In Soviet Russia, Road Drives YOU!

So, if Danica Patrick thinks she is so damn good at Driving, let's see what she can pull off in Mother Russia!

Other Less Notable "Duba"'s In The World: The Duba Plains

Ladies and gentleman, believe it or not, there are many other great good things or interesting things in the world that have incorporated the "Duba" brand into their product or service. Prior to the creation of this blog over a year ago, a search for my last name brought up several results. One that has always fascinated me was the "Duba Plains Camp" located in Botswana.

Botwhata??? Silly uneducated fools...It is a country located in Africa, and is the 48th biggest country in the world. There is a lot of safari and big game hunting and wildlife preserves in this country. The Okavango River travels, north to south, through the country into an eventual delta known as the Okvango Delta, in the northwestern corner of the country, and coincidentally in the middle of nowhere. There are several camps and preserves in this area. 

The Duba Plains camp is not a place where you can go party with me or learn of my life's achievements, but rather a place where you can see over 30,000 hectares (over 74,000 acres, over 115 square miles, 3,228,318,700 square feet) of, uh, delta. Oddly enough, Delta Airlines has no flights that ever go to Botswana. So, if you are into exotic big game hunting, you can perhaps find a magic genie lamp and spend one wish on a trip there. 

What do you do there? Why, there are "roomy" tents for your safari adventure. There is a bar area and swimming pool and complimentary laundry services as well. Look at this detailed map of the resort:

Try not to get eaten on the way to the bathroom or complaining to the manager about somebody.

The "Eyes on Africa" website says that the Duba Plains are most notable for the classic battles between lions and buffalo and you can enjoy your nature walk at night. Uh, no. I am sure if a lion lost a battle with a buffalo, and was still hungry, I would be the perfect dish for a lion. 

There is also bird watching of the mildly humorously named Rosy-throated Longclaw, Slaty Egret, and Wattled Crane. 

The Duba Plains supposedly is home to one of the most dense lion populations in THE WORLD. There are allegedly thousands of buffalo. You may also be exposed to some lion-hyena battles. Sounds like no laughing matter.

Want to go and stay one night in the middle of Nowhere, Botswana, Africa? Tented room costs range from $900 to $1,209 per night. A single bed ranges from $241 to $265, depending on the time of the year. The pricing is odd, as there is no price for kids for part of the year. Must be baby eating season that time of the year. The restrictions on kids are only for those 6 to 11 years old. Thus do not bring your newborn in to the Duba Plains. In fact, do not bring your newborn into the movie theater Duba is in. Those people suck at life.

In a bit of sad news, the Botswanan government has plans for a hydropower facility in a river that contributes to the Okavango River, thus threatening the life of the Duba Plains. It's weird because it will provide an environmentally friendly power source to the country, but ruin one of the regions most diverse environmental ecosystems. Stop progress, Save Duba!

Let me know if you plan a trip to the Duba Plains. Feel free to share any photos of wildlife or the bite marks you obtained from your trip as I will be curious to share them here. Safe travels!

Moving On...

If you are my friend, you know how terrible the past week has been. I will not glorify that situation here. I have, however, started a separate blog where I can express my feelings on the loss of my friend. It is certainly not easy to discuss feelings without fear of ridicule, but, believe it or not, I am a pretty humble fellow. I call myself "The Great" as a joke. If you truly sat down with me one on one, you would know that. This new blog is meant as trusted space for the people I know and perhaps people looking for comfort in their thoughts and emotions who can relate. 

So, this blog will continue to bring about the normalcy of my life, even though it was changed forever.

As such, yesterday I had a 15 hour exhausting day. It consisted of traveling to every office within my company, driving various vehicles over the course of 8 total hours, and 7 hours in the cold rain and snow covered ground. The length of the day and arduous nature of the tasks at hand were a great way to exhaust my mind from the current state of things.

