I'm not the only medical person of my squadron who made the news

My boss also had a story written about her. Not much going on over here, studying for my advancement test and dreaming of coming home. After spending months on end looking at just brown, it's nice to return to the techno color of my wife. I'm living every geeks dream, married my very own Anime Girl. Haven't regretted it for a second, not much longer hun!

Oh here's a picture of my team trying to take out Superman.

5444

   Twice a year, the powers that be in the Navy come out with a Bibliography of the material you need to study for the bi annual advancement test to get promoted to the next rank up the ladder.  Each bib is specific towards the rate rank of test you are taking and tells you exactly what information you need to study, chapters, instructions, workbooks, manuals, etc.

 

   The exam I'm currently studying for is the HM1, E-6 exam.  After finishing up my FMF warfare device and my brain was still in the study mode so I picked a manual out at random and started reading.  Over the past couple of weeks I've literally read 1500 or so pages and my brain was starting to ache and my eyes get blurry trying to memorize this supremely dry material.  

 

   I needed a break so I decided to figure out how much we were actually studying, I'm a number type of guy and I'm good at laying down figures and stats.  So I pulled up every piece of information that the bib said we should know about and added it all up.  Five thousand four hundred and forty four pages.   Egad!   5444 minus 1500= 3944 divided by 15 days till the exam, each day I need to read 263 pages of adult Snoppy language and let it sink into my noggin.   Bleh.     

 

   So if I disappear for the next few weeks, it's unlikely that I've been blown to smithereens, I might wish that I had every once in a while but it probably didn't happen.  And if I am here, it's because I'm using the blog as a release from scholastic tension.

How those bombing asshats affected my travel plans this year

1. No more bottles liquor or perfume from the duty free shops. I wonder how many billions the people who run the duty free shops are going to loose? Not that I've been a big buyer of either but I'm sure there are people out there that are. That whole line of business is going to go bankrupt, thanks for nothing Osama!

2. Not being able to brush my teeth after a twenty four hour flight. Yuck! This one hits close to home, not only are we going to be smelly from the hours we spent waiting on the plane in 100 temperature and not taking a shower in some cases 2 to 3 days, we also can't brush out teeth for the entire flight. So much for a first impression when we get off the plane and kiss the love of our life.

3. Guess all of those dreams of future in-flight internet services are out too since we're not allowed to bring laptops into the plane. Oh no, have you seen how military people load up sea bags? If it can't survive an 8 foot drop to the deck, you shouldn't put it in your stowed luggage. It's not so bad on the when I fly civilian airliners, I have a hard suitcase that a 200 pound man could do a dance on top of without it harming the laptop we don't get that option in the military.

4. I've had all of my luggage misplaced a couple of times, how many of you guys have your entire contact list programmed into your cell phone? Guess we're going back to using payphones and little black books. If my luggage gets misplaced in another state, there goes all of my conveniences of modern technology, my cell phone, my car alarm which is waiting for me in the parking lot for 8 bucks a day and several thousand dollars worth of computer garbage which I've seemed to have collected.

There should be limits on what we are willing to give up in our chase towards safety. We're letting a very small group of bad guys dictate how we live our lives and putting more power into the hands of the people who enforce these rules. We're being forced to turn back the clock 25 years to a time when our lives weren't controlled by electronic gadgets. Not that I have anything to hide and I know it's important to keep us safe from the bad guys but how far are we willing to go? I don't want our lives to end up like a scene from the movie V for Vendetta. I might be fighting a battle for freedom out here, but there are other battlefields in this war being fought tooth and nail not by rifle or sword but by pen and votes, on television and on the web by other warriors, you don't need a gun or to take someones life to get involved, tomorrow it's everyones future we're talking about today.

Information Psychosis

It's a term I picked up out of a Roger MacBride Allen book that was written in 1990 before half of the globe was plugged into the internet.  It's a term for people who had become overwhelmed by information, I'm sure I'm not the only person out there suffering from this?  As bloggers we get online and spend hours just gathering information that we don't even use.  We each have a list of websites that we click through like clockwork, some of us spend more time taking in information then doing anything else.  I don't even want to think about the cases Glenn Reynold's or Matt Drudge are hiding in their closet, take them away from news and they're probably basket cases. 

