4th of July in Plano
We’ve been living in Plan now for nearly seven years, and like most suburbanites, we don’t get involved much with the city. This year, my wife noticed they have a 4th of July parade. Since my daughter has never seen a parade, and it was right around the corner from the house, we headed over.
The parade was a great time. I was really surprised to see the streets so packed. It was a small town parade; nothing fancy. But everyone was having a great time and I learned straight-laced Plano even hosts a bunch of Boba Fett bounty hunters. I wish the city would put them to use for the red light runners.
So everyone had fun and my daughter was thrilled. We’ll definitely add this to the agenda, and it even gives me a desire to get more involved with Plano.
20 Years Gone By
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the first Gulf War. The air campaigned kicked off on January 17th, 1991 and the land battle on the 23rd. I was there in Saudi Arabia for both these dates, and it feels strange that it has been 20 years already because I remember much of it like it was yesterday.
In December of 1990, I was a Sergeant in the US Air Force stationed at Eielson AFB outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. I was an airborne Russian linguist, flying aboard various RC-135 aircraft, including the Rivet Joint, Cobra Ball and Cobra Eye. Since I was also a computer geek at heart, my secondary job was as a Computer System Operation (CSO) where I ran the antiquated HP1000 mainframe used by our system on the ground.
We had been watching the build-up in the gulf for Desert Shield, but it didn’t mean much to us half-way around the world. That all changed when my boss, Spud Webster, said they were looking for a volunteer to be a CSO in Riyadh to support the RC-135’s deployed there. Being young and bullet-proof, I readily volunteered. I joined the Air Force to see new things, and this was a shot I wasn’t going to pass up.
My mother didn’t share my same enthusiasm when I gave her the news I volunteered to go to war. Now, many years later, I can appreciate the heart attack I almost gave her. My father sent me the medallion of Saint Christopher that he carried with him in Vietnam.
I flew out of Eielson bound for Riyadh on Christmas Day, 1990. Master Sergeant Tom Lamb also volunteered to go, and he was going to work on the operations staff. We hitched a ride on a rotation aircraft to Offutt AFB, then tagged along on an empty RC-135 headed for Athens.
In Athens, Tom and I had to change planes and complete the final leg of the journey in a KC-135 tanker. It was a packed flight. The plane was full to the gills with equipment and support personnel. We finally got in to Riyadh and the first stark change for me was the seriousness in the air. The Air Force in the 1990s was pretty much a giant boys club, especially for aircrew. TDY (temporary duty) entailed flying to fun places and drinking with the boys. Riyadh was not going to be that.
We got our first in-brief there on flightline. The big point was to ensure we kept our chem gear handy. At the time, Saddam had some nasty stuff and a willingness to use it. We continued on at our main compound in downtown Riyadh at the US Military Training Mission (USMTM) next to the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) headquarters.
Our tents and trailers were setup on a soccer field in the compound. They had put up razor wire and sandbags around the field. Our facilities for the RC-135s were only a small part of what was going on there. The entire soccer field was covered with tents and trailers like a scene out of MASH. Each tent had a page in a plastic document protector saying what level of security clearance was required to go into the tent. The Air Force had brought out all their best toys and was going to put them to the test.
Our squadron commander was Colonel Lewis. He was one of those crufty, no-bullshit, full-bird colonels the Air Force keeps in their back pocket in case of emergency. He wasn’t there to build leaders, mentor or make spouses happy – he was there to win a war.
My primary work facility was a small, heavily air-conditioned trailer with a stripped-down version of our ground system, along with four processing stations. The job consisted of preparing missions materials for the 24-hour-a-day RC-135 coverage of the theater. It was basically a lot of copying disks and erasing old data after the missions.
Tom and I were assigned to the same empty apartment in Eskan Village, outside of Riyadh. Eskan Village was essentially an empty city the Saudis had constructed, obstinately for the Bedouins. It was all empty five-bedroom houses and apartment towers. Given the toilets were western style, and included a bidet, we all doubted the official story. It was pretty clear the Saudis anticipated someone was going to need to come save their asses at some point and they were going to need a place to live.
Each of us had a room to ourselves in the apartment, furnished with a cot. There was no other furniture. The living room consisted of a Sony TV and VCR sitting on the floor, donated by the Japanese. We eventually picked up some more roommates, but I can’t even remember what they did.
Tom was a bit hardcore, and after we moved in to the apartment, he asked me if I had written my letter. I actually had no idea what he was talking about, so he explained the final letter soldiers traditionally carried in war zones which would be sent back to the family in case they were killed. The whole thought of that struck me pretty hard, and after stewing it over for an hour, I decided I wouldn’t write the letter because I had no intention of dying there, simple as that.
