BlogWorld & New Media Expo and the 2008 Milblog Conference

Myself and several thousand regular Bloggers and Milbloggers will be will be trekking across a vast desert (without people shooting at us) by plane, train and automobile till we arrive at a small southwestern town called Las Vegas this weekend for the BlogWorld Expo. Yes, it’s that time of year again for the 3rd annual Milblog Conference (small joke, the last one was May 07)where we have fellowship in person instead of across a cybernetic divide and people get to find out how much cooler we are behind a keyboard. Sponsors of the Milblog Conference include Military OneSource, Military.com and of course our trusty USAA. This year I am thankfully not on a panel (fear of public speaking) and can take part just enjoying the show and hopefully live blogging it (yay, Wireless internet!) Friday night I’ll be attending a pre-conference bash with my wife hosted by my buddies over at Blackfive at the world famous Penthouse Lounge. Here is a list of the schedule and hopefully see some of you there (you can also follow me live on Twitter.)

Panel topics/times are below:
Date: September 20th, 2008
Location: Blog World Expo, Las Vegas
Agenda:

10:30a – 11:00a: Opening Remarks and Presentation of 2007 Milbloggie Awards

11:00a – 12:00p: Are MilBlogs Still Relevant? In the wake of a successful military surge in Iraq, waning media attention and an election year, are MilBlogs as relevant to the national conversation on war as they once were?

12:00p – 12:15p: Break

12:15p – 1:15p: MilBlogging as a Community. A fascinating look at how the milblogging community was built, what it’s achieved and how deep and wide its reach has become. We’ll explore how milblogging gives a voice to supporters, parents and spouses of service members, and how that voice is effectively used to support an entire military community.

1:15p – 2:45p: Lunch Break

2:45 – 3:45p: DoD Live Bloggers Roundtable: We will be joined by Pete Geren, Secretary of the Army, and General George Casey, Chief of Staff of the Army, for a special edition of the weekly DoD Live Bloggers Roundtable. Secretary Geren and General Casey will take audience questions re operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other topics.

3:45 – 5:00p: Free Time (Sit in on other panels or stroll the vendor floor).

5:00 – 6:00p: The New Cadre of War Reporters. Reporting from the Green Zone is not an option for this gritty band of milbloggers. Today’s technology enables milbloggers and embedded reporters to report directly from the battlefield. We’ll talk with some of these milbloggers about their experiences in the combat zone.

6:00p: Closing Remarks

Ike Live Coverage

Like a moth to the flame, I can't stop watching. I found this link that streams 4 of the local TV stations from Houston an Galvestin live in one place. Plus the usual stuff at weather.com and CNN. John from Blogs of War has been live blogging all night. Some crazy stories coming out of the area, live and unfiltered.

Perhaps my wife has a good point with her hurricane fear.

I cut the cord

No, not that cord, I mean I’ve gone all of the way and switched over to cellular wireless internet.  My days of stealing WiFi signals are now over and I’ve signed up to Sprints mobile broadband service.  After all of these years of complaining about finding internet service while on the road and the crappy quality of unsecured wireless signals, I’ve taken the fatal plunge. 

From my apartment, my download speed is 1175 kb/s through speedtest.net in comparison to the California average of 5288 kb/s which is nothing compared to Japans 16,019 kb/s.  Even Russia is faster than us with 6512.  I’m basically saying that my internet is slow but worlds faster than 56k that almost everyone used a decade ago.  Plus, I can drag this anywhere I want and not feel guilty for mooching off of my neighbors.

Long Road Home

I pulled back into San Diego after 3 weeks of leave, 3000 miles on my new car and 500 on the truck. During the long drive, I finished the entire Twilight Series, it’s strange to think that the two biggest selling Mormon authors write SciFi and Vampire novels.

Anyway, it’s back to the grind, my wife is going to grad school in another part of the state which gives me some time to sink into the job and I’m beginning to think I’m going to need that time to polish everything up. One of the parts about being in charge of people is the responsibility you have for those underneath you. I have no problems with doing it but I seem to have a talent for getting blindsided by things that were totally out of my control. Guess I’ll just have to work harder.

On other news, I’ll be in San Diego till at least January 2010, I extended my orders here waiting for some other set of orders to open up to a very non exotic place. Blog world is going on in a couple of weeks and if any of you are going, keep an eye out for me. I’ll be with the pink haired girl.

