The Furher's speech

Now before anyone goes ballistic on my use of the word "furher" for Bush, keep in mind it's meaning in German is "leader". Granted a role he may not be filling well but he is the elected leader of our country right now. And I've used this phrase for presidential addresses for more than 10 years now.

Anyway I listened to part of it last night. It was just more talking head stuff on his social security stuff. Although he did "promise" that the lowest income seniors would get benefit bumps before others. Probably not a bad thing but since he's a liar why should we believe him? I could see his point in not announcing a date for the pullout of American troops. If you sets some date he's pretty much got to stick to it and the insurgents know all they need to do is to wait him out. Which isn't to excuse the administration's apparent lack of an exit strategy. They should have something even if they can't tell us, but it appears they don't too often.

I had Op Center all day today so ... well not really anything. But this afternoon I've got Marlin on one side filling in for Erik and Woodsmall on the other writing code for him. His blog is funny as hell and possibly more wrong than South Park.

You want me to THANK him???

http://www.thankyougeorge.com/index

I'm very lukewarm on this. While it's true Lucas did create something wonderful in 1977, I think there are nearly as many things he needs to apologize to us (sci fi fans) for as things we should thank him for. I think it was merely a matter of good timing as his "skill". His casting has been hit AND miss pretty steadily.

Alec Guinness, James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and a host of others from the first film were great choices. And while Mark Hamil has matured into a fine actor, in 1977 he was whiney as all hell. Ewan MacGregor, Liam Nielson, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson and others were great choices for Episode I but Jake Lloyd continues the whiney tradition with alarming accuracy. And for Episode II and III we get Christopher Lee on our side but have to put up with Hayden Christensen.

Even now I see a number of the photos of Darth Vader have been modified so that it's him in the suit instead of David Prowse. The three inches of space on the sides of his armor just ruin the whole effect. You know it's not the menacing "Dark Lord of the Sith" inside there, rather it's the "Cheese That Comes With Our Whine".

Episode V (The Empire Strikes Back) is commonly considered the best of the first three (many die hard fans don't even consider the first two) and I suspect that this may be because someone else helped him write it and someone else directed it. I think he was busy with the Indiana Jones films (and Speilberg was also doing those so Lucas couldn't "ruin" them, even when he makes a bad film, Speilberg does it well) Again in Episode VI it was someone else directing. But we can still see Lucas' influence because of the presence of the Ewoks. Charming and cute, they don't really have a place in an epic tale of the eternal battle between Good and Evil.

And what else has Lucas done? Indiana Jones but Speilberg was there so he couldn't mess that up. American Graffiti. But nothing else that's not SW or IJ. This leads me to the conclusion that he had two and a half good movies in him and he's spent them all now. So he should go back to his ranch and continue to get fat and happy off the tons of money his franchise is raping fans for. The only franchise which seems more intent (Neo Cons aside) on raping it's fans for as much money as they can is Paramount's Star Trek.

So no, unless George promises not to ever write or direct again, I'm not going to thank him.

Woo hoo!

The Serenity trailer is up on Apple's site. Wicked cool. And they have one of the best lines I've heard in awhile (Alan Tudyk seems to get the best lines).

Wash: This is gonna get pretty interesting.
Mal: Define "interesting".
Wash: Ohgodohgod we're all gonna die?

It worked

Well Saturday after the brunch I talked to Jon who told me that to fix the bathroom shower door I should get some anchors and put them in. I went to Wal-Mart and got two sizes along with some epoxy. Something else came up so I didn't actually start working on it until Sunday however.

When I started working I found some adhesive & filler and used that instead. I broke out the drill and drilled the holes larger then put adhesive and stuck the anchors in. Then I got to wait for the adhesive to set. I waited until 11pm to put the screws back in and couldn't get the top one in because there was some sort of screw type socket up there instead of just a hole in the aluminum. But since it's not load bearing the other four screws should hold okay. It looks better and closes completely now but it doesn't seem to have slowed the leaking. I suspect I'll have to get a strip of sealing rubber to glue down there. More projects.

Maybe if I start making a list of projects and try to get one done every weekend I'll actually make some progress. Or at least (sometimes it seems this is more important to Americans) the illusion of progress.

When you say one thing and mean your Mother

A funny definition of "Freudian slip" I've heard.

NPR has a piece about Freud's work since this is the anniversay of his book, and the influence of his nephew, Edward Bernays, apparently the father of modern PR. So all these terrible commercials are HIS fault!

