I did not do hardly anything on the PC last night.  My right arm was just too sore.  I am still trying to figure out what I did to it.  It feels a little better today but it still hurts so I will take it easy again today.

I watched the Olympics for a little while last night but mostly I fell asleep on the couch, not good for the arm.  In between the Olympics I was watching one of those doom and gloom things abut Dec 12, 2012. 

It is pretty interesting that so many societies have that date as the end of the world.  Makes you wonder.  Laila found a "You tube" thing that is very frightening.  If this is true then it is very scary.

Anyway since it is painful to type right now, I will keep this brief and get it saved.  Maybe I will feel a little better later.

I thought yesterday was ugly with the air conditioning being out and the class in lab but today is already starting out bad.  I got here a little early and got the lab lit off, the air conditioning lit off (it is working today) and then I had to also light off the OTCIXS lab today.  I got all of that done and then found out that our TAD guy will not be here today.

We have already had to shuffle things around since we are splitting up the senior class to DAMA and OTCIXS today.  I will take OTCIXS and hand my class off to ET2.  We have ETC select coming in to teach DAMA and now we are scrambling to find a safety observer for the class doing final PT’s.  We will have to get someone from the office or from another area.  This is the first time in a while we have not had enough people for our classes.

Last night when I got home I was so tired I just threw some frozen pizza’s in the oven and laid down on the couch for the night.  I didn’t play any games on the PC, just checked the status in Tribal Wars and lay down.  I kind of laid there going in and out of sleep while watching the Olympics and then went to sleep up stairs. 

I hope today is better and the rest I got yesterday pays off with me having more energy today.  Well I guess that is it for now.  The classes should be coming back from Naval Military Training and then we have to change classrooms.

This morning went smooth for me over in OTCIXS and we got quite a bit covered.  In the meantime the labs over in WSC-3 had a few equipment issues so I helped out every time we went on a break.  I went ahead and shoved the OTCIXS class off for the day and I will help out in the lab this afternoon.  I have this feeling in my bones that I will be just as tired tonight as I was yesterday, but I will have to see how that goes.

Tomorrow I have a dental appointment so I will have to let my class off early again tomorrow but that should not impact anything as OTCIXS is a quick area to teach.  I worry about the WSC class in lab though as they look to be going a lot slower today than earlier in the week.  It might be because our safety observer is unfamiliar with our lab and equipment (he is from another area) and ET2 is still relatively new to the lab.  That is why I will assist this afternoon. 

I guess that is all for now.  They will be getting back soon and I want to make sure we are ready to go.

I woke up late today, but still managed to get out of the house on time so I could get to work.  I think I stayed up too late watching the Olympics.  In fact I know I stayed up too late since I did not go to bed until 1:45 AM.  Not a good move on my part since I had to work today.

With the Olympics being on several channels and the Internet I have been able to follow a lot of what has been going on.  One thing I can not understand is the scoring in something like gymnastics or diving.  If you make a mistake at this level of competition I don’t understand how you can go on, no matter how hard your routine is.  Anyway last night the entire American team would have been eliminated as well as some of the Chinese, but they were passed through. 

I can hardly wait until the track and field events start.  A lot of the stuff they have shown so far like shooting and archery I don’t consider a sport, but running and the field events are cool.

I am wondering what will happen if Russia continues their attacks on Georgia, and I am wondering if the US and UN are going to go to Georgia’s aid.  I know we are already taking their troops back home but we need to do more.  Russia is totally out of control these days and if not stopped I feel they will go back to the Russia of old.  This can also be the start of a much larger conflict as I can only see this escalate and I see a possible showdown between Russia and the United States if this small conflict continues.

Well, time to get to work. 

It is lunch time now and the day has been flying by since I have been so busy.  The class has been sailing through the troubleshooting and it has kept me jumping since I was the only one in the lab.  Well actually I had one other person sitting in the lab as a safety observer but he is not qualified as an instructor yet so I had to answer all the questions and check all the work. 

Also the air conditioning is down so the lab is really hot.  I have just finished taking out the faults they completed and shutting down unnecessary equipment. In an attempt to keep things from getting too warm.  This heat in here is making me so sleepy too!

Well I just got done playing a joke on someone.  One of our ET1’s made Chief and while he won’t be able to wear the uniform or anything until after the initiation in Sept I changed his nameplate to ETC.  That should give the folks something to mess with him about.

