Frightfully busy

The meat grinder has arrived, and it's built like a Massey-Harris tractor, in the Czech Republic. The obligatory multi-Euro-lingual packaging announces that Germans call this machine a fleischhacker.

The temping job is going very well, and will carry our house well into the new year, after Tadpole is born. I'm now steeping in the culture of Air Force Space Command.

We launched a new blog, targeted towards my AF community, hoping it will catch on so I can unsubscribe from several military email distribution lists. So posting here has been light and may remain so until:

• the antelope is ground to sausage,
• the mudjacking of our front porch has settled and I can caulk the gigantic crack that still runs across it,
• I roll a few hundred rounds of .357 Magnum for another guy in the shop,
• trick-or-treating is over,
• we figure out what to do with the eight pumpkins that dominated our backyard---two are carved for jacks already,
• I finish reading the New Atkins Revolution and count down to Induction,
• it goes on and on.

Beater

is an Argentine Sistema Colt pistol, a licensed copy of the M1911A1 manufactured for their Policia Maritima. I ordered her when a lot were being imported at about $250 each.

She was rusted up, loose, and wobbly. Off I took her to the pistolsmith for cleaning up.



Most of the pistol is the original, except for the springs, the extended safety, beavertail, sights and barrel bushing. The ejection port was relieved and lowered, the hammer bobbed, the barrel link replaced with a longer one that tightens the lockup of barrel to slide. The trigger is lighter. It's beadblasted and Parkerized. It was my carry arm while licensed in Pennsylvania, and before I adopted Biter.

Here's a close-up of the rollmarkings, highlit with discarded loud-yellow nail polish.

Yo! Earthlink! Comcast!

We really really really want a cable modem to get us to Earthlink.

Comcast has the franchise for this area. Comcast used to be AT&T Broadband, who used to be TCI. The cable network here is finally getting upgraded to the point that it will carry digital cable (the reverse path is turned up and aligned so modem upstream signals can get from my house to the headend) so DOCSIS should be supported here any week now.

But I have used Earthlink since 1997. I like it. Barbaloot likes it. I've logged in to it with local numbers in every state I've been to, and one foreign country. I'll need local dialup for travel, in addition to a high-speed connection at home, for the foreseeable future.

I want Earthlink to continue to be my ISP, and I want to reach Earthlink through a cable modem.

Can you two arrange a stock swap or something? Jeebus.

rrrrrreeeeeeuuurrrrrr, Part V and Conclusion

The replacement cooling fan for the video processor arrived promptly (thanks again, Kirk), but I waited to see whether the existing one would become noisy again, since I had flossed some graphite into it. It obliged, about a week later. The grinding resumed without any of the graphite appearing to have been slung around inside the case.

I verified that it was indeed the video card's fan that was noising up again, by opening the case with the G4 still running. Yup, that's the one. OK, button her back up, and . . .

I took a quick look at the back connections, and noticed through the grille that the power supply's fan was not turning. This is the fan I replaced earlier in this educational troubleshooting process.

Hmm. Is it controlled by a thermostat? I shut down and dismantled the case to get the supply out. There's a component on the power supply's circuit board that looks like a big thermistor, and it's in a spot right in front of the fan, and a label on the board said this component was "TH1". Strange, though, I've never seen that fan not spinning. I've never heard it suddenly kick a new fan noise on, nor turn one off, as if any thermostat were controlling the fan.

I took the fan out and ran it with the 12V supply from a Zip drive. It spun.

Then I looked at the modular plug where it takes its power from the circuit board. The socket that receives this plug pokes its two contacts through to lands on the solder side of the board. A tiewrap and two screws were all that held the board in place in its box.

First, do no harm, physicians are warned. Don't make something worse while trying to treat it. When I replaced this fan (without troubling myself to be sure this was the source of the noise), I spliced the plug from the old fan on this one. When seating the plug in the PCB socket, it pushed the leads of the socket through the PCB, and broke the circuit traces on the solder side. No juice to fan, fan no spin. You can see shadows cast by the pads of the circuit traces, dead center of the photo. They're about a millimeter up from the board surface.



The basement is chilly, and we had been running this G4 only for short spells, instead of its usual 24/7, since cleaning out the video chip cooler, so the power supply probably hadn't been at risk of destruction. But this situation could not go on.

I found two suppliers of replacement supplies, one different from the other by a thirty-dollar core charge. Still, at those prices let's try to fix the existing supply.

This is when I remembered that the only soldering iron in the house is a butane-powered underperformer. The USAF taught me how to run a soldering iron, giving me my start in 'lectronics, and how do I preserve this essential skill?

I left the G4 in parts, and stopped in to the Computer Store With Real Geek Girls on my way home from work the next day. A twenty-five watt iron, solder, wick, (iron under capital expenditures) and away we go. Different set of Real Geek Girls too, BTW.

Plan A, an attempt to solder the socket back to some traces on the PCB. Still no juice to the fan. One contact of the socket was too far down into the socket to make contact with the fan's plug. Any more work on this board and I'll be burning a hole through it, and setting off the smoke alarms.

Plan B, restore the original plug-and-socket combination originally supplied with the replacement fan (clever how they do that---both a male and a female 4-pin, that will jack into the power supply harness in parallel with a HD inside). There was enough slack to run the fan's leads out of the case and jack them in with the DVD-ROM up high in the case.

Success. G4 is back to 24/7 operation, all the fans spin. Next project: how to upgrade the Linux box for faster mobo and CPU.

Mmmmmmm . . . speedgoat

Several people warned me that antelope meat, especially that harvested on open prairie, will taste strongly of sage, so much that the locals prefer going after elk. To them, antelope are practically as easy and plentiful as rabbits, neither a challenge nor a good meal. It was an exciting hunt for me, and I'm not readily jaded.

Still I was concerned that I would be the only person chez Fûz who would be at all interested in eating this precious lean meat. My experience with kangaroo was non-peak.

I thawed and marinated a short piece of backstrap in Buffalo's finest, Chiavetta's barbecue marinade, a case of which Barbaloot determinedly ordered through the local King Sooper's.



Middlechild is our resident master carnivore, and Pronounced It Good. Put yourself in my place, see what I've seen. A five-year-old girl turns her blue eyes to you, still chewing, saying "more antelope, please."

I am working up the courage to cook this meat without marinade, just laying bacon over it. The meat is tender, sweet, barely a hint of the smells of the prairie where it fed.

A meat grinder is enroute also, that we may try our hand at chorizo and sweet Italian sausage. Sheep casing surely can be found hereabouts.

Miramus grasshopperella

Middlechild found this in the back yard the other day, after a cold snap. It was sluggish, confused, drawing warmth from my hand.

Driving? Miss Denver: the FAQ

Your head is spinning with the pitfalls and possibilities of Fûz's proposed modification to TREX, and how it might affect you if it were adopted. First, this is a proposal, it is not reality. Don’t worry, it’ll never happen, especially if you think it’s good idea. Second, stop the madness and read the FAQ offered here. We also offer maps for both Northbound and Soutbound traffic and how this proposal would Express it.

Let’s say I'm getting on at Arapahoe and getting off at Belleview. Should I pay a toll?

• You can't even get into the Express HOT lane along the proposed I-25 corridor, except at the Northern or Southern ends.
  
• During high traffic periods, why are you trying to get on an Interstate highway to move 2 exits? You are what we call "local traffic." Local traffic should use what we call "local roads."
  

What if I live inside the 470 beltway but I'm leaving town? Aren’t I really Interstate traffic? How do I get into the HOT lane?
You are local traffic until you’re out of town. Make a beeline on whatever local road serves you to the 470 beltway, or I-70.

Who can use the Express HOT lane?
Anybody. Some pay, some don't.

Who pays a toll to use the Express HOT lane?
During high traffic periods, passenger automobiles with only one person in them, taxis and limos with only one passenger and a driver, and trucks with more than four tires meeting the road, including a trailer. Buses, jitneys, passenger autos with more than one person, taxis and limos with more than two persons, and motorcycles always enter the Express HOT lane for free. Outside of high traffic periods, everybody enters the Express HOT lane for free.
Getting out of the Express HOT lane into a local lane, without driving the whole way through the City of Denver, is tolled during high traffic periods, for all vehicles.

What if I enter the Express HOT lane just before high traffic starts?
You enter for free. If you cross over from Express HOT to local lanes after high traffic begins, you pay.

Who pays a toll to get out of the Express HOT lane into a local lane?
During high traffic periods, every vehicle.

What if I enter the Express HOT lane just before high traffic ends?
You could have waited another few minutes, relieved the rush hour traffic, and saved some money. Listen to the radio or have the traffic authority email the high traffic times to your phone.

