NUKE_CLEVELAND

QUOTE(kyyle23 @ May 27, 2007 -> 03:05 PM) Live Chat anyone? Im trying to get in.........and cant. What the hell!?

Well, I've had some close shaves so far in my time here but today was the closest yet. We were driving down the main drag in our sector with my truck in the lead and we got hit by an IED. It was a rather large one and it went off no more than 10 meters from my vehicle. My gunner got the worst of it and all he had was a mild concussion so that's a relief. I was a little shook up but I was unhurt. Same goes for my driver. As for my truck all that was wrong with it was some piece of junk or something shot out from the blast site and took a good little gash out of my windshield. ( Picture posted below ) . Needless to say we were VERY lucky today. Things could have turned out MUCH worse than they did. Im going to be away at an outpost the next 3 days so hopefully nothing happens out there and I won't be posting till I get back. Bottom line is we're all good and that's all that matters

QUOTE(Brian @ May 22, 2007 -> 01:09 PM) Hang in there, Nuke. 3 of my buddies just joined the army and are 3 weeks into boot camp. Give them my best. We could always use some more help.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ May 21, 2007 -> 08:44 PM) Well, for starters, N-O A-M-N-E-S-T-Y. Bye! ^^^^ What he said.

Well, we've had a little while to get used to our new sector and so far as I can see it has been VERY quiet. It's also quite small. The area we have to cover is barely 2 square kilometers. At any rate, the people seem very friendly, at least for the moment, and the biggest issue in the area is trying to get them more power ( they only have between 3-6 hours of electricity each day ). That's going to be a really big issue as it's already intensely hot out here ( north of 100 every day now ). Anyway, between all the time off we had during our transition to the new area and the fact that things have been quiet here so far we're all doing really well and actually getting enough rest for a change. Hopefully things stay this way for a while.

Hey dudes. I'm doing a cameo in the chat room if you all are interested. Come on and say hi!!

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ May 16, 2007 -> 12:14 PM) Great idea. Now here is the problem. What is this energy source? Can it be mass produced? Can you get filling stations to retrofit so it can deliver it? What is the cost of this source? What is the cost to the average American to replace or retrofit their vehicles to run on this energy source. What is the environmental costs of mass production of this new "green" energy source. Until these are answered, America is still going to use Oil at a high demand. So we need to address oil production still until an alternative can be named. The need to ditch oil as our primary source of energy is clear. That being said, you're right though. This new source of energy is not that easy to come by. Even ethanol is starting to get a lot of heat from certain circles becuase it's driving up the price of corn and poor countries are b****ing that it's harder to feed their people as a result. We need to drill more, we need to use less, and we also need to find an acceptable substitute. Unfortunately, nobody is really serious about doing any of these things. Instead, typical of your average American, they want to sit around and cry because they're paying 3 bucks a gallon to fill up their Suburban. No sympathy from me over gas prices being too high. Until people start doing what needs to be done to actually bring down prices I have 3 words for them...........DEAL WITH IT!!!!

There is a little justice in this world.......just a little.

QUOTE(Soxy @ May 16, 2007 -> 09:37 AM) I thought you had a stratus? I traded it in last year for a Jeep Cherokee.

QUOTE(Texsox @ May 16, 2007 -> 06:17 AM) IOL, You've Got Mail! So easy to use . . . The guys that replaced your unit, is that a training issue, unclear orders, learning curve??? I'm struggling for the right way to ask this, but are these guys more likely to wind up dead or cause other people (friendly) to die? Finally, from your descriptions and accounts of the game, I could see the average Iraqi wanting the US out and their neighborhoods returned to a prewar state. There can not be much semblance of life as usual for them. I don't know what their issue is. In talking to a few of em they've been together for longer than my unit has and still they make basic mistakes. Additionally, listening to some of what they were thinking about doing in sector made me ask "are you serious?!". I think they'll be alright but it's going to be a great deal more difficult for them than it was for us. Fortunately for them, we're leaving them a sector that, in spite of all the action I talk about here, is relatively calm. If they don't piss everybody off they'll only have a problem with one small portion of it ( that's where all the crazy stuff I write about happens ). Believe it or not, the average Iraqi, in spite of all these polls to the contrary, still wants us around. They view the Iraqi security services as corrupt, incompetent, and motivated by sectarian issues. That's a sentiment a lot of us share.

