RETIRED WARRANT

My Internet was broke

Well this morning I woke up to a shock. It seems the power supply for my DSL modem died over night. It is nothing too bad and I should have it repaired in a matter of minutes tonight so I will be back in business as soon as I get home.

Other than that I am not feeling well today. There has been something spreading around and I think I caught whatever it is. I went to bed somewhat early last night and woke up on time this morning, but since taking my morning shower I feel congested and I have been sweating. I also feel a bit weak. I hope it is not the flu coming on.

Also they are all ready talking about how hot it is supposed to get today so that is not good. Anyway if I continue to feel ill I will try and take off early and go home and take some medicine and all.

I didn’t blog yesterday, not because I didn’t write anything up, but because I was pretty upset with some folks and I blogged about that. I decided to let Laila read it before posting it, and while she said it is right on the money, she also told me to hold off on it, so I will.

Anyway without internet until I get home and I was not able to chat with Laila this morning on line. I tried calling her but the call didn’t go through and then she called me so I let her know what was up.

Well I guess that is about it for now. I have a lot to do both here at work and when I get home.

My mouth is healing

Today my mouth feels a little better. I have been really careful to keep the area clean and I have been really careful when shaving and brushing my teeth. I hope it heals quickly so I can get back to eating solid foods. It really is a bummer to cook something good for the kids and then have to have soup myself, even though I did fudge a bit and tried some lasagna last night. But being careful I was able to chew with my back teeth and was careful to not bite with the loose ones in front.

I watched most of the Baseball All Star game last night. It was really cool to see the tribute to Willie Mays and a little sad that there are so few role models in the sport today. He was awesome both on and off the field.

It was also sad to see the National League lose again. The inside the park home run by Ichiro Suzuki was a special treat. I guess there is always next year.

To switch to another subject that I have blogged about in the past, there is a new recycling center opening up by our local post office. They closed the old one up there about a year or so ago. I don’t know why they closed it but I was glad when they did, because all it did was attract a bad element. Here in San Diego we have a trash pickup day, mine is Thursday and every two weeks they also pick up recycled materials. We have special blue trash cans for paper, cans and bottles.

On July first they raised the deposit on bottles and cans to encourage recycling, I don’t know how high they raised it but it used to be 2 cents per can and 5 cents per plastic bottle. I don’t know how much it was for glass bottles.

Anyway between them raising the prices you can get for turning them in and also with the recycling center opening back up in the neighborhood the bums are back. Today a few streets away was trash day and I saw about five or six folks out with shopping carts going through peoples trash and recycling bins. You would figure there would be a law against it. Maybe there is but it is not being enforced. I would think that with the city having money problems and all that they would start enforcing it and keeping people from rooting through people’s trash. After all when I put out my recycling bin I feel I am contributing to the city as well as doing my part for the environment. I should not be contributing to someone’s drug habit or whatever else is holding these people back in society. I also hate the fact that now when I go to the post office or the local stores that I have to pass by more and more pan handlers. I hope to see this recycling center go the way of the other one, preferably before it opens up for business.

Last night one of our Fed mates used a racial slur in the chat, and that was extremely depressing to see. He tried to justify it by saying the word was not offensive in his country of France but I don’t care where you are from or who you are. There is no place in this world for words like that and as I have traveled to many countries in my time those words are know as offensive anywhere you go. I was impressed by the way it was handled in the chat and I hope I don’t have to see things like that in the future. It is very hurtful to many people and totally uncalled for.

Laila was a little upset this morning when I got up and I really can’t blame her. She is the only member of all our allied feds that is on the ranked outpost posting list, though I think a few of us are getting close. She spends all her free time watching out for others and rarely makes a mistake that results in losses. She is always trying to help outers and improve her knowledge of the game.

Last night she was the last to refresh her DP time, through no fault of her own. She wound up going out very late and basically I was falling asleep at the keyboard. A few members said they would watch over her and sent me off to bed, but when I got up this morning she said that after I went to bed, they did to, leaving her out with only static outpost. That would not bother me so much if I were out with only static, because to break my main with the stack I use and the system defense I have would be extremely hard at the PR I play at.

Laila’s empire is much weaker than mine and is susceptible to attack. She feels betrayed, even though I did explain to her that while I went to bed at Midnight it would have been 2 AM or 3 AM where some of the team mates were. If she would have known that they were not able to stay up, they should have told her not to go out and posted static for her to go out later should nobody post, as we do have some players overseas that come on while we are asleep.

