Lots of Family

My family came into town on Friday, ready for the Tour de Force of Colorado relatives. They decided to try and see if all of us could sleep in Alcott, and after some shuffling and a couple of air mattresses, we managed it.

On Saturday we saw Grandma Bobbie, along with aunt Rhonda, aunt Teresa and her grandson. After breakfast and a short visit, we were off to Great Grandma Keller's and Grandpa Doug's, and saw Teresa's boyfriend Ed, aunt Gwen and her two girls. Grandma Keller is not looking well these days; cancer is taking its toll. It's very sad to see her whither away like this. As the evening set in, we headed over to see uncle John and Maryann at their isolated little foothills house. They're doing well, as are all of their dogs.

Sunday, Zach decided to leave to visit his friend Josh. The rest of us did a bit of clothes shopping, and in the afternoon we visited Grandma Doris and aunt Nancy. They seem to be doing pretty well these days. After that, Mom and Dad drove up to Loveland to see Dad's friends, so Jeannie and I stayed home.

This morning, everyone packed up, and after a late lunch, my family left for home. I managed to get a half a day of work at my internship, and now I'm home, finally able to relax a bit. This evening is New Year's Eve, so we may have a few people over, I'm not sure yet. I think Holly and Chris have already called back. We'll find out.

Christmas in New Mexico

Well, I spent the first part of my break at my parent's place in New Mexico. I had a very relaxing time. Looking back at the whole trip, I only left the house a few times. I got to meet my sister Jeannie's boyfriend, who was recovering from a bout of some sort of colitis. He's a nice enough guy, but he has a long and colorful history in Los Alamos.

The family opened packages on Christmas eve. I made out with a bunch of new tools, which I can certainly use. I've also got a gift card to Best Buy, which is always handy. On Christmas day, my brother Zach and I went for a run around the neighborhood, and I really didn't keep up very well. Dinner was very good: lasagna, sides, and pecan pie. My parents had saved the frozen pie from Thanksgiving.

I planned on staying a bit longer, but my family is also planning on coming up to Colorado, so I drove back today. This should give me a day or two to clean the house.

Semester: Done

I'm done, it's over, fin. My exams all went pretty well. Arabic was a little bit iffy, but I was impressed that I did know a few things. I hope my grades are good enough for Engineering, but it's out of my hands now. It's a strange feeling. I'm relieved that I've done my part and I don't have to work anymore, but still nerve-wracking. It shouldn't take more than a week to get my grades back, but I have no idea how long the dean's office will take in its decision. I've decided that if Engineering turns me down, I'll still stay at CU for another semester, to try for appeals, and so I don't have to switch schools in a matter of days, potentially. That could be a nightmare.

Besides school, driving is also winding down, at least for me. I haven't volunteered my services over the break, although I might want to do a little work. At this point, I want a break from the bus.

The internship is still going well. At this point, it's pretty slow going, but as I learn more of what's ahead, I'm starting to cringe. We're diving into an ocean of questions and research. However, I'm confident that we can find ways to break up our monstrous tasks. My only complaint so far is the commute. Traffic in east Denver is just horrendous!

Last Day of Class

School is drawing to a close. I finished up my classes this week, and tomorrow is my first exam. It's really been a good semester, even if it's been stressful and difficult. If I can just pull my GPA up, I could be admitted to the College of Engineering and Applied Science. If I can't, I'll be barred from the college and the Computer Science major, at which point I'll probably transfer to another school. My predicted grades put me right on the line, and I'm not yet sure how to feel. On the other hand, my exams count for a lot of points, so they could really help or really hurt me, either way.

In other news, the internship is starting well. I've decided to work on the same project as Holly and Marlin. Some of the ideas are covered by non-disclosure agreements, but basically we're going to be working with Natural Language Processing ideas, trying to expand the field in new ways, and possibly make a profitable application. Let me say this; if we can pull off some of Marlin's ideas, we will be taking the science in very new directions. It's really exciting to be involved with this project.

Internship

Hey, just a quick update. There's not much to report for school, since I'm just looking ahead to the end of the semester and the fateful decision. But the exciting news is that I just interviewed at a small corporation called Rational Data. Holly has been working with them for a few months on a new project, and recommended me to her boss, the CEO, Marlin. The interview went well, and I've already been invited to start next week, although we're not sure which project I'll be involved with just yet. I'm just excited that I'm looking at real-world experience!

Last Midterm, and Drill

This week, I took my last midterm, for calculus. I felt pretty good about it, but I only earned a 67. I'm not fretting though, I only have to hit the average.

My monthly Army drill was this weekend. First thing on Saturday morning, we had a random UA screening. Funny thing about the random people chosen, though; most of the E-4's and below were "randomly" chosen. Just funny is all. While people were waiting for the urge, our Major put in The Muppet Chrismas Carol. I'd never seen it before, and it was cute.

After that, we got some work done on service calls. I ended working mostly on phone lines again. Sunday afternoon, there was a Christmas gift drawing, and I got a mug and some candy out of the deal. I have to say, I really like this unit, and I'm proud to serve with such a great group of people.

Thanksgiving in Colorado

Well, I was planning on leaving for Colorado on Wednesday, but the weather ruined that plan. Instead, I spent the day doing homework and getting some quality "me" time. Thursday, I went with Ashley to the Campbell's Thanksgiving celebration in Greely. There were quite a few relatives that even Ashley didn't know, but the food was great. I got a chance to talk with her grandfather, Bob, and he gave me a bit more of his vast knowledge on guns. It was fun. After the Campbell's, Ashley and I drove back and visted my grandma and aunt. They seem to be doing well. We also visited Ashley's grandmother, and she was thrilled to see me. I really need to visit people more often.

Saturday, Ashley needed to catch up with her work, and it was a gorgeous day, so I decided to get really ambitious and clean our garage and make room for a huge bucket freezer. It wasn't too bad, and just when I started to run out of steam, Ashley's mom and uncle showed up to help put everything in place. After that, we started taking down one of the trees in the front yard. Ashley's uncle was very confident that he could do the job, but after a couple of limbs dropped in odd ways, I wasn't so sure. One of them dropped on the roof of the garage, but there's no damage as far as I can tell. Another one, I had to jump back to keep my feet from being hit. Anyway, interesting time.

Today, I finished the rest of the garage cleaning, and got the freezer in place. The thing is a huge commercial bucket freezer, and maybe just maybe, Ashley and I will get to use it for this new food service that Kelly "recommended." (Actually, she just put our name on a referral list and never told us they'd call. Surprisingly, we're still considering it.)

Wedding!

Yesterday was Chris and Holly's wedding, and it was absolutely wonderful! Ashley and Jackie left the house early, about 10 AM, so they could go have their hair done. I lounged around a bit longer. Finally, at about 2:30, I drove to the event center. I met up with the girls. Most of them were already dressed and ready. I changed into my tux and helped Chris with his. Pictures started at about 4. At first we were missing the best man, Ed, but he arrived with impeccable timing. We took many pictures with just about every configuration of family members and bridal party members possible. During much of the process, Ashley took pictures with her new camera, and she got some excellent shots. After the bridal party was released so the photographer could continue family shots, we mostly sat around, complaining about the lack of a lunch meal.

As the evening waned and the photos wrapped up, guests started to arrive. After what seemed like an eternity, the ceremony began at about 7. Holly looked absolutely wonderful! It was fairly simple, with a general non-denominational order of rites. After the ceremony, we learned that Holly's dress was a convertable! She removed the shawl and train, the girls hitched up a layer in the back, and suddenly, the dress was a uniform floor length, ready for the party!

We re-emerged from the back room, and the reception began. First was a great buffet dinner, for which the bridal party, and especially the bride's maids, jumped directly in line. After everyone had eaten their fill, the DJ directed the guests through the cutting of the cake, the first dance, the father-bride dance, the mother-groom dance, and finally, the bridal party dance. Chris and Holly directed the DJ to break out The Time Warp! I've only seen Rocky Horror once before, and it was a little bit traumatizing, but the dance was fun.

The dancing lasted well into the night. I think it was about 10:30 when we finally started cleaning up the hall. Chris's "hot" cousin had the groom's men help with candestinely decorating the bridal carriage (Chris's station wagon) with window ink and tin cans on strings. After everything was mostly cleaned, Ashley and I left for home, and directly for bed.

Wedding Prep

Well, last weekend was a bit crazy. Friday morning, Kristen was induced into labor with her baby. Ashley decided it was her job to get Kristen through, so she was at the hospital most of Friday and into Saturday. All that time, I was hastily cleaning the house. Saturday morning, my mother arrived, and I spent most of the day with her. In the afternoon, I received the call that Devin had given his mother some trouble coming out, but after an emergency C-section, mother and baby were both wonderful! Sunday I spent more time with Mom, and she came with me on my bus run to Boulder Reservoir. It was a great time, and she found several opportunities to use her new camera. Sunday evening, I went and saw Devin for the first time. Babies are just so tiny when they're first born!

This week I've been a working fool, but at least this time I'm choosing my hours. I need to get some money together for the holidays. I had a physics midterm on Tuesday night that went very well. This weekend has seen many last-minute preparations for Holly's and Chris's wedding. Jackie flew in on Friday afternoon, Saturday was the rehearsal and dinner. Today, the girls are getting nails and makeup ready. Tomorrow is the big day, and I think everything is ready.

I've spent the last couple of day's spare time setting up a project for Ashley. She would like to transfer her home videos on VHS cassette tapes to DVD. It's a great idea, but it will take some work. I've now set up a VCR and a capture card from Pinnacle, but so far I'm having problems. While I'm trying to capture the signal, the audio is fine, but the video is stuck on one frame, and that one frame only shows the top quarter of the picture. I'm sure there's some setting or patch I'm missing, and when I figure this out, I'm going to be very happy. Until then, this is going to bug me.

