Why?

People still ask me how I can stand to live in Alaska.

"Winter, how can you stand it? It's so cold and dark!"

I usually say that I like winter because in winter there are no bugs and no tourists, but this might better illustrate the real reason. For every 20 days of bleak howling wind and bitter, soul numbing snow - there are days like this:

Movie Review - The Bourne Ultimatum

As I've said elsewhere, I'm not big on going to movie theaters. I don't much care for either modern theaters, or rude and stupid modern theater crowds. I want to be able to watch a movie without listening to the guy behind me hogging down a bag of pork rinds and a giant slurpee. I hate it when people come it late, it just pisses me off. I want to be able to pause the flick if necessary, I'm in my forties which means I need to go to the little movie reviewer's room right about the time the first major action sequence hits. I've got classic noise induced hearing damage from a lifetime of having things blow up next to my head and from being around heavy military machines, which I compensate for in real life by watching faces and mouths (so, if we're ever face to face and I'm not looking you in the eye, I'm not being rude or evasive, I'm watching your mouth). When watching a movie I don't always catch every word because a lot of the visual cues I depend on just aren't there, so I like to back the movie up and listen to certain sections again. My wife and I tend to trade smart alec comments during the show, this is generally frowned on in a theater. I also like to watch a movie with my laptop, so I can look up trivia and such, this is also generally frowned on in a theater. I don't much care for the classic movie theater snacks (except for Junior Mints, I love those things), I want to be able to drink a beer and have cheese and crackers or dill pickles or whatever I feel like. And, most movie theater seats kill me, the rows aren't far enough apart and my ass almost always falls asleep about an hour into the flick. So, we normally wait for a movie to come out on DVD, then we buy the widescreen version, sometimes in HD depending on the movie, and watch it in the comfort of our living room on our monster plasma in full surround sound.

Last night we watched the third installment of the Bourne trilogy, The Bourne Ultimatum, based on the Robert Ludlum novels.

It did not disappoint. It's smart and fast and shiny and intense.

As expected Ultimatum finally answers the questions asked in the previous two installments: i.e. who is Jason Bourne, where did he come from and how was he trained, why can't he remember anything, and why is the CIA after him? The movie asks a few questions of it's own. A few loose ends are left dangling, leaving open the possibility of a fourth installment.

Ultimatum is an action movie, of course. Boy is it an action movie. There are chases and shootouts and some extremely intense fight scenes. In fact, if I had any complaints at all, it would be that there's just a little bit too much action. There are two intense chases sequences, one on foot through the claustrophobic alleyways of Tangier and a car chase through the streets of New York. Both go on just a little too long. But ultimately (heh) at its heart, this is a chase movie - so my complaint is a minor one.

The story is a little predictable in places, but in a good way. If you've seen the first two installments, you know what this one is going to be about. Jason Bourne is going home, he's going to get answers, certain people are going to pay. The director, Paul Greenglass (The Bourne Supremacy) doesn't try to hide this, in fact he makes it clear right from the beginning. He also expects his audience to think for themselves. He wants you to figure things out, and he's happy to give you the satisfaction of those Ha! I knew that was going to happen! moments. But, there are also plenty of little twists to keep you entertained and guessing, and Greenglass does a masterful job of building suspense along the way.

One of the things I enjoy so much about these movies, is that they are filled with strong smart women. I like strong, smart women. Franke Potente's role in the The Bourne Identity is terrific, and Julia Stiles and Joan Allen continue that tradition in The Bourne Ultimatum. Stiles' character, Nicky Parsons, has grown from a supporting role in the first movie, to a strong main character in the last one, and Stiles does an excellent job with the role. Greenglass never allows Parsons to devolve into the Bond Girl window dressing so stereotypical of this genre, and Stiles makes you want to know more about her. If they do make a forth movie, I hope we get to explore a bit more of her history with Bourne.

Joan Allen, as CIA Senior Agent Pamela Landy, is also uniformly terrific. Landy's character is smart, driven, idealistic, and intelligent. She's the kind of person you hope really exists in the bowels of the CIA. There's a nice scene overlap between Ultimatum and Supremacy, which centers around Landy and Bourne. It was a neat twist, without the artifice of retconning.

And, of course, there's Matt Damon, as Jason Bourne himself. Damon is one of the great actors of the modern genre. He consistently and credibly pulls off the understated everyman. He makes Bourne a human and believable character, an idealist, intelligent and conflicted, on a quest to find out who he really is. Though the movie contains a great deal of violent action, Greenglass never allows it to become gratuitous. Bourne the assassin goes out of his way to avoid conflict, but when when violence is forced upon him he performs without hesitation.

A few minor quibbles: CIA Director Kramer, played by the fantastic Scott Glenn, is a cardboard cutout. His motives are never more than sketchy. However, what little screen time he has, Glenn makes the most of (and in Greenglass' defense, it would be very easy for the powerful Glenn to overshadow the story, and the emphasis in supposed to be on Bourne so maybe this is why Kramer is kept in the shadowy periphery). CIA Deputy Director Vosen is just a little too graspingly self-serving, just a little too obvious - though David Strathairn does a credible job with the character. The various 'assets,' CIA assassins, are just a little too machine like, though one of them does display human compassion and a sense of honor late in the film. No human, not matter how well trained, could take the punishment Bourne does - but hey it wouldn't be much of an action movie if the main character spent two months in traction recovering from a pair of broken legs and a dislocated shoulder.

One major quibble: The camera work. Greenglass loves to use the Ridley Scott technique, i.e. he films his action sequences using a hand held camera with the steadcam stabilization turned off. This is supposed to give the viewer a sense of looking through the character's eyes. Done well, it in essence projects the moviegoer straight into the middle of the action. And Greenglass does it better than most. The problem is that this technique only works for the viewer under the exact right conditions, in a theater sitting dead center, midway to the back. In the front row, close to the screen, it's nauseating. At home on a medium sized tube TV, it's jarring and jittering and reminds of me of broadcast TV when the vertical frame lock is lost and the picture rolls and flips up and down - which is to say that it is annoying as all hell and makes me want to smack the side of the TV, hard, just to get it to stop. On my big 72" widescreen, it's not too bad, but it's still distracting and there was far too much of it in this movie.

All in all, The Bourne Ultimatum was well worth the wait. It's a terrific popcorn flick, and it does what a movie is supposed to do - it entertains. And as an added bonus, it's smart, intelligent, and exercises your mind. Go get your copy today.

Bet he gets an earring too

Just For Men Commercial:

[Middle-aged guy shown lying sleepless and alone in a king-sized bed]
Voiceover: “Alone again, and how am I supposed to start over with all of this gray hair?”

Unspoken Translation: “I’ve dumped my middle-aged wife after twenty years, now how do I get me one of those 19 year old trophy bimbos so I can impress the guys down at the bar?”

Answer: Just for Men hair color (Viagra sold separately). Just a few treatments a week. Look twenty years younger. Nobody has to know. Chicks dig it!

Final scene: Smiling, middle-aged guy now with a full head of thick, dark hair running down the beach with a young blond. [Just as the smiling couple pass the camera, the girl drops her towel and exposes her tanned and thong clad rear. Pan and zoom, focus on her firm young ass as she jogs towards the surf] This could be you! If only you didn't have all of that gray hair.

[Fade out to tag line]
Just For Men Hair Treatment! Fueling America's juvenile wet dreams and helping shallow middle-aged assholes through their midlife crisis since 1975.

Something just doesn't add up

You know those crime dramas?

The ones where the otherwise respectable suspect has committed some heinous crime, and has told some reasonably plausible sounding story to cover his tracks? But the persistent detectives keep chipping away at the alibi and eventually they find some discrepancy, some little inconsistency, and then the suspect has to rationalize away the flaw in his story, and you just know he's lying his ass off? Suspense builds as the lies and the inconsistencies pile up and, eventually, the whole sordid mess falls apart like a house of cards? Yeah, those crime dramas.

CIA officials have been quoted as saying that water-boarding has been used on three prisoners since 2001 but on nobody since 2003 [emphasis mine].