What exactly am I doing? I hope you aren't trying to stay awake, because my work explanations have been pretty boring. I was actually excited when I got home yesterday to tell Kim of the results of our effort. She faked yawned, but when we first met I used to tell her about my day and she would fall asleep. So pop a 5 hour energy as this story will take away three of those.

I do environmental cleanup work, specifically for the soil and groundwater. New Jersey is quite the state to fix up in these terms. I have a Site in northern Jersey that has toluene stuck in the groundwater. It is basically an organic solvent. It can be used to dissolve paint, paint thinners (odd), rubber, sealants and also is part of the construction of polyurethane and TNT (trinitrotoluene). Don't worry, I have very little chances of blowing up.

So my boss has traveled the country looking for innovative technologies. We have these units in the groundwater wells that feed a set of nutrients like fertilizer into the water as air is constantly supplied. I will not share any more specifics so as to keep my company off my back. It started out as an experiment/pilot study and has now been accepted as a remediation treatment for the groundwater (that's cleaning mechanism to you common folk). The pilot study was presented at an international conference last October and more details will be published in a future scientific journal. We had 6 treatment points out of 15 total groundwater access points.

The six original areas are all "hard-wired" - i.e., all tubings are entrenched underground. Yesterday we removed one of the units from its permanent installation and transferred it to one of the other 9 non-treated wells. We brought up a trailer from another office and yesterday I constructed the system into a smaller version to fit into the trailer. With the help of my great coworker Sean we had the thing up and running smoothly in no time.

So how bad is it? Well, the toluene concentrations are in the hundreds of thousands parts per billion (ppb) while the required standard is in double digits. When we had the system first set up, one of the original 6 wells had measurably thick amount of the pure toluene in it. After two weeks, that product was completely gone and not returned since. In fact, that well has gone from a measurable/unsampleable amount of pure toluene to no detectable concentrations. Now, through a biweekly maintenance program combined with our "hot-spot" mobile treatment, this Site could probably be free of the toluene worry in a year.

And, That's how its done! (video!)

Today Is The Worst Day of The Year (again)

Much like last year, the reasons are the same. Somebody said on the radio this morning that the past four Super Bowl winners have played the Eagles in their home opener at Philadelphia. I know Green Bay, Baltimore, New York Giants played the Eagles. Eagles were 1-2 in those games, but I don't remember the Eagles playing the Saints at home 4 years ago. So instead of looking it up I will pretend it never happened, like a good journalist. Regardless, 25 percent of the Eagle's wins this year came against the world champs. Relevant football game action is over for the next 7 months, and I must now find new topics to talk about. I won't confront any other sports unless I attend something unique. Perhaps the rodeo will come back soon. If football truly indeed had to end last night, it was in grand fashion.

I kind of had some predictions right in my entry yesterday, with the exception of the Ravens never playing from behind in this game. Which makes 50 percent of my prediction wrong. but if you round up from 0.5, you get 1. Or 100 percent, bitches!

On to the game. I got Brandon's house just in time to see the coin flip, bet Jay $5 that it would land on tails, and then proceed to lose that bet. I promptly followed that up by saying we would see a kickoff return for a touchdown. I did not specifically state that's how the game would start, even though that's what I intended. So I pretty much lost all my money within 2 minutes of arriving. Luckily Jay cleared away the debt and let me live my life normally without fear of money collection. So the kick is deep in the end zone and a touch back. The 49ers had two weeks to prepare for this game and on the opening play had an illegal formation. Bush league. The 49ers first drive didn't last long. The Ravens then began a drive culminating in that beautiful Anquan Boldin touchdown. That guy, who I forgot to mention in the Super Bowl stories that interest me, had a huge hand in the winning of this game. He made that one spectacular catch early in the game, maybe even that drive, when Flacco was getting chased. It looked like Joe Flacco was just tossing it downfield. The camera man just kind of zoomed out for that "ball is flying anywhere" shot. Turns out Boldin went up, out muscled the defender, and drug the guy out of bounds with him. That was awesome. A replay showed that the ball kind of curved in the air, right into Boldin's hands. It was a great highlight catch overshadowed by some later remarkable plays. The 49ers answered with the field goal, and then the Ravens just teed off. Dennis Pitta got another touchdown. I think the 49ers answered with yet another field goal, and the score was 14-6. Then, a great, 50+ something yard play happened that was the real highlight of the game. Flacco tosses it deep, but short. Jacoby Jones came back fell on his ass during the catch. The anti-gay cornerback Culliver avoided all contact with another man by jumping over another man, making sure to aim his side rather than his front or back junk towards him.

