Attention Local Weather Forecasters

31. January 2008 · Comments Off on Attention Local Weather Forecasters · Categories: Letters to the Editor, Media Matters Not, Stupidity

Temps in the 30s with wind, rain and snow, does NOT qualify as “SEVERE” weather.  If I can see down my street clearly to the “T” intersection (about a block and a half away) this is not limited visibility.  Visibility would be more limited if we weren’t getting any weather and the smog got a chance to settle down.  “Mountain passes are closed!” is not a reason to break into Regis and Kelly, it’s what’s known as “normal” for winter in the freaking mountains!  A crawl across the bottom would suffice.  Seeing your red, panic-stricken, hyperventilating face telling me you’ve come in early to “monitor the situation” doesn’t make me think any better of you, it makes me think you’re an idiot who migrated here from Southern California back when we were in a draught.

Seriously people, get a grip.  It’s just snow and ice.  You handle it by driving what we call “carefully.”  Say that with me, “Care-full-ly.”  Full of care.  It’s simple.  Slow down and be aware of the people around you.  Get off the damn phone, especially if you’re talking to someone you’re on your way to see.  Oh, and your four wheel drive protects you against, say it with me, “nothing.”  We’ve had black ice for the past three nights.  In case you haven’t learned the hard way yet, all four tires slide on wet ice just fine.

Your freaking out over every “weather event” just makes people become immune to your warnings.  If we ever do get a no-kidding, rip roaring blizzard dumping a foot or three of snow on us, we’re not going to believe you when you say to stay inside.

If Things Keep On This Way

31. January 2008 · Comments Off on If Things Keep On This Way · Categories: General

Our choice for November looks to be either McCain or Clinton.

Seriously?  This is the best that both parties have to offer?

I wonder if I should look at jobs outside the country with a four year contract starting Next January?

Good Dhimmi

29. January 2008 · Comments Off on Good Dhimmi · Categories: European Disunion, Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not, World

“Here, dhimmi! Sit! Stay! Roll over! Want a treat?! There you go – such a good dhimmi!

“Now, give up your minorities… there’s a good dhimmi, now!”

“Sit! Stay! Who’s a good dhimmi then?

“Quiet, now! Good dhimmi!”

“So obedient! I hardly have to tell them what to do!”

(All links courtesy of Da Blogfaddah)

Later: “Now, Dhimmi – quiet! Sit still!”

Multi-Tasking considered harmful – not

28. January 2008 · Comments Off on Multi-Tasking considered harmful – not · Categories: General

In which the author blames multi-tasking for

The Iraq quagmire. The mess in Afghanistan. Failure to capture Osama. A car crash. The breakup with his girlfriend. Problems with his new girlfriend. Sexual disappointment. Failure to obtain cheap airplane tickets to San Francisco. His bosses failure to pay attention during a face-to-face. Enron.

The scientists call this ruinous mental lurching “dual task interference,” or just plain bottlenecking. I call it the reason Keven Federline cost me a cheap flight to San Francisco. (It also explains, perhaps, why sexual threesomes are often disappointing.)

I just wish the military understood the concept. They might understand then why “walking and chewing gum” in Afghanistan and Iraq is no way to catch bin Laden.

Right. ‘Cause we sure ’nuff had problems fighting Japan and Germany at the same time, fifty years ago. For that matter I worked for units that did complicated and diverse stuff all the time. It is as if getting stuff done across the world with hundreds of thousands of troops is just a bit more complicated than pulling a fum-ducker and driving your car off the road while looking a nekkid photo of your girlfriend on your cell phone.

I’m sure it plays well around the campfire with all the scouts nodding wisely and learnedly. But I ain’t buying it.

………..

It is true that when you try to multi-task it becomes enormously more difficult to do anything that requires actual thought.

Adults compensate for this by turning off the phone, not looking at email, setting distractions aside and getting on with stuff.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

That’s What I LIke About Texas

28. January 2008 · Comments Off on That’s What I LIke About Texas · Categories: General

http://selenite.livejournal.com/207839.html

I ran into the lovely awamiba at Chikfila

Two things about Texas that I miss that I never thought I’d miss;

Chik-fil-a.

Jack in the Box.

Chik-fil-A for the food – about the best fast food you can find. And the cow advertisements – the idea of sentient cows selling out their fellow livestock (Eat Mor Chikin) tickles me.

Jack In the Box because the food is not at all good for you, it’s damned tasty, and Jack In the Box places don’t have playgrounds or pretend to be doing anything but moving fast food and getting people in and out.  And some of our first meals together were cheap burritos at Jack In The Box.

Mmmm. Burritos.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

It’s Really Frustrating

28. January 2008 · Comments Off on It’s Really Frustrating · Categories: General

The more that the current bunch of Presidential candidates talk, the LESS I want to vote for them.

I liked Thompson. He was a Federalist and had a clear vision of what the Feds should and shouldn’t do. He didn’t talk enough to win any primaries. So he’s gone.

McCain was the guy I wanted as a candidate in 2000. Bush’s folks basically covered him with slime, so he stopped running. He was my second choice this go-’round, but now he’s attacking Romney, who I don’t really like, but McCain’s current volley has me backing away from him.

