My friend's son made this video.
It's a bit hard to see, but if you look at the bottom of the bottle he's drawn a set of eyes. With the motion of the car it looks like the bottle is singing along to the music.

So I took over the coffee bar yesterday and have big plans for it.
First on the list is a slight change in the sign showing prices.

Put up or Push up

Publish Post

Nobody Drinks for free...

Put up - $.50

Push up - 25

So I got tased the other day. This video wasn't me, but it may as well have been.
I also got Pepper Sprayed and have been doing a bunch of other fun stuff. I've been in training for a while now and it's fun, but man I can't wait to go back to a normal job again.

I always liked this song

I was in a car accident the other day.

I was on a three lane highway going about 65 in the far left lane. The guy in the middle decided to merge into my lane and didn't check before doing so.

Nobody got hurt, the other guy didn't even stop, but my car is still in the shop getting fixed.
I didn't have the chance to get a plate until he was about fifty feet down the road and by then he was just to far away to see. It blew out two tires on one side so I had to get it towed and now it's a waiting game to see how much actual damage was done. So far it's the front bumper and engine guards, both drivers side wheels a tie rod and that's before he got it on the lift.

I'm glad I have full coverage.

Gas is going down!

I almost caused an accident today when driving by a station. $2.39 for regular! I was listening to NPR the other day and they commented that OPEC is having a summit, or probably has by now as this was more than a few days ago, to discuss what they refer to as harmful price fluctuations, and they are calling for restriction of barrels per day output because they are alarmed at the price drop and want to artificially raise prices. You gotta love capitalism.


Chuck Norris Factoid # 112: Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.

I'm sending this out for Christmas this year. It's my favorite Christmas card and it's pretty old, I'm not even sure they still print it. However, it's not like I need a lot of them, so I'll probably find a printer who can do it cheap or see if someone sells card kits for home printing.

I almost forgot. On the inside the caption reads:
"Merry Christmas!
Hope you get everything you wish for too."

-Ace

BLACK LIONS!

Here's a pic of the Navy half of my old platoon.

Although some of us joined the platoon a little earlier or later than the main group, almost every one of us was part of the "Black Lions" platoon back when we were training and mobilizing.

They already had a motto when I arrived, "Black Lions, Rawer!", but I thought it was pretty stupid. When I was mobilizing and training, the platoon motto was "Black Lions, B!@#$!!!". The important thing to understand here is that when a platoon is in formation and whoever is out in front calls you to attention you snap to and belt out your platoon motto as loud as possible. The funniest thing about it would be when all four platoons in the company were mustering in formation and the brass was out. One by one our platoons would be called to attention at which time each platoon would sound off with their motto. We were the third platoon, and the first two platoons had pretty generic mottos, so when it came to us we would grin ear to ear and really belt it out. I tried to get the change to carry over when I joined up with these guy's and found out they were all Black Lions, but I think they were too afraid of offending the chain of command.

At any rate, that's my post for the day.

Long time no see...

If I was to give this picture a caption, it would be "Old habits die hard".

Speaking of habits, a bad one I've picked up recently is apathy for my blog. It started with not haveing access to a computer and just sort of ran rampant from there. I wish I could say that there was a good reason for my overlong absence but really there isn't. At any rate, I'm now getting settled back in to a day to day routine in Oklahoma and things are about as normal as they ever are for me. I ran four miles today! I have been off my running regimine for so long that it really whipped my butt, but I guess I'm ok with that. I look at it as a baseline, and from here I can only improve.


Anyway, more posts will be forthcoming.
-Ace

Well, it's getting closer and closer and I still don't have an official itinerary, or even an unofficial one for that matter. On the plus side, I saw the new Batman today and it was pretty cool. It was looooong and I can see where they warned parents from bringing young kids to it. The best part of the movie was when the six-six guy in front of me hunched down in his chair and for about ten minutes I could see the whole screen. After that he sat back up and I was forced to watch the left and right sides of the movie and extrapolate anything that took place in the center. At any rate, at least two thirds of it was a good movie and I think I'll try to see it again before we leave.

Coming home...

