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GRAFFITI -- September 22, 2008 thru September 28, 2008 >> Link to the Current Week << Last Week << Mon   Tues   Wed   Thu   Fri   Sat   Sun >> Next Week Search this site : Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable.     About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.

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September 22, 2008

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September 23, 2008

2121 - Good evening. Welcome to Fall. Q3 is almost over, and the world is flying by. Along with the normal Monday night routine, I arrived home yesterday to find a non-functioning garage door. Well, it functioned as a wall, but not as a door. Turns out one of the torsion springs snapped sometime during the day yesterday. I called the local Overhead Door folks at 1658 yesterday afternoon. They had a guy onsite this morning at 0800, and he fixed the door well enough to last until we get the new one, and for under a hundred bucks. Good service - that I appreciate. The new door was already on my list, since the current wood door is rotting out... but now I've got their sales guy dropping by tomorrow late afternoon. I've already done some preliminary pricing, so if they can come close, they get my business.

I'll tell you who else I appreciate: the instructor for my current UMUC course. Of all my UMUC online classes, I've experience more enthusiasm and more in-class participation from Dawn Smith than in all of my other classes combined. And that's just in the first two-and-a-half weeks. She knows what she's teaching, and cares about encouraging her students to learn it. She's already getting an A, I can tell you! For this week's class work, I still have the Lab Exercises to do, but that's for another day. I've read and taken notes on the chapter, done the case scenario and the course module. I find I'm on track to write perhaps 40K words in the online conferences over the 12-week span of the course. Yow! That's on top of the technical paper, and whatever the final project requires. Still, I'm up for the challenge. Now to relax for a few minutes. Ciao!

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September 24, 2008

1101 - Good evening. It's late and I must rest. The garage door is ordered. That's good. There's a naked clown calendar for sale on the Intarweb. That's not good. Well, it may be good for some, but it disturbs me greatly. I hope to be able to sleep tonight. Bleah upon those who wished those images upon my impressionable brain. G'night.

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September 25, 2008

2222 - Good evening. Lab exercise for this week is now done. And there's a stellar quote that appeared in one of the IRC channels I hang in: "Clay Aiken is stealing all of Lindsay Lohan's rainbow thunder". When you see that on the Inquirer, remember you saw it here first (or maybe second, if you know where it came from). Ciao!

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September 26, 2008

0736 - Good morning. Awesome. Go read The Undefended City. Thanks to Jeff Timm on Bob's message board. Back to work.

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September 27, 2008

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September 28, 2008

1528 - Good afternoon. Yesterday, in the morning, I helped Marcia get ready for her little shindig - a candle party of some kind or another. Then while that was in play, I took the appropriate tools over to Tae's house (I work with Tae) and helped get the shoe molding installed around her basement, capping off the floor installation that she did a couple of months ago. On the way home from that, I stopped at TCP to see if there was anything crying to come home with me. It was quite annoying to have my main system grind to a halt when I tried to open 75 small-ish JPG images at once for editing (with the Gimp). So I'm starting to look at the bones of a Quad Core system, but I'm still in the early window-shopping phase. So it turns out there wasn't any new hardware coming home with me, but I ran into Mike and Sara there. So it was worthwhile just for that alone.

Today we shopped. Then we went back out, to the Old Town Bowie Fall Faire (or whatever they call it), to see if we could find any more art for the dining room. No success this trip: that's okay. We don't want to spend an arm and a leg, but we also don't want to rush anything just because the walls are empty. Now, here I am ...

A bad week. The seven men lost in the helo crash a couple of weeks ago - I expected to see that announced before last Sunday, but I'll wager that the next-of-kin notifications were still in progress. So sad. Our condolences to the families and units of our fallen warriors.

• Chief Warrant Officer Corry A. Edwards, 38, of Kennedale, Texas, died Sept. 18 when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in went down in the vicinity of Tallil, Iraq.
• Sgt. Daniel M. Eshbaugh, 43, of Norman, Oklahoma, died Sept. 18 when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in went down in the vicinity of Tallil, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Anthony L. Mason, 37, of Springtown, Texas, died Sept. 18 when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in went down in the vicinity of Tallil, Iraq.
• Sgt. Maj. Julio C. Ordonez, 54, of San Antonio, Texas, died Sept. 18 when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in went down in the vicinity of Tallil, Iraq.
• Chief Warrant Officer Brady J. Rudolf, 37, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, died Sept. 18 when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in went down in the vicinity of Tallil, Iraq.
• Cpl. Michael E. Thompson, 23, of Harrah, Oklahoma, died Sept. 18 when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in went down in the vicinity of Tallil, Iraq.
• Cpt Robert Vallejo II, 28, of Richland Hills, Texas, died Sept. 18 when the CH-47 Chinook helicopter he was in went down in the vicinity of Tallil, Iraq.
• Maj. Rodolfo I. Rodriguez, 34, of El Paso, Texas, died Sept. 20 in Islamabad, Pakistan, of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device.
• Sgt. Joshua W. Harris, 21, of Romeoville, Illinois, died Sept. 17 in Gerdia Seria, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.
• Capt. Bruce E. Hays, 42, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, died Sept. 17 in Gerdia Seria, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.
• 1st Lt. Mohsin A. Naqvi, 26, of Newburgh, New York, died Sept. 17 in Gerdia Seria, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.
• Staff Sgt. Jason A. Vazquez, 24, of Chicago, Illinois, died Sept. 17 in Gerdia Seria, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.
• Staff Sgt. Brandon W. Farley, 30, of Grand Prairie, Texas, died Sept. 18 at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained Sept. 17 when his mounted patrol was attacked by enemy forces using small arms and rocket-propelled grenades in Able Monti, Afghanistan.
• Sgt. Jerome C. Bell Jr., 29, of Auburn, New York, died Sept. 19 while supporting combat operations in Farah province, Afghanistan.
• Staff Sgt. Nathan M. Cox, 32, of Walcott, Iowa, died Sept. 20 in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.
• Pvt. Joseph F. Gonzales, 18, of Tucson, Arizona, died Sept. 20 in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.
• Cryptologic Technician Third Class Petty Officer Matthew J. O’Bryant, 22, of Duluth, Georgia, died September 20 in the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan.
• Staff Sgt. Matthew J. Taylor, 25, of Charleston, South Carolina, died Sept. 21 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when he received small arms fire during dismounted operations.
• Capt. Bruno G. Desolenni, 32, of Crescent City, California, died Sept. 20 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Chaplain (Col.) Sidney J. Marceaux Jr., 69, of Beaumont, Texas, died Sept 14 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C., from a non-combat related illness.
• 1st Lt. Thomas J. Brown, 26, of Burke, Virginia, died Sept. 23 in Salman Park, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his patrol came under small arms fire during dismounted operations.

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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.

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