Jones quickly realized he was not downed after the catch, got up, and outraced a couple more defenders into the end zone. There was not one diehard Ravens fan in the room, but I think we all were screaming in excitement about this. I only wish CBS stuck with his celebration as he has one of the most coordinated touchdown celebrations. 21-6 and halftime was mercifully here for the 49ers. They had been down in the NFC title game as well, storming back to win and win HARD.

So, Halftime came and went, and the first play of the second half involved Jacoby Jones tying the Super Bowl record for longest play with a 108 yard touchdown return. I turned to Jay right before the kick and said, "Jay, this is the return touchdown right here. I know it." Eleven seconds later and game day bucket went BOOM!

I hate that chick. It is the single worst, most annoying, violence inducing line I have ever heard in television. And besides? Why did you have to sit the chicken next to the black gentleman? Racist asshole.

So the door was completely blown off now. 28-6. I enjoyed that, but suddenly realized my enjoyment of the game was over. I never EVER want to see a blowout in the Super Bowl (unless the Eagles ever make it and are up by 68 points). Exactly three players later, including a weak kickoff return by the 49ers and more offensive struggles, the camera view quickly changed to ground-up shot of the Super Dome, with half the lights on. The Ravens were literally playing light's out football. In the background you could hear a cackling laugh reminiscent of Sean Peyton and then the feint splash of wire cutters being tossed into the Mississippi. The power was out. Dead. Literally half the stadium was dead. It did not seem like anything was going to be fixed any time soon, so I decided to head out to the garage hangout. Brandon showed off some shelf with replaceable baskets that he made. He threw some excess glue at me as well. It was dry and pointy like a shank. We entered the TV room just as the power came back on. The power was on, but the game was delayed even further. I know now it was because communications were down within the building, and John Harbaugh had a freak out similar to that of his brother Jim two weeks ago in the NFC title game.

While this was being worked out, I stated that this plays into the 49ers favor tremendously. They are younger, and the Ravens already hyped themselves up for the second half, and now had to wait nearly 40 minutes again to resume play. They were all stretching. Staying loose. Loose as a goose. They were leese as geese. Then the 49ers just exploded with a 17 point third quarter. At one point, they had 106 yards to the Ravens 16 yards since the power outage. The Ravens still kept the lead alive, by ultimately knocking back two more field goals.We saw most of the 49ers points, but then something happened with the TiVo recording the program. The recording of the game was instantly stopped and jumped to a couple minutes left of the fourth quarter with the score Ravens 34, 49ers 29. We missed the two aforementioned field goals and the 49ers touchdown and subsequent failed 2-point conversion. Either way the 49ers were driving and were at 7 yard line of the Ravens. Game on the line. Four down territory. And the Ravens held. The announcers and broadcast crew pointed out some major pass interference on Crabtree in the end zone, but I believe the refs were like that the entire game. It happened on both teams behalf earlier in the game and was a noncall, so they couldn't change heart at that point. The Ravens got the ball on downs, and the 49ers defense was playing desperation football, burning time outs, but making big stops. The Ravens had to punt on 4th down, from the end zone. I tried figuring it out, that perhaps the Ravens would give the ball back to the 49ers with like 10-15 seconds left. So they ball is hiked back to the kicker, and he starts jogging to the sideline. He waits at the sideline to get pushed out of bounds. 0:04 left on the clock. Brilliant. First I thought John was trying to be a dick, but then I realized he took time off the clock, assured the 49ers wouldn't get a blocked punt/touchdown for the lead, and ensured a safer kickoff. They had 5 points to spare, and had a now very comfortable, smart 3 point lead. It seemed like by the time Ted Ginn Jr. got the ball in his hands the game was over. He ran as far as he could, and time went down after a 20+ yard return. Ravens won the game. Joe Flacco almost smiled.

