“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”
— Ian Fleming
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Translated speech from French General Christian Blanchon
“Even if I were fully vaccinated, I would admire the unvaccinated for standing up to the greatest pressure I have ever seen, including from spouses, parents, children, friends, colleagues, and doctors.
People who have been capable of such personality, courage, and such critical ability undoubtedly embody the best of humanity.
They are found everywhere, in all ages, levels of education, countries, and opinions.
They are of a particular kind; these are the soldiers that any army of light wishes to have in its ranks.
They are the parents that every child wishes to have and the children that every parent dreams of having.
They are beings above the average of their societies; they are the essence of the peoples who have built all cultures and conquered horizons.
They are there, by your side, they seem normal, but they are superheroes.
They did what others could not do; they were the tree that withstood the hurricane of insults, discrimination, and social exclusion.
And they did it because they thought they were alone and believed they were alone.
Excluded from their families’ Christmas tables, they have never seen anything so cruel. They lost their jobs, let their careers sink, and had no more money… but they didn’t care. They suffered immeasurable discrimination, denunciations, betrayals, and humiliation… but they continued.
Never before in humanity has there been such a casting; we now know who the resisters are on planet Earth.
Women, men, old, young, rich, poor, of all races and all religions, the unvaccinated, the chosen ones of the invisible ark, the only ones who managed to resist when everything fell apart. Collapsed.
You’ve passed an unimaginable test that many of the toughest marines, commandos, green berets, astronauts, and geniuses couldn’t pass.
You are made of the stuff of the greatest that ever lived, those heroes born among ordinary men who shine in the dark.”
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I was introduced to the best goulash in town by a great friend of mine in CAP. It’s a quint little deli that serves the best sausage I have ever had in Rochester. Though be carful when you plan to go as it is always packed for lunch.
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NYWG Encampment Graduation 2022 Last week I returned from Encampment 2022.
Civil Air Patrol maintains a youth program aimed at making young men and women leaders, ready to be of service to their community state and nation. Part of this process in accomplished at a yearly half Boot Camp half Summer Camp program called Leadership Encampment. It is a checkpoint in a CAP Cadets career as it is a requirement for them to complete their Mitchel Award (equivalent to the Boys Scouts Eagle) or for them to attend National Cadet Special Activities such as HAWK MOUNTAIN SEARCH AND RESCUE SCHOOL or NATIONAL BLUE BERET.
This is my first time going to an Encampment. Having joined CAP as an adult I never went to encampment, though having been to actual Boot Camp, I am completely fine with that. As an adult Staff member it was hard but a lot of fun and I hope to return next year. For your entertainment I included some highlights below.
DAY 1
Pulling in to Hancock Field Air National Guard Base I was hit with a feeling I never thought I would say about any military base. Hancock Field, is a quaint little base. Having been stationed at Camp Lejeune and visiting Bragg, Norfolk, Quantico, Hancock Field is quite small in comparison but has a strangely homely feeling compared to those bigger posts.I pulled up to what was affectionately called Tent City, which was the billeting for Encampment. When I was originally told we would be sleeping in FEMA tents I was apprehensive of the state of the garbage they would dump on us. I was quite surprised to see they gave us actual military deployment tents with AC units rated for the Afghanistan dessert. They were amazing and I would have no reservations about sleeping in one of these again.
That is provided I have full control of the AC. That first night in these tents no one knew how to control the AC and they were so effective, we were effectively sleeping in meat lockers. Everyone could see their breath in the middle of a heat wave in New York. I had packed light assuming we would be stuck in sweltering tents and I was freezing that first night. Finally at 4am I could no longer take how could it was, I ended up walking over to where the CAP Vans were parked and crawled in the back to fall asleep.
DAY 2
Heat index of 90+ degrees started on this day and lasted throughout the week. I found out my original job as the ADMIN Officer was being switched to Logistics. In hind-sight, I was so glad to be assigned to Logistics as the week flew by at breakneck speed.DAY 3
Receiving of the Cadets began on Sunday. Oh the flashbacks I got watching Cadets being processed for their first time. It was fun to watch but ultimately I was there to help keep the show running. That night though is where the real fun began.We had been warned by the Security Forces that a bad storm was incoming that night. Plans where laid down in case an evacuation of Tent City was required.
DAY 10
Some last minute cleanup of the camp was completed before finally heading back home. I was really glad I only had to drive back to HQ and get a ride back home from there.¶¶¶¶¶
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So you may have noticed a few strange changes.
For years I have been rocking various versions of WordPress/themes to power my site. The very first website tutorial I ever used was by Tyler Moore and was for his Tesseract WordPress theme. It has served me quite well over the years and many sites I set up for family, friends, and business interests where based off of the knowledge I learned back in 2015. Since then my skills have grown to a level that I feel WordPress is now to limiting for what I want to do in my personal and professional website designs.
With that I have begun to update my site with the GRAV CMS. I have also slowly converting all my old WordPress posts into the GRAV blog format. In hopes of making everyone’s life easier I am slitting off the blog/news section of the site to its own URL so as to link it to the current WordPress version of my site currently still online and to keep it separate from whatever tinkering I do to the main site moving forward.
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Just got my Wiwynn Lyra SV315 10 SFF 1U server, rocking dual Intel Xeon E5-4627 V2 SR1AD 3.3GHz 8-Core 16M LGA-2011 CPU’s. I tested ProxMox 7 and it worked fine, I just need a new SSD to finally put it into production.
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A Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Cessna is pictured at an airfield in this courtesy photo provided by CAP.
I was preparing for the wave of trick or treaters when I received… the call. The Group Commander called to congratulate me, after several weeks of the selection process, I was selected for the position.I joined the program in 2013 while I was still stationed in Camp Lejeune. Squadron NC-160 was all the way over at MCAS Cherry Point but it was worth the 2 hour commute each week because I believed in the program that strongly. I was not quite sure if I wanted to progress through the command track, but once the opening at the Rochester Composite Squadron presented itself I felt it was worth putting my hat into the ring.
I don’t know yet what challenges await me during these crazy and unpredictable times, but I know I will face it with help from all those who volunteer with me in Civil Air Patrol.
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