 

Which brings me to the point of why I'm talking about this.  Our base was cut off from the outside world for the few days because of an incident which didn't even make CNN or FOX because of the British Terror Plot.  While very important, that wasn't the only thing happening in the world yet according to their tickler and reporters that's all that was happening.   They spent three days rehashing the same words with hardly any new information, today they're covering other stories again but don't they realize that this drives more people away from them to the internet?  If they were the only source of news you might imagine that was the only news out there.  

 

After being cut off for a few days from the internet, we missed stories like the biggest Typhoon to hit China in 50 years?   Do we not care?  What's happening in Israel or Iraq?  Nope not interested.   What about that big pipeline in Alaska which supplies a good percentage of the domestic oil to the US that is going to be shut down?  Hey there was tickler spot for that!   Who decides what's important for us to see?  How many people were tired of seeing the same images of an airport, the ratty house in Britain with the guys in the bright coats, the camera zooming away from those fellows in the white robes and reporters treading off a list of things you couldn't bring on a plane.  For a news junky like me, that was just a load of crap.

Another one bites the dust..

I just learned that one of my favorite authors David Gemmell has passed away, he wrote Legend and Waylander and speaking as a guy who reads quite a bit, every word he wrote was quality stuff.  Much of his work took place in different series, colorful detailed worlds that blossomed under his pen.  Everything that Dave has written is on my shelves and he'll definitely be missed.  While he does write epic fantasy, every book also stands alone, you can pick up any of his novels and start from there, so no strings left untied.   His characters made you want to be more like them.  If you want an insight into warrior creed, this guy had the inside scoop.

 

At least he didn't leave us on a cliff hanger like what could possibly happen if Robert Jordan kicks the bucket (sorry RJ).  Robert brought us into his imagination and his worlds were so close to reality that I would wonder which world I woke up in when I hit the snooze button.  The Wheel of Time is probably one of the biggest achievements in epic fantasy, millions of people are hanging on to each of his words waiting for the final battle and what happens?   Right before he gets is last book written, he falls ill with some evil disease called Amyloidosis and is admitted into the Mayo Clinic.  I'm praying for his recovery but investing months of my time on his alternate reality and having it collapse around me without the answers would be somewhat disheartening.

 

Other Authors who have died on me?  Of course there is Douglas Adams who had actually stopped writing and was making movies and video games when he keeled over at age 49 in 2001.   Two hard science fiction authors that I liked and close friends Robert L Forward and Charles Sheffield were taken out 42 days apart by two separate brain tumors, (anybody else think that's strange?) they were both working on space elevators, space tethers and different types of star drives, alas, they didn't get to see any of their work be put into production because they died in 2002.  

 

But out of all of the writers in existence, no one has strung along as many fans for as long as Robert has, 16 years since Eye of the World came out and the next one (if it ever sees the light of day) is called A Memory of Light and rumored to be 1500 pages long (I might have to take leave to read that if and when it comes out).   After spending so much of my life reading this guys work, stepping into a Wheel of Time novel is like returning to my home town and I pray he doesn't die before he finishes it.

 

I finished Terry Goodkind's Phantom which I thought was a vast improvement over the last two Sword of Truth novels, if a bit gory for the average reader, like the Wheel of Time series, only one more book left.

Excuse me while I fall into this book

I'm taking a time out from everything to dive into Terry Goodkind's Phantom which just arrived fresh from Amazon directly into my grubby little hands along with a copy of Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. Which was on sale in hard back which brought my grand total to 25.96 which makes it eligible for free shipping and handling! Yay! Took 9 days to from the time I ordered it till it arrived. Not to bad Amazon!

Yes, I'm a reader of epic fantasy novels which tells you my level of geekdom. My calendar is marked off by release dates of authors that I follow, the next book on my list is Dzur by Steven Brust which comes out on the 8 ^th of this month. Wow, that's in a couple of days. The other epic fantasy readers in the squadron have been coming by just to touch Phantom which is sort of funny now that I think about it.

