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More 511th History: Being Punished for Planning Ahead

19 July 2025 • by Bob • Military

Here's another in my long line of 511th-related stories that I documented at one time or another.

Obtaining necessary items from supply was critical to carrying out our mission, and over the years we had a modicum of success with getting the clerks in supply to do their jobs and order what we needed. Throughout my first two years I learned how to anticipate what I might need in advance, and I would frequently requisition items from supply several months before I might need them, which often paid off handsomely. One item in particular that I always made sure our squad had an ample supply of when the 511th deployed to the field was "D" sized batteries, which the EW teams needed to run the AN/TRQ-30 radios by night. (The TRQ-30s consumed 12 batteries at a time.) Of course, "D" sized batteries were also used for our flashlights, so it was nice to have lots of spares.

But that being said, I vividly recall a deployment when the rest of the 511th hadn't bothered to plan ahead. When the time came to head to the field, a bunch of people ran to the supply office, where they were promptly informed that supply wouldn't have any batteries for several weeks - long after the deployment was over. Of course, a lack of batteries was insufficient to prevent the 511th from heading out to the field.

After our squad had arrived on site, word somehow got back to CPT Quinn that "SGT McMurray had a huge stash of batteries that he wasn't willing to share." Armed with that knowledge, CPT Quinn personally dropped by our location to put an end to what he perceived as my "greediness." When he showed up, he asked me to produce every battery that I had brought with our squad. I pulled out a couple boxes of brand-new batteries that I had requisitioned through supply, then I pulled out a large box of loose batteries that I had personally spent an hour checking with a multimeter before the deployment.

I proceeded to explain that - unlike the other squads in the company - I was constantly preparing for our next deployment. I always requisitioned new batteries months in advance, and I personally inspected every battery after we returned to garrison after a deployment. (Any battery with 1.5 volts was good enough to keep, and anything less was tossed in the garbage.) I also explained that the EW squads needed more batteries because of the TRQ-30s' unrelenting appetite for batteries, and I pointed out that many of the squads who were complaining about their lack of batteries generally wanted batteries for their personal boomboxes, which had nothing to do with the mission.

Nevertheless, CPT Quinn did not applaud my resourcefulness, and he confiscated half the batteries that I had faithfully accumulated over the months prior to this deployment. I tried to protest and say that a few nights without a flashlight might teach the other squads to plan ahead in the future, but my words - as usual - fell on deaf ears.

In case I haven't mentioned it elsewhere, CPT Quinn was kind of a jerk about these sorts of things.

PS - My devotion to planning ahead for our next deployment was due to having served with LTC Lesser, who taught the 511th to remain combat loaded at all times and ready to deploy at a moment's notice. CPT Quinn, however, did not share LTC Lesser's foresight and devotion to the mission.

Using XSPF files with VLC to Specify Start and End Times Within a Media File

29 June 2025 • by Bob • VLC

I have a small confession to make: despite my posts about My Top Ten Favorite Rock Songs, My Favorite Guitar Solos, and My List of 20 Most Influential Albums, I am a huge fan of Classical Music. My wife and I used to be season ticket holders for the Seattle Symphony, and together we've traveled around the globe to see symphonies, concerti, operas, and other classical music performances in myriad venues. While that might seem counter-intuitive for a dyed-in-the-wool rock music fan such as myself, it really make sense when you consider that what I'm actually a fan of is superior musical skill, and you'll typically find far more musical talent in an orchestra than you'll find in the typical pop, rock, or hip-hop group. (Although Jazz is often in the same realm as Classical.)

One of the greatest recurring classical music events is the BBC Proms, which is an annual event that has been held for over a century (since 1895!). Way back in 2012, the BBC Proms featured a performance with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra of Alberto Ginastera's suite of Four Dances from Estancia (Opus 8A), which is a series of excerpts from his larger Estancia ballet. Thankfully I had the presence of mind to download the video from YouTube, because it's no longer available. And with that in mind, here is the full-length video that I downloaded:

Sadly, this video isn't the best quality, but it was uploaded 13 years ago, and at the time creators weren't uploading a lot of high definition videos. Nevertheless, I'm glad to have this copy of the performance, because conductor Marin Alsop is an absolute joy to watch, and her interpretation of Ginastera's Estancia suite is particularly well done. (And meaning no disrespect, I prefer Aslop's interpretation over Gustavo Dudamel's version at the BBC Proms from a few years prior, but I digress.)

Of the four pieces in the Estancia suite, my favorite by far is the fourth, which is titled "Malambo." Somewhere around the 01:55 point in the fourth movement of the suite it takes off into a frenzied display of Latin American musical wizardry, and I love to listen to it when I'm writing code. Occasionally I only want to hear just the fourth movement from the suite, and it's always a little weird trying to skip ahead to find the correct place within the full-length video to start listening.

Many years ago, my primary video player was Windows Media Player, which was a built-in feature on Windows systems, and in its day it was a pretty good media player. One of its most-useful features for me was its support for its proprietary, XML-based Windows Media Metafiles, which allowed me to create custom files that specified the beginning and ending for specific sections within a larger media file. For example, the following ASX syntax allowed me to separate the video of the full Estancia suite that I shared earlier into each of the four movements:

<ASX VERSION="3.0">
  <TITLE>Ginastera - Estancia Suite</TITLE>
  <AUTHOR>Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra</AUTHOR>
  <COPYRIGHT>BBC Proms</COPYRIGHT>
  <ENTRY>
    <TITLE>Estancia Suite - The Land Workers</TITLE>
    <REF HREF="BBC-Proms-Ginastera-Estancia-Suite-Sao-Paulo-Symphony-Orchestra.mp4" />
    <DURATION VALUE="00:03:10.0" />
  </ENTRY>
  <ENTRY>
    <TITLE>Estancia Suite - Wheat Dance</TITLE>
    <REF HREF="BBC-Proms-Ginastera-Estancia-Suite-Sao-Paulo-Symphony-Orchestra.mp4" />
    <STARTTIME VALUE="00:03:10.0" />
    <DURATION VALUE="00:03:02.0" />
  </ENTRY>
  <ENTRY>
    <TITLE>Estancia Suite - The Cattle Men</TITLE>
    <REF HREF="BBC-Proms-Ginastera-Estancia-Suite-Sao-Paulo-Symphony-Orchestra.mp4" />
    <STARTTIME VALUE="00:06:12.0" />
    <DURATION VALUE="00:01:53.0" />
  </ENTRY>
  <ENTRY>
    <TITLE>Estancia Suite - Malambo</TITLE>
    <REF HREF="BBC-Proms-Ginastera-Estancia-Suite-Sao-Paulo-Symphony-Orchestra.mp4" />
    <STARTTIME VALUE="00:08:05.0" />
  </ENTRY>
</ASX>

However, the syntax for Windows Media Metafiles is considerably limited. If you look through the Windows Media Metafile Elements Reference, you'll notice that there aren't a lot of options. Of particular note in my preceding ASX example was that I could only specify the start time and duration for each section, rather than the start time and end time, which was preferable (by far).

Over time, I ceased using Windows Media Player in favor of the far superior VLC Media Player (otherwise known as the VideoLAN Client, or "VLC" for short). Among VLC's many improvments over Windows Media Player is its support for a different XML-based syntax, the XML Shareable Playlist Format (or "XSPF" for short, which is pronounced "spiff"). XSPF supports a far greater number of elements than Windows Media Metafiles, and through a series of VideoLAN's extensions it supports an even greater number of options that are specific to VLC.

Before I continue with some examples, I should share the reference links that I used when creating XSPF files for VLC:

I'll spare you the tales of trials and errors that I went through before arriving at the following XSPF example, which provided the same level of functionality that I had with the ASX sample that I provided earlier, albeit with some improvements that I will describe in a moment:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<playlist xmlns="http://xspf.org/ns/0/" xmlns:vlc="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/playlist/ns/0/" version="1">
  <title>Ginastera - Estancia Suite</title>
  <creator>Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra</creator>
  <license>BBC Proms</license>
  <trackList>
    <track>
      <title>Estancia Suite - The Land Workers</title>
      <location>BBC-Proms-Ginastera-Estancia-Suite-Sao-Paulo-Symphony-Orchestra.mp4</location>
      <extension application="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/playlist/0">
        <vlc:option>start-time=0</vlc:option>
        <vlc:option>stop-time=191</vlc:option>
      </extension>
    </track>
    <track>
      <title>Estancia Suite - Wheat Dance</title>
      <location>BBC-Proms-Ginastera-Estancia-Suite-Sao-Paulo-Symphony-Orchestra.mp4</location>
      <extension application="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/playlist/0">
        <vlc:option>start-time=191</vlc:option>
        <vlc:option>stop-time=373</vlc:option>
      </extension>
    </track>
    <track>
      <title>Estancia Suite - The Cattle Men</title>
      <location>BBC-Proms-Ginastera-Estancia-Suite-Sao-Paulo-Symphony-Orchestra.mp4</location>
      <extension application="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/playlist/0">
        <vlc:option>start-time=373</vlc:option>
        <vlc:option>stop-time=486</vlc:option>
      </extension>
    </track>
    <track>
      <title>Estancia Suite - Malambo</title>
      <location>BBC-Proms-Ginastera-Estancia-Suite-Sao-Paulo-Symphony-Orchestra.mp4</location>
      <extension application="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/playlist/0">
        <vlc:option>start-time=486</vlc:option>
      </extension>
    </track>
  </trackList>
</playlist>

As you can see, instead of the <STARTTIME> and <DURATION> elements from the ASX file, the XSPF file has <vlc:option>start-time</vlc:option> and <vlc:option>stop-time</vlc:option> elements that are defined within an <extension> element that is specific to VLC. The values for the new entries are offset in seconds from the start of the file, and the stop time is far easier to compute than the duration from the ASX file.

You can download this example XSPF file by clicking here.

One last note is that the "start-time" and "stop-time" options are from the VLC command-line help URL that I listed earlier. In short, the many options that can be specified on VLC's command line can be specified in <vlc:option> elements, which adds an enormous amount of flexibility when creating XSPF files. For example, instead of specifying the "stop-time" as I did in my example, you could specify the "run-time", which would allow you to specify the number of seconds for playback for a track rather than the offset in seconds from the beginning of the larger media file as I had done. There are lots of options to choose from, but they're outside the scope of this blog.

FOOTNOTE: I should mention that I first learned of Alberto Ginastera while listening to WRR FM in Dallas, TX, which is one of my favorite classical music stations on the planet. WRR plays a wide array of music from hundreds of composers - both classical and contemporary - from across the globe. I much prefer WRR over our local KUAT FM here in Tucson, AZ, which is a terrible classical music station that routinely slogs its way through dozens of utterly forgettable pieces of musical tripe that no one cares to listen to. KUAT FM seems to focus on broadcasting bizarre pieces of auditory garbage, which quite often feature long passages of discordant cacophony that scare my grandchildren. So if your goal is to hate classical music as a genre, then KUAT FM should be your "go to" station. But if you love classical music, then WRR FM is your best bet.

Why Rick Steves is Wrong about Weed

27 June 2025 • by Bob • Health, Opinion, Science

My wife and I are big fans of travel writer Rick Steves. Over the years we've watched his travel shows on PBS, we always use his guidebooks as we travel throughout Europe, and we've been on a couple of his European tours (which are worth every penny). Because of our fanboy status, I follow Rick Steves on Social Media, and I was both surprised and shocked when Rick posted the following on Facebook earlier today:

Rick's position is understandable: he's a cannabis user, and everyone who is behaving in a manner that others might perceive as wrong would love to see all restrictions lifted for their chosen vice. This mindset is what has led several states to overturn previous laws that criminalized marijuana use, but just because something has been made legal doesn't make it right. For example, adultery used to be illegal, now it's only viewed as immoral. In other words, adultery may be legal, but it's still regarded as unacceptable, because it hurts people. And it's the same thing with marijuana use; just because cannabis has been made legal in some areas doesn't mean that its harmful effects have been negated. On the contrary, numerous researchers in science and medical fields have published a wealth of peer-reviewed articles about the negative effects of recreational cannabis use, though this research falls on deaf ears because people want what they want, regardless of the consequences. (Which is why tobacco use has remained popular around the world despite overwhelming evidence that it's a highly addictive drug that kills millions of people per year.)

With that in mind, I felt prompted to respond to Rick's post with the following comment:

I fully expected a wave of negative feedback from the pro-cannabis crowd in response to my comment, but that didn't happen. Instead, Rick promptly deleted my response. Apparently, Rick doesn't like people presenting a solid argument that disagrees with him.

C'est la vie.

Cognitive Offloading versus Learning a Language

10 April 2025 • by Bob • Linguistics

I belong to a group of former military linguists, and someone shared the following article earlier today: Man Alarmed as His Cognitive Skills Decay After Outsourcing Them to AI. That article referenced a source article on the Wall Street Journal's website at How I Realized AI Was Making Me Stupid - and What I Do Now. As I read both articles, I must admit - I hadn't encountered the term "cognitive offloading" before, but I can easily see where it's happening more and more, and it's an interesting phenomenon that the majority of people don't realize is happening in their daily lives, and in some cases it's not necessarily a bad thing.

For example: there was a time when we were all required to give people directions to some location that would typically involve statements like, "Get off Main Street at Brown Ave, then drive until you see a Circle K on the right (not the one on the left), then you'll need to make a half-turn on your left past the big Oak Tree in front of a green house, and drive until the road ends near the corn field, and then..." Those days have long passed, because now everyone is carrying a GPS that is usually (e.g. 99%) accurate to get someone where they're going, and we've "offloaded" the part of our brains that used to have to think through the problem of getting someone where they needed to go. Building on this idea, I recently bicycled 500 miles across Spain along the Camino de Santiago, and for the most part Google Maps managed to get me from Point A to Point B (with only a few minor episodes where Google Maps tried to kill me).

In the past, I would have needed to haul a map with me and spend far more time planning than I did. So from a navigation perspective, I fully realize that I had become lazier. (Which, in hindsight, could have been an issue had my phone died on me.)

However, the concept of "cognitive offloading" made me think about languages. As a former Russian linguist, and as someone who lived 6½ years in Germany and used to speak that language passably, during my trek across Spain I intentionally chose NOT to let Google Translate do all the work for me throughout my journey. To be sure, I used Google Translate now and again to look up a word here or there in the same way that I used to use one of those tiny Langenscheidt dictionaries in the past.

But for the most part, I conversed with all the locals the old-fashioned way: by memorizing vocabulary and phrases, and by simply being willing to make a ton of grammatical mistakes along the way. My efforts were rewarded through some genuinely great discussions with lots of locals as I pedaled my through the mountains and villages of northern Spain, though in particular I'd like to highlight the discussions I had with a fellow traveler whom I occasionally ran into a few times: he was from Italy, and he didn't speak any English, and I'm from Arizona, and I don't speak Italian, so the only language the two of us had in common was our mutual poor grasp of Spanish (and we had a lot of laughter at our respective lack of skills in that regard).

All this is to say, I can attest to "cognitive offloading" in my life - I think today's technology has made that unavoidable to a degree. However, I can also attest that life is better when you don't let technology take over everything that requires active thought - especially when it comes to learning languages. In other words: life's a journey, make sure you enjoy the ride by stopping now and again to talk to the locals.

The Unrest in Our Small Slice of the Forest

21 March 2025 • by Bob • Humor, Nature

In honor of March 21st being the International Day of Forests, I thought I'd share the following anecdote:

When my wife and I bought a house in Seattle many years ago, we had a single Maple tree in our backyard that was surrounded by towering Pine trees, which were, of course, blocking out the sun and clearly causing the lone Maple undo distress.

After a day of working in our yard to clear out some underbrush, my wife asked me how my labors were progressing, and I replied:

Oh, sure - any self-respecting Rush fan could probably see that joke coming a mile away, but still - how could I resist? (IYKYK)

PS - My wife, who is no fan of the Triumvirate from Toronto, responded, "That's from a Rush song, isn't it?"

A Few Additional Suggestions for Renaming Geographical Locations

20 February 2025 • by Bob • Humor, Politics

In the wake of the "Gulf of America" renaming debacle, I think that Mexico should rename the "Gulf of California" to the "Gulf of Mexico," and California should rename "San Francisco Bay" to the "Gulf of California."

Meanwhile, "Cape Cod Bay" should be renamed the "Gulf of Ireland," the "Black Sea" should be renamed the "Gulf of Ukraine," "Long Island Sound" should be renamed the "Gulf of England," the "Red Sea" should be renamed the "Gulf of Saudi Arabia," and all the "Great Lakes" should be renamed the "Gulf of Canada."

While we're at it, the "Atlantic Ocean" and "Indian Ocean" and "Mediterranean Sea" should all be renamed the "Gulf of Africa," and the "Pacific Ocean" should be renamed the "Gulf of Antarctica."

I think that takes care of just about everything.

To be the Dogman

06 February 2025 • by Bob • Humor, Music

My granddaughter is obsessed with the children's superhero "Dog Man" these days, but I have to admit - every time she mentions him, I can't help but think of this song:

That's pretty much the same thing, isn't it?

The Glamour and Romance of Travel

28 January 2025 • by Bob • Travel, Humor

I believe I've stayed at this hotel on more than one occasion:

Stupid People Do Not Understand Genetics

10 January 2025 • by Bob • Humor, Science

A friend of mine posted the following image from Twitter (with the actual names removed to protect the innocent):

I responded that I like to mess with people who are that scientifically illiterate by saying things like, "You realize that when you compare a woman's XX chromosomes to a man's XY chromosomes, there are 8 branches in a woman's DNA and only 7 for a man, which means that women have 12.5% more DNA than men, and that extra branch is where DNA stores all the building blocks for intelligence and logic, which is why most women are smarter than you."

Yeah, sure - that statement about DNA isn't scientifically accurate, but it doesn't matter - because whoever the illiterate idiot is, they've already proven that they're too dumb to know better.

A Few Thoughts on My 40th Wedding Anniversary

29 December 2024 • by Bob • Marriage

Today my wife and I celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, which is no small feat by any stretch of the imagination. Together she and I have faced more than our share of triumphs and tragedies, prosperity and poverty, happiness and heartbreak. This year we joyfully greeted our fourth grandchild, while bidding a tearful goodbye to my wife's brother and aunt and my father. When my wife and I both said "I do" all those years ago, we were mere children ourselves, blissfully blinded by the stars in our eyes from the realities that lay before us. Side by side we survived eight years of Cold War deprivations during my time in uniform, followed by almost 30 years of my wife's career as a nurse and my never-ending adventures and misadventures with Microsoft. Through it all, however, she and I have trod the path before us hand-in-hand, and words cannot do justice to how much my wife makes everything better in life.

Perhaps the great Irish poet, Thomas Moore, expressed it best when he penned the following verses:

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