We've got 120,000+ of our men & women in uniform overseas, doing what our country asks of them. Many are reservists or National guard, people who have put their life on hold to go serve in Iraq. They volunteered to serve our country, and because of that they've had to leave their jobs & loved ones behind.

So, get off your collective asses and do something for them. Got some magazines laying around that you've read and are ready to toss out? Send them to our soldiers. Maybe some DVD's you no longer watch, or games for the XBox / PS2 that no longer get played, yup - if you find the right unit they'll be thrilled to get those and put them to use. You say you have none of these things to give? How about taking a couple minutes out of your day and just sending them a letter or a post card - is that too much to ask?

Head on over to Any Soldier.com and find someone who would be happy to hear from you, someone who put their life on hold to answer our countries call. Time for you to put a small portion of 1 day on hold to answer their call. Now you just know that I picked Marines to send stuff to, but feel free to find someone from any branch of the service, they'd all love to from us.

Doing some reading of blogs while I'm checking in source code for the work I did this evening (btw - Microsoft Visual Sorcesafe over VPN sucks, bigtime), I came across a couple new blogs I'll be following. The first is American Soldier, and the other is Team Med-fah, both are pretty good reads.

By way of trackbacks and such, I came across this bit of info.. The Army is offering up to $150k bonus for people with prior military experience. Damn thats a nice chunk of change.. almost makes a guy think about signing up! Of course, theres a few minor factors stopping me, including the fact that they surely don't want any part of my 42 year old broken up body, not to mention - its the Army. Sorry, but once a Marine always a Marine. *grin*

I know that I will be sent back at some point. It is an inevitable fate that I gladly accept. I don’t know what it is. I cannot comprehend not serving. I just can’t grasp trying to avoid going back. I know it puts a burden on my family, it holds up my employer but dammit if it weren’t for willing Soldiers. Then all of this would not exist. We live in a time when people want to hurt all that we have. We haven’t had to defend our beloved country is years. It’s time to mount up and accept that this is not going away.

Michael Yon has posted his latest combat reporting article titled Gates of Fire. What an amazing article, an absolute must read for everyone. Once again Michael reports on what is going on in Iraq, what our soldiers face on a day to day basis with such clarity and detail it leaves you in awe. All of Michael Yon's articles should be requirde reading for all journalists and bloggers.

I sick and damned tired of reading & hearing about Casey Sheehan's mother down in Texas, and how she's camped outside of Pres. Bush's ranch to make some sort of anti-war statement. Yes, I feel bad for her loss - how could you not? But lets get the facts straight here, ok? Casey volunteered to join the Army. He obviously felt strongly about what he was doing, as he reenlisted knowing he would likely be sent to Iraq. When it came time to go on the mission that ultimately cost him his life, he volunteered to go on that mission - he didn't have to go. And now his mother is making a media whore of herself, even though it goes against what her husband and the rest of Caseys family know he would have wanted.

What really pisses me off is that the media is fawning all over her, and yet there are so many other voices out there that should be heard, ones who have as much at stake as Casey's mother does - and yet the media pays them no attention. How about telling the story of Captain Charles "Chuck" Ziegenfuss and his wife? After being injured by an IED in Iraq, he was recovering back in the states. Due to his effort, a group called Soldiers Angles has started up a project called Project Valour-IT to get voice activated laptops to soldiers who have been wounded to use while they are recovering.

And while you're browsing around, go read Holly Aho's story about her conversation with an Iraq soldier. Futher down the page she has some ideas on what you can do to support our troups - do it.

Michael Yon was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, you can read part of the interview at Radio Blogger.
I found this comment the most interesting.

HH: Are Americans getting a distorted view about how the war is going?

MY: Absolutely. Clearly, you're getting mostly body counts and bombings and that sort of thing, which are very real. I mean, I see those things here. They absolutely occur. We fight here every day. But what they don't see is that we fight less and less here every day. For instance, Deuce 4 has not been hit with an I.E.D. in about two weeks. We used to get hit like twice a day. Now, it's been like two weeks, and we have not been hit at all. So, you know what I'm saying?

Yup - you read that subject line correctly.. I'm back to keeping track of the Q&A for the Bob & Brian 'You (still) Cant Win' contest. I've been able to listen to the contest on a pretty regular basis for the last month or two, so I figured it was time to start actually keeping track of the Q&A so I could try to call in and win.

For those not familiar with the saga, I was the original record keeper for YCW starting back in Feb. 1997. After several years of tracking the info, the people who maintained the B&B website stole my page pretty much word for word and posted it on the Lazer103 website. After a bit of bitching, I was able to get them to acknowledge this and they had a line on the page giving me credit for keeping track of the info. And then they removed it .. heh.. Oh well, so it goes.

Anyway, after much time of alternating being deligient and extremely lazy about maintaining the YCW info, and having a few readers flame the hell out of me in email, I just dropped the whole thing - I just didn't have the time to keep the site updated. Around that time Jay N. created the Yahoo News group for YCW and it became pretty much a self monitoring team effort.

Now I'm once again ready to try and win. Yes, after following YCW and running the unofficial website for ~7 years, I never once was able to win or even get thru on the phone lines. But, I'm ready to give it another shot so I need to start putting together a list of whats been asked, answered and confirmed. So since I'm maintaining the list for my use, I'm putting it back online for anyone else thats too lazy to write down the info on their own.

For what its worth, I do very little (if any) of the research for the answers.. all credit goes to the people in the YCW news group for the answers.

Ahh, back at it after a week off. Spent Fri July 22nd - Tuesday July 29th up at Rock Island state park for the yearly 'guys camping trip', and then on Thursday I headed out to Forestville, NY for 4 days of the DML (Dakota Mailing List) yearly BBQ. Both were a great time, though we did have to deal with a major storm while camping on Sat 23rd, and the drive to Forestville was too damn long (~10.5 hrs) to do it by yourself very often. And no - I did *not* take the 05 Dakota off roading.. way too many mods to be done before that. Plus, its just too damned new for me to deal with dings, scratches and breakage right now. Maybe in a year or two.. :)

Detailed updates and more photos to come in the next couple of days, once I get my shit together.. way too much work to get done, lawn needs mowing, and all the rest of the usual fun stuff ..