Eggnog

Two days ago, I had my first ever cup of eggnog. At work, it seems, everyone pitches in and supplies food and snacks for break time and lunch time during the week before Christmas break. On those days, then, we get to partake of a veritable feast of sundry goodies and libations.

Well, on Wednesday and Thursday, someone saw fit to bring in some cartons of Mayfield eggnog. I figured I go ahead and try, as I'd wanted to, but never had the chance.

It's pretty good stuff. It terms of flavor, it reminds a little bit of the yogurt milk the Korea Team introduced us to. Obviously, it's considerably... thicker than the yogurt milk was, and was considerable richer as well. But I liked it.

It was kinda scary how fast I developed a taste for that.

I'm sure by now all of you have heard the news about the suicide attack in Mosul. Go here for an eyewitness account of what came after (Hat Tip: Instapundit). They sent a suicide bomber into a mess hall, and then launched a mortar attack against the hospital where the wounded were taken.

Obviously we're loosing; it's Vietnam all over again; quagmire as thick as eggnog; Haliburton. At least, such seems to be the basic tone of the prevalent media coverage.

Please. Go here, and see what the brothers Omar and Mohammed (sans Ali now, sadly) have to say. Go here, and read what Alaa had to say, before the site went "thbbpth" on him.

The above sites are all run by Iraqis, by the way.

Go here and browse through Chrenkov's weekly "Good News from Iraq" installments. He's not on the blogroll yet, but he will be when I get back to my apartment in a week.

Go here and read an account of Secretary Rumsfeld's ("The Donald", as he is refered to in the tale) visit to Iraq this past week. Now, think through the MSM criticism of Sec. Rumsfeld in light of that account; read the harping of the MSM about the autopen thing, the lack of armor on vehicles, and their portrayal of Rumsfeld as a veritable incarnation of cruel indifference who hates the soldiers and wishes them all dead so he can devour their entrails in the hot sun, remember all of that... and then remember the actions of the wounded man.

Who is it, the media or "The Donald", who has the respect of the soldiers? And what can the answer to that question tell us about the nature of the sides in the debate over the war?

From CNN:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, how do we win the war in the media? It seems like that is the place where we're getting beat up more than anybody else. I've been here -- this is my third tour over here, and we have done some amazing things. And it seems like the enemy's Web sites and everything else are all over the media, and they love it. But the thing is, is everything we do good, no matter if it's helping a little kid or building a new school, the public affairs sends out the message, but the media doesn't pick up on it. How do we win the propaganda war?

The above quote is from another Q&A session with the troops, much like the one that produced the armored vehicle flap. But that is another story.

I'm not going to comment on the above, nor am I going to give Secretary Rumsfeld's answer; if you want to read it, follow the link. I am going to pose a few questions, just for y'all to think about.

1. "Sir, how do we win the war in the media? It seems like that is the place where we're getting beat up more than anybody else." This quote was said by a soldier, refering to our media. Why would he feel the need to make a comment like that, to ask a question like that?

2. What does it say about the MSM establishment that such a quesiton would need to be asked by an American soldier?

3. Why doesn't the MSM show the good we do along with the bad the enemy does?

Many of the weblogs I've linked to on the right-hand side of the page have taken on the mantle of carrying just such information, often from first hand sources. I recommend them all to you, and I'll probably add more as I come across them.

For now, just remember: good information is the only way to beat a steady diet of bad information, and the first step to winning the propoganda war is to recognize propoganda when you see it, and to reject it upon recognition.

As for the MSM... you can probably guess what my opinion is; I won't tell it here, as it is immaterial, and unprintable.

Ah, I have blathered on for long enough, forgive me.

Have a very Merry Christmas, and may the blessings of Christ follow you throughout the rest of your days. May He watch over our soldiers who are in harms way and who are home-stationed; may His gracious hands keep them and guard them and guide them to victory, in all wars that we may fight, according to His perfect will, until that Last War, when Christ Himself returns, and sets all things right.

Till then.

Dream Squelched

Okay, okay, the above topic is a bit melodramatic, and in no way reflects an actual sense of squelched dream despondency on my part. I had hoped, before I returned home for Christmas, to get to see an F/A-22 in flight. Alas, it does not look like that will occur.

Yesterday a F-22 crashed on take-off at Nellis Airbase in Nevada. The pilot ejected safely (the fact that he is okay is why I feel like I can joke about this, to an extent), but the Air Force has put a hold on all further F-22 flights until further notice.

