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Showing posts from March 30, 2003
***WAR NEWS*** The firefight for Saddam Airport in Baghdad is ongoing. Apparently it's now in control of the coalition forces, but they're weathering heavy and continued assaults from Republican Guard units. Meanwhile, Saddam has appeared on TV referring to the Apache that went down a few days back. They're still not sure if he's alive though. It's fair to assume that an Apache would go down in this war - they're not particularly good in sandy conditions, so he could have pre-recorded a number of speeches and the Iraqi TV services are airing the most appropriate one. There's also an investigation been started into how CNN knew the war would start on March 19th. Quite why they need to investigate this is anyone's guess. I knew that was the start date - I think most people did - way in advance. Look back in my blog to March 6th. All it took was a little common sense, watching the news, and listening to GWB's rantings to predict this. In fact, I predi
Busy busy busy. House stuff, people coming and going, two film crews filming the EP product in two days. It's exhausting, but in a good way :-) The snow has remained on the ground today - it's still cold - no thaw in sight right now. All my websites came back up, and AT&T finally got their thumbs out of their arse and put the line intercept on our old phone number.
Holy snot it snowed big-time overnight. Got up this morning - snow everywhere. I had to clear the driveway and paths and everything. The aluminium roof on the house is great - no snow - but it's all transferred to the ground around the house. I think we'll get some eaves heaters for next winter to try to manage the snow a bit better. Meanwhile, 2 of my 3 websites are down :-(
Jeez - AT&T or Comcast suck so badly it's untrue. They can't do anything right. Twice I've been on to them now to try to get them to put the promised line-intercept on our old line to tell people what our new number is. They even gave me a case number yesterday yet today it's still not working. Their file shows the work order is complete, but of course it isn't. Holy shit and I thought NTL was bad in England. I think NTL's handbook must have been sponsored and printed by AT&T. "The AT&T guide to shite service, 1st edition." Anyway, they've put a second engineering request in and I've got to try again on friday .... Meanwhile I'm twiddling my thumbs because all the systems are down at work so I can't get at email or any of my files.
American Airlines has come to an agreement with its three main Unions to permanently cut $1.8bn from workforce expenditure. It's amazing to me that United and American are virtually held ransom by their unions. United is all but dead because their unions won't let the workforce cost cutting go ahead. They don't seem to understand that it's either cut costs, or have no airline to work for. I'm glad American saw the light.
***WAR NEWS*** It seems we can blame Rumsfeld for the current sphincter factor of the troops in the Gulf. Apparently, he repeatedly rejected advice from Pentagon planners that substantially more troops and armor would be needed to fight a war in Iraq. New Yorker mag claims that Rumsfeld insisted at least six times in the run-up to the conflict that the proposed number of ground troops be sharply reduced and got his way. The mag also reckons Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander (Tommy Franks) to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance. Interesting.
Ok so maybe I won't drop the war bit all together. I found this on one of the Fark photoshop contests for a more favourable front page for CNN. Made I larff. Blind speculation over something which may or may not have happened. Due to a lack of concrete evidence of what is really happening in Iraq, we are once more forced to fill 24 hours of TV and hundreds of web pages with re-warmed analysis of things which may or may not have happened, and speculation, often by spectacularly uninformed people on the periphery of the modern military, about things which may or may not ever happen.
I think I'll give up with specific war news. We're in such deep shit in Iraq now that nobody seems to realise they're running headlong into Vietnam War Part 2 - The Gulf. Anyway, we picked up the bike on friday and moved into the new house on saturday. It took us 2 and a half hours to get everything moved from the apartment to the house. Sweet. The people we'd asked to help were brilliant. So now we're getting used to new house noises and smells, meeting the neighbours etc etc. It's all very strange. DISH networks came out and sorted out the satellite system for us. We're getting all but 3 of the channels we had on AT&T, two of which we hardly ever watched, for $18 a month less. Suh-weet. On friday, the company laid off another 58 people, which made my heart jump into my mouth when I heard about it. After all - new house, mortgage commitment..... On sunday, Bob and his wife, Kerry, Paula and I took off on the bikes for a four-hour ride to Antel