Great Firewall Of China Now Has Animated Cops to go along with the warnings.

The photo above was taken from the http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/

This comes as no news to the people of China. For years they have been monitored by the government and defiantly know if they enter a certain word or words in a yahoo or Google search . They will told by the government you are being watched and that you are trying to look up unauthorized material. Well now they have added Animated Cops to go along with the warning. There are ways around the Great firewall of China but when China finds them they block them and the people have to look for another route through cyberspace to get the information you are looking for. The link below is a video news report.

Glen

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/246/popup/index.php?cl=3962298

Have A Happy Moon Festival Everyone.

This is a time for family & friends to get together. Our Local FCC is hosting a get together for the families & kids with lots of games and story telling. It is a good time to get caught up on what everyone has been up to. Below are some stories of the moon Festival.

Glen

I. The Lady - Chang Er
The time of this story is around 2170 B.C. The earth once had ten suns circling over it, each took its turn to illuminate to the earth. But one day all ten suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. The earth was saved by a strong and tyrannical archer Hou Yi. He succeeded in shooting down nine of the suns. One day, Hou Yi stole the elixir of life from a goddess. However his beautiful wife Chang Er drank the elixir of life in order to save the people from her husband's tyrannical rule. After drinking it, she found herself floating and flew to the moon. Hou Yi loved his divinely beautiful wife so much, he didn't shoot down the moon.

II. The Man - Wu Kang
Wu Kang was a shiftless fellow who changed apprenticeships all the time. One day he decided that he wanted to be an immortal. Wu Kang then went to live in the mountains where he importuned an immortal to teach him. First the immortal taught him about the herbs used to cure sickness, but after three days his characteristic restlessness returned and he asked the immortal to teach him something else. So the immortal to teach him chess, but after a short while Wu Kang's enthusiasm again waned. Then Wu Kang was given the books of immortality to study. Of course, Wu Kang became bored within a few days, and asked if they could travel to some new and exciting place. Angered with Wu Kang's impatience, the master banished Wu Kang to the Moon Palace telling him that he must cut down a huge cassia tree before he could return to earth. Though Wu Kang chopped day and night, the magical tree restored itself with each blow, and thus he is up there chopping still.

III. The Hare - Jade Rabbit
In this legend, three fairy sages transformed themselves into pitiful old men and begged for something to eat from a fox, a monkey and a rabbit. The fox and the monkey both had food to give to the old men, but the rabbit, empty-handed, offered his own flesh instead, jumping into a blazing fire to cook himself. The sages were so touched by the rabbit's sacrifice that they let him live in the Moon Palace where he became the "Jade Rabbit."

IV. The Cake - Moon Cake
During the Yuan dynasty (A.D.1280-1368) China was ruled by the Mongolian people. Leaders from the preceding Sung dynasty (A.D.960-1280) were unhappy at submitting to foreign rule, and set how to coordinate the rebellion without it being discovered. The leaders of the rebellion, knowing that the Moon Festival was drawing near, ordered the making of special cakes. Backed into each moon cake was a message with the outline of the attack. On the night of the Moon Festival, the rebels successfully attacked and overthrew the government. What followed was the establishment of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644). Today, moon cakes are eaten to commemorate this legend.

