Well the radio broadcast fell through. They were here and they tried but the agreement was that the military would provide the satelite equipment and that the station would pay for the satelite time, about 1200 an hour if I remember right. Well, they booked the time ahead of time but the military equipment fell through and they got about 1 hours of broadcast time of which the equipment was crap and they had a 6 second delay.

 

Calling on a telephone line has a 2 second delay if that calling to japan. By Satelite it should not be a 6 second delay. Anyway, they had problems with the military satelite in Israel so it never got to that. The station promoted this event widely (obviously), they payed 7-8000 dollars on satelite time plus airfare over here from San Fransisco and they were in Afghanistan for the troops. They had very little support from anyone over here and were basically soured. They  took time out of their schedule to do this for us, and the military didn't support them at all.

 

Im just a little upset about that and I know everyone else that was around since they got here on Thursday was dissapointed by the military's support. Im sure they wont be back here and I hope they make a stink of it when they get back.

 

Anyway, enough about that, I can't complain fully, it's not everyday that you get to meet a 4 time super bowl champion nonetheless give them a tour of a base and just chit chat with them about stuff. That was cool and EA sports gave trash bags full of video games to hand out, the NFL gave a couple of boxes of tshirtsand hats, so many thanks to those two companies for the generous gifts. They weren't crappy games either.. I got Tiger Woods Golf 2006 and they had everything from NBA Live 06' to NASCAR 2006. The tshirts were plain NFL t shirts which are nice and the hats were the superbowl hats for this year (in detroit) so it was definatly not a total loss, I just hope that this doesn't happen to other events and doesn't deter other folks from comming over here to Afghanistan.

 

Today was the start of a busy half a week. I was suppossed to be be broadcasting tonight of course, tomarrow is the awards ceremony for the air wing here and I volunteered to sing the national anthem at (the last guy they had sing was HORRIBLE.. I felt obligated after that to volunteer to sing it). And then Thursday we have a promotion party in our back garden for our unit, so In between all of this I've been trying to make the garden look as good as possible.

This is not a commercial.

 

That having been said, tune into "sports byline" on the 26th, 29th and 30th of May. 3 other service members and myself will be co-hosting the sports show live from Bagram Afghanistan. The sports byline has the largest listner base in the US with over 100 stations broadcasting it. It's also on the Cyrius satelite radio network and broadcasts to over 120 countries. In Michigan I know there's a station in detroit, cadillac and sout saint marie, all on AM stations (it's a talk show of course, no music) - They have information on what affiliate stations broadcast them on their website to check it out and see if tere arfe any nearby and what stations they are. We're suppossed to be co-hosting this show (I'm not sure exactly what that means when it comes to radio commercialism and maintaining a listener base) but it should be fun and we'll have the opportunity to talk to a lot of hall of famers in sports like Eli Manning and for all of my hockey buds, Joe Thornton and just have an all around good time. Im suppossed to be getting more information tomarrow sometime about it and if anything is important I'll be sure to pass it along to ya'll. Ill also put the list out there tomarrow, just let me know if you have any questions you want me to ask them (Of course not all of them will prolly be on the show but the ones that are I'll ask the questions you have).

 

Weee.....

The two things that makes life alot happier around here.

 

2 Christmas's ago (2004) I received an Ipod from Mr. Grougan, The father in law :) It was a nice Ipod, 20GB and good for its day. No color screen but it played music and a lot of it.

 

At first I didn't know what to do with it really. When I received it my computer had already been shipped off to Okinawa and was somewhere in transit (Getting handled roughly but thats a different story). So, on plane ride to Okinawa all it was good for was playing solitare. People looked at me oddly wondering why I wasn't listening to music on it, but they soon overcame their curiosity, or just started watching the movie. When I got to Okinawa it sat in my desk drawer. At the end of January I finally got my computer and I got the ipod up and running but I didnt have much use for it. I work at customer service so I can't wear headphones (technically you

re not suppossed to wear headphones when in uniform period, but thats a story for a different day) and I had no speakers to work from, so it remained in my desk drawer.

