My wife and I ventured to Mayfair Mall today. Mayfair is a great success story in that at one point in time it was almost as big of a waste of land as Northridge. Today it is a thriving palace of cool. It's a place where kids go to hang out… a place so popular that the fast food joints in the food court can charge substantially more than normal and still have a line backed all the way up to the garbage cans.

The only problem Mayfair has nowadays is parking! That's right, parking. The rumors you used to hear about 'violence at Mayfair' were mostly nothing more than media contrived filler stories. Kids get into fights everywhere. The only times fighting makes it into the news are if 1.) someone gets killed, or 2.) black kids are fighting in an area that white people frequent. Sad, but true.

Back to Mayfair's parking issues. It has been about 5 weeks since the last time I stopped at Mayfair. I had trouble finding a spot in their very narrow isles even then. Today was much worse. They are building a new building in the middle of the main parking lot on the west side of Mayfair. When I first arrived I commented to my wife that they were finally going to build a parking structure. It turns out it is going to be a “Crate and Barrel” store. Also, adding to the new lack of space caused by a construction project in the middle of an already cramped parking lot, there were at least three sink holes in the western-most part of the lot. Orange cones were placed all throughout the lot in an attempt to keep us from falling into one of the crevices. The parking lot was reminiscient of Christmas-time, but it's February.

Remember, they just built the “Cheescake Factory” in another part of the lot. (It must be nice to be able to charge $15 for a slice of cheesecake.) The lot isn't getting any bigger.

Luckily, the Milwaukee Business Journal reports that they will be adding a 630-space parking structure soon. Soon should have been before the Cheescake Factory and the Crate & Barrel.

This afternoon I finally purchased one of Apple's new iPod Shuffles. I had been frequenting the nearest Best Buy in hopes to get my hands on one of the 512mb units since the day Apple released them to the public. Everytime I got there, however, the 512mb units were sold out, leaving only the more expensive 1gb units on the shelves. I don't have time to listen to 240 songs at a time, so the 1gb model is more space than I need.

Today I found out that the new Delafield Best Buy had a cache of 10 units. I loaded the little one in the SUV, headed to D-town, and made my purchase.

Upon returning home, I plugged my new prize into my old G3 iMac (OSX 10.2.8). I use my eMac for work and my iMac for music and pictures. To my dismay, however, nothing happened. I looked at the iPod box and read the “Requirements” column. “Phew,” I sighed to myself, “I run OSX 10.2.8 on my iMac G3, and 10.3.8 on my eMac G4. I'm in the clear.” Still, nothing happened. So I thought, “maybe this unit is DOA.” After moving it around every usb port on the iMac, if decided to try it on the eMac.

The side usb ports of the eMac gave me the same unimpressive result, but once I plugged the Shuffle into the keyboard usb port, a small green light began to flicker. “Success!” Or so I thought.

After iTunes opened and the iPod Updater ran its course, the green light on the Shuffle shut off. I read the manual and it said “the led light will be amber when charging, green when transferring data.” (or something to that effect.) There was no light on the item, which lead me to believe nothing was happening. I performed a search for “iPod Shuffle” & eMac. (see for yourself)

WTF!?!!??? There are two computers that the iPod Shuffle doesn't work with… AND I OWN BOTH OF THEM! In order for the Shuffle to charge with an eMac or iMac G3, you need a “usb extender.” It does say “May require USB extender cable.” That's great, but if there are only two Apple computers that are incompatible with this Apple product, shouldn't Apple specifically point this out? At least I would have been able to purchase the required extender while I was out. Now I am stuck here with a new toy that I can't play with.

This Apple left a bad taste in my mouth. Apple should be ashamed.

You're wondering why FuzzMartin.com has been so light on updates recently. Here's the answer:

1. Husband duties
2. Daddy duties
3. “Your Ride Home with Fuzz Martin” duties
4. College duties
5. Other website duties (see right sidebar)
   and…
6. Fuzz duties

I'll be back in the swing of things in March. This going back to school experience has been a trip. Who knew studying would take so much time. Obviously not me, that's why I have thrice been to college.

Robb Svoboda, my friend Amanda's bro, took the time to comment on FuzzMartin.com - all the way from Samarra, Iraq.

What's up Fuzz. This is Amanda's brother writing you from Samarra, Iraq. I just wanted to thank you for posting my article on your website. It's amazing how many people are thinking about us back home. I'm glad that you support us and what we are doing. I have a correction for you. My address if you want it to be posted has changed. My new address is:

SPC Robert J. Svoboda
Cco 1-128 INF, 1st PLT
FOB Brassfield-Mora (PB OLSON)
APO AE 09393

Thanks again for showing your support. Take care.

Robb

Thanks for all you do Robb.

Dognutz is back with more of his exciting grey matter seepage; this time divulging his thoughts on the end of the NHL season.

Check it out in the Dawg Haus.

Our prayers and condolences are with the family of Lance Cpl. Travis M. Wichlacz of West Bend. Travis was killed on Saturday during hostile action in the Iraqi Babil Province.

Travis, we thank you for your service to our country.

A lot of people talking about the Iraqi election - but I bet our friend Bob can tell us how it really went down:

Hello Family and Friends

Well, we made it through the elections here with relatively few problems.
Our platoon has been split into two sections over the past week. Basically
while one group is out the other is sleeping and getting ready for the next
mission. For the most part we were out for 6-8 hours then come back and
the other section would go out. I think it was very effective in our area.
The locals here think that we are vampires because it seems like we never
sleep and can see at night because of the night vision goggles that we
wear. It always throws them for a loop in the fact that we don’t drive at
night with any lights on at about the same speed we do during the day.
There was a curfew placed on the country and all only certain vehicles were
allowed to drive during the day so I think that was a big help in insuring
the security of the polling sites.

I was quite surprised at how the Iraqis did respond fairly positively to
the election process. All of the schools were being guarded by Iraqi
Police and Iraqi Army soldier’s days up and through the elections. Also
teachers from the one of the schools we were responsible for guarded the
schools all through the night with AK 47’s.

One problem we did have with the elections was getting the guards, the
police and the army to stay at the schools and actually watch them. Many
of them received death threats for working with us and one school was
bombed on the 26th of January and all of the guards quit. On the Election
Day we had to escort soldiers to the polling sites because they were scared
to go without us. What we thought was funny is that there was at least 20
soldiers and they all were heavily armed, yet they were very hesitant to
leave the safety of the FOB. By law on Election Day we could not go within
300 meters of the polling sites so we basically walked them right up to the
schools and let them take over. I think it was good that we basically
stayed out of the process because it let them feel that it was their
elections and not something that we were in charge of.

We also ended up driving one of their troop transport trucks to the polling
site because the driver got it stuck twice on the way there. It is funny
with the language barrier what is actually being said, but a lot of
gestures and broken Arabic and English is needed in situations like that.

Last night was also very interesting in that as we left the FOB there was a
report of a C-130 airplane that crashed just south of our location.
Information was sketchy at first to what really happened but our adrenaline
was definitely pumping as we sped to the suspected crash site. When we got
near where we thought the site was it turns out that the plane was another
10 k south of that location and the spot we were in was where it had left
the radar. You probably have more information on it then I do by watching
CNN, so I don’t know if there were any survivors or how it went down.

I have enclosed some pictures from the past few days. I haven’t gotten a
chance to enclose any Election Day stuff, but as soon as I get them in the
computer I will send them. The ones that say raid on them are from a few
days before the elections. We have been getting a lot of good intell from
locals on people who have been placing IED’s in our area so whenever we
feel that there is enough evidence we pay them a visit in the middle of the
night. I have to say it is one of the scariest yet adrenalin pumping
things that we get to do here. In these pictures I took of one house that
the people were living in only one room and were finishing the rest of the
house. It is going to be a beautiful house but when I kicked open one of
the doors I found that they had cows living in it. The stuff I see here
never ceases to amaze me. In another house we were in I got my picture
taken in front of a stuffed vulture. That guy turned out to be the
Minister of Oil production for that
province. The other pictures show me in some of the schools that we
visited frequently, notice the armed guard sitting outside of it. I also
snapped a picture of one of the chalkboards that had some math equations on
it which looks like it was dealing with physics and pulleys. Leave it up
to a teacher to be the one checks on the student’s work even in another
country. Finally I included some pictures of the kids that always come out
to great us when we stop, in this case by their school. One of the
pictures shows one of the youth’s who I gave a pair of shoes to. He
actually came up to me and asked if we had any which was cool, because he
asked if we had any so he could play soccer. I can’t stress to all of you
how handing stuff out to these kids and seeing their response is the
highlight of our day. They do get somewhat bothersome at times but I feel
it is one of the best things that we as soldiers can do for this next
generation of Iraqi’s.

Good Night from Iraq

Bob

These pictures are not in order - but enjoy them anyway.

***Note - if you are going to steal these images, please save them to your own server - do not steal my bandwidth…***