my life, my thoughts, my world.

The last few days have been pretty “meh”. I certainly can’t complain much as there are many worse off then myself, so I won’t. My best friend’s baby brother Grant passed away on the 9th – if you’re the praying sort please pray for his family. I wish I could do more, but I can’t, at least not right now.

There are two new pics up in the gallery. One is the Diyala River as I’m going over it, and the other is the back of the M1114 I was behind. I took a lot more pictures, but I didn’t figure anyone wanted to see the inside of the front blast shield 50 times. Taking pictures while holding a .50 cal and scanning your sector is hard (and evidently I suck at it).

I’ve been awake for 28 hours, so I’m going to sleep now.

That’s right, two year ago was my first day in service. It sucked, and well today kind of sucks too! Funny how that works out. The good news is I only have two more years of active duty left. That of course assumes I don’t get stop-lossed and extended for another rotation in Iraq, but at any rate, in 2 years I can at least plan to get out of the Army, and move on with my life.

haha or not. 22 in Iraq, maybe today nothing in my sector will explode. I fully intend to play guitar for several hours when I get off work, and maybe watch a movie or 3.

Nothing new at all. Really, not a single thing. I restrung my guitar for the 4th time out here. Given my typical routine of every 2 weeks, I’m actually doing pretty well on the conservation of guitar strings, not that I need to, I still have 5 sets left so I’m pretty sure I’ll make it through OIF3 without running out of guitar strings.

I may do some geekish babbling about how the Sony PSP totally rules later. I’ve had mine for quite a while, I’ve only just now decided that it really does rule on high. poor nintendo ;_;

A friend of mine from High School just posted a load of pictures from his recent trip to SE Asia – check them out here.

I remember when the Petronas Towers were the foundation, and a skeleton of the lower halves of the buildings. Really I haven’t thought much about my time in Malaysia since I left, but seeing a bunch of new pictures brought back a lot of old memories. Pearl Jam’s “Rearview Mirror” (Vs.) just came on my playlist, and brought back a few more. I must have listened to that song a thousand times in the Cameron Highlands. That’s all for now, I’ve got to head to work.

It’s always good to reconnect with an old friend. The other day I got back in touch with a good friend from my days at The University of Texas at Arlington. We lost connection with each other somewhere between me graduating One Station Unit Training, and her graduating from UTA. Nearly two years later someone linked me to a story online at the Caller Times, her name was mentioned in it – so I took a shot in the dark and e-mailed the Caller. A few days later, I got an e-mail from Beth. Funny how these things work out.

Most people would agree that hate is not a good thing. I’m not typically that optimistic when it comes to my fellow man, but I’ll go on a limb and say the majority of people aren’t of the opinion that hate is good. Why then do I see so much of it? The volumes of unrestrained hate I’ve read lately directed at the entire Islamic population of the world is enough to make me sick. Those claiming that all Muslims are evil people that wish to kill every infidel on the planet – and then justify their own personal desire to irradicate the islamic on the word of Christ need to sit down and read the Bible again.

Muslims do not hold a monopoly on killing in the name of God. Extremists from a multitude of religions and beliefs have resorted to violence to try and push their agenda. The Crusades, the IRA, China, Japan, Nazi Germany – grab a history book, the list is long and distinguished. I see a common thread among them all – man.

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
John 8:7

Here comes another limb to climb out on. Compared to your average American or European, something tells me I have spent a great deal more time around Muslims than most. I grew up in an Islamic nation. Right now, I’m deployed to one. There are extremists in both – and like all extremists they aren’t going to be gracing any Hallmark cards anytime soon. Great wonder of wonders, there are good people in both countries too! I’ve lived and worked with them, they dislike the misguided extremists just as much as I do, and in many cases they too risk their lives to minimize the effects extremists can have in this world.

Let’s can this whole hate bit.

Today, was probably the hottest day I’ve ever experienced. At least 3 different 120 degree thermometers were completely pegged, and I heard someone mutter something about 136. Walking from the TOC to my CHU put me into the wind, and I swear it felt like my face was on fire, and my eyeballs were boiling. I feel sorry for anyone that was on patrol, or guard today after lunch. The heat was just insane.

I’m sore as hell right now, I took a PT test yesterday and whoa. Army standards for PT are a complete joke, I easily passed everything (including maxing my run, unintentionally.) At any rate, I’m still all kinds of sore. My knees are pissed, and for some reason my back is killing me. Tiger Balm to the rescue!

Sleeptime nears, so I think I’ll do the only logical thing and play guitar.

Still trying to figure out exactly how I want to lay all this out. I’m going to begin bringing over most of the content from the old site (think noblingblog). A slip of the hand over the horrid lag that is my connection, ssh, and wanton use of rm -r resulted in all of my Blogger.com content going the way of the dodo.

WordPress – at last. Needs tweaking. More to follow.