Someone asked me about the Hash

and I told them it is what it is. It's a hash, a mixture of all sorts of things.

It's also a challenge and a compulsion and serves as a vent for life's frustrations. Getting it published daily has been challenging at times. I've written from practically everywhere I can imagine. 

I've written from airports, on  planes, in a parked vehicle alongside the road and God only knows where including a couple of muddy ditches out in the middle of nowhere. Right smack dab in the epicenter to locate it precisely. I've used WiFi from about every sourse I can imagine and tethered to a cell phone just to be able to post on line. It's been a challenge. 

I remember having to set up shop in a park in the rain and write from a shelter with a 110 adapter tied to an extension cord and posted with a tether attached to a cell phone. 

I've also posted from Camp Perry during the Nationals using a cell phone tether to get on line.

I've posted about why I use surplus milspec laptops before. I simply use them for what they were designed for. To be used in non-office conditions. This post is being made on a Toughbook I scored a while back that's seen hard use since I snagged it. The average office machine would have been dead and gone eons ago.

About ten years ago I seriously considered taking the show on the road and going to Afghanistan to post alongside the troops but got word from a friend of R,Lee Ermey's that a halfway decent breakfast in Kabul was about $50 at the time. Amazingly enough, my employer was all for giving me the time off.

Occasionally I wonder if I should have just done it and the hell with the cost.

I wanted to cover the troops and NOT the career people. I wanted to write about the privates, corporals and junior officers working off college loans and the kid next door types.

Generals and field grade officers get too much publicity as it is and I still think America wants to be able to put the name and face of the kid next door in their home for assurance that America is still America and the kid next door is still a part of us.

Of course every reporter that arrives in theater wants to know what's going on so they ask the BCWIC (Big Cheese What's In Charge). While the gererals know the big plan they generally have no clue as to what's going on at the grass roots because they're too insulated. Besides, the information they get has generally been filtered.

Actually when I want to know what's going on in a military outfit I generally ask a platoon sergeant and when I want the REAL dirt I ask a sharp corporal. 

Everyone still wonders about the kid that used to deliver their paper and help them rake their leaves or the reambunctious kid that learned he wasn't as tough as he thought he was and the quiet kid that found out he was a lot tougher than he thought he was.

The youngsters that go into the service are certainly a part of America and I feel they should be know to the public. The public ought to at least be aware of the humor and pathos their kids go through. After all, these are our children.

As for why I keep posting here? I simply can't stop. It's become a part of me.

Long before the blog and the internet I had a portable typewriter and I carried it with me while I lived in the tipi and for a lot of the time I lived in Alaska. I'd write about various things and when I had a few things I would stuff them into a manila envelope and ship them home. My parents would toss the envelopes into a footlocker somewhere that later disappeared which sucks. There were quite a number of tipi and Alaska stories in it.

Later I did stop when I was sailing but my sister showed me this blog spot and I continued.

I write this for MY entertainment and if you don't like it you get two choices.

Choice one is you simply don't read it. 

Choice two is you can simply put the piece of mistletoe I keep handy to good use. I keep it clipped to my shirt tail.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY