I'd like to wish a Happy Father's Day to all the guys that stop in here on my blog. I don't know how many of you there are, but the wish is here for you. I'll be calling my Dad and Stepdad later today to wish them a good day.
The weather is pretty good today. Very light wind out of the South, the sky is actually mostly blue today! I'm seeing very little of the brown/tan color from the smoke this morning. This calmer and cooler weather is definitely working for the firefighters. Here's the rundown on the fires for this morning:
Humbolt Fire: It's 50% contained as of 7:00am this morning. It's burned over 23,000 acres so far and unfortunately has also destroyed 74 residences and 8 outbuildings. 20 more residences have been damaged. According to the California Fire News website, the fire is burning slowly towards the East now, which means it isn't heading towards Chico or Paradise.
Martin Fire: 90% contained as of 7:00am this morning! At the rate they are going, they should have a line around it for 100% containment by the end of today. They've lost 3 homes and 8 outbuildings there, with 1 home and 2 more outbuildings damaged. (Yesterday they were saying that 10 homes had been lost, so the crews must be checking the buildings more closely to have downgraded the number of homes lost.) The California Fire News website is reporting that the authorities there are looking for a "person of interest" who had been seen in the area near where the fire started. The website has a copy of a sketch of the person up for folks to look at. If you're from that area, please follow the link and see if the sketch resembles anyone you know or have seen.
Whiskey Fire: This one has grown considerably since yesterday but they've got it 15% contained now. It has charred over 6,500 acres as of 7:00am this morning. (The Inciweb site is loading extremely slow for me this morning so the link goes to the California Fire News blog entry for the Whiskey Fire.) There are no reports of structures being lost so far since this fire is burning in some very rugged terrain.
Indian Fire: It's 31% contained and has burned over 33,000 acres. Yesterday the containment percentage was higher, so they've "lost" some of their headway towards controlling this fire. It's still highly active on the North and East sides. According to the entry for the Indians Fire on the California Fire News website, the fire behavior yesterday was "extreme". According those on the fire lines it was pulling Oak trees out of ground during its run. Fire storms are scary things.
Other News... I've been halfway watching the trial of Neil Entwhistle, the Englishman who is accused of murdering his wife and 9 month old daughter in January of 2006. On Friday, a fraud inspector from eBay and PayPal, Jeremy Roybal, was testifying to Neil's bad behavior on eBay. Apparently he was defrauding eBay buyers and had been kicked off the site. Anyway, the prosecution did a pretty good job of showing what a weasel Neil was. (I only saw part of the direct questioning because I left to make the trip up to Redding with my family.) Then the defense attorney, Elliott Weinstein, got up to cross examine the eBay guy. Sad to say, this defense attorney should have done his homework before he attempted to question Mr. Roybal. His "questions" were more like statements (erroneous ones!) about how eBay and PayPal work. Mr. Roybal did his best to answer, but apparently the answers weren't what Mr. Weinstein wanted so he gave up saying "You know what Mr. Roybal, I don't think I'm going to ask you anymore questions today", then grumpily stomped back to the defense table. A person with the name of RealityCanBeEvil on YouTube has been uploading most of the testimony for the trial and late last night, she uploaded the clip of the cross-examination. It was pretty funny to watch the clip this morning. The expression on Mr. Roybal's face when Mr. Weinstein gave up was priceless. Check it out below. (The person recording the trial had some issues with frame rate and all that, so the video isn't the best, but you can sure see the fellow's face... lol)
Sprocket, over on the Trials and Tribulations blog has been posting a lot of the testimony from this trial. Check it out!
Update 6/19/08
Apparently someone got upset over RealityCanBeEvil posting videos of the trial testimony and YouTube has disabled their account. Unfortunately that means that all the videos she/he had been posting have been "removed" from YouTube, including the one that I linked above. If I can find that video posted elsewhere on the net, I'll post a link or embed it here again.
Another Update! 6/30/08
RealityCanBeEvil has found a new place to post the videos from the Neil Entwistle trial! And she has reposted the video of Mr. Weinstein's goofy cross examination of Mr. Roybal. I still think that Weinstein should have studied up a lot more on how eBay and PayPal works, because he apparently had absolutely no clue... Or maybe he got his information from Neil? Anyway, enjoy the video!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
ROFL
That lawyer can only handle yes/no answers - a "proper" answer may give more reality
It is time the witnesses (or perhaps more likely the prosecutors) complained to the Judge about statments vs. questions
Liz
You've got that right! The "questions" from this lawyer are absurd at times... It's as though he is trying to get just the answers he wants and to heck with the truth... I haven't watched that many trials, but I've never seen an attorney ask questions the way Weinstein does.... It puts me in mind of the adults in the old Charlie Brown cartoons... "wah wah wah wah"... **yawn**
Post a Comment