Life was pretty straight forward in the lead-up to the war. Work, eat, sleep. There were five CSOs on site, led by Scott Davis, which was more than enough for the mission, so I ended up doing a lot of odd jobs. Depending on the day, I was working in the trailer, shuttling mission loads out to the airstrip, driving the bus for the crews, or riding shotgun for other people.
The last task was the most laughable. We were in Riyadh, well away from any front, but there was a lot of paranoia in the air. When out in the bus or shuttling the mission loads, I would be given an M16 and ammo pouch, “just in case”. Mind you, I had never fired a real M16 before, and the security police had to show me how to clear it, but it was the thought that counts.
Taking mission loads to the planes was the most excitement. Jay, one of our admin guys, would usually drive. We’d toss a bunch of highly classified stuff in to the bed of a pickup truck and Jay would drive like a bat out of hell through downtown Riyadh heading for our planes at the airport, with me sitting in the passenger seat with the M16. All the smart Saudis left Riyadh prior to the war, so the streets were mostly empty.
Everything changed about three weeks later. I found out the air war was going to kick off the afternoon prior. We moved everyone to a tent city by the airport to be closer to the planes. It absolutely sucked. It was winter in Saudi Arabia, and the rainy season to boot. It was mud city with 20 cots to a tent. I spent the evening of the start of the war cleaning .38 caliber revolvers for the RC-135 aircrew to take with them. We locked the revolvers and ammo up in mission boxes with a padlock and would transfer the key to each Airborne Mission Supervisor (AMS) prior to the mission.
One big consequence of Desert Storm actually starting was they closed down the cafeteria and we had to eat MREs. I could have anything I wanted, as long as it came in a green plastic bag. Since a lot of the combinations weren’t too tasty, we had a huge box of MRE parts inside our main tent at USMTM. The crackers and peanut butter alone were enough calories for a meal.
The Iraqi’s didn’t appreciate the air war too much, and returned the favor by shooting their Scuds at us. The very next evening after the start of the campaign, I was working the night shift at USMTM and we had just gotten the evening crews launched when I decided to catch some sleep. There was a cot behind the map boards at the end of our tent we used for briefing the crews. I had just lain down to sleep when the air raid sirens went off.
Total panic erupted. I grabbed my gas mask, flak jacket and Kevlar helmet, and dived under one of the old-fashioned steel army desks we had in the tent. I put the flak jacket on my knees to close up the opening under the desk, and tried to keep from hyperventilating while I put on my gas mask and helmet. Time started standing still. I heard some enormous explosions, and the ground even shook. I thought for sure we were hit. Then, time started up again, and someone came running in to the tent. He was yelling “the patriots got the Scuds!” A dozen of us came crawling out from under our improvised hiding places. Everyone started cheering and high-fiving.
The Scuds turned out to be more a weapon of terror than war. We had a few close calls in Riyadh. Newsweek had picture of an American GI in chemical gear standing in front of a Scud on a street. That picture was taken just down the road from our compound. And one of our planes took some shrapnel damage from a Scud that hit out at the airport, but no one was injured.
Ironically, the only injury I heard of from our squadron was a tired maintenance guy who fell down the front chute of our plane.
Scubs became pretty common place after that. The Iraqis liked shooting them at night, hoping to increase the survivability of the launchers. What this meant was having air raid sirens going off in the middle of about every night at Eskan Village. The first few times, all of us would get up, put on the chem gear, plop down on the floor in front of the donated TV and watch the news to see who was getting hit. After about a week of that, we didn’t even get up anymore.
Desert Storm was really our first Nintendo war. It was the equivalent of fishing in a barrel with a hand grenade. President Bush rightly stopped the war after the Highway of Death. I remember guys out in Eskan who were selling picture albums from the Highway of Death. Lots of photos of charred corpses and guys cut in half by tank treads. It really was a slaughter of the retreating Iraqi army trying to get their asses out of Kuwait.
The most haunting memory of the first Gulf War was hearing an American pilot get captured. The crews had brought back a recording of an A10 pilot talking on his survival radio after getting shot down. He was trying to make contact with an inbound rescue helicopter but a truck full of Iraqi soldiers got to him first. His last comments were “game over, man” before they took away his radio. The pilot ended up a POW and I found out he was released after the war.
I ended up spending six months in Riyadh – all of Desert Storm and the first part of Southern Watch. I worked with a lot of very good people that I’m proud to know. The war was a major life-changing event for me. It made me appreciate that winning means coming home alive – the rest is just details.
