When Erika busts out the camera, she doesn’t mess around. I’ve uploaded the almost ridiculously large pile of pictures she took down at Disney World. It’s a daunting pile to say the least.

I was looking at the “spam” comments that this website manages to draw in. It’s an interesting mix of topics, from Viagra adds to various “adult” things to political stuff and everything in between. Of course none of it comes from humans, it’s all generated by automatic spamming machines out there somewhere. And then it gets annihilated here by my automatic spam destroying machine. Which honestly makes me wonder what the point is. I mean, do people really make any kind of money at all sending this nonsense out? Is this machine on machine warfare some sort of precursor to the coming Terminator like apocalypse? Could there be a secret world changing code hidden in it somewhere? One has to wonder. I occasionally browse through it just to see what they’ve thought up this time. And then I hit the delete all button, and it ceases to exist. I guess we’ll never know!

Every few years I get talked into going to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. For the uninitiated, imagine an outdoors Star Wars convention populated by hippies and D&D players. You more or less wander around yee olde English Village watching shows, buying food, and shopping. The entire thing is a fund raiser for various not-for-profit organizations. When I was younger I was really into this sort of stuff. I’ve found these days I enjoy it mostly for the people watching opportunities, and the boys have fun so it works out. Much like any sort of themed gathering like this, some people come out dressed up. The level of sophistication in said dress up varies greatly. You have anything from very expensive looking period costumes that are truly impressive, to “elves” that appear to the untrained eye to be escapees from a pokemon convention, to teenagers wearing a sheet carrying around a light saber while they talk on their cell phone. There was even a Ghostbuster and a guy dressed like a taco. It’s an odd experience for sure. However, the beer stands serve Fat Tire, which made my day. Logan got some marbles from Uncle Don for his birthday. All things considered it was a good time.

Speaking of Logan’s birthday, he turned nine on the 4th of October. Nine. One more year and I’ll have a child in double digits. My God, he’s almost a teenager .. how did this happen? Riki organized an overnight party thing at a place here in town called “YES”. It’s a sports themed youth center. They had a big basketball court and batting cages as the main attractions. They also had a game room with a couple XBOX 360′s and a Nintendo Wii, which I have a feeling dominated most of the night. Logan purportedly stayed up until 3am, finally passing out on the couch. He had about four or five friends there, although only one actually stayed the night. Still, it was good enough for him. Riki bought him a little cheapo digital camera which he has been sneaking around the house taking stealth pictures of things with ever since. Maybe he’ll be a paparazzi reporter one day and can stalk the Brittney Spears of his generation! A father can only hope. We have a bunch of pictures from the party but I haven’t downloaded them off the camera yet so they’ll have to wait.

Fluffy has been replaced. We are now the proud owners of a baby rat named Brian. Not named after me mind you, but rather Logan’s uncle Miller. Thanks son! The thing is actually a great little pet so far, rats are very calm and people friendly. It will happily sit on a shoulder for hours. They’re very intelligent too, they can be liter trained and can be taught tricks. Some people even walk their rats around on leashes. We’re probably going to go back to the pet store later today and pick up another one as Brian seems somewhat lonely and everything I’ve read says they do much better in pairs. He appears to have a bit of a flea problem which isn’t surprising coming from a pet store. I’m going to need to talk to a vet and get a prescription for a product called Revolution. All the online rat forums claim it’s the bomb. Here’s to hoping this pet lasts a bit longer than the last one.

Finally, I upgraded a bit of software on the website. The picture gallery has a new feature called “Lightbox”. It’s basically a fancy way of displaying pictures, they pop up in a neat little overlay when you click on them. I’m not sure if I like it or not though, so please let me know if you have any problems with it.

I updated a bit of software on the site the other day. As usual you won’t see most of the changes. However one of the new features is the ability to use “flash video”, kind of like youtube or google video or whatever. I’m not sure if it’s worth the trouble yet. Please let me know if you have any problems or find this method works better.

We had a nice Easter weekend with the family. There were the usual egg hunts and baskets and stuff, coupled with crazy kids running around everywhere. Little Mathew is getting quite mobile and is a lot of fun, the sounds and faces he makes are priceless. I will say as much fun as little kids are I’m glad mine aren’t so little anymore. They’re great in small doses!

Today is our ninth wedding anniversary. I guess compared to some that’s not much but it sure does seem like a long time to me looking back. Couple that with me turning thirty this year and I’m starting to feel positively not young anymore. It’s ok though because one of the guys at work is having a big going away party this weekend, which is always a great opportunity to feel adolescent and stupid again!

I have a bunch of photo’s I’ll be uploading at some point here soon, I’ve been pretty slack this year. This new version of the software I loaded has a neat feature that makes a folder showing all the new items in the gallery, but I haven’t figured out how to turn it on yet. Once I do it should make seeing what has been added a lot easier.

We’re looking forward to heading back down to Arkansas in May for Erika’s graduation. I’m still not sure of the exact date but I’d imagine it will be some time near the middle to end of the month. Time sure has passed quickly since we left, it should be fun. Maybe the weather will cooperate and we can sneak in a night camping or something.

I uploaded a ton of pictures from the computer that I had never bothered to put on the website. Most of them are from 2006 but there are others from all the way back to 2001. If you click on “Detail” down in the lower right corner on the gallery page you’ll see icons for all the new and updated galleries when you look at stuff. There’s nothing ground breaking in there, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time so I’m happy. Next project, upload some videos ..

