Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

I am now going to add this to my calendar.

ScrappleFace has the straight scoop on this whole TANG memo story.

***UPDATE***

And Liberal Larry fills in the blanks.

On top of it all, Birdie tells us that he and his wife join the ranks of soon-to-be parents. I will have a Birdiebaby, Bogeybaby, and Slice, Jr., to play golf with in my old age!

Welcome to listeners of Lago’s show this morning. For those of you who have never heard of a weblog, or “blog”, let me offer some initial guidance. The following links will take you to some of the more popular web sites for keeping up to date on news:

Drudge Report
InstaPundit
PowerLine

Different blogging software sites:

WordPress
MoveableType
Blogger
Blosxom
Asymptomatic

Also, down the left column of this site you will see a graphic for Homespun Bloggers, which is a group that includes some excellent writers and thinkers. Farther down is my list of favorites. It changes frequently. Take a look at all of them. They are a diverse group with many opinions, and I read each of them every day.

I believe the proper curse is, “May you live in interesting times.” The last three days of site ownership have been interesting.

I have been getting some comment spam, so I tried to install Blacklist for my MT 3.01 installation. No dice. When 3.1 came out with a “plug-in pack” that included a version of Blacklist, I thought the time was right. As stated before, I’m no UNIX or network genius, and the MT manual is written for such people. I had some difficulty just at the time David linked to one of my posts. To anyone who came by to visit due to his link, I apologize. But especially to him for them embarrassment I may have caused because the link didn’t work.

The problem was that the individual archives were lost, even though they were where they should be. I had backed them all up, which took several tries, and that ate up a bunch of bandwidth. Once I got things working again, the comment spam hit. Of course, I hadn’t yet completely configured Blacklist, or the spam bypassed the filter. I don’t yet know.

Why? Well, PowerWeb, my hosting service, shut it all down and would not activate the site until I removed the offending file. Great. But I have no ftp access, either. Kinda hard to fix the problem without it. So, off and on for the last two days I’ve tried to explain that to virtually everyone at PowerWeb who works at Support.

This afternoon, I finally got someone to activate things once again.

So, the millions of readers (dozens?) out there who have been waiting patiently for the words of wisdom I have to bestow upon your anxious minds may now rest easier knowing Bunker Mulligan is back on line.

Actually, the most frustrating thing is that I haven’t been able to easily acces the sites I generally read each day. I have bookmarks for news sites like Drudge, InstaPundit, and PowerLine, where I generally get updates on what’s happening in the world. But those are simply my starting points, All the sites listed in my Favorites column haven’t been available to me. And that is unacceptable. How do I know what to think without my ties to the VRWC?

So, I have a lot of reading to catch up on this weekend.

Yesterday I upgraded to MT 3.1 and now I’m having some difficulty with the archives. For some reason, it can’t find them!

Well, it actually can find the category archives, but not the individual ones. Very strange. So, if you are looking for a single entry, check the categories list, and it should get you there.

All this because I wanted to implement Blacklist to counter the increasing comment spam.

***UPDATE***
It took a while, but I managed to back up everything and rebuild. It took several tries, so there was something going on not so good.

The Air Force takes writing and speaking very seriously. Communication is essential. That doesn’t mean it can’t be humorous.

When I attended Squadron Officers School, a professional course for junior captains, we were blessed with presentations by the AF CINC Writing, a gentleman with a PhD in Literature. He was also a pretty good historian in regards to military writing. Being long-winded in writing is always an issue. He brought up a case study involving George Washington to illuminate the difference between rambling prose and terse directive in writing.

One of Washington’s generals sent him a long description of the apprehension, trial, and conviction of two soldiers for rape. The penalty was death. The general detailed the offense, trial, and his intent to carry out the execution. It went on for a full page.

Washington sent his reply at the bottom of the same sheet. “So do.”

The underling learned quickly. He responded, again on the same sheet of paper, “Done.”

Tongue & Quill is one of the best texts on writing and speaking I’ve read. Officially, it is AFH 33-337, an Air Force Handbook. It is not what most people expect from an official military publication. It is very clear, has outstanding guidance, and humor. All that makes it a book most Air Force personnel kept on their desk when I was in. It is not just a good learning tool, but a great reference as well. The newer version is okay, but I prefer the older version. Nostalgia, I guess.

As soon as I saw the chart put out by the Kerry Campaign to link Dubya to the Swift Boat Veterans, I thought of this chart in Tongue & Quill.

The block midway down the left side may have been created with Kerry in mind.