Heros
Where have all the heros gone? When I think back to my carefree days of childhood, I always had heros. The dictionary definition of a hero is “a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities”. It was naively easy to revere a famous astronaut, athlete or other celebrity as a child because you hadn’t had to deal with the world as an adult. And then, insidiously, the wisdom that comes with age starts to have its effect. You gradually become harder to impress, and you start to see you childhood heros for what they are: talented men and women who were in the right place at the right time.
Now, as I’ve pushed past 40 years old, it has become near impossible for me to assign the label “hero” to anyone. This is mostly because I’ve learned the world is a lot more about infinite shades of gray, rather than the crisp black & white view that hero worship tends to require. But it is also because my definition of a hero has evolved. Courage and noble qualities are still important, and all too lacking in our modern world, but a hero is someone who also makes a difference. And not just for today, but for tomorrow, or century from now. And to make it doubly tough, I think any living hero should be the kind of person you’d want to have a beer with.
When I hold up my yardstick to the currently living field of contenders, almost none measure up. The vast majority of modern athletes will be long forgotten in a decade and have no effect on the world. Sports isn’t about heros, it is about business. Astronauts are still cool, and most would probably be fun to have a beer with, but they’re just scientists doing their jobs. And modern “celebrities” fare even worse against the yardstick.
So who are the modern heros? Living men and women with courage, compassion, integrity and conviction, who are making a difference in the history books. And of course, they must still be down-to-earth enough that you’d slam back a pint with them any day. If we look back at the 20th century, I would put Teddy Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, and Mahatma Gandhi on this list, but they don’t count for a modern hero survey since they would be hard to have a beer with.
I actually had to wrack my brain for quite a while to even come up with few names that might pass the hero test. And as that list evolved, I also added another quality to my heros: the quest for truth. I couldn’t admire anyone as a hero who wasn’t willing to pursue the truth, regardless of whether it was the popular or politically correct thing to do.
I ended up with only two names: Sebastião Salgado and Reza Deghati. Both are names most people have probably never heard of, but have probably seen their work. They are two of the top photojournalists in the world.
So how do I arrive at a pair of photojournalists for heros? If you take a look at the pictures either has produced, their courage and conviction are clear. Pick up one of their photo books some day and read the prose. You’ll understand their integrity and quest for the truth. And their work is timeless. Generations will stare in awe at their chronicle of cultures and human experience that most spoiled westerners want to conveniently forget exists.
So we’ve got the personality traits, the quest for truth and the making a difference part. Now what about the beer factor? I haven’t read anything about Sebastiao that would suggest I wouldn’t want to have a beer with him. As for Reza, I met him and his wife at a book signing in Paris in 2006. His humility and kindness were staggering. He actually spent 10 minutes talking with every person who’s book he signed.
These are the kind of people the world needs more of. I proudly claim both as my heros. Now who are yours?
Ode to Gaming
I’m going to diverge a bit from my usual talk of bits and bytes to pay tribute to another one of my favorites: role playing games. 28 years ago, my mother purchased the red box D&D basic set for me. It was pure magic. I was always a fan of fantasy writing, but this was actually about being a part of the fantasy rather than a casual spectator. I didn’t actually start playing until a year or so later when we moved to Heidelberg, Germany. My tight circle of friends were all gamers. Those were the days of the original first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. We would play every weekend, checking every month for the latest edition of Dragon magazine at the Stars and Stripes bookstore on post so we could try something new.
I continued to play throughout my own military career, expanding out into many other games. I usually ended up being the ring leader / gamemaster and had the pleasure of running campaigns for AD&D, Shadowrun, Top Secret, Champions, Call of Cthulhu, Vampire: The Masquerade and various one-offs just for fun. I quit regular play over a decade ago after leaving the military, but I still collect the books.
Tabletop gaming is a bit of an enigma nowadays. In the era of World of Warcraft, everyone is too busy on their computers to actually sit down at the same table together to experience face to face gaming. And it is a loss. There are whole generations who will not know the joy of exploring Expedition to Barrier Peaks or the Keep on the Borderlands. Then there is the palpable terror of taking a group through Missing Blood or The Haunted House for the first time. These were the experiences of my youth that I think every imaginative kid should have have the chance to know and enjoy.
It is sad because in the age of instant gratification on the web, people miss out on actually using their imagination in a social setting. WoW is about the destination, killing monsters to get better gear; RPGs are about the journey — the roads travelled together by friends exploring the depths of their imagination.
