Almost Unemployed

As I write this I have less that two hours left in my duties here in Central Asia. The time is a bittersweet time; I look forward with intense anticipation and excitement to seeing my family again and reacquainting with friends, but I also will be sad to relinquish command of this great squadron.

Command is tough--deployed command has its own set of challenges through which all commanders must drive. Most significant in my mind is the inability to "decompress" and relax when "at home." It is a huge benefit for me (back at home) to sit with my wife and vent my frustrations and substandard performance peices of the day. While deployed, that decompression simply can't happen. For the past six months, I've felt like I've had to be a commander 24/7, never letting myself relax with other people.

That said, though, this 6-month period--apart from the seperation from my family--has been arguably the most rewarding 6-month period in my 16-year career. The sense of mission accomplishment, the direct impact on the lives of so many people in Afghanistan; it all has been an incredible ride. When I get in front of my squadron today and hand over leadership to my successor, I will be elated, sad, reluctant, and relieved all at once.

Finally, I could not have done this job adequately (let alone as successfully as I've been told) without His protection and wisdom. I am immensely thankful for that--as well as the prayers of you, The Reader. Thank you, and I will see many of you next week.

1 November

That's when I'm headed on the plane, folks! Like the Steve Miller
Band sang, I'm headed on to a "big ol' jet airliner" back home.

Not that I'm excited or anything...

Fulfillment...

Every boy's dream came true for me today. I got to drive this (it's a P-23 crash truck). Got to shoot the water cannons, too. For you spec geeks out there, drool over this:

The Oshkosh T-3000 is a diesel-powered, six wheel-drive truck with an automatic transmission. The operator controls consist of power-assisted steering, air or mechanical brakes, transmission range selector, and in-cab controls for operating the fire-fighting system. The water storage tank has a capacity of 3,000 gallons. The roof turret has a discharge rate of 600 to 1,200 gpm and an infinitely variable pattern from straight stream to fully dispersed. The bumper turret is electric joystick controlled with auto-oscillation. The discharge rate is 300 gpm and it is also variable pattern.

Sometimes, my job's pretty cool.

Seriously?

When the Nobel Peace Prize was first established in 1895 (through the Last Will and Testament of Alfred Nobel), Mr. Nobel ruled the Peace Prize would be awarded "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."

There is a significant problem with President Obama winning the award yesterday. He. Hasn't. Done. Anything. He was awarded the Prize on the "potential" of his future. Really? Why not award him the Cy Young award, then, too? How about an Oscar, too? Both of those could be awarded because of his potential. The Nobel Prize for Literature, though, he's not won--probably because he's actually written two actual, published books.

The Washington Post, in the words of Richard Cohen, put it another way:

In a stunning announcement, Millard Fillmore Senior High School chose Shawn Rabinowitz, an incoming junior, as next year’s valedictorian. The award was made, the valedictorian committee announced from Norway of all places, on the basis of “Mr. Rabinowitz’s intention to ace every course and graduate number one in class.” In a prepared statement, young Shawn called the unprecedented award, “[deleted] awesome.”

And again in a stunning coincidence, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences announced the Oscar for best picture will be given this year to the Vince Vaughn vehicle “Guys Weekend to Burp,” which is being story-boarded at the moment but looks very good indeed. Mr. Vaughn, speaking through his publicist, said was “touched and moved” by the award and would do everything in his power to see that the picture lives up to expectation and opens big sometime next March.

Perhaps Progress?

I love it. There are more and more articles coming out lately throwing in to serious question the enviro-activists' panic of global environmental destruction. Take, for instance, these gems:

1. Significant ice growth at the Arctic cap. Yes, growth.
2. This scientist believes Co2 doesn't cause global warming. Better hope Al Gore isn't funding his research...

I've long thought our ideas of global warming were suspect. Growing up with a meterologist as a grandfather, I've seen how average temperatures change sporadically up and down over the long term. Further, many "global warming believers" also believe the Earth is millions, if not billions of years old. With that in mind, we have only a hundred years or so of recorded data on global temperature. That, in any statistics class, is the textbook definition of "statistically insignificant."

You mean...

You mean to say the world doesn't like us any more now than it did before January 20, 2009? But...but...but...

This article makes a great deal of awesome points.

Not to toot my own horn, but I've said for years the minimum wage law is a hinderer to employment, and makes the working class worse off, rather than better. This article confirms much of what I opined.

Simply put, this is not a surprise.

Lastly, back on 27 Sep, I posted a link to an article that insinuates the data for "global warming" is either missing or cooked (as in "cooking the books," ala Enron). You mean the Southeastern US isn't drying up because of the environment? Gasp! I was really surprised to see the article was in the NYT!

Ah, October...

Fall is supposedly amongst us...though I was beginning to wonder when the temperatures here hit 91 degrees on the 30th of September.

But it certainly is fall, and with this first full month of fall (oh, how I love alliteration. Okay, so that wasn't entirely alliteration, but close enough, wouldn't you say?) comes the baseball playoffs (even though the Mariners aren't going to be playing anything other than a few rounds of golf), but more importantly, the bona fide beginning of hockey season (and the Blues have already beaten the Red Wings once and twice!)

Even the best college football team in the Montana University System is starting the year off well.

But the coolest thing of all is on (or about) 30 October, I will be relinquishing command of this here unit, and beginning my trip home. Sweet!