Fans of Firefly, Buffy and Serenity check out Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a supervillain musical directed by Joss Whedon with Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. While the writer strike was going on, Joss went out and grabbed some of the best talent with waivers and in 6 days came up with the video below and it’s great, no, it’s a work of genius. Even better, it’s totally free so what are you waiting for? It's right here and will bring a smile to your face (or if you want, it's on Itunes but not Zune).



Anyhow, I’m off to go empty out some of these boxes standing in stacks around my place, peace out till next time.

Road Tripping

Spent a couple of days in Prescott with my son Collin, selling one of my trucks a 98 S-10, I put it on craigslist and it was sold half an hour later. That’s what you get for putting it on for 500 under low blue book. I sort of fell into another truck a couple of weeks ago, a 97 Toyota Tacoma which I picked up for a steal, thanks Sandy. It wouldn’t pass smog in California, so I got a special power of attorney and a bill of sale, changed all of the fluids, aligned her and brought her over to Arizona, 21 miles per gallon and 127 bucks later, I was her proud owner, I think I’m going to keep her.

During my stay in P-town, visited my buddies Larry, Jason and their families and found my new favorite beer, Dogfish Head, 90 Minute Imperial IPA, mmm, very good stuff. Also met up with Carla from Some Soldiers Mom along with her soldier Noah and Jim, we had an excellent meal at the Iron Springs Café.

Now I’m down in Phoenix after dropping the son off at the airport, hanging out with my dad. Spent this morning doing some automotive work on my step-moms car and had lunch with one of my best supporters when I was overseas, Sherri and her husband, she’ll be at Blogworld with CC which I’m sure is going to be a blast.

Tomorrow, I have an appointment to pick up a 2008 Dune Pearl Ford Fusion that I ordered from Exchange New Car Sales while I was in Iraq.

Ack! (which is the first 3 letters of the license plate on the Toyota). I’m getting rather long in the tooth and it’s about time I had bought a brand new car, never thought I would see the day. When I get all of my stuff out of storage, I’ll be selling the Suburban at a very discounted rate, anybody interested in an 89 diesel suburban?

More fun in the sun, hope everyone is doing good out there, it's good to be home.

Two Weeks Back

It was around 8 Monday night when we got off the plane, I came back in a smaller group of 25 people who weren’t part of the greater bulk of Marines who filled the rest of the flight going back to the states so when we hit the ground, the rest of them were making a formation while we milled around for a second then broke for the crowd. My wife was standing out of the gaggle like a pink jewel and we flew into each other’s arms and I can honestly say, that was one of the happiest moments of my life because for a time I thought it would never reach that moment again. The past deeds had been washed away and all that remained from that forge of the fire was our love for each other.

We stated at the Old Town Inn for 89 dollars a night which was really a great deal considering Comic Con was about to go on. (Sorry to all of you romantics, this is also going to be a post about good deals in San Diego for the Military). No, we didn’t have tickets to the Con which I was mildly disappointed about but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be back in time, next year we’re going to dress the occasion.

Tuesday we went out apartment shopping, I had in mind this gettoish apartment complex close to base because the bride wasn’t going to be living down here because she’s going to grad school up north but managers never showed up which ended up being a blessing. We went from place to place no one had a place available till we got to the one I’m in now. I opened the door to the office and there was a big bookshelf filled with books and I know, this is it.

We sat down and talked to the manager and she just had an opening which she was saving for someone else but she broke her leg and the apartment was on the second floor. I took it, not only was it cheaper, larger and had a nice deck but was the only apartment complex in the area that let you have dogs (for when Gatsby visits). It also has some of the better tropical landscaping that I’ve seen in San Diego. Nothing could go wrong this week, I'm home.

After getting the apartment, we went to the local ITT office (Information, Tickets and Travel) and see what they had to offer, we picked up some first run movie tickets at 8.50 a pop, saving 2 dollars a ticket, Hornblower Cruise normally 25 dollars was another 8. One Zoo ticket for Heather 26.50 and I was in free with Military ID. That afternoon we went to see Hellboy II and the next morning was off to the zoo. We took the sky ride to rear of the park and zigzagged our way back towards the gate. Not a bad way to spend the day, let me tell you, it’s a lot of walking.

I went back to work on Friday to take care of some post deployment paperwork and get online to print a Heroes Salute pass. Military families can get one free family pass annually to SeaWorld with ID. Actually there are several places that are free from there, SeaWorld is just the closest for me, you’ll have to check the site.

Saturday we met up there with my other son Alec from Prescott (my hometown, Alec is not my real son but Collin and him do look remarkably alike and I claim him most of the time), his mom Lynnae (whom I’ve known most of my life) sister Karma and stepdad Alex . Good times, I’m glad Lynnae and the bride got to finally meet.

