/hurricane in Central Florida.  After living at the tv station through 3 storms (Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne) in the summer of '04.  I have been through 8 hurricanes during my career in tv news.  Before Hurricane Charley... I kind of got a charge out of covering them.  That all changed when I was sitting in my house (the first I've ever owned) and the power went out... then large pieces of oak tree starting raining down on the roof as Charley's eye passed right over top of us.  I learned to have a much more healthy respect for these storms that night and I no longer look forward to covering them in any way.  What are your memories of that long, stormy summer of '04... the "Summer of Storms?"


(Charley bearing down on Central Florida)


(Frances comes ashore)


(Radar loop of Jeanne)

FIve years ago today... 10's of millions of people (including me) were plunged into darkness and uncertainty in the northeast... upper midwest and parts of Canada.  I will never forget it as long as I live.  It was a Thursday afternoon I think.  I was at home... my wife was working at the tv station we both worked for at the time.  I remember reaching into the refrigerator and seeing the bulb dim to a very odd brownish color... never seen anything like it before.  I shut the door and then it dawned on me that what I had seen was not normal.  So I re-opened the door. At that exact moment... the power went out!  It freaked me out.  The door shutting and the power fritzing were so close together that at first I thought the door closing caused the power problem!  I went outside to see if the power was out in the rest of the complex.  It was.  Then I walked down a the street a bit and the power was out there too.

I went home and called my wife at the tv station.  I asked if they had heard anything about the power going out in our little suburb.  Her response was essentially:  "You idiot... the power's out to half the country... I gotta go!"  (maybe that's a little stronger than it was... but you get the idea!)  That's when I started getting nervous.  This was less than 2 years after the 9/11 attacks.  We lost power for almost two days along with New York... Detroit and parts of Canada.  It turns out the whole thing was caused by overgrown trees (that were supposed to have been trimmed back) hit power lines... that knocked one power station out... then the whole northeast grid dominoed off-line!

Something very good came out of it in my neighborhood though.  When darkness fell... word started going around that there was going to be an impromptu cookout at the community pool.  A bunch of people were bringing grills and the idea was to cook the meat you were gonna lose anyway because of the power outage.  I met people I had never spoken with before that night.

I recently discovered something that frankly... scares me to death!  Did you know that human trafficking is the 2nd most lucrative illegal enterprise on earth?  The U.S. Department of Justice says that 800,000 people are victims of international human trafficking and smuggling every year.  Approximately 20,000 of those cases involve the United States.

Here's the even scarier part:  Florida is among the top 3 states where it happens.  Most of the victims are imported **into** the U.S.  They are often used as essentially modern day slaves in various ways that I will not going into detail about.  (You can probably guess though.)  This is just horrible, horrible stuff.

While most of the people who are victims of human trafficking and smuggling are brought into the U.S.  Sometimes U.S. citizens are taken and sold then shipped abroad.  It seems like something you would see in a movie.  Unfortunately it's real life and it should really give everyone who knows about it reason to pause and reflect on our world.

If you wanna learn more... here are a couple of websites you can check out:

Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking

Florida Freedom Partnership

Hey... I wanna thank all of you who came out Saturday to take advantage of and support the wonderful "Take Your Best Shot Back-to-School Bash."  I had a fantastic time emceeing the event on the main stage... Lauren Laponzina tells me she said hello to and signed autographs for about 500 of you at FOX 35's booth on the concourse.  It feels good knowing that we helped a lot of Central Florida students with free back-to-school immunizations, physicals and school supplies.  Again... thanks and check the photos below of some of the new friends I made there.

 

Now this is taking a stand against smoking!  What do ya think?

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Health officials want to make the tiny South Pacific island of Niue (NEE'-oo-ay) the first country inthe world to be fully smoke-free by banning tobacco.

A bill proposing to ban smoking and the sale of tobacco in all public areas and private homes has been drafted and presented to lawmakers, Dr. Sitaleki Finau, Niue's top public health official, said Tuesday.

