Those crazy Russians

You know your winters are too long when ice bathing is a national pasttime.

Death by butt

This chick is dead due to having one too many butts. Read about it here.

Reminds me of our 6 toed cat that couldn't climb trees. We named him "Fweek". I remember one time Fweek got freaked out, and instinctively went to climb a tree, and landed on his back.

Good riddance?!?

Some of you may have been shocked and dismayed by my callous attitude over the demise of an unfortunate pigeon in the gullet of a pelican.
Although this story probably belongs in the JJA series, I will enlighten you as to where this desire to see all pigeons suffer comes from.

It happened while I was at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. The barracks we stayed in were quite lovely. The barracks buildings had Spanish tile on the roof, there were two person rooms, each with its own bathroom, a common area on each floor with lounge furniture, and each floor had a small balcony so you could stand outside if you wished.
Being the Army, cleanliness of everything and especially maintainance of the facilities took a very high precedence. We all had responsibilities to keep the grounds neat and clean.
One day, we were cleaning, and we notice that a pigeon had built a nest on our balcony. As I go to shoo the pigeon away, and get rid of the nest, Specialist G (who shall be known just as Specialist G to protect the innocent) rushed up and demanded to know what I was doing.
First, a few words about Specialist G.
She was one of the few people who had been at DLI forever. She was a student, but she had gotten through some portion of the language class, contracted some illness that made her unable to attend class, so she just kind of hung around not really doing much...other than try to save pigeons.
I replied to Specialist G that I was shooing the pigeon away because it was messing up our balcony. She was so adamant that the pigeon should stay, that she went to our platoon sergeant with the case for why the pigeon should stay on our balcony. AND HE AGREED WITH HER!!!
Now, this is the Army. The Army that trains its soldiers to kill people. And the Army that has mascot pigeons roosting on the balconies of its barracks.
So we watched the pigeon lay its eggs, and nurture its young. And poop. And poop some more. And poop and poop and poop. By the time the pigeon raised it young, and abandoned its nest in search of another balcony to poop on, our balcony looked like a winter wonderland.
And who ended up cleaning up the entire balcony by himself????
Private Mitchell. Not Specialist G.
I hate pigeons.

Fighting Army Style #3

Kick em in the uh-uh!


1. While your opponent is flying in the towards you with his awesome HIIIYAAA flying side kick, calmly catch his foot.
2. Kick him in the uh-uh.


1. Stand in your stupid side guard position.
2. While your opponent is staring off into space, telegraph your intentions with a really big windup.
3. Hopefully your opponent does not notice the trajectory of your foot going towards...
4. Kick him in the uh-uh.
5. Laugh and gloat as your opponent doubles over in pain. Good job soldier.

1. While your opponent is standing in the stupidest position possible with a bayonet pointed at YOUR uh-uh...
2. Single handedly grab his rifle while he does nothing to prevent it.
3. Continue to stand there with one hand on your opponents rifle confident that he cannot get away from your steely grip. Laugh to yourself knowing what you are about to do.
4. Kick him in the uh-uh.
5. While your opponent is stunned, go for the ultra-deadly kick to the knee.

Mr. Pelican has a snack

Click here to read the description of the pigeon struggling to get away from the pelican.
Good riddance...

All I want for Christmas...

So, the girls decided to start writing their Christmas list already. The older one is taking dictation from the younger one, since the younger one can't write. So, this is what I found laying on the dining room table this evening. Perhaps I won't get them EVERYTHING they want on their list...

Like Father, LIke Son

So I get home from work today, go into the kitchen, and there is a dead mouse in a trap near the dishwasher. Of course, the kids need to see, so I holler upstairs for everyone to come see the dead mouse. Middle daughter exclaims "Ooooh, you got another one daddy!!!" Then, when I thought about it, I didn't remember setting a trap there. That is when son pipes up and says "I set the trap today. I baited it with crumbs from the toaster oven." Aaaaaaah, That's my boy!!!

Mouse Hunter Extraordinaire Jr.

Mouse Hunter Extraordinaire

Since the weather became colder, we have had some unwelcome guests in our house...mice. We first discovered them because we have a drop ceiling in our kitchen (thanks to the previous owners) and I heard them skritching along above the ceiling tiles one evening squeaking all the way. Blecchhhhh. So when I get a chance i pick up some mouse hunting supplies at the local hardware store. I put peanut butter on some traps and place it by the spots that I suspect the mice are getting into our kitchen. The first night I caught 1 mouse. That was good. It was a dumb mouse and fell for the peanut butter trick right away. However, we had (at least) one other mouse that has eluded capture. I tried glue boards, I tried the peanut butter trick...the kids even suggested that I put bread on the traps since they seem to like that as well. I even tried to put a trap in the ceiling tiles, but there is not enough space between the ceiling tile and the ceiling to let the trap spring.
The mouses luck ran out....TONIGHT!!!! HAAAHAHAHHAAA!