Well, that's good, we've only tortured three people. Just three. Three, which is to say more than two but less than four. Just three, three is the number, and the number shall be three.

It is now also known that in 2005 the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and another al-Qaeda prisoner.

Uh, how's that again? Hundreds of hours? Hundreds? For just three interrogations?

The White House has said categorically that it doesn't torture prisoners, and that things like waterboarding are merely 'enhanced interrogation' techniques. And enhanced interrogation has only been used in three cases. And it's very effective. And yet, the CIA destroyed hundreds of hours of tape recordings of those same interrogations. Hmmm, something just doesn't add up. Either it took one hell of a lot of water up the nose to get the prisoner to talk (which would indicate that it really isn't all that effective), or there were a few more interrogations than just three. Supposedly a lot of the footage was of Zubaydah just sitting in his cell, recovering from his wounds (which were inflicted in the firefight during his capture). We'll come back to that below.

Now, you have to be careful getting your numbers from a newspaper article, or even several newspaper articles. Or the internet. Or politicians. Or most especially, from the CIA. But these numbers seem to be reasonably accurate in broad strokes, neither CIA or any of the other entities involved are denying them, and it's their reasonably plausible story, so let's go with it for the moment.

The CIA is not denying that it did, indeed, perform the enhanced interrogations or that it did destroy the tapes. The question then would have to be: why? The CIA claimed that the tapes were destroyed to protect it's own interrogators from legal action in the future, should the footage somehow be leaked to the public.

Couple of observations here:

1) If we don't torture people, if we only use safe and legal 'enhanced' interrogation methods, then why does the CIA fear for it's agents (translation: the Higher Ups fear public reaction, their jobs are at risk - nobody actually gives a shit about the interrogators) if they were working within legal guidelines? Is it perhaps that those tapes showed something that looked a lot like torture? Screaming? Thrashing? Panic? Fear? A man strapped, naked, to a cold steel table, with water being forced up his nose? Coughing? Choking? Guess we'll never know what happened in those interrogations, or what the CIA did in our name, will we? We'll just have to take their word for it. And, of course, the CIA has a sterling reputation for telling the truth, don't they?

2) At least one of those agents has gone public. Others have been named. The interrogators themselves don't seem to be overly concerned about their anonymity. If their anonymity is so important to the CIA administration, why haven't they brought charges against John Kiriakou for divulging classified information, for endangering himself and his fellow interrogators? If this were one of those crime dramas, this is the point where the detectives would start scratching their heads and giving the suspect one of those patented Bruce Willis quizzical looks.

3) According to both the White House and the CIA, enhanced interrogation is absolutely necessary, evidence of which is that waterboarding of Zubaydah produced, and continues to produce, actionable intelligence which was used to disrupt terrorist operations and capture other enemies of America. This doesn't add up. I'm not saying that the interrogation didn't produce the actionable intelligence, because it appears that it did - or it at least corroborated information obtained through more traditional means. There are two problems with this little detail: First: If the interrogations did, in fact, produce useful information, as both the CIA and the White House claim, then that information is still useful - for a number of reasons. Government agencies in general, and intelligence agencies in particular, never destroy records or information (unless that information is contained in White House email, but I digress). When I was a Navy intelligence officer, I saw tapes and records that went back to the beginning of WWII, some of which were still useful for training, or for historical reasons, or as lessons learned. So here we have a major intelligence coup, something that is part of an active campaign, something that justifies the President's position on enhanced interrogation, proof positive that these methods do yield usable results, that the ends do indeed justify the means - and the CIA destroys it? Talk about hanging your boss out to dry. Wow. And Second: The CIA was specifically, unequivocally, ordered to maintain detailed records of all interrogations, by the White House, Congress, and several Judges. Now the Director of Central Intelligence isn't stupid, he must have known that there would be major political fallout when the destruction of the tapes became public. He knew that disclosure was inevitable. He knew he would be called to account for it in front of Congress, and he knew that the White House would hang him out to dry. So, ask yourself this: what was on those tapes that was worth hiding, when such consequences were the inevitable result?

4) As noted above, supposedly, much of the footage was of Zubaydah sitting in his cell, recovering from wounds inflicted during his capture. Boring stuff, just film of a guy sitting in a cell watching the water drip, so to speak. But that doesn't make sense either, why destroy recordings of a guy sitting in a cell by himself? Unless he was, oh say, naked and freezing, or being deprived of sleep, or chained in duress positions for extended periods, or any of a dozen other methods that sound humane but when seen turn out to be, well, torture. I'm not saying that he was tortured. I don't have too. Others, some in our own government, some in US and international human rights organizations, some in the CIA, have said so. The White House and the CIA deny it. And yet, and yet, they destroyed the tapes that would have proved the truth of their claim. Unless, you know, they didn't.

5) Those tapes were classified. Highly classified. Speaking as somebody who held a Special Security Access and handled highly classified materials for over twenty years - uh, real vote of confidence in your Classified Materials Security System, CIA guys. Ah, hell, actually I probably have to give this one to the spooks. Both the White House and Congress leak like a Russian nuclear reactor, it was an absolute certainty that somebody would have leaked those tapes.

And there you have it, right there. The CIA knew those tapes would leak to the press, it was inevitable. I'd be willing to bet that those tapes didn't provide any actionable intelligence, didn't justify the use of enhanced interrogation, didn't prove the White House's position on torture. In fact, on the face of things, I'd say those tapes had a high probability of showing just exactly the opposite. I'd say there's a pretty high probability that the information on those tapes was so damming, so embarrassing, to the CIA, the Administration, and the reputation of the United States, that powerful men were willing to risk their jobs and reputations to get rid of it. They were willing to throw away hard won intelligence. They were willing to risk jail for defying a Judge's order. Quad era demonstrandum, just saying.

If this was indeed a TV crime drama, well this would be the point in the script where the suspect confesses his crimes and the detectives haul him away. Then we'd break for a laxative commercial and scenes from next week's show. Alas, this isn't a TV crime drama, there'll be no tidy wrap-up. Let's hope the low Nielson ratings get the show canceled sooner, rather than later.

Comparisons

Here's a question for you:

Who are you compared too? Are you flattered by this comparison, or not so much?

Me? Well, there seems to be a consistent theme:

I've have been repeatedly compared to Ted Danson's character of Dr. John Becker from the TV sitcom Becker. This doesn't bother me at all. John was a curmudgeon, easily irritated and he tended to rant - traits he and I share. But Becker always did the right thing, eventually. And he had a good heart, even if it was covered in scare tissue. And he was very, very good at what he did. I can live with this.

I've been compared to John C. McGinley's character Dr. Perry Cox from the TV Sitcom Scrubs. This also does not bother me. I watch Scrubs reruns almost every night, it's easily one of my favorite shows, ever. Cox kills me, he's very very good at what he does. He's also a smart ass. And McGinley is one of my very favorite actors, ever. If they ever make a movie about me, I hope they get McGinley to play the lead.

I've been compared upon occasion to Hugh Lauri's character House, from the TV Drama House, M.D. Can't say I care for this comparison much. House is an ass. He's good at what he does, but he's a self-involved jerk and frankly I just don't care for the character all that much, I wouldn't want to know him, and I wouldn't want him to be my doctor. Also, he seems to be wrong, a lot, and can't seem to admit it - even if he does eventually get the right answer. Don't get me wrong, I like the show and Hugh Lauri is a terrific actor, but I can't stand the character House (which I think is exactly what the show is aiming for).

I was once compared to Nathan Fillion's character Malcolm Reynolds from the awesomely fantastic TV show Firefly. This tickles me beyond words, for many reasons. This comparison only happened to me once, I wish it would happen more.

Several military folks once compared me to Viggo Mortensen's character of Master Chief Jack Urgalye from the shitty Demi Moore movie G.I. Jane. They very much intended it as a compliment. Uh, not so much. I disliked Urgalye. I also disliked the movie, intensely. I also dislike Demi Moore, intensely.

For the record, except for a very slight, passing resemblance to Viggo Mortensen, I look nothing like any of these people. The comparisons are, I think, prompted by personality. Make of that what you will.

And you? Who do people compare you to?

