Monthly Archives: March 2007

I Pity the Fool…

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Back in the days when “The A-Team” was a popular television show, Mr T had a catch-phrase: “I pity the fool.”

I was almost the fool, today. I’m sitting here in the Pittsburgh, PA airport, waiting on my homeward flight, and I had hours to kill, since all earlier flights were booked solid. “No problem,” says I to myself. “They have free wireless here! I’ll just while away the hours surfing the ‘Net.”

So I dig out the company laptop, fired ‘er up, and let the trusty wireless device search for the local free wireless network.

And I was almost caught. Not by the cops, but by those folks who have nothing better to do than look for ways to steal data from other folks.

My wireless program found several wireless networks, all listed as free. And because I was tired, at the end of a long 2-week stint imparting knowledge to our customers, I didn’t notice at first that the network I selected, labeled “Free wireless network” was, in fact, an ad-hoc network created by someone else’s laptop. NOT the actual, true wireless network provided by the airport.

Happily, I noticed before I had ever typed in any passwords.

I’ve been in a lot of airports with my laptop, and used a lot of airport wireless connections. This is the first time I’ve noticed ad-hoc networks in my list. And it wasn’t just the one. When I powered up again after lunch, in a different part of the airport, I noticed 2-3 other ad-hoc networks next to the official airport wireless.

I do, indeed, pity the “fool” who doesn’t know the difference between the ad-hoc network hosted by someone’s laptop, and the official wireless networks offered by the airport. It could be an expensive lesson for them.

I’d rather pity the fool who is out there creating bogus networks for nefarious reasons, but if that’s really what they’re doing, they have my disgust rather than my pity.

Resist By All Means Available

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From our POW Code of Conduct

“….I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist. If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy. If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.”

This code of conduct was created and adapted for all the American services in the wake of the Korean War, when American (and other nationalities) POWs were both brutally mistreated and exploited for propaganda purposes by their captors. While some service personnel may be a trifle foggy on the exact requirements of the Geneva Convention until the need for familiarity with those conventions floats up to the top of their personal “to-do” duty requirements, the POW code of conduct is branded on our consciousness. Well, that and the bitter knowledge that the last military opponent of ours who paid anything like strict attention to Geneva Convention requirements when applying them to captured American service personnel were the Germans in WWII.

So, we have quietly gotten our heads around a couple of facts, one of the most important being the brutal reality that Americans best not surrender. The odds of surviving long enough for the International Red Cross to make that all-important visit to verify your well-being are practically non-existent. Snuff videos made available through various pro-fundamentalist Islamic media throughout Middle East make it pretty damn clear that no surrender in the first place may be the most viable career option.

Even if a prisoner is lucky, and the market for death-porn is flooded, the odds of being used as a hostage, and paraded like a puppet in front of the video cameras are pretty much a given. Exactly how far one can or ought to go in resisting this kind of exploitation is a judgment call. Admiral James Stockdale, as the senior American POW in North Vietnam chose to mutilate himself rather than be paraded in public for propaganda purposes, and threatened suicide if the North Vietnamese continued to continue torturing other POWs.

Pvt. Patrick Miller, of the 507th Maintenance Company was taken prisoner during the dash into Iraq in 2003, (at the same time as Pvt. Jessica Lynch) and was one of the five surviving members of his unit paraded on Iraqi television. I remember seeing the clip of the five on the news, and thought that he was the only one of them who seemed to be defiant. He answered back with his name and rank, and looked like he was about to spit into the camera, even if he and the others were entirely at the mercy of Saddam Hussein’s goons. In the long run, ones’ response to the extreme of captivity and threatened (or actual torture) depends on training, and maturity. But sometimes it depends on strength of character, and maybe a large lashing of stubborn bloody-mindedness, which are harder to predict in advance and inculcate with training. But I digress. I have a point, and I am getting to it.

This week, it’s the fifteen British sailors and Marines, taken by Iranian goons, and paraded in front of cameras, while Tony Blair and the British media agonize over how to react, what should have been done, and what can be done to get them back without loosing any national self-respect, and their families try and maintain a stiff upper lip under the hot searchlight of media interest.

It pretty much looks like it was deliberate and well-planned, done expressly for the purposes of getting hostages to toy with, probably with an eye for a prisoner exchange, and building up their image internally. They announced their intentions to kidnap coalition personnel some weeks ago, but at this point in the war, American personnel are probably just too damn hard to catch unawares. So, go for the easily gathered harvest, and drag it out as long as possible. I am afraid that if it drags on for a long time, as long as the Teheran embassy hostage crisis that it will become as much of a political hot potato. I can see the Blair government in a cleft stick; having neither the means or the will to respond with gunboats, or the 21st century equivalent. Being that the war in Iraq is resoundingly unpopular (as near as I can judge from a distance) I wonder if there is any stomach for that kind of response anyway. And while the diplomatic alternative grinds slowly away, over weeks and months, and the hostages families fret and worry, and the national media pounds away, involvement in the coalition may become even less popular. Getting the hostages freed may come to seem to be such an overwhelmingly good thing that no one will care very much about the price paid for such an end.