Now, that may seem like an extreme reaction to one crash, but when you think about it, it makes sense. Here you have a newly-produced line of air-superiority/attack fighter craft, and one is utterly flumoxed at take-off. There are a few possible reasons for such an incident (as near as I can see, at least), most of which revolve around problems in the flight controls or propulsion systems. Time will tell and fix, I guess.

Of course, it could also be that the engines ate an unladen Nevada swallow, but I won't say that outloud, as I don't know for sure if they even have swallows in Nevada.

On a positive note, Time Magazine has named President Bush 'Person of the Year' for 2004. Love him or hate him, I'm certain you can understand why. In my case, as I say in the hood (i.e., whenever I go outside in my raincoat or heavy coat with the built-in flop-back head protection), "Dubya's my homeboy, you dig what I say, yo?".

Unless you post on the forums of The Democrat Underground, of course, as their complete and utter revilement of everything Dubya (and Republican, and I think maybe even evangelical, for that matter) produces the brand of hateful, vulgar invective that would be amusing if it were not so... sad. Right Wing News has a listing of some of the best (unintenionally funny) and worse (downright disgusting, maddening, infuriating, inducing-incredulous-stares-at-screen-and-random-exclaimations) posts from the DU forums. While you're at RWN, browse through their Quotes Section. The Patton quotes especially are well worth it.

Also, to join in with the President's PoTY award in proving that Time Magazine does have some sense, Powerline has been award the first Blog of the Year award. They rapidly became one of my favorites during the months leading up to the election (hence why they are in the blogroll), and earned a certain degree of fame for their roll (right alongside Little Green Footballs and INDC Journal) in exposing and rending twain asunder the 60 Minutes Bush Memo Fraud back in September. I highly recommend the writtings of Hinderocket, The Big Trunk, and Deacon, so go check 'em out.

I mean, even Lynne Cheney likes 'em.

Earlier tonight (as in, about a half-hour ago), I was watching a piece of "investigative reporting" (hosted by Bryant Gumbel, no less), on some UFO landing/encounter that happened near a major RAF/USAF base in England.

Ah, here it is: "UFO INVASION AT RENDLESHAM".

All in all, in was actually rather (not in the Dan sense) interesting. The story behind the case was presently fairly and fairly well, even if there were the occasional breathless references to Roswell, NM. The basic situation involved the buzzing of the base at Rendelsham (which may or may have had a few tactical nukes stored on hand; rightly, no one confirmed that) over a period of two nights by a triangular UFO. Each night, it seems, it landed.

The guy who investigated it on the first night says he actually got close enough to touch the thing, and I had no reason to disbelieve him.

The big twist came when we discover that the two witnesses,the investigator from the first landing (who also investigated the second sighting) and another airman who was taken out to see the second 'landing site' were, in their recounts of what they saw on the second night, talking about the same phenomena but AT DIFFERENT SITES.

Gives ya gooesbumps, that does.

As with all UFO specials, this one managed to build up a good bit of suspense and paranoid tension. Between government conspiracies and hypnotic regression (which has got to be one of the most unexplainably FREAKY things I've ever seen, and I don't know why or how else to describe my reaction to it), you're rendered unable to turn around for fear of seeing a "Gray" backed-up by government agents, who are going to let the "gray" take you as part of their "agreement", and then do all sorts of obscene and degrading experiments on you and it hurts and the ACLU is too far away to file a complaint and oh my goodness is that Zeta Aquilae?

Erm, where was I? Ah, yes, agreements between the US Government and the "aliens" or whatever they are. Specifically, agreements whereby the "aliens" give "advanced technology" to the US.

Now, this is the part where all tension breaks down and I JUST HAVE TO LAUGH. They have some chick on there (a UFOlogist, I suspect) who is speculating on the nature of the technology exchange. She makes the statement that perhaps some of the great breakthroughs in this past century are as a result of "alien technology."

Her prime example? "Perhaps that stealth technology." .

Stealth technology. The best you can bleeding do is stealth technology? For the love of coherence, where do they find these people?

I can order a book from AIAA on how stealth technology works. How Stuff Works has a whole section on it. It's simply a matter of airplane geometry and the use of certain materials, nothing particularly "otherworldly" about it.

Just a bunch of smart guys at Burbank doing their thing. Granted, some probably were bald after the design phase.

Whether they were were gray and had big eyes I'll leave alone: it WAS in California, after all.

Did you know.... (II)

That a city ordinance here in Kennesaw requires the head of each household to maintain a firearm and the ammunition required thereof? Provision is made for those who aren't physically or mentally capable of carrying/using a firearm, can't afford one, simply "don't belive in the things", or are convicted felons.

