Category: General

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Willow Grove Air Show

My wife, two friends and I attended the Willow Grove (PA) Air Show on Saturday (9/14) and came away highly impressed.
Of note was the combined field assault demonstration put on by the military. It featured a Marines forward recon team inserted by Bell Huey in order to mark the target. Two overflights of F-18s and A-10 Warthogs served to soften the target enough to allow two Stallion helicopters to deploy two squads of Marines. The Marines’ advance was covered by two Apaches, a LAV (light-armored vehicle) and more air support from the F-18s and A-10s. A Stallion then dropped off a Hummer which the recon team used to exit the field. More air cover/suppressive fire and the Stallions returned to extract the Marines.
Also noteworthy was the Thunderbirds (the Air Force’s precision flying team). (On a side note: the turning radius of the F-16s seemed to be such that they turned around roughly right over my house 2 miles from the Willow Grove air base. I got a secondary show on Sunday afternoon just by standing on my front stoop. *grin*)
All of this served to drive two points home to me:

  1. I very much would not want to be on the receiving end of the US’s military fury. The speed, grace, agility and deadliness of the US’s air arsenal was plain for all to see. I think that any but the best equipped and most prepared foes should quake in their boots at the mere mention of US air power. But then again, I’m a bit of a jingoistic patriot, so what do I know?
  2. We are incredibly fortunate to have no personal knowledge of modern warfare on our home soil. We are blessed to not have to cringe with the sound of jet engines, to not look with fear and trepidation skyward at the sound of a helicopter’s rotors.

May it be ever so.

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Shocked

I am in shock. After spending most of last week in New Hampshire, I returned to find an email in my inbox from my best friend, the upshot of which was: his life sucks. He took some extra time to graduate and was all set to (finally) get an engineering job that was ideally placed (i.e., a couple hours’ drive from his girlfriend). In interest of doing so, he took a complete physical. Turns out he has ITP, a fairly rare blood disease where his antibodies eat his own platelettes, making blood clotting impossible.
Since he couldn’t pass his physical, the engineering firm he was slated to work for said “Why don’t we hold off on your actually working here until you’re all better, mmmkay?”
So now, he’s up the proverbial creek, sans flat-bladed hydropropulsion device, because said firm wrote back and said “You know what? This is taking too long. Why don’t you reapply for the job when you’re ready, mmmmkay?”
Still haven’t gotten to the shocking part, though. I found out last night that his younger sister was killed in a car crash Saturday night on Route 206 near Princeton. The weather was so bad that they couldn’t medivac her; they had to take her by ambulance to Children’s Hospital in Philly.
I just don’t know how to take it. She was a very intelligent, very beautiful young woman taken from us far too early.
The Trenton Times blurb can be seen here.

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Busy.

Been busy here at work. Have I mentioned that I hate Oracle and Perl? Have I mentioned that the current project I’m working on employs both of those?

It’s so hard to go back to Perl after using php for so long and Oracle is just overkill for what I need to do. *sigh* Oh well.

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Informational Work Paralysis

They shouldn’t let me near the Internet. There’s just so much good stuff out there that I get Informational Work Paralysis. To put it bluntly: my need to inhale information supersedes all other concerns, and my work thus suffers.
Seriously. The Wall Street Journal and Gamespot need to start charging to let people read their opinions in full, if only for my career’s sake. Little Green Footballs should go, too, along with Instapundit, NRO, etc.
How can I possibly code Perl when the War With Iraq is being planned and endlessly opined about?

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Busy Weekend

Had a busy weekend. My good friends Aron and Heather got married yesterday in Cherry Hill. That was in addition to:

  1. Aron’s bachelor party Friday night
  2. My grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary party on Saturday
  3. A now-traditional Wedding Day IHOP visit (side note: a modification to said tradition has been put in place. We forgot to do IHOP prior to the wedding this time. Luckily, A&H were married in a Jewish ceremony. So, from now on, all Gentile weddings will be preceded by IHOP, while all Jewish weddings will be celebrated in a like manner afterwards). We’ll be employing this tradition at Doug&Renee’s wedding (if it should ever happen) and Brad’s wedding, should he ever consent to marrying Lauren.
  4. A hurried trip to Macy’s for pantyhose, shoes, and a wrap for the wife. I’d like a round of applause for what was probably the shortest, most effective shopping expedition I’ve ever been on with my wife. We actually employed the Navy Seal Shopping Method™ successfully. One for the record books.
  5. More driving than I care to account for.

The wedding itself was beautiful. I have never attended a Jewish wedding before, and I was lucky enough to be chosen as best man for this one.
Aron’s dad looked like he was about to burst from pride and Heather’s mom couldn’t stop crying. Par for just about any wedding, I guess. *grin*
Reception was nice, and I didn’t flub the toast too badly. Aron’s dad raised a “mazzletov!” from the crowd; I drew an “Amen.” Guess being a PK shows through at the weirdest times, eh?

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Go Forrester.

Doug Forrester, former mayor of West Windsor, NJ (my high school hometown) has drawn even with Bob “The Torch” Torricelli, who continues to be plagued by ethics problems.
Go Forrester.

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Frist Proust!

Figured it was time to latch on to the blogging bandwagon (“blandwagon”?), since everyone and their brother’s dog now seems to have one.
Need to come up with a better title for this h’yar blog; “rm -rf /bin/laden” was the first thing that lept to mind, as it’s sitting here on the whiteboard in my office, staring me in the face.
On a side note, I’m continually blown away by how other people seem to have independantly come up with my nickname/screenname of choice.
Unless they saw my stint at Halflife.org as an inspiration and yoinked my nick.
The world may never know.