Well yesterday didn’t go as planned, no mail came, big surprise. And it took almost all day to upload the pictures that I have into “cyberspace”. We got another huge engineering unit or something and now the base is crawling with lowranking-computer using idiots that clog up my computer/phone time distribution…Damn!! Also we were sent a letter  by our Sgt Major explaining that we need to “keep the standards”…which for me means that I have to be in uniform all day in the hot sun instead of pt shorts and t shirt (??) and wear that stupid “boonie” cap anytime I am outside, and a host of other retarded details that have absolutely nothing to do with our ability to put rounds downrange effectively or anything else we are here in Afghanistan to do. And to top it off…the First Sgt. just showed up today to “check up on us” for the next week which means that the next week is sure to be as gay as possible. Damn, you go on one mission and suddenly everything sucks, even the cooks are now mad at the 82nd guys because some retard complained against them so no more double rations and awesome hookups on the main courses. But on the bright side the 1st Sgt brought an entire kicker palette full of mail with him like Santa Clause…screw this week because I leave for home when it is over…and the food sucked anyway so screw them. hahaha. I feel better. I just am praying that today is the day that all my mail comes and I won’t care about the rest…it’s all about karma, bring on the crappy news, and stack up the good karma, I just want my guitar.

    Aahhh… home at last, or back at Tiran Kawt at least. I leave in a week for KAF, headed to Germany, then  headed to U.S….THEN headed home at last. It is kind of early in the deployment for R and R but whatever I am not going to not be excited about it just for that reason. At least I will be home for summer. My camera broke due to dust intake on the mission but it broke right as we were leaving for home so I still have a ton of awesome pictures that I will upload later today. I would do it now but my memory stick is missing, oh yeah, and my speakers blew right before we left. So other then those few technological setbacks things are not to bad. I am supposed to get my camera and maybe even my guitar as soon as I get off work today so if I do I will come update the site as soon as I get done playing with them….Yowsa

(Needless to say as you look at the gap in posts, but the “next mission” was actually the next night and was much longer then I had thought, sorry for the information gap)

Here is a little tour:

(My car.)

(My house and my porch).

(My bed)

Well that is about it for the tour that is really all there is.

 Ahhh, it felt great to wake up on my own, or at least woke up the by this picture after my 8 hours of sleep. Sure beats waking up to and alarm clock right at midnight and going to work.  To bad I leave for another mission in two days….always something. (more to follow about the mission when I find out for sure)

    Well I found some new toys after looking around….I wasn’t sure when I first conceived the camera idea how well it would work, what kind of camera I could get and how well it would work, and what range it would have. I spent 45 minutes looking through home security cameras and then I found this. It is pretty inexpensive too, has color and nightvision mode, and has a range of over a mile while in full motion. PERFECT. Plus I can plug it into my laptop and sit outside and do little recon mission or even record the video and just romp with the truck and then watch the cockpit view later. To cool. I also had another thought….

Hmm…very interesting….movable turret…shoots airsoft pellets up to 35 meters. Just a thought. I think I am going to talk someone else into buying the tank (it is cheap) and then just hook up my camera system… that is if I get it. It sure would add to the fun of running into a shitter if I could shoot the person when they open it up to see what happened…that makes me laugh just thinking about it.

     So there is was, almost off shift…tinkering around on the Internet for something entertaining. And I came across this picture, but not at some military site, but at a remote control truck site. Hmmm I thought to myself almost audibly. But then I noticed to price. 135.00$ Way to inexpensive to be of the quality I would require for the terrain here. Making me wonder if they just didn’t run this truck downhill just fast enough to catch this sweet photo-op of air before it lands, crashing the shocks and sending the truck in several rolls before it turns into a fireball with wheels. Alright so that might be a little dramatic…but I have a suspecition that it is crap. But I liked the idea of a remote control truck that I could drive around with a remote camera on it and look at stuff on base, drive it at the hodgeys (Local Army) and watch them run from it while I hide around the corner or watch on my laptop with a remote camera…(which supply has). So even though the thought of a replica striker humvee seems entertaining, and ironic to harass the locals with and go on missions, I began to look around for other options. And the I found this clip… 

http://www.hobbytron.com/media/e-maxx.wmv

     Obviously I was intrigued by the implied horsepower of the video clip. Plus the 8 shocks dual 550 electronic motors, dual battery harness for longer life…(or mission readiness time) and mean looking stance added to my enthusiasm. Now I have learned that no good Internet purchase is made on the spot. I have a new shopping strategy learned from Abbigail where the plan is to wait a few days and see if I still want it as badly as before. By the way is goes 35mph…anyway like I said, waiting is the key.(haha) But can’t you almost picture it with camo paint on it zooming across the ground at night and slamming into the portashitter where my unsuspecting friend sits focused on his task, and now terrified by the sudden boom outside. I can.

God Bless the USA, the Afghanistan National Army, and Harley Davidson.

    Today is the first day of my new shift here in the SF talk. Before I came on at midnight Zulu time, 6:00am local time, 7:00pm home time… Anyway it falls right in the middle of the night which means I would get about 3 or 4 hours sleep and then come to work and try and squeeze in a nap during the next day. My new shift is going to be at 6:00am (ZULU) which means that I can fall asleep…and (this is the good part) wake up whenever I am not tired anymore. I have probably only slept in 6 or 7 times in the last year and half, including leave, I sleep less on leave then I did at work. But for the next 6 weeks until I rotate back to my old shift I can sleep in everyday if I want then go to work, then work out, then I have the rest of the day off until I go to sleep again. YES!! It is going to be like summer break… I am pretty excited about that.

