Lo and behold, I finished a book.  For me, that’s an accomplishment.  When I can only get about 20 minutes a day to read, finishing anything lengthier than the back of a cereal box is memorable.

Last night, I finished Sandman Slim, by Richard Kadrey.  Plot synopsis without too many spoilers:  Man returns to this world after spending 11 years in Hell without dieing.  He’s back to kick ass and chew gum, and he’s fresh out of gum.  He bumps up against unholy ethereal creations, Homeland Security, and life in Los Angeles.

It’s a gritty and fun page turner.  The main character is the ultimate anti-hero.  That is to say, he’s a mean SOB who’s mean for a reason. 

If you’re devoutly Christian, be warned that this book pokes all kinds of holes in and fun at Christian dogma about God, Lucifer, angels, and the residents of Hell. 

I’d suggest this as a good weekend read.  Since it’s the first of a series, I’ll be getting the rest of it as time goes by. 

Today I’m starting a series of posts that detail some of the things I learned during my years in the Army.  I’ll try to not turn these into a bunch of “no shit, there I was, up to my ankles in mud, blood, and beer” posts, but some of these things have been rattling around in my mind for a while, and it’s time to let them out into the wild.  I’ll rely on you guys to keep me honest and not let me turn this into a series of war stories.

First, a couple of disclaimers:

First of all, a lot of the things I talk about in this piece are taken from other sources. Either it comes from people with whom I’ve served, whose work I’ve read, or who’ve I’ve heard speak on television or at lectures.  Where possible, I’ve attributed my quotes or phrasing to the source.  If I’ve missed something, please bear with me, I’m only human.

Second, I’m not Sergeant Rock or Audie Murphy.  I did some really fun and cool things when I was in the military, but I was never a Ranger, Special Forces, or even Airborne or Air Assault.  I had the privilege of working with and for some excellent leaders who came from backgrounds in these specialties, and their influence is found thoughout this piece.  Also, I didn’t attain high rank within the military.  I served as a Sergeant (E-5) for the last 6 years of my 9 years on active duty.  Sergeant was the rank I wanted when I was a private, and that’s where I got to and stayed.  I don’t have some hokey reason like “I wanted to stay in touch with my people” or some such garbage for not doing those things necessary for promotion.  To be honest, I was having too much fun being a buck sergeant to want to be promoted.  I did try for OCS once, and when I left the Army, I was promotable to Staff Sergeant, but I took the tests for OCS to satisfy someone else’s ambition, and I went to the promotion board so that my supervisor wouldn’t get in trouble.

Last, I don’t want to drop names, but I feel that some people need to be singled out by name.  The people who influenced me are still a part of my life, even though I haven’t seen most of them in years, and they deserve my thanks and recognition.  Drill Sergeants  Decker, Hill, Busby, and Dunlap, who taught me that convincing your subordinates that you’re a little crazy is an effective motivational tool.  SFC Gardipee showed me that ability is what makes you a leader, not gender.  Command Sergeant Major Byron taught me that it’s more important to accept a bad order with dignity than it is to let the bastards know they’re getting you down.  Captain Degnan taught me that a good leader cares more for his troops than he does for himself.  Captain Fasone taught me that you should never be 100% satisfied, and you don’t have to be a nice guy or be liked to get results.  Captain Randy Jones showed me that it’s OK to be liked as long as you are respected.  Lieutenant Harold Brown taught me that teaching is a two way street, and noone goes home if we all don’t go home.  There were others of course, and I will bring them up as we wend our way through my ramblings.

As for those who I never knew, but who influenced me, they did it mostly through the books I read.  I’ve been reading military nonfiction, fiction, and science-fiction for most of my life, and it’s had a pretty profound influence on what I’ve become as an adult. 

First to come to mind is David Hackworth.  Colonel Hackworth entered the Army as a private, was battlefield commissioned in Korea, and served several tours in Vietnam.  I read his autobiography “About Face” when I was a 19 year old private, and I’ve re-read it about once a year ever since.  I regularly read his newspaper and magazine articles, and have read all of his books at least twice.  If only half of what he wrote about himself and his life is true, he’s still as hard as chicken lips.  One of my regrets in life was not to have met Mr. Hackworth before he died to thank him for his service and message.  I’m 39 years old, and I still want to grow up to be David Hackworth.

Next is Anton Myrer.  Mr. Myrer wrote an excellent novel titled “Once an Eagle”.  It’s the story of a man who joins the Army just in time for the Mexican expedition, serves in France in WWI, leads a division in WWII, and finally ends his story as an observer in Vietnam in the early 1960’s.  He’s the archetypical good soldier and leader.  Juxtaposed to him is the careerist officer that works his butt off to get promoted at the expense of his subordinates and peers.  Excellent reading for anyone who wants to be a leader.  As a matter of fact, I’ve never met a good officer or NCO who hadn’t read this one at least twice.