I finally have time for some reading, I've been studying for the last few months for my FMF (Fleet Marine Force) Warfare Pin, it's a written test and an oral board covering all of the aspects of the Fleet Marine Force, history, weapons, tactics, important people, ORM (operational risk management), NBC and countless others. It wasn't easy at all and for any of my corpsman readers, yes I'm a slacker. I should have had this done a long time ago but I'm pretty happy with my timing, it's not affecting the time I spend with my family and there was a huge pause between books this summer from the authors that I follow.

Other epic series that I'm following include George R.R Martin's, yes Harry Potter and Robert Jordan who I hope is recovering somewhat from his illness so he can finish the last book of the Wheel of Time Series (12 ^th book and final book). It's a series which I've been following my entire adult life and if he dies, me along with a million other fans are going to be left hanging like what almost happened when Stephen King was ran over by that van.

Well I'm hitting the book so take care!

Walks in the desert

Today is our one year anniversary, thanks hun for making this year one of the best years of my life.  Looking forward to many more anniversaries in the future, hopefully all of them in your arms.  Our exchange is well stocked on anniversary cards to give to husbands but not a single one for a wife so I hope you like the little gift I had sent to you in it's place.   I'm the luckiest guy in the world, thank you for marrying me.

 

News on my side of the world?  There's a war going on a little way over the horizon but we know as much as you do about what's going on.  There's a new chow hall on base, mostly the same food but a lot more room and indoor plumbing.  It's pretty nice.   It's been cooler here then it has been in the states, hovering a little over a hundred degrees with zero humidly, it's a dry heat.

 

I've taken to long walks across the desert on the way home each night, the alone time is peaceful and don't worry, there's a couple of well guarded fence lines between me and the outside world the only thing I have to worry about are the camel spiders and snakes.

 

Not much to write about this week, I wish I were home with my wife but that's normal, we're well over the halfway mark in our deployment.  I'm glad I'm with a Marine unit, our deployments are only 6 to 7 months instead of a year to 18 months with the Army and National Guard.  They're doing a great job but there is a reason why they're also getting the huge reenlistment bonuses, the Army folk I've talked to are somewhat envious of our shorter deployments.   I'm sure being gone that long away from home isn't good for a marriage.  

 

Take care everyone!

When I'm on the other side of the globe

Everything strange and interesting happens on the opposite side of the world of where ever I'm at.  When I went to Thailand in January of 2005, all that everyone back home could talk about was these horrible storms and floods washing everything away, when I get home it's warm and dry, the grass is green and the sun is shining.  Now on this trip, hundred degree temperatures stretch all the way across the nation, my home town has had weeks of record breaking temperatures.  Even for those who don't believe in global warming and would deny the entire theory with their last breath might be having second thoughts, what if those guys were right?   

 

This summer could be a taste of what the future holds if they are.   Imagine, if you will, what would happen if the temperature was this hot or hotter for months at a time, not much different for the deserts that I've been living for the last few years but there's a reason why they're called deserts.  How would our crops and livestock handle these kind of changes?  How about the places that are the borderline states for needing A/C?  With the rising cost of energy, could we afford it?  Would we, as the human race be able to adjust fast enough to cope with the dangers posed?  Or will we let the next person elected take care of it?  As usual, there are more questions then there are answers. 

How to get rid of fear by Sean Dustman

I grew up in Prescott Arizona, if you don't know much about Arizona, you might think that the entire state is one big desert. The image you might get in your mind could look like all of those Wiley E Coyote cartoons (there are places like that) but not where I'm from. The northern part of the state is mostly made up of pine forests, grass plains and mountains. Prescott itself is located at a mile elevation and is surrounded by granite mountains, those pine forests and grassy plains. Lots of interesting stuff for a youngster such as myself to get into trouble with.

