I am home in HI. Iraq is done. It was nice, but I so much prefer to be at home. I had the honor of being in charge of getting 94 soldiers home, which was an adventure. After some initial delays in Tikrit, due to rain of all things, we rushed from there to Kuwait, through Customs, and onto a North American Airlines charter flight. Similar to when I came home (covertly) this summer, we went through Leipzig to Bangor, Maine, before stopping in Sacramento on the way to Oahu. It was a long, long 36 hours. For me, the saving grace was that, as the guy in charge, I got to sit in the comfy sets at the front of the plane. Still, though — that’s a lot of miles to cover. And really, when the wife and kids are waiting on the other end, the miles seem to take that much longer.

Now that I’m home, I’m really doing three things:

1. Hanging out with the wife and kids.

2. Working on the honey-do list.

3. Running.

The hanging out part is pretty easy. My temperament seems to be a lot better than it has been after other deployments. I am much slower to be irked – which was not always the case after other trips.

I’m doing my best with the honey-do’s. Today, I spent a good amount of time tinkering with our TiVo. With Galleon, VisualHub, and websites like this, I figured out how to add video to our TiVo (when normally it just has the things that it records). Now, I can add programs to it, for us to watch — I can go someplace like this, download a movie like the original Street Fighter, when load it on the TiVo for us to watch later. Not have to do, just nice to do.

And yes, running. Always with the running, even while in the process of staging to move from Iraq to Hawai’i. At the airport in Tikrit, while we waiting for the weather to improve, I did three runs that totaled almost 18 miles. On Sunday, about 14 hours after I got home, I did a 12 mile run through the pineapple fields. Iraq was flat; I am having to adjust both to the lack of flat running, as well as the humidity. This weekend, I am suppose to run something around 18 miles for my long run — I’ll need a plan for water and maybe food along the way.

So, yeah. It’s good to be home.

I found a Law & Order SVU episode on — one of my favorite ones, called Obscene. From season 06, it aired 12 October 2004.

So what? They’ve edited the sound. There are words now that are being omitted.

Yep. A show that was made for TV, that has aired on TV, that passed all of the standards for being aired on TV, but now the network (UPN) thinks that the dialog is not OK.

It was OK before. It’s not OK now.

Nice. Stay classy, UPN.

I bought a new toy.

And right about now, my wife is saying, “Oh, crap.”

I bought an EyeTV Hybrid today, when we were at the Apple store up in Atlanta. I came home, loaded the software, plugged in the little USB Adapter, and then my cable TV cable into that. Poof, not just TV on my PC, but my MacBook Pro is now a DVR that spits things back out (automatically) in iPhone format.

I rule. I totally rule.

There’s more, of course. How about this: every episode of the TV series Twin Peaks? That’s not working for you? How about The Love Boat, or Melrose Place, or MacGyver? The original Star Trek series?

CBS is doing it right, putting great older stuff online for all to watch for free. More, here.

And one of those things we’re catching up on is BSG. Kristin and I were both old enough to have watched the show in its first iteration, back in the day. We didn’t start watching the new version of it when it started, as we were in Germany.

But we’ve been watching it this year, and when it came to move, we had watched the first three seasons, the extras, the web based clips, and the movie. Part 1 of Season 04 is only ten episodes, and we’ve just gotten to watching them.

Today I noticed that part 2 of Season 04 starts next weekend, and Part 2 will be the last 10 episodes of the series. I’ll be at the Dragon next weekend, so I’ll have to check and see what we’re doing that night. Maybe some beer to go along with #6.

I’m not looking forward to the series ending. I am, though, looking forward to seeing what they’re all up to. After lunch, I’ll finish the end of part 1 and will be caught up, all ready for part 2.

Maybe after part 2 I’ll write something of length about the series.

Note to self: check Wikipedia before starting any new TV series on DVD.

Oh, and I did not know that the original series ran for only one series.? Hell of a reputation, for being just one season…..