I’ll be going within the house and I have Chicken in the oven so I may be slow in answering and allowing comments in the next few hours. Opinions of all stripes are most welcome and when time permits will be answered personally, so if your comment isn’t answered or posted be aware that this is the reason.
Archive for the ‘personal’ Category
This one is for my friends at the open house
Posted: January 5, 2009 by datechguy in personal, warTags: Israel, reality
At my open house I mentioned the non-shrapnel missiles that Israel is using to chase civilians before blasts. A pair of liberal friends of mine looked at me like I had two heads or was a naive idiot so this post is for them. The process is known as “Knocking on the roof” here is a post on the subject:
5:05 PM Just to give people an idea of how the Israeli Air Force works, they use a method called “Knocking On The Roof”. There are several steps…
1. The AF calls the house they’re about to hit that they are about to bomb it.
2. The residents send all the women and children to the roof of the building with the understanding that the AF won’t strike civilians.
3. The AF has developed a small missile that creates a small non-lethal explosion without shrapnel to scare off all the civilians.
4. When they have left the area the building is hit with the big guns.
The base post is from this post at The Muqata which along with Israellycool has been liveblogging the war. (I was sure I had read it at Israellycool but was mistaken).
This post at Mere Rethoric also mentions it but not by name:
The IDF has made frequent use of what is known as “knocking on the roof”: Militants are warned by phone when a residential building used to store arms will be bombed, and told to vacate the premised together with their neighbors. The weapons caches are hit only after the residents leave. Hamas has tried placing civilians on the roofs of such buildings when the phone call warning comes in. In these cases, the IDF fired antitank missiles near the building, and in a few cases the residents left
His bottom line is the war’s bottom line:
Israel warns the Palestinian civilians whom Hamas has endangered. Hamas uses those warnings to endanger their civilians even more dramatically. Israel gets blamed for Palestinian civilian casualties. Makes perfect sense.
The irony is both on offense and defense our Palestinian friends try to maximize civilian deaths, both Israeli and their own. This is just plain a different culture.
BTW something I should mention.
When I comment at HotAir I comment under my old wordpress name Peter the slow. I started daTechGuy specifically to promote the remote tech support I offer since losing my job. After all who would buy tech support from someone called Peter the Slow?
So if I haven’t made it clear Peter the slow and datechguy are both me. I figured it was implicit in the comment format but I don’t want to risk Greenwalling myself.
It’s peaceful and quiet in here
Posted: January 5, 2009 by datechguy in local stuff, personalTags: family, nostalgia, resturants
Some local Fitchburg stuff:
Today is the first day since Nov 11th that the kids have gone to school, the youngest as usual on the first day was up early and ready. It will be the only other of the school year when it is true.
When my wife leaves for her school in a half hour the house will be as peaceful quiet as Pat Cohan’s at 8:45.
That is my favorite fight scene ever in a movie.
Glaze ice all over my road. My other son has a large catapult about 3′ x 1.5′ x 2′ for a school project so I drove him. The main roads are sanded but the side roads stink. That’s Fitchburg all over.
The Diner at the end of the road is still there after 3 weeks. It is not only amazing that someone just opened a business in Fitchburg but it also opened during the week of the ice storm. I wish them luck.
Their sandwich sign should have their morning special on it ( 6-8 a.m. 2 eggs, homefries, coffee, toast $1.75). and not just their opening. If breakfast under $2 won’t get people in there nothing will.
Found out Sabino the baker has retired. When I was a kid after mass we would go there to pick up our italian bread for Sunday dinner. His bakery burned down in 1977 killing a local fireman John Cetrino (the street formally called 5th street is now named for him) and he moved. A while back he got involved in a restaurant-specialty store in Leominster called Tre Sorelle where his daughter worked. He would be up 6 days a week baking fresh bread there. When I drove by one day and saw his name I literally did a 270 to pull into the place. Thanks to Tre Sorelle my sons had the chance to taste the best Italian bread in the world. Sabino is now 80 and decided he had enough of a 6 day week. I wish him the best. His rest is our loss.
Since the house is still pretty clean from the party I guess it is job hunting, blogging and some Civ IV today.
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