Wardriving to the next level

Well, I think I've taken my wardriving to the next level. Currently, I'm in the middle of a bus run to DU, and I'm parked in the bus, nowhere close to anything on campus. (Actually right about here.) However, as I type, I'm connected to the infamous "linksys" wireless access point. Someone in one of the nearby houses did the typical home user thing, and just plugged in their router without setting up any security settings. So now, I'm not stuck trying to walk around south Denver trying to entertain myself. Thank you, linksys. How many people can say they've gone wardriving in a 20-ton bus?

In other news, the online music store that I've been using, URGE, has officially shut down, so now I'm stuck finding a new store. It's like PC Club all over again. So for the past couple of days, I've been trying out Rhapsody. My MP3 player, a Sansa e260, is designed to integrate with Rhapsody, and so far I'm impressed. Instead of the way I'm used to doing business, which is buying one track or album at a time, Rhapsody works best as a subscription service. For $15 a month, I have access to almost their entire catalog, including the ability to sync anything to my Sansa. In addition, they have "channels," which are basically dynamic play lists from a particular genre, which allows you to explore music similar to your current library without buying more music. (One of the main drawbacks of using an MP3 player, according to radio enthusiasts, is that you never introduce yourself to new music.) I'm still not convinced that the subscription is going to be easy to bend over and take, but we'll see how much I use these premium features. Features aside, I'm pretty pissed off at the music player program itself, which seems really unstable and buggy. It will stutter and freeze quite often. Maybe it's just a problem with my computer? Time will tell, since I just "acquired" Windows Vista for my desktop computer.

Serving via Transit

Or this post's alternate title, "Since When Am I an 88M?"

This weekend was my unit's drill, and this time we were slated for weapons qualification at Ft. Carson. Now that I'm the only licensed bus driver in the company, my superiors asked me if I could head down with the advance party on Thursday, one day ahead of the bulk of the company. So, Thursday, I woke up bright and early, and headed over to Fitzsimons to meet up with the rest of the advance party. After a bit of confusion initially, we lined up our three HMMWV's and our LMTV, loaded our personal gear and my radio gear, and set out for Ft. Carson. The rest of Thursday was rather dull for me, since it was just the other members of the advance party, all senior NCO's (and most nearing retirement) getting ammo, ranges, and the like lined up for Friday.

Friday morning, we acquired our bus, and everyone headed out to the range to start setting up. The company showed up earlier than we expected, so we went back and shuttled them out to the range. The company quickly got started on grouping and zeroing. I was called back a few times to shuttle the Command Sergeant Major and the Colonels back and forth to range control in the bus. By the early afternoon, we moved on to qualification. I headed out on the first firing order, and hit 27 out of 40 on my first try, which is passing by a large margin. I would have liked to try again, but time moved rapidly and soon we were forced to close the range for the night. After chow at the dining facility, First Sergeant Bernal gathered all of the enlisted soldiers. He had everyone leave their weapons in the care of the officers, and we trekked out to the bowling alley. Everyone filed into the little watering hole connected to the bowling alley, and then he bought everyone a round of drinks to recognize two outgoing NCO's. SFC Sparkman is retiring after the December drill, and MSG Kanan is transferring to a different unit to be deployed. They're both great guys and great NCO's, and they've both helped me personally during my time with the unit. After 1SG's toast, the karaoke machine was fired up. That was the beginning of the end. Dupio got up several times, as did SPC Justice, the new chaplain's assistant. They even did a duet of "Summer Love" from Grease! Someone volunteered me, Pritchett, and SGT Nieto. I never figured out who, but I suspect either Pritchett was pulling our leg, or it was MSG Kanan. SGT Nieto bailed to the bathroom before the song started, so SGT Mathisen took his place, and the three of us sang a horrible but entertaining rendition of "Old Time Rock-and-Roll."

Saturday morning, we went out to the range and tried to cook off our ammunition as quickly as possible. (It's difficult to turn back in to the depot, so everything you take, you use.) Just for fun, the controllers opened up the long targets, everything from 200m to 800m. I think I may have hit one of the 800's, but it was hard to tell. If I did, it was a lucky shot. After that, we cleaned out the billets, I cleaned out the bus, and was assigned to drive the new company commander, CPT Sherard, in one of the HMMWV's. We didn't get 5 miles out of the gate before MSG Diehl's vehicle ran out of fuel. We went to the next exit for fuel, brought it back, and put it in, only to find that the fuel filter had run dry as well. It took MSG Diehl about 30 minutes to charge the system, and we got back en route. After returning to Fitz, we quickly put away our gear, and called it an evening.

Sunday was slated for a half day, with only one major goal, the PT test. I had been training for 3 weeks, but I still felt nervous. Even so, I was able to get my minimum on the push-ups and sit-ups with energy to spare. But then, once again, the run was out of my ability. I ran 2 miles in 17:28, a full minute and a half short of my age group's maximum time. That's my best time ever at this elevation, but still quite short of passing. I just need to keep pushing, keep improving.

Now, this evening, Ashley and I are over at Holly and Chris's new town home. They've just had internet installed, so I'm working on my Arabic presentation while the other three are playing Age of Mythology. Ashley's been getting into that game recently, and I guess you could call this her first LAN party! Excellent! I guess I'll have to install Age of Mythology and join in next time.

Busy Pays Off

Alright, so it's Halloween night, and tomorrow I'm going in early for drill. I managed to get to Sights and Sounds of the Islamic World last Thursday, and Ashley and I had a good time. The food was quite good, the songs and poetry were great (besides the extremely rude crowd), the comedian was a ball, and the wedding was intensely interesting. On Saturday, Sean and I mostly finished the calculus lab, so that's one academic need complete. Saturday night Ashley and I went to the CU Theatre's production of "The London Merchant," which was in the Loft Theater, a very small venue with seating for maybe 100 people, on four benches surrounding a square stage. Very unique production, and a great play.

Monday, Ashley and I got to our last beginning ballroom dance class. We're thinking about more advanced classes, but we'll see. Last night we both went to Golden with my Arabic class to enjoy a meal at the Ali Baba Grill. The food, company and coversation were all great. Professor Aissa and a few of my classmates got into several debates, about women's rights in the Islamic world vs. the West, etc. I think that was my first experience with Arab food, and I really enjoyed the entire meal. I'm going to have to find more restaurants like Ali Baba's, maybe a little closer to home.

Which brings us up to today. I decided to dress up for Halloween, so I just threw on an old set of BDU's (the old woodland camo's), and grabbed my clear plastic Airsoft M-4 for good measure. If I'd had my TA-50 bag, I could've worn my web gear and Kevlar helmet. Oh well. I've already been to my classes and taken my Arabic miderm, which was rough, but passable. I've turned in all of my assignments for the week early, and the last thing I'm doing tonight is one more shift on the bus. After that, I'll grab a few good hours of sleep, then it's off to the Army!

HolyCrapBusy

Well, here I am again, driving the bus on the late night. Oh well. Earlier tonight was the second calculus exam. It felt significantly better than the first, but there were a couple of parts that were out of my grasp. The TA's were very good about grading last time, and we had the exams back the next day. That kind of turnaround is unheard of! Hopefully they will do the same tonight.

I've got plenty happening in the next week; tomorrow night is the Sights and Sound of the Islamic World event, which I'd like to experience. They're holding an actual wedding, plus who can turn down free food, even falafel? Saturday night, Ashley and I are going to see the CU theater production of The London Merchant by George Lillo, which promises to be entertaining. Monday night is the last of the dance classes that Ashley and I have been taking, Tuesday is the Arabic class "field trip" to the Ali Baba Grill in Golden, and Thursday will be the start of this month's Army drill. Since I'm going to be missing two days of class, I have to finish my usual homework early in the week, as well as finish the calculus lab project and mostly finish my Arabic cultural presentation (5-10 minutes of talking in Arabic). Good times.

Busy Bee

It's been another busy week for me. Work has peaked again because of another home football game and Parent's Weekend, so I've been driving a lot. Tuesday I took my exams, and did fairly well on both of them, so I'm pleased there. Academics from Wednesday forward felt rushed. I'm still keeping up with calculus homework, but only just. We have a calc exam next week, and I've had little time to study for that until now.

For driving, I've taken a lot of different runs, ranging from early morning College Inn loops to late night WillVill loops, and even a few charters. In particular, Thursday afternoon I had a charter from the School of Engineering going to several tech companies in north Boulder, and that run was disastrous. I had 3 separate drops and pickups, and conflicting information on where they were and in what order to arrive. I did what I could to salvage the trip, but it was still a royal cluster-f***. We got back to the school 35 minutes late, and several people missed their classes. I just hope the teacher on board isn't involved in the Engineering entrance decisions, doesn't remember my name, or else had a positive view of my efforts.

Yesterday I took another field trip for Prof. Harvey Nichols and his Alpine Ecology class, this time down to the Denver Museum of Natural History. I enjoyed walking around the museum and listening to Harvey's notes on the animals and dioramas. It got me feeling very intellectual and adventurous, like Ashley and I need to take more one-day vacations to interesting places. We'll have to see about that. Maybe we can go on a hike at Garden of the Gods, and I can geocache while she uses her amazing new camera ( a Canon Powershot S5 IS). That sounds like fun.

Cactus Patch

Nothing huge to report this week. School is continuing at a steady pace. Work has slowed down, and I'm quite happy about that. We have several new drivers coming into the company, so the workload should cut down a bit. Ashley and I have started ballroom dance classes on Monday nights, through October. I had fun, more than I expected. I don't dread the classes like many males do, but I have to admit, I wouldn't just take them on my own.

This weekend was the first Army drill of the new fiscal year. We have another addition to the commo section, MSG Mora, who is a great guy and a knowledgeable NCO. I spent most of the weekend moving phone extensions, since the unit decided to rotate offices for a bunch of people. However, a couple of highlights included a change of command for the company commander from CPT Robinson to CPT Sherard, followed by a patch-changing ceremony. Our higher headquarters have changed from the 96th RSC in Utah to the 103rd ESC in Iowa. Our new patch is a cactus, a historical relic from the 103rd Division in WW2. At that time, the 103rd hailed from Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, and hence was called the "Cactus Divison." Besides that, our full-company PT test was delayed due to the freezing rain, so I have another 3 weeks to prepare for the next trial.

