My opinion hasn’t changed in the past few months. I think Bluecoat is a horribly coded web filter that does a poor job of characterizing content. Much to my surprise, they have tweaked the algorithm and I’ve seen some noticable changes. First off, they no longer categorically block websites that have the word blog in the URL. Yes, somebody out there heard the clamouring from the masses (or the screaming minorities as it may be in this case) and made some changes to the what they define as a personal page. Surprisingly, my website is no longer considered a personal page. To think about it, I think they might be right. If I write about something thats going on with me its often centered around something else going on in the world. I rarely write directly about me aside from whatever asprirations I may have in life. My website is chock full of right off the top of my head uncensored goodness - if you’re in to that kind of stuff. If you’re not, why the heck haven’t you navigated away…. at this moment 9/10 readers will have left this page to find something else. Good for them - thats the joy of the internet.
I still loathe bluecoat - and I may never stop. I’m just glad they decided to tweak the code.
I’ve been reviewing some of my old posts and I noticed that I spend most of my time writing about things that cause me grief. So, I’m going to break off some of those onto a new blog called How I loathe thee
I do need some other bloggers so if you’ve got something that grinds your gears let me know and I’d be happy to share the space with you. Topic choice is up to the author and you are free to write pretty much whatever you wish. Feel free to check it out - I’ll be writing some stuff there on occasion.
The military has a zero tolerance policy to discrimination based on sex, religion, race, or creed. The civilian world has no such policy.
We live in a world where we see should no longer be looking at the race of an individual - we should view each person on their merits. Lines dividing us based upon sex, religion, race, and creed should blur more with each passing day. Unfortunately, there are some out there that try to separate and segregate us based upon these categories.
The United States has an African American man and a Caucasian female running for office. There are some out there that use racist and derogatory terms to identify these people. I have to wonder why they do it. I know that these two individuals, as all others, are equal to me in every way. They share the same blood as I do and they live and die as I do. They are no more superior to me than I to them. We all stand on the same playing field as humans - some of us rise higher than the rest but it has nothing to do with our backgrounds. Everything should be based upon our merits.
I have a few family members that make racist comments - they think that its an acceptable practice. I think they are ignorant fools. I have a few friends that think that an African American should never run for office of president because he is a “insert racial epithet here.” I think they are ignorant fools.
What kind of individual judges people based upon their skin? Should I treat the ignorant as my equals? Should any of us? I would rather hold an individual of a different race that hates me based upon my merits higher than a friend that likes me but hates others based upon their race.
Some people need to grow up - we are living in a world where lines of race are blending with each passing day. Areas that used to be dominated by one race are seeing many cultures prosper. Should we shun these newcomers? - absolutely not. We should embrace them and all they have to offer. We should meld their culture into ours and learn about their history. These people are our long lost cousins. They are family to us - we’ve just been apart for generations.
Racism should stop - unfortunately, as long as the ignorant live we may never see the end of it.
I meant to spent my evening doing something for the greater good but the water shortage deterred me doing it. I had intended to spend a few hours at the hospital doing whatever they needed to do - I didn’t want to go over there smelling like I do. Its been a few days since I’ve last showered and I’m starting to smell myself. I’m sure everyone else can smell me too.
If was in the comic strip Peanuts I would probably walking around with a dusty stink cloud around me. Then again, I think there are quite a few of us in the same situation.
This post hasn’t been made without some extreme effort. Yesterday, a schmuck accidentally cut a few fiber optic cables north of Egypt. I can’t say for sure that our internet is routed through those cables but the timing of our EXTREME connectivity problems is a bit dubious. Yesterday it took me over 20 minutes to get into my email. It was dreadfully slow - things have picked up a bit as the signals get rerouted but its a tedious experience. It reminds me of the days when I was rocking the 56k modem. Its a shame that most websites (including mine) are designed for people with some sort of broadband connection.
I don’t have much else planned for my day off - I think I’ll go watch a movie that I’ve already seen and read some more of my book. If I get really froggy I might go back to the gym for another hour or so - it gives me something productive to do and I feel better about myself after I’m done. Its my primary method of relaxing - yes - working out calms me down.
I feel like writing something while knowing full well that I have little to share. I’ve mentioned almost everything of note in previous posts and there is very little that you don’t know about my experience while I am in Iraq. I still feel the need to post - but only time will tell what actually pops out of my head and ends up in this post.
I only work twelve hour days, six days a week. The work schedule really doesn’t bother me because I came here to work and it gives me a great feeling of accomplishment when my job makes a difference. Unfortunately for our foes, the difference it makes renders their skin unable to hold their body together as god intended.
When I’m not at work I have a few choices on how to spend my time. On work days I go through the same schedule: Wake, shave, gym, study, shower, eat, work, eat, work, eat, work, sleep. On my off days I have a few different choices because there are movies, games, video games, the gym, books, and volunteer work to keep me busy. The last two weeks I’ve done almost nothing productive save for reading a few hundred pages in a book. This week I think I’ll go to the (Iraq) Theater Hospital and do whatever they need me to do. Some people are thrown off my medical treatment - I’m not sure how I’m going to take it. I’ll probably only volunteer from six to midnight and then goof off the rest of the time but its better than doing nothing.
I have a book on the way that should prepare me to take one of my two final classes for my associates degree. I’m in need of a humanities class so I’m going to study world religion and take a DANTES test. I passed my last CLEP test without studying my I’m not so sure I could pass this one without reading up on it. I found a book for $6 on Amazon so I think its a fairly decent proposal - spend a few sheckels on a book, study it, and take a test. It sure beats going to a class for a few months.