I was sitting in the quiet evening house when I thought I heard pans rattling under the stove.
Oh No, I thought...its living under the stove in our pots!!! BLEEEEEECH!

So I run over to the stove, and pull out the thing under the stove. Nothing.
I move some pots around, and I see the mouse running frantically away. In its panic it couldn't jump high enough to get out of the box. Perhaps it use the pots to get up before, because at this point I had most of the pots out of the thingy. So, hoping it would not jump out, I ran and grabbed one of my set traps with PB on it, and placed it in the stove compartment where the mouse was. When mice aren't stressed, they can avoid the traps, but when they panic, they tend to ignore caution. So I got the broom, and started stabbing at the mouse to make it run around. Sure enough, after 30 seconds, it stepped on the trap. As it took its last breath, I tossed it in the trash can...
Trash day is tomorrow.

P.S. Now I'm washing every pan under our stove.

TV of the Future

Expendability

Communism works

Satellite view of the Korean Peninsula at night. The big splotch below the line is Seoul. The little dot above the line is N. Korea's capital, Pyonyang. No doubt the lights in the North are the amusement park on the Dear Leader's compound...

Bloatware?

Windows Vista, the next Operating System from Microsoft will require a whopping 15 GB of free hard drive space to install. Here's a nice little graph of space requirements for various versions of Windows.


Raw Data (I'm not sure what is causing the extra space...apologies):

Win 95	55 MB
Win NT	110 MB
Win 2000	650 MB
Win XP	1500 MB
2003 server	2500 MB
Windows Vista	15000 MB

Yummy cookies

Mrs. Wbobth brought home some cookies today. I'm excited!!!

JJA #3 - Shipping out

Well, the long year wait was over, and all I needed to do was go. From what I recall, the recruiter gave me a report date, but it was actually before my high school graduation. I think my mom called to complain, and my report date magically moved to 3 days after graduation. June 21, 1993. I reported to the local high school bright and early and the recruiters drove us to Harrisburg for stage 1 of our inprocessing. 2 notable events happened while I was at Harrisburg: the big lie that I mentioned in a previous story, and the physical.

The Big Lie
I had already signed my enlistment papers a year prior. However, when I got to Harrisburg, they told me that my job required a 5 year enlistment. So, they ripped up my 4 year commitment paper, and had me sign a 5 year commitment. I was too naive/lazy to protest so I went with it. In hindsight I should have protested. When I got to language school NOONE had a 5 year enlistment. I was the only one.

The Physical
This was actually quite a funny experience. Imagine 60 guys in their underwear duckwalking around a big room. Part of the physical was making sure that everyone had a full range of motion in all of their limbs and joints. They had us do other weird things like hold our hands out and flick our fingers. I don't know how the Army was in the years past, but at least they didn't make us do the "turn your head and cough" in front of everyone else there. So they called us one by one into the doctors office for the more personal exam. The doctor was a small oriental man who had an accent. After examining the front parts, he needed to look in the trunk, so he said the phrase I will remember for the rest of my life: "BENN OHVAH AN SUPWHEDD YAWW TSEEEK". I winced expecting a finger, but thankfully none came (that happened later in my Army career and will be the subject of a future blog post).

After Harrisburg, they flew us to Basic Training.
Next stop: Arrival at Ft. Jackson.
Stay tuned!

Mmmm....Haggis

Thank the folks over at the Deep End Dining blog for this recipe.

HAGGIS
* 1 sheep's lung (illegal in the U.S.; may be omitted if not available)
* 1 sheep's stomach
* 1 sheep heart
* 1 sheep liver
* 1/2 lb fresh suet (kidney leaf fat is preferred)
* 3/4 cup oatmeal (the ground type, NOT the Quaker Oats type!)
* 3 onions, finely chopped
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
* 1/2 teaspoon cayenne
* 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
* 3/4 cup stock
Wash lungs and stomach well, rub with salt and rinse. Remove membranes and excess fat. Soak in cold salted water for several hours.
Turn stomach inside out for stuffing.

Cover heart and liver with cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
Chop heart and coarsely grate liver.
Toast oatmeal in a skillet on top of the stove, stirring frequently, until golden.
Combine all ingredients and mix well.
Loosely pack mixture into stomach, about two-thirds full.
Remember, oatmeal expands in cooking.

Press any air out of stomach and truss securely. Put into boiling water to cover. Simmer for 3 hours, uncovered, adding more water as needed to maintain water level.
Prick stomach several times with a sharp needle when it begins to swell; this keeps the bag from bursting.
Place on a hot platter, removing trussing strings. Serve with a spoon.
Ceremoniously served with "neeps, tatties and nips" -- mashed turnips, mashed potatoes, nips of whiskey.
....
Yeah, you'd need to whiskey to keep from passing out when you ate it.
Also, check out the stinky tofu review. Its worth the read.

I'm famous too

This post is in response to Wbobth's Moms blog entry that she is famous. Well, I just have to prove that I am well known on the Internet too. She might have a video, but I have this.
(BTW, I have nooooooo idea how this got there. I must have uploaded this to a BBS when I was 14 or something.)

Fighting Army Style - #2

First, we need to continue to learn how to stand before we go on to more advanced moves.

Right and Left Guard.
(BTW, you can click on the pictures to get the full sized view)


This text is taken verbatim from the manual:

Football Kick
a. Objective and use. The object of the football kick is to deliver a powerful kick to a vulnerable area anywhere on the body. It is used best when the opponent is on the ground but not close enough or in the correct position for a heel stomp. (Heel stomp described below.)
b. Description.
To deliver the football kick step close to your opponent, facing him.[ed. best not done backwards]
Plant your non-kicking foot firmly so you can maintain your balance.
When you kick with the other foot swing it to the rear and bend the knee. As you swing the kicking foot forward from the hip, straighten your knee and keep the foot close to the ground. The toe is pointed toward your opponent for maximum force.
Snap the leg forward as if kicking a football.


Heel Stomp
Objective and Use.
The purpose of the heel stomp is to dull the opponent's senses by a blow to the head or other vital area. This stomp is used best when the opponent is lying on the ground.
[ed. Who woulda thunk it? The Army is telling us to kick them while they are down.]
Description.
To execute the stomp you must be standing over the portion of the body you wish to stomp. Pull the knee up and flex the ankle as much as possible. To stomp, straighten out the knee forcefully, striking your opponent with the back edge of the boot. Attempt to drive your heel into the ground to insure that the full force of the kick is delivered to your oppnent.

In the full sized pitcures, notice the little ouch marks they put on the guys face.
Thats all for now!

Football?

Yes, I played football.
Yes, you may laugh.
(That's my cousin Gary, BTW)

12 step program

My name is Jeremy...and I'm a programmer.
OK, so this isn't quite Programmers Anonymous, but here are the 12 steps to writing better code.

Eyebrows

Ah, we have a fascination with eyebrows don't we?
OK, "we" don't, but perhaps I do.
Women spend money plucking and trimming them for having too much hair above the eye is considered unsightly.
Words like unibrow and monobrow have crept their way into our lingo. Even Merriam Webster recognizes unibrow as an official word.
We even have websites mocking those with the genetic code unfortunate enough to produce too much hair where it is not wanted.
However, copious amounts of hair on the brow is not such a stigma in all cultures.
Famous female Mexican painter Frida Kahlo accentuated what must have been her favorite feature in her self portraits.

To the Chinese, having long eyebrows is a sign of age and wisdom, not to mention fighting prowess.


And, whenever we think of the burly Russian man, we picture a big hairy guy with massive eyebrows.
There is the former Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev...


..to the Cosmonaut Salizhan Sharipov who made the "Famous people with Unibrows list" on Wikipedia.


...and finally the reclusive Russian mathematician who recently won an award for some solving a supposedly unsolvable math problem, Grigory Perelman.


On the bright side, he could be a stand-in for Vorvon the Space Vampire...

I know the date of my demise

This morning I found a second gray hair. I was mock weeping in the bathroom when my middle child wandered by and asked what was wrong.
"I'm getting old! I have 2 gray hairs!" I sobbed.
"Don't worry" she replied. "You still have 30 years to live."

October 10, 2036
R.I.P.

JJA #2 - Recruitment

Recruiters are so notorious for lying that one line in a popular Army cadence goes:

My recruiter told me a lie
Join the Airborne and learn to fly

(for the unaware, the Airborne corps is composed of people who jump out of airplanes, which, technically speaking, is controlled flying)
My recruiter actually didn't lie to me too badly. It was only after I signed the papers that the big lie came, but I will get to that in a later post.

Anyway, I was the one that approached the recruiter. I chose the Army, or rather fate chose the Army for me, because it was a toss up between Army and Airforce, and the Airforce recruiter was out to lunch, so I talked to the Army recruiter. The rest is history. BTW, I had ruled out the Marines, cause I thought they were all nuts, and the Navy was out of the question for 2 reasons: they have a rank named after a bodily fluid, and their uniforms look stupid.
So, the Army it was.
I had one simple demand: I wanted to be a linguist.
Well, they said, not so fast. I needed to pass a couple of tests first.
The first test was the ASVAB. Kind of a general knowledge test. If you kept your eyes open for maybe one day in your high school career, you could pass this test, but there were some who tried to join along with me that had to "study up" cause they had failed it once or twice before and they REALLY wanted to join.
Anyway, having passed that with flying colors, I then had to take the DLAB: Defense Language Aptitude Battery. It supposedly measured your potential for learning a language. All I remember is that I scored a 112. Out of what I do not know, but it was high enough for them to accept me. This test was very difficult, probably more difficult than the SAT, although I took the SAT and DLAB about 6 years apart, so it is hard to really compare.
Well, with the tests under my belt, I was assigned the job code of 98G. You can look at this list to see all the job codes and descriptions that the Army has. My official title was Electronic Warfare Specialist or something like that.
All of this occurred the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school. Now all I had to was graduate High school, and ship off once I graduated.

Next stop: Shipping off for Basic Training.
Stay tuned!

Fighting Army Style - #1

We shall learn how fight - Army Style!!
When I was still in the Army, our unit was doing some house cleaning, and we came across an old manual on fighting dated from 1971.

The pictures and descriptions are rather humorous, so I will share the hilarity with everyone.

First, we need to learn to stand correctly.
Here is the Front Guard position.


If I stood like this is a real fight, I would get my butt kicked.

Foam Jigsaw

Well, after being in this house for around 5 yrs (wow has it been that long? We moved in November of 2001 if I recall correctly), I finally decided to take the butt ugly 70's style brown paneling out of our hallway. I feared what I would find behind the paneling, since people put up paneling to hide problems that they don't want to fix. I never expected to find...a foam jigsaw puzzle.
A foam puzzle behind butt ugly 70's style brown paneling?!?! How can that be, you ask yourself.
A little background.
We have about an 85 yr old house with very old plaster walls. In some cases, the plaster can be difficult to repair. The folks who lived here before us for about 30 years obviously did not like repairing plaster. They put up butt ugly 70's style brown paneling on every surface they could get their hands on. We have been slowly taking the paneling down and repairing the walls as we have had the opportunity. I was amazed to see the lenghts of stupidity the previous owners went through to put up this paneling in the stairwell.

This is the hallway halfway through tearing it apart:

You'll notice the beautiful framework of wood that they nailed into the walls to keep the butt ugly 70's style paneling in good shape throughout the years. They also filled every crack with FOAM. Perhaps this was to achieve an insulating effect. I guess I'll find out this winter. You'll notice at the top of the picture the desire till make sure every crevice is filled with foam.

See exhibit #2:



This insane desire goes even further when they stack foam pieces Tetris style and wedge foam between the poorly cut pieces of wood. Just to make sure no crack goes unfoamed.
Yeah we need a law entitled "No Crack Unfoamed." Interpret that however you like.
Anyway. The Piece de Resistance...



I mean what the hell is that??!??! Lets take every piece of spare foam we have and spend hours painstakingly piece together a solid block of foam so that the guy who rips this crap apart can take pictures of it and mock it in a public forum.
NO CRACK UNFOAMED!!!
Ah well, I digress.
They actually were hiding something bigger with the paneling.

A big hole in the wall. I'm going to Lowe's tomorrow for some plaster hole fixing supplies.
Adios for now!

JJA - #1

Jeremy Joins the Army. - Episode 1

I was the type of kid who like to do ... nothing. Really. My idea of the perfect day was lounging around doing nothing. If you consider playing computer games and dissecting small forest fauna nothing, then you'd get a pretty good idea of what I spent my time on. So, you can imagine everyone's surprise when I announced out of the blue that I was going to join the military. This was the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school. Somehow, I was smart enough to know that I would not have done well in college right out of high school. And, since I despised doing anything that I did not want to do, as evidenced by my A in German and F in Calculus, I thought I would go to the place where I would learn how to do one that I wanted to do...learn a language. My sister's friend had joined the Army language corps a year or 2 prior to my decision. That is what gave me the idea of joining the Army to learn a language. Everyone that I told at school laughed at me because I could barely do 10 pushups, and I ran the mile in just under 12 minutes.

Next stop...the recruitment process.

Wbobth?

My friends and I used to play with the Speak-n-Spell when we were but budding young lads. The newer Speak-n-Spells had an "encrypt" feature that took a word, then performed the unbreakable one for one letter substitution. My name encrypted was Wbobth. And thats what they called me. Play with the Speak-n-Spell here