What if I don't want to pay the toll, or I can't afford it?
You have several options:

• Go when you want to, but use the congested local traffic lanes, with new vehicles merging on your right at every exit, and Express HOT drivers merging on your left at every third or fourth exit. It's free but worth every penny you paid.
  
• Use E470 or C470 to get to the best local road, or vice versa.
  
• Adjust your driving times so you can use the HOT lane when it's free.
  
• Take a serious look at (gulp) carpooling.
  
• Take a serious look at (gulp) mass transit.

So I'm coming from Albuquerque up I-25. I'm going to Cheyenne. What do I pay, and where?
It depends on when you get here, and how you choose to pass through the Denver area. Assuming it's between 6:30 AM and 8:00 AM on a weekday and you're alone in a passenger car, you have three choices:

• Go straight up I-25, quickly and without dodging local traffic. You pay one toll at the Lone Tree plaza, just North of Exit 191. Stay in the HOT lane until you pass the Boulder Pike plaza and you pay nothing more.
• Go straight up I-25, local lanes, and dodge the local traffic. Count on spending 45 minutes more to do so in lieu of paying the toll.
  
• Take E470, you pay nothing.

Why only a few chances to get from the Express HOT lanes to the local lanes?
Short answer: Because they’re Express lanes. It's what Express lanes do.
Long answer: Much of the danger and hassle of local rush-hour traffic on an Interstate highway comes from mergers and lane changers. The HOV lane that exists today in the TREX stretch of I-25 actually compounds the danger as cars weave in and out and cops try to police it. This proposal limits the impact of high-occupancy and toll vehicles merging with local traffic, by allowing them to do so at only a few distinctly marked places. It also reduces the law enforcement burden---cops will not have to patrol the HOT lane for violators or maneuver in traffic to do so.

Why charge for both getting into and getting out of the express HOT lanes?
We need to discourage through traffic a little because that traffic tends to consist more heavily of trucks that are better off going around town anyway. We also need to discourage local traffic, driven by people who live here and should be familiar with alternate and side routes.

Isn’t this just a 'Lexus lane' scheme, making a separate road available for the rich?
Sure it is. Take your pleasure in screwing the rich, making them pay to pollute less! Take a Lexus, take a Peterbilt truck, take a motorcycle, it doesn’t matter. When does it pollute more: when it’s idling in traffic, or it’s cruising through the DTC at 55 mph? An Express HOT lane lets more vehicles cruise instead of idle.

Any other pollution impact?
By encouraging more through traffic to circumvent the city, this proposal would relocate much pollution out of the city.

How much is the toll?
Just enough to influence your decision of which road to take and when. You pay 'by the axle' to enter, and a flat toll to exit. We’ll study the amount of traffic in the Express HOT lanes and price them to get the most possible use of them at decent highway speeds. That might mean that tolls will vary somewhat with day of the week, month of the year, weather, and so forth.

If the toll varies, how can I budget for it or adjust my work schedule to take advantage of it?
By making tough choices.

Won’t this proposal force more traffic and higher costs on the side roads?
Yes. But it will also collect money that will be shared with the localities to get those side roads repaired and upgraded. Which would you rather do: keep paying insane Federal income taxes and hope that Congress returns enough of it to Colorado for local highway construction where it’s really needed (this is the current system, y’all), or pay tolls and rebuild it as you go, exactly where you need it, with less of the money subject to political shenanigans?

You refer to some "authority" above that would operate this highway. Who are they, what kind of agency or entity would they be?
A non-profit corporation chartered by the State of Colorado, I suppose. I'd ask the Independence Institute.

24w3d

Fetal sonograms can now render in three dimensions. It's spooky, guys. This is what the Tadpole looks like now.

My first speedgoat

Pronghorn antelope, taken North of Rock Springs, Wyoming, by me with a Ruger M77 in 7x57mm at about 200 yards.

Update: The pronghorn fell at about 1800L on Saturday. We started dressing him out right away, so any smell I noticed was that of entrails. I found the exit wound---three of his left ribs shattered at their roots---but no entry wound.

We spent most of Sunday cutting him up and wrapping him for the freezer. That's when I found the entry wound, a neat hole through the right shoulder blade, and destroyed meat on either side of the spine.

Lessons learned:

1. A Kabar knife is too big for taking apart an antelope.
   
2. Have a sharpener nearby too.
   
3. You're going to smell blood and meat on yourself for a while afterward. Hand sanitizer helps but keep it off the meat.
   
