Kapt Kaos The Cosmic Pirate

Washington, D.C. – The FBI today is providing a warning to the public against an ongoing scheme involving jury service. The public needs to be aware that individuals identifying themselves as U.S. court employees have been telephonically contacting citizens and advising them that they have been selected for jury duty. These individuals ask to verify names and Social Security numbers, then ask for credit card numbers. If the request is refused, citizens are then threatened with fines.

The judicial system does not contact people telephonically and ask for personal information such as your Social Security number, date of birth or credit card numbers. If you receive one of these phone calls, do not provide any personal or confidential information to these individuals. This is an attempt to steal or to use your identity by obtaining your name, Social Security number and potentially to apply for credit or credit cards or other loans in your name. It is an attempt to defraud you.

If you have already been contacted and have already given out your personal information, please monitor your account statements and credit reports, and contact your local FBI office. Local FBI field office telephone numbers can be found in the front of your local telephone directory or on www.fbi.gov. For further information, please review the warnings posted on the U.S. Courts website at www.uscourts.gov, “Newsroom” news article “WARNING: Bogus Phone Calls on Jury Service May lead to Fraud,” August 19, 2005.

I survived my trip to Roatan! Wow, this was one great vacation. Did lots of diving. A whole lot more then I expected when I left. But, before I get there let me tell you about a little trouble that someone ran into on the way to Roatan. I was traveling with a friend of mine. We drove from Austin to Houston to catch our direct flight to Roatan. Just as we are reaching to get our passports to present my friend looks at me with this glazed look on her face and says, “oh shit”. I look at her and say “oh, shit what?”. she left her passport back in Austin! She ends up finding a flight out on another airline the next day but still has to drive to Austin that night. Turn around and drive back to Houston at 5am! She is not a morning person.

She did make it the next day and is staying the full two weeks.

So, I got there with now issues at all and had only one really bad problem the whole time I was there. I will get into that a little later. As I said before I did a lot more diving then I had expected. I was staying at Luna Beach Resort which has a dive shop on site. I went in and talked to the folks at the dive shop about whether I need to do a refresher course as I have not been diving in over 5 years. They asked me how comfortable I felt about getting back in the water. I really did feel pretty good about everything so I decided to just go a head and dive. We were only going to be going down to 45 feet at the deepest on the first dive anyway.

So, I got up Monday morning and did the 9am and 11am dives. Had a great time. The only issue I ran into on the first dive was mask squeeze. I forgot about equalizing the pressure inside my mask as I go deeper. That only last a few minutes but it was enough to give me this big hickey like effect around my eyes. It really was kind of creepy but no real damage done. Other than that I had not issues at all.

Now I had expected as well as planed on that being the end of my diving. I didn’t expect to have as much fun as I did. I ended up doing the 9am and 11am the next day as well. Again, they were both great dives. Saw lots of really cool stuff. Went over a wreck at about 50ft. The wreck is at 100ft but I was not rated to go that deep as I had left my log book showing my deep dives as well as my night dives at home.

Tuesday was the wedding! This was the reason I was there. It was out on the dock looking out at the sunset. Andrea and Monte looked great. It was presided over by Fred(dad). It was just a great wedding. I can only hope to have as much love in life some day as they do.

Wednesday I got up and did the 9am dive. Skipped the 11am dive but did the 2pm dive. This dive was the same location as the night dive was going to be. To do the night dive I had to review a chapter in a dive book and take a test on what I read. The night dive the best dive I had at that point. I saw two Octopus, a King Crab that had a body with at least a 12″ diameter. The claws looked like they could have taken my whole had off if I got to close. Also, saw a few see cucumbers and the biggest lobster I have ever seen. Saw lots of fish and other things. One of the cool things to do is turn your light out then swish your hand back and forth. This creates tracers in the water. It is caused by the little things that live in the water. It is like a little fireworks show.

I took the next day off from diving so I could be a tourist for a while. Ran around taking pictures. Did some shopping but didn’t buy anything. I wish I had as I didn’t get back out to do any shopping any other day. The next day I as back in the water at 9am again. This time I was doing a deep dive, 100ft. Again, to do this I had to take a test after reviewing the book. We went down to the wreck this time. I also got to do a test while on the dive. The test is to show you just how depth effects your thought process. I was given a math problem at the surface. They time how long it takes to do the problem. Then at about 90ft I get to do another problem. I did the problem on the surface in 19 seconds. However, I got the problem wrong. When I got to 90ft and did the problem it took me 39 seconds. This time I got it right! Goes to show you that is now how fast you are as long as you get the right answer.

On the deep dive I saw lots of really big groupers. Stuck my head into the wreck in a few places. Even saw a green moray eal at on point. We only had 19 minutes at this depth. Then we came up to 45ft and stayed there a 20 minutes or so. Then we did out 3 minute safety stop at 15ft.

This was the end of my diving as I was flying out the next morning.

Now the issue that I talked about at the beginning. On Monday we were going to another part of the island for a wine tasting. To get there you have to take a water taxi. Now I use the term taxi very loosely. This more of a flat bottom fishing boat. They pilled 11 people including the driving on to the boat. We would find out very soon that this a few to many people for this boat. As we approach our drop off point the “driver” pulls back on the throttle. When he does this the nose of the boat drops. With the overloaded condition this caused the nose to begin to go underwater. Water began to come in and we began to jump out of the boat. The boat them capsizes. No one is hurt but we are a little shaken up as you would expect. I swim under the boat a few time to make sure no one is trapped. during this I loose my zip-lock baggy of money with my room key. $200 dollars are floating somewhere in the area. I am sure someone is very happy by now. All said and done it wasn’t too bad as no one got hurt.