I hear it this morning on the radio and I was taken by the statement of one of the researchers quoted.

Well I tried to listen to it but I couldn't hear enough of it here in the Op Center. I need to get some headphones.

Anyway one fellow who was researching Freud said that (this is a paraphrase) "It's not that people can't think, it's just that the stuff shovelled at us is aimed to avoid that." His use of the word "shovelled" was indicative I think. And on the surface this makes a whole lot of sense. The example they use is his (Bernays) work for a bacon manufacturer. He asked several doctors if they thought a quick light breakfast or a hearty one was better. The docs (of course) said hearty. So he morphed this into bacon being equated to hearty and making people feel safe. Very clever. Devious in fact.

But upon consideration it seems that this theory partakes in one of the things typifying American society, avoidance of responsibility. It seemed to say to me "it's not our fault we don't think", which annoys the hell out of me and makes me hate people even more.

And if the advertising aims below our cognition threshold so that we don't think about their products, won't that just encourage us not to think when we can avoid it? And the mind will atrophy just like any other unused muscle will. Being a society that takes the easy path, if you haven't used your brain to think and it's hard to now, you won't. You'll abbrogate your decision making power to someone else. And they won't be concerned about your welfare, only with their chief concern (money?).

Look at Bush's energy bill, which just passed the house. He loudly proclaims that it has environmental facets as well as facets to lower gas prices. However even a cursory examination will reveal that it has 12 billion dollars in tax breaks and incentives to energy companys. Coincidental? I doubt it since he comes from a "texas oilman" business background. No doubt he has friends who helped his campaign in the oil business. Lining the pockets of his cronies? That sounds familiar, might I have come to that conclusion based on other things he did?

The bill supposedly has environmental facets but everything I see says they're too soft and shield gas additive manufacturers from lawsuits over poisoning the water supply. While making gas burn cleaner is a good goal, destroying the water table to do it seems counterproductive to me.

Opening the Alaskan Wilderness Refuge to oil exploration will meet more of our oil needs domestically and reduce our dependance on foreign oil. Possibly. However I venture to say that oil drilling in national wildlife areas will definately harm them, perhaps irrevocibly. And will more oil reduce gas prices? Not within the next few years since it will take time to find it, set up drilling, get the oil to refineries and get the gas into the distribution network. And if last month's lack of reduction in gas prices when oil prices fell by the oil companies is any indication what it will mean is more profits for them. Again, a goal of the President.

The House Minority Leader (a democrat from California) called the bill "anti-consumer, anti-taxpayer and anti-environment." Which fits right into my perception of the President's position on most matters. She also said it was "clearly designed to help energy companies make more money, not help the American people save money."

Well enough politics. All it does is validate my opinion and it seems, now that I've typed all this up, as me just saying "told you so". Which doesn't help anything much.

Well 7025 to you too!

I ... well hate is too strong a word, but it's annoying when you get paged with nothing. I just got paged (in the bathroom thank you very much) and that's all it said "7025". It's not a phone number or part of one, not on campus anyway since we need a 2 or a 4 in front of the last four. Then minutes later I get paged again but this one is empty. No data.

No wonder I don't carry the thing except when I'm on call.

More hodgepodge

Today is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. The had a thing on NPR about it but I've come to dislike the morning announcer on KBIA so I turned it off. I thought about it as I was getting ready for work and came to realize it was yet another ignored indicator that the so-called war on terror didn't really start in 2001. That wasn't even the first incident of domestic terrorism. I wonder if we're really "American, land of the ostrich" with our heads stuck in the ground. I know we posses an incredible faculty for self denial but to have it blatantly confirmed is disconcerting.

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Tricia talked with me last weekend and she told me she'd like Matt to stay here for a year. I didn't agree outright but said rather that we should see how it goes over the summer and then reevaluate things.

I think I realized a little what bothers me about the situation. It's not that, were I in a relationship, I would be against having children. Hell I love my neices and nephews (and yes I have taken care of them for a week and a half so the ability to "give them back" doesn't necessarily factor in greatly) but it's the lack of choice. Perhaps I am a bit of a control freak and not being able to influence the decision is what bothers me. The feeling of helplessness. If this is it then I should be able to process it and get past it to make the best of things without getting even more bitter in my old age! ;-P

"They paved paradise and

put in a parking lot!"

Joni Mitchell sang that in 1970. Amy Grant covered it a few years (1994 it seems) ago also.

