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Topics - Rico
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« on: November 05, 2016, 04:08:15 PM »
If anyone else on the forum is a fan of Jonathan Coulton and didn't know about it, he puts on a cruise every year ( https://jococruise.com/ ). Misty and I have gone several years in a row, and it's a blast. This year it leaves out of San Diego, and there are still cabins available. In the past, we made up about 25-30% of the passenger list, but this year the entire ship is ours. Lots of nerd entertainment, board games, and general geekery. We have an incredibly good time every year, and come back super relaxed. Misty likes it because my cellphone doesn't work for large portions of the time we're on the cruise, so she finally gets my undivided attention. =)
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« on: February 01, 2007, 09:28:51 PM »
You know Evonus, no one can debate anything very well if they can't debate either side. You say you have a valid point, but no one wants to accept your arguement. Why don't we do this:
You state your stance on the whatever topic you want(and one folks have slammed you for in the past) and give a basic outline of your arguement for your position. We'll tear it apart and show you how to build it right. I can't think of much you've tried to take a stand on that I couldn't find an arguement for. I'm also pretty sure some of the other intelligent folks around here are more than capable of lending a hand. Our objective isn't to convince anyone, just construct a strong arguement. Worse case, you get a chance to see how everyone thinks an arguement should be staged. My guess is that you might learn something out of it, and if we're lucky, you won't be the only one.
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« on: September 25, 2006, 02:35:06 PM »
I always thought Bill Clinton was a smart guy, but watch what he does to this reporter. I get so sick and tired of seeing reporters pulling that kind of stuff, and it was really nice to see some one do something about it. I hate how conservative media will host a liberal figurehead, or visa versa as often, just to appear to be neutral. Of course, once the individual arrives for the interview, they get bombarded with these little pokes and jabs in an attempt to make them look stupid. We've got some sorry political leaders in our country, but I firmly believe it's a sorrier media that makes decent ones look worse.
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« on: August 11, 2006, 04:36:50 PM »
Does the belief in magic necessarily preclude faith in God, or visa versa? I know it's an odd question, but I'm not accustomed to sitting
around like I have been the past week or so. It's driving me a little nuts, so I guess I just started thinking. Being a Christian, though not necessarily a devout nor a typical one, I believe strongly in my God. The Church tells us that magic is the domain of Lucifer and simply charlatan tricks for the most part. I'm willing to accept the likeliness of that, however I've been in the world for a number of years now.
In my various trips here and there in the world, I've bumped into some pretty weird stuff. I've seen dark things in corners that had nothing to do with any cast shadow, people that you could tell at first glance were darker than any mere absence of light, and I've also seen the flip-side in things like injured animals and people nursed back to health when there had been no hope before.
The good stuff can easily be explained by the grave of God, of course. It's the darker stuff that has no explanation in doctrine.
So, that's the background to my thought, of which I truly have no firm opinion.
I believe that the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy is veritas universalis in that the concept applies to all things. So,
it doesn't make sense that dark magic would exist without light to balance it. So does God grant certain people abilities that extend beyond the normal, or is that just the stuff of comic books and fantasy novels?
I was just curious what you folks thought.
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« on: April 03, 2005, 05:14:24 AM »
So, my sister goes to a smaller college in the southern part of Oklahoma. While in one of her classes on day, her teacher starts running down the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. The teacher says that it makes fun of blue collar workers and poor people from the south. She procedes to explain to the class why they shouldn't watch it because it doesn't treat these poor people.
My sister, bless her little heart, raises her hand to be acknowledged. Once the teacher allows her to speak, she asks her, "Have you seen it?"
"Well.... no, but..."
"Then how can you tell me what to think about it?"
Of course, the teacher didn't know what to say to that, so my sister kept on going. She told the teacher that SHE was a redneck, and that's what they're called, and her whole family had beem blue collar workers for generations. My sister continued with how we didn't need her to stand up for us, we were perfectly capable of doing it ourselves, and further more, we had enough pride in our heritage to not take offense when people were having a little laugh at our expense. We don't mind, because to us, a laugh is more than worth any discomfort it may cause so long as it wasn't intended to be mean. Also, those guys on the Tour had been blue collar workers all their lives, and they weren't making fun of other people, they were making fun of themselves. They tell stories about the dumb stuff they've been a part of so that the rest of us can all laugh and say, "yeah we've done that too!" So the last thing my sister told her was that we didn't need some dumb yankee who'd never even seen the routine she was running down telling us how we should feel about it and trying to defend us without our permission. Class let out early that day.
