I work with Linux all the time. And I build most of my pages in php. But Ruby on Rails has stymied me also. I gave up.

I wasn't a member of the greatest generation, but I fought in the war of my peers. Vietnam. I too have a cigar box stashed away in my sock drawer, it has been there for nearly 40 years.

I hung my medals and ribbons in a display case years ago. When my kids asked me about them I told them what they stood for and why I was awarded them. I never hid the fact that I was a combat veteran, but then I never talked about my experiences in country.

What remains in my cigar box are some old photos and letters. Now I look at those pictures and study the young faces staring back at me. So many of them are long dead and buried. I understand the need to hold on to some things like this. I also have a stack of letters in there. After I read your entry I opened one of the letters. It was from the father of a friend I lost in Vietnam. He thanked me for telling him how his son died. The awful thing is I don't remember writing him. I wrote so many of those letters in 1968 they all became a blur. So I looked at the signature and then searched through the pictures I kept. There was his son, beer in one hand, M-14 in the other, drunk as a lord. It all came back.

I know what is like to serve honorably in a dishonorable war. It does not diminish in one bit the courage and sacrifice of our young soldiers. Now I've carefully returned the letters and photos to their place in my sock drawer. I don't have to worry anymore. The kids are all grown and left home. The grandchildren can't reach that drawer yet.

I hope you guys and gals don't mind if I rant for a minute. I've had something eating at me for a long time now and its time to vent.

In the past six years I've had everyone of my grown kids move back home for a while. Some of them for a month or two, one of them for six months. All of them are the victims of Bush's booming economy. It seems like a college education and a desire to work don't mean much in America today. Between jobs being outsourced and programs being cut today's young people have a pretty grim economic future ahead of them. Not to mention the enormous debt our grandchildren are facing because of this administration's destruction of the middle class.

I had five children, two girls and three boys. My son Jean-Paul was murdered twenty years ago and that has been hard enough to live with, but seeing my surviving children live in an era of little hope is just as bad. Both of my daughters have moved home for months on end. One brought my four grandchildren to share the little home my wife and I paid off before Bush took office. My oldest son came home when his technical job was outsourced to India. It took him six months to get back on his feet, barely.

My other son lost his home and he and his wife and another granddaughter moved in for a while. Then they moved out. He has suffered from mental illness since witnessing the murder of his little brother twenty years ago. This administration cut his access to the medications he needed for his illness and soon he sank into a dark world of delusional paranoia. He bought into all the fear these people have been pushing. He thought the al Qadea and CIA were after him. Then one morning last December he shot himself. Another victim of the Bush administration.

I don't know how much more of this great economy these compassionate conservatives have foisted on us. It is sad to think that our children will never have as good as their parents have. It is not fair to us, the working middle class. How many of you have found yourselves in the same situation? How many have grown children living at home because all the years you scrimped, saved and sacrificed to pay for their educations and now it means little to nothing?

I'll stop ranting now. Thanks.

My wife goes to bed early sometimes. I turn of the volume on the TV and watch with CC. So a few nights ago my wife comes out into the living room with a strange look on her face. She tells me Lucille, one of our Jack Russells, is under the bed . . . whistling. Well I had to see this. My mom always told me that if dogs could whistle and had pockets they would rule the world. I reached for my hearing aid on the night stand and discovered it wasn't there. I knew then I was in big trouble.

Anyway I captured Lucille and pried my poor, damaged hearing aid from her jaws. It still works, but the casing is broken. So I took it to my audiologist to have it repaired. Has anyone else had their devices recased? They had to make another mold of my ear canal and sent the whole package out express. I hope I get it back soon. Meanwhile, Lucille is in the dog house.

The audiologist said they are going to have to recalibrate the thing when it comes back and they want me to take an other hearing test. Has anyone else suffered a weird destruction of their aids? And what did you do?

This is the worse kind of dirtbag. This guy should be impeached and thrown in jail. I think a few letters from vets and their families might get some actions on this.
This from Colorado:

<snip>
FORT LUPTON, Colo. -- The mother of a U.S. Marine was grieving for her dead son when she found that his savings account had been claimed by the director of the funeral home.


It was money that he had no right to and despite a court ruling, the funeral director refused to pay. What's even more puzzling is that he's not just any debtor, he's the mayor of the small town and a member of a City Council that has financial responsibility for the city's budget.
</snip>

You can read the full article here

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/90564...

This guy should be tarred, feathered and rode out of town on a rail.

But I will tell you, as a viet vet, not an asian what I've come to find out personally.

I'm a vet and a member of a veteran's motorcycle club. Often in the morning I walk my dogs through the neighborhood wearing my leather vest with all the patches and pins that identify me as well as the ribbons on an active duty soldiers chest. One morning several years ago I was walking by a neighbor's home. An extended family of Vietnamese live there. An ancient Vietnamese man I've seen often, but never stopped to talk to, came up to me and pointed to a patch on the back of my vest and said, "you fought in Vietnam?" I told him yes.

I have to make it clear before I go on that I made my peace with that war a long time ago. I also want to say that I came to respect my enemy over there. Where I was in Quang Tri Provence we saw a lot of NVA activity. They were tough and not afraid to fight. If you thought they were inferior you stood a good chance of getting your arrogant ass shot off.

Anyway, the old, weathered Vietnamese guy stuck out his hand and said thank you. I took it and said I had only been doing my duty. He began telling me what he and what was left of his family had been through after we left. He lost most of his family and endured several years of hardship before being able to take a few relatives with him to the United States. He voiced no bitterness, only gratitude at our attempt to salvage his country. He said that he was now an American too and was very proud of his new status. He invited me into his home to show me his citizenship papers and introduce me to his wife, son and daughter.

After that I would always make a point of stopping when I saw Nguyen working in his garden and ask him how he was doing. He would usually smile and say that every day above ground was a good day. I got to know his family and would often wave or stop and talk with his son or wife.

Then about a year or so ago I noticed that I hadn't seen old Nguyen in a few days. I stopped the bike and went up and knocked on his door. His wife answered and she burst into tears and said that her husband had died. Her English was pretty awful, so her son came to the rescue and told me the story. I felt as though I had lost a good friend too.

Now when I was in country I lived and fought along side the Hmong tribesmen. I learned to respect not only my enemy, but also my allies. I think that the gist of the whole matter here is respect. Too many times I've heard vets refer to their Asian allies in derogatory terms. They carried a lot of prejudices with them and still live them today. That is their loss.