Entertainment - The game started out fantastic as the Ravens were playing foot on the throat early. I liked that, because I wanted the Ravens to win. Then it almost started to get out of hand and I realized I may be watching a very boring Super Bowl. Suddenly, the lights went out and the game changed completely. The Ravens cored 28 points in thirty minutes, 11 seconds of action. Then 6 points in the remaining 29 minutes, 49 seconds. We saw the 49ers do this to the Falcons, but you have to remember that the Ravens are not the Falcons who find it okay to crumble. The Ravens gave up some big plays, but found enough glue to keep it together when it counted the most. The game had a runaway freight train to start, an explosive play to recover from the boring death of a Beyonce half-time show, a power outage to kind of bum us all out, people leaving Brandon's as the game seemed over, to a humungous rally by the 49ers, to a dramatic goal line stand, quick wits, and dramatic finish. This was the best Super Bowl I can remember seeing since I have been an all-around NFL fan, so 10/10.

Half-Time Show - I don't care about Beyonce. I don't like how she sang the national anthem during her media day press conference to dispell here "haters." And they spent months promoting her as the half time act and then she brings her "aslo-ran" partners from Destiny's Child out there. The ladies in attendance were going bananas and ape shit, coincidentally one in the same, and claimed that if Mariah Carey came in it would cap it all off. We were all in the garage and came back in as Beyonce was laying on her side and split leg kicked up in the air, exposing her baby canal. I had several laughs from Brandon's "open-window in the shower of his frat house" stories while the female contingent enjoyed their thirty minutes of feminist rights music. I guess I have to give my half-time experience a 6/10.

Commercials - Ever since somebody declared that the commercials are the best part of the Super Bowl, they weren't anymore. And it is so overbearing. They actually took a commercial break between the 49ers first touchdown and their extra point. The game was the longest in Super Bowl history, but only because of the power outage. Other than that, the game was on a rapid pace. I liked the goat-Doritos commercial and my favorite was the Kia commercial when the guy is car-raping the new Kia and the robot lady beats him up in about 5 seconds. I don't know, wedgies make me laugh, especially when the guy's underwear was pulled over his face. There was a series of Bud Light commercials where Stevie Wonder instilled good luck on some people who brought shit to him. Guys with their lucky things would show up and Stevie would ask "What do we have here?" I chuckled a bit. The voodoo doll commercial had Brandon asking, "Do you think everybody in New Orleans is now offended?" I replied, "Please, nobody in New Orleans who isn't at the game doesn't have a house to watch it in." Some groaned, but Mandi was laughing for a solid minute. Heartless woman. The Clydesdale commercial finally aired and it was lame. I don't care about a man and his horse. Also, that Audi commercial where the kid becomes a rock star at the prom and kisses the prom queen and gets a black eye. I said I need more than a kiss to get a fist in my eyeball. Infiniti missed a golden opportunity to have an orgy in the back of their SUV in a later commercial. Most of them were more dumb than anything, and the godaddy.com commercial almost made me vomit. The sound of the tongues smacking was gross. I only like to hear my tongue smacking. Anybody who goes to that site to see their commercials is probably a special needs. And the Calvin Klein commercial is the worst one of all time. Fuck you, Mr. Klein. Way to show us what your priorities are. 3.5/10.

Announcers: The game volume was up at a decent level, but the house communications were louder. I did not hear much announcing, but towards the end when only Pudding, Brandon, Mandi, and Duba were there, they were great. A lot of emotion at the end, and they were even surprised during the punter running out the end zone and Jim Harbaugh's fake field goal. Less is more, and it was great. 8/10.

