my life, my thoughts, my world.

Day 97

Originally uploaded by macktruckturner

The only thing I did that even remotely counts as productive was to run the line out from my Boss BR864 into the line in on my Macbook Pro so I could use my microphone to record stuff. In the process I decided to go ahead and export the songs on the Boss to GarageBand just to give it a shot. There are few things in this world more horrible than a drum machine, especially the one on the Boss (which is known to the State of California to cause ear cancer in certain species of rats). GarageBand does a better job, allowing me to change many aspects of each drum kit sound – but it’s no drummer.

This revelation of course brings me back again, to a land far away (from home anyway), at a time roughly a decade ago. There was a group of WayCoolDudes™, I played guitar with this most awesome group, well after I taught a few of the a chord or four (how many were really needed in the mid-90′s anyway?). Even then there was a real drum set in the room, and that drum set made big sound from a little dude (hell none of us were huge at 12). Long before I even had a clue who Jack Black was, or knew of his crusade to spread that which is ROCK – I knew of the Rock and/or Roll. I’m pretty sure that for the better part of 3 years, I never once came home from school on time – you could find me and the rest of the keepers of Rock (and the word of Hendrix) making entirely too much noise in a practice room on campus. Hopefully, when I trade my SGT in for a Mr, I can have a high wattage reunion with those guys as we all still keep in touch. A number of explosions, and ridiculously loud vehicles have pretty much destroyed my hearing, so I think I’ll turn it to 11 this time.

That’s all for now, I’m going to go play with GarageBand some more, and hope Iraq stays quiet for the rest of the night.

A little of everything this time around. My wish list has been updated to reflect the stuff I do believe I’ll be buying when I get back. The top bit is stuff I plan on buying, and using in addition to the gear I already have for my shot at my crazy photography for $BLING$ idea/plan/hope/WhateverYouWantToCallIt(tm). The stuff at the bottom is more stuff I’d like to add, but can hold off for a while. Well over $15k in goodies combined.

Rumor has it there are some pretty good movies out, or coming out soon. I want them. Good movies rule. Brian, Jordan, this is pretty much a task for you – being the two dudes I trust most to recommend MoviesThatDon’tSuck(tm). Some funny stuff may well come out of the sandbox given a few plans floating around with some friends – and I’m more than willing to use whatever gear I have out here to help make them happen. Stay tuned.

I clean my M4 too much. Not that I assume it will see any use, but because I really can’t stand a filthy weapon. Walking to the toilet is enough to get it full of sand, and that is pretty annoying. In fact, just sitting here for 12 hours on shift is enough to let it collect enough sand for a small child to play in. Also, I miss my 1911s – why, I’m not sure, but I do. When I do return, I’m probably going to have to buy an M4, a carbine upper for my Commander, and a few thousand empty .45ACP cases, bullets, and primers (along with the required gunpowder.) I haven’t reloaded in a while, but I’ll definitely be rollin’ my own as soon as I can.

A few days ago a song popped into my head, lyrics first. Usually it happens musically first, then ReallyBadAndPointless(tm) lyrics show up. Actually, I’ve never had lyrics before I had music. Weird. Anyway, when I get a place, and some time, I shall record it. it’s in A Minor for anyone curious, but that’s all I’m saying. Having my Strat would be most helpful, as it could rock if I turned the volume to 11 – I’ll just have to do the unplugged cut first, and get it all loud and awesome later.

When I packed my BoxOfShitToSaveMeFromBoringDays(tm), I left out all my programming books. Big mistake. Don’t get me wrong, I still hate programming, and rarely come up with anything worth coding in the first place, but at least it gives me SOMETHING to do. Guess I’ll just have to download some AppleScript stuff and have fun “mastering” OS X, until I break something and have to use one of my spanky backups to save the day.

That is all for now.

First of all, I have to say my feelings go out to the victims and families that have suffered at Virginia Tech. My ability to follow the news is limited to a choppy feed of Fox News without audio, but just the info scrolling in the ticker is enough to show how tragic the shooting was. Out here death and carnage is something you pray doesn’t happen, but come to expect. That should never even be the concern of students and professors in a classroom. Unfortunately the human element can bring pain to any location, and there is no real way to stop those willing to bring that pain on their peers.

