Wandering Far

A bunch of books and cash...

2009-09-05T05:22:00.000-07:00

I unpacked a bunch of books today! There were a few in there that I had picked up a while back and haven't had a chance to read, so it was nice to re-discover them again in with the rest of the flotsam from my other apartment.

Speaking of the other apartment... When we first gave notice a month and a half ago, our rental manager, Crystal, indicated that we shouldn't expect to get our whole deposit back. Not wanting to scare her, I didn't verbalize this over the phone, but looking at how abused the carpets were in that place, I was more than a bit afraid they might not return any of it. A rug-doctor, two bottles of carpet shampoo, a whole lot of elbow grease an entire bottle of stain remover and a can of paint later, I met with Crystal for the final walk through.

She was pretty impressed with my paint job and said the carpets looked pretty good too. There were still a few hard-core grease stains in the living room from when we came in after changing out something or other on my roommates jeep, but she said she thought we could probably get them out if we used stain remover. She had a short list of other stuff that she wanted done too, and said she'd give us back the entire deposit if we did them, or she'd hold back $50 and have them done by her company. I paused for half a second weighing fifty bucks against scrubbing Kenny's tub and tried not to snicker at the thought of a whole bottle we'd already used on those stains, then grinned really big and told her to keep the cash. The horrified look on her face was priceless, apparently she didn't want to scrub out his tub any more than he or I did. I tried not to whistle as I finished signing the walk through paperwork, but man dd it feel good to only have one house to worry about.

Need to blog

2009-09-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

The reason I haven't been blogging in forever is because I've been sidetracked by facebook. The one thing it doesn't have though, that I really like is a good place to blog so I figure I'll start using this one again and just link to it on my facebook.

Consider yourselves forewarned...

-Ace

2009-02-24T19:45:00.000-08:00

I saw this at a museum the other day.

2009-02-09T20:27:00.000-08:00

When I say that I was covered in drywall dust, what you need to understand is that it seriously looked like I had just finished wrestling a mountain lion in a vat of powdered sugar. On the up side of the equation I am now fairly adept at using a roto-zip to retrofit replacement pieces of drywall onto an existing ceiling.

I've been helping a friend work on his house, and today's project was taking down part of the bathroom ceiling that had a bit of mold. (Yes, we fixed the leak first). He began earlier in the day, by the time I got there the entire room is covered with blown insulation and little odd shaped chunks of drywall where he just got in their with a pry bar and took care of business. Two hours, three huge bags of trash and one light bulb later, I decided to call it a night and headed home to scrub the dust off.

2009-02-02T14:59:00.001-08:00

I got to go to the Oklahoma Museum of Art on Saturday!

At first I almost didn't go because I was only going to have three hours to peruse through it, but I decided to anyway figuring I could always go back if I didn't get through it. As it turns out the museum is a bit smaller than I would have thought, added to that they have a whole section shut down for a new exhibit their installing on the Harlem Renaissance. I'm glad I did go, three hours was more than enough time to get in, take a gander, and grab a coffee. Altogether I'd say I was struck at how much work appeared to go into most of the works. I say most because some of the abstract works (I'm not even sure that's how they were titled) seemed to have been phoned in. I'm sure they are important for some reason or another, but when I compare Don Eddy's "Private Parking V" to something done by Sam Francis I can't help but feel confused that people can even take Francis seriously as an artist. I guess what it boils down to is that I think I need to do a bit more research on some of the schools of art that they have represented at the Museum and then go back for a second look because there's obviously something there that I'm not seeing.

2008-12-17T20:57:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-12T13:28:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-08T18:56:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-05T20:07:00.000-08:00

I was in a car accident the other day.

2008-10-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-10-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-08T13:37:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-10-03T18:45:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-09-28T17:30:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-06T15:06:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-07-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-07-13T09:05:00.001-07:00

Some pics from Qatar:

Vacation!

2008-07-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-07-03T02:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-06-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-24T06:42:00.001-07:00

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

2008-05-20T23:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-18T01:47:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-15T23:17:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-05-11T06:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-08T00:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

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".

2008-04-29T06:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-04-28T00:26:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-04-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-04-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

"WE'RE NUMBER ONE!"

2008-04-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-04-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-02-24T16:17:00.000-08:00

2008-02-21T17:42:00.000-08:00

Long long day

2008-02-19T17:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-02-06T06:38:00.001-08:00

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!