The state of gaming is sad today compared to the heydays, but it is still going strong for some. I finally attended a GenCon last year and was awed with the quantity and quality of gaming experiences. I’ve resolved to go every year I can now and plan to take my daughter when she is big enough. Since the collapse of the big names (TSR, FASA, White Wolf), the gaming scene has changed a lot. But there are still some nuggets of awesomeness out there:
Pathfinder – Paizo is now carrying the reigns to the heart of D&D in their own RPG inspired by D&D 3.5. Their books and modules are extremely well written and bring back the excitement of what RPGs are supposed to be about. Where the current 4th edition of D&D feels like a computer game, Pathfinder is role playing gaming at it’s finest.
Delta Green – Pagan Publishing took the Call of Cthulhu mythos and gave it an X-Files spin. I’m a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft, and Delta Green puts a modern conspiracy theory flavor on top of it. There are a couple books of Delta Green fiction which are must-reads, and the gaming books themselves are fascinating.
Goodman Games – These guys write some of the best modules out there for D&D. They actually care about the story telling. I ran in two of their games at GenCon last year and they were a really good time.
Kobold Quarterly – This magazine reminds me of what Dragon magazine used to be like in the early days. Awesome content and a thrill to read. Every gamer should subscribe.
The Oldies – One of my favorite settings is still a combination of first edition AD&D along with some spice from the Arduin Grimoire series. You can easily find all the classics at good prices at any of the used game vendors like Noble Knight, and it will be a more satisfying gaming experience than a lot of the new crap out there.
Unfortunately, for every bright spot, there is a trail of failure — and that trail is littered with the former glory of the big names:
D&D 4th Edition – In an attempt to reboot the game, Hasbro/WOTC has created a tabletop version of World of Warcraft. While fun the first few times, it quickly loses it’s luster and doesn’t have the feel of anything I would want to run a campaign in. And it still has the wallet-sucking book-a-month bloat problem.
Shadowrun – This IP has passed through many hands. From FASA to Whiz Kids to Catalyst Labs, it has lost something along each hop. At the beginning, I was enthralled with the setting and possibilities. It was truly brilliant. But the rules are fundamentally over complicated and imbalanced, and it gets old having every adventure end in a double cross.
Champions – This was the original dream game for min-maxers. Even the early guides took a tongue-in-cheek approach to it. But the early game was concise and had a really fun combat system. The latest versions of Champions / Hero Systems are now encyclopedia-sized monstrosities of rules. I play to have fun, not to study.
White Wolf – The first version of Vampire: The Masquerade was pure brilliance. I actually had a campaign I ran for about a year set in my home town of Olympia, Washington. It was fresh and fun. Then the book bloat hit. Now I’m afraid to even look at the White Wolf bookshelf. And White Wolf literally held a contest at GenCon having people compete to see who could hold up their latest two-inch thick sourcebook the longest.
So I’ve resolved this year to try and be a more active gamer. I’ve already registered for GenCon this year, and look forward to meeting new friends and discovering new games. And anyone out there who was also a gamer should take a look at the current crop of winners and support them.
Geek Desk
To start off the New Year, I did a little physical un-cluttering to go along with the mental part. My desk had become a disaster zone so I took some time this evening and solved the problem. As it won’t stay in this state for too long, I decided to capture what I view as the ultimate geek desk setup for posterity’s sake.
Here’s an overview of the whole desk. I’m a wide-open spaces person for desks, so my desk is a 30×60 inch commercial workbench. Simple and to the point.
My computer is a 13″ MacBook Pro with 4gb of RAM. I use a 23″ Apple Cinema Display at home. This gives me the best of both worlds. Plenty of screen real estate when I’m at the desk, while still having a small laptop for on-the-go work.
My only grief with the display is that it sits too low when I’m seated at the desk. A quick trip to my local Woodcraft store solved that problem. I bought an 8x8x2 inch block of nice hardwood and smoothed it down. I then glued a piece of thick brown leather on the top and felt feet on the bottom. It is the perfect stand for this display.
My second best investment was a BookArc for holding my MacBook vertically behind the display. It doesn’t hold the laptop completely vertical like in the picture, but it is very stable and helps save a ton of desk space.
Here you can see how the MacBook tucks in behind the screen.
For the keyboard, I picked up one of the compact Apple bluetooth keyboards. I love the compact size, and it is easy to get out of the way when I need to work on other stuff on my desk. I stuck with a Logitech mouse, the VX Nano. It is a shame Logitech quit making them. It is the best mouse I’ve ever used. It is a laptop size mouse but still works perfect for all-day work at the desk.
Finally, two of my favorite desk accessories are a Rotring 600 Series 3 .7mm mechanical pencil and ballpoint pen. These are the older models with the knurled grips. They haven’t been made for over a decade and have become collectors items on eBay. If it is good enough for Jason Bourne, it is good enough for me.
So this is the current state of my geek creation station. We’ll see how long it lasts, but a clean desk feels like a clean mind.