Best Milbloggers of 2005

36 hours to vote for your favorite milblog over at Milblogging.com. Currently I'm sitting fat and happy at number 3 for Navy blogs which suits me just fine, fairly mundane and happy year. When the corpsman in bored, everyone is happy. All you need to do is sign up for an account and click on your favorites. Easy as that.Who's on my favorite's list? Lt Smash, Michael Yon, Blackfive, Some Soldiers

I didn't get squished!

After days of worrying about how I was going to get that 630 pound tool box out of the back of the truck, I rolled it off smooth as silk. I did spend an hour building a strong ramp before though. Now I just have to finish filling it up and cleaning the house before I cook the prime rib I got for Christmas from my mom and the turkey I got for 1.50 using the 15 dollar coupon I got from my partner

A long weekend and what to do?

We’ve made it back to San Diego safe and sound and I have a four day weekend coming up and not too many plans other then a get together to with some friends to consume a prime rib I got for Christmas and a turkey left over from a gift certificate.So I’m looking about the internet for cheap things to do in the area. We’ve spent our wad and other then cleaning, San Diego is too nice of a place to

Tool Box Odyssey

After spending a week with my son in Arizona it was time for the homeward journey.This is where the odyssey of the the tool box started. From 1999 till 2001 I was out of the military and working as a Mechanic. The biggest goal of a starting out Mechanic is not fixing cars, it’s gathering tools. I started with a couple of small tool boxes on a rolling stand, one day our local Snap-On sales devil

Holidays around Prescott

My son and I are road tripping around northern Arizona (lovely wife has to work, sigh) Visiting the family and staying at my moms house. Our mornings have been taken up with different construction jobs and nights with visiting friends, relatives or shopping. Yesterday I put a roof on a garage and my son dug holes for my mom.Last night we went out Christmas shopping. Thursday we’re heading down to

Night of Stories

My wife’s grandfather is down visiting for the weekend, he’s a retired Marine with 30 years worth of stories. A Veteran from WW2 at Midway, the Korean War, he was at the Chosin Reservoir and Vietnam till 1968, he’s been in the shit. Last night we went out to dinner with him, her uncle and aunt, pretty good time. Grandpa Ken is staying at our house for the weekend and the others are staying at

My confession

Confessions of a Military Recruiter did a post where he's talking about enlisting recruits with law violations, on this note, I have my own confession to make.When I originally enlisted in '91, I had one of those law violations, namely, Trespass on Town Property, my best buddy and I and his 11 year old little brother snuck into the community pool in the middle of the night. His little brother

Tagged... Five Weird Habits

Some Soldier’s Mom has tagged me... and I'm supposed to describe Five Weird habits I have... I have many more then five of them but these are the ones that are popping up right now.1. I’m like a boy scout when it comes to my suburban, it’s always prepared for anything, if the end of the world is about to happen, I’m the person to be with (in my big old suburban). I’m usually carrying around

Bloody Mary’s

I’m reading the late Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt and I’m surprised how alike we look at the world. We’re both slackers about deadlines and make fun of everything. I was particularly struck by one chapter that he talks about only ordering Bloody Mary’s in Airports, which happens to be my flying drink of choice along with my old flight surgeon, Bruce and a number of other medical people I

Christmas fun anyone?

This Santa game is just wrong, don't play it, really I mean don't play it! (now why can't I stop playing it?)When I grow up, I want lights like this on my house for Christmas.Thanks for sharing these with me B

If you don’t agree with us we’re going to beat you

Paul Mirecki, University of Kansas religious studies professor, had a course scheduled to start this spring called “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies”. Instead on Monday he got ran off the road and beat by two men in a large pickup truck. Guess these thugs were supporters of “Intelligent Design”.Professor Mirecki has given in to these

Congrats Sis

This morning I was working at a cell phone dead spot and my sister left me this message....“Hi Sean, it’s your sister Sarah, you’re an uncle again, little Mason Drake was born at 12:25 this morning and he’s 9 pounds 6 ounces and 21 inches long and he absolutely beautiful so I’m calling to let you know that the baby’s here. Hope things are going well talk to you soon, goodbye!”Look forward to

So what's up with blogger tonight?