I hope that there is a Stockdale, or a Miller among the captured British sailors and Marines. I hope that they are not being tormented, as Admiral Stockdale was, at the hands of the North Vietnamese… and I hope that they are resisting as best they can, for the sake of their own self-respect as members of a proud military with a long tradition of defiance and resistance to captivity. I hope they will return knowing in their hearts that they held to the code, and to their comrades, and never in their hearts surrendered.

(Also posted at Blogger News Network)

Texiana

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Still working my way through the tall stack of books, provided by the San Antonio Public Library (may their stacks never fail, and their incredibly helpful staff go on saying “shusssh” yeah, unto generation after generation). This has put me in the way of a lot of interesting, or startling historical tid-bits, for instance:

Ice harvested commercially from New England began to be shipped to the Gulf-Coast town of Indianola in 1851. Ice cream and chilled drinks were wildly popular and freely available from that time on. (Except during the Civil War.) Kind of a mind-blower to know that ice cream parlors could exist in a state at the same time as people cooking beans over open fires and fighting with the Indians.

Commercial shipments of sides of beef, under mechanical refrigeration began in mid-1869, also from Indianola.

Texas politics during the time of the Republic can be described in three words: Tomcats. In. Sack. No one emerged unscathed; least of all Sam Houston.

Sam Houston; a fascinating and contradictory person, and almost too big for the 19th century. Autodidact, runaway, alcoholic, slave-owner and Unionist, brawler and dandy, soldier and politician, twice-divorced, and Indian-lover. Worshipped and loathed in about equal measure.

Houston’s worst enemy (except for a couple of hundred others) was probably a man named Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. With a sissy name like that, he had to come to Texas, of course.

At the Battle of San Jacinto, where Houston finally turned and fought, defeating a much larger and better-trained Mexican army, his army advanced to music played by a small scratch field band; a raunchy and suggestive ditty called “Come to the Bower”. It may have been the only song that all the volunteer bandsmen knew.

Everyone who was in Texas in the 1840s and 1850s knew Captain Jack Hays… mostly from having served with him. He was kind of the Kevin Bacon of the period, but I can only find two biographies of him. And one of them uses the phrase “beauty and chivalry of San Antonio” in a completely serious and un-ironic manner.

Several useful volumes put together by local historians of the Hill Country, with all sorts of interesting stories, and accounts of local haps and heroes. Some of the biographical sketches are so reverent in tone that it reminds me of the old joke about Charleston.

Why are the Charlestonians like the Chinese? Because they eat rice and worship their ancestors!

(More to follow, as I encounter them)

2008?!!!

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Battlestar Galactica ended their season on a much better note than they did last year. THAT’s how you throw a cliffhanger.

However, if they’re serious about BSG not continuing until 2008, I have to say that the Science Fiction Network is continuing their long standing tradition of fracking up a good thing.

Log Cabin Days

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Among the books in my tall stack to read, in preparation to revise and polish the current epic is one with the very dry title of “Texas Log Buildings; A Folk Architecture” – which has actually proved to be a bit more interesting and informative than it looked at first glance. I am a sucker for knowing how things are constructed or put together- which is good, especially since I need to write a description of building such a thing as a log building. Little details like how many days it would take to build one, what size it would generally be, and the layout – these little details count.

Previously, the one description of the process that I could bring readily to mind was “Little House on the Prairie” – and it turns out that Pa Ingalls was not building that cabin to much of a standard. He may not even have been all that skilled as a carpenter, but since he was working on it mostly by himself, and in a place where the swiftness of getting a roof of some sort over his family counted for everything – allowances were made.

That was almost everyone’s first and most urgent need, upon settling on a new grant or homestead, that and planting some kind of crop in the ground; building a cabin, to meet immediate shelter needs. This book differentiates very clearly the difference between a log cabin, and a log house. A log cabin was small, twelve to fourteen foot square, windowless, with a dirt floor. They were scratch and hastily put up to use as a temporary dwelling place, whereas a log house was larger, permanent, and much more carefully constructed; even quite elaborate as to comforts. For much of the 19th century, at least in Texas it was a matter of some embarrassment to still be living in a log cabin after a couple of years; rather like living in a trailer would be. In fact, many log houses were covered with siding and paint as soon as their owners could afford to do so. If they had lived in a little cabin before building the permanent house, the cabin was frequently reused as a smoke-house, or a stable.