This coming Tuesday, I have the Experimental Physics lecture final exam, and later that day is the second General Physics midterm exam. Wish me luck!

She Said Yes!

Tonight was the 5 years of dating anniversary for Ashley and myself, and about a month ago I bought tickets to the Loreena McKennitt concert! This was Ashley's first ever concert, and the first one I've been to on my own, and it's been years since I've been to one at all. It was held at The Paramount in downtown Denver, which I had never been to. The concert was amazing, and the woman sitting beside us was friendly and had an extended conversation with us before the concert and on the intermission. The concert was just absolutely great. Ashley and I thought the three encores were a bit much, but oh well. I was extremely intrigued by the hurdy gurdy and its player. I'd heard the sound in some of Loreena's songs, but I could never identify the instrument, so that was a treat. Ashley bought two CDs from the vendors, and we headed home.

As if it wasn't a great evening to begin with, I still had a surprise for Ashley. When we got home, I gave her a little crimson Shane Co. box, and inside the grey ring box was the bridal ring set that I paid off this morning. It's a beautiful set, with 20 channel set diamonds across both bands, interlocking "points," and a 1/5th carat princess-cut diamond. Then I got on my knee, and asked her if she would marry me. She said yes, and started crying for joy. She had to use an ice cube to remove her promise ring, but it looks great on her finger. We sat on the couch and talked for a while before we both went to bed. It was a perfect end to a wonderful evening!

Calc Midterm, then Party!

Wednesday was the Calculus midterm, and I didn't do all that well, but I'm not alone. Temper my 49% with the fact that the average was 51%, standard deviation 16%. I feel like school is going pretty well, but I'm staying incredibly busy with special events. Like Friday night's Buff Bus driver's party. Dine, the girl I trained with, worked very hard and was actually able to reserve one of the 22-passenger mini buses for a "team-building event." She invited all the drivers to be picked up at their residences, to be taken to a park off of Broadway and Table Mesa for a barbecue. We had a great time, and I got to meet a couple of drivers formally instead of just passing them on the time sheets. I spent a good amount of time talking to Stuart, an Army ROTC cadet and generally good guy, and we arranged to switch our schedules a bit to make both our lives a bit easier. Great time.

Saturday was another football game, this one against #3 Oklahoma. I had the distinction of driving the ADA bus, shuttling those with physical disabilities down to the stadium. Once again, the streets became extremely crowded before the game. So crowded that on the last drop-off before the game, Events Services wouldn't even let me down the street. Most of my passengers decided to walk the short distance left to the stadium, but one gentleman was adamant about being dropped off before the game started, and I was adamant about getting him there. I ended up dropping him off at a different gate, then had a hell of a time trying to get back on route. After the game started, however, the crowds dropped off sharply and I was able to get back to work. The rest of the day was uneventful, except perhaps for the big win!

Sunday was my second party for the weekend, Kristen's baby shower. I spent a little time helping set up decorations, and then the rest of the time enjoying the friends, food, and festivities. I lost my necklace with the plastic safety pin pretty early on for saying the word "baby." (That was one of the games.) However, I did pretty well at pinning a cloth diaper to a balloon. And getting the little plastic baby out of the ice cube was no problem. Normally I guess you have to hold the cube and warm it and it takes a while, but I opted to put it on the deck and smash the cube with my foot. It was dubbed the "emergency C-section" method of playing the game.

Hopefully I can get back to business as usual soon. We have more drivers coming into the company, so work will be letting off a bit. I'm done with midterms for the moment, but there's no end of homework and studying with which to occupy myself. And I may have exciting news soon, since Ashley and my 5-year anniversary of dating is approaching...

Ruidoso

This weekend was our family trip to Ruidoso, and we had a great time! Ashley and I spend Thursday night trying to pack and plan for the airport. Friday after class, I headed strait home to get the last few things ready. Ashley and I got out of the house on perfect time, parked on the off-site lot, went through a quick computer kiosk for check-in, and buzzed through security without a hitch. We had a little bit of time, so I introduced Ashley to the USO at Denver International Airport. The flight was very short, and in no time, we met my mom at the baggage claim in Albuquerque. We spent about 3 hours driving southeast, some of it through twisty mountain roads, and found the condo without too much trouble. We met Dad and Jeannie there, and went to bed promptly thereafter.

Saturday, we picked up some groceries, then mostly just lounged around. Zach showed up mid-afternoon, and everyone took some time to enjoy each other's company. It's not often that we can get the whole family in one place anymore! Sunday was spent in the shopping district, looking at all of the neat little stores. After that, we found a spot with go-carts, which Dad, Zach and I rode around, and mini-golf for everyone.

Monday, Ashley decided that she needed a Western-style photo (and I wasn't opposed, I'm just being ornery), so we had some photos taken of the entire family plus Ashley, then just Ashley and I, and then just Jeannie. It was really fun, we had the prints ready in about 20 minutes, and they even sold us a CD with all of the digital photos that we took! That was just amazing, I didn't think that they would just release the copyright just like that. After a little more shopping, Mom, Jeannie, Ashley and I headed for Albuquerque once more, and that night we were home.

Midterms, Round 1

Well, Tuesday night was my first midterm exam of the semester. It was in my General Physics 2 class, and I already have the score back, a B. I'm pretty happy with that, although I haven't seen what questions I missed. I have an exam in Calculus next week, we'll see how that goes. This weekend is the family trip to Ruidoso, NM, so I'll have to study on vacation. What a gyp.

A Game and A Shower

The week was normal for the status quo. I'm still working a bunch, and not incredibly happy, but at least I'm keeping up with schoolwork. Saturday, I first had a trip up to CU's Mountain Research Station, a very beautiful, scenic drive.

Saturday evening was the football game against Florida State, and I was driving WillVille. Not only was it the first game of the year at Folsom Field, but it was also Florida State's first ever trip to CU, so the student body was hyped up and there were a lot of Floridians in attendance. For some reason, Events Services had not redirected our normal route, so we were expected to keep going through the middle of campus along Colorado Ave. As game time approached, it seemed obvious that it wasn't going to work for long. Colorado Ave. was a sea of people, with vendors and radio stations lined up on the sidewalks and people meandering everywhere. I found that I could inch through the crowd safely, but my horn was only semi-functional. Just as the game started, they decided to redirect the route to Regent Dr. Duh! But after that, the evening went as quiet as any game night, relatively wild but nothing too horrible. Too bad we didn't win the football game.

Sunday evening was Holly and Chris' wedding shower, which Ashley helped to organize and plan. It was a wonderful evening, highlighted by a photo montage on DVD made by Holly's father, several games (including the TP wedding dress contest), and of course, the presents. They made a decent haul. Gosh, their wedding is coming up pretty quick. Ashley and I are in the wedding party, so I should probably go get fitted for the suit I need!

Mini-Reunion

Hey all, just a quick update. This weekend, my dad came up from New Mexico, and my dad's uncle and a couple of his cousins came from California to Colorado for a visit. I followed them all around Saturday and we met with quite a few relatives. However, the person of honor was my great grandma Jean. She's 86 years young and battling cancer, so she's usually quite tired. This time, with my dad and his cousins, and a couple of my aunts and their children and grandchildren, grandma perked up and held out for quite a few hours as everyone talked on her front porch. She still seemed frail and tired, but she was also excited to have so many of her generations in attendance.

School has been going well, but it's certainly picking up pace. A rhythm is slowly starting to form, and I just need to adapt my schedule to it. I'm working quite a bit again this week, but nothing like the first week, thank god. Don't worry, my studies still come first.

Good Long Labor Day

Well, Saturday I looked forward to my last bus run for the week, the CU vs CSU football game. It's traditionally one of the rowdiest games of the year, seeing as CSU is our rival school. Well, sure enough, even at 8:30 in the morning, we had several hundred people lined up on the sidewalk, all vying for a seat on the Buff Bus. We packed all of our buses as full as we could allow, then set off for Mile High Stadium. The entire way, the crowd would start up singing the school song, and a variation on a CSU chant, "It sucks, to be, a CSU Ram!" Once we hit the traffic, the crowd would often see a car loaded with black and gold, and cheer. Or they might see an SUV loaded with green and yellow, and start jeering.

We made it to the stadium in one piece, but after much more traffic on the side streets, we were turned away from the usual bus parking lot. This upset me quite a bit, as I was forced to drive around (at a crawl) and try and find a place to let off the now-rioting mob behind the driver's seat. Eventually, after many pleas to just "Let us off here!" and "I really really have to pee!" I just let them off near a major causeway. The parking arrangement was settled, and I was allowed to enjoy the game. I'm not a huge fan of football, but I know enough that I can enjoy the occasional game. It was an interesting game, first very close, then CSU took off and at one point had an 11 point lead, then CU came back. I had to leave halfway through the 4th quarter, so I didn't get to see the tying field goal or any of the overtime period, during which CU took the lead. I was pleasantly surprised when my passengers back were fairly calm and not a rejoicing bacchanal. However, while I was refueling, I discovered that one of my back windows had been punched and broken, probably on the trip down. All in all, better than I expected.

The rest of the weekend was quiet. I tried to arrange a party on Monday, and cleaned furiously for it, but it didn't happen. The person I was most interested in seeing was Mike, who is rumored to be thinking about moving into Alcott. I haven't talked to him in some time, and I still can't seem to get a hold of him. I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

And despite working myself to death last week, I'm mostly keeping up with my studies. Maybe that's because it was the first week, a fairly light study load. It looks as if this next week will be much more reasonable. Knock on wood.

Work, work, and then...

Transportation plans on working me like a dog this week. We're down several staff drivers and lost many student drivers to graduation, and I feel like I've been picking up more than my share of slack. From Tuesday to Saturday alone, I'm working 33 hours. I'll admit, that's not even quite full time, but I'm a freaking full time student! I've sworn off full time job and full time school ever since EchoStar. Three nights this week, I'll have gotten less than 5 hours of sleep. If this bullshit doesn't clear up right quick, I'll have an earful for my boss.

