After 14 grueling days, working 14+ hour days and studying late into the night, I emerged from my training class weary and tired. Still, I managed to accumulate a 7-0 record on the exams, and walk away with my MCSA and MCSE certifications. Our entire class did extremely well, with 8 of 11 people passing everything the first time, and two more only having to re-take one exam. A nod goes out to my instructor.

I also want to thank Lope for taking the reins from me while I was taking my training class. Had I not been able to leave my weblog in his capable hands, I probably would not have been able to pass the class. Instead of using those lunch breaks and spare moments to study the next chapter, I would have undoubtedly been busy trying to publish a quick weblog entry.

I did however, manage to save a few bookmarks. I tucked away articles and stories that I really wanted to talk about. I saved them all up, for what I'm calling the "Longest Entry Ever" or "The Week(s) in Review" or "Chicken Soup for the Blogging Soul".

In blogging news, I missed Spoon's big comeback. I had a feeling he might be up to something when he left this cryptic message on my web-site. Oddly enough, Spoons added me to his blogroll right before he went on hiatus, and removed me from it right after he returned. Mrs. DuToit also put me on her blogroll, right when she started her hiatus, and her hiatus started right around the time Spoons came back from his. Both Spoons and DuToit have the same number of letters. Spoons lives in Chicago, and Mr. DuToit used to. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Is Spoons really Mrs. DuToit? Hmm... Inquiring minds want to know.

Speaking of Ohio, (okay, I wasn't, but I needed a segue) on Tuesday, I read about the city of Cincinnati going all 1984 on people's asses. Up go the cameras, which should make for some good "Stupid behavior caught on tape" videos. Ironically, Cincinnati lawmakers are Ohio's biggest opponents to allowing law abiding citizens the right to carry concealed firearms. It just goes to show you that they would much rather spend government money to investigate your murder, than to allow you to have prevented it in the first place.

Meanwhile, Fox News featured an AP story about a West Virginia man that went nuts at a school board meeting. He doused a man with gasoline, and opened fire with an "AK-47 assault rifle", because some people were smoking around him. I'm sure the pleasure police liberals will be falling all over themselves to try to ban cigarettes, AK-47s and gasoline from school board meetings.

Kim gives us a story about Massachusetts gun registration. It seems as though the police agency in charge of processing registration requests simply decided not to do it any more. The sheriff blamed budget cuts and imposed a moratorium on all new gun purchases. Thankfully, the town council had the sense to tell the sheriff he had to do his job, regardless of the budget. Hopefully this will be a wakeup call for citizens to tear down registration barriers once and for all.

In another gun registration story, Kim notes that the U.N. may be pushing for world wide gun confiscation registration. Specifically, they want to wield power over the citizens of the United States and our lawless, freedom loving ideas. All I'll say is that it isn't going to happen. Not to my guns any way.

Speaking of gun bans, one of these days, the citizens of Washington D.C. may finally get their rights back. The Post reports that Senator Orrin Hatch has proposed legislation to end the gun ban. Despite having a handgun ban and a longgun ban/registration scheme in place since 1976, Washington D.C. is the murder capital of the United States.

Speaking of murder capitals, the violent crime rate in England is still on the rise. Despite passing a sweeping gun ban in the late 1990s, overall violent crime is up 20%. Murders in London jumped 22%, while "gangland" crime has skyrocketed 72%. Gee, you make guns illegal, and prosecute homeowners for defending themselves, and look what happens. Go figure.

Speaking of guns, Kim has yet another good one about the age old argument between the .45 ACP vs. the 9mm Europellet. I've always thought size mattered, and for that reason, I don't own a wimpy 9mm. If I do buy a 9mm, it'll be something that like this mean and nasty Cobray M11, that is sure to drive fear into gun grabbers everywhere.

In other gun news, Taranto pointed out this tidbit of media bias. Journalists at the Olympian (Washington) are shocked, just shocked, to discover that gun owners can actually get together for some friendly competition and not end up killing each other in "Dodge City" fashion. Their headline: "Despite presence of guns, friendliness abounds at state championships" says it all, and makes me wonder about the mental stability of their reporters.

Speaking of media bias, Eugene Volokh caught CBS in not one, but two flaps about Iraq. I guess when you can't find any bad news, you just have to make it up sometimes.

While I'm thinking about Iraq, dems are acting like they've found the Rosetta stone with George Bush's state of the union address. Even though they voted to go to war months prior to the speech, Dems are claiming they were duped by the "bad" intelligence info. Desperate for a campaign issue, presidential wannabes like Kerry and Graham have been giving pointing the finger at Bush and his deceptive yet persuasive fifteen words that retroactively convinced them that attacking Iraq was the only option. They never would have voted to attack Iraq if they had known that the 15 words Bush interjected into his speech three months later were going to end up being false.

So distraught were some democrats, that they forgot all about the NAALCP's convention. After some harsh words from the race warlords however, dems were quick to Step'n Fetchit. They would have garnered more respect (and kept their spine) had they used this excuse instead.

Speaking of racial warmongering, Kim DuToit notes that the Congressional Black Caucus is upset because Bush didn't invite them to go to Africa. Kim notes that "perhaps if you stopped referring to the President as a moron, or as a right-wing fundamentalist, or as someone owned by Big Oil or Enron, or as someone who allowed 9/11 to happen so he could enrich his family -- perhaps if you stopped doing all those things, he might actually care about what you think."

Back at the NAALCP convention, Bob Graham, who is no doubt a product of government schools, noted that he would "use the five-letter word: deceit" to describe the Bush Administration. I wouldn't normally grandstand over such a trivial mistake, if it weren't for dickheads like Jacob Weisberg. The "Bushism" crowd, who tape every Bush event, in hopes that he'll stumble over a syllable or two, were eerily silent. What, no book of Grahamisms?

Speaking of the product of government schools, the top item on the PC Watch list are parents of an Oregon school system that want the schools to stop flying the American Flag. One of those who would be offended by the flag is Tracy Bungay, who whines, "I want to raise my children to be citizens of the world, and the flag does not represent ideals I want to instill ... It represents dominance, greed, corporate power and not freedom." Too bad state law requires the flag be flown. Perhaps Tracy can use her school voucher to put her children into a private school. Oh wait, she's probably against school vouchers too. Oh well, deal with it, Tracy.

Tracy may not understand what freedom means, but the Iraqis sure do. Over in the gulf, the fall of Saddam's regime has been made an official Iraqi holiday. I'm sure this is driving the peacenik's absolutely crazy. They could only be more pissed off if the Iraqi's started calling it George Bush Day.

In other war news, Puggs over at Random Nuclear Strikes finally got around to watching Gods and Generals. He seemed to enjoy the movie, but claims that his Yankee blood could feel empathy for the "confederate men, but not their cause, not their passion for the war that was to come." So just what did he feel empathy for, if not the cause or passion of men defending their homeland from invasion? Perhaps it was just indigestion he was feeling.

Meanwhile, in state news, the Rhode Island state police have declared war on the natives over cigarette sales taxes. First the white man stole their land and used their images as sport's mascots, and now they cannot even sell tobacco (which is a truly Native American product) without paying tribute to the man. If anything, we should be paying Native Americans for giving us the wonderful product that is tobacco. I wish the Narragansett Indian Tribe the best of luck in federal court. Those yankee pleasure police droogs need to be taken down a peg or two.

I really had to bite my tongue when I read about the Nevada Supreme Court overturning their own Constitution. Apparently the Nevada constitution mandates that school funding be taken care of, and that tax increases be passed by two-thirds majority. Lawmakers discovered that by diverting budgetary funds away from the school budget, they could try to push through a tax increase under the constitutional provision protecting school funding. The question that comes to mind is how mandating a simple majority is any more constitutional than a two-thirds majority. Well, it could have been worse. At least they didn't use the words "compelling interest". Augh, you know this is all her fault.

