The current death toll from Indian Ocean tsunamis is estimated above 100,000. As usual, the United States leads the world international aid.. But, as we have seen, our reputation is on the ropes. Further, few economies in the civilized world, outside of Australia (riding China’s coattails) and the emerging economies of Asia and eastern Europe, match ours. It is especially important for we Americans to give generously to the private relief NGO’s operating in the effected region.
Monthly Archives: December 2004
Long Live Abbas
The more I hear of presumptive Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the more I like him. He rails against The Wall, but supports the Two-State Solution. He reveres Arafat (as any viable Palestinian politician must), but steps away from his policies.
This, coupled with the recent warming of relations between Israel and Jordan, the past ten year’s rejection of theocracy in Iran, and our own overturn of Saddam in Iraq, leaves me very hopeful for the future of peace in the Mideast.
Let it snow
We almost had a white Christmas here in North Carolina. It came the day after Christmas, and we were on the edge of the system and got mostly sleet. In 35 years, I have had only one white Christmas, and it was 3 or 4 inches of snow sandwiched between 2 inches of ice. (One inch on the ground under, and one on top of it.) I had just turned 14, and we still lived out in the country. We were iced in for about a week. So for fun, I went to the neighbor’s dairy in the evenings to help feed an milk.
Post shut down Monday (with the exception of essential personnel), so I got a snow day. Granted I still worked all day on a class I will be teaching, and considered staying in my pajamas to work on it. Tuesday was 2 hour delay, but I only postponed the trip an hour. Trip was fine, until I got to post. Yeah, those roads weren’t so clear. Ah, there is just something about black ice, that reminds me of my first 3 years in England. There was about a mile strip on the back road between Alconbury and Molesworth that was adjacent to a small forest. Since it generally got very little wintertime sunlight, it stayed pretty slick if any wet stuff fell. Most people there would take the A14 back and forth during winter weather, but I “rebelled” as I was prone to do over some things. Yes, the back road was not ideal, however, all you had to do was slow way down, stay of the brakes, and you were fine. On a clear dry day, I could make the trip between the 2 bases on the back road in 15 minutes. When it was wintery, it would take me 30-45 minutes as opposed to up to 2 hours on the A14. Of course there was always 2 or 3 idiots who would rush on the ice/snow/frost, end up in the ditch, and cause us all extra safety briefings, and orders not to take the back road. What really got me about that was that there were generally more accidents on the A14 with greater damage and personal injury. Didn’t have to watch out for the lorries (translation:tractor-trailors) on the back road, which tended to make me feel safer.
Anyway, still winter stuff on the ground here, but it’s almost all off the roads now. It’s supposed to be in the 60′s through New Year’s Day. Ah, winter in the South. My parents got the white Christmas in Arkansas. Glad we went home for Thanksgiving instead of Christmas….
Someone Up There Is Smirking At Me
Almost immediately following my tease of Sgt. Mom last week, comparing the weather of south Texas and SoCal, a series of storms, with rain for the foreseeable future, rolled in. Further, the rain we are currently having is very Texas-like, with hard driving cloudbursts in the presence of bright sunshine. 
But, they say “it never rains on the Rose Parade.” True to form, the chance of rain for Saturday drops to 20%, going up afterward.
Tsunami Relief
Michele has been extra-super busy over at The Command Post and has what must be the definitive list of agencies to help in the Tsunami Relief effort.
A Favorite Quote
“Not only does God play dice, sometimes he throws them where they cannot be seen.” — Steven Hawking.
Yanukovych Takes One From The Al Gore Playbook
Unable to win at the polls, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych intends to try and win in court.
Military Times Poll
The results of the annual Military Times Poll are in. The results, with respect to both morale, and support for President Bush, are quite good. This is not a scientific poll, of course. But I think we will all be agreed here that this is pretty representative of the general attitude of the troops. Here’s a summary from USA Today:
Sixty-three percent of respondents approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, and 60% remain convinced it is a war worth fighting. Support for the war is even greater among those who have served longest in the combat zone: Two-thirds of combat vets say the war is worth fighting.
But the men and women in uniform are under no illusions about how long they will be fighting in Iraq; nearly half say they expect to be there more than five years.
In addition, 87%% say they’re satisfied with their jobs and, if given the choice today, only 25% say they’d leave the service.
Compared with last year, the percentages for support for the war and job satisfaction remain essentially unchanged.
