Category: Orlando

pulse aftermath – day 219

whbeebe

It’s been 219 days since the Pulse Nightclub shootings on 12 June 2016 when 49 innocent people were slain by a demented religious nut. I drove past today because, in part, it was MLK Day. There’s a community core that won’t forget. I certainly won’t. No one deserved to suffer and die the way they did.

Earlier today news reports were published that the FBI arrested Noor Salman, wife of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen. She’ll be headed back to Florida on charges of obstructing justice and aiding and abetting the attempted provision of material support to a foreign terrorist organization. I’ll wait to read all the material facts of the case; in my opinion, the FBI isn’t the best law enforcement organization, especially after Comey’s incompetent handling of the non-existent Clinton e-mail evidence right at the end of the general election.

construction triptych 

whbeebe

I’ve been wanting to stop and photograph some of the on-going construction of Universal’s Volcano Bay before construction is finished and everything is buttoned down. I decided to run these series of photos with the Olympus E-M10 and the 14-140 Mark II. I moved the color JPEGs from the E-M10 to my iPad Pro 9.7″ and post processed them with Snapseed. I them moved them up to my blog with the WordPress app. Unfortunately I once again had to go into the browser-based WordPress editor to finish this entry. I’m pretty much done trying to edit with WordPress on either iPhone or iPad. Now it’s time to move on to some other tool.

This is the water park meant to open next year and to replace the old Wet ‘n Wild water park directly across Univeral at I-4. I have no idea how much more work needs to be done or if it’ll open 1 June 2017 as promised. The last time Universal tried to open a park on 1 June, it was Universal itself in 1990, and it didn’t go well. I was one of thousands of contractors trying to get it open and operational. I was a contractor with a company named Kinetix (long since gone) and I worked on Jaws, Quake, and E.T. Starting November 1989 I started working 12 hour days, six days/week, until March of 1990, and then we went to seven day weeks. On the afternoon of 31 May I walked into the park and worked a solid 34 hours until I left the morning of 2 June. It took almost a month for me to get back down to a normal work schedule. I’ve not worked a schedule that long and that intense since.

I’m curious to see what will transpire over the summer.