Astro, spacedog.

Load, "*", 8,1

The Commodore 64 computer is 25 years old this month.

Ahhh, the C64, the Model-T of personal computing, the machine that anybody could afford.

I bought mine in 1982, for $250. It was the first 'real' computer I ever owned. Mine had the little tape drive that stored data on cassette tapes. I never could afford the $1200 external 1MB harddisk drive for it (but, man, did I lust after that). 64KB of RAM. CP/M operating system stored in ROM. Color. Sound. It would run rings around an Apple II. I learned my first programming language on that machine; BASIC, of course. Anybody remember GEOS? No? That's OK, nobody remembers how to hand start a Model-T anymore either.

Wright Predicts the Future!

Congress wants to know if the CIA broke the law by destroying video tapes of prisoner interrogations.

Angry congressional Democrats demanded Friday that the Justice Department investigate why the CIA destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two terrorism suspects.

Oooooh, angry congressional Democrats!

I'll make a prediction here - there will be hearings. There will be rhetoric. There will be denials, excuses, and rationalizations from the White House. There will be angry patriotic statements from congressional Republicans accusing the angry Democrats of sympathy for terrorists. There will be bizarre logic, contradictory statements, and no comments from the CIA. John McCain will deplore the CIA's actions while reluctantly supporting them. Other presidential candidates will shake their little fists and growl like small dogs. Obama will blame Clinton, Clinton will blame Obama. Kucinich will, of course, blame space aliens. Senator Craig will be in the men's room. The angry congressional democrats will be distracted by shiny bits of foil and the smoke and the beating drums - and gradually become less angry.

And not one damned thing will happen. Not one.

And another one bites the dust

See? This is why we wear protective equipment when woodworking.



Dammit!

I was within minutes of being finished with this piece. I had increased the RPM's to apply the final burnishing (see the nice shine on that broken piece?) when suddenly I heard cracking noises. I had just enough time to knee the kill switch and step back. Boom! and it split down the middle. If you look at the piece still hanging from the chuck, you can see bark wood along the broken edge. That particular flaw was not visible until the bowl exploded. Crap!

At least I didn't get hit this time, the flying pieces went the other way. Left a dandy dent in the dust hood you can see just behind the broken pieces.

What's up?

Anybody know what's up with Blogspot?

I haven't got comment email updates in two days or so. And for a day before that it was intermittent. Strangely, whenever I make a comment to one of my posts, I get an email notification. Odd, that.

Guess I'll have to go fish around on their support page.

One of the reasons I use Blogspot instead of running my own site, is that I don't have to fool with all of the tech issues. I can, I just don't want to. Usually they're right on the ball, so this is a tad out of character. Of course, I'm not paying for the site, at the moment, soooooo I guess I shouldn't complain. And I won't, I'm just curious. Everything else seems to be working fine.

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New post up on Deep Thunder.

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Update: And now, strangely, comment email notification does seem to be working. Okay. It's a mystery.

That nagging feeling...

You know the one. You know something is wrong but you just can't quite put your finger on it? Yeah, that nagging feeling.

For the last several days, I kept noticing this funny smell, concentrated in the main floor den area. Now, when I say funny I don't mean funny ha ha, I mean more like "Geez, that's funny, what the hell is that." Followed by sniffing everything in the house like some demented bloodhound with a coke habit. I've got a very big house, so that's a lot of sniffing. It made me dizzy. And I still couldn't find the source. I was starting to think it was in my head, and that would be, well, you know, non-optimal.

Just a whiff of corruption, every once in a while. The den is next to the garage. Now I do keep the garbage in the attached garage during the summer (it's Alaska, there are bears. Big ones. Garbage is a lot like the Golden Coral Buffet for bears, low low prices and all you can eat. Bears will come from miles around to pony up the garbage buffet. Bears in the yard are bad. They might make friends with your kid, as if he doesn't already have enough bad influences in his life. It hasn't been cold enough, long enough to make absolutely certain that all the bears are in hibernation yet - so garbage, garage. Savvy?) (and don't weird out over it. I put it in big heavy plastic bags, I don't just throw it out there in a heap next to the car, sheesh) I make a run to the dump every other week or so, and the most recent run was last weekend. There's no garbage in the garage. Plus I couldn't detect the weird smell in the garage, so that wasn't it.

Cat box maybe. As I've mentioned before I have a robot self-cleaning cat box. I modified it (read made it a lot bigger) so that it only needs to be attended to once a week or so. I set a reminder in Outlook so that I don't forget. But every once in a while, it gets hung up. The box is in the basement, the cats get down there through a cat door in the den which leads to a catwalk (heh, get it?) and cat ladder in the basement storage room. No mess, no fuss, no cat box in the living spaces. But it didn't smell like that either, and when I checked, the robot was shoveling shit in perfect mechanical bliss. So that wasn't it.

It also wasn't the dog kennel, which is under the sunroom. And it wasn't in the furnace room, which is under the den. And it wasn't the drain vents in the den bathroom. That funny little smell was starting to make me insane.

That's about the time I noticed that the carpet in the sunroom was damp just inside the door to the den. Now that's not a particularly strange thing, I have an eleven year old son, odd stains and damp spots appear mysteriously throughout the house like soggy poltergeists. There wasn't any point in asking the kid about the damp spot either, because as you know the only response from an eleven year-old to such an inquiry is 'I dunno.' Shrug. 'Can I have a snack?'

This was two days ago. The damp spot didn't get any drier, in fact today, ominously, it began to get wetter and bigger. Uh oh, says I to myself, that can't be good. I'd have probably realized what was going on earlier, but we keep the sunroom closed during the month of December. Because that's where we put the Christmas tree. And as you may have inferred from the cat box reference above, we have cats (I mean otherwise, what's the point?) Two of them. Big ones. With bad attitudes. And like bears are drawn to garbage, so these two evil little demons are drawn to the Christmas tree. The tree is one of those fiber-optic jobbers, expensive and something my wife has wanted for years. Cats and electric trees don't mix, at least not more than once. So, the sunroom stays closed off, and so I didn't really realize what was going on until today.

It's the humidifier.

We heat with gas, we also have a gas fireplace in the sunroom, and wood burning fireplace in the living room - so the house tends to be a little, uh, dry in the winter (yeah, like the Sahara Desert, which I've been to, so I know). We have a 'whole house' humidifier in the central heating unit, which was a completely non-functional, calcium encrusted mess when we bought the house (because the previous owners had never heard of either water filters or annual maintenance, apparently). I probably should have just replaced it with a new unit, but I tend to regard such things as a challenge (OK, and I'm a cheap bastard), so I refurbished it and got it working. Nowadays it runs great, but because it's an older unit, it's not quite enough to keep the whole house at the proper humidity level. So we supplement with a unit in the den. And that beast has been, apparently, leaking like a Russian nuclear submarine.

I didn't realize what was going on because the water was seeping through the carpet under the humidifier, and then spreading beneath the carpet. It wasn't until water started saturating the den carpet and soaking through that I noticed it (other than the weird smell that is).

On one hand, I'm happy that I've finally figured it out. On the other hand, I've spent the last three hours sucking water out of a hundred square feet of carpet with the steam cleaner (of course I own a steam cleaner, a big one, I've got cats, dogs, and that kid I mentioned above. Pay attention) and placing fans to circulate air. And on the gripping hand, tomorrow I have to rip the humidifier apart and find out what's leaking and fix it if I can.

And yet, there's a bright spot to everything. I now have clean carpets, and even better, I find myself thoroughly amused at the cats as they attempt to levitate over the damp carpet. Their dismay and utter distaste for the wet floor just might make the whole thing worth it.

Deep Thunder Update 2.2

New posts up.

We've jumped forward a month. Things have taken a nasty turn.

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For some reason, blogger has stopped emailing me when new comments are posted. Not sure what the problem is, I'm working on it. So, if I don't notice your posts for a while, that's the problem. Either that or I'm out in the shop.

Deep Thunder Update 2.1

Okay, obviously I didn't get new Deep Thunder posts up yesterday. I was overtaken by events. Sorry, but it happens.