 

Finally sometime in may I recieved computer speakers for my work computer. This made me happy and my ipod got it's first useful use. Soon I was carring it with me to and from work. Then I got another great idea and confiscated my friends tape player thingy that had a headphone jack on it, plugged it into my car and wallah, I now could listen to more than just the radio. Life was good, Hobie was happy. I got thrown on speacial assignments gallore and it came with me. I found the "enable hard drive" option very handy and I had no need for a thumb drive. It was great, it did everything I wanted it to do. Then I got thrown on security Forces. It sucked, so my ipod came with me.. One day it was put next to my cold water bottles in my backpack and it never worked again...

 

So again, it lay dormant in a desk drawer. Sure Kate mentioned seeing if we could get it replaced but my hopes were low, after all it was due to damage caused by me.  We all know how much companies like fixing things for free. Then I got deployed and Kate being the wonderful person she is, went around my pig headedness and took it back with her to the USA and by gollee jee, it was still under warranty. Best buy wouldn't replace it, but the apple would. She sent it in and went back to Okinawa. Her dad got it back in the mail and it had grown from being a child into a teenager. It grew up.. the 20Gb hard drive was replaced with a 30GB hard drive. The greysreen was replaced with full color screen. And it held pictures that you could see on the screen, and video's could be added to it. Best of all, it was replaced free of charge.

 

This made Kates dad very happy. He didn't want to send it in the mail to Kate but being the nice guy he is, he sent it after much pleading (and teasing of it to both Kate and I). Kate got it, drooled on it (Im confinced this is why it didn't want to work when I got it in Afghanistan), uploaded all of her music on it (much of which she had gotten from her friend Annie back in USA) and copied it all on a folder on the hard drive so that when it was plugged into my computer, it wouldn't be deleted when it linked itself with it.

 

And so the last week Hobie became proactive and started cleaning it up some, Deleting much music from it that didn't agree with Hobie's stomach (Sorry Annie!). It was at 3000+ somgs on it, which is a nice ammount. But now that I'm going through purging it, its down to around 1100.  Ive uploaded alot of pictures back onto it as well. I dont have any videos unfortunatly though, Im not big into web videos or music video's. Im thinking of putting some movies I have onto it if I can. That might be cool.

 

This concludes my story of itunes and the ipod.

 

 

After much...debating and heated discussion... Kate and I have decided how we're going to handle our leave. A week's worth of leave will be taken when my mother arrived in Okinawa in August. 3 weeks of leave will be used to come home mid december, and the rest of the leave until we leave the military will be used to travel to places around japan (japan, china, Australia etc..). What this means is that if you want to see us again after this for another year or two, this will be your shot to see us unless you pay to come to Okinawa.

 

Some basic guidelines are being created due to things experienced by both us and other individuals when they go home on leave.

 

the main guideline is this:

We'll be back home for 2-3 weeks. With a few exceptions, if you want to see us, you're going to need to make the time to see us. We've travelled 10,000+ miles and $3000 dollars to come here. The least you can do if you want to see us is spend the 20 dollars for gas, call and drive up to meet us. We dont plan on driving all around the state and country to see people. All of our time home would be spent driving if that was the case. Let us know if you want to see us and we'll make rook in the schedule to see you. We'll be in Saginaw for Christmas Eve for First Presbyterian's Christmas eve service. We haven't worked out christmas will work yet, but we'll get the figured out. Outside of that spending a day or two at Tim and Sam's place playing warhammer and being with those good friends, our schedule is free.

 

Too many times military folks come home after being oversea's for so long and they are the ones expected to travel all over to see everyone. That is rude =p If you dont make the time and effort to see us after weve taken the majority of effort and money to see you, then dont complain when you dont see us for 2, 3 years =p

 

Thats all I've got to say about this.

 

 

Despite all of this, I actually have another post drafted up and ready to be posted. Ill post that in a few dyas =p

 

Merry Christmas everyone :)