This Ship Has Sailed! Updates -- January 1, 2016

For background to this story, see this post -- Theo T, the first ship to take advantage of the relaxed rules on exporting US crude oil. 

For those who want to track this history-making tanker, this is what you do.

Go to this link: http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/details/ships/shipid:375065/mmsi:311538000/imo:9262194/vessel:THEO_T.

Click on "Latest Positions" at that site, which will bring you to this: http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/index/positions/all/shipid:375065/mmsi:311538000/shipname:THEO%20T.

Then simply "copy" the coordinates; you don't even have to format; simply copy "lat" and "long."

Bring up google maps. "Paste" "lag" and "long." Again, no formatting required.

A red dot will show on a sea of blue. You have to zoom way out (multiple hits on the "-" button in the lower right hand corner until you see land.

If you do all that, this is what you will see (it takes about 3 seconds). Note how the "lat" and "long" are directly copied/pasted with one "sweep":

I Am Sailing, Rod Stewart

*********************************

Missed The Boat

Updates

January 2, 2016: It appears I wasn't the only one who "missed the boat." Viewership, this year, of the bowl games down 45 percent. Link here. Many reasons cited. This comment was representative of many, and my thoughts exactly:

The NCAA made the decision to move the bowl games to cable and that's when many of the "regular joes" who cannot afford to pay for TV found other things to do on New Year's day. Their greed and seemingly uncaring attitude toward the fans ruined the tradition of watching the Rose Parade New Year's morning, followed by bowl games all day. That's gone now for a good portion of the audience and we have found other things to do with our time. Not surprised at all that switching the semi-final games to New Year's Eve resulted in a ratings drop. For a league that pretends to honor tradition, this is a bad precedent to set.

Original Post

 

I was curious to see how the football game was going, so I turned on our television set. We only have basic cable (which gets us the four major networks, Criminal Minds, Bones, and Big Bang Theory re-runs). I was unable to find any football game. What's up?

I completely missed this; it's probably been going on for the last ten years -- another boat I missed. My favorite college football games -- the ones I watched religiously while in high school in Williston -- the Cotton Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, and the "granddaddy" of them all, the Rose Bowl -- are all televised on ESPN, which we don't get.

Very, very sad.

Not really: I got a lot of reading done today. Having completed my American Renaissance phase / Concord phase -- Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emerson, the Peabody Sisters, etc -- I have moved on to the "real Shakespeare." I've read the book (The Truth Will Out, Brenda James) and the sequel, but I forget things if I don't re-read often. So, I'm going through the book again, again taking notes.

While flipping through the channels looking for the football games that don't exist, I saw the top story in Texas today is "open carry law" goes into effect today. Oklahoma has had the same law for three years; in fact, in Oklahoma it's even more "lenient" or relaxed.

The other story is all the flooding in the south. This was the first time I saw video images of the flooding. It seems to me that the story was under-reported. Did President Obama fly over the devastation? The devastation certainly covers a much wide area and affects lot more people than Hurricane Katrina ever did. Or so it appears. One wonders.