This alligator resides in the retention pond on the far side of the Blackbaud parking lot on Daniel Island. This picture is over a year old, but the gator is still there and is actually a bit bigger thanks to a steady diet of raccoons.

A yearly tradition in our Toastmasters Club is to have a Halloween themed meeting. We have some candy and decorations. The names of the roles are altered so we have Spookers, a General Eviscerator, and the Grossmaster of the Day. The word of the day goes along with the theme (ours was massacre, but I’m partial to macabre) and off course, Table Topics will have a Halloween theme.

Our Table Topics Master has a peculiar fascination with the Zombie Apocalypse and other unique scenarios that result in the death of mankind by supernatural forces.

1. One day tomatoes will rise up and destroy mankind, just like in the holy prophecy – Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, when they do, what fruit or vegetable will join them in world domination?

2. In Return of the Living Dead, it didn’t matter what you were when you died, you came back as a Zombie. Even animals used as science experiments came back looking for brains. What nonhuman zombie scares you the most?

3. Of course this means that you will have to become a vegan, which could be hard if the tomatoes are attacking you at the same time. If it was not only the Zombie Apocalypse and the tomato apocalypse but also the Monster under the bed Apocalypse – what do you think would be the hardest thing you would have to do to survive?

4. One of the good things that will come out of the Zombie Apocalypse is that Humans and Vampires will finally be friends. Because if the Zombies eat all the humans, there will be no more food for them. What other cool new monster/human partnerships do you look forward to?

I got called on for the first question. I’m not a fan of questions where I have to be creative and make stuff up. I’m much better when I can fall back on a past experience. Luckily, I was able to talk about how evil and vile okra is.

The Daniel Island Club

Starting tomorrow The Daniel Island Club’s Ralston Creek course will host the Nationwide Tour Championship. The tournament is the final event of the year and the stakes are high for those players who have qualified. The top 60 players on the Tour’s money list will compete in a 4 round, no cut, stroke play event with the top 25 earning their cards to play on the PGA Tour in 2010.

For ticket information you can visit the Nationwide Tour website or the Family Circle Tennis Center ticket office. Daily tickets are available for $10 per day and weekly passes are priced at $30 per person. All four rounds will be broadcasted on The Golf Channel on Thursday thru Sunday from 2 – 4:30 p.m. so Daniel Island and the Charleston area should get some quality TV time this weekend. The Daniel Island Club is signed on to host the event through 2011.

The Nationwide Tour is essentially the minor leagues for the PGA Tour but has shown to be fertile proving grounds for up and coming golfers. Master Champion Zach Johnson, two-time Heritage winner Boo Weekly, and US Ryder Cup member Brandt Snedeker are some of the more popular and successful PGA Tour members who got their careers rolling on the Nationwide Tour.

Over the weekend, Hurricane Rick intensified into a mammoth Category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds of 180 mph and a central pressure of 906 mb. This made Rick the 2nd strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Eastern Pacific. The strongest Eastern Pacific storm was Hurricane Linda of 1997 which had winds of 185 mph and a central pressure of 902 mb.

Below is an image from Sunday morning of Hurricane Rick at its peak intensity from Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog. Although the storm quickly weakened over the next day from wind shear and dry air, its power and fury should serve as a reminder that Mother Nature can bring the ruckus at anytime. Rick is expected to make landfall along the Mexican coast as a tropical storm later this week.

I spent all day Friday and Saturday getting trained and certified by Master Robert Moran in his system of self defense based off pressure points. Anyone with knowledge of these points can show them to you and talk about how they work, but one of the best ways to truly understand their effectiveness is to have it done to you. Fortunately we recorded one of these demonstrations which I present to you here.

There’s a second video on Facebook featuring yours truly again that incorporates a pressure point on the back of your neck. That one really hurt and is probably the closet thing to Spock’s Vulcan neck pinch. None of my reactions are embellished for affect, especially in the second video. I truly crumbled to the ground like that and hoped he would let go quickly.

If you have any interest in learning about this system of self defense, Japan Karate Institute is now offering a two year program where you learn the system Master Moran has refined over the years. You can read more about it here or check out over a hundred similar videos Master Moran has posted on his Youtube channel, Zanwack.

Satellite image of Typhoon Ketsana

I have a friend who is into conspiracy theories and buys into some of those 2012, end of the world scenarios. Every time there is natural disaster or some random event, he points to it as a sign of the impending apocalypse. Apparently the Mayans had all the secrets of the universe figured out and knew exactly when the world is going to end (December 21, 2012 if you’re interested). This dooms day is to be preceeded by an unprecedented number of natural disasters. I don’t buy any of it for a second. If the Mayans were so smart, they’d still be alive. However, this week’s events in the South Pacific sure seem pretty biblical and slightly, maybe, kind of corroborate some of these ‘end of the world’ theories…or not.

It began with Tropical Storm Ketsana dumping over 16 inches of rain in 12 hours on the Philippine capital of Manila killing hundreds. The storm moved out over open waters and strengthened into a category 2 Typhoon and slammed into Vietnam. The area remains active as there are 3 more tropical systems currently lined up east of the Philippines.

Yesterday, a massive 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck near the Samoa Island region. It did form a tsunami that struck nearby islands killing an estimated 100 people. The quake was so powerful it generated a 1.5-foot tsunami on the Hawaiian island of Oahu 2,700 miles away, and a 0.6-foot tsunami on the Oregon coast, over 5,000 miles away.

And finally another powerful earthquake struck western Indonesia yesterday. It measured 7.6 and occurred along the same fault line that spawned the massive 2004 earthquake that killed over 230,000 people in over a dozen countries. I guess the only thing missing is a volcano eruption…or a meteor strike.

Here’s a picture of Typhoon Ketsana making landfall in Vietnam from a friend on Facebook:

Now that much of the waters from last week’s flood in the Atlanta area has receded, the really hard part begins for those affected – cleaning up. I can’t even imagine the mental, physical, and logistical nightmare these folks must be going through.

I’m no weather man, but when an area that has been in a drought for a couple of years suddenly gets upwards of 20 inches of rain over the course of a few days, there are going to be problems. My brother lives near Atlanta and he simply described the flooding as ‘biblical’.

The weather pattern that is causing all the rain will persist through the weekend before things finally clear out. You can view several hundred twitpic images of the flooding here (be prepared for some Kanye memes thrown into the mix) and you can follow udpates on twitter at #atlflood.

The Atlantic basin has been relatively quiet this year in regards to tropical activity, but the Pacific has been pretty active. Super Typhoon Choi-Wan is currently spinning up a storm (pun intended) with maximum sustained winds at 160mph and gusts approaching 200mph. When storms get this strong, they are essentially just ginormous EF2-EF3 tornados. Check out the mesmerizing satellite loop of this impressive looking system. Thankfully the storm track has it veering away from Japan and it shouldn’t significantly affect any populated areas.

Visible satellite image from rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov

We’ve all seen hundreds of pictures and images from September 11, 2001. Each one conjures up a wide range of emotions and feelings. For me, some of the most moving images of 9/11 are the ones from space showing the billowing smoke extending for miles from lower Manhattan. There is something about the quiet, sterile, solitude of where the images were taken, contrasting with the loud, horrific, and chaotic events on the ground that makes these pictures so impactful to me.