Gallery

Gallery

Gallery

Went Geocaching with Brad today, the second time since I've been in Germany. Here are Geocache Pictures from both times. It was really nice and sunny today. We stopped by a cool bridge on the way back.

Took another trip to Köln, this time with Koval, Southard, and Cookston. Spent two nights there, and saw a lot more stuff.

We attempted the climb of the bell tower of the cathedral, but I was the only one to make it to the top. The other three chickened out halfway up. Southard we all know is deathly afraid of heights, but the other two? You had to climb the first 400 steps on a single spiral staircase, it was insane.

We also climbed a 29 story building with an observation deck. Southard as usual was freaked out but he actually went and stood next to the glass.

Went to the Zoo, it was much nicer than the Neunkirchen Zoo. It had a lot more animals and a big aquarium. It didn't have the giant pit of baboons the other zoo did though. ;)

Went to the hard rock cafe and the lego store. I bought t-shirts from both of them.

Pictures are in the usual place, under Travel/Germany.

Went to Trier yesterday with Southard and Cookston. Left at about 1100 and got back today at 0800. Went to Porta Nigra and a Cathedral. Pictures are on my smugmug page.

Missed the train back, so we decided to go as far as we could in the right direction and maybe get a hotel or find a connecting train. Made it to Turkismuhle but there was nothing until 0400 (it was about 2300), so we went back to St. Wendel and found an Irish pub for Southard and Cookston. We stayed there until closing (about 0300) and went back to the station to wait. Southard and Cookston alternately yelled at each other and cried on each other's shoulders for the intervening hours. Of course, I hadn't noticed the 'weekday only' notation next to the 0400 train and it ended up being 0617 when we got out of there. We were all either wasted (them) or tired (me) and we managed to overshoot Idar-Oberstein and make it to Bad Munster. After a little more drama we got back to IO and took a cab back into Baumholder.

I didn't even drink and still feel pretty horrible, Southard and Cookston are probably in bad shape. We got a 4 day weekend, so I have tommorow off to recuperate.

I got my internet connection today, hurray! It's suitably fast, although upstream bandwidth could be better at 512kbps, downstream is around 3mbps.

I'm back from my deployment to Iraq. I was gone for 2 months 3 weeks, in Camp Blue Diamond. It was a pretty decent place, right next to the river in an Iraqi mansion/compound. Earned by CAB from an IED, lost a friend (PFC Shane Austin), gained some new friends. Pictures will be posted when I have bandwidth.

Well, I've been here almost two months and am about to leave. I've completed the IRT (Individual Readiness Training) and CLS (Combat Lifesaver) classes and done various other small Army things.

I have a ton of photos left to upload, but I've got most of my trip to Burg Eltz (a famous castle) posted on Smugmug. I'm not sure when I'll be able to upload the rest, but as soon as I get a good internet conneciton I will.

Yesterday we had a picnic thing with the spouses and dependents of all the soldiers down range. Those of us stuck here had to do the setup and tear down, it was a pretty long and boring day although we had a few minutes of fun here and there. Went to see Superman Returns with some of the guys last night. It was OK, the effects were good enough. It was better than Xmen 3 anyway, which I saw Friday night (for the second time).

I've made it to Germany, and this is the first time I've been on the net. I'm in the education center in Baumholder.

I've been to Idar-Oberstien and Kaiserslautern so far. Both are pretty cool, the whole contry is really cool. It's hilly and green, and the weather has been pretty nice although it's a little humid.

I've been doing a lot of inprocessing, almost done though. My unit is in Iraq right now so I'll probably be joining them in a month or so.

More updates later.

Well, tomorrow I'll be off to Germany. Already feeling a bit homesick. I'm leaving so much stuff and people behind, and none of it will be easily accessible like if I was in the states. I hope I haven't forgotten anything I need to take!

Forgot to mention I got a PSP, around the same time as my new camera. It's pretty awesome, plays videos and does slideshows awesome. Have GTA: Liberty City Stories, Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, and Ys: The Ark of Napishtim games for it, also picked up the T2 UMD to see how those looked. Going to use it as a PMP more than a gaming system I think, too bad it uses Memory Sticks.

Bought a Surveyor SRV-1 robot. It's pretty bad-ass. Video frame rate isn't the greatest, but the picture is pretty darn good and it goes faster than it looks. It's really small too! The XBee modules are really cool, I'm going to have to start doing some more hardware hacking.

I finally decided on which camcorder to buy. I had originally wanted a Panasonic PV-GS400 but they're impossible to find, being an almost 2 year old model. So instead I went for a Sony HDR-HC1, which got CamcorderInfo.com's Camcorder of the Year award for 2005. I got it from B&H Photo for $1349, a little more than I wanted to spend but still not too bad. The camera shoots HD, and according to all the reviews has an awesome picture. I'm going to have to buy more web space...

I've finally created a gallery for all my videos, both ones I've taken and ones I've downloaded. It's available at My Videos. There are over 600 videos totalling about 30GB right now and I'll be adding more as I get the chance. Some of the videos may not work, as I've uploaded the thumbnail but not the video itself. Stay tuned for further updates.