However, this morning I will get it done. I'm not doing anything else until I do. Back later.

Deep Thunder Update 2

I originally started the Deep Thunder blog as an experiment.


What I intended:
I wanted to see if I could tell a story in a bloggy first person format. I wanted to see if people would respond to it. I wanted to know if something like Deep Thunder could be shaped into an actual book. And - I thought it would be easy, something I could hack out without much effort while working on my real book. If Deep Thunder flew, well then it would be that first 'throwaway' novel to get my name out there.

What I've learned so far:
It appears on the face of things that I can, indeed, tell a story in this format. People do seem to be interested - I'm seeing roughly 400 to 500 hundred unique hits a week there and growing. I receive emails from a number of folks outside of my usual readership expressing interest. I believe it can be adapted, with additional material, into an actual print book.

It is not easy. Not at all.

It is a unique medium. I'm not sure anybody has done anything like this before. The potential is far greater than I first realized, and I'd be stupid not to take advantage of it. My former profession was in the field of Information Warfare, and my formal education is in Information Technologies, and as such I'm beginning to see the shadowy outline of something uniquely different in novel writing. For example: in one respect, this is much like the creation of a MMRPG where I create the story and the general 'verse, set the tone and direction, establish the rules and take all the credit, and others can create their own unique position in my world and play along. In another respect, it's almost like having people looking over your shoulder, writing fanfic before I've even decided to where I'm going. And in yet another respect it's a bit like publishing a serial comic strip. It's very strange, and complicated, and interesting (at least to me), and evolving. I can't wait to see where it goes.

Additional things I've learned or am in the process of learning:
- Deep Thunder requires an extensive outline. The characters require thought and background in order to make them real. I had not planned on this, intending at first to just 'wing it.'
- Comments are taking me in directions I had not anticipated, this is cool, but it often forces me to go back and think about things. I'm beginning to see that Van must respond just as a normal blogger would. The hateful comments from Anon Y Mous hit me almost personally at first, until I realized that they were directed at Van, not me. Van is emphatically not me, and I have to figure out how he will respond in the future. When the comment from John first appeared, I was pissed that anybody would be so crass as to take on one of my principles as their own. John is based on a real person and I intended very specific things for him. Then I reread the comment and realized that it was exactly what John would have said - in his very own voice. And this was too much of a coincidence to be coincidental, if you get my drift. It wasn't, the person John is based on is the commenter. This tickles me greatly and I have taken him on as a collaborator. So far John is the only commenter whom I know the identity of in real life - and I prefer to keep it that way for now.
- Because this is a blog format, much is left unsaid. Van must assume that the reader knows as much about the situation as he does, if not more. His perspective is limited and unless I make contrived entries, readers will be forced to fill in details on their own. This may lead to confusion on some people's part. This may lead a loss of interest on some reader's part. This may lead to weird and interesting comments. This is acceptable, but it requires a rigid set of rules on my part and careful thought. In order to make this a real book later, there will have to be extensive third-person material in between the first-person blog entries. There will also have to be additional 'blog' entries that do not appear online, along with some sock puppet comments from characters I've created (I am not making sock puppet comments as of yet, if I do, I will let you know before hand). This is also acceptable - because it means that you readers can participate interactively in the story online, or just read along, but later when this does become a full blown novel, you will get new material and background should you choose to purchase the book. You will also get the satisfaction of seeing your character suggestions appear in print (and yes, if it comes to that, I will be including a thank you page and a list of all those who participated and are willing to have their real names included).
- Due to it's nature, Thunder cannot be an action-novel as I had originally sort of intended. Not to say that there won't be action, but by it's very nature the story takes place inside Van's head and therefore it has grown legs, reared up, and changed direction on me. What it is, or will be, is a story of the human condition, or at least one human's condition and his perspective of those around him.
- Deep Thunder is work, something I had not anticipated. It is also fun, which is what I was hoping for. However, I now feel responsible. I feel like I'm letting the readers down when I don't post every day, or I post short entries, and it gnaws at me.

Where I going with this, as far as I can tell:
Introductions are done. Here's the summary: It has been implied that the world, the US in particular, is not a very nice place - a straight forward extrapolation of current events should the Conservatives win the next election and the war fail to end. You have the basic gist of what's going on, to wit: Signs in the Heavens, Angels of more than one stripe have appeared on Earth, they appear to be dead ringers for the creatures of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish text. Their nature has not been explained, they may be divine creatures, or they may be aliens of unimaginable sophistication. If they command technology, then that technology is firmly in the realm of Clarke's Law. If the government or the scientific establishment know the Angel's true nature, they haven't told Van. It has been implied that the Angels command fiercesome power, so far that power has been limited to transportation and manifestation and astrophysical events of a nature incomprehensible to most humans. Consider that setting the stage, obviously in book format there will be much more material - but for now we're going to jump forward a month and get into the story I really want to tell. Invasion and occupation.

What I think you can expect:
- Somewhat obvious parallels to the invasion and occupation of Iraq (something I know a bit about).
- I will do my very best to post every day. Now that I know where I going, that should be easier, unless you throw me a curveball in the comments section.


New entries will be up today as soon as I'm done proof reading and take care of a couple of things. Couple hours at least.

Thanks to all of you who have expressed interest and played along. I'm hoping that the rest of this story will be worth your time.

Knuckles

Twenty something years ago, as a newly minted Seaman Apprentice at the Naval Technical Training Center, Corry Station in Pensacola, Florida, I was strolling along the second deck catwalk overlooking the central courtyard of the 3700 Barracks Complex.

And I happened to pass a rather strange character, this in and of itself wasn't notable - Corry Station was (and still is) home of the Navy's Cryptologic and Electronic Warfare schools. By definition the CT and EW ratings are filled with some pretty odd folks, CT's especially (and nowadays the rates have been merged - so they're all CT's). The CT rate is highly classified, and requires certain aptitudes best describes as 'extreme geekitude,' If you ever wondered what happened to those awkward nerdy kids you went to high school with, a significant fraction of them ended up as CT's, and what they do for a living would probably scare the crap out of you. Most CT's spend their entire careers in dark holes buried deep inside warships or in bunker type buildings that have no windows, surrounded by computer screens and blinking lights and esoteric electronics that look remarkably like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Navy CT's make up a significant fraction of the NSA workforce. CT's are easy to spot in a crowd, they're the ones with the pasty pale skin and eyes watering from the sun, as they only come out of their holes when the supply of Top Ramen Cup-O-noodles runs low. They tend to jump at loud noises and are noticeably lacking in social graces. They are, as I've said, rather strange fellows. Now, there is a certain very small percentage of the CT community that does not toil away in the dark. Unlike their photophobic cousins they rarely come indoors, and what they do is even more highly classified than the usual CT work. They are proficient with weapons of several kinds, they are often covered in mud and grime, and can usually be found in the dark and dangerous parts of the world. And they are much stranger than the 'normal' CT's - I know, I used to be one of them.

So, as I said, passing a rather strange character at Corry Station wasn't in and of itself a notable event - except for the fact that this particular character was carrying a 4-pack of Guinness Stout. He was a large intimidating fellow, not particularly tall, but broad, and radiating an air of massive confidence. He was wearing a pair of round, wire-rimmed glasses, as if he'd punched out John Lennon and taken the rock legend's trademark from his bleeding nose. He had a kind of wild eyed intensity about him (think Billy Idol singing White Wedding), and a lot of sunburned forehead surround by a wispy halo of straw colored hair. You'd have pegged him for an Irishman at 40 paces, even without the Guinness.

