1,280 chicken dinners sold in our fundraiser today. I have had about 5 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours. I am quite exhausted,but our kids got money to go to Winterfest now.

Now if you excuse me (you really should patent this, Char), I'm gonna pass out. Just dropping a blog to say hello to my 2o2p peeps. Miss you guys.

Here's just a quick one......

I'm boarding the plane tomorrow for the healthcare conference in Milwaukee. I'll be there until Wednesday morning, back home Wednesday night.

Last couple times I posted I got the vibe that 2o2p doesn't have much representation in Milwaukee, but if anybody is in town at the same time fire off a PM. I will have at least a couple nights and a full day (Sunday) for downtime and I'd love to get together for a drink somewhere. I've heard there's some place called Miller that makes some alcoholic beverage in that general vicinity..........

i just came across this and thought it was funny as hell. come on. "we drink beer and support obama"

www.rednecks4obama.com/

well, it's serious to them, but i found it hilarious!

I'm thinking that men and women (generally) feel differently about this.

I am an avid Carcassonne player...I love the game....it makes me think, but it is not too hard, I find it relaxing...I just enjoy it. I'm rated in the top 10 of rated players, but my win/lose ratio is not too much better than 50/50. I am not a very agressive player unless I get mad and think my opponent is a total jerk.  I like to win, but I enjoy playing whether I win or lose. After playing a game of this type as often as I do, you get to know the other players. So when I  play against an unfamiliar tag, I often give them the benefit of the doubt, expecially if they appear hesitant and new.  Even when I play frequent opponents, I will block to add difficulty to their progress, but I usually don't block so their pieces are permanently disabled; I'd rather outwith them than cripple them. I guess I'm a wimp. 

I've had (in my opinion) jerks ask me why I bother if I lose so much, tell me I'm terrible, ask me why don't I give it up, I'm obviously not learning anything, etc, etc. For me it is not only about winning.  It is the socialization, it is a passtime; I don't think I've ever won a game of Monopoly in my life, but I still like playing with my kids. I guess what I'm saying is, there is more to playing Carcassonne for me than just winning,,,,and the same goes for most other games I play. I certainly don't win most shooters, but it is still fun, and i'm not going to stop playing!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HtNXlShAvU

For more information, or to find out how you can help, visit http://www.defendersactionfund.org/

A buddy of mine sent this to me.  I know the math is off depending on where you live, but it's still pretty true.

Time for a cocktail imo.  Join me in some RB if you want to share one with me. 

 If you had purchased $1000.00
 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

 With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000.
 
 With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have
 
$49.00 left.
 
 If you had purchased United Airlines, you would have nothing left.
 
 But, if you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank
 all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling
 refund you would have $214.00.

 Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink
 heavily and recycle.
 
 This is called the 401-Keg Plan.

Cheers..

I only worked a half-day today, the other half was spent at a trade-school. Not that I decided to return to school, but to help a former collegue of mine out. This guy is now a civilian-contractor to the UN, and together with another guy he visits trade-schools and advanced-schools (We don't have the educational-system the US has), to learn teens about what the UN did, does and hopes to do in the future. Both of them have a hairy history of UN-footwork. He and I both were in the military, although he's a Legionaire (This guy actually added four terms to the mandatory four years of Legion-service, and accepted the French Nationality but mostly hangs out in the Netherlands.) and has vastly different experiences than I do, and the other guy did civilian field-work like observing or inspections.

Anyway, the civilian guy came down with a bug and by coincidence they're visiting a trade-school in my town this week. I did run in to him by chance the other day and he asked me to fill in.

I never before appeared before a class of future jobless teens (trade-school supplies to the bottom of the workforce, really) from generally frowned upon ethnic backgrounds like Suriname, Dutch Antils, Turkey and Marocco. The class was laughy and unruly, but when Joop started to talk, he quickly made listeners out of them without raising his voice. We were going through the Dutch involvement in the UN dating back to Cambodia (Ho-Chi-Min war, the UN got clobbered badly and decided to not take a fighting role anymore in any conflict, which is a pivotal decision that influences decision-making to this day.) to their current involvement in Afghanistan.

After that there was a free-debate and quickly the topic rested on religeon, with some kids believing that the UN is pro-christian, and works to keep the muslim world under wraps, more or less. They were astounished to learn that Pakistan has supplied UN-troops on more than one occasion in the past. Trying to get their right, they said that the dutch army only selected non-muslim people for the UN-missions... and at that point I told them that I'm a born muslim, and has been a part of the UN ever since the Lebanon, in Dutch service. Acting on the silence that followed I started to explain my involvement over the years, what I did and had seen and experienced. As I talked, Joop took a seat amongst the kids, nodding at the parts where the Dutch Army and French Foreign Legion met up during UN-operations.

