05 January 2010

Double Double Vision Vision

As I've just mentioned in the comments section to a book review posted earlier, writer and fellow Midwestern citizen-soldier Jeff Courter was kind enough to post the very first comment (!) to Red Bull Rising. Jeff is author of "Afghan Journal: A Soldier's Year in Afghanistan," which recounts his 2007 experiences as an Embedded Training Team (ETT) member, training Afghan Border Police (ABP) in Paktika Province.

Jeff also continues to write at his "Life, Love and Truth" blog, which I've added to the Red Bull Rising blog-roll, at right. He seems both willing and able to take on the Big Questions and Changes of Perspective that soldiers seem to encounter during and after a deployment, and I look forward not only to finishing his book (I'll post a review at Red Bull Rising later), but also to keeping up with his blog.

He's a Midwesterner, and a National Guard guy, and a veteran. Basically, he had me at "hello."

Jeff's use of the comment feature caught me with my blog-administrator's trousers down, however. For reasons related to: (1) a potential deployment in my immediate family, and (2) Uncle Sam's bipolar orientation toward blogging, I've chosen, for now, to publicly identify myself only by callsign (aka "handle," "nickname," or "alias").

I was in the middle of sanitizing Red Bull Rising of all personal data when Jeff knocked on my blog-door. In replacing and reposting everything with an almost-exact but now-anonymous duplicate, I unfortunately had to delete his original comment. (The Internet giveth, the Internet taketh away.) I did figure a way to copy-and-paste his remarks under my own identity, but, admittedly, that's not quite the same. The bottom line? The first Red Bull Rising lesson-learned on blogging:

"Never change the identities of your horse midstream."

2 comments:

  1. Aw shucks, brother Sherpa. My bad. Guess I jumped the gun with my comments on your new site before it was fully baked. Shoulda just done the old-school point-to-point backchannel via email. But I wanted to give you public props for your hot new site! (Hell - I still do. Great job!)

    Obviously I haven't learned my "blogging for dummies" lessons yet! (Hence the big, nasty, real-name target on my blog's back!) So, once more with feeling - let me say thanks for your interest in my commentary (blog AND book). But moreover, thanks for adding to the collective contributions of milbloggers.

    It's a brave new world, eh? I choose to believe that whatever our outreach does to raise military eyebrows is more than offset by increased awareness and support for what citizen-soldiers and others are doing to serve the interests of our nation - at home and abroad.

    You certainly have my attention.
    Rock on!
    Jeff

    (BTW - if you'd like a digital reviewer's copy of "Afghan Journal" let me know. I have a friend at the PDF factory.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually, you're doing a fine job, particularly helping me validate my blog administrative set-up. I just learned, for example, yet another thing regarding the "comments moderation" functions on Blogger. Couldn't have done it without you!

    Zap me an e-mail and we'll exchange contact info. I might need to pick your brain for milblogging lessons-learned and TTP in the next couple of months.

    I'll also take you up on your kind offer of a PDF review copy of "Afghan Journal," but please also know that I've got a purchased copy already in route.

    You might say I believe in "voting with my bucks," or "putting money where my boots are," or something like that. This New Economy thing isn't going to support itself, you know ...

    ReplyDelete

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