randoms

another old video for courtney

-so. how do some ideas get past so many people when they're clearly bad? when i was at fort bragg i used to eat at fazoli's fairly regularly. single guys in the barracks didn't have kitchens, the dining facility closed at 6:00pm and it was just cheap and easy. especially when i was doing alot of racing and it seemed like a decent way to carb load. i don't eat there so often now and walked in the other night and was surpised to see that they were charging $0.25 for "endless breadsticks". walking past all the seats to my table and seeing how few of them had the indicator on the table to designate that the patron had purchased the breadsticks was humorous. it's hard to believe they couldn't bury a charge into the meals to cover the price of breasticks and continue to appear as a service oriented, friendly establishment instead of appearing as a greedy company out to nickle and dime you to death. before that actually became policy and the signs and all were printed don't you think someone would've had to say "hey, is this REALLY the image we want to portray?"

-the watch that i love? one of the pins popped out of the band. i couldn't stand the thought of sending it away for weeks so i tried to j-b weld it. so far so good. not sure that j-b weld is the recommended way to repair a fine swiss timepiece, but oh-well. it's kinda funny, my dad grew up during some really rough times. like bread and butter sandwiches and glad to have them rough times and so treats all of his possessions carefully. so carefully that he rinses his car with purified water so that it doesn't get mineral spots on it when he washes it. he also fixes pocket watches and clocks. i was asking him if he had pins in his desk that would fit it and while he was looking i mentioned that i was expecting a lecture from him for beating up my nice watch. he said hell no. i bought it, i should wear it, that's what watches are for. sometimes he confuses the hell out of me.

-i'm still hella pissed about this lack of training. it's a leadership thing. how dare you send troops into a dangerous situation without proper training. i fully agree with rumsfeld's quote of "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want". if i was told to get my troops ready to get on a plane to go into a combat zone in 18hrs or less, i'd say "yes sir" and drive on with my mission. but we had training set up for other soldiers. we had the time, the equipment. it was a lack of planning that prevented us from having enough people on the ground to train everyone who is deploying. so now i'm going to have to take a lot of personal time and money to buy ammunition and call in favors to borrow weapons and get civilian range time to train my guys and get their comfort level up. and it's not out of the goodness of my heart. sure, it's the right thing to do. but it's also entirely selfish. my safety may soon depend on these young guys and i want to make sure they're up to snuff. i'm not 100% sure about the rules of ranting against the military in a public forum, but i have to say i'm very disappointed that we're an army that's been at war for 7 years now and we're still making the training mistakes we're making. the whole focus of the army is wrong. we're worried about a new dress uniform. some peoples' priorities are a little messed up.

-it's nice to be stationary for a couple days. my poor yard's a mess and the small mountain of laundry facing me is intimidating. so's the amount of paperwork i have to do to get reimbursed for all of travel lately.

-if you were going to get a graduate degree today and it was going to be for the purpose of forwarding your career (although if you're one of the lucky bastards who found a field that coincides with all that they love and so the graduate degree would both forward their career AND be something that they're amazingly interested in and WANT to learn...) what would it be in and why?

-i finally completed all coursework for my undergrad. now i'm just waiting for the jackasses to finish grading the final for the last class. i swear they drag the process out as long as possible on purpose. but i'm putting in my promotion packet for the next step and will be able to include the degree. took me long enough.

-i'm a geek, but i'm in love with this pen.

-i'd love it if people would take the self-porn photos off their computers before they gave them to me to fix. just saying. well. okay. if hot girls ever give me their computers to fix they can leave it on. yes. i am a pig. oink-oink.