July 10 2008

I am really bad about updating this thing. So a quick recap of the last month or so.

Seeing as there is not a lot of stuff to do in West Virginia, we went to a beer fest in a state park and had a whole slew of different beers. And last weekend I went up to Pittsburg for the 4th, fireworks, and Kennywood Amusement Park. It was supposed to rain that day so there were almost no lines there for most of the day.

Other than that, I have spent quite a bit of my free time in the gym since it is one of the few things that I can do after work, and is within walking distance. Seriously, I have never seen so many empty, run down buildings around a college campus. Its sad. But I am not complaining.

But one of the benefits around here is that movies are only $3.50 for matinee and $5.50 for evening shows. This place may suck, but atleast the cost of living is low!

And now I am at the academy. This really interests me because I am seriously considering becoming an agent in the next year or so, assuming that I get in good enough shape that is.

In two weeks I will be in Vegas, and the week after that I am in DC (throw paintballing, firearms training, and more DT into the mix and we have a summer on our hands). Yee haw.

Strella was put down today. RIP 1993-2008.

Hmm... I guess when I can't post these things on company time like last year, I don't do it quite as much. But I got out to West Virginia just fine, and settled into the dorm that I will live in all summer. Yeah, not the greatest deal ever, but the rent is only $340 a month, and that includes cable, power, internet, gym and parking. So I have nothing to complain about. But after a day of settling in, we packed up and drove out to Washington DC for orientation. While orientation at headquarters may sound glamorous, it was painfully boring. We sat in a hot room for an hour, then did a 4 hour marathon without a break, and then our hour lunch break was cut down to 20 minutes. And staying awake in a hot auditorium for 8 hours... whew. But what I did find out is that in this blog, I cannot say what organization I am working for, and I cannot post any work related pictures. But ask me and I can show them to you in person.

After the two days, we had an extra day where we got to tour the Capitol building. Since we were with Senator Byrd's office (the guy that has been serving for 40+ years and is in the hospital right now... here's for term limits!), we did get to see some behind the scenes stuff that was pretty cool. We also got to see the senate as they were voting on a budget bill for the next five years, and 93 of the 100 senators showed up, including Barack Obama on the day that Hilary Clinton conceded the nomination (although neither Clinton or McCain showed up).

Finally we got to the place we would work at, only to have another half day of orientation. I was about as oriented as I was going to get. But I did find out that we will get to do defensive training and firearms training for sure since we are in the right location (the DC kids don't get that). And then we got to work. My boss was out of town for Thursday and Friday, so I was shown around the office and datacenter a bit by some of my coworkers. But I can't say much about that.

Two pretty sweet things though: every intern gets a mentor, and my mentor is the deputy assistant director (second in command in our field office). Second, I will be doing auditing... the kind that I was doing all of last year in school. So it looks like this will be a perfect fit.

The upcoming plans look pretty sweet too: paintballing, skydiving, whitewater rafting, trip to a certain military base that my organization is pretty big at in Virginia, defensive training, and firearms. Not a bad summer coming up.

Well it is time to dust off the trusty old blog for this summer. As usual, I will update this with the different things that I am doing while off, away from Idaho. However, due to the place that I will be working this summer I have to be a little more careful about what I write here. I was essentially told to be careful on what I write that can be searched. So that means that I will not actually say where I am working, but most likely if you are reading this, then I have told you.

Also, due to my clearance level, I probably will not be able to talk much about what I am doing at work. At this point, I am not really sure what they are going to have me do, but I know it will be related to the broad category of computer security.

But there will be plenty of stuff for me to talk about. There are about 20 interns and plenty of preplanned activities for us to do, including firearms training, and defense tactics training. I have heard rumors of other things involving the president's helicopter and supreme court justices, but those have been unsubstantiated as of yet.

I fly out this Friday, and start orientation next Monday in DC. Fly out in three days... start in six. Oh man this is exciting.

Today is my last day at CMS, and I don't know if I am excited or not about that. I mean, I have gotten paid $13 an hour for the past nine weeks to do essentially nothing. Plus I am getting part of my scholarship requirement out of the way (now I just need to graduate and get the government job), and I am getting three CS elective credits. But it gave me lots of time to edit Wikipedia, setup Google Calendar, and play with RSS readers. Tough life.