QUOTE(Texsox @ May 16, 2007 -> 06:12 AM) We need to mount an investigation, Nuke is sounding vaguely liberal in this post. He's probably been awake to long or one of his buddies is posting for him. This is pretty much the same thing I've said about high gas prices all along. If you wan't to drive the big SUV, that's great ( I own an SUV ) but don't come crying to me when gas goes up and you have to pay more to fuel it. That's hypocrasy and it also runs contrary to my beliefs about personal responsibility.

Internet has been down the last couple of days.......again........so I haven't been able to be around very much. Anyways, we've been in something of a transition period the last several days. We handed off our old sector to another unit ( more to follow about these losers ) and started checking out our new sector. Nothing really crazy happened to us but that's not to say crazy stuff hasn't happened. The guys that replaced us in our old sector are FREEKIN RETARDED!!!! I have never seen a unit so chewed up in my nearly 9 years of service. They can't navigate, they can't communicate, they wouldn't listen when we would tell them stuff about the place.......hell, they can't even stay together when they're moving!! I had the misfortune of riding along with them a couple of times and I was utterly appalled. The 1st time was when their guys were escorting a supply run to one of the outposts in the area. Despite the fact that their destination was a mere 2 miles up the road ( and they had been there before ) they still needed me to find it for them. Before that, though, it took them over an hour just to get outside the gate from the parking lot. They had to go back once cause they forgot something, then they drove around aimlessly for a while, then they spent like 15 minutes outside the gate just sitting there before they moved. Coming back was the best though. We were returning to base from a little side trip that we had to make and on the last turnoff there's a nice wide hole in the median where they can cross over and make the turn. I guess that was too easy for them, though, because they missed it and went over the 2 foot tall median. Their Strykers barely made it over but the one humvee in the convoy ( their commanders humvee ) got high centered. I then got to watch them do their vehicle recovery drill ( which looked more like a Chinese fire drill ) for like 20 minutes until they got him loose. The second time I had the misfortune of riding with them I thought for sure I was done for. I got sent out with one of my guys to ride with them on a 7 hour mission at night to look for IED emplacement activity and just patrol the area. We see this car out after curfew coming at us. He turns off his lights and flips a u turn real fast so we fire warning shots with M4. He still doesn't stop so these guys decide to light him up with their 50s. Normally that would be cool, except for the fact that there was an IP checkpoint right in their line of fire and the results were predictable. We go up there to assess what happened, all of us get off the trucks and now there's 30 US soldiers staring at 30 IP's. Everybody's armed to the teeth and there was just a friendly fire incident. All I could think of was "Mexican Standoff". These morons didn't bother to bring a terp so they can't communicate with the IP's. I guess the IP's said something along the lines of "f*** this s***" cause they grabbed their guy that was killed and their wounded and hauled ass somewhere ( presumably the hospital ). I personally have no love at all for the IP becuase they're all crooked motherf***ers and I'm still pissed over that EFP that went off a week ago, but after this all I could do was shake my head in disgust. I could go on and on about their many f***ups but Im really rambling now. The new sector they have us going to is really dense, really s***ty, and really Sunni. I can totally see us having a fun time up there. I drove through there yesterday with the unit we're replacing and the place is a total s***hole. Half the paved roads there are torn up. The story was that the guy they hired to repair the sewer lines was really an insurgent so he tore everything up and then disappeared ( with our money ). Now there are holes in the road that would swallow a humvee whole and at least a few miles worth of torn up asphalt. Another beautiful sight to see was the kids playground. I guess at one time it was really nice but as we drove by the place was torn up. To add to the ambience, we saw a dead guy laying face down off the side of the road. It looked like somebody knelt him down and shot him in the back of the head based on how he was laying. Must have been a few days ago too because he was all bloated from the heat. Ahhh fun times in Baghdad. Im just thanking God we're done handing off our old sector. Those guys are going to have a REALLY long year here if that's how they do business. Im taking a ride through the new sector tomorrow so I'll get another good look at the place.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ May 15, 2007 -> 06:45 AM) There is one way to cut gas prices... Cut demand. Period. Taxes are actually a help toward keeping gas prices lower than they are, because higher prices would usually serve to stunt demand (all though gasoline is a strange commodity, and doesn't behave normally from a supply and demand standpoint). This protest is just stupid, because it doesn't stop the actual problem. This is the best post in this thread so far. These same people that are crying the loudest about gas prices are still the ones that drive their SUV everywhere they go. It doesn't matter whether it's to work or 2 blocks down the street to get a gallon of milk. Sacrifice, to your average American, is something that other people should do. Until that mentality goes away there are always going to be really high gas prices.

