My Project for Trace Adkins

Hopefully you all know that last year, as a member of the West Point Glee Club, I had the opportunity to sing with Trace Adkins for the Academy of Country Music Awards.  He is doing a concert here at West Point on 2 October, as well as a USO Gala in Washington, D.C. the following week and has asked the Glee Club to perform the song with him again.

When we sang in Las Vegas, we sang a shortened version of the song and representatives from the Academy of Country Music put together a video to play in the background for the song.  The video of our performance may help explain it.    Since we don’t have the same time limits as we did there, Trace asked if it would be possible to make a new video for the same purpose.  As the S6 (Information Systems Officer, or just plain of Tech Guy) I volunteered to do it.

The Director of the Glee Club, Mrs. Chase, got me in contact with several sources from various segments of the Army and DoD in order to acquire media for the project.  I spent quite some time really thinking what I wanted to do with it, and based on what I had received at the time (since there was a time constraint on getting it finished) I went to work.

I was surprised with what it was turning into as I worked.  Ultimately, I felt that I had gone where I wanted to go with it with what I had at the time and showed it to Mrs. Chase.  She thought it was good, so we sent it to Trace’s manager.

I received word this morning that he “loved it” with several exclamation marks.  I’ll definitely try and put it online at some point, but I don’t want to undercut Trace in any way, so I’m holding off on that.  This was arguably one of the most nerve-racking and possibly far reaching projects I’ve been able to work on.  I’m really proud of how it turned out.

On a side note, my knee is currently bleeding from my mountain biking class…

Michael

People

It occurs to me that as much as I like to think that I don’t trust people, I’m disgustingly trusting.

Time and time again, I overestimate the connections that I have with people.  Probably a result of the great family I was raised in and great family friends over the years who provided a great example of good people.  As I look at the world though, I see a lot of screwed up people.

There is of course a trade off in this situation.  If you are more cautious of people, you can inadvertently miss out on good opportunities.  On the other hand, being too trusting can get you hurt.

I want to be the realist that I profess to be.  In the same way that being the “nice guy” seems to do wonders (please note the sarcasm) for my current relationship prospects, that nice guy status has not had a great effect recently.

In other news, I can’t shake this desire to be in Afghanistan with my unit rather than here….  I don’t know that desire is really the word.  I’m sure they’d think I was nuts if I said I wanted to be there, but still.  I feel like I almost stepped out on them by coming here, even though I’ve been gone over a year.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately.  Anyone who reads these things regularly knows that most of the time I just write for the sake of writing.

Michael

1000th Night

Only another 999 days until I graduate from West Point…oh dear….

Michael

Is it bad that I’m already tired of school after a week and a half?

Seriously, I’m not even kidding here.  It’s been a week and a half and I’m already ready for summer to come again, or at the very least Christmas.

Classes are going pretty well thus far.  A lot of this semester is stuff that I’ve learned before but it’s been a couple years.  So, rather than study for a couple days and try to get out of it, I’m taking them again, which is probably a good portion of what’s causing the boredom.

On the bright side, I’m using Project64 to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time a lot…probably more than I should actually, haha.

Michael

New Cadets, among other things

March Back for the Class of 2013 is today.  In about an hour, the first human being I will ever be directly responsible for will arrive and I will see him for the first time.  This place sure is an experiment isn’t it?  This is going to be my chance to figure out my style.

In other news, I passed the National Registry exam for EMT.  It really scared me honestly.  The test was just awkward, but I passed.  I did another shift with the paramedics on Sunday.  Almost got to see a dead body.  I was looking forward to it…but they canceled us right before we got there, and then they put us on another call.  We could have gone back after the detectives went through, but we didn’t.  It was a better shift than my actual ride-along though.  We got about 9 calls I think as opposed to 1.

I’m taking 20 credit hours this semester.  I have class solid from 0730 to 1155, then lunch, followed by labs on some days for Physics and American Politics, and I have last hour cycling every other day.  Gonna be a hell of a semester with 8 courses.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got for now.

Michael

Emergency Medical Technician – Basic

The title basically covers my entire life right now.  Everyone here at West Point has to do at least one MDS (Military Development School) during one of our summers.  During the year, you put in your preferences and then get slotted for them.

I’ve got through Combat Lifesaver Certification twice now in its entirety and did CPR and First Aid with Red Cross at my unit.  I’ve always thought that medical knowledge is an important thing to have, especially in the Army.  As a result, the MDS called AMT (Advanced Medical Training) was my first choice, and I was happy when I found out that I got it, mostly because it meant I wasn’t doing Air Assault.

Today was the 6th day of the course.  It is usually a 4 to 6 month course, but we are doing it in 17 days.   Needless to say, regardless of the difficulty level of the course, it’s a lot of information to learn in such a short time.  I’m doing well though, passed both of our tests so far on the first try, which is more than I can say for some of my comrades.

