Turns out a bunch of people in Indianapolis, IN voted themselves out of a job recently. Yeah, good going UAW. This is why democracy sucks: People cannot be trusted once they figure out they can vote themselves a pay raise. In this case, they refused to take a 50% pay cut to keep their jobs (they were getting paid close to $30 an hour). Four hundred and fifty-six people said that they would much rather continue at their pay for the next year or so than take less pay and continue to have jobs for a lot longer, and keep a plant open that would continue to employ other people.
What the hell is wrong here? Who in their right mind would think "They wouldn't shut the plant down, they have to keep it open!" Oh, right, everyone who thought the bailout bill was a great idea. Too big to fail, right? I mean, it's not like we're in a recession or anything.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Stuff
Today I got to sleep in 'til 0400. It's depressing to be able to type that sentence. We had a Class A inspection which I somehow passed 100% despite my uniform having been in a box since June and me putting on the bits of shiny by eyeball alone. I think that the first sergeant was distracted by the two epic fuck-ups standing behind me.
A kid fractured his neck being a dumbass in combatives. It was a simulation of crowd control, and he somehow managed to get his Kevlar to fall down over his eyes. He panicked. He took off at a sprint, tripped, and landed headfirst on a wall. He's in a halo thingie now, complete with struts drilled into his skull. He'll live, but I doubt he learned the lesson of "If your helmet covers your eyes, push it back up." It's amazing how the obvious solution evades us when we're in a panic.
I had to resist the urge to write 'Keep your chin up' on the get-well poster.
For the record, when I went through I immediately 'shot' the guy who grabbed my secondary weapon. A second guy tackled me, I kicked him off (shouting "Bad Iraqi! No cookie! No chocolat*!" as I did so) and 'shot' him. The NCO in our group did even better, beating them back with his rubber ducky before the big guy grabbed him. The NCO calmly put a pistol to the side of the big guy's head and said 'bang'. Another kid was pretty damn hostile - he had his knife out and 'in' the attacker before he hit the ground. It was pretty cool to watch.
*: Not misspelled, the Iraqis pronounce it funny.
We did a land nav course yesterday. The group I was with had it wrapped up forty minutes before the next team and about two hours before the last team. I'm fair to sure it's because they realized rather quickly (with a little pointer from yours truly) that land nav courses are maintained by a buncha old graybeards who don't want to walk for hundreds of meters, so almost all of the points are within about a hundred meters or so of a path. It was refreshing for them to put down the damn compass and just navigate. It's been my (albeit limited) experience that compasses are good for orientation, resection, and intersection, not for actually navigating your way from one place to another.
A kid fractured his neck being a dumbass in combatives. It was a simulation of crowd control, and he somehow managed to get his Kevlar to fall down over his eyes. He panicked. He took off at a sprint, tripped, and landed headfirst on a wall. He's in a halo thingie now, complete with struts drilled into his skull. He'll live, but I doubt he learned the lesson of "If your helmet covers your eyes, push it back up." It's amazing how the obvious solution evades us when we're in a panic.
I had to resist the urge to write 'Keep your chin up' on the get-well poster.
For the record, when I went through I immediately 'shot' the guy who grabbed my secondary weapon. A second guy tackled me, I kicked him off (shouting "Bad Iraqi! No cookie! No chocolat*!" as I did so) and 'shot' him. The NCO in our group did even better, beating them back with his rubber ducky before the big guy grabbed him. The NCO calmly put a pistol to the side of the big guy's head and said 'bang'. Another kid was pretty damn hostile - he had his knife out and 'in' the attacker before he hit the ground. It was pretty cool to watch.
*: Not misspelled, the Iraqis pronounce it funny.
We did a land nav course yesterday. The group I was with had it wrapped up forty minutes before the next team and about two hours before the last team. I'm fair to sure it's because they realized rather quickly (with a little pointer from yours truly) that land nav courses are maintained by a buncha old graybeards who don't want to walk for hundreds of meters, so almost all of the points are within about a hundred meters or so of a path. It was refreshing for them to put down the damn compass and just navigate. It's been my (albeit limited) experience that compasses are good for orientation, resection, and intersection, not for actually navigating your way from one place to another.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Best Reason for Cell Phones Ever
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/10/september.11.photo/index.html?hpt=C1
It didn't bother me when I had to watch as people I cared about got packaged up and shipped off on a Black Hawk for the medics to try and save their lives. I bore putting the black Lab down during my redeployment leave with a stiff upper lip. I shed tears when I read this story. Special mention to the Danish businessman, Erik Troelson, who snapped what's probably the last picture of Gary Box ever taken.
New York (CNN) -- Judson Box has never known exactly how his son, Gary, died on September 11, 2001. But an unexpected find nine years later has given him a glimpse into his son's final hours.
Gary, then 35, had been working as a firefighter in Brooklyn for roughly five years when the terrorists attacked. He did not speak to his father the day of the attack and his body was never recovered, leaving the circumstances of his death a mystery.
On September 11, 2009, Gary's sister, Christine, was visiting the Tribute Center when an employee asked her if she was looking for someone specifically. She mentioned her brother Gary, and the employee showed her to a picture of a firefighter in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel that had a caption bearing Gary's name.
But it was not Gary. It was a photo of Brian Bilcher, another member of Gary's fire squad who also perished on 9/11.
The discovery compelled Gary's father to dig deeper, clinging to the possibility that there could be a similar picture of his son out there.
Box scoured photo archives of the National 9/11 Museum and the memorial's website, which allows users to upload photos from 9/11 directly to the site.
After searching one night for more than five hours, Box went to sleep, physically and emotionally exhausted. The next morning, his wife, Helen, called him into the living room as he was eating breakfast.
She showed him a photo of a firefighter running through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel toward the Towers alongside cars stuck in traffic.
