Maybe this will help get past all the issues:

Thank you for stopping by, God bless you all, listen to The O Word on BlogTalkRadio, Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

Tip of the cap to The Loon, who sent this to me and I just saw it last night (mea culpa, mea culpa):

Before You Go Home

Quite the reminder of what we are losing, everyday.

In case I haven’t said this lately, let me say it now – go out and thank as many veterans as you can find. Doesn’t matter how old they are or how young they are. Tell them you appreciate their service to this country. Doesn’t matter if they claim they were forced into it, or if they served willingly and would do it again. Thank them for their service. I thank every veteran I run across. I usually get tears in return, if the veteran is older than I am. I’ll get a “It was my pleasure, sir!” out of the younger ones. If the veteran is a little stooped, and his baseball cap with the 1st MarDiv patch on it has World War Two battlegrounds listed next to it, I’ll learn some military history and some personal service history. If the names on the cap are oriental and difficult to pronounce, I’ll get clarification of the names, and why they are on his cap. Sometimes, from a Viet Nam vet, I’ll get five minutes of silence while his stare goes out to a thousand yards and he runs down his mental list of buddies he can’t see anywhere but in his mind… that’s when I sit quietly, and watch his face, and start to tear up for him, and for my cousin, who died with the epithet of “babykiller” still ringing in his ears, thirty years after he stepped off the freedom bird. Thank them all, because they did something not everyone is willing to do – put their beliefs and their lives fully behind the greatest nation in the world.

Thank you, Gawfer.
Thank you, Doug.
Thank you, Fred.
Thank you, Kris.
Thank you, Old Soldier.
Thank you, Greybeard.
Thank you, Gunny.
Thank you, GuyK.
Thank you, Akinoluna.
Thank you, dtodeen.
Thank you, Hans and Lewis.
Thank you, Fix4RSO.
Thank you, Mac.
Thank you, Stu.
Thank you, Eric.

Added 5-19-08
Thank you, Richard.
Thank you, Rogue.

And thank you to the ones I missed, whether because I couldn’t remember or since I was writing this so late at night I shouldn’t even be up…

To all the veterans out there: Thank You.

First, hop over to Texas Fred’s to answer a few questions. My reply, in part, was thus:

We need leaders who are not afraid of enforcing OUR laws on OUR land. Kowtowing to the vocal minority is what got us to where we are.

The list of conservatives who are qualified to lead this country where it needs to go is short; the list of those qualified and willing even shorter. Certainly, none of the “presumptive” candidates for either of the major parties is going to get the job done when it comes to maintaining the sovereignty of the United States. I certainly don’t know who I am going to vote for. The “candidates” decry the “single issue voter” but fail to realize that this one issue drives 75% of the rest of the issues we as a nation are facing today.

I do, however, know this: You will never find out how well armed I am or how well trained my dogs are unless you stop by the house personally. I would suggest you call first if it’s meant to be a friendly visit.

Leave a comment there to let him know how you answered.

If you recall, last Saturday was not a good day for The Most Beautiful Woman in the World. Her Camry was rear-ended by a lady* who, it turns out, was not insured. In fact, presented an insurance card to the highway patrol officer (DPS) that she knew was not only expired (in January) but had not been valid since she cancelled her insurance in November of 2007. At this point in time, I would like to say that so far, our insurance company has been very good to work with. MetLife, you have my thanks for the way you have handled this claim. On my way to either pick up TMBWitW and MEG and the Momma from the accident site or to make sure they were able to get going under their own power, the air conditioning in the Road Rhino (aka the QX4) died a horrible death. (in unrelated news, we had our first 100° day today) With TMBWitW driving a rental, and the Rhino being repaired by an A/C specialist, flexibility was strained.

Transportation issues (and the patience of MEG) were put to the test today. You see, my lovely wife, the Bride of the Century, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, participated in her commencement exercises today. The degree of Bachelor of Science, Accounting, was bestowed upon her. This simple action required us (due to a lack of a second vehicle) to arrive at the graduation ceremony site by 1100 hours for the Graduate to take part in the group pictures (Accounting class, Golden Key International Honor Society group) and then wait for the ceremony to begin. There were several other group photos to be taken, but she was not involved in them; this was a typical “hurry up and wait” scenario. MEG and I, meanwhile, got to wander around the grounds of the MArriot where the ceremony was scheduled. Since we left the house about 0930, and MEG’s first nap time is usually around 1000, someone was not in the mood to cooperate very much, although she was a real trooper and didn’t fuss. The ceremony started promptly at 1300, which is about an hour prior to someone’s second nap time, and concluded about 1530. Still, no fussing, and a minimal amount of squirming. I tell you, God has blessed me twice in this lifetime – first, with the wife I didn’t deserve, and then with a daughter that is so darned cute AND loving AND patient with all this adult silly business. We were joined by family and friends, and we all had a good time, with the majority of the group convening to the nearest Islands restaurant for dinner.

