Well, it’s been quite sometime since I’ve done a blog and I need to hit it up again.  A few notes however…

I’m doing a lot of changes all around, whether that is online or offline.  Work is going, to an extent.  Though now our working hours are on a day by day basis, deciding on what the workload is.  It’s been a little bit of a bummer to be a tad bit shorter on pay, but the weather overall has been pretty nice and has alleviated the fact that I get our somewhat early in the afternoon.  Of course, that can leave me with a somewhat hermit lifestyle just so I can keep better track of my money, but oh well…hopefully all of this is temporary.

Online…still keeping that low.  It’s been up a little since every now and then I miss “24″ and have to get the replay on Hulu.  I’d also began slowly moving over to Facebook…as far as how “active” my MySpace has been, that activity has about ceased and there isn’t too much of a point for me to sign on there daily.  I get e-mail alerts whenever someone calls me for whatever reason.  Even the group that I belong in there, which was a major reason I was there, has languished and the posts that have been put up there the past three months hasn’t been really inspiring.  I am gonna keep it though…I have always said I will stay in touch, and there are still a handful of friends there.  However, for some reason or other, a huge number of people moved over to Facebook…I don’t know why, but that’s what happened.  I guess MySpace didn’t get a favorable rap overseas, but now I have my cousins and other relatives and a rather large number of Cole/Navy friends on there, and it’s pretty active there.  I only have 24 hours a day to expend my time, right?

Right now, I don’t know if I will blog after this on MySpace.  I still blog at my own website…I’ve experimented a little with Twitter, I don’t feel for it the way others do, but I’ll hold on to it for a little bit more…  I don’t blog on Facebook either…they call it “Notes” and there is something about the format that I don’t really care for.  So I may just save myself a whole lot of time and just consolidate my blog on my own website.  It’s not interactive, but I get a good amount of traffic…which I apologize since I don’t really update it, so everybody pretty much sees the same damn thing from time to time…

I figured I’d hit this up now since March is over, and this has been quite a month.  The year has started off good…and FAST!  I’m gonna be 70 in a week if it just keeps getting faster and faster as it has been.

So while not a whole lot has gone on, there have been some big things.  First, in January, Tony had went off to do some workup training before his overseas deployment with the Reserves.  I’m watching this carefully.

March has come and gone…and the anticipation was pretty wild for me.  Better late than never, Sean eventually decided (after several years) to uncement his butt, quit making assumptions and actually planned to come down here to see things for himself.  It was kind of a last minute thing, but we got that to work out.  Also, Tony’s training had wrapped up and they were permitting his group a few days off before they made final preps and would head overseas.  As good luck would have it, they would have overlapping schedules.  Also, while it didn’t happen in March, I got to see Bobbie and her husband.  We’ve both been in Dallas for some time and, also better late than never, we finally met.

It really wasn’t the best time for a visit, but the window of opportunity on a near perfect visit had long passed and we made do with what was available.  Sean arrived on the first weekend of March, with where we met up with Christine until she got out of work and hit up Cafe Brazil.  The idea was brought up on a previous meeting with Bobbie and her husband the week beforehand.

Overall this entire week, sleep wasn’t really much of anything.  I was reeling and exhausted the following week but finally recuperated to make sure the following weekend wasn’t spent in bed!  We did plan beforehand to try to do some events, specifically the North Texas Irish Festival and the Greenville St. Pat’s parade.  It turned out that there was just simply too much to do, and those events took up at least half a day.

Part of the trip was planned to look for jobs…but the “fun” factor was kind of overwhelming and we deviated from that a little.  Still, we did a little bit of that and there were some returns…which was something that I guess Sean wasn’t used to.  I dunno.  Places to go, and mainly places to eat…those were the overlying bits of the trip.  He had a decent variety of food while he was here, including some good BBQ.  Places…Dallas isn’t really too much of a sightseeing bit.  We have a few things here and there, but it’s generally a live and work city for the most part.  One sight that we decided to see at the last minute, not really a sight…but by its nature, it is…is the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium.  Basically, everyone is encroaching on Area 51 looking for Roswell evidence.  The government needs a place to hide UFOs and they help give Mr. Jones some cash and arrangements and you have the gigantic obscenity that is the stadium.  Made so that an entire state’s population can watch a football game while government scientists continue to poke at galactic visitors underground!