Many years ago I was involved to some extent in a pig roast. I am not sure what parts of the story are lore or fact but here are the details I can recall. Back in the autumn on ‘00 I was a young college student that knew little about the world around me and about life in general. I was still green behind the ears but was full of energy… not a whole lot of ambition but I had alot of energy. Iowa State Delta Chi had a great tradition of pig roasts during homecoming and I happened to be involved in the whole ordeal. We discussed what we were going to do a few weeks before and we decided that we would buy a whole live pig in order to save a few dollars. A few of us grew up on farms and we assumed that someone would know how to properly (and humanely) kill and dress a live pig. Unfortunately, the person that knew how to do that wasn’t around when the pig arrived. We did some extremely inhumane things to that poor animal before we eventually beat it to death. We couldn’t figure out the proper way to kill it so at one point we were beating it to death with a claw hammer. I, unfortunately, wasn’t around when this transpired. Mike’s brother came over and helped one of the guys from the house dress and clean the pig. Not knowing what to do with the unusable bits, they threw them in a 50 gallon trash can. We did have an insatiable hate for the baseball players so we eventually found a use for the really smelly bits. They cut the pig into chunks, threw it inside the rotisserie, wrapped it all in chicken wire so the good bits didn’t fall out and let it go overnight. The next day we all ate pig until we were physically ill. We had a leftover pig head so we threw it on top of the guts and left the whole thing on the pitchers mound to… give the place a nice odor. Sure, we left it in the trash can and didn’t empty it out as some had suggested. It could have been considered a hate crime if we had a Muslim baseball player involved. After a few days of laughing about it, someone had an attack of consciousness and we took the remains to a place far far away… I think it was a ditch in the country.
So, with that memory in the background I’ve been tasked with cooking hog for an upcoming squadron bbq. As you can tell from the story, I don’t remember that much about the whole process. I think I’m going to do much the same thing… aside from killing and dressing a pig to save a few shekels. I’m just going to get a whole bunch of pig… because we’re looking at feeding roughly 400 people…. so I’ve got to figure out exactly how much uncooked pig we’ve got to acquire.
Needless to say, if you have any advice or bbq related anecdotes feel free to leave me a comment.
So, in an effort to come out of my shell a little I asked if people were going out for the evening. I already knew that they were but I wanted an invite. So, along with them I went to go get my booze on. Like normal, I had to eat something first so I wandered over to Taco Hell. My thinking was that whatever I ate I had to be cool with leaving on the ground later if worst came to worst. Luckily, things turned out well for me and I didn’t have to worry about that. The bar had a special and it was fifty cent drinks for the entire night. Seeing as I wanted to be able to function in the morning I stuck to Bud Light. Sure, it tastes like crap and the alcohol content is low but it allows you to become “more social” and hang out with everyone else. If I did my normal and started drinking straight booze I would have not survived the evening. I tend to not drink on school nights because I sleep poorly; I know how I react to booze even if its a small quantity. This morning I woke up an hour late… normally this would make me late for work but seeing that I was only on the other side of base I still had a half hour to spare before I had to walk out the door. I don’t think I’ll ever drink heavily on a school night here because I’m bound to not show up for class. I also don’t want to be inebriated in the AM because driving drunk to school and showing up drunk would be a bad career move. I’ve got a test in a few hours so I need to study some more (yes, I studied last night before I went off to kill some brain cells… besides, booze only targets the weak ones right?)
I don’t like to be short… but I am. For those of you that aren’t in the military being short has nothing to do with an individuals stature but rather how close they are to being done with work for a few days due to leave or PCS. I’m ready to take leave but I hate being short… the truth is that I don’t have any work to do. I’ve tried to do what I can but I have been inundated with questions from the person that said “I’m not an idiot, this stuff is easy”. She has proven that its not as easy as it looks… why don’t you read the fucking book before you ask me any more stupid questions. I tend to read the book first before I do something new instead of trying to do it and asking all of the questions when I fail to complete the task… I can’t even clean anything up today… I’ll have to find something to do because its only 9AM and its going to be hard to squander the rest of the day and then still find something that will keep my occupied tomorrow.
Yes, I’m ranting… I haven’t done it in a while
Yes, my happiness is tied to job satisfaction… thats just the way I am
The week is nearing completion and I am more than happy for it to end. I’ve got to come back into work next week to take a test while I’m on leave. Unfortunately, the only time I can take the test in the next few months is next week. I’m hoping that I can get a comp day out of the deal because it was necessity that I come back into work while on leave to knock it out. Hopefully I’ll do well on it because it will qualify me for one of the career fields on my retraining list. If I don’t do well enough I won’t be able to retrain into that particular career field.
I “should” be moving to the other side of the base when I come back from leave. I’ve set it up so that the lions share of the work has already been started from the operating instruction change so it “should” be an easy transition. I’ll be happy because I’ll have the opportunity to hang out with some different people and learn a different job. I love learning… even when its things I hate learning about… mostly because I enjoy the learning process.
I’ve been slightly annoyed this week as my co-worker is back from her hiatus and has taken all of my duties away. Since those tasks are no longer under my purview, I am relatively jobless. Luckily for me, we’ve been doing a massive cleanup this week and I’ve been able to spend time here and there on it. If I was here next week after the cleanup I would probably get a little annoyed with the situation… as you know, my happiness is tied to the relationships I have with others and my job satisfaction. If I don’t have any work… I’m not a happy camper (thus the retraining request).
Its all down the road but I’m almost to the point of counting down hours until I’m officially on leave…
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