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.
