All This Beach and No Ocean…
First I need to thank Brett for helping me by getting this site up and running, next I need to thank Buckley and Stacey for the idea, and finally I need to thank God that I’m not stuck in some desert somewhere for four mo…oh, wait, scratch that last bit. Guess I should introduce myself for anyone who happen to not already know me. Hi, my name is David and I blow things up for a living. Well, I suppose that’s a bit of an over simplification, I’m a member of an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Team with the United States Air Force. For those that don’t know EOD is similar to the Bomb Squad in the civilian world except we deal with military ordnance in addition to IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). There’s actually a lot more that we do, but I figure the simple explanation is best for now, otherwise this could be a long, long post. At any rate, I’m deployed to Afghanistan right now and my most excellent friend Brett has set this site up for me so I can share some stories, pictures, random thoughts, and what-have-you about my experience here. Please bear with me though; I’m a novice at this. Later this year I’ll return to my wife and kids at my home station in Okinawa, Japan and will continue to post from there and where ever else the Air Force decides to send me. At least that’s the plan. For now I’m just going to keep pressing on, and maybe see if I can’t make this patch of world a bit safer. Oh, and blow some stuff up.
For them’s that are curious, here’s a some info on Kandahar Airfield. It’s a bit out of date, but there are some cool images and whatnot. More to follow.
David
June 12th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
Glad you got it up and running. Will keep working on fixing the bugs. If you get up to Kabul I would love to see a photo of the Bala Hisar, the old fortress.
June 13th, 2005 at 1:35 am
Glad to see your blog. I used to blow things up too, but that was [Geeze Mode] yikes, like 20 years ago. [/Geeze Mode] I have a nephew with the Va National Guard nearing the end of a year deployment at Bagram, so all you guys over there are in out thoughts.
June 13th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
Hurray! You’re posting! I’ve been meaning to read my copy of “Travels in the Hindu Kush” (or however it’s spelled, the book is at home) and now I think I’ll get started on it so that I can follow along with your adventures.
Love and kisses.
June 13th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
Being one of “Brett’s friends” I am tempted to put something like “always cut the green wire first” but I’m sure that’s not at all funny where you are. God bless. Please come back in one piece.
June 14th, 2005 at 5:27 am
Thanks for posting guys, one more big thanks to Brett for setting this up for me. As for cutting wires, I’m sure my wife and my mother will be glad to know we use as much remote technology as possible.
June 14th, 2005 at 12:30 pm
Don’t let the robot cut the green wire!
June 14th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
Cool! So, you get to blow stuff up and drive robots! Do you do maintenance and repair on the robots? I’m a software engineer by trade and an electronics hacker by hobby. (Hacker in the good older meaning.)
June 15th, 2005 at 6:26 am
We do some limited mechanical and preventitive maintenance on the robots. Our primary system, the REMOTEC ANDROS series of robots don’t use a software operating system, but the PackBot uses a windows based OS and is the robot we take on flyaway (helo-borne)missions because it’s nice and lite.
June 22nd, 2005 at 3:55 pm
You should find a good “ticking” wav or mp3 file and use that as the background sound for the website.
Have you been to the Blast-a-thon? You missed a great one last weekend.
June 24th, 2005 at 7:59 am
Anything like adding sounds to the background would have to be accomplished by Brett since he has all the web knowledge, I just post stuff.
As yet I have not attended a Blast-a-thon unfortunately, though I did get to detonate about 6,700 lbs of munitions all at once yesterday.