My blog has been my main launch page for a while but something seems to be wrong with blogger this evening. So I'm just chilling here with the beautiful lady and putting up the Christmas tree and lights to outside of the house and chilling I am, it's 41 degees out! What's up with that? I thought I was in San Diego, not the arctic. It's not my fault that some of you guys live in places where it

5 things

AFSister has tagged me with answering 5 things you probably don't know about meI’ll go for the easiest one first, my first car was a 1978 Chevette, primer gray, bought it when I was 15 for 500 bucks doing lawns one summer, had it for 3 years and it was one of my favorite cars.I was married for 5 years to a girl named Lisa. Sort of a shotgun wedding, we have an 11 year old son named Collin. She’s

Source of Ebola Virus Found

Researchers in the Congo have identified three species of fruit bats that are acting as the reservoir for the Ebola virus. Twenty-two percent of the bats tested were found positive for genetic traces of virus. Even more interesting is that this produced no symptoms in the infected bats. This has been driving scientists nuts for a while and for good reason, in 1976 it appeared in 55 villages near

An uncounted blessing

A little over a month ago, I caught some sort of bug and spent a week lying in bed reading and watching the tube. My wife would come home from work, make me some soup and turn the TV to Charmed each night at 5 on TNT. Me being the loving husband that I am, didn’t argue and let her have control of the remote. As it turns out, TNT plays 2 hours of charmed each week night. Not a show I would

Thanksgiving and the Grand Canyon

Made a road trip over the holiday weekend with my wife and the new bug to Arizona for Thanksgiving with my mom and a very pregnant sister. Saturday made a side trip with my best friend Larry, his wife Jen and my other son Alec to the Grand Canyon, pictures here. Great weekend, didn't cook a thing, slave labor for my mom was mild and did not involve injuring myself and Grand Canyon impressed the

Google searches

Okay, how in the heck did I become #1 on Google for "bossy cow syndrome"? So what if I called my mom a bossy cow, once! And I did tell her about it. (it was actually her brothers and sisters that called her that, I just put it on the blog). I'm not too worried about her reading this, the only time I've seen her on the internet is looking over my shoulder (I will laugh when she does find it).

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

I’ll be making a road trip to Arizona over the weekend and wanted to share a few things I am thankful for this holiday.First off, I’m very thankful for my awesome wife. She has filled my life with wonder and joy, I don’t even know how I even survived before I met her. Each morning I wake up just to look at her for a minute and thank god for bringing her in my life (except for the other night when

I'm not sure I would have left the 8th grade

I've been watching CNN's coverage of Debra Lafave she's the 25 year old teacher accused of having sex with a 14 year old student. I bet the only regret that kid has is letting the cat out of the bag. I know I’ll probably get grief about saying this but a vast majority of males have had fantasies about hooking up with a hot teacher. What’s going to happen next? Playboy center fold?(note: I'm very

Time to Nominate the 2005 Weblog Awards

Once again it's time for everyone to put in their nominations in for the best of the blog-o-sphere for the 2005 Weblog Awards, Kevin of Wisbang gathers the nominations for 37 categories and then the voting starts on December 1st. There's even a spot for best military blog! There's two more days to nominate your favorite blog.

This American Life does Milbloggers

The title of this weeks show is called "Strangers In a Strange Land" and can be found on the This American Life website and broadcast somewhere between Nov 18-20th on your local NPR station. There are pieces from Colby Buzzel of My War, Trueman Muhrer-Irwin of Rebel Coyote, he was injured in November 2003 by one of the early IED's, Capt Chuck Ziegenfuss of From My Position... On the way! and

Out with the old...

The car my wife has been driving around for the last 5 years just breathed it’s last breath and we’re donating her organs to charity. She was an old friend who had brought Heather and I together (but old and ugly as dirt). It was sad to see her go and my lovely wife shed tears when she turned her in. But like all good things, it was time to move on.Her dad has been picking on her for years over

Saturday at Knott's

I have a secret to tell, my wife has never been on a big roller coaster so last Saturday we gathered up 2 of my nieces and made a road trip to take advantage of the Knott’s Berry Farm’s, Tribute to Veterans, good deal, with a military ID, you and a guest get in for free from November 1st till the 24th. Her car had just decided to take a dump so we were stuck driving up there in my extended cab S-