Last weekend, Amaris and I met up with her dad one last time and headed out to the beach. Everyone told us to go to Ocean City, MD when we did the beach, but what we didn't know was that everyone else got the memo too. Seriously, there were three times when we hit major delays: at a toll booth (1.5 mile delays), at a STOP LIGHT (1 mile delays), and when we were getting into Ocean City (7 mile delays). Yeah... we hit almost 10 miles of stop and go traffic (more stop than go). We didn't get out of Catonsville until noon so it was almost five by the time we got there. Since I was not feeling like dropping $200 on a hotel and then dealing with the same traffic heading out of town, we decided to play in the ocean for a few hours, grab dinner and head out. That place was a nut house, and it was the type of place where you can just tell that all of the vendors are just seeing you as a cashpot that they want to tap (much more so than businesses usually do). You could easily leave there cleaned out and carrying a bunch of junk that you will regret buying. So we stayed for about 5 hours walking along the board walk and playing in the ocean and then we headed home. It took us 2.5 hours to get home.

Today we are heading out for Vegas. Allowing for stops at training camps, and spending the weekend in Virgina with Ben, I figure that we will roll into Vegas around noon on Thursday. Hopefully I wont get a call on Monday from the Riviera saying that they rented out my room to someone else.

Ok, lets do it. Football season is here and just in time. Last year when I was in Southern California, the Dallas Cowboys flew into the base I was stationed at for their training camp and I got a few pictures and autographs with the players. I also stopped by the San Diego Charger's training camp, and I would just like to point out that both of those teams ended up going to the playoffs (and getting eliminated in their first game... but what can you do). Maybe I am good luck for teams.

This year, I am making a much longer trip back to Moscow and will be able to stop by a lot more camps. Baltimore doesn't start their camp early enough for me to go there, but I will see the Washington Redskins, Indianapolis Colts, St Louis Rams, and the Denver Broncos with the option of the Pittsburgh Steelers if I feel like it. I will post pictures, but now onto the pressing business. My yearly evaluation of the Packers.

Unfortunately I won't be going to Packers camp because it is a bit out of my way, but I can evaluate them from a distance. Last year I said that they would go 6-10, but after a late season four game win streak that put them within one New York Giants loss of being in the playoffs at 8-8, they definitely have some potential this year. Most of the starters from last year are back,

Quarterbacks: Favre is 37 and this is probably his last year. Even if he wanted to come back, I am not sure the Packers would let him. They have cut pretty much every other 30+ year old player in their rebuilding, so I think that his legacy in Title Town will only keep him on the roster so long. Aaron Rodgers is now in his third year, and I am not sure he will sit around much longer. He was amazing in college and probably wants his shot. Either way, if Favre goes down this year, there is someone behind him ready to jump in (as long as he doesn't break his foot again).

Running Backs: Ahmad Green was the franchise back, but he got too old and was cut. They drafted Brandon Jackson in the second round, and have a few other backs that got light use in the past two years. Most likely, the Pack will use a committee of running backs, with Jackson slowly moving into a prominent role. That is... unless they land someone like Larry Johnson. But Ted Thompson seems to lean towards getting young, cheap talent that he can develop. Seems to be working so far. They also got rid of their full back (again, getting rid of 30+ year old William Henderson), and are handing the job to third year pro Brandon Miree. He got some starts and a fair amount of playing time last year, and did a fair job so this might be a good move.

Wide Receivers: Donald Driver is back, but he is getting older and is starting to lose a step. However, Greg Jennings should mature into a starting level WR this year. In addition, they have third rounder James Jones and second year Ruvell Martin who showed flashes of promise last year. I think that the wide receiver position is getting much better than it has been in years past (since 2004 when they last had Javon Walker).

Tight Ends: Bubba Franks is back, with Donald Lee backing him up. This is nothing to get excited about, but Franks is a reliable target and blocks well and Lee has done a good job in years past so this is not necessarily a weak point either. But this is no Antonio Gates or Tony Gonzolez.

Offensive Line: With all of the starters, and most of the backups coming back this year, the OL is finally looking more promising, and Thompson's moves from years past are starting to look a little more logical (still don't agree with most of them, but they are looking better). The line is finally going to have some consistency, and should improve on the acceptable performance of last year. That is critical when you have a 37 year old QB and young RBs in the backfield.

Defensive Line: While KGB is loosing his edge, Aaron Kampman has shown that he is one of the league's best with an NFC high 15.5 sacks last year. That pair teamed with a committee of defensive tackles, including Ryan Pickett and first round pick Justin Harrell should make the line a force to be reckoned with.

Cornerbacks: With Charles Woodson and Al Harris starting on each side, the Packers have one of the best starting CB combos in the NFL. Woodson showed that he still has quite a bit of gas left, and took a lot of the pressure off of Harris. Throw in Will Blackman, and you have the strong spot of the Packer's positions.

