One of the Christmas songs of my childhood is Snoopy’s Christmas by the Royal Guardsmen. The Royal Guardsmen were a one-hit wonder of the mid-60’s. I found it interesting reading about their history here.

I came across this interesing account of five times that the U.S. and Soviets nearly accidently started nuclear wars.

I’d heard about some of them, but this one was news to me:

On Nov. 9, 1979, in what Forden calls “the training tape incident,” three command posts showed a massive Soviet nuclear strike headed toward the United States.

American intercontinental ballistic missiles were alerted, jet fighters were scrambled, and an airborne command center – known as the president’s “doomsday plane” – took to the air, although without the president aboard.

When ground-based radars showed no incoming missiles, no counterattack was launched. It was later determined that a training tape simulating a Soviet attack had been mistakenly inserted into the Pentagon’s computer system.

Heh heh. Whoopsie! Just a training tape, guys…

It’s high time we quit playing with the fire that is nuclear weaponry.

After getting bombarded with comment spam lately, I’ve been thinking of countermeasures. I found this interesting discussion about the problem.

At the bottom of this thread is this handy little SQL SQL statement which will close comments, which is the place most of these comment spams get planted.

update node set comment=1 where nid (less than sign) (top node number – 10)

Now I need to find which table contains the top node number so I can automate this process and run it nightly.

I’ve been meaning to weigh on in T. A. leaving the Pack. While he’s got the skills, and the guts to play when he’s injured, he does get injured a lot. And he fumbles at the most inopportune moments.

I know he’s hoping to guard against a potential injury wrecking his chances of joining the NFL, but I think he’s leaving too soon. If he stayed and worked on his ball handling, he’d have a much brighter future with the NFL. I wish him well, though.

Also today, the news that Doc Holliday is jumping ship to Florida. I hope we can still recruit in the post-Doc era. The next few seasons promise to be defining for the future of Wolfpack football.

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge. The battle lasted more than a month and was one of the most brutal of World War II. American forces, outnumbered and surrounded, fought in bitter cold with few winter supplies, eventually defeating the Germans surrounding them.

My late Uncle Bub was with the 101st Airborne at Bastogne and lived to tell about it (though he rarely did, if ever). I’ll raise a glass to him tonight.

I’ve been meaning to recap the weekend, so here goes.

We got to Florida in two days, having decided to stop in Commerce, GA, about halfway down. We ran into issues with Hallie not wanting to sleep in her own bed there, but soon resolved them.

The trip was made longer than the usual twelve hours by Travis needing to nurse frequently. After several stops, we finally made it to Panama City, arriving there with barely enough time to unpack, change, and make it to the viewing by way of Grandma’s house.
Continue reading →

Before Grandma’s funeral, the family was asked if they had anything to share about Grandma’s life. I came up with a short speech that I hoped would tell what I loved most about her. Here’s what I said:

Grandma kept a tag on her keychain that said “when Irish eyes are smiling, they’re up to something.” If that’s true, then Grandma was always up to something because she always had a twinkle in her eye.
Continue reading →

Today was the first day back in the office after a marathon trip to my Grandmother’s funeral. I took a moment to reacquaint myself with the concept of work, but soon was back in the swing of things.

In the morning I went back to my car to fetch something when I noticed a familiar pool of green liquid on the pavement near my car: coolant. Yikes. I corralled a coworker to drop me off at Happy Japs and went to lunch while they worked on it. Fortunately, the leak was from a worn-out hose, an inevitability for a car pushing fifteen years old.

I probably should be concerned driving a car that long, but my 1990 Honda Accord is in great shape in most every respect. I watched it surpass 213,000 miles recently and think it will easily top 300,000. While I could get another car, I admit that the novelty of an old car appeals to me. That, and not having a car payment, of course.

I had a dental cleaning scheduled for today, too. I canceled it when I had to take my car in but then begged to have it back. Fortunately they were able to see me, as the next available appointment would’ve been February. I take my teeth very seriously, you know.

The family was happy to see me when I came home, which is the highlight of my day. Hallie seems happy to be home, and I don’t blame her. Being cooped up in the car for four days tested the patience of everyone. Still, it was worth it.

Not much left to say right now. I need to write up the rest of my weekend. Stay tuned.