This is a test. I guess Windows 7 lets you write blog stuff off line and then post it to your page. Maybe now I’ll start posting again…

Bluest Blues

This is one of the songs we recorded in the Studio!!

I thought this was a novel new way to get people to pay attention to those safety briefs on planes.

Here are the bloopers…

Looks like this might work. First post in 6 months!!!

One of my cousins in England works in the IT industry and recently alerted me to a developing technology which is nothing but disturbing. It is called RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device). Below is a link to a lecture by Katherine Albrecht who heads the opposition to this technology in the States.
One application of RFID is a small chip that is the size of a grain of rice and can be embedded into pretty much everything. (The soles of your shoes, for instance) Since each chip is UNIQUE, if you bought that pair of shoes with your credit card, anyone with a reader and access to a database will be able to tell when and where you passed any device that can trigger the chip in your shoe to spit out it’s number.
The industry application is to be able to track a product from the manufacturor to the stores all the way into your home in order to optimize logistics. The negative side effects in conjunction with illegal abuse are horrifying.
Imagine a reader in every doorway of every public building and store. As you drive onto a parking lot  of Wal -Mart, the database will alert store security that you hardly ever spend money in the store and in fact have returned 5 items in the last 6 months. (They are putting RFID chip in tires already and all you have to do is drive over a mat embedded in the concrete entrance to the parking lot!)  A friendly “store executive” the size of a gorilla will then catch you at the door and politely ask you to shop elsewhere. (more subtely a test is already being conducted in England where the price shelves have digital price readouts – now imagine walking up to a shelf and the price of that item changes INDIVIDUALLY based on your credit rating!!?? ie if you have no money in the bank and have shitty credit the price automatically gets  jacked up so high that you are deterred from shopping all together. )
Now imagine applying for health care and the insurance broker can track the fact that you have bought ‘off the shelf’ medication for years for some affliction and refuses to insure you based on your health risk…

The potential for abuse and the step toward a totalitarian monitored society just like in George Orwells 1984 (hence Big Brother) are a reality with this technology, and it is being introduced right under our noses.
Watch this lecture and then go to this site to find out more. (The lecture is divided into 7 parts of 8-10 minutes so about an hour…)

Here is IBM’s patent application to do exactly what I just talked about as a risk…!!!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while.

 I am in Bavaria on leave right now. Yesterday at 13:30 GMT+1 my mom died after a year long battle with cancer. Several radical operations as well as 3 months of chemo therapy had no effect and her cancer just seemed to grow faster and faster. I spoke to her last thursday and she seemed hopeful and optimisitc about her recovery. The next day she had to be sedated and rushed to hospital for an emergency operation on her intestine. After opening her up the surgeon saw how much the cancer had ravaged and saw no hope for her. He closed her up and she was transferred to intensive care. On friday I flew down to be with her and she fought peacefully the entire weekend. My dad, my sister and I drove in on Monday after the doctors called to hurry up since she wouldn’t make it through the day. We arrived at 930 and sat glued to the vitals monitor watching her lifesigns. Her pulse was 135, oxygen saturation 58% and a blood pressure of 30 over 21. At 13:20 her pulse stared to slow and we stood crying and holding her hand until it steadily slowed to 0.

It was the single most horrible event of my life.

My outlook in life has been altered forever. – cherish every single moment you have on this earth, whether you believe in the afterlife or not. My Mom spent her whole life saving and waiting for the good times to come. She died before she ever saw them.

Rest in Peace Mum, I love you. Thank you for being there for me.

Kathleen Hönig. Born: 23. Sep 1949 – Died 08. Dec 2008.

I’ve been playing the drums for almost 30 years and I don’t think I’m that bad at it. I’ve had many years of professional instruction, played in about 20 different bands and have performed in front of 3500 people. When I saw this it made me want to throw up. This kid is 16 and in my view the most amazing drummer I have ever seen. To someone who is just into normal music, this won’t really mean much, a lot of what this kid does is so advanced you’d have to slow down the video just to guess how he does it. Take that, and then add all the stick twirling and it’s enough to put any one off for life. How can anyone be THAT good at anything?

Watch below to see what I mean. You need to wait towards the end to see what I’m talking about…

more funny stuff.

Oli sent me this. Holy Crap. Balls of Steel.

Here are some of my favorites from Saturday’s Howl at the Moon II

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Since everyone likes to click on one of my first Posts where I ‘feature’ Tonica I thought I’d title this one ’show off my wife’ to see how many voyeurs end up on my site this time. This was the award she recieved when she was voted “Sexiest Costume” at our Howl At the Moon II Party.

I finally found a design for a pumpkin carving that I like. I was a bitch to carve, since you cannot get Carving sets in Germany and I did the whole thing with a carper cutter and a steak knife!
In daylight the effect is almost unrecognizable, but once you light it and itis dark, it looks pretty cool…

Saw this at work today and nearly choked…

This is one of the few shows that totally takes the piss out of the Neo Nazi movements in Germany and many other countries. The sketch is laced with a bunch of WWII Hitler speech references and even if you don’t understand the German the voices themselves are hilarious enough. The two wannabe Nazis are filming a show on how to make Mashed N utmeg and P otatoes with  D ill. (NPD is an actual political party and is a decendant of the Nazi party of WWII – we can’t make enough fun of those idiots!)

Great stuff. Hope you get it.

Here’s another sketch called “Dancing for the Fatherland”

Sorry Snakeye, but I thought your ‘Frag Cloud’ was the coolest thing I ever saw, Man. So I had to steal it. Took me a while to find  where you got it from… here’s my first test before I have any Idea how and where to insert it on my side bar – I might have to redesign the page around it …it’s THAT good…

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I don’t have time to come up with a new post, although I promise I have some stuff I’m brooding on (PS3 HDR, Photography stuff, Flying and other crap I’m thinking about…) But I thought this recent development was pretty interesting. After finally getting back online I finally gave in and set up a Facebook page. Within a few hours the hits on this page started increasing too – what a plug. Below is a graphical representation of the flat line that my page had become with it’s recent boost of Facebook adrenaline – thanks for checking in. BTW the number one page people still look at is the “Show of my Wife “ post – go figure.

after 2 LONG months of no internet, we are finally back online. Still need to get the datails workiing, but this is officially our first sign of life!!!

More to follow soon!Limey

Now that’s my kind of humour.

Saw this in the german news today and thougt it was pretty cool. Someone took a Spanish 1 euro coin and somehow re-minted it to show Homer Simpson on the back. The guy who found it actually had someone pay him with the coin. I think all new money released should have famous comic heroes on them. How a bout Hanky the Christmas Poo or Garfield? I think the South park collection would be best suited, don’t you?

Holy Crap. That’s all I can say. I knew Trip and Snooze were pretty good musicians, but oh did I underestimate them! Saturday night at the Schallmauer was by far the most fun I have had behind a set of drums since I started playing when I was 7 (almost 3 decades ago, I’m scared to realize). Below are a couple of pictures, but trust me, they in no way picture the energy on that stage. A friend of mine recorded all 4 (!) hours of the show, and once he compiles it all onto a hard drive, I’ll post some of the highlights here. We played a total of about 40 songs to an amazed and enthusiastic crowd. I can only imagine how next week’s show in Spangdahlem will go. We played to about 60 people up in Laage, and on Sat we are expecting between 200 to 300 people. I can’t wait to see if we’ll be able to top that one.

Getting home at 0930 in the morning will also be hard to beat – — –

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I won’t just put up anything just to fullfill the desire to say SOMETHING. Ever since finishing the I-Course my ass has been as busy as I can remember. I was TDY for almost 3 weeks learning to fly BFM from the Test pilot guys down in Manching. We finally have the ‘official’ clearance to fly BFM since an FCS hick up can be ruled out in the newer EF2000s we are recieving from the production line. However, no one has ‘officially’ flown BFM since introduction into service and most of those guys flew F4s before that … basically we are ALL way out of BFM currency. I was the #most’ current having flow BFM in a Viper only 1 year prior (!) so I was picked to Projo the spinup of the Squadron back to BFM unlimited maneuvering glory. On the side I am also now Chief of Wing training (great) and flying every other day as well as teaching academics. My brain hurts when I get home and I am just not in the mood to post about this or that – especially since my wife still accuses me of having a boring blog. oh well.

What’s keeping me going are my preparations for Trip and Snooze to come out here tomorrow. We’re playing a full show at the Schallmaur on Saturday and I want to have my shit together – we’ll see how that gig goes as a warm up to the big show in Spang the following weekend. I still hope to see some old familiar faces from mytime in the states – we’ll see.

Enough rambling, I’ll leave you with my curent favorite joke from a british comic who unfortunately already passed away. Good luck trying to understand the East London accent!