Hmmm....

My hotel in Colombia used to be a monistary. They still have a large open space with an altar for worship, and a confessional which is available three nights a week.

When you look at the choice of items for the minibar, I guess having the confessional onsite makes a little more sense.

Normandy, 65 Years Later

Today marks the 65th Anniversary of D-Day. For those under 40, it's the day that the Allies invaded France, and liberated it from the Germans during World War II.

Ironically, I'm sitting in Nice, France, where it's quite nice (if it weren't for all the tourists), watching the commemoration ceremonies live. Obama's there, as are hundreds of veterans and their families, and heads of government French President Nicholas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Ironically, none of the four heads of government were alive during the conflict, let alone served. Queen Elizabeth II, however, actually served in the conflict, and wasn't officially invited by the French... Go figure.

When people accuse the US of trying to impose its will on the world, perhaps they'd do well to reflect on the selfless actions taken 65 years ago. France would not be the country it is today had it not been for the sacrifice of tens of thousands of men and women from the United States or the Commonwealth. They didn't die defending their country's borders --- they died on the shores of Normandy, in Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Then again, as recent history is showing, many in the US are also unable to also realize that the freedoms they enjoy came at a price. It wasn't just handed out to us.

Shocking...

There's a lot of buzz over the past couple days about an Oregon man who apparently shocked his kids with a dog collar. Not exactly the fine model of parenting most of us would come to expect, but hey, somebody has to be the worst at it...

I've got three dogs, and Taz has worn a shock collar like the one above since she was a puppy. Without the collar, she'll bark for hours. With it, we get a couple of light woofs once in a while, which she's learned is enough to trick the collar into not going off... And yes, I've been shocked by it from handling once in a while. A little worse than a nasty static shock from carpet and metal, but just annoying, and not lethal. Taz may have a nasty disposition at times, but I don't think it's from the collar.

Step back into the time machine.... remember Troopergate, and how outraged the world was that Sarah Palin tried to get her ex-brother in law fired?

I find it sad, yet totally predictable, that while the media is up in arms about what this dad in Oregon did, nobody in the media seemed to focus much on the fact that Palin's ex-brother-in-law used a taser on his 10 year old stepson. And no, nobody seemed to be nearly as outraged as they are over the Oregon guy.

For the record, I don't endorse doing this, and I trust this shmuck in Oregon will get the punishment he deserves.

It's just too bad the media couldn't see as clearly when it came to Mike Wooten. Instead, they were off committing journalistic malpractice by attacking the whistleblowers instead of the actual criminals.

The Oregon guy is in jail. Mike Wooten still is employed as a law enforcement officer. Go figure.

What's even more discouraging... Had Palin not taken any action, I'm sure some cutting edge liberal investigative reporter would now be pointing out how the Palin's abused privilege by condoning similar actions on her nephew by a family member.

Dog Days of Springtime

"You move 15 tons, and whaddayou get... another day older and deeper in debt... St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go, I owe my life to that Home Depot store..."

Some people go to the beach for the weekend, some head for the lake, others to the mountains...

We decided to move a mountain. Of rock.... 15 tons worth... In case you're wondering, that comes out to about 180 wheelbarrow loads.

As many of you know, Maggie the Yellow Lab won an award two years ago as the most destructive dog in the State of Arizona. She's met her match in Coogee...

Last year, we put a fence up to keep Maggie out of the pool area, but she still managed to get at it over the winter. And she's been training Coogee in the off season.

Now, what does 15 tons of rock have to do with Maggie?

In preparing for putting down the rock, what Maggie and Coogee didn't destroy, the teenage landscapers did...

So, in addition to laying down 15 tons of rock, I got to rebuild the drip system for the third year in a row. This year, I decided to improve a bit. When the original system was installed, the flex pipe used got mixed in with the regular PVC pipes for the grass pop-up sprinklers. Not a problem, except there were places where it was near impossible to get to the flex pipe to plug holes or put in new drip lines.

Rather than fight the same battle I'd lost twice, this year, I ran new flex pipe along the edge of the pool deck, and for good measure, installed PVC where the dogs had access to the flex-pipe along the house wall... All in all, a good six hours of work, and a moderate success. I also have the added benefit of now knowing where all the lines are, which will make repairs a heck of a lot easier.

The dogs? They're just waiting for the opportunity to get into the pool area. They saw where I was working...

OK, now what do I watch?...

For 15 years, they've been a fixture in living rooms around the world, including ours. This week, ER said goodbye, and I have to say, did so with style.

Spoiler alert for those who didn't see the show yet.... stop reading now. Close the browser. Now.

For the rest of us who did see it on Thursday night, watched it online at NBC.Com, or, like millions of others, downloaded it illegally off the internet, it was a good way to close things out.

Over the past six months, we've seen all of the original cast return in some form or fashion. The flashback sequences with Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes) , Mark Green (Anthony Edwards) and my personal favorite, Robert Romano (Paul McCrane).  John Carter (Noah Wyle) returning from Africa, and winding up on the table for transplant surgery with none other than Peter Benton (Eriq Lasalle) at his side, an almost direct flashback to Season 3, when Benton winds up on the table with Carter doing the honors. And yes, Doug Ross (George Clooney) and Carol Hathaway Ross (Julianna Margulies) made their reappearance, albeit from a distance.  Jeanie Boulet (Gloria Ruben) made her return early in the season.  I was really starting to wonder about Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) , who finally showed up in the finale.

There were only a few recurring characters who didn't return in the last season.  Of those who lasted more than two seasons, only Deb Jing-Mei Chen (Ming Na) and Yosh Takata (Gedde Watanabe) didn't come back in some form or fashion.  Don Anspaugh (John Alyward) also didn't make any appearances, however he was referred to in two of the last episodes, including the finale.

I must admit, I really like how they handled the finale. In the opening sequence of the , Archie Morris (Scott Grimes) is woken up by Lydia Wright (Ellen Crawford), which is something she did in the pilot to Mark Greene.  They opened not with the newer techno music, but with the original Marty Davich theme.

Greg Pratt's brother Chaz is giving a tour to a group of med students, and one keeps lagging behind the rest. It turns out to be Rachel Greene (Halle Hirsch), Mark's daughter, now 22 and in med school and applying to CGH.

During the remainder of the episode, a few loose ends are tied up for good. The Carter Center is opened, and John's estranged wife Kem makes a reappearance at the opening reception, but it's not the happy ending some expected. Taggert and Gates finally reunite, and Benton and Elizabeth Corday (Alex Corday) have a very brief moment in which they finally become friends again following their breakup over ten years earlier.

The closing scene, and last line?  Absolutely perfect.  There's a mass trauma coming in during the middle of the night. All the docs and nurses are standing by in the bay, almost as though it is a curtain call, awaiting the arrival of the first ambulance.

Ambulances start to arrive, and organized chaos ensues as the injured are brought in one by one.  

Carter, heading in with one of the last patients, turns around and calls out to Rachel, who has been standing on the edge of the action, watching with interest...

"Dr. Greene, are you coming?"

A smile breaks out on her face, and she runs in after Carter, following in her father's footsteps quite literally.

So, rather than there being a real ending, things wound up coming full circle. And definitely not the explosion killing everyone in one fell swoop as some radicals expected...

Thanks to John Wells for an excellent ending to a series that I was convinced had lost its way a year earlier...  It's too bad Michael Crichton wasn't around for the final curtain, but just as the Mark Greene character would have watching the final scene unfold, I'm sure he would have approved.

Sign of the times

Driving across New Mexico on I-10 today enroute to Texas... The Union Pacific mainline runs parallel to the interstate for a couple hundred miles, so there's usually a few trains along the way.

Interestingly, there are a lot of storage sidings as well. On them, I think we passed at least 400 auto carriers... All empty, without engines attached.

Yep, because people stopped buying cars, the railroads now have more rolling stock than they need.

Something I hadn't put a lot of thought into until today.

Virgin (un)America...

It's been a while since I wrote about airlines, and that's because they've been on autopilot for the past six months or so. But today, they're back front and center.

Both Wall Street Journal and PlaneBuzz are reporting that Cyrus & Black Canyon have taken their money and run, so Virgin America is no longer 75+% owned by U.S. investors.

While nobody at DOT or VX has said anything public as of yet, for all intents and purposes, they no longer meet the ownership requirements for a US carrier.

So, I'll write this obituary a little early. Virgin America was a case of an airline trying to create a niche that didn't exist, and in an environment they couldn't survive.

And that's all I have to say about them right now. Let's see what happens in the next two weeks...