Random Thoughts 6/15/11

• Wow.  Some Kansas City guy took some laptops to the computer repairman and the repairman found a screen that said "Joplin School District."  The creep was arrested yesterday for looting.
• Chiefs TE Leonard Pope saved a boy from drowning in a swimming pool.  Pope was the only one at the home who knew how to swim.  Teach your kids to swim!
• The Armor School at Fort Knox has shut down and been transferred to Fort Benning.  Since 1940, the Army has trained its tankers in Kentucky but now those days are gone.
• Stars and Stripes has a new section called "Heroes."  Go check it out.
• I had no idea how high tech the cotton industry was.
• According to reports, half of all iOS device (iPhone, iPad, etc.) owners never back up by syncing to their computers.  The next software upgrade will fix that, as it happens automatically, and this will fix a lot of problems that people have because they didn't take the time to do this manually.
• Good news for Army guys who hate those black berets.  The new uniform rules get rid of the beret and replace it with a patrol cap when wearing your ACUs.  Personally, I thought the black beret looked horrible 90% of the time on 90% of soldiers.  
• We went to the library and started with the first season of the sitcom, "How I met your Mother."  Someone told me that it was a "sweet and sentimental" show.  Really?  All I knew about was the commercials during football games and they focused on the one character, played by Neil Patrick Harris, who's a bit of cad.  It turns out the advice was right and the commercials were misleading.  We watched the first season of the show and it was delightfully sweet and sentimental (by today's standards).  And funny too!
• Is our new war in Yemen war #4 or war #5?  It depends on whether you count President Obama's increased bombings and incursions in Pakistan as a separate war or an extension of the war in Afghanistan.  The other two are Iraq and Libya for those of you keeping score at home.
• The Best Picture Oscar has been tweaked again.  For a long time there were five nominees.  Then two years ago, they expanded it to ten nominees.  Now it will be between 5 and 10, with the sixth nominee (and lower) needing at least 5% of the vote to be included.  That's probably better, I suppose.