After sailing the past two years in the "Royal Clipper " he added more bells and whistles at home. Everything sounds like he remembers it: bells each half hour, boatswain's pipes , bugles, reveille , sweepers, chow call , morning and evening colors and tattoo at 2200 hours. At "eight bells " one day, the display on his Gateway laptop went blank. Not to worry, the bells are still there BUT he's added all this stuff to Connie's PC.

The final blow was during an approaching hurricane when a certain politician claimed he was on his Swift Boat on Christmas Eve in Cambodia in 1968 . Bill ran in circles, screamed and shouted, bought a new laptop, and turned up the bells, whistles, bugles, and blog routines on three computers. Bill would not relent.

He plans to take the guy back to the Mekong Delta in January to show him and a certain CBS notable where this politician could not have been. CBS: "If he hadn't believed it, he wouldn't have seen it."

Now it's over, and we are trying to graciously and humbly move on , and change the subject, to wit, the Redskins are losers but we love our Hall of Fame coach, and VA Tech could probably beat them.