Get ready for voting

If you are an expat and you want to vote, here is the place to go and register: http://www.fvap.gov/ Important Dates for UOCAVA citizens: General Election: 11/06/2012 Register by: 10/09/2012 Request ballot by: 10/30/2012 Ballot Return from Within U.S.: 7pm, 11/06/2012 Ballot Return from Outside U.S.: 11/12/2012* The more people vote, the better the outcome will be. When Obama get's sent back to Chicago we don't want anyone to say 'he wuz robbed'. Go vote, and let the better man win.

Safe cracker

Frustrating morning running around the airport in DF. an early
flight and a late beer meant I only slept a few hours before being
rudely snatched from the arms of sleep by the crazy annoying alarm
on my cell phone. I got ready and almost walked out the door forgetting
my passport in the safe, walked back into the room and entered the
wrong code,bonk, then the code I was sure was right, bonk, then a
variation on the right code, bonk, then the right code again, bonk.
The LED flashed "slep" and blinked off.

Fuck. I was on the verge of being late for the flight so I called the
front desk, no answer, ana de llaves, no answer, gerente. nada.
Ran the 200 yards to the front desk; "estoy (gasp) en (gasp) hab. (gasp)
veinte-tres zero cuatro (gasp)". blank look from the girl wrapped
in two coats and two scarves because the lobby of the NH hotel is
the coldest place in mexico. two more guesses at my room number
and then finally the girl lights up, says she'll send the guy right
away. 15 minutes later, the guy shows up to unclog a toilet, no magic
safe cracking box. fuck, now I'm actually late for the flight, he leaves
and comes back 10 minutes later with a box, the safe pops open and we
jog to the front desk.

I had a ticket, so I just dropped my bag at the AM counter and the girl
said 'they are boarding, hay que correr'. A nice lady in a wheelchair
helped me cut most of the security line, through security with just a quick
explanation of what a kindle is, "libro, no es un ipad" since they are
making people with ipads take them out and put them in another tray,
and I jogged to the gate where I was third to the last to board the bus.

After all that running and huffing the plane turned around went back to
the ramp because the pilot's seatbelt was broken. I could have slept half
an hour more.

Rhythms

I'm eating a subway sandwich at my desk and reading
through lunch. Lunches here are from 2 to 4 and it's
not recommended to stay in the office and eat while working,
it tends to stretch out the day from a 10 hour day to a 12
hour day. bleh.

I'm reading one of the best things posted on the web, it's
"Rhythms" by Neptunus Lex, and it tells the story of a couple
of days strike fighter operations on an aircraft carrier during
the Iraq war.

it's the poetry of war, and really fantastic writing. He brought
to life what it must be like to serve on an aircraft carrier.

Still bummed out

I'm too busy lately to just surf around the blogosphere, and
my bookmarks got nuked in a harddrive crash last year so
I mostly read just a few on my bloglinks, Instapundit, Jerry Pournelle and
Neptunus Lex being the most common.

Out of force of habit I clicked over to Neptunus Lex and it hit
me again. What a sad week.

He was nice enough to respond to an email I sent:

On Nov 04, 2011, at 04:12 PM, Joe wrote:

Hey Lex,

I'm sure you're going to convert all of these notes into a book, but what I really can't wait for is the movie. It will be easy to sell, the tagline could be "Top Gun meets The Rookie". Dennis Quaid would be the obvious guy to play the main character, with love interests, dogfights in prop planes, high speed motorcycle rides down the coast ('sweet home alabama' playing in the background), jet aircraft screaming off the runway.

anyway, keep up the great writing,

Joe


ex lexl@mac.com
11/5/11

to me
Dennis Quaid? My wife would love it!

Thanks,

Lex

From his blog back in 2003:

Homecoming:

"Finally you are moored, the colors are shifted from the main mast to the after staff, the brow is lowered to the quarterdeck and permissions are piped to go ashore. First , the new fathers, those Sailors whose wives have given birth while they were at sea. Then the rest of us, in order of seniority. You go ashore, find your family, and experience the most exquisite sensation of sweetness that God has given man to ever know. It is unalloyed bliss.

At that moment, everything you have experienced is almost worth it. The moment will not last forever, but it is enough."

Neptunus Lex

A good bio from the Navy times of Neptunus Lex.

"But as a prominent military blogger, he was part analyst, part cheerleader, part critic and part poet who wrote about the Navy, his family, the military and global affairs with the casual tone, frankness and familiarity that flows through ready rooms. His sea stories were personal memoirs as well as parables."

Missing Man

Fantastic writer, storyteller and Pilot Neptunus Lex was killed in a crash.
Fair winds.

Standing like a Stone Wall

I was pretty bummed out and worried that the death of
Andrew Breitbart at a too young age (younger than me)pretty
much dooms us to 4 more years of the current president. I
feel like my ancestors must have felt when Stonewall Jackson
was killed. Sure there are other non-left slanted media people,
but Andrew Breitbart actually delivered, pointing out the
stupidity and hypocrisy of the left. Maybe we can still win
in november, but I doubt it.

But then again, since I can't be in the USA to help fight, I need
to at least blog consistently to do my small part of replacing a
blogging giant.

To get restarted on blogging I thought i'd start with what I believe.
In one article on the life of Breitbart, I saw that he was a
south park republican. The distinction between South Park Republican
and Libertarian eludes me, but I'd go with that title as well.

South Park insults everyone equally. Every ox gets gored on that show.
The truth is I don't care what other people do or believe, but like
south park I do reserve the right to laugh at them if their beliefs
or actions are really stupid. I don't care if people are gay, or get
married to gays, or smoke pot, or crank, or buy sudafed or grow organic
food, of funnel beer or believe in communism, or smoke, eat potato chips, go
to church, don't go to church. Don't fucking care. and the government shouldn't care either.

They definitely shouldn't have people making GS-16 money inspecting
gay weddings, or bunny farms or organic farms or feeling up people in security
lines or arresting someone because their daughter drew a picture of a gun.
In the 90's we could afford to think like that and hire people to do stupid
shit, but we can't afford it. I have to do my taxes this weekend, and even
though I don't live in the USA and get no benefits from the USA, i still have
to pay taxes so some dickwad can make it illegal for me to buy two packs of
sudafed at the houston airport and bring them back here.

We need to be throwing the bums out at every level, elected, bureaucrats,
everyone, and making it easier for the bums that are thrown out to start a
business without any bureaucracy getting in the way. If someone wants to make
a new law "for the children", then they should find two other laws to take off
the books.

To get the growing rolls of people off of food stamps and disablity, the
government just needs to get out of the way and let businesses start up,
let pipelines be built, let wells be drilled. Queers,smokers, tweekers,
stoners go do what you want, but at some point you'll have to grow up and
be men. Take responsibility for yourself. The government should stop taking
responsibility for people. help people when they are down, sure, but the
government can't be the universal nipple, condom supplier, food giver, job
provider, and it shouldn't. Any group that can give you everything will be
able to take everything away as well.

Anyway. to some up. do what you want, don't expect to get bailed out so
stop taking crazy bets. Vote out every single person currently in office.
If you're an expat like me, be sure to vote this year.

It's the only way to be sure.

I'm reading reports about the afgani's days of rage because
a few books were burned and I find that I've lost the entire
feeling of give a fuck about that region. Since we've already
given a date for withdrawal, we should just pull out now.

I thought the small footprint approach in afganistan was correct.
(Don't fight a land war in asia seems like a good rule of thumb) and
I supported the war in Iraq because it seemed like creating a stable
democratic country in the place where it seemed possible could have
worked to gradually free the entire region from it's medieval mentality.
I never thought a large scale war in Afganistan could be successful, you
can't convert a country full of illiterate tribesman into taxpayers,
and the Russians proved combat doesn't work either.

Iraq might have worked, but in reality President Bush never made the right
case or pushed back against the constant stream of lies and mistruths,
so that the results of the whole operation was 'Bush lied people died'.
The narrative that was written by his political enemies and the media
is the one that has survived and is repeated over and over.

Iraq has instead inspired the Arab spring, which looks to me more like
the Iranian revolution than the American revolution. The US government
has returned to a policy of weakness and apologies, so now it appears
the cycle of 1980 to 2008 is going to repeat, probably with much worse
outcomes for everyone. Weakness will lead to attacks, the attacks will
probably be worse because they will be nukes. We'll respond with the
only thing we have left, which will be nukes.

I'd say it doesn't matter who is in charge next year, but apologies and
weakness is the worst thing to do right now. It will inspire another
generation of people to think they can win. If they are going to hate
us anyway, it's better to be feared and hated than just hated. If it
looks like a weak horse, and quacks like a weak horse, it is probably
a weak horse.

Dominos of Doom

Reading Zerohedge the past couple of years it's easy to see DOOM
approaching. Now DOOM really seems to be just weeks or months away
for the Euro, probably pretty close for US banks as well, one thing
seems really obvious to me. All credit default swaps should be
cancelled and they should be made illegal.

Banks buy cds' to hedge against losses, but really they just make an
entangled alliance of risk. Banks think they are hedged, so there
is no risk and they can be even more leveraged. When one domino falls
they are all going to blow up like the scene in Finding Nemo, where a
falling torpedo sets off all the mines around the submarine that Nemo
and Dory are hiding in. boom.

Instead of hedging the risk the cds' are just propagating the risk
around the world, and who knows how much of it there is. why they
weren't outlawed after 2008 made me lose the little bit of faith
I had in the congress.

If the OWS people want to protest something concrete they should be
demanding the end to TBTF, and CDS' instead of just demanding cheap
pot.

Steve Jobs bought me a car

When I got to use the mechanincal engineering department's Mac SE's
back in 1988, I was amazed, compared to the vt100 terminals or
DOS box's we had it was beamed in from another world. My parents asked
me what computer to buy in 1998 and I said buy an iMac. Tricky to use
dialup on that, but my young relatives were able to create creepy
speeches using the speech synthesizer. Around 2002/2003 I was sitting in
a cubicle in houston listening to music playing from the adjacent
cubicle, and it never repeated. over days and of music, it was
always different. I finally went around the corner and asked how
are you doing that? and my neighbor showed me his iPod. I saw that
and immediately looked up aapl stock and saw that it had almost as
much cash as market cap. I used the only gambling money I had, which
was the remains of my dot-bomb account on etrade and bought 2k worth
of aapl.

If I had kept more of it longer or bought more I could have been rich, instead
i made enough to buy a car. I'll give myself credit that I can recognize genius when I see something like an ipod for the first time, but true genius is the guy who could create something like an ipod, or iphone (my iphone 1 being stolen still hurts), an ipad or Mac air, and not compromise with the people who must have been there saying
don't spend the money on designing a new interface, just sell what we have
and maintain profitability.

True genius.

Anyway. sad that you are gone, I hope you find peace.

September 11th - 10 years later

I was watching cnbc when they broke into live coverage of
the premarket with video of the first tower that was hit.
We had just gone to New York on vacation 2 weeks before, and
we went into the south tower to Windows on the World, but
they wouldn't let us on the roof, it was raining slightly.
I said don't worry, we'll come back to New York another time.
-doh. When they showed the first tower was on fire, I said
"that's the building we didn't go into" and I went back to
eating my cereal. I with my head down in the feedbag I didn't
see the 2nd plane hit, just the resulting red glow of the
steel after the fireball subsided.

Strangely enough, we left home. I brought my wife to school
and I went to the office. Even with war starting I was scheduled
to go offshore the next day and I had to do some preparatory
work on a unix box at the office. My boss called from NO
and said they were evacuating and I could go home too, but
I wasn't finished yet, so I rolled a tv out of a conference room
into the hallway where I could hear it. Every website
I knew was down, it wan't until later in the afternoon that
I discovered Instapundit, so I was stuck listening while
software slowly ground through some data. When they said
that the south tower had collapsed, I couldn't believe it,
I pictured the top falling off, or partially collapsing. I
couldn't picture the building collapsing because it was so
freaking huge. Just seeing it on tv didn't describe it's size
you had to walk around it, and look up from the base to see
up the dizzying heights to appreciate how giant those buildings
were. I didn't imagine it collapsing into a pile of dust and
twisted steel.

I finally finished and went home, then I went offshore that
night, arriving to fourchon at 5:30 to take one of the last
helicopters that week, because they shut down all helicopters
as well later that day. I spent the next week working in
a logging cabin, and reading about what had happened on
blogs, the best information was on Jerry Pournelle's
page The stories about firefighters running up the stairs
to the 75th story were pretty amazing, but the most amazing was
the story of Rick Rescorla, who was singing Men of Harlech while
getting his people to evacuate, and staying until the building
collapsed around him.

Men of Harlech

Men of Harlech stop your dreaming
can't you see their spear points gleaming
see their warrior pennons streaming
to this battle field

Men of Harlech stand ye steady
Let it not be ever said ye
For this battle were unready
Welshmen do not yield

From the hills rebounding
Let the war cry sounding
Summon all, the clarion call
the mighty foe surrounding

Men of Harlech on to glory
This will ever be your story
keep these stirring words before ye
Welshmen do not yield

Fight for father, sister, mother,
Each is bound to each as bother;
And with faith in one another,
We will win or die!
Tho' our mothers may be weeping,
Tho' our sisters may be keeping
watch for some who now are sleeping;
On the battlefield,

Still the trumpet's braying,
Sounds on ever saying,
Let each bowman pierce a foe,
And never stop the slaying,

Till invaders learn to fear us,
And no Saxon linger near us;
Men of Wales! our God doth hear us,
Never will we yield!

We'll not die, be conquered never
Harlech, Harlech, lives forever
Freedoms' from the greatest giver
Freedom is our good.
See how Welshmen shouting run down
from the moutains they do come down
Like a storm that strikes at sun down
boil up like a flood.


Welshmens strength has made her
Freedom's strong crusader
Swords of Welsh men have cut deep
the heart of the invader

The sword is met, by sword replying
steel on steel on strength relying
See where Gwyers' flag is flying
Freedom's in her blood.

President Obama, bestest writer ever

A good article at American Thinker showing that
the President's earlier writing at the law review
that is as grammatically impaired as mine, miraculously
changes to become the best memoir eva'.

The comments are even funnier, one comment suggesting
that the grammatically impaired are an oppressed minority.
(Sing it brother)

I don't think it's so terrible to be a writer of turgid
prose, my writing varies from turgid to incomprehensible if
I stray off the technical writing dry bones footpath.
I do think the press should have done it's job a couple
of years ago, and written articles like this before the election.

The election is coming up, the mainstream press is already in
full attack mode on the rethuglicans (I've been called worse, I'd
wear tea-bagger as a badge of honor if I ever get the chance).
It would be interesting to see some unbiased strait reporting
of the realities of the presidential candidates. I like Rick Perry
because when I lived in Texas I never heard his name, which is exactly
what I want from the government But maybe he was just playing possum.
Who is he really? Is the only way to find out who a politician is to
elect them to a higher office? To find out what's in a bill, pass it?
Is this a christmas present or a bomb? I don't know, let's crowd in
close and open it. Not the best technique.

This kind of war

I'm reading "This Kind of War" by T.R. Fehrenbach, which is a history
of the Korean Conflict. Fehrenbach has now become my favorite writer
of History, taking over the spot from Barbara Tuchman (Guns of August).
He also wrote a fantastic history of Mexico that explains why this
country is the way it is. (Fire and Blood, a history of Mexico).

In the same way that Fire and Blood really does a good job of
describing Mexico in such a way that what is happening today
is easy to predict, "this kind of war" tells the story of Korea
in such a gripping way that it is hard to put down. It is also
apparent to me that much of our relationship with China has it's
seeds in the Korean Conflict.

The tale begins with the North Koreans sweeping south over both the
ROK armies as well as ill-trained, ill-equipped american soldiers who
are no longer the professional army of the 1930's, but one that has
been gutted by congressional reforms to make it nicer. The UN forces
finally overcome the NK's and drive them up to the Yalu when they
are almost overwhelmed by the Chinese.

I've read other books and seen movies (even MASH showing the 'buguouts')
that imply what happened, but always presenting US victory as foregone
conclusion. Dr Fehrenbach's book really brings to life the struggle
faced by the army and marines while fighting a limited war.

It is also more apparent to me that the normal presentation of chinese
troops either being Russian catspaws, or allies of the North Koreans isn't
so true, it really was a war between the USA and China, with a slight
veneer of North Koreans and some tech assistance from Russia.

We've mostly forgotten that we fought a bloody war with the Chinese just
60 years ago, but I'm not so sure that the Chinese have. In the letter
that MacArthur published that got him fired, he speaks about how the chinese
have not enough manufacturing to support a modern army, and it would be
possible for the USA to use just a few nukes to completely remove their
industrial capacity. Dr Fehrenbach goes into detail about how MacArthur's
letter upset embassy's around the world.

I imagine the comments about china's backwardness and lack of industry
really hit home in China. In the USA the Korean conflict is long forgotten,
the 50,000 men who died have a nice memorial in washington. Maybe
it's not so forgotten in China and has been a major driver of
the competitiveness and the willingness to spend almost any amount
of money to shut down american industries.

I guess we'll see in a few years, if they have evil intentions we're
almost at that point whatever nefarious plan they have can come to fruition.
If there is no nefarious plan, just plain old mercantilism the same
result could happen, probably just slightly less gloating will occur.

S'scusi, dove il bar?

The song "not now john" by pink floyd is stuck in my head
today, or more specifically the refrain that says "Fuck all that!"
sung by the backup singers.