Tony came in later in the week and that was good to see him.  We hit up a few favorites that we’ve enjoyed since he’s been here, but haven’t visited since he is now a fellow Dallas area resident.  Humperdink’s, Atheneos and Cheddar’s were our eating locations while Tony was here.  As well, we got a little shooting in.  This was good for all of us.  Christine and I were still working out shooting in our schedule and Christine hadn’t shot since Tony last shot before he left back in January.  Sean lives up in MA…enough said!  Tony has done some shooting, I’m sure…super advanced commando ninja stuff, like Navy quals and failure drills.  So this was his opportunity to touch up on what he personally felt he needed and in a more relaxed atmosphere.

As quickly as it happened, it went.  Sean went back up to MA, fully appreciating what his home state has and what Texas lacks, lol!  Tony is overseas, starting up his deployment.  Christine and I continue to have our “Sales…” moment, complete with speed of darkness, super loud second hand wall clock and flicker flourescent bulbs.  This was the beginning of the month…it would now be until the end of the month before the next event showed up.

It was meant to be a birthday present…but identity theft happened, and now I wish I had an Audi Q5.  Just kidding…but yeah, someone decided to be “me” on Paypal…so I’m in the process of paying back Christine!  Basically, it was time to do some shooting under the eyes of those more skilled than we.  Nothing really new, though a few things are almost always inevitably learned.  I do stuff like this to see how I stack up, or refine…I actually like the small scale informal stuff, like what dotted my calendar last year.  That’s what it does, but I always have a bigger picture involved.  It’s basically a “Welcome to My World” experience!  Turns out, that experience went a lot deeper…and in the end, much more satisfying.

So the birthday present, that I owe, was basically Christine meeting Paul…a real American hero and a badass in the truest sense.  That was the basic nutshell…big deal, huh?  But everything that came with it was awesome…she got to meet and make a few friends, in turn she made a name for herself and has become…dare I say…far more conceited!  Me, I’m just my super awesome humble self.  The last shoot we had, I only had 100% accuracy…which sucks, I usually do 180%…I need to work on my slacking technique and attitude.

As all the luck in the world would have it, Christine’s car (which we rode out there) dumped and died…her transmission.  Not a good thing when you’re out of town.  Welcome to the real world…she thankfully now has a job that makes it relatively easier for her to deal with the finances for this.  I told her at first it will majorly suck, watching all that money just vaporize.  In the long run, it’ll be good…you dealt with the problem on your own.

Well, not really…the guys we were with did some banding to help make things right.  Paul got on the phone to his wife, who went to CTU Mode…I mean, CMMDU (Counter Man Made Disaster Unit - it was political news about a week or two ago, go search it if you’re still drawing a blank)…and vectored us to a transmission shop.  Paul go to the tower that he usually uses and they towed Christine’s car to the shop, where it would be almost a week to complete repairs.  Paul had his right-hand man grab one of his trucks and loan me the keys for the weekend.  He said anything else, let him know…but I did my hardest to make sure that Paul did no more favors for us, too much to ask of him…and I barely asked, he did it on his own.  One of our fellow shooters said he met another shooter that flew in to Dallas and immediately went to see if we could grab a ride.  The answer was no problem, and no our issues were seemingly under control.

I am somewhat used to this…how friends went the extra distance to cover and help their peers while in the Navy.  It was good to “be back”…and Christine was impressed with it all herself.