4. Range estimation on open prairie like that is tough. This antelope actually gave me time to use a laser rangefinder if I had had one.
   
5. A laser rangefinder could be fit into the capital expenditures budget . . .

"What kind of fool do you take me for?" "First class."

This is the text of an email I received today from Rania_Glornia@geocities.com (probably a forged return) via a RoadRunner server in the Tampa Bay area.

We have just charged your credit card for money laundry service in amount of $234.65 (because you are either child pornography webmaster or deal with dirty money, which require us to layndry them and then send to your checking account).
If you feel this transaction was made by our mistake, please press "No".
If you confirm this transaction, please press "Yes" and fill in the form below.

Enter your credit card number here:

Enter your credit card expiration date:


Well Rania, since I'm paying more than two C-notes, make my layndry extra starch.

Carnival of the Vanities, number fifty-five

Please check out this week's Carnival, hosted at Dancing with Dogs.

Driving? Miss Denver

TREX and E-470 have it all backwards. A beltway is supposed to relieve the downtown of the traffic burden of mainline highways crossing the city. Travelers who want to go through Denver should be encouraged to drive the extra miles, on very nicely built roads with high speed limits, to skip the traffic and the hassle, and even to relocate some of the air pollution away from downtown. Ten bucks of tolls does not constitute encouragement to drive 46 miles instead of 32, especially for heavy trucks whose per-mile and per-minute costs are higher.

So the Fûz Proposal, which is cunning but simple, but cunning, and promotes the Interstate highways as they were intended---regional highways, not local commutes:

• Raise the bucks to pay off E-470 by reserving a High-Occupancy/Toll lane in T-REX. Try express lanes like those for the I-270 spur from the District of Columbia to Frederick, Maryland, just to segregate the local traffic from the big trucks who are mostly passing through. It can be simplex (one way at a time) like the HOV lane up North through the Mousetrap---but Northbound in the morning, Southbound in the evening. It can be toll-free during those times when there's no traffic congestion.
  
• Provide a limited number of places where a car can cross from express to local lanes. Charge a toll at these crossovers, whether the vehicle is highly occupied or not. Some drivers will choose to use the express lanes to penetrate the layers of traffic, then change to local lanes when their exit comes up, instead of suffering the start-stop in local lanes the whole way. For example, pay twenty-five cents to cross to local at Arapahoe to exit at Belleview Ave, instead of using local lanes the whole way from Lincoln Street to Belleview. Charge a toll for any vehicle crossing from express to local lanes, whether the vehicle is highly occupied or not.
  

Instead of E-470's RF toll transponders, how about prepaid cards that bear a large barcode? The traffic authority encrypts the bar code so cards are hard(er) to counterfeit, and sets the tolls low enough so they're not worth counterfeiting.
Privacy geeks can pay cash for the cards to disconnect the driver's identity from gate and time. Flash the card at a reader on the toll gate. The gate flashes back how much value is left on your card for the next gate.

These two incentives will combine to push some local traffic out to E-470, and make any North-South through traveler think twice about going direct through Downtown.

Some through-traffic motorists will spend the extra operating costs, and the extra time, to go around; others will choose to pay the toll to go straight through (the toll booths at the very Northern and Southern ends of the HOT lane will have to be manned, so out-of-towners can buy toll cards, high-occupancy cars are admitted, and local tollers can get their cards recharged). Either way, the long-distance through travelers get to choose.

I'd take a kinder view of professional sports if the Denver Broncos comped the tolls for I-25 through traffic during certain home games. Their advertising budget could handle it.

The backs of the prepaid toll cards are a great advertising space for tow services, DWI public service announcements, jitney services, and so forth.

Local traffic can:

• slug it out on the local lanes of I-25, paying nothing but aggravation and engine hours to weave among each other in slow motion through the Tech Center, or
• they can pay extra to take the HOT lane in to a crossover near their exit, or
• they can pay the extra time and operating costs to use the beltway.

They get 3 options because there are more of these motorists, they tend to be on the roads at about the same times, and their origins and destinations are more numerous. Either way, they get to choose and they can see the consequences of their choices more clearly. No market distortions are hiding the consequences from them.

We can reduce traffic congestion, fuel consumption, and pollution only if the individuals who are creating it have a choice in how to reduce it, and still have lives. Their choices can be informed only by the measurable costs of money and time. Their money and their time, by the way.