Another Semester Started

Well, yesterday was the first day of classes at CU. So far so good. I think this semester will be good, as long as I don't get bogged down with work. So far, I've got about 20 hours this week, and thats really more than I want to handle. I've got about 9 hours bus driving on a permanent basis, but a bunch of people are still figuring out their schedules, so I've pick up some of the slack. Oh yeah, and I'm working the CU vs CSU football game this Saturday. Wish me luck. I'm thinking about taking a flak vest or my Kevlar helmet, because it's going to be absolutely nuts.

As long as work settles down to about 12 hours a week, I should have plenty of time to get with study groups and office hours and the Arabic Speaking Club, and use so many more resources that I never thought I needed. This semester, it's time to figure out how to be a good student again.

Laptop!!!

I've been mulling it over for weeks, and I decided that a new laptop really would help my endeavors this semester. My old laptop is a bit slow at this point, but I could live with the dated technology. What really prompted me were the bulk and weight of the machine, and the fact that it has a 2 minute battery life. It's impractical to try and use that laptop very often, since I'm forced to sit near an outlet and take a few extra minutes for setup and tear-down.

So today I finally took the plunge. Armed with some leftover student loan money, I headed to Best Buy. I had already shopped around and picked out the machine, so the transaction was fairly quick. I am the proud new owner of an HP Pavilion dv2415nr. It's fairly small and light, and looks great with their Wave pinstripe design. It's got Windows Vista, an AMD Turion dual-core processor, comes with 1GB of RAM (I'll probably upgrade that posthaste), and built-in NVIDIA GeForce graphics! Not to mention the internal wireless network card (revolutionary for me), DVD burner, and built-in webcam that I don't know how to access yet. W00t!!!

The jury's still out on Windows Vista, as I'm having to relearn the locations of many utilities and interface features. It's pretty, sure, but how does it perform? Does it make me more efficient? Time will tell. I'm sure I'll get used to it. Either way, this is my first brand-new brand-name never-touched perfect-battery-condition laptop! I'm totally geeking out here!

Broke Bus

Well, just got back from my first major bus break-down. Several other drivers and I were taking a group down to the Denver Museum of Natural History and the Denver Zoo. The drop-off was uneventful, and the other drivers and I wondered around the museum for a bit, taking in the dinosaurs exhibit. When I went to start the bus back up, however, I noticed a large puddle on the ground, near the engine compartment in back. Upon further investigation, there was oil leaking all over the transmission block, and it had been the entire time I had been dropping students off. It was a severe leak by this time, but my only conclusion is that a hose was severed while I was coming off of the highway.

Luckily, there was enough room to take all of the students back on the other buses, with a few standing. I waited for a while for the enormous tow truck to get through rush hour traffic, then had a pleasant ride with Brent, the tow truck guy, back to Boulder. I'm just thankful that this wasn't worse.

New Mexico for the Holidays

With summer break coming quickly to an end, I decided to head down to New Mexico last Saturday. It was optimal timing, as I was in attendance for Jeannie's birthday dinner and the big day, her first day back to LAHS, and Zach's last few days before he heads off to his first year of college at New Mexico State. My dad and I also got to go hiking and geocaching, but we didn't find our chosen cache before the weather forced us to move along. I also saw The Simpsons Movie with Dad, and Rush Hour 3 with Zach. Decent, funny movies in both cases, but I think the company was better than the movies themselves. And for Mom, we found Photoshop Elements 5 to help her compile her many family photos digitally. It was just the break I needed before I get back into school mode. Oh, and on the drive back today, I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on audiobook. Great read (or listen, in this case), I highly recommend the entire Harry Potter series now that they're all done.

Sick of Being Sick

The past week hasn't been the mad cleaning fest I had planned. After Jackie moved out, I had planned on doing my best to get myself and Ashley better organized, and find everything that was left behind. Instead, Sunday I developed a nasty pain in my abdomen, and it just got worse. I went to the doctor on Tuesday, and based on the location of the pain he suspects some form of colitis. The pain peaked Wednesday, and I spent most of Thursday asleep or in agony. But after many antibiotic pills, the pain finally let up Friday. I didn't feel well enough to get to my Army drill, so I'll have to make that up soon. By today, I'm feeling mostly normal, and thank god for that.

Bye Bye Jackie!

Well, starting where I left off, last Sunday I went down to the Renaissance Festival. We weren't sure ahead of time who all would go, but we ended up with just Jackie, Holly and myself. Ashley was down with a tummy ache, and didn't feel up to going. But the two girls and I saw the sights and got our fill of the merchandise, the shows, and most of all, the atmosphere. I can't vouch for the Faire's authenticity, but it truly is another world apart from the modern.

The week has been usual, excepting a fairly embarrassing incident while driving a bus through Denver International Airport. No injuries or damage, just embarrassment. Jackie has been packing like a crazy woman all through the week, and it culminated today. After picking up her father and their U-Haul, we packed the small truck, said our goodbyes and took our pictures, and she's on her way. It should only take 3 or 4 days to get to Georgia, the faster the better I'm sure. Best of luck on your trip and in your new home, Jack! You'll be sorely missed. We'll see you soon, hopefully!

Summer Marches On

A few exciting points this week. Last Friday, Ashley and I attended her cousin Robin's wedding. It was a very simple ceremony by a Justice of the Peace in their beautifully decorated back yard, and a nice family party afterward. Robin looked great, and it was a great time overall.

Saturday and Sunday were devoted to the monthly Army drill. It consisted mostly of unpacking from AT, and the commo section received a new addition. SPC Flauta is a former active-duty infantryman, and self-admitted World of Warcraft addict. He seems like a great guy, and it's great to have him in the section.

Besides that, I've been driving buses. Yesterday I took my first bus trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park, and it was just a terribly pretty drive. I've forgotten how nice it is up in the mountains at this time of year.

Jackie has been making more preparations to move out next week, and the house has half-full boxes everywhere. But tomorrow we're taking a day off...

Fine Arts Major?

Well, not a bunch to report on since coming home. I've been working a lot, including more than a few "rain runs." They work like this: I come in and pre-trip the bus as usual, but I don't actually go anywhere until the coordinator of the cheer camp calls us. We're only needed if the camp needs to be moved indoors due to rain, and it's too early in the summer for many afternoon showers. Consequentially, I end up doing busywork, like cleaning out the classroom, inventorying bus equipment, or even just washing buses. Its not like it's hard work, and I still get paid my full rate, but still.

But the real news today is that I declared a major! I've been vying to transfer into the College of Engineering and Applied Science to become a Computer Science major since high school, but this spring I got caught. I earned more than 60 credit hours and was forced to declare a major, but I couldn't get into Engineering because of my GPA. A guy in the Department of Financial Aid said that I could declare a temporary major, and even made a suggestion on my choice. "I think you can even apply for Fine Arts online, they'll take just about anybody." Hehe. Can anybody see me as a Fine Arts major?

But rather than sink that low, I decided to first pursue Mathematics as a temporary home. This afternoon, I met with a Math adviser and explained my situation, she had me fill out one easy little form, and I was done! So now I'm a Math major for the time being!

In other news, Jackie is preparing to move to Georgia in a couple of weeks. It seems spur-of-the-moment, and I hope she's thought this through, but I have confidence that she'll find the change of scene motivating, if nothing else.

Back to Reality

That's right, I'm back home now. Last Sunday night was the end of the exercise. 1SG Bernal got a paranoid in the last hour, assuming that the opposing force (OPFOR) would mount a massive assault, so we broke out the MILES AT4 so that we'd be ready to do some real damage! We loaded them and ran them out to the entry control point (ECP), but the MP's there were already packing up for the exercise. What a let down.

Over the next two days, we packed up the tents and all of our gear, and loaded them in our CONEX (Container Express, aka. a steel shipping container). On Wednesday, everything was packed and shipped, so there was nothing to do except enjoy ourselves! LTC Carter was able to get control of the rappelling tower, so several of us went and had a blast with that! In addition to the wall that everyone rappels down in Basic, they opened up the open side that simulates a helicopter rope decent! I only went down the wall, but the open side looked like a blast! After that, SPC Faith and SPC Dixit and I walked the mile out to Mission San Antonio de Padua. It's an old Spanish mission founded in 1771, and is in fact the third built in what is now the state of California. It's a wonderful place, and it was only a mile away the entire time! We had very little time to stay and enjoy, because the entire 5025th/651st was having a barbecue to celebrate the end of a good exercise.

That night, we moved out of the barracks and spent the entire night waiting for the bus. (I'll never know why we had to sleep outdoors with the bags.) The flight home wasn't bad, and getting home was a relief! I had a good time, but now it's time for a couple days of R&R.

Award!

Annual training at PacWar has been going well. SPC Dupio and MAJ Friberg have already gone home, so it's just SFC Zimmerman, SGT Lant and myself. About once a night, at 3 or 4 in the morning, Sgt. Z and I hear blank fire and are forced into a defensive posture, but other than that I've been updating work order paperwork, watching movies, and trying to stay warm. Yeah, no kidding, this place gets frickin' cold at night! It's 110°F in the heat of the day, and 45°F at night. And while 45° may not seem that bad, it gets to you after a few hours of sitting around typing.

But I have some very exciting news! This morning after shift, Sgt. Z and I were told to be at the morning formation. That was a little strange because we haven't had to attend formation while on night shift. But at the formation, the two of us and several people from our sister unit (the 5025th GSU) were awarded the Army Achievement Medal! It's a fairly low-ranking award, and most people with some years of service have received one. However, ours were awarded by a different unit, a medical unit that we assisted in getting their HMMWV driver's licenses. I'm told its quite an honor to receive an award from another unit. Besides that, it's my first award! W00t!

Busy Days at Pacific Warrior

Well, it's been a heck of a time so far here at Operation Pacific Warrior. Last week, I joined up with about half of the company to fly out to California. The NCOs introduced me to the USO for the first time, and the USO in Denver is exceptional! The flight to San Jose was uneventful, and we had a short wait until we caught a bus down to Camp Roberts. In the grand scheme of the exercise, Camp Roberts is "Kuwait," the in-processing station, and Fort Hunter Liggett is "Iraq," the operational area.

