From The Jet Setting Side of my Family

Via Email at 4:46 AM EST

Hi all! Just wanted you to know I've arrived in Istanbul and am getting ready to nap in the bed pictured below for a bit.

Haven't seen much of city yet. I've only driven in from the airport but I can tell I like this city already!!

B1

Well, B1* I do hope you have a lot of fun, but please be careful. And yes, just for the record, I am jealous!


*B1 = brother number 1.

From the Front

I apologize for the lack of posting lately.

July is the beginning of a new year for us and I've been pretty busy closing out 2010 and starting the 2011 year, add in a long holiday weekend and some hardware issues here, and I just haven't had time to do much of anything. To add to the time crunch I am at "Summer Camp" next week so other than some scheduled posts there will be no posting that week either.

I know that two-weeks with no posts is a death knell for most blogs these days, so I hope you all return on the 19th. Until then, please continue to visit the blogs over there on the blog rolls for the most up to date info on Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Home Front.

ATTENTION!

There will be no From the Front today. I'll be away from the computer most of the day so no time to scan the blogs and news sites.

In the meantime, why don't you scan over those links on the right and click on any of the blogs with the notation - patrolling. Those bloggers are posting stuff right now!

Thanks to everyone that added the Thunder Run's - From the Front to their blog, spreading the word is what it's all about.

Also - Big news is in the works from the NMAW - The Wartime Museum. Stay tuned to Concrete Bob's blog today starting at noon for all of the news - as it happens live!

Where's the daily From the Front post?

Well, about halfway through compiling it this morning, I had a slight problem with my PC. It's fixed now...but the document is gone.

So hopefully I can recover it later and post it along with tomorrows post.

Also, don't forget...Friday moring is a travel day so the From the Front post will not be up, as the wife and I make the drive down the road to Arlington and the 5th Annual MilBlog Conference. I do hope to see you all there.

Delta Bravo Sierra Does More Than Comics!

Here is a website/blog that you all should be watching. If you think Delta Bravo Sierra is only known for his comic strip, think again.

Check out his great artistic ability!

Go now and check him out....

Your Input is Requested

For those of you that receive the daily From the Front series via email, I'm sure you've noticed a change in the format. What I need from you is your honest opinion, on the three format's you've seen to date. Which do you like and which is most beneficial to you.

Honestly one of the reasons why I started the email service is to increase traffic to The Thunder Run, but over the last couple of months, the traffic patterns here have been, well to be honest, dismal.

So how can I get you the news and posts for the front lines that you need, and at the same time increase my traffic load?

My New Wallpaper...

Capt W gets Hitched!

For those that have followed this blog for a while you know about our family friend Captain W who is a Nurse Practitioner in the Air Force...well despite all of the trouble in her life, she has finally gotten married to a wonderful man.

Go here and wish them the best of luck!

S N O W M A G E D D O N

A little video of what we are calling SNOWMAGEDDON...

S N O W

A couple of scenes of the snow before it became the blizzard of 2010.

More coming...both snow and pictures.

An Ending, A Beginning and a Near Death Experience.

What a cryptic headline....

Follow along and I hope to explain every aspect.

So posting has taken a huge hit lately, and no for those that know where I work, I am not in Haiti.

I am however, undergoing a huge transition in my life that has taken up a lot of my time....tonight I will be at my last Fire Department meeting. I'm done.

This is the Ending of that Era.

Since 1991 I have served my community as a Volunteer Fire Fighter/First Responder. Since 2003 I have been the Secretary of my Fire Department, and after many hours of discussion with my wife and an evaluation of what I am getting out of my service and the time constraints, she and I came to the conclusion that I would not seek another term of office. In fact I will not be taking on any obligations at the department, and short of taking some required training every three years to maintain my certifications, I will not be doing much of anything at the department.

Because of this change for the last three weeks I have spent pretty much every available moment, making sure that all of the company's paperwork is completed and organized so that I can transition it all to the next Secretary and Executive Committee.

This has been a big decision, and quite frankly even though I know it is the right one to make, I still feel as if I am leaving behind a big part of my life that really defined who I am, and because of that I have been feeling a little down in the dumps.

Which leads me to the Beginning.

For many years I have been the Cubmaster of my youngest son's Cub Scout Pack, as well as an Assistant Scoutmaster for my oldest son's Scout Troop. With my obligations ending with the Fire Department I am now available to become a fully trained Scoutmaster/Assistant Scoutmaster for the Troop. This is something I've wanted to do for a while, I just never had the time to fit in the training in my schedule. I am a fully trained Cubmaster / Committee Chair at the Cub Scout level and have my "Bachelor's Degree" in Cub Scouting but my youngest son will graduate from Cub Scouting in 2011 so Boy Scouting will become our entire focus at that point. Who knows with all this time available maybe I'll even get my Wood Badge.

And now the near death experience...

I'm torn if I should mention this event, or if it even truly was a near-death experience, but I'm going to go ahead and let you all know. I consider this experience a near-death experience based soley upon my medical training and nothing else.

Just this past weekend our Scout Troop went on our annual winter campout. Tubing, Skiing, Snowboarding, Sleeping outside in the cold, eating around a campfire...what more could one ask for? It's a rhetorical question people....

Our campsite is wonderful with a great fire pit and a flock of geese living nearby - you don't need an alarm clock when you have neighbors like them that come alive at the crack of dawn -and a stream that flows by the campsite.

Anyway Saturday afternoon, one of our scouts, my son infact, got a little too close to the waters edge, lost his footing and went in the drink. It was of course witnessed but it took a good minute to get him out of the water. Being soaking wet in 35 degree weather, and going into near freezing temperature water is not conducive to good health.

By the time we got him out of the water he couldn't speak he was so cold...so it was time to warm him up as best we could.

Our campsite butts up against a federal facilty and we have access to the showers/locker room there so I immediately grabbed up all of his clothes in his pack, clean or dirty it didn't matter he needed dry clothes at this point and force marched him the quarter mile to the locker room. I still debate in my mind if this was the best course of action, but driving him would have taken in all reality the same amount of time and the walk actually helped produce body warmth for him helping to stave off hypothermia.

An hour later after stripping him down and getting him into a progressively warmer shower, he was drying off and dressed in clean dry clothes and feeling much better. His vitals were good at that point but the wearing off of the adrenaline rush and shock of the situation was causing him to get very sleepy.

By morning he was back to his old self although he did confess he did not sleep very well...he kept dreaming he was back in the water. I'm sure its going to take a while to get over that experience for him.

Did it change him? I don't know, but yesterday after shcool, he grabbed a hammer and went around the house tapping back in every loose nail he could find on the deck and fence, and that was after he helped me clean out the gutters that were clogging up with leaves.

I'm just glad he is still with us.

The weekend worked out for our family...however for two families this weekend was one they would not want to wish upon anyone.

A Housekeeping Note

With the exception of a few prepared and scheduled posts there will be no new posts until Tuesday, May 26, 2009 when I shall return to blogging.

Until then enjoy the archives, click on a few links over there on the right, peruse the Rule 5 ladies and enjoy your weekend.

Thank you.

Problems With Internet Explorer

For some reason, something in the far-right (not to be confused with the Far-Right Wing Conspiracy groups, DHS is worried about) side bar is causing Internet Explorer to crash when trying to access the blog.

Until I get the time to actually go in and figure out what new fangled update Bill Gates sent all the IE users that causes this issue, you are going to have to use Mozilla Firefox. At one time I would ahve been happy about that, but Firefox isn't all that great either anymore.

Oh well, thats what you get when you can't leave something well enough alone....

UPDATE: For those that really want to use IE, when the page loads and the side bars start to load, just click the stop button and avoid the dreaded abort dialouge box that results if you let the page try and load completely.

Well, That's Fixed...I Hope!

For those of you that emailed....thanks.

For reasons yet unknown to me, the blog stopped displaying and then started to display everything crammed into one field. It Uhhhhhh...was a little wierd to say the least.

If for any reason that happens again, please don't hesitate to flood my in box, with notices. Quite frankly, I don't visit the site more than once or twice a day, so it would have been some time before I noticed anything on my own.

Also, due to reloading the template...the sidebars are loading slowly. I have no idea why...just that they are. If and when I have time I will fix that.

Please Bear With Me As I Unpack the Boxes

As you can tell, the move has occured, and now I'm trying to get everything to fit just right.

If anyone sees something goofy happening on the page, please let me know ASAP.

I hope to increase the viewable space on the blog soon and tidy up the sidebars. 'Til then the content you expect on The Thunder Run wil not change.

The Thunder Run is Moving

The day has finally come, thanks to the fine folks at VA Mortgage Center! The Thunder Run is moving to its own domain...thankfully if you continue to access the blog via it's blogspot address you will be redirected to its new address.

Oh I almost forgot the new address is www.thunderrun.us so please update your links, blogrolls and favorites.

That new name should be active by tomorrow morning.

So if things look and get a little screwy over the next couple of days and the style of the page changes dramatically you'll know its just me playing with new options.

Thanks for coming along for the ride!