2008-02-03T19:01:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-25T19:43:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-01-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-01-09T00:59:00.001-08:00

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

Also, I have a new toy. The Oculus

2008-01-04T21:08:00.001-08:00

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.

2007-12-27T15:56:00.000-08:00

So I woke up this morning and went about my morning ritual. Halfway across the room, light still off, I heard the unmistakably dribbling... Either my roommate was peeing on the living room carpet whilst standing on the kitchen table, Oooooor a pipe had burst. Weighing the plausibility of one against the other, I hollered for Ken to get off the kitchen table and for God sakes use the head. In answer I received more dribbling and... a snore? Yup, the pipe had burst and Ken was still asleep on the living room couch. I got him up and we got stuff moved out of the way and buckets under the biggest drips then called the maintenance guy's. What can I say, it was an interesting morning.

2007-12-23T16:27:00.000-08:00

So there I was, three hours into the counter top method of turkey defrosting, and the bird's still frozen stiff...

I have been invited to a Christmas Eve lunch at the neighbors and was going to make a Turkey to bring. I've never cooked a turkey before, so I asked my neighbor about defrosting it. She said that I shouldn't use the refrigerator method, but should instead put it out on the counter the day before for a few hours and then pop it into the refrigerator. My neighbor usually knows about this stuff so I took her advice, hence my opening sentence.

After a bit of internet sleuthing, I've decided to go with a modified cold water kitchen sink/refrigerator method in order to get the bird ready in time to cook tomorrow morning. I guess what it comes down to is that if defrosting a turkey is the craziest thing in my life right now then I really have no room to complain.

2007-12-18T17:13:00.001-08:00

Baaaah!

Word is out on the street at my Church that I'm single and you can about guess where the rest of this rant is going, so I won't even waste my breath articulating it.

In other news, I'm going up for my Air Force Qual Cert. In theory this means that I will be officially able to do the stuff I have already been doing for them unofficially. The actual logic behind why a Navy person is getting an Air Force leader qual it is a bit more convoluted and honestly gives me a headache, but I digress.

2007-12-11T19:35:00.000-08:00

My favorite uncle died today. He had been in an accident when he was younger and had suffered massive brain trauma. Honestly, I was told that nobody expected him to live this long. Still, that's a small comfort for the mother and brothers and sisters he left behind.

Also, I've been without power for the last two days as a massive ice storm came through and leveled a lot of the trees which also brought down power and telephone lines. My neighbors and I are trying to make the best of it, two of them have young children. What it's come down to is four families huddled into one apartment, sharing firewood, candles, and food. I spent some time after work tonight picking up fallen tree limbs for use as firewood because they called and said we were running out. Every store in the state is out of firewood, hatchets, axes and the like, but I did manage to pick up a camp saw so at least we have something to break this stuff down with. I had just walked into a Lowes to see if they had any axes hidden anywhere when one of my neighbors called to say that the power was back up. THANK GOD! It had been a long day and I really wanted a hot shower.

2007-12-06T20:17:00.001-08:00

2007-12-04T17:59:00.000-08:00

I realized last night that today was the day I volunteered to work with Habitat for Humanity!
I haven't worked with them for over a decade, but it was really a lot of fun. We didn't do too much, pretty much tied in walls and put up some sort of barrier up on the outside, but it was still a good first step which will hopefully turn into something I do on a regular basis.

Hee hee hee, Bunnies.

2007-11-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

2007-11-25T17:04:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun...
I drove up to South Dakota, ok that part wasn't much fun, but anyway... Everyone was gathering at my paternal Grandma's house and spent a few days just hanging out and playing cards with cousins and uncles and aunts. Now when I say everyone, you have to realize that my dad had 10 brothers and sisters, who in turn have spouses and children, and some grandchildren. In short, a small family get together for them is when only six or seven families can make it. Six or seven families may sound small, but when you extrapolate out to spouses and grandkids that's easily thirty people.

I swear Grandma should teach seminars on effective time management. With that many relatives around you would think things would get super crazy and disorganized, however they've all been doing this so long that everyone seemed to know what to do, when to do it, and how long to do it for in order to make sure everything worked out great. From apple pies and turkey to Black Friday shopping and all night board games this vacation was really a lot of laid back fun and I can't wait for the next time I'm up there.

2007-11-19T20:26:00.000-08:00

An email I received:
Hi Asa, How are you? Are you finding things to love about the dusty OK?
Is your job gonna be as boring as you thought or are they shipping you around for special tasks?
What's in your fridge? What's the latest best thing you've eaten?
What's the most fun you've had there so far? What's the crummiest thing to have happened?
What's your favorite room in your apartment and why?
What's the prettiest thing you've seen lately? What's the ugliest?
What's your most outrageous impulse these days? Inquiring minds want to know!

My (mostly unedited) response:
Thanks for the email, things are going pretty well... Or at least they aren't threatening my existence on a daily basis, which in my book is almost as good. I've come to the conclusion that Oklahoma isn't as bad as I thought it was, but rather that limiting myself to hanging out with people on base is what was giving it such a one dimensional feel.

This job is going to be as boring as I thought it would be, although I will probably be doing a six month tour overseas within the next year or so. My fridge currently has juice, water, apples, three types of cheese and some sliced turkey for sandwiches.

I can't really say what the latest best thing I've eaten is, although I did have a spinach salad the other day that was pretty tasty.

By far the best thing that's happened in a while occurred last weekend while I was volunteering to do security for a football game. I noticed this girl assigned to my post who constantly had her nose in a book whenever she wasn't actively working. "At last" I thought, "A kindred spirit!" Eventually she came to relieve me for a break and I asked what she was reading. As it turns out she is in the Air Force, has been here for three years and is taking masters classes at night.
The book she was currently ravaging happened to be just one of several she had to get through for the semester. Seizing the opportunity I grilled here for the first third of my break on where to go in OKC to find theater and the arts. She admitted to having the same issues I was
having when she first came here and pointed me in several promising directions with regard to the performing arts...

The crummiest thing that happened was when my boss called to tell me I was being shipped to Iraq for 18 to 22 months. Don't worry, it fell through and I'm staying around here a bit longer....

The prettiest thing I've seen lately happened a few hours ago when I missed my exit on the highway and had to drive out of the city before I could turn around and come back. I was rolling up to the stop sign on the off ramp when the angle of my approach aligned almost perfectly
with the surrounding darkness to reveal this gorgeous, star-filled, sky.

2007-11-15T20:11:00.001-08:00

So I was screwing around and made up a few new ring tones. The first is from Govt Mule's Lay your burden down and another is James Brown's It's a Man's world. Other than that, I think I'm going to file for a divorce from my cable company. What can I say, I've been dreaming of cable for the last two years, and now that it's been at my beck and call for a few weeks the blush is off the apple and we just don't get along like I thought we would. I find myself watching less and less T.V. and have come to the point where I'm just not sure the relationship is going to work. Minx that she is, the cable company struck first with lawyers retained for just such an event and is threatening to take me to the cleaners unless I capitulate and agree to live out this farce of a relationship for five more months.

What can I say, at least I get the discovery channel.

2007-11-10T08:46:00.001-08:00

I finally took the plunge and bought a cell phone with a local company in order to get a local number. I had a phone with Version, but OKC is about the only place in the country where they don't have a service contract. Normally this wouldn't have bothered me and I would have just lived with an out of state number, but it became a necessity to have a local number for too many reasons and I finally succumbed to the pressure. At any rate, it's nothing fancy but I guess it'll do the job.

2007-11-05T21:06:00.002-08:00

So I'm in an apartment and planning to buy a house in a few months. I just got back to the states and have had to buy all new (to me anyway) furniture. All I can say is thank God for craigslist... At this point I have held off on buying a bedroom set because 1) I don't want to shell out that kind of dough and then not have it fit in my bedroom when I buy the house, and 2) I'm trying to keep the amount of big stuff I have to move from here to there to a minimum.

Long story short, I'm tired of living out of luggage so I broke down and bought a ratty old chest of drawers for $50. Now I probably could have left it to it's spider-infested, nicotine-stained, rattyness, but I figured it would be a good learning experience to give those spiders the what old for, sand off at least the top few coats of primer, then finish it up nice and fancy like. In theory, the end product will have a pattern a bit like this one, but with a lighter base coat.

2007-10-17T05:34:00.000-07:00

After it was all said and done I decided to get a 2001 Nissan Frontier. It's not as good on gas as my car was, but it's come in pretty handy already and I've only had it a week or so.

Also, I just moved into my new appartment and will not have internet access for a while, so probably won't be online to post for the next week.

Its official, I think...

2007-10-14T16:50:00.000-07:00

It's official I think I'm getting a truck.