Got the word that they won't tell us for certain but we're going back some time in the next month.

We won't know until three days out but we're pretty much breaking camp and preparing to chuck deuces.

Some pics from Qatar:

Vacation!

So I've been on pass for a few days now and I have to say it's pretty nice. The first two nights we watched the last of a three day battle of the bands, tonight I played in a free holdem tournament and tomorrow my friend and I are going to a mall to watch a movie in an honest to God real movie theater!

I did ok but not great in the tournament but it was fun and I think I'll start playing in them regularly when I get back to Kuwait.

Going on R&R!

Well, it's day two of trying to go on R&R. I started my journey yesterday at the crack of dawn and got one hop into it when we were told to stand by for a while. A while turned into "you better get temp billiting" and what do you know I'm still here today. The good news is that our R&R doesn't start until we set foot in Qatar so all this sitting around waiting doesn't count against us.

At any rate, things are going pretty well at work and although it's been in the high one-teens and low one-twenties every day is one day closer to being home for a while.

The best thing happened yesterday...

This guy has owed me 15 bucks for about a month now. I've reminded him several times (in case he forgot the previous times) but he claimed to never have the cash on him. It was to the point where I was considering alternative options to gentle reminders when this parable from the bible hit me.

In a nutshell there was this moderately well off servant who owed the boss a lot of cash. The time to pay came and the servant didn't have it so he begged the boss to forgive him of the debt. Being the nice guy that he is the boss forgave the servant who promptly went out and found this other servant who owed him a little bit of money and demanded it on the spot. The other servant couldn't pay right away so the servant who had loaned him the money had him arrested and thrown in a debtors prison. The other servants found this out and of course turned him in to the big boss who was like "O yeah" and you can about imagine what happened from there.

My point is this. Towards the beginning of the month I found a huge amount of cash that has yet to be claimed in spite of my efforts to reunite it with it's owner. At this point it's pretty much mine unless someone comes out of the blue to claim it. The amount this guy owes me is petty compared to the amount that pretty much just fell into my lap so why was I being so adamant about his paying it back in a timely manner. I decided not to worry about ever getting it back and even prayed that God would take care of it so I didn't have think about it any more.

Shortly after waking up that morning this guy found me with cash in hand to settle the debt. Now tell me that isn't just cool.

Rollin Rollin Rollin...

Rollin Rollin Rollin
Keep that treadmill rollin
Though my ankles' swollen
Rawhide


I've rolled my ankle about two weeks ago and have been taking it easy on the PT ever since. I finally decided that I couldn't take sitting around anymore and have started running again at a fairly slow speed. My ankle doesn't hate it so far and is for the most part behaving itself so well that I'm tempted to start running at slightly higher speeds. Of course the second I do that I'll roll it again, probably while on the high speed treadmill, and will be right back to where I was when I first hurt it.

The good thing that has come out of this is that I've been trying to lose weight while over here and for the two weeks that I've been pretty much doing nothing my weight has remained relatively stable. That is to say that while I haven't lost any more weight I haven't gained any more either... I take that as a good sign that I lost it the right way and am encouraged to press on and see if I can't hit the 170s before I leave here.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

My New Walkman

I decided to get a Sony Walkman. Here's another review.
I know it's a bit of cash to drop, but I figure I bought a Sony a few years back and it has always served me well so this one has got to do the same. Plus, not that I'm trying to be elitist, but it's got the best sound of any MP3 player out there right now. I know that bluetooth and good sound may sound contrary to each other today, but science changes and codex change and pretty soon they'll get it figured out so that you don't sacrifice quality to send music over bluetooth.

At any rate, I like it and so do the majority of the people who've dropped the cash for one.

Tired

Man I'm tired...

In other news I found a sack with some cash in it today. Oddly enough the sack contained almost the exact amount I had just spent on a new Samsung P2. At first I was like "Sweeet! God's looking out for me!" but about half a second after that I was like "wow this is a lot of cash, someone's probably going to be missing it." Short story long, I inventoried the bag and it's contents and put up a found sign telling people to email me with a description of the bag and it's contents if they wished to claim it.

man I could have made a car payment with that much cash.

