Sour Swinger Predominantly follows my Army & Iraq Deployment. Also has some Geek, School, and other talk.

Took a few videos but only one manage to come out ok. This video was requested by one of my friends and regular Army readers Gordon. Hopefully this meets what he was looking for. Basically it’s just a demonstration of how to drop to the ground during IMT. Yes the military has a text book procedure on what to do, but ultimately it comes down to what’s comfortable and works best for the individual soldier.

IMT Demo from Sour Swinger on Vimeo.

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The last drill until we deploy has come and gone. Technically its not the last as there is one more in September, however that drill takes us directly into the mobilization so it really won’t feel like drill. Orders were finally issued a few weeks ago. September 19th is our mobe date. It says we are activated for no more then 400 days at Camp Shelby, MI. Soooo, technically I could serve my entire deployment in Mississippi. Wouldn’t that be fun…not!

Drill was pretty laid back but at least didn’t feel as much as a waste of time as July’s Drill. We did some minor MOUT training and loads of packing and breaking down equipment that will be shipped out to Mississippi. Also for a company first, we conducted PT for 2 days!?!?! Usually (if we do PT), its only done once. Hopefully we’ll continue this little practice.


The big event for the weekend was the Company family picnic. All the soldiers wives, girlfriends, and children came out. There was volleyball, football, and that horseshoe toss game. We even managed to get a moon walking thing for the kids. We ended up having more food then we could handle as everyone brought something different. It’s always interesting to see a soldiers other side in life. I only really know these guys from within the Army atmosphere. Seeing the families always adds a new perspective on the men.


Unfortunately there was a briefing prior to the picnic. Correction a 3.5 hour long briefing!!! Someone from above the company thought it would be a great idea to put out last minute information for the families. What they didn’t think about was all the kids! The info put out wasn’t anything no one heard before. Most people were in agreement about how bull that brief was. Its one thing to make soldiers sit through that (hell we did a 7 hr brief in Shelby), but to make hungry family members with little children sit in a hot building is just ridiculously. The brief started at 12 so those expecting lunch to be the picnic suffered hunger pains.


All in all, the weekend went pretty quick and smooth. With only a few more weeks left, time will go quick and last minute deployment preparations will have to be made. I’m honestly WAY behind.

The pictures from this weekend’s drill.

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I actually did this a week ago but wanted to wait and see what changes I noticed. None. Wordpress stated they will begin doing more incremental updates for minor bugs. So its not totally necessary to make the updates. With 2.6 came an annoying bug where your login information is not stored and/or access correctly when selecting “remember me”. So every time I load the admin page, I have to enter my username and password. Unfortunately 2.6.1 did not fix this and I must continue to wait.

Joe has 200 more miles left to go, but he has to quit
in order to make it back home in time for school.
He will finish the 200 miles sometime in the future.
Joe comes home to Pittsburgh on Saturday.

~~~Diana

Oh so close! Good job though Joe. To hike for that long is simply amazing. I doubt I could have done the same.

During the first week of August was my family’s big reunion. As usually we do one big family dinner. Clint and Carolyn ended up being quite drunk. I was fairly toasted though not quite as bad. We needed a DD so in comes Frank. Sober as can be but never drove stick in his life. Clint or Carolyn, not sure who, took the video of everything. It happened at night so its very dark. Clint and Carolyn being their drunk selves proves to be entertaining.

Came across this video on YouTube. Typically videos like these don’t make an impression on me however this one is different. Its a shame how pro-war the republicans have become. It seems people who are not pro-war typically aren’t pro-military either. Why can’t we be pro-military while wanting to use war/violence as a LAST resort. Having a strong military is crucial in maintaing national security. If our military is completely incompetent and puny, I’m pretty sure someone would have invaded by now.

Now that my mind is wondering to it, when did this preemptive bull shit start happening? Looks like they’re about to attack, lets hit them first! Looks like they “might” have WMDs, lets attack! For a country who follows innocent until proven guilty, we sure do like making strong convictions. If someone looks like they could rob a liquor store, do you immediate assault them and point a guilty finger? If you’re wrong, who looks like the jack ass? Bush/Iraq anyone? The idea of preemptive strike is just this but on a larger scale. People tend to forget this. I say, better to wait and let the suspect make the first guilty move. This way, you don’t look like the jack ass, you know without a doubt the person is guilty, and most people will be understanding of your further actions.

Anyway, getting somewhat off track of just wanting to post this video. Here it is:

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Tags: Government, McCain, Preemptive Strike, Republicans, Video

July has been quite eventful.  With all my Army posts combined with the surprise AllTunes post, I set a lot of new records.  I haven’t seen a jump this big since February.  If I’m lucky, I’ll pass the 10,000 mark at the end of August.  Otherwise I’ll definitely surpass it in September.  This month sets the new record for most hits in a month: 1,942.

California still maintains number two spot while the United Kingdom takes third.  This is the first time a country takes a top spot for visitor locations.  As such, I now consider my blog international.  I finally had a post, AllTunes, receive more hits then the main blog page.  For most the month of July, I maintained the number 2 result when googling “AllTunes”.  Also, the number of visitors per day nearly doubled.

Total blog hits: 8,814.

1 July – 31 July Visitors 1,056 visits 785 were unique 34 per day 1,942 page views 1.84 pages/visit 70% bounce rate 72% were new visits 202 visits from PA 113 visits from CA 46 visits from UK 54% used IE 35% used Firefox 9% used Safari   Traffic Sources 60% from search engines 33% from referring sites 7% direct traffic Content 1,579 Unique Page Views 447 viewed “End Of Alltunes” 62 viewed “Army Category” 57 viewed “Getting In Trouble” Most hits in a day, 94 on 26 July followed by 91, on 18 & 21 June

1 June – 30 June Visitors 571 visits 457 were unique 19 per day 942 page views 1.65 pages/visit 76% bounce rate 77% were new visits 89 visits from PA 34 visits from CA 29 visits from VA 40% used Firefox 48% used IE 9% used Safari   Traffic Sources 62% from search engines 33% from referring sites 5% direct traffic Content 776 Unique Page Views 137 viewed “End Of Alltunes” 36 viewed “Camp Shelby Day 0” 32 viewed “YouTube Account Created” Most hits in a day, 60 on 24 June followed by 58, on 28 June