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WITandWISDOM(tm) - November 17, 2003 ISSN 1538-8794 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: If you can't win, make the fellow ahead of you break the record. - Author Unknown Source: Have A Nice Day e-mail list ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: A Day at Baltimore Airport By Will Ross Administrative Judge United States Department of Defense I had been attending a conference in Annapolis and was coming home on Sunday. As you may recall, Los Angeles International Airport was closed on Sunday, October 26, because of the fires that affected air traffic control. Accordingly, my flight, and many others, were canceled and I wound up spending a night in Baltimore. My story begins the next day. When I went to check in at the United counter Monday morning I saw a lot of soldiers home from Iraq. Most were very young and all had on their desert camouflage uniforms. This was as change from earlier, when they had to buy civilian clothes in Kuwait to fly home. It was a visible reminder that we are in a war. It probably was pretty close to what train terminals were like in World War II. Many people were stopping the troops to talk to them, asking them questions in the Starbucks line or just saying "Welcome Home." In addition to all the flights that had been canceled on Sunday, the weather was terrible in Baltimore and the flights were backed up. So, there were a lot of unhappy people in the terminal trying to get home, but nobody that I saw gave the soldiers a bad time. By the afternoon, one plane to Denver had been delayed several hours. United personnel kept asking for volunteers to give up their seats and take another flight. They weren't getting many takers. Finally, a United spokeswoman got on the PA and said this, "Folks. As you can see, there are a lot of soldiers in the waiting area. They only have 14 days of leave and we're trying to get them where they need to go without spending any more time in an airport then they have to. We sold them all tickets, knowing we would oversell the flight. If we can, we want to get them all on this flight. We want all the soldiers to know that we respect what you're doing, we are here for you and we love you." At that, the entire terminal of cranky, tired, travel-weary people, a cross-section of America, broke into sustained and heart-felt applause. The soldiers looked surprised and very modest. Most of them just looked at their boots. Many of us were wiping away tears. And, yes, people lined up to take the later flight and all the soldiers went to Denver on that flight. That little moment made me proud to be an American, and also told me why we will win this war. Will Ross Administrative Judge United States Department of Defense http://www.dod.gov/news/Oct2003/n10312003_200310318.html Submitted by Carol Blum ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: London, England (AP): Scientists at Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham, western England, an intelligence-gathering station, were baffled by strange high-frequency noises coming from Scarborough signal station in Yorkshire, northeastern England. GCHQ's in-house paper, the Daily Observer, said the noises were unlike anything staff had encountered before and an investigating team initially thought they were coming from spies or aliens. Their investigation found the signal only happened in the day time, went across all the high-frequency bands and only Scarborough aerials could pick it up. Eventually, investigators discovered that a ram was rubbing its horns against the aerial masts. It was probably just a post to rub against," said GCHQ spokesman Bob McNally. Source: White Board News, http://www.joeha.com/whiteboard/ ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: I tried a new recipe for corn-bread muffins using fresh corn. After tasting one, my seven-year-old son made no comment. "Honey." I asked, "did vou notice anything different about my muffins?" "Yeah, Mom," he replied. "They're not burned." Contributed by Adrienne Harris Source: Reader's Digest, Copyright (c) October 2000, http://www.readersdigest.com/ ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: How to Know What to Change in Msconfig MSConfig is a Windows utility. It tells Windows what programs to start along with Windows. There may be stuff in there from Microsoft that needs to start. But lots of other programs stick their noses into MSConfig, too. America Online and the RealPlayer are common offenders. You access MSConfig by clicking Start. Run. Type "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) in the box. Click OK. Select the Startup tab. You'll probably find several files there. Some you'll recognize; others, not. You can uncheck those that you recognize and are not interested in starting automatically. Some may be from Windows, which might need them to start properly. You can find a list of entries and explanations at: http://www.lafn.org/webconnect/mentor/startup/PENINDEX.HTM This tool is not available in Windows 95, 2000 or NT. For the same functionality, download the Startup Control Panel. It's free, but the author accepts donations. You'll find it here: http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml Copyright 2003, The Kim Komando Show. All rights reserved. Source: Kim Komando's Weekly Newsletter, http://www.komando.com/newsletter.asp |