Either way, there you are.

Blogroll

If you will look to the right-hand side of the page and scroll down, you will see a new section labled "Blogroll". Now, the names below this are links of various weblogs that I tend to read on a daily basis. All of them are excellent reads, so give 'em some traffic.

Plane Sightings I

Planes seen so far:

C-130J Hercules: 5-6
C-5 Galaxy: 3
F/A-18 Hornet: 1
F-16 Falcon: 1
E-2C Hawkeye: 1

The only one to take with a grain of salt is the E-2C. We were outside during a fire drill, and I did see a plane go past that matched the basic profile of the Hawkeye (complete with radar pod), but I'm not 100% sure of the ID.

90% sure, maybe.

Anyway, I'll be updating this list depending on what I see, and if I think I can report a sighting. Some of y'all know the drill.

This Past Sunday... (part II)

Upon my return from church, and consumption of lunch, I proceed with the repairs. Now, the initial state here is that the computer is only recognizing the two hard drives and not the CD-ROM.

No problem: I open the case and pull the IDE cable off of the second hard disk. Knowing that I will have to go back in a few times, I do not put the case the whole way on when I reconnect the computer.

Boot up, act according to what I remember I did last time. Which means I simply install the CD-ROM drivers, power off again, disconnect, rehook IDE cable, put on case, reconnect power back on.

A quick check of Explorer reveals that the computer is only recognizing the two hard drives. I begin to grow frustrated; obviously my recollection of the prior recovery is faulty.

The next few hours proceed along the same vein. Around 4 P.M. or so functionality was finally restored to the system. Here I shall immortalize for your amusement and my own future reference the required steps for repair:

1. Open case and gain access to mother board.
2. Remove (billy yank) IDE cable from second hard drive (johnny reb).
3. Apologize to readers for the above bad civil war reference and move on.
4. Secure motherboard in case, keep cover off.
5. Connect monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
6. Power on computer. Wait for boot-up to finish.
7. Install Windows 98 Second Edition updates (this is the key to the whole operation).
8. Install required drivers (mouse, video card, LAN card, CD-ROM).
8.a. If video card install seems to stop, simply press ALT+TAB and follow the instructions on the pop-up alert box that didn't pop on top for some unfathomable reason.
9. Turn computer off.
10. Disconnect all cables.
11. Gain access to motherboard again. Reattach IDE cable to second hard drive.
12. Put everything back together, and do try to avoid throwning things across the room.
13. Reconnect monitor, keyboard, ethernet cable, and mouse.
14. Connect newly reset router to DSL modem. Connect computer to router.
15. Turn computer on. Enjoy full functionality and the firewall that comes with router.
16. Run Spybot, just to be sure.
17. Kill things Spybot finds.

So there you have my Great Virus Adventure. By this time the silvan elves of Mirkwood have slaughtered the vile orcs and I find myself as their guest. Somehow I have convinced them that I am one of the Dunedain.

Anyway, that night was also the night of Kennesaw First Baptist's Christmas Program. Fun night, that was, and just what I needed after the frustration and near computer-cide of the earlier afternoon.

It began frivolous enough; standard Christmas decorations of lights, fake poinsettas, the works. They even had a plastic/fabric facsimile of a snowman in one corner of the stage.

The choir began by singing the fun, easy going Christmas songs. "Jingle Bells", "Deck the Halls", etc. At "Frosty the Snowman", during a strategic verse of the song, the snowman is revealed to be a REAL LIFE PERSON IN A SNOWMAN SUIT who then proceeded to suit actions to song lyric and danced around on stage.

I pity the poor guy for having had to have spent the first fifteen minutes of the program crounched on the stage motionless pretending to be a fake snowman. Had to have been murder on his knees.

One good thing about living in Georgia is that there is little if any of the irrational "saying Christmas is teh (yes, I meant to type 'teh'=ed) right-wing religious nut conspiracy to disenfranchise athiests!" being thrown about here in Kennesaw. The songs that the adult choir and the kids choir sang together, just in the mixing of the words and the sounds of the voices, were things of grandeuer.

All for now; it's "late" for me. Good night one and all.

This Past Sunday... (part I)

Was a fascinating day. To begin the tale, we must go back in time a pace, to Saturday night.

I'm sitting at home, relaxing, surfing the internet. For some motive as yet unexplained by reason and modern psychiatry, I'm using IE 5.5 instead of Firefox. It's about 11 P.M., I'm minding my own business (though I should be in bed), when suddenly, my computer beings to process very furiously. Now, this happens every now and then, depending on what I have running in the background.