Anyway, today she will not be playing actively because she has to take care of some personal business regarding our court cases and will not be there. They can then get a taste of what it is like when she is not there all night as she usually is. I think some folks have grown to take her for granted, and that is wrong.

Today was pretty cool, as my class knocked out all the first set of troubleshooting problems and almost all of the second set. That means tomorrow we will finish second set and start the final set.

The new class started today and is pretty big. I will start teaching them on Wednesday, next week after my current class graduates. I would have liked to have started with them from day 1, but such is life.

I suppose that is it for today. I have to get this done and get back to the job since the lunch hour is ending.

Went to the dentist

Yesterday I called and talked to the folks at the dental office and got my appointment changed from a normal cleaning to one where I could get my teeth checked out for damage. I was supposed to go for the cleaning today but when I called I was told that they would take me in yesterday afternoon.

After a little joking around about what a klutz I was and all, they took x-rays and found that I didn’t have any serious damage, it was just going to be painful for a couple of weeks since I had disturbed the nerves in two of my front teeth. He told me that if it hurts when I eat cold stuff that is a good sign but if it hurts when I eat or drink hot stuff that is bad. If it hurts when I eat hot stuff it means that I severed the roots and will need a root canal. He didn’t seem to think that they were that bad, just painful. So that is good news.

Last night was a miserable night though as after he poked around and all, my mouth was really painful and it still is today. I guess I will be eating soup for a while since I still can’t chew anything without pain.

Today at work it has been a good day, other than I have been hungry all morning. I finished up the classroom work and tomorrow we will start the practice troubleshooting problems. The new class starts up tomorrow and it will be another large one. This afternoon I thin I will help get the lab put back together for the new class. We still have some stuff sitting out from when we were replacing equipment.

I always put everything back when I am done but some of the guys leave stuff out so we have that cluttered look right now. Besides it will give me something to do to take my mind off the pain in my mouth and jaw.

Laila was feeling sick yesterday too. I hope she feels better when she wakes up in the morning on her side.

Well I guess that is about it for right now. I still am not in a very motivated mood, as far as looking at PC’s go. I want to get to work on something where I am not looking at a monitor screen for a while.

Back to work and still hurting

Sorry about not blogging over the weekend. I really didn’t feel like doing much of anything over the weekend. Yeah I logged onto the game, but pretty much posted op and did the five minute thing with my infra but didn’t chat a whole lot or anything like that.

I did work on making up a spreadsheet to try and learn more about the ships and all, but lack of concentration made that hard. Also not being able to eat anything solid kind of ruined the weekend for me too.

Yesterday, due to the nice black and blue chin we skipped church. Instead Laila and I prayed the rosary together. I did take the kids out and got them brunch at a Chinese takeout. I bought noodles, sweet and sour chicken, and broccoli beef for me, but two of my front teeth hurt so bad that I couldn’t eat the chicken or the broccoli beef, so I gave that to Carlos.

I have an appointment to get my teeth cleaned tomorrow, but that is not going to happen, instead I will call the dentist and see about canceling that one and getting the two loose teeth looked at.

I was going to try and do something over the weekend but I kept getting the after hours leave a message numbers and figured I would tough it out over the weekend. I hope that wasn’t a mistake, I guess I will have to wait and see on that.

This morning when I got up, I really didn’t feel too good. I didn’t have anything soft to eat so I just had coffee and came to work. I am here early now and got everything unlocked and set up for today’s lesson already, and now I am just waiting to get started.

This morning on the radio everyone was talking about the “Save the Earth” concert. I didn’t watch it myself but the hypocrisy of these folks amazes me. How did they get to the concert? Most of them by private jet most likely. How did they get there from the airport? By one of those huge gas-guzzling limousines is how.

I am so tired of the “Do as I say, not as I do” people who are trying to look after me and my future. I think Al Gore should probably be trying to straighten out his son who is currently out on bail here in San Diego for drug charges, than continuing to put out his planet is in trouble crap. How many and how large are his houses and cars?

So that is it for today I guess. Time to get in there and start teaching. Have a great week.

Did it again

Last night I did it again. For those who have been long time readers of this blog, you might remember a couple of years ago when I had an accident in the house. I was in the family room and I heard the phone ring, so I got up and ran to get the phone. My floors downstairs are ceramic tile and when running for the phone I slipped and fell on my butt.