Next comes Robert Heinlein.  OK, most of his work is escapist, right-wing pulp.  But “Starship Troopers”, while pretty naïve about military life, is an excellent read, and some of its message means a lot to me.  I especially like the theme of “If you haven’t proven that you are willing to sacrifice for the benefit of society, you don’t get to have a position of authority in society.”  More politicians should have to pass a quiz on this one.

Also, please forgive me for rambling.  Old age tends to do that to me.  Don’t think 39 is old?  Ask any 18 year old private what he thinks of a 39 year old veteran, and one word will come out:  old.

My buddy and I got up at Oh-God-It’s-Early this morning and headed off to the wilds of North Ohio.  After keeping his VW just barely on the ground on the way up, we got to Camp Perry.  This small Army post has a retail store for the ODCMP.  Additionally, it is hosting the annual National Shooting Matches.

Buddy went to buy himself an M1 Garand, and I was along for the ride.  We spent quite a bit of time looking at all of the Garands, and eventually he picked out a very nice Field Grade Garand with mostly WWII parts.  Not being there to buy a gun, I had to show a lot of restraint to not buy anything more than a tee shirt.  I already have a Garand, and I just bought a metric buttload of rounds for it.  That’s not to say I wasn’t tempted.  There were quite a few beautiful shooty things to be had:

The CMP appears to be running low on M1 Carbines, but had a LOT of Garands.  There were also a few stripped heavy barrel 1903A3 actions, but no complete 1903 rifles.

One Garand in particular grabbed my eye.  It was a 1950’s vintage manufacture, probably with the original barrel.  There was almost no muzzle erosion, the bluing was about 90%, and the only defect that I could see was that the wood in the stock didn’t match the hand guard.  It was a Service Grade, which ran $600.  I looked it over with Buddy, looked it over myself, carried it around for a while, looked at it again, then took a deep breath, wiped away a tear, and put it back on the rack. Just didn’t have it in the budget, and asking Irish Woman to live on ramen noodles and generic hot dogs for a couple of months so we could afford it was not a good idea.

One thing occurred to me while we were looking around:  Gun people are some of the nicest people around.  As you can see, there were quite a few people in the store looking at guns.  Some were newbies like us, but a lot were old hands who were looking for a diamond in the rough.  When they noticed that we were seriously looking, several older shooters took us under their wings and explained how to grade these rifles, how gauging the muzzle and the chamber works, and how to tell when the receiver, muzzle, trigger, stock, and all of the other parts were manufactured and by whom.  Tell me you’d find that at most other activities where the old hands are competing with the newbies to buy quality merchandise.

After we left the store, we wandered down to the area where the matches were being held.  Today several shooting clinics were occurring.  One in particular caught my eye.  The Marine Marksmanship Team was teaching long range shooting to high school students:

Those targets in the background are 600 yards away.  The AR-15’s the students were shooting are usually only shot at point targets out to between 300 and 400 yards.  These kids were hitting the targets.  Pretty impressive.

By the way, knowing what good shots most of the Marines I know are, just how godawful good with a shooting iron do you have to be to qualify for the Marine Marksmanship Team?

Overall, this was a wonderful day.  I definitely need to work to improve my long-distance shooting and get into a club.  I want to shoot at Camp Perry one of these years.

We packed up ourselves and the new purchase, and made a low-level flight down I-75 and I-71 back to Louisville.  I have had a very long, very good day.  Hopefully more days like this are in my future.

Customers at a BP filling station in New York were showered with fire retardant chemicals after a small explosion.

“It was crazy! It first poured out like it was water, and then turned into a huge white cloud,” said Henry Pacheco, 29, a moving company worker who had just bought a lottery ticket at the station.

You know, I’m just paranoid enough that my first thought would have been chemical weapon, not fire extinguisher.  Bravo to the men and women who helped each other out until emergency workers could get to them.