The government has not yet signed up to the plan, and Finau conceded it could face stiff opposition from tobacco companies and other commercial interests.

But health officials were urging legislators to be bold and impose the bans.

"Small countries are allowed to be ambitious," Finau told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "If a small country can do this, then big countries will start thinking. Imagine what that means."

Niue, a lone island measuring just 100 square miles about 1,500 miles northeast of New Zealand, has about 250 smokers among its 1,300 population, Finau said.

Sometimes life really does imitate art.  Remember in the movie "Aliens" they had a contraption called a "power loader?"  It looked kind of like a forklift that you wear like a suit of sorts.  It allowed "Ripley" (Sigourney Weaver) and anyone else to lift incredible amounts of weight. (See first clip below.)  Now... 22 years after the movie... the real thing is here.  It was built by Ratheon and it's amzingly cool! (See second clip)

 

I am a techno-geek.  I have no problem admiting that.  "(singing)I love technology...!" (See Dynamite, Napoleon)  And while I do not have an iPhone (budget constraints prevent it) myself... I do think they are REALLY cool.  So it's with some excitement (and jealousy!) that I can tell you it looks like the new version of the iPhone (called the "3G" model) is just about here.  Have not heard details of how it's gonna be new and improved... but it's apparently coming out in late June.

* First clue: Apple's website is sold out of the current versions. Can't buy it from the online.

* The second clue is an AT&T Mobile memo (see the memo here.)essentially cancelling vacations between June 15th and July 12th because of "an exciting Summer Promotional Launch."

Fortune magazine guesses the actual launch date for the 3G iPhone is June 27th. (see the article here!)

Do you have one of the current iPhones?  Will you buy one of the 3G iPhones? Can you lend me $300-400 to buy one, plus the monthly service fee? (just kidding!)

You may have heard about the Bushnell man who was bitten by an Indian Cobra snake this week.  He's in the hospital and alive after getting a lot of antivenin pumped into him... including 20 vials flown in by Miami's Venom Response Team.  I ask you a simple question... WHY?  Why would you keep a cobra?  Why not a dog or a cat?  Maybe a running chainsaw would even be better!  Here're some things you might not know about Cobras and Miami's Venom Team.


(Photo from: http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/indian-cobra:naja-naja-ph
oto-1829.html)

* Indian Cobra's average length is about 6 feet
* Without treatment death from respiratory failure can happen as early as 30 minutes after being bitten.
* Cobra bites are fatal in about 10% of human cases.
* Cobra will only attack a person if provoked or in other circumstances which threaten its survival
* Cobra strikes are quite slow when compared to the extremely rapid strikes of such species as rattlesnakes

Miami-Dade Venom Response Team 

* Highly specialized team of paramedics trained in response, management, and treatment snake bites
* Has only antivenin bank for public use in the U.S.
* Responds 24 hours a day locally, nationally, and internationally
* Provides antivenin mainly to eastern U.S. and Caribbean
* Has 25 antivenins for 95% of all venomous snakes

O.K. all you amateur arachnologists out there... I need your help. We have a bunch of the spiders you see below... all around our yard right now. Most if not all of their webs are attached to plants. I'm relatively sure that they are not poisonous because there are only two poisonous spiders in Florida to begin with... widows and recluses. (By the way... recluses are not even native to FL but a few got here somehow! How dare they!!!) Anyway... take a gander at the photo I took of one of these suckers and see if you can tell me what they are because I really wanna know!

Wanna reason to pay attention to India and Pakistan's nuclear weapons?  A new study says a regional nuclear war would cause problems all over the world... not just in the countries involved.

India and Pakistan are at each other's throats and they both have LOTS of nukes.

The National Academy of Sciences says if they launch... the resulting fires would blast a ton of soot into the atmosphere.  That could cause holes in the ozone layer over major cities around the globe.  Scary!