Well over the next couple of weeks I kept aggravating it to the point where I lost feeling in my leg and after a trip to the emergency room found out that I had pinched a nerve.

Last night I had another fall, but this time I didn’t hurt by back but hit my jaw. I was playing online and chatting with Laila at the time when I took a sip of my soda and it went down the wrong pipe, sort of when you cough while drinking something. Well I jumped up and started running to the kitchen to get a paper towel and I don’t know if I jumped up too fast or if I slipped or what, but the next thing I knew was that I was on the floor and my jaw was killing me.

I had not been gone long, like only 2 minutes from looking at my last chat entry before it happened and when I got back to the PC. But now my jaw is all sore, bruised and swollen and a few of my upper teeth on the left side are loose. I have been debating on calling my dentist as they are not open on Fridays and I have a regular appointment on Tuesday anyway.

I will see when I get home whether to call and get checked out or not. In the meantime I am carefully keeping it clean and trying to deal with the pain.

So I guess that is about it for now. I am not really in a mood to concentrate right now and I of course will have fun explaining to the class why my jaw is all swollen and bruised. At least today is Friday and I have the weekend to recover.

The week is half over

I have been putting it off for about a week now, but I guess today on the way home I will have to hit the commissary. We have food but have run out of several little things so I have to go there to stock up and save a little money.

They just opened it on Friday and everyone has told me the place is huge and just now the crowds that were checking it out have gotten smaller so it should be a good day to go. It would be nice to get a few things anyway. We still have food but are running out of the nice stuff like snack foods and shampoo. Just little things like that.

Yesterday I went ahead and continued my online tech assist with one of my students who is on a ship on the east coast. I think we solved the problem, I just have to wait for an e-mail confirmation.

Then I lay down on the couch for a few minutes, but it turned into a couple of hours. I guess the Nyquil kicked in and really knocked me out. But I am feeling better by the day.

I really felt blah last night. I felt ok physically, but it was hard to get my head into anything seriously last night. I just couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything, perhaps the Nyquil again.

I managed to get myself reset in the game and took care of some other stuff. I was going to go to bed early, and I did kind of. I went to bed when the news at 11 went off, even though I should have gone to bed earlier. I still got a lot of sleep though.

This morning is physical fitness day for the Navy folks so they will be in late, but I came in at the regular time to get everything set up and ready to go. I still have about half and hour before they will be here so I will be working on some power point stuff until they get here.

So with that I guess I will close this post and get to work.

Well it is lunchtime so I figured I would add a little to the entry. One of our student’s wives had a baby last night so he was gone from class today. It kind of kept us from getting too much done, because we don’t want to have him get too far behind the rest of the class. Also one of the female students recently got married and is trying to get all her paperwork straightened out, so today was a good time to excuse her so she could get that all taken care of.

So tomorrow they will be catching up and I think the rest of the class will be putting some of the finishing touches on getting ready for the Captain’s visit next week.

Now I guess I will go ahead and close this out for the day. Time to get a few last minute things done so I can get out of here on time.

On my way home I heard that Rosie O’Donnell is leaving “The View”. I now know what will be all over the news no. I don’t know if she got fired or quit. I don ‘t even watch the show, but seeing all the clips of the controversial things she has done, I say good riddance.
BT

Another Cold

Well Monday morning is here again, and it is time to begin the workweek. I didn’t blog over the weekend as I just had too many windows and tabs open all weekend and didn’t find the time to get to it.

Also Saturday I felt a little tired, and fell asleep for a while, while playing on line. Sunday after getting up early to post outpost we went to church and stopped for food on the way home. I was really hungry when we went to church, and I was hungry while buying the food. When I got home though I took one or two bites and I was already full, so I saved it for later.

It wasn’t that the food was bad or anything, it was because I was coming down with a head cold. No sore throat or upset stomach this time. Just coughing, sneezing, and running nose. This morning I have that sinus headache that comes with it, and we will see what happens suppose. I may have to depart work a little early today.

I have been using Vicks vapor rub and some nose spray along with aspirin. I switched from milk to water and we’ll see how it goes. I hate colds and my nose is starting to get a little red and sore.

Since I didn’t blog from home I don’t have the links to the readings and gospel. We had a new priest, Father Dennis who is running the parish, even though he is assigned to one across town.