I post this because there's a field, I think it's called "Reactor Field" because it's in front of the University's Nuclear Reactor. I recall seeing assorted aged kids playing soccer on the field. It was big enough to have two games going on at once. Not necessarily paradise but it was good to see kids out running around playing.

Now it's been graded and turned into a parking lot. Ironic (and not the Alanis kind).

Confirmed

Well John Negroponte was approved as the nominee for the head of the National Intelligence Director. It goes to the whole senate next I think. I read a bit more on his background and it seems he was involved with covert funding for the Contras in Nicaragua as well as the coverup of human rights violations by CIA trained operatives in Honduras. Charming.

The Senate voted to stop government spending on propaganda videos. At least the Democrats were calling it propaganda. And it's not going to stop groups from producing them, just wasting our taxpayer money paying for them.

Armstrong Williams. No idea who he is (besides a neocon) but he was paid $240k last year to promote the "No Child Left Behind" crap. And the White House refused an interview by the Education Department. Sounds suspicious to me but then that's the watchword of this administration, "behind closed doors".

Speaking of which I heard a piece on NPR this morning about the President's annual meeting with newspaper editors. Seems they were taking him to task for being so restrictive on releasing information. He, of course, trotted out the 'we're at war' bit. News for you dude, we've been at war with the terrorist since the early 1980s.

Wild Wild ... South?

Florida just passed a new law that allows people to kill in self defense without making the effort to flee first. They can use deadly force in a public place if they have reasonable belief they may be in danger of death or "great bodily harm." And they can use any means.

Not sure how I feel about this other than glad I don't live in Florida. However that was a given anyway!

An eye for an eye?

Whoa!

I used to be pro death penalty. Some crimes seemed henious enough to demand it. I must be getting soft in my old age, however, since I don't necessarily support it wholeheartedly. Given the vagaries of our legal system, unless someone confesses to the crime, are we ever 100% totally certain someone is guilty?

Now this one seems pretty severe. Bombing abortion clinics and claiming that killing in defense of life is right and correct? Not even claiming he was framed like the white supremicist in Chicago did a few weeks ago. Puts me in mind of a humorous slogan I created in high school, "I'm going to make the world a better place if I have to kill every man, woman and child on Earth to do it!" (I was apparently experimenting with irony then).

New heights

The phrase "contempt of Congress" has always had another meaning for me based on the practices of modern politicians and their apparent unwillingness to have a spine, stand up for what they believe in (or even what they perceive we believe in) and take responsibility for their actions.

However now I'm even more appalled at them. To be fair it's not all of Congress that is doing what I finding unpalatible, just Mr. DeLay from Texas. Two of the Supreme Court Justices came to Congress obstensibly to discuss budget issues. During the course of these hearings DeLay attacked them for their "bad decisions" and even threatened impeachment (is that even possible??). It was (of course since the horse obviously isn't dead enough) over the Schiavo thing. And the fact that Congress passing legislation attempting to interfere in a court matter got overturned apparently bothered him so he decided to do some grandstanding.

From what I heard of how Justice Thomas responded, they handled it with aplomb and even encouragement, citing that this sort of debate ensured the health of the democratic system. Obviously they have a whole lot more class than DeLay. If I was from Texas or had voted for this bozo I'd be hideously embarrassed. And 7 of the 9 justices were appointed by Republican presidents!

neocon == moron;

Whoa!

Thunder, thunder, thundercats, Ho! Thundercats are on the move, Thundercats are loose. Feel the magic, hear the roar, Thundercats are loose. Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thundercats!

I never spend much time in school but I taught ladies plenty. It's true I hire my body out for pay, hey hey. I've gotten burned over Cheryl Tiegs, blown up for Raquel Welch. But when I end up in the hay it's only hay, hey hey. I might jump an open drawbridge, or Tarzan from a vine. 'Cause I'm the unknown stuntman that makes Eastwood look so fine.

Knight Rider, a shadowy fight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

Hey there where ya goin', not exactly knowin', who says you have to call just one place home. He's goin' everywhere, B.J. McKay and his best friend Bear. He just keeps on movin', ladies keep improvin', every day is better than the last. New dreams and better scenes, and best of all I don't pay property tax. Rollin' down to Dallas, who's providin' my palace, off to New Orleans or who knows where. Places new and ladies, too, I'm B.J. McKay and this is my best friend Bear.

Just the good ol' boys, never meanin' no harm. Beats all you've ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day they was born. Straight'nin' the curve, flat'nin' the hills. Someday the mountain might get 'em, but the law never will. Makin' their way, the only way they know how, that's just a little bit more than the law will allow. Just good ol' boys, wouldn't change if they could, fightin' the system like a true modern day Robin Hood.