QUOTE(Texsox @ May 14, 2007 -> 10:35 PM) I do wish he'd stop by and share what guys serving feel when they see their former Generals disagreeing with the Commander in Chief. BTW, from what I've seen votevets has been fairly moderate. My interenet's been down the last few days or I would have chimed in on this sooner. If I were to go and ask every member of my unit whether they had heard what these retired generals had to say about Iraq I'd be hard pressed to find 2 ( not including myself ) that even knew about it. If you want info on how we feel about the war in general, I think the general consensus is fairly close to my own. Most of us feel that going to war was the right thing to do but the way things are being run at the higher levels......ahem......leaves something to be desired. A lot of us feel that decisions are made by people who are out of touch with what is really going on on the ground and sometimes run contrary to what we feel is the best course of action.

QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ May 15, 2007 -> 01:49 PM) The quick answer is that it doesnt work the same way. Your school is a lot closer(not as much delay), has a faster connection to the dedicated backbone, has a lot more peers to communicate with. So adding quality of service and restricting traffic has a small price on the overall health of the network. The longer answer is this. Delay is the real killer here, more than pure bandwidth. The further away you are, the longer the traffic takes. So as you saturate the link more, your tcp communications will start to drop here and there, and you will retransmit more and more. This slows down your connection, and also saturates the link with more traffic. To give you an example we have an office in australia. Its 267 ms to that office, no matter if you have a 2 meg link, or the new 10 meg link we installed at that office that had no effect on their performance. We had to buy expensive wan optimizers to help us function with our traffic over it. At that point we decided to restrict traffic so only business traffic would traverse over it, to get the best bang for our buck and help lessen the saturation and delay. The military is just doing the same thing. And is probably using expensive WAN optimizers just like we are to help their traffic move across the network faster. Remember the primary use of these links is for Military communications. They allow some web surfing, however if any of that traffic impedes on the primary use of the network you shut it off. I dont allow any of those sites here at my work, nor things like Skype, IM or anything fun. From the security standpont these sites are a killer as people can post up intellectual property or military secrets. Video is a pig from a bandwidth standpoint, no matter how you optimize it. Military communications run over their own networks and is secure and encrypted. The stuff they let us use for personal use is contracted out to the locals and it runs over it's own satellite hookup.

Another thing I've been reading is that the early Easter pulled quite a bit of sales back into March from April and that helped contribute to the decline in most places.

QUOTE(santo=dorf @ May 13, 2007 -> 10:04 AM) These are probably the same conservative posters who b**** about Shaprton and Jesse Jackson and talk about how if somebody in their community made a remark or did something about white people, there should be an outrage but nothing would happen. They're trying to have it both ways. What would happen if a black fraternity or school sponsored organization dressed up as white people and did stereotypical "white" things at a party? I could totally see jenksismyb**** and/or Nuke complaining about it and making a crackpot shot at Jesse Jackson and/or Sharpton not being there to protest the racist events. They won't admit it though. I wouldn't complain about the stereotype at all. What would be fun, though, is to point out the hypocrasy of these so called "civil rights leaders". But, as always, the truth is better than fiction could ever be. Reference Sharpton's comments about Mormons.

QUOTE(Balance @ May 10, 2007 -> 10:13 AM) Sweeney has been a real bright spot. I wouldn't want to even consider sending him down unless and until Pods is back at 100%. And perhaps not even then. If Sweeney can be allowed to stay and keeps producing then why not dump Pods with his salary and his injuries and let Sweeney handle things?

Just gotta go out and handle business boys!