Romney. He’s way too slick. He sounds good. He looks good. I immediately don’t trust him. He looks like a ’50s Dad coming home from the office. I keep waiting for his wife, with a perfect string of pearls around her neck, to look up at him and say, “Ward, don’t you think you were a little hard on the Beave last night?” It’s not because he’s Morman, although most of the Mormans I meet are the annoying ones knocking at our door just around dinner time to “talk about the bible.” Ummmm, no thanks, I’m going to eat, no, please don’t come back at another time.

Huckabee. This has nothing to do with what he says or what he stands for. I’m simply not voting for a man with a name that sounds like something Jodie Foster chanted in “Nell.” Okay, so the Christmas message bothered me too. Not because there was a cross in the background, but because he tried to pass it off as an accident that it was there. The man’s a preacher. If he’s going to deny that a cross is a cross, where is his conviction?

Giulliani. I just heard that he’s probably going to drop out and run with McCain if he can’t win Florida. I never saw the man running for office that I remember from 9/11. I’m not sure that man ever existed other than in my shocked memory of that day.

Clinton(s). Every time they open their mouths a voice in my head screams “LIAR!” The simple truth is I can’t hear a word they say because of that. I’m told I wouldn’t agree with them anyway. Hillary is a poor speaker with that annoying midwest nasality, and while Bill is one of the best speakers I’ve ever heard, when he’s in attack dog mode, he comes off as a tired Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon.”

Obama. To be honest, based on what I’ve seen in the debates, I’m not sure what he stands for other than to bash at Hillary. This endears him to me. The fact that he’s inexperienced in almost all areas supposedly needed to be President is actually a plus in my book. The “experienced” folks of the past 20 years haven’t impressed me all that much once all was said and done. The fact that Kennedy has endorsed him isn’t helping my opinion of him, but on the other hand, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Edwards. I stopped listening to him when he agreed to run with Kerry. Anyone who’s willing to compromise as much as he did in 2004 simply for the chance at being number two doesn’t have what it takes to be number one. Anything he does say is drowned out by what he did in 2004. The fact that the unions love him makes me shiver as well.  There’s word that he’s trying to strike a deal with Obama that if he drops out, he’ll get Attorney General from Obama. This man is NOT a President.

I still have no idea who I want as our next President. This pisses me off. I should be able to listen to them and become MORE inclined toward them. The more they talk, the less I like them. I hate to admit it, but I’m frightened for us.

Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 080128

28. January 2008 · Comments Off on Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 080128 · Categories: Technology

There are times when being a Customer Service Rep for Ginormous Worldwide Telecom is downright boring. Changing rate plans, selling phones, adding and subtracting features until it not only meets the customers’ needs but also their pocketbook. Those are pretty standard calls. We also have the folks who call up screaming their heads off because their “phone is broke and I just bought it and…” Nine times out of ten that can be fixed with a simple, “You know, at this point, cell phones are basically little computers. Do me a favor and turn it off…wait about five seconds and turn it back on…is it working now?” “Ummm, yeah, what’s that do?” “It reboots it. If the same problem happens again, try that first.”

Every now and then though I get great satisfaction out of helping a customer that no one else has seemed to be able to help out before. Now a lot of folks call in, over and over and over again, hoping they’ll find some sap to listen to their sob story and credit them back the ridiculous amount of overage that they accrued over the holidays. Most of the time, I’m going to tow the company line an advise them, just like the last four reps did, that those are valid charges and there’s no way we can credit them. Every now and then though, I get a customer who, for some reason or another, no one has LISTENED to before. That happened right before my night ended tonight, and I feel pretty good about it.  Earlier the customer had called in and the rep had told him that he had oodles of minutes remaining for the month. However, the customer went over by over 200 minutes when the cycle actually closed out. When he called in to dispute it, he was told, “Those are valid overages.” Once, twice, three times. He wanted to cancel and was sent to cancellations (or SAVES, the folks who do their best to keep the customer) who once again told him those were valid overages and wouldn’t refund him anything either. He cancelled service, pretty much fed up with us. The man was quite tenacious and had a strong feeling that he’d been wronged and called in one last time to see if I could help him. And I could.

Once all was said and done and after I’d simply played with the database a little, it was easy to see that at the time he was told he had oodles of minutes left, he was already over. A little further digging and I found out where that customer service rep had found that oodles of minutes number…from his previous month’s bill!!! That’s clearly our error and I was able to fix it for him, making him so happy that he had me restore his service immediately. Three lines. That’s potential profit the company was going to lose because no one would listen.

And like I said, I got a great deal of satisfaction out of that. Three previous reps AND a “SAVES Specialist” missed the simple fact that we gave him the wrong information from the wrong month’s bill. I’m very much in an, “I SO rule.” mood right now. I’m also disappointed in four of my coworkers, one of them deemed “The best of the best.”

As much as other reps are going to hate me for saying this, if you’re a customer, and you KNOW something’s wrong, keep calling until somebody hears exactly what you’re saying to them. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll have someone on the other end who’s willing to dig a little deeper and say, “Sir/Ma’am, that’s clearly our error, and I’m going to fix it for you.”