By Chinese Fortune-Telling Calendar

Six non-stop U.S.-China routes OK'd

By Ben Mutzabaugh, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Setting the framework for U.S.-China air service for the next few years, the U.S Department of Transportation on Tuesday approved six new non-stop routes to the mainland.
Delta Air Lines (DAL) received the go-ahead to begin service in the next few months between Atlanta and Shanghai. Almost immediately, Delta announced plans to begin flying the route on March 30 with Boeing (BA) 777s. The Shanghai route will be No. 3 Delta's first route to China. It had been the largest U.S. carrier without service.
Each of the USA's six big traditional carriers — American, (AMR) Continental, (CAL) Northwest, (NWA) United (UAUA) and US Airways (LCC) are the others — were awarded a route. Flights will start on a staggered schedule through 2009.
Routes to China are tightly regulated by bilateral aviation agreements. A recently approved agreement opened up the newly awarded routes. The DOT is next scheduled to award China routes starting in 2010, when it's expected to award authority for seven daily flights over a two-year period.
The DOT approved United Airlines for daily non-stop service between its San Francisco hub and Guangzhou, which currently has no direct link to the USA on a U.S. carrier. United said service will begin next spring.
The four other routes were recommendations by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, but final agency approval is expected. Those routes involve Newark, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia in the USA, and Beijing and Shanghai in China.
Trans-Atlantic carrier MAXjet was the only airline that applied for rights to China that failed to get a route. The all-business-class carrier proposed Seattle-to-Shanghai service, seeking one of the spots reserved in the rules for a "new entrant" to the China market.
But the DOT said the best way to "maximize our limited opportunities to enhance capacity" to China came instead from US Airways' bid. Tempe, Ariz.-based US Airways proposed bigger aircraft and argued that it could draw customers from that airline's broader route network.
US Airways CEO Doug Parker called the route a "historic opportunity." The carrier said it plans to fly the Philadelphia-Beijing route with a 269-seat Airbus A340 jet.
Earlier this year, United landed the rights for non-stop "capital to capital" service between Washington Dulles and Beijing in one of the most-competitive bidding efforts ever over the tightly controlled flight slots to China.

Annie at the Old Mill

North Little Rock's Old Mill is featured in the opening scenes of this classic film. The film is about a young woman, Scarlet O'Hara, from Atlanta during the American Civil War. Many Weddings are now performed here. Oh and we also took some time to feed some ducks.

Glen

China cracks down on one-child violators

Reuter photo

File photo of a man playing with his grandchild in Beijing, August 21, 2006. China...

From Yahoo news
Fri Sep 14, 9:19 AM ET
BEIJING - Urban Chinese who have more than one child will get a black mark on their credit record, the government said, in a scheme that appeared to target newly rich couples undeterred by fines from having extra children.
"In the future, city residents' family planning violations will be entered in the credit system of the People's Bank of China," said a notice posted late Thursday on the Web site of China's National Population and Family Planning Commission.
It didn't give additional details about the scheme and it was not immediately clear whether the action might affect a person's ability to conduct financial transactions.
China's 28-year-old family planning policy limits most urban couples to just one child and allows some families in the countryside to have a second child if their first is a girl.
Rising incomes mean many people can afford to break the rules and pay resulting fines. The government has tried to crack down on the trend by raising fines and, in some cases, trying to embarrass violators.
In February, the eastern province of Zhejiang announced it planned to name and shame rich families who ignored the one-child policy by paying to have their second or third baby.
China has about 1.3 billion people — 20 percent of the global total. The government has pledged to keep the population under 1.36 billion by 2010 and under 1.45 billion by 2020.

To Red Lobster We Go.

We went out to Red Lobster for our anniversary dinner and we all had it good time Annie is still in the stage where everything is new and exciting. Well almost everything home work is nothing new to her but she had gotten good marks on her grades these first few weeks so for English being her second language that is good.
Glen

17 years ago today.

17 years ago today.
Lori and I were married we have been through a lot together, partners for life, here’s to the next 17 years.
Glen

We are out of the review room

目前已审核完成2006年7月31日前受理的收养申请文件。

In English.

The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before July 31, 2006.

Boo Got A Job

I took Brandon by Mc Donals yesterday to see about geeting a Job and he starts work today how about that.
Glen

What's in the box?

After we got the mulch under control it was off to the mall so Annie, Lori, and Boo could get manicures and I could sit in the wonderful massage chairs that they have at the nail salon.

Annie standing back taking it all in.

Looks Heavy.




After 17 years of marriage we finally have our first new couch. We always bought 2nd hand furniture. It was nice to order it for ourselves this time, take it out of a box and not have to clean it first. I will express my feelings in the word that Annie likes to use, "yeah"

Glen

Looks like we have moles.

Me and Lori got up early this morning to tackle the mulch & beat the heat doing it. I am glad to say that we got all the mulch put into piles to be spread in the backyard. The front driveway is all cleaned up, mulching is such instant gratification.
Glen

What's in the truck?

12 yards of mulch!

We had the mulch delivered this morning after cleaning out the front flower beds. Annie helped us spread the mulch in the front flower beds after she got home from spending the night with some friends. Lori and I started wheelbarrowing the mulch around to the backyard this afternoon and will start and hopefully finish spreading all of it by tomorrow at about 10 am. We hadn't mulched in about 3 years and all of the existing mulch had pretty much turned to dirt and powder. It was time to it again.