I found a great Toyota Tacoma, now I need to get my car to a mechanic for a clean bill of health and then it's onward to the lemon lot. I'm kinda torn because my car does get good mileage and is paid off, but the Tacoma gets pretty good mileage too and what they're asking for it is fair. I worked pretty hard to get out of debt, and don't really want to take a huge loan for this truck, but it's got low miles and will probably hold it's value pretty well. I guess the bottom line is that while my car is a heck of a lot of fun to drive aside from getting good gas mileage it isn't really that practical. A truck on the other hand, you can haul stuff with a truck.

What it comes down to is that I'm gonna get my car ready for sale, and in two weeks if I still want that Tacoma the car and I part ways.

2007-10-10T18:18:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been an interesting few days...

(You know, it occured to me just now that the elipsis is probably my favorite punctuation mark, but I digress...)

As I was saying, I went down town this weekend and got a bit of information on theaters and it turns out they are just about to start their fall season. Also I stopped by the outdoor programing center is base. Immagine my surprise to find that they not only rent a lot of different gear, but have a 12 climbing wall that runs about fourty feet and has two arches. Because you can never be higher than 12 feet, there's no need for belaying (sp?) gear, and it's only $2 an hour. They were almost closed when I got there today, but I'm already making plans to try it out for lunch tomorrow. I also signed up for their mailing list of upcomming events. They have a lot of ski/snowboard trips but what really got me excited was a climbing trip and a backpacking trip that they do once a year. The climbing trip is for somewhere out in Colorado and consists of 16 hours over two days and isn't until next June, while the backpacking trip is much longer and spread over easier terrain and a number of days.

The guy at outdoor programming also told me about this great biking trail just south of the base. It's supposed to be a pretty good trail for getting into shape, which is exactly what I need right now. I've been doing a lot of running, but would like to mix it up a bit and this looks like just the ticket.

Like I said, it's been an interesting few days...

2007-10-07T19:00:00.000-07:00

I've been in Oklahma City for a week now and have decided that while it may be a bit premature to say that this place has no soul, it would seem to either be extremely small or very well hidden... This place seems to be the stepford wife of citites. On the surface everything is normal hustle and bustle, but if you push past that there just doesn't seem to be anything culturally substantive beneath. I'd like to believe that I'm wrong, and that I just haven't chanced to stumble across kindred spirits, but the longer I'm here the more likely it seems that perhaps those spirits do not, in fact, exist.

I find myself with a lot of extra time on my hands these days and have decide to start back into working out and check out a martial arts school that teaches Tukong. If those guy's don't pan out, there's a place that teaches fencing, and that would just be fun. The base gym here is pretty nice, and they have a great running trail on base. I ran a couple of miles a few days ago and made it 6.5 today. I also went tried out a church this morning that is located a few miles down the road from where I'll be renting for the next few months. It's a non-denominational church, and although the cameras (apparently they televise their services) kinda wierded me out the message was pretty good.

God bless joint service commands.

2007-10-05T21:53:00.000-07:00

Man I joined the wrong service...

- We showed up for work this morning at 0900. (my last command we left for work at 0430.)
- The person we were supposed to muster with was busy at another office so we were told to go home and return at 1300.
- We reported back at 1300 and met with was there and told us to leave and report in to him again on Tuesday at 0800. Not Monday, Tuesday!

I haven't had this much liberty since I don't know when, and all I can do is feel guilty and think things like "Man did I join the wrong service."

2007-10-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

I paid a deposite on an apartment today, they're doing the background check and will call me in two days. Even when I'm approved the appartment probably won't be ready for two weeks :( ... Now it's a matter of finding some funiture for it. I bought a matched set of tweed chairs with ottomans. It's not the old 70's tweed, it's more of a neutral-beige, clean cut tweed.

I swear I almost spent a couple of grand today, but stopped short because I just have this thing about not wanting to make impulse purchases. I figure I'll sleep on it for a week and when I've moved into the appartment I'll make a decision about what I want and what I don't.

2007-09-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

It was cold today... 46 degrees when I went outside this morning.

I don't really have any cold weather clothes, so I bought a sweater, bought a coffee, and sat down to write a few lines...

It's been a long time since I wrote anything, but it's good to get back into the swing of it and just dust off some mental tools.

MAN MY DAWGS ARE BARKING!

2007-09-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

My kid brother and I helped the old man shingle the roof today. One of his friends came over and it was a lot of fun, but man am I sore. My back is sore, my legs are sore, my head is sore and man are my dawgs barking...

I guess Pop's roof is a bit steeper than normal, and it's a two story drop on one side, so we had a bit of a time of it laying those first few rows of shingles right at the edge of the big drop into a mostly well kept lawn. I'm so glad this is done and nobody got broken, or nailed, or maimed for life...