So yeah, Christine as usual made a name for herself…and some of the shooters were convinced that we were more than we were letting on.  Not really…I was the former Sailor and Christine is just my younger Sister…  But I guess that was really all that I said.  Every since Christine bought her gun last year, I tried to make sure that she knew how to use it and how to make good shots with it.  Last year paid off…despite being surrounded by pretty good shooters, Christine was comfortably intermixed with the varying skill levels.  She did well with either hand, and even with a Glock 19 that Paul loaned out for her to try.  There was a hostage round where Christine fired some accurate hits without striking the hostage, as far as anyone could see.  In this stage, she and I did really well…the active Army guys that were present didn’t do so well!

During our stay, we decided to hit up some unique places to eat…we were there for a handful of days, so it really wasn’t a big deal.  But we hit up a local seafood cafe as well as a fast food joint specializing in chicken fingers.  Both amazingly good…which is one of the good things about being out of the city.

As with all great things…it was time to close up the show.  It’s been fun and outstanding, Christine didn’t want to leave…but how many of us wanted to anyways?  A fellow shooter, Derek, had offered us a ride back on his rental car…a Prius.  Interesting!  Happy, yet exhausted, Christine conked herself out in the back and Derek and I made conversation that made the drive feel like half an hour.  Didn’t accept fuel or food…once again, these guys are tremendous in gratitude and feeble in cost.  Now back to civilian land, lol.  As Christine put it…it would be, yet again, a “Sales…” moment.  Well, we all keep in touch as usual!

So, amazingly fast, the year is now 1/4 over and April comes in.  There’s not a lot to do.  But Christine was finally in the presence of some true American Badasses…I mean, there is Tony, Sean and myself…but, well…

Lol!

In usual goofy fare, it was time to wrap up the last weekend of 2008.

While trying to figure out when to comb Ariel’s hair, I remembered that ICE! over at the Gaylord Texan would be ending soon.  I didn’t know whether or not this was the last day (it ends on the first weekend of January, so a few more days left to go for those reading this currently) and figured I’d go.  Perhaps Christine would want to go again…we both went about two or three years ago.

This time, instead of my Sony V1 camera, I had my D40.  I wanted to see how the pics would turn out.  Last time I know I had to be incredibly still and still had to take a few shots to get anything nice.

The D40 was faster, had a larger sensor and I could actually use higher ISOs that I would’ve never done with my Sony.  The D40 also isn’t top of the line, but I’m not a pro photographer anyways.  I enjoy it, but it won’t be something I do for business purposes.

I hate digressing…can’t you tell?

So off to the Gaylord Texan we went!  We took in the atrium briefly, but this was going to be a shorter visit this time.  We had a shoot scheduled.  My current pistol I bought as a Christmas present to myself last year, so in essence it turned one years old a few days ago.

This time seemed a lot busier than usual.  Lots of kids, lots of families…clear shots were not the norm.  Because of that, it seemed like we all moved sort of in a line.  Last time, we all just wandered aimlessly and checked what we wanted to see.

The exhibits were also different.  It seemed a little smaller this time around…but I can’t really tell for sure.  Either way, I feel like I took a little fewer pictures, mainly for kind of moving in a group and not really getting a chance to roam around.

The disturbing exhibit award goes to Santa.  Santa was looking a little freaky, and he was at one end of the room.  The flanking sides of the wall had these elves…but they looked more like Charlie Brown’s head laid on the ground and stepped on until his eyes popped out!

Christine took a picture for a family as they posed in front of Santa.  They did the same for us and I had looked through their camera’s viewfinder…the difference in image quality was stark.  I don’t remember that much a difference with the Sony…but I think that Sony camera was one of Sony’s greater cameras of the time.

The next big hit was the ice slide.  This is where dSLRs definitely ruled.  Low light, varying light…lots of motion.  I watched family after family, camera after camera.  I felt a little sorry for them because they were just the typical point and clicking type photographers.  The amount of delay just on the cameras focusing, then add the slow write speed for most cameras.  If the person operating the camera didn’t time things right, they usually got no good pictures.

I had similar issues with my Sony, but learned to time for the right moment to fire.  Prep and compose, hold then fire.

