The past weekend has been a great celebration of the many wonderful things we have in life. As in too many years past this year saw the marking of Thanksgiving with our troops in harm's way around the globe. While debate continues about the reasons for the current conflicts and their intended goals the inescapable conclusion that oil plays a major role in many of the conflicts around the world.

Beyond being a source of conflict the consumption of fossil fuels is contributing to unprecedented changes in thin outer layer of the planet, our atmosphere. With this time of year providing a great opportunity for reflection, thought and contemplation, and with new-year's resolutions just around the corner it is time for each of us to ask what we might do to help end the conflicts around the globe and make sure our planet is fit for generations to come.

In other words take a few minutes and look at changes you can make today that will have large impacts on our quality of life. Also very important is that folks take a look the facts about the costs. For too many years we've been told that it is "too expensive" for polluting businesses to clean up. The reality is that running cleaner businesses can not only be better for the future, but cheaper and more profitable for the business owners (stockholders) today.

I've been working on a friend's iPod recently. The otherwise healthy iPod has started freezing every time you move songs to it. Choose a batch of 20 songs and 5 or 6 will transfer fine and seven will die. The real problem is that it is not just the iPod that freezes but the whole computer. The machine (running Mac OS X 10.4) will stop completely. A few processes are "stuck" but even attempting to shut-d. own or restart the computer don't work. The only solution is to power down the computer and restart it. After a restart the whole scenario plays out again.

After several tries with other iPods and the computer it seemed to be a problem with the specific iPod. A trip to Apple Care and back and they report the iPod is just fine. Upon transferring the next set of songs the familiar freeze was back. The iMac locked up completely. Had Apple Care missed something? Why did this computer that works with other iPods not work with this iPod.

Eventually I decided to reload the iTunes library to make sure there wasn't a problem with the library itself. After taking all the files out and re-importing them there was no difference. Could it be the cable? The cable had been used for a couple of years and had never really been taken anywhere or used in any other way. However, it occurred to me at that point that the "other iPods" that were working fine were all USB models. Plugging the ill-functioning iPod into the USB cable it performs flawlessly. Somewhere along the line one of two things has happened. Either there is a problem with the firewire cable, which I'm still skeptical about, or there is a problem with the OS on the iMac and how it recovers from firewire errors. Read more about iPod blues

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. Mine was good, all things considered. I flew a 7.2 hour mission that lasted nearly the entire day. I flew with a Pilot-in-Command that I have not flown with before and he was very relaxed about letting me fly the entire mission. I got some great flying done.

We began the day by flying a country music star named Aaron Tippon to our base for a concert. I did not know who he was but I guess he is pretty famous. I got a picture of myself with him in front of the helicopter. It turns out that his son-in-law is a pilot here and that Mr. Tippon is a private helicopter pilot himself.

After flying the performer, we did some more battlefield circulation and then returned to Speicher in time for thanksgiving dinner. The dinner had all of the expected foods - turkey, ham, sweet potatos, stuffing, pie. The food was average, at best, but the thought was nice. I was thankful for returning safe from the mission, having a good day of flying, and having a great group of friends and family here and back home.

I am attaching a photo of me with Aaron Tippon.

I have not been flying very much recently but the missions that I have flown have been pretty interesting. I flew a "hero" mission and a mission with an Apache. These are different from the usual "battlefield circulation" (read bus driving) missions that I usually fly.

A "hero" mission is a mission to pick up the body of a soldier killed in action and transport the corpse to an air force base for the final trip home. I was on the night standby crew a few days ago when we got word that we were needed for a hero mission. A soldier had been injured by a roadside bomb the day before and had passed away. We launched as the second flight in a formation of two ships to get the body. We landed at the pick-up site and got out of the aircraft to pay proper respects to the body as it was loaded on board the lead helicopter. The crews lined up on either side of the cargo door while the chaplain, his assistant, and 2 soldiers from mortuary affairs carefully loaded the flag-drapped body bag. We stood at attention and saluted in the dark. No one discussed the meaning behind behind the mission very much.

The next day we were tasked with flying as the sister ship to an Apache and carrying several officers on board to a meeting at another base. We flew lead. I had to keep our airspeed down because Apaches cannot keep up with Blackhawks, at least not when they are loaded with rockets, missles, and 30 mm ammo for the cannon. It was cool getting to fly with another type of aircraft. I have attached a photo.