Changing lanes, I’ve got to thank everyone that has read this, and sent items from my list. As of today, I’ve recieved enough weapons cleaning supplies to last my section at least three months, over 20 bars of soap (20 came in a box from Michigan today, along with two bags of Sweetarts), several sticks of deodorant, more gum than I could have imagined, a mega pack of toothbrushes and toothpaste, and a much needed box from my sister (Natalie) and brother-in-law (Tyler) with name tapes and even more cleaning supplies for my section’s weapons. Being located solidly in the middle of nowhere, and away from any MSR, our ability to recieve mail is highly dependent on conditions we can’t always control. That being the case, my mail may get to Iraq and sit at LSAA for 3 or 4 days before it can get put on a convoy to FOB Hammer. From there our mail staff get the pleasure of sorting a MILVAN full of mail for over 2500 soldiers in the heat of the day just so we can have it by dinner the same day it arrives.

Today I initiated the paperwork to enroll in the Army’s Savings Deposit Program. I should have done it during OIF3, and won’t be making the same mistake again. Basically, it’s an account the Army keeps for you during a deployment that returns 10%APR compounded quarterly, up to $10K. May as well make as much during this second (and final) deployment as I can, and interest is a good way to do that. I’ll be dumping in enough each month to hit the $10K ceiling before this deployment is done. Having far fewer bills this time around that I did in OIF3, I can do this while maintaining my normal savings allotment, and still having more cash from each paycheck left to burn than I normally do when not deployed. My intent is still to ETS when I get back, buy a house in Houston, and finish school. 15 months of combat pay should make that rather doable.

That’s about it for now.

Aside from the update I just made to my mailing address here in Iraq, I have not posted much to my blog. The reason, of course, is that I can only get online at work – along with the 40 other people on shift. Granted, this machine has been MY computer for over 3 years, and my login is one of the TWO in the Brigade Combat Team that actually works on it – I try not to be a shithead, and let everyone use it so they can make sure they’re getting paid/charged properly or send email to their loved ones. Quite a few people take that opportunity to screw around on the internet for hours at a time, so I’ll have to quit being so generous and switch into shithead mode.

Free time is limited to sleep, since I work a midnight to noon shift. I get off, take a shower, and pass out. That gives me about 6 hours of sleep before dinner. I could sleep through dinner, but I’d be entirely too hungry before breakfast, so I wake up. Considering I’m back in a combat zone, 6 hours of sleep ain’t bad at all. I’ve done more, on less, so no complaints here really. My guitar is here on the FOB, and tomorrow I intend to liberate it from the hot steel box it is in right now. I’m sure the strings are screwed, so hopefully my folks remembered to send a set of replacements (D’Addario EJ26s if I recall correctly.) My poker set should be in the box too, so I’ll have something else to do. Spades is a horrible game, and quite boring when you win even with a string of crappy hands. Pay. Attention. Pretty hard to lose if you pay attention to what is being played, who is cutting what, and what spades have been thrown down.

I’ve been keeping up with the 365day photo challenge at Flickr. In fact, that is about all I have uploaded since I got to theater. Right now I am playing catch up, I’ve taken a photo of myself every single day since I mobilized for this deployment, but I haven’t been able to upload every day. I can upload now, but it is VERY slow, and I can only add 5 photos per day to the 365day group pool. My current plan is to upload 5 of the 365day challenge photos every day on my shift, until I am caught up. After that, I’ll upload a new one daily, and start uploading 4 or 5 of my other photos each day. It takes nearly an hour just to upload 5 photos, so we’ll see how that works out for now.

The Macbook Pro is doing fine, as is the 500GB drive I’ve been backing up to. Hopefully everything remains functional throughout the deployment. If not, the FujiP is back in Iraq, and will do what it needs to do, when it needs to do it. Newegg still ships to APOs, so should things start shitting the bed, I can at least order more drives to save the day, etc. Mostly the MBP has been playing DVDs and working on a movie project in iMovieHD. I am taking all the footage I have from when my guys got back from OIF3 (I got back before some of them), and the drinking that followed, as well as a video slideshow of my favorite photos from OIF3 and putting that in a “movie” along with the footage I’ve already taken here during OIF5. While I’m on shift I can’t get any new footage (OMG CLASSIFIED), but afterwards I can get some of my soldiers being themselves. We’ll see what that all equates to when I’m done. If nothing else, it keeps me occupied for a while and saves me from boredom from time to time.

The level of suck out here deserves new blues songs, and I’ve got a lot of them in my head. Now that the guitar is here, I’ll start writing them, and eventually – recording them. The world may have to wait for me to go on R&R, or get back from Iraq for good before they’re online – but it’s a project I’m working on. My goal is 8 new songs, they don’t have to be blues, but chances are most of them will be – don’t be surprised to find a lot of Psalms/Proverbs references.