The summer between my junior and senior year, my group of friends Larry, Jason, Justin and myself, made it a point to know just about every inch of this set of rocks just outside of town called Granite Dells. A rock climbers Disneyland, huge granite boulders scattered over 30 or so square miles of area. Almost every morning, Larry and I would go rock climbing, sometimes Justin and Jason would join us but they weren't the heavy rock climbers that we were. It was always fun showing Justin new places and Jason would always find himself in the middle of some archeological find and wouldn't move from that spot till we drug him away.

After a morning of climbing at near 100 degree temperatures our bodies were in need of some serious cooling off and what better then the cool waters of Oak Creek Canyon by Sedona. A 55 mile jaunt to our favorite cliff jumping spot called Dutchman's Leap. (no I'm not going to give you directions how to get there, some things are private, but I might show you in person if we're ever in Arizona at the same time).

The cliff was a 30 or so foot direct fall off of a beautiful cliff into a bottomless pool (well we never got to the bottom anyway) When we first started jumping, we had to dare each other to jump, standing there, looking down at the water below. I would get so scared that my hands and feet went numb, the fear was so great that it felt like pain. I could taste it in my mouth.

I would take this fear and pile more on it, other fears, fears of dying, rock climbing fears, rocks falling out of the sky, you name it. Till the fear would blot out the world around me and I would get tunnel vision from me to the bottom of the cliff. I would start feeling vertigo, being almost afraid that I almost couldn't stand it for another second. Then another part of my brain, the emotionless analytical part, would take control of my body and calmly take a few steps forward and jump while my conscious mind was wailing like a banshee. When I hit the water, it was like being reborn, the fear was gone and the feeling of relief was almost over whelming and I would run back up the cliff and do it again without the fear and hesitation.

Who needs drugs when you can scramble your own brain without outside help? After the first jump, it was impossible to build up the fear again, I guess all of the endorphins were gone till the next trip. Each trip out there the fear got less and less till one day it wasn't there any more. Leaping became just an act and full of fun.

This was one of the most important lessons I learned growing up. The feeding the fear and the act of pushing past it, each time you do it the fear becomes less and less and it's easier to let the analytical part of your brain take control when the world is going to hell in a hand basket around you. I carry this little trick inside of my head that has helped me through some hard periods in my life.

Back in my early days of flying CASEVAC, the fear never arose because the analytical part of my brain was in control. Doesn't mean that I was emotionless, the fear just never touched me. It didn't matter, flying around in with someone else at the controls, bullets and RPG's flying through the air, I wasn't at the stick and if it ended up being my time, there was nothing I could do to change the outcome on sitting on my butt in the back. Might as well be easy with life and take it as it comes.

Grilled cheese and tomato soup

Blessed grilled cheese and tomato soup, one of the staples of my diet back home.  I have a strange weakness for dipping grilled cheese sandwiches into tomato soup and they had both of them today at the chow hall.   Which made me a little sad because it reminded me of home, it's the small things that touch you out here and that also make you happy, clean sheets, cold air conditioning and a good pillow (which I think I left at home).

 

One of my corpsman came back from flying CASEVAC for a month at another base so my crew is back up to 3 corpsman and the flight surgeon.  We can now toss in a day or two off here and there with out it being a strain.  Not that our job is that stressful but it does help to change things around a bit.  

 

My first two trips out here, nether of my two units had a single broken bone, this trip 6!   Nothing even close to being life threatening but it is notable.  I've chosen a clumsy crew to work with but at least they give me some value for doing my job which the rest of the time is mostly killing trees and typing in Data onto the computer.  

 

I've moved back to my sometimes beloved swing shift which gives me some quality alone time which after a month of 12's, I'm holding quite dear.  My wife has taken my son Collin on vacation and I'm been receiving briefs and letters of their assorted adventures, I'm able to call he on her cell phone and check it but she doesn't always have access to the internet so the emails volume is rather lean.  Wish I could have been there to join them, they are my two favorite traveling companions, sounds like they are having a grand time.  

