Yes, sir, Chad Torres, Sir

Chad has resorted to demands that I update my blog. I can't say that I blame him. I have been slack. It's not that I have nothing to say, its just that . . . well . . . I don't know if my boss reads this. I'm being ego-maniacle to think that he would take time out of his busy day to read something as mundane and unimportant as this so that's not a very good excuse is it.

I'm back from my Operation Jump Start deployment to Orlando Florida. Yeah, a tough gig. It was a little fun, but I did have to work too so its not like I spent every day at Disney World. Actually, I didn't go there once. In the three months I was there I only went to Sea World and The Holy Land Experience.

I'm still on duty at the ANG base so I have not yet returned to Nerds To Go. Honestly, I don't look forward to going back to NTG. Its hard to look forward to 12 hour days 6 days a week. 72 hour weeks are not fun no matter how much you like computers. I'm not sure I have a choise. If I'm lucky maybe I'll get to go to Afghanastan or Iraq as it would probably be more enjoyable. Certainly less stressful. Yeah, you think I'm kidding, but I'm not. You don't see a little smiley face do you?

The mission at our base is changing and so I think I would like to change my military career. Currently we are an A-10 fighter wing, but the Air Force is taking our fighters away. That mission will be replaced with three other missions. 1) A jet engine repair facility. 2) A C-21 flying mission. In the civilian world C-21's are known as Leer 35 Corporate Jets. 3) An Air Operations Center (AOC). AOC's control all air operations withing a specific area of responsibility. That probably doesn't explain an AOC very well, but it is a complex mission that would take too long to explain adequately. You can Google it if you really want to know.

I said I'd like to change my military career and perhaps you are wondering what that change might be. I think I'd like to move over to military intelligence (no oxymoron jokes please), specifically Imagery Analysis, Operations Intelligence, or Network Inteligence Analysis (in that order of preference). You can go to About.com or Google them if you want to know more about the jobs. I'm not overly confident I'll get the opportunity, but it's fun to dream about it. Sort of like dreaming of winning the lottery.

I'm trying to get serious about eating right and exercising so I've been looking for a good sight to track what I eat. I already use Fitness Journal (http://www.fitnessjournal.com) to track my exercise. If you scroll to the bottom of this page you will see a map that shows my progress accross the coutry. The specific details can only be seen by other members. Its not a free service, per se, but I can get you a free trial if you ask me politely. To track what I eat I have been using FitDay (http://www.fitday.com) which is a free service, but I don't think I like it much. I can share my info (there is a link in the welcome message at the top of this blog), but you have to enter all the meal info manually. Today I found The Daily Plate (http://www.thedailyplate.com). It is free to use it's basic features or you can buy an 6 or 12 month subscription and get more features. Their database has tons and tons of food in it and I have found everything I have eaten in the last day. The pages are a bit cluttered, but not annoying yet. It has a friends list, but I don't know what that lets you do since I have no friends on the site yet. If you sign up and want to add me as a friend my username is ritchdavis. I don't think it will let me share my info from this website, however, but I think I can live with that.

I find myself a bit discouraged with my church lately, but am not yet compelled to leave. I get so tired of the anti-war rhetoric. That didn't really come out right. I don't really mind speaking against war per se. It's just that, well, what about the soldiers? How many care packages have been sent to the soldiers from our church? The other day I read an article about how the USO (United Service Organization) sent 10,000 care packages through a recent campaign. That is a tremendous number of packages. However, there are 150,000 troops in Iraq and others in Afghanistan. Those 10,000 care packages will reach fewer than 10% of the troops. If 1/2% of americans sent one care package all of our troops would get one. But nooooo .... we don't do that. We'd rather spend our time hating the government rather than loving our soldiers. Man it ticks me off. There are other things as well, but I'll not talk about them at this time. To be fair there are some things my church is doing that I really like. I do like the way they reach out to the community both locally and abroad.

That's it tonight. Good night and God bless you.