A year ago, 77% said they thought the military was stretched too thin to be effective. This year, that number shrank to 66%.
Of course, there are some leftist propagandists out there who would like to use this poll’s lack of scientific validity to convince their readers that the morale of our troops is lagging.
New Air Force PT System is Broke
I wasn’t going to post this…I was going to save it and wait for it to break via the Air Force Times or some other medium and then giggle about how “I knew that.” The problem is…the story isn’t breaking. It’s the end of the year. Supposedly everyone has either passed their PT test or they’re in classes to get their scores where they need to be. That’s what should have happened. That’s the way the system works. You either passed, or you’re working on passing. That’s the deal. Having my leg give me fits and having to work on trying to run and then realizing that I can’t run and it not being my fault and watching all the folks I was in class with bust their asses to get their run times down or get their bike test where it needs to be was a great experience. I’m proud of my score. I earned it. I’m proud of the folks I was in class with. So for the folks who haven’t passed and who aren’t in class trying to pass, I have little to no sympathy. There was a gal in my PT Class who was in a freaking CAM Walker (removable walking cast). I really don’t want to hear any sob stories, ‘k?
The new Air Force PT Test consists of three parts:
Aerobics: which consists of either the 1.5 mile run or the new, harder, bike test. That’s worth up to 50 points right there. That’s the big kahuna. You don’t score in the upper 30s there…you aren’t passing.
Body Composition (Your Waist Size): Worth up to 30 points. If your waist is over 40″, you’re going to class to learn how to cut some of that goo off of you. No, Stryker, they don’t recommend liposuction.
Muscle Fitness:
Pushups. Worth up to 10 points.
Situps. Worth up to 10 points.For a possible total of 100 points.
A score of 90 or above is considered “Excellent.” You-da-man. If you score here, you don’t have to be tested again for two years. You’re in shape…we get it.
Now, you need a score of 75 or greater to be considered “Good.” Good means that you test again in another year.
If you score 70 to 74.9, that’s considered “Marginal.” You should have to take a class that encourages a healthier lifestyle and will test again in 6 months.
Under 70 is poor. You not only have to spend some time in a classroom to encourage you to get thy shit together, you’re being handed over to “them.” You know who I’m talking about, they were the gym teachers when we were back in school. I’m sure they’re called something like “Physical Lifestyle Enhancement Facilitators” or something equally as smarmy, but I just call them (shudder) “Trainers.” My Trainers were young, in very good shape, and just plain mean. I owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
So where exactly is the system broke? You take the test, you get your score, you know right away whether or not you’re participating in “mandatory fun” at the gym for the next couple months or not. How could the system be broke?
As most of you know…in this day and age…no event in the military really takes place until you enter the results into a computer. And depending on the size of an Air Force Unit, the folks who are giving the test, may not be the folks who are putting the data into that computer. The folks doing data entry may have up to 10 different folks feeding them score sheets.
Take another look at the block up above and notice where I say that each area is “worth” up to “X” amount of points. Say a 43 year old guy runs the mile and a half in 12:10. That’s worth 40.5 points. It’s entered into the computer as 12:10…the computer does it’s thing…it computes 12:10 for a 43 year old male as being worth 40.5 points. How would a 43 year old guy score the full 50 points? He’d run the mile and a half in 10:24 or better.
You know what you score if you walk off the track or fail to complete the mile and a half? You score a zero. Or, I should say, it’s “worth” zero. However, that’s not what the computer is looking for…the computer isn’t looking for you to feed it the score…it’s looking for the time. And because the folks who built the database weren’t thinking everything through and because no one was double checking the results the computer was coming up with as they put in score sheet after score sheet…as far as the computer is concerned, 0:0 is just another time under 10:24 that’s worth 50 points.
How do I know this? Because when I went to have my real passing score of 75 put into the computer in my Orderly Room, they had to remove the score of 89 that was in there from back when I failed my PT Test in October.
So…if you’re Air Force and you KNOW you didn’t do as well on the PT Test as you should have and you’re still waiting for your unit to contact you, perhaps…just maybe…you might want to log onto the Air Force Portal and take a look at your score.
‘Cuz I KNOW my unit is working on fixing this thing but what I don’t know is what they’re going to do to the folks who have been sliding since they failed. See, our PT Managers told each and every person who failed to contact them or the Orderly Room if they hadn’t heard back from them in 10 Duty Days. I don’t know what your folks told you but I’m thinkin’, “Hey, they never contacted me after I failed.” isn’t going to fly…especially if you’re still a tub of goo who can’t wobble around the track in the right amount of time or ride the bike with a decent heart rate.