 

I'll be missing my first anniversary in a couple of weeks.  People who think that we're getting paid too much?   What monetary figure can you attach to spending all of these holidays, anniversaries and birthdays away from our loved ones?  Add on to that that chance that there could be a bullet or mortar with our name on it?  It's just another day but those days do add up, the missed memories and special moments that could have been.  I'm sticking with the job but it's definitely not for everyone.   I'm extremely lucky to have landed such a wonderful wife who's doing a great job at keeping the home fires burning.      

 

War's expensive which I think is a good thing good thing, the value of a human life should be worth a lot of money and not thrown away cheaply.  Every one of us is a book that has been unwritten, every loss is a possible Einstein.  I can't talk bad about the people who preach peace, I might not agree with them but I can't hold it against them that they don't believe in killing another human being.  It doesn't make them un-American, it makes them human.  That doesn't mean that they are right or that they're always wrong but there are some things worth fighting for, justice for the attack on the Twin Towers and fighting this organization who started it all by killing innocents without cause which put us on this war footing in the first place.  Should we have sat backsit back and let them get away with it?  This isn't about religion, yes they were part of one religion but we're trying to fight the mindset these terrorists have and to let them know that we won't let anyone get away with the acts that they have done.  Now they're reaping what they have sowed.

War down the street

Is it making you guys back home as edgy as it is making us to read the news about the what's happening in the middle east? Not Iraq, we've been pushed back to page 3. Being deployed out here and reading about the largest Israeli offensive to happen in 24 years taking place only a couple of hundred miles from where I'm sitting is a bit disturbing considering the powder keg that we are sitting on. What I'm saying here isn't anything you can't read out just about any paper but I'm viewing it as a common Joe on the ground. These are merely my views, not the views of anyone else out here, we could be at a cusp of a possible Holy War, it's not the first time the world been here and not the last but the weapons are getting bigger. Countries shooting at each other, money and weapons flowing back and forth over borders, polarized populations who want that want to wipe the other off the face of the earth and these folk are all surrounding me? Am I wrong to be a little spooked?

How do I view what's going on down the road? If you keep poking a tiger in the eye with a stick from the other side of a wooden fence, eventually that tiger is going to get pissed and knock the bloody fence down and eat you. I'm not saying if making the decision to start this offensive is right or wrong but with anybody there is a point when the last straw is tossed on the camels back and when the line in the sand has been crossed too many times. Every time I see a cease fire announced, it makes me think about the story of the turtle and the scorpion crossing the river, "it's my nature".

Hezbollah and Hamas have been poking this tiger for a while, wanting it to strike back so they can get more people of like mind involved. Only this is a tiger that's been fed with the best of American arms, training and has been backed into a corner without a place to retreat to. American armed forces whom many consider the worlds premiere fighting force use many lessons that they have picked up from the Israelis. If we equipped our passenger jets like theirs, 9/11 would never have happened. Many of our cool new medical products were developed and used first time in combat in Israel. Books written by their generals are on most military reading lists, specially lately with urban warfare tactics being used, these guys know how to make war.

Israel has the highest percentage per capita of military people in the world. Their intelligence forces are the boogie men of the spy world and they've been sharpening their knives and taking down names for half a century. The places they've bombed this week? They have probably been on a battle plan "A" for years. The reason why they don't have troops to Iraq for either Gulf War? Because the rest of the world didn't want to open up Pandora's Box, bad things will happen. Saddam shot a bunch of scuds at them during the first gulf yet they held their peace when they could have laid waste to much of the this country. Now something has set them off, watch the news, hopefully those bad things that I'm imaging don't happen. I'm keeping my fingers crossed because there's a world of difference between being in this war and being in that War.