We at least made it into the review room at CCAA.

From CCAA:

The CCAA has finished the review of the adoption application documents registered with our office before June 30, 2006.

The CCAA has finished the placement of children for the families whose adoption application documents were registered with our office before November 21, 2005.

November 21, 2005,
I will be so happy when they get into the same year that we were logged in July 22 2006. Glen

Done

I got up stretched out and pulled all the spacers out and cleaned off the tile in preparation for grout. Then I ran the kids to school.

Boy, it is a good thing I cleaned the tile wouldn’t want to get anything on them.

It's just grout.

Photos from this moring all done but still have to move all of our furniture back, and to say we have to dust would not do it justice, but I'm happy with the way it turned out. We laid the two floors 8 months apart and the tile STILL matches. We were worried that they would stop carrying it before we got done so, when I found out that I had a couple of days off I jumped on it now that my back can handle laying tile again.

Long Busy Day!

Well yesterday was a very productive day, but before I get into that let me just say my reef tank is doing swimmingly. All corals and fish survived & show no signs of stress from the move to the bar in the kitchen.
That clown fish loves his anenome way to much. He guards it with his life.

I also wanted to show you the piece of equipment (tile saw) Lori ran yesterday when she got home from work. While I put down morter and tile, she did the cutting. I am so proud of her she still has all her fingers.

First piece of hardy backer board goes down.




You put it down over mortar then nail it to the sub floor. Lots of nails went into this floor.


All the hardy board is finally down, now it is time to get some tile.
Lori made it home for the last two peices of the hardy board.



We wanted to match the tile in the kitchen and I figured it would take 14 boxes of tile to cover the floor. Then I would get a box or two of extra tile for broken pieces that you get sometimes when you buy tile & for any mistakes we made in cutting. They only had 13 boxes and 5 pieces. We bought it all in hopes it would be enough. No room for mistakes now & we did get 2 tiles that were broken but we managed to use them for some of our cut pieces.







I had to post this photo notice all the spirit orbs. You people that waste your money on having ghost busters come to your house need to get a life. It is dust in the air reflecting back from the flash you dorks. Lori had just finished sweeping the side where the bucket is before she took the photo.

Finally at 8:00 last night we were done laying the tile & hit the KFC for a late dinner. Today I will grout the joints in the tile, put the furnishings back, and start collecting the many sprit orbs with my proton power pack. I will post pics of the finished product.

Glen

My project for the next few days...

After work today the opportunity arose for me to finally get the tile in the living room laid down. The fish tank had to be drained and relocated to the bar in the kitchen, all of the furniture had to be moved throughout the house, and the desk had to be turned so that it was on the already laid tile in the kitchen which exposed the wiring birds nest that exists behind it. The flooring that is shown in the pictures is the linoleum that was underneath the flea infested carpet when we moved in in 2001. Lori immediatley ripped all of the carpet out and we have been slowly renivating and replacing the flooring since then. The living room is last to be done. More pictures tomorrow.

We went to parent - teacher night at the high school and met almost all of the kids teachers. We ran out of time and ended up missing 2 of them. Everyone was very happy to have Annie in their classes and remarked on how she is very smart and nice. Boo's teachers really like him as well and had lots of nice things to say about him, and also added that he calms down quickly when they ask him to during class. Boo's a talker and a comedian, we know it, if they don't they will soon.

The fellows at the Waterbuffalo Lodge in Bedrock would be proud!

Well, we decieded yesterday to get out of the house and go bowling. Annie has never been before and Brandon LOVES to go bowling. Brandon went out of his way to show Annie how to hold and aim the ball and then she promptly beat the pants off of all of us. The girl catches on quick! Ok, it's not really that hard to beat us bowling as we are not very good. After bowling we went to Moe's (mexican resturant) for dinner, another Brandon and Glen favorite. We also ordered the couch that we have had our eye on for sometime, it should be here next Sunday if all goes as expected. The weather has started to cool down some here, thank goodness but still no rain. We had to close the vent in Annie's room yesterday becuase she was turing into a popsicle. Apparently Americans keep our homes and places of business alot cooler than in China. While we were out the other day Glen had to go out and get Annie a sweatshirt because her hands felt like ice cubes. This winter we will have to make sure she stays bundeled up and get her an electric blanket for her bed.

Glen