Kara and David

What a train wreck, I’ve been reading the blogs of David Ludwig and Kara Beth Borden. While interesting, what is more interesting is the takes of all of the friends on their buddy lists. From people that worked with David, went to bible study with both of them, friends that live down the street and heard the shooting, show’s how interconnected everything is getting these days.What went wrong here

If this blog were a car, it would be time for a replacement

My sitemeter sometime today is going to roll over the 200 thousand mark! Unlike the first hundred thousand, I did the second without the AP sending 70 thousand visitors over at me in one weekend. Wonder how many Matt, Chuck and Greyhawk get everytime they get a story gets written about their site? They're all over the news.Plan on heading up to Knott's Berry Farm tomorrow, every year as far back

Valour-IT update

Looks like we've sunk the HUGE Army team again!Couple more days of poking fun at our sister services for a good cause, if you haven't met Chuck of TC Override, he was injured in Iraq and lost use of his hands (for a while anyway) project Valour-IT started when he put a request on his blog for someone to donate voice recognition software for his laptop and Soldiers' Angels took the idea and ran.

Happy Birthday Marines

230 years ago during the American Revolutionary War, a resolution of the Continental Congress resolved to raise two battalions of men who were to be used as landing troops for the newly created Continental Navy. These gentlemen were called the Continental Marines. Every year since that date on November 10th, Marines gather around and pay tribute to a long legacy of steely eyed warriors. Months

It's my Birthday today!

I'm 33, it was also my wife's birthday on Halloween, actually started feeling a bit better today, hopefully I'll be well enough to work on Monday. Not that I don't love lying about in bed all day but it's much more fun when I'm not coughing up large chunks of lung butter and having crazy fever dreams. Root canal, pneumonia, Heather's car went poop for a couple of days, had a staph infection on my

Project Valour-IT is back in time for Veterans Day

Notice there’s a HUGE button on the top of my sidebar. The lovely Mrs. Smash is leading the fund raising drive for the Navy Team and we’re blowing all of the other services (scroll down to the bottom to see the current numbers) out of the water which I think is odd considering Army milblogs out number the Navy 6 to 1. If you haven’t read up on Project Valour-IT, they provide voice recognition

Blah, nothing going on here

I’m trying to come up with a post but my brain has been stuck in la la land from a couple of different sources. Couple of pounds of snot clogging up my head and lungs and some very snazzy medications that my kind doctors kindly given me have mushed out all of my higher thought processes. The only thing going on in my life has been going up and down the stairs and running out of breath that goes

It's Halloween and if you sound like Darth Vader...

….something is very wrong.I got over that horrible cold a couple of weeks ago, my house was decorated with a bunch of Halloween stuff and I was expecting to have a great weekend. Mine and Heather’s birthday is coming up this week so we decided to throw a Halloween/birthday party with everybody dressing up. Instead of this well thought out plan, I started feeling froggy and feverish that morning,

Radical Wackos

Has anyone noticed that there seems to be a worldwide movement of radical Muslims against any religion that isn’t theirs or against other Muslims that aren’t radical enough? 3 school girls beheaded? What’s image does that put out to the world.?“Look, my religion says it’s alright to be serial killers and behead young girls”India and Pakistan have opened up the border in 5 places, something war

Blocking of Commercial Email

The Navy and Marine Corps as of 18th of October has blocked all overseas access to commercial email accounts from government computers. Which I thought was going on the last time I was over in Iraq but we had an internet café on base that was run by a civilian company. But from what this article says, they’re also blocking the same sites at MWR’s and Libraries. I’ve had my same hotmail account

No more emails from Stella

Maybe I’m one of the few close dear friends of Stella Obasanjo, you see we've been sharing emails back and forth ever since she offered to share her fortune with me. You ask, who is Stella Obasanjo? She's the troubled wife of the Nigerian president. In late 2001 after that Towers Towers event, she started sending me these desperate emails, saying that she wanted to leave her husband and asking

Burning of Bodies

To say I’m mildly upset about the military burning bodies of the Taliban fighters is an overstatement. The Taliban have no respect for any other religions, I remember back in 2001 before 9/11 when they blew up the Buddha’s of Bamiyan, these were 1800 years old statues and the largest examples of carved Buddha's in the world. These guys aren’t getting my pity about religious rights. Well, maybe