I’ll get to do clinical ride along time on August 1st, where I go with an actual ambulance to real calls and get to help.  I’m looking forward to it, but also to being done with the course.  10 hours a day is a lot of classroom time.

Anyway, I’m gonna go not study.

Michael

Guess who’s back?

Shouldn’t be a tough question, I’m the only one that writes here.

I’m all done with Cadet Field Training and now I’m back at my rockbound highland home for Advanced Medical Training.  I spent the last four weeks, shooting, exploding, and otherwise destroying a lot of stuff.  Played laser tag in tanks, shot artillery, breached a door with a donut charge that I got to put together, etc., etc., etc.  Overall, there was a lot of good training.

At the same time, I’m glad it’s over.  Just ready to move on, and ultimately get to the academic year and the craziness that’s going to come from that.  Keep up the fight.

Michael

Quick post

I’m flying back to New York this afternoon for Cadet Field Training, so I won’t be online for about a month.

Before I go, I wanted to post a link about helping out the Iranian Twitter members who are trying to communicate.

http://heavenp2.somee.com/helpiraniantwitters.pdf

Also, you can set up proxies for them to use: http://blog.austinheap.com/2009/06/15/how-to-setup-a-proxy-for-iran-citizens-for-windows/

Please help if you can.

Michael

I am ashamed

I haven’t blogged in quite a while now.

Things have been busy here, but mostly I just didn’t have anything important to say.  I’m still here at the academy, currently in “summer school” for gymnastics, which I failed this semester.  It’s going a lot better.  I’ve already got almost as many points as I had at the end of my first attempt at the class.

Some fairly important stuff in the news today.

First, Iran sent 6 warships into international waters.  Lovely.   I’m thinking that we should probably do something about Iran, but that’s just me.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,521730,00.html

Next, North Korea tested more missiles.  I’m loving all these crazy dictators we have running around with substantial amounts of weaponry…and quite possibly nuclear ones.  I don’t see how the US and the UN giving them a slap on the wrist and saying, “bad” is going to solve the issue.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,521730,00.html

And my final note (not that there isn’t a lot of other craziness going on right now) is that the California Supreme Court, which I actually once had the opportunity to witness in session, has ruled that the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage in the state is constitutional and will remain.  As much as this follows my own personal beliefs, I’m fairly concerned about the backlash that will come out of this.  If you read back in some of my blogs, you’ll see the response, specifically against the LDS (Mormon) church while all this was going down initially.  I doubt we’ve seen the last of this.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/26/california-high-court-rule-gay-marriage/?test=latestnews

On the personal front, once I finish my class here on 5 June, I’ll head home until the 17th.  Then I’ve got Cadet Field Training in the fabulous Camp Bucker (A.K.A. Bucknam, Buckraq, Buckghanistan, Buckmalia, etc.) for 4 weeks.  Then I’ll finish out the summer with Advanced Medical Training here in the <sarcasm> ever beautiful </sarcasm> West Point.

That’s enough out of me for today.  You stay classy…all three of you reading this.

Michael

3 years after high school graduation

It’s been three years since I graduated high school.  Finally finished my first year of college.  Hah!

Honestly, I wasn’t planning on having it done this soon, so I guess I’m really ahead of my own schedule.  When I enlisted, I wasn’t planning on coming to West Point.  I was planning on staying enlisted, doing my job for a few, or 20, years, then becoming a civilian one way or another and making lots of money doing stuff with all my Army training.  Well, things have changed haven’t they?

I enlisted rather than going to college for a few reasons.  Perhaps the biggest reason is that I knew myself, and I knew that unless I was in a place like West Point, I wasn’t going to do ANYTHING because no one was making me do it.  I still rebel in my own little way at the Point and manage to get through things.  The best example from this semester was my history class.  I didn’t particularly like the class, so when I went into the final with a B- because of my research paper’s positive effect, I put enough work into the final to maintain it.  I didn’t really study, because I knew by that point where the grade was going.  I’m proud to announce that I got a C on the final and kept the B-.

What’s interesting to me is that while you would think I’m picking up these skills during my process of figuring out how to succeed academically in a college environment, I’m just kind of using whatever works.  In general, I’m putting as much work in as I did in high school, and sometimes less.  People often say that people who had an easy time in high school have a rude awakening here.  I’m worried that it’s still coming for me, and that plebe year has lulled me to then destroy me in the future.  I hope not.

I’m currently figuring my total GPA for the semester at 3.114 and my academic GPA at 3.222.  Down from last semester, but I probably could have taught some of those courses.  Physical is a different story.  Gymnastics awaits me in the first block of summer.

I thought of an interesting way to look at it.  West Point could be compared to teaching an old dog new tricks.  I am an old dog, using the old tricks, but in a new house.

Michael