We’re moving in a few days, the packers show up Monday. I can’t really say we’ve done much to prepare. Actually we’ve pretty much done nothing. I took the kids swing set and basketball hoops apart, and that’s really about it. Monday I’ll disconnect all the computers and stuff. I’m going to leave the phone hooked up and the internet hooked up to the laptop so we’ll be reachable. If all goes well we should be up in Missouri some time Thursday evening. Exciting!

We had the annual Osan Air Show this weekend. Now, under normal circumstances it’s only a so so endeavor. I mean, this is Korea after all. They have a few fighters zip around for awhile, some random fly bys of whatever they can scrape up out of Japan and Guam and here on the penninsula, and a smattering of Army equipment and South Korean aircraft. The highlight is the Black Eagles, a Korean stunt team akin to the Blue Angles or Thunderbirds that you’ll see back in the United States. They fly T-37′s and generally put on a decent show, although I wouldn’t call it anything particularily special.

Unfortunately, our short little dictatorial friend up north decided to literally drop the bomb last week and test a nuclear device. This resulted in a bunch of cancellations for our Air Show. Do I think it was intentional on North Korea’s part? Did they blow up a tiny little bomb just to show they can put an end to Osan’s yearly spectacle whenever they want? I’m no expert, but it’s entirely possible. Jerks.

I went and wandered around anyway and took a few pictures. As it turns out, I had my camera set to some ridiculous settings from the last time I was screwing around with it, that made all my pictures come out overexposed and blue tinted. I tried to correct it as best I could on the computer. You can’t really tell since the pictures I put on this website are so small, so it’s not that bad.

Also, I was looking around the picture gallery earlier and realized it was horribly disorganized and hard to find stuff in, so I broke down and rearranged everything into chronological order. Better? I dunno, but it makes me happy.

There’s not much else going on over here. Well, I mean, there is the whole North Korea wanting to test a nuclear weapon thing. Personally, I’m convinced this is all just another ploy by Kim Jong-Il to ensure North Korea enters back into talks on the best terms possible. I’ll be absolutely amazed if he actually tests anything, or even HAS anything to test. North Korea is notorious for doing stuff like this, making huge dramatic threats and then changing direction at the last minute, all to gain some strategic advantage in negotiations. We’ll see I guess. I talked to a few South Koreans about it and they could care less, they think it’s all a ploy too. Actually, a few of them thought it was all fabricated by the United States. That’s South Korea for ya.

We should be closing on the house within a week. Ug, Im all stressed out about this, I really need to get out of this country and get on with my life.

I added the ability to subscribe to website updates via email. Any time the page gets updated it will send out an email to all the registered users letting them know. If you don’t want to get these emails you can disbale it in your profile. It’s not perfect but it seems to work well enough for the moment.

I’m also stumped, and need help figuring something out. I’m getting this growing feeling that things are .. different .. since I was home on midtour. I can’t really put my finger on it. When I first got here to Korea, I had all these ambitions. I was going to eat right and get in even better shape, I was going to get out and experience the local culture, I was going to try to learn some Korean. I made grocery shopping lists and cooked my own food. I went out on the weekend from time to time but it was rather irregular and certainly not anything I couldn’t live without. I called back home religiously, and frankly talked to my friends more than I did when I was actually IN Arkansas. I went down town and bought random Korean trinkets to send back home. I had all these plans to pass the time, and every day was one more day gone before I could go home and visit.

Now I’m back. I call home but it’s sporadic. I stay up until like 6am and then sleep all day until it’s time to go to work. I go out every weekend with the same people to the same bars and have the same conversations. I have very little interest in going anywhere and could care less about speaking to Koreans, much less speaking the Korean language. I pretty much eat whatever the Air Force is serving in the dining hall and occasionally stuff people moving out of the dorms leave in the kitchen. Tonight was the first time I’ve cooked in weeks, a glorious meal of macaroni and some chicken wings I found in the freezer awhile back. I’ve managed to keep exercising at least, but not as much as I’d like to. I’ve developed a rather new procrastination habit as well, even for things I enjoy like playing with my nifty XBOX 360. Why would someone put off doing something fun? It’s just weird. It’s all just weird.

At first glanced I’d say I’m depressed, but honestly I don’t think that’s it. From what I’ve heard this happens to a lot of people after they go home and visit. It’s like you build up all these expectations, and then the visit back home just kind of deflates it all. It’s a very marked change. Someone explain this, there’s got to be some fancy psychological mumbo jumbo to make it all fit together.

Just a tip .. when viewing the picture gallery, in the lower right corner you’ll see a thing that says “Display Mode: Summary | Detail”. Click on “Detail” and you can tell exactly which albums have been updated or are new.

I also updated a few pieces of software on the site, so let me know if anything funky happens. And I took my ugly mug off the top, so all you complainers can just hush.

I’ll be home in under a month now, for mid-tour anyway. June can’t go fast enough. Time certainly has flown by so far, hopefully the rest of this tour will be equally speedy. Looking forward to seeing everybody!

Nothing, other than they all happened in the same 24 hour period and I took pictures of all of them.

The cherry trees caught my eye as I was walking to work .. they’re booming all over the country and it’s just wicked looking. The work pictures are just that, more helicopter pictures and other random things. The BBQ was, as usual, over on top of the Asia hotel in Songtan, courtesy of our Production Superintendant JD Burns (the guy that resembles a leprecon). And Operation Joe? That was our super secret undercover plot to cover the General’s car in 33rd Rescue Squadron “Green Feet”. This venerable Air Force practice, known as “tagging”, was carried out in the traditional fashion; under the cover of darkness and alcohol. It was a complete success!

On an unrelated note I did some software upgrade to the photo gallery over the last couple of days, which is why the site was down. Not much has changed, although there is now a nifty “rate picture” option under each picture. Fun!