Concerts and Hurricanes

Couple of months ago, my wife bought us a set of tickets to see Gwen Stefani and Black Eyed Peas. Gwen puts on a good show, two concerts this month, saw Green Day and Jimmy Eat World a couple of weeks ago. Good stuff!Spending this weekend at home cleaning and decorating for Halloween, my wife’s a Halloween baby and my birthday is a few days after, might have a little get together next weekend. We

Milblogging news

New post from Eric of Dagger Jag, it's been 10 months since he's posted and will the wonders never cease? Sgt Hook posted too! Eric is from the same batch of OIF 2 milbloggers that sprung me out and Sgt Hook is one of the original crew, looks like they're both getting back in the game. Other news, T-bone and Risawn have some great pictures to prove to the rest of us that it's way cooler to

Chair-Force?

I usually don't make fun of other services because I usually end up having to work with them so instead I'll let them do it. Chair-Force is written by an Ex Senior Airman who pens himself Joethefat. I was at an Airforce base for 3 years, how in the heck did I miss this guy? Funny stuff, over 4000 members on his message board and a healthy following of junior Airforce folk.

Just Another Soldier

Jason Hartley does NPR, good interview, check out his book, Jason was one of the brightest milbloggers coming out of Iraq till his blog was pulled, looking forward to reading it after I finish Robert Jordan's, Knife of Dreams.

What does NAVY stand for?

I heard this back in 91 when I was going through boot camp, Never Again Volunteer Yourself, well yesterday, I lifted my right hand and said these wordsI, Sean Dustman, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the

Where do you find a 6 foot tall Thai guy?

Went to the movies tonight and caught Serenity once more and the house was full, 20 or so empty seats in the house! Saw a great preview of the movie Jarhead, one of the best previews I have ever seen, my wife asked if they made a movie of my life over there who would play her? I said Gwen Stefani of course and she replied with “real life imitating art imitating life”. What would my story be

I hate dental...

Back in one of my endless vacations to Iraq, I bit into a date and cracked a filling which caused this mind numbing pain which I resolved to take care of the next morning at dental. Next morning came about and there was no pain so I promptly forgot about it and went along with whatever kind of work I had made for myself. Half a year goes by and I’m getting ready to do my enlistment stuff, one of

Published Milblogs

There’s a flood of War Memoirs coming out of Iraq over the next few weeks and NPR’s Talk of the Nation did an audio story with guests, Colby Buzzell of the blog, My War and book My War: Killing Time in Iraq (rank # 2703 at Amazon) and Nate Fick, Author of One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (rank #364 at Amazon).Another blogger whom I know personally is also coming out with a book. I

Warming up

With warmer ocean temperatures and stories of melting ice caps, I would think the idea of living below sea level a bad deal. No matter what your thoughts on global warming are, the ice caps are melting and I’d side with a scientist any day over a politician concerning this stuff. Logic prevails because it’s just a matter of time before the next big one hits. Know what happens when ocean water

Happy Birthday Mrs Smash

Went out for a little happy birthday get together with the Smashes, Joanie, Gracie, Dave, my wife and a mystery blogger who will not be named to BJ's Brewery.We had pizza (which I've been making from scratch lately, mine might just be a little better) for dinner and for dessert a huge pile of ice cream on top of a pizza sized peanut butter chocolate chip cookie (a.k.a. love handle pie) , below is

My totally shameless plug for Serenity

Updated:(rewrite of a post I did Monday night)I received an invite to preview Serenity a couple of days ago along with a hundred or so other San Diego bloggers and Browncoats. This might have been the biggest effort by a motion picture company to use bloggers get the word out before a movie. I know if you see it, you won’t be disappointed (well most of you anyway, there are some with an inborn

What happened to Firefly?

In 2002 Fox pulled the plug on one of the best Science Fiction TV series ever made and there was a great sigh heard all around the world and grown men (and women) wept. Now it's time for the Brown Coats to rise again and join the crew of Serenity.Joss Whedon, the Oscar® - and Emmy - nominated writer/director responsible for the worldwide television phenomena of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and

Milblogger's visit to New Orleans

Want to see the stuff the military is going through on the ground? Check out what American Soldier has been doing. Good post.

How many times do you get a second chance in life?

