Thursday, February 26, 2009

On Pinion Canyon — 2

Why the resistence?

Some additional thoughts on the situation around Pinion Canyon. These deal with the history to date.

In the last quarter of the 20th Century….[Gads! That makes me feel sooooo ‘old’.]....I worked at Fort Carson and with units that trained in Pinion Canyon. Indeed. I was an infantry company commander at Fort Carson.

The problem is that one cannot maneuver—for training purposes—anything larger than a brigade. And even then, it has to be a force-on-force excercise—one group against another—as the entire brigade cannot maneuver effectively. This does not allow the brigade commander and his staff to function properly, as all they are in a force-on-force exercise is the ‘referee’. Not the commander of their entire force. This is, in my honest opinion, PP training. [Note: The smart people can figure out what “PP” stands for.]

Fort Carson and the units stationed there need more room to maneuver in order to train well.

Pinion Canyon, as it is today, was purchased in order to provide additional maneuver space. However, people who have no regard for national security, maneuvered themselves to prevent it from being used to its intended purposes. Anyplace where it was suspected that some pre-Columbian American Indian hunting party make a fire to cook their game was declared an archeological find. Therefore ‘off-limits’ for maneuvering units. This restricted training of combat forces to ‘roads’ and ‘trails’ This, in effect, made the training area useless to its intended purposes.

Now, with the expansion of Fort Carson’s tenant units to the return of the 4th Infantry Division (Mechanized) along with aviation and special operations, we need to review the training areas to support these forces. Pinion Canyon is part of that review.

So this fellow lives in the area of Pinion Canyon. And he’s opposed to expanding it to provide for good training of the people who protect his property, liberty and life.

WHY? And I invite anyone here to answer that question…...

Caveat Emptor — Gain$saver

A less than satisfactory encounter with eCommerce.

We decided we needed another desktop computer last month. But we didn’t feel a need for a new machine, as the new operating system was incompatible with some of the high-end software we had on hand. The software worked well enough on the old machine’s operating system but word was out that there were issues working it in the new operating system. So we decided to look for a refurbished machine to work our older software on the older operating system.

Looking around we encountered an outfit called Gain$aver, a.k.a. GainSaver. It seemed to have the best pricing and reasonable reports on veracity. So we ordered an older machine. We paid extra for it to be bench tested for 24 hours. We paid extra for an extended warranty.

Two weeks ago, about a month after the purchase, the machine began acting up. We reported the problem to Gain$aver.

They promptly issued an RMA. However, the RMA said that it was only good for ‘store credit’, i.e., no refund if they could not replace the machine. This sounded to me like an interesting variation on ‘bait and switch’.  They never answered my question about refunds or replacements.

Last week, it was determined that the problem wasn’t the computer. Rather it was an esoteric peripheral device that was messing with the computer. Replacing the device seems to have solved the problem. But not the problem with Gain$aver…..

More...