Housekeeping

President's Day, and for some reason the kids are out of school too, which of course means that I'll be out and about with them all day as the misses sleeps off her 12 hour night shift and readies herself for another go round tonight. Those RN's really do work a crappy schedule, heck all I have to worry about is the occassional midnight call out for an automatic alarm, and those are so few and far between that I tend to sleep right through them. Hey, if they want to start paying me to get up in the middle of the night, I'll be more than happy to supplement the paid staff after bed time.

So until I return later today...much later today, why dont you amuse yourself by dropping on the National Museum of Americans in Wartime and becoming a member. Because if you are reading this blog, then you are already supporting their mission to Honor those who have served, Educate those who haven't and Inspire a new generation to serve their country.

Big Things in the Works at The Thunder Run

Yes, I know I’ve been saying this since blogspot shut off my blog back in August after being incorrectly labeled as a spam site, but now it is really going to happen. Do you remember when several milbloggers, myself included, mentioned the MilBlog Bailout of 2009? Well, I applied for this bailout and guess what appeared in my inbox this morning? Yep you guessed right an email from the VA Mortgage Center indicating that they would reimburse me up to $150.00 US to purchase hosting! So The Thunder Run is officially looking for a new home, as of this minute!

Of course this means I need to look for new blogging software/platform so I am wide open to suggestions.

What else is going on? Well how about a massive year-long membership drive for the National Museum of American’s in Wartime (NMAW)! Yep, all year this blog and dozens of other MilBloggers will be helping the NMAW gain and sign-up nwe members.

Why a museum?

Why not? Their mission dovetails nicely with our mission as milbloggers to: Honor those who serve, Educate those who haven’t and Inspire a new generation to serve their country.

So do me a favor stop on over there on the sidebar and click on that link to the NMAW and take a look around. I’m sure you’ll agree that the museum is an extremely worthwhile endeavor. And if you are going to the Milblog Conference in DC this April, you can stay on ‘til Sunday and take a trip to the Tank Farm and see a large portion of the heavy equipment that will become a part of this hands-on museum.

Thanks for sticking around and for making The Thunder Run a success.

Apologies

It's been obvious that my posting, and subsequently the daily visitor rate, has slacked off ever so slightly each month since November. This has been the result of an ever increasing number of responsibilities being added at work as well as several outside volunteer organizations with which I am involved. Add in some personnel issues at work that I am being forced to deal with (the only real reason I hate being the boss) and I just haven’t been in the mood to keep up my regular posting levels. To top off the end of the year, I also suffered two computer failures within a week of each other at home. One has been fixed and the parts are on order for the other so that will take some of the strain off - hopefully.

I can’t promise that I’ll be back to myself anytime soon, but hopefully February will be a lot better. In the meantime, I intend to continue to provide the Web Reconnaissance and From the Front as often as I can. If you are one of the regular 300 readers who still visit the Thunder Run on a daily basis, please let me know if you have a preference on which of these features you prefer (maybe I’ll add a poll) and I will do my best to accommodate your desires. In fact if you are a regular reader of The Thunder Run please let me know what it is you like and I will definitely continue to provide that service for as long as I can.

I know I’ve been promising this for a while know but the time really has come to move The Thunder Run off of Blogger and to its own domain, any suggestions? I had hoped to have accomplished this already, but just as posting has taking a hit, so has admin issues on the back side. I can promise you this, look for a major marketing campaign to be coming out soon - of which The Thunder Run is going to be playing a major part. I can’t tell you who or what it is for, but this Friday (January 16, 2009) I will be travelling with a couple of other well known bloggers to visit with a large corporation as guests of a up-and-coming non-profit that will be supporting the military and veterans of all branches as a major part of its mission. I can’t wait, and yes of course I'll be blogging about it.

Thanks for sticking by and I hope to be back to the regular posting levels soon.

David M
Editor: The Thunder Run

Yeah...I'm Back

I know, I'm a terrible host, I just up and disappeared for a few days....but really it wasn't my fault. Apparently we have a holiday in this country in fact most of the civilized world celebrates it. Did you all know we celebrate a holiday called Christmas?

Honestly I had no idea, I always thought the holiday season referred to other, well holidays. Anyway, apparently I am required to purchase gifts for my wife, kids, other family members and friends for this Christmas thing. Who knew?

So you see it wasn't my fault, one minute it was Thanksgiving and the next thing I know its this Christmas thing. How is a man supposed to keep up? Next thing I know its' going to be Valentine's Day and I'll be required to get my wife something for that! Do I have to do that? Damn, I knew I did.

Anyway, my posting really suffered during the past week, and I thank all 2 of you that emailed me checking in to see if something was up.

Of course, with the owork schedule the way it has been....there really won't be much posting from me the rest of this week either although I promised a few of you that I would continue to do the From the Front series. So hopefully alter today you'll see that.

Thanks for sticking around.