Did I mention how proud I am of my wife?

She has worked so hard to get to this point. She is now a degreed accountant, instead of just trained – she has book knowledge and a piece of lambskin to back up what she knows!

Woo HOO!

Honey, if you are reading this, I just want you (and the rest of the blogging community) to know how darned PROUD of you I am. I can’t say enough about you, and even when I do run on at the mouth I can’t cover it all. People think I’m gushing, but I”m barely getting started.

TMBWitW BS/A, you rock.

Thank you for stopping by, God bless you all, listen to The O Word on BlogTalkRadio, Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

*The use of the word “lady” in this instance is a capitulation to the fact that the driver was a female. My testimony prevents me from describing the illegal immigrant other driver in any other term, no matter how accurate that alternate description would be.

I have been messing around with computers since about 1982. That was the year the Marine Corps got digitized in it’s maintenance records, and being the MIMMS clerk for the Communications Platoon (along with being the parts guy, and a line company operator, and the Comm Chief’s driver…) I got to make the weekly trek down to S-1 with the disks under one arm. Yes, the disks were large enough to carry under your arm. They were about the size of dinner plates. Huge, really. And they only carried about 256k of stuff on them.

Anyway – I’ve been doing this for a while.

During the late eighties, I was involved in the running of several Bulletin Boards (BBS) while I was living in California. One of the highlights of running a BBS was providing “door” games for your callers. One of the best, in my opinion, was TradeWars, from martech software.

Now comes the blast from the past: The game is still out there. Not as popular as it once was, since everyone is doing the ‘net these days instead of telneting or dialing up their favorite BBS, but it’s still there. I have found a place that has a couple of games going, and I’ve been fooling around on there. you have to telnet “cavebbs.homeip.net 23” (without the quotes) to get there. It’s called the Cave BBS, run by Red Wolf. Registration is free, the board is text-based, and if you have the same memories I do the only thing missing is the handshaking of two modems at the blazing fast speed of 300 bpm.

If you remember the game, pop on in. If you are interested in learning the game, I’m sure I can help out with tips and advice.

If all this is Greek to you, then move along you young whippersnapper you – there’s nothing to see here.

Thank you for stopping by, God bless you all, listen to The O Word on BlogTalkRadio, Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!

UPDATE: Both races will run today, 2/25. starting at 1100 MST. Still, no mention anywhere of which network might be carrying the races… I think NASCAR and their broadcast partners need to work on this aspect of the show.

I have Dish Network. The only reason I am paying for this premium service is to be able to watch all of the NASCAR races – the Cup series, the National series, and the Truck series.

Normally, I have no problem at all, no matter when the races are scheduled. I have timers set up to catch the races on FOX, ABC, SPEED, ESPN, ESPN2, the Alternates, and wherever else NASCAR tries to hide them. The timers I have set up start 3 minutes before posted race time, and run an hour (the maximum allowable) past the scheduled end of the race. Like I said, normally it’s not a problem.

Tonight I am a little perturbed. Through no fault of NASCAR, I will most likely miss the Cup race, and will be highly likely to miss the National race. The National race was postponed from Saturday due to the rains southern California is getting right now. The original plan was to run the National race an hour after the Cup race completed. That’s not going to happen now, because the Cup race was first rain delayed, and then after it got started a crash involving Casey Mears, Dale Jr, Sam Hornish, and one or two others caused the race to be stopped (red-flagged) when Mears’ car ended up on it’s side with Hornish’s car tucked under it and on fire. After and hour and ten minutes or so, the race resumed, and about forty laps later the rain stopped the race again.
I just checked NASCAR.com and they are saying the race will run tonight, with a restart at 0100 EST. That’s about 11:00 here, but they failed to mention which channel the race will be run on. There is still no mention. I did find out that the National race will be run on Monday, but again, no mention of the channel.

DISH DVR does not do schedule updates often enough to catch the timers and the new times – so I can either stay up until I find it, and manually record the Cup race, or read about it in the paper tomorrow. Or not, since it’s not basketball and there is no way the Arizona Birdcage Liner will hold the delivery for an auto race.

*sigh*

Thank you for stopping by, God bless you all, Wear Red on Fridays, and support Warriors for Innocence!