What's new Fall 2012??

Well,

College is behind me now, mostly. I do have about a year's worth of credits left on the Post 9/11 GI Bill left that I may be able to use towards my Master's degree should I choose to pursue that later. The baby will be 9 months old tomorrow on September 1st. My wife is still as always awesome and she has been helping me to stay healthy and in shape. She has even surpassed me and has lost more weight than I have and she had a baby last December. As for me, she thinks I might be a little crazy. I've been doing things a normal person, or at the least the old me would never have attempted. After I left the Army 5 years ago I kind of let myself go and when I started my Corporate desk job the pounds started piling on. Somehow in all this I was still able to meet my awesome hot wife and she even agreed to marry me after dating for about a year and a half. I saw my wedding photos and started to realize how unhealthy and out of shape I was. Meanwhile, around the same time I started working for my company we were blessed to get a corporate gym on our property. I joined but never really committed to any sort of routine. The gym would have fitness challenges every so often and I would consider participating but never really did it. Finally after my wife and I were married for a little while and we started trying to conceive our child I decided if I was going to be a father I wanted to be a healthy parent that would be around for a while. I told myself that if my BMI was high enough and I qualified to participate that I would finally make myself do it. I went to our onsite clinic and was measured and weighed and discovered how unhealthy I was. Thankfully with the help of some good people including my wife who helped me plan healthier meals, my nurse practitioner, and my coach at the gym, I was able to not only lose weight but I won that challenge as well as the confidence to continue my newly formed healthy habits. I started taking CrossFit classes at our gym, running more 5K races, started attending a Bi-Annual running clinic local to my area known as Death at Dawn, and during this time I completed my bachelors' degree and we gave birth to our daughter. All in all alot has happened to get me where I am now. A group of us CrossFitters at the our gym decided to sign up for a running series that tours our country. We signed up for the Tennessee event coming up outside of Nashville this year. As we were getting ready for this one, I found out that a different local mud race was coming up sooner here in town and signed up for that one as well to train for the Nashville Warrior Dash. Finally my boss ran across some videos on YouTube of a team building event led and conducted by Army Special Forces and other Military Special Operations professionals known as the GORUCK challenge. This one wasn't scheduled to come through our town but we found out that with enough participants and the right price, they would come to you. So we found 30 like minds that were likewise not in the right mind, so we will be going through this 9-12 hour 15-30 mile challenge on November 2nd. Tomorrow is the first of these three events, the Mud Run, and then I go through Warrior Dash in two weeks. Its hard to believe that I am in the shape to do this or that I would even be brave enough to try. It's been a great year and it's going to be a great Fall.

Almost Done

And we are in the Home Stretch.....

I picked up my cap and gown for graduation today. I have at least three research assignments left as well as some other miscellaneous assignments and then in May I will walk and become a bonefied College Graduate with a Bachelors Degree in Interdisciplinary studies. I gave a piece of my life to the United States Army for 6 years and the best thing I got out of it was the Post 9/11 GI Bill to help me finish my degree. My wife has been very supportive and understanding these last couple of years and I am thankful for her and for our new baby daughter Brogan. I can't wait for what our future holds for us.

Saturday Afternoon Summer Rantings and Ramblings

My pregnant wifey is napping away on this July 16th afternoon of 2011. I am watching an episode of Doctor Who with the 10th Doctor on Netflix(It is complicated the character is an alien that regenerates into different bodies when seriously injured, ie new actors). I have already watched every epidsode available featuring the 11th Doctor so I started midway in the series that had Doctor 10. If you've never watched these they can be overwhelming and complicated to jump into at first but then they get addicting. Anyway the Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack have been brought aboard the Dalek Crucible ship. Those Daleks are pretty creepy inside and out. They have a so called reality bomb.

 Meanwhile back in the real world my wife is pregnant with our baby daughter whom we will get to meet in December. Our elected officials are sitting up on Capitol Hill pointing fingers at each other throwing the blame back and forth as the government gets closer and closer to defaulting on the national debt if they don't pass a budget and make some much needed changes. Repubs want to slash Medicare and Social Security that the working taxpayers have been paying into for years and years. Dems want to tax the rich and I'm not really sure what else. Both sides are warped and are both fighting over how to spend the money that hard working class people like me and most of the rest of us have paid into the system for years. These politicians of BOTH parties are nothing more than bad money managers with their own opposing agendas but neither side can come together to a solution to clean up the mess that THEY the politicians made to begin with. I must admit I don't understand all of it, but what I do know is that DOCTOR WHO is way more entertaining than this and although complicated in itself, much easier to follow than this debt crisis mess.