Unfortunately, the choices already have been made by our betters, and the highways being built are literally casting those choices in concrete.

If some good come of this, may it be that . . .

We don't recall ever having mentioned Rush Limbaugh before in this weblog. Events compel us.

His alleged criminal painkiller abuse, and the hyprocrisy that would be exposed if the allegations are found true, could demonstrate the falsehood of one of the Right's sacred tenets:

Occasional drug abusers are no better than abject junkies. They can't be ordinary people. They cannot be successful. Drug abusers' faculties, skills, and daily lives will be so disturbed by the drugs, regardless of the level of consumption or dependence, that they cannot function normally. Laws are justified to remove them from society. Businesses are justified in declining to hire people who use drugs because they underproduce, increase the risks of error and accident, and impose costs through increased absenteeism and higher medical burdens.

I don't care what your opinions may be of Rush as a person, or of his philosophy. But you must concede this: his talents as a radio personality are exceptional. He is the best in his field. No amount of money or hype generated by his quarter of the political plane could put him in that position or keep him there long if he didn't possess the talent (that quarter of the political plane is not gifted at hyping anything or anyone in the first place). This talent continues in spite of an alleged very expensive painkiller habit that, according to current (and his own) wisdom, should have reduced him to a pitiable wretch incapable of a top-rated radio program.

I would of course have to be much closer to him personally, to have seen and listened to him regularly over the span of years since before the abuse began, to have noticed any drug-attributable decline. My listening is irregular but frequent, and is influenced more by steel building design and sources of RF interference than by my tastes. I enjoy his program.

Here's Attaboy's take, much like my own:

Unlike what many liberals think about people like me, I am not a lemming following his every word as I flee into the ocean. His commentary forces you to think. Even those who vehemently disagree with everything he says have to agree that just his presence in the marketplace forces them to look hard at what they believe and perceive about everything.

A more regular (but still impartial) listener than myself, if such could be found, might comment on how often he hands his show off to Walter Williams or Roger Hedgecock, or some other guest host, and even then it would be deceptive, on a Democrat Party order of magnitude, to attribute this absenteeism to an oxycontin habit.

If a serious drug habit like this one didn't topple a very visible radio personality from the top of the charts and the top of his own game (an arrest would---the habit in and of itself has not), why should we accept the assertion that occasional drug use leads inevitably to impairment and destruction, compelling intervention by the State? Why should we accept the routine of offering piss to potential employers, to do nothing more dangerous for them than operate spreadsheets and photocopiers?

Let me borrow again from Joe's Attaboy post:

As I would for anyone who has an illness, affliction, or serious personal crisis, I'm going to pray very hard for Rush, his wife, and his family. In spite of one's political and social positions, I don't think anyone deserves to suffer the pain of addiction.

As Rush's callers say, "dittoes."

And before you go:

• Note carefully that nowhere in the preceding post have I advocated utter forgiveness of people who harm others while under the influence of any substance that alters mood, perception, or judgment. Just read the warnings on the label of any bottle of over-the-counter cough medicine, which labels illegal drugs lack because, well, they're illegal.
  
• Note carefully that nowhere in the preceding post have I advocated the use of recreational drugs during certain activities or for members of certain professions or pursuits, such as surgery, military service, handling firearms or operating 10-ton hydraulic presses. In fact, nowhere above have I advocated the use of drugs for recreation, period.
  

Any posts or emails seeking to break through or ignore the rhetorical fences I've strung around these two points will be summarily deleted.

Update: Robert Scheer agrees with my basic assertion that drug addicts may still be able to function competently.

Limbaugh's experience is the best argument against the demonization of all junkies — this one throughout his addiction held a big job and presumably paid a lot in taxes.

Advantage, Fûz. Found via Dustbury.

Maybe better to be carried by six, after all

Walter in Denver spanks the Post for completely missing the point on fully-informed juries.

No comment

Literally. No comments links are appearing under my posts, again. Last time, some rogue code converted a needed angle bracket in the template into the character entity for an angle bracket, causing an html tag to go unclosed. I found it in the template and fixed it.

Can't find anything of the sort this time. Bastidges.

My capitalist daughters

Firstborn has been suggesting for some months now that Barbaloot and I begin to give her an allowance. I don't know how that notion was planted.