AFI 10-248 is the prescribing directive for the Air Force Fitness Program.
More Babes With Power Tools
It seems that Discovery Channel has discovered their makeover shows will fare better with guys if they have some really attractive women on the construction crews. Check out their new shows, Garage Takeover and Dude Room (no web pages available yet).
But I want to know, where are they finding all these ladies? I might just move there.
First Impressions, Half-Life 2
Let me preface by saying this is the game I’ve been waiting for. Doom 3 was fun, but I was still waiting for this one.
I got The Collector’s Edition with Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life 2. It loaded just fine once I realized this version came on a DVD vs a CD ROM. Loading was easy and quick…until it came time for the decrypting. Yes friends, we’ve gotten that far. Not only does the game have to load, but it has to talk to it’s home server and then has to decrypt. If you don’t have an internet connection or you don’t let their server talk to your computer, you ain’t playin’. Sorry. Thanks for buying the game anyway. And the decrypting takes forever…go make yourself a bowl of Easy Mac, let it cool, eat it slowly, you have time. I’m sorry, but in the year 2004 anything that takes longer than 10 minutes is just too freaking long.
I’m running a P4/1.8Gig, 512Meg on the board and 256Meg on the VideoCard. When the game first loads it gives you a bit of a start…the screen is all blurry…but down in the lower right-hand corner…perfectly sharp and legible is a little oval with the word loading in it. And the picture sharpens…and sharpens…and then sharpens even more. Oh….my….God.
Remember how startled you were the first time you saw “Myst” back in the mid-90s? It’s that big of a leap.
For me the game runs smoothly in the default settings that the game chose for my computer, except for immediately after the next section loads…then it’s a bit choppy and you may want to do a circle or two and jump up and down a time or two to get the stickiness out before going further. As you progress, watch out for baddies at your points of entry.
And who are the baddies? Besides our old friends the crabheads and their flying asshole symbiants, we have a new group of humanoids to fight…The Combine. Deciding when to fight them and when not to fight them is up to you. Sometimes it’s better to duck and run…but you need to figure that out yourself. And ALL of the baddies are smarter than they ought to be. The AI on this game is almost too good. I’m playing in Easy mode the first time and they’re still displaying too much cooperation and too much evasive capability. I’m not sure when I’ll be ready to crank it up a notch.
Some of our favorite Non-Player-Characters are back…my favorite being Barney. Although this time he’s not quite so inept and seems to have beefed up a bit.
There’s more than just a new set of office spaces to work our way through…this is an environment. We’re in their world: Outside, inside, day, night, city, beach, country.
One word of advice that won’t ruin the story…stay with your vehicle for as long as you possibly can. There’s usually a way to do that if you look hard enough.
Which brings me to the puzzles. As with all games of this genre, the key is to look around. Get all the angles. You’ve got a zoom feature…use it…the answer may not be right HERE it may be over THERE. Oh…and brush up on your Newtonian Physics…particularly the first three laws of motion. You may have to run…you may have to crouch…you may have to jump. If you find yourself saying, “You’ve GOT to be shi—kidding me.” you’ve probably figured it out. The folks who put this together have nothing if not a twisted sense of humor. The puzzles aren’t so hard as to completely discourage, but you ARE going to have to think.
This isn’t Doom. They’re not out to startle us at every turn. It’s more…disturbing than startling or horrifying. You may have to acknowledge your inner-psycho if you’re going to survive because sometimes the only answer is for you to get just as twisted as the folks who put this together. But being a horror film fan won’t hurt you either…there are some nods to some classics buried in here and when you catch them you can’t help but grin.
So far I’m having a blast. Beautiful Wife looked at one scene and said…”Oh wow that’s really pretty…hey, I bet if you put that thing there it would make that thing fall and you could get over there.” Of course she was right…and yes…I love it when she looks over my shoulder when I’m doing crosswords…why do you ask?
Worth the money? Yes. Worth waiting an extra year for? Well, yeah, but the shock of how good it looks would have been even greater before Doom 3 came out. Lucky for them the folks at ID like playing Doom in the dark.
Caption Contest, The Third
Again, Winner(s) on Thursday.