Hooah!

Army Ten Miler - This is the 6th time that I have run it!

Really, I don't think you could ask for a better day for a race. Quite a contrast from last year’s "hell race" which actually killed someone. My time this year definitely reflected the awesome weather, a very respectable 91 minutes (obviously a 9:10 pace... gotta love the easy math).

The crowds, the attitudes (everyone was in a pretty good mood), the course (such a pretty course) and even the weather all combined to make it a great morning for a run.

And really! The wounded soldiers making the run? It makes the heart break to see them injured but it also causes my heart to swell to see them come out and run. I know that I and most of the other runners would definitely give them a quick word of encouragement or cheer (I of course went with the ubiquitous, "hooah!").

Now I need to rest my aching body one more day and then it is back to the routine.

Push

Neither one stuck their foot in their mouth. Very much not up to expectations.

Though I guess that technically is a win for Palin, since she hasn't exactly had a stellar time in the media as of late (not that Biden has exactly been stunning people). She most definitely outperformed expectations.

I still stick with my status from Facebook, "Dan is I suppose I should be a good DC person and at least watch the debate... though who really cares about the VP? I vote for the President, not the VP."

Let's Go Hokies!

I was lucky enough this past weekend to attend the VT/Nebraska game at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska.

It was quite an experience. 88 thousand people were in attendance, maybe all of 6-7k of them were Hokie fans. But we represented, almost all wearing Orange (some wearing the more camouflaged Maroon) and apparently we were far louder than any visitor team that any of our neighbors could recall (my family was sitting almost opposite to the Hokie corner and you could clearly hear the cheering and chanting from across the ginormious stadium).

Really, the game was a sheer, grip the edge of your seat game. While the Hokies grabbed the lead early with a Safety and a quick TD from an interception, there was no moment that night that that I felt completely comfortable with victory (probably due to my having seen the Hokies blow it so many times at this point when they do get ahead).

I will say that I have nothing but good things to say about the Nebraska fans. We were sitting deep in their territory and answered many questions (the most popular being of course, "What is a Hokie?") and other questions (I think overall they were impressed that so many people traveled so far for this game). They were also very gracious in defeat (it was such a close game they could be angry at their own team but not us... particularily since there really is no bad blood between VT and Nebraska), I even was given a brand new Nebraska hat as we were leaving the game

Other than the football game I was quite impressed with Nebraska (not that I would live there or anything... far too pedestrian unfriendly for my taste) but it has been 11 years since we went out there. I saw a number of relatives that I haven't seen since then and was actually pretty impressed with the way that they have developed downtown Omaha.

New TV Season - Sundays

A good way to prepare for the new week.

• The Amazing Race - Only Reality show that I really love. Travel, adventure, action and intrigue. What is there to not like?
• Most of Fox - Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad (just not a fan of King of the Hill)
• Brothers & Sisters - Another great show.
• The Unit - Hooah!
• Valentine - Gods? Why not, seems worth a try.
• Easy Money - will try most anything once.

New TV Season - Fridays

This is a rare night. One channel, 3 shows. I can hear my Tivo's sigh in relief about this evening.

• Ghost Whisperer - Yeah... I like JLH.
• The Ex List - will give it a few eps
• Numb3rs - Good interplay between the cast. Like the application of Science to real problems.

New TV Season - Thursdays

The only other, all 4 recorders running at the same time day!

• NBC Comedy block: My Name is Earl, Kath & Kim, The Office and 30 Rock.
• CSI - It will be interesting to see how Grissom disappears from the show
• Grey's Anatomy - Yeah I watch it. You got a problem with that?
• Supernatural - Back from Hell!
• Life on Mars - I am intrigued. The British version was fun, I will be interested to see how the American on will be.
• Eleventh Hour - Will give it a try.

New TV Season - Wednesdays

This is a much more relaxing night, though it makes up for it with quality by having 3 shows that I love!

• Pushing Daisies - Yes, I love this show. Quirky, funny, romantic, and just plain clever. I eagerly await the return of the Piemaker and his motley crew.
• Dirty Sexy Money - Delightfully sinful. Willing to take every cliche and hyper-extend it. I can't wait to see more of the Darling's exploits.
• Bones - Love Bones. The interplay of the characters is fun. The season opener in London was entertaining ("lets get out of here before someone else dies").
• Knight Rider - Will give it a shot
• Private Practice - Why not, just as background TV
• CSI:NY - Same as above.

New TV Season - Tuesdays

Hopefully today goes better than the disaster that was yesterday.

Tuesday is a bit less busy than Monday (what day isn't this season?)