I got an allowance when I was a kid, but only when my father suggested that I give up my newspaper route so I could learn to run a bulldozer and backhoe for him. His bid to run a coal strip mine fell through, though, and he had no work for me to do, so out of compassion he offered to give me five bucks a week until I found something else.

In this shanty, we don't pay or give allowances. Barbaloot and I conferred, and agreed that instead, we would pay for the performance of chores. Some days the cats are not fed because Firstborn just doesn't remember, and the cat litter goes way too long between Middlechild's careful cleanings.

We agreed to pay them in the currency of poker chips.

When I got home from drill last weekend, dinner was not quite ready and the girls were bouncing off of the walls. I suggested that we go to a nearby retailer and get said poker chips.

Once in the store, we had to look for the poker chips. Not in the stationery. Not in office supplies. Oh, there's a nice little safe I was considering for Beater, Biter, and Glamdring (more on the sidearms later). What's the price on that? Hmmmm. OK, girls, let's keep looking for poker chips. As I started down the aisle, Middlechild's hand tugged resolutely on mine. "Middlechild, it's time to look for poker chips. Can you come with us, please?"

Firstborn chimed in, eager to get them, since she had already done enough chores that I owed her a pile of chips already.

"No, Dad. Here."

"What?"

"Here, Dad." She was standing right beside where I had been, ogling the safes. She was also standing right in front of a display of playing cards, and poker chips.

You need to understand this: this girl had never seen poker chips before in her 5 years of life. If she had, she might not know what a stack of them in a box looks like. I didn't think she could read that well either, that she could see from the package's markings that here were her poker chips. Somehow she knew that, well, right here they were. Our search was over.

Firstborn is a quick reader too, mind you, and she didn't see them. But introverted Middlechild homed in on them better than I could.

We picked up a package that is probably worth hundreds of litter box cleanings and months of fed cats. At the girls' request, we had to visit the lobster tank at the other end of the store, because they think lobsters are cute and wanted to say hello to them. Then back home.

The family room floor is clear, and 24 hours later it is staying clear. The cats were fed this morning. Firstborn wants to know how to clean toothpaste off of the bathroom countertop. Middlechild needs a broom just her size to sweep under the kitchen table after meals.

Wymmyn in the Service

James Rummel posts on unsatisfactory findings relative to women in the armed services, and goes directly to at least one conclusion I share.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrruuuurrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuurrrrrr, Part IV

Part III is here, follow links to previous posts of same topic.
The customer support email from my video card's maker reports that they do not provide replacement cooling fans for their products. If it were still under warranty, I could send them the complete video card and they'd repair it. Ahhhh, no.

So until I find a fan of the right dimensions, I have slicked the fan up with both BreakFree (liquid teflon) and graphite grease, slipped inside the motor by a length of dental floss.

As the title of the post suggests, the fan is much quieter. Now the problem has entered a new realm: what if it stops making noise completely? Is it is running smoothly or totally fried and letting the graphics processor bake to thermal runaway?

The hunt for a replacement fan continues. I see kits at the Computer Store with Real Geek Girls, which include a gigantic frigging aluminum heatsink that wraps around the whole video card, and a heat pipe for God knows what, which means I'd have to remove the heatsink that's already there and cram half a kilo of metal into that space. This sounds counterproductive to me. The new heatsink would have to be thermally greased to the GPU. A replacement fan just has to blow air across the existing, greased heatsink.

Update: 24 hours later, the G4 sounds like it did just before the basement cleaning that started this whole mess, and the video card maker emailed back saying they can't even recommend a replacement fan as a purchased part. Too bad, because I read the manufacturer's name and part number from this one, found them online, saw drawings and specs for the fan, yada yada. The video card maker could have made a couple of bucks off of me---I probably would even have found it in my repair budget to have it shipped Second Day Air.

My daughters are acquiring the basics of capitalism while those guys are losing them.

I still got it goin' on

My shop was evaluated this weekend on its physical fitness. USAF and ANG have converted to a more holistic measure of fitness, considering body fat, flexibility, pulse after 3 minutes of stepping, push-ups and sit-ups. A Computer Program rolls these measurements together and outputs a single "fitness age" that is indicates whether one is unacceptably "older" than one's age.

My 43 years of wisdom, experience, and regrets inhabit, I am told, a 36-year-old body. Barbaloot is delighted, of course.

Listen to Stryker

Sergeant Stryker posts on our abridged free-speech rights under the UCMJ. Well done.