The reason I state the above is that the place I work, the American Forces Network, along with our counterparts at the Coalition Press Information Center, has most likely been buzzing today because of the news of Jill Carroll’s release from her hostages in Baghdad. I just saw the press conference live on Fox News and CNN International…and anytime one of Maj. Gen. Lynch’s Thursday briefings gets aired live on one of the big networks, you know it’s a BIG DEAL. I’m glad I wasn’t there to have to deal with any of it.

The last four days has been that of Bible study, reflection, rest and relaxation. Of particular note is the fact that a bunch of Word of Faith and Prosperity Gospel debunking has been taking place on Jude 2. I don’t want to get into it here, I’d probably only attract some heavy and harsh criticism from those who believe the doctrine. However, I do believe it is a doctrine that needs to be squashed, but I’m not gonna be the first to do it or make my blog another lightning rod for controversy when there’s plenty of it to go around on another forum.

Speaking of forums, we now have ten members on the FirestormLIVE Forums. Thanks to everyone who has joined in just the short week that we’ve been active. And here’s a call for those who are regular visitors to the blog but just lurk, or those who just happen on by…go ahead and join the forum. We’d love to have you.

Sorry about the shoutbox being down, by the way. It’s incompatible with this theme…but I’ve emailed the plugin author and I’m hoping we can figure out a solution soon. For those of you who enjoy using the shoutbox, I apologize for the inconvenience.

I’m outta here for now. A 54321 is coming later…the top dance tracks of the week!!!

I mentioned a couple of days ago that we got to meet Senator John McCain down at our office. He had been holding a press conference and took time to speak with each of the troops that were in the room afterwards. Here’s the photo I was able to get with him. Really nice guy, down to earth…and on top of that, I think he’s a frontrunner for the Republican bid to retain the White House in 2008. I don’t agree with all of his politics but I definitely respect him (he was a POW for 5 years in Vietnam) and he supports the troops and their efforts here in Iraq 100 percent. That being said, I would like to see him run for the White House in 2008 and he would have my vote (I say this not knowing who any other candidates are yet, of course).

As has been mentioned, today is the first day of my four-day pass, and I was planning to sleep in as anyone would do on their day off. Some selfish idiots from across the way had to wake everyone up around 6 AM with a loud mortar though. It sounded like it hit pretty close but I didn’t hear the voice over the loudspeaker tell us to gear up so I rolled over and went back to sleep. It’s amazing how at the beginning of my deployment, I almost crapped my pants whenever I heard a mortar or explosion…and now near the end of it, I hear one and it’s routine, almost like I’ve grown to live with it.

Continue reading ‘Day 147: Sleeping In? I Don’t Think So’

First off, just really quick, someone at work today brought to my attention that something I had posted in a previous entry could be construed as violating the military’s operational security policy. Even though the fact I posted was “common knowledge,” still it came close to violating the OPSEC guidelines. I had no clue that what I posted was a sensitive topic, and I apologize for it…action has been taken to correct it and the sentence that was put into question has been removed.

Moving on…

Today I covered U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad’s visit to the newly renovated Al-Huriya Youth Center in Northwest Baghdad. It was a pretty neat place to visit, and it was a youth center and athletic club combined. It wasn’t an ordinary athletic club as Olympic athletes from sports such as boxing, wrestling and soccer trained there.

I shot footage of the building, of people touring it, of the athletes training…and let me tell you, I guarantee you won’t see anything other than the fact that the Ambassador spoke about getting an Iraqi government formed, on any civilian news station. It’s sad because I shot footage alongside CNN, AP and Reuters photographers and videographers, and the only video reports they gave focused on the fact stated above. Sad, because there were a lot of good stories to come out of the day.

All the Iraqi athletes were handed gold rings for their participation in the 2004 Olympics, and it was really neat to see the Olympic Committee chairman up on the podium as well. Just think….four years ago, Uday Hussein was running the Olympic committee and torturing athletes if they didn’t do well. Now, they play for national pride, and the people I talked to said they need to give their nation something to hope for because, in their own words, “right now is a difficult time.”

Continue reading ‘Day 145: The Al-Huriya Youth Center’

Not good. Like the title says, I feel a LOT older than I really should. I guess it’s because there’s a lot of stupid stuff going on at work (what’s new?). Please….remind me not to talk about work in a negative manner anymore on the blog, because I’ll give you some unabashed perspective on my time spent in the office, when I get back to Langley AFB.

Not much to talk about…I’ve got tomorrow off so I’m up at the dead hours of the night updating my blog and making sure that the videos I uploaded today are posted for everyone to see. So make sure you click the link in the header image for my news stories…I added four new videos today. I’ve been adding them all at a frantic rate.

I’m going to be making a spiffy DVD of all the news stories and supplemental footage I shot. I might even distribute it on a donation basis. I’ve found that if you make people pay for stuff like that, they don’t really want to buy it just because they’re paying for it. But if it’s a donation basis, at least they know they’re giving to a worthy cause…which in my case is my refrigerator in my dorm back on good old Langley AFB. So yeah, I don’t know when the DVD is gonna be done, but it’s at the bottom of my priority list.

In other news, I had to change the blog back to its old design. After folks began to weep and cry about the Shoutbox being gone, I gave in and reverted to the old classic theme. Hope it serves its purpose. I want to tweak it to make it look a little different, and I’m gonna need some serious help in CSS coding and design…so if you see some things out of place on the blog in the next few days, fear not. It just means I’m fixing something under the hood.

Wow, everyone out there hasn’t really been saying much lately. I’m sure my blog participation dropped about 50% over the last few weeks (some of you know exactly why, as well), but that’s okay. More people who have never visited my site are checking it out, so if you’re one of the new visitors out there, say hey in the shoutbox or something. I don’t bite. Unless you bite me first. Then I shoot.

Anyway, I love you all. I’m gonna dive into the Word for a bit tomorrow and post some stuff I’ve been studying on. It’s been awhile since I’ve done that.

Hasta manana.

So I’ve decided to get in on this phenomenon they call podcasting. Basically it’s like a radio show but you can download what episodes you want, when you want them…or if you have iTunes, you can set them to download automatically. I’m not going to go into much detail about podcasting…if you want more info, click here.

A few technical aspects….I got a cheap mike and it shows as there is a buzz throughout the whole thing. I plan on getting a better mic back in the states. All the podcasts are in MP3 format, and are encoded at 64 kilobits per second. Small files indeed, to help out with my bandwidth issues. Anyway, here it is. Hope you like it.