Just a lousy month, March was.  Despite celebrating a birthday in it.

Wife's health continues to be poor.  Prognosis is...not sure.  The COPD will never get better, but we are currently stalled awaiting specialist appointments.  And she seems to slide backwards a bit each week.  She's doing everything she's been told, but there are still unanswered questions.  The emotional whiplash she suffers with this certainly acts as a negative "force multiplier."

I love the company I work for, and I'm doing what I'm good at (or good at most of it...), but it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks today that I'm tired of doing this job.  Not tired of the people, they're marvelous.  Not tired of learning and doing new and cool things.  I still love to learn.  But, tired of the insane dance dictated by a government financial system whose first principle I've never fully understood, i.e.:  Spend all your money in the fiscal year you get it.  (Or the two-year time frame, or...it gets complicated.)  No brownie points for frugality or being an efficient steward of public monies.

In any other business, if I brought in a $2 million R&D program a couple of hundred-thousand under budget, but still on time and delivered the new technical capability, I'd be a hero.

If I do that in this role, I'm considered a bad manager (by the government at least).

Don't worry gentle reader; I will properly, legally, and expeditiously expend all assigned funds by completion of the project deadline.  No other option is acceptable.

But Lord...I wouldn't mind a new line of work.

Checked out a local karate school that teaches Iaido.  Looks like lots of fun, the people were very nice, and the Master even took time to explain things directly to me even though I was just sitting in the peanut gallery   But there are only two classes a month.  And if I understand the language on the website, I can't train any other style if I'm doing that.  I'll ask for clarification, I don't know if it means I can't train *anything* or they restrict folks to their empty hand style.  Except their empty hand style doesn't really interest me.

I'm really missing my old dojo this evening.  I gotta say, this being a Ronin pretty much sucks.

Just tired.

I should quit my whining, tie my hakama back up and get to it.

Carry on.

How do we "depolarize" politics in our country.

The tendency to draw broad lines of demarcation and declare positions "black or white" has certainly increased in my lifetime.

It oversimplifies complex topics and does not engender debate or understanding.

This, combined with the death-grip "big money" has on our political processes, is more of a threat to our Republic than a dozen other so-called "dangers."

How do we do it?

*Can* we do it?

I have no answers.

I have engendered some confusion by being too vague on my previous post.  I humbly apologize, I hope to clear up some confusion.

First, the issue with my current dojo isn't the dojo itself, rather its location.  It's a military gym that is unique in the Air Force...it's funded by "appropriated funds" (i.e., those federal monies provided for the operation and maintenance of the Active, Reserve, and Guard Air Force).  Every other gym on an AF base or GSU (geographically separated unit - the Lab where I work is one) is funded via the "Non-appropriated Fund" method, i.e., they have to generate enough income to pay for their overhead.

Because this gym (which contains said dojo) is paid from from the appropriated "pot" of money, it is illegal to expend any of that money on civilians.  I may be retired, but I'm still a civilian.  Certain parts of the military food chain have elected, for quite a long time actually, to look the other way because of our remote nature.  But it was still improper to permit us to have access.  Now that sequestration as put *everything* under the microscope, the Lab had no option but politely but firmly tell the retirees they can't use it anymore.

This goes into effect on 31 March. We train on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, hence three lessons left.  :)

I'm not leaving because I want to, or the Sensei has asked me to.  I've simply run into a federal regulation.

Second, my observation about the SCA has led a couple of folks to believe I'm either going to A) Quit fighting soon and/or B) Quit the Society.

Neither is the case.  My thinking out loud was contemplating whether I should take the time and energy I've been expending in Karate and put it back into armored combat, rather than look for another dojo.  I've let that languish.  My additional observation was intended only that, at 55, I'm mindful I can't keep treating my body like it's 30.

I'm not ready to hang up my swords yet...but ask me five years from now.  I'd rather retire from heavy combat gracefully than have the "You can fight, or end up with parts of your body no longer functioning" discussion with my family doctor.

But I'm in no tearin' hurry.

I apologize for any consternation I may have cause.

Banzai!

What follows is difficult to write.  I can see both sides of the dynamic, and have a ring-side seat to watching part of it play out.

What follows is not a "smoker's rights" diatribe.  Neither is it an anti-smoking rant.  It is, I suppose, a lament in the classic sense.  Some of what is here I've said before, some may be new material.

So, smoking sucks.  It's bad for you.  Duh.  Not news...it's been preached certainly as far back as my Junior High/High School days.  But it's legal, and it does serve as a stress-reliever for many.  It did me, hence the struggle I had breaking its grip.