Camp Roberts itself is not much to look at. Yes, it was a huge training base during WWII, but I'm sure it hasn't been updated since 1945. Half of the camp is in complete shambles, unsafe and unfit for habitation. The other half has plastic siding installed. (Detect any sarcasm?) It's an enormous dust bowl, and miserably hot. I'm thankful we only stayed three days.

On Friday the 8th, we bussed back up to Fort Hunter Liggett. Immediately I could see that it was a huge improvement. Green, tended lawns. Bays with decent lockers and air conditioning. There's even a pay-for-wireless network in all of the bays, so it's too bad didn't bring my laptop! The only drawback is no cell reception.

In the past week, I've been working hard most of the day up in the billeting office, our temporary base of operations. Most of our issues have been network access and printers. I've also been attending classes on everything from radio procedures to OE-254 antennas to MILES 2000 gear. Other than work, I've been trying to take advantage of the base's gym and pool.

Starting last Friday, we started moving into the tent city, in preparation for the actual combat simulation. Our job during the exercise is going to be running our own radios and computer network, as well as providing network connections for the other units in the Cantonment Forward Operating Base (FOB). The commo section is going to have our own tent, so we're using our resources to set up a "Morale, Welfare and Recreation" (MWR) tent. We're going to set up 3 or 4 computers for people to use the internet, a printer, and a projector screen for movies. We even brought popcorn and an air popper! For the last couple of days I was on day shift, but starting tonight I'll be on the night shift. Someone has to be in the tent 24 hours a day to guard the equipment. And with the exercise starting, if we hear blank gunfire or simulated mortars, we'll have to take appropriate action and turn out the lights and guard the doorway until the all-clear. Good times!

Sleepy Summer Days

Since coming back to Colorado from Zach's graduation, I've gotten back into the routine of preparing for AT and trying to wind down. Saturday I had a quick one-day drill, which I took to fill out my military license, take a HMMWV road test, and grab all of my gear. Sunday I spent with my Mom, and we visited family up north.

I've just about prepared everything for AT. Everything's packed into two standard duffel bags, compartmentalized using plastic zipper bags. I'm taking a camera, my GPS, and a few other amenities. I've decided to skip the laptop this time. It's just too heavy and bulky, and it's likely I won't have any internet access anyway. I'll be setting up an internet cafe at Fort Hunter Liggett, but for military computers only. I'll have to wait to see what sort of access I have down there. Potential internet deprivation aside, I'm pretty excited about this AT. It will be the first time our unit has done it all together in a long time, and I'm excited to find out how people handle being in the field, stuck with each other for longer than three days. It will be interesting, I'm sure of that much.

Beginning of Summer

Oh gosh, it's been a while. Really sorry to ignore this for so long, but you can beleive I've been busy. School ended smoothly with the presentation of our project in Components, and the very next day I was on the road to New Mexico. I drove to Albuquerque to see Zach's track final, and I was rewarded to see him get 2nd place in both shotput and discus, both directly behind his good friend and team mate. I was also there for Mother's Day, so Mom, Dad, and I went geocaching and found a great little path. While I was gone, Ashley had surgery on a cyst, and I came back to Colorado to find her very much in pain still.

The weeks that followed were pretty quiet. I started thinking about Annual Training coming up in June, but mostly I was catching up on some good old computer gaming. One day, Marcy and I installed a new bedroom window, so hopefully it will be more energy efficent and more bearable in the heat. I also had a few bus runs, shuttling a conference from their hotel to NCAR and back. But this past Thursday was a real treat. Kelly came down for the day, and the two of us went to Elitch Gardens and rode the rides all day. Ashley and Jackie won't ride the coasters, and Kristen of course has that whole medical condition of expectant mother, so it was just the two of us. They didn't miss a whole lot, since half of the park was still shut down in anticipation of full-blown summer. We also had several school districts worth of high schoolers taking a field trip. However, we made the best of it.

Friday, Ashley and I both drove down to New Mexico to see Zach's graduation ceremony. The gym was barely large enough for all of the family, but the speakers were generally short and sweet. The reading of the names was horribly long, even with a class of only 300. Since then, we've been attending parties and eating too much cake. After all, your little brother only graduates high school once!

Culmination

My pride, my Army promotion, and my grades are all being decided this week, and so far I'm not doing well. The drill this weekend was fairly normal, nothing too bad except for the company PT test. I started on the push-up event, something I thought I had locked up. But about 10 push-ups in, I started lowering my head and looking at the ground. Almost instantaneously I had 3 NCO's standing around me and telling me to keep my head up and go down lower. With all of the commotion around me, I did a pitiful job, probably one of my worst performances on the push-ups. I didn't even come close to passing there. Disheartened, I wouldn't have even bothered going on, but SGT Murray encouraged me to at least finish all three events. I barely eked out enough sit-ups, and really took it easy on the run. All that preparation on the run with Pritchett, and I ignored my push-ups and failed before the run even started.

This morning was the Arabic written final. I don't think I did a spectacular job, but it was good enough. I did learn a lot this semester, and I do think it showed. Besides, Oustad Aissa is a very compassionate teacher, and he's always willing to help out his students when they need it. My components final is Thursday, and I feel confident about that. After all, it's a computer class, right? How can I go wrong? Directly afterward is the optional project demonstration. My partner and I have been putting together a two-machine pong game with serial-port communication. I'm impressed that we got it working this far, but somewhat disappointed with the results. We didn't figure out how to get the tiny LCD screen to draw smoothly, so we ended up with a quick flash for the ball, and a paddle that constantly changes shape. Not only that, but the collision detection is skewed, so the ball hits a wall, stays next to it for a while, then bounces. The whole program has a mind of it's own, and I don't think programs are supposed to do that. As the programmers, we should have complete control over it and know what happens and when it happens. However, I'm still looking forward to presenting it.

Bad Run

Last night I had a fairly bad bus run. I was moving a conference from their hotel to Folsom Field for a relaxing evening of fun, gambling and socializing. I was driving an articulated bus, which forced me to park awkwardly for picking up the group. I had several ladies in high heels trying to walk down a short, grassy slope to board. However, no harm done, we continued on our way. I dropped the group off, then went back to base and post-tripped the bus and ate dinner. I came back to the bus and drove back to the pick-up point, where I was slated to shuttle for a couple of hours. Very few people came out during the shuttle period. When 10:30 rolled around and I had still only shuttled a fraction of the group back, I began to get a little nervous. However, my trip ticket said I ended at 10:30. Maybe the party went later? They were probably still partying and would find alternate transportation back to the hotel. So a few minutes afterward, I drove out, fueled up, and went back to base.

As I was attempting to park the bus, my boss Scott called me over the radio sounding sleepy and slightly annoyed. He asked if I had picked up my group, and I told him what had happened. He then informed me that the bulk of the group was waiting up at Folsom Field still and very angry that I had left them. I immediately drove up to the pick up point, and was assaulted with all sorts of accusations. I had left 10 minutes early; I waited until I saw people walking out, then drove off; I had spent the last half hour sleeping somewhere. I didn't retort that they didn't have the courtesy to be on time, not even one of them. I made a mistaken judgment call last night, and I took for granted my own obsession with being on time. I wasn't supposed to be a bus service last night, but a chauffeur. I talked to Dien and Scott about it today. Dien, an experienced staff driver, suggested that I could have gone up and checked. Scott thought that my mistake was not grossly out of line, and agreed that the incident might warrant changing some procedures, perhaps including requesting approximate passenger counts on reservations. I don't know what could have helped the situation, but I've learned a little for next time.

Other than that, I've been working hard on my run, with the assistance of SPC Pritchett. He also goes to CU, and he's one of the fastest guys in our company, so I'm glad to have his help. We've been working hard; I don't think I've ever worked my legs this hard over a two-week stint. I just hope it's enough.

Today is the last day of class, and tomorrow is the June drill. Wish me luck with finals!

Four Fronts

My time has been battling on four fronts for the past week; school, work, family, and PT. School has been busy as ever, and more so because finals are fast approaching. It's been a struggle to keep up, even after cutting slack and quitting calculus. I'm not doing as well as I thought in Components; my partner and I have done solid A's on our homework and projects, but I had forgotten how much weight the midterms carried. I always count on computer-related classes to be an easy A, but this class and its tests have really challenged me.

Work has been keeping me busy. A lot of the other drivers have effectively started to refuse runs because they need time to study, and so I've been asked to take on more and more. I'm such a nice guy that I'll take almost anything from Ava, and I certainly don't mind the money. It just keeps me a lot more busy than I like.

If that weren't enough, there's a PT test at the next drill. When they mentioned it at drill last week, it became clear that I didn't have a month to prepare, I had two weeks. Well, in the past week I've been pushing my legs hard, probably the hardest they've worked since I got home. SPC Pritchett also takes classes at CU, so he's been helping me train. He's one of the fastest guys in the unit, and I really appreciate his help. I feel hopeful about this PT test, if not confident.

Yesterday, I had a small break in the action. After I help Ashley and Jackie set up their garage sale, I drove down town to the Denver Coliseum and met up with my sister and her church youth group. They drove all the way from Los Alamos to attend the Acquire the Fire event. It was much different than any event I've ever attended. They had a lot of messages for teens, including an eye-opening perspective on "branding," or imprinting consumers with a particular archetype and getting them to buy products based on that cultural stigma. The example they really pushed was MTV's "Mook and Midriff" branding scheme. Every teenager knows that the people on MTV are cool, young, and sexy, and MTV subtley encourages teens to emulate this lifestyle in order to sell its wares. The worst part, says ATF, is that this is not overt advertising, where MTV obviously pushes these products. It's very subtle, and makes teens think that it's what they wanted in the first place. I'll let the reader do their own research and form their own opinions, but the conference made some striking points.