A Girl and her Grill

27. January 2008 · Comments Off on A Girl and her Grill · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, World

With the very last insurance payment for the late lamented Mitsubishi coupe (totaled last spring in a collision at the I-35/Division off-ramp) which was not received until after we returned home, don’t ask for the long and involved explanation of how this came to pass – Blondie went straight to Lowes’ and bought a gas barbeque grill. Then she hied herself to the local Humongously-Enormous Big-Ass Grocery store for all the grill impedimenta to go with it – including one of those little stands for doing beer-can chicken, which I would swear was invented by one of the clients from the inventions-consultant that I was working at when I began blogging, yeah on many years ago. (five and half, if you want to get really technical – not quite the dark ages, but nearly there.) The beer-can chicken came out well, BTW, but last night we did something else, entirely.

To celebrate Blondie’s birthday, we had a sort of garden-party dinner; catching the weather at just the right moment. Yesterday was mild and only tenuously cloudy, and Blondie cleaned up the garden and adorned it with candles, lanterns and tea-lights from her vast collection gleaned at various yard-sales and the Extremely Marked Down shelves at various retail outlets. She invited her co-workers and I invited mine; making a nice mixed crowd, since some of them knew each other. Dave the Computer Genius has sorted out the computers at Blondie’s place of employment on a couple of occasions. There didn’t seem to be any of those awkward pauses, and there was very little leftover food. Always reassuring, that – even better, no one had to go to the emergency room for treatment of food poisoning. Look, that is always a worry, when you have people over and feed them. Projectile vomiting – not a memory to hold on to, although I seem to have retained mine for all those AFRTS food-safety spots.

Anyway, we did a very nice pasta salad, from one of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, and a splendid barbequed chicken – also from the same source. My sister, Pippy is a fan, pointing out that the beauty of Ina Gartons’ cookbooks are that just about everything can be done in advance. All we had to do for the chicken was throw it on the grill. This is the recipe, and it was splendid! We have enough that we will do “pulled chicken BBQ” sandwiches tonight.
More »

Doldrums

25. January 2008 · Comments Off on Doldrums · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Rant, Veteran's Affairs, World

I read – in a couple of places on the intertubules or overheard on a TV fluffy-news item sometime in the last couple of days that some genius has deduced that mid-January is without peer, the most depressing part of the year. Forget about Christmas, and such moveable feasts such as post-natal depression, the suckage-factor of this time of the year cannot be measured with current technology. At least he got some news coverage out of this blinding flash of the obvious.

And this is actually rather bizarrely comforting – at least I know it just isn’t me. Other people are feeling the great dreary weight of generalized malaise and suckage too. I’d be cheered right up, except for my own accumulation of post-Christmas blah.

Let me count the ways, enumerate the bleakness, have a nice wallow in it… at the very least, it gives me a nice blog-entry topic. Actually I haven’t felt much like blogging, either producing free bloggy ice cream or reading anybody elses free bloggy ice cream. Some of the best have quit, pulled the plug, nothing more to say, and everyone – including me seems to have said it all before; much better, with more zest and with a great deal less laborious effort. It all seems terribly stale, flat, pointless, joyless.

The presidential contest 2008 promised to be unutterably depressing and pointless; Her Inevitableness versus The Fresh Prince of Illinois. Yuck. Bill Clinton. Double-Yuck. Nancy Pelosi. Triple-Yuck.

Even the discussion groups I participate in, the other members appear to be enervated and depressed. Days go by without any comments or new topics. I am winding up a project for the Independent Authors Guild, to collect up a number of books by our members to donate to the BAMC patients’ library. Since before Christmas, authors have been mailing books to my address so that I will be able to deliver one big box of them to the volunteer librarian. Getting boxes of books in the mail almost every day – what could be more exciting? But I haven’t been able to generate much interest in this outside of the contributors themselves… and the library may already have enough book donations anyway. Delivering yet another box of them to BAMC just feels like one more onerous chore.

I had a spike in sales from nice book review and instalanche around the first of the month, but nothing much since then. There are six or seven other copies of “To Truckee’s Trail” that I sent to people in September on promise of an eventual review, but no review produced to date. I’ve pretty much given up on following up. Just as a note, the cost of those review copies come out of my budget. No review means I might as well have made a nice bonfire and burnt them in the fireplace, except for this way I can claim the expense on my income tax.

Another cause for malaise – income-tax filing time. I know the deadline is April, but I like to beat the rush.

Received a rejection from a publisher on the first volume of the Texas-German trilogy, from a place that didn’t even have the courtesy to even send a letter saying no thanks. I don’t know why this annoyed me so much, but it did –having to hunt them down and ask seemed very much like waiting to hear the results of a medical test. You wait and wait and wait, never get a call… and then when you finally call and ask, they tell you “Sorry, you’re dying from the ingrown toenail. Have a nice day and best of luck.” This is why writers go mad, although I would swear a lot of them started out that way anyway.

The weather is dreary, it’s cold. I’m not making any money, from the book or much else, the dogs are doing their best to kill me on the morning walkies, and I don’t much want to do anything else than sit down and pound out another half-chapter for the last book of the trilogy. It’s a refuge in a way, just about the one thing that I can control. If great writing comes out of misery and depression – it’s going to be a pretty damn good read.

Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 080125

25. January 2008 · Comments Off on Confessions of a Wireless Customer Service Rep, 080125 · Categories: General, Stupidity, Technology

Working for Ginormous Worldwide Telecom can sometimes be a chore. Especially if you have a sense of personal responsibility.

Right now, cell phone companies sell cell phones at hugely discounted prices, sometimes even giving them away, in return for a commitment from the customer to stick around for X amount of time. If you break that commitment, there’s a fiscal penalty. There’s always the choice to buy a phone at full price with no commitment. People don’t normally choose to buy a phone at full price, they chose to take the discounted price and agree to the commitment.

Right now, cell phone companies sell service plans for X amount of minutes. You can sometimes get drastically reduced rates on your service plans if you agree to stick around for X amount of time. This, it seems to me, is a good thing. If I know I’m getting good service in my area from a company and they’re willing to sell me more minutes for less money, or even the same amount of minutes for less money, in return for a commitment, I’m all about that.

That may change one of these days. If it does, you can blame California.

If this class action lawsuit goes through, and the folks who have filed it win, you can bet that we’ll all suffer for it. There will be no more discounted cell phones and there will be no more reduced-rate service plans. We’ll all pay more because some folks who can’t read a contract before they sign it or who refuse to honor a contract after they’ve signed it, decided that they’re special and the rules that the rest of us live by don’t apply to them.

I Was Sad to Hear

23. January 2008 · Comments Off on I Was Sad to Hear · Categories: That's Entertainment!

…that actor Heath Ledger died yesterday afternoon. Of course the press was salivating over how he died and whether or not he died of an overdose. Were Ashley and Mary Kate involved? Seriously, i could care less.

I was sad because I liked him in everything I saw him in. From “10 Things I Hate About You” to “A Knight’s Tale” to “The Patriot” to “The Brother’s Grimm” I simply thought he did some good work and I’m bummed he won’t be doing more. I’m looking forward to his take on The Joker in the next Batman movie. It takes serious balls to take on a role that Jack Nicholson has put his stamp on.

I never regretted seeing one of his movies. That says a lot.

Ever-Accelerating Waltz

21. January 2008 · Comments Off on Ever-Accelerating Waltz · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, World

I’ve been lax in blogging the last couple of weeks – three reasons for this. One – slogging away at the epic known as Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms, for I have reached a Very Interesting Chapter, one that I had thought a lot about – so the narrative does not have to be yanked out of my consciousness, inch by reluctant inch, like pulling a large boa constrictor out of a tight-fitting drain. I have spent four or five chapters setting up all the characters in place on the literary chessboard, establishing motivations, dabbling on the foreshadowing and setting up the conditions for what happens now. It’s a lightening-fast raid by a Comanche war party, which results in death for two characters and the kidnapping of another characters’ children. I am not planning on being particularly politically correct in describing the aftermath of the raid. I imagine Mom’s English-professor friend who has been reading the story all along will be terribly freaked out by this development. There’s no getting around the fact that the Comanches treated adult captives with a brutality that can really only be described as psychotic.

Second reason: my various employers – Dave the Computer Guy, and The Worlds’ Tallest ADHD child have gotten their respective post-holiday business plans in order and for the past two or three weeks I have been working almost every day for one or the other. The Worlds’ Tallest finally got the last little scrap of his office organized. Heretofore, he had been in the habit of just scraping off the top of his desk whenever it reached an unbearable degree of clutter and dumping everything in a file box. When I first began working for him, more than a year ago, there were more than a dozen of such boxes piled up under the living room table… and naturally he would be in a tizzy because he could never find anything; a file, a post-it note reminder, a scribbled telephone number, last weeks farm and ranch property classifieds, a past-due bill from the utility company. You name it – he couldn’t find it. But over Christmas, he sorted out the last two boxes – mostly by throwing out the contents on the very fair assumption that if he hadn’t missed anything in them in a year, than there wasn’t much important therein. The file cabinets are purged, the desk-tops are clean, he found a whole case of copy paper buried in another closet, and I have almost trained him to put receipts into a manila envelope in the wire file-rack on my desk instead of leaving them crumpled up in the most unexpected places. So he is off to take pictures of various ranch properties, and on the morrow I will start making up nice little one-page write-ups for each. Which is what I was supposed to be doing, all along, but never mind.

Dave the Computer Guy is helping one of his friends launch a carpet-cleaning business, in addition to the computer-repair and website stuff, which he runs from his home. Yes, he is diversifying his vast corporate empire; and I am doing his market-mailing and general office support. He went all-out and set up a private office for me, in an attempt to untangle the office stuff from the computer-repair stuff and the carpet-cleaning stuff. They were formerly jumbled all together in the second bedroom of a double-wide in a trailer-park on O’Connor Road. Yes, I have achieved the dignity once more of a private office, but alas, no corner view – no window, for the office was formerly the walk-in closet. It has worked out rather well, actually – for it is just large enough to accommodate an L-shaped worktop, with shelves above and below, a single office chair and myself. The neat thing is that I can reach everything, just by scooting the chair about six inches one way or the other.