Now you have to understand what it was like for us back then. A Seaman Apprentice made considerably less than $1000 per month, I made about $720 before taxes. We lived in the barracks at Corry and ate in the galley (chow hall for you non-Navy types). We went to code school for 14-16 hours a day (9 hours of school, and anywhere from 5-6 hours of remedial study on our 'own time'). It was intense. When we weren't studying, we were polishing our boots (Navy boondockers in those days), pressing uniforms, marching and drilling with our training companies, doing physical fitness, cleaning our rooms, on work detail, standing inspections - or drinking (sleep? Uh, no don't recall much of that). The base had a hell of an enlistedman's club, the best bar for a hundred miles around, and we spent a lot of time there. Mondays were quarter beer night, Tuesdays were mixed drink specials, Wednesday was hump day, Thursdays were pool contests and drink specials, and Fridays were dollar pitchers. Sometimes they changed the order, but every night was something, and the weekends were when things really got going. We drank whatever they served,and they served whatever they could get the cheapest. I remember one month when the drink special was peach schnapps, I hate peaches, hate the smell of them, but we weren't rich enough to complain - so I drank peach schnapps for a month, gah, to this day I'll cross the street to avoid peaches. I remember many nights, sitting on the floor of my barracks room counting pennies and nickels, looking for loose change so we could go to the club and get a couple of pitchers of cheap piss-water strained from a river in downtown Milwaukee (down-stream from the sewage treatment plant, no doubt).

So, as you can see, a wild-eyed Irishman with a 4xer of real, expensive, peat bog brown, thick foamy Guinness Stout would get my attention. I made some kind of squawking noise. He stopped, probably stunned that an inhabitant of nerdland would actually recognize real beer, and we struck up a conversation. And that conversation led to a lifelong friendship (it also helped that he shared that beer with me). We became inseparable friends for the rest of our time at Corry, Shawn Riley and I. Shawn was of the indoor variety of CT, and I was training to be more of the outdoor variety, but we were both tops in our respective classes and as such got our pick of orders when the time came. We both chose Rota, Spain. We were roommates in Spain, living first in the barracks and later out in town on the Spanish economy. We rented an apartment from a wonderful Spanish family and had many strange and wild adventures. After Spain, I was assigned to Iceland and Shawn went to Italy, but we kept in touch via mail (in those days there was no such thing as email or the internet, Al Gore hadn't invented it yet). Years later, after I had returned to Corry as an instructor and met the woman of my dreams, Shawn Riley flew all the way from his base in Japan to be at my wedding - and became instant friends with my wife Becky. Over the years, our careers took very divergent paths, but we always kept in touch and visited each other when we could. When Shawn was stationed in Hawaii, Becky and I flew from our home in Maine and spent three weeks exploring the islands with him. The three of us explored the beaches, cities, and nightclubs of Oahu, hiked the depths of Waimea Canyon on Kauai, and crossed the lava fields beneath erupting volcanoes on the Big Island. And years later we all ended up stationed together one last time in San Diego, where I was assigned as the Information Warfare Officer on USS Valley Forge and Shawn was assigned to the Cryptologic Support Group at the 32nd Street Naval Station. Shawn watched over my family while I was gone to Iraq, or South American, or out at sea. And when I was on land we explored Southern California together.

Two years ago I flew down from Alaska and was the guest speaker at Senior Chief Riley's retirement. And afterward we spent a week roaming San Diego and having a blast. The following summer Shawn drove 4000 miles up the Alaska-Canadian Highway in his RV and spent the summer with us. Working in my woodshop and exploring Alaska. Nowadays he lives in upstate New York, in the town where he grew up, and works at the local railroad museum. He's always lurked around Stonekettle Station and recently he's come out into the light and made a few comments as 'Beastly' (it's a long story, don't ask). Also recently he's been bitten by the Blogger bug and opened up shop here.

A couple words of warning:
- Shawn "Knuckles" Riley is loudly intolerant of fools. Act foolishly around him and he will crush you, see you driven before him, and revel in the lamentations of your women. He will.
- He's vocal, irreverent, and outspoken - I expect his blog will be the same.
- He's a damned good friend to have, especially in a fight - his forehead is considered a lethal weapon on three continents. The one thing Chuck Norris fears is Shawn Riley's headbutt-fu.
- He's an accomplished professionally trained photographer, hopefully he'll be putting up some of his work (hint hint).
- He's a carver and woodturner and makes wonderful carved bowls.
- I once saw him projectile vomit a case of Cruz Campo and a black-olive pizza straight up into the air, about four feet.
- He's a hell of a cook, Italian mothers weep in envy when they taste his tomato sauce. And he's the only guy I know who once made Kalua Pig in an oven instead of a hole on the beach - and nobody knew the difference.
- He, along with my brother, once destroyed a Volkswagen Golf with a pot of Beenie-Weenies.
- He prefers feisty, fiercely intelligent redheads and he's available.
- He's my friend and one of the very few people I can tolerate in large doses.
- He may or may not be a character in Deep Thunder - and he may or may not make appearances in the novel I'm currently writing.
- He and I occasionally break into the "he's not hiding in da stove..." routine from Bugs and Thugs. We find this hysterical, you will probably not.
- He'll probably be pissed that I pimped him here.

So there you go. He only has one post up as yet, but I expect he'll get around to more sooner rather than later. And hopefully next summer, if all goes as planned, he'll be blogging from here at Stonekettle Station. Stop by. Say hi. Bring Guinness.

Kids these days

Yesterday and this morning have been brutal, weather wise. The winds are coming in straight off the Gulf of Alaska, howling up the Knik Arm below my house and slamming into the mountains behind us. We're caught between the sea and the mountain passes, which has the effect of compressing the winter winds to truly ferocious speeds. Weather like this is normal here this time of year, Auto Body Shops gleefully call it the Sprung Door Hinge Season.

This morning the temperature is hovering around 13F, according to the weather station feed from the Palmer Airport. Combine the temperature with the 40-60MPH winds (gusts to 80MPH!) and you're looking at wind chill factors anywhere from Angry Velociraptor to Starving T-Rex. It's so damned cold and nasty out, that that the dog won't do more than poke her nose out of the flap in her kennel door - when a husky/Shepard mix sled dog won't go out in it, you know it's friggin' nasty. (yeah, yeah, I know the rest of the country is getting pelted with 'the first big winter storm' of the season. Blah, blah, so what? We had much worse than that a full month ago, didn't even make the local news, let alone the national. Welcome to the party, Midwesterners, you bunch of babies).

Now show of hands: if you had to go out in those conditions, how many of you would, you know, actually wear a jacket, hat, and gloves? You would? Me too. And a sweatshirt. And long johns. And googles. And probably a shotgun (for the velociraptors, duh). You're probably cold just thinking about it, right?

That's because you're not eleven and on your way to school this morning, where it is apparently much more important to look cool (really), than, you know, actually be smart enough not to get frost bitten. (This is also apparently the norm, since half the kids going into school this morning weren't wearing winter gear either. In fact I saw one kid in shorts!) We constantly have to fight with our son to wear proper cold weather gear, you'd think an Alaskan kid would know better, I mean wouldn't you? I'm not the praying type, but if I was I'd pray that he develops some common sense before the velociraptors get him.