Safties: Both starting safties are back this year, and they both played all 16 games and had 80+ tackles last year. While they didn't get lots of interceptions last year, the consistency at this position will help and will continue to take some of the pressure off of the cornerbacks.

Linebackers: All three starting linebackers are back this year, including Nick Barnett and 2006 first rounder AJ Hawk, both of whom had over 110 tackles. The depth isn't great at this position, but with so much youth and so much talent back there, the Pack should have a shutdown linebacker corp as long as no one goes down.

So the strong point of the Packers this year is the consistency they have (including 20/22 starters returning) and the durability (19 of those 20 played 14 or more games last year), I think there is some serious promise this year.

Ever have one of those days where you think back to things you did as a kid and just reminisce about it? I did that this week in a big way. After getting sick and tired of the way '24' was going (with too many sappy scenes involving any of the women on the show and not enough action), I decided to move on to another show. I don't know how I ended up with it, but I decided to download the first season of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Way back when... back when it first premiered in 1993 when I was an 8 year old southern boy living in Texas, I started my obsession with the Power Rangers. Now when I say I was obsessed... I mean that. As a kid, I would get completely enthralled in one thing and nothing else (I guess I am still kind of that way... but to a lesser degree). Things like BRIO trains, MarbleWorks, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and my SEGA, pretending to be a radio station DJ (with my parents collection of CD including Huey Louis and the News, Bryan Adams, and MoTown), POGs, and of course the Power Rangers.

My brother and I would pretend to be power rangers for hours, fighting and everything until it usually ended with him getting hurt and me getting in trouble. We would even try to end arguments by saying that we had the shield, referring to the shield that the Green Ranger... because he was the bad ass ranger. We even bought the Megazord to play with.

But watching the episodes now just isn't the same. Its great to see the show that took over my life, but it is really pretty lame. The sets are beyond simple and half of the show is just the same long clips of the rangers morphing and then calling their Zords. The show must have been easy to make but damn I was obsessed. When we moved up to Idaho, the first thing I wanted to know was what channel Fox was so that I could watch them again.

Of course, after the rangers my obsession changed to computers when my family got our first $3000 Windows 3.1 computer, and I haven't moved on since. I guess the stuff I had was sold in a yard sale at some point,

Amaris and I finally made it down to Washington DC last weekend. We were going to do it a few times before, but something else always came up and it got pushed back. But dang there is a lot of stuff to do in DC. We got around to most of the memorials (Washington, Lincoln, Vietnam, Korean) along with the capitol, Arlington National Cemetary, Union Station, and the Holocaust Museum. While everything was really interesteting, I think the Holocaust Museum was the best part just because it was such a thorough account of what happened around WWII. In the past few weeks, I have gotten to see a lot of American History with Gettysburg, Philadelphia, Annapolis and Fort McHenry, but this time I got to see a war that didn't have much to do with America (relatively speaking). The museum bridged the time between WWI and WWII and how Germany ended up letting Hitler do what he did.

Even in the two days that we were there, there were a lot of things we missed. We didn't have time for any of the Smithsonians, the FDR memorial, or the WWII memorial. There were also things that required [free] tickets that we just didn't have the forsight to get. Gotta do the Washington Memorial, the Mint and the Capital building next time.

The best part was probably at the end. We were walking through Arlington towards the Marine's Iwo Jima memorial and reading some of the tomb stones... it doesn't really hit your that these were real people until you actually look at them. There were people who had been born in the late 1800's and people who had fought in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. I didn't realize what the Iwo Jima memorial was (I had seen it before, but the name didn't ring a bell), but that was really cool to see upclose again.

Now we are getting ready for the last week in Baltimore. This weekend we might meet up with Amaris's dad one more time, but the details still aren't clear on that. But I think that it is time to head to the beach. We have gotten close but never made it all the way there. Next week is my last week at work (and Cal Ripken Jr's hall of fame induction) and then training camps start. So on my way back across the country, I am going to have to stop by a few places. Ya know...

Then DEFCON. Oh yeah. It is going to be a good month.

I think that global warming is one big warm pile of crap. Everyone is all of a sudden all worried about being green and having a small "carbon footprint" (ironic since our foot... and the rest of us are carbon based... I always get a chuckle out of that). Last week there was a big concert, with people flying in from all over the world and people watching on the internet and on TV to watch a feat that uses one heck of a lot of power and fuel and creates a lot of trash to promote being green. Hmm... seems rather counter productive doesn't it.

