You know your Famous when...

...Someone impersonates you on Facebook. The other day, I got a friends request from a someone who shared no friends with me there. So I did the normal thing, sent her an email asking did I know her? Took a look at her profile and saw that she had a post that said, "Jean and Sean Dustman are now friend", huh? I didn't accept her friends request! So I clicked on Sean Dustman and found my picture which was taken in the Coffee Shop at the Hotel St. Michael in Prescott AZ, I was helping a friend with some computer stuff. I didn't realize that I worked at the U.S. Army or studied at California State University, Northridge (if so, I want those credits!) Obviously this evil twin has different tastes then me, his music, blah, books, alright, I admit, I did like the Da Vinci Code and Transformers was cool but who hates the Transformers?

I put a complaint into Facebook last week using the "Report/Block This Person", then clicking on "Fake Profile" and on the draw down menu "Impersonating me or someone I know" and typing in my name. There is a new law in California that Criminalize's Online Impersonations which was really a step at taking out the cyberbullying that goes on online. Not that I feel bullied but it does bother me that someone is using my name and image to pick up on girls (all 8 of his friends are females from the Phillipines). Next thing I know, one of them is going to be coming after me for child support!

This guy doesn't seem to be defrauding anyone like in this story, but if any of my readers her get strange request from me, it probably wasn't and I'm fairly easy to get a hold of even though I haven't been blogging as much lately.

Remember when..

I got my first cell phone in 1999 through Quest and they immediately lost all of my information and every couple of weeks or so, I would call asking for a bill and to be moved to a higher minute plan and they would say my number wasn’t on their system and they couldn’t help me. This went on for almost a year till eventually I got a monstrous bill for a couple thousand dollars. I had been keeping track of my calls, people who I had talked to and dates and told them that this was their screw up and worked my way up the chain of Quest till eventually I got satisfaction and a bill that was much reduced.

Since then, there has always been a cell phone in my pocket. Going to school, many long commutes, moving from place to place, having a constant contact with the world for a single guy was the way to go. My first clamshell phone in 2002, I was excited when I got a cell phone that would hold play MP3’s in 2003 (it did a lousy job), 2005 my first camera phone, first QUARTY keyboard in 2007 (I actually have a blog post from that phone someplace here, it’s the Rumor post). Now I’m on my second Blackberry much to the dismay to many of my IPhone using coworkers and my son who thinks how cool it would be if I could get him an IPhone. Face it, I’m a mobile electronics geek, connected, will travel.

Right now, I’m driving up with the bride to San Jose for the weekend and reached into my pocket to call my dad and it was empty. Oh man, I left the phone in my uniform pocket. I keep looking around and patting my pockets (for the fifth time). So, this weekend, I’m unconnected well other then this blog post and maybe a status update on Facebook.

When I discovered the phone missing, my brain seized, for a second, have you noticed how attached we have become to our electronic appliances? I remember the day when I used to keep all of my phone numbers on a single piece of folded paper that fit in my wallet that went through 4 separate generations over a decade and a half. I still have all of those pieces of paper but they’re now living in a photo album. I also used my brain, I had dozens of phone numbers floating up there waiting to be called up, patterns I could use to pull them up, now? I don’t even remember my dad’s number, over the years I’ve picked up so many numbers, just dropping them willy nilly into my cell phone with address when I was able and now, I can’t remember anything. My phone, like many of yours, has become part of how we recall information.

A decade ago, I couldn’t imagine how much stuff I use my phone for, I track all of my appointments, I keep numbers and notes about what I did that day, email responded to instantly, want to share a scene? Click. Need to find someplace? Press. A different ring for every event in my life, it’s not big brother who controls what I do, it’s a little slab of plastic and transistors which I keep in my pocket.

P.S.

I'm hitting 6 years of cyber babbling here next weekend

Mini Reunion

(I wrote this a week ago but this was the first time I've been on the internet)

One of the wonders of social networking is the ability to gather people who share a common element. Before my trip to Prescott, I had told two classmates that I would meet up with them on my next trip out and left a comment about that on Facebook. Other people from my graduating class started pinging in and so we decided it was as good excuse as any to set up a meet on the day following Thanksgiving. 8 of us gathered at a local watering hole called The Outpost Saloon. My 3 beer limit went out the window and I had to call an old friend to give me a ride home, thanks Theresa, I owe you big!

In a couple of years, our 20th is going to be coming into view. I wish we had Facebook and Myspace for the 10th, with a couple of messages back and forth, it was easy to set up this little gathering. Looking forward to testing the power social networking with the 20th. Here’s a picture of the gathering, we all had a great time.