Today I mostly helped with the garage sale, and we made a little bit of money. Enough to buy a lawn mower and a weed whacker, maybe.

Weapons Qual

Friday morning was a bright, early start for me. I drove down to Fitzsimons, ready to rock the firing range! The morning was the usual drawing of weapons and gear, then the bus ride down. We had a little bit of a hold once we were set up in the billets, since the ranges were behind schedule to go hot. The first sergeant offered to take several people to the Military Clothing Store, and I decided to go with him and buy more boot laces. (Al has developed a fascination with mine.) When we got back, we were late for the move to the range, so SPC Faith and I rode down in the back of a HMMWV with CPT Robinson. Once at the zero range, I tried to quickly verify my M16's zero was still good, then headed back.

Friday evening, SFC Zimmerman cooked up some commo training for SPC Dupio and myself, and we refreshed ourselves on SINCGARS radios and learned how to operate a field telephone switchboard. I really needed the radio refresher, and the switchboard training was completely new. We are going to need this stuff for AT in June, so I was glad to get some section training.

Saturday morning we went strait to the qualification range. On my turn, I shot 32 out of 40, my personal best! I even moved up from a Marksman to a Sharpshooter and earned a new qualification badge for my Class A uniform. After that, we were moved over to a MOUT range. We had some Iraq vets teach us the basics of urban ops and clearing buildings. I thought it was valuable and interesting training, but I hope I never need to use it. Several of us lower enlisted, including SPC Pritchett and SPC Faith, hiked back to Tent City with CPT Scahill. With the blessing of MAJ Acree, we even stormed the Tactical Operations Center where the big wigs were hanging out.

Sunday was mostly uneventful. I had a quick bus test from MSG Scott. He's one of our unit's only bus drivers and he's retiring at the end of May, and we hope to have more than one driver for AT.

It really struck me this drill that SPC Vaughn really isn't still here in Colorado. He deployed to Iraq a few weeks ago. I just hope and pray that he gets back safely in one piece.

Chugging Along

Not a lot of interesting developments here. I've been plugging away at schoolwork, and taking more bus trips. I've had more WillVille of course, plus two charters to Chautauqua and one to the Boulder Reservoir. I'm really enjoying this work so far, it's probably one of the better student jobs I could think of.

Last Sunday we cleaned the garage, in preparation for the Broomfield City Spring Cleanup. On one day out of the year they'll take just about anything that people need to get rid of, so I'm going to get my computer junkyard cleared out. I probably have 15 or so computer towers that are basically useless, and I need to be able to get them out the door. With Ashley's and Jackie's help, we cleaned out all of the cardboard boxes and the strewn-about recycled bottles, and we were rewarded with a walkable path through the garage. We still have the old corner couch and a few other things to deal with, but Ashley and Jackie are planning a garage sale soon for those.

Tomorrow I'm headed to Ft. Carson for my April drill. We're running weapons qualification again, so wish me luck!

Driving and Drumline

Well, the first week back from break wasn't too bad. I started driving more bus runs, and I've done several WillVille shifts plus a geology run to Chautauqua. Hanging out under the flatirons was very relaxing, so I think I'll be taking more of those runs! Wednesday evening Ashley gave me a couple more gray hairs by calling me and telling me she had backed her car into a ditch. I didn't ask questions, I just grabbed Jackie and started driving over. It turns out she was trying to get to a house in east Boulder for her poop-scooping job and missed a turn, so she attempted to turn around in a rural area, and backed one wheel into a small drainage ditch. She had called a tow truck and was towed out by the time I arrived. I wasn't very happy about it, but I knew that she just needed me to help at that moment. She got the grumpy treatment for the rest of the night. I wasn't angry, just grumpy my relaxing evening was upset.

But Saturday night was a real treat. It was the RMPA State Championship. After a bit of getting our plans confused and reorganized, Ashley, Jackie and I drove up to the Budweiser Events Center in Loveland. We met up with Kelly when we got there, and were just in time to see Broomfield and some of it's competitors' shows in the final round. After that, we went out to dinner and caught up with Kelly. She's been doing very well. We decided to drop in and visit Kelly's fiance Will and their house. It's a huge house! It seems perfect for them. After a while we drove back to the event center and waited for the score announcements. After the usual pomp and circumstance, they announced the scores for Regional Open class, and what do you know? For the first time, Broomfield won first place! We were so excited. For most of the years I participated we were always second. Always just behind. So close. I haven't been a part of the line for a long time and only just recognized a few faces, but I still feel like I have a small claim to their success this year. In an ancient history sort of way.

Script for Importing Casualty Data

A few readers may know that the Pentagon publishes US military casualty data on a web page, and that every death from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom is cataloged and available for download on an Excel spreadsheet. (It's debatable whether every death is cataloged, but speculation is not the purpose of this post.) I have been attempting to mine data on this Excel sheet for some time, but it's not nearly as convenient as having it in a real database.

So after some thought and a little tinkering, I've developed a rough solution that will automatically download the latest spreadsheet, do some conversion, and import the data into a MySQL database. It's accomplished through a Linux shell script and a Perl script, so if you're on a Windows machine, you'll have to search for a different solution.


This is the shell script, I call it oifdata.sh:
#!/bin/sh<br/>filename=casdata<br/>printf "Grabbing xls from DoD..."<br/>wget -qNr http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/oif_list_of_names.xls -O /home/chris/oifdata/$filename.xls<br/>printf " Done.\nFormating to tsv..."<br/>perl oif_xls2tsv.pl $filename.xls > $filename.tsv<br/>printf " Done. Importing to mysql...\n"<br/>mysqlimport --local --delete -u oif -poif oif casdata.tsv<br/>printf "Done.\n"<br/>

The Perl script reference here is a slight edit from xls2csv from the Spreadsheet-ParseExcel Perl package (which you will need to install). Instead of comma-separated values, it outputs tab-separated values. Also, it is specialized to start and end at the correct rows. I would like to generalize this in the future, but it's a lot of extra code at the moment.
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/># oif_xls2tsv.pl<br/>#------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>### oif_xls2tsv<br/># based on xls2csv (for Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Utility)<br/># specialty function for parsing the excel spreadsheet from the DoD concerning<br/># casualties in Operation Iraqi Freedom, available from<br/># http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/personnel/CASUALTY/castop.htm<br/># @args $filename, location of xls<br/>use strict ;<br/>use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;<br/>use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Utility qw(sheetRef);<br/><br/>if(!(defined $ARGV[0])) {<br/> usage( "Bad Args") ;<br/> exit;<br/>}<br/><br/>my $filename = $ARGV[0] ;<br/><br/>if( ! -f $filename) {<br/> usage( "File $filename does not exist") ;<br/> exit ;<br/>}<br/><br/>printf xls2csv($filename) ;<br/><br/>#------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/><br/>sub xls2csv {<br/> my ($filename) = @_ ;<br/> my $rotate = 0 ;<br/> my $sheet = 0 ;<br/> my $output = "" ; <br/><br/> # start the excel object now<br/> my $oExcel = new Spreadsheet::ParseExcel ;<br/> my $oBook = $oExcel->Parse( $filename) ;<br/> # open the sheet<br/> my $oWkS = $oBook->{Worksheet}[ $sheet] ;<br/><br/> # define start and end of data<br/> my $s = "A4" ;<br/> my $e = "V" . ($oWkS->{MaxRow} - 6);<br/> my @start = sheetRef($s) ;<br/> my @end = sheetRef($e) ;<br/> if( !@start) {<br/> print STDERR "Bad start coorinates - $s";<br/> return "" ;<br/> }<br/> if( !@end) {<br/> print STDERR "Bad end coorinates - $e";<br/> return "" ;<br/> }<br/> <br/> if( $start[1] > $end[1]) {<br/> print STDERR "Bad COLUMN ordering\n";<br/> print STDERR "Start column " . int2col($start[1]);<br/> print STDERR " after end column " . int2col($end[1]) . "\n";<br/> return "" ;<br/> }<br/> if( $start[0] > $end[0]) {<br/> print STDERR "Bad ROW ordering\n";<br/> print STDERR "Start row " . ($start[0] + 1);<br/> print STDERR " after end row " . ($end[0] + 1) . "\n";<br/> exit ;<br/> }<br/> <br/> # now check that the region exists in the file<br/> # if not trucate to the possible region<br/> # output a warning msg<br/> if( $start[1] < $oWkS->{MinCol}) {<br/> print STDERR int2col( $start[1]) . " < min col " . int2col( $oWkS->{MinCol}) . " Reseting\n";<br/> $start[1] = $oWkS->{MinCol} ;<br/> }<br/> if( $end[1] > $oWkS->{MaxCol}) {<br/> print STDERR int2col( $end[1]) . " > max col " . int2col( $oWkS->{MaxCol}) . " Reseting\n" ;<br/> $end[1] = $oWkS->{MaxCol} ;<br/> }<br/> if( $start[0] < $oWkS->{MinRow}) {<br/> print STDERR "" . ($start[0] + 1) . " < min row " . ($oWkS->{MinRow} + 1) . " Reseting\n";<br/> $start[0] = $oWkS->{MinCol} ;<br/> }<br/> if( $end[0] > $oWkS->{MaxRow}) {<br/> print STDERR "" . ($end[0] + 1) . " > max row " . ($oWkS->{MaxRow} + 1) . " Reseting\n";<br/> $end[0] = $oWkS->{MaxRow} ;<br/> <br/> }<br/><br/> my $x1 = $start[1] ;<br/> my $y1 = $start[0] ;<br/> my $x2 = $end[1] ;<br/> my $y2 = $end[0] ;<br/><br/> for( my $y = $y1 ; $y <= $y2 ; $y++) {<br/> for( my $x = $x1 ; $x <= $x2 ; $x++) {<br/> my $cell = $oWkS->{Cells}[$y][$x] ;<br/> $output .= $cell->Value if(defined $cell);<br/> $output .= "\t" if( $x != $x2) ;<br/> }<br/> $output .= "\n" ;<br/> }<br/> <br/> return $output ;<br/>}<br/># -----------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>### error<br/># writes a message to STDERR<br/>#<br/>sub error {<br/> printf STDERR shift ;<br/>}<br/># -----------------------------------------------------------------------------<br/>### usage<br/># this decribes how the program as a whole is to be used<br/>#<br/>sub usage {<br/> my $errmsg = shift ;<br/><br/> error( "\n" . $errmsg . "\n") if( $errmsg) ;<br/><br/> error( "<br/>Usage: $0 filename \n\n") ;<br/>}<br/>