Yesterday’s message was about the third appearance of Jesus after his death where Jesus asked John Peter three times if he loved him. It was in response to the three times John Peter denied knowing Jesus on the day of the crucifixion. Also yesterday was baptism day and I guess they baptized a bunch of folks, it was hard to see from where we were sitting and they didn’t put it on the big screen as they usually do.

After church I gave the kids a choice and they wanted Chinese food, so off we went for Chinese takeout. It was great but as I said my appetite had gone away. I got on the game to find out what is happening. Joe appointed me a temporary LT in the fed and then we set about, getting some stuff done to run the fed. It included accepting a new member and talking about little things we could do to make things better.

We have had one member that had been getting a bit out of control lately, and we have another that is always whining about losses. At the same time I have been watching the outpost trends of other federations to see how we can improve ours. We also need to keep and eye on who people are attacking and the retaliations that will come later. Some of our members have lost a lot and it has been due to retaliations.

One member quit his last federation because he said the outpost was not good. He had now joined our federation and is complaining about the outpost. For one, many times his account came out unattended during some pretty busy times, or sometimes when he was out he dropped below outpost coverage.

If you lose big playing in different federations and it seems to be a trend, do not blame it on the federation, and instead take a look at your game play. How many were retaliations from above, were you above outpost, what were your stacking percentages, and how is your infrastructure?

I get so annoyed at people who whine and cry and do not want to accept responsibilities for their crappy play. Just the other day one played was losing and discovered that he had forgotten to put his war minister on his main. Little things like that can make a difference.

Also before you go out make sure you can afford your fleet. If you don’t have 3T at least and you have more that 10 hours before your damage protection expires spend your time earning money. This non-related 50% tax crap is killing some of your fed mates, while being just generally annoying to others. We all have vassals to support and federation emergencies to handle. While it looks cool that Laila, I, and a few others make a ton of credits, but it still took us hard work to get to that point. There are no shortcuts and everyone has the ability to be self-sufficient. You just have to take the time to level up and watch how you assign your planets.

Many folks just want to fight, fight, fight, and that is ok, if you can afford it.

Well I have to go over across the hall and start sitting in over there for a week or so. I am trying to get myself back up to speed on DAMA so I can start teaching that in the future. I have been doing the majority of the OTCIXS teaching lately, so it is time to expand my horizons.

Have a great week.

Lots of rest but still tired

Well it is not the middle of the week and though I managed to go to bed earlier than normal last night, I am still a little tired this morning. Today the class will be a little late because they had physical fitness training. Since I broke everything yesterday before going home I will get a little breather to get my troubleshooting lecture reviewed.

It is basically a few examples to show them where to start and then basically the format that I want them to write the steps down. After that I will turn them loose in the lab and see how they do.

I guess the commissary is going to be closed tomorrow and I was planning on going one day this week, so I suppose I will grocery shop on the way home tonight. We don’t really need that much, just a few things and I want to get in and out in a hurry. So I will see how I feel at the end of the day. We still have plenty of stuff in the house, but we do need a few little items.

I am wondering how long all this Texas Tech stuff will be in the news. They are beating this one to death now. I wish the news agencies would just report things and move on, but the whole news report after this incident is about the incident and maybe 5 minutes dedicated to other news. We know what happened, we know who did it, and we know he was mentally unbalanced. I don’t need to hear every student on campus interviewed. I don’t have to see every law enforcement, coroner, and lawyer available to the news agencies give me their take.

But as usual this will be in the news until the next bad thing happens or until they get to make a fool out of the president or his administration.

Last night I was doing very well in Unification Wars. I went out early and put a few people into damage protection and then sat waiting for someone to put me in. All of a sudden I got suicided from above and I had 5 retaliations on him. I wanted to jump out really high above him and use them, but there was a swarm of hostiles up there and the players in my fed other than Laila would have had a problem keeping outpost up in terms or credits and turns. I don’t like exhausting other people’s resources and think they could better spend their stuff on themselves so they become self sufficient like Laila, me and a few other fed members.

I used my retaliations on him and got a few planets before knocking him into damage protection and then settled in to get into protection myself. On of our allies got attacked and so I put him in, and then I started getting attacked and was hoping to get in myself when I saw another ally that needed help. I got him in but I was getting slammed by a couple of groups who have decided to prevent us from moving up.