Last Sunday in Virginia, I missed the commissioning of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan. She looks like a good ship, and should help usher in the next wave of super carriers. The U.S.S. George H. W. Bush is right behind her, and should be the next carrier out of dry dock. Apparently, there may just be a U.S.S. George W. Bush in the works too. Hmm, I wonder why there is no U.S.S Clinton. I wouldn't name a carrier after him, but perhaps a yellow submarine that's long, hard and full of seamen. (rim job er.. shot)

In other national news, the AP notes that the RIAA has won hundreds of federal subpoenas against music fans. I find it most interesting that the ISPs that are being targeted for enforcement, are in direct competition with RIAA members like TWAOL. Verizon and Comcast users have been hit the hardest, neither of whom also has a music business division. Meanwhile, even though they are the nation's largest ISP, not a single AOL user has been served with one of the 871 federal subpoenas.

Fox News brought us the sob story of former college students that are stuck with "high interest" loans. Apparently we've gotten to the point where 6.45% is "high interest". Oh woe is Gene Riccoboni, a New York lawyer who is prevented by the government from locking in his taxpayer subsidized loan at the low 3% rates that are common among today's student loans. You know, with seven years (or more) of college, you'd think he would have learned the difference between FIXED and VARIABLE rates. You don't see me crying to Ford Motor Company because I'm locked in at the ludicrously high rate of 4.9% on my car loan. Gene, you always have the option of trying to find non-government subsidized financing in the private sector. You could always walk down to the bank and ask them for a 3% personal loan. (Good luck with that!)

There has been a lot of good offbeat news lately. Last Thursday, I sent out an email about a nice South Carolina girl I'd found. She has a few skeletons in her car.. er closet, but at least I don't have to worry about her running off. About a week later, my cousin's wife asked me about this mysterious new girlfriend I had. I guess cynicism is lost on some people.

In a rare bit of journalistic humor, Reuters featured a truly bizarre story about a Swiss rent-a-cow service. Apparently the cows are rented out for their milk production and cheese. I wonder if PETA has a European branch?

In other offbeat news, On the Fritz featured this truly bizarre story about the tracking of rubber duckies. Ahh, our scientific dollars hard at work.

In related scientific news, the mystery of Van Gogh's Moonrise has finally been solved. This has long been one of my favorite paintings. Scientists, not wanting to squander a perfectly good government grant, have calculated the precise time and day that Van Gogh would have created such a masterpiece. On July 13th, 1889 at 9:08 PM local time, Vincent Van Gogh forever immortalized a ridge of the French countryside. We can all rest better, now that they've cleared that up.

In other French news, actor Johnny Depp, known for his roles in Private Resort and Cry-Baby, plans to make Paris his permanent home. The Seattle PI reports that Depp says that the United States "mortifies" him with its "childish freedom fries and freedom toast." Depp also campaigned for the "Father of the Year" award by noting that if his kids ever wanted to smoke pot, he'd go get it for them. After watching his friend River Phoenix go dance with the devil in the cold moon light, Depp doesn't trust street drugs anymore, because they could easily be laced with other substances. Ahh, another liberal, doing it "for the children".

France's ally, those pesky Iraqi guerrillas, are going to have to suffer through their shortage of white flags. France has ruled out sending troops to Iraq.

Also in France, cyclist Lance Armstrong, who is trying to win his fifth Tour de France in a row was held up by some French anti-globalization nutjobs. Taranto linked this SI article, and noted that only in France could a political protest that stopped a bike race be deemed "a normal race incident."

In other sporting news, Tazteck notes that home town hero Maurice Clarett may be getting more than just tutoring. Apparently communications is a harder major than it looks like, and the star running back may have taken drastic measures to make it to the Tostito'stm Fiesta Bowl last year. I'll hold my judgement until the facts are in, but I've taken classes with student athletes that seemed to never show up, yet always still managed to pass.

And of course there's Kobe. Kobe Bryant was charged with felony sexual assault. I'm not sure what to make of athletes who get in trouble with girls. On the one hand, there are plenty of women out there who would love to trap an athlete in this exact situation, in hopes of getting a huge settlement. On the other hand, there are plenty of grab-ass athletes out there that think they can get away with murder. (cough) OJ (cough)

Well, that brings me to the end of a long post. If you made it down this far, congratulations. Give yourself a gold star for attentiveness. Happy hour is rolling around, and somewhere there is a beer with my name on it. Salud.