1st Armored Division	I Marine Expeditionary Force		170th Infantry Brigade

So I'm done with class for the week, been to all of them except a new one I'll talk about below. Biology, the class I was concerned about, should be easy plus it doesn't sound like there's a term paper. We have to use (and buy) this little RF clicker thing to submit answers to questions during the lecture. Kinda neat but who wants to buy that thing, oh well. Maybe I can hack it, it is RF and has a USB port so maybe I'll get some use out of it later. My Calculus professor (Brewer) came highly regarded and I can see why, she's so much better than Choi already. Explains things much better, I think Choi should stick to the theoretical calculus classes and leave the engineering ones to Brewer. My second CS class, objected oriented programming and data structures will be cake. I already took this in high school (though this one is in Java not Pascal) and have years of experience programming. It has an automated submission system which is web based, I may have to hack up a shell script/curl to submit things from the command line on general.asu.edu. Speaking of general it's no longer Solaris, but Linux and of this semester is virtualized. No luck getting my SSH keys to work on it yet, possibly due to AFS permissions issues.

Only one class to go, LIT294, which I found out about today and called Veteran Student Success. It's a once a week, 1 credit hour course, I figured I'd give it a try and meet some other vets. Supposed to be only 19 seats available and they announced it really last (after first day of classes!) so we'll see what happens. It's right after CSE120 on Tuesdays so doesn't give me a goofy schedule.

Quote of the Day -- "Move it [your phone] to vibrate it sort of makes a nice feeling in your pocket." -- Dr. Mor, BIO181

Found the articles that were written out us when we were on a mission in Iraq: Diyala Offensive Part One: A Whole Lot of Gray and Diyala Offensive Part Two: The Ghosts in the Canals.

Made it back to Germany yesterday, finally! They put me in the Charlie Company barracks since Alpha's barracks are so much smaller than all the other buildings, Southard is over there too but I'm not sure which room. 90 day loss, hurray! Started reintegration today, got through it first, even before HHC, don't ask me how I wasn't trying. Want to get my car BAD and go eat at Poseidon's (a greek restaurant) with the guys. USAA screwed me over though, paid for my insurance on the 28th of April and they still haven't posted my documents. Have to wait a couple hours for the international agents to come in so I can call and bug them and hopefully get it today, otherwise it'll probably be Monday. Signed up for internet access almost first thing, supposed to send somebody out on the 5th but I'm hoping it's already hooked up and I can just plug in and go. Unfortunately the power supply to my DSL modem hasn't arrived in the mail yet, why didn't I pack it in the same box as the modem?

Well we're on our way back, some of us anyway. I'm on leg 2 of about 7, so still have a ways to go. This has been a very boring and stressful deployment and I'm glad it's over. That may seem like a contradiction but those of us out here with me will totally understand what I mean.

Well tomorrow morning I head out, back to Iraq. I've done a lot this leave, helped clean out Aunt Diane's apartment after she passed away and went the funeral. Went to both Aunt June's and Uncle Mark's for dinner. Went down to Tucson twice to spend time with my Dad and hang out with him at work. Went to Amanda and Noah's the first trip and Kim's the second. Saw my Grandfather twice, and went to my old work site to see the crew. Uploaded about 4,800 Pictures from the deployment to Smugmug. Cleaned up and threw out a lot of my old stuff at Mom's. Spent a lot of time on Yahoo talking to people. Reread Hyperion by Dan Simmons and the two Succession (The Risen Empire & The Killing of Worlds) books by Scott Westerfeld all excellent Hard Sci-Fi books.

I'm not really looking forward to going back. The trip itself is long and painful, and I'm tired of the Army. We've moved as well, so I'll be going back to a new place and hopefully all my stuff survived (I did pack it before I left). Hopefully we'll be redeploying soon, although that's another huge nightmare. 6 more months to go!

I'm at the Shannon Airport in Ireland right now, using their free WiFi while going home for R&R leave. The whole process has been a typical and horrible Army adventure. In the end if all goes as planned it will have taken me 5 days to get from the JSS to home. Of course in the Army it's not optional and everybody has to take R&R leave.

We've moved, not far but to a bigger FOB. The DFAC here rocks but there's too many people. Have Internet access (150kbps) in my room which is awesome although slow. It rained a little today for the first time (well, more than a couple drops anyway).

First time I've been able to blog since we got back from our mission. Three weeks in the shittiest corners of Iraq in the hottest time of the year. I can't go into details of the mission, but nobody I know got hurt and we're all happy to be back at the patrol base.

Went to the E-5 (Sergeant) Board today. I got recommended but it was pretty rough. It was like a garrison board, there were no situational questions just book stuff. I've got enough points so I should get promoted August 1st.