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SEC. GATES: Good morning.
As you know, yesterday, Admiral Mullen and I testified for the Senate on the way ahead in Iraq. It is a path that is unanimously endorsed by our nation's top uniformed officers and civilian leaders, myself included.
We are currently in the middle of the initial drawdown of the five surge brigades. By the time it's complete in July, we will have rearranged our forces in Iraq, redrawn battle lines, reduced our presence in some areas and shifted more responsibility to the Iraqis. In short, there will have been a major force realignment.
The only prudent course of action at the end of July is to pause the drawdown for a period of time -- General Petraeus has said 45 days -- to assess what impact, if any, all of this will have had. General Petraeus will then be in a position to give an initial recommendation. Whether we should hold troop levels steady, to maintain stability or offer additional protection for provincial elections or whether, because conditions allow for it, he can recommend further drawdowns at that time.
As the president said yesterday, continue return on success. Regardless of General Petraeus' initial assessment and recommendation, the process of evaluation will be a continuing one, with periodic recommendations whether to stand fast or make further drawdowns.
I certainly hope, continue to hope, that conditions will allow us to remove more troops by year's end. That hope for return on success is shared by the president, General Petraeus, Admiral Mullen and the Chiefs. But we're all realistic.
The history of this conflict has demonstrated that we must always be prepared for the unpredictable and that we must be extremely cautious with our every step. As I said yesterday, we cannot get the endgame wrong.
ADM. MULLEN: Sir, I don't have any opening.
Q Mr. Secretary, there's still fighting, as you know, in Sadr City and some in Basra as well. I wonder if both of you can addresses this. Is Muqtada al-Sadr an enemy of the United States?
ADM. MULLEN: To me, Muqtada al-Sadr is somewhat of an enigma, and it's pretty difficult to figure out exactly across all of the things that he is involved in where he's headed or what his plans are. Certainly he has -- the cease-fire that he asked for many months ago, some 12 to 18 months ago, has had a positive effect, and he seems certainly to have a following that's impacted -- that's followed that and significantly impacted on the reduction of violence. But just based on what happened at Basra the other day, he clearly can have the opposite impact, as well.
So I think part of what is evident out of recent operations in Basra is there's been -- Prime Minister Maliki took steps to, I think, go after the militia and was seen to have -- was actually praised both in his country by both -- by all the different groups, and he's also received support externally in the region, which I think it's very positive.
So I think Sadr clearly is a very important and key player in all this. Exactly where he's headed and what impact he'll have long term I think is out there still to be determined.
Q Sir, if he returns to Iraq, would you --
Q Would the secretary address that too, please?
SEC. GATES: I would just say more broadly that I think those who are prepared to work within the political process in Iraq, and peacefully, are not enemies of the United States.
Q But if he were to return to Iraq, would you order him to be arrested, or do you feel that he's somebody who does want to enter the political zone and therefore you're trying to work with him?
SEC. GATES: I think I would be surprised if there were a move along those lines.
Q Which lines?
SEC. GATES: A move to arrest him. He is a significant political figure, and clearly, if he is willing to work within -- we want him to work within the political process in Iraq. He has a large following. And I think that it's important that he become a part of the process if he isn't already.
Q Yeah, Secretary --
Q To both of you, if your hope is not realized, if we're not able to see further withdrawals in the fall, what's the downside? What are we putting at risk if conditions force you to maintain force levels throughout the fall?
ADM. MULLEN: Well, I think the available forces that we have in Iraq are the ones that offer -- should reductions continue -- potential to put forces in Afghanistan and also to build dwell time back here for our ground forces. And so there's risk associated very specifically with that. And that's probably in the three pieces that we try to pay a lot of attention to -- our force levels in Iraq, our requirements in Afghanistan which are unmet, as well as balancing the health of the force -- that if we stay at these levels for a significant period of time, which we can do -- I mean, we have the forces to do that, but we continue to press our forces at the levels we have and we would be unable to fill the requirements that we've got in Afghanistan.
Q Secretary, The Baltimore Sun reporting today that Marines sent to Afghanistan are essentially stuck on base, waiting for operations to be approved up the chain of command. Have you heard anything about this and can you talk about it?
SEC. GATES: This is the first I've heard of it. I don't really --
ADM. MULLEN: I saw the story this morning. I've actually been watching very carefully the 3,500 Marines getting to Afghanistan. They're a very important part of our efforts this year. I've watched their training to get ready for full operational capability and I've received no indication from the commanders out there that they're behind and that they're not going to be ready to go.
Q Mr. Secretary, Admiral Mullen, can you explain what the point is of the process which gives you -- both of you a separate voice to the president in the way forward in Iraq and talks about -- and you have the opportunity to talk about the stress on the force and the broader strategic risks, and at the end of that process, the president simply says General Petraeus will have all the time that he needs?
SEC. GATES: Well, I think -- first of all, I structured this process the same way I did last September. I wanted to make sure that the president had the opportunity to get the independent views of the field commander, the CENTCOM commander and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I wanted to make sure that it happened in a forum where they would feel comfortable speaking their minds and saying exactly what they thought. As it turns out, here in April, as in September, everybody ended up on the same page.
And I think that is that we are going to pay a lot of attention to General Petraeus' evaluation of the situation on the ground in terms of the pacing of the drawdowns. I think that that -- my own view is, that's what the president said. And it doesn't mean there aren't going to be evaluations and recommendations at various points, but there's going to be a lot of deference to his evaluation and his commanders evaluation of exactly what's happening in Iraq and whether this change in what he calls the battlefield geometry is working and whether the Iraqi security forces are stepping up and so on. So I think that's the context for all of this.
Q Just to follow up, Mr. Secretary, are you really on the same page? You used again this morning the word "pause," which the president has said is misleading and people shouldn't use.
SEC. GATES: Well, I got -- there was some confusion on the Senate side yesterday about this. When I say pause, I mean pause in the drawdowns. When the president used pause yesterday, he was very specifically referring to there will be no pause in our operations in Iraq. That's just the difference -- sort of get the Kremlinology of "happy" and "glad."
Q But the point -- he specifically said that that's not -- people have termed this period of consolidation and evaluation a pause and he said that's misleading. But you used it again this morning.
SEC. GATES: Well, I probably shouldn't have used it, because I meant an interruption in a process of withdrawal. Okay? of drawdowns…
Q So you're on the same --
SEC. GATES: Absolutely.
Q Same place on the same page?
SEC. GATES: Same line, same word.
ADM. MULLEN: The only thing I'd add to that is I feel very strongly that we are in the same place, and that we have the opportunity to assess the conditions on the ground and make a decision down the road as to where we should -- as to whether we should continue drawdowns or not. And General Petraeus has talked about that as a possibility as well. And to process what you asked about, in addition to General Petraeus presenting his views, the chiefs had an opportunity to do that, Admiral Fallon had an opportunity to do that and it is -- there are continuous opportunities to have, certainly from my perspective, discussions with not just Secretary Gates but the president on how we should move forward in this area and in others as well.
Q Mr. Secretary, we heard a lot over the last couple of days about Iran, particularly related to the operations in Basra, this perception that Iran was playing either a greater role or a perceived greater role in arming, training and, in some cases, directing militias there. Should we take away from this that there is an increase in Iranian activity there or that the U.S. was merely able to see what has been happening all along? And then, just quickly, for Admiral Mullen, your call for increased troops in Afghanistan, does that go to using U.S. troops to replace the 3,500 Marines when they leave?
SEC. GATES: I think that -- I honestly don't know the answer to your question, whether there has been an increase in Iranian support to these outlaw groups in the south or whether stirring the situation up has simply exposed more of what had been there for a while but was not evident to us. And I -- the admiral may have a better feel for that than I do, but I think that there is some sense of an increased level of supply of weapons and support to these groups. But whether it's a dramatic increase over recent weeks, I just don't know.
ADM. MULLEN: I think I would agree that there is a sense that it has increased. Certainly this gave us much more insight into their involvement in many activities in that part. And that also is in the context of what we've discussed over many months about whether or not they were going to decrease their efforts. And that question has come up. Some indications, just by level of activity that they may have, as far as I'm concerned, this action in Basra was very convincing that indeed they haven't.
Q So what we were told a few months ago, that there was a decline at least in weapons that people were finding, turns out to be not true.
ADM. MULLEN: I haven't made the specific comparison. But certainly we never said, to the best of my recollection, we never said, yes, we're convinced that there really -- their behavior is much better. This Basra time convinced me that actually it isn't.
(Cross talk.)
Q Will you use U.S. troops to replace 3,500 Marines?
ADM. MULLEN: The president announced in Bucharest that we would add additional troops some time in '09. And that was based on the assumption that our troop levels would continue to come down in Iraq without any specifics.
There's a requirement that we have there. The first requirement is we need additional trainers there, about 3,000. Six (hundred) or 700 of those are being met this year by the Marines. They're not yet scheduled to be replaced, because we've made no decisions with respect to the trainers.
And then additional combat troops could also, would also be required, particularly in RC South, where the Marines are. But right now it's not a one-for-one replacement.
Q How long has this need for additional troops existed? Is this something new that the commander has suddenly said? Or have you been getting these calls all along?
SEC. GATES: Well, first of all, there's been -- I would put it in two categories and then ask the admiral to add.
There is the formal set of requirements through the NATO process, the CJSOR. And I don't know what it means -- (chuckles; laughter) -- but it is the formal requirements process of the troops and capabilities that the commander needs. That has included about 3,500 trainers, 3,200 to 3,500 trainers. It has included additional helicopter capabilities. It has included at least one or two additional maneuver battalions, as I recall.
What the commander out there has said outside of that, in effect, if he could have all that he thinks he needs that would be about three brigades. That is not part of the formal approved sort of NATO requirements at this point. That's more an expression of the commander's desire. Is that a --
ADM. MULLEN: Yes, sir.
Q And how long has he been -- (off mike)?
SEC. GATES: My recollection is, in terms of the three brigades, that that's been reasonably recently, a few weeks.
ADM. MULLEN: The official requirement request against the NATO document for the trainers has been out there for -- since sort of mid-last year. The additional two brigades is really -- at least, my take on that has been since sort of the fall time frame. In other words, last year was a pretty tough fighting year there, and General McNeill has come forward and said to move forward in that regard. Given what he saw last year, this is what he thinks it needs.
Q Mr. Secretary, yesterday in response to a question, you told Senator Levin that you no longer believe that the number of U.S. troops could be drawn down to about 100,000 in Iraq by the end of this year. Can you tell us why you've dialed back on that target? And do you have a new target in mind?
SEC. GATES: Well, first of all, I was asked to go back to make sure the record, like last year, was correct. What I was asked was did I think -- that I had said in December that I had hoped by the end of 2008 that we could be down to 10 brigade combat teams. And I was asked then yesterday, did I still hold that hope, and I answered no.
I think that the process has gone a little slower. I think that -- I actually came to that conclusion, I think, in my visit to Baghdad in February, when I spent quite a bit of time with General Petraeus, and he laid out his plans in terms of what he was going to do with the -- how he was going to adjust the forces for the -- after the withdrawal of the five brigade combat teams by the end of July, and his concern to proceed with drawdowns more cautiously. And he wanted a period -- he first of all wanted the period after the end of the drawdown of the five to what I characterized on the plane coming back from Baghdad as a period of -- a brief period of consolidation and evaluation to see what happens on the battlefield once you've got those five brigades gone. That gets you to the middle of September, and at that point it seems to me that trying to withdraw five brigade combat teams would be a real challenge and probably would be -- and he persuaded me that that probably would be too quick.
And beyond that, I think -- I'm not going to get drawn out on what I think now, because I think we're going to have to wait and see, and see whether the Iraqi security forces will have been able to take on new responsibilities, whether their new battalions are in the fight, whether the political process has continued. And I think it really is based on the situation on the ground. And I think we'll just have to take it a step at a time. And that's the way I characterized it in the opening remarks.
Q And do you believe the analysis of some military officials and some military experts who say that the U.S. military, the Army, just cannot sustain 15 combat brigades through the end of the year, and you'll have to get down to at least 13, maybe 12?
SEC. GATES: Well, I'll let the admiral respond to that.
ADM. MULLEN: Yeah, actually I don't believe that. I believe that we can sustain 15 brigades if that's, in fact, what the decision is.
Q Mr. Secretary, can you address this criticism that's been leveled by some that whether you're talking about reducing combat tours or whether you're talking about additional troop commitments for Afghanistan in 2009, that you're making commitments essentially that are going to have to be decisions, really, for the next president to decide whether he wants to follow through or --
SEC. GATES: Well, that was clearly an issue that came up before Bucharest, when we were talking about this. And it seems to me -- the two things led to my recommendation along those lines, to make that kind of commitment in principle -- the president was very careful not to say how many troops or when in 2009 they would be forthcoming -- but I made it on two grounds: First, I am confident that we will have a lower number of troops in 2009. Again, I'm not saying when in 2009, but I believe we will have a lower number of troops in Iraq in 2009.
Second, unlike Iraq, there truly is, I think, very broad bipartisan support for being successful in Afghanistan. We were attacked out of Afghanistan. People recognize the consequences of not being successful. And I believe very strongly that whoever is elected president is going to want to be successful in Afghanistan. And just as the French made an additional commitment, it seemed to me, in principle, that it would be important for the president to signal that the United States was going to stay in the fight in Afghanistan as well and do more, assuming we could.
Q Last year, you said you weren't willing to let NATO off the hook in terms of meeting additional commitments for Afghanistan. Yesterday before the Senate, you seemed to have thrown in the towel.
Have you given up on NATO?
SEC. GATES: (Laughs.)
Well, actually, you know, we have received some additional commitments at Bucharest. There are additional -- there are other countries that are thinking about increases.
Also, as I said at the hearing, one of the reasons why a year ago I began pressing for the NATO leaders to reaffirm the commitment to Afghanistan and have a strategic vision document they could sign on to that said, where will we be in Afghanistan in three to five years; why are we there, and what are the security risks to Europe of not being successful in Afghanistan?
While there may not have been as many troop commitments in Bucharest as some of us would have liked, I think the fact that knowing what they know now, compared to two years ago, all of the NATO leaders unanimously endorsed being in Afghanistan and winning in Afghanistan as a big deal.
And my hope is that they'll use that document with their own populations and help try and educate folks in Europe as to the direct security connection between what's going on in Afghanistan and in Europe. And I used this in the meetings in Bucharest and I used it in Munich.
And the fact is that virtually, that most of the terrorist attacks that have taken place in Europe, and many of those that have been thwarted, have either been either originated in Afghanistan or in the FATA, or they were trained there or they were inspired from there.
And so the Europeans need to understand there is a direct threat to their security. And my hope is that with this NATO-approved document in hand, that they can go out there and perhaps change some of the political dynamic in Europe and get a greater commitment of forces.
Q (Off mike) -- budgeting question. The cost of war has come up repeatedly this week.
What is the status of the remainder of the '09 supplemental? Back in February, when you --
SEC. GATES: The '08 supplemental.
Q Oh, the -- your '09 add-on -- you remember 70 billion (dollars) was the request in '09 and then --
SEC. GATES: I'm losing track. I've still got the '08 supplemental up there that --
Q I know. I can straighten you on that. But you were pressed, and you said the 170 billion (dollars), which is not going to be -- it's going to be inaccurate. You said that back in February.
But as you see the troop levels now stabilizing through the middle of this year and into '09, and -- is 170 billion (dollars) within the realm of potential?
SEC. GATES: We are still working our way through that. And I would expect that we would be in a position to report to the Congress within a matter of a few weeks on what that level -- what we more accurately estimate that level to be. And I'm -- we're just not there yet for me to able to respond.
Q And that '08 -- you are waiting for the remaining 102 billion (dollars) to be passed?
SEC. GATES: Impatiently.
Q What happens -- and what are the ramifications if this drags through, you know, the end of May?
SEC. GATES: Well, end of May -- it would be "The Perils of Pauline," and we might escape the saw just at the last second. But the fact is -- we begin to run out of money to pay the Army in June. There are -- you had several other examples yesterday, as I recall.
ADM. MULLEN: Well, there -- I mean --
SEC. GATES: Where we've -- it would interrupt contracts at the depots for repairing our equipment. And so I mean, the implications are significant, and even the delay has consequences for BRAC and for the family housing, for procurement in a lot of different ways. So we really, really need that supplemental as quickly as possible.
Q Dr. Gates --
Q (Inaudible) -- both of you come back to the issue of Iran, because we've heard, again, so much about it by -- this week. By any measure, it appears their involvement in Iraq is not lessening but instead perhaps broadening and deepening.
So, when -- what's the end game in the minds for both of you? If the U.S., after all these months, hasn't been able to shut down the rat lines coming in, hasn't been able to stop the training and the increased accurate fire from Sadr City, if U.S. troops are now clearly continuing to be killed by Iranians -- and the president yesterday said that he would hold them to account, I believe -- what do you do? I mean, do you just keep on with the same strategy about dealing with the Iranian problem? Do you still hold to the position that Ahmadinejad couldn't possibly directly have any knowledge of all of this? What's the next step with the Iranians, and what do you do about stopping them?
SEC. GATES: Well, clearly we are going to be as aggressive as we possibly can be inside Iraq in trying to counter their efforts. I would say one of the salutary effects of what Prime Minister Maliki did in Basra is that I think the Iraqi government now has a clearer view of the malign impact of Iran's activities inside Iraq. And I think that -- I think there -- we -- they have had what I would call a growing understanding of that negative Iranian role, but I think what they encountered in Basra was a real eye-opener for them.
And so I think that -- I think that they are in a position themselves to bring some pressures to bear on Iran, it seems to me. And we hope that will happen at the same time that we and the Iraqi forces take all necessary steps we can to stop what the Iranians are doing inside Iraq.
Q Do you still both believe that Ahmedinejad has no direct -- I mean, I think it's been the administration's position -- you have no information, no indication that he would have any direct knowledge or role in this involvement inside Iraq?
SEC. GATES: I'll invite the admiral to comment. I haven't seen information to that effect, but I find it inconceivable that he does not know.
ADM. MULLEN: Nor have I seen any information to that effect.
Q Dr. Gates, if I could -- members of Congress this week expressed frustration about what they said were unrealistic goals in Iraq. And I wondered where does fostering democracy in Iraq stand as a goal? It seems like the military is already pushing stability and security far more than sort of democratic progress? What would say about that?
SEC. GATES: Well, in my original -- in my opening statement, I mentioned that one of the factors that General Petraeus will be taking into account in evaluating whether or not to have additional drawdowns this fall is whether he judges that they are necessary to provide security for the provincial elections. So I think that the role of democracy in Iraq remains an important part of our goal.
And frankly, I think there has been significant progress in terms of that regard, in terms of passing the provincial elections law -- or the provincial powers law, and planning for provincial elections this fall, a national election next year, the role of the Council of Representatives in passing legislation, the interaction between the legislative body, the Council of Representatives and the Presidency Council, the executive, if you will.
This looks to me, particularly for a country that has never experienced this kind of governance before, significant progress. So I think it remains a goal, and not just a goal, but one that is quite viable.


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So an old Cuban fisherman who talks about baseball is realistic in Hemingway's setting. Santiago's continual references to Joe DiMaggio, though, go much further than just establishing a realistic setting. To Santiago, Joe DiMaggio — who was and still is considered the greatest baseball player in history — represents what a man should be. Santiago idolizes DiMaggio in part because he (DiMaggio) suffered through the pain of a bone spur to make a great comeback.
This idea of struggling and persevering in order to ultimately redeem one's individual existence through one's life's work is central to the conflict of The Old Man and the Sea. As Santiago struggles with the marlin, he equates his struggle with the pain of DiMaggio's bone spur and tries to live up to DiMaggio's example by not giving up on the marlin.
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The federal government set a Friday deadline for states to notify Washington if they will set up their own insurance exchanges under the federal health care law.
Colorado has already moved ahead setting up an exchange, which is a private marketplace for shopping for health insurance.
Colorado is one of six states that was given "conditional approval" by the federal Department of Health and Human Services for their self-designed exchanges. The approval came Monday.
Exchanges are the gateway to the new health care law for individuals and families who buy their own health insurance, as well as for small businesses.


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Armed with the newest devices and technologies, patients will enjoy better health outcomes, doctors and medical professionals will be more effective and efficient, costs for payers and governments will be slashed and populations will – for the most part – be more health conscious.
Indeed, by coupling the power of mobile devices with rapidly-maturing technologies such as cloud, health systems around the world are starting to awaken to an entirely new way of delivering health services.
Of course, this revolution in healthcare will come, not simply by virtue of the mobile devices themselves, but rather by unlocking new approaches to delivering health services. Gone will be the constraint of physical location and – with it – the hard costs of maintaining costly facilities such as hospitals. Instead, care will be moved out into the home, office or primary care environment; whichever location best suits the patient and their circumstances.
Yet as the hospital fades away as the epicenter of health service delivery, patients will find that – somewhat counter intuitively perhaps – access to medical professionals and services will actually increase. Mobile devices will allow specialists from halfway around the world to consult with patients, review test results and design treatment plans. Remote monitoring devices will essentially bring nursing and diagnostic staff right into the patients' home. And when patients do need to use location-based health services, mobile applications will help them find the closest and most appropriate care at just the touch of a button.
While the benefits of mobile within healthcare are clear, the path to mHealth is far more complicated. In part, the challenge is institutional: most health service delivery is designed with providers in mind rather than patients. And, as such, care tends to be fractured and incongruous which, in turn, leads to higher costs and sub-optimal patient outcomes.
Mobile holds the promise to change all of that. Using mobile devices and enabling technologies, providers will be able to access a shared and holistic view of the patient, thereby speeding up the care process and eliminating the potential for errors or interactions. Mobile devices will enable medical professionals and caregivers to collaborate and work together to design better treatment options tailored to the needs of each patient. And, ultimately, mobile will usher in an era of integrated care where providers work as a single team to deliver better health outcomes for their patients.
Evidence of this evolution is all around. Attendees at the Consumer Electronics Show 2013 will have seen an explosion of health-related organizations demonstrating new mobile solutions. Delegates from United Healthcare, one of the largest health benefits providers in the US, talked up their partnerships with some of the world's top mobile gaming developers, while the CEO of Verizon stole the show with a keynote presentation on the telecom giant's move towards creating a healthcare cloud.
A range of new smartphone-enabled devices are also now starting to emerge. AliveCor – a San Francisco-based company – has developed an iPhone case that acts as an ECG; MobiSante (also based in the US) offers an FDA-approved, smartphone-based ultrasound device; Sanofi, a French pharmaceutical company, sells an iPhone-enabled blood glucose monitoring device.
At the same time, we have seen the market start to heat up with major health providers and payers snapping up mobile technology solutions that hold the promise to increase efficiency, enhance patient outcomes or create a better customer experience. Just over a year ago, Aetna – another large US payer – purchased Healthagen, a mobile health startup and the developer of the popular health app iTriage (a mobile app that allows patients to not only understand their symptoms but also identify a nearby provider based on wait times, patient feedback and effectiveness ratings). Aetna has been aggressively expanding its reach and coverage ever since.
More progress will need to be made before mHealth can truly become a new model for health delivery. Applications and mobile services will need to mature beyond simply replicating web services or dishing up static information. Device price points and functionality will need to improve (particularly for more specialized mobile devices such as ultrasounds). Cloud providers – both public and private – will need to hone their service offerings towards the unique needs of the health sector. And, throughout, health providers will need to maximize innovation and rethink business models to ensure they are making the most of these new approaches.
What is clear is that mobile technologies and devices are catalyzing a transformation in the way that modern healthcare is delivered to such an extent that – fifty years from now – doctor's offices and hospitals may be nothing more than a quaint memory of a bygone era.
By Ashraf Shehata, Global Center of Excellence Healthcare, KPMG in the US
KPMG's Global Technology, Media & Telecommunications Practice:
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AFTER years of denial over global warming, President George W. Bush now seems willing to tackle the issue - in words, at least. And he has army backing: "Climate change is and will be a significant threat to our national security and in a larger sense to life on Earth," said General Gordon Sullivan, former chief of staff of the US army in written testimony to Congress on 27 September.
The next day, Bush hosted a summit of representatives from leading greenhouse gas emitting nations at which he called for curbing emissions to be made a long-term goal. He repeated his opposition to a mandatory cap on emissions, however. Each nation must decide for itself how to achieve results, he said.
Despite the president's opposition to mandatory cuts, the results of a nationwide poll this week found that 68 per cent of Americans would support an international treaty ...
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(Saturday, October 18th)
Final Score: New Mexico 70, San Diego State 7
Albuquerque, NM (Sports Network) - Rodney Ferguson rushed for 149 yards and four touchdowns to lead the New Mexico Lobos to a 70-7 victory over the San Diego State Aztecs in a Mountain West Conference tussle at University Stadium.
James Wright added 110 rushing yards for New Mexico (4-4, 2-2 MWC), while Brad Gruner rumbled for 42 yards and two touchdowns. Gruner also threw for 92 yards and one touchdown in the win.
Ryan Lindley threw for 156 yards and one touchdown for SDSU (1-6, 0-3), but the quarterback was also intercepted once and sacked twice.
The Lobos jumped out to a quick 21-0 lead, beginning with a 20-yard touchdown run by Gruner. Robert Ferguson's four-yard TD run followed just minutes later, and then the New Mexico defense got involved, as Jaymar Latchison returned a fumble 28 yards to pay dirt.
The Lobos continued their offensive dominance in the second stanza when Ferguson scored on touchdown runs of four and five yards, pushing New Mexico's lead to 35-0.
Gruner added a 13-yard TD run midway through the quarter and then tossed a 19-yard scoring strike to Chris Mark in the final seconds of the first half to extend the Lobos lead to 49-0 at halftime.
Ferguson continued to run all over San Diego State in the second half, as the tailback scored on a 35-yard run early in the third quarter.
The Aztecs finally got on the board midway through the third frame when Ryan Lindley connected with Darren Mougey for a 15-yard scoring strike.
New Mexico scored two more times in the fourth quarter, as Matt Quillen plunged into the end zone from four yards out, while Terence Brown added a 37- yard touchdown run to give the Lobos a convincing 63-point win.


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Iowa Central Community College promotes intellectual discovery, physical development, social and ethical awareness, and economic opportunities for all through an education that transforms lives, strengthens community, and inspires progress.
Iowa Central Community College is the learning College of choice, meeting the needs of all we serve in a changing regional and global environment. Iowa Central Community College will continue to provide programs that foster economic vitality to all members of our region. In cooperation with our partners, our College will lead by example to improve the quality of life for the people we serve by:
Innovation, excellence, and continuous improvement define our College where the focus is on the learner and on the appreciation of diversity.
It is the philosophy of Iowa Central Community College, as a comprehensive community college, to aid in developing our citizens 'capabilities to the maximum. Iowa Central provides a flexible program to satisfy the needs of the individual and the needs of the community. An educational environment is planned to provide experiences for those who desire pre-professional courses, improvement of educational or technical skills, or developmental programs for self-enrichment. This environment can be on campus or on-site. In concert with this mission, Iowa Central offers.
Iowa Central Community College was organized in 1966 with a broad mandate to offer a vast array of educational opportunities to the residents of its nine-county area. Iowa Central was built on the firm foundation of three area junior colleges which had been operating since the 1920s by the local public school systems.
They were Fort Dodge, organized in 1921; Webster City, 1926; and Eagle Grove, 1928. Iowa Central came into being as a result of the Area School Act passed by Iowa's 61st General Assembly. The legislation authorized two or more county school systems to merge to form an area community college. Nine counties combined to create Iowa Central: Buena Vista, Calhoun, Greene, Hamilton, Humboldt, Pocahontas, Sac, Webster and Wright. The resulting Merged Area V has some 28,000 students in 31 public school districts. In 1971, a fourth center was added with the completion of a new building in Storm Lake. The Storm Lake Center originally was established to serve 12 public and private school systems in Buena Vista County as a secondary career education center. In the ensuing years, the Storm Lake Center has been expanded so that now it offers the full range of community college programs.
In 1975, Iowa Central joined with Buena Vista College in Storm Lake in a cooperative venture whereby students can earn a bachelor's degree attending evening classes. The students' first two years are completed at Iowa Central and the final two years at Buena Vista at the Fort Dodge Center.
Accredited by and a member of the Higher Learning Commission.
Iowa Central Community College shall not illegally discriminate on the basis of age, race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability, or military service. Any inquiries concerning the College's affirmative action/equal opportunity policy should be directed to the Affirmative Action Officer (515-574-1138). In compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Iowa Central Community College will provide reasonable accommodations to disabled persons upon request. Please make such requests to the Coordinator of Special Populations (515-574-1045).
The Board of Directors of Iowa Central Community College endorses the principle of equal educational and employment opportunities of all people regardless of race, color, sex, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, or non-job related disability. Furthermore, the Board does not discriminate, on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, or non-job related disability in the educational programs or activities it operates.
The Board of Directors of Iowa Central Community College reserves the right to change, at any time, without notice, graduation requirements, costs, curriculum course structure and content, and such other matters as may be within its control, notwithstanding any information set forth in this catalog. The costs for tuition, fees, room and board and other charges are subject to change.


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...or How-To Free Up iPad Space for MORE iPad Apps!
Been adding app after app onto your iPad and now need to clean it up and free up some space? Yes, you can tap and hold on individual apps but here is an easier and more efficient way to delete those space-hogging apps you aren't using right now!
First of all remember that when you delete an app you still own it, so anytime you want to put it back onto your iPad (as long as it's still in the App Store) all you have to do is reinstall it, no charge! When you do that the price button will read "INSTALL" to let you know that you already own it and you won't be charged again. Just remember too that if that app had any info stored within it that will also be deleted and cannot be restored.
So how do you quickly ascertain how much of your iPad is already being used and which apps hog the most hard drive space?
Simply follow the steps below:
- Open up your iPad Setting App
- Go to General > Usage
- Allow your iPad to collect and display all the apps on your device. (you will see the spinning wheel while it's processing the information)
- All your apps will be displayed in the order of largest (takes up the most space) to smallest
- Simply tap on any app to delete it permanently (but remember you can always get the app – but NOT the stored info within it! – reinstalled through the App Store at a later date as discussed above)
- The app will be immediately deleted and you will see the space freed up at the top of the list
That's all there is to it! Some apps take up very little space but some, like music apps can take up a LOT! I had one on mine that took up a full gigabyte! While I love it I reinstall it as needed.
How about you? Do you have apps on your iPad that are preventing you from adding more? Free up that space today so you'll have the room you need tomorrow.
p.s. if you have a tip or trick you'd like to share with us we'd love to hear from you in our comments!


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Views: 606
If it doesn't bother you than go for it. If you can be confident in your lack of belief and still wear it then go for it. The only thing to be careful about is sending out a mixed message to your friends and family. If they know and are cool with your atheism then great but also realize that you wearing that may signal to them you may be finding your faith again. I am like a vampire with crosses I hate even looking at them. However, like I said, if you're ok with it, that should be all that matters.
when I see someone wearing a cross, my opinion of them declines, until/unless I find out that the cross is more a "it looks beautiful" thing.
Then again, what you're describing isn't a stand-alone cross. It's something that has crosses in its design. So, perhaps you won't look like the reality-denier that you'd look like with a cross.
It's just as easy to see them as funky plus signs. If you wear some atheist jewelry or a t-shirt at the same time, imagine the interesting conversations you'll start.
today in this age you see people with big expensive necklaces with a diamond cross, and the person who is wearing the necklace is not a christian,If you are comfortable in your own beliefs and don't mind everyone who sees you thinking you're a christian go ahead and wear it.
My priests wear a penis around their necks. You can convert if you want.
If you want to wear it then wear it! People will presume your a Christian but if they ever question you on it you can tell them the cross predates Christian use for millennia before!
If you like it, and the crosses hold no meaning for you, then what would be wrong with wearing it? I like ankhs, but that doesn't mean I pay heed to the Egyptian gods.
The cross in our society symbolizes Christianity - for many, specifically the death and resurrection of a supposed person called Jesus. Personally, I would not wear it any more than I would wear any other religious symbol, but, to me, the symbolism of the Christian cross is utter nonsense and, if equated to human sacrifice, very unappealing.
I think a cross with a noose and an electric chair on the same necklace are an appropriate combination.
Is it possible to have them refitted so that the crosses are upside down?
If you don't do that, then at least it allows you to operate among theists in stealth mode.


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the 243,260 REM, 7-mm08,308win,338 FED,358win plus untold wild cats all should be doable. I would lean more to the 358 win if heavy brush hunting was the goal. I personaly would start with a bulged Yugo trunion for a 308 Based build (all the above rounds use the 308 as the parent brass) others have built on rommys but the extra protection cant hurt. I plan on reloading for whatever I build and plan to keep the champer pressures at 50,000 0r less. I wish I could buy a 100% reciver minus the LH rail(308 build requires moving the ejector back) for a yugo fixed stock. I can bend my own or do a bent blank but I think I want to do a registerd build for once as this might get sold off down the road. I supose I could just buy a 100% yugo reciver drill out the spot welds and replace the rail. want it as a pistol first
A 308 sagia with just a barrel change is another way to go. could be done for aproximently $200 over the price of the gun. cant be made into a pistol


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- The Jam Compact Snap One of those discs that disappears from the rotation for a year or two and then suddenly I need to hear it over and over. "A Town Called Malice" was put to appropriate use in the movie "Billy Elliott" -- it's almost impossible to listen to without beating out the drums on the steering wheel and bop-bop-bopping along. The whole disc still sounds fresh after all these years, when some of the quirkiness of the other British Reinvasion groups (say, XTC) has worn thin. Could be that whomping bass.
- Sledding with the girls: took two blow-up tubes, one little blow-up "Swiss Luge", an old-fashioned, hard-bottomed flying saucer and the toboggan over to the golf course in Delmar yesterday and had a couple hours of screaming fun. They wore their ski helmets, which may have made them the dorks of the hill, but at least we didn't have to bring it all to a crying halt after one of them took a header. My old Adirondack toboggan, circa 1974, is still the fast and furious of the sledding hill, by the way, and I took a certain uncharitable delight in the failure of some yuppie parents to get their runnered baby sled to work for little whatever-her-name-was. Runnered sleds are for Christmas catalogs, NOT FOR ACTUAL USE. Pay attention, people.
- Gaudi Afternoon -- a completely unnoticed movie with Judy Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, and Lili Taylor, directed by Susan Seidelman. A complete hoot set in Barcelona with a backdrop of Gaudi's architecture. Funny, interesting, fast-paced. The Spanish and/or Catalan isn't subtitled, but it doesn't need to be. There's even a bizarre magic act with erotic overtones that made me wish Seidelman had had the self-reference to put Steven Wright in the audience (see "Desperately Seeking Susan").
- Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 for Playstation 2 -- please. Unlike THPS2 for Mac, you don't have to keep on restarting the game, you just pick up timed challenges when you feel like it and freeskate the rest of the time. Plus, many more songs, though I'm sure after a while I'll get tired of these, too. Hannah thinks that my character's top hat is the reason he's skating so poorly....
- Ofoto.com -- Really, it's a dead heat with Snapfish.com, but the point is I love digital photography, I love being able to play with my pictures in Photoshop and clean them up and/or mess them up, and I love inexpensive prints that I don't have to send back because some lab-monkey didn't bother to blow the dust off the negative. Spent the weekend getting a bunch of Thanksgiving photos cleaned up, cropped and ready for printing.
- Nick Tosches. Loved "Where Dead Voices Gather." Loved "Dino." Now I'm reading the most unlikely thing I can imagine myself reading, "Trinities," a Mafia/Chinese gangwar novel about the heroin trade. Too much exposition in places, but damn his writing is crisp.
- OLN TV -- okay, so maybe there's much more duckhunting than I really need to see, but there's also "No Boundaries," bicycle racing, kayak competitions and things you just don't get anywhere else. But really, guys -- if I want to see duckhunting, I'll dig out my Chuck Jones cartoons.
- Random blogs -- The nature of the web has changed back to what it started out as, narrowcasting of personal messages that somehow connect. On any given day, scouting through blogdom, you can find a message that you somehow relate to that hasn't been filtered through the profit motive by a corporate asshole.
- The Interregnum -- there is a short period of my life, just about to end, when there are no Nutcracker rehearsals, no ballet lessons, no swim lessons, no ski lessons, and no real work obligations. The house is a Christmasy disaster, there is too much food, a leaking faucet untended, chores that have to get done if we're ever going to build a new bedroom for Rebekah, but for right now, it's just time to lie about in it and rest.
- St. Helena Olive Oil. To die for. So good you want to drink it. Really.
December 2002 Archives
This much snow:
I'm not good with birthdays. Beyond my immediate family, I'm pretty hopeless. Even if I remember what day they fall on, I'm unlikely to think of them around that time. But for some reason I have always remembered my great grandmother's birthday, which is today. It would be Grandma Hazel Smith's 108th birthday. As it happens, she made it to 102. In Hazel's last 10 years her health was strong but Alzheimer's had taken her, unfortunately, and she spent most of her days waiting for her husband Ernie to come and get her. Ernie, who had been dead since 1963. She was a sweet woman who baked a great apple pie. She stayed tight with her sisters, most of them, all her life, though there was some kind of a feud with her sister Mamie that rose to the level of being mentioned in Mamie's will. (My mother thinks Hazel stole Ernie away from Mamie. I guess we'll never know.) Ruth and Helen and Hazel spent the summers up at their houses in West Glenville, and Margaret was down in Scotia, and they saw each other all the time. They were an interesting group. They didn't come from any money -- their father was the town tinker and the town drunk. Helen, who took care of me and my sister when we were young, had a flamboyant affair with a married insurance agent who gave her some property that helped her get by. In the midst of the depression, she was able to lend a considerable sum of money to Hazel and Ernie, which they secured with everything they had, including farm equipment, an old car and 60 chickens. In addition to a rooming house in Schenectady, Helen somehow managed to get a summer house in West Glenville, just up the road from where she'd grown up. Margaret, similarly, had a lifelong boyfriend, and she worked at the Wallace's Department Store downtown and had a two-family house in Scotia, where she rented out the upper floor. I know that Ruth had worked and somehow she had the family house on Waters Road in West Glenville, but what she got by on is a mystery. Hazel was the traditionalist of those four, in the sense that she married a man who supported her. Ernie had various ventures in his life, but mostly it centered on subsistence farming and carpentry. He died from an accidental overdose of blood-thinning medication, and after that Hazel went to live with her daughter, Thelma, but spent her summers mostly up at Helen's house in West Glenville. All these labors and intrigues, ways of living and relationships, arguments so important they lasted a lifetime -- all viewed dimly through second-hand memories and some papers found in a wooden box -- all the rest is lost to us now.
Lost somewhere in the news over the weekend was the word that Joe Strummer of The Clash had died of a heart attack. He was 50 -- or, for those who keep track of such things, eight years older than I am. Okay, John Entwistle was no surprise, really, though one would think the boys would slow down after a few decades of drugs. Joey Ramone was hard to take, but he had been sick for a while. DeeDee, again, was no surprise, except perhaps that he had lasted this long. But now, Joe Strummer? Who's going to be left? At a time when I was very ambivalent about New Wave, hated the music of the '70s, and was still focused on some of the music of the '60s, The Clash were like a flash of lightning. I already knew and loved The Ramones, but they did what they did and that was it. It was brilliant and exciting and took people back to the roots and a little bit beyond. The Clash then took that and went all over the map with it -- since The Beatles there hadn't been a more musically inventive band, and I think they surpassed The Beatles in some ways. They combined ska and dub into rock 'n' roll and made it all make sense. They did hard-driving rock and deep, slow-tempo dubs. Nearly every song sounded different, and there was always something interesting going on. The big, triple-disc mess that was Sandinista goes through more musical ideas in one album than most bands do in their entire careers. Like all the good ones, The Clash were a band. They captured the restless, unsettled Thatcher years for England, and a lot of that spoke to the Reagan years here. ("A lot of people won't get no justice tonight" -- "Coke adds life / where there isn't any") Once they were done, they were done. After they came apart, Big Audio Dynamite had some success and was certainly fun to listen to; Joe's Mescaleros didn't make much of a ripple. It was the band, the time, the energy. Remember . . . to kick it over . . . no one will guide you . . . it's Armagideon time. . . .
If I were being honest, I'd have to say that I haven't really felt the same about the holidays since my father died, which was a long time ago. At some point in the very early '70s, Christmas eve became a gathering at our house to which all sorts of family, extended family, former family, etc. were all invited, and over the course of an evening 30 to 40 people might come and go. I'm not sure just when lasagna became part of it, but it is, and I remember a disastrous year when my mother decided she was not making 5 or 6 trays of lasagna and substituted something else -- grown men were practically in tears. My mom's sister started making creampuffs, and somehow they got there every year whether she did or not. So Christmas eve always meant family, lasagna and creampuffs. Individual faces changed, people came and went, but the core families were always there. It was a very informal gathering, though on occasion my father was moved to say a word or two. It was a chance to stay up late and listen to the grownups talk (my cousins were all much younger than I was), and to me it was as important as Christmas day; maybe moreso. The year my father died (he died in September 1985) was the first year I ever missed it -- Christmas fell on a Wednesday that year (like this year), and I was backed up at work and really couldn't take extra time, and it just didn't seem worth making the trip, so my mother and sister came out to Syracuse the weekend before and they went on and had Christmas eve without me, which was fine with me because the truth was that I couldn't face Christmas eve without my father that year. But the tradition went on, and the other men who had been important to me growing up were still there, and it was a chance to see them again, but I felt my father's absence acutely. We all started having kids, which brought some spark back to the thing, but there was more loss -- Hank died, then Jimmy. Duane moved away. Both my grandparents and my great grandmother died. Two years ago, my mother did something only slightly less unthinkable than not making lasagna -- she moved. Not far, but still, when someone shifts from a house she's been in for 40 years, it's surprising. Now Christmas eve is almost entirely made up of folks from my mom's side of the family, my cousins and their kids (though not all of them, depending on who has custody over the holidays. Modern life). And it is joyous. The girls dress up and scurry around, passing out little presents, getting each other all wound up, chasing their cousins up and down the stairs and staying up too late. There's lasagna and creampuffs (I abstain from the latter, but not the former). But running through it is the ones we've lost, the ones I miss, especially my father. I wish he were here to see these little wonders we're rearing, that he could have been some piece of their lives. I wish there had been more time for us together. But this is the way of things, meetings and partings, and we can't let the ghosts of the past prevent us from being in the present, hard as that may be sometimes.
Had a magnificent day skiing Mount Snow with the girls and their aunt on Monday. (Lee's out for the season with a stern warning from the bonesetter against taking even a single fall.) Less sunny than Wednesday, so it felt a little colder, and there was some serious wind on the lifts, but on the slopes it was all nice. Conditions were excellent, and even though the place was plenty crowded, we really only had to wait in a serious lift line at the very outset; after that we stayed away from the main lift and were fine, and things thinned out in the afternoon. I had been nervous about Bekah, who after all is only six and has been skiing only seven times, all for her lessons last year. So I figured she'd be going too fast and crowding the edges, like Hannah used to, and not really be in that much control. But Bekah's more of a natural athlete, and this skiing stuff seems like second nature to her. Didn't once feel like she was out of control or in any kind of trouble, even though she was bombing down the hill. Had to keep reminding her to turn, turn, turn and then turn again . . . she had a kid's natural tendency to just keep going down the hill. But she was great, and I could even see her doing some natural edging on her turns. Started out on the easy easy stuff and then took some intermediates, and now I'm convinced she could go on almost any intermediate I'd go on. And that makes it easier, because I'd like to be able to take them both out again, even if I didn't have their aunt's help. And despite the drive -- really, it's 75 miles but two hours, despite my desire to make it less -- I'm really coming to enjoy Mount Snow. The facilities are in great shape, it's full of good intermediate trails, and I always have a good time there. Buzzed through Bennington for the second time in a week, made me think of my old roommate Dan and his family. Learned from e-mail that yes, his folks do still live in the same place (which I could find in a hearbeat). Bennington hasn't changed all that much in all these years, although the fringes have gotten suburbanized (it's amazing how small a town in Vermont that can happen to) and Walmarted and so on, but the downtown is still healthy and pretty. Always liked visiting there. Suddenly flooded with searches for gravestone pictures. It's Christmas so our thoughts turn to . . . tombstones? Maybe it's the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come at work, but I think it's odd that all of a sudden I'd have quite a number of people coming to the site searching for headstone shots. "Headstone Shots" -- could be a nasty alcohol promotion. Better copyright that, pronto.
Well, we all want a white Christmas, but not quite this white, and not right ON Christmas day. My mother called on Monday night to see if we wanted to change all our plans because a big storm was a-comin'. Since she is entirely in the thrall of the weather-fear mongers, I treated this with the same personal concern I have for sea level rise -- if it happens, I'll deal with it. Then on Christmas Eve, as all anybody could talk about was the coming storm, we decided we'd better have a backup plan if it actually hit, and that backup plan did not include getting stuck in Rotterdam ("A Nice Place to Live") for an extra day. So Christmas with my mother and sister has been put off until tonight. Did the other side of the family yesterday morning, and then had a slow but not treacherous slog home around 2 pm, then spent the afternoon trapped in the house watching the snow drift. It's now up to the top of the tires on the Xterra, so any thought that I'm going on a road trip this morning is out of the question right now. They said it was our first Christmas storm since 1978, and it's a doozy. Heavy, slippery, and plenty of it. On the upside, perhaps conditions will stay good for tobogganing on Saturday. I'd take the kids today, but . . . oh, maybe I'll take them today anyway. The girls were magnificent, and Christmas morning was nigh onto magical. Santa brought them some very nice things, and in a couple of cases their parents chose to take the credit for giving them what they really wanted. Hannah finally got her American Girl doll, which she has been lusting after for a couple of years, and which it occurred to me there was no reason on earth she shouldn't have except that they're expensive. I wouldn't think twice about spending that much on a toy for ME, so I finally realized she should have it. Rebekah had wanted a real magic wand, despite several counseling sessions in which she was told that Santa probably couldn't give away his magic. She had promised only to do good things with it, too. As an alternative, she wanted flying pills. She got 2 new sets of fairy wings to wear around the house, which she said was even better than flying pills. More when I can. Much snow awaits my shoveling....
I was sitting outside Nutcracker rehearsals yesterday. Another dad was sitting with his son and younger daughter, who took classes there but wasn't in the Nutcracker. At one point the studio door opened and the music spilled out, and she exclaimed, "Barbie In the Nutcracker!" A pause, and then, "I never get to dance to Barbie In The Nutcracker music...." Well, I'm sure Tchaikovsky, P.I., would be, at the least, confused to find that a child of the Aughts thinks his most famous work was produced for, or possibly by, an 11-inch plastic doll with a serious shoe fetish. Popular culture used to be a doorway to "higher" culture, and I think some of that has been lost, especially in cartoons of today. Shows like "Rocky & Bullwinkle" and their subsets were loaded with references to historical events and the arts that formed the basis of my understanding. I had seen some form of the Mona Lisa in cartoons dozens of times before I ever saw a picture of the real thing. There was an entire arc of Bullwinkle that featured "The Ruby Yacht of Omar Kayam" -- believe me, it was YEARS before that meant anything. Bugs Bunny, with less wit and success, did a few historical cartoons as well. Nowadays there is a little bit of that again in shows like Spongebob Squarepants and The PowerPuff Girls, but that's after a very long drought. So, if a little girl thinks that the Nutcracker music (which can be just as brain-sticky as "Holly Jolly Christmas") came from a highly annoying computer-animated feature that has almost nothing to do with the original Nutcracker story, that's fine. Someday she'll discover the original and it will already be full of associations for her.
I'm not trying to be informative or anything, but if you came here looking for glycerol ester of wood rosin (I mentioned it in passing in one blog long long ago, but it took me high in the search engines' rankings), I suggest you look here, or consider this excerpt from that site: The Health Canada approval allows up to 100 ppm of the wood rosin derivative in beverages. The product improves the stability of citrus-oil flavor concentrates and beverages and is used as a weighting/clouding agent in such beverages as sports drinks. Most thrillingly of all, this tremendous improvement meant consistency in beverage production worldwide. PowerAde in San Francisco and PowerAde in Beijing are guaranteed to have the same level of clouding. Think of it! Enough!
It is time to end the tyranny of "Holly Jolly Christmas," a song which gets stuck in the heads of millions each year, driving them to a slow, sputtering insanity, and if desecration of the grave of a beloved old leftist folksinger is the only way to end this, count me in. For starters, I always hated that "Rudolph" special. For some reason, the animation always creeped me out; plus, it was the same animation used for the electric shaver ads featuring Santa riding a Norelco, an image I could neither understand nor wipe from my mind. So, that's one strike. Also, I could never stand Burl Ives. I didn't like his voice, I didn't like his fatness, and as a child I suspected there was something more than slightly evil about the guy. (And that was before I knew he had played Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," big blubbery hand on Maggie's belly, raging about mendacity.) On top of that, one of the only record albums we owned when I was a kid was a Burl Ives platter of "children's songs," horrifying ditties rendered in that jaunty Burl Ives style, including a bowdlerized version of "Big Rock Candy Mountain" that, even with the removal of references to "little streams of alcohol," was a completely inappropriate song for children. Cigarette trees? Jayzus. Two strikes. And then, there's that hideous, unstoppable song, which seems to be nothing more than an endless loop of the chorus. Once in your brain, it never leaves. It'll be April and a few bars of it will still sneak out. I hesitated even to name it, for fear of infecting others. The song must die. And the singer with it. This is my fatwa. (Great, now I'm going to get Googled for fatwa.)
Crazy day. Reminded me why I needed to take yesterday off. But that crisp, cold air is still in my lungs, and there's a little bit of weariness in my quads, so I can feel like I still have some of the mountain with me. I only started skiing two years ago. I had done it a few times in high school, with a few Exploring friends up at Oak Mountain in Speculator. I was decently good at it, but it was hellishly expensive (for instance, if I recall, the lift ticket and rental together were $12. Well, that was about 6 hours work at the time.) Then I moved to sunny Syracuse, home of plenty of snow but inadequate hills, and I much preferred to blow my money on alcohol and rock 'n' roll than on skiing. Did a little cross-country now and then, but that was about it. Then we moved back here, and there was much more of a ski culture around, and the Nagano Olympics piqued my interest. Then, after several winters stuck inside with little children in various stages of sickness, resulting in raging cabin fever for me, I decided that Hannah and I were going to take ski lessons and be forced to get outside on a regular basis. So we looked at all the programs around and picked the one that was cheapest and closest, over at Bousquet in Pittsfield. Small mountain, very friendly, and enough steep terrain to terrify a beginner. Then last year, Bekah and Lee started in, too, and we'll do it again this year. We've added some occasional runs to Jiminy Peak or, more often, Gore, and now I'm really coming to enjoy Mount Snow. I've gotten good enough to get in over my head, and I've got skis that are too fast for my own good. Let's see, started skiing AND running at 40, re-started biking at 42 . . . starting to look like a midlife crisis? Only to the untrained eye. I think that when the average guy turns 40, he gains an unprecedented interest in running and the Civil War. Not sure why, but it's happened to many people I know, including me. Besides, it's not like I started shopping for sports cars.... I've been doing in-line skating since I was 34, so that's in no way implicated in this discussion.
The main problem with skiing in Vermont is driving into the sun all the way out, and driving into the sun all the way back. But in between, it's magnificent. Went to Mount Snow, a longer drive than usual because I got stuck behind the Sysco truck headed for, of course, Mount Snow. But I wasn't in a hurry and the place was pretty much empty. 14 degrees when I arrived, but the sun was out and there was no wind, the conditions were fantastic and there was virtually no one on the slopes. Ice on the trees was crackling and falling, the air was clear and sweet, and on the first run I remembered where all those muscles were and how to use them. Paradise. One of the most peaceful places in the world for me is on a chairlift, all by myself, breathing it all in. It's church, outside where it always belonged. Mount Snow is great, lots of interesting intermediate trails, though I do find the naming conventions could be a little more informative. Got in over my head just a little on a couple of trails -- tried the bumps and fell in so deep I had to dig out the tail of my ski; ended up staring at a part of Committed for about 3 minutes before deciding I didn't like any of the lines available from where I stood, so I walked up and across the trail to improve my drop-in, and then everything was fine. I skied hard and got in a little over 3 hours on the slopes, but then my quads were screaming and my feet weren't turning exactly when I told them to, so I had to invoke the No Injuries Policy and get out of there before I took a fall. Great fun though, and a couple of good conversations with some older guys on the lifts. Went hard and went home.Still a bunch of signs up in the area honoring Kelly Clark, last year's snowboarding gold medalist, and that for some reason fills me with that aw-shucks-ain't-this-country-great sort of feeling, the same sort of feeling that Jim Shea has pouring from him. Very cool to see a town support its local athletes, and very cool to see the definitions of athletics constantly being pushed to encompass more and more human endeavor. More tonight.
Off tomorrow. Thinking Mount Snow. It's going to be cold, but I take what I can get, and the conditions are supposed to be fantastic. First ski day of the season! Very psyched. Passed a very pleasant hour last night watching running on OLN (Outdoor Life Network). Coverage of marathons, triathlons, and a duathlon, which I wasn't familiar with. It's 5k run, 30k bike, 5k run. Leave off that last 5k, and I could definitely do it. Hoping today's therapy session will kick out the ITB problems, which my therapist actually thinks originate further up my thigh. She gave me a couple of new stretches to try, though it's hard to stretch such a long muscle. I'll get at it tonight. More work on the Indo Board, too, which has been good for my legs overall and has strengthened me up around the knees. I just keep letting myself get out of balance by slacking off on parts of my body that I think are in good enough shape. But now, having watched some world class running -- not something you see often on TV -- I'm psyched once again to get back into it and get over these injuries. But tomorrow, the snow! Time for some fun.
My advice is that one should always start the day with a therapeutic massage, grab a cup of Starbucks on the way in, then arrive fashionably and casually late to a meeting on philosophical issues (as opposed to actual crises). This will, in my experience of the last several hours, set you up for a very pleasant day. Transitions around here, which will be going on for a while. Last night was the sendoff for a treasured colleague, of the sort they don't make 'em like any more (and if they did, they'd be subject to any number of lawsuits, I'm sure), a great person to shoot the breeze with, and one who always reminds me to get home to the kids. Lots of nice tributes of just the right tone. I was going to say a few sarcastic things but I just couldn't do it. The Governor came for a bit, which was very touching and a real testament to how important this guy has been to our program here for the past several years. Real shot in the arm just to listen to the Gov for a few minutes -- he has a tremendous ability in a few words to remind us why we got into this and what we're trying to do here, the legacy we want to leave for New York's environment. AND, even cooler than that, other of my treasured colleagues brought me a signed copy of the bill we got through Congress late this summer, which just blew me away. For one thing, nobody can even remember the last time we got a stand-alone bill through, and it was against tremendous odds, caught up in various national political agendas, and a very tricky thing to craft. But we got it done. And while these days it may not be all that hugely impressive to have something I worked on signed by W, someday the politics of it all will have fallen away and the idea that I was an integral part of that process will be all that remains, and I think that'll be cool. How many people get their work signed into law? And I got paid to do it... And now it's hanging up in the dining room -- Stephanie had it framed for me. She's too good to me. The absolute key moment, when I knew we had the wrapped up, I wasn't even in D.C. I was at home, talking on the cell phone while herding the kids to the school bus on one of the first mornings of school. I don't like to divide my attention when I'm with them like that, but sometimes it's necessary, and since I couldn't be in DC at the time, it was the only way to get it done. Felt very odd to be negotiating legislation while standing on the corner with the neighborhood kids, waiting for the bus to come on a sunny September morning.
Very interesting drive to Taconic Hills, as we did not get the threatened combination of sleet, snow and freezing rain, but instead got plain old rain, which when combined with a big pile of fresh wet snow on the ground creates a tremendous fog in the valleys of the Taconic Parkway -- and the fog on the way out, which kept visibility down to about 200 feet in the afternoon light, only worsened once darkness fell. Beautiful, thick, white fog, like a deep snowstorm without the graininess. Got there and back without incident, but as I've said, no one falls asleep on the Taconic. The performance was perhaps the best I've seen, and now I've seen a few of these. Hannah was good as a pink polchinelle (a clown, for those not immersed in Nutcracker-speak), and the rest of the show sparkled. I took a lot of pictures, of which maybe a dozen came out well, which ain't a bad ratio considering the limitations of shooting a lighted production from a seat. After the show, Hannah and I had dinner at the Martindale Chief Diner ("A 1958 Silk City Diner"), which is one of those diner landmarks you're never quite sure about . . . could be great, could feature the original food. Well, it was about what would be expected, but it was fine. Very odd that a roadside diner in Claverack would be hit with a post-theatre rush. Lee went to my niece's birthday party with Rebekah while we were out in Taconic Hills, and we all hit the driveway at the same time. Got the girls in bed as quickly as possible and hit the couch together, where we watched, and, I'm ashamed to say, laughed at, "Dude, Where's My Car?" I just want to apologize....
