"Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!"

Electronic Frontier Foundation

SecDef Visit, Etc...

This past week has been hectic so here's a recap on everything that has been going on. Last week I did well at the poker table. The cards weren't in my favor from the beginning and I had to dig into my pocket for R$20 just to keep playing. But then I got a huge swing and came ahead by R$80 at the end of the night. So that was good. We have another game tomorrow night, we'll see how I fare.

The rest of the week I've been preparing for a major inspection we have coming up in the first week of April. I'm the Supply NCO so I have to account for all the property that belongs to the detachment among other things. When I was assigned the job it was a real mess, so I've spent many an hour trying to straighten it out. I'll be majorly relieved once the inspection is over.

Today all of us woke up bright and early for a photo op with none other than the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld himself. We arrived at the hotel and waited for him to get out of a conference. Once he was out, he came over to us and we introduced ourselves and took this picture:

He said a few words to us and then his entourage ushered him off to whatever he next on his agenda. But all-in-all, I thought it was pretty cool getting to meet the man. After that I spent the rest of the day busting my hump getting ready for a pre-inspection inspection I had this afternoon. And tonight I have duty. So man, oh man, what a day this has been. I'm going to be dead tired when I get off.

(+250 to me for meeting the SecDef)

Public Service Annoucement

I'll get to the PSA in a bit. After last week's game I decided to set another game up for this Wednesday. I've been tossing the idea around of investing in a large chip set and hosting a multiple table game night or maybe a small tournament. But logistically and legally speaking, I'm still seeing if that's really feasible or not. We'll see what happens.

At the Embassy's Happy Hour last Friday one of the temporary workers had a thermal imaging camera. Here is a picture he took with it of me and a couple of the guys from my detachment.

(If you can't tell which one I am, well...you're a dumbass)

Now for the PSA. Quit forwarding these lame-ass e-mails about getting money from Microsoft/AOL and free products if you forward the e-mail to X amount of people! I got one of these today and for some reason I can't help but think some people might just not know better. I need to migrate my blog to a different webserver so I can post the e-mail I got on a seperate page so you can see just how badly conceived it was. For starters, here's the subject line:

FW: (U//FOUO) PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE REEEEEAD! IT WAS ON THE NEWS!

Wow, that alone is pretty compelling! It was on the news so it must be important. Let's read on and find out what it is that everyone is so urgent about. Here's another exerpt:

I'm an attorney, And I know the law. This thing is for real.

Well, that settles it. I'm sold. If it's coming from an attorney it MUST be for true! Because we know everything that comes from lawyers and attorneys is true. That was verbatim from the e-mail, but how about this:

Dear Friends; Please do not take this for a junk letter. Bill Gates sharing his fortune.

But not with you! Last time I checked Big Bill was only giving to charities and whatnot. Anyways, the rest of the e-mail makes my head hurt too bad to keep reading it again. Stop with the idiocracy and quit sending this crap to me, to your friends, to your family! Save your time, and my bandwidth and go kill yourself make a sammich or something.

Poker? I hardly know 'er...

Wednesday night we had our first poker night since I've been in Brazil. I've had the poker bug for some time and been itchin' to play and until recently I found enough players to scratch together a game. The game went great and everyone went home happy, even the ones who got cleaned out. And lo and behold, all the poker players start coming out of the closet now that we've had this game. I had like at least 10 people come up to me at the Happy Hour at the Embassy tonight saying they'd like to get in on it! I think I underestimated the demand for such a function. This could be a very good, and profitable, venture for the Marine detachment here. We'll have to see how the next poker night we have goes.

And lately, battalion has been pumping new orders down the pipeline to us at the rapid rate. If we don't get it done in the next few days the catalyst will reach a boiling point and we're all gunna be in deep shit trying to get things done. I just hope we don't get over our heads with some of the extra paperwork and what not. Everything should settle down by the end of April, so I can't wait for that time to come. Ah well, more to come as it develops.

"So long, and thanks for all the fish"

Well hot damn, Blogger.com decided to finally let non-users identify themselves in comments. All I can say is about frickin' time. I noticed this tonight when I posted a comment on Justin's blog. Now all you asshats can leave your names when you post! Not much to tell you about lately except I had some kind of stomach bug this weekend. I think something I ate at Friday's might have been bad...I didn't really get sick but my stomach has kind of ached the past few days. I thought I was going to throw up on Saturday there for a little bit, but the sensation passed.

Last Thursday we went horseback riding again. Good time. Rained on us on the way back home but that wasn't so bad. We even went swimming at this little waterfall that the guide took us out to. Then when I got home I saw that my shizz from Japan got here...bout damn time! I mainly wanted my guitar that was in the shipment. I might be taking up classes with another embassy employee that recently got a guitar too. So we'll see how long that lasts. Maybe I'll rock your socks off next time you see me (or maybe not).

I leave you with this: I won't be posting any posts with pictures in them for the next week or so as I reload the software on my computers at home. I will however continue to post from work and such. I'll let y'all know when I have everything back up and running full speed.

And 1,500 points to the person who can name the book that the quote I used for the post title is from. Because I don't think you can.