Lastly, my database table is set up like so. This was generated using the mysqldump script included with MySQL. I'm considering adding this file to the main script so that the auto-incrementing key will go back to zero each time the data is refreshed.
-- dbdump.txt<br/>-- Table structure for table `casdata`<br/>--<br/><br/>DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `casdata`;<br/>CREATE TABLE `casdata` (<br/> `Service` char(1) NOT NULL,<br/> `Component` char(1) NOT NULL,<br/> `Name` varchar(70) NOT NULL,<br/> `Rank` varchar(5) NOT NULL,<br/> `PayGrade` varchar(5) NOT NULL,<br/> `DateOfDeath` date NOT NULL,<br/> `IncidentDate` date NOT NULL,<br/> `Hostile` char(1) default NULL,<br/> `Age` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,<br/> `Gender` char(1) NOT NULL,<br/> `HomeOfRecordCity` varchar(45) NOT NULL,<br/> `HomeOfRecordCounty` varchar(45) default NULL,<br/> `HomeOfRecordState` varchar(5) NOT NULL,<br/> `HomeOfRecordCountry` varchar(5) NOT NULL,<br/> `Unit` varchar(100) NOT NULL,<br/> `IncidentGeographicCode` varchar(2) default NULL,<br/> `CasualtyGeographicCode` varchar(2) default NULL,<br/> `CasualtyCountry` varchar(20) default NULL,<br/> `CityOfLoss` varchar(45) default NULL,<br/> `RaceEthnic` varchar(20) default NULL,<br/> `OccupationCode` varchar(5) default NULL,<br/> `OccupationCodePrefix` varchar(5) default NULL,<br/> `ID` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,<br/> PRIMARY KEY (`ID`)<br/>) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;<br/><br/>

There you have it. Now you too can have a script to fill your database with the latest casualty information from the DoD. How you use that data is up to you...

Spring Break

Ah, glorious spring break! A break from the norm. The first couple of days I spent relaxing, mostly computer gaming. Tuesday I set off for New Mexico to see the family. On the way down I listened to Ashley's Eragon book-on-CD, and quickly got hooked into that. I had just seen the movie on rental, and Ashley was right, the book was much better. Incidentally, I do agree with the sentiment that it's really a Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings ripoff, but it's entertaining and compelling all the same.

I spent the next few days relaxing and hanging out with my family. They weren't on spring break, so I was alone for the midday most of the time. Wednesday I got down to Santa Fe with my mom, and we shopped around and visited Blue Corn, one of my favorites. We also started experimenting with her new scanner and scanning photos and negatives. She was interested in a program for organizing photos by tagging, so I did a little bit of research there. I found a wonderful little free app, from Adobe of all people. Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition is a free program that implements the tagging features my mom wanted, and extremely well. It's all drag and drop, everything is intuitive, and it even does simple photo doctoring like red eye removal and cropping. Granted, it's really a fishing hook to get people to buy Photoshop Elements, but my mom doesn't need that kind of power. This is the first program I've found that includes tagging, and it's done very well. Scanning negatives turned out to be very easy for the 35mm film that the scanner was designed to use. However, when my mom started taking out the 110 and 126 films, we had to get creative. She even has large squares of film with very old pictures, and no feed holes or registration tabs or anything. I have no idea how we'll deal with those.

I also went to Jeannie's youth group on Thursday night. I met a lot of her friends there, and we all played a game called something like "The Winking Game." It involves a circle of chairs, each chair with a person standing behind it (a guard) and another sitting in it (a sitter). One chair is empty, and only has a person standing behind (the winker). The winker must wink at the sitters. When a sitter receives a wink, they must attempt to jump out of their chair and run to empty one. The guard behind the runner must attempt to tag them before they're out of arm's reach. If the runner is tagged, they must sit back down, but if they are not tagged, then their guard becomes the new winker. There are a couple of other rules, like the sitters must sit in the back of the chair, not the edge. Also, the guards must keep their hands clasped in the small of their back unless their sitter starts to get up. After a time, both sides switch. It just so happened that we had equal numbers of males and females, so we divided the groups that way. It was very fun, and fast paced. The group had a short sermon from the pastor, and ended with a short worship. I had a lot of fun there, and I got a chance to hang out with Jeannie.

On Friday afternoon, my dad and I went out Geocaching around the edge of the mesa they live on. First we attempted to find Volcanologist Field Day. We had a wonderful and scenic hike down from the top, but when we got to the boulder field we got stumped. We're sure it was there, but there are so many small crevices and caves among the fallen rocks that it could have been anywhere. Had I been alone I might have searched longer, but I preferred to spend the time hiking with my dad. I don't get to see him nearly often enough, so I cherish the time we do get to spend. After that, we hiked back to the top and backtracked along the top of the mesa to find On The Edge. We were able to find that one, and hiked back to the car. I definitely had fun, and I pretty sure my dad did as well.

Saturday I decided to leave for home early. I could have gone to my brother's track meet, but instead I will go back down for his State Finals meet after my school is out. He's graduating at the end of May, so that will be exciting. I listened to almost the end of Eragon, but it was cut short by the time I was home. I was looking forward to a nice relaxing, quiet evening. Just myself, possibly Jackie, Cameron, Ashley, or some combination. Instead, when I got to the house, there was barely a parking spot for me, half of the corner couch was on the front lawn, and all of my friends were in the house. Ashley decided to rearrange the living room just as I was getting home. She had spent most of the day cleaning up after Cameron's 21st birthday party and his prompt move-out, and I was grateful that the house was mostly clean. However, I was pretty upset by the sudden upheaval of the entire living room. My room was full of assorted junk from around the house. I consented to let the girls use it to store stuff for Cameron's party, but I expected it to be clean when I got home. It was not. Worse yet, I had let Jackie use my spare LCD monitor to troubleshoot her laptop problems and back up files. I found it laying on the bed under a pile of junk, and the screen was scratched in several places. I spent the rest of the evening being a grump, and Ashley apologized. I don't mind if she rearranges the furniture, but I would prefer it if she at least warns me, and maybe waits for an evening when I haven't been driving long distance or doing something else that frazzles my nerves.

Anyway, not too bad of a spring break. I wish I had gotten more done to catch up in calculus, but I've got a month left to push to the end.

Spring Break Can't Come Soon Enough

Here I am, Thursday night, and still wishing I was a little closer to spring break. As of this morning I've finished this round of midterms, including a fairly bad Calculus test, and oral and written tests in Arabic. Yesterday afternoon I got a crack at daytime WillVill, and it wasn't half bad. I'm really starting to get the hang of this job, I think. The new buses are nice, and it's nice to get the trainer out of the bus. I don't have to make 8 mirror checks on turns when I'm out on my own.

Tonight I have another late night from 10pm to 4am, and I'm fully expecting to go home and crash into bed and sleep through Arabic. I think oustad will understand that it's the day before spring break.

Survived

Friday was of course the day before St. Patrick's day, and I had a little surprise in store. I was still getting some initial runs ironed out for the bus, and my boss asked if I could be a bus buddy for Saturday night. I said that was fine. Later on in the day, though, she asked me if I could actually drive one of the two buses. I was taken aback at first. I hadn't been trained up on any of the buses except our one conventional. All of the rest are transit-style with the engine in the back and the front wheels behind the driver, so they're quite a bit different. I reminded her of my lack of training, and she suggested I could take the conventional. I agreed, but I was still apprehensive. My first run ever is going to be late night WillVill on St. Patrick's day?

For those who don't know, WillVill is our regular route that shuttles students between campus and the William's Village apartment complex, about a mile from the main area of campus. During the day it can be crowded at times due to surges, but is fairly tame patronage. But on the weekends on late nights, it becomes the party shuttle for the hundreds of kids trying to find a party somewhere between The Hill and WillVill. So suggesting that my first run would be late night WillVill on St. Patrick's Day sounded ludicrous! A brand new driver shuttling hundreds of drunk, rowdy college kids (drunker and rowdier even than usual) on the busy, narrow, pedestrian-rich streets of Boulder at night. My first thought was that I'd crash within the first hour.

Well, I took Saturday pretty easy. I went shopping with Ashley for a bit, then had dinner with my dad. Saturday night I drove up to the bus lot a little bit early to pretrip the conventional. I drove up to the WillVill stop and had a chat with the other driver, who turned out to be Dine, the girl I had just trained with for a month. She was my one consolation; I wasn't out there alone. We started doing loops, and after the first hour and a half, the traffic died down considerably. I quickly calmed myself down and just tried to ignore the bacchanal behind me. I drove from 10pm to 2:30am, then went off route. Dine was slated to finish up an hour later, and I bet she met all of the heavy traffic back to WillVill. I feel a little sorry, but I guess that's how it goes. Normally there's only one bus anyway, so I'm sure she was fine.

The next morning was training at 8am. I considered sleeping in my car that night in the bus lot, as going home would cut an hour off of my sleeping time. Eventually I just decided to go home and trade quantity for quality. I think it was a good decision, as I slept like a rock for 3 and a half hours. Running on energy drinks, I showed up for up-training on the rest of the buses. I learned that we have the mini-transits, which are short (25 ft?) buses that get used a lot in tight places and on geology mountain runs. Next we did a quick run over the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses. We have a couple of them, and they are supposed to be very clean vehicles, but they are basically out of use. I quickly learned why; the engine is extremely inconsistent and has very little power uphill. Hopefully that will be the only time I ever drive one.