I miss good food

Another dry and dusty day in the desert, we're in another lull of injuries.  The entire squadron had a day off Monday and we threw a bar-b-q where there were steaks that were actually quite tasty unlike the boiled pieces of meat that share the appearance and steak name that they serve at the chow hall but really taste and feel like leather.   It takes a fare bit of skill to make a good piece of meat that inedible.  Contrary to popular belief about being in a war zone, it is easy to be a vegetarian out here, actually it's quite easy to imagine how someone would get fed up with the mystery meat products and decide that flesh isn't good for you anymore

 

I'm just going though my mid deployment gripes, don't take me wrong, the food is worlds better then they had the first go around and what other military has at least one seafood night per week at the chow hall?   It's one night I always make it down the hill.  I can't say too many bad things about the prime rib either but their interpretation of oriental or Mexican food needs much work.   I stick with the vegetarian or fast food (fried foods) those nights.

 

Breakfast usually consists of waffles (they must have bought stock in the company that supplies them because they would go out of business on the civilian side of the house) or pancakes (which are good), scrambled or boiled eggs (you always know what's in a boiled egg), some breakfast meat product, low bidder bacon (another brand of food that wouldn't make it in the civilian world), sausage pucks or regular sausage (which isn't that bad).   

 

Tell you the truth, the food isn't too bad, it's just not exciting for this poor Thai boy's taste buds as the grub I put on my table back home.  Trips halfway gone and before long I'll be going out to eat with the lovely wife, there is light at the end of this Iraqi shaped tunnel!

Rip Acidman

I've been a follower of Rob Smith for a couple of years, he's one of the grandfather bloggers, a sure sign that I haven't been blogsurfing is I missed his death, godspeed Rob, you left your mark on all of us.

Boring life..

I haven't been blogging much because there's not really much going on in my life.  Much of what I'm doing these days is routine, taking care of the illnesses and so far, minor injuries of a helicopter squadron.  I'm not flying CASEVAC (casualty evacuation) so all of the war stories I experience are either second hand or through CNN.   We have had some broken bones, not of a serious nature.  Biggest culprit?  Riding bikes and getting in fist fights with walls.   If you're coming out here, remember all of the gyms have punching bags, walls out here are all made of solid concrete and are therefore dangerous, unless you are Superman or the Hulk, a wall is always going to win.  

 

Even though we're deployed to a war zone, most of my Marines have not seen any action except for the aircrew flying and that action has only been muzzle flashes.   Three trips out here with 2 different squadrons and what does that add up to?  Zero discharges of any of our personal weapons either by accident or on purpose.  Unless they came they came from the grunts, 95 percent of us haven't even looked a bad guy in the eye. 

 

Last month, all of the troops were required to go through Values Training to reemphasize our core values of Honor, Courage and Commitment following the following the fallout from Haditha.   Every single thing they went over are values that are supposed to be ingrained in us being members of the United States military not to mention that it should be just common sense and decency for most human beings.  For my unit, we first experienced Haditha like most of you, through CNN and other news channels, then though official messages about personal conduct.  We don't have any contacts with the locals so there's little or no chance for my guys could be involved in any sort of act that could be labeled an atrocity.  Just because we haven't been outside of the gate, doesn't mean that we won't though.

  

My thoughts on Haditha?  Finish the investigation and throw the book at the guilty parties.  We're supposed to be the good guys and after spending 12 years of my life in the military, I have yet to run into anyone who would tolerate behavior like that.  I wouldn't do it nor would I let anyone around me do it.  But on the same token, punish the guilty parties.  Don't find scapegoats all the way up and down the chain.   How can you blame the commander or a SSgt who wasn't there because there's a psycho hiding in the ranks?  Maybe if there is a past history of that fellow or squad doing that sort of thing and there was no corrective action.  Considering part of our job could involve shooting people, of course we're a lightning rod for a horde of wanna-be serial killer sociopaths enlisting with itchy fingers just waiting for the moment when they can snuff someone and not get in trouble.   Iraq is turning into a breeding ground for those wackos, ten years ago, you had to go through a lot of work to find footage of a beheading, now they are all over the internet.  Whether it's us or them, this kind of behavior is evil!  Do you think your god appreciates you lopping off the heads of these tied up captives for disagreeing with you?  If he does, that's not a religion I want to belong to and would have no problem snuffing out under my heel.  

 

My point is that there are enough bad guys out here without us importing more and as a general rule, US troops don't kill innocents.