Getting Christine going down the slide was no problem for me at all, same with her getting a pic of me doing a tactical ice slide!

After that was her famous evil angel exhibit.  Flanked this time around with luminescent candles vs the angels of 2 to 3 years ago.  After that, it was the manger scene…then the end.

I had my camera and Christine brought along her Flip, another difference from my big camcorder from the last ICE! visit.

I don’t know if they worry of the economy made the exhibit seem smaller, but it was moreso evident with what greeted us after we exited.  Last time we got a coupon for a free hot chocolate to warm up after the exhibit.  This time, our coupon was for glowing necklaces.

Awesome…despite my fashion insensibilities, I’m proud to know that my wardrobe is now complete to have a glowing necklace as part of my ensemble.

Oh wait…I forgot to redeem that prize on the way out.  Great, now I have to BUY one!

Tony was done watching his weird…movies.  He had just returned from seeing his parents back home and elected to watch strange videos that only Sean would also appreciate vs doing a tactical team ice slide or whatever!

Time to shoot!  Well, we made a short stop and started to hit the Garland outdoor range.  But Christine wanted blue whale biscuits from Central Market, so even though it closed sooner Targetmasters was the more logical choice.

Over the course of the year, Christine has fired several hundreds of rounds and I’ve kept a nice close eye on the progress.  Around the summer time, she seemed to hit a wall.  Her shooting was very good, but she wasn’t really getting more accurate.

I also knew that she was left-eye dominant.  This was a challenge posed when line coaching Moni, I think, back on the Cole.  I didn’t really have a confident solution back then and it was coming back to haunt me here.

Some thought and some conferring and we decided to let Christine try starting to shoot using her left hand.  After making sure she had a halfway decent grip on the gun, we threw a clean target on the range and she fired off a group very similar to shooting right handed.  Positive signs for me…we’ll see if she does end up rocking back up again!

Tony did a couple of firing strings…glad to see him up shooting to about usual again, but disheartened that he was pretty much the only one in his unit that was to that capacity.

Me…well, I just simply had to be the most awesome shooter in the range…so I shot and I let that ever growing hole on the target speak for my awesomeness!  We even scared away the rest of the shooters from the bay, that’s how awesome I was.  Nevermind that the range closes in about half an hour.

Feeling good of our shooting and letting the goofy momentum continue, we had someone enter our bay and continue to show that no matter how bad of a day we have shooting, we can always look at someone nearby and feel much better about ourselves!

Our example here is seeing this guy’s target…maybe three yards away and he is shooting fairly rapidly.  His “group” was pushing past a foot wide…basically five or six of the worst groups of Tony, Christine and my shooting combined could fit in this guy’s handiwork.

We went into mockery mode…Tony and Christine began wobbling their guns while shooting at the target.  Yet…the shooting was still better.  So he was rapid firing somewhat, I decided I’d take him up on that…nothing but a fist sized group.

So, like many others we’ve seen before, what’s a guy to do who can’t hit a target not even 10 feet away from him?  Let’s run the target all the way out to 25 yards!  We watched a little more until we saw one end of his target fall away as he hit the clip of one of the targets.  With about five minutes to go, we quickly just packed up and left him on his own.  If he wants to set the whole range on fire, that’s all him!  Tony noted him having a USP of some sort…his holes looked like a .40 or .45 to me, nothing Christine herself couldn’t handle.

To Central Market we go!  Tony feels hungry at first and then he sees what seems to him to be Neiman Marcus prices.  So he eats the price inflation floating in the air and all of a sudden he just wants a bottle of real Coke!  I figure a burger with fruit is good and I got a whole pizza where he could at least have a slice if he got hungry again.  Christine got a meatloaf sandwich.

Mine was pretty good…I didn’t leave much of anything behind…actually anything!  Tony had a slice of paper thick pizza and declared himself full.  Christine wanted to like her sandwich…but meatloaf usually has a tomato sauce of some sort, not mayonnaise.