No matter how many times I see a shuttle launch... I still get chills when I see lift-off.  Is it just me?  I'm sure most of you were not up at 2:28 a.m. to watch Endeavour head for the stars and I can't say that I blame you.  If you were though... what are your impressions?  I hear that this was not visible to much of Central Florida because of cloud cover?  Where do you live and could you see it there?  What are your favorite launch memories?  Also... if you went to Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch... make sure you upload your pics to our launch photo gallery.  There's a link right on our home page.  Here's one from the gallery... taken as Endeavour cleared the launch pad and raced toward the heaven's this morning:

Isn't it amazing how something can happen today that instantly brings back crystal clear memories of something that happened years ago?  That happened to me yesterday when the gigantic Florida Power Outage went down.  It brought back a flood of memories from the Great Northeast Blackout of 2003.

My wife and I lived and worked in Cleveland at the time.  It was a little after 4 p.m... I was home and opened the refrigerator to get something.  I'll never forget seeing the light in the 'frig do this weird "surge" kind of thing... then turn an odd orange-brownish color.  I remember thinking: "O.K... that's weird."  I closed the door and the power went out.  I had no idea the true scope of things yet.  Then about a half hour later I called my wife.  We both worked at a Cleveland TV station.  She told me she was to busy to talk "because of what's going on."  I said: "O.K. call me stupid... what's going on?"  That's when she told me that the power was off to the ENTIRE northeast from Detroit to New York City and up into Canada.  The chill that went down my spine was electric.  Keep in mind... this was about a month shy of two years since the 9/11 attacks so everyone immediately wondered if terrorists had figured out a way to take down the power grid.  Thank God it turned out to not be that!

Vector map from North America second level political division 2.svg by Alex Covarrubias.

Data and colours from North America blackout.png by Smurrayinchester

That night was one of the strangest I've ever spent.  Let me tell you... being without power... in a major suburb of a large city is C-R-E-E-P-Y!  It just seems un-natural.  The normally lit up neighborhood was pitch dark.  We all slept with the windows open... no fans... in mid-August.  Even our cats were freaked out!  But in the midst of all the oddities... something really cool happened.  Word started going through our complex about ain impromptu party at the pool.  The thinking went like this:  Meat in our refrigerators was gonna go bad because the power was expected to be out for days... so why not bring a bunch of grills together... and cook it all up and get to know your neighbors?  That's just what we did!  I met neighbors I had never met before... and we all had a great time.  Then we went back to our dark, quiet and hot little cottages and tried our best to sleep.

Amazing how one event can trigger such vivid memories of something that happened years ago... isn't it?

Every spring there are dozens and dozens of "Bridal Shows."  And of course... for every wedding there's also a "Bridal Shower."  So, here's what I wanna know:  Where are the "Groom Shows" and why don't men get a "Groom Shower?"  And don't tell me that the guys get a "Bachelor Party" because women get those too.  I want answers people!  I'm already happily married but bottom line... this is patently unfair and we guys need to stand-up for our rights so no groom ever gets slighted again!!!

My wife and some friends went to see Michael Buble in concert this weekend at the beautiful and sparkling new UCF Arena.  The show was great... and the customer service ended up being good... but we had a small issue before that. 

Here's what happened:  We were seated in the first row of Sec. 203.  It's all the way at the back of the arena, upper level.  Almost as soon as we sat down... water started dripping on all of us.  I looked around at people in the rows behind and next to ours and the water was dripping down on them as well.  A look up quickly revealed the culprit without much investigation.  There is a huge pipe that appears to be for air conditioning that runs directly over those rows from one side of the arena to the other.  (The pipe is in the top left corner of the photo below...  which comes from the UCF Arena website.) The water was drip, drip, dripping on us from that pipe.  We went to Guest Services, told them what was happening and about 20-minutes later they moved us to new and better seats that did not have water dripping on them.  At one point someone in our party overheard a guest services worker say that this problem happens often during events in the arena.  So, I wonder, is this a design flaw maybe?  Have you seen a show at UCF Arena and had this happen to you?

(The pipe in question is visible in the top left corner here.)