Pace “Little House” and a whole raft of western movies, I’d always visualized such houses and cabins built out of the whole, rounded logs, with simple interlocking half-round notches (called a saddle notch) cut close to the ends, and about a foot or so of the log hanging out beyond at the corners, rather like a “Lincoln-log” house. This method of construction turns out have been employed by the relatively unskilled and/or those in a tearing hurry. The majority of Texas log structures were built of timbers which had been at least roughly shaped on two sides, and carefully notched at the ends to make a square corner. With the exception of part log, part dugout shelters built in far western Texas, where trees were scarce, most log structures were also raised off the ground on corner piers, to prevent rot and termite infestation, and to take advantage of air circulation.
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Bianca Ryan

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Remember the little girl who won the talent show, “America’s Got Talent?” Bianca Ryan? You know, the one that made Brandi stand up with her mouth hanging down?

Apparently she snuck an album out last fall when we weren’t watching and she has her own web site. I have to admit, until recently, if it wasn’t on iTunes I wasn’t paying much attention to new releases.

The album is a little too overproduced. The songs are all standards. But anyone who can listen to her version of The Rose and not have their heart torn out needs to simply shoot themselves, they’re already dead. I think if she doesn’t self destruct she’ll be bigger than any female singer out there today because she’s better than just about anyone I’ve ever heard in my 45 years on this planet.

I have to admit it feels weird saying that about a singer this young and I pray that she goes toward Rock vs AC or Country, but DAYUM. She’s got some serious pipes.

I Got the Gardening Bug

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Growing up, my dad always had a vegetable garden. In fact, he always had a large vegetable garden. We had very few store-bought vegetables because Dad grew so many in the garden and canned them that we had enough some years to last more than just one winter. Unfortunately, though not at the time, I was not allowed in the garden because I might mess it up. I therefore didn’t get lessons on how to weed, the proper way to hoe a planted garden, how to thin plants, etc. I didn’t care either because I always figured I would just buy it from the store.

Now after years of buying from the store, I realize that my parents were right. Fruits and vegetables are better home grown. Now I am starting my own garden. So far, it’s really small, and really more of a test run to see if I can actually grow one. The small area I have chosen for my garden spot only has a small area fit for growing currently. The previous owners had put a bunch of wood chips down in the area to use for a play area for their kids. I haven’t managed to get a full half of the chips out of the area yet, so I only have about 1/3 of the area available.

I sat down back in January and decided what I wanted to plant. I finally settled on lettuce, spinach, broccoli, turnip greens, green peas, carrots, snap beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and yellow crookneck squash, eggplant, bell pepper, cayenne, jalapeno peppers, watermelon, and cantaloupe. Of those already planted, I only managed to get 4 pea plants up, a handful of turnip greens, a handful of lettuce, a couple of handfuls of carrots, and I’m not sure that any of the spinach has come up. I also put out some strawberry plants that still look as dead as when I pulled them out of the bag. I started the tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers indoors, and aside from what Notch decided to munch on, I have almost all of them to come up and look real good. I could probably put them out this weekend, but I am going to leave them outside in the containers over this week to harden them before transplanting.

Now flowers are another matter entirely. Mittens, the stray cat we adopted, has decided that every place I have put potting soil is a toilet. Now fortunately, she isn’t doing any “real business” in them, but still she’s digging. Bad kitty. I suppose I am going to be forced to put netting (like vinyl chicken wire) over all my flowers and pots until she takes her business back to the leaves. But I digress. I didn’t have good luck with flowers last year. I can only blame myself as I didn’t keep them weeded, watered, and fertilized as I should have. I will put some of the blame on the software engineering course I took as I had absolutely no free time during that term and it was spring term. This year, I will have the time to do proper weeding and watering. Then I will see if I do truly have what my mom calls “Susie’s green thumb” referring to my paternal grandmother who could grow anything anywhere.

Iran Hostage Crisis Redoux

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Not a good feeling about all this. Will the British let themselves be played for 444 days, like we were, after the Teheran embassy was overrun? Are we prepared for another long series of staged demonstrations and photo ops, fruitless diplomatic wrangling, a ceaseless media circus, yellow ribbons around the old oak tree, and an assortment of clueless do-gooders making their way to Teheran on their knees, and making sure their good side is to the camera? Five will get you ten, George Galloway already has his bag packed.

So, is this a calculated move from the highest levels in response to the alleged defection/kidnapping of a top Iranian military man a couple of a weeks ago, or just some ambitious and impulsive underling taking a chance and seeing how far he can go?

How far will the Iranians go? How far will the British go? Will Ahmedinajad still be admitted to the US on his way to address the UN? How many of the UN members will break out the old knee-pads and kneel down before him, metaphorically speaking.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets, please. I have a feeling it is going to get kinda interesting.