Third reason: Not much interested in the spectacle of Her Inevitableness and the Fresh Prince of Illinois slugging it out, other than relishing the irony. It’s gonna be a long political season, and I’d like to pace myself.

Another Fine Mess

17. January 2008 · Comments Off on Another Fine Mess · Categories: General, General Nonsense, GWOT, Home Front, Media Matters Not, Military, Rant, sarcasm, Veteran's Affairs, War

Oh, so it looks like the ever beloved New York Times has nobly volunteered itself to be the Piniata o’the Month for unleashing yet again – in the words of Maxwell Smart “the old Krazed Killer Veteran Story”. You know, the same old, same old pathetic round of stories that those of us over a certain age saw in the 1970s – and not just in the news but on every damn cop show; the freak who got a taste for killin’ and brought it home with him after the war. Honest to key-rist, NYTimes-people – what is your assignments editor these days smoking these days? I am a little late to joining the predictable pile-on from every quarter, which looks like it includes just about everyone short of the VFW.

At least it’s nice to know legacy media drones can do a google search these days and assemble a laundry list of whatever it was they were looking for in the intertubules. A step up from a couple of years ago, all things considered. But… and that is a big but there, almost as big as a Michael Moore butt…it is just that – a laundry list of incidents where someone who was a military veteran of a tour in Afghanistan or Iraq was subsequently involved in or thought to be involved in a murder. Or manslaughter, or something.

No context, no analysis – just OMFG, the Krazed Killer Veterans are Koming (and it’s all the military’s fault!) Look, NYTimes-people, coincidence is not co-f**king causality. Sometimes, it is just a co-incidence, and laying on a smarmy layer of sympathy and glycerin tears over the poor *sniff* innocent *sniff* widdle misdiagnosed *sob* veterans does not make your s**t-sandwich of a story any more palatable. Not to veterans and their families.

Not only can we remember this kind of story post-Vietnam, but the very senior among us can remember it post-WWII. I am reliably informed that there was even a certain amount of heartburn over an anticipated propensity for free-lance violence on the part of returning veterans from the Civil War – and no, I will be not sidetracked into a discussion of how the still-expanding western frontier managed to provide an outlet for all of those Billy Yanks and Johnny Rebs seeking post-war excitement.

My point would be that when this same-old-same-old went down post-hostilities every other damn time, the experience of military service was a bit more evenly spread among the general male population. The general reader had enough friends and relations in his immediate circle to take the whole Krazed Killer Veterans are Koming narrative with a large handful of salt. They knew enough veterans personally to not take what they read in the papers as necessarily the whole truth, and to put the sensational stories of post-war veteran crime into context. And they could blow them off as just another grab at the headlines.

But service in the military these days draws on a smaller sub-set of the population – and unfortunately that set does not include the media or cultural elite. Tripe like the NYT’s Krazed Killer Veteran – if it is not challenged and countered robustly- will soon solidify into conventional wisdom, just like it did with Vietnam veterans. And that, my little scribbling chickadees at the NY Times – is not going to happen again. Welcome to attitude adjustment, Times-folks. I can promise a real interesting and educational time for you over the next couple of days. Take notes. They will come in handy, especially for the next time you are assigned a story about military veterans.

Later: (Update from Iowahawk, too delicious to leave unlinked. Beware, NYTimes- this one is gonna leave a mark!)

Still later: And so will this blast from Col. Peters. My advice to the NYTimes writers is to load up on Midol, as well as taking notes.

American Idol Season 7

16. January 2008 · Comments Off on American Idol Season 7 · Categories: That's Entertainment!

I don’t know why I expected more actual talent on the first night…but I did…and now all I can say is that I’m grateful as I can be to the inventors of the DVR. I was going to record all of the episodes and just ff through the bad ones but I think I’m just going to skip the sucktitude all together and wait until they get to the actual competition where there’s at least a chance of hearing more actual singing than seeing some fat guy get his chest and back waxed.

Hey, I’ve got movies, I’ve got some of my favorite shows on DVD. I refuse to let the writers’ strike drag me into reality hell…not as long as there’s Discovery Channel.

Hey, who knows, maybe if this keeps up, America will start turning off the TV and reading more…what? It could happen.

Just Heard From Robert Ferrigno

16. January 2008 · Comments Off on Just Heard From Robert Ferrigno · Categories: Fun With Islam, That's Entertainment!

Received an email from Robert Ferrigno yesterday. “Sins Of The Assassin,” the sequel to “Prayers For The Assassin,” is due to be released in February. I can’t wait. What I’m expecting is a lot of information on Islam, wrapped in an action packed thriller that will keep me up way too late waiting to see what happens next.

What I liked about “Prayers For The Assassin” was that it showed Islam from all sides. From the whack jobs who want to destroy us, to the good people of that faith that are desperately trying to do the next right thing.

I’ll Be Watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

15. January 2008 · Comments Off on I’ll Be Watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles · Categories: That's Entertainment!

First and foremost, Summer Glau is playing a major character. To say I have a a bit of a crush on this young lady is to put it mildly. Beautiful Wife has nothing to worry about, but ever since I first saw her in Firefly, I’ve been absolutely fascinated by her. I liked her in The 4400 as well where she did crazy well, but I missed her fighting. In Terminator, she’s back to being a badass. There’s something about a woman who can kick ass with style. If the first and second episodes are any indication of what we’re going to see from her, I want more.