On Sunday we went on the 2 hour Hornblower cruise around the bay. Saw the seals over by Point Loma to the south side of 32nd Street, probably one of the best 8 bucks I ever spent, if you’re local, don’t miss it.

Stepping back into the LPO position Monday was a definite shift, I had done a switch-a-roo with the guy going out, new faces, new issues, new bosses, a lot to take in all at once. One issue at a time and don’t let any one thing take all of the focus. Lovely NMCI had messed up my computer access so I was a work computer for most of the week which gave me time to tackle the problems that needed face and foot time (normally the things I handle after the computer time) and it seemed to work. Took a lot of notes and got a pass down ready for the guy taking my place when I go on leave 9 days later.

Even though I got back in July, while we’re deployed forward we earn “combat leave”, we’re tax free when we’re out there and earning 2.5 days a leave a month and that leave you earn there is considered tax free. If you take it the same month you come back, it’s just a waste because you are tax free that month anyways.

Back to work, I think I got most of the fires put out and my replacement up to speed on everything that’s going on but in reality? He probably had a better handle on the issues then I did because he’s been here the entire year and I just fell off the turnip truck.

Now, I have came up for and going to be heading out to Arizona in the mornin to see the family, next week I should be a proud owner of a 2008 Ford Fusion and minus one or two of my other vehicles. I don’t try collecting cars, they just appear like magic. It’s late and I have to drive all day tomorrow and don’t look forward to paying for gas. Peace out till I get back to the internets.

P.S. We'll be hitting the Blog Expo in Las Vegas, have the room paid for and our seats reserved.

One of my Martial Arts Videos

Out of 20 or so videos that I strung together to make the entire video, it will give you a taste of what I put together. These guys were going though the Tan, Gray or Green belt course and it was no joke. Sgt Luna was our instructor and I've never seen his like, great job brother. Video and pictures taken with the Canon S3 I purchased at the beginning of the deployment.



PS. Hellboy II rocks!

I'm home

and there is no place I'd rather be in the world right now and I think the picture speaks for itself. Thanks for the support.

Kuwaiting Take 8

Once again I’m hanging out in this hot and sandy place, we flew in early one morning and I said to Swear, “it’s not too bad today” and he replied with “it’s only 8:30 in the morning” and I said “Oh”. One of my Marines had injured their back during the unloading process so I made a trip over to medical where they kindly provided some medical care and on my dime, I took her over to Taco Bell for the first time in 6 months. Who knew Taco Bell would taste so good?

Got back to the barracks and crashed out due to the lack of sleep I’ve had over the last couple of weeks only to wake in a blast furnace. The power had gone off and it felt like it was 140 degrees inside and I crawled out into the 117 degree day and it was cooler out there. To think, there are people live like that all of the time. I had it good.
I’m watched black market DVD of Hancock and the dog on the movie looked like my dog Gatsby. The movie didn’t get great reviews but I liked it, far from perfect people with some incredible powers. I’m into a complex storyline that makes you fill in the blanks and has a potential for a lot more.

I think there’s a conspiracy against the Marines who come though Kuwait, for some reason on every one of my trips out here, they stick us as far from the chow hall as you can be and still be on base or at least putting the chow hall at the opposite side of the base from us. I think I would have lost a lot more weight if I was stationed here. It’s sort of like purgatory, considering all of the people in the bible were from places like this, they must have known what they were talking about.

Today I woke up around 10 (yay!) and went to chow at noon, then was going over to the internet café and there was a line and next door I saw a sign for wireless internet and it was 4 bucks a day and I was on that like white on rice and started walking back to the barracks but it was so hot that I had to make a pit stop at the Rec center and watched The Fifth Element and downed 4 bottles of water.

Then back to the barracks where I wrote this. Sounds like I’ll be back home before too long.

My first feature length film

As my time draws to a close out here, I had one more project to complete. The book form cruise book fell though because we couldn’t get enough people to buy them to make it economically feasible. So, the cruise book staff voted to make another DVD and me, being the DVD guru with a brand spanking new laptop to handle it was put in charge. We had less then a month.

First I needed to gather a game plan, we started brainstorming. All of the brainstorming somehow ended up coming out of my head for some reason, I had them gather up all of their personal pictures and video onto a cruise folder on the share drive, decide on a musical theme for their shop and teach them how to make movies so I could be more of a directing force behind them and focus on the extracurricular activities that I had filmed and taken pictures of, i.e., softball league, martial arts, field meets, etc. I would also go around the different shops and letting everyone from each shop give a greeting and intro.