---

I found that at http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/text/ off of Wil Wheaton's blog. I can identify several of the paragraphs from "The Fall Guy" and "The Dukes of Hazzard". I know the others are from assorted TV shows but I can't readily identify them.

And here I thought I was getting random text.

Maybe we're not doomed

Okay after all this negative bashing of the administration I did hear something this morning on NPR that gives me hope for the future.

It seems that a lot of graduating seniors at some Ivy League schools are volunteering for something called Teach For America, which is a program to bring teachers to low income schools. In fact they had 17,000 top level graduates apply for some 2,000 positions. And the ones they interviewed all wanted to help less fortunate children and "give something back" rather than head straight into the high paying jobs they were educated for and would have gotten as "rich kids".

It more than alleviated my concern at the editorial about how corporate CEOs aren't working toward improving their reputations as money chasing profiteers who care nothing for the laws their breaking. And if these seniors do head into the corporate world after a stint with this group, I suspect they'll take with them the morals and ethics they learned.

In digging through the material on their website I see that the impetus for the program was the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation. Very surprising since everything else I'd seen or read about that was patently absurd and seemed destine to hold back good students rather than help poor (intellectually and fiscally) ones. Ah the program has been around since 1990 so the NCLB only allowed school districts to hire uncertified teachers. It seems a lot like the Peace Corps. This thing is impressive as all hell.

Human rights? What human rights?

Okay to answer my question yesterday about "whose next?", the answer is a diplomat nominated to be the head of the intelligence apparatus who ignored human rights violations in certain Central American countries.

Now I realize that things are often complicated, especially diplomacy and international relations. However turning a blind eye to assorted attrocities isn't the best way to get things done and will come back to haunt you. And how much does a career diplomat really know about intelligence operations and the agencies which conduct them? (oh you're an engineer? fine, we'll put you in marketing -- wait, isn't that a Dilbert cartoon? Great, the country is being run by the Pointy Haired Boss!)

Although since the administration seems to interpret intelligence data any way they see fit (or rather as a means to justify whatever action they want to take) then it's probably not that big a deal to them.

As dense as granite

Okay while there's a certain measure of truth to this editorial, appointing someone who seems to be the anti-thesis of the title (being a diplomat seems to indicate that you can be diplomatic and not piss people off every time you open your mouth) doesn't strike me as particularily effective.

He has some interesting points. However I very nearly couldn't wade through his Democrat bashing to isolate them. All the problems could very well be true but I don't think, particularly after our unilateral action in Iraq, that appointing someone who will tell them bluntly that they've "fucked up" will help fix the problems. Attention will be instead focused (just like now) more on counterattacking him. Which very well could be the neocon's objective (UN lack of action/effectiveness provides all kinds of justification for unilateral international actions which support their goal of lining their own defense industry subsidized pockets). Very similar to cutting education funding so that people are less able to see through their transparent propaganda.

Whoa, I'm definately starting to sound conspiracy theorist here.

Blinding Brilliance!

I read today

U.S. Has No Exit Strategy for Iraq, Rumsfeld Says

to which my response is "no kidding, you're the one who was supposed to take care of this!".

Donald Rumsfeld, master of the blatantly obvious

---

Okay I started reading the article and it's all semantics. We don't have an "exit strategy" we have a "victory strategy". Charming.

However it doesn't keep American Soldiers, Iraqi policemen or Iraqi civilians from getting killed in ever increasing numbers. Let's revise his title ...

Donald Rumsfeld, all flash, no substance

Textbooks?

Apparently there was a hubub in China recently over a Japanese history textbook which glossed over Japanese actions in China during WWII (attrocities). Protestors in several Chinese cities marched over the weekend and some even threw stones at the Japanese embassy. The Japanese ambassador wants reparations and an apology from the Chinese government.

While I believe it's important not to forget the past so that we don't repeat the mistakes in the future, and I certainly don't hold with ignoring attrocities since a repetition of those events is even more undesireable, there are probably more important issues, issues we can do more positive good for more immediately, to get really, stone throwing worked up over. Hunger, destruction of the environment, human rights violations, grinding poverity, etc.

Who's next?

Well we've seen the attorney who advised him that torture was 'just fine' become the new Attorney General, a nepotistic congressman whose self proclaimed job was to bash the intelligence community become CIA head and now a bull-headed "diplomat" who loudly proclaimed the UN useless become UN ambassador, I wonder which croney will become the next travestic appointment as head of the EPA. I always thought competancy and merit were good things, especially when we find them in our government (an ever less likely discovery). Obviously I was wrong.