This time, it was Gary.
"I was out of out control, emotionally," Box said. "Thanking God, being so happy that I had something to see."
Eager for more answers, Box contacted the National 9/11 Museum and Memorial in an attempt to track down the photographer. Several months later, the museum gave him the e-mail address of Erik Troelson, a Danish businessman who was stranded in the tunnel on his way to a meeting when he snapped the picture of Gary.
Having entered the tunnel before the first plane hit, Troelson was unaware of the tragedy that was taking place outside.
"Suddenly, the girl in the car in front of us got out crying," he said. "Then we turned on the radio and heard the events as they unfolded."
Soon after, firetrucks started racing through the tunnel, but a car with blown-out tires jammed traffic, he said.
"Some of the bigger trucks got stuck, so the guys started walking briskly past us," Troelson said. "Gary Box was one of the guys."
Box and Troelson corresponded via e-mail for months, with Troelson doing his best to recall the day's timeline of events.
On Tuesday, the National 9/11 Museum and Memorial foundation arranged for a surprise rendezvous between the men at their annual fundraiser.
They shared an emotional moment onstage. Afterward, they spoke at length, with Box expressing his gratitude.
"I think I said about 300 times thank you and God bless you, that's all I could say," Box said. "I think I told him I love you, and I don't tell anybody that."
Nine years after September 11, Box said he still feels the pain of that day. He doesn't have the means to make large donations to the museum, but has sought to promote their cause through his story.
"We need that in this country because too many people forget," Box said of the museum.
"I wish everybody could get what I got."
It didn't bother me when I had to watch as people I cared about got packaged up and shipped off on a Black Hawk for the medics to try and save their lives. I bore putting the black Lab down during my redeployment leave with a stiff upper lip. I shed tears when I read this story. Special mention to the Danish businessman, Erik Troelson, who snapped what's probably the last picture of Gary Box ever taken.
It's Been a While
Yeah, it's been almost three months since I've posted in this. Sue me, I'm the only one who reads this thing anyways.
It's also been nine years since the attacks on September eleventh. Talk about generationally defining moments. You saw 'em, I don't think I really need to say much more on the subject. If you didn't, the basic summary is a bunch of savages from the Middle East killed thousands of innocent civilians in four attacks - the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field south of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The flight that went down in Pennsylvania is, when it's remembered, remembered as the beginning of our War on Terror. Then-President George W. Bush received word while he was reading to a group of elementary school students and got a shit-ton of flak for continuing to read for seven minutes. It's amazing how much younger he looked back then. People like to say that, from then on forth, we were a nation at war.
Yeah. Right.
See, here's the fact of the matter: Your average American is not at war, nor has he made any 'sacrifices' for this war. He is, in fact, continuing on much as he did before the attacks. Sure, he's gotta spend more time jumping through hoops at airports, and the global jihad makes the news a lot more frequently, but less than two percent of the country is actually anywhere close to the war.
(That whole economic collapse thing? It's called the end result of living beyond your means like a jackass, not the result of the war's expenses.)
A pastor in Gainesville, Florida decided he'd get some free publicity by publically announcing he'd burn a couple hundred korans as a protest against the government's dhimmitude. Everyone and their mother's been pleading with him not to do it, not to antagonize the Muslims. Okay. One: Why should he be concerned with antagonizing Muslims? And this is speaking as one of those Joes who the jihadists target whenever they get their man-dresses in a bunch. It's like telling an abused wife not to talk back so she doesn't antagonize her husband. Two: How in the wide, wide world of sports can the creator of the infinite multiverse be offended by the actions of a mote of dust on a mote of dust in a cloud of dust in a cloud of dust? Three: With the strictures against idolatry, how can any material items be truly sacred? How can any item of this world be more sacred to the Creator than even the least of His children? I know my God would rather all the Bibles in the world be burned than one person be harmed by another.
I'm just sayin'.
It's also been nine years since the attacks on September eleventh. Talk about generationally defining moments. You saw 'em, I don't think I really need to say much more on the subject. If you didn't, the basic summary is a bunch of savages from the Middle East killed thousands of innocent civilians in four attacks - the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field south of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The flight that went down in Pennsylvania is, when it's remembered, remembered as the beginning of our War on Terror. Then-President George W. Bush received word while he was reading to a group of elementary school students and got a shit-ton of flak for continuing to read for seven minutes. It's amazing how much younger he looked back then. People like to say that, from then on forth, we were a nation at war.
Yeah. Right.
See, here's the fact of the matter: Your average American is not at war, nor has he made any 'sacrifices' for this war. He is, in fact, continuing on much as he did before the attacks. Sure, he's gotta spend more time jumping through hoops at airports, and the global jihad makes the news a lot more frequently, but less than two percent of the country is actually anywhere close to the war.
(That whole economic collapse thing? It's called the end result of living beyond your means like a jackass, not the result of the war's expenses.)
A pastor in Gainesville, Florida decided he'd get some free publicity by publically announcing he'd burn a couple hundred korans as a protest against the government's dhimmitude. Everyone and their mother's been pleading with him not to do it, not to antagonize the Muslims. Okay. One: Why should he be concerned with antagonizing Muslims? And this is speaking as one of those Joes who the jihadists target whenever they get their man-dresses in a bunch. It's like telling an abused wife not to talk back so she doesn't antagonize her husband. Two: How in the wide, wide world of sports can the creator of the infinite multiverse be offended by the actions of a mote of dust on a mote of dust in a cloud of dust in a cloud of dust? Three: With the strictures against idolatry, how can any material items be truly sacred? How can any item of this world be more sacred to the Creator than even the least of His children? I know my God would rather all the Bibles in the world be burned than one person be harmed by another.
I'm just sayin'.
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