On a side note, Tony and I were looking at the chicken cordon bleu that was up there.  We laughed because in the Navy, that was one of the few foods you could ever screw up.  It was a good day onboard if you got to the messline and saw you’d have it for lunch or dinner…you were gonna have a good meal!

Then we got some groceries, Christine got blue whale biscuits and we all headed back to Mesquite.  Sleepy I was, with work the next day.  Christine tenderized her blue whale with her microphone.  Tony went back to watching movies that he and Sean watched together in some undiscovered space on the Cole!

What a great finish to the final weekend of 2008!  Gonna do similar for the first weekend of 2009!  Standby!

Well, let’s see if I can get this all knocked out this time!

I know…other than a short blurb, I’ve been out for a while.

Well, the week after Chip’s birthday weekend it was work as usual…until about mid afternoon. Several of us at work heard a quick boom that had the lights flickering. At first we didn’t really give it much thought. Given the Texas weather, it wouldn’t have surprised us if a blanket of thunder clouds just covered the sky and it was starting to thunder and rain. Then it happened again, in a staccato and rapid succession. This time, my brain entertained the possibility of gunfire…except that the lights were also flickering, which didn’t make sense. Well, I went into full alert and quickly proceeded across my building out and outside to see what could be going on. Ramon pointed it out to me first as he peeked out…a power line was laying on the ground, and lines that were connecting to an adjacent building were popping and throwing sparks. We quickly started to secure power over into my building and shutting down sensitive information. Things worked out and I quickly raised the nearest bay door and called 911, quickly reporting what was going on. Go Navy training!

Sure enough, my building went dark and the power lines violently ripped themselves of the building, igniting insulation and starting a fire. The fire department quickly arrived and the fire was quickly put out.

The magnitude of rebuilding did not set in until much later. That was back in August and we are slowly closing out September. The immediate affected building has had new power distribution architecture installed, the side building rebuilt and a newer and larger capacity set of power flowing from the grid to the building. My building was an affected casualty, as it was originally drawing power from that building. We had made some creative adjustments and had brought some power into about half our plating shops from adjacent buildings and have some machines running. However, most of the shop and my office are still dark and it’s been fun running around. It’s going to feel weird when things return to normal. The plan is to have a pole installed nearby and draw power directly from the grid. No pole yet, but the power architecture in my building is pretty much set and ready to go. All we now need is power coming from a newly installed pole.

So that’s about it with work…as work encompasses most of my life. The rest of my personal life I don’t really say online much anyways…though I have been getting very busy. I will be glad when all my tasks are over, it’ll be nice to breathe easy again!

Though one aspect of my life is shooting…and there was much of it during this time period. The first prominent event was when Christine coaxed her best friend to go shooting. While I was present, Christine ran the show. She taught Jennifer how to run the gun, how to shoot the gun, and keep bullet holes from appearing on her body and the bodies around her. She did very well, and was definitely better than most on the range that were doing all sorts of strange behavior, that is sadly so common at the range these days.

As always, I like shooting by like-minded people as well. Had gone shooting with Tony a couple more times, so he could get some range time tucked into this belt finally. Christine and I also shot with some similar minded folks using a borrowed carbine and our pistols. I know Christine was one of the popular people there for that.

A few months ago, I got approached by Benjamin to do some photo/video work for a team sniper match. I guess people think I take good pictures! I did agree to after checking my schedule for an all clear and did that this past weekend. The weekend before was a whole lot of fun of enjoying family time and some good food! A churrascaria, small Greek restaurant and countryish cafe were all targets of my belly…and we had such good weather too! So I had been in a very light mood despite wearing patience of events at work.

After some hiccups after work, I met up with Benjamin and a few friends that recommended a restaurant. After a beer and some food and introduced to new friends, we headed out over to the range. We did some small talk and I tried to get a feel for the match. We got in late at night and got situated at a bunk house. No sooner than I eased into a bunk that Brett came from somewhere. After a little bit more chit chat, it was taps for me!