• NCIS - Yep. I watch it and enjoy it.
• House - Fun.
• 90210 - On the bubble about this one. Currently use it as a background show.
• Priveleged - I LOVE this show. by far the best of the breed.
• Fringe - Looks like it has everything. I think that it just needs a bit more to "click"
• Mentalist - I will give it a look. Deep six otherwise.
• Eli Stone - cute show. Definitely low tier but fun to watch.

Car Free?

I went car free yesterday, though for me it isn't that hard. During the week my car will probably move 2, maybe 3 times (grocery store and maybe gym). When you live 3/4 mile from work and have a gym that is 1/2 mile away there can be many days where you can do without a car.

Ironically I do this and I have one of the most efficient cars out there, a Prius.

Disaster!

Dear Verizon FIOS... Perhaps changing the location of all the channels on the first day of the new TV Season was NOT a good idea. While I appreciate the additional HD Channels (SF Channel HD!!!) I do not appreciate that my poor Tivo's were very perplexed by this change. Read that as, I will be d/l-ing every show that was on last night since I was out of the condo yesterday evening (and I don't generally watch live TV so I was very perplexed when I saw no new shows on my Tivo's when I got back).

New TV Season - Mondays

And now to ignore all the political stuff and focus on what I find very important, the new TV Season! A bit late given the early start by the CW and Fox, but now that the teeth of things are starting:

What I will be watching (I am going to break :

Monday - Holy crap this is an awesome night (thank god for my Tivo Series 3 HD boxes, 2 channels per box)

• My Own Worst Enemy - should be interesting to see how it plays out. Slater looks to be a good addition to the TV lineup and the story sounds intriguing.
• CBS - pretty much the entire night. This may be the best night for comedy on. Big Bang Theory, How I Met your Mother, Two and a Half Men, and the new show Worst Week.
• Samantha Who - Loved the show when it was on earlier!
• Boston Legal - the last year. I will miss it when it goes off the air. I predict that the ending scene will be the Alan and Denny drinking scotch on the balcony. It would be fitting.
• Heroes - Looking forward to seeing how they can redeem themselves this season.
• Chuck - really looking forward to the new season.
• Gossip Girl - good for the images (what can I say, I am a guy and there are some fine looking women in this show) and for the teen drama.
• CSI Miami - I will have it on the background while doing other things. This is the show that I dump if I start running low on space (maybe after watching the first few minutes for the "Horatio Gaze." (which is absolutely hilarious to me))- I will have it on the background while doing other things. This is the show that I dump if I start running low on space (maybe after watching the first few minutes for the "Horatio Gaze." (which is absolutely hilarious to me))

Yes... I am a TV whore. Good old DVR's allow me to have a life though. Must... resist... temptation... to buy more storage capacity for my Tivo's......

Arr!

Gotta love Pirate Day! Anything to distract me from this election....

Anyone who disagrees with me can go walk the plank.

The Theme of the Day

I had my 9/11 moment earlier this week (though the flags flying everywhere definitely do pull at my heart this day):


Driving back on 395, a long, busy weekend. Finally almost home at 10PM (after leaving at 4AM on Friday), wearing my Army uniform and ready to see my parents and head to bed.


But as I cleared the turn that brought me right past the Pentagon from the HOV lanes all of that popped from my head.

Yes, it struck me... to see that flag there, in the foreground (not seen here) the lights representing those who lost their lives that day. In my hometown –Arlington, VA.

9/11 is and always will be personal to me. While I was immensely lucky to not lose anyone in the events of that awful morning, everything about it strikes a chord with me and my life:

• The poor, brave souls on UAL Flight 93. As someone who has flown so often in my life, I have little trouble imagining the terror and confusion on the plane that morning. People just like me that were traveling for business or pleasure and expected the greatest inconvenience to be dealing with the cramped seats, bad food and delays of air travel, but instead faced a horrible situation where the passengers rose to the challenge to protect their country.
• The civil servants, military personnel and contractors working in the bowels of the Pentagon to keep this country safe. Having been a contractor, serving as a National Guardsman and also being a civil servant, these were my people. My coworkers (in the grander scheme), comrades and peers who lost their lives in an unprecedented attack.
• And of course the lives lost in the WTC. I have lived in NYC, worked in the high-rises and consider it my second favorite US city. My family works there, my brother lives there.. Really, nothing can compare to the horror, terror and anger I felt at this violation and senseless loss of life that these attacks resulted in.

So, yes I slowed (not safe I know but I did look and there was no traffic at all behind me), I felt myself finger the flag that sits on my right shoulder of my ACU's and tossed off a short salute as I drove past. 9/11 was one of the impetuous for me to join the Guard and driving past in uniform like that was fulfilling a promise of mine to not feel as helpless as I did 7 years ago.