Boo on Washington and this Debt Crisis  

Hurray for the Doctor and Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and River Song.

Awesome business trip.

So in my job I work Corporate Security, but not how you might think. For our whole company there are only 2 people on the security team. My boss and myself. We are not security guards. That job is contracted out to several different companies at our many service centers. We coordinated security ops within the whole company and use our resources to handle any issue that comes up such as theft, safety, backgrounds, and access control. Recently down in Atlanta at our facility there had been a rash of pharmaceutical thefts. My boss and I had to pour through over 160 hours of video before we finally had a suspect. From there all we had to do was put out some bait and coordinate with the DEA in Atlanta. This was not easy and took us about a month to get going before we finally got to take our trip. It was an awesome sting operation and it was great to get to work in conjunction with the law enforcement officers down there to get our drug thief.  The guy was true to form and followed the pattern that we spotted on video. Everything went off without a hitch and we even finished on time to make the Braves game that afternoon. One of the many reasons I am thankful for and love my job.

It is officially Summer time..

Summer came almost 2 weeks early but it wasn't official until this past Monday. It has been the hottest most humid June in TN that I remember in a while. Praise Jesus for Air Conditioning. I dread getting my electric bill.  At this moment on this Saturday I got up early and mowed the huge yard around the rental house Wifey and I just moved into almost 2 weeks ago. Due to other commitments, etc. we are still unpacking at a slow rate. At this time the US is behing to Ghana by 1 point in their 30 minute overtime period against Ghana. I'm hoping they pull through but the announcers are already talking gloom and doom as fickle sports announcers are so well known to do. On this not as hot as it has been Saturday my wife and I will be going to visitation for 2 people I went to church with in my hometown who lost their lives in a house fire. They are with God and I am happy for them although my heart hurts for their Surviving family. The BP Oil Spill continues to regurgetate(is that how you spell that word) the black mess into our Gulf waters damaging the environment in such a way as it will not be contained for many many years. The economy is on the rebound and hiring is on the upswing again so that is a good thing. My cousin just got married a week ago today and she is currently on her honeymoon in Antigua. The ceremony was awesome and Texas weather was suprisingly more bearable than it has been here with all of our TN humidity. going on about 8.5 minutes left in this match an the US will have to step up to even get a tie today and stay in the series. Soccer just looks like an awkward sport to me and I have to respect the athletes that play it. I've never really paid close attention to it before this year. Michael Jackson has been gone a year and just when the media hoopla started to let him rest they started up the one year remembrance stories. His doctor/enabler is just now getting ready to go to trial. I will probably purchasing a weedeater at some point this weekend to finish the problem areas in our yard. This is a major adult purchase for me and makes me feel all the more older. Now I need a chain saw and an air compressor. Met my 3 month old nephew on my wife's side Cole for the first time this past week. He is a good baby. Gives me positive hope that the wifey and I will have kids as good as our nieces and nephews. Well, not much more to ramble on about so I will end this for now. Ghana 2 USA 1. Less than 2 minutes left...
_OUT

Boycotts and other random ramblings etc.......

Things I am presently boycotting:

1. The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
2. BP- (They spilled another 100,000 gallons on the pipelines in Alaska not to mention their giant mess that keeps growing in the Gulf)
3.Kate plus 8
4. Anything on TV associated with Tyra Banks
5. Jersey Shore
6. Anything with a Kardassian
7. That Pretty Wild Show
8. Chevron- Yep they made a mess somewhere in the world too.
9. The Bachelorette
10. The Bachelor
11. Dancing with the Stars
12. Sushi (nothing against the food, I just avoid fads that lots of mindless sheep jump on just to do it rather than appreciating something for what it actually is. I might try it more later when the fad dies down)
13. Partisan Politics- I catch it from both sides. Dad's a Bluedog Dem- Wife's side of the Family are Reaganesque Conservatives. Both sides are corrupt and have their own selfish agendas and are out of touch with the common man.
14. Jessie James(He needs to give his name back to the Dead Outlaw. He is a whiner and he is weird)
15. Anything with Tom Cruise.