Global warming is coming... that is why we have to BUY carbon credits. That is why we have to change the way we do business. That is why you should be SCARED TO DEATH because the world will possibly, for sure, end sometime in the very near or semi distant future. It is a call to arms because there is only one thing that we can do: throw more money at the problem to fix it (want to buy carbon credits, or even a device to measure your output?).

But should we care. There are four things to think about before you join the mob and turn into a hippie:

Is GW actually happening?

Supposedly. I don't think that there is any solid science to back it up because supposedly the sea levels are going to start rising dramatically, the winters will get shorter and the summers will be dryer. But "global warming" has been happening for such a short time that we have not been able to detect it. Sure, they show you images of huge ice shelves falling off Antarctica but what do you expect? The continent goes from seeing next to no sun one day to having complete sun six months later. Wouldn't you expect it to grow and shrink?

And of course the graphs showing the fractions of a degree that the world has been warming at for the past years. I have seen graphs that compare the graph of the last 100 years to the last 2000 to prove that GW exists. But how do they think that they can accurately tell us what the temperature was 2000 years ago. Sure, we can tell that there were ice ages pretty regularly, but they want to say that they can compare accurate temperatures with wild ass guesses?

If it is, are we causing it?

Our carbon emissions right? But what caused the temperature fluctuations in the past when cycled in and out of ice ages. Was it SUVs back then too?

Maybe we should understand the past better before we start jumping to conclusions. There are more variables in a global climate than just humans.

If it is happening and we are causing it, is there any reason to think it will be bad for us?

So it gets warmer. Is that really bad? The world changes a bit... some people loose their water front property and we have to change some of the habits that we have made in the past. People are scared of change, but this might not be completely bad. Besides, if global warming keeps up at its current snale's rate, then our great great great grandchildren wont even notice the difference, and we won't be around long enough to see any real change happen. It will just be the way the climate is.

Just because the climate is changing, doesn't mean that it will be catastrophic.

If it is happening and we are causing it and it is bad, are there any solutions out there to fix it?

Will buying carbon credits from across the globe for your factory in Los Angeles really make LA that much better? People are going to continue to consume and the only way that anything is going to change is when the consumer continues to get what they really want, and when the business doesn't see it on their bottom line. And we have been doing that for years now. Cars are cleaner, electronics use less power and technology has allowed us to do more with less. That is the natural succession of business. What can Al Gore giving us sensationalist media clips do that is better than that?

Last weekend was another one of my three day weekends because of my 9 hour work schedule. So I essentially had 2 days off (last weekend), 2 days on, 1 day off (the fourth), 1 day on, 3 days off, and now 5 days on. Not that it really matters... I am not doing anything.

Amaris and I hooked up with Lucas and his wife and went up to Philly last weekend. We didn't really plan the trip months in advance, but it was appropriately timed. I had forgotten most of my US history relating to Philadelphia, but there is a lot there! The country was born when the capital was there, so there is Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed and the Constitution was written. There is also the Liberty Bell, the First and Second National Banks, and some serious history. We ate at a place that has been open since 1775 where some of the founding fathers met over brew to talk about how to get Independence from Britain. All of the dates were a little fuzzy, but walking around gave me a quick refresher.

July 4 was the day that they finished the Declaration of Independence. They didn't sign it until a month later and that was when the war started. Not only that, but New England didn't even support the war so only about half of the US was actually fighting the war (and even then many people in those states were loyal to Britain). With all of the patriotism around the fourth, it is easy to think that we got our independence that day... but that isn't the case. We finally won in 1781, but that was just to get independence from Britain. The Constitution created a *united* set of states and wasn't adopted until 1787. Washington became president before all of the 13 original even became states in the United States.

Good stuff.

So the town that we are living in has an annual parade that is kind of a big deal I guess. People actually set chairs out on the side of the road a week ahead of time to save their spots (although I think it is more of a symbolic thing because even on the day of the parade it is easy to find a place to sit). The parade was an hour and a half long and had some of the state's senators and representatives in it, so I guess it really is a big parade.

But there were two parts of it that bugged me. Right before the parade, there was a girl (had to have been 12 or 13) who was wearing a shirt that had the British flag all over it. I don't know if she was doing it for a reason, but seriously... we are celebrating the idea of getting away from the "taxation without representation" and the other policies that the king imposed that we didn't like. The other was a float in the parade that said that war is not the answer... peace is. They had people walking along side it with tribal looking things on their head. I felt like ripping those things off and breaking their legs with it. Maybe they don't understand that we are celebrating the WAR THAT GOT US OUR FREEDOM. Get the fucking sand out of your vagina and go drown yourself in your own smugness. That was not the right parade to be at you damn hippies.