Secondly, they haven’t skimped on the CGI effects. They’re good, especially for network T.V..

Thirdly, I’ve always loved the ‘verse of The Terminator. I think we should be more than a bit worried about what we computerize. You know I love computers and what we can do with them. However, I think that we’re advancing faster technically than we are socially. It worries me. When I think about it though. Humanity has survived under those conditions for centuries.

Fourth. The rest of the characters are fully filled in and follow the story line well. Lena Headey does a decent Sarah Connor. She’s no Linda Hamilton, but then again, Linda Hamilton hasn’t been Linda Hamilton since Beauty and the Beast. Thomas Dekker plays John Connor and since I wasn’t that thrilled with the kid who played him in that Terminator movie, anyone could have played a young John Connor better. He’s got some fighting skills as well so I think we’re going to have some decent sequences as the season progresses.

And lastly, did I mention Summer Glau is in it? I’m a happy man.

It’s Been a While…

13. January 2008 · Comments Off on It’s Been a While… · Categories: General

since I plugged Radio Paradise.  About 90% of the time I’m on my laptop, surfing or playing online poker, I’ve got Radio Paradise running.  I know I can play my iTunes library just as easily, but sometimes I want to hear stuff that I don’t have.  They’re eclectic but the sets they put together always make me smile.

Right now they’ve got a promotion going.  If you subscribe, you can win a Wii and a pair of AudioEngine speakers.

If you like it, send them a couple of bucks.  No commercials and enough variety to suit just about any taste.

Mo-Toon Fallout

12. January 2008 · Comments Off on Mo-Toon Fallout · Categories: Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not

I think the fuss over the Danish Mohommad cartoons was the point where I definitly lost all respect for that segment of the Western press who were all about striking a brave pose about the so-called “right of the people to know” against any threat to that most sacred of rights…but folded like a wet paper bag when it came to actually – you know – telling people about things, like the Danish Cartoons o’ Death. Here the fearsome Muslim street was going ape-shit over a set of cartoons published in a Danish newspaper, which poked mild fun at how Danish cartoonists were afraid to publish cartoons about Mohammed for fear of the Muslim street going ape-shit… and our brave palidins o’ the press were all in fear and trembling of actually showing us the cartoons that set the world on fire. (Or that part of it actually Muslim.)

Yep, in the face of it all, they delined to publish a set of drawings about three degrees milder than Family Circle, for fear of ‘offending people’. Nice to know the guardians of the press have our backs, good to know they will fearlessly stride forth and defend our right to know. Thanks, press guardians – appreciate the effort.

Of course there were some who did slap their manly chests, step forward and actually publish the Mo-Toons of Doom. And one of those who did, is caught in the predictable fallout and has made a defense of press freedom that ought to put a blush of shame on the face of every editor of a news program or newspaper who declined to live up to what they had claimed to be their reason to exist.

Courtesy of Da Blogfadder and Samizdata.

The Problem with Us v. Them…

12. January 2008 · Comments Off on The Problem with Us v. Them… · Categories: General

… is that sometimes one goes after a “them” that’s really an “us,” or is neither an “us” nor a “them.”

Baldilocks points us to one tragic example, in Kenya.

Lucas Sang was a Kalenjin farmer. He was also an Olympian, racing for Kenya in the 1988 Seoul Olympics as part of their 4×400 metre relay team.

Don’t know if you’ve been following the mess in Kenya, but there’s a huge “us v. them” struggle going on right now, over their most recent elections. Lucas Sang is one of the victims of that struggle – he was stoned to death on New Year’s Day, by a mob expressing their displeasure with the recent election, who thought he was a Kikuyu.

Us v. them. It’s so easy to let emotions run ahead of rational thought, and the outcome is rarely pleasant.

On the Lighter Side

08. January 2008 · Comments Off on On the Lighter Side · Categories: Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, The Funny

OK, before anyone gets into a pissier mood, herewith an amusing email, courtesy of the FEN Yahoo group:

Subject: Things to avoid for seniors

Many of us ‘Old Folks” (those over 50, WAY over 50, or hovering near 50) are quite confused about how we should present ourselves. We are unsure about the kind of image we are projecting and whether or not we are correct as we try to conform to current fashions. Despite what you may have seen on the streets, the following combinations DO NOT go together and should be avoided:

A nose ring and bifocals

Spiked hair and bald spots

A pierced tongue and dentures

Miniskirts and support hose

Ankle bracelets and corn pads

Speedos and cellulite

A belly button ring and a gall bladder surgery scar

Unbuttoned disco shirt and a heart monitor

Midriff shirts and midriff bulge

Bikinis and liver spots

Short shorts and varicose veins

Inline skates and a walker

And last, but not least… My personal favorite*

Thongs and Depends

OK, everyone in a better mood now? Thank you, I live to serve…

Caption This One (080108)

08. January 2008 · Comments Off on Caption This One (080108) · Categories: Fun and Games

 
Couldn’t resist this one.  From The Guardian.

