FPM (Food per minute)

!!! WARNING !!!THIS NOTE MAY SPARK CONTROVERSY !!! AND WILL MOST LIKELY CONTAIN SPELLING ERRORS AND PROBABLY SOME GRAMMATICAL PROBLEMS !!!

FPM (Food per minute, a.k.a. how fast you eat):

I've been meaning to write about this subject ever since I was told to slow down while eating for the first time. I think it went something like this, "Slow down, it's not a race." or "There's plenty of food for everyone." or "Don't inhale your food." or "You're sucking your food down like a vacuum." Yup, something like that, and it bothered me then, as much as it bothers me now.

Recently, and by recently I mean today, I went to lunch at The Shed (a really great BBQ place by the way). I ordered some baby back ribs and some potato salad. Now, I have never had baby back ribs, so needless to say I was excited on many levels. When the waitress brought me my hunk of meat it was as long as my arm and as wide as my leg. I was in awe. So, I started eating. And for my part, I feel like I ate at a pretty good speed, not too fast not too slow. Maybe around 30 FPM (note: The actual rate of food per minute will not be calculated and for this note's purposes I will be subjectively assigning numbers to the various speeds I think I ate at. Comprende?) So, you can call it my "socially acceptable" eating speed. But, in the course of eating my most delectable meal I was told by my class mates, one in particular, that I was eating so fast that I reminded him of the former hot dog eating champion Takeru Kobayashi (Who, as we all know eats at an alarming 95 FPM, a far stretch from my FPM). He thought it would be cool to call me Lt Kobayashi. Now, I need you to know that I am actually fond of said class mate and think he's a cool guy, so it really didn't irk me that bad. It did however, add to the number of times that people have told me to slow down while eating, which in due course prompted me to write this note.

As a student of sociology/psychology/anthropology I understand norms and customs, and taboos as well as the next guy (maybe less, it's been a while since I was in school lol) but I am struggling to understand where this supposed bad habit/annoyance for others/taboo if you will, came into play.

I mean, what's the BIG DEAL people! It's not like I'm eating YOUR food for you, am I? And since I'm eating my food, and you're eating your food who cares if I eat at a slightly faster to a moderately faster pace than you. Because in the end, you will still have had dinner, and so will I. Is it that unbearable to eat with someone and talk with them if they don't have anything left to eat? Now, You're probably all saying, "Well what if he's making weird sounds while eating, or if he's spitting food out cuz he's eating so fast, or if he's talking while he's chewing, or what if he chokes while eating so fast?" And my dear friends and family, to that I say, any and all of you who have eaten a meal with me in the past have probably enjoyed it, and will most certainly know that I don't make weird sounds while I eat, and I most definitely don't spit food at you, and I have never really talked with food in my mouth, and if you are concerned about me choking to DEATH!!! because I eat too fast, don't be. Because you are looking at a guy who has plenty of experience with the Heimlich maneuver. In fact I can count in my head (a difficult skill I know) of 3 times when I have had to stop myself from choking. Once was bubble gum, I punched myself in the stomach and PATOOHIE!!! out it came, once while at a high school party with Eric Hansen and Ben Evjen and the rest, I choked on some pizza because I was laughing so hard. But you know what? I did a self-administered Heimlich on myself (This last phrase was approved by the department of redundancy department). And another time I was eating dinner, similar story similar ending. But I note, the chokings if you will, were not caused by my supposed alarming FPM rate. (I hope you like run on sentences as much as I do).

So please guys, tell me your beef with people eating "too fast" for you at a meal (and someone tell me where the term "beef" came from and why we use it in sentences like this). You won't offend me. You might not get a birthday present though =P (just kidding, I'm not a very good gift giver, so that was never an option in the first place suckas! my friends and family can attest to that lol.)

I just want to know what you're thinking when you tell a guy, or me, "Slow down turbo greased lighting McAllister III (I put the third because I'm the second i.e II and most people are too stupid to call me "The second" they usually end up calling me "The third" or complaining to me why I should be called "Jr"), you're eating TOO FAST!"

In the end, I probably won't listen to you or change my ways, because I know this one simple fact: I doesn't matter how fast I eat, God will still let me into heaven if I'm worthy to get in when I die. So there. =P And for that matter, he probably doesn't care about nose picking, or farting, burping, spitting, showering, brushing your teeth, etc. YES!!! I'm free of all these stupid cultural norms!!

