When one is driving to work at the crack of dawn to meet with upper management and an auditor from the government for the entire day, it is not good to realize that you left your laptop at home as you drive into the parking lot 5 minutes before the beginning of a yearly audit.

Oh well.  Wasn’t going to get promoted anyway.

An onion truck overturned in downtown Louisville today.  Apparently it was quite a cleanup.

Oh well, no use crying over spilled onions.

UPI is reporting that the Army may have overlooked warning signs over the butcher who shot up his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009 because they didn’t want to lose the “diversity” of having a Muslim psychiatrist.

In other news, when water gets cold, it can get hard enough to walk on.

Anyone who is surprised by this should check themselves in for a check to see if their brain has come unplugged.

When I was in the Army, it was common for “minority” soldiers to skate on anything subjective, such as job performance, conduct, and even uniform wear.  Leaders who tried to correct them would be counseled about their “lack of sensitivity”, and would learn very quickly that it was easier to find a way to shuffle them off to a place they wouldn’t do any harm than to fight the current and get the soldier in question to actually do their job, or to stay out of trouble.

Interestingly enough, if a good leader who happened to be of the same “minority” happened to be in that soldier’s chain of command, the standard would come up to at least what was expected of other soldiers.  A “minority” officer or NCO was insulated from being labeled “insensitive”, and could demand performance.

Maybe if the chain of command for Nadal had given more of a damn about the good of the Army than having “diversity”, those soldiers at Fort Hood wouldn’t be in the hospital or the morgue right now.

HatTip to UberPig over at Blackfive. 

A few years ago, I read a blog by a fellow named Jack.  His “Texas Music” was an excellent read, and got me started in reading police blogs.  After a few months of reading him, I was disappointed to learn that he was quitting blogging.

Well, Jack has started blogging again.  His new blog is also called “Texas Music“.  Go, enjoy.

This weekend, I took advantage of the good weather to do a little maintenance on the truck.  Nothing much.  I changed the air filter and replaced a blown headlight bulb.

When I fired it up, I noticed the RPM’s were a tad high, but thought it might be from the new air filter.  The old one was pretty gunky, and I thought it would even out once the computer got used to getting more air.

But when I took her out on the road, I had an unpleasant surprise.  The brakes were extremely stiff, and I had almost no braking power.  Further investigation yielded nothing.  I got her back in the driveway with no crashes.

I know little about fixing modern brakes, so I called my mechanic after he opened this morning.

He said it sounded like either a power booster or master cylinder, or both.  A quick check of a parts website showed that parts alone would run into the $200 range, and then add in labor and taxes.  Plus a rental car to get around for a few days while he ordered parts.  Ouch.

So, with trepidation and thoughts of my ammunition budget for the next couple of months flying away, I nursed the truck to the garage.

He took a look, started the engine, and then put a brake hose back on that I didn’t see when I knocked it loose.

Charge – nothing except a handshake.

As I drove home, my brakes were good as new, and my RPM’s were exactly where they belonged.  I guess the engine was working overtime trying to get pressure into that hose, and that’s why it was racing.

Someone earned himself a box of donuts tomorrow morning and a recommendation every time someone in Louisville is looking for a mechanic. We’ve bought tires and such from him in the past, and Irish Woman takes her car there when something goes wrong that I can’t fix.  I think I’ll be taking my cars there more often too.

I’ve worked in some environments where you always checked your back for knives every night before going home.  The kind of place where everyone is either striving to get that next promotion or to keep their heads above water and not get laid off, and they’re not above crawling over the bodies of their co-workers to do it.

Luckily, I’ve fallen in with a wonderful group of people who support each other and work together on everything.  No-one is worried about getting promoted enough to try to sabotage anyone else, and we’ve all worked together long enough that we know each others’ strengths and weaknesses.

We have a way of acknowledging our unintentional mess-ups that makes them into light-hearted learning experiences.

We call it “The Order of the Golden Lobster”.

Basically, when you mess up really bad through a simple mistake, you acknowledge the error and work with the rest of the group to correct it.  Afterwards, a small parade is held through the office, where the Golden Lobster is taken from its last recipient and you receive it.

Your boss gets gets the “Little Black Raincloud” trophy, which symbolizes the amount of crap that may rain down on them from above.

It’s a good way to acknowledge our human failings without making it personal.

This afternoon, I was working on two servers.  While doing something to one of them, I was distracted by a phone call.  Afterward, I turned back to my xterms and put the reboot command into the wrong window.  I then went on with my business and waited for the server to come back up.

A moment later one of my coworkers asked why the main configuration management server was down.

Imagine my surprise when I realized that the xterm to the configuration manager was gone, but the window to the other server was up.

So I have the Lobster.  Haven’t had it in a couple of years.  I won’t have it long, I hope.  We’re doing a lot of storage work over the next few months, and that is ripe for opportunities to become crustaceanified.

Nowadays, the word hero is used a lot.  I had to gently admonish my nephew and niece last year when they thanked me for being a hero on Veteran’s Day.  I’m no hero.  I served my time, but it wasn’t anything to write home about.

This gentleman, on the other hand, qualifies:

Stamatakos took off his parachute, for better leverage, and lowered himself cautiously into the bomb bay. He straddled the bay, which was open, the two bombs at his feet. He had a hatchet handle in one hand and was clinging to a leather grip with the other.

(H/T to This Ain’t Hell.)

Imagine, you’re 19.  Your job is dangerous enough to have a life expectancy measured in weeks.  There’s an emergency, and you climb out into an open bay 20000 feet above the ground to whack at two BOMBS with a hatchet handle. You save not only your own skin, but also that of all of your crewmates.

And then you go through a successful life and you receive a letter from the Pentagon.  You’ve been given awarded the Silver Star, the 3rd highest decoration you can get.  Do you do the talk show circuit, expounding on policy since you obviously know what you’re talking about?  No, you feel humbled by the honor and only after your family has written proof of your feat do you tell them about it.

Can you imagine your average 19 year old today doing something like that?  I know quite a few teenagers, and none of them come to mind.   Can you think of someone in our current generation doing something like that and then not beating on their chest or whining about not getting the recognition they think they deserve?

My next door neighbor is in his 80’s, and he fought in Europe during the Second World War.  We talk every now and then about the military, mostly about Iraq and Afghanistan.  But he rarely even mentions his own experiences.  Most I’ve gotten out of him is that he saw and did things he never wants to remember and that is all he has to say. 

I hope that when the current crop of veterans takes their grandfathers’ example and runs with it.  Real heroes don’t need the recognition to show their worth.  It comes out in everything they do.  But it is good to see that a long overdue honor has been given to this most deserving warrior.

An accused drug gang leader wants to represent himself in court.

His court appointed lawyer thinks it’s a bad idea and is fighting it.

I say, let him. He’s a big boy, let him flush his life even further down the toilet.

Let’s see if all those years of watching Judge Judy and Law and Order help.  Hopefully it’ll be something funny to watch on the Daily Show.

Irish Woman and I are watching the men’s figure skating from the Olympics at the moment.  Ahh the things we do for love.

There’s a Japanese skater doing a routine choreographed to a Jimi Hendrix song. 

Never thought I’d see that. 

Dude, you could at least wear a headband and then set one of your skates on fire at the end of the song.  Come on!

Well, look what we found: