noinput.net | plug it in

This time for me, it’s close to home.

No. 610-05
IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 16, 2005

DoD Identifies Marine Casualties
The Department of Defense announced today the death of four Marines who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lance Cpl. Jonathan R. Flores, 18, of San Antonio, Texas
Cpl. Jesse Jaime, 22, of Henderson, Nev.
Cpl. Tyler S. Trovillion, 23, of Richardson, Texas
Lance Cpl. Dion M. Whitley, 21, of Los Angeles, Calif.

All four Marines died June 15 when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations near Ar Ramadi, Iraq. All four Marines were assigned to 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, their unit was operating with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, which was attached to 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward).

Dion Whitley was not only the fist Eagle Scout of Troop 40 in Pasadena, CA, he was also the gentle, quiet leader in our Order of the Arrow lodge who was happy to help get things done.

My prayers are with you friend, thank you for your ultimate sacrifice.

Pasadena Star News

ALTADENA — The explosion of a roadside bomb in Iraq has sent waves of grief and shock through Northwest Pasadena and Altadena.

Lance Cpl. dion Whitley of Altadena was one of five Marines to die in a predawn attack on Wednesday. The convoy in which he was riding hit an improvised explosive device near Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.

Whitley, 21, was a machine-gunner. He had been in Iraq for three months.

“I decided I would carry good thoughts. I prayed for him several times a day,” said his mother, Deborah Whitley. “The only time I’d get apprehensive is if I didn’t hear from him for a period of time. Then when I’d get that phone call, I’d be delighted.”

dion’s brother Arian, 26, said the pair talked about starting a barbeque catering business together when dion got out of the service. Whitley also hoped to use money from the military to go to college, his brother said.

Whitley was an Eagle Scout, a 2002 Muir High School graduate and president of the GeoSpace Academy at Muir. In high school, he played football and belonged to the Z-Club, a student community service group.

His teachers and football coach remembered him as a shy young man who grew into an outgoing leader. Clarence Stubblefield was Whitley’s Boy Scout troop leader.

“He ended up being Senior Patrol Leader, in charge of the whole troop,” Stubblefield said. The other boys voted him into higher and higher positions, Stubblefield said.

“He was just a likable guy. If someone had a problem, he’d listen to the problem. He’d spend time trying to solve the problem,” he said.

Shelley McDonald, Whitley’s English teacher, agreed.

“He looked like a football player, but he had a gentle spirit,” she said. “He had friends from a lot of different arenas.”

He loved being with younger kids, Deborah Whitley said. He helped with the nursery school at Victory Bible Church, and worked with younger Boy Scouts at Camp Cherry Valley on Catalina Island every summer.

Whitley’s family and friends also said he was a cut-up.

“When he was in first grade or second grade, his teacher said dion just stood up in class, did an Elvis Presley impression, and sat back down,” Deborah Whitley said with a smile.

Josh Smith, a close friend, said Whitley could make anybody laugh. “You could never tell when he was serious or playing.”

Whitley was interested in the military from an early age, his teachers recalled. When he had reports to do in English class, he did them on the Marines.

He argued with other students about the importance of contributing to his country, McDonald said. After he made it through boot camp in March, he came in to talk to her class. He had lost weight, was trim and ready for combat, she said.

“He said (boot camp) was testing his stamina and the strength of his commitment,” she said. “He was proud because he had made it through.”

But “I tried to talk him out of going into the service,” Stubblefield said.

“Everyone did,” Whitley’s friend Smith said. “I was like, man, you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

Yet Whitley was determined, his family and friends agreed. To be eligible for the Marine Corps, he had to lose weight, so he took up walking five miles round-trip each day to school.

“His mother didn’t want him to go. I didn’t want him to go,” Stubblefield said. “He could have gone to college, but he’s always loved the military.”

And a sweet job at that! Very nice job from the dudes at Technorati. For anyone who doesn’t know, this is a search site dedicated to providing content via RSS feeds, not necessarity cached/spidered sites, therefore you can find out whats happening up to the second rather then what happend 2 weeks ago and how many hits it generated.

I like the new design much better, it has a great feel to it and very slick with the AJAX calls.

So we all know I’m not the biggest Mac fan, but I have to say this site was very del.icio.us worthy when I saw the link this morning.. the Macintosh Garden get you to classic games like The Oregon Trail, Lemmings, Indiana Jones, Mantra, the list is endless..

I have a feeling I’ll be jumping on Brian’s laptop tonight

It’s such a great monday! Work gave us the day off for all the hard work we put into our last project, well needed and greatly appreciated, thats for damned sure. I know I’m behind on this blog, thats because i’ve been working on my new photo-blogger site. Got MT up and runing last night with a solid copy ready to rock, and I’m putting the tweaks on it now and integrating the tag-based keyword extension.

At first I was all gung-ho on writing it all myself and making a cool design to showcase, but the more I kept checking friends phot-blogs and seeing what everyone has going, it made me realize thats all just so much extra most people dont care about. Point in fact and to push one of the superb in the field, check out Orbit1’s post this morning; John never fails to impress.

So i’ll have it up soon, and the redesign for my blog site. Get ready for a change Now im off to supprise Val for a lunch picnic by the beach. Gotta love day’s off baby!

/pace

Wired News: CitiFinancial Data Goes Poof

CitiFinancial, the consumer finance division of Citigroup, said Monday it has begun notifying 3.9 million U.S. customers that computer tapes containing information about their accounts — including Social Security numbers and payment histories — have been lost.

Citigroup, which is based in New York, said the tapes were lost by the courier UPS in transit to a credit bureau.

Man what is this. UPS lost it and “Can’t find it”? See this makes no sense to me. Yes they’re slow, always late, dont leave the packages at the door when you tell them to and overpriced.. but they don’t loose it, the tracking is actually pretty nice.

You’d think with a company like Citi they would have a private courrier or some form of safe-guard against such things. .. good thing I have Chase

I swear I thought this weekend would never come. We’ve been so swamped at work it’s been unreal. I do have to say I’m really impressed with the amount of work we pulled off this this last week at the office tho, all of us put in 200% on our most recent project and it’s an amazing site, I have to say. I alone was worked about 65 hours this week.. and that’s taking into account I had monday off. Here’s a quick screenie of the alpha build.

We’ve been blessed with a lot of other great work too, finished up the new redesign for Cleveland Golf a few weeks ago and it’s in production now, that was a fun project too, mah man Jordan helped me score that.

All I have to say is I can’t wait for the weekend. Tomorrow I’m sleeping my white-ass in, going to take Mykie to lunch for his birthday and then it’s a Dodger game with mom+dad+val. Havn’t been to Dodger Stadium in a while so that should be fun. And then Sunday me and Val are hittin up Santa Monica! Can’t wait babe, love ya.