Flooded!

Yesterday it started raining here at Al-Asad Marine Base... the first rain we had seen in quite some time. Last night it started pouring, which I knew could not be good in the desert. When I woke up this morning to a thunderstorm, I was not surprised to see a flash flood running through the base, effectively separating me from work and, more importantly, the chow hall and any other source of food. For right now I'm stuck and probably going to take a nap since our power is also out and my laptop battery is about dead.

The photo above is a truck trying to cross the river on what had been the road to get out of here.

Combat programmer!

My job in the US Air Force was a computer programmer, and I essentially did then what I'm doing now, except I was doing just outside Washington, DC supporting HQ Air Force and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. When the war here in Iraq started I tried unsuccessfully for volunteer for deployments. There are no jobs for programmers in Iraq, I was told. Me and the guys used to joke about the concept of a computer programmer in the desert with a laptop jumping out of a plane and programming in the desert.

Aside from the jumping out of the airplane part, I realized last night that I'm now fitting the mold. Laptop in hand and body armor donned, I got onto a Marine helicopter early in the morning to come out to Al Asad Air Base in Anbar Province. I'll be out here for a few days to train some of the users of my application on how to use it, as well as some performance testing in low-bandwidth environments.

Pictured above, a combat programmer in the flesh.