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Archive for July, 2008
Dancing from Steve Webel on Vimeo.
Tebow is coming back, “Rocky Style.” Cue the music – “Eye of the Tiger”
By quarterback Tim Tebow’s reckoning, his offseason training regimen stretched over three continents and included four countries.
Tebow, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner and a member of Florida’s 2006 national title team, begins two-a-day practices with the Gators on Aug. 4. He spent his summer with his father’s ministry that took him to the Philippines, Croatia and Thailand.
“I have been a lot of places, and it’s been a bit of a whirlwind for me,” Tebow said Wednesday in Hoover, Ala., at the Southeastern Conference’s annual news media summit. “You get to do a lot of unique training, running up mountains, running up steps. I trained Rocky-style a little bit. It was pretty cool.”
“I love doing it, and it’s something I’m very passionate about,” Tebow said about helping others. “Doing those things, taking my platform as a football player and using it to be an influence and change peoples’ lives — that’s more important than football to me.”
I don’t think I could like this guy any more than I do. I believe that even if he wasn’t a Gator, say a Seminole, a Volunteer, or a Bulldog, I’d still love him!
Oh Starbucks, when will you come to Hunan? I would love it if you would come to Yueyang, but I realize that’s not realistic, so Changsha will do.
After all, you have about 2 billion Starbucks in the rest of the coffee drinking world, so why not come to Hunan? There are 65 million people here who don’t even know yet that they love coffee. You need to do your humanitarian service and open a coffee shop or two.
Oh, don’t misunderstand me, there IS coffee in Hunan already. But by-and-large, it’s gross and overpriced. The beans are usually burnt and stale, then when they brew it, they murder the taste. After all that, they want $4+ for a thimble sized cup. It’s sad, very sad when the best cup of coffee in town, at the best value (outside of my personal kitchen,) is obtained at McDonalds…
In the spirit of full disclosure, I also have to tell you, a couple of weeks ago,shortly after I returned to China from several months in Texas, I was making my way through one of the three grocery stores here in Yueyang that sometimes have ‘imported’ goods and I saw the logo that my oldest daughter, Elizabeth, can spot even in the most crowded of strip malls in Texas or shopping centers in Hong Kong. It was the round and green STARBUCKS logo on a bottled Starbucks Frappuccino.
The price was high, very, very high. It didn’t matter, I was in shock – I bought two. (One for me, one for my wife Erica who actually likes Frappuccinos more than me.) Could this be true, Starbucks in Yueyang? Who cares if it comes in a bottle and was made three months ago… it’s Starbucks in Hunan!
However, since that fateful day, there has not been a Frappuccino in sight, nowhere. (I wonder who in the world bought all of those other bottles in just two short weeks? Did I mention earlier that they were EXPENSIVE?)
There are places I can go within the vast borders of China to obtain a Grande Peppermint Latte or sometimes a Hazelnut Latte. In the picture on the left, you can see me enjoying a beautiful cup of coffee on the Great Wall of China!
However, there is nothing nearby. Not even close. So I call out to Starbucks…
Please open a Starbucks in Changsha!
Previously here on my blog, I wrote about my disdain for “Junk Mail” (aka – Standard Mail); “Efforts to Block Junk Mail Slowed by Postal Service and Environmentalists!”
Well, it appears the effort to improve the image of junk mailers is in full swing, and guess who’s helping out… the U.S. Postal Service.
The United States Postal Service is on the case, too. It has taken out a trademark on the term “environMAIList” to refer to marketers that adopt greener mail practices and try to make direct marketing more eco-friendly.
On its Web site — right after it notes that every dollar spent on direct mail returns almost $12 in sales — the Postal Service now lists green tips for marketers, like letting people easily opt out of mailings, using water-based inks and recycled materials, and encouraging customers to recycle the mailing after reading it.
In May, the Postal Service mailed — on recycled paper, of course — general tips on greening up direct mail to about 100,000 companies. Those who send back a card asking for more information will get an organic cotton T-shirt and a handbook giving more detail on how to adopt greener practices.
The Postal Service has also been sending press kits to reporters to spur coverage of its green push. Part of the pitch says: “Although direct-mail accounts for only 2.4 percent of landfill waste, many opportunities are available to lessen its environmental impact even more.”
Both the post office and the Green Marketing Coalition have stopped short of setting concrete goals. The coalition’s guidelines, listed at greenmarketingcoalition.com, do not specify any measurable milestones or target dates for action.
Shouldn’t the USPS be serving the citizens of America, who by-and-large hate junk mail as much as I do, instead of working to keep the junk mailers in business?
If they really were concerned about the environment, they’d stop the FLOOD of junk mail that fills mailboxes across America every day!
Now that I’m back in Asia, I’m no longer getting the junk mail that I was getting while living in Arlington, Texas (Dad is getting it, and sifting through it looking for anything REAL, for me! Thanks Dad!) However, I still am concerned about this but I have no idea what can be done to fight this.
Any ideas?
I spent the better part of my day today getting this;
This is my “Certificate of Health Examination for International Traveller”
It all started with a phone call on Monday saying that I had to have my “Health Exam” done before the University could move forward with preparing the documents I need to process our family’s work visas for China.