Fast forward:  Tobacco trials in the 90's.  If there's one damning action that should have had people swinging from a gibbet, it was the fact that the tobacco companies deliberately messed with nicotine concentrations to make the damn things even more addictive.  Forget going after the ad guys, I think they should have strung up the executives who ordered it and the scientists who carried it out.

Fast forward:  Early 2000's.  Stop smoking aids are the new rage.  Some work on replacement therapy, which works for some, some are just placebos, one or two take a shot at chemical attempts to alter the human biochemistry (e.g., Wellbutrin and Chantix.)  But by and large the "gold standard" for the medical community is simply quitting "cold-turkey."  If you can't quit with these methods, neither the medical nor insurance industry really gives a damn at this point, you don't pass the "cost-benefit" analysis.  (Read:  No attempts at insurance or government subsidized in-patient programs such as you might get if you were addicted to other substances.)  Bottom line:  Can't quit on your own?  Tango Fox Bravo.

Running parallel with the above is a massive social engineering effort that first treated smokers as people needing help, and then moved to simply making the ones who were left pariahs.  The latter condition holds in these current times.

So...one of the known issues is that smoking seriously increases the risk of all kinds of disease.  The most common side effect is COPD and/or emphysema.  Again, been known for a long time.

First I'll speak to the Physicians, knowing several and having one in the family.  They have a ring-side seat to a decades-long train-wreck in slow motion.  They have impossible demands levied on them, including people with advanced pulmonary disease(s) who beg for some miracle, while smoking on the way in to do the begging.  It has to grate, it has to be frustrating, and I fully imagine that...after years of it...one must  be able to filter it out lest one go mad.

But then there's the other side...the side I got to watch up close over the last couple of weeks.  Some (not all, but some) physicians now have blinders on.  They see the patient in the ED complaining of breathing problems, hear "I smoke(d)" and the mental doors slam shut.  You have COPD, here're some oxygen and steroids, can't do anything else, next.  And to be fair, as noted above, that's often the case.

But not this time.

Not this person.

Yes, the patient has COPD...but if you'll stop and listen for a moment, no one is arguing with you about that.  No one is in denial.  No one is asking for a miracle you can't provide.  If you'll open the blast door that just closed in your brain, you will hear that the complaint *was completely unrelated* to a pulmonary problem.  Once one of your other compatriots started listening and diagnosing, they discovered the esophageal spasms, which were the reason for the ambulance call, were due to a different problem, one whose proximate cause doesn't have dick to do with pulmonary disease.

This is a very dangerous trend.  One I've seen coming for a long time, and this wasn't the first time a physician "turned off" as soon he/she heard the words "smoking" and "COPD" in the same sentence.  Just the most obvious and egregious.

I'm not a physician, or a nurse, or an EMT...hell my "medical" experience is limited to my First Aid merit badge in Boy Scouts, and some "Self-aid/Buddy-care" sessions in the military.  But I do believe I'm safe in stating that contracting COPD doesn't suddenly mean you're immune to any other diseases or medical complications.  And you're making a very serious mistake in immediately categorizing your patient and truncating your diagnostic steps because you heard those two damning words.

I quit 12 years ago (cold turkey, the available "resources" were useless), and have no doubt that should I ever contract pulmonary disease, the Scarlet "S" will be stamped all over my medical records, and I'll be running the same risk of being summarily judged (excuse me..."diagnosed") and dismissed as a weak-willed idiot who's getting what he deserves.

Or just maybe, my leg really is broken, and the fact that I smoked doesn't have a damn thing to do with it.

I'm just sayin.....

Long silences do not always mean lack of concern, rather they often mean one's attention is riveted elsewhere.

Personal challenges abound, the most frightening of which is the health of my wife.  It has taken a turn for the worse.  A recent stay in the hospital yielded an incomplete set of answers.  It is compounded by multiple forces, to include her partial non-compliance with medical direction as well as what I perceive as a prejudice that has gone subconscious in the medical community.  To wit:  one of her troubles is COPD exacerbated by the fact that she smoked for pretty much all of her adult life. (She has finally quit.)  I watched far too many doctors, during the recent hospital stay, see/hear "COPD" and "smoking" and then stop listening to any additional input.  

So, she's home, doing what they told her to do for the primary complaint, and it doesn't seem to be working.  Lack of sleep isn't helping her either.  But between an ambulance ride that featured a botched intubation, and the apparent (if not in fact it certainly looked that way to a 3rd party observer) tendency of medical personal to quickly go "blind" to other possibilities because of the smoking/COPD link ("She smoked, her problem is COPD, here's a prescription for *more* steroids...next!"), she's loathe to return for more medical evaluation...at least at this juncture.

On a somewhat more minor, but annoying note, I may have to stop training karate.  Due to the, ahem..."unique" situation surrounding the AFRL facilities where I work, they're restricting retiree access to the site's gym.  This isn't done from any sense of caprice or prejudice, the driving force is based in federal law.  The retirees aren't quite being shown the door, but a bunch of nonsensical requirements are being put in place. (e.g., having to get a "passport" size photo so I can get a "badge" to get into the gym.  'Scuse me, I have one already...it's called a DoD I.D. card issued to military retirees.)

But I was truly loving being in a dojo again, and it was a significant source of stress relief.  The main dojo is a two-hour round trip distant...so it isn't a viable option.

The company I work for continues to be a joy, so all is not darkness and despair.

On to the day's demands.  

Gun control is one of those topics guranteed to wind up everyone in the room.  

It's an emotional topic, right up there with religion and abortion, and hits lots of emotional triggers. 

In my lifetime I've seen the debate slowly dragged into little more than a screaming match by the fringes of the respective positions.  Most of the anti-gun organizations make no bones about their desire to make it illegal for any private citizen to own anything more than a Nerf gun, and they probably want them to be registered.  Many pro-gun camps (and voices) loudly declaim they don't understand why they can't purchase a set of "Quad-50s" as casually as they do a tube of Carmex at the impluse counter at Walmart.

I've also seen, in my lifetime, a significant difference in how firearms are viewed.  We were raised with guns in our home, taught firearm safety and how to shoot properly, and often hunted.  Yet, despite all the angst of growing up, grabbing a gun and walking into school to vent our troubles never entered our minds.

In this day, folks point to violent games and images...and perhaps there is some connection, at least for some young people, that the barrage "desensitizes" them.  Though I rather think it only does for those who already have issues, likely undiagnosed.  I'm not sure it'll "wreck" your average kid.  Certainly the images presented in video games and in movies of how guns function and what they do are false, badly so.  But I keep coming back that it was considered perfectly normal to teach youngsters firearm safety when I was younger.  Knowledge trumps fantasy pretty much every time.

The other component to this is "gun control" in relation to our Constitutional right, and that is not a simple issue.  Thus simple solutions cannot strike the proper balance.  Yet it seems to be what everyone is shooting for.  (Pun intended)

Case in point, and the purpose of this minor rant, is our New York State legislators, in an shameless display of political grandstanding...wrapped in a display of purported "concern" for their charges...voted to pass some of the toughest gun restrictions (stop saying "control"..."control" is safely handling your firearm) in the country.

"Assault weapons" (of course, there are no such things...there are "assault rifles" and they are already heavily regulated, and have been for a long time) are now illegal.  NY State residents have a year to register or dispose of them.  There are some wonky grandfather clauses, and the text of the bill is hard to read (the text of all bills is usally hard to read...I think deliberately so), but the bottom line is, if you own an AR-15 or similar rifle, and have a "high capacity magazine" (that being anything capable of holding more than 10 rounds) you have to register the firearm and get rid of the magazine.  Possession of an unregistered rifle, or the magazine, will be a crime.

Oh, but wait, there's more...if you have a 10 round magazine, you can't legally put more than seven rounds in it at a time.

Will our law enforcement personnel start randomingly checking?  "Hey buddy, that's a Ruger 10/22...let me see the clip for that..."  (For the uninitiated, the Ruger 10/22 holds 10 rounds of .22 ammunition and doesn't meet the "ugly gun" rules to be classified as an "assault weapon.")

This is driven by the Sandy Hook murders.  And please, call them what they were...murders.  Using the term "shooting" is a deliberate action by anti-gun organizations to get folks to mentally equate any "shooting" (even if it's target shooting or hunting) as evil.

Here's the problem.  The law-abiding folks are the one who will toe the line.  The next whack job who wants to unleash hell on some unsuspecting folks is going to do it.  These new laws will not stop him/her, they likely won't even slow that person down. 

This isn't about registering firearms, it's about registering gun owners.  My short term prediction is we'll see magazine capacity reduced further, and we'll see a bill requiring gun owners to register all weapons regardless of type.  Just sign here, and oh...by the way...here are you papers.  As long as you show them to the nice enforcer, everything will be fine.

As I said, this is a complex issue, I haven't gotten many other related topics that should be addressed.  But the NY State Legislature just flipped the bird to the Second Amendment.

Seems to me the rights I spent my life defending are being stripped from me.

I am *not* a happy man.