O well, they way I figure it only junior enlisted are foolish enough to carry that much cash money out here, so whoever lost it is probably really feeling the pinch. Hope they email me soon.

All quiet on the Middle Eastern Front

As my title implies, there's not a whole lot going on out here today.

I ran into my friend Webster yesterday and have made plans to stop by and see him in the next few days. I've been doing a bit of research into Sony's new Video player and it looks pretty sweet. In fact, I think I just might buy one. Also, I think I may be leaving Oklahoma sooner than expected. As it turns out, if my cross-rating gets approved then they'll cut me a new set of orders right there and ship me out to school as soon as possible. By this time next year I could be out of OKC and off to wherever their school is.

At any rate, things are going pretty good.

A good day

Today was a good day. They had an issue of Mental Floss at the store so I snapped it up with a quickness. Also I watched this great kung-fu movie called "The Royal Tramp" which was done by the same guy's who did kung-fu hustle and Shaolin Soccer. At any rate, it's a great comedy and well worth watching if you get the chance.

Other than that things are going pretty well. I've started mentoring a few youngsters at work and they seem to be responding pretty well.

My gym time has been getting a little slack lately. I've started using The body sculpting bible for men. At first I thought it was a bit of an easy workout, but my buddy swears by it so I kept up with the program and now I'm in into a bit more advanced stuff and it's kicking my heiny every day. It's one of those six day a week dumbbell workouts, with every third day being mostly calisthenics and running. The problem is that if I go to the gym it takes time away from homework and even though I'm doing a self paced class it's still aggravating to take two weeks for a one week segment.

Good new/Bad News

Well, I have some good news and bad news.

The good news, Quotas came out for advancement and it looks pretty good.
The bad news, God help them they might actually advance me to E-6.

I'm hoping I didn't make it because that would make my conversion out of the MA rate a bit hard, but if I do get it I guess it'll be a bit of extra cashola so I can't complain too much.

-Ace

I had the opportunity to get a shawarma a few days ago and man was it good. You can get them in a variety of ways and I always preferred the hot (spicy) way so I told the guy to make it spicy.
"Ok ok my friend" He waved me off.
"Naw brother, I want it really really hot!"
"No problem spicy hot."
"No you don't understand, I want it so spicy it makes me cry."
He just sort of looked at me, "Cry?"
"Cry."
He smiled and said something in another language to the guy who was actually preparing the sandwiches. It wasn't in Arabic, and I have no idea what he said except for the final word, "suffering".
The cook looked up "suffering"?
He said it again "SUFFERING".
The way he said it made me cringe in anticipation. It wasn't the two syllable "suf-ring" that you might have expected, but the fully articulated three syllable variety that he slowly and painfully rolled off his tongue. In case the point was missed, he accentuated it with a pinch of the air between his thumb, index and middle finger as a he shook his hand at the cook. "Suf-Er-Ing..."

Needless to say the shawarma was Delicious, with a capital D, but after a buildup like that it was not all that spicy and turned out to be rather unimpressively sufferable.

Lots of stuff has happened not much I can talk about.

I weighted in at 188 the other day, which is about 20 lbs less than when I was on leave. I've been talking to one of the Sergeants I work with who also works in govt and he has explained in detail the govt hiring process and how to tweak my resume to increase my chances of getting a civilian job in case I decide to get out.

My Cantonese is getting a bit better, I can now tell the difference between the Cantonese language track on a kung fu film and the language track in Mandarin.

It's getting steadily hotter here every day and they say it'll reach 115 this weekend. Thank God I work nights...

Mom, I've always thought of you when I hear this song and since I couldn't be there in person to wish you a happy Mother's Day I thought I'd let this video do it in my place.

Love ya lots,
Asa

We had the weigh-ins for our PRT yesterday morning and everyone was a bit anxious to get the results. For the most part we've all been PTing out here and although I've been checking my progress weekly, some of the guy's hadn't been on a scale since they started working out in January...