         I get mail here again in a few days…can’t get enough junkfood. Plus my guitar should be here in about a week.. Plus sleeping in. Who would of thought there would be so much good news on a Monday in Afghanistan? Not me.                                                                     

Hello world,

       I found a way to buy memory space online and so this site can be a lot better. I have taken some time to upload some random little movie clips I have taken with my camera. You have to have quicktime to view them but quicktime is a free download here. http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html

Just go down to the free download button. You should already have quicktime on your computer most systems come with it.

Well here are the movies, they aren’t much just helicopters, and huge ants, and storms, and guns and stuff but they are interesting enough I guess.

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122469

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122499

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122500

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122501

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122502

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122503

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122504

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122514

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122495

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122496

http://box.net/index.php?rm=account_download&file_id=122497

...Enjoy.

   So it turns out that online poker is not a surefire way to turn 10$ into 135$ everytime. Damn! I gave about 60$ of my winnings back last night and have earned myself a frustrated vacation from it for a few days. Some of the worst beats ever. I’d have Ace 8 they would have Ace 9, or something along those lines. Oh well I still have invested any of my own money.

     So tomorrow I get a new shift at work and instead of it being in the middle of the night so I can’t sleep, it will be first thing in the morning and I can’t all but sleep in. I don’t think I have slept in two days in a row in the last year and a half. I got 6 weeks till I have to pull this shift again. It looks like long naps and guitar playing are in my future. Except of course for the next missions, but that is parts of the game I guess. Either way I am a happy little guy right about now, no major complaints, I am staying well supplied with junkfood and batteries and pictures from home. (thanks mom and grandma and grandpa Read)

    Well, it is ab day, which means 200 situps, 200 crunches, 100 leg throws, and 40 pullups, it also means a day or two or not being able to get out of my chair without using my arms. Picture to follow in a few weeks showing the results.

     So I found a new way to occupy myself. Today was the best day ever. I signed up for pacific poker, they give me 10$…thanks bitches! I played the nickel and dime tables until I found myself up a bit and them moved up, till I won a bit and then moved up again, and so on until I found myself hitting the “raise 20″ button, then I knew I was home! I only ended up 135$ dollars up but at one point I was way up…(and way down) I won an 86$ pot with trip jacks on the river over a pair of aces…over slowmofo (pictured below…) Anyway I think the plan is two start with 20 every night and try and rise to the big boys level and win a few hundred or lose it all. I should come out ahead in the longrun…(*everyone says that) either way it is fun. Then what made it the best day ever was the 12 hour “nap” that I took directly thereafter. If only every day could be like today, I almost forgot to be pissed off that rest off the world including my girlfriend is parting there ass off or going to prom and spending the night with there date.Well I have poker to play and money to lose…gotta go

(Not that much money but I started with 10$ for free a few hours earlier)

   Aright I am glad that that is done. (don’t you hate it when languange forces you to use “that” twice in a row?) After an hour or two it is all finnaly loaded. Hopefully now that I have a more entertaining media to write to I can begin to comment on more trivial things and take a more lightheated approach to this “diary”, or “journal” or whatever it is and get away from the overview of last week feel that those other entries had. Note to reader, if this is your first time here…go back to beggining and read so that you can see how I got here…(Afghanastan that is) Well it is prom day which means that while most of the adolescent world rejoices and parties either because of prom or Saturday night, I am about to go take a shower, put powder on my feet, and maybe take a nap before work. But I am not complaining, I love it here….does it look real, does my smile look real? It really only bothers me on Friday and Saturday when I compare what I am doing with what I could be doing…damn. I could have puked of a balcony tonight. Ahh well.

May 13

Well I am finally reaching some sort of “routine” here. Good news, bad news… bad news first. The novelty of doing nothing while here inside the post is wearing off and after I get off work, I am becoming more and more just bored, Good news…I started working out like an addict. I rarely can sit up or scratch my face depending on which day it is, also my guitar and my camcorder are on the way and all I need is to find that one enveloping hobby that consumes my attention all day and I can’t wait to get back to it. And now that I have some sense of routine and I am committed to it, it is just a matter of time until I seek something out. Maybe programming or filmmaking or reading or ….writing(yeah right) Probably the guitar for now. Either way, things are moving along I can’t believe that it has been a month and a half, and already rumors of going home early, I will be back to beer, a loving girlfriend, a excited puppy, a relieved family. my brother and another horde of bar girls that have no idea what just happened. So far I am not really disappointed with myself much at all, not incredibly impressed but I have been pretty disciplined so far and the momentum is building. Me and Abbi are doing fine, we have hit some sort of rhythm where we don’t have to be running at full throttle to enjoy each other. The earrings were a hit and a great investment. The 125$ in pirate costume and accessories probably not. But you can’t make all good decisions in the middle of the night. We are supposed to have another mission on the horizon, which I would rather not attend but it is becoming clear that the only good stories I will have of the actual war are going to come from these adventures with the Special Forces. And good stories they will be, not very many people get to work alongside of them and even less get to sit in the control room while the battle captain coordinates the entire mission. And only 4 people in the last 30 or so years have help direct fire support for a special forces mission… myself of course included. I found out about an opportunity I will have when I get back to volunteer to be a recruiter, which of course means no more regular army crap, 800$ a month for rent, 300$ for food, and an extra 2000$ after recruiter bonus for my monthly pay. Plus, back in sales…YES. Even if I am selling some poor kid a paycheck at the price of his very soul for 8 years. But it will be good for them, builds character sweating your balls off in Afghanistan or waking up at the crack-ass of dawn to run 10 miles in the morning. They will thank me for it in 30 years when they can go to .50 cent draft nights at the VFW…hopefully. Cheers to that!