A beautiful evening in Fort Collins as the Rams of Colorado State rolled over the wishbone offense and non-existant defense of the Air Force Fighting Falcons. After watching the Rams struggle last season it was great to see a running back that can begin to fill the shoes of Ram greats Kevin McDougal and Cecil Sapp. As is usual the Flacons pulled out a couple of new plays in the contest. One worked well in confusing the Rams' defense and netted a touchdown. It wasn't until later in the fourth quarter that things got surreal. Returning a kickoff the Falcons threw a forward pass that was tipped by the Rams and ended up more lateral than forward. Forward is forward however, and the play cancelled an 85-yard return. From there the Falcons descended into self-destruct mode. A self-sack set the Falcons up inside the Rams' 10-yard-line.

There is all of this a great lesson about managing or coaching teams. DeBerry's squad called a gutsy play. The best that could happen was a bite out of the 18-point lead. Not a win, not greater confidence but a swing on a trick play. However the trick play backfired and the Falcons folded. However, had they chosen to run a few plays they could have battled back and made it a contest and possibly had a shot at a win. Instead a risky gamble didn't pay off and the consequences were disastrous for the the Falcons.

Update: Although it seems the Falcons play-calling left something to be desired in the game the head play-caller, DeBerry, proved once again his class tonight. Following the game he talked for a few moments with Sonny Lubick as is customary. Read more about Rams roll over Falcons

Nevada's Open Meeting Law has quite a bit to say about the keeping and providing of minutes that are both timely and complete.

The OML requires that written minutes be kept of each meeting of the public body, for both closed and open sessions. Written minutes must include the date, time, and place of the meeting, the members of the public body who were present, the substance of all matters proposed, discussed or decided, the substance of oral or written remarks made by a member of the public if he so requests, and any other information which a member of the public body requests to be included.

Written minutes, and any audio or tape recordings of an open meeting must be available for public inspection within 30 working days after adjournment
of the meeting. Minutes of public meetings must be retained
by the public body for at least five years. Upon request,
minutes of closed sessions must be provided to the person
to which the closed session pertained within 30 working days
of adjournment of the meeting. Minutes of closed sessions
are generally not public records.

This raises a few questions. In many of the meetings of the Clark County town advisory boards and community advisory committees. For example a recent 2-hour meeting in Laughlin resulted in thirteen pages of minutes while an hour and a half meeting of nearly the same length in other boards warrants only one sentence that there was a long discussion.

Another challenge is boards that don't meet more than once a month. It is likely that the minutes of a meeting won't be approved in the timeframe suggested. A few boards seem to post draft minutes to the website but there are also those that have, sometimes long, gaps in the minutes being posted. Read more about Meeting minutes

I am sitting in an air-conditioned trailer filled with internet terminals. I arrived in Kuwait early this morning after a very long trip.

We reported to the Hanger at 1500 and departed for Germany a little after midnight. We then flew for 8 hours to Frankfurt where we waited for 2 hours as the plane was serviced. The saga then continued for a 5 hour flight to Kuwait city. From Kuwait city it was a 3 hour bus ride to Camp Buering.

I must say that I am pleasantly surprised with the accomodations so far. We will be here for about two weeks as we get qualified in desert flying. The area is incredibly hot and barren. The high today will be 102. There are, however, creature comforts. My company is living in a very large, air-conditioned tent complete with a wood floor, electric lights and power outlets. We are sleeping on cots and nearly everyone has hooked up their computers and MP3 players. Camp Buerring has trailers housing a taco bell, a chinese restaurant, a pizza place, an internet cafe, a coffee shop, and two dining facilities. It also has warm showers and flush toilets. Woo-hoo!

It is not perfect, of course. The sand is everywhere and the temperature and wind make it worse. There are about 30 of us sharing a bit tent so there is really no privacy. We have to be in uniform all the time and tote around our rifles everywhere. All in all, however, this is not a bad place to begin the year-long countdown.

Once I have access to a high speed internet connection I will begin to send pictures. I dont have an address to give you yet because, by the time anything would arrive here my company would, most likely have moved on to Iraq. Read more about Im Here

There is a thread going over at Drupal.org about the best way to use Drupal for a brochure style site.

Dries makes the comment that a needed change is the ability to, per-node, limit the inclusion of author and date posted information. I agree in part. It would be good and likely would be good in Drupal 4.7 which has much better dynamic hiding and showing of parts of the authoring screen. One of the common complaints I get from users is that the screen for authoring posts, especially if a user has many privileges is that the authoring page gets confusing.