Thunder @ MindSay 
rain
Program Date: August 28, 2009
Program Time: 2100 hours, Pacific
Topic: Thunder in the Night
Listen Live:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/LawEnforcement/2009/08/29/Thunder-in-the-Night
About the Guest
Raymond S. Kopp “was born in the small town of Starrucca, Pennsylvania on September 19, 1951. He joined the Navy upon graduation from high school and his four years of service took him to many places, including Vietnam. Ray left the Navy in September of 1973 and later returned to Navy Reserve duty from 1978 to 1980. He has enjoyed many occupational endeavors, including working as a technical specialist and designer in the aerospace industry, an N/C machinist, a sailing instructor and a skiing instructor.” Raymond S. Kopp is the author of Thunder in the Night: A Sailor's Perspective on Vietnam.
According to the book description of Thunder in the Night: A Sailor's Perspective on Vietnam, “When May 1972 came around, the war in Vietnam was supposed to be winding down. But for a the crews of Task Unit 77.1.2 it was just starting. Steaming into heavily defended North Vietnamese waters the sailors and marines experienced war as they never thought possible. They engaged their foes with crushing, hit and run tactics that helped stem the flow of men and materiel needed for the Communist takeover of South Vietnam. In raid after raid the artillery firefights that ensued showed their adversaries to be well-trained and equipped forces intent on defending the military complexes of the Hanoi and Haiphong region. As time trudged on they found themselves constant targets of enemy fire and inner-psychological warfare.”
About the Watering Hole
The Watering Hole is Police slang for a location cops go off-duty to blow off steam and talk about work and life. Sometimes funny; sometimes serious; but, always interesting.
About the Host
Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster was a sworn member of the Los Angeles Police Department for 24 years. He retired in 2003 at the rank of Lieutenant. He holds a bachelor’s from the Union Institute and University in Criminal Justice Management and a Master’s Degree in Public Financial Management from California State University, Fullerton; and, has completed his doctoral course work. Raymond E. Foster has been a part-time lecturer at California State University, Fullerton and Fresno; and is currently a Criminal Justice Department chair, faculty advisor and lecturer with the Union Institute and University. He has experience teaching upper division courses in Law Enforcement, public policy, Public Safety Technology and leadership. Raymond is an experienced author who has published numerous articles in a wide range of venues including magazines such as Government Technology, Mobile Government, Airborne Law Enforcement Magazine, and Police One. He has appeared on the History Channel and radio programs in the United States and Europe as subject matter expert in technological applications in Law Enforcement.
Listen, call, join us at the Watering Hole:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/LawEnforcement/2009/08/29/Thunder-in-the-Night
Program Contact Information
Lieutenant Raymond E. Foster, LAPD (ret.), MPA
editor@police-writers.com
909.599.7530
Today was the first day of 'Super Saturday', a series of 5 Saturday mornings where kids from K-8 sign up for enrichment classes in the area and learn all sorts of cool things, like cooking, robotics, bridge building, chess, foreign languages, calligraphy, cryptography and so on. I teach the bridge building and cryptography classes. For those who don't know what cryptography is, it is not the art of tagging graves with graffitti. (Hah.) It is the science of secret writings. Codes. Ciphers. Encryption. That sort of thing, but this is for kids. They eat it up.
Every once in awhile I get someone in my classes that is either hyper-energetic (not to be confused with hypoallergenic) or who knows a lot about the subject matter and is very eager to share. I have a young boy in my cryptography clas that is very knowledgable in some of the basic codes, and while he does not come off as a know-it-all, the rest of the class is feeling the weight of his prior knowledge.
I've already warned him not to 'steal the teacher's thunder', and he understood what it meant, but the request was quickly lost as we went through some of the basic codes. He'll be a handful this time around. I almost can't wait to show him something that he doesn't know, just so that he'll be quiet and learn about it. I think I may have impressed him that I know more about his world than he knows about mine. While he was waiting for the rest of the class to finish an assignment, he started doodling. And he drew a rather detailed spaceship that looked familiar.
So I looked at it, and commented, "Someone's been watching 'Star Wars: Clone Wars', haven't they?"