Juliana Hatfield rocked!

(or is "pop-ed"? She seemed confused as to whether she was pop or rock) All I know is that I really enjoyed her show.

A confluence of events led me to seeing her concert last night, an random click-around on Facebook that brought me to her fan page, the fact that the show was at Iota (a scant 15 minute walk from my place) and a date that ran short (nice girl, just not enough in common to make me think much of anything will happen. biggest hint to myself that I wasn't interested was that we were wrapping up and I glanced at my phone and thought, "cool! I can still make Juliana's show")..

Interesting note, I was standing next to some guys and this one was saying that he remembered that he had seen her a decade ago in southern VA, the other one then said that it was probably at Virginia Tech, probably in 1993. This caused me to pop in that I could definitely place it in 1995, since that was when I first saw her perform. This is funny because the 3 of us (and I have no idea who these guys were) were probably 10% of the audience at that show... It is a small world...

Man can she sing and play that guitar! I love her lyrics, they definitely are deeper than most. And at 41? Couldn't guess that, she is hot!

A well spent $15!

With great power comes great responsibility

So my Company (military unit, not commercial entity) has a new commander. With that came the discussion of having the Company sound off with a slogan when the come to attention.

Me, being the smart-ass that I am, promptly suggested (purely in jest, I swear) that we should go with "Can you hear me now?" We are a Signal (radio and computers to you non-military types) Company so that brought a few chuckles and then we moved on to other items of discussion.

That was until a couple of hours later when I was heading to the drill floor to see final formation and lo, what do I hear my platoon sergeant telling my Soldiers to sound off with? Yep, you guessed it, "Can you hear me now!"

Yes, I cringed.. and was still cringing the next few times that it happened. Hopefully (and it looks like it has some buy-in) we will be moving on to my next suggestion, "Signal Strong!", by the next drill.

I love this country

"I've got liquor, cash, food, ammo and weed," she said as she floated out of sight. MSNBC

Other than the last one I can completely understand. I guess it all depends on where you live down there.. I know that I have a few relatives riding it out in NO (their place is well above sea level and was perfectly fine during Katrina).

Uniforms

As noted I have some issues with the new Uniforms (mainly the new one that doesn't have a jacket).
But compared and contrasted, I like that we went with the Blue uniform.
Old Class A
New (or Old Dress Blue. Main difference will be no bow tie, just a regular one)


Anything that doesn't have me wearing hospital scrubs green wins... And given my branch, Signal, gotta love the Orange (there is VT bias).

Final Thoughts on Signal BOLC III

I have to be a little careful on this one.. The Internet can sometimes take a wrong turn and have this pop up on the wrong screen. And there is more than enough information in this blog for it to be traced back to my real life (it has happened before).

But here is my final take-away..

The course, overall, served it's purpose. People such as myself had to muddle through basic material that we already knew (hello... MS in Computer Science with 10 years of industry experience) but there were a few things that I didn't know (mainly radios).

One interesting trend throughout both BOLC II and BOLC III was how keyed the course is at the Active Duty side. We are constantly told statements that start with, "when you finally get to your unit" or "the first time you are in front of your platoon." Very useful advice for the AD folks, not so much for those of us in the Guard, since most likely we have been doing that for at least 6 months, longer for some. We just roll with it and roll our eye's (exchanging glances with our fellow Guardsmen).

The field problem could use more relevant equipment, since it uses old stuff that no one, not even the reserves, uses anymore. But given that the priority is equipping the field units that obviously will take a backdoor until everyone else is equipped (though I am not sure Iquite agree, since it would make training much more useful). Though I guess it does a good job at giving a bit of a feel for things, though it depends on which track you went through how useful the training was.

Alright, that is it. No more talking of Army training for a couple of more years. Thank god I am done with TRADOC, after basically being under them for the past 3 years (minus a little break where I was with my unit).

Back at it

5 months is a long time to be away from work. I actually was back at work the day after graduating from SBOLC, Thursday.



Seeing a lot of my coworkers (and my boss... a pretty good guy that shares my somewhat off sense of humor), meeting new coworkers, seeing how some projects have proceeded and, well, it felt good to be needed (the past 5 months left me somewhat feeling like a cog...). People were happy to see me, willing to listen to my input and it was interesting to catch up on some events. Hopefully it will be a while before I am not excited to go to work, because right now it's a pretty exciting prospect.



Nothing like being away to give you new perspective in life.

Excellent Decision

Ever since I heard her name mentioned as a distant possibility for VP, I had been hoping against hope that McCain would make the right decision and go with her. And against all the pundits arguing for Romney and all, I was right.

McCain/Palin!