To say I miss my motorcycle would be an understatement. Right now, I’m not planning on doing much on R&R that does not involve me riding my motorcycle. Hurricane Season, are you listening? Give me another R&R hurricane, and I’ll be 57 flavors of pissed off.

That is all.

Just a quick little recap of this week. I sent my Rebel XT back to Canon, they got it and have responded that it will be fixed at no charge to myself. Estimated time to me having my camera back is 7 business days. My truck is still having some problems in the braking department, while it will certainly stop real quick and fast like I am not a fan of the non-ABS related pulsing I’ve got going on, nor the shake in the steering wheel. Having essentially a squad worth of brand new privates to keep in line, and look out for – I don’t have the time to further investigate these issues myself.

Having no doubts in my own abilities as they relate to auto mechanics, this whole concept of allowing others to work on my vehicles is not something that sits well with me. Really it never has, and on most occassions where I have broken down and allowed other people to work on my vehicles, I end up having to redo the work myself anyway. Unfortunately, I’m starting to understand why my Dad has in the past taken his car to the shop instead of doing it himself. Time. Somewhere, someone decided to start cramming more than 24hrs worth of work into a given day. We get backed up, or worn out – and then simple things like fixing your own car turn into tasks to add to someone else’s day, as it sure as hell isn’t going to fit into yours.

A number of times this week I thought about setting my Soekris net4801 up on m0n0wall, however time constraints again bit me in the backside. Add my time issues to the fact that I’m presently having exactly zero problems with the minimal Debian Sarge install currently handling my routing, firewall, qdiscs, and dhcp – and I see no real reason to move to m0n0wall. Sure, no rotating parts, but *knock on wood* I’ve been running this over a year now with no real issues. Thanks to my friend dd should my disk fail, I can be up and running again in short order.

On the music front, again I’ve been playing much acoustic guitar lately. I’ve had to work hard to avoid spending more money I don’t really have on more guitar equipment I don’t really need. One thing I should do is change the strings on my RD20S, and my Strat. Somewhere down the line I should also take the AD60CK out of the case and play it – I’ve forgotten what it even sounds like. That being the case, I may just end up selling the AD60CK and replacing it with something else – like a semi-hollowbody electric, or a dual humbucker set neck solidbody electric. Who knows.

If you’re paying any attention to the Audioscrobbler bit over to the right, you see I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Seger lately. What prompted this? The latest issue of one of the big motorcycle magazines, either Cycle World or Motorcyclist, I forget. It mentioned Roll Me Away as a great motorcycling song, which reminded me how often my Bob Seger CD made it’s way into my deck for multiple repeats on long drives across the country. There’s really not a single bad song on this album. Who knows, maybe I’ll hit up Tom Petty next week.

Quick post just to say Open G rules. I love the blues. That is all.

Looks like we’ll be jamming regularly now. It’s a pretty good time, we play pretty much the same songs every time but whatever. The other guy wants to learn, so I’m teaching him what I can in the time I’ve got. Had some pics taken tonight, they’re up in my Gallery

Last night was about 100 degrees. Not the best outdoor guitar playing weather, but would I let a silly thing like that stand in my way? Not only no, but hell no! Another good session – polished a few songs we worked on last time. Another soldier from another company joined the group and played along. Gave me the chance to do two things I love – play guitar, and teach someone else new things. w00t.

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Dave Matthews – particularly the tracks from the Some Devil album. There’s a lot of great guitar work from both Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds on this album. A bunch of them follow no clear progression at all, which is great because Dave pulls it off well. I used to hate the Dave Matthews Band for some reason presently unknown to me – but I have to give him credit for breaking all the rules, and making some great music in the process.

The vast majority of the music on my laptop and on my ipod came from the CDs I owned, and ripped to mp3 format. Then there’s the directory or twleve that I have no clue how I came across. Bad Brains? No clue who that is. Black Flag? Know who they are, don’t know how I came to have an entire directory of them. Blaster the Rocker Man? Whiskey – Tango – Foxtrot. What am I doing about it you ask? Surely not deleting it, never know when you’ll need some wildly obscure tunes. I am doing the only logical thing, and bravely going where someone else obviously already went. That’s right, I’m on a mission to have exactly 0 never played tracks on my ipod.