I'm now down to 192, and a lot of the other guy's had lost some as well. Short story long I was talking to one of the guy's about my goal to hit 185 before we left and he said he wanted to hit it as well then drop another ten. A bit of O-Yeah!ing ensued and you can about imagine the rest of the story. It's a prorated race to see which of us can lose 17 lbs within the next three months. We picked 17 because that's what I have to lose to hit 175 and since he's got a bit on me it's only fair to hold him to losing the same poundage. I guess we could have calculated loss based on body weight percentage, but it was 3am at the time and the very idea of anything more than basic mathematics gave me a headache.


So anyway, that's what I'm doing for fun.

Bored bored bored bored bored.

So I'm learning Chinese from this online course and I guess it's going ok. My problem is that it's self paced so I want to do everything perfectly before moving on to the next lesson. Of course nobodies perfect, so I now find myself a month into the course and just starting week three. On the other hand, I've self prescribed homework in the form of watching Kung Fu movies at least once a week so at least there's a bit of pleasure with the pain.

The last movie I watched was called "Fatal Contact" and was about this naive farmboy from the mainland who finds work doing a Kung Fu act in the circus. Mobsters see his act and offer him lots of money to fight. Kid says no but his friend overhears how much they offer him and talks him into it. A whole lot of 18 fingers of death later, the mobsters turn him into a mindless killing machine and his friend into a prostitute. When they both come to the realization of what they've stooped to doing for money it makes for an interesting ending...

The bottom line is that I guess this class must be working because I could actually pick out individual words in the film, and see how I had been mispronouncing others.

Next on the list "Infernal Affairs" the trilogy that Scorsese ripped off as the basis for his own movie "The Departed".

If u type How to find chuck Norris on Google and click I'm feeling lucky you will laugh at what it comes up with =)

I'm Feeling Lucky

Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried...

I was standing post last night and someone told a Chuck Norris Joke. I guess I've heard that the Army is infatuated with him and I asked them what it was all about. I was stared at with disbelief and for almost a minute trying to decide if I was really that ignorant or if I was trying to pick a fight. Finally, someone spoke up, then they hit me from every direction...
"H-H-H- He's CHUCK NORRIS!!! What do you mean, why do we like him? Have you ever seen a Chuck Norris movie"
"That guy's badder than the illegitimate love child of Curt Russel and Bruce Willis.
When Chuck Norris runs with scissors, other people get hurt...
Chuck Norris is Luke Skywalker's real father...
Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse, horses are hung like Chuck Norris...
He's counted to infinity - twice...
Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Not because he's afraid of the dark, but because the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris...
Chuck Norris' calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd, no one fools Chuck Norris..."

Apparently I had broken some sort of unwritten law and since these guy's all have guns I decided to take another tack and asked them for a few more jokes.

Short story long, I've compiled a list of Norris jokes and will, in theory, be passing them along with each post.

It's starting to get hot out here.
Highs are in the 105 to 107 region. They are only going to go up from here and I have a feeling we're going to be looking back fondly on 105 in a few months.

I was sitting on post during a particularly slow portion of the day today, it was in the morning and all of us there were looking out over the approach to the post while a warm wind whipped down from the north. There was a halfway brewing sandstorm so visibility wasn't very good and for some reason Otis's "Dock of the bay" kept running through my mind.

"WE'RE NUMBER ONE!"

So the guy's in my PCB decided we need to change the room up a little. We all kind of got thrown in here at different times and in different ways and now that we're going to be here a while we decided to make it a little more comfortable. I'd have some before and after pictures, but I lost the cable for my camera and will have to buy a new one before I can put up some pics.

Also, I can now do one handed pullups!!! I look at it as a milestone... I've never been able to do one them before. Of course they're not true one handed pullups as my free hand is clasped around the wrist of the arm doing the pulling, in a nod to fairness though I did my best to only use the one arm.

I was working the other day and a military photographer stopped by...

In other news I ran into a good friend from Japan today while doing laundry. We used to stand a lot of post together and he'd tell me about life in the Philippines. He's about to head home in a month or so but I got his email and told him I'd look him up on my next day off.