He looked up at me and said, 'How do you know about that?'
Then I took his shaken-up mind and gave it a drop kick. "That's the Malevolence that you just drew, isn't it?"
"How do you know this??" he said, amazed.
Score. 
Also in this class, I had my first ever emotional breakdown! It was heartbreaking on its own. The young boy couldn't grasp the concept, which was my fault for not explaining it properly. But once we got the idea down, he was good to go. So many young sponges.
This time was also the first time I had a class in my 'advanced' cryptography class. That was fun, trying to shake the cobwebs loose from kids that had already taken the 'beginner' class. That might be a way to repackage the classes, come to think of it. Anyway, one of them has a 'secret spy book' that shows all sorts of ways to be a spy and use code tools, gadgets, codes, etc. Last year he was the one who stole the show for a bit, until we got to a point where I showed them all some things that weren't in the book. It was fun to watch him start to learn something new, and see the class' reaction that hey, the book isn't going to be all the spoilers that they thought! And whoa, this code is wild! This same boy is now in the advanced class, and he brought his book. Too bad there's nothing in the book that I'm going to teach them! LOL
Also for the first time, I have more girls than boys in bridge building. That, I think, is awesome. It's almost a 2:1 ratio. Future mechanical and civil engineers! And they learn just as fast, if not faster, than some of the boys. So phooey to anyone who thinks girls can't pick up engineering!
Lotsa firsts.
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On a side note, ever cry at a cartoon or animated feature? 'Bambi' counts.
But have you done it recently? I did, watching a death scene in the anime Naruto.
Absolutely heartbreaking.
That's what I love about anime. They don't sugarcoat the scenes. Characters die. Sometimes violently. And they don't come back. Characters fall in love, or discover something about themselves as they grow older. And they age too. At least, in some of the better-written animes. Yeah, there will always be anime that is kid-friendly and sweet and doesn't touch on some of the more adolescent or adult themes (and I'm not talking about sex, though you can get that too if you're so inclined), but there are also the ones out there that do have those themes. That's what makes them more 'real', and that's why I like anime. Naruto seems to be filling the void now like that.
Just a day and a half and I will be off work for two weeks, w00t!! I can hardly wait, I really need this break to.
I think I am going to spend a lot of time at the beach, I just hope the weather holds out, we have had a really crappy summer so far, no hot days, lots of rain and thunder storms. Although, I actually do like the storms, they are never bad enough to cause any damamge, just a nice lightening show to watch with the kids.
Actually, a few weeks ago during one such storm, two really young girls (14ish) where running down the street in bikinis, while the storm was raging, I was sort of worried for them, I was thinking I should tell them to go back home, but knowing they wouldn't listen to me I didn't say anything anyway. After the storm they where walking back and one girl glanced up and saw me, suddenly she turned her back to me and mooned me. Wow, that is all I have to say about that.
I have to stay away from online games during this vacation, last year I wasted a week just playing games, I can't let that happen this time!!
I love it I tell you.
The first three pictures are of the Forrest Mushrooms my mom bought for us (I paid her back:P). They are smaller then the other type of shrooms we normally eat from the wild and aren't as buttery tasting but still GOOOOOOOOD!
The first picture is of them soaking all day in salt water. Salt water kills all the lil bugs and such off of them. The second picture is of them nice and cleaned off (part of them anyway) and ready to be dipped in batter!
The third picture is of them deep fried and yummy tasting.
I used crackers for this go around of breading. The kids perfer that over flour. But I perfer the flour breading mixed with a lil corn meal myself!:D
The next round of pictures if of the tree that came down in that big thunder storm that rolled through our area of NE in the middle of May. We had no clue that it came down! And our bedroom window is on that side of the house! The top window showing is Colt's window. Our window on that side of the house isn't showing. Colt didn't even hear the tree coming down. And it had to hit hard! Randy had to hook the big truck up with his chains to pull out some of the bigger branches from my yard, they were embedded into the ground! The lil dog kept waking us up that night and we kept getting after the poor thing for barking! She was just trying to warn us the tree was falling was all!
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