Where I've been in the US

Found this on a Farker's bio page, thought it was neat, so I did one myself.



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Moving On...

Well, here's how it is:

Sgt. Arflin has moved to a different job. He would prefer I not mention him in the weblog. He's no longer with the Fountain Inn unit.

SSG. Knight is working with a Special-Forces Liason unit, and will have to go through several years of military training. He's no longer attached to the Fountain Inn Unit (which, by the way, is now ALPHA company, 1/118th)

Anderson has married his girlfriend, and they have moved back to St. Louis, Missouri. So he's no longer attached to the Fountain Inn unit.

Horne is a construction engineer in a unit in Rock Hill, and he lives up thataway, so he's no longer with the Fountain Inn unit.

White is in the Wellford unit, so I don't ever see him, either.

Kind of a shame that I don't get to see any of the mortar guys anymore. My email has been acting up, too, plus I can't get to my us.army.mil email right now, so even if they tried to contact me that way it wouldn't work.

I do see several of the guys from FOB Lindsey at guard drills though. At least one platoon of Bravo company was stationed there, so I know about a third or so of the people that show up to guard drill now. Well, except for the fact that about half of the unit is made up of soldiers from the low-country who didn't deploy, so I guess really I know about 1/6th of the unit. heh.

Teaching, incidentally, is very challenging work. It's hard work trying to come up with ways to keep the students interested from day to day. I'm glad that this is a Christian environment, because that's really helpful to me personally. I don't know how teachers in secular Government schools manage to deal with it.

Hurricane Duty, Sept '08

Well, Hurricane Gustav scared the tar out of people in Louisiana, and I guess Governor Mark Sanford didn't want to look like he'd been caught not doing his homework, because when Hanna looked like she might impact Florida, Georgia, and SC, they decided to activate the SCARNG.

I got the call Tuesday afternoon, and had to report on Wednesday morning. We were doing prep-work at the armory Wednesday and Thursday, and then by Thursday afternoon, things looked pretty good, so the govt. decided not to pre-deploy us to the coast, and instead sent us all home.












That was the drill floor as we were getting ready. Most of the black boxes are stuff that got shipped home from Afghanistan. We have about 50% of the unit as guys who were deployed, and about 50% who were "stay behinds" for whatever reason.

I got reassigned to SSG Anderson's squad, in SSG Simpson's platoon. This is the best place for me, honestly, because SSG Simpson was my squad leader when he first joined the unit, and SSG Anderson and I were junior enlisted soldiers together, many years ago (like 10+), so I know both of them and have a lot of respect for them.

No pictures of my gear all spread out to be packed, nor pictures of the hurricane, sadly. Maybe next time.

First Week of School

Well, I haven't written anything in a while, because I've been getting ready for school. The first week of school has passed and it was an interesting experience.

I have learned that the 4 and 5-year olds really tire me out, even though I manage pretty well to keep them under control. The 6th, 7th, and 8th graders are usually pretty well behaved, although they do get a bit rowdy at times. I wonder if I've started off in too relaxed a manner, and things will get worse later, but there's no way to know right now.

I am mostly teaching typing to the older children, and basic computer skills to the younger children. Typing is an essential skill these days, and now that I think about it, is probably the only skill I learned in high school that I still use on a regular basis.

My wife and I have given up on EQ, and have tried trial accounts of World of Warcraft (several times, in fact) but can't afford to have WoW accounts this year. We've also looked at EVE Online, and we're watching with interest the development of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. We've both applied for the beta test, but haven't been accepted, sadly. We'll see if we can get into the open beta, and if our computers can run it with anything approaching stability.

Our children have started school, so that's fun for my wife. But other than that, not much is happening here. I hope your summer ended well (for those of you with children).

Lack of Contact

Well, we've been home now for... almost two months, I guess.

In that time, I've seen Anderson once, talked to him about four times on the phone, seen White once (at Dave Liembach's funeral), and traded MySpace messages once with SSG Knight. Other than the folks I saw at Dave's funeral, I haven't seen, or talked to, anyone else from Bravo company.

Because Captain Pinson is a member at my church, I've seen him about three times. But other than that, no contact with anyone from the unit.

I've found that if I hear one of the songs SSG Knight used to play over the radio while we were on missions, I tend to space out for a bit. But other than that, I'm not really suffering any side effects from the deployment. Well, I do tend to get a bit more uptight if somebody doesn't do their job, or if they cover for someone else who isn't doing their job. But that's basically it.

Latest Creations

Well, since I've been home, I've been working my butt off. I've been getting the children to do their chores, cleaning up around the house, trying to get a bit ahead of the housecleaning, mowing the grass, keeping the yard up, etc etc.

I've also been playing computer games, looking for useful stuff online to share with the children at GCS and that sort of thing. In addition, I've been reading Terry Pratchett and various other non-fiction stuff.

The only thing I've really put any effort into has been carving. I've done several more swords. I'm working on making one for each of the children, and considering possibly carving some to auction on E-bay. I mean, what's there to lose? I enjoy doing it, and if they sell for more than the lumber I use, then it's like getting paid to do something I like.

So, here is a picture of the latest four creations, with a large carpenters hammer to show scale:













I've been experimenting with using a saw to cut out the hilts. Sometimes this works well and shortens the carving time to a bare couple of hours. Sometimes it leaves the hilt very weak, though, so I'm not sure I want to do it very much. I've worked on making smaller two-handed swords, and on making "Link" style swords on a child's scale, and on making single-edged blades, kind of vaguely like machete's.

Anyway, the kids all like their swords, although they don't seem to do much of anything organized with them, they seem to use them to run around for a few minutes and carve up the air, then they kind of give up and go do other stuff. Maybe it's because of the humidity here making things hot, or maybe they just aren't terribly physically fit. Either way, I'm having fun carving them swords, and they're all excited about having them.

I am now a teacher

I have accepted a postion with a local christian school, managing their IT infrastructure, and teaching computer classes for a year. It promises to be a challenging, and rewarding position.

I also saw that the Supreme Court yesterday somehow decided that POWs should have access to the US Federal Court System, which is only going to motivate us infantry soldiers to try harder to ensure that we don't take any prisoners. Very smart on the part of the government. Really good.