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

Well funny enough I’m not the only blogger within the 56th Brigade. Thanks to a dedicated reader, I was given these links. If anyone knows of any others be sure to let me know.

111th HHC Recon
C 1-111th Inf
A 1-111th Inf

Little FYI, the 1-111th is the battalion that I caused a big uproar with their Lt. Col about my blog. Hopefully these guys don’t have anything against me.

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Milblog is the nick name given to my type of blog…..A Military Blog. Of course I also do other types of blogging, but with this deployment I really don’t have the time. A couple weeks ago, I went on a search for “advertising” my blog. With 7 months in, I’m still only receiving 40-50 hits a day. I wanted to garner more attention and bring in more readers. Well my searching brought me across MilBlogging.com.

Milblogging claims to be the worlds largest index of military blogs on the home front and over seas. From what I could find, that’s probably very true. They index over 2,256 military blogs from 43 different countries. I suggest checking them out. You can search for blogs from any country such as Iraq or Afghanistan.

Anyway, I went ahead and registered my website with them. I’ve noticed an increase in traffic since. If you glance to the bottom right of this website you’ll see my milblog profile link. They also run a top 100 blogs from each country and top blogs in total. I humbly request anyone who feels my blog is worth voting for to go and help bounce me up that list. Out of the 426 Iraq blogs, I’m ranked 66th. The top dog has 21 votes. If enough of my readers vote, I’ll easily beat that. To vote for me click here. You’ll be taken to a page describing my blog. Under the actions section, you’ll find a link that says ‘Add to favorites’. The more people who favorite my blog, the higher I’m ranked. The only catch is you have to register with the milblogging website first. No fear they don’t spam email.

I appreciate any votes and as always, I appreciate the following of dedicated readers I have already gained. It makes the time I put into writing and maintaining this website that more worth while. :D

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From my brother who served in Iraq during the surge:

“My classmate from West Point (Craig Mullaney) published a book (“The Unforgiving Minute”) last week which recounts his time at West Point and as an officer leading Soldiers during combat in Afghanistan. Craig is a Rhodes Scholar who I know fairly well (as cadets we were both history majors and also spent a week together in Normandy, France studying the D-Day invasion). I’ve only had a chance to review his book, but after talking to him and reading the reviews on it I think that his story is perhaps similar to many of my experiences as well as many other company level leaders. I’ve included links to the NY Times Book review and a recent interview that Craig did with Bob Schieffer. His book has many high profile endorsements to include Gen Petraeus.”

The Battlefield Can Be an Unforgiving Teacher
Author On War In Afghanistan Video

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LT Price is the greatest PL ever.  He plans really cool missions and we kick butt when he does.  One time I saw him take out a building with 12 insurgents in it by himself while carrying his wounded driver on his shoulders.   His driver went in the building by accident because he did not sleep like the LT told him to.  That is another story……

FYI: I left my computer briefly and found that LT Price wrote this as a joke for my blog.  I decided to keep it and post it.  HAHA

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Several months ago I was authorized to create a new website for Delta Company. It sat on the back burner for some time but I finally completed it. You’ll find important information, contact lists, pics, videos and more. As of right now, I’m still waiting on the FRG information. This marks my first ever website built from the ground up. It was quite the learning experience and came to enjoy the whole process. I HIGHLY recommend you view the site with anything but Internet Explorer. I learned that IE seems to be the only browser that does not follow W3C completely. I suggest downloading and using Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

The New Unofficial Delta Company Website.

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My Army weekend came and went relatively quickly. Aside from some slight modifications in our training schedule this summer, no new news on my mobilization. The most exciting thing to happen was the combatives class. This was the first time I got to use my instructor qualification to help teach. Since I’m only level 1 certified, however, I was only the assistant instructor.

I also got permission to set up our company’s official website. There were some minor rules I must follow, but otherwise I’m free to do whatever. My intention is to make a nice run down on who our company is and our battalion’s history. Also include pics and bio’s of the chain of command, and electronic copies of our yearly training schedule and news letters. With the up coming deployment, it’ll probably be a good idea to add info for the family support group and a forum for military family members to chat on. This little project will have the lowest priority during the school semester. However, come this summer I should have plenty of time to get it up and running.

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Wow so its been nearly one month since my last post! Alot has happened since, and I’ve decided to break up this post in many tiny ones. Basically since my last post I had finals, then my Army weekend, short visit to Philly, back to Pittsburgh briefly, quick stop off in Ohio, up to my brother in New York, back down to Philly, trip to the Bahamas, a wedding in Washington DC, and finally arriving back in Pittsburgh for the start of class. I really need a vacation from vacationing. Traveling definitely wears me out.

I’ll start with the Military update. My deployment dates are still projected to be the same. Mobilization around Sept/Oct with an in country arrival Dec/Jan. Our training schedule has been accelerated to get us up to speed in time. For a first (at least for me) my unit will be conducting Muta-7/8s. Meaning drill will last from Thursday until Sunday. This means I must leave Wednesday night to make the Thursday formation. Because of these lengthen drills I’m forced to drop a class taking me from 16 to 12 credits this semester.

Drills during the fall semester have been pretty solid as in going from 0500 until 21/2200. Leaving no time to work on homework. I expect this semester drills to be the same. Typically, I schedule all my classes for Tue/Wed/Thur to compensate for drills. Unfortunately there’s no way I can schedule classes solely for Tue and as such will miss each class at least once a month.

SRP is scheduled for the last week of finals which means I may have to take some tests early. SRP (Soldier Readiness Process?) is basically a 5 day medical eval process to ensure every soldier is able to mobilize. Rule of thumb is to take care of your dental prior to SRP. Army’s philosophy is to simply pull any teeth that may have issues. Yikes!

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