Well it is almost time to go back to work.  I guess I had better get this saved and I might even get it posted when I get home.

I took the other route to work today and sure enough I shaved a few minutes off my trip to work.  I would have saved more time if some knucklehead in a pickup truck would have paid more attention to the stoplights rather than who he was talking with on the phone.

Last night I took five villages in the war and I now have over 1 thousand fakes and nukes out.  Today when I get home I will be launching some more fakes and my noble trains to take out the guy that took my village the other day.  I figure since he took 1 from me I should take 5 from him. 

Last night I spent a few hours getting my attack spreadsheet made up and I am all ready to go now.  I feel sorry for Laila as her internet is messing up again and she has been on dial up since yesterday.  She is seriously thinking of switching ISP’s again.

Tonight when I get home I will post all these words of wisdom I have written through the week and then get to attacking.  The class tests out of the receive area today and so it should be a short day.  I have already loaded up the PT problems for Monday and tested them so I am good to go there.

The other class should be testing out of antennas today and I will get my regular classroom back.  That will be good as I feel more comfortable teaching there.

The Olympics start tonight so we will be watching that for the next few weeks.  I hope it goes smoothly.

Other than that life goes on.  Well it is time to go review for the test and all so I guess I will get this saved and get to the classroom.  Have a good weekend.

Another Thursday is here and I am glad the day is passing by quickly.  I got a late start out of the house this morning.  I went out the door on time, but I went ahead and put the trash cans out on the street and got all dirty in the process so I had to go back in to get cleaned up.  So I left about a five minutes later than usual, but still managed to get here in plenty of time to get everything set up for the labs.

Driving in this morning it dawned on me that lately there has been very little traffic on the roads when I drive in to work.  I guess the gas prices are keeping folks off the roads.  In the past I was getting on at Plaza Blvd because the I-805 was usually backed up from the I-15 to the I-54. Now I should be able to get on the I-54 in the morning and shave about 5 minutes or so off of my drive in.  I think I will try it tomorrow.

Yesterday while I was at work I got attacked and lost a village.  I also had incomings on another but I killed his nukes and built up more troops there.  I also stacked the village with scouts so that he can not figure out what I have in the village. 

Laila was a little hot this morning.  She wanted to claim some villages in the rear areas but found that they were already claimed.  Some of the larger players in the tribe claim far too many villages at the same time.  I guess this guy claimed a whole bunch and has not nobled many of them.  I was talking to Payne yesterday and he wanted me to take out a few rear area villages which I did.  He was saying time is critical and it must be done fast so we can get the rear area cleaned out. 

I told Laila to contact him since he is our group leader and maybe he could give her some targets.  I did send her a list of what was not claimed.  I think the other thing bothering her is the fact that her internet has been messing up again.  It has been taking her quite a while to load the pages in the game and so it takes her a long time to send any attacks and check status.

Other than that, my class has already completed the practice troubleshooting for receivers so we can take the test tomorrow and move on to the overall radio troubleshooting next week.  I will use the afternoon to get the faults loaded and tested so I will not have to do it Monday.

This morning I heard on the news that Oceanside is planning to build a desalination plant that would have a positive impact on the entire area.  The only problem now is that the environmental nuts are starting to fight it because they are worried that it will affect the growth of plankton and all.

Right now Southern California is in trouble.  Almost all of our water is pumped in from the Colorado River, and Northern California.  The water we receive has already been reduced because some Judge decided the pumps were killing the smelt.  We need to find alternative methods and I applaud the idea of a desalination plant.  The ocean covers four/fifths of the globe so I think it can handle it.

Right now we are having a gas crisis because the environmentalists will not let us drill or build refineries.  Our brush fires burn up thousands of acres of land each year because the environmentalists will not allow the brush to be cleared.  There is a food shortage developing in California because of the lack or water being sent to the growers in the central valleys, again due to environmentalists. 

I believe in taking care of the planet, but we need to take care of the needs of humans as well.  Right now every time anything is proposed they are against it.  I hope people are taking notice of how these folks have impacted our everyday life and keeping in mind the elected officials who support their causes. 

Well time to get some stuff done.

Today has not been a good day so far.  I got to work on time and all and I got everything lit off and operating and got the class started in lab.  Then the equipment started messing up.  A lot of it was minor stuff, with an adjustment here and there and then bay #10 went down hard.

It would not key in any mode and gave the symptoms of the classic transmit fault at first.  That is where BITE 10 fails, Bite 11 and 12 pass but there is no carrier on light.  It was a 3A so the first check after that was to check 1A1A1-TP1 and look for a logic high, which I got.   After that I had to check the 1A1A6 card and all the signals looked good with the exception of the 70 MHz coming from the 1A1A10.  I pulled the 1A1A10 and it was extremely hot so I replaced it.

After that my symptoms changed and BITE 12 started failing.  I figured it was probably the RG-214 cable between J-9 and the dummy load so I went ahead and read across from the outer to center conductors and found 14 ohms of resistance.  That meant something was shorted so I replaced the cable and still had 14 ohms.  I tried another dummy load and still got 14 ohms. 

I started worrying that it might be the ribbon cable as we have been having problems with them lately so I disconnected 1A2-J3 and took a reading across it and found 14 ohms again.  This told me it was between J3 and the transmit module so I replaced the transmit module and that fixed the problem.

After that I went ahead and started installing faults for receiver troubleshooting in the bays that were not being used.  I had to make adjustments to bays 5 and 6 to have them put out the proper indications and then I got to bay 3.  It wouldn’t key so here we go all over again.  It would not key in any mode and again showed the classic transmit fault.  This time it turned out that someone had disconnected J2 on the back of the case. 

I sent the class off to lunch and when installing a fault in bay 12 as soon as I keyed it I got a malfunction light.  That one turned out to be the AM modulation out of adjustment and it was way out of adjustment.  Anyway now I finally have a break since it is lunch time and all.  I still have one group of students that need to finish the receive lab.  They had a bunch of equipment problems yesterday and then they were on bay 9 today when it broke.  They are just about done and then we can roll into practice troubleshooting.

I sure hope the equipment cooperates this afternoon.  I am already worn out and only half the day has passed.

Last night I was getting frustrated playing Biscuit Brigade on Neopets.  I started playing it before I left for Laila’s the last time.  I showed her how to play it and we have been competing with each other to see who can get the highest score.  Since I got back to San Diego she has ran the score up and I was having a hard time catching her.  I was trying to use 12 towers and though I would not lose any cookies about the highest score I could get was about 6,400 while Laila was getting scores above 7,000.

She found where someone had posted his game play on “You Tube” (and I thought I didn’t have a life) and the guy scored over 7,200 so we both started experimenting with what he was doing. 

Monday night I got down to 7 towers and scored about 7,100.  In the second game I got down to 6 towers and my score went to about 7,200.  I actually tied Laila in that one and then the last game I beat her score and posted my highest score ever about 7,300.  The top person in the game is at 7, 445 or something like that so we are within striking range.

Well last night I tried several different times to get away with only using 5 towers with no luck.  I went back to using the 6 tower strategy from Monday night and again no luck.  I guess maybe they are changing things in the game each day to make things interesting.  Laila didn’t get a new high score last night either.

The war in tribal wars is going fine.  I have not been attacked yet but I have been scouted.  I have taken two small villages in the war and should have a third when I get home.  I have sent out hundreds of fake attacks and I have kind of mixed up my troop numbers in many villages, but it is all manageable.  I have not really seen a whole lot of anything going on in the war, but it may get lively as the weekend approaches.

Last night on the way home I got stuff to make Tacos, Chili Dogs, and Spaghetti.  When the kids came home I asked which they wanted and they all wanted tacos.  I made them a little different this time and they came out great.  Oh these were the type like Taco Bell, made with hamburger instead of Carne Asada or anything like that.

I went ahead and used an extra package of taco mix and added some chili powder and red peppers to the mix and they were awesome.  I even had help in that Dominique cut up the vegetables and Judy and Carlos did the dishes and put the food away when we were done.  I love it when everyone pitches in and helps.  Dominique and Judy helped me out this weekend with the cleaning too.  Carlos would have helped too if he were home, but he was at work.

Well time to get some paperwork done before the class gets back from chow.

I am a little upset with myself this morning.  We are currently battling another tribe in the game and so while I have been doing all the support missions and fakes and all I also had to pick a few villages to noble. 

I picked three small ones up in my K-4 area figuring they would be easy pickings and not full of troops.  I sent a clearing wave to each and then my noble trains.  I didn’t time my attacks out of laziness and as a result I cleared the village but allowed the person to fill them up with troops prior to my noble trains getting there.  As a result I lost 7 nobles and a ton of troops.

I guess I will just have to go ahead and treat all villages big and small the same way and time all my attacks.  It is just showing that there are no shortcuts in the game. 

This morning I was running around looking for one of he other staff members and I saw something that must have been driving the fleet sailors trying to get to the wet side of the base nuts.  Between the dry side where our school is and the wet side where the ships are there are some railroad spur tracks where they park the automobile carrying train cars.  Usually when they move those things around they do it at night but this morning they were moving them around just as folks were trying to get on base.  That keeps all the folks coming in from the I-15 from getting through the main gate as the train crossing is there. 

It really gets the traffic backed up and there is no legal way to turn around and take a different route.  I am sure a lot of folks were a bit frustrated.

The governator has managed to tick off a lot of the state workers by signing a bill lowering their wages to the federal minimum wage until after the budget is presented to him by the state legislature.  It is all a bunch of BS as these folks all got their full pay checks on Aug 1 and as long as they give him the budget by the end of the month it will have no effect on them as then they will be back to getting their regular pay checks.  It was just an attention getting ploy, but it did give them time to take off work and go picket several places, mainly the Department of Motor Vehicles in North Park and Chula Vista.

Also I heard yesterday that due to the State budget crisis Arnold is thinking of raising the state sales tax as if we are not taxed enough by the good old state of California.  If the folks in Sacramento would quit driving businesses out of the state and quit throwing our money away there would be no budget crisis.  Also I seem to remember that Arnold ran on the no new taxes platform to get re-elected. 

Ah, I got it.  The sales tax is not new, it is an old tax that he is just raising, so I guess that must be ok.  Right now with the higher gasoline prices and the resulting trickle down effect people are having a hard time making ends meet.  The housing crisis and the banking crisis are also having a bad effect on people.  Now the Governator wants to raise our taxes which will compound things.

What they need to do is stop wasting our tax dollars.  They need to look at where the money goes and cut waste.  Everyone says that when they are running, but after they get elected it is the same old thing, tax and spend.  Californian’s already pay some of the highest taxes in the country.  Because of that business have been picking up and moving to Arizona, Idaho and other places where they do not get taxes as much.  When they move they take their jobs with them adding to unemployment.  This results in less tax income for the state so they have to raise taxes to support the non-working masses.  It is a vicious cycle that needs to be broken or the state is going to go right down the tubes.

Maybe we should just elect Comrade Newsom of the Peoples Republic of San Francisco.  He is full of great ideas for raising money.  I saw his latest and greatest in the news yesterday.  If you do not properly sort your trash into the right bins he proposes that you get fined up to $1000.  He is going to have the garbage collectors become the garbage police and have them search your garbage.  If you throw an aluminum can in the paper bin you’ll get fined.  If you throw coffee grounds in the paper bin you will get fined. 

I wonder what happens if you catch a fish and clean it.  I always used old newspapers for that.  Do you have to separate the fish guts from the newspaper or what?  I wonder when the people of San Francisco are going to say enough is enough and boot this guy from office.

I also love the fact that Comrade Pelosi was all over the news yesterday trying to explain why she sent the House or Representatives on a five week vacation without any action on the energy bill.  Let’s face it, the only thing Congress ever passes on time is their pay raises.  I guess they have not figured out that when the country goes under, they will be jobless.  I think we should have them get used to being jobless and vote them out of office in November.  It is time to clean house.  The House and Senate are broken and to fix it we have to get rid of the professional politicians that fill those offices.  If we don’t do something now our country will cease to exist.

I am sure everyone has seen the commercials paid for by T. Boone Pickens regarding the oil crisis.  We are spending all of the United States wealth buying oil, usually from countries and companies that hate us.  Our country is being bought up by foreign investors in a huge fire sale since the dollar is losing its value abroad.

Who would have thought that Anhieser-Busch could have been bought in a hostile take over?  What other companies are being taken over by foreign interests?  How many American companies are left?  I heard that foreign investors own almost all the high rises in New York City.  Much of our national debt is being held by Russia, China, Germany Saudi Arabia and others.  If these folks wanted to they could crush the dollar and bankrupt the country, but our fine folks in Washington don’t see that.  Instead they started running for re-election right after the last election.

We need to drill for our own oil, cut back on usage, and look for alternate sources of energy before the country has shifted all it’s wealth over seas. 

Well, time to get ready for the work day.

Monday is here again after a busy weekend, which was not really planned to be busy.  Well actually let me take that back, Saturday was busy while yesterday I recuperated.  Anyway let me start out with something that happened Friday.

The annual E-7 (Chief Petty Officer) selection board results came out and we had two people here in communications get selected for advancement.  So congratulations to both of them. 

Friday when I got home I didn’t really do much.  I did stop by the store on the way home and I also put gas and oil in the car.  I then after checking my game accounts just sort of hung out on the couch and watched television.

Saturday after getting up a little late, Laila and I did our morning routine and then Judy and I decided to do some cleaning.  We started with the computer areas, where I actually took my pc apart and vacuumed it out as well as cleaned everything thoroughly.  When I got everything back together my monitor did not work.  I checked it out and it appeared to be a power problem.

I put one of our old monitors in its place and everything worked fine except for one, the fonts were really small, and two, there was a big blurry area in the upper side that caused everything in that area to appear out of focus.

We had put the large monitors out in the garage and so I decided to replace the one that was broken with the large one from the garage.  I should have waited for Carlos or David to get home but I went and got it myself and then Judy helped me get it into my computer desk.  That one did not work either so I put the small one there.

After that I decided to go with Judy and Dominic to the store.  They were both going to Wal-Mart and Best Buy is right next door, so I decided to go monitor shopping.  Wal-Mart had a 22 inch widescreen at a good price so I went ahead and got that one, so everything is back up and working great.

Judy told me that my monitor stopped working for a few days when I was visiting Laila but fixed itself, so I will see what happens with that.  I may just send it in and get it repaired and use it for a backup if anyone has difficulties with their monitors.

All the lifting Saturday caused me a little back strain so I was sore Saturday evening and all day Sunday, but I do feel a little better today.  Yesterday I took it easy and Judy, Dominique, and I watched season one of “Prison Break”.  We had actually started watching it on Saturday since prime time TV’s off season and weekend lineups are so bad.

Also we kicked off our war last night in Tribal Wars.  I picked a few small villages to play around with and sent out many fake attacks and random offensive waves.  I have not been attacked back yet, though I do expect that to happen in the next few days.

I think I have inadvertently screwed up my afternoon.  Wanted to get the class into lab today and so I went ahead and finished all the classroom stuff and went over how to do the frequency conversion homework.  I then sent them off to lunch and then lit off all the lab equipment. 

I then looked in the student guide to list the job sheets they will be doing and low and behold the first one is the PSK and FSK alignments.  Of all the job sheets that one is the biggest pain in the butt we have.  So it will be an interesting and painful afternoon.  I have everything laid out on the workbenches for them, and so now all I can do is hope the transceivers will cooperate.

After that is done the next job sheet is the preventive maintenance, which can also be a royal pain in the butt because there is so much test equipment involved.  If I get lucky they will get the alignments done and we will not start the preventive maintenance until tomorrow.

I heard there was some terrorist stuff going on at the Olympics but I didn’t catch what happened so I suppose I will have to catch it on the news when I get home.  I have a feeling that this Olympics is going to create some newsworthy stuff from terrorist attacks being thwarted to human rights being violated.  They have already been screaming about censorship on the internet.  I am sure there will be more complaints other than internet access by the time the Olympics is over.

I guess that is about it for today.  Have a great week.

Friday has finally got here, and none too soon.  I am looking forward to a nice weekend of rest and relaxation.  I do have a few little chores to do like pay the bills and gas up the car, but after that all I will have for the weekend is to get the laundry done and then rest.

It was a very quiet trip in to work today and since I was the first one in I had to open everything up.  My students are starting to roll in so this will be a brief one today.

About the only thing on the radio this morning was about the samonella outbreak being traced back to Mexican vegetables.  They do not have the same standards that we have as far as irrigating crops and now that they have been confronted they are fighting back.  I personally will not buy anything grown there.  I look at the labels before buying anything and if it is identified as being from there I will pass on it.  I just can’t afford to get sick with some terrible disease.

I am wondering if the fact that my daughter and Carlos like to frequent the local Taco shops, might be the reason they are getting sick all the time.  Could be I guess, because they get most of their vegetables from south of the border.  Anyway, I will continue to be picky for right now until they clean up their act.

I guess it is time to get to work.  Have a great weekend everyone.