Extra Credit - School Assignment

So I am currently enrolled in a course that focuses on Internet Essentials. (Cue laughter - yes this IT guy has to take a basic Internet course). One of the things that can be done for extra credit is the creation of a blog and posting for others to see.

********Disclaimer********
I created this blog back in 2008 and haven't done much with it since then. It's been sitting in the Cloud for over 2 years accumulating dust. Any thing you come across is just.... old.

Struck a Nerve

Today flying through Chicago to get to Sacramento, I had plenty of time to watch people during my 8 hour delay, and let me tell you, I saw some discouraging behaviour exhibited by the human race. Kinda just makes you wonder sometimes where the good is in people. A man slapping his son because he wasn't walking fast enough, a middle age woman yelling at her older mother for not being more worldly. Just things that make you pause. Bad Religion did a song regarding that and it popped into my head. Here's Bad Religion's video. Although the video is grainy and old, listen to the lyrics.

Happy Bday to Me!

Just some sentiments regarding MY birthday.

PS - If you don't like vulgarity.... Allyson I mean you.... Mikey, not YOU.... do not watch. You have been warned.

Quick Run Down

First off, just booked some tickets for Spring Break. Sac-Town here I come! Secondly, just found out my internship ends at the beginning of May. With the option to go back in August to resume the internship if I choose too.

So fun, fun. I'm thinking of looking for summer job in either Sac or San Diego, but I got a couple months to figure that out. But that's about it.

Arrgghh!!!

Pirates vs. Ninja..... Ninja loses. Pirate wins.

Pirate Kyle that is... Yes Mikey, you made me into one scruffy muthah. You turned your fellow game tester into this monstrosity of a red-beard. Yeah. I likes it.

Realizations

So for better or worse, the choices I've made have lead me to where I'm at in life right now. And I hear lots of people say,"I wouldn't do anything different if I could" What a bunch bullshit that is. I sure as hell would change how I did things. Right or wrong my choices have made me who I am, and I'm just now beginning to see the shit I've done and become.

Now for all you people who are going to say that we are defined by our choices, and by changing them, you change who you are; I totally agree. But if I had done something differently, someone would be alive. Do you possibly know how heavy someones life can be, when you bare the guilt? What if by being 5 seconds faster, someone wouldn't have drowned? If I had trained harder, instead of goofing off?

But I also realized that I am my own opposition, and as weird as it is... I like it. Things have been weighing on my mind and I just don't know anymore. Right now I have all these feelings building inside of me and I just can't help but associate them all with Missouri.

Mostly I'm tired of being alone. Go sporadic thinking.

Fighting Against Terrorism

I've had a lot of free time recently (even with school starting back up) and have found myself reading a couple different books about the Special Forces of America and about how and why they were created. I'll be honest, I originally picked up the books to read the stories from the actual teams and one book, 'Inside Delta Force' is exactly that. Written by Eric Haney, he was one of the original operatives in Delta Force and the training they received is astounding. And I'll have to admit I had my little boy moment saying, 'That's sooo cool'.

The next book I started to read was written by Tom Clancy and a retired Brigadier General Carl Stiner. I know what some of you may think, oh it's a Clancy book, that's what I thought as well, I was expecting stories from the actual operatives, but what I didn't know was that Clancy also writes non-fiction about the military. And that's where Stiner comes. Stiner and Clancy lay down an outline and history of Special Forces and unconventional warfare. Clancy then go on to explain just how difficult it is to combat terrorism.

One thing I found interesting in both books was that to fight terrorism requires a degree of cut-throatedness(not a word I know, so sue me). What I found interesting was you have these scumbagish, unscrupulous men as terrorists willing to do whatever necessary to accomplish there goals. And oppositely, the men we have combating that, are the most honorable men, that sometimes have to do worse than their counter-parts to effectively combat them.

Now with all this talk and divide going on with Iraq and whatever our reasons for being there are, we cannot forget that it was terrorist actions that spurred us to actions. How do we effectively combat someone who is willing more willing to die than work out a compromise or a dialogue for peace.

This isn't the first time that terrorism has been encountered, it happened during Roman times as well. The Romans had a strong(too strong) response to any terrorist act against a Roman citizen. For instance if a Roman Citizen was killed, Roman soldiers would grab 10 foreigners at random and kill them. The life of a Roman was worth 10 non-Romans. This worked as a strong deterrent, because the ruled populous understood that the Romans would follow through on this policy with no remorse. And it's one thing to lay down your life for a cause, but that of your wife, husband, mother, daughter, father, and son? Like I stated, this was brutal, but it worked.

So what am I saying? I have no clue, just some thoughts I put together on my drive home from work.