Alaska is a beautiful land, it really is. But it can turn deadly on you without warning. Every year a least a dozen people on average are swallowed by the wilderness. Truthfully, we Alaskans are, if not outright amused, then at least not surprised when outsiders manage to do something stupid and get themselves killed because they were either woefully unprepared or woefully lacking in common sense. Case in point: in November of 1996, my wife and I were making the two day trip from the Alaska Ferry Terminal in Haines to Anchorage. This is a distance of around 750 miles, across the Yukon and through some very rough country, especially in winter. The first day took us nearly fourteen hours to cover the 400 mile distance from Haines to the halfway point at the interior town of Tok. The road was a roller coaster of frost heaves and sags, snow drifts and ice, gloriously beautiful - and very, very dangerous. In the Yukon we drove for seven hours without seeing another living soul, it is a vast desolate land in the winter and you best be prepared for it - especially if, like us, you're making the crossing with a new baby in the truck. In Tok, as I recall temperatures that night were around -48F, and at those temperatures even the 80-weight oil in the jeep's differentials will freeze solid if you haven't taken proper precautions. The jeep is equipped with a cold weather package, including electric block heaters and battery blanket, and my anti-freeze is normally mixed for -75F, but that night I filled the Jeep's gas tank and left it running all night. Heat from the running engine kept the transmission warm and radiated enough heat under the vehicle to keep the differential oil from turning to amber and the brake and gas lines from freezing. The next morning we had reindeer sausage and pancakes at Fast Eddy's, had the waitress fill our thermoses with hot coffee, filled the gas tank again, and cheerfully headed out for Glennallen, two hundred miles away - the temperature was -52F. Twenty miles out we passed a young man walking on the side of the road, headed back towards town. No hat, no gloves, light jacket, jeans fashionably torn at the knees with bare skin showing through. Hmmm. A little way further we passed a car on the side of the road. We recognized the kid as a fellow passenger on the Columbia, the Alaskan ferry we had ridden for the last four days up the inland passage from Bellingham, Washington. I was in a hurry to get to Glennallen and then down the very dangerous mountainous Glenn Highway to Anchorage while there was still enough light to see by, and I was tempted to leave the kid to his fate (I wouldn't have, but there was that moment...). My wife turned to me and said "he'll die if we don't go back for him, you know." She was right of course, it was unlikely that anybody else would come along in time, so I found a wide spot in the road and carefully turned the jeep around (we were heavily loaded and had a hitch-haul mounted on the back, turning around in the dark on that road wasn't a casual decision). Total elapsed time from when we first spotted him to the time we picked him up was probably no more than four or fives minutes. He'd been walking no more than ten. And his ears, forehead, cheeks and fingers were already badly frost bitten, feet stone numb, and he was right on the edge of hypothermia. I doubt he would have been able to keep moving for more than another fifteen minutes. We got him in the jeep, wrapped him a polar-fleece emergency blanket and gave him a cup of coffee - and I headed back into Tok (didn't see another car the whole way, stupid would have been out there a long time if we hadn't turned around when we did). Along the way we got the story out of him, he was from Washington State, coming up to see his dad in Anchorage for the holidays. He hadn't winterized his car (even for the milder Washington climate, no snow tires, no arctic anti-freeze, no block heaters), hadn't brought hat or gloves, a heavy jacket, long johns, or even a decent set of boots. He didn't have an emergency kit, no blankets or sleeping bag, no matches, nothing. He'd gotten up that morning and left Tok an hour before us. He hadn't left his car running during the night and didn't have a block heater to plug in. I was surprised that his car had even started that morning. He hadn't waited for the vehicle to warm up and twenty miles from town he noticed that he still didn't have any heat, even though the temperature gauge on his dash was pegged above the redline. Odd, he thought, but what the hell, it'll thaw out - that's when the engine seized up and he coasted to a stop (I feel like I should add "and then the wolves began to howl" but I won't). Long story short we got him back into Tok and to the emergency station. I stuck around long enough to make sure he was going to be OK, then we headed back out for Anchorage.

We were already pretty savvy survivalists, even then, but that incident impressed on me just how brutal the Alaskan wilderness can be, and just how quickly the technology we depend on for our survival can fail. You can die up here, very quickly, without proper preparation and common sense. We never go into the bush without emergency equipment - even for a Sunday afternoon hike in Hatcher's Pass. Our vehicles always have emergency kits, even if we're just headed into Anchorage from our house in Palmer. I've tried to impress on my son the importance of being prepared but he's eleven and looking cool is more important to him than dressing properly. He's a kid and I guess that's normal, but, damn, I hope he develops some common sense before it's too late.

Do they have it in HD? (apparently NOT)

Coolest movie idea ever.



I mean, Zeppelins, dinosaurs (pterosaurs, whatever), what's not to like?

UPDATE: The picture was a movie poster for the never made Hammer film Zepplins vs Pterodactyls. For some reason the link has stopped working. So, you'll just have to visualize Zeppelins and biplanes fighting the giant flying Pterosaurs. Sigh.

UPDATED AGAIN: I found a picture of the original British movie poster. So here you go. Man, I'd love to see a remake of the this. I love Airships, I find them fascinating. I would have given anything to see the Graf Zeppelin or the Hindenburg, or the USS Shenandoah, USS Macon, or USS Akron in their glory days. And Pterodactyls in full combat with biplanes, Man, it just doesn't get any cooler than that. Probably needs to star Wil Smith, just for full effect. Until somebody gets around to it, I guess I'll just have to settle for the I Am Legend remake of the Omega Man.

And AGAIN: Hammer Films never made this movie, but they'd taken the idea from an old Republic Saturday matinée serial from the 1930's. Like everything else in the world, that clip can be found on YouTube. I'm not quite sure what's going on, but you've got to love the flying wing and the actual footage of the zeppelins. See if you can spot the big name actors, hint a stunt man named Marion Wayne makes a very brief appearance in the Zeppelin gondola.

Just a suggestion

At a loss as to what to get me for Christmas? You can all chip in and get me this:




This would make me happy, especially if it came with the optional flamethrower and kung-fu grip.

Extreme Ways

Just watched a repeat of The Bourne Supremacy in HD. Haven't seen The Bourne Ultimatum yet, I'm impatiently waiting for it to come out on DVD (I very rarely see movies in a theater since they won't let me control the sound or the pause button. They also make that annoyingly disapproving expression when you start shooting at the idiot teenagers in the front row who won't shut up or when you pepper spray the retarded housewife behind you on the cell phone. I'd much rather watch movies on my enormous plasma in the comfort of my own living room, then I can go pee when I want to and not miss anything). I have high hopes for Ultimatum, I enjoyed The Bourne Identity and Supremacy immensely - I'm always a fan of movies that manage to combine both intelligent story telling and reasonable believable action.


I'm not exactly a big Moby fanboy, but I dig the tune Extreme Ways which plays during the credits of all three movies.

Best. Idea. Ever.

This is the kind of innovation we need more of.

Various and Sundry

New post up on Deep Thunder. More this weekend. It's coming together.

I'm going to be out in the shop most of the day. There may be pictures later.

The new battery for the CX2618 came in yesterday morning, exactly as Best Buy said it would. Plugged it in, charged it up, works get. Yah, Best Buy.

Janiece Murphy, former Navy Senior Chief and regular Stonekettle Station commenter has opened up her own shop here. There are smart men and hot, hot chicks there. So go, read, enjoy - and don't say anything stupid.

More late, must go make saw dust.

Deep Thunder update

I'm not slacking off on Deep Thunder, just in case you were wondering.

It will be updated. Today. Yes, it will.

It's just that I'm on deadline for a couple commissioned projects and I need time to think very carefully about the next couple of posts. Which leads me to this, I had a long conversation with the character John the other day (No, I'm not having some kind of psychotic break with reality here. John is based on a real person, a very very good friend of mine. Being him, he recognized this right away when reading Deep Thunder and took it upon himself to post in the comments as John. This tickles me to no end). Anyway, 'John' and I discussed a number of ideas for the story and I needed make some revisions to the next couple of posts. With the other things I've got going on, this is taking me a bit of time.

I know you're not patient people, I like that about you. Your impatience will be rewarded. Today. I swear.

Later, though, later today.

On the nature of self denial

I take my kid to school on band days, he plays the trombone and it's a pain for him to get the awkward big-ass thing on the bus. School is right around the corner so it's really no big deal for me to take him, and since I'm already out I occasionally go into town and get a cup of coffee.

Usually, at 7:00 AM, there is nobody in the coffee shop except for me, but this morning for some reason there were eight people in line when I got there. Agh! I hate waiting in line. I. Hate. It. So, I was immediately pissed. But since I'd already made the trip into town, I queued up and tried not to grind my teeth and make bleating noises.

Immediately ahead of me in line were two twentyish rather, uh, large women (I'm being polite here, grossly obese would more accurate). Now, normally I wouldn't be so crass as to mention it, but these women were pissing me off - first, because they had pushed their shopping carts into the coffee shop (the Starbucks is in a little alcove inside the local Fred Meyer grocery store). The place is tiny. There's barely room for the tables, there sure as hell isn't room for one, let alone two, goddamned shopping carts. They were shoving tables aside to get the carts through, as if the carts had to accompany them all the way to the register. How can people be this damned clueless? It never occurred to them that the barrista was going to have to find the time to put the tables and chairs back into order, and it sure wasn't like they were straightening up behind themselves. But, what was really getting on my nerves was the loud conversation regarding their respective weights.

