Political Soap Box, Be Warned

I've been reading this morning about Israel's attacks on Lebanon. Take your opinion on that as you would like. When you hear statements from the one's being attacked that they knew kidnapping the solders would get a response, just not one this big, it's very hard to have sympathy for them. I mean duh, you can only poke a dog so many times with a stick before he bites you. If you did something to get a response, my advice is you deserve what ever response you get. Suck it up and deal with it.

My main complaint is with a news article this morning saying how people in the middle East are getting mad at America because of Israel's attacks. Beirut doesn't want to listen to our peace plan because Israel is still attacking. How is that the US's fault. I say the world get so mad when we step in, that we should not step in this time. Let Israel bomb them off the face of the earth. It's none of our business in my opinion. The nerve of anyone getting angry at someone with a peace plan, when the people with the peace plan are not the one's bombing you. Enjoy the bombing, hopefully it will be your last.

The Hotel Of My Mind Has Many Vacancies

Wish I was clever enough to have made the title up, but alas no, it was stolen from an Animaniacs episode. Animaniacs came out on DVD Tuesday, so naturally we've spent the weekend watching all 5 DVD's. The Pinky and the Brain DVD's are next on our list. Gee Brain, what are we going to do tonight? The same thing we do every night. Try to take over the world.

I'll Take That As A Yes

I'll take the fact that no one even bothered to give me yes as an answer as a definite yes. Yeash, I'm too boring to even insult. Who cares.

On to things I do care about. The SS Norway is still sitting off the coast on India waiting for a court ruling on if it can be dismantled or not. It's pains me that the one group fighting to save the ship is Green Peace. They are not usually my kind of people, but it's such a grand old ocean liner, I'll take any group saving it, as long as it's saved.

On a good note, unless I hit my head, it actually looks like it's raining outside. I should take a picture. I haven't see rain much here lately.

How Boring Am I?

I know, this seems like an open invitation to an insult, and in a way is sort of is. I've been writing on this thing now for a long time and let's face it, I've never had anything that interesting to say. Only engineers find the few technical things I write about interesting, and they are not interested anyway. I think for the most part my life is sort of boring. I think that's a good thing. I don't want all the drama and problems that lead to an interesting life. I'm happy going to work, coming home, and my biggest worry is what to have for dinner. I don't want to have life or death pressing issues to think about. They make my brain hurt.

So, life is good and therefore most everything I write is boring. Is that a rule? Can only upset, starving artist types do anything of interest? That's food for thought. I don't know. Maybe I should start making stuff up. The 2 people who actually read this will know right away I'm making something up, so what good is that?

Call it frustration, call it lack of anything interesting to write about. Call is lunch. I'm going to eat.

Out Of This World

There I am, sitting at NASA, surrounded by all sorts of things space related, when out of the blue the musical notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind echo through the building.

After a brief moment of thinking I needed more sleep last night, I figured out that the overhead crane plays that music when it moves. How fitting for NASA.

Emperors New Clothes

It's a busy Monday. Nothing new to write about, I just feel I should update as to not disappoint my throngs of fans. Who knew a throng was so small or that the word fan could refer to the last poor person that pressed the "Next Blog" button and wound up here?

On a somewhat bright note after a trip to Nashville this weekend I do look rather dapper in some new clothing. In exchange for said new clothing I must clean out my closet. Cleaning my closet will be a task. It's hard for me to get rid of old shirt, especially t-shirts that I got from somewhere as a souvenir, but when they are more holes than shirt, I do guess I should get rid of them.

Formatting Fun

For once when talking about formatting I'm not talking about Word deciding how it wants my document to look, regardless of my preference. Am I the only one that gets this?

This morning I am waiting on a 300 GB hard drive to format so I can use it for backing up a server. Talk about the fun and exciting world of engineering. I say that, and think that I am becoming a bit jaded. I took one of our new guys out on the military base yesterday. He had never been there before and was amazed at all the things we saw. It kind of struck me that here I am pointing out test ranges, places where parts of space station are built, the place where they test shuttle foam, and lots of other cool things as if they are no big deal. I'm sort of sad that I've lost some of the joy at seeing all of these neat things for the first time. Don't get me wrong, I do still get excited by some of it. Seeing the thruster fire that I wrote all the code to control is exciting, but I've seen so much cool stuff, that I do think it takes something really cool to impress me now. I guess that's a good thing, it does mean that I have been exposed to lots of things and got to work on lots of exciting things. I must admit, it was cool yesterday to stand in one of the test areas and point to 4 machines testing different parts of military helicopter and know that I wrote the code for all 4 of those stations. I'm not sure if that was cool or just an ego boost, but I liked it either way.