I’ve been a constant visitor to New Orleans since the early 90’s, there are weeks of my life missing due to being extremely inebriated, I’ve been in every shop on the French Quarter but there have been times when I’ve become lost and suddenly within the passing of a street found myself transported into the twilight zone. I’m a person who’s been to house parties in South Central LA (admittedly

Best of Craig's List

Craigslist is a great place to find deals on the internet or sell something. During the hurricane the site has gained much fame for helping find missing relatives, finding jobs of those misplaced, housing and has a nice list of Katrina support sites. Today I found the holy grail, if you haven't been reading the Best Of you're missing out, some good humor going on there. Warning not for the

I used to think Katrina was a cute name..

Like the days following 9/11, half of the country is glued to the news. Satellite pictures, blogs, weather channel, Fox and CNN, I’m starting to feel News Saturation sinking in again. Katrina has been the most documented natural disaster in history, satellite pictures up within a day, hourly accounts through blogs, personal photos, unlike 9/11, there was something new happening by the second.

Playing at the Beach

My first try at coloring my wifes hair.pictures by Sean

Whew

Katrina was very bad but not as bad as some of the forecasts predicted. There’s still a lot of healing to be done on the Gulf Coast and I’m hoping the nation can come together in helping those folk out.

Big one for the Big Easy

I’m watching the Weather Channel’s coverage on Hurricane Katrina. I’m a huge follower of natural disasters lore, dark humor is part of being a medical guy. I’m looking at that bottom little number where it says pressure, 902 mb and dropping. Camille at it’s worst was only 909 mb and is the name everyone in the hurricane community uses as the Boogyman killer hurricane. Andrew’s worse was 922 and

Milblogger Bar-B-Q

Started off the day making sure the house was in order and prepping the vegetables and meat for the curry, first person to arrive was Ted from Game the World with a package of very good cigars. I’ve been a blogging friend with Ted around a year now, he’s from Palmdale, I discovered his blog while I was stationed at Edwards AFB looking for local bloggers. This was a first time actually meeting him

How do you get a group of milbloggers to shut up?

Put in Team America!Now who wants to watch Team America?America F.... Yeah!!!"Your Curry and Bar-b-q kick butt Sean!"Us Sandy Eggans put together a milblog/blogger Bar-B-Q today with me hosting the get together. Guests included the Smash's, Neptunus Lex, the Donovans, John and Beth, Da Goddess, Kevin from The Primary Main Objective and Ted from Game the World plus Gracie (our favorite blog

Range and weekend plans

Coving the range for the latter part of this week, which is a welcome break from verifying health records. Some of my fellow corpsman look at this as a horrible duty. Not I, half of the reason they look at it that way is probably because they can’t keep themselves entertained, I do not have that problem. My job out here is pretty much hang out incase something does happen, figuring these guys

Have you thanked your Soldier's Angel lately?

Sorry about the lack of posts this week, my cohort and I are getting the squadron ready for a medical inspection sometime in the near future. Lots of record reviews and data entry. After this, it will be easy sailing till our next middle east trip in the spring.If you haven’t checked out Soldier’s Angels recently, now’s the time to do so. They have some amazing projects going on, Project Valour (

Milblogs made the daily show!

Relaxing tonight and was catching up on my blog reading when my cousin Greene from Australia calls and says turn on the daily show. To late to catch it on TV now but John Hockenberry talked with Jon Steward about his Wired Article about Milblogs, Blackfive did a post about it last week which I totally missed till tonight. You can probably find the video on Comedy Central's Daily Show Videos

Back and ready for full duty

More wedding pictures are here.I can't begin to thank all of the people that made our wedding perfect, Orlando, thank you for manning the camera! Mom, your food was awesome and will be the talk of the town for a while to come. Lee, thank you for everything that you have given us. Debbie and the rest of Heather’s family, thank you for the support that you’ve shown and for making me feel welcomed

I'm going to be busy for the rest of the week.(PS for you military folk, the two stars on my good conduct medal were broken off by my seat belt! One of the grooms men wasn't able to get all of his medals mounted so we decided to only wear our top 3.)

Excuse the lack of blogging this week

I'm busy doing other very important things. Hope you all understand, will update soon:)

Very soon to be Mrs Dustmanpictures by Sean