Both were loudly complaining to the other that they just couldn't loose weight, no matter what they did. Diet, exercise, pills, blah blah blah and etc, one was considering stomach stapling. Now because I've been playing dodge-the-cart with these two idiots for the last ten minutes, I can't help but notice the groceries in the carts. Wanna take a guess? A dozen each of Chocolate and Maple bakery donuts, large bags of Doritos, whole milk, frozen pizza, ten kinds of snack food, and, well, you get the idea. Not a vegetable in sight. As far as I could tell, about the only low fat, low-cal thing in either cart was the cardboard packaging around a large frozen Stouffer's lasagna. And then, when they got to the counter, what's the order? The first one ordered a Venti (read jumbo) Christmas Frapasomethingorother, with extra chocolate and whipped cream. The second one ordered some kind of large iced coffee slurpee, with extra fruit syrup and whipped cream. Then, I watched in amazement as the first one added six, that's right six, raw sugar packets to her drink (she also left the empty packets on the counter for somebody else to clean up, arh!). I gathered from their conversation, that this was a daily occurrence (the coffee part, I don't think even these women could have eaten all the crap in those two carts in just one day, but I could be wrong).

Being an acute observer of the human condition, not to mention a highly trained and experienced intelligence officer, I applied my mind, training and experience to the situation.
Problem: failure to lose weight.
Available hard data: they 'diet', 'exercise', and take those weight loss pills ordered from the Home Shopping Network (which, as you all know, are guaranteed or your money back, less S&H).
Conclusion: Self-denial is enormously fattening.
Solution: continue current program until fatal heart attacks cause significant metabolic reduction, followed by immediate and permanent weight loss.

This kind of self delusion pisses me off. I don't know why, it's really none of my business, but it just does. Look, I understand that weigh loss is hard, seriously hard. I do. I understand that some of you struggle with your weight, and I absolutely don't wish to either insult you or hurt your feelings. I understand that there are certain medical conditions that can cause significant weight gain and complete inability to do anything about it - thyroid conditions for example. I'm not trying to be insensitive here. Really. But Goddamnit, there just ain't no way in hell either of these women are ever going to lose weight. Ever. Not with carts full of junk food and heads full of wishful thinking. The one was talking about stomach-stapling. Major Surgery, with a fairly significant fatality rate. To her, this is a better solution to her weight problem than, oh I don't know, putting less sugar in her coffee or leaving the frozen lasagna in the freezer isle, and I'm not even going to mention those donuts.

Myself, I never really have had a weight problem. I could always eat pretty much what I wanted, and as long as I maintained a reasonable level of exercise (which in the military isn't exactly difficult) my weight remained pretty much constant (believe me, I understand that this isn't the case for everybody). But, now that I'm retired and not nearly as active as I used to be, and especially as I push into my upper forties, maintaining my weight is a lot more difficult. I'm used to being very active and eating a lot. So I've gained a bit of extra weight in the last couple of years. As a result I've cut back significantly on my calorie intake. Most days I eat a small breakfast and go without lunch. Or, I don't eat breakfast and have a small lunch. Either way, I've basically deleted a meal from my day. I'm hungry a lot of the time, but I drink a glass of water and ignore it. If I feel like I have to have a snack during the day, I have a banana or some low-fat cottage cheese. This isn't a hard and fast rule, if I'm doing heavy work and burning a lot of calories, especially if I'm working out in the cold, I might have both breakfast and lunch. Otherwise I end up with a migraine. We try to eat a decent dinner, but with reduced portion sizes. We don't have desert, except on special occasions. And I usually have a snack in the evenings, popcorn or cheese or olives or something along those lines. It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle. Diets are something you do temporarily, lifestyle is a permanent change - that's why diets don't work. Do I miss being able to eat a whole pan of fudge brownies without consequence? Oh you bet. It sucks to get older - but that's just the way it is.

Is it easy? No, but it does get easier as time goes by and my habits change. The bottom line is this, if you want to loose weight you have to take in less calories than you burn during the day. Period. There just isn't any other way around it. All the wishful thinking in the world isn't going to help when you're shoving down chocolate éclairs and drinking coffee with six sugars and whipped cream on top - unless you're running a marathon every day and burning eight or nine thousand calories every 24 hours.

It's just basic physics.

Caution, May Contain Nuts

Spam provides an endless source of amusement for me. Take this one:

dont make hitting on the girls so hard, just show them your cock.

Oh yeah, that'll make picking up girls much easier - chicks dig a flasher. For full effect, you should probably use this technique around playgrounds or the mall. Oh and get a raincoat.

Of course, I may be misreading this, in which case I haven't a chance in hell of picking up a girl - I don't even own a rooster...

Stomach Cramps

As if you didn't know what I was going to post about this morning. As if.

I'm watching the CNN re-run of the Republican Debates. Please, can we have more old white conservative tight-asses in dark suits? Please? Oh, please? Gah, I don't think I've got enough Pepto-Bismol in the house.

A couple of observations:

1) I'm sure the whole "let's have Joe Average ask the candidates questions via teh Utoobs" sounded like a good idea to the CNN producers, at the time. Here's the problem, Joe Average is a baboon-assed moron. Joe Average is doesn't care about the NeoCon agenda, he just wants to get his You-Tube clip on TV. Is it just me? Or did this format remind anybody else of Let's Make A Deal? Instead of Anderson Cooper, they should have got Monty Hall to be the moderator - then it at least would have been entertaining.

2) I'm sure the whole "let's have good Conservative Christian Americans from the Heartland ask us Good Christian (and Mormon) Candidates questions via that technology intertooby thing the kids are using" sounded like a good idea to the old white conservative tight-asses in dark suits, at the time. You can almost see the planning meeting:
McCain: "Hey, that liberal alarmist, gay loving, spawn of Satan Al Gore might have invented the Internet while I was off fighting the WAR, but by Gawd he doesn't own it! Let's do it!"
Romney: "First I was for it, but now I'm against it! Wait, no, now I'm for it!"
Giuliani: "What's this UBoob thing they're talking about? If there's going to be boobs, I'm in!"
Huckabee: "Jerry Falwell Jr. said God is on our side! And God likes boobs, I like boobs too, just saying."
Thompson: "Can we bring our guns? Reagan would have brought a gun. And I like boobs too. Guns and boobs, I'm in."
Hunter: "Boobs, they got those on computers now?"
Paul: "I think..."
Everybody: "Shut UP, Ron, you boob, nobody gives a crap what you think!"

3) Could they have invoked the shambling zombie of Ronald Reagan any more? Look I liked Reagan, sort of. I worked for him, sort of. I shook his hand once. As president, he was damned good to those of us in the military. He made us proud of ourselves again. He was a hell of a personable guy, even his mortal enemies liked him as a person. His final years were tragic, I wouldn't wish Alzheimer's on anybody (OK, maybe Anne Coulter, but that's where I draw the line). So, I liked Reagan, even if I didn't, and don't, agree with all of his views. But for the love of all that is holy, can we just bury the guy now? What we need here is the equivalent of Godwin's Law - Let's call it the Stonekettle Rule of Reagan Comparisons: As the course of a Republican debate grows longer, the probability of a Reagan comparison approaches 100%. And while we're at it, I hereby declare Wright's Law of Reagan Comparisons: If, during the course of a debate, any candidate invokes the name of Ronald Reagan, they automatically lose the debate. Immediately. Ideally, at this point, the candidate should be escorted from the stage and dumped in the alley behind the building. This also applies if any candidate uses the term Legacy with the obvious implication that it's Reagan's legacy they are referring to. Enough already.

4) The candidates:

- Thompson: Could you tell he used to be a professional actor? It was like watching Don Rickles do his Ronald Reagan impression, entertaining yes, but more than a little creepy. If the others invoked the name of Reagan, Fred was channeling Reagan. If this guy gets elected, you can expect another four years of the President holding his palsied withered claw to his ear as reporters shout questions, then a big smile and wave as he boards Marine One and flies away without answering. You can probably expect jelly beans too.

- McCain: Oh look, John's against waterboarding - this week. McCain really missed his calling - he should have been a professional dancer, then he could have gotten paid for tap dancing.

