Shame on the police at the national mall in Washington DC. A group of students was moved to begin singing the Star Spangled Banner while visiting the Lincoln Memorial. They were quickly shushed by Officer Friendly because they were in a ‘content neutral’ area.

Riddle me this Batman. If it’s not appropriate to sing patriotic songs near memorials to our national heroes and war dead, exactly where is it appropriate?

The official who commented in the story said that the area was off limits so that other visitors wouldn’t be bothered and could just be tourists, and that would be how president Lincoln would have wanted it. Someone needs to tell the tourists that those piles of stone weren’t erected for their entertainment. And something tells me Honest Abe, who asked for Dixie to be played on the White House lawn after making a speech about the end of the Civil War, would not have objected.

1. You can complain that your husband doesn’t do enough of the yard work, or you can complain that you were stuck in the house all morning while he went out and mowed, trimmed, weeded, and cut down for 3 hours.  You can’t complain about both.
2. If you write a PERL module, please write the documentation so that the users will know which function to call.  Bonus if you provide code samples.  Minuses if the titles to your functions don’t describe what they do.
3. There are few better ways to begin a Monday morning than a cup of hot coffee and a bowl of Life cereal.
4. If you go to the zoo, and it’s 90 degrees in the shade, don’t complain that all the animals are just sitting around.   If you don’t feel like running around in your front yard to entertain passers-by, then why should the animals?
5. Dropping a check into the printer can make it hard to deposit.

The Hall of Fame Game is beginning!

And yes, I do believe I am ready for some football, thank you.

I saw this over at JRebel‘s, so I thought I’d try it out:

Funny thing is, I’m not even close to being the nerdiest guy in my office.  How’d y’all do?

I have to face facts. I’m not a young stud anymore.  I turn 40 next year, my oldest is starting his second semester of college, and I wake up every morning creeky and crabby.  My hair isn’t as thick and lustrous as it used to be, and there’s almost as gray in it as brown.

And to top it all off, my vision is going.  35 years of squinting at computer screens, reading in bad light, and sitting too close to the television have finally taken their toll.  I’ve had glasses of one form or another for years, but they were always necessary only when my eyes got tired.  Now, I think I need to wear them all the time. 

I’ve got my glasses out, and I’m seeing if the old prescription is good enough to not need to get a new pair.  I haven’t worn them in quite a while, so this is going to take some getting used to.

Watch this space to see how much of a poindexter I turn into now that I’m wearing glasses almost full time.

In memory of SGT David C. Dolby, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division,  May 14, 1946 to August 6, 2010.

The word hero gets used a lot in our culture nowadays, but it’s rare that a true hero is celebrated.  Only a very few heroes are awarded the Medal of Honor while still alive.  The actions that earn that highest award tend to be fatal.  David Dolby was one of those special men.

One such hero passed from our midst yesterday:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty, when his platoon, while advancing tactically, suddenly came under intense fire from the enemy located on a ridge immediately to the front. Six members of the platoon were killed instantly and a number were wounded, including the platoon leader. Sgt. Dolby’s every move brought fire from the enemy. However, aware that the platoon leader was critically wounded, and that the platoon was in a precarious situation, Sgt. Dolby moved the wounded men to safety and deployed the remainder of the platoon to engage the enemy. Subsequently, his dying platoon leader ordered Sgt. Dolby to withdraw the forward elements to rejoin the platoon. Despite the continuing intense enemy fire and with utter disregard for his own safety, Sgt. Dolby positioned able-bodied men to cover the withdrawal of the forward elements, assisted the wounded to the new position, and he, alone, attacked enemy positions until his ammunition was expended. Replenishing his ammunition, he returned to the area of most intense action, single-handedly killed 3 enemy machine gunners and neutralized the enemy fire, thus enabling friendly elements on the flank to advance on the enemy redoubt. He defied the enemy fire to personally carry a seriously wounded soldier to safety where he could be treated and, returning to the forward area, he crawled through withering fire to within 50 meters of the enemy bunkers and threw smoke grenades to mark them for air strikes. Although repeatedly under fire at close range from enemy snipers and automatic weapons, Sgt. Dolby directed artillery fire on the enemy and succeeded in silencing several enemy weapons. He remained in his exposed location until his comrades had displaced to more secure positions. His actions of unsurpassed valor during 4 hours of intense combat were a source of inspiration to his entire company, contributed significantly to the success of the overall assault on the enemy position, and were directly responsible for saving the lives of a number of his fellow soldiers. Sgt. Dolby’s heroism was in the highest tradition of the U.S. Army.

