Tribe elitism started

I learned of a tribe tribes.tribe.net/goldstarclub where only those with a goldstar (ie paid membership) can join. This tribe (and there maybe others) stinks of elitism.

There is another: tribes.tribe.net/star-belliedsneetches which is named from a Dr.Seuss poem about elitism and the ridiculousness of such superficialities, which does allow plain bellied members to join. This seems to be a good tribe about the star vs. plain issue. Thanks Rhino!

BUT the presence of a star on the tribe icon makes me very much not want to pay tribe, I feel any financial transaction between me and tribe should be private.I don't want a star showing up on my icon, as nobody else needs to know!

So for those who want to feel as good as those star-bellied sneetches, I created a tribe tribes.tribe.net/plainbelliedsneetches which is open to all sneetches, especially as I understand some people get a star forced on them, but I feel the place for a plain belly can feel welcome.

Reminds me of pre-WWII Germany, but then, being labeled with a star was considered bad!

Granddad again

My daughter told me today that she's on the way for child number two.

ETA mid July.

She and Ben are VERY happy!

In the mail

Today I sent the gifts from a tribe gifting "pyramid".
Cross, Paulski, and Flicka are the lucky recipients, keep looking for mail in a couple of days!

What Would Jesus Buy?

I just saw the movie "What Would Jesus Buy?" starring Reverend Billy and The Church Of Stop Shopping: wwjbmovie.com
It was excellent, humorous and educational. It was also disheartening to know some of the excess consumerism in the West, and it's made worse that it's done on the slave labor of developing countries.

I recommend everyone see the movie, and recommend it to your friends, neighbors, and family to see it too.
See their website for where it's playing: wwjbmovie.com/theaters.html

Has anyone else seen it?
What did you think?

Rats leaving tribe's sinking ship

I've seen so many requests and it seems most tribe people are getting accounts on mostly myspace, facebook, and ning.
So if you are there, befriend me at whichever you're on (or all of them).

These are me:
• www.facebook.com/profile.php facebook is my current favorite (after tribe)
• www.myspace.com/bryandongray myspace is graphic design from hell
• www.okcupid.com/profile okcupid has GREAT quizzes (although is really online dating for free)
• triberefugees.ning.com/profile/BryTee
• triberip.ning.com/profile/BryTee

Strange thing about ning is each network is a different environment, and there are many environments I might join there, so I'll have many profiles there :-(

Comment here about other social networking sites that are good.
Or post here your profile pages whereever they are - thanks!

Would you pay for tribe?

Poll: Please read and respond
******
The word in some of the admin tribes is that Tribe.net is in serious financial peril. Peril that may make this site go away. Most of us belong to MySpace and/or Bebo and/or Facebook, yet we return to Tribe because it is what serves us best. There are even rumors that Tribe is down to less than five employees.

Given the above, would you be willing to pay a $5/mo subscription fee to tribe as a Premium Member? Premium Members might receive benefits such as ad-free usage, more customizable skins, or other such bells and whistles. Please, if you support tribe and are willing to pay HALF THE COST OF A MOVIE TICKET for one month of Premium Usage, respond to this blog post. Repost this in YOUR BLOG. Collect the yays and nays and forward them to Pi. After ten days I will summarize the results and forward them to the Admins.

Please Support Tribe

people.tribe.net/pi/blog/7...d97c94b047

Finger painting

This 3 year old can paint: www.youtube.com/watch
Wow!

Halloween costume party

At work, we had a costume party of I work my "Mad Max"/Viking outfit, and it was VERY well appreciated.
I was in the top 3 of the many costumes but "Boo" (white ghost) won - well... she did have white contacts too!

See photos either at my FaceBook www.facebook.com/album.php or MySpace viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm albums.
But they need you to have an account there, so there's my own photoview site: www.dongrays.com/images/view.cgi but you cannot make comments.

tribe does not have a decent photo album system, so I've just uploaded a few in my photos: people.tribe.net/btd/photos

Aftershocks

A 3.7 magnitude aftershock just happened: earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter...89819.php

But I noticed how there have been a whole ton of aftershocks (see above photo).

Magnitude 5.6 - near Milpitas

That was only 10 miles from me!
It felt BIG!
So I dived under the desk (yes, I was still at work), and afterwards I had to wait for the USGS website to get the info.... but well done to them, it was there within 10 minutes!

The GoogleMap shows how huge it was....

Details:
Magnitude 5.6
Date-Time
* Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 03:04:54 UTC
* Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 08:04:54 PM at epicenter
Location 37.432°N, 121.776°W
Depth 9.2 km (5.7 miles)
Region SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA
Distances
* 8 km (5 miles) NNE (31°) from Alum Rock, CA
* 11 km (7 miles) E (91°) from Milpitas, CA
* 15 km (9 miles) NE (45°) from San Jose City Hall, CA
Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 0.1 km (0.1 miles); depth +/- 0.3 km (0.2 miles)
Source earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter...04628.php