Then, of course, the fall of Sebrenica. It was very hard to talk about it as opposed to writing about it on here (and that took me two years to decide upon). Talking before a class where the minority has the Christain right and the majority the Muslim wrong, explaining the fall of Sebrenica and what happened in the aftermath is now officially the hardest thing I've done to this day.

It's extremely hard to explain that for an officer, the safety of the men comes first and that war on a tactical level is a numbers-game. Romantic and heroic battles are Hollywood, in reality they're bloodbaths were even the winners lose and the were the losers surely never win. As a sergeant I lost a good friend of mine I enlisted with, I have blogged about that before. Klaas who stepped on a landmine. As a lieutenant I suffered a handful of wounded men. It's not something that an officer puts beside him. Every officer wants to be the blessed leader who escapes from a war with his original unit still intact, but infact there's not one officer in the world who was able to pull it off.

The class was divided. A good part of the class thought Unprofor played the cowardice-card, the rest was milder but could not understand why we didn't stand and fight. Even explaining the principle of a command-decision did not make them see. A command-decision is never the right one, as it is always a selection between two evils with the CO hoping he did choose the lesser one of the two.

The Joop came to the front of the class again and layed down a hypothetical question. If the class was the War-Tribunal in The Hague and they had to rule over the Dutch Forces, how would they rule? Heroes or war-criminals?

We aren't heroes...

I have a cheap laptop and my gaming/development PC.

The PC specs are (off the top of my head)
MSI motherboard,
E6600 2.4ghz Core2 Duo with an Ultra 120 heatsink
4gigs of memory
500gig hdd 7200 rpm WD Bevs
xfx 8800GTS 320Meg video card
Corsair 540W PSU
Antech P182 case (view quiet)
After market fans to make it quiet. It is a view quiet PC.
5.1 Logitech speakers
Vista 32 and 64 Home Premium disc

How much do you think that rig is worth these days?

I am thinking about selling both computers and getting a high end laptop. I don't game as much as I use to on the PC but I still need a powerful one for development. Sager has a $600 sale on their lowend 17" laptop which is still bigger than my desktop.

I am keeping my 21" monitor, I use it for more than just the PC.

crap. It's happened. I had a baby, then a toddler. Now I have a terrible two. Looking forward to it. No really. I can handle this. I just have to think 2 steps ahead of a 2 year old. I can do this.

Mommy needs a drink.

Today: she didn't want to go to the park. Say park and you get "NNNOOOoooooooooo". Okay. Get home, get snack. She wants to sit on the potty and read. It was 5 O'clock... and she wants t o go to the park. and it's 3T: Tears and Tantrum Time.  Hun... you gotta eat in like half hour, park just aint happening. I mean it's mostly my fault: I have to think of a different way of handling things. She is happy now, watching Pablo (Backyardigans) before dinner.

But I reiterate.

Mommy needs a drink.

An older lady was somewhat lonely and decided she needed a pet to keep her company.. So, off to the pet shop she went. She searched and searched. None of the pets seemed to catch her interest, except this ugly frog. As she walked by the jar he was in, she looked and he winked at her.

He whispered, "I'M SO LONELY, TOO. BUY ME AND TAKE ME HOME WITH YOU. YOU WON'T EVER BE SORRY."

The old lady figured, what the heck! She hadn't found anything else. So, she bought the frog. She placed him in the car, on the front seat beside her.

As she was slowly driving down the road, the frog whispered to her "KISS ME AND YOU WON'T BE SORRY."

So, the old lady figured, WHAT THE HECK, and kissed the frog.

IMMEDIATELY the frog turned into an absolutely gorgeous, sexy, young, handsome prince.

THE PRINCE THEN RETURNED THE OLD LADY'S KISS.

SUDDENLY THE OLD LADY FELT HERSELF TRANSFORMING FROM HIS KISS.

NOW CAN YOU GUESS WHAT THE OLD LADY TURNED INTO?

COME ON, GUESS!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH COME ON.....DON'T BE A POOP!

SHE TURNED INTO THE FIRST HOLIDAY INN SHE COULD FIND!!!!!!

She's old....NOT DEAD

OLD LADIES ROCK!