Since the last update, I’ve been to Tampa Florida, Djibouti Africa, Harrisburg Pennsylvania (for 3 hours), and Oahu, Hawaii. As you might could imagine, I am wholly sick and tired of flying. Also since the last update, I’ve bought a new laptop, built a new computer system via Newegg.com, and found out that I’ll be moving to Virginia in late March.

On the military front, the Air Force has given me an assignment to the Air Force Command and Control & Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center (AFC2ISRC) and I’m looking forward to the job more than you can know. No more never ending communications security paperwork, inspections, paperwork, shredding, paperwork and paperwork. Back to my beloved racks upon racks of servers and routers and the constant sound of whirring cooling fans! I can’t wait.

(more…)

Ridiculous Image Technology :
What happens when you take all the tourist pictures in the world and chuck them into this new program? Answer: Really cool stuff.

NINJAM :
A program that lets you jam and record music in over the internet with other musicians!

Air Force Silver Star Recipitant :
SSgt Earl Covel and his team credited with 120-150 enemy killed.

Some Random Bash.org Quotes :

Engrish.com :
Now hiring: Compentent Translators.

I read something interesting on a financial site I Stumbled Upon the other day. I didn’t agree with much of what they had to say about saving money, but they mentioned the importance of short term, tangible goals and that really made me think.

I’m constantly telling my airmen and my family members to start saving for retirement. “Save for retirement!” I say. “You need to start now! It’s vitally important you do this!” I tell them. Save for retirement. Sounds good, but what’s the goal? What if I was to tell you that your goal is to have $2 million dollars by the time you’re 55 years old? Well, right there with that statement, most people instantly stop believing that I’m trying to give advice and instead expect a punch-line or wait for me to start slobbering and yipping and punching myself in the face. Two million dollars is simply a fictional number for most folks. And telling someone in their 20′s, “… when you’re 55 years old,” is the same as saying, “When we made peace with the Klingons.” It’s science fiction. So after reading about setting short term goals, I started thinking that maybe I should start suggesting 3-5 year plans to introduce the concept of saving money. Something a little more tangible to a 20 year old than “retirement.” It was at that point that I realized that I didn’t have a 5-year plan of my own!

So I came up with my 5-year plan. In 5 years I will be eligible to retire from the Air Force, so by then my plan is to have the house I own in South Carolina paid off. Set your goals high I say. It’s a 30 year fixed rate mortgage and I’ve been paying about 7 years. I originally financed $72,000 and currently owe $66,000. To do this I’ve committed a personal sin and stopped adding money to my investments. All of that will go toward paying off my car within the next year. After that I’ll turn on my investments again, and put all the money that was going to the car note, onto the mortgage. Plus any extra that I might scrape up from time to time.

Set a 3 or 5 year goal for yourself. Set your goal high, but make it tangible and obtainable. Say… buy a new car with cash. Or get a plasma TV. After that, start working on goals a little more intangible, but much more financially beneficial. The first one should be getting out of debt. Once you get used to saving it starts to become addictive, and then you can really start improving your financial health and save for retirement. To me, financial health is second only to physical health in importance for a long, less stressful life.

OK, since I no longer have the inspiration to try to write nice long funny dispatches, I figured I’d just post smaller thoughts and such more often. Fine. I’ll blog. I swore I wouldn’t, but I give up.

So I’m sitting here in an apartment with a very noisy and inconsiderate upstairs neighbor, and while swearing for the 8th time that I’ll never live in an apartment again, I’m flipping to the Home and Garden channel. I’ll be leaving Alaska around this time next year, and I’m planning on buying a house at my next assignment, so I’ve been watching quite a bit of that channel recently. After watching for a couple of weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a neighborhood somewhere with 15-20 houses in it called HGTVille, and all of these HGTV shows simply rotate through the houses over and over again.

You see, in one hour they show these design shows, where some person is dissatisfied with their dining room or kitchen or what not, and in swoop these women or gay men (or more often, both) who cluck endlessly about color swatches, lamp shades and stencil patterns. They try to cram as much “design” into every corner as they can. Then in the next hour they have the “Sell my house!” shows, where people who have bright flashy matching colors, and cute lamp shades and interesting stencil patterns are told by severely dressed real estate professionals that their house will never sell unless they de-clutter and paint everything neutral colors.

So I think that once these “design” shows go through one of the houses in HGTVille, the “Sell my house!” show rolls into the same house and does their thing, and they just keep rotating in and out of the same 15-20 houses over and over again. I think I’m done watching the HGTV channel.