The next morning, I arose with no problem and got ready to rock. Just as the sun started peeking over, the vehicles started rolling in. One by one, people started coming up in line and registering before heading back to their vehicles and unpacking all their kit. Anyone who tells me the economy is going down the drain needed to be there. I have to say about a third of the guns out there had a Schmidt and Bender scope on them. Those that don’t know, those are scopes that will sometimes cost more than the rifle itself…even the little scopes!

The match was a WHOLE LOT OF FUN! Which I have to emphasize, because Christine was groaning about her weekend. But NOT ME! I HAD A WHOLE LOT OF FUN!

FUN!

FUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!

The match blew away my expectations. There was some precision long distance shooting, but there was also a lot of dynamics. I think a good number of people were quite ill-prepared. I’m sure everyone in the match was good at laying steady and shooting at a distance. By the afternoon, I was wondering if I could register myself. I would completely fall on my face over 400 yards…but there were many courses that required a spotter’s precise carbine shot, or both pistols. Some people were out of shape, having a hard time running over a hundred yards going from one scenario to another. Each team had to run it once, I had to run it multiple times following team after team with camera or video. It was very exhausting, but I had to keep up. A good number of these guys didn’t have me trying to hard. There were steel and paper targets, a shoot house, shooting from a tower…it was incredible.

By Sunday, some adjustments had to be made to allow the match to fly through as quick as possible. Finally, the scores were tallied and everyone had a good lunch followed by an awards ceremony. Lots of great prizes, the most expensive being an $2,400 gift certificate from a riflescope company…a top of the line one at that.

As quick as it came, it was over just as fast. I had an absolute blast even though I was tired, sweaty, dirty, burnt in about ten different shades of brown and almost dangerously dehydrated. There was lots of shooting around me, lots of adrenaline had good food and met some new friends.

I haven’t been this euphoric since my time in the Navy…and that high eroded away as I realized the “real” world was back upon me. Gotta get ready for work tomorrow, do laundry, clean up, yada yada. I hope I get another chance to do something like this again. So these past two weeks have been great…and now I’m busy again, but hopefully I’ll have power soon and one weight will be off my shoulder.

Anyways, that’s what’s happening in a nutshell!

Regardless of whatever your political beliefs are, Sarah Palin is a big factor for the current moment.

One of the results of this is a sudden fanbase for her.  One of these, are the Palin Facts.  This is pretty much in the same comedic bout that you see Chuck Norris Facts and Jack Bauer Facts (and if you’re Sean, Chris Hagad Facts).

Well, Christine, bored out of her mind in one of our nation’s fine educational institutions (and I say that with great sarcasm and my eyes just simply cannot roll around in my sockets enough…) had one come from her head and text me.

I did a Google search for it, and did a semi-thorough search through the Palin Facts with no hits.

“[Sarah] Palin doesn’t hunt moose.  They run up to her and shoot themselves.”

Who knows, this may be the first time this is posted…if not, oh well.  We’re not crazy…just a thought!

This one could be something Sean says about me, so it’s gonna be a Seanism.

Seanism, go!

Welcome Shannon, Valerie, friends, Ms. Texas de Brazil…hello!  I figured I’d throw this up real quick, as I’m still somewhat suffering through the pounds of meat.

…oh, but what good meat it is.

…who came up with the idea of bacon wrapped filet mignon?  And why can’t the digestive system digest that, plus many other meats, with far less pain haha!

I’m STILL working on the pictures.  With luck, they’ll be on my site maybe tomorrow?  How about Thursday or Friday realistically?  I did give Friday as a deadline.

I come to my office this morning…the sun wasn’t even at the horizon and I downed an entire Coke to try to jump start my body.  Entering my office, I find a small circuit board laying on there…and a 9V battery.

What the terrorism?

At least at this moment…my stomach has pretty much returned to normal.  Normal devouring will take place starting tomorrow!