So, that is a total of 27.5 out of 40. That is over twice as good as the game last year. The game, you could not ask for a better one. I was thankful for the power outage as the game shifted. That is why, in my opinion, Jacoby Jones should have been MVP. He made a great catch, hustled and muscled his way into the end zone, and the proceeded to get the last touchdown for the Ravens on a great kickoff return. If he was stopped or fair caught it or got a touchback, it would have been a matter of a few plays until the power went out and the Ravens would have again struggled, whether they had the ball or not. The 49ers then theoretically would have won 29-27, the reverse of the score I proposed the Ravens would win by. Jacoby Jones shares the record for longest Super Bowl Kickoff return and now holds the record for most combined yards (290) in a Super Bowl. His play allowed for the great position the Ravens were in offensively for most of the game. Oh well, Joe Flacco did guide his team to points and it is the trend to give the superstar or the new quarterback on the block the award, and not some receiver who may not even be on the team next year. Remember when Santonio Holmes won the MVP? Yeah, neither does he.

All in all, a great game, with some very deserving players winning the trophy. Congratulations, Baltimore. That was well earned. Now stop with the Ray Lewis sermon.

Super Bowl Game Day Predictions!

Finally....the wait is over. Two straight weeks of "How great is Colin Kaepernick?...Ray Lewis' past...Joe Flacco is now elite...These coaches are gutsy!" talk all comes down to today. Today is like only the third Super Bowl in hirteen years without somebody named Manning, Brady, or Roethlisberger in it. New blood is upon us and quarterback variation and differences will be displayed. We know some of the old guard of the NFL are retiring while other all-time greats at their positions could be swayed to pack it in depending on how the game finishes later tonight. And a family will be torn apart.

At least these past two weeks have flown by without me having to struggle to choose a side. San Franciscans and Baltimorons are a proud fanbase, loyal to their team amd respectful of there opponent at the same time. Both teams have never lost a Super Bowl appearance. 

The quarterbacks are a contrast in styles. Coli. Kaepernick has the rocket arm blazing speed and the ability to confuse his opponent every single play. Joe Flacco has showed resiliency all season long as well as development into an accurate, trustworthy pocket passer. Kaepernick's greatest weapon is the combination of pure athleticism combined with the element of surprise against the poise strength and resolve of Joe Flacco.

The receivers for San Francisco are quite an eclectic group led by Michael Crabtree who has broken out quite a bit in the past couple months. Mario Manningham and Randy Moss and Vernon Davis do the rest stretching the field to develop the running game, which has only gotten stronget the past few weeks. The Ravens have a speedy strong receiver Torrey Smith and a beast in the form of Anquan Boldin who has put the NFL on notice that he will NOT be denied...anything...ever. They also have an up and coming tight end, Sir Dennis Pitta, and a much stronger, now more advanced running game wig the Bernard Pierce Ray Rice one two punch. The offensive lines for each can create enough time for each quarterback to build a sand castle before passing the ball.

The defense for Baltimore is legendary. One representative from the 2000-2001 team remains on the active roster. That team was statistically the greatest defense of all time. The 49ers are younger yet injured, and have had some moments this year that has strucken fear into the hearts of their opponents. Yet boqth teams have had their moments when they have allowed the doors to get blown off. The Ravens can be shredded on the run while the 49ers can be thrown on and picked apart.

Ultimately it is a guessing game. Who do I root for? Definitely Baltimore. Who do I think has the best shot at winning? The 49ers. Like I declared earlier this week, the only acceptable terms for a 49ers win will be off the foot of David Akers. game time call...Joe Flacco leads the Ravens back from 6 point deficit to take the lead with under a minute left. 49ers move and move trying to gain field goal position. Ray Lewis makes it through the line to sack Kaepernick, stopping the 49ers short as Lewis does his preaching and dancing all the way up his ascension to heaven. Ravens 28, 49ers 27.