(Also posted at Blogger News Network… and corrected)

The Writers Life Waltz: Con Brio

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I’ve come up for air this week, because I need to sit down and read a stack of books as tall as my bedside lamp table, and take copious notes in preparation for revising and expanding my first draft of “Adelsverein – Volume One”… or as a reader called it “Barsetshire with cypress trees”. Yes, I have taken everyone’s advice and broken it into a trilogy…since I was about a third of a way into my Sooper-Dooper Detailed Chapter Outline and had clocked over 105,000 words. I believe that in the mystery-writing biz that sort of happening is called “a clue”.

Otherwise it would take me the rest of the year, and result in a paperback book about the thickness of a concrete block. The first part stands alone as a ripping good yarn anyway, but I have salted it with enough foreshadowing to leave everyone hungry for Volume Two (The Civil War years). The stack of books for that part is another pile almost as tall as the bedside table, but the stack for Volume Three (the open-range cattle-ranching and Indian War years) is only about a foot tall, most of it taken up by a single book which I scored at the library sale for a mere pittance. It’s a massive compendium of first-hand accounts taken down from members of the Old Time Trail Drivers’ Association… pure gold for my purposes, but I am getting ahead of myself. (Oh, and the reason for the odd historical essays… I just find odd tidbits in all these books which I find kind of fascinating. Especially if some of them are not well-known at all. I write about stuff that interests me at the moment, ‘kay?)

I also needed to get cracking on marketing “Adelsverein” to agents and publishers, because it doesn’t look like “Truckee’s Trail” is going to go very far with them. It’s a ripping good yarn and I am not giving up on it, but I’m not holding my breath either. The feedback that I have gotten so far from the two agents who have read it is that marketing it to a publisher is a chore they don’t want to take on, for various reasons. It’s not quite a Western, not the sort of historical that really sells, the major romantic relationship is between two people happily married to each other; not an easy book to categorize, and that’s why it’s a hard sell. There is no word from the publisher who got it in January to review, but if they decline it, I’ll put it up to Tor Books… and by the end of the year I’ll go back to the POD publisher who did my memoir if they pass on it. It will be published, one way or another. I’ve put too much work into it, and the people who have read it have liked it too much to just stick it away in my desk drawer and forget about it. Frankly, I have enough stuff in that drawer already… and “Truckee” is just too damn good to drop. “Adelsverein” is more marketable, as it contains near-operatic levels of passion, murder, adventure, war, stolen children and Dire Revenge.

My friend the computer genius will set up a website especially for my books and help me market them through other means… which I will probably do anyway, even if I do manage to get somewhere with an agent and/or a mainline publisher. On the bright side, I just received an email from an agent who wants to take a look at the first couple of chapters of “Truckee”… could the third one be the charm? And I got another email from another agent who said she is intrigued by “Adelsverein” but is absolutely swamped in too much work to give it full attention… but if I haven’t found representation by July, she’ll be happy to take a look.

My writer friend on the West Coast counsels a spirit of Zen detachment and patience. Which I want now, dammit!

Comancheria: The Meusebach Treaty

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(earlier parts, here, here, here and here )

But first, before they were welcomed to Ketumsee’s main camp, the interpreter Lorenzo de Rozas told Meusebach’s party that as a demonstration of their good faith and confidence, they should empty all their firearms, firing them into the ground, or into the air.
For the forty men of Meusebach’s peace venture, it was a pivotal moment, for they were far beyond the safe frontier, and surrounded by what was estimated to be five or six thousand Comanche, the acknowledged warlords of the Southern plains. They had assembled on a hillside near Ketumsee’s encampment on the San Saba, mounted on their best horses, in all their finery and carrying their weapons, on either side of a flag on a tall staff; warriors on the right, women and children on the left. It was a splendid and heart-stopping sight. In the event of Meusebach having entirely miscalculated the Comanche’s desire for a peace treaty there would be no aid, no cavalry pounding to their rescue. About the only thing that would be a certain guarantee in that event… would be that every one of them would die, in as agonizing a manner as the most creative sadist could devise.

Meusebach quietly ordered all his men to empty their firearms. And in response, the Comanche warriors who carried firearms also emptied theirs. Chief Ketumsee and his senior chiefs came forward to greet them with handshakes and with elaborate ceremony; Meusebach and his party were conducted into the village. They were invited to stay within the Comanche encampment, in their skin lodges, but on the excuse of finding better pasture for their horses, Meusebach graciously declined. They set up their own camp, but might as well have not bothered, because almost all of Ketumsee’s tribe came to visit over the next day or so; men, women, children and all, and mostly on horseback As one of the German visitors later wrote “Horses play an important role in the life of the Comanches… when there is a scarcity of food, horses furnish a supply of meat…from early youth both sexes are taught to ride… we saw children who had been nursed by their mothers until their third year, leave their mothers’ breast, jump on a horse and light a cigarette…”

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