Nobody hurt he says

Glenn Reynolds mentioned this article in the NYtimes that shows
how fewer mexicans want to go to the USA now, there are more opportunities
here in Mexico, fewer in the USA and the border region is dangerous.
(I'd bet on number 3, no matter how bad the economy I don't imagine many
suburbanites doing hard labor like picking lettuce for $2/hr)

Glenn then snarks that our employment situation is bad enough in
the USA that Americans will soon be sneaking across the border the
other way. I nearly snorted some coffee out of my nose when I realized
he was talking about me. I nearly had a job offer in the USA last
year when Macondo happened, and then the blowout killed any chance
I had. The deepwater drilling ban killed our operations offshore,
and got a lot of people fired/retired/transferred out.

When Obama implies that no one really lost their job due to his ban,
he shows his ignorance of how the world works. A minimum wage cleanup
job is not the same as technical offshore worker's wage. So thanks
Obama for keeping me an expat. (I'm not saying he shouldn't have
stopped drilling to review the licensing process, but he could have
done it like I suggested here last June)

Slip sliding away

The New Orleans times picayune has a good article on
the Morganza spillway, with a map showing where the water
will be diverted to lower the risk of flooding in New Orleans.

I didn't know that the Morganza spillway and Atchafalaya spillway
cover almost the same route. I lived for a couple of years
in the atchafalaya spillway in Butte La Rose (french for Rose's
Butt, I don't know who Rose was). It was pretty stupid to live
there, it was a great fishing camp, but I was single and working
offshore. When I got home, there was no food and it was 15 miles
to henderson on a levee road, so I subsisted mostly on what I could
buy at the local bait shop, beer and chips.

When I first moved there I fished almost every day from the dock.
Fishing and drinking is quite respectable, but after a while catching
fish really just got in the way of drinking. Also, since
my water discharge line was right below the dock I never ate anything
I caught, I think I just caught the same 5 fish over and over.

I crushed all my cans and kept them, thinking I would recycle them.
Finally I gave them to an old guy collecting cans on the side of the
road. Two 50 gallon bags of crushed cans, I thought the old guy was
going to kiss me.

Luckily, the owner asked me to move out because someone wanted to buy
the camp, and I moved back to Lafayette, otherwise I'd probably still be living
out there, or working as the assistant of the old guy picking up cans
on the side of the road.

I'm glad it looks like Butte La Rose won't be as flooded as
they were predicting earlier in the week. I really liked it out there,
it's just not a good first home.

You can never go home again

Coyote blog has a link to a great set of pictures at
"how to be a retronaut", all taken in a video arcade cerca 1982.

Since I spent most of my disposable income one quarter at
a time, that brings back memories. What game was my favorite
depends on the year...Galaxian, then Galaga, Asteroids,
star castle, elevator action, any game where you got to
sit down and pretend to be a pilot for 3 minutes. I was
probably best at Star Wars, but I cheated by working at an
ice cream shop that had that one game. If no one was there
I was playing. (I should have studied instead, the Jedi
never came to ask my help)

Game of thrones

Mexico was a week ahead on Thor, and it's a month behind on
Game of thrones, so I didn't get to see the first one until last
night. Not bad. Everything according to the book, graphics
look good, some decent acting. I detected a slight drift towards
a revenge of the sith filming technique, Darth Vader horribly
burned... check. Direwolf puppies found...check. It was
good enough that I'm looking forward to next Sunday.

Strangely enough, I watched Clash of the Titans right before,
and I liked that movie. Much better than the other version with
the guy from LA Law. (I summon google...shazam...Harry Hamlin)
(Why doesn't google do that, right mouse click, google search my
last sentence. Shazam.)

The next book in the Song of Ice and Fire series comes out in July.
It's something I'll have to buy on the kindle just for safety reasons,
a hard-back 1000 page book can easily smother you if you fall asleep
while reading. Kindle, it's for safety (tm).

Twitterfied

I signed up for twitter, @joegremlin. I don't know how much
I'll use it, but it seems much more phone-sized then blogger.
By the time I navigate to blogger on my phone and peck out a few
words I've forgotten what I wanted to say. Twitter is already
limited to about how much I have time to say, so it could be a
good fit.

I'm following several financial type people (Cramer, Alltucher, Ritholtz,
and a few celebrities. Best thing I've seen is Marina Orlova @hotforwords.
I didn't know etymology could be so interesting.

We'll see how it goes, I spend so much time traveling that I don't have time
to blog, I should be able to twitter more frequently. Same basic topics,
no work or family, just travel, finance, politics, books and movies.

Hi Ho, the son of a bitch is dead!

I've never been so happy to hear about someone being killed.
I went to bed before they announced it, so I woke up to a chat
message from my wife saying "felicitaciones!"

Off to buy some sweets to bring to work.