1. No, you do not need root, oracle, or administrator rights. If your software demands it, re-code or find another vendor.
2. If you utter the words FTP, telnet, rsh, or rexec in my presence in reference to my systems, then I think you need to either re-design your solution or find another SysAd. I will not break corporate policy or industry best practices to make your life easier.
3. I do not now, never have, nor will I ever care about what your previous SysAd did for you.  If you want me to do your job or the job of your contractor/vendor, then I want payment from your or their salary up front.  If you can do it yourself with the rights that have been assigned to you, then it’s your responsibility, not mine.
4. I will answer my cell phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for you.  I will bleed through my eyes in exhaustion to bring your services back up in an emergency.  I will work through the night, while my children are peacefully asleep and by all rights, so should I, so that your customers aren’t overly inconvenienced by downtime.  But if you come to me on a Friday afternoon and announce that there will be a planned upgrade this weekend that you didn’t think to tell me about, don’t act surprised if I get a little red in the face while I sit there and hold back the torrent of obscenities that are filling up my mind.
5. Yes, it costs that much.  I know you can go to BigBox Electronics and get something for a lot less, but I’m not going to jeopardize our business using some crack-house solution because you want to save a few dollars. Yes, I said crack-house.  No I didn’t mean ghetto.  The difference between crack house and ghetto is that a man can still be proud in a ghetto.  There’s no pride in a crack house.
6. No, I don’t think we need to meet every week.  Face to face is essential, but not every bleeding week.  A status report and a quick phone call should be sufficient at least half the time.
7. I don’t work for you.  I work for my manager, his manager, and so on until you get up the food chain to the CEO.  I do, however, work with you.  If you need something from me, please feel free to ask for it.  Contrary to popular belief, I’m an easy guy to get along with.  I may object to what you ask for, and you may not get what you want each and every time, but I will at least be pleasant and explain why you can’t have it and suggest other options that may satisfy your requirement.
8. Going to my manager because I told you no, told you it would be expensive when your crack house solution would be cheaper, or tried to help you find a better solution that doesn’t resemble a Rube Goldberg cartoon will get you precisely nowhere.  He was a SysAd himself, and will back me up to the hilt if what I did or said is right.  If I say something that scares or offends you, then please, go talk to him about me.
9. Do not try to intimidate me.  I am a veteran, have four children, two ex-wives, and am married to a full-blooded Irish redhead.  Do you really think that threatening to give me a negative rating on my personnel review is going to scare me?
10. Please remember that I am not being a jerk just for the fun of it.  I am just trying to follow the rules that have been set down by our company for how we do business, which is to be spend money smartly to ensure that our solutions work, to keep our data and our customers’ data secure, and to plan our work so that everyone gets what they need and some of what they want.  We’re all trying to do the same thing here. 

LawDog is articulating exactly what I feel about this:

Having identified their target, a fierce battle ensued during which the warlord was killed. To prove that they had got their man, the Gurkhas attempted to remove the body for identification. Further enemy fire necessitated a fast exit minus corpse. So, an unnamed soldier drew his kukri  –  the standard-issue Gurkha knife  –  removed the man’s head and legged it.

The allies are blowing quantities of Taleban into mincemeat with assorted artillery rounds, bombs, mortar shells, bombs, rockets, bombs, missiles, and bombs — you damned well can’t tell me that all the sticky bits are getting recovered after Abdul the Moderately Rabid catches a 500-pound GBU amidships — so why are you getting all wrapped around the axle because one or more Gurkhas did the needful with a knife instead of high-explosive?

 Too many of us have forgotten that war is a costly, bloody, disgusting thing.  It is not neat and sanitized like a movie or a video game.  Even the gun camera videos from helicopters and Raptors fail to show how brutal being on the receiving end can be.

And that’s the point.  If you don’t have the stomach for what the soldier on the ground has to A. complete the mission, and B. get home in one piece, then don’t send him to do your bidding. 

Troops like Gurkhas are trained from an early age to find, fix, and flay their enemy.  And now the British MOD is having a hissy fit over it.

This young man should be given a medal for finishing his mission in such a way that lessened the danger to his unit, not sent home to await punishment after an investigation.  The MOD needs to be flushed like a filthy stable and re-peopled with personnel who understand what it’s like at the sharp, shitty end of the stick. 

I took a couple of days in the middle of the week to spend time with Girlie Bear and get some stuff done.  I seem to enjoy taking time off during the week rather than just having a long weekend. 

Wednesday was “Clean the House” day.  It’s been a while since we did a wholesale cleaning of the house, and I always do housework better when I’m alone.  The kitchen was completely dismantled and scrubbed.  The living room and dining room were dusted, washed, and the floors were cleaned using Irish Woman’s electric mop.  Nothing like the smell of Murphy’s Oil Soap.

While I was working, I thought of something.  We’re not dirty people, and we do regular maintenance cleaning, but nothing brings you down to earth like looking at how funky your mop water is after cleaning the house.  When I was done, the floors shined, and the house smelled wonderful.

That afternoon, I broke out the clippers and started shearing Shadow.  His Newfie ancestry had made him quite shaggy, and he’s been shedding bad enough to change the color of the rug he sleeps on.  Add to that the hot and muggy summer we’re having, and he’s been miserable.

It took three passes over each area to get him shorn, but when I was done, he no longer looked like a throw rug with ears and a tail.  I didn’t take him down to skin, well not in most areas anyway.  He has enough fur left that he looks like most other black field labs.  I didn’t do anything funky like carve a message into his flank or give him a mohawk, but the temptation was there.  It’s not the most expert job that could have been done, but the only part that looks really weird is his tail.  He would not sit still at all, so his tale is completely uneven.  Oh well, at least he’ll be more comfortable.