The other two buses I trained on are our mainstays; the super-transits, and the Gilligs. Our super transits are specially modified 40 ft. buses with two doors. Their floors are very high up, and they are surprisingly maneuverable. The Gilligs are previously RTD local route buses, and are much lower to the ground and a bit harder to corner around turns. We almost got through training on the articulated buses, but the one we pretripped died mysteriously and we were out of time anyway. So we'll save it for another day. Our fleet also has the brand-new Nova buses. They're extremely nice, and so the managers want to wait for the new drivers to have more hours under their belts before they get out and ruin them.

And so ends my long, looong weekend. W00t for 3 hours of sleep!

CDL!

W00t! Passed my Commercial Driver's License test this afternoon, with flying colors! The pre-trip portion was fine, I aced maneuvers, and there were no major problems on the drive test. I guess Jordan and Dine had some problems on their first tries, but Jordan's already re-taken and passed. And I have faith in Dine, she's a pro! In no time at all, we'll be driving the Buff Bus baby!

In other news, our good friend Kristen is... pregnant! She hasn't had a doctor confirm it yet, but apparently the home tests are more prone to false negatives than false positives. Meaning, it's very likely. As a consequence, Jackie and I have temporarily adopted Alastor the cat. There's some specific bacterial infection that feral or previously feral cats carry, and the infection can cause birth defects and miscarriages. Kristen would very much like to avoid all of that.

Also, my confidence is renewed in my chances of actually getting into the Computer Science major instead of hanging around in Open Option. I talked with a CS adviser about my situation today, and she's optimistic, and even suggested I apply today. So, the paperwork is in. A lot rides on this semester's grades I think, because my "technical GPA" is borderline right now. I'm confident I'll come out of this semester strong.

Long Monday

Yesterday was quite the long day for me. It started out just fine; I got out of the house at a decent time and made it to Arabic early. I stayed for my two early classes, then headed home in eager anticipation. I sent my MP3 player in to Best Buy recently for a warranty replacement, since the left audio channel had stopped working. I though perhaps the replacement voucher would be in the mail, so I came home and immediately check the mail. Nothing important, just the usual junk. To make it even better, Jackie was in a huff about something. I learned that she and Ashley had had a tiff about cleaning Alcott. Long story short, everyone was in a bad mood.

I defused the situation somewhat, but there's no way to fix it entirely at this point. No one will talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the living room and kitchen, that being Cameron's mess. Now, calling it Cameron's mess is a bit of a misnomer, because everyone has contributed to it by now. I still think of it as Cameron's because he's the one that has truly no intention of cleaning. We asked him about it once, and he really does not care what state the house is in. He's perfectly happy living in a pig sty that smells like spoiled food on the dishes sitting on the counters, and he's not concerned about dishes that come out with bits of dried refried beans still stuck to them. I can't confront him about it, because I'm not perfect and I have a feeling he will refuse to listen until I am always putting my own dishes away. After all, I wouldn't want to be a hypocrite. Oh well, we have a couple of indications that he may be moving soon, so I'm not pressing the issue just yet.

Back at school for my last class, Components lecture was just fine. After that I went to the Components lab to try and work on our current project, a program to take in a sentence and generate morse code. That part of the program is just dandy, but the last task, volume control, is still sketchy. My partner, Sean, and I worked for a good 3 hours and made only a little progress. I jokingly suggested that instead of programming that feature with a shaft encoder, we just install a variable resistor. It would be cheaper to mass produce anyway! However, that's not really the goal of the excercise. I wouldn't be concerned with having this halfway finished, but the project is due later today.

After all of that, I met with Ashley and made a preliminary meeting with a bible study group. I'll be meeting with 5 other men, and probably studying different Bible chapters in detail. After the meeting, I understand that this is sort of auxiliary to my Inquiry and RCIA classes, and more advanced. It may not be ideal for my situation, as I don't have an intellectual or spiritual framework to really understand completely the lessons that will be covered. However, at this point any information I learn is to my benefit. Besides, I will be able to gain from meeting more people in the community and building relationships there. Ashley was invited to sit in with us, but they traditionally have segregated men's and women's study groups, so they will try and find a women's group for Ashley to attend.

Done with Training!

The week was fairly quiet. Tuesday between classes I decided to do a little geocaching around home, and went for a walk around Tom Frost Reservoir, which is near my house. Wednesday it decided to snow, and while it wasn't torrential, it was very slushy and made the roads very slick, so after my first class I drove back home and curled up with a book on C# (C-Sharp), a fairly new programming language.

This weekend consisted of more bus training. Saturday we had Dine, Jordan and myself back with Dien the trainer. He took us around some very tight roundabouts to start off, and those were fun. Just as we were about to start some WillVill loops, we were called off of training to cover for a driver that had not shown up for her run. We drove down to Aurora, almost to the airport, to pick up a busload of middle schoolers for the basketball game at the Coors Event Center. The run is called Ralphie's Roundup, in which we pick up grade school kids from the Denver area and take them to see a sports event, so it's a very cool program. But by the time we got the kids to the game, they had already missed an hour of the game. That was too bad, but we had done all we could.

For lunch, Jordan, Dine and I grabbed some Subway and wandered around Target for a while. We had a blast! We played four-square in the aisles, played with the iPod docks, and bought a box of ice cream sandwiches. After lunch, we finally got to start WillVill loops, and Dien let us bring on passengers. Every few stops he would announce that, "This is a training bus, and the driver is a trainee. You're welcome to ride, but if you're not comfortable, you have an opportunity to wait for the next bus." Nobody ever got off, so we must've done alright.

Sunday we were back with Adam. We started off the morning with more maneuvers in the BVSD lot, and we all nailed each of the maneuvers. In the afternoon we took a trip through DIA's maze of roads, since I had missed that for Ethel's party. We drove around at Fitzsimons to see the university's hospitals there, and drove almost the entire length of Colfax Blvd. to Golden, then back up to Boulder on Highway 93. It was quite the tour.

All three of us have accumulated more than 40 hours of training, so we've all scheduled individual times to meet with Steven during the week and be tested. Steven is a certified CDL tester, but I've heard he's quite a stickler. He has to be one, as the state can come back with an inspector and re-test his drivers. If they fail with the inspector present, Steven is also liable. I'm testing Friday, so wish me luck!

Burning the Candle at Both Ends

Just a little busy this weekend. Saturday morning started with more bus training. We mostly drove around the north end of Boulder with Dien, visiting the Boulder Reservoir, through Lyons, and halfway up to Estes Park. We had to make a U-turn at a pulloff because we can't go all the way to Estes without mountain training, which requires at least 40 hours of route time after getting one's CDL.

Saturday afternoon was spent with Ashley at her uncle's house. This was Ashley's grandmother's 90th birthday! I couldn't miss that for training. We went and mingled with her cousins, and aunts and uncles. We met the 6 point buck that her cousin Michael recently bagged on a hunting trip. It's really a monster. We got to play with Ashley's little 2nd cousins. They're pretty cute when they're that little, I have to admit. We stayed for most of the party, and then Ashely and I left for our own adventures.

Saturday night I headed over to Mike's house for a long-awaited DnD session. Ashley intended to come, but wasn't feeling great, so she left for home. However for the evening, we did have Mike, Claire, Jackie, Buddha, and Claire's friend David. We started an odd but interesting campaign set in a desert. What was most confusing was when David's dwarf died in battle, then woke up the next day with a headache and unable to use his gear. We didn't figure out the cause, but hopefully we will continue with this campaign next time. We only played until 1 AM, I'm sure we could go longer next time.

Sunday consisted of more bus training with Adam. We traveled down to Golden via Highway 93 to see the School of Mines and the Coors Brewery, but we didn't stop there. We headed east to Denver to see some of the common event sites, like Mile High Field and the Pepsi Center. The afternoon consisted of more Boulder destinations.

So all in all, I've had a very productive weekend. I can't say I enjoy being this busy, but come what may! I'm ready to take life by the horns!

A Sport with Gadgets? I'm There!

This past week I stumbled upon a relatively new sport called Geocaching. Basically, people have gone out into remote parks and forests and left caches (most are tupperware containers) filled with at least a log book, and have posted the latitude and longitude coordinates. The object is to use your own GPS receiver and go and find these caches. Sounds simple and boring, right? What if the cache is halfway up a sheer rock face, requiring climbing equipment? Or hidden underwater for a scuba diving adventure? OK, most caches are not quite this exciting. If nothing else, it's a fun way to get a family together for an activity. In Ashley's (slightly cynical) words, it gives hiking a point, a goal.

Well, Thursday evening I came home to find my brand new GPS receiver waiting for me in a shipping box. I bought a Garmin eTrex (for a good bit less than the MSRP), a fairly low-end receiver. It doesn't have a lot of fancy features, but still good enough for hiking around the woods. Friday afternoon between my classes, Ashley and I went up to Chataqua and found the Higher Ground cache. You can sort of see some of the hike if you plug the latitude and longitude coordinates into Google Earth. Very beautiful hike.

One last note about my eTrex, one really cool feature I think will be useful is the ability to enter coordinates not only in lat/long, but also in military grid coordinates, MGRS. This means I can use this unit when I go out to "summer camp" (Annual Training) at Fort Hunter Liggett this summer. Sweet!

Buses are Big Vehicles

This weekend was my first full weekend of bus training. Saturday I joined Dine, a girl in biochemistry. Our trainer was Dien, one of the staff drivers. We also had Adam, a staff driver training to be a trainer. After a long, methodical pretrip, we drove out to the Boulder Valley School District bus lot and practiced maneuvers. Let me tell you, it's not easy to parallel park a 40-foot bus. After lunch we went out driving around Boulder. One of the things we practiced was the Williams Village route, or WillVill. It's the major route that TS runs, so just about everyone has driven WillVill, and will drive it again. Sunday was more of the same with trainer Brian plus another trainee, Jordan, a dance major in the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. We started out with maneuvers and then just drove around every part of Boulder we need to get around. Have I mentioned yet that those buses are huge? You're freakin' half way into an intersection before you even start turning! Gigantic. Can't wait to start driving the articulated buses (arc's).