That's it for now. I'll add more are it comes to me.
-OUT
14.

The Culpepper Minute Men,Christopher Gadsden, Metallica, and the Tea Party Movement

I wonder if half of the people ranting and raving, cleaning their guns before they go to their Sarah Palin/Tea Party rallies and waving their flags with the snake on it from the Metallica Black Album with the song title from track number 6 on that album, really know its origins and what it stood for? Half of them just think it looks cool, and half of them think it's probably actually originated with Metallica. Here's a little history about both versions of the flag, that all of the people that think they are angry because the pundits told them they are, love to fly.


The Culpepper Minutemen:
Organization


The Culpeper Minutemen organized on 17 July 1775 under a large oak tree in "Clayton's old field" on the Catalpa estate near Culpeper, Virginia.
The Culpeper minutemen fought for the patriot side in the first year of the American Revolution, and are remembered for their company flag: a white banner featuring a rattlesnake, featuring the phrases "Liberty or Death" and "Don't Tread on Me". At the time, Culpeper was considered frontier territory, and the Culpeper minutemen, many of them hunters, preferred the rifle to the musket.
In October 1775, the minutemen were sent to Hampton in response to British ships attempting to land. The riflemen were able to effectively shoot the men manning the ships cannons, and the fleet eventually sailed away.
The Culpeper militia next participated in the Battle of Great Bridge in December 1775. The battle was a complete American victory. There were accounts of the battle that suggested the British were unnerved by the reputation of the frontiersmen.
The Culpeper Minutemen disbanded in January 1776 under orders from the Committee of Safety. Many of the minutemen continued to serve. Some joined the continental line, and others fought under Daniel Morgan.
John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States, was a member of the original Culpeper Minutemen.
 Civil War
In 1860, the Culpeper Minutemen were formed under the same oak tree where the 1775 Minutemen had organized. They also carried the same rattlesnake flag. The unit was mustered into the Confederate 13th Infantry and fought in several battles.
 Later Minutemen
According to the Museum of Culpeper History, the Minutemen were again organized for the Spanish-American War, but were never activated for duty.
The Culpeper Minutemen were again organized for World War I, and joined the 116th Infantry.



Christopher Gadsden and his amazing Yellow Flag


The Gadsden flag is a historical American flag with a yellow field depicting a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. Positioned below the snake is the legend "DONT TREAD ON ME".The flag was designed by and is named after American general and statesman Christopher Gadsden.
So what's with the snake you ask???
The use of the timber rattlesnake as a symbol of the American colonies can be traced back to the publications of Benjamin Franklin. In 1751, he made the first reference to the rattlesnake in a satirical commentary published in his Pennsylvania Gazette. It had been the policy of Britain to send convicted criminals to America, so Franklin suggested that they thank the British by sending rattlesnakes to England.

In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Franklin published his famous woodcut of a snake cut into eight sections. It represented the colonies, with New England joined together as the head and South Carolina as the tail, following their order along the coast. Under the snake was the message "Join, or Die". This was the first political cartoon published in an American newspaper.
As the American Revolution grew, the snake began to see more use as a symbol of the colonies. In 1774, Paul Revere added it to the title of his paper, the Massachusetts Spy, as a snake joined to fight a British dragon. In December 1775, Benjamin Franklin published an essay in the Pennsylvania Journal under the pseudonym American Guesser in which he suggested that the rattlesnake was a good symbol for the American spirit.


Considered one of the first flags of the United States, the flag was later replaced by the current Stars and Stripes (or Old Glory) flag. Since the Revolution, the flag has seen times of reintroduction as both a symbol of American patriotism and as a symbol of disagreement with the government.The rattlesnake from the flag is shown on the U.S. Army's Drill Sergeant Identification Badge, at the top of the Army Flag with the cannons, and was also used in one of the first flags adopted by the US Marine Corps.

I'm sure that the first couple of well intentioned angry peeps that flew this at the first Glenn Beck 9/12 project/Tea Party rally might have known a little about the significance of this flag. I am highly satisfied that many of the rest of them think it's just from that cool Metallica song.

Thanks to Wikipedia for providing lots of source for me to cut and paste.

Freedom of Speech is great. Just know the legacy of the symbols you use to speak your ills.

-OUT