Dave Mancuso dot Com

[My brother Joe lives in Guam and travels all over that part of the world whenever he gets vacation. Right now he’s off to China, and he’s letting me post some of the travelogue notes he’s sending out. Pretty interesting stuff.]

Post 1, Bangkok:
“Made it to Bangkok fine and am waiting for my visa to PRC when I can leave Tuesday. Funny, we are used to hearing of the Philippines as a foreign/terrorist kind of place but the French steward and passengers around me on my AirFrance flight going to Paris were worse. They were nice until they figured out I was American, after that every 15 words I could make out a sneering “ammmmweweeecan”. Yeah, whatever. I wanted to ask him if he remembered who liberated Paris in 45, but figured a nap would be more productive.

Checked in last night to a hotel I hadn’t stayed at before and headed right out to look for visas… soon it was late and I TOTALLY forgot the hotel name…. There was a moment where I considered checking into another hotel just to sleep and figure it out later! I did find it later…

I can’t think of a place anywhere where the people are so friendly. They truly understand tourism here. All day has been one smile after another, just like it was last trip. I have to brace myself for China now…”

I posted a story a few days ago about the military extending service duty tours in Iraq. A few military (and ex-military) personnel have posted comments to the blog and said essentially that this is an up front expectation when you join up–no one should be surprised about this. That’s good to know. I had felt that our servicemen were being taken advantage of, but if it’s something that they know about as a possiblity from day one, then it’s a much different (and better) situation.

Of course, opinions by people like me (who aren’t in the theater of operations) wouldn’t really hold much weight compared to someone in the service.

I hope when we pull out that the whole country doesn’t collapse. I think we’re holding their utility infrastructure up by force of will right now until more contracting work is done.

This “new” product from Apple–what a sham!

They’ve obviously found some old 1991 Apple Personal Modem 1200s and decided to recycle them for this “new” product:

Of all the gall. Oh, wait–it’s not the same at all, actually:

Actually, that’s pretty cool… Yeah…54 MB wireless, you can network multiple Airport Expresses without wires, you can stream iTunes wirelessly from your laptop to your stereo, you can connect a USB printer and share it to your wireless clients, you can plug it into Ethernet networks too….

I MUST HAVE ONE.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going down to the local Apple store 70 miles away and waiting for Airport Express to come out in, um July. Darn you, Apple!

Check out John Robb’s post about keeping volunteers in the army after they’re due to go home (short summary–they change the rules to say “Nope–you have to stay indefinitely now, can’t go home.”). I’m not pointing this out as a commentary on the war in Iraq, but I am making the distinction that this “stop loss” policy comes dangerously close to conscription (the draft).

As Robert Heinlein said in 1961, “I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don’t think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can’t save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!”

This from an ultra patriot, radical conservative, military veteran who campaigned for Goldwater.

From one of my favorite new websites, Ace of Spades HQ, “news commentary” on Air America news.

I found a link in Dana Carpender’s LowCarbezine newsletter about a new food show on the Food Network called Low Carb & Lovin’ It. I set the TiVO to tape all the shows and I’m watching the first one right now. It rocks; it’s about low carb comfort foods.

By the way, you can see in the intro that this guy’s family lost a combined five hundred and sixty pounds (yes, 560 lbs.) on his low carb cooking.

I think this is a show I’m going to watch a lot.

Oh–hey Josh, thanks for the heads up on the Asian grocery in Lancaster (for the Chinese Five Spice Powder). not sure if I’m up to the eye of bat, though.(!)

From TheOneRing.net, May 25, 2004 news, people in line for the DVD talking to a New Line rep:

“We also talked about the EE DVD, and he told us to expect a January release, or late December, but that was unlikely. He added that they were looking at first releasing the EE in theatres, and that a ‘super-trilogy’ Tuesday was under consideration, but not a definite, while mentioning that last year’s EE releases were very lucrative for the studio.”

I had hoped to get the “EE” DVD for ROTK (Mike will ridicule me mercilessly for the overuse ot TLAs) by Thanksgiving, but oh, well. The possible theater showings were a cool surprise, though. You may have your chance yet, Brad. But at 3.5 hours, 3.5 hours, and at least 4 hours, we’re talking 12 hours of film including half hour breaks. Even I may not have the stamina for that.

My wife and I were talking on our cell phones today and we both happened to be tuned to NPR. I noticed that I heard her radio a split second after mine. She said hers was first though, and mine was later. Then I realized that the digital cell network was causing a delay between us. It happens all the time, but unless you notice a radio or something like I did, you’d never know it.

So the point is that on digital cell phones, a live conversation is an impossibility. I’m never talking live to my wife; I’m talking to a voice recording, a digital reproduction of her words a split second later. We never actually speak with each other directly.

A little weird if you think about it.

So I’m pushing low carb again. I’m desperate–I was over 250 again (254, to be exact) and I was feeling crappy, tired, just not energetic.

So I go on the diet again and a week later I’m 7 pounds lighter and feeling much, much better.

But.

Low carb eating requires variety if you want to make it a lifetime diet. That means you have to build thst variety into your foodstuffs and seasonings, which requires a bit of menu planning. I mean, I made a killer beef stew the other night with some leftover red peppers, onions, and mushrooms along with my chuck roast, but that doesn’t happen that often (chop it all up and put in a pot on low for an hour and a half with some red wine, beef broth, worcestershire sauce, and steak seasoning , by the way–it turns tender and you can thicken up the juice by putting it through the blender with some sprinkled Xanthan gum).

So the two ingredients I can’t find are “Chinese Five Spice Powder” and Asian “fish sauce.” The five spice powder is supposedly available everywhere, but I haven’t seen it anywhere in Pennsylvania Dutch country. I can widen my cuisine choices with this stuff, but I guess I have to hunt down a food store that has it (since I’m not into making it myself).

Then I have to find a steady supply of low carb tortillas, since no one around here has them. The quest continues…

Well, one reason I was so excited to get satellite dish service back last month was TechTV. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Comcast bought TechTV and is merging it with their own G4 gaming network. They have a webpage about the new “G4TechTV” network that explains a bit about the merger.

They say they’re keeping The Screensavers, but they’ve given notice to everyone at TechTV. The only staff who get to stay are the ones who want to relocate from San Francisco to LA (and if you’ve never been to California, you might not know how far apart these two cities are).

Man.