The Land of Ozz

I am looking forward to activating my new flying forum. Now the forum will not literally be flying, but hopefully the flying folks will put flying stuff in it. I have not found much on terms of flying forums so I thought I might start one. Let me know what you think. Leave a comment here or drop me an email at theozz@gmail.com.

Help spread the word even if you are not able to donate. The Lowcountry Heart Walk is coming up in just a few weeks. Our family has joined the fund raiser for the Lowcountry Heart Walk 2005 to raise funds for the American Heart Association. You can donate $25 or more through our my page or you can join our team here. You can also donate less than $25 using the PayPal link on the right side of this page and your donation will be credited to Team Caden Osborne.

Help spread the word by passing a link to our Team Caden Osborne page.

I don’t know how she does it, but Michelle Malkin has the best coverage on the hottest subjects. You can get your fill of the news with the best set of links on Hurricane Katrina and Camp Casey.

Here are the latest and greatest from Malkin:

On Katrina. Look at other recent posts on her site as well.

On Sheehan and Sharpton she does not comment, but led me to The Political Teen’s Coverage. The Political Teen also delivers plenty of laughs with coverage that shows Sheehan doesn’t know anything about anything.

I didn’t realize I would do a part II, but there is a priceless story written by one of our pastors at Seacoast Church. Geoff Surratt gives some history of the growth by “Accidental Multi-site” that I have seen in the time I have been attending Seacoast. The church weekly attendance of 7,000 is more than double what it was when I started going to Seacoast four years ago this month.

The local Charleston News paper, The Post and Courier, prides itself as “The South’s Oldest Daily Newspaper”. Today they stepped out and featured a blog that was founded by a medical student at MUSC (Medical University of South Carolina). This blog called “The MUSC Tiger” has been growing in popularity since it started last year. I was very pleased to see the local newspaper feature a story about a blog on the front page of the Sunday paper today. The article can be viewed via a no-fee registeration here.

I found the statistics of this blog to be alarming when compared to my own blog statistics. As many of you may know, I have only been blogging in the formal sense of the term since Election Day 2004. I consider myself as starting to blog officially on the day my second child Caden was born. That was the day I started Caden’s Page. I moved Caden’s Page into the real world of blogging in January 2005 when I converted it from raw html files to Blogger where it has lived ever since. You can view an example of Caden’s Page in the early months here. I later got the urge to blog about more than just Caden so I started The Land of Ozz in March 2005. I later added the The Tech Land of Ozz and Grill’n Time. The total of all these blogs have combined to give me a fairly steady increase in readers. My Site Meter statistics do not show all of my traffic, but the graphics form my raw logs do. Here is a peek at what my traffic looks like for the past year.

Hint: Click on the images for a clearer picture in a separate window.

And here you can see the statistics reported by Site Meter for The MUSC Tiger.

What I find so interesting here is the similarity in traffic patterns, evolution of our blogs, and where we both got started blogging. You can see that my blogs peeked at around 6,000 visits in a single month in July which is very similar to The MUSC Tiger. We both also had a high of around 3,000 visits in a month around the first of the year. Another interesting similarity is that we both started on Blogger and ended up on Word Press. What is even more interesting is that I officially started my first blog from inside the MUSC campus. I posted my very first update from my wife’s hospital room a few hours after Caden was born on Election Day 2004. I also started an email list so that folks could sign up to be notified when Caden’s Page was updated. Caden’s Page has accounted for the majority of traffic to HOEI.COM in the past year, but things are changing a little. The Grill’n Time Blog is gaining in popularity as well as this blog.

I have found blogging to be very therapeutic as the Holly Auer called it in the title of her article in the Post and Courier today. The stress and struggles that I have endured with my son Caden’s health problems have given me new respect for the folks at MUSC. I had never stepped foot into the MUSC Hospital until about 13 months ago when went in for a fetal echo cardiogram. Now, I will bet you that the number of hours I have spent in the hospital can rival the hours spent in the actual hospital by the medical students running The MUSC Tiger blog. I guess I have become somewhat of a medical expert from the other side of the bed. I try my best to understand all there is to know about my son’s medical conditions. He has a very rare combination of health issues related to DiGeorge Syndrome. He is classified by several of his therapists and doctors at MUSC as their most extreme case ever. It is very difficult to keep information consistent across all clinics, doctors, and therapists inside and outside of MUSC. At last count, I believe Caden is actively on the schedule of six therapists, eight doctors, a physician’s assistant, and a nurse practitioner. That is a total of 16 medical professionals that we have to coordinate care with while trying to maintain a “normal” life. That number 16 does NOT include seeing others for blood work, x-rays, and possible visits to CHoP (The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia 22q clinic) and a feeding and swallowing center at in NJ.

I tell you all of this because I want you to know that I have seen what these medical professionals have to deal with on a daily basis from the other side. I would not want to have to deal with people like myself in a life and death situation. These are special people wearing white coats as a student, resident, or doctor. At first, I was a little skeptical about having students work on my child at MUSC. I am still likely to request an attending physician perform certain things on my child, but I have warmed up to the students and residents. Actually, sometimes the younger folks seem to have a much more open mind to possible treatments with rare cases like Caden’s. I am glad to see a local blog get some positive media attention. I encourage everyone to visit The MUSC Tiger. It is a look into the human side of the upcoming medical professionals who will be dealing with folks like you and me for years to come.

