Forget a Nuclear Iran, this is the real threat:

Military Dance-Off!



Iranian Army soldiers field-stripping machine guns with their feet.
Did you read that right? Their feet.

Meanwhile, what can the USMC do with their feet?
The Cha-Cha.



So who wins?
The cha-cha is hilarious, while field-stripping a gun with your feet is just ridiculous.

USMC: 1 (but watch those cross-overs), Iran: 0 (seriously, your feet? wtf.)

Using your cellphone abroad

One of the blogs I keep up with posted an article on this issue, which I've been thinking about quite a bit as I get stuff together for this trip.

Lifehacker linked to a CNET news article on using your/a cellphone abroad.

I've been stressing about this a bit, so it was a nice surprise to see this article featured. My personal plans include looking into better options than my currently functional (but ridiculously overpriced) international SIM card. (In some ways, it's actually more of a pain having an unlocked phone & SIM card, if you don't plan to be in any one place long enough to justify getting a local card/plan.)

The article gives a pretty good overview of what American carriers have in the way of international options. It also has some useful metrics to compare regarding price per minute and per megabyte, and the number of countries covered by each carrier's international plan.

That said, it didn't say much about getting a limited-time international plan, and was a bit iPhone-centric. So, though a mixed bag as far as what I'm looking to figure out, it's a useful resource in general.

I'm taking a trip.

So, it's been a while since I touched this blog. In its absence, I've graduated college, taken the LSAT twice, applied & been accepted to law school, and participated in a bundle of student organizations.

It's been a long year.

Nay, it's been a long few years. From the start of sophomore year, I've been in school full time during the academic year, and in school and working at least one job each summer. With law school on the near horizon, this is looking like the last summer I'm likely to get to use however I want for a long while.

So, I'm taking a trip. A long trip.
The idea hit me in Arabic class sometime in the fall semester: I want to go around the world.
Scratch that, I've wanted to go around the world for some time. This summer, it's actually within my reach.

Now, the inevitable problem was that my kneejerk reaction to the question "where do you want to go?" is "everywhere!"
Tickets to everywhere, I've discovered, are not cheap, nor could I see it in the 3-ish months of summer I've got.

So, with a bit of help from my friends and plenty of time staring at the map, the list has been cut down a bit. It still feels like a big list for just 2+ months.

On June 19th, I leave JFK for Israel.
With about a week in each place, my itinerary is:
Israel, Egypt, Dubai, India, China, Japan, and then back to America.

I'll be taking photos ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/simnatic/ ), posting blogs, and generally doing my best to chronicle this trip.
You can find me on twitter: @fjennings, or facebook, or the Google.

But why all that chronicling?

In the short-run, it's a way for family, friends, and interested onlookers to follow along, to see a bit of what I see, and a way to share the experience vicariously with everyone who's helped me get this trip off the ground (whether directly, indirectly, or entirely peripherally).

On a more long-term note, I want it for my own records, so when the grandkids unplug from surfing their metawebs long enough to ask me what I did before being old and crotchety a lawyer, I can point them to these archaic 2-dimensional archives of what I did and where I went on this trip.


So, without further ado, here's the first post of this trip.
Wish me luck.