This morning as I approached the gate there was absolutely no traffic at all.  I thought there was a holiday that I did not hear about.  No such luck though, it is a work day and some of the guys were already at work when I walked in. 

So now it is the start of another work week and we are starting the receiver side of the radio.  Last night I got a surprise phone call from one of my old High School buddies.  He just moved to Oregon from Fresno.  We talked about the old days a bit and hopefully once Laila gets here we will be able to drive up the coast and visit him.

I know I said I was not going to get political but something happened over the weekend that has me hopping mad.  Friday night or maybe it was Saturday a border patrol agent was shot and killed chasing down some illegals.  The Mexican authorities caught 4 guys in connection with the shooting and one of them even had the border patrolman’s weapon.

I did not follow the news enough to find out if Mexico was going to turn these guys over or not.  Usually they will not as they do not turn over anyone that would be eligible for the death penalty.  I guess we will see what happens with that in the next few days.

What makes me mad is that on the Local, State, and Federal level they are not deporting illegals when they catch them.  If that is the case why do we even have a border patrol?  Why are these people putting their lives on the line?  What is the secret agreement our government seems to have with Mexico?

The government is broke cash wise at all levels.  If they are not going to protect the sovereignty of the nation, a constitutional requirement by the way, then just disband the border patrol and save all the money that the organization costs us.  Get rid of all border checkpoints and just set out a “Welcome to America” welcome mat.  Set up welfare and Medicare booths at the border to make stealing benefits easier.  Give them all a Social Security Card. 

The government is doing all kinds of things that it is not empowered to do by the Constitution.  Where does it say anything about taking over the auto industry, the banking industry, or providing health care?  It does say our borders will be protected though.  We are protecting the borders in Afghanistan and Iraq but not the borders of Texas, Arizona or California.

California is going through a huge financial meltdown but the Governator will not cut any benefits to illegals.  What the heck is with that?  There has to be some secret agreement with Mexico.  People in congress must be making money off this somehow, or something would be done.

OK I am off my soap box now.  I need to get this wrapped up and saved.  It is time to get to work and earn my paycheck.

This morning I got up and took a little longer than normal getting ready for work.  I was about 5 or 6 minutes late getting on Skype with Laila but we managed to get our morning routine done.  I left for work on time and had a quiet ride in.

As soon as I walked through the door though I knew my day was going to go south.  I had a blue error screen on the work PC, basically telling me that I had hard drive problems.  I restarted the PC and it gave me one of those drive not found messages meaning I probably had a fried hard drive.

I went ahead and opened it up, cleaned out all the dirt and dust and tried it again and got a drive not found.  I moved the drive to another PC and got another drive not found.  So basically the drive was done.

Luckily I had backed up all the power points last week so all I lost was the stuff I did the past two weeks and some personal files.  A lot of that I did on my laptop but I did do quite a bit of work on one of the Transmit power points and all that is gone.

The class took the transmit test today and after that they had to go over to the other building for urinalysis so they are gone for the day.  I will get a few things done and probably head out myself.

I got a huge accomplishment done yesterday.  We have had a shortage A6 module extender cables.  I had the supply guy put some on order put some on order a year ago and they still have not been received. One of the guys went out in town and bought some connectors and built four of them a couple of months ago. 

I noticed when this class was in lab that we seemed to again have a shortage of A6 extender cables so I started looking around for them.  I found only 3 and two of them were the older ones.   One of the other things I found was that our extender cable drawer was a rats nest.  All the cables were just shoved in there in no apparent order or anything so I decided to clean it up and organize it.

I emptied the entire cabinet, sorted all the cables, moved the dividers, and then started grouping the cables in groups of 5 and put them together with rubber bands.  I then neatly put them back in the cabinet.  Now they are organized and we now have some extra room in the cabinet.  Now I just wonder how long it will stay that way.

I wore the perfect shirt for working under my desk on that PC.  I wore a white shirt and now I look like I just climbed out of a dust bin.  I am glad I have a short day today as I hate having a messy appearance. 

Anyway, the weekend is here almost and I can not wait to get home and catch some rest over the weekend.    

This morning I was wondering what I would blog about.  I can not blog about the President's press conference for one, because I did not watch it, and for 2 I have my self imposed ban on commenting about the current administration.

We watched some episodes of “Bones” that we had recorded on the DVR.  In Prime time we watched “Wipeout” and then “America Has Talent” until they stopped showing the talent and went on to highlight Susan Boyle.  We switched it off and watched some Japanese game show thing.  What happened to Wednesday night network TV?  There used to be a lot of drama shows on and now it is all crap. 

Anyway this morning I got up and was the first one in.  I opened up everything and fired up the equipment.  I then ran over to the bowling alley to grab some breakfast.  They had the Communist News Network (CNN) on.  They were talking about how they are going to go after Michael Jackson’s doctor for manslaughter.

Frankly I am tired of hearing about Michael Jackson.  He was a drug addict and a pedophile that had enough money to beat the rap.  As they go after this doctor I wonder if they are going to go after his drug dealer.

It is all the same with these celebrity types.  They spend their adult life stoned, they overdose, and then everyone glorifies their drug addicted lives and tries to pin the blame on someone.      

Perhaps we should maybe pin the blame on Jackson as he was the one that put the drugs in his mouth, arms, and nose.

So the drug addict is dead and buried.  I would like to see the main stream media bury this story too.  I am so tired of hearing about it.

Wow, it is lunch time and I am already feeling beat up.  The class is going through their first troubleshooting problems and they have been keeping me hopping.  We have not had too many equipment issues and when we have they have been quick repairs.  At least through part of the morning I had a lot of help with the labs. This afternoon it will be a little different as three of my fellow instructors have physical therapy, 1 is on watch and the other is at a week long meeting.

Laila, Judy, and the rest of the family have me playing a couple of new games.  They are both on Facebook and are fun but frustrating.  The games are always dropping off line and usually at critical moments, like when I need to save what I have done so I can leave the house for work and times like that.

This morning just as I was about to save the game it dropped before I got a chance to close my restaurant and put my folks in rest mode.  Oh by the way, that game is Restaurant City.   If you don’t close and put your people up when you quit, when you come back your people have no energy and the restaurant is trashed.  So I left the house a few minutes late.  I did manage to get to work on time though.

Today at lunch I ran over and put gas in the car.  I like to do it during lunch to escape the long lines that are always present in the afternoon.  Now I am resting and waiting for the students to get back from lunch and we will get back to troubleshooting again.

Last night Judy and I watched the season premier of “Hell’s Kitchen”.  It looks like this season is going to be interesting and I think one guy is not going to be there very long.  He kept picking fights with Chef Ramsay and acts cocky as hell. 

Being on that show is pretty much a job interview, and the way this guy was acting should have got him booted from the start.

The class is coming back now so I guess I better get this closed and saved. 

For years now the City of San Diego has been having a problem with seals who have taken up residence in a children's wading pool in La Jolla.  Every time they try and do something about it thy get sued by environmentalists or animal lovers.

Recently a judge ordered that they be removed.  While the judge was reviewing that case the Governator was busy getting legislation passed to keep the seals.  Arnold got it passed but it does not go into law until January. 

So the city will start getting rid of them tomorrow I believe if I heard things right.  They hired some company that they are paying $700,000 to play dogs barking across a sound system to scare off the seals.  $700,000 being paid from a city that is going under financially and has been laying off workers and cut services.  Does that make sense to anyone?

I was listening to one of the local radio talk show hosts and he said he would do it for $50,000 and all he would need is a bull horn.  These people just do not get it.  It is not their money they are blowing on things like this.  That is our tax dollars.

They work for us, we do not work for them and the time has come to get rid of the wasteful employees.  

It is lunch time now and I have had a pretty adventurous day so far.  The class was doing reference readings and I was helping one of the new guys in the lab.  Two of the students did not show up this morning so he was busy trying to locate them and another staff member and myself took over for him.

We were getting ready to do some data checks so I went over and checked out SATCOM Bay 2 to make sure it was ready for the students.  It failed in both PSK and FSK so I decided I would do the alignments on it to get it ready.  I started out with the FSK alignment and it was way off, but I managed to get it adjusted.  It aligned fine but I still had no FSK when I finished.  That was very strange, and I also discovered that the PSK BITES were passing, but no PSK. 

I checked out the 1A1A5 and found there was no PSK being developed and FSK was absent there too!  The fault was getting stranger.  I checked pin 4 on the 1A1A5 and found I was not getting any data into the card.  Well that told me why I was not getting PSK or FSK modulation, but it also gave me the terrible news that I had a serious problem.

I checked the data transmit side coming from the NOW and I had data there.  This left me with either a OK-367 wiring problem of a WSC wiring problem.   I pulled J2 and then couldn't find pin 42 which is data in.  I waited until one of the younger guys came in and had them check the pin while I operate the test equipment and the NOW keyboard.  I had data there so now I am stuck with either a ribbon cable problem or we have a blown input filter.  Either one is a major headache, and we do not have any of the parts so we left it for now. 

Usually when we get a fault like this we try and swap out the equipment case with SPAWAR so they will check on that.  So now I hope the rest of the day goes quietly.  I guess I will find out when the class gets back.

I have not blogged lately, mainly due to my political beliefs and the fear that if I were to publish anything I might lose my job of jeopardize Laila being able to come here.  Enough said there.

This morning I had an interesting ride to work.  There was either a double homicide or maybe a murder suicide about 2 blocks north of the post office last night.  There were five news crews on the scene as I drove by.  I caught it on the news, before I left the house and figure it might be another couple in danger of losing the house or something.  What can you say, times are tough.

After that I came upon my jackass driver of the week, a little early this week.  As I was approaching Plaza Blvd the light turned yellow then red and I stopped at the light.  The clown behind me started honking his horn as soon as I started slowing for the yellow light.

He then backed up, made a right turn, then an illegal u-turn on Plaza and headed towards the I-805 onramp at about 60 MPH.  Guess he was late or something, but with that attitude and with the reckless driving exhibited that person is a danger to others.  I wish I would have thought to get the license number but I was a little too shocked at the time.

After that the trip in was quiet until I got to the gate, where I almost got sideswiped by someone with their head up their butt.  No signal, no looking before changing lanes, the guy just changed into my lane and if I would have not jammed on the brakes I would have been hit.  Then the guy gets to the gate and did not even know where he was going and had to ask base security.

Driving these days scares me.  Every time I get into the car I feel I am putting my life in danger.  Between the people who are aggressive and could care less about the rules of the road, to the people busy talking or texting on their cell phones, you really have to be defensive these days.

You can not blame law enforcement as they are active.  There just are not enough to do th job these days.  I think since the city, county, state and federal government are all hurting for money perhaps they could maybe triple or quadruple the fines for traffic violations.  Say charge $5000 for speeding or running a stop sign.  Make it cost these idiots.

The, all of the above, governments have no problem raising taxes on anything, why not raise the fines to cure these aggressive drivers.  Also when they do not show up for court, put out a warrant and arrest their butt.  Double the fine if they do not show up.

Schools and prisons are hurting for money so this would be a great way for the, all of the above, governments to raise some cash and prevent layoffs and budget shortfalls.  So that is my 2 cents for today.     

Well I am back to work now and sitting in to help out the new guys with their teaching.  It was a little difficult to get up this morning after al the time off.  Also we are going through a hot spell and it was pretty miserable sleeping weather last night. 

I got up on time though and managed to get here to the schoolhouse early.  I was the first one here this morning and got everything opened up and turned on.  I let some of the new folks into the classroom and then got caught upon everything.

I wanted to follow along and update the power points as we went along, but forgot that I moved all my files to my PC at home.  I will have to copy them back to the laptop when I get home tonight.  

I managed to clear up a problem I had with my laptop yesterday.  The keys on the right were typing numbers instead of letters.  After beating my head against the wall for a couple of days it turned out that I had turned on my number lock.   I felt pretty stupid when that was all it turned out to be.

Anyway, we are back to class now so I had better get back to paying attention.