I finally hit the map on Google Earth. The image below shows my blog in the middle of a wooded area in Goose Creek, SC. I am not sure about the placement ending up in the wooded area. I can assure you that I do not live exactly where the map shows my blog, but it is at least within a couple of miles away. I got my coordinates from Google Earth that I plugged into Blogwise so I will have to ask around about why the positioning is a little off. If you ahve not played with Google Earth you are missing out.


You can get yoru blog listed on Google Earth using Blogwise. I highly recommend Blogwise even if you are not interested in getting on the Goggle Earth map. Enjoy!

I have not been keeping up on my “Best Day of Flying” stories as I wanted to. I expected to have several up by now, but I have been busy with other things. There will be more to come very soon. In the meantime I want to tell you about a great few days of flying that I almost got.

I received an email from the local aero club last week. A fellow member was moving to Alaska and needed his Cessna 172 delivered to Alaska. He could not supply anything other than fuel money, therefore the person delivering the plane would have to get home on their own dime. I have not been active enough flying to feel comfortable making a trip like this alone, but figured I could round up a seasoned pilot friend to join me. I found out while searching for a co-pilot that this trip would take about 50 hours of flying time. This was much more than I thought and I learned that the owner would be okay if we could just get the plane to Montana. He felt he could get it to Alaska pretty easy from Montana. I really wanted to try the Alaska trip, but knew I could not possibly e away for more than a couple of days. I did some calculations and found that I could get the plane to Montana in about 16 hours of flying. This could easily be done over a long weekend with two guys sharing the effort even with some mild delays. I saw this as a great adventure and training opportunity as long as I had the right person with me. The owner needed the pane moved immediately to get the plane up to Alaska before the winter weather sets in. I started looking again for a friend.

I knew I could probable get two people home on flyer miles. I have enough flyer miles for at least a couple of free round trip tickets on different airlines. I figured it was worth burning a couple of tickets to get this type of experience even if only to Montana.

I did find a pilot friend/instructor to go along, but he needed to ask his wife. I told him that I needed to ask my wife if I could be away for a few days too. I knew that she would encourage me to go since she has been trying to get me to take some time for myself to go flying for a while now. She did, but reminded me that we should pray about it.

God spoke pretty clearly once again as he has with many other situations in my life lately. First of all I found that none of the airlines had one-way reward tickets to Charleston, SC out of anywhere in Montana. The even more convincing answer was from the phone call I received from my friend. He barely got a chance to talk to his wife before they received a call that his wife’s grandfather had passed away. God spoke pretty clearly to me in this matter I do believe.

I will not be writing about a “Best Day of Flying” to Montana. It was a great dream while it lasted.

I had a heart-to-heart with my best friend and wife last night. She asked me what my motivation was when writing my recent posting on Casey Bartholomew. I could not come up with a good answer. The bottom line is that I feel right into his trap. I gave him attention. He even acknowledged in his email response to me that was what he really cared about anyway. He seems to have no regard for who he hurts or what he has to say in order to gain attention.

Today will be the first day that I no longer listen to Casey Bartholomew. I recommend you do the same. If he is ignored, he will go away. He can not maintain a job in radio without listeners. I refuse to support his name calling and degrading of other humans where he has no clue what their true circumstances are.

I apologize to the readers of my web site for lowering my standards to the level of the Casey Bartholomew show and repeating offensive things he said on the air. There’s no real value in doing that even in the name of exposing the evil in his behavior. I thought I was sharing the truth. While I may have been, I was also bringing attention to his show and I refuse to do that any more. There’s no entertainment value in the humiliation of other human beings and will have no part in this practice.

I will not post anything else on the Casey Bartholomew Show until the day I am able to report that he was replaced as the afternoon host of WSCC-FM drive home show. I will keep and eye on the radio station’s web site from time to time to see when this happens as I am sure it will soon if others feel the same way I do about the current show.

In the furture I will take a new way home as I will be enjoying other stations during my drive. I hope you do the same in the Charleston area. Today I will also begin a whole hearted effort to only post information that can be seen as informational while maintaining a positive and uplifting theme. Once again, I apologize for anything that may have been offensive in my recent postings.

Sincerely,
Hank Osborne

A recent report of new construction growth shows churches at the top of the list for highest percentage of non-residential construction increases. Church construction grew by 23% in June according to McGraw-Hill Construction, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

Mark over at Tapscott’s Copy Desk turned me onto this topic when commenting that this is a “statistic you likely will not see in the MSM.”

What makes this an even more interesting story is when you factor in the numbers from creative ways that some churches are growing when they find themselves pinched out by the real-estate boom/bubble. I attend Seacoast Church in Mount Pleasant, SC. Seacoast Church has become a national poster church for multi-site growth. Multi-site church is where a church delivers the same message via video or tape to multiple services at multiple locations in a weekend. Each location and service has its own worship team and other church functions, but the message is common across all locations and service times.

The lead pastor at Seacoast, Greg Surratt, recently played tour guide to some visitors and got a look at multiple sites of Seacoast on one weekend. Pastor Greg reported, “It’s working, we’re healthy and I love it.” With this type of growth that is not represented in the construction numbers, the actual numbers on church growth have got to be much greater than the construction statistics could ever reflect. It is a great day for the Lord, but it is too bad that God will likely not get much more credit than what is given from a few of us bloggers. Seacoast started in 1988 in borrowed and rented space with 65 attendees. Today the membership is up to approximately 7,000 members across nine locations if I have my statistics correct. There have been some really creative moves by the staff at Seacoast to bring God’s word to this many people without building a bunch of new church buildings.

h/t: Bill Hobbs for the link to the construction data.