- Ron Paul: If Thompson was channeling the ghost of Ronald Reagan, Paul has the bony hand of Ross Perot jammed to the elbow up his ass. He even has Perot's angry whine down pat.

- Huckabee: As nearly as I can understand his position, Huckleberry Finn here wants to keep the kids of illegal immigrants and throw away their parents. Hmmm, yeah, OK. And Jesus jokes? Come on, Huck, you don't joke about what Jesus would do, not in that crowd.

- Romney and Giuliani: Well at least their little spat over who gave sanctuary to more illegal aliens was entertaining - for about five seconds. Next time they should mud wrestle. Of course Romney would never go for that - it might muss up his perfect hair. And Rudy, well, he'd do it, if he could make it a 911 Memorial Mud Wrestling match - for the children you understand.


5) and finally, General Kerr: The guy is mad as a hatter, but you've got to admire anybody who would stand up and make a pitch for gays and lesbians in that forum. The guy doesn't lack for guts, I'll say that - but, seriously, did you see the horrified faces of the crowd behind him? Aghast, I believe is the correct word. As in Uh Uh Uh! Who let a FAGGOT in here! It's General Queer! And he's a member of (gasp!) Hillary 'the anti-Christ' Clinton's group. Ah! Ah! He's getting teh gayness all over us! Help us, Jesus, why have you forsaken us! I nearly pissed myself laughing.

Seriously though, if you thought all the nuts were on YouTube or at the debate last night, you ain't seen nothing yet. If you really want to see raving batshit unhinged lunacy go read some of these posts. See how much you can take. Knowing you guys, I'll bet it isn't much.

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Anyway, I've got some writing to do. Expect a post here about the direction Deep Thunder will be taking, and some Deep Thunder posts later today. Probably this evening. I've got to spend time out in the shop this morning - I have two commissioned pieces I have to complete this week, so I need to put steel to wood and get them done.

Avatar

Playing with the Avatar Maker over on Meez

Pleasant Surprise at Best Buy

I own a number of computers, about ten in all, scattered throughout Stonekettle Station. I use the big monster HP tower in the den for writing and photoshoppery and data storage, etc. There's another one in the upstairs office that my wife uses for business and one in my son's room (with parental controls enabled), and various other machines scattered around. But I don't like being tied to a desk, and so for most non-writing related things I use a laptop. Becky has one too, for similar reasons, and she usually has her business laptop at home as well. I love the portability of my wireless laptop; with the extended range signal booster added to the wireless network router I can get a connection and excellent bandwidth pretty much anywhere on my property. Becky and I tend to wear out laptops at an alarming rate however, and every couple of years we've got to get new ones. Currently I'm using a Gateway CX2618 Convertible, a tablet laptop that is hands down the best damned machine I've ever owned. I can't see ever owning a laptop that isn't tablet capable ever again. It does everything I want, and the ergonomic design suits my damaged hands perfectly. About the only downside is the weight, the thing is heavy, mostly because of the large 8-cell battery (which doubles as a cushioned hand grip in tablet mode). However, I think the weight is a fair trade-off for seven hours of battery power (Gateway does offer a smaller, lighter 6-cell battery with less battery time. Do not want).

The Gateway was expensive but I got a pretty good deal on it at the Best Buy in Anchorage (computer companies don't offer free shipping to Alaska, in fact they often charge extra. So it's generally cheaper to buy technology locally and pay a little higher retail) - and on impulse I went ahead and bought the extended warranty. Now I don't normally do that, either buy computers from Best Buy or purchase extended warranties. There are damned few things I don't know about computer systems and not much I can't fix myself. I've been doing this for a long time (my first computer was a homebuilt HeathKit 8-bit Z80 breadboard running CPM, that should give you a basic idea of my experience), so I figure I know just a bit more about it than the Geek Squad nerds. Plus, at the rate I go through laptops, I'm usually in the market for a new one before the warranty expires. But for some reason I decided to purchase Best Buy's three year extended warranty, I don't know why, sometimes I do things even I don't understand.

Last week the CX2618's battery charging light came on, and stayed on - after the battery was fully charged. The power meter showed 88% charge, even though the machine had been plugged in for several hours. I unplugged it, discharged the battery, and plugged it back in. Same results. Uh oh. So I tried a full battery maintenance cycle. You do this by disabling the power save options and shutdown warnings. Run the computer until the battery is fully discharged, recharge, and again three times. Same results - the battery would only charge to 88%. Well, crap.

Pretty obvious what happened, 12% loss in an 8-cell battery indicates a cell failure, and a failed cell will cause the other cells to start failing sooner rather than later. I need every bit of charge I can get. A failing battery would seriously harsh my mellow, dammit. So, a new battery is not a luxury, it's a necessity, and I'm looking at $160 minimum, plus S&H, and a two week wait (nobody local carries them).

But, about then I remembered that extended warranty! Ah Ha! What are the odds that the warranty covers laptop batteries? I don't know, says I to myself, let's look. Only I can't find the stinking paperwork. Anywhere. Argh!

We had to go into Anchorage anyway. So I figured what the hell, I took the battery and went to Best Buy to see if they had a copy of the paperwork. Best Buy was zoo, worse than usual with the pre-xmas chaos, and there was a line at the service desk. Three people ahead of me in line all had the same problem - they had forgotten their passwords and managed to lock themselves out of Windows. Uh, duh. $30 bucks for the Geek Squad to do a reset on Windows XP's shitty security. Man, I'm in the wrong business, thats like free money. So anyway, half an hour in line and I finally got up to the geek, I explained my problem and the lack of paperwork. Now I expected two things: 1) no tickee, no laundry, and 2) batteries not included. I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong, on both accounts. He asked for my phone number, which I gave to him, and he pulled up the paperwork in a jiffy. Printed it out and gave me a copy. Cool. A couple of clicks later, and Geek Squad boy says, "OK, sir, you're all set. We'll mail you a new battery in a couple of days. You should have it in within ten days, max." Two minutes and I'm done, and happy. How often does that happen to me? (shut UP. Don't go there)

I got an email notice last night from Best Buy customer service telling me the battery has been shipped via UPS. According to the tracking number it'll be on my doorstep tomorrow. Cool, and just about as painless as it gets in the technology world.

The extended warranty cost me less than the new battery would have. And, get this, Geek Squad guy told me that since I've got eighteen months left on the warranty, to come back right before it expires and swap the battery out for another new one. Oh, and have a nice day.

You just can't beat that. Thanks Best Buy, next time I need a laptop I know who I'll be buying it from - along with the extended warranty.

In case you were wondering

My favorite XKCD comic. I don't know why I find this utterly hysterical, but I do. It's probably the way the 'chicks' are waving their arms.

Why they make Prozac

One fine day in 2004 Marvin Heemeyer snapped. Completely.

He built himself a tank and went out for a drive, and the town of Granby, Colorado was never the same again (some of it was not as tall as it used to be, so to speak).



You might not be able to fight city hall, but given enough time, heavy equipment, and sufficient batshit crazy, you can flatten that sucker - which is almost as good.

That's a special breed of crazy Marvin's got going on there. But, arguably, Marv had an excuse, click on the YouTube logo and read the comments on the original post, some of those folks need to be darted with a tranquilizer gun.

Man Bites Dog!

Students Sue Law School.

The students at the American Justice School of Law at Paducah have filed a $120 million class action lawsuit against the school's administration for mismanagement and racketeering.

Bawahahahahahaha!

Sorry. Couldn't help it. The irony is just so thick that it's practically poetic.

See, it's a law school, the students are lawyers in training, the lawyers running the school lied and stole the student's money, now the law students are suing the school. It's like the punch line to every lawyer joke ever told. Bawahahahahaha!

But, wait, it gets better. If the students win their case, they lose. Because, see, if they win - well, that would show that they have an effective education in bloodsucking lawyerism and therefor the school did it's job. But if they lose, well, then they win, because losing shows that their eduction is inadequate, er, uh, or something like that. Whatever, I'm sure lawyers from a real law school will figure it out.

Bawahahahaha!