The combination of applications at that point was not one that normally produces furious CPU and hard disk action. I begin to grow concerned.

Said concern reaches what I thought was a zenith of intensity as I press CTRL+ALT+DEL to call up the list of what programs are running at the time.

I do not recognize a good one quarter of the programs on the list. The zenith, I realize, was little more than a piddling lookout point facing a rice paddy, with a sign that points towards a darkened, weaving trail that winds and coils it's way into a dense, Mirkwood-esque forrest.

Did I mention that the winding path is one of those automatic horizontal-escalators you see at some airports and gigantic malls? Except this one is covered in a superglue-cement mix.

Drawn inexorably forward towards certain OS doom, unable to escape and knowing that there is no Thranduil waiting in the woods to great me with wine and meat; I am on my own and my only defense is a rusty blade from Dunland.

From the CTRL+ALT+DEL menu I proceed to shut down the anomolous programs. Some are running twice, none die easily; most required two presses of the shutdown button before the "Program Not Responding" box would appear.

Such was not the end of my travails; I continued to hack away at the spiders with the Dunland blade, wishing that I had an elven blade, even just a dagger, one that I might have more confidence in it's forged bite than I do my own.

In the end, a blade of elven smithery would have been fortuitous, as it turned out that orcs were near.

Knowing that whatever set the programs to running had probably installed something a little more permament (to snipe me in the rear when my guard is down and I'm not working, the viperous spawn of perdition...> I proceed to the Control Panel and call up Add/Remove Programs.

Yup. Not a whole lot of unauthorized stuff, but enough to make me nervous. It is a simply matter, or it should be; highlight the program, press the "Remove" button, and click okay when asked.

But always read the questions, as I half expect one of these "applications" to someday request my immortal soul and the right to consume my bowels when I die.

Most of these "Remove" actions go all right. Two do not.

One succeeds on the second time. The second produces yet more furious CPU processing and hard drive access; the computer begins, as the fellow in the AOL commercial says, to make the sound of a Yeti.

I close the Add/Remove Programs window and the Control Panel. The noise and access stops. Okay, I think to myself, it's probably over now. I'll just go into msconfig and make sure that nothing... unnecessary starts with Windows.

As I move the mouse to the Start button, I glance at the left side of the desktop.

*%^*@#!!

The Recycle Bin, My Documents Folder, My Briefcase Folder, and Internet Explorer Icons have all SIMPLY VANISHED INTO THE DIGITAL ETHER. Discovering a new definition of the "zenith of concern" as I contemplate the loss of the My Documents folder, I proceed to feel a STONE FORMING IN MY GUT as I watch my computer slowly SHED ITSELF in much the same way that Vladimir Komarov's Soyuz I spacecraft did on it's ill-fated maiden voyage.

I can no longer run programs by clicking on their icons, either on the desktop on on the quick-start bar. The only start menu function that woks in the Run window; from that I see that "My Documents" has indeed disappeared from the hard drive, and from experiment that most of the programs are well nigh dead.

By the time I recovered my mind enough to hit CTRL+ALT+DEL twice for reboot, all the icons on the desktop had gone to the default windows icon (white background with the small flying windows thingy in the middle) instead of their program specific images.

I tell myself not to panic; perhaps, I rationalize, this is some passing thing, and will recover with the reboot. Yes, that is it; a reboot solves all.

"General Protection Fault yadda yadda yadda in module explorer.exe". At boot-up.

*&*^#^%#!!! Orc ambush. I curse my lack of elven steel as I am carried towards the torture pits of Dol Goldur.

Needless to say, this means that my computer WILL NOT START, and I cannot remember which key to press, or when, to bring up the start-up options.

Fortunately, I have a Hewlett-Packard, so I have another option: the Recovery CD. This is a CD-ROM, that is bootable, that contains all the information that was originally installed on the computer.

Hoo-ray! I can recover!

I plug the CD in during one of the stare-at-non-functioning-windows moments, then reboot the computer. Boot up, go through a few menus, installation begins.

I go lie down. It is now well after 1 A.M., and I am tired. I can't sleep; I am overcome with worry and unabashed trepidation for the contents of the "My Documents" directory. I rise from my bed and return to my computer a while later.

The install has completed.

Now, some of you may remember that a few months back I reformated the C: drive and did a reinstall, just to try and fix some system instability. You may also remember that I discovered a conflict centering around the second hard disk and the CD-ROM: Windows 98, at the original install, would only recognize and access one, and not the other.

