"THE PHOENIX"

Welcome: It is with a heavy heart, that I write this 3rd edition of "The Phoenix". As you probably know by now, (if you don't, crawl out of your hole or from under your rock, and turn on the news) the United States Space Program suffered a terrible tragedy on the morning of 1 Feb 2003, just four days after the anniversary of the Challenger disaster, suffered 16 years ago. Seven astronauts died... Six of them citizens of the U.S., the other a decorated hero of Israel, and their first astronaut. One of the U.S. astronauts was a naturalized citizen, having originally been from India. All the countries involved are now mourning the loss of these brave men and women. I too mourn the loss of these brave men and women, and I pray for their souls and their families. In light of this, I have chosen this month's theme - Heaven - as the theme for this issue. On a lighter note: I have returned from my tour in South Korea, with the Army. I am currently on leave, and spending some serious quality time with my family. I am happy to be home, and many of you have probably noticed that I have not been at AIH much lately. Rest assured, I will return - my hiatus is strictly temporary. Before I can return though, I have a lot ahead of me - towards the end of the month, Wooster, myself, and our two girls will be packing up our home, and moving to my next duty assignment in North Carolina. Additionally, we have to get our house ready, so that we can put it up for rent. This means painting, new carpet, repairs to some of the woodwork, and new linoleum.
Additionally, I am proceeding with a new computer buildup - my most ambitious one yet - An AMD 2200+ Athlon system, (to start - I'll be putting a faster 2800+ in it later). It will also have 512MB of DDR 3500 SDRAM, a 120 GB IBM Hard drive, an ATI Rage 9700 Pro - all on what is arguably the world's finest motherboard - the Soyo Tek Dragon 400 Ultra Platinum. If you don't know much about computers, and all this is boring, I apologize... This computer system will take the place of Wooster's old desktop - an old Celeron 466, with 320 MB of SDRAM. I will be giving that system (after upgrading the processor to a Pentium III - 700 Mhz) to a good friend of mine who's son has a better computer than he does, and his son only has an old Pentium 166! One last note: Beginning tomorrow, I'll be working on rebuilding my truck's engine, which threw a rod a few years ago, and I haven't bothered with it since... But, I need a way to get around on Ft. Bragg, so I guess I better get it running (that or buy a cheap vehicle somewhere)!
Before you get to bored with my babble, I'll tell you that I have no idea if I will be deploying anywhere when I return to duty at the beginning of March. I expect that I will have a few months before I have to go anywhere, and I certainly hope so, but, just so you know, the military can at any time give me an order, and I'll have no choice but to follow them... This does not mean that I won't have access to the internet though, so don't get you hopes up on that. If I do have to deploy, I'll try to let you know what I can. At a minimum, you'll be able to go to my website - 68.82.96.20/wolf - and check there. It will have any info I can give you there. I may not be able to publish anything related to "The Phoenix", but at least I'll be able to let people know what I'm up to. Let me sign off now, and you can get to the meat of the newsletter: Take care, God Bless! Additionally, I ask that you take a moment of silence, and I also ask that you say a prayer for the families of the astronauts. See you next month! Wolf

CONTENTS:

Bermbits wins $500 A-bucks, and the runners up - Dilbert and Lastone - win $250 and $100 A-bucks respectively. Just so you know how hard this was, Bermbits is the only person to get ALL the answers. Again, congratulations!

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Mystery Baby Pictures:

Here are five pictures of Mystery Babies of AIH! Each of these is the picture of someone who is a member of AIH, taken when they were babies. Submit a guess for each picture, or for only one. Mail the guesses to . For each guess you get right, you get $2000 A-bucks. If you get all five pictures right, you get $10,000 A-bucks ($2000 for each pic) and a bonus of $10000 A-bucks! If no one gets them all right, the person that gets the most pictures right, will get a bonus of $1000 A-bucks for each picture guessed right, plus the $2000 per picture... in other words, if no one gets all five pictures, but Dilbert gets four of them, and he is the first person to get four pictures, he will win $2000 per picture ($8000) plus a bonus of $1000 per picture ($4000) for a total of $12000 A-bucks! :) Since it is almost impossible to tell the sex of a baby by a picture, I have given you that as a clue. Hopefully, some of you will get a few right! Oh: One other note: There is no limit on the number of guesses you can e-mail me. I won't tell you which ones you got right, but the submission with the most correct guesses is the one I'll use!

Here are the pictures:

If for some reason, I did get your sex wrong, e-mail me by clicking here ---> .

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Faults - by Thomasgx Hiya, here is something I wrote to put on my uni democracy wall about a year or two ago - my attempt at being funny. Hope you enjoy! The poem reads...... Women have their faults, men have only two.... Everything they say, and everything they do.

Surfing USA - by Sruane My little brother and I used to go body surfing at Waimea Bay. The waves get pretty big there, some two and three stories tall. Anyway, one day they were really booming. The Coast Guard had closed the beach because they thought it was too dangerous, but me and my little brother thought that it was great that we could have the whole beach to ourselves, so we went in to ride a few. A wave came along that was big enough to have its own zip code, and we both caught it, but not for long. While I was scooting down the face of the wave on my stomach, I saw a curtain of water descend between me and the beach. The top of the wave had curled over enough to touch the bottom of the wave, and we were in the "pipeline".

A really big wave will trap a pocket of air in the pipeline, then tons of water will compress the air pocket until something gives. When I felt the pressure in my ears, I knew the pipeline had closed off at both ends, and it was time to bail. I turned through the foot of the wave and headed for the sandy bottom, waiting for this watery behemoth to pass over me so I could pop up behind it.

After getting back to the surface, I watched the wave race away from me. It was a lot like floating at the lip of a waterfall, watching the top of the wave pummel the bottom, three stories below.

I looked around for my little brother. He was nowhere to be seen. He had to still be in the wave, so I watched as it thundered toward the beach, churning up a slurry of spray and sand, and, possibly, my little brother.

At about this time, the pocket of air trapped by the tons and tons of water this wave was hurling at the beach had compressed as much as it was going to, and the back of the wave blew out with the force of a cannon, spitting my little brother out like a watermelon seed. He sailed completely over my head and splashed down some distance behind me, then bobbed up, grinning.

He wanted to try it again, but, at about this time the rescue squad was hollering at us from the beach through bullhorns, asking if we needed to be rescued. We decided to call it a day before they came back with the helicopter, so we made our way back to shore.

Steve

Windows Tip - by Liontheheart Getting back to the desktop quickly - This works with all versions of Windows from Windows 95 and up! Ever tried to get back to the desktop when you have several windows open? It's quite a task minimizing all of those windows one by one. That's why Windows has a Show Desktop button conveniently located on the taskbar. No matter how many windows are open, you can click just this button to minimize all windows at once. Try it out! If you change your mind and don't want to use the desktop, you can click the Show Desktop button again to restore all of your windows. The “Show Desktop” Icon is located in the QuickLauch toolbar on the Taskbar --> just hover the arrow over it using your mouse and the wording “Show desktop” will appear.

Note: If you don't see the QuickLaunch Toolbar, right-click the taskbar, point to Toolbars, and make sure Quick Launch is checked.

Addendum - by Wolf:

A keyboard shortcut to do this, is to push and hold the funky little "Windows" key - located on keyboards that have it - between the ALT key and the CTRL key, and then press "D".

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a country located on the western side of the Arabian Peninsula along the Arabian Gulf. It is comprised of 7 emirates namely Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Ajman and Umm Al Quwain.

The capital is Abu Dhabi and its ruler, His Highness Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, is the country’s president.

The UAE is a young country having celebrated its 31st National Day on 2 December 2002. This is the anniversary of the signing of the treaty between the emirates that witnessed the birth of the Federation in 1971.

The country has roots back in prehistoric times and archaeological evidence of such settlements has been found. The civil society is rooted in Islam and dates back many centuries.

Although many of the emirates were founded primarily as fishing and pearl villages, the discovery of oil in 1968 lead to a leap in the development and economy of the region. The UAE has one of the fastest growing economies any where in the world today.

Dubai is the largest city in the UAE and has many landmarks that are famous in the region and fast becoming famous around the world. A few examples are the Burj Al Arab, the world’s tallest and probably most luxurious hotel and the Emirates Towers, who’s office building is the tallest building in the Middle East at 355m.

The climate is warm and sunny with most parts of the country having over 300 days of sunshine per year. Summer temperatures approach 50 C with humidity nearing 100% and in winter, the daily temperatures average around 25 C with humidity around 30%. Although many parts are desert, elaborate desalination and watering systems have ensured lush green cities with many parks and grassy verges along the roads.

There are many activities in the UAE, some ancient like falconry and horse riding and others modern like dune riding, desert rallies and diving in the Gulf. Modern sports are popular and Sharjah is famous for its cricket contest every year, the Sharjah Cup.

The people of the UAE are friendly and visitors can enjoy traditional Arabian hospitality. With all its activities and places to see, the UAE is definitely a must for any tourist.

You can't get much more precise than this recipe for yummy Chocolate Chip Cookies! Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
532.35 cm3 gluten
4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
4.9 cm3 refined halite
236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein
473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)

Directions:
To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation.

In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous.

To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredients nine and ten slowly, with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction. Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm).

Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston's first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown. Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.

your ever-lovin' ponyhead

Photo(s) of the Month: Sunset - by: Day_Dreamer3 Here is a picture of the last sunset of 2002 and our winner of the photo of the month Contest! Thanks Day_Dreamer3!

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Closing:

As always, some of you have submitted stuff for consideration and publication in this newsletter, but unfortunately, space considerations mean that adding more content in what I think is already getting to be a long newsletter, would be too much.

If you would like to submit articles, artwork, photos, graphics, recipies, or other original work for consideration and publication, or if you have comments, suggestions, gripes, or complaints, please send them to me by clicking here: --> .

Also, as always, "The Phoenix" is a work in progress... It is growing, and many of you have provided me with inspiration and help. If you would like to help, please let me know. I can use any help that you are willing to provide.

Thank you, and God Bless!

Wolf