mech leader a3

So this week has been all about the blue force tracker (fbcb2; force 21 battle command brigade and below) and the a3 simulator. Once again that is a giant computer that recreates the gunner and driver compartments on the bradley. Pretty amazing stuff. We're doing our gunnery tables in the simulator for the rest of the week (translation: shooting targets). Apparently you aren't suppose to use armor piercing rounds for engage troop targets because some guys in geneva a while ago thought it wasn't fair. Well I say shucks to that, and I did. Headshot! @ 900 meters. Yay for me. My instructor scolded me and quoted the geneva convention..then congratulated me on the great shot.

My buddies Payne and Peck finished Ranger school and are graduating on friday. They are a first time go through the school which means they passed everything the first time (no simple task).

Everything is going great. I am thinking about spending x on a new video card, where x is >$70 and <$180. I have found that the performance on my computer is started to show. Early this week I have overclocked the cpu and the video card and was able to squeeze out a good 10-20% boost in performance. See, that degree is paying for itself now.

Stay classy.

btw congratulations our newest members, todd and josh!

Josh's blog is hilarious and much better than mine: http://josheastofcenter.wordpress.com/
please feel free to check it out two other members (dad and todd)

welcome to the a3 course

This week I started the bradley leader's course. I know what you are thinking, didn't he already...yes, this is the A3 course, the last one was the A2 course. Apparently the A3 is the best new thing in the mechanized infantry world. They pretty much turned the Bradley from a car with armor and a gun into a computer (with armor and a gun). Everything has a overlord type computer monitoring it. This has some really great benefits but as we all know computers break more than anything and I'm sure this is no exception (at least this might allow me to fix bigger computers than I've tangled with in the past).

Last week I did successfully graduate the A2 course. We spent two days in the simulator doing missions (think giant video game) and one day on the range shooting actual bradleys. Good stuff.

This week has been slightly different but a lot of the same routine. Think groundhog's day but instead of a day, its been three weeks. We don't use the bus anymore, we drive. We still have pt and we have tests everyday this week.

My roommate zwirgzdas has been gone all this week and last. Lucky for him I got some sort of flu/infection. It's not too bad really, just irritating.

I'm really looking forward to the weekend. This might be the first weekend that I can remember where I'll get to sleep in. So far every weekend I have had to wake up really early to do something or another for somebody. I normally start my saturday mornings driving to atlanta's airport, then turning around and driving back (2 hours each way). Seems there is always somebody I know that needs to get to the airport for one reason or another.

Stay Classy.