 At the time of this action, Dolby was a Specialist 4.  He probably had no official leadership training, and it’s doubtful that he had anything other than rudimentary knowledge of how to call in artillery and air support.  It’s doubtful that he was even close to the top of the command chain in his platoon.  But none of that mattered when the world dropped out from under him and his comrades.  When his leadership was killed or wounded in the first moments of the battle, he stood up and took charge.  He placed himself in danger to take care of the wounded, coordinate the efforts of his platoon, and knock out enemy emplacements.   This 20 year old did more in that 4 hour stretch than most people will do in their entire lives, and our world is a better place because of his actions.

Sergeant Dolby, may the Lord keep and protect you. 

This isn’t for me.  I have quite enough books, magazines, and websites to read.

This is for Girlie Bear.  She’s about to turn 12, and I want to introduce her to science fiction.  Unfortunately, my introduction to science fiction at that age was geared extremely towards things that interested me as a boy, mostly written by Terry Brooks, Robert Heinlein, and J.R.R. Tolkien.  I honestly have no idea what a young girl wants to read in the SF realm.

So I need advice from any of you ladies that started reading science fiction at a young age.  What authors and books would you recommend for a young lady who likes to read, but hasn’t started reading science fiction yet?

My plan is to buy her a couple of books and just have them on her bookshelf ready for her to pick up when she wants to, so there won’t be any forced reading, book reports, or testing involved in this.  If she wants to pick it up, then I want to have something that she will enjoy and will make the world of SF reachable to her without it being something that will bore her.

So, what say you?

If you come to me to ask how I do something that I do routinely, I will show you the method I use to do it.  This isn’t the “right” way to do something. It’s the way that has worked best for me over the times I have done this particular task.

Please don’t insult me by saying such things as “That’s a kludge” or “That’s a stupid way to do it”.  Also, if I have showed you how I do something, I will point out traps that are easily fallen into, and will adise you away from them.   If, however, you then go on to do said task in a way that you think will work better, I will applaud you.  No-one says you have to follow my suggestions like a robot.

If, however, you should purposefully jump into those traps I told you about, or discount my advice and get stuck in a large set of problems caused by your choice of methods, please don’t expect me to play the part of Mr. NiceGuy while I work to extract you and our servers out of the quagmire you have thrown them into.

Like a lot of children of baby boomers, I grew up listening to the music of the 1960’s.  My mother was an unrepentent hippie, so I heard a lot of Hendrix, Moody Blues, Jefferson Airplane, and of course, The Beatles.

She had every scrap of vinyl the Fab Four ever released, both in LP and 45.  She kept them in a special box, in a special corner of her closet.  Once or twice a year, she’d sit down with a stiff drink or something a little more herbal, take the records out, look at them, and play them one by one. 

When I was five or six, just prior to the beginning of school, I decided I wanted to figure out what the big deal with all of these records was.  I somehow got into her closet and dragged the box out to the porch.  I took each of the albums and 45’s out and looked at the jacket art.  Most were interesting, although I remember thinking that the white one was pretty boring looking.  I wanted to see if there was anything else interesting inside the album covers, so I took each of the records out and set them on their respective covers.  And I sat there and looked at the liner art for a long time.  I couldn’t read, but I recognized some of the words, and looked over all of the lyrics and liner notes.

Did I mention that this was in the summer just before school started, during a hot, sunny, North Dakota afternoon?  And I had those vinyl records out for a long, long time in direct sunlight.  At the time, I thought it was really cool how the vinyl changed shape over time.

My mother came out of the house looking for me, and found me with her prized possession slowly warping its way to oblivion.  It is a testament to her self control at the time that I was not beaten to death right there on the spot.  I did, however, receive the worst spanking I ever had, and was sent to my room for the rest of the day while she tried to salvage her collection and have a good cry.

I did a lot of really bad things as a kid and teenager, but nothing seemed to upset her as bad as the day when, in the innocence of a child, I destroyed her Beatles records.

In tribute to my love of the Beatles, and my grown-up understanding of why she was so upset, I submit this, courtesy of GraphJam: