Am I getting anal retentive?

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Am I getting anal retentive in my old age or what? Yesterday I was watching the NASCAR race and any good citizen should be doing. I wasn't paying much attention because they were introducing Kurt Bush. In the background, I heard his intro music. It was music sampled into some crap rap music but it reminded me that I really liked that song.

Anyway, I was now on a mission, a mission from god if you will. I had to find that song. Of course there aren't any lyrics to google and I'm not really good at singing instrumentals for anyone else to help me. I knew it had some trumpet in it, so I started looking that direction. I first bought and downloaded Chuck Mangione's Greatest Hits. I was hoping it was on that. No such luck. Then I bought and downloaded Herb Alpert's Definitive Collection. Strike two! After listening to my own music I was finally ready to give up after a couple of hours wasted. I figured I would eventually hear it someplace and remember where I had heard it.

So I had moved on and completely forgot about, AT LAST, and then this afternoon I was watching cartoons, as usual, and there was a commercial for that movie Cars from Pixar. Sure enough, in the background they were playing that song. At least this time I was able to Tivo it. So ya know the first thing I did was pull up the Cars soundtrack on Amazon. Nothing looked familiar on the album. I was just about ready to buy that one as well, and then something clicked. I played back the snippet of the song. It was a bit longer than the first one I heard and it had just enough to trigger something. I remembered it was from a movie, a John Travolta movie. I couldn't remember the name but then I finally remembered it was a Quentin Tarentino flick. Now I had enough to google and found Pulp Fiction. I was pretty sure about my third album purchase in the past two days. Sure enough the first track, Misirlou, there it was.

If I would have heard the guitar I would have been able to pin it to Dickey Dale or at least another Surf Rock artist, but everything I heard was the trumpet part. Well needless to say it lead me down the wrong road. What I don't understand is I'm 100% sure I had this CD. Everything I got is MP3'd and it's not in my MP3's. I'm wondering if I lost this CD in the divorce. Well I guess I was able to get some good music out of the deal anyway. A couple of weeks ago I spent about 3 or 4 hours looking for the title, artist, and album for a song that ended up being "Swing the mood" by "Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers". Well I guess I'll be able to get some sleep tonight not worrying about it. At least until the next one.

New Design

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So I've had a little "Free Time" lately so I decided to work on the website a bit. I've had a little issue where IE didn't display correctly, imagine that! Every other browser on the planet worked correctly but Micro$soft doing things their own way didn't. I'm just tweaking the design a little bit. Colors are very simular, sections still have rounded corners, but HTML wise it's much cleaner, has dynamic sizing, and looks more 3D like. Anyway, you can check out the progress here... It should be just a few more days and I'll have it up and running.

Stupid people are really dumb!

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So check this out...  Tonight I'm headed home. I'm on a road that is 6 lanes that merge into 2. I'm being a good boy driving along in my right lane cuz I know the other two are about to end. I notice this red Dodge truck coming up on my pretty fast. He's in the center lane. At this point we are all pretty much bumber to bumber in the right lane and I'm thinking to myself that someone up there is going to have to let this ass in. But I don't know if he knew that anybody needed to let him in. He just merge right on over into this brown Chevy truck. He bounced off this Chevy and into the center guardrail. He bounced off that and kept going. I waited until the guy that got hit was out of the way and then I continued on my way. Thinking this was a fairly minor accident It wasn't really needed for me to stop. I was thinking that this guy was just going down to the next crossover and turn around. He wasn't. I was a few cars behind him but when I saw him not stopping I hauled ass to catch up with him. I got behind him right as we came up to a stop light. It was red of course. He blew right through that making a right hand turn. Luckily there wasn't much traffic coming so I came right along with him. By this time I'm getting 911 on the phone. When we stopped at a red light he couldn't run I was able to get 911 a description of the truck, the guy driving, his tag, our location and direction. The 911 operator asked if I could follow him. I told her as long as I could do it safely I'd be right behind him. We continued through the light. As we approached another light, He and I were in the center lane, another witness pulled up next to me to ask if I was on the phone to 911 about this guy. I said yes and he continued to follow from the right lane. We stopped a another light. This time there was no traffic in front of us. our light was red but as the turn lane changed to green he pulled out and made a left turn across two lanes of traffic. As soon as the traffic clearned I turned to follow him. The other witness had no choice but to continue. By this time I'm pretty sure he knows I'm behind him. He's now doing about 70 down residential type 6 lane roads. I told the 911 operator that I was fine now since there was no traffic but I might have to bail if he got really crazy. About that time we were coming up to another red light where there was a number of cars stopped. I'm not sure if it was the speed, misjudgement, or him paying attention to me but he crashed a second time into the back of an SUV. The SUV driver just stopped right there with him on his bumber. I pulled up behind him to block him off. It was about that time the cops pulled up and made the stop. They pulled him out just looking for a reason to jack him up. It was at this point that I realized that the guy was either drunk or stoned. He wasn't living in the same world as you or I. Just a minute or two more and the second witness pulled up. He was in just about as much shock as I was. I also overheard that he had insurance but it was expired. I gave my statement and pretty much left from there.

The good ole IRS.

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So seeing how today is tax day. How fitting would it be that I recieve a letter from the IRS today. Yup, it seems they are "Examining" my 2004 returns in great detail. I think that's just their way to saying "We aren't going to offically audit you if you pay us money". And you guessed it. That's what they wanted. $784 to be exact. Well I wasn't initally very happy about this. Not that I currently am, but I was even less happy when I first opened up the mail. I tried to just set it on the bar and hope that it just goes away, but then I remembered that it had a "Were going to cut off your nuts if you don't" kinda deadline on it. So I finally read it and they were claiming that I took out over $3500 in retirement out of my 401k. Well I hadn't heard anything from my 401k people in quite some time. I called them and figured out what was going on. I had a 401k out there that had done pretty well for me. I had mostly forgotten about it. Not completely but just mostly. I didn't realize that any 401k under $5000 can be just turned off with out any real notice after your no longer employeed with the company you started it with. Evidently that's what happened. In June of 2004 they closed my account and sent me a check. To a home that I hadn't lived in a year. Needless to say I didn't cash that check, and luckly for me neither did anyone else. So after I got in touch with Meryl Lynch, no easy task on tax day, I put all the pieces together and talked them into reissuing the check to my new address. So even though the IRS charged me $784 to find my 401k for me, ML is sending me $3500 to pay that with. So, big picture, I did loose money. Taxes and penalties and I no longer have a 401k, but at least it didn't hurt as much as it could have.

Camping….

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This weekend I went camping. It was the the most fun I think I've ever had camping, outside, with out a TV, or internet access, or air conditioning. I think most of that was with the company I had. Between Lynda and I we planned it just about perfect. The weather couldn't have been any better. It was warm, windy, and zero bugs. Not once did I have to put on bug spray. Any way, here are the pics, so check them out...

Holy Crap….

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C-5 Crashes in Delaware...

From what I can tell just watching CNN is that #2 engine flammed out. The declared an emergency and attemped a return to KDOV. CNN says that they "Came Down" short of the airfield. I'm thinking that it was much more than just a simple engine flame out. Being a former Flt Engineer with the 9th AS I know how much training is geared towards engine out operation. The C-5 will fly fairly well with only three engines. Looking at the video it looks like they did have a load onboard, but even with that I don't know that three engines with a full load would be enough to cause you not to be able to make the airport. Now as far as the flame out is concerned there are really only two things that would cause that. Lack of fuel from any of many possibilities, or catastophic engine failure. If an engine was to come apart, which they have been known to do in the past, it could throw fan blades and other parts through the aircraft causing a much greater emergency. Looking at the video on TV it looks as if #2 engine looked to be intact. #1 engine was not on the aircraft and there is evidence of a fire on the outboard left wing area. This could easily be post crash damage. It did look like the aircraft was in landing configuration. The flaps aren't visiable in the pictures I've seen but the slats indicate they were at least extended to 40. The gear did appear down. The aircraft ended up in a field, my questions now would be were they not able to make the airfield or did they make a decision to put it down in the field. The good part about this is all 17 crew members are reported to be alive. The scary part is from the video and pictures I've seen the aircraft split in the forward part of the crew compartment. Forward of #5 Service Door but aft of the Avionics Bay. This of course would be right where any crew, other than loadmasters that may have been in the troop compartment, would have been located. Hearing that a C-5 crashed litterally made me sick at my stomach. I'm still not 100% but knowing that everybody made it out is really great news.

Gotta few spare minutes?

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Gotta few extra minutes, check out this site. It's really worth the read. I think this guy has way too much time on his hands. The Sneeze

I really think this guy could be my long lost twin, here's what he said... "I'm simply not cut out for jail. Where I really shine is watching Tivo on a couch. As soon as you need me to survive a sharpened-spoon attack, (or even a regular spoon attack)-- I'm just not your guy."

Mysql replication heartbeat script

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#!/usr/bin/perl -w

## On a slave server, check to see that the slave hasn't stopped.

use strict;
use DBIx::DWIW;

my $conn = DBIx::DWIW->Connect(
DB => "mysql",
User => "root",
Pass => "7mailliw",
Host => "localhost",
) or exit;

my $info = $conn->Hash("SHOW SLAVE STATUS");

if (exists $info->{Slave_SQL_Running} and $info->{Slave_SQL_Running} eq 'No')
{
warn "slave SQL thread has stopped\n";

my $to = 'rootnotification@aghealth123.com';
my $from = 'root@avenger.aghealth123.com';
my $subject = '*******Avenger Replication Failed*******';
open(MAIL, "|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t");
print MAIL "To: $to\n";
print MAIL "From: $from\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";
print MAIL "Mysql heartbeat script has detected that mysql replication
has failed between agdb1 and avenger.

Thanks...
root\n";
close(MAIL);

}
elsif (exists $info->{Slave_IO_Running} and $info->{Slave_IO_Running} eq 'No')
{
warn "slave IO thread has stopped\n";

my $to = 'rootnotification@aghealth123.com';
my $from = 'root@avenger.aghealth123.com';
my $subject = '*******Avenger Replication Failed*******';
open(MAIL, "|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t");
print MAIL "To: $to\n";
print MAIL "From: $from\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";
print MAIL "Mysql heartbeat script has detected that mysql replication
has failed between agdb1 and avenger.

Thanks...
root\n";
close(MAIL);
}
elsif (exists $info->{Slave_Running} and $info->{Slave_Running} eq 'No')
{
warn "slave has stopped\n";

my $to = 'rootnotification@aghealth123.com';
my $from = 'root@avenger.aghealth123.com';
my $subject = '*******Avenger Replication Failed*******';
open(MAIL, "|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t");
print MAIL "To: $to\n";
print MAIL "From: $from\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";
print MAIL "Mysql heartbeat script has detected that mysql replication
has failed between agdb1 and avenger.

Thanks...
root\n";
close(MAIL);
}