I wonder at what point the majority of the people who elected him will come to realize that it was a bad decision. How many more examples will they need?

Movies

The second batch of Netflix films came and went. I had "Fargo", "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen", and "A Life Less Ordinary". Fargo was pretty good ("yah, dontchaknow, unhuh") and A Life Less Ordinary was great (turned me into a big Ewan Macgregor fan), however Confessions was a ... ahem, bit overdramatic. I really liked "Mean Girls" and was apparently expecting that again from Lindsay Lohan. However I guess she's got room to develop as an actress, including the ability to select scripts. However she was under contract to Disney and so maybe she had to do whatever crap they handed her (and Disney is very hit or miss the last 10 or 15 years). While it was a bit of a twist on the coming of age story it wasn't up to Tina Fey's writing. Or maybe the Dyan Sheldon book isn't as good as the Rosalind Wiseman book. Or maybe Gail Parent isn't as good a script writer as Fey.

Hmmm, Parent wrote Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, and The Golden Girls. Impressive TV resume but I've never heard of the films she did. And Fey has about seven years writing and acting on SNL and this was her first film script. Now I haven't watched SNL since the Ackroyd, Murray, Murphy years (and I don't think it's very funny now based on the promos) but based on Mean Girls I'd suspect that Fey was one of the things that was funny on it.

Got a few movies from the bargain bin at Wal-Mart. More Ewan, some Ellen Barkin and a couple of others (one with Teri Hatcher & Rob Lowe). We'll see.

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Put the brunch club on hiatus. It wasn't that people couldn't come anymore, hell they have lives (unlike me) and families and such. But no one was telling me one way or the other. Now some of these folks, email isn't the best way to get ahold of them (Brand for example), but a 'we can't make it' email couldn't have taken *too* long to write, could it?

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So Tricia called Saturday (I think). She wanted to know if she was going to be in Phoenix and if she should sign a teaching contract next year. An oblique way of asking if Matt could come live with me. I still have no idea what to do with him during the day when I'm at work and have a bad feeling that something movie-of-the-weekish may happen but I can't really say no, can I? It's family and you have to do what you have to do. Especially in a no-one's-fault kind of situation. That doesn't make it any more palatible, however.

At least I have six weeks to get the house ready for him. And Dad will drive him so they can bring the stuff he needs to survive with me. But there was no mention of a duration of this. I'm hoping it's only for the summer but it's just another fear to pile on things. Saturday night I went to bed at about 1 after playing some WoW and woke up just after 3. Some time around 5 I finally got back to sleep.

If it is for the summer I guess that puts the kibosh on GenCon this year. I had told Marlin and Yvonne since they were in WoW and she offered to take him during the day but I don't want to put him back into a situation just like he came out of where he's terrorizing younger kids. We'll have to see what happens. If I keep dwelling on the worst that happen I'm setting both of us up for failure, I need to keep an open mind and a positive outlook. Could be challenging. Right now I'm focusing on the logistics of the situation. A lockable box to store all the dangerous things, maybe locks for the interior doors. I need to get a list of what the rules are there so I can set up mine. I think that consistency is going to be important. I also need to research camps and summer programs to see what I can get him in. Since he's failing school we need to get him some help so he won't be trashed from the beginning next year.

I guess my fate magnet is back up and working. My life was apparently too quiet.

Okay there's a reason

that some people have a job with their name on their shirt. And some people can't even do a job like that correctly.

Don't you hate it when you're in a rush to get lunch, go through a drive through and then don't realize you've interacted with one of these sorts of people until you get back to the office and discover that they munged your order.

I just got back from Hardees with my lunch. Except it's not my lunch since I didn't order a ham sandwich. However I'm in the Op Center all day today so I can't really take it back and make them fix it. And I could tell when I talked to her on the intercom that she's wasn't high speed, she didn't confirm my order twice like most of them do and she didn't ask me if I wanted to 'go large' with it (which I did, mainly for the bigger soda) or try to get me to buy whatever they current dessert of choice is. But she put my initial order in quickly and pushed 'enter' on it so it showed up on the screen. I could tell it was trouble when she told me I'd get my total at the window. I should have walked in like I usually do, especially at that Hardees.

My own fault for assuming competance before it had been proven. MUPO.