The Longer I’m Retired…

08. January 2008 · Comments Off on The Longer I’m Retired… · Categories: Rant

The more I realize that all those hours that I worked longer than I had to “for the good of the mission” would have better spent working on my degree. I robbed my family two ways. I wasn’t there when I “stepped up” and did all those extra hours. And all of those extra hours did absolutely nothing to help my family now that I’m retired.

“The experience” that I gained from the Air Force means almost nothing in the civilian world. “The mission” that at the time seemed so important, is pretty damn meaningless now.

Dulce et Decorum

06. January 2008 · Comments Off on Dulce et Decorum · Categories: General, GWOT, History, Iraq, Military, Veteran's Affairs, War, World

I suppose it is only one of those vast cosmic coincidences that mil-blogger Andrew Olmstead would be killed in an ambush in Iraq at about the same time that George Macdonald Fraser died of cancer in his 80s. On the surface they would seem to have had nothing much in common at all – save for being writers and having similar terminating dates on their memorials. Different ages, nationalities, different professional experience and all that… but one similarity – they both were soldiers and wrote about their experiences in uniform in a way that people who weren’t military could connect to and begin to understand something about what motivates men (and women, too) to take up a lonely position on the walls.

It’s one of those elemental and primal things, I suspect – almost the first obligation of a citizen to a community is to take up arms and defend it. Most Americans, or Brits or western Europeans have lived so long in relative safety that most people feel this duty can be farmed out to specialists; no need to serve in the same way as all adult male citizens of ancient Athens served as their cities army, or the Colonial militias, or rangers on the Texas frontier needed to defend their own isolated communities. The downside to this specialization is that most citizens – most especially our political and intellectual elite have little to do with the military, or that part of their community from which the serving military is drawn. Andrew Olmstead and other military bloggers have tried over the last five years with some success to bridge this experience gap, to convey to people half a world away what it is like at the point of the spear in this war.

G.M. Fraser is most famed as the creator of Flashman, the Victorian era rogue-hero, who managed to participate in just about every important 19th century event and meet up with every prominent personality of the time – usually unwillingly and glimpsed over a shoulder as he fled with great speed, buttoning up his trousers. His memoir of his own time as a soldier in WWII. Quartered Safe out Here or the adventures of his alter-ego Lieutenant Dand O’Neill in the post-war British Army as related in the McAuslan Trilogy, is a little less known than the flamboyant and fictional Flashman but very well worth reading. The O’Neill-McAuslan stories especially are a peep into the world of a military that if you take away the superficial trappings, the specific-era technology and the very specific slang… is timeless as it is familiar.

I kind of picture Fraser and Olmstead, sitting quietly together with a bottle of especially fine Scotch in some otherworld officers’ club, swapping stories and memories and eventually getting quite merry. For they had quite a lot in common, and one of them – to judge on what they wrote about being soldiers would have been agreement with this sentiment;

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods,

Thomas Babington Macauley – Lays of Ancient Rome

FM 3-0 Operations (SAMS Edition)

05. January 2008 · Comments Off on FM 3-0 Operations (SAMS Edition) · Categories: General

FM 3-0 Operations (SAMS Edition)
Doctrine for Dummies
Illustrated by Mrs. Finklestien’s Third Grade Class

Introduction

You are students. This means you are supposed to learn things. Read this and learn it.

There will be a test. There are only two grades…”win”, or “lose”.

Come back with your shield, or on it.

I.M. Mean
General
Soldier in Chief

Excerpt

2. Whacking bad people is dangerous. It’s also hard. It’s easier and safer to whack the bad people if you do it from the air or the ocean. That’s because the bad people can’t afford the super weapons that do stuff from there. That’s why we have to be nice to the Navy and Air Force; so they will whack bad people with great enthusiasm.

Full text is here, includes a link to a PDF file.

Condensed version, with multimedia is here.

No one has produced an ultra condensed version in comic book ‘graphic novel’ format written at the 1st grade level for Marines. No doubt some very bright field-grade officers are working on that at Quantico.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Andrew Olmsted Died

04. January 2008 · Comments Off on Andrew Olmsted Died · Categories: General

One of the very first milbloggers (and my personal favorite), died in Iraq. He left a note behind in case of his death here. There will be tears.

Random Thoughts on Interstate Highway Travel

04. January 2008 · Comments Off on Random Thoughts on Interstate Highway Travel · Categories: Ain't That America?, Critters, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Memoir, Site News, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Topmost on my list of such thoughts is – oh, god, it’s good to be home! It’s good to be able to sleep in ones own bed, to stretch out and not have cold feet, cold hands, cold-whatever-body-part-winds up pressed against the side panel of the Montero and is just a thin sheet of metal and some miscellaneous plastic bits removed from the frigid, wind-whipped New Mexico or West Texas weather.

Oh, yes, it was bloody cold out there; there was no snow to show for all that cold, but some nice patches of blowing dust and sand. The winds kicked up the day before we left Mom and Dads and made such a racket we couldn’t sleep that night anyway – and followed us all the way across three states. Nothing says “I want to go home” quite so much as vacating the area at 2 AM.