Long long day

Man it's been a long week, and we're only on day two. I shot on an Army range today and even though my rifle is shooting a bit high I managed to shoot a 30. Matt's shot the same range and normally gets between 31 and 34. I get to shoot it again tomorrow and am hopeful that I'll at least reach the low end of his range.

Other than that, life is pretty good.

Well, I got here in one piece and walked into the USO just in time to catch the best part of the Superbowl! As you might imagine it was crowded with servicemen (and women) but oddly enough nobody spoke, the place was keenly silent with most of them literally on the edge of their seats as the end of the fourth quarter played out. To me the social interactions going on were even more interesting than the game. Most of the guy's were pro Patriots, but here and there in little pockets you'd have these die-hard Giants fans. The interesting part would happen after a great play when all of New England's fans would be grinding their teeth in disgust while one of the more boysterous New York fans would jump up, fist clenched at the tube and scream "take that suckas!", or other sailor type words to that effect. He did this a couple of times and although nobody ever clobbered him for real, if looks alone could do it he'd have been a goner many times over.
Nothing much else to report on. It's great to be back on a Navy base, although God definitely has a sens of humor about how my class is composed. I'd say 60 percent of my class are officers and another 10 percent are E-7 or higher. Talk about being a Hebrew in Egypt, I haven't tread this lightly since I was in bootcamp surrounded by RDC's. (Navy Drill Sergeants)
At any rate, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Made it!

Well, I've made it to the West Coast and will try to catch the last few minutes of the Giants wiping the field with the Pats...

God bless the Underdog. :D

A steadfast heart is a powerful weapon...

They called me on the 18th to say I'd been selected to participate in an extended exercise and would be away from home for long enough that it only makes sense to cancel my lease and put stuff in storage.

Not sure exactly where I'm going or what I'll be doing, but I've made my mind up to do the job right no matter how long it takes.

On the bright side, at least I'll be in civil temperatures once again.

I'm supposed to get certified for a leader position tomorrow. This will be the third time I have been scheduled to certify, the previous two were canceled because the people who test us didn't have their stuff together. Guess what, they test is computer based and I was told that the system it's on may be down. Strike three, who's out?

Me that's who.

Without these certs I have nothing to put on an evaluation and it looks like I have been here for six months (I will have by the time evals are due) and have managed to avoid actually doing any real work.

O well, I guess it's out of my hands, but I still feel frustrated that I can't just get this stupid thing done and put behind me.

My first niece, Lelia, on the way home from the Hospital!

Also, I have a new toy. The Oculus

Well, my internet is back...

After an Ice Storm earlier last month, my internet has been intermittent at best. Not just my internet, but internet for everyone around me. I'd call in and they'd do all sorts of stuff to test why my computer wasn't connecting, as one tech put it, "to see what I'd done to make it stop working".
I, of course, would fall back on the old, "how does something I did to make it stop working affect my friend in a different building, because it always starts and stops for all of us at the same time." The techs on the phone aren't really technically savy, they just read scripts, so of course they would just smile at me and claim it was my personal router that was causing the issue. At the same time, a different tech would be telling my neighbor the exact same thing about her own wireless router.

Long story short, I called again on Tuesday and a tech proceeded to claim that he could see my modem and computer perfectly, that the modem was working fine and it had to be my router because I swore it was attached but he couldn't find it on my network. I told him I had a telecommunications engineering degree and had been in the field since he was in grade school and that I'd been spoofing mac addresses since you could set them with physical switches on the network cards. I assured him it was my router he was seeing and not my computer, and that in any case it was absolutely insulting to believe that my router was responsible for denial of service to hundreds of customers. I finally snapped and, without cursing, told the tech in no uncertain terms that my neighbors and I were going to make their lives utter hell until they actually dispatched people to look at their half of the network because it had come to a point where it was down more than up.

The next day an actual technician called me and inside of twenty seconds actually came to the conclusion that it was their side of the network and not mine. UREAKA! He made an appointment to come out and when they did discovered that my whole complex was riddled with repeaters sending a bad signal...

I'm glad it's fixed, I just wish it hadn't taken so long.