April 2, 2007

Prayer at Rumayla – Chapter Five…

rmiles7721April 2, 20079Entertainment

…is now up to listen to over at Charles’ site. If you haven’t had the chance to listen to the podcast you really should go check it out. Here is a little blurb on it from Charles’ site and a couple of reviews:

Nineteen year-old Chet Brown arrived home from the Gulf War in the spring of 1991 and found that, for him, the war was only beginning. Betrayed by his friends and lover, ignored by his family, Brown travels across the country in search of meaning behind the horrors of his war.

“Bleak and disturbing… dead-on-target …This first novel is a work of pure psychological conflict.” – Pulitzer Prize winning reporter John Hanchette, Reno Gazette-Journal

“Brutally honest, direct, and meaningful, Prayer At Rumayla is a compelling novel of coming to terms not only with dangers and traumas of the battlefront, but with its aftermath upon the lives of the surviving combatants.” – Midwest Book Review

Luckily I have a copy (a couple actually) but it has been at least a couple of years since I read it, so listening to the podcast itself is like reading it again.


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Bwahaha

rmiles7721April 2, 20074Site News



Bwahaha

Originally uploaded by rmiles.


The deed is done

rmiles7721April 2, 2007Site News



The deed is done

Originally uploaded by rmiles.


Men of Science…

rmiles7721April 2, 2007Site News

…er, women that is. I don’t know where the heck she found it, but Dr. Doches has found the funniest damn picture of Al Gore that I have seen in awhile but you have to read the post first.

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Spot the vampire dog

rmiles7721April 2, 2007Site News



Spot the vampire dog

Originally uploaded by rmiles.


Customer Service

rmiles7721April 2, 20071Site News

As much as I hate going to Wal-Mart, where the heck else can you go for two new tires, milk, and zantac all in one stop. That’s where I’ve been this afternoon. I’ve been needing tires on the back of the Neon for awhile now anyway as one of them has a slow leak that has been developing into a much faster one. The last time I bought tires I went to Kelly-Springfield, but there isn’t one out near me. RePete and I went and window shopped and I got her a little dish, bowl, and cup set that had the Disney princesses on them. Hey, it’s the little things that make the little ones happy.
After that we decided to go to Sonic for a couple of milkshakes. Not to mention the extra long cheese coney and tater tots. Damn, sometimes you just gotta have a bit of the old junk food. It rocked. She enjoyed going as well. I couldn’t get her to touch the coney, but she did share my tater tots with me. We didn’t do anything particularly special, but sometimes it’s the small things that count for that parent-child time.
You know, I forgot what I was posting here and hit publish. Duh.
Shortly before RePete and I left Sonic, this guy and his family drive up in their Expedition and order drinks. I guess at Sonic you can get your fountain drinks with all kinds of add-ins for a little bit more. After they had paid, the guys beeps them back out and starts raising hell about paying six buxks for something that should have cost four something. The girl explained pretty thoroughly about the add-ins, etc and the guy just kept on raising hell. I was getting embarrassed for the girl (and the guys family) because he was being such a dick. Sometimes it just does not pay to be in customer service.

History, Part 1

rmiles7721April 2, 2007Politics

I find it interesting that the older I get, the more “history” that I see. When I was young I used to sort of envy my great-grandmother. She was born in 1883, so had seen all kinds of changes in her life. Things coming into common usage. Automobiles. Airplanes. Telephones. Televisions. Great wars. WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam among others.

What got me thinking about it, was that I came across a short post that I put up on April 2nd, 2005. Pope John Paul II had died. The post itself was nothing major or ground shaking, just a quick observation that a religious leader had passed away. My wife’s family is Catholic so it means a bit more to them than it does to me. The Pope is just another guy to me. Yeah, one with influence over millions of people world-wide in many different countries, but just another guy. The Pope has a lot less influence over politics and other things than he used to though. I think that a lot of people have become jaded about organised religion. Not nessecarily God or anything, but religion itself.

My personal opinion is that it’s all a crock of shit anyway, but that’s my opinion and we all know about opinions. Not only that but I would never deign to force my opinions on anybody else. My daughter for instance, loves to go to church, loves Jesus and all that other stuff that goes along with it. When she talks about it you can just about see my son’s eyes bug out of his head because he has a lot of the same beliefs as I do but he has a much harder time minding his own business and holding his tongue.

Oh yeah, I was talking about history, not religion. I’ve seen eight presidencies since I was born. Some good, some bad, some laughable. I have seen the public’s respect for the office slowly erode away, particularly over the last 15 years. No longer is it President Bush. Now it is Mr Bush or Mr Clinton. By god, whether you like them or not, they are the President of the United States and the office needs to be shown respect whether the men that hold it respect it or not. The mainstream media is guilty of it as are both sides of the political equation. That just depends on who is holding office at the time as to who shows the least amount of respect.

I have also seen eight Georgia Governors as well. Although I have visited many states I have always lived in Georgia and love it here. I have seen many changes as well. The area north of Atlanta where I grew up has changed immensely. I grew up in the Sandy Springs and Roswell area and when I was a kid there were all kinds of dirt roads and “country” areas. You would be hard put to find a dirt road in the area now.

I had some other stuff that I wanted to add, but I have kind of lost my train of though, thus the Part 1 in the title. Maybe I will come back to it later.

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Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Mark My Words, third world county, stikNstein… has no mercy, basil’s blog, DragonLady’s World, Pirate’s Cove, The Bullwinkle Blog, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and LaTogaStrappata®, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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More on Spam

rmiles7721April 2, 20074Blogging, Technology

Since the actions that I took concerning trackback and comment spam didn’t work, I am using a plugin called Spam Firewall to curb the spam load here. Actually the comments and captchas worked just fine, but I got too many complaints from people.

Renaming the trackback script worked for all of about 24 hours before it was back to business as usual.

I don’t know how well Spam Firewall is going to work with trackbacks and the open trackback alliance, so if there are any problems, please let me know. In theory it should be just fine, I know it does what it is supposed to but I am concerned that it will block legitimate trackbacks as well.

I am also using a plugin called Blog Janitor (how fitting after the last post) to close all comments and track-backs on entries that are over 45 days old. I still get the occasional comment on the Natalee Holloway posts, but that is just not worth the hassle.

Unfortunately I woke up about five o’ clock so I had to do something with my time before everyone else wakes up. I may try to hit the sack again for at least a couple of hours.