BunkBlog

After I backup the Movable Type database to a flat text file, I’m going to nuke the MT database off the server, as well as the 20 megs of archived HTML. One big benefit of WordPress over MT: No redundant files. Every time I update the blog, MT rebuilds something that takes somewhere between 30 seconds and 10 minutes, depending on what it interacts with. The HTML that gets served up is prebuilt for the viewers, so that saves an SQL hit, but it incurs a lot more PHP time for each rebuild, so I think the space and time savings with WP will be better overall. We’ll see. Since I’m backing everything up, if I get a wild hair and want to go back to MT, I can. If I can get the LJ plugin to work in WP, I may not even look at switching away from the Open Source WordPress anyhow. Open Source is my friend.

Further adventures in culinary achievement…

One more experiment down, Hasselback Potatoes last night. They turned out ok, but not really worth the time it took to make them. This is actually about the same as the Orange Marsala Hens, which were quite yummy, but not appreciably better than the $5 whole roasted chicken from the local grocery store.

On the up side, the raspberry cheesecake brownies are fantastic, and a big hit at work today.

According to CNet, music labels are trying to dampen CD burning yet again. So far, this has never worked. Every method of copy protection fails. This is especially true of audio CDs, because you have to be able to *hear* them for it to make any sense to buy them. Since anything you can hear can be copied, any copy protection of audio (or video) is doomed to failure.

I would think this would be obvious, but apparently it’s not to the music and movie industries, who think fighting with and suing their customers is a good business idea.

I’ve been making recipes from a magazine I’ve recently subscribed to. Last night, meatball subs with homemade (baked!) meatballs. They were quite yummy and about 18 pounds per sandwich. Tonight, we had steak grillades on pepperjack noodles. Tomorrow, orange marsala hens.

I’m very happy with my cooking this week. 🙂

Bush Honors U.S. Military Dead from War on Terror

Is this the first time he’s been at the cemetary since the war in Iraq began? He’s gone to such lengths to avoid anyone else seeing the caskets, it is a valid query, no? More than 200 American men and women died in the past two months; compared to the 138 who died during the “actual combat” phase. One wonders what this is, if not combat.

As a side note, the Reuters wire article uses the phrase “Bush, who avoided combat in Vietnam.” I guess the media isn’t going to let that one go, no matter how much the President wants them to.

I know all my readers (that is to say, both of you) are waiting anxiously to find out what happened since my last school post.

You’ll be happy to hear that my final final was graded finally. Somehow, a percentage grade of 86% for the class (96 on the final, thank you very much) ended up giving me an A in the class. I didn’t think college classes had curves. If you write your curriculum correctly, there is no need to have curves. Take an instructional systems design class and get things straight.

Anyway, that keeps my GPA where it was when the semester started: 3.666 – I have the GPA of the beast. If I get at least a B in my summer class (I’ve never gotten below a B in any UMUC class), I’ll be on the Dean’s List in the fall. Isn’t that exciting? Nah, not to me either. That BS in the spring of 2005, though…

Thanks to ThrowingStarDNA on Livejournal for this article:
Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012

An excerpt:

bq. What made this all the more disheartening was the wretched performance of our forces in the Second Gulf War.[73] Consumed with ancillary and nontraditional missions, the military neglected its fundamental raison d’etre. As the Supreme Court succinctly put it more than a half century ago, the “primary business of armies and navies [is] to fight or be ready to fight wars should the occasion arise.”[74] When Iranian armies started pouring into the lower Gulf states in 2010, the US armed forces were ready to do anything but fight.

Preoccupation with humanitarian duties, narcotics interdiction, and all the rest of the peripheral missions left the military unfit to engage an authentic military opponent.

In the last two days, approximately seven million flies have appeared on our dining room floor. They seem to have come out of nowhere to die in our house. I believe that it is all part of an insectoid suicide pact. I picture a tiny messianic figure and itty bitty barrels of koolaid.

As I mentioned earlier today, the instructor in Romania posted my grade. This evening, the instructor in the Dominican Republic posted my grade (only a B this time).

I took three tests in one week, the first on Monday, the others Wednesday and Thursday. Which one is not posted? The one from Monday, which is the only one that didn’t get sent to another country to be graded. Amazing.