To you high and mighty people that care so much about us poor white trash:
Suck it. How dare you insult us by implying that we can't defend ourselves? If I didn't like some one saying something, I don't need you to handle it for me. I think I can take care of that myself. I know your pathetic attempts to tell other people their being mean to us are really just you trying to show everyone how much better than me you are. Well, guess what! We have way too much pride in ourselves to be your next cause, so go find some other helpless demographic and stay the hell away from ours!
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« on: September 23, 2004, 08:38:40 PM »
I was busy this week and didn't get in to see the fire fight.
That really blew up fast, and got out of control. I'm not sure that banning Gillivray was the right thing to do, though. Why not just lock the thread and call it good. He certainly wasn't the only one being insulting. Law, and I both said some pretty inflammatory things, and I think there's plenty of blame to go around.
Topics concerning religion always run the risk of getting heated. Faith is a powerful, and motivating thing, no matter what, or who, it's in. Gillivray may not hold to any religion, but he's still fallen victim to hate. It's hard to kill people sometimes, unless you can alienate them and make them less than human. Does that make it right? Of course not. I'm only pointing out that his motivation is no less driving than those of us who do believe in God. He has strong feelings, and we shouldn't turn our back on them because one topic got off course.
Law is a good man, and he's a regular, but that doesn't mean that he's any less at fault here than Gillivray. Maybe I should be banned, too. After all, I was pretty upset and said some hard things in that thread. For me, it actually started out as simply wanting to say I found it disrespectful, but Demo is the master at drawing me into arguements.
Anyway, I know I'm going to get slammed for this, but consider unbanning Gillivray. That arguement was as much my fault as his.
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« on: September 14, 2004, 10:02:29 AM »
Well, the topic of Gun Control is hot in the media again these days. What do you think?
Seems like our president is bowing to pressure put on him by the NRA and refusing to apply the innitiative needed to maintain our current level of control on the market. The right to have your own arms is a guaranteed right, but it doesn't really say what type of arms you are allowed.
My personal opinion on that is that if it's taken in the spirit that it was intended, that means NO restricting of weapons, at least not for anyone who has not been convicted of a crime. Our Founding Fathers had just fought for their freedom, and had come from a society where in the past, the common people had not been allowed to own weapons for fear of insurection. Knowing that a government founded by the people should exist only by the sufferance of said people, they felt that allowing everyone to have their own weapons would deter a goverment that would suppress the liberties which were being granted. Unless you warp the facts, I'd say it's pretty clear what they had intended.
Then again, no one really has any use for assault weapons. By requiring that owners apply and be certified to own one, you're not really keeping them from it. You're just ensuring that those who have them, for the most part, are not a threat to other people who don't. Many States have a Conceal-Carry permit that can be obtained, and it seems like that hasn't really hurt anyone. Plus, so long as the fees don't get silly, it's a good way to raise money for wildlife conservation and law enforcement.
I'm not really opposed to some gun control, just as long as it doesn't go overboard. I can easily see both sides of the arguement, though.
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« on: July 13, 2004, 08:05:05 PM »
MOSCOW, July 13 (Reuters) - Russia and Georgia should not allow a mounting crisis over Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia to derail improving bilateral ties, top officials from both states were quoted as saying on Tuesday. The two states have engaged in an angry war of words after Georgia's nationalist President Mikhail Saakashvili -- who recently subdued another independent-minded region, Adzhara -- launched the latest drive to restore control over South Ossetia.... http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L13166373.htmThis is a pretty serrious situation and could easily go to all to hell. Who do you think should be supported if the UN gets involved?
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« on: June 25, 2004, 09:23:56 AM »
I shared this story with a friend this morning, but I thought you guys might get a laugh out of it.
Basically, this morning at o-dark 30, several members of my unit and I had "Drown Proofing." This is a class where they teach you what to do if you ever get caught in water and have to wade a long ways to shore, or have to wait for an evac or something.
The uniform was boots, BDUs, and later rucksacks. Events included five-minutes of treading water, two lap swim, dead-man floating," jump off high-dive, hauling each other through the water by the collar, floating with a ruck as the floatation device, using two rucks and a poncho to make a two-person floater, and finally, using your BDU bottoms as a floater.
I did everything and had little trouble, other than just getting worn out! Well, everything except the little BDU-floater trick. You see, what you do is swim out to the deep end, untie your boots and take them off, tie them together again and hang them around your neck, take your belt off and fasten it around your chest, or where ever, unbutton your pants, get them off, button them back together, tie the ankles together, swing the thing over your head to trap air in it, and then pull it all over your head and float with it....
Yeah, I nearly drowned while trying it. Me of all people! I, who pride myself on being able to go from decent to Jay-bird in 5.2 seconds, nearly drowned trying to take my pants off. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! I finally got it all done and lay there floating in my hard-earned floaty, sputtering and coughing, and thinking... "When my wife hears about this, I'll never hear the end of it."
Well, my friends. She's laughing her butt off, so you might as well get a chuckle too. This one's for you, so enjoy!
By-the-way, second funny thing was that apparently beer is NOT allowed at these events. I thought that since alcohol is lighter than water, the more beer you had in you, the easier it would be to float. No brainer, right? Apparently there's an Army Regulation that prohibits it.
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« on: February 17, 2004, 12:05:13 PM »
Well, Demo asked for more ranting, so here's my attempt. Does lazy, as well as stupid count?
Okay, in my profession we actually have quite a few females working along side the males. Since it's a job that often requires as much mental strength as physical, women really have the chance to excel in it, unlike many of the other Army occupational specialties where the females in a unit are often, and sometimes unfairly, limited on what they are allowed to accomplish. The point of that beast of a sentence is to point out that I work with some great girls that really make a difference, but there is this one...
She has been on three deployments with us and everytime it's the samething. While everyone around her is rushing around to get everything setup and functional, she sits in a chair and reads, falls asleep, or stand off to the side somewhere and talks with observers. If you ask her to do something and you are her immediate suppervisor, she'll sort of do it, but it'll take her a long time to get to it. If you don't have any possition in her chain of command, she will just look at you, litterally.
This girl has pulled this kind of crap so many times on just the few deplotments that she's been on that she is just detested by every member of the team. It's not like we haven't tried either. just a few months ago we were deployed out to a Korean Army base to assist with their opperations a give a demonstration of our own stand-alone-capabilities. While there, this girl sat in a chair, in the middle of a room, and had the other members of the team scambling around her to get things up and running. The way we work is that everyone has their own systems, which they set up themselves, and then some of the more technically inclined people, such as myself, get the network up between the two sides of our opperation. The system ops are resposible for getting their system up and running, and then on the network.
This girl sat there the whole time and let other people set her system up for her. Then at one point when it wasn't connecting to the network and I told her to look into it, she told me she didn't know how and went back to reading. Now, she had been on a couple of these things already, how in the hell does she not know how to use her own system!? I let it go and fixed it myself. Through out the day, samething, over and over.
Finally a the end of the day I took her to the side and had a talk with her.
"Look, everyone is getting a little upset with you."
"Why?"
"Because your sandbagging, and..."
"Don't call me names."
"What?"
"Don't call me names, I don't like that."
"...oookay? Well, anyway, you've been out here long enough that you should know your own system, and you don't."
"No one ever showed me how."
"It's not their job to show you how. You need to either ask, or figure it out, but don't sit there and wait for them to just walk over and give you a class."
"blah blah blah [/excuse]"
"Yeah, right. You also need to stop sitting on your butt while everyone else around you is working to get setup."
"I don't know what to do."
"So find something. Ask somebody. We have too much to do to have you sandbagging like that."
"If you're going to insult me, I'm leaving. Goodbye"
"What the... Are you fucking serrious?"
"You can't cuss at me."
"Really? #$%^% #$%^# #$%^# [/long string of four letter words and other pent up stuff] ...and if you don't stop dragging ass, I swear to God, you're getting a pipe in the back of the head. People like you get other people killed because you're to stupid to do your job, and to lazy to learn anyway. If we were in the desert right now, which we may be in another month, and we're in the field, you can guarantee I will frag your snadbaggin-ass in a heartbeat before I let you get one of my battle-buddies killed. Do you understand me, you worthless #$%^?"
"I'm talking to SSG So-and-so about this."
She did, and he asked her if had taken notes...
Anyway, this last deployment, though we asked them not to, her section sent her with us again. She pulled the same crap, so we sent her ass home with a note to her NCO. She griped to the Equal Opportunity guys about it, saying we were being sexist, dispite the fact that there were about 8 other girls out there with us doing just fine. The company asked us to take her back, just to save the heartache of paper work, so we did. We put her on guard-detail since you don't have to move to do it. She fell asleep, of course, so she got a very negetive counceling, and should be getting her Article 15 in the next few weeks.
Saw her NCO today too. Bastard sent her to us because he doesn't like her either. We've decided to send her to Brigade and let her be somebody's driver, or do paperwork, or something. They've got some really crappy jobs planned for her already.
Moral of the story? Well, despite how ticked I get with the Army, sometimes things happen that just make you smile and renew your faith in the system. Too bad it just took too long. Hope that wasn't too boring for you, but it was really nice to get it off the chest.
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« on: February 13, 2004, 01:32:48 PM »
Hi. I wasn't really planning on ever subscribing here, but I saw some one posting that I haven't seen in a while, so I went ahead and dropped in.
Howdy
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