Well this week isn't starting out much better than last week.  Laila and I watched the Miss Universe Pageant last night as I blogged about before.  We had a real good time and when it was over I caught a little of the news and then shut down everything and put all the video stuff away.  I went to bed right after that since Laila was getting ready to go to her weight loss thing.

When I got up this morning I got a shower and all, got my coffee and it took me a little while longer to get the PC up since I had shut it all the way down and secured the power.  I'll talk more about that later.  I then logged on to the Internet and Laila was not on line.  I sent her a Chikka message (text to cell phone) and she sent a text message back to me, telling me they were on their way home.

She came on line about 6:10 AM and we recited the rosary, then she told me all about the gym.  She sounded so excited and though she said she was a little bit sore, she was feeling great.  I am glad that she enjoys it.  Her sister and her daughter are also attending with her, and that is good because they can push each other to stay on the plan.

After we chatted for a while it was time to leave for work.  Again the side gate was closed, so again I had to go to the back gate.  The traffic wasn't too bad and I got to work on time.  After reporting that all my students were present we started right in on the final performance tests, since I had installed the faults on Friday.  Everything went smooth and I even got a visit from one of my old shipmates, who was stationed with me on USS Elliot.  He filled me in on some of our other shipmates and then had to get to class, since he is here to learn about a new system.

Once my class was finished with their performance tests I went to see what was going on and found that they needed someone to help out in the WSC-3 lab.  So I excused my class for the day and went to help in the lab. 

The first thing I found was that one of the Satellite transceivers had an intermittent fault.  I got it down to a card, which I replaced by borrowing from another radio, that we suspected might be non-operational since some of the cards had been removed and were sitting on the workbench.

After getting the first one back together and operational I then put the cards in the second one.  Low and behold, it had the same problem.  So I guess what happened was that the one with the cards removed was being worked on by someone on the night shift.  They were swapping cards with the first one I worked on and had swapped a bad card to that one.  Anyway, since we have no spare card for them I guess we will have one radio down until I can get the card back from the 2M repair shop.  Now I am holding down the fort while the Navy guys are out doing their physical training. 

Friday when I was on my way home from work I was listening to the Roger Hedgecock Show, and he was all upset that the Governator was encouraging people to not use their Air Conditioners and save energy.  He was also saying that a shortage of electricity is the fault of the state government, and the fact that they did not anticipate that it would get warm in the summer.

When Grayout Davis was voted out of office his mismanagement of energy was one of the big reasons he was removed.  Now we are getting threatened with rolling blackouts again.  We are being told to keep our air conditioning turned down and not use appliances until after 7 PM.   I paid to buy my air conditioners, and I pay my electricity bill.  Now the government is trying to tell me how to use something that I am paying for.  Anyway I agree with Roger when he says use everything as normal and when the rolling blackouts start the public outcry will again bring Sacramento back into the public spotlight.  The only time anything seems to happen there is when the press exposes their stupidity and lack of action.

Now I have been keeping stuff off, like my computer when I go to bed, but these people need to get a clue.  We live in the most populated state in the country.  That population grows every year.  Summer comes every year and with it hot temperatures.  When it is hot, the voters like to keep cool.  So each year more electricity is needed and I am sure they could go back and check statistics to make a forecast of how much is needed.

Well that is my rant for today.  I have to get a few things done before the students and the rest of the staff get back.

I would like to pass along a hearty well done to the Rick Roberts Radio Talk Show.  Since I can only listen to a few minutes of his show each morning on my way to work and since we do not get AM inside the building I work in, I did not catch this one until I heard about it on the way to work this morning.

Yesterday a father of three children called in to the show and asked for help.  His three children along with 150 other children had gone to Lebanon as part of an organized religious field trip and were now trapped in the middle of the war between Israel and the terrorists.

As a result of this call some folks at Congressman Duncan Hunter's office heard it, contacted the White House, and the children are now on their way to Cypress.  They will be returning to San Diego over the weekend, and so it just goes to show that talk radio is not the mean rotten anger generating thing that some folks accuse it to be.

This was a great public service and I love hearing the news, especially since children were involved.  Bill O'Reilly has been doing a similar thing with his radio and television shows to get a trapped family out of Beirut.  I love seeing these people use their popularity to help people.  I have a lot more respect for these men now.

It does not matter what side of this you are on.  Innocent civilians are being hurt and so they must be evacuated.  Since the terrorists will use children and women as shields, the more we can evacuate to safe areas the better.

On another note we now know what was making Laila sick, and I will not blog about it.  That will be up to her to see if she would like to talk about that or not.  I will leave it up to her.  As a result of what is going on though, we will be taking at least a week off of blogshares to cut down on any excitement or stress she may develop and will instead watch TV or have our families communicate.  Yeah I talk to her kids and she talks to mine.

My daughter has started a new blog and is still trying to set it up.  Laila and I have been helping her with it.  I think the first thing she needs to do is learn about spell check, as she is worse than me at spelling and thought that would be impossible.  I think sometimes my fingers move before the brain tells them what keys to hit, because when I write with pen and paper my spelling is usually pretty good.  I think maybe Judy has the same problem.  I wonder could it be genetic?

Anyway, the weekend is almost here so let me get finished here at work so I can go home and enjoy my weekend.  I already know on Sunday we will be watching the Miss Universe Pageant, as Judy and Laila, and maybe even Pearl will very interested in that one.  Besides the Philippines as well as the USA are represented, and I know Laila has a huge sense of national pride, so I will be rooting for Miss Philippines to be high in the rankings as well as Miss USA.

Anyhow, I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Well in keeping with the fine start of the week I had yesterday, this morning started out similar.  I got up and got ready for work.  I then said the rosary with Laila and left for work.

Again the side gate was closed so I went to the back gate.  The traffic was not as bad today, but when I made the turn to go in the gate, I found myself four cars behind an Indian Casino Bus.  I wonder why that was coming on base.  The problem with following a bus is, that the gate security has to check the Identification of all the passengers.

I guess it could have been worse, like a delivery truck to be searched or something like that.  I just wonder sometimes why if these companies who know when people are going to work send their vehicles at peak hours for deliveries and such.  Security is still going to stop and search them, so all they do is mess things up for everyone trying to get to work.

After I got to work I started setting up and lighting off the equipment for today’s lesson.  I had more time to setup today because on Tuesdays the students have Navy Military Training downstairs from 7:30 – 8:00 so it gives me a little free time.  Nights left me a few surprises as I had two broken pieces of gear, but I had them fixed within 5 minutes.

Anyhow, looks like today may be a repeat of yesterday, I hope not.  Well time to get going, as the break is over.  It is now lunchtime and I have excused my class for the day, as I must assist with the other class.  We have a first time instructor teaching it and there were a few things he skipped since he did not really feel comfortable teaching them.  I am glad when they ask for help like that, because if they teach it wrong or are not confident the class will catch on and feel that the person does not know what they are doing.  You have to maintain your credibility when you teach.  If the students don’t trust what you are saying then they will not learn from you.

And everyone always has a few areas they do not feel confident with when they first start out.  It sometimes takes a couple of looks before you get confident in everything.  I have been here for almost 5 years now so I have everything down pretty good.  I still have to look at things before I teach them to get me into that mindset for that area of the course.  I always review what I am going to teach when I get home the previous day, to make the power points better and to refresh my memory.  For the new guys that first time can be a little nerve racking.  So I would rather have them watch me do it and get it own, rather than make mistakes and blow it in front of a class.

On another subject Laila is feeling a little better now.  She was worried that she was having a heart attack but her blood pressure and EKG came out ok.  We think what she experienced was either some bad food or maybe something to do with the air pollution and the fact that she had been saving on electricity by keeping the air conditioning off and leaving the windows open.  I guess the typhoon that blew through made the weather cooler for a few days and so she used the wind to keep cool instead of the air conditioner.  The only problem with that is that there is a really high level of air pollution there, and I think it may have affected her.

Well I guess that is it for now.  Since I will be shifting from the OTCIXS mode of teaching to the transmitter mode I had better look at the presentation to get me in the right frame of mind.

After waking up late today and doing a few household chores and while waiting for my daughter to get up so we could eat and go to church I started reading a few of the news sites.  I came to the realization that we are indeed in the middle of World War III and people do not realize it.

Our enemy does not wear a uniform, and there have not been the big classic battles as there were in World War I and World War II.  No, in this one we have suicidal bombers who blow up weddings, funerals, malls, and train stations.

And these bombings are taking place all over the world, not just in Israel and Iraq.  People need to wake up to what is going on around the world.  There are many news reports coming out of Israel and I have decided to put my World Net Daily news headlines back up above my links on the left side of my blog.  If you read some of the stories you will know what I am talking about.