Ok, enough from me, go read something interesting.

So Can I Post Now?

Last Tuesday as my loyal readers know Sara and I saw Michael Buble in concert. She made me promise not to post pictures or anything until she finished her post about it. Well, she finally did, so now I can post more about it.

Sadly though, I've already wrote about it, and she posted lots of pictures so I don't have much more to say. As I said before, it was a great show. If he's in your area, go see him.

Safari

There we were, off on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by deadly lions, tigers, wolves, and cougars. The sun was beating down upon us, the temperature had climbed to nearly 100 degrees and this was the road ahead of us...

What lie at the top of that twisty dirt road was tigers. 4 wild vicious beast just waiting to pounce on us.

Here one tries to eat my arm.

Another tries to eat my shoe, I mean foot, yeah foot.

As you can see, these are wild vicious creatures.

E-mails You Don't Want To Get

From Sara:

Todd (our dog) has the housekeeper on the kitchen counter and won’t let her down.

We Survived The Tigers

The tigers were very cute. I'll hopefully remember the USB hard drive tomorrow with the pictures and I'll post much more. I got bit by a tiger and have a nice little bruise. Sara is so jealous.

Wasting Time Online Is Bad

As I am still teaching class, I have time to browse the net and find things I want. Things like this K&N intake for my car. It adds over 14 horsepower. I'm sure I need that. Now if I can prove it improves gas mileage I may be able to justify getting it. It's like $300. That's at least 5 gallons of gas or so.

Here Kitty Kitty

I've made reservations Saturday to throw Sara in a cage with tigers. Isn't that cool? You can just call a place and they will throw your loved ones in a cage with wild tigers. You have to pay them to do it. You'd think it's free tiger food and all to them. I guess since the Tigers are only a few months old they might not eat her. I think my biggest worry is going to be stopping her from taking one home. I don't think our dog or cats would be happy with a baby tiger in the house. I'm pretty sure we would need a larger litter box also.

I Was On A Roll

I was updating often in an almost regular fashion. Well, I guess I blew that. Sorry, I've been busy. I'm teaching class, yes, me educating people. Is that a scary thought or what.

I've been waiting on Sara to write an update about the Michael Buble concert we went to Saturday night. Mainly because she has the camera and I want to steal some of the pictures. He really did put on a great show. Excellent singer, he sang the last little bit without a microphone and in a concert hall with 3000 people his voice was more than powerful to fill it and he sounded great. The show was also very funny, he sang a Johnny Cash song, sang and danced like Michael Jackson, it was great. He came out in the audience and went right down our row. Sara got to hug him. Made her day.

He also said something that, even if I hated his music, I did so love hearing him say. He's Canadian, and he says he's got a very strong interest in US politics and has very strong feelings about the war on terror, the he said, that he thinks musicians and actors should just shut the hell up about their views. He did dedicated his number one song "Home" to the solders over seas. I thought that was very nice, and he was so right about fame, not making anyone a political expert. God bless that little Canadian boy.

If he's ever in your area, catch his show. The one we saw in Birmingham was totally sold out, and I can see why, it was great.

$1.47

$1.47! That's how much in gas it cost me to drive to work this morning. Can you believe that? That's just gas, not including the cost of oil, tires, and everything else. I'm sure it cost a little more to get home because I go a slightly different way. So, that's $3 a day just to get back and forth to work. After 4 weeks or work, that's 20 days, or $60 just in gas. Math scares me now.

This Is Just Wrong, But Funny

The real danger to us from the Middle East.

This morning, from a cave somewhere in Pakistan, Taliban Minister of Migration, Mohammed Omar, warned the United States that if military action against Iraq continues, Taliban authorities will cut off America's supply of convenience store managers. And if this action does not yield sufficient results, cab drivers will be next, followed by Dell customer service reps.

