Looking Back

Looking back at this last semester, I really didn't want to do the 20% project. I was thinking oh great, a huge thing that will take all my time up. I didn't choose a subject until very last minute and didn't really act on it right away. I had dragged my feet starting out, then I gained momentum, started writing, and coding almost every day.  Hours on end, just in front of the computer, probably a better way to spend a day, but I was enjoying it.

I wasn't incredibly nervous with my first interview, mostly because I knew the guy, Zachary Tinlin, a US Marine Machine Gun section team leader. I talk with him a lot about the Marines, I have learned most of what I know from him. Like what to do in an ambush, what a buddy team rush is, how to properly assault a town, where to position support units to get the most use. I love every second of it, absorbing it all. I probably couldn't forget if I wanted to.

With talking to other veterans, I learned a lot about what they had to go through in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. Those places were living hells. Every corner a potential firefight, every building a possible kill house, every rooftop a enemy sniper. Their nerves were fried everyday, they were never off guard, hardly slept, no showers for weeks, boiling temperatures. The only thing that kept them going was coming home. They fought for their family back home, and for the soldier next to them, most of them joined to serve their country, but when all hell breaks lose, flags don't matter, nations don't matter, all that matters is that they keep each other alive.

I have learned so much from this project, more than I ever thought I would. It is awesome to attend a school that enables us to do these sorts of things. Thank you Shasta Charter for another awesome school year. That said, I am glad it is over!

A Just War

In today's society, our military men and women are not held as high in regard as they used to be. When they fought in Korea, Europe, and the Pacific, they had the nation at their backs. Now we fight an unknown enemy, an enemy that is an even higher threat than Japan or Germany ever were. They were known, you knew your enemy, now everyone you walk by is a potential enemy, everything is unknown, we rarely find them, and they always find us. Just because the war they fight isn't on our doorstep, but rather all the way across the world, doesn't mean they aren't dying for you, me, your neighbor. This war is real, and if we lose, the attacks will never stop, you never want to be on the defensive in this war.

To protect ourselves and our neighbors we brought the war to their doorstep, so it wasn't American, English, French, or any other nation's people on the front lines, it was in their home, and their land. American soldiers have been branded as baby-killers, mass murders, sociopaths, and more since Vietnam.

Imagine for a second you are a convoy's overwatch, you are watching their backs. A man walks out, hands his son a explosive of any kind, as the only guy with a shot, it is up to you wether or not it is an insurgent's son, or American soldiers that die. One death, or a possible twenty deaths, you think, people die, your brothers die. You react, a kid dies, no time to think, split second decision, no pause button, no do overs. You pull the trigger, kid dies, soldiers go home to wives, and children. That day haunts you for the rest of your life.

Decisions like this are being made almost everyday by soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. They don't get to retry, they screw up and people die. I recommend that for those of you that dislike the Police, or the Military because you think they are cold blooded killers, think again, try to put yourself in their shoes. This is not an easy job, real people die for their mistakes. No matter what choice they make, someone dies, it is just a matter of who. The only thing you can do is make their job harder, and get more of these good men and women killed, or you can stop, and make it easier for them to come home. I say let them come home.

The First Time I ever used HTML

I have always been incredibly interested in the military and everything about it. I love how the US Army stands for Loyalty, and bearing the true faith of the United States, they recognize their Duty as soldiers, they Respect other people.  I love how everyday they put their lives on the line in Selfless Service, and how the Army upholds Honor in their actions, or how they believe in having Integrity, but I mostly respect their <Personal Courage.

So naturally when I first used HTML coding for something, I created a database of every vehicle the United States Armed Forces use in today's time.  I gave statistics, images, facts, stories, summaries of what it is used for, and which branches use that certain piece of equipment.  Pretty much anything you would ever need to know about it, basically a Wiki page for Military gear.  It took close to 3 months to finish, and due to the costs of having someone host a website for you I never put it up.  However after accomplishing that I stopped coding, never got back into it. I forgot a lot about what I had learned, so I felt this project would be easier than it has turned out to be. 

I have always been a collector of quotes, I can name 6 from Patton, around 8 from Teddy Roosevelt, a few from JFK, and a few others from famous commanders of the past.  Of all of them, one has stuck with me more than anything, and I think it will with you too.

"Remember that guy that quit?  Neither does anybody else."

So this task may have turned out to be more difficult than I first thought, but why quit and make all the work for nothing? 

Reflection of the Project

So far I have been relatively successful in gathering stories, however it has been a larger learning curve than i realized in putting this all together using HTML coding.  I have prior knowledge of coding, but I have never been successful in scripting.  Making this relatively difficult.  Has anyone here ever inspected a google page and seen a mass mumbo jumbo appear on the right side of their screen?  

I have, and was fascinated by it, so I decided to teach myself how to write code.  Now I am trying to put it to use, and as I said before it is relatively difficult.  

There have been lots of things I have learned, like you start a document with then proceed to put to begin the page.  If you want to make a header you use

pretty straight forward right?  Only at first, if you want text white you have to put this This text here will now be white an now your text is white. Now say maybe you want to press enter t make a line space, nope doesn't work, you have to put
.  Or maybe you want italics, you use .

So if I wanted to make everything I just wrote above as HTML, it would be 4x as long.  Then occasionally you make a mistake, and test the page, and it doesn't work, now you get to enjoy shifting through all that code you wrote to find your fatal error.

You then proceed to get a headache, either from the constant staring at a screen, or from the amount of times you slam your head into your desk.  I can never tell.

After a some ibuprofen, you sit back down and proceed to start writing again.  Then you need to do something you have never done before, so you surf the web, browsing YouTube.  Only to find out there isn't a single tutorial on it.  If find this website to be very helpful.  Allowing you to manipulate sample code, and instantly see the results below. A couple hours later you get to repeat the process, and after a week find out you have only finished one story.  

Telling their Stories

         I have chosen to use my 20% of the school year to tell the stories of our fallen soldiers.  I have always enjoyed reading about the battles in history class.  However when I was younger whenever I saw the casualty count, to me it was like, "Awesome, we only lost 100 to their 300" as if it was only a number.  I never looked at that number as people who are no longer breathing because they chose to fight for what they believed in.  Too often these sacrifices are just dismissed in our society as meaningless, and people say that they died to fulfill some government agenda.  America has lost its sense of patriotism toward our troops.  To everyone they used to be heroes, protecting our freedom, and dying for that cause.  Soldiers have fallen in priority in society.  They have lost all importance in our average lives, maybe it is easy to forget men and women are dying overseas for a cause unknown to most.

"Those who have long enjoyed such freedoms, as we do, forget in time, that men have died to win them" - Theodore Roosevelt

        To me it doesn't matter what cause they die fighting for, wether it be some government agenda, or fighting for the men next to them.  They hung up their lives, in pursuit of a cause they believed in, a cause they trusted enough to offer their life to.

      "It is wrong and immoral to praise the dead, rather praise God such men ever lived" -George S. Patton

  In honor of their memory, and their sacrifice, I am putting together a website where I will share their stories.  I will have a short passage of when and where they fell either in combat or not.  This being said, sometimes their is not a lot of information on some of these stories. There were incidents that are more well known like Black Hawk Down, Fallujah, or Baghdad.  Then there are incidents were soldiers die without anyone knowing how. I am going to cover back as far as Somalia, and then go through tp the war on Terror.