So I went to work on my works of art. I started off with 30 hours of video and a couple thousand martial arts pictures and cut it down to less then 20 minutes. I knew what I had just had trouble finding the shots, I was overloaded with information, songs I had liked before became earworms with slideshows and video haunting my dreams.

After what seemed like an eternity, the Kung Foolery video was done (to be uploaded to YouTube when I get to the rear) and I turned away to check on the progress of my co-conspirators and found that only one shop had made any progress at all. The Military Intel guys had everything put together for their shop including the interview and it was nicely packaged (not quite as nice as mine) and ready to be added to the final product. One Cpl wanted to do the Kung Fu and her shop, I had to talk her out of it at the beginning because she didn’t know what she was getting into. I think I was a little harsh because she didn’t have anything ready but was willing to work on it.

Just about everybody else said, “we have no clue, please help us doc”. The hardest part of making a video for me is picking the music theme. After that, everything else flows into place, it takes a while but at least you have a rhythm to put a timeline. That gives you objectives on what kind of pictures or videos you want to match to the words or the tempo.

One shop kept turning in inappropriate songs for the family viewing audience and couldn’t agree on anything so I slapped their pictures together with YMCA by the Village People and stuck that on the share drive. They then came up with some music that worked and I redid it even though, YMCA did seem to work pretty well considering how little work I had put into it.

Anyhow, I’m tired and rambling, today, I finished the final product which ended up being 116 minutes. In two weeks, I had produced and published, almost totally by my self, a feature length film (other then the 20 minutes that 3 of the shops did). My last video which up to that point was the longest was 33 minutes.

Ack, it was a true bear but I’m glad it’s done, I’ll just have to see how what the responses are like since I was under a deadline, I didn’t have time for anyone (including myself) to edit any of my work (just like this post).

See ya on the flip side.

Running on Fumes

One thing that is good about being out at war is that I don't have to fork over a large pile of money to fill up my gas tank. That's all going to change before too long and I'll be back in the land of pumping gold into that tank. In fact, I'll be paying more then most because I drive a diesel.
I remember back in the early 90's, if I wanted to make a weekend road trip to Arizona, 20 bucks worth of gas would get me there and I would have enough gas to drive around for most of the weekend. Even being an E-3, it wasn't a strain on my budget, my biggest bill was the cost of insurance.
Fast forward to now, with the current gas prices, the same trip one way at 25 miles per gallon costs 68 dollars. While my wage has doubled since then, the price of gas has gone up 500 percent so road trips take up a larger piece of my financial pie and make me rethink taking those long road trips. My son from a prior marriage lives in Northern California and the cost of travel to see him has made a huge impact on my choices for my next duty station. I turned down some great orders to North Island to try getting orders to a place out in the middle of nowhere called Lemoore just so I didn't have to drive as far to see him.
Even so, I don't have it that bad, I make it a point to live as close to work as possible to avoid the commute but what about those people who live in the suburbs where they purchased a home because it was cheaper?
The popular place to buy a house if you live in San Diego is up the 15 freeway. Directly north lie the communities of Murrieta and Temecula which were at one time the secret place to get a good deal on a house. Traffic can be a bit heavy with the 55 mile drive but the bang for the home buying buck did make the drive worth it. Eventually, it wasn't a secret anymore and developers turned the entire area into new homes which many military people I know bought into the American dream of home ownership.
But now with the gas prices breaking records on a daily basis, when will that point come when they can't afford to make the drive home? Or how many Marines and Sailors have already hit that point? That's not even counting the 22 percent lost in home values for the San Diego area (taken from www.marketwatch.com article titled "Four years of gains in home prices wiped out"). The economy in general is hitting the military right in the pocket book.

Making a Video

The hardest part of making a unit video for me is the first step, coming up with the music and theme then bending my mind around that idea. Once that’s done, everything else does start falling into place, the gaps get filled in and there’s a sense of accomplishment as sections get done till finally, a finished product. With a good enough idea and the proper eye and ear candy, the video can take on a life of its own. I’ve discovered that these video projects tend to take over the creative parts of my brain and other things that I normally do like write, talk and read for pleasure, all of that get chopped off at the knees and I mumble, spill drinks and my blogging goes to crap.

