Will has some free time to send me links from the various RSS feeds that he subscribes to. He sent me this one from The Onion:

Kitchen Floor Conflict

After reading that one, another story caught my eye:

Area senior remembers a simpler time…

If you know me, you will know which link had me rolling on the floor! Enjoy!

It has been almost a week since I returned from my 8 day FTX. It took me that long to recover *just kidding*. This time, the weather cooperated (mid 60’s to low 80’s!!!) and we seemed to have a bit more time to sleep.

Speaking of sleep, I will tell you that I don’t miss sleeping with Jason…my M16A2 that I was assigned. I named it after my favorite action star Jason Statham (I was not the only one that named my weapon…I was in a tent full of chicks, so we all decided to have fun with it). You have to understand that you don’t go anywhere without your weapon. Eating chow - have your weapon. Washing your face - have your weapon. Using the port-a-john - have your weapon. I was all too happy to turn Jason in when it was over.

So what was the most "memorable" moment of this FTX? Other than getting a shower day (you don’t realize how much you miss soap until you can’t use it regularly…), we had the dreaded gas chamber.

I cannot fully describe to you how much it sucked. It is something that one must experience to fully understand. Once I was instructed to remove my mask, I was barely able to say where I was from and my social before the choking fit set in. Someone got a photo of me coming out and it will be just a matter of time before I end up on someone’s blog out there with snot coming out of my nose and tears in my eyes. There were 2 psychos in my class that went through 5 times! Crazy thing about all this is that the gas was only at 40% strength! Needless to say, I was happy when that was over.

After 9 years of work, I decided to retire my boots that I was issued in Basic Combat Training. These boots got me through BCT, AIT, PLDC, BNCOC and numerous field related training classes at WRAIR. They were very comfy, but also very worn. They didn’t attempt to shine anymore nor did they accept Kiwi. Someone referred to it as a Hershey bar because of all the brown showing. I’m not really sure if I could throw them away just yet, but I do know that I can’t wear them outside of paintball anymore.

Will I ever get used to the field? Doubt it. Will I put up with it to get the job done? Absolutely. As I learn more about my new role in the military, there will be more playing in the dirt in my future.

A friend of a friend invited me to a LAN party; I accepted his invitation. A few days before the party, I learned that our mutual friend had bailed. However, I still went.

Nad can attest to the fact that I avoid meeting new people. It took a lot for me to make the thirty minute drive out to the house to spend several hours with a bunch of people I didn’t know (I knew the names of two guys, and that was about it). Aside from wanting to be in a LAN party after not attending one in many years, the thing that drove me to go out there was the promise of playing Rock Band.

We played maybe two games of Unreal Tournament and one game of Serious Sam. The trouble I had installing UT, an eight-year-old game, solidified my stance against PC gaming. It shouldn’t take 44 minutes to apply a mod and a couple of patches to an ancient game.

The rest of the time was dominated by Rock Band. I put together the below video of them playing two songs. I should note that the first half of the video has some flickering due to a bad SD card. I switched out for the second segment.