The best thing about departing in the wee hours on New Years Day – no traffic, once you finish dodging the drunks. There was one suspiciously careful driver, weaving gently down the Valley Center grade, which Blondie felt obliged to try and call 911 about – but all we got was it ringing about twenty times and then an answering machine. On 911; I guess they had their hands full. And the driver we were worried about didn’t look to be the reckless sort of drunk driver.

The “Starbuckifaction” of the coffee-drinking element has spread it’s what some would claim is an insidious influence far and wide, yea my brethren even to the truck plazas and gas stations along the interstate highway system. The Flying J/Pilot stores provide a surprisingly excellent selection of coffee… and have half-and-half on tap. Not just exclusively that ghastly powdered chalk non-dairy “cream” muck, thankyouverymuch. Extremely drinkable and for about a third of the cost of an equivalent at a Starbucks. No demerara sugar, though, but I expect that to appear by the next time I do a long, long road trip.

Oh, and speaking of coffee in the wee hours, I must pour scorn and derision upon the Carls Junior, just off the 1-8 in the eastern suburb of San Diego where we attempted to purchase some handy breakfast comestables and coffee at 4 AM. Yes, I know it was 4AM on New Years Day and the single unfortunate young person running the place was so junior as to make drawing fuzzy end of the lollipop and working that shift inevitable… but still; no breakfast items? We were told that only lunch items were available… oh, and sorry, the coffee brewer wasn’t fired up. And payment could only be made in cash. Yeah, so he wasn’t senior enough to have the keys to the debit-credit card processor or the coffee urns, but lunch items at 4 AM? Jesus jumping key-rist on a pogo stick, the whole damn reason for 24 hour fast food places is to dispense coffee!

Gas prices – not to shabby once outside California, and Blondie’s Montero got very good mileage on the highway. We filled to the top four times and came in well under budget, having allowed for gas at $3.25 a gallon when we planned the trip. Most gas stations along the interstate in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona had it within a nickel of $2.90, either way.

What to call the road-kill count – Bambi Bits? Bambicide? Whatever it is, the deer population takes a hell of a beating; that stretch of 1-10 through the Hill Country is a veritable holocaust for them. As a stratagem to keep ourselves awake and amused after coffee ceased having the required effect, we counted road kill from Mile 300 to Mile 511 in the median, on the roadway and off on the shoulder. Not counting various nasty looking smears and blots on the paving, our grand total was 49 deer, 8 raccoons or opossum, 3 skunks, 3 large birds (turkey or guinea-fowl of some sort) and 23 U-L-O-M, which is our acronym for “Unidentified Lumps ‘o Meat”. At that, we probably missed about a third as many, off-sight on the opposite side of the highway.

So – we’re home – and when I get home, the first thing I find is that Eric at Classical Values posted a lovely review of “To Truckee’s Trail” and Da Blogfaddah linked to it. With a resulting uptick in sales through Amazon. Maybe I should go away more often. Oh, never mind – provision of good bloggy ice cream will commence as soon as I finish going through my email in-box.

Don’t be an ass – the internet never forgets

03. January 2008 · Comments Off on Don’t be an ass – the internet never forgets · Categories: General

Get caught doing the dumbs and you will never, ever live it down – the internet has a long memory.

Guy is caught keying a car – $2400 worth of damage. Guy has words with the car owner. Seems the guy keyed the car because the car owner has military tags and plates. The police are called. More words are tossed around. A citation is issued.

The details are at Blackfive.

A moment of ill-considered vandalism, a lifetime of crap.

The problem is, Google is good at finding stuff but not so good for measuring repentance. He could have a Come to Jesus moment a year from now, he could find himself a changed man a decade from now but Google will likely always pull this incident up, first.

It will also find the hatred and bile piled on by blogs and blog comments.

I have some sympathy.

A long time ago I made a foolish choice and screwed up. If I’d been a civilian I might have gotten fired and moved along to the next job.

I was enlisted in the Marine Corps. I got Non Judicial Punishment; docked a few months pay, reduced in rank.

Ambition

Yes, it sucked.

Every service member has a record book.  Your new commanding officer opens that sucker up and just about the first thing his eyeballs fall upon is Page 11; the list of all the Bad Things you’ve done. Later there is another page with all of the good things but by then it’s way too late.

If it you were a bad kid five minutes ago, or five years ago it’s all the same thing – condensed into neat tidy paragraphs for their reading displeasure. You know what’s coming ..

– We going to have any problems like this?

A small part of you may want to roll your eyes: I’ve heard this before. You want to say “That was five years ago and I regretted it about five seconds after the fact and long, long before the The Man had me standing tall in his office and oh boy have I changed, hey look at last quarter’s pro/con marks ..” but you don’t because all you can do is suck it up and demonstrate you’ve changed because Marines Don’t Whine.

You say ‘No Sir’ and get on with it. Because that’s what you do.

Chesty Puller
Five Navy Crosses.  Not a whiner.


At the risk of beating this into the ground …. this is a problem in the Real World where everyone is looking at your Page 11 and no one is going to be around to see what a good guy you actually are.  First impressions are last and final ones.

Google is great for finding information. It’s not so hot at measuring reputation capital – for telling people who you are now or how an otherwise ‘ok’ person had a bad day and fucked up his google rep for the next few years.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

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