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Don't tweet as I say and don't tweet as I do

The Marine Corps has issued orders for its folks to stay clear of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  CNN reports that the Marines apparently are worried that a slip of a lip might sink a ship which would mean Marines would have to swim from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. Never mind that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen has his own Twitter feed. He had 4,551 followers as of this afternoon. The latest feed says:

“Obviously we need to find right balance between security and transparency. We are working on that. But am I still going to tweet? You bet.”

RHIP ?(Rank hath its privileges). YBYA (You bet your ass).

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The last word on beer summits with limited puns

Well, thankfully the so-called “Beer Summit” is over and no one got hammered or started slugging it out on the White House lawn.

It being the summer and all I just suppose there isn’t much to talk about except how hot it is and speculating on whether or not the Beer Summit did any good after all the talk about the circumstances leading up to said summit.

Not surprisingly beer companies started raising hell when the White House revealed what everyone would drink. I think Henry Louis Gates Jr. had originally ordered the Jamaican Red Stripe but after the American brewers started their own brouhaha he chose as Samuel Adams. I think since he was one of the guests of honor he should have been given whatever he wanted for Pete’s sake. I mean, this is the White House!

I must admit I would find myself troubled to attend a White House beer summit these days because there are just too many beers to choose from. Although I attended many a beer summit in my younger days — mostly during the Navy and in college — I don’t drink beer much these days. And I suppose it is irony for me to complain about having too many beer choices.

There were times in college but mostly in the Navy when I was perpetually poor that the choice of beer had to do with the price. I am mostly talking about drinking in bars. Thanks to the humanizing policies instituted by our prior Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt, we could buy cans of beer for 35 cents from soft drink machines in the barracks, or BEQ (Bachelor Enlisted Quarters) as they were called.

I didn’t buy a lot of beer from the vending machines. I suppose that it had to do with the selection — probably Schlitz or some such. (As one of my favorite Texas singers, Robert Earl Keen, recalls: “Schlitz beer. I haven’t had that since elementary school.”)

Since I worked most of the time during college I didn’t worry so much about price although most of my college friends did. I do remember that day during my last semester — the one semester I felt like a real college student — my friend Warren and I rejoiced over the switch to Busch being the draft served during happy hour at our real one and only bar in Nacogdoches, the Crossroads.

I digress but these days I just get astonished when I walk by a beer selection in a store or liquor store and see all the choices. Talk about making your eyes glaze over.  You got your Santa’s Butt, Fat Tire, Arrogant Bastard, Drink Till You Puke On Your Shoes, Who Stole My Good Sense? and other great brands. (I made up the last two but the others are real.)

It is kind of amazing to me that some people stick to one brand of beer all of their life. Looking back on the days of my beer summiting I tend to characterize a favorite brand in conjunction with a place or time from that era. I think of Miller ponies at Jim’s Lounge in Gulfport, San Miguel or Olympia in the Philippines, Swan beer in Perth, Western Australia, Coors when you couldn’t get it east of Colorado, Coors Light in El Paso when a bartender told me you couldn’t get lighter than Coors and Busch at the Busch 4th of July shootoffs.

But now it’s decisions, decisions. Oh well, to each his own. Buuuurrrrppppp! In case you didn’t know, that was a burp from going through that long list.

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New GI Bill a positive step, but bargain?

The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin processing payments tomorrow for the new Post-9/11 GI Bill. The new veterans bill was designed to augment current veterans benefits such as those found in the Montgomery GI Bill, which was a de facto post-Vietnam era bill. Veterans will also have the ability to transfer benefits to family members under the legislation.

The improved benefits are expected to help nearly a half-million veterans and their families attend college next year alone. Almost $80 billion for these benefits will be paid out during the next decade.

I am happy to see an improved GI Bill to help the younger veterans and their families. Still, I can’t help but think this crop of veterans are getting shafted compared with what I had for the GI Bill and the economic situation of the times that I used them to attend college.

When I started college in 1980 I was under the post-Korea and Vietnam era GI Bill. I got a check every month I attended school. Since I was single the amount I received was $327 per month for a full load of 12 hours. That amount increased to $376 by the time I graduated in 1984. That doesn’t sound like much, but consider that tuition at state universities in Texas was $4 per semester hour during that time period, plus the fact that I worked full-time as a fireman, and one can see how I made out.

I remember on at least one occasion and perhaps maybe it happened more often than that but I received my monthly check and was able to pay tuition, fees and books for that semester just by using my monthly stipend.

A year after I graduated I returned to my alma mater, Stephen F. Austin State University, with thoughts of getting a graduate degree. Since I had only a minor in political science, which was the field I had locked onto for a possible master’s, I had to first take a few more hours to get my second bachelor’s in that field. By that time tuition had jumped to a whopping $12 per semester hour.

Looking at my old school’s Web page with its tuition calculator I see that for a full load during the upcoming fall semester the tuition is $50 per semester hour, then you start looking at fees, room and board if you live on campus, etc., and the numbers start increasing.

Even adjusting for inflation what I spent back then for various costs were a steal. In today’s dollars I would be paying $196 a month for the one-bedroom apartment I rented when I started college.

It is no wonder that when I look back on the days I went to college that I felt somewhat rich. Little wonder I feel that way since the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator shows that the amount I was making in combined salary and GI Bill would be more than $39,000 in today’s dollars. That’s pretty good buying power for a college guy.

So today’s veteran, when someone tells you the college they are selling is bargain then perhaps it might be. But it certainly isn’t the bargain that I had when starting school almost 30 years ago.

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Back in service a day later

For slightly less than 24 hours I have been off the Internet due to a broken wireless modem. Forget that I didn’t know that I had insurance for damaged wireless equipment. I had no idea that such equipment could be delivered within 24 hours. I suppose that is because the insurance company was the mover behind the curtain rather than Verizon.

I suppose that when one sees he or she is spending more time on the phone with people from the wireless Internet provider and/or the cell phone company, then perhaps the deal that has been chosen isn’t working out so well. Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t look like I have a choice. Verizon has the best wireless Internet service in my area.

When that service is working properly it is super and with excellent speeds. The problem is consistency. I suppose I shouldn’t get bent out of shape because my Internet fails right in the middle of doing something important or time-sensitive. My wireless is still 10 times better than what I have to put up with using dial-up for my government computer.

Then again, I don’t have to pay a monthly charge for my dial-up service which powers my part-time job’s equipment online.

This all makes me wonder if cell and wireless Internet service will someday be somewhere next to flawless? With com providers, such as Verizon, trimming more and more workers form its rolls it certainly seems that is a dream of something far, far into the future.

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The password is …

Look at them. A page of jumbled letters, numbers and special characters I have written down on several different pages . It’s all for the sake of computer security.

I have about 15 different passwords for work-related sites, or should I say, my part-time work-related sites. Then I  probably have another 25 or 30 more passwords for personal use or for my other line of work.

Now, I must admit that contrary to all the warnings, I do sometimes use the same passwords to access different pages. I am warned over and over not to do that. But have mercy on a poor soul as me who does good to remember the grocery list.

I would almost be willing to bet that my number of passwords are even lower than many other computer users. But there are still too many passwords that fly out in front of me, leaving me dazed and confused.

Perhaps someone out there in the computersphere is working  on a way to minimize passwords. I mean, some sites can remember your password and login name. And then some sites say they can but don’t really do it, like my Verizon Wireless account. Maybe we should get Sally Struthers to do a TV commercial asking for bucks for developing a password-free world like she did seeking help for all those impoverished foreign children.

Please we need to limit passwords before people go stark raving mad. Time is running out!