Daytona Finish Wild

If you're not a fan of NASCAR, stop reading. If you are, then you probably either are a happy or a sad camper today, based on yesterday's wild finish when hard charging Kevin Harvick beat NASCAR's most sentimental favorite Mark Martin, by a couple of feet to cross the finish line and win the prestigious Dayotna 500. It was wild to say the least, considering that behind the two side-by-side racers heading into the final turn, others were wrecking all over the place. I was hoping Martin would win, because he's an old guy (in NASCAR terms) and was driving the Army sponsored car. But, I was also glad to see Harvick win, instead of other drivers in the final mix at the end that I do not care for...Kyle Busch being one. But, it would have been great to see Mark standing on top of his car after the race, celebrating as the winner, as hard as anyone could possibly do. The nice part of all this is that the racing season has just begun. Hold on.

Not what I expected to hear

Last Friday night as I was flipping between TV channels (my wife was not home so I had total control of the remote and could flip as much as I wanted to) I caught a portion of the testimony by the Secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, and the Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker before the House Appropriations Committee. I was surprised at the rapport I saw between the committee and the Sec Army and CSA. I got the impression the committee was pretty much ready to provide levels of funding being requested by the Army, but only if such could be well substantiated. I was also impressed by the sort of questioning of some Democratic committee members (John Murtha for example). He seemed very knowledgeable about what Army requirements are, and gave me a much different (better) view of his position from what I had expected. Other committee members asked equally good questions. Better still, Secretary Harvey and General Schoomaker gave very candid and complete responses, with no hint of defensiveness. I watched for about an hour and as I changed the channel I thought to myself that things are not as bad in Congress as I may have thought.

Deplolyment to Dwell Time

I recently attended the 18th Airborne Corps Engineer Conference at Fort Bragg, NC. It was an inspiring visit, not so much by the things I learned while there, but from the looks of determination I saw on the faces of those in attendance. You see, these warriors are preparing (again) for a new "road to war" later this year. The main engineer unit involved is the 20th Engineer Brigade, but the Corps staff will be deploying as well. To get a feel for the sacrifices these Soldiers deal with every day, you had to see the number of hands that went up when the Commander of the 20th Engineer Brigade (Colonel Peter DeLuca) asked for a show of hands from those who had been to either Iraq and Afghanistan three times or more since 2003. Lots of hands were raised. In 2003, Army objectives for the active force was to have a ratio of 1:3 for years deployed to dwell time (back home). The objective ratio was 1:5 for reserve component Soldiers. Today, for a large percentage of Soldiers assigned or attached to the Corps the deployment-dwell time ratio is 1.3 to .5 (that's "point" five!). Talk about being motivated and willing to serve! If we saw such motivation from the average American civilian, we'd have a a bunch doing something more inspiring than sitting in front of their wide-screen HD TV sets worrying about who the next "American Idol" is going to be.

Army Uniform

I don't know whether or not General Casey (nominated to become Army Chief of Staff) will be confirmed by Congress or not, but if he is, I sure hope he reverses the decision by the current CSA to replace the green Army Class "A" uniform, with the current blue "Mess Dress" uniform. I also hope he will change uniform regulations to allow officers to wear their branch insignia on the Army Combat Uniform (ACU). I know it's a bit superficial right now to discuss this situation, given all the other more important actions underway; but, I also recognize that the Department of the Army staff initially decided to push this ill-advised effort during an equally critical period.

Computer Operating Systems

Now that the new Microsoft Vista operating system has been released, Windows PC users out there are faced with a decision of whether or not to upgrade from (probably) the Windows XP operating system. There are several Vista upgrade versions available and they are not cheap, so many users will probably decide to stay where they are now, unless they intend to buy a new computer soon. More importantly, other than some new features many won't use, and neat "eye-candy", Vista essentially does the same thing that Windows XP does. Passionate user arguments aside from both Microsoft and Apple camps, many of the new Vista features have been around in the Apple OS X operating system for some time. But to keep comparisons fair, Vista has some features that OS X does not. Personally, I prefer doing actual work on my Apple MAC desktop and laptop computers, while leaving my Windows XP machine to primarily manage my work email account, and financial records. So, for me Windows XP is just fine, and other than being interested visually in Vista's new graphic interface features, I'll keep what I have. When that computer dies (as it eventually will) I don't intend buying another Windows machine, so using Vista on a daily basis will be something I'll probably never experience. It's going to be interesting to see how the military eventually adapts to Vista, since they are tied to Windows exclusively. Talk about shelling out some BIG BUCKS!

World War II guys never give up

I posted information last December 13th (see Blog archives for 2006) about a fire in a restaurant in Kentucky. Bad enough, it was made even worse by the fact that the structure also housed a museum containing wartime memorabilia from the 297th Engineer Combat Battalion and other units and organizations. Hal Miller who owned the facility has decided to re-build at another location, regardless of the recent devastation. It seems to me that veterans of World War Two never give up. That's what makes their generation so special.