Kathleen Turner's in rehab? Well, I know, Mrs. Robinson was a drunk. But I'm shocked. And disappointed. As if that weren't enough, Meryl Streep has been forced to appear with Nicolas Cage. Hmm... and Kathleen Turner has also been forced to appear with Nicolas Cage. Coincidence? (Title reference courtesy of Tommy James and the Shondells. Really.)
It seems difficult to believe, but I'm having a bit of a hard time slogging through Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer." Maybe I'm just not in the mood for it, or the right place in my life. When I was 20, I thought it was brilliant. I read some Miller again when I was about 30, but then I was in much more of an Anais Nin mode. Now a good chunk of it seems like shock for shock's sake, and more than a little sad. Perhaps it was always that way, and I just couldn't really perceive the sadness. When I was younger, my affinity for grit, dirt, decay was much stronger. I still like the rough edges of urban spaces, but I know that you can't live on the edge forever. You stop being edgy and eventually become pathetic. Not that Miller's brand of promiscuity ever looked attractive to me anyway . . . I'm afraid I'm a little too fastidious to thrill to back-alley acts with Parisian whores (great -- now I'm really going to get Googled by freaks). I'm also a little too fastidious to read "Tropic of Cancer" on the couch at the ballet school, so instead I took a biography of Lincoln with me last night while I waited for Hannah. Ended up sitting out in the hall and nodding off more than a few times. Noticed this morning that the book had won "The Lincoln Prize", which hardly seemed a surprise at all. I couldn't seem to find a bio that took the middle-ground on detail, so I erred on the side of too much and now I'm paying for my mistake. I finished "Dino" last week, a much more interested read than one would expect, and strangely, I find that I now have knowledge of Dean Martin in my head. Knowledge that must be shared. Let me tell you, when you broach the topic of Dean Martin in casual conversation with your peers, here in 2002, you can get some very interesting looks. And then the backing-away thing....
When I started tracking hits on my genealogy and Essex County history sites, I had no idea there would be so many people seraching for information on Nathaniel Mallory, Zadoch Nichols, and the history of Mineville. Granted, in this case, "many" means "more than 5", but still... I thought I'd get a lot of hits for the abolitionists John Brown or Gerrit Smith, but not so. I get a LOT of hits looking for Mineville, a lot for Keene, some for Jay, and quite a few for North Elba, but it seems they're actually searching for Elba, NY, which is out in the western part of the state. (No, I don't know why it's North Elba.) The most searches come for the history of Crown Point, which is the most extensive of the histories and has the most names, so that makes some sense. I also get a lot of hits for "old school photographs" or "old college photographs," which is just what I've titled those pages, but it makes me wonder just exactly what people are looking for when they Google those terms. I've had several hits for "Bennington College photographs" -- I can produce any two of those search terms, but not all three, sorry to say. I had one hit not too long ago for "plastic surgery disasters photographs" -- that person went away disappointed, I'm glad to say. And I picked up a hit from someone looking for information on "rosin allergies" -- again, I can tell you about rosin (well, about glycerol ester of wood rosin, anyway), and I can tell you about allergies, but if you're looking for a synergy of those terms, you're gonna have to look elsewhere. I've also attracted a few hits from people looking for some bizarre porn, but I can't imagine that when they see a summary of the sites that they would think they've found it here. Worried about what kinds of people might turn up now that the words "Nutcracker" and "Mother Ginger's skirt" are in my blog, but these are the chances you take. Maybe it was better not to know....
The snow day yesterday meant the school where Saturday's performance is being held (and if you think a school is an iffy venue, you haven't seen the very handsome auditorium at Taconic Hills High School) wasn't available for the construction of the sets, which means that has to be done tonight, which means NO DRESS REHEARSAL. The kids are just going to go on, have one very quick runthrough so they can get the sense of the stage, and that's it. We're going to have the same situation at The Egg next week. Hannah has played her role before, and has been on the Taconic stage twice before, so she shouldn't have any trouble. But for Bekah and the others who haven't danced it before, they're going to come out onto an unknown stage, unable to see anything because they're inside Mother Ginger's skirt, go running out from underneath her skirt and then god only knows what will happen. Hope for the best. Nasty weather predicted for tomorrow, too, which always makes the Taconic Parkway (aka "The Little Highway That Cried") interesting. It is one of the loveliest roads in the state, but a 55-mile-per-hour road with grade crossings and CURBS makes for an intense driving experience. There is never a fear of dozing off while driving the Taconic. Deer through the windshield is another matter. My mother is concerned that our Christmas present will be too big to take home in the Xterra. This frightens me.
Wet, heavy, perfect snow for snowballs and snowmen. Not so magnificent for sledding, but we gave it a shot down at the school anyway. Lots of snowball throwing and good silly fun. Not much that's better than giggling girls in the snow. The best, slickest run on the steepest hill is, of course, right up against the school building, so the whole time they're on it I'm watching with a parent's trepidation that they're going to go headlong into the bricks. They were careful and it didn't happen. Made me remember our favorite toboggan trail when we were kids, The Monkey Trail. It was at Collins Park in Scotia, which generally had some good, long slopes -- nothing extremely steep, but you could get some nice long rides in the right conditions. What seemed like a million of us guys would drag our rigs -- toboggans, sleds. battered flying saucers, and one of the first of the plastic contraptions, known as "The Kitchen Sink" -- all the way up across Mohawk Avenue and to the park behind the library, where there was a long ridge that led from the parking lot and picnic areas down to the lake. Local legend had it that this had once been a Mohawk torture ground (no, I'm not kidding). It was a great sledding hill, and it attracted a lot of people, but it wasn't much of a challenge. We would build ramps and jumps and so on to make it more dangerous. But when those weren't enough, we would wander down to the extreme edge of the park, to a little space about three feet wide that ran along the park fence, down the hill toward the lake. The trail was a little twisted, quite bumpy, and had some significant tree roots in the way. There was a chain link fence on the left and trees on the right, and in order to deal with the roots we had to pile up snow on them and make little jumps. It was fast as hell. It was The Monkey Trail. It was generally too dangerous for unsteerable things like flying saucers, but with a fully loaded toboggan of boys, you could go so screamingly fast you could almost make it to the lake. It was very cool. And like any good parent, I'd kill my kids if they ever went down something like it.
Just enough to get me out of my travel obligations for the morning, which was fine with me. Cancelled that, rolled out late to start the shoveling -- heavy stuff, but I wasn't in a big hurry, so it was fine. Girls were out for about two and a half hours messing around in the snow, they couldn't be happier. Now they're tired and full of hot chocolate, just as they should be. Wish we could go tobogganing over at Albany Municipal Golf Course later on, but we've got dance class in the late afternoon. Well, maybe we can work it out anyway. Made a great label for the new Christmas CD. Got my final addresses for the Christmas cards (lost my address book in the great crash of Labor Day). I'm of very mixed feelings about all the sabre-rattling. I think the case is there to be made, but that the administration hasn't bothered to make it. I think that you can't threaten to go to war without being ready to go to war, so all the preparations in that direction certainly are necessary to show our resolve. But I've gotta say that the message from the administration, as filtered through the New York Post yesterday, was a little alarming: "WE'LL NUKE YOU". That may not be the message that causes moderate Iraqis to join the fight against Hussein. On the other hand, it's not ambiguous. And I'm a little sick of people who think this has all happened of a sudden, that Bush was handed a perfectly stable set of circumstances and mucked it up. There were eight years between Bushes, when we essentially acted as if none of this were happening. That's my political contribution for the day.
Jesus, people, it's the Northeast. It snows. Sometimes a whole bunch. Get over it... I think the media are to blame. Anyway, freezing rain and sleet, with a bunch of inches of snow on top, coming tonight. Looks like I'm NOT driving to Newburgh tomorrow (field trip to look at some kind of burning technology). We'll see if it's possible to get off the hill in the morning or not. Did I mention that I got ALL my Christmas cards done? Written (pithily and with brevity). Rubber stamped (messily and with Christmas colors). Mailed (expeditiously and with extreme prejudice). Okay, so I've got a couple of stragglers, but ALMOST all of them are done. Burned a new Christmas CD last night, too. It was hard to decide if using little snatches of William S. Burroughs narrating "The Junkie's Christmas" was too dark, but in the end I decided to go with a few of them. I love the story, but others may not quite get it. So I reduced it to three snippets, odd and out of place, such as: "'Merry Christmas, Doctor.' The doctor said nothing in return." Why couldn't I just love Celine Dion like everyone else? On the upside, some real new Christmas songs, including Cracker's kickass "Merry Christmas, Emily" and the long-sought "Sock It To Me Santa" from Marshall Crenshaw. Gotta run and get home before the storm hits. Panic! Panic!
Non-stop. Running from one meeting to another. Tomorrow I am actually triple-booked at a couple of times, including a meeting with a major famous pain-in-the-ass. Hopefully, he won't actually show. We've gone from zero to sixty around here, which doesn't bode well for sneaking some days off for skiing. But I'm going to -- I got virtually no time off at all last year (and an abbreviated summer vacation), so now there will have to be some give. Mount Snow is pretty much completely open, so I MUST get over there next week. Ice on the river today, quite lovely -- the ice breaker came through and broke things up pretty well, but it looked like it was reforming quickly. (My office has a beautiful view of the mighty Hudson.) Our lake is frozen, and if it doesn't snow it may make for decent skating, though I'm sure the kids' skates no longer fit. We didn't skate at all last winter, mostly because we were skiing, and partly because I really need soft-booted skates and can't justify the expense to myself. But the old stiff boots do bad things to my heel, and they do it much faster than my ski boots. It's supposed to warm up on into the week, so who knows if the ice will be thick enough this weekend. The lake was frozen a lot last year, but the surface was never great, and the year before it was constantly snowed on.
"Carmelita." Zevon. I pawned my Smith-Corona....
Okay, so it's a little undignified for a 42-year-old white dad to say, "I wanna give a shout out to...." But to any of the folks who are browsing the old school pics, drop me a line if you haven't already. Love to hear from you. The link's on the left somewhere. I was going to try to make something of the fact that the pics were old, of an old school, and on film (an old-school medium), but I got to the point where wise words of a colleague, spoken as I was reaching desperately for a pun, rang in my head: "It's not supposed to be work!" So, consider the associations made, and pun 'em if you've got 'em.
Well, it was warmer than 6 degrees, anyway. It got up around 60 in Sacramento, we saw some sun, and there were oranges in the Capitol park, but I couldn't figure out how to free them from their bondage without having to explain myself to The Man. There are some things state agency executives Just Don't Do, and rustling oranges at another state's capitol building is probably one of them. There's a certain agreeable rhythm to a cross-country flight -- takeoff, movie starts (Spy Kids 2. Seen it. Twice.), drinks, food, drinks, bathroom/leg stretching break, drinks, end of video, last break, and then just as you're getting restless and tired of listening and reading and solitaire on the Palm Pilot, you touch down. Of course, you touch down in Philly or Pitt, so you've got another hour of this nonsense before you're home, but right now, it's okay. I think this is the seventh cross-country trip in the past couple of years, one of the few perks of the job. If it's a perk to worry about being stranded, having to reroute from Philly to Pitt, and spending hours in the nearly abandoned USAirways terminal at SFO with zero food or drink options. Oddest thing ever : in order to balance our unusually empty Airbus 321, which had a cargohold full of lettuce, we all had to sit behind row 18 until we'd hit level flight. Odd, no? Never heard of this on a jet before, but we did it, and I took my patented takeoff nap so it wouldn't matter much whether they'd really managed to make the right calculation based on "average passenger weight for wintertime." They really told us that. Anyway... Not much play on this trip. Stayed at the new Sheraton Grand in Sacramento, nice but still ironing out the kinks. Didn't even try out the pool. But Thursday afternoon we took the Land Shark (Lincoln Town Car, The Car That Doesn't Feel The Road) up to Napa, via the back roads, and had a nice time touring wineries and an olive oil tasting place. Shipped home a bunch of stuff for Christmas, flavored oils and so on. Weather was agreeable (especially considering back home was getting socked). Up around 60, but cool at night. Got in one run, and hit the ileotibial band wall right away. Not happy about that. Adjusted badly to the time change, and now I'm having a hard time adjusting back. Didn't even see the ocean this time. Newly discovered old Zevon: "We made mad love, shadow love, Random love and abandoned love Accidentally, like a martyr The hurt gets worse And the heart gets harder"
New York Thanksgiving Pikachu eats Times Square, yes? Bright pink tongue, happy. That's my haiku for Thanksgiving in NYC, which was fabulous expensive fun. Now I've done New Year's Eve and Thanksgiving in New York (albeit 22 years apart) -- what else could there be? The girls were wonderful, the room at the Dumont Plaza sparkling (though overheated), the weather chilly but not frigid. We saw the inflating of the balloons, a very enjoyable little stroll around the Upper West Side. Got up not so very early on parade morning and made our way to Times Square (where potties were available, if necessary, in the hotels), and after a while, through some attrition among the underdressed, and some good will, Lee was able to squeeze Hannah up to the front where a batch of kids was sitting. I held Bekah, all 60 pounds of her, up for a while, and then there was space for her, too. I am not a person for crowds or mass spectacles, but if you've ever watched the parade on TV and thought it would be fun to be there in person, all I can say is, save up all your bread and fly TransLove Airways to [END outdated Animals reference] New York City. There was such energy, such a friendly, joyous buzz in the crowd, spontaneous bursts of applause for New York's Finest and New York's Bravest (though the real heroes of an event like that are New York's Strongest, the Department of Sanitation -- and yes, that's really what they call them), and the balloons. The balloons are huge. Gigantic. Just amazing. The day was fairly windless, so we didn't have any dangerous excitement, but even so, when a giant yellowish mac-and-cheese-box dinosaur starts drifting over your head . . . well, that's a New York experience. Lovely dinner with sister-in-law in Brooklyn, who put on huge amounts of food, and it was all good. Friday was spent on the tip of Manhattan -- over to the Statue of Liberty (cold and windy!) and Ellis Island (lovely, and coincident with Hannah's school unit on immigration, so she was thrilled). Then we went to Ground Zero, partly to show some of what I do, partly to show the girls that I could be involved in a response like that and I'd be okay. Bekah was very interested and had wanted to see it all along. Hannah was very skittish about it. Then we went to the Winter Garden, which I'd never been in. A very special space to a lot of New Yorkers, and nice, though not all that much of a garden. Still, palm trees in New york, and beautiful. Plus, there was ice cream. Then we went up to Union Square and walked through the Christmas flea market, which was fun. And on Saturday morning we went to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, strolled through Macy's, had lunch at Grand Central and were on our way home. I've never been such a tourist in my life. And all these things were fabulous, they're all New York, but they're not all that makes it so magical. There were so many little moments, such as all the subway and street musicians. Bekah had a ball dancing along to a pair of roots blues players in the subway. There was a man dancing with a doll in the 14th St. 4/5/6. There was a delightful busker who could speak snatches of numerous languages, to the delight of the Japanese and Germans in line for the Liberty Island ferry. Rebekah marvelled at the windows of the button stores on Broadway, oohing and aahing over the variety of buttons and trim and plastic tiaras. Just a delight, and truly, so much city they had to name it twice.


text: http://androidforums.com – So I wanted to play games like the new Most Wanted, and Modern Combat 3. So I changed some things in my build.prop and made my phone think that it is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus S and all the apps are unlocked. So now I have both the games purchased, installed and play them all the time they work just fine. This is what you change: Code: ro.product.model=Nexus S ro.product.brand=Google ro.product.manufacturer=Samsung ro.product.device=Nexus S (General)


text:
Info & Phones News Forums
Top message: Audiovox 9900 by Sicilian
Replying to: Re: Audiovox 9900 by hmoradi
Re: Audiovox 9900
hmoradi said:
Do you know how I can use a verizon phone in Korea? I do not want to use Verizon roaming and I want to set up an account with SK telecom or other companies.
This isn't the right place for this question. But, if you want to use our service in Korea you have to go to Verizonwireless.com and click on international packages. We have a loaner phone program that will allow you to use service in korea. On the other hand we do now have a phone that has CDMA and GSM which is a Samsung a790. That phone will work overseas. For questions regarding service please put the thread in the appropriate forum, hence the Verizon Wireless Forum.
-Verizon Wireless Authorized Agent
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text:
ashman information
About Us
Ashman Manufacturing & Distributing Company started in 1987 with just one product: our House London Broil Sauce. Since then, Ashman Manufacturing and Distributing Company has grown to become one of the leading manufacturers, marketers, and distributors of gourmet foods in the Mid-Atlantic region. The company ships products all over the country and exhibits at the Winter and Summer Fancy Food Shows as well as the Boston International Seafood Show.
Tim Ashman has served on the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT) Scholarship Committee and has been a member of NASFT since 1992.
Ashman Manufacturing & Distributing produces many lines and products, some of which are proprietary (i.e. the House Seafood Marinade and Dry Blend lines and the Classic American Sauce and Dry Blend lines). Ashman is the exclusive manufacturer and distributor under a licensing agreement with the Bowman Companies (which has been purchased by Sazerac) for the Virginia Gentlemen Bourbon BBQ Sauce line using Virginia Gentlemen Bourbon.
After acquiring the licensing rights for the Virginia Gentlemen Bourbon sauce line, Ashman developed a line of seven sauces under the Virginia Gentlemen name, one of which captured the "Best New Product Award" (The Diamond Award) at the 2000 Virginia Food & Beverage Expo.
Ashman also manufactures for leading companies such as Balducci's, Whole Foods, A Southern Season, and others under their proprietary labels. Ashman is involved in producing and/or marketing for many well-known restaurants including Hill Country BBQ NY; Doc Pierce's Bar-B-Que; Rocklands Barbeque & Grilling Company in Washington, D.C.; the King Street Blues product line in Old Town Alexandria; as well as many more throughout the Mid-Atlantic Region.
In 1996, Tim Ashman was presented with the Commissioner's Award by the Virginia Department of Agriculture, which is awarded by the Division of Marketing to companies whose efforts to promote and support Virginia's agricultural industry have been outstanding. Ashman was awarded because of his company's extensive manufacturing, distributing, and marketing of approximately 150 different Virginia products. His company earned the Virginia's Finest designation in 1989.
Tim Ashman served as Vice President of the Virginia Specialty Food and Beverage Association from 1993 to 1995, served as President of the organization from 1995 to 1997 and Chairman of the Board until 1998.