Monday, Monday, Monday

I know it's Monday. The day when all of corporate America heads to work and updates their Blogs. Sorry I'm late. I don't have anything exciting to write. The best I have is that apparently our lawn sprinklers cause rain. It's been dry, so yesterday Sara turns on the sprinklers, as soon as the last zone was finished, here comes the flood of rain on a bright and sunny day. It's sort of like washing you car will cause rain. I think I remember growing up that hanging laundry out on the line also causes rain. Yes I grew up in the country. We had an electric dryer, but we still used the clothes line, get over it. Before you ask, we also had running water. Yeash. It was a stream about 3 miles from the house.

History Lesson

It was the first day of school and a new student named Pedro Martinez, the son of a Mexican restaurateur, entered the fourth grade.

The teacher said, "Let's begin by reviewing some American history. Who said 'Give me Liberty, or give me Death?'"

She saw a sea of blank faces, except for Pedro, who had his hand up.

"Patrick Henry, 1775."

"Very good!" apprised the teacher.

"Now, who said, 'Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth'?"
Again, no response except from Pedro: "Abraham Lincoln, 1863."

The teacher snapped at the class, "Class, you should be ashamed! Pedro, who is new to our country, knows more about its history than you do!"

She heard a loud whisper from the back of the classroom: "Screw the Mexicans!"
"Who said that?" she demanded.
Pedro put his hand up. "Jim Bowie, 1836."

At that point, another student in the back said, "I'm gonna puke."

The teacher glared and asked, "All right! Now, who said that?"
Again, Pedro answered, "George Bush to the Japanese Prime Minister, 1991."

Another student yelled, "You're INCREDIBLE!"

Pedro jumped out of his chair waving his hand and shouting to the teacher, "Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky, 1997!"

Now, with almost mob hysteria, the teacher said, "You little punk ... if you say anything else, I'll kill you!"

Pedro frantically yelled at the top of his voice, "Gary Condit to Chandra Levy, 2001."

The teacher fainted, and as the class gathered around her on the floor, someone said, "Oh crap, we're in BIG trouble now!"

Pedro whispered, "Saddam Hussein, 2003."

Finally someone throws an eraser at Pedro and another student shouts "Duck"!

Teacher, just waking, asked "Who said that?"

Pedro answered: "Dick Cheney, 2006!"

No More Kitty

The cat purring in my ear is gone. That's nice.

I have a world political question. Why does North Korea firing missiles makes the price the oil go up? Last time I checked we didn't get oil from North Korea.

On a related note, hearing the China and Russia are not wanting to confront North Korea about their missile program makes me reaffirm my position, no we should NOT buy things made in China. I'm waiting for France to join their side. Just seems to be typical.

I don't think I want a muppet in platform boots to have nuclear missiles. Sounds like a bad plan.

Bad Kitty

No, not the real cat, the one I hear purring in my ear because my head is stopped up.

No Light Is Good Light

It's a good start to the morning when after a 4 day weekend, you come in and the message light on your phone is not lit.

Made In The USA

It's still the 4th of July and Sara and I are watching a TV show on Wal-Mart. It's sort of ironic that on the 4th of July we're watching about how much of their merchandise comes from China. I know when Sam Walton was still alive they focused more on selling American made goods, but now it's all about the price. To get a lower price, you get things made in China.

I like lower prices as much as the next person, but I also like to support the American economy. Right or wrong I think that unions in the US have made it too expensive to employ some people in this country.

I started out wanting to rant about Wal-Mart, now I almost want to rant against unions. Let me get my rants straight and I'll get back to you.

WW III

World War 3. The title of this post has two meanings today. One the easy one, my backyard. It's the 4th of July and I think everyone in the state has personally spent $1000 on fireworks to set off. Every day for the past 4 days it's been constant. Day and night, explosion after explosion. As long as they don't start any fires in my back yard, I'm good. I've got to see some very spectacular displays from my backyard. Some people spent some serious money.

On the second part of my topic, the USA launched the shuttle today. That's very big news here in the Rocket City. At the same time North Korea launched a long range ballistic missile. I somehow don't think it was an accident these two launches happened so close to each other. Thankfully the shuttle launch went off without a hitch, where as North Korea's missile crashed in the ocean 35 seconds after launch. Just some food for thought.