Finally

Well it got the radius purge oracle script finished. It seems I was trying to be too complicated with my fetchrow_array when I didn't need it. The number of rows deleted was dumped into the variable I'd assigned the execute statement too.

Now need to finish up the documentation for the chalk talk week after next.

And Jeff is looking at playing WoW. Cool.

Hodgepodge

A jumble of things in general.

Erik has me testing another piece of blog software. Not sure if it's intended for use by bengal users but we have one bozo who has the same stuff setup and one of it's scripts keeps driving the load up. If he doesn't get his head out we're gonna end up locking him down tight (hehehe).

Been writing some oracle type perl and ran into a problem with the results from a delete statement not being parsed properly. But it's || this close to being done. Of course that just means I get to rewrite some oracle php that the security group needs next ... :)

Did a chalk talk on some of the unix stuff. At the end of the month we're moving to a combined oncall schedule so there won't be the unix one and the windows one. Got to practice managing services on the test windows server. Ikram is setting up (as an exercise in installing linux I suspect) a unix test server for them to play with. Got to get hot and finish the 2nd of the next batch of chalk talk documentation. Prolly tomorrow while I'm in the Op Center.

Netflix is turning out to be pretty cool. Have "Fargo", "A Life Less Ordinary" and "Confessions Of A Teenage Drama Queen" to watch this weekend. Oh, have to send out the brunch note too. brb

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I tried to post this yesterday afternoon but blogger.com was returning a "document contains no data" error every time I hit a button. Annoying but then they've got a lot of people blogging here. Of course if this is your business I'd expect you to be a bit better at it.

I'm still getting the error but if I hit the button a few times I finally get it to respond. I wonder what they changed that munged things?

I wonder if I'm going to be able to get this entry up since it's happening a lot more now that I try to publish.

D'oh

Well it seems that Illinois and North Carolina faced off in the NCAA tournament. Normally I wouldn't care but I'm an Illini alumni and when I went there they never won much of anything (they did win enough at football to get to the Liberty Bowl but they lost it - what was more impressive was that the quarterback was a 4.0 student of Nuclear Medicine). But they had a near perfect season, only losing one game before the tournament began. Then apparently they only lost this one. And there were tied at 70 all a minute and a half from the end after being down by 15 at one point. It sounds like a great game even if you don't much like basketball.

I saw a report somewhere (CBS sportsline?) which decried how tragic it was that they came so close to so many records. It's tone was that it was all over for Illinios. Forever. Bullcrap. But then that's generally what sports commentators are full of so it's not surprising. I respect the ones who have "been there, done that" and actually played the sport they're reporting on. The rest are all failed movie critics (a profession which has absolutely no professional requirements at all from what I can tell, you don't even need to know how to speak or how to write!) or people who can only get jobs with their name on their shirt.

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The medal of honor ceremony for SFC Paul Smith (B Co, 11 EN) was the other day (4 Apr) at the White House. One of three awarded since the end of the Vietnam War (the other two were for the sergeants killed in Mogadishu in October, 1993). There is more at
http://www.medalofhonor.com/PaulSmith.htm but some of their information seems a tad sketchy (they refer to these two sergeants as "Special Services" rather than Special Forces, the kind of mistake which seems to imply that the folks putting it up there aren't ex-military and the words don't mean as much to them).

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Well I was going to put some more up there but I forget what I had in mind and I've some things to get done. More later.

Whoa

Well I got a few things done this afternoon (Op Center on Friday afternoons). Helped Amy with a problem resulting from how she used some script Erik wrote for her. Learned more about symlinks.

Then read some blogs. That's always an interesting activity. Perused all the ones from the Sovereign guys. Talked with Tracy this morning about his WoW playing.

French toast again this week at the Brunch Club. Need to get some firmer bread that won't go soggy when cooked. Got lots of breakfast meat though. Marlin and Vonne can't make it but the Holcombs will. No word from Bobbi & Brand but Erik prolly won't. Hope Andy and Kerri make it.

Time to head home.

She's dead people, give it a rest

Schiavo died the other day and her family still can't stop arguing. And not the good kind of arguing either ...

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I saw a piece about the report from the WMD commission. Kit Bond (R), one of the Missouri senators (I won't call him "our" senator) blames the Clinton administration. All very well and good but I seem to recall that he was in office then. I wonder what he did to help fix things. And it notes that he's on the Select Committee for Intelligence Oversight, so I wonder what he's doing to fix things now. (I sent him a note expressing this opinion, we'll see what his staffers have to say)