Inedible Ink

No Green Card for your software gurus? No problem…

The plan is simple, provided that any plan that starts out like this can be called “simple”:

A.) Buy a cruise ship.

Yeah, that’s simple. Really big, but simple. The plan continues:

B.) Anchor it in international waters, just off the coast of California.
C.) Hire hundreds of programmers from India.
D.) Offshore some jobs. Just a teeny little bit offshore.

In international waters, Sea Code would not need work visas for it’s engineers. In a familiar time zone, the American residents who are the customers relying on their output would be able to reach them during normal business hours. Just offshore, a helicopter or landing craft could have customers aboard in short order for meetings or other collaboration.

These engineers will make far more money than they could in Bangalore, yet still substantially less than someone making mortgage payments in, say, San Francisco.

600 Indian coders aboard or no, a cruise ship is still a cruise ship. I wonder who’ll be tending bar? Isaac or Iswara? Will they make port of call stops in the west coast’s technology hub cities?

Not a little bit Rock ‘n’ Roll just a little bit country.

I occurs to me that when you are in no country, and you set up semi-stationary shop with 600 inhabitant employees plus support staff (let’s call them Filipino, just for kicks) you approach, and meddle with, statehood.

The Vatican is the world’s smallest country with 900 or so inhabitants, so size does not seem to be much of a barrier to entry.

Does the simple plan end like this?:
E.) Accidentally form the first floating country.

We parked in the side-lot of the Funeral Home near white swinging double doors. A sign on the doors says “Employee entrance only”. “Wouldn’t want to make that mistake.” I say to my brother. His eyes agreed.

The casket reminds me of the one in About Schmidt. Not that anyone was about to have a cheapest-casket-tantrum, or even that it looked at all cheap, just that it looked like that one.

I wonder if caskets are one-size fits all. Grandpa was a tall man; I used to claim to my elementary school classmates that the dings on the top of his head were from doorways and ceiling fans. While that may well have been the case, for my part, I was weaving a tall-tale. I wondered if he was to spend eternity with his knees bent for lack of a Big-and-Tall department at the casket store.

I had never seen him lying down before, in all my life I’ve never seen him lying down.

The only parts of him that do not seem to have shrunk with age are his hands and his brow. His black suit might be too big around the shoulders, but it looks sharp. He’s also wearing a bright white starched cotton shirt with a little texture in it. “Nice shirt.” Grandpa was more a wash-and-wear guy, an 80/20 poly/cotton blend guy.

I called home the evening after the visitation.
“He’s looked better.” I said.
“Hmm, he is 93 years old.”
This I concede.
“And he’s been dead for three days.”
“Funeral Director has got to be a tough job, eh?”

I am told that we 6 grandsons are to be pallbearers.

We are Pall Bearers who do not bear the pall. The pall is the white cloth that covers the casket during a funeral mass, it is administered by the funeral home staff, and it is not on the casket while we carry it. The honorary pallbearers bear a few umbrellas and two canes.

The roses were perfect. My Grandpa grew roses, even after he’d sold his hobby farm. There must’ve been four or five dozen beautiful red roses on that casket. I took one at the interment, eager to hold on to something, but seconds later, it was just the thing to leave on Grandma’s headstone.

A commentary from last nights commute home with All Things Considered.  Worth a listen, I thought it was hilarious.

3/4 tests robotic machinegunner
Story by Lance Cpl. Paul Robbins Jr.
>In-Depth Coverage
FALLUJAH, Iraq (May 20, 2005) – The M240G medium machinegun sent a hail of bullets downrange, leaving accurate groups as it adjusted between three different targets, and behind the weapon…there was no gunner.

The system is operated by a remote hand device connected to the platform by a 20 to 100-meter long cable, allowing the gunner to operate the weapon from a covered and concealed position.

“The system is easy to operate,” said Lance Cpl. Diego A. Morelli, a 22-year-old mortarman with Weapons Co. “It’s just like playing a video game.”

It has been over a week since Grandpa’s funeral. I’m surprised at not having more remembrances of his life and his effect on my life to share. I bought a sketchbook as soon as I realized I hadn’t packed one for the trip. I was thinking I’d need to get it all written down. But no drawings or stories have materialized in its pages. Just one rose petal plucked from the casket inhabits that book, tucked inside the front cover.

Instead of remembrances, the picture of him my mind’s eye holds foremost is not one with him carrying a bucket in one hand and a hoe in the other but of him in his casket. Peaceful? That is the thing to say, certainly, but I have much higher expectations for “peace” than so much emptiness.

I have not been to an open casket visitation in a very very long time so I don’t know if it is an ordinary experience for mourners to imagine or watch for the slightest movements of someone in a deep sleep. They were not there. Perhaps this is one of the undocumented steps of grief, between denial and pain; watching for the chest to rise or the nostrils to flare just a little. I noticed myself thinking this and was unable to resist remembering a joke:

Two friends that died together in a car accident are going through heavenly orientation class. They are told they will have an opportunity to look in on their own funerals. When asked what they hope to hear the mourners say about them the first friend answers “I hope they remember me as a good father, a good husband and a good Christian.” The second friend says “I hope they say ‘LOOK! he’s moving!’” Ordinarily, I can’t remember a punchline, and now this.

The dead do have an uncanny knack for lying still.

I’m supposed to be saying goodbye, and that talking inside your own head that might be prayer and might be telepathy is jammed up with “LOOK! He’s moving!” Nice. If he can hear me saying goodbye, he can hear this joke. So this is what Grandpa might have heard on the telepathy phone: “Sorry about the joke, I didn’t mean to think of it, I will miss you, I’m sorry about not calling you more often these last couple years, hey, is that a rosary in your hands?”

I didn’t know Grandpa to go to church, or to pray at all, never mind the prayer-world’s humble champion of repetitive heavy lifting, the rosary. And I had completely spaced on his late-in-life conversion to Catholicism.

Telepathy Phone: “I didn’t know, I mean, I forgot, that your second marriage was in the Catholic church, the rosary, wow, I’ve never been able to be still and humble and get over myself like that, well you’ll have time now, eh?”

I had to turn away from the casket and inspect the flower arrangements, like this was the telepathic equivalent of: “could you hold a sec, please?” I don’t know the path a departed soul takes. I am weak of faith, stingy with my trust and short on imagination.

What do I believe? What does happen to a soul? I do not know. But it is not knowledge that I need.

Telepathy Phone, again: “Yeah… Grandpa, I don’t understand it, can’t understand it, but I do believe you will have time to pray your rosary.”

Congratulations go to my Dad, who’s finishing up his first year of teaching school. After many years of getting other things done, he’s getting this done. No word on if his kids have the South Park Mouth. I’m guessing not. And yes, adding the puppet was all my idea.

Hats off to South Park Studio.

Iraq Pictures blog
The mortars and the car are part of the 20 weapons caches that U.S. Marines from India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment found during the operations. Pic: Lance Cpl. Brian M. Henner, USMC

Shameless clipping from a legitimate news source:op29online.com

American Forces Press Service-Press Release

WASHINGTON-Multi-National Force operations netted 109 terrorists and suspects throughout Iraq Saturday and Sunday and included finding large weapons caches.

In simultaneous operations conducted early today north of the town of Al Qaim, 54 terrorists within the circle of known terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were captured or killed, according to Multi-National Force Iraq officials. Coalition forces also destroyed car bombs, bomb-making material and two buildings that contained large weapons caches to include hand- and rocket-propelled grenades.

Multiple sources of intelligence indicate that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s key lieutenants, suicide bombers and a large population of foreign fighters are located in the region in and around Al Qaim, near the Syrian border.

In recent months, terrorists operating in this unstable region attacked Iraqis and coalition forces, established safe houses and helped move foreign fighters, weapons and money from Syria into Iraq.

In other action Saturday, Task Force Baghdad raids snared 38 terror suspects in the Baghdad area, including two high-value targets in a series of early morning raids.

The raids included getting 29 suspected terrorists in the largest strike of the day in south Baghdad. And a separate operation detained five more suspected terrorists, one thought to be the leader of a terror cell in southwest Baghdad. There, troops also found 1,000 rounds of assault-rifle ammunition in a burlap bag covered with mud.

In addition, U.S. soldiers on patrol in east Baghdad also found another weapons cache containing two mortar rounds and 10 rocket-propelled grenades.

In Babil province Saturday, Multi-National Division Central South forces detained 17 terror suspects during cordon-and-search operations. Iraqi, Polish, Salvadoran and U.S. troops conducted the combined operation in an area of Al Mashru, capturing anti-Iraqi and anti-coalition forces, illegal weapons and ammunition.

Elsewhere, Marines and soldiers of Multi-National Force West recently discovered and destroyed hundreds of weapons and tons of ammunition found in 13 hidden caches near Al Amiriyah in Anbar province. The find was the largest in recent months in western Iraq.

Marines of 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division and soldiers of the 155th Brigade Combat Team unearthed a series of caches April 27 while they were conducting cordon-and-search operations. The caches took nearly a week to uncover, catalog and destroy.

The caches contained significant numbers of weapons and explosives that could be used in attacks on Iraqi citizens, Iraqi security forces and coalition forces. Items included more than 4,100 mortar rounds, more than 800 rocket-propelled grenade rounds, more than 100,000 rounds of machine-gun ammunition, more than 400 grenades, and several thousand pounds of different types of explosives and bomb-making material.

Some materials were buried, while others were in underground bunkers. Most of the weapons and ammunition were in good condition and ready for use.

the answer to life the universe and everything = 42

KansasCity.com requires a free registration to see this piece on a local Marine:

PHILADELPHIA, Mo. - Amid his dangerous duties as an infantry machine gunner with the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, Caleb Wilson finds time to spread a little cheer to the children of Iraq.
It started when the 23-year-old native of the small northeast Missouri town Philadelphia shared with children some of the treats he received in care packages from home. Then, in a letter to his family, he asked for crayons, pencils and coloring books that he could pass out to Iraqi children.
The response was quick and overwhelming. Relatives, friends and members of his church, Bethel Baptist of Smileyville, Mo., sent a box filled with giveaways. Wilson shared it with other soldiers, who passed out the small gifts to children they encountered on the streets.
In a letter to his family dated March 29, Wilson described how soldiers would stop a car at a checkpoint, see a bunch of kids inside and then hand each of them crayons and coloring books.
‘Their faces would just light up with excitement after getting these bags of goodies,’ Wilson wrote. ‘It didn’t take but a few days and the box was empty.’
Wilson sent a letter to the church thanking the congregation for the gifts. Pastor James Croft said another box from the church is now on its way to Wilson.
‘The people at church think so much of Caleb,’ Croft said. ‘He’s done so much for the church that they wanted to keep sending him things.’
Wilson is serving his third tour of duty in Iraq. He is a corporal stationed on the outskirts of Fallujah, according to his sister, Leah. She said her brother primarily works at a security checkpoint.”