I took three classes last semester, all online. One of the teachers is in Washington state, one in Romania, and the last in the Dominican Republic. The finals were all taken in one week, with the Washington one first and the Romanian one last. One test has been graded so far, and I’m sure you can guess which one it is. That’s right – Romania.

I shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of urgency from the Washington instructor – it was evident throughout the semester. I wrote about him previously. The test which had to travel the farthest and which was mailed latest is graded first. Go figure.

In good news, it was an A. 🙂

According to a CNN story, “Sanchez said he put the prison under the command of a military intelligence brigade in November to improve the facility’s defenses after a series of mortar attacks in late 2003.”

Um, Military Intelligence is not a combat force. MI is combat support, so if you wanted to improve the defenses of a facility, you’d maybe use folks with heavy weapons, not MI geeks with M16s? It’s getting kind of deep around here.

Holly has been taunted and harassed by the blue jays who are living in our pecan tree. They dive at her, and she thinks she can catch them. She has a very small brain.

These are fantastic. Imagine the joy you will experience when the gel loosens on these babies…
Strapless Bikinis

Proving that the U.S. doesn’t hold a candle to the Mideast extremist for insane behavior, video shows beheading of American captive in Iraq.

bq. “We tell you the pride of all Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and other jails is worth blood and souls.”

Now, let me get this straight. Pride is worth lives? Pride is a feeling, which can be regained. Life, once removed, rarely returns to the body. To justify the beheading of a man whose only crime was trying to repair communications equipment is grotesque.

And the betting on how quickly Zarqawi is killed while evading capture can now resume.

In a conversation with my mom this weekend (Hi mom), we were discussing the concept of holding Bush or Rumsfeld directly responsible for the actions of every single person who worked for them. Obviously, there is a level of abstraction in any sufficiently large organization, and it is unreasonable to assume that Bush or Rummy knew anything at all about the crimes at Abu Ghraib. That does *not* mean, however, that they are not responsible for those actions.

Truman made famous the phrase, “The Buck Stops Here” as a symbol of the enormous responsibility placed on his shoulders. The President is responsible for everything that is done in his name. And every official action of a military servicemember is done in the name of the President.

The enlistment oath I took four times:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Notice, soldiers defend the Constitution first and foremost. Second, notice that they obey the orders of the President. Now, the actions of these people in Iraq are violating all kinds of laws and treaties, but some of them (weakminded as they were) had been led to believe that they were acting legally, as required by the interrogation teams that had been placed over them. This does not excuse their actions in the slightest, but they thought it was acceptable.

And, the President finding out about the Abu Ghraib from the news is absurd. If he didn’t know about these actions before then, he should have. If he is being shielded by Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld should be fired for exposing the President to such an extreme breach of ethics and honesty.

More than anything, though, the President needs to stop trying to pass that buck to everyone but himself. He is the President. His people did something awful. It’s his responsibility, whether it’s his fault or not.

Illuminating blacked-out words in redacted (edited/declassified) documents is actually possible with computers today.

Interesting, the government stopped using Courier in its documents recently because it’s ugly compared to Arial or Times New Roman. But, because Courier is a monospace font, it is actually harder to decipher with the method listed in the article. So, the government has made it easier to pierce the veil of secrecy they put around redacted documents. Fantastic.

Great post about Abu Ghraib.

“The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies (OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention. The Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC) at Abu Ghraib called these detainees “ghost detainees.”

On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of “ghost detainees” (6-8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law.”

There are more photos and video from Abu Ghraib prison. They’re worse.

U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner and “acting inappropriately with a dead body.” The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.

I am taking three classes this semester, all online. Two of them have responsive and personable instructors. The third actually has a teaching team consisting of a professor and TA. You would think this would make it the most responsive of the lot. Nope.

Two days ago, the professor posted that our grades from the last assignment would be posted that night, as well as the solution. Still nothing.

I wish I could say I’m surprised, but it’s completely par for the course. It has taken 5-15 days to get a response to a question, the book is bizarrely useless, the online forums have only the vaguest relationship to the course objectives and none with the book, etc.

I fully expect the final to be written in ancient Greek and Aramaic, and consist entirely of electronic engineering problems (it’s not an engineering class) dealing with combinations of dilithium crystals and unobtanium produced under intense pressure in a low-gravity environment.

Please just let me get a passing grade so I get reimbursed for tuition. Horrible class.