Or course, I'm kidding about all those...except how fast I eat.

My Last Name

I need to vent. I love my last name. I did some research on it and found some really cool things about it. Things like royal blood lines, our coat of arms, our family motto, etc. What makes me mad is when people are too stupid to know how to spell it.

Through out my entire life whenever I was asked for my personal info the person asking for it would inevitably ask me how to spell "Hart." It would go something like this. Person: "First name?" Me: "Richard" Person: "Last Name?" Me: "Hart" Person: "(waits a second)..Can you spell that?" Me: "(thinks to myself, how the heck hard is it to spell my last name?) H-A-R-T" Or some times they would say, Person: "Hart? H-A-R-T?" which is only slightly better than the first response. It got to the point where I just started saying, "Hart, H-A-R-T" You all are probably thinking, "They are probably just making sure it wasn't H-E-A-R-T." To that I say, GEEZ!!! Why didn't I come to that conclusion before?! I must be stupid! lol No, the reality is, the people on the other end are stupid.

I have never once, in my life of almost 27 years, come across someone with the last name of Heart. It's always, "Hart, H-A-R-T"

Just so you all know, I have google searched several surname data bases and yes, the last name "Heart" exists. The last one was mentioned on a census in 1930. So, yeah it's out there. But guess what people, I'd say 98% of the people you meet, will spell it "H-A-R-T." Just once, I'd like to talk to the person behind the desk and have them write my last name down correctly after the first time I say it with out asking questions. It's not like my last name is "Xaimoungkhoun" (real last name by the way. http://www.accessgenealogy.com/search/gdxsearch.php?firstname=&ssearchtype=regular&fsearchtype=regular&offset=50&page=1&surname=Xaimoungkhoun) But if it WERE my last name, I'm sure they'd just say, "Oh, Xaimoungkhoun, yeah, that's an easy one. I can even spell it backwards out loud! N-U-O-H-K-G-N-U-O-M-I-A-X. I get that name ALL the time. Not like Hart or Heart, or how ever you spell it, over there."

So, here's an open letter to all the people behind the desk:

Dear People behind the desk,

Please stop being stupid, S-T-U-P-I-D. It really bugs me when I have to spell a four letter last name to you. It's really not that hard, H-A-R-D, and I bet if you reflect back on your life, you'd see that you have never once ran into someone who spells it Heart. So, do me this one favor, whenever me, or any other Hart, H-A-R-T, comes to your office or calls you, just spell it Hart, H-A-R-T.

Sincerely,

Richard Hart, H-A-R-T

Guess what else. The person behind the desk asked me how to spell my first name today as well. =/, Honestly, is there any other way to spell Richard, that is commonly used today? If you find out a way, let me know, and I'll go kill the person who spells it that way. Problem solved =P.

This title has nothing to do with the following note

WARNING!!! THIS IS A LONG NOTE!!! JUST SO YOU KNOW!!!!

Let me tell you of a tale. A tale of many things that just happened to occur around the same time.

Friday: 22 Jun 07

I went to work. It was already a good day because it was Friday. We had a birthday party for one of my SSgts. It was cool. Then, at the party I got some good news. "Per MSG (Mission Support Group, fyi, that's higher leadership) you all get a half day today." I'm like, woot! So, I get off work at 1230 and I head over to the flight line to get a better look at the space shuttle. I end up meeting some other Lts who have flight line access and we get really really close. It was so freaking cool to see it land! I was about 1/4 mile away from it. o.O, wow. Very cool moment in my life.

Then, I went to my CGOC meeting. For those who don't know, it's a company grade officer club (Lt - capt). And usually, it's supposed to be like an hour long. But the speaker, who is prolly pretty cool in real life, spoke non-stop for an hour and a half. I wasn't paying attention after 15 mins. =/

So, then I headed out for my tournament down in Oceanside. The US OPEN Elite Taekwondo Championship. I was late heading out. When I got to Pinon Hills (Middle of no where) I needed some gas. I saw a Chevron and I felt relief. But I saw this shady looking character, and I then felt nervous. When he asked me for a ride, I felt surprised, and more nervous. I have given people rides before, but I didn't feel good about this guy. So I said, "No." As I went to buy some delectables for the rest of the trip I decided to lock my car doors, so shady Joe wouldn't rob me (That's what I was thinking). To my dismay, I locked my keys in my car, while it was running. I first though crap!!, then I thought, wow, I left my car on while I was pumping gas. I had never done that before. John, the guy behind the counter was kind enough to give me a hanger and some basic lessons on breaking into a car. I guess I wasn't proficient enough, cuz I couldn't do it =/. Then, some dude asked if I needed help. I was like, yeah. So, he fiddled with it for about 30 mins. As time went by, we attracted more and more locals. By the end we had about me + 5 locals working on this. I think it was more interesting to help the outsider than drink beer on this Friday night. But with our powers combined, we broke into my car, and I was only set back about an hour. =D But the fun doesn't end there. As I continued down my chosen path (well, really the path google maps chose for me) I ran into a closed road. I learned that even google maps doesn't know when roads in the middle of no where are gonna be closed. So, I called my trusty GPS center (Luke and Ben) and they re-routed me. Thanks guys! I arrived at the hotel at about 10 pm, 4 hours after I set out. yay.

Saturday: 23 Jun 07

The next morning came with a hope filled dawn. I always get excited and a little anxious at tourney's. I keep a good poker face even though I feel that way inside.

Side note: I haven't been to a tournament since 2004.

kk, so I need to explain something really fast, other wise you might get confused later. I have a black belt in taekwondo. It's with the American Kyukido Federation. That's a midwest-west coast federation. I have a blue belt with the World Taekwondo Federation (otherwise known as WTF, which I think is funny), which is well, a world wide organization and basically the olympic peeps. I am planning on getting my black belt with them too. I competed in forms with my blue belt. Because I forgot them all, and am just learning them again. I've never been the best at forms, so I wasn't surprised when I got the silver. Although, I was a little embarrassed that I was beat by some color belts. However, for sparring, I was like, there's no way I'm gonna spar at blue belt, because it wouldn't be fair or fun. So, I talked with my instructor and convinced her to talk to the tourney director so I could spar as a black belt. He said sure. I was like, WTF!!!! AWESOME!!!

The Sparring matches: two 2 min rounds per match, continuous sparring, full contact. (they had a screen in the back and it was hooked up to these buttons the judges could push to give points in the moment. It was totally sweet)

Division: Male, 19-29 yr, Black Belt, Heavy Weight (182 lbs +) I weigh in at @ 205 - 210. Although, I don't look like it. =)

Match 1: Some dude (who was shorter than me, and a little heavier) vs Me.

I went into this match fairly confident that I was gonna win. I did. 7-0 in the second round. Important notes: I kicked him in the face for 2 points, and I did a jumping back kick to his chest, hard, which was awesome.

Match 2: Tall Black dude, 180 lbs (they let him move up) agile, and quick vs Me

I went in with more caution this time. I knew he had a slight reach advantage and that he was as quick or quicker than me. Very dangerous. I started out slow, and in a defensive/counter attack mode. He quickly scored 4 points or so. I scored 1. This was in the first 30 secs. That woke me up quickly. I countered his batch of points with some quick kicks and some decisive blocks. By the end of round one I think it was 5-4 for me. Round 2. I was tired. He was tired. I thought to myself, well no matter what I get a silver lol. =) Then I thought, even so, I want to win the gold. So, I told myself I wasn't tired. I went into round 2 and we moved around a bit for position and I did a spinning hook kick to his head, making him wobble momentarily. The score was 7-4. He got a few more points and so did I. At 15 secs left in the match I was up 9-7. All my tired body had to do was wait it out, and not get hit. With one second to spare he kicked me in the side of the head (which on his account, was very nice). I was too tired to block it, and I wasn't fast enough to put my hand up. So we tied 9-9. Then the judge said, "SUDDEN DEATH!" I was like, whoa! But I was pumped none the less. This is where I felt at my lowest. I had a real Rocky moment in my mind right here. I said to myself, I have fought a good fight, and I'm proud of accomplishments so far. But I told myself, I can't give up. Never give up. This is where you decide if you want to win or not. I got up, entered the ring, and I knew I was gonna win. When the judge said fight, we both hesitated for a second, and he came charging in with a flurry of kicks, I new I had to block and strike quick or I'd be finished. As he closed, I blocked 2 of his kicks and as I was pulling back, I kicked him in the stomach. "POINT!!" I had won!! I had beaten the demons in my mind saying I was too tired, and I had defeated my opponent, and I had won the Gold Medal for Heavy Weight black belts 18-29. It was a great feeling. In fact, this was the best moment in sports, for me, in my life. Not bad for my black belt debut. I stopped competing in tourney's like this when I was a brown belt or so. =D

(Side note: both my opponents were cool guys, and weren't jerks after. It's a guy thing I think. Once you beat on each other, you're friends. lol)

Then my instructor and me, and some other students went to a sushi bar and had a gregarious time.

Look for the next exciting chapter when I go to the Las Vegas Open in August. It's an international tourney with 50 countries attending! =D

Golf Karts and Softball

Lately I've been feeling like a total moron at work. This is largely due to the fact that I'm taking over an extremely important office that is extremely busy and has an extreme amount of little things you have to know. Wow, that's extremely extreme! Today though, I felt like I was useful instead of being a waste of organized matter. The sugar on top of that was this; I found out my office shares control of a golf kart. A GOLF KART for crying out loud! If that's not cooler than a bucket full of ice cubes on an arctic morning covered in liquid nitrogen then I don't know WHAT is! So, today I took the kart and drove it to the finance office a couple of times to drop off some orders. It was, how you say, fun. Then at softball practice tonight, our coach's arm was getting tired of pitching, I know this because he said, "Hey, anyone wanna pitch, my arms tired." It was pretty obvious. So, I was like, yeah I'll do it, how do I do it? I pretty much learned by baptism by fire. After my first guinea pig I was getting better, and then by the end of the night I was like, yo, I could pitch in games if you need me. The sad part about that is, I've only pitched softball like once in my life, and I'm like the back up. So if you couldn't tell, today was pretty cool.

Here is a list of bonus words that any one would want to use in a conversation.

-introspectible: adjective: to practice introspection; consider one's own internal state or feelings.

-hylocereus: noun: genus of climbing or epiphytic tropical American cacti with angular stems and mostly white very fragrant flowers

-boresight: verb (transitive) to verify the alignment of the sights and bore of (a firearm).

Lately I've been saying, "K, so..." a lot. I need to kick this habit, because it sounds like I'm saying, "queso." Which is cheese in Spanish for all you who didn't know.

K, so, I've been watching a lot of war movies lately too. This is not weird either, because I've always liked a good war movie, I mean who doesn't? Don't answer that. Also, because, I'm in the Air Force. So, it's kinda my thing. I thought someone, somewhere might like to know that I'm starting a war movie collection, just in case I end up in AETC (Air Education and Training Command) as an ROTC instructor or at Air University teaching ASBC or SOS.

As for PRU, (Personnel Readiness Unit) let's just say things are stressful and busy. However, it's not too bad. It makes the day go by faster and I feel like I've done a lot through out the day. This is one job where you hit the ground running, there's no time for crawling or walking.

Which brings me to my next point, Taekwondo. Since working at PRU, I've started to build up considerable amounts of stress through out the day. This is unhealthy. So, to combat it, I have been continuing to do my taekwondo workouts. And you wanna know what? Going to taekwondo and kicking the crap out of the bag has never felt so good. It's weird, I mean I've been doing martial arts my whole life, and never has it been such a good stress relief, or at least I didn't know it. I guess that means my life was never as stressful as it is now lol. Oh well.

In conclusion, I like war movies and taekwondo and Red Lobster.

You can't win them all...

Well, today was graduation and the top flight from the Mustangs Squadron won top flight of ASBC. Oh well. They deserved it I guess lol. But, a flight from the ORIONS won the Bone Crusher award. Which is awesome! It's the PT award. And of course we won ICARUS. So, overall it was a great time here in Montgomery, Alabama. Until SOS, this is Lt Hart...

ORIONS Top Flight and ICARUS Champions

3:39pm Thursday, Apr 19, 2007 | Edit Note | Delete

NOTICE!!! I'M GOING TO EXPLAING ICARUS FIRST FOR DAN SO YOU CAN SKIP THIS FIRST PART IF YOU WANT!!!

Kk Dan, ICARUS is the team sport we play here at ASBC (Air and Space Basic course). Also, really quick, I'm here in Alabama at the AU (Air University), and ASBC is kind like being a freshmen at AU. When I make Captain I will apply to come back for SOS (Squadron Officer School), that's kinda like being a Sophomore. Then you have ACSC (Air Command and Staff College), Junior, and Air War College, Senior. That aside, ICARUS is a game that we play to emphasize certain air war principles, like OCA (Offensive Counter Air, or in other words F-15E, and F-16s and all that going in and blowing stuff up in enemy territory). And DCA (Defensive Counter Air, or F-15Cs and F-22s killing there planes that come into our territory). We also use SAMs (Surface-to-air Missiles), Loggies (or Logisticians) and The AOC director (AOC is Air operations Center, it's really complicated.)