I was the unit videographer my first trip out here in 2004 and had a bunch of spare time to make movies and post pictures on my fotopage and it was still a huge job. This time it’s a different story, I’m actually working pretty hard. Yes Anonymous Guy, I am at Camp Cupcake with a nice pool walking distance away but that doesn’t make my job any easier or change the distanc that I'm separated from my family. I'm just cleaner and a bit safer and no, I haven’t gone out to Salsa night (don’t need strangers to see my lack of dancing skills). Even though I was getting mortared and shot at on a somewhat regular basis in 2004, my job back then was worlds easier. Now I’m living in a paperwork jungle and miss the easy, drama free times when I was just a squadron corpsman and could work on these huge products while sitting around at work instead of on my spare time after a 12 hour workday.

But I admit, there was one perk about being at Camp Cupcake, Puddle of Mudd came out a couple of weeks ago and put on a show for the troops. I got to watch from 15 or so feet away and it was an awesome! I even got to use some of the bandages I had packed into my cargo pocket at the end of the night, a guy who was leaving 4 days from then got gashed in the eyebrow by a flying CD. I estimate 12 sutures.

Well back to screening music, still haven’t figured out the soundtrack for the second quarter, wish the bride was around, she sees everything through the lens of song.

My brain has stopped adding words together

I’ve hit the slump of the deployment along with many of the Marines and Sailors that I work the only difference is this is the first time that the slump has shut down my writing cold. I would put an idea on paper and try to expand on it and would end up having monosyllable conversations with myself. As painful as it is to have a conversation with one of those people, it’s worse to read it.

I did a two blog post a while back ago called Twilight of the Deployment (take one and take two) and I can’t really improve on either of them with this block filling up my head just to note that my unit is in that period of time.

The Dear John’s or Jane’s have started trickling in one party, here or there is shocked and can’t believe it’s happening to them. It’s that season of the deployment, between the middle till right before we get home. I’ve been here before and most of the Staff NCO’s I work with are on their second or third marriage, it’s the junior guys that worry me. Right now is where relationships crumble, one party realizes that they really don’t like being alone or that their significant other isn’t the “One” or meets someone special who isn’t far away and don’t know how to break it off with someone on the other side of the world then waits till right before they get home. There is no easy way to break off a serious relationship.

Where one party is lonely and falls for someone they are interacting with daily and breaks the relationship off. The spouse that cleans out the bank account and max’s out credit cards out of spite and disappears. Tired of the lack of email, phone calls, letters, etc. Tired of how the other party is spending their finances.

I see these stories every single day, the names and faces change and as a leader or a healer, you have to help these people make something constructive out of the crap that life took on them. For an air unit like mine, it’s not the suicide bombers or the mortars that cause most of us to toss and turn at night or think it’s not worth it anymore. It’s the worry about the person we expected to spend the rest of our lives with on the other side of the world. The military is tough on family life any way you look at it and there isn’t a cookie cutter solution that can fix all of the problems.

For me, this trip I’m just soul weary tired, 4 trips out here is beginning to add up and it’s tough to keep that cheery grin on my face or to find the words to put words down on paper. The last year was a bit rough on my psyche and I haven’t a chance to patch all of the holes that have been made. It all adds up in the end.

If I haven’t proved it in the past, I do write when I’m depressed but that’s not exactly what I’m feeling right now. I just a sense of numbness in my brain, I’m trying to talk some of them out, the heartache I’m feeling isn’t for me, it’s for the people whom I work with and care about. It sucks not having an answer to such big questions when they are so desperately. My head feels like I’ve stretched something too far and it broke away.

Speaking of away, while I wasn’t typing on the keyboard I did get a chance to read everything by an author named Jim Butcher and Bane, I agree, thanks for the tip. One of the ingredients that probably added to my writers block was the lack of sleep I was getting because I couldn’t stop reading. Seriously, he’s good.

I’m sorry for not popping my head up for an entire month, every writer I know hits a low point in their writing and this has been mine. Some days they flow from my fingers but I just haven’t found it lately and I’m not one of those people that like tossing up words.

A ticket to 1408

Just got done watching 1408 and I’m thinking it might be truly the spookest movie I’ve seen in years, John Cusack is the man. It’s going to give me dreams when I go to sleep. I’m not going to get into it more but to say, watch it, I would highly recommend it, yes, highly.

No good deed goes unpunished, I got dimed out from several different sources to put together the video that’s going to run during the 110th Corpsman Birthday ball so I’d better get rolling on getting the pictures and videos and pasting them together into something that seems magical. Lets see what I can come up with. Any of my readers received the video I sent out yet? Thoughts?

Hope everyone had a great week, next post should be about the great sand storm once I get the words together. Take care.