It was actually talked about in a chat room set up for one of the other federations. They forgot some of our members were there when they said that due to a planet race they would have to attack anything rising above 1.5 B power rating. So I guess over the next couple of weeks I will stay lower than 1B since I was attacked at 1.3B last night. I don’t mind hanging out low, it just means I get hit from below by a bunch of pests who see my large planet count.

As a federation though if we expect to move up people are going to have to do some work. Everyone needs to become self-sufficient and get their planet counts over a million planets. If they can’t do this they are only holding the entire fed down. We have to be able to make the jump as a group, not just one or two people at a time. Right now these guys above us can afford to sit up there and attack in groups, everyone we try and send up. I don’t mind staying out low, but I also want to go to the next level. Went I am asked to post stacks under 100M I get a little concerned as that player is holding us down. When I see unattended empires out unattended I grow concerned as these people are afforded all the opportunities in the word to reset.

I am a little worried about people who do not reset when live outpost posters are there and then complain when Laila is trying to protect 2 or 3 empires at once as a single op poster. I will not mention any names but last night before I went to bed there were many live posters and we had a heck of a time getting people to go out and reset. Everyone wanted to wait until later. They did and later Laila was the only poster. Though almost everyone is good about posting outpost, if they are not on line then it does not get refreshed. You will get Laila’s stacks but once the rest is depleted you are in trouble.

Look at it also from a different point of view. When we are out our fed mates know who has outpost, what stacks they are getting, and how many people are posting. Don’t you thing the opponents know the same thing about us?

For your own good refresh when everyone is there and can help you. I have stayed up later than my normal bedtime many times to help out. I feel bad when I see anyone take losses. We all can be a little smarter in what we do, me included.

Anyway, time to get to work. Have a good week.

Dental Visit

I made it through Friday the 13th unscathed and got a great night of sleep last night. I got up somewhat early this morning and supported some team mates and then I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. I gave the dentist a hard time about all the people he had there and how business must be going great.

My dentist’s office is quite a distance from the house and when I tuned on the radio the talk stations had a bunch of rerun shows and the music stations had those folks they try to be funny in the mornings so I popped in a cassette tape instead.

I listened to a Black Sabbath tape, and it was great to listen to some music for a change. I have been a Black Sabbath fan since high school and even though the tape I listened to was post Ozzy Osbourne I loved that great beat that all Sabbath songs have.

I love the way the bass and drums sound together and when the lead guitarist goes on a tear it is some great heavy metal.

I am not really much of a fan of music these days. I can’t stand hip hop or rap, and the heavy metal bands these days are loud but not good.

Anyway it was great and when I got home I did laundry and laid down on the couch and watched some TV once I checked the game and saw nothing was going on.

Now I am chatting with Laila until she goes to church, and then I will lay down a little while longer.

Have a great weekend all.

Took part of the day off

Yesterday after my weekend fight, with whatever stuff I managed to catch towards the end of last week, I went to work but I didn’t last long. It is funny that as you start purging all this stuff out of your system all you do is spend time in the bathroom either throwing up or having it come out the other end.

So after coming to work yesterday I still was not feeling very good at all. I got the guys to cover my class for me and then just went home. I spent most of the day just lying on the couch between my frequent trips to the bathroom and I just drank fluids and ate some chicken soup.

Today I got up and though I am physically weak I have not been having all the trips to the restroom and my stomach has settled down. So I should be back to normal soon.

Today the class has the receiver troubleshooting performance tests and so I had a busy morning. They are not done so I will be continuing after lunch. I am still not brave enough to eat anything solid, so I will write this and then I have a few things I can work on until they get back. I am just really tired and my legs feel really weak.

Today on the way to work I was listening to the radio and they were talking about a Russian Immigrant with Tuberculosis that came to this country and is now being confined because it is resistant to treatment and highly contagious. He had it before coming here and did not follow the doctor’s orders to prevent the spread of the disease.

Now that they have confined him the American Civil Liberties Union is fighting the confinement as a violation of his civil rights. What I am wondering, is why he was allowed to come here in the first place?

I thought immigration had procedures in place to keep people with infectious diseases out of the country. I guess we do not have the right to be protected while he has the right to infect anyone he comes in contact with.

That is it for today I guess. I am not really up to making a long post nor continuing to raise my anger about immigration problems. Washington doesn’t care about the people, only being reelected.

I hope I feel better tomorrow.