K, are you with me? The So, there is a field we play on that is split into halves and it's like 90' across and 180' long. It's not very big. But big enough. I'm going to describe one side of the field, because each side is mirrored. 15 ft or so from the center line you have 3 SAM sites spread across your front. Then you have the DCA track that looks kinda like a "Y." The DCA is restricted to movement and throwing ordinance (doge balls) from the track. Then you have an air base on either side of the Y track where you pick up balls and behind each base and in the middle of the DCA track is a com node, for a total of 3. about 10 ft behind the DCA track you have the AOC. Now, I know that's hard to visualize, but bear with me. Each side has 4 red balls (OCA), 4 green balls (DCA), and 4 yellow balls (SAMs). The SAM sites can only use yellow balls, the DCA can only use green balls, and the OCA can only use red balls. The AOC also counts as a SAM.

Still with me?

At each SAM site is an orange cone. At the top most corners of each base is one orange cone, for a total of 2 cones. Each com node is represented by one blue cone. And the AOC is represented by 3 orange cones in a triangle that's like 3 ft per side.

The object of ICARUS is to gain air superiority, that means you win the round and play stops. You win air superiority if you knock down both bases cones, all 3 com nodes, or all three AOC cones. While you are trying to knock their cones down they are throwing green dodge balls at you and yellow ones. If you get hit you die for the round until air superiority is won and then the field resets. And it's real time, so they could be trying to knock your cones down while you are knocking theirs down. The AOC director tells you what your current assignment is. So, if the AOC thinks the team needs more DCA, he/she yells, "DCA!" and you have to run and touch a com node, and then go to the base and pick up a green ball and get in the track so you can throw it at someone and get them out.

It's possible for one person to be DCA, OCA, and a SAM all in one game. Each time you throw your ball you go back to the AOC and you get reassigned.

If you kill one of their bases, then they have to restock it before they can put balls in the other live base. And they can't use those balls from the dead base for the rest of the round. So, it's really nice to kill a base. It cuts their capabilities in half.

The loggies run around and pick up balls and bring them back to the base. They are super duper uber important. They have to be fast and on the ball. They can only carry 2 balls at a time or it's a foul. So, if you don't have fast loggies you don't have balls to throw, and your team dies.

That's ICARUS in a nutshell, and a very long drawn out explanation. It's very fast paced and really fun, at least I think so. Oh yeah, it's 2 five minute halves with a 1 to 3 min half time.

The points system:

com node = 1 pt

base (both cones) = 1 pt

AOC (all 3 cones) = I think it's 5 pts, but I can't remember, we never went for it, we always killed both their bases to win. It's a championship winning strat

; D

Air superiority = 3 pts

SAMs = 0pts

So if you kill both bases you get air superiority (3 pts) and (2 pts) for both bases totallin 5 pts for the round. Then you go agian until time runs out.

Any questions?

NOTICE THIS IS WHERE THE EXPLINATION STOPS!!!!!!!

Now, on to the important stuff.

So, through out all of ASBC they keep track of what your flight does and how they perform. Well, Our flight did so well, that we earned Top Flight in our squadron, The ORIONS. That was really cool. Those of you who have been to ASBC know that ASBC is not that big a deal, but it's still kinda cool to win Top Flight. Then, on top of that, we played in the tournament today and went all the way to the top and beat the Gryphons in the final game making us the ASBC ICARUS champions of this class. =D We have a 6 - 0 record for regular season and post season. The tourney was 3 games. I played We are the Champions by Queen afterward. It was cool.

Also, because we were top flight we had to compete in the final challenge against the 3 other top flights from Eagles, Mustangs, and Gryphons Squadrons. Well, we still don't know who the ultimate winner of ASBC is until tomorrow at graduation, but I think we have a good chance. We got almost all of the academic part correct, we were really quick on the PT part and we completed both LRC challenges (Leadership reaction course). It's like a team challenge where you have a few boards and some rope and you have to get across a pool of water and there are fake landmines and crap. It's really cool.

So, I'll update you tomorrow what the results are.

WOOT!!!! WE ARE TOP FLIGHT AND ASBC ICARUS CHAMPS!!!! =D