This is important, and time is of the essence, so I moved on it immediately. As I was sorting out the details, it turned out Erica needed to get this “Health Exam” too. She was not thrilled.
One of the reasons this was ‘inconvenient’ for us is that we couldn’t get this exam done in the city we lived. We had to go to Changsha, the provincial capital that is about 2 hours away. Thankfully, we have some friends in town who could watch the kids for us (bringing them on this trip would have been quite the ordeal!)
We left at 7:30am and returned home around 5:45pm – with our certificates in hand. Whew!
If you listen to the news in America, you’d think we were headed for the next great depression. It’s almost as if people are willing to say anything to get ‘their guy’ into the White House.
Tell me again how horrible the US economy is?
U.S. sales of video game hardware and software rose 53 percent in June from a year ago
PlayStation 3 console sales jumped 94 percent from the prior month. U.S. consumers bought 405,500 PlayStation 3 consoles in June, up from 208,700 consoles in May.
Nintendo Co Ltd sold 660,000 Wii consoles during June, a slight decrease from the 675,100 Wiis sold the month before. But the Wii’s solid sales have secured its spot as the best-selling video game console in the U.S. of the current generation of machines. The console has sold 10.9 million units since its November 2006 release.
Microsoft Corp sold 219,800 Xbox 360 consoles, a 17.8 percent increase from May.
For the first half of 2008, the U.S. video game industry has generated $8.3 billion in sales. This is a 36 percent increase in sales from the same period a year before.
Do you realize that one of these consoles costs more money than most people in the world will see all year? (PlayStation 3 = $500; Nintendo Wii = $577; Xbox 360 = $449) It makes me sick every time someone in the US complains about hard economic times… Perspective people, let’s get some!
Over the weekend, something exciting happened… well, at least it was exciting for me. Apple opened it’s first ‘official’ Apple Store in China. (Beijing of course.)
The two-level store store opened July 19th in Beijing’s Sanlitun entertainment district at 10 a.m., Apple’s 219th worldwide.
“This is the first of many stores we will open in China,” said Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, in remarks at the store. He later added that Apple will open stores “in Beijing, in Shanghai and beyond,” and confirmed that another store will open in Beijing’s Qianmen area, a shopping street south of Tiananmen Square that has been renovated ahead of the Olympic Games, which begin next month.
The store will offer Genius Bar services in Chinese and English, said John Ford, the store’s manager, with support in some other languages available, including German.
The Worlds Population was estimated at 4.4 billion.
The first first ever Cellular Mobile Phone was introduced.
Space Invaders appeared in arcades.
Average Income per year $17,000.00
- Cost of a gallon of Gas 63 cents
- Dozen Eggs 48 Cents
After nearly 30 years The Volkswagen Beetle stops production having manufactured 20 million cars
Lesley Brown gave birth to the world’s first test tube baby delivered by Cesarean section in Oldham, England. Dr. Patrick Steptoe and Dr. Robert Edwards developed the process to conceive a child in a laboratory and then plant in a uterus to develop normally.
The introduction of bottled water was a big story as very few thought there was much chance of people buying in large quantities.
The comic strip character, Garfield, first appeared.
In the Movie Theaters: Greece, Saturday Night Fever and Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Popular Musicians
- Bee Gees with ” Night Fever and Stayin Alive “
- Paul McCartney and Wings
- John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
- Rolling Stones
- Commodores with ” Three Times a Lady “
- Boomtown Rats
The TV show “Dallas” premiers on CBS.
Popular TV Programs
- Happy Days
- Little House on the Prairie
- The Rockford Files
- Good Morning America
- Saturday Night Live
- Wheel of Fortune
- Charlie’s Angels
- Quincy, M.E.
- The Muppet Show
- CHiPs
- The Love Boat
- Three’s Company
and…
Our very own Erica came into this world on July 20th, 1978! Happy Birthday Sweetheart!
1978 from Steve Webel on Vimeo.
I know your trying to not take it too hard… You’ll be fine!
Many left leaning environmentalist don’t like to admit the fact that our earth is pretty resilient! Way to go God!
Half a century after the atomic blasts that devastated Bikini Atoll, vast expanses of corals in the area seem to be flourishing once again, much to the surprise of scientists.
American government scientists detonated a hydrogen bomb on the tiny island (a part of the Marshall Islands in the western Pacific) on March 1, 1954, and about 20 other nuclear tests were carried out on the atoll between 1946 and 1958.
The massive explosion vaporized everything on three islands in the atoll, raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees and left a crater that was 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) wide and 240 feet (73 meters) deep.A team of scientists recently led a diving expedition into Bravo Crater and found an unexpectedly thriving coral community.
“I didn’t know what to expect — some kind of moonscape perhaps. But it was incredible, huge matrices of branching Porites coral (up to 8 meters [25 feet] high) had established, creating a thriving coral reef habitat,” said study team member Zoe Richards of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.
Source: Fox News
I’m definitely NOT left leaning in my politics, but I do support conservation and prudent environmentalism. I don’t think we should be going around nuking islands and evaporating oceans. However, I do think that we sometimes give ourselves too much credit for what impact we can have on God’s great creation.
Hi! I'm Steve Webel and this is my blog. Thanks for stopping by!
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