In no particular order:

1.  Went to karate again last night after a long haitus (due to the new job...more on that below).  I was shocked, pleasantly, at how much of my kata I remembered.  As it was "red tip testing" night, Sensei was also pleasantly shocked, I have achieved my next belt.  :)

Did come home with a good bruise, as sparring was part of the testing sequence.  I successfully stopped an upper-ranked belt (way upper rank) who was preparing to launch a kick into me.  I got my leg up faster than she could chamber her kick, and stopped her knee cap with my shin.  Ow.  I won't complain though.  Sensei lets me "dance" with the higher ranked belts because of my unique and varied background in the martial arts.  I blame Ogami-san mostly.  :)

2.  The new job:  is the bomb!  (Okay, it's an outdated term...but then, I'm outdated.)  Working for a small business, composed of genuinely likable folks is incredibly better than being employee number 10,529 in a large company.  Not that the large companies I've worked for were bad, they were fine.  But not having to thread a labyrinthian maze for every little thing, and having a senior staff bereft of huge egos, makes working with (and for) these people a pure pleasure.  On top of it, the owners are engineers in their own right, and while they *are* out to make money, they are geniunely excited about the techonologies and the help it brings to our warfighters.  (I know, "warfighter" is an improperly constructed word...get used to it.....;) )

3.  Political ramblings in no particular order: 

A)  Read an interesting lament on Guantanamo still being open, and being largely ignored in the recently completed election cycle.  I have my own thoughts on Gitmo (which I've made clear in other posts), but I have a radical...if decidedly un-Christian...proposal.  Empty the place.  Seriously. 

The folks carping that we should try them as "prisoners of war" ignore the fact that we could, under the laws of armed conflict, summarily shoot them under those laws for violations under those laws.  The folks carping we should try them in a civilian court (No...jurisdiction in terms of the offenses is the first problem that come to mind, there are other issues as well) only want that so long as they are housed somewhere *else* upon conviction.

So, let's pack 'em up and dump them back in their respective country of origin.  And here's why I say that:

   (1)  I completely agree we *should not* be in the business of running this kind of prison.  It served a purpose initially, but as with all things, "mission creep" turned into something else.  The solution to preventing this from happening again?  Enforce the laws of armed conflict if a similar conflict occurs.  You're either in the field as part of legally fielded, recognized organization (please note this *does* include guerilla outfits), in accordance with recognized international law, or you're an illegal combatant and we'll just shoot ya dead.  All perfectly legal.

   (2)  Here's the "un-Christian" part:  What appears, initially, to be an alarming number of former Gitmo inmates who have been released, have subsequently been killed as they took up arms against us again.  The people complaining about this dynamic and using it as a justification to not release Gitmo prisoners aren't looking at it from the right angle.  If we release the rest of them, and several of them take up arms against us in the field and get shot...issue resolved.  If they don't take up arms against us...issue resolved.

   I don't see the down-side.

B.  Recent election:  I must admit I voted for Obama, even though I don't care for his performance to date.  This was largely due to the fact that the Republican Party spent most of the year-plus run-up to the election, scaring the bejesus out of most moderate voters who were inclined the same way I was. 

If the GOP is going to remain viable in the future, they're going to have to drop the "everything is a crusade" and hard-line "litmus test" requirements for their candidates, or they'll continue to be marginalized.  Hell, they didn't even put up the best guy they had in the pack:  Jon Huntsman.  Arguably better qualified than *anyone* in the rest of the pack, including Mitt Romney.  But he didn't have "star recognition" and likely wouldn't have toed the party line on several issues.

C.  "Fiscal Cliff":  what I'd like to see if some fiscal sanity.  Letting the Bush tax cuts expire, at least on the high-end, will *not* wreck us economically, nor unfairly "shear" people who are better off economically.  From what I understand, the actual change in the marginal tax rate will pretty small.  By the same token, Geithner's request to remove the debt ceiling completely is freaking brain-dead.  The deficit matters boys and girls.  We can't just keep printing money and loaning to ourselves.  Neither should we keep borrowing on the world stage as those become "must fund" payments out of our budget, and reduce the amount of discretionary funds available for other things.

I'll stop there for now.  That's enough blathering for this morning.  Back to the grindstone...

Carry on.

I have come crawling back after slumming on Facebook for what seems like ever.  I've railed that it's damn near impossible to have an intelligent, articulate argument in that forum...but have tried to do so for far too long.

So, I will perform some measure of penance, something minor to atone for my sin...application of the keisaku (as demonstrated below), an asectic diet, significant alcohol consumption...what ever is necessary to clense me.

I'll be back, in fairly short order, to blathering on this page...at length.

Gomen nasai.