After he was completely shorn, there was a pile of fur big enough to knit a puppy with laying on the patio.  And no, there are no pictures.  No need to embarrass  the dog.

Wednesday evening we had a pretty intense lightning storm, and just as it seemed to be moving on, we lost power.  Apparently a splice in the power line down the block had separated when the line was hit by lightning.  We were without power for about 3 or 4 hours, but the lights came back on just as it started to get dark.  I was actually looking forward to camping out in the basement.

Yesterday was my lazy day.  Had a nice slow breakfast, then Girlie Bear and I went to the library to get her some more books.  She’s started consuming books as fast as I did at that age, which makes me very happy.  When we got home, she conned me into watching “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” on Netflix, which just goes to show how far a father will go to please his daughter. 

After lunch, I lay down, drank some beer, and watched a couple of hours of Ren and Stimpy.  Girlie Bear wasn’t interested and went off to read.  She thinks my choice of entertainment is “immature and goofy”.  Guilty.

I followed Ren and Stimpy with an hour or so of Call of Duty World at War on the Wii, and then it was time to make dinner.  Immature, insane comics followed up with electronic mayhem does a lot to work off stress.

Coming back to work this morning was rough.  Today is going to be a much nicer day weather wise, and it pains me to spend it indoors.  Oh well, I’m going to be taking some more time off in a couple of weeks, and hopefully it’ll be nice enough to go to the range or fishing.

This weekend was extraordinary because I am married to an extraordinary woman.

On Friday, Irish Woman went with her girlfriends to Hullabalou, a music festival with multiple groups performing.  She says she really enjoyed Train and Bon Jovi.  Of course, if she could get enough plastic surgery and hair color into me, I’d look like Bon Jovi, so I’m not surprised.  She got home at about midnight, and seemed completely exhausted.

On Saturday morning, I got up early and went to McDonalds to get breakfast.  By the time I got home, she was up and cleaning the house.  Later, we went to Sam’s Club for our monthly supply run, and instead of heading immediately over to the groceries, she went over to the LCD and plasma TV’s and started asking me which ones I liked and why.

After we had gotten our groceries and taken them home, she started cooking.  Rather than just splitting up the bulk meat and freezing it, she cooked several meals with it, split those up, and then froze the meals.  She and I went to the peach tree in our back yard and picked a bushel of peaches.  Irish Women then blanched, peeled, sliced, prepared, and froze 8 quarts of peaches.  She also made me a very delicious peach cobbler to go with the boneless pork ribs in homemade bourbon barbecue sauce she made.

Sunday morning I stuck my head out the door, decided it was too hot for yard work, and headed back into the house.  Irish Woman got herself out the door and did the yardwork, even after I protested that it was too hot and sticky to be working outside.  She didn’t just mow the grass.  She mowed, edged, weed-whacked, and raked the yard.

After coming in bright red and weakly sweating, she drank a quart of Gatorade and then started in on the house.  I had been working on some small stuff while chasing BooBoo, but she took over and hit it hard.

Overall, Irish Woman spent the weekend busting her tail.  I figured she would have been too tired after all day and night in the heat at the concert, but she seemed to be energized by it.

Overall, I’d say I’m a very fortunate man.

Never one to miss out on a meme, I’m following in JayG‘s footsteps, and listing a few of my favorite guilty pleasures:

Old Cartoons – I lurve me some Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and Tom and Jerry.  The Golden Age of Cartoons, which ran from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, was a period when animators, writers, and voice artists used god-like powers to synthesize ink, celluloid, and squeaky voices into masterpieces of American cinematography.

Fast Food Breakfasts, especially McDonalds and Hardees – I love fresh fruit, hot cereal, and wholesome whole grain pancakes as much as the next guy.  But what really curls my toes is a nice piece of deep fried potato matter, a nice greasy egg, cheese, and something that resembles processed pork sandwich, and a cup of coffee.

Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee –  Jay already mentioned this, but I love a 55 gallon drum sized coffee, with plenty of cream and sugar, from Dunkin’ Donuts.  This wonderful concoction may not have been made by a wonderfully artistic, multiply pierced college student, using beans that were grown in the shade of a unicorn tree on the side of a cotton candy volcano, then roasted in an oven warmed by the fires of a gumdrop dragon, then ground between the thighs of a Ukrainian super model, but it definitely tastes good and gets me going in the morning.  I just wish we had a real Dunkin’ Donuts in Louisville so I could sit at the counter and eat cruelers with my coffee.

Best part is, I got to indulge myself in all three this weekend.  Yesterday morning was made of Win!

So, what do you guys love?