why am I 'the mighty'?

For those who have followed my saga, you will notice that I have now updated many of my older blog entries to catalog them as part of the Lost Chronicles of Sarnia - for those of you not 'Fritter Critters during that era, the joke may be lost on you...

This is because I have begun a new chapter in my life and can truly say that my therapuetic venting has ended.

For closure's sake, here is what I am up to now:

Married my girlfriend of the past year.
Gave up looking for a job in IT.
Decided that teaching was not for me (at least not pulic high school).
Re-evaluated my self and my skills.
Conlcuded that the best career match was the Armed Services, (specifically, the US Army).

Those who actually know me find this is such a starke difference to what many expect from me. Truth of the matter is, I do have what it takes (although the running will take a LOT of getting used to). With all I have been through, I can handle the psychological strain of anything that comes my way. It is somethinhg I must do for my children and is a long-term decision I am making.

There are still more big changes for me in the works (I may share some here later) but the big thing is that I got through the worst of it and turned around what God let me and let go what he showed me I should. It is life re-booted with a couple of glasses of lemonade to spare.

Throughout it all, there is one thing I always knew: I would and could endure. This is my greatest strength and always has been. I endure. This is what makes me mighty. No matter how bad it is and how bad it leaves me feeling, I am mighty in that I will endure.

I am doug-doug the mighty.

Comments

cwsmith's picture

We all hope for the best for you -- just don't forget us poor slobs here at AppleFritter!

alk's picture

Isn't "Aim high" an old Air Force slogan? The slogan for the Army at that time was "Be all you can be." More recent slogans include "Army of one" and "Army strong". I personally really like the "Army of one" ad campaign, but "Army strong" is okay, too. "Be all you can be" started to become cliched toward the end of it's era...

I definitely think that the Army has some of the best ad campaigns of the US armed forces. But the National Guard has some good ads that play before movie previews at the cinema that are very good and always make me want to sign up. I never do, but the idea sticks in your head.

DDTM, good luck! The Army isn't for everyone, but if you've enlisted (are you going to do OCS?) of your own accord, you probably already know whether or not it will be a good fit for you. That's a tough decision to make as an adult with a supposedly "established" career.

Best of luck!

Hey, do any active duty service members read AppleFritter? Please post if so!

Peace,
Drew

doug-doug the mighty's picture

Just a quick word to say I am still around. I have finished BCT (loosing 30 lbs in the process) and am now at my AIT in Sunny Arizona awaiting my classes to start. I will be here until mid-September or so and will try to got on line when my schedule permits.

gsmcten's picture

Doug-Doug,

I spent 24 years in the Navy. Many Schools. Many Adventures. Many life long friends. Bought my first Apple II on shore duty and built my first 386 DX while onboard ship.

Watch your six if you're due to ship out after AIT.

doug-doug the mighty's picture

still breathin'

been really busy

I am now in that 'before I go' phase where I get all my stuff in order before I deploy. Also a lot of prep work centered around my MOS. Still got some time, but there is never enough, eh?

If anyone here has my email address, it has just changed and been updated here - PMs will get sent to new address.

I plan on taking a small project and a soldering pencil with me, so expect to me to stick my head in as connection space permits...

much love to all.

themike's picture

Good luck Doug. I've always liked reading your thought-out and well timed comments on this forum. May your deployment be a safe and maybe even enjoyable one.

doug-doug the mighty's picture

I am finally glad to be be back from my 'vacation' in Afghanistan. I met a lot of cool people and learned the true meaning of Dirka-Dirka.

I have much to catch up on and a project or three I have been dying to take on. I will post on these as they actually get off the drawing board (hopefully they will)...

gsmcten's picture

"Heavens to Mergatroid, Welcome Home Doug!!!" Smile

eeun's picture

Welcome back!

Will you be working on the 8600, or was it a 9600 I sent you those bezels for?

I just got hold of a free 8600/300, and a remarkably cheap Sonnet ATA card for it. Not sure what my ultimate goal with it is other than running pre-OS 9, but it'll be interesting if we're working on similar projects.

doug-doug the mighty's picture

It was an 8600 IIRC, which is Connie. First, I am going to set up Connie (the 8600) in my new digs. I will 'acquire' 3 flat panel monitors (got video outputs to support that already) and I will work on getting a good DVDRW installed on my Sonnet Trio (should still have a drive on hand, somewhere...). Other than trying to upgrade the hard drives on this, there is not much planned or anything too crazy. Since the browser is obviously dated, it will be limited to what web stuff it does and will be my local iTunes server (porting mp3's to my Newt of course). If I can get the DVD running, I may also use it for movies as it will have the nicer display and the kicking audio system (as opposed to my laptop).
--Right now, I have installed internally 3x SCSI drives, 1x SCSI CD, 1x SCSI ZIP, 1x IDE drive, and 1x IDE DVD (driver issues/not working). I may pull a SCSI drive and try to mount an internal FW or USB drive off of the Trio card. Upgrading the cooling is being considered.

Also have a gutted optical Mac mouse from a lampshade iMac which I have set into an old Mac SE serial mouse body. I still have to finish this project (cosmetic stuff) but may add a micro USB hub inside and a micro SD card reader, making the mouse a memory module as well. The parts I have on hand should fit, but I will shrink to a smaller USB hub for the actual finished project. Figured this would go nicely on Connie.

Before I deployed, I gave all my stuff to a guy over on Newton Talk (except the laptop, Connie-related stuff, and a few things to support my Newt). I think I kept an old Mac Clone tower (7x00 type), named Jenga (as in Jenga Fett, the original of the clones Wink ). This was running AppleShare IP when it was up and running and was intended to be a file server.

My iBook is the last of the great PPC's so I will reformat the drive to support dual boot (and clean up the large overhead of useless stuff I have on the machine. I have been planning to add the bluetooth dongle on the internal USB port and took stuff to do it while I was in Afghanistan, but I forgot to bring my Torx driver, so nothing happened...

I think my biggest and most challenging project will be to finally name my laptop, something I have struggled with for almost a year now.

themike's picture

Doug! Its great to see you back on here. I've been wondering when you'd return.
Good luck naming the laptop... I too understand the challenge in that.