This fire sale talk is a bunch of horses***. This team has the pitching working right now and all it's going to take is the bats heating up, which you know is going to happen, and this team can easily retake 1st place. I've never seen this level of pessimism over a team that has played like crap and is still 3 games over. Just wait till they bring their A game.

QUOTE(Alpha Dog @ May 12, 2007 -> 01:19 PM) Just curious, who supplied those figures for the amount they spend Were they reported by the Cuban government? I realize that the source is biased, but have you lokoed at any reports about their healthcare that haven't come from government sanctioned sources? Blogs would be about the only thing, I guess, since it isn't likely castro would let a truely free press make him look bad. Interesting pictures and stories here: http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm Plus, it has been reported that the reason the infant mortality rate is low is due to the high number of abortions performed. Of course, this info comes from an NRLC story, so I guess they would be a bit more biased that Castro. http://www.nrlc.org/news/2001/NRL03/rai.html Somewhere in the middle, perhaps, lies the true Cuba healthcare system. Everything I've read about Cuba's medical institutions tells me that they have a great many quality doctors. Hooray for them. Those same readings tell me that their standard of living is light years behind ours. Thank you fatass Michael Moore but I'll stay put right here in the good ol USA.

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ May 12, 2007 -> 07:31 PM) It's not as if the school is giving these kids money to throw a racist party. Why hold them to a higher standard? Because they're smart kids and they should know better? Does that it make it more right or more wrong? I'm in agreement with Nuke here. I just wish minorities would learn to give it back. Society gets along better when we can all laugh at each other. Someone (cough*liberals in academia*cough) created a nation of whiney pussies that are offended at everything. And as I always point out in these types of discussions, if you look hard enough, you'll find offensive speech in everything. Funny how 90% of successful television sitcoms revolve around making fun of men, showcasing them as morons who couldn't walk straight if it weren't for their wives. Isn't this offensive to every man in the nation? Shouldn't we be boycotting these networks for their offensive speech? I'm calling my Congressperson. Very well said!

QUOTE(Texsox @ May 11, 2007 -> 09:16 PM) Since you can call your buddies racial slurs, then minorities everywhere should put up with it? If a group of officers got together for a party like this, are you telling me all would be ok? This is a public university group, if their best attempt at humor is insulting other people, then they should grow the f*** up. Who said anything about putting up with anything? If someone gets truly butthurt about certain jokes then they don't get told. The only reason people make jokes at other people's expense is because it's funny and people here have thick enough skin to take it. QUOTE(Texsox @ May 11, 2007 -> 09:16 PM) Are these the same military men who have been whining for over four decades that a couple may have been called baby killers? Talk about being too sensitive. I'll bet these guys will forget about it in a couple days, not decades. Dude the guys I have out there were born when Reagan was in office. They know as much about Vietnam as their parents and even grandparents told them.

Boy, we really made the terrorists s*** their pants today ( sarcasm ). There is this really dangerous area outside our sector and a house was identified that was a potential terrorist hideout. So we get called out to set up in observation of this place while the artillery guys launch a special kind of round at it to blow it up. So we head out and they're screaming at us on the radio to hurry up and get there because they want to shoot early. Fine. We haul ass out there, set up in our positions and wait. Once we get out there the PSYOPS guys start yelling over the loudspeakers some speech about " now see what happens when you mess with us ". Well, it didn't exactly turn out like that. First they start having problems with the round itself. It's a precision weapon and it was designed to drop through the roof and detonate. Well the 1st round failed to fire, so they tried another one........IT failed to fire. Some problem with the round holding data. So fine, they settle on a regular fire mission. Well, that didn't work either.......now the gun had problems of some kind. Finally, after an hour and a half of waiting around and talking s*** to the locals over the loudspeaker our commander pulls the plug and tells us to return to base. Score one for the good guys.

QUOTE(Texsox @ May 11, 2007 -> 06:25 AM) you are learning a lot from the Iraqis when it comes to punishment. I wonder, when we finally sink to their level, torture, etc. who comes in and rescues Americans from an evil ruler? Oh, and BTW, Moore is a dickhead and unless Cuba has some radical medical treatment that was these people's only hope, he deserves what ever punishment we dish out. Nuke, you smoking any Cuban cigars? If I did smoke cigars it would be fairly easy to get my hands on some over here.