After a shower and some Excedrin, with a Pepsi to wash them down, things are definitely looking up. My headache is gone and I can now manage to make it from one room to the other without hobbling like a cowboy with jock itch. I am really glad I got to do this, not only because I'm sure it really helped Pops out, but because I've never roofed before and now I feel like I could probably do my own. Of course knowing what I know I'd just hire someone to do a job that size, but I'd totally be up for re-shingling a garage or entryway or something on a smaller scale.

2007-09-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

My kid brother and I were going to help Pops tear the shingles off his roof today, but the rain came down and granted a reprieve.

Postponed until tomorrow? Great, I'm going back to sleep!!!

In other news the micro sd reader I have doesn't work for the micro sd card I have. :( It's looking more and more like I'll have to bite the bullet and drop some green on that stupid usb cable.

2007-09-19T06:01:00.001-07:00

It's official... I broke down and bought a cell phone.

For all the normal cell phone stuff it's pretty nice, but for texting it's a dream. I have to confess that the main reason I bought this model over others is it's video capture and playback capability. So imagine my surprise when I tried to obtain a USB cable to transfer my video off of it. Of course you have to buy a 30 dollar cable for this from a qualified rep, so I went down to the vendor I bought the phone from and he gave me this tap dance about how you can only use the cable to transfer mp3's through it's proprietary software and that you can't use it to transfer anything else. I.E. pictures or video...

"You're such a tool..." the words rose without warning and nearly escaped my lips before I fought them back with the rationalization that I may yet need this man's pseudo-expertise.

Me: "So you're saying that in this day and age there's no way to get images off this phone?!"
Rep: "Of course there is, you have to email them..."
Me: "So I can't just buy your cable thingy and plug it in and have this show up as a USB drive?"
Rep: Narrowing his eyes "Why would you want to do something like that???"
Me: "Data transfer"
Rep: "I suppose you could buy a memory card and use it along with a Micro SD reader on your computer."
Me: "Do I have to buy the cable from you, or can I get it somewhere else?"
Rep: "You have to buy the LG music package, it's got the dongle and the drivers."
Me: "I can't just buy the dongle and download the drivers, you want me to spend 30 bucks for them!?"
Rep: "You might get it cheaper on ebay."
Me: "So this driver CD, does it include software to let me make ringtones?"
Rep: "Why would you want to do that?"
Me: "Cause I want to make my own ringtones."
Rep: "No the CD doesn't support that function."
Me: "So if this USB connection is crippled, how do I update the firmware?"
Rep: Eyes wide open. "Why would you want to do that?!!!?"
Me: "Come on. Newer, better functionality... Who doesn't update their firmware."
Rep: "Just bring it in to us if you want that done."
Me: "I travel a lot. Like other side of the world a lot, I'm pretty sure you don't have reps where I'm going. Can't I just hook it to the web and download updates from a site?"
Rep: looking around to make sure the boss is somewhere else, he leans in. "Look man, there are... programs out there, you can do that stuff yourself but we aren't supposed to tell you about them..."
Me: "Yeah kid, I know..."

In the end I didn't buy the dongle, but opted for the cheaper sd card data transfer option... (I already had the memory card and a reader was dirt cheap.) Once I get set up in Oklahoma I'll probably get the USB cable just to see what I can do to this phone... I've been looking into "... programs out there" and have decided which one to use and how to go about enabling my phone to function the way it's creators would have wanted it to.

2007-09-11T14:21:00.001-07:00

On a road trip across the country, we stopped to visit two old friends in Tennessee.
Yesterday, while one of them was doing his best not to bite the fingers off the family dentist, the other took us hiking on the Tennessee and North-Carolina border at a place called Roan Mountain.

I felt bad that Mike had to visit a tooth-wrangler, but the mountain was pretty darn sweet.
This picture doesn't do it justice, but does serve even in it's limitation as an example of how absolutely beautiful it was up there.

Almost Home

2007-08-28T18:19:00.000-07:00

One by one the pieces are falling into place.
My truck is sold, my travel paperwork has been submited to the budget people who will purchase my ticket, and my housing inspection is scheduled for tomorrow and Friday morning.

It's hard to believe, but my time here may actually be coming to an end.

I've decided to start writing again; partly out of boredom and partly out of wanting to keep my hand in at it. I think I'll start by going over some old stuff and see what happens from there.