Yes, it was the same case again. Wearily, and still somewhat a captive of the orcs (though my captors have now been waylaid by on of Thranduil's hunting bands), I shut the computer down and proceed to bed.

More to follow

New Gadget

If you will kindly scroll down to the very bottom of the page, you will see that this site now has a visitor counter. Special thanks to Site Meter for their free counter provision.

Did you know...

That ALF has his own talk show now on TV Land?

Funny Incident

Today I was reading through the manual for the Automated Technical Manual system that I'll be using. I'll be doing a lot of this, as they can't actually train me on the ATM system till after the new year.

Anyways, the system uses various SGML tags to generate the contents of a technical manual. Naturally, after it gives the tags for a particular part of the manual, it shows an example of what the tag sets produce when compiled and processed and whatnot.

One particular set of tags is used to produce a cover page that contains a set of byline tags. These produce a "By: ______" with the spaces filled in by entered text. Now, for whatever reason, the manual had two different cover page examples. I can't remember why, but there they were.

The first cover page had "A. Dent" next to the byline. Now, I didn't laugh too much at that one; I caught the possible reference, but figured it could have been a coincidence, or someone making a standard "dent" joke. Then I turned a few pages and all doubt was removed.

The second byline was "F. Prefect."

Had a right chuckle over that one, I did.

Title Explaination

Howdy again. Work seems to be shaping up well, I'm getting set into a schedule (I think), so I figured I might as well go ahead and explain something.

The title of this blog, before some of you assume that I am taking a moderately egotiscial stance, is an allusion to Isaiah 42:1-3, specifically the third verse. In these verses, God tells Isaiah the character of Messiah:

Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him; He will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry out or raise His voice, nor make His voice heard in the street.
A bruised reed He will not break and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish; He will faithfully bring forth justice.

So anyway, you're probably asking where I'm going with the above quotation. Think through the bolded section, the statement that Messiah will not break a "bruised reed". He does not break those who are weak. By break, now, I do not refer to the brokenness that comes from and accompanies repentence; indeed, that I've experience many times in my life, and will more than likely experience even more as time goes by.

By "break" I refer to the brokenness that accompanies destruction, i.e., being rent twain assunder. As you can guess, this is not an occurance conductive to continued survival and growth. Yet, we would all, for whatever reason, deserve just such a "breaking" at His hands.

I am an unbroken reed; I am bruised, though foolishness and wrong actions of my own doing. Yet because of the mercy of my God and Savior, He hasn't not broken me yet. In time, then, under His care and preservation my "bruises" can heal; and this reed will stand tall and whole, with Him as the root.

Till then, just a few parting thoughts in a completely different vein.

1. Watched "The Last Starfighter" on Cinemax (I think it was Cinemax, at least). Good movie, very underrated. Best Line:
(Centauri has just told Alex Rogan about several Great Men from Earth and Star League history)
Alex: Look, Centauri, I'm none of those guys. I'm just a kid from a trailer park.
Centauri: If that's what you think, then that's all you'll ever be.

2. Currently watching "The Last Samurai" on HBO. Must be a "Last" thing going on here on something. However, I am glad that I'll have to go to bed before the ending. I like the movie, but the last part, where Algrin prostrates himself before the Emperor Meiji, just disturbs me. Both of my grandfathers, fought in one way or another to stop the imperial ambitions of Emperor Hirohito (who was a descendent of Meiji).

3. Today is the 63rd anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Our grandfather's saw it with their own eyes; we only have their stories and pictures to make our memories of that time. Let us remember how out nation was attacked then, and let us remember what our nation accomplished in response.

In any event, good night.

Hello

Hello, blogosphere. Don't really know what I'm gonna do with this thing, but its something I figure might be fun to do now that I'm settled in one spot for a while. As for what next, well... we'll see. Tomorrow, I'll explain what the title refers too (just in case those of you who I'll send the link to can't guess. Following that, who knows; at times I'll be silent, at times I'll be funny, and at times I'll rant and rave.

In the mean times, here's one more word to y'all in Huntsvegas, something that I would have said if I hadn't been touched beyond the ability of coherent speach by the send-off at the apartment. Seriously, you guys have no idea how much that meant to me :).

Anyway, to (slightly) mis-quote from the musical version of "Les Miserables", the third verse of 'Drink With Me':

Drink with me
To days gone by.
Sing with me
The songs we knew.
At the shrine of friendship
Never say die;
Let the wine of friendship
Never run dry.
Here's to you
And here's
To me.

In any event, I must shortly go to bed, as work begins early for me in the morning. G'night, blogosphere.