Bout to turn 4

It’s hard to imagine that I’ve placed 4 years of my life on the internet, I wonder how many words that is (the old blogger tracked how many words you wrote, the only problem I have with the new one). Not many bloggers, let alone milbloggers have continued on so long, my secret? I wrote when I felt like it. I have more sites up then most but a majority of the info cross pollinates, they’re just reaching different audiences. I’m like the cable company that offers cable, phone and internet, I have a monopoly on the Doc in the Box corner of cyberspace.

It all started out with my fotopage way back in the dark ages of 2003, I was taking pictures of my Marines going through training and hit a lazy spurt and got tired of making hundreds of copies of the pictures I took every week so I began posting them online for them to get when they wanted to. Lately, I haven’t posted there as much considering I’ve killed 5 cameras over since 2003, one of the cameras was a 1000 dollar model (I could get a laptop that’s 3 times as fast as my current one for that!) I’ll get back in the photo groove once I get a new (good) camera and maybe clear the 9000 picture mark.

Eventually I went to check out what this Myspace was about and copied some of my information from the blog over there and found a new audience of people that I actually knew (most of my analog friends aren’t blog readers unless the blog is on myspace). There isn’t a month that goes by when I don’t get someone from my dark and shadowy past shows up and we connect again. They have great tools for keeping you up to date on people in your immediate circle and I enjoy the heck out of it. Laugh all you want non myspace users, it’s pretty cool, yup, another internet addiction.

One day I discovered YouTube and suddenly had a place to upload the numerous videos I put together over the years. Marine Vs Camel Spider has received more hits then everything else I have put on the internet, 500 thousand plus and the comment section has taken on a life of it’s own. Even with all of the attention, it’s just a side effort when I have time, a place to put the funny little bits about my life here and there.

But all of my online efforts circle around the Doc in the Box. Here I have laid out the mundane, the funny, the boredom and definitely over the last year the pain for the entire world to see. I’ve made lifelong friends that I’ve almost known since day one and this blog has literally taken me around the world. I’ve gone to meet ups everyplace that I’ve gone, from home in Prescott to the other side of the word in Iraq, Kuwait and Thailand.

Occasionally I get offers for people to host this and move over to another service but why would I need to? (thanks for the offers though) The machine isn’t broken and does everything that I’ve ever asked it to, I’ve had maybe a week out of 4 years of blogging of down time. I’ve grown up here and I can’t really imagine moving to different digs with other rules and having to tell all of the people that link me to change their addresses would take forever, sounds like taxes with a pen and paper. Plus its totally free, out of all of my internet ventures the only thing I pay for is the premium haloscan. This place fits me like a favorite pair of jeans.

I’m sure there are people out there who wished they were getting a more impressive product in this milblog but face it, I’m a low pressure dude and most of my military job involves the murder of trees, sticking unwilling Marines with needles and sometimes the pulling of some diabolical prank. Not the stuff great epics are made of unless you wanted a blog version of MASH.

Thanks for support over the last 4 past years (in two weeks anyway) and here’s to the next 4 years.

Welcome new visitors!

You would think that appearing on CNN for a large part of their feature on milblogs would have gathered a sharp increase in my readership, nope, a few extra hundred hits. What about when I did that online chat on the Washington Post, nope, just another couple hundred. When my blog was flogged by the San Diego Reader? Maybe a hundred total. I get probably get a quarter of my new visitors by people searching for Camel Spiders.

But do a post telling everyone that a popular email forward is totally false and just a new urban legend? You strike gold. My post about New Traffic Fines in 2007 has scored Doc in the Box an extra 450 visitors each day since the post, thanks for visiting guys! Take a look around, you might find something of interest.

It goes to show how a strong and viral email forward can take over the inboxes around the world. How do this things start? A prankster (someone who could be like me) types up a story that affects most of his target audience, it almost reads like fact, kind of close to the truth but a little bit of absurdity mixed in to get the monkey in us curious and our brain says, hmm, I should tell others about this. The hook is sunk. The Mark forwards the email to everyone that they know and those people do the same and in a couple hundred days, most of the world has seen it. A majority of folk are taking the subject as fact since it came from reputable sources. (I hope I don’t get pulled over by a “so called” email savvy California Highway Patrol Officer who thought the new laws were real, you can still get tickets for most of those items but the fines just aren’t as high as the email states)

Not many people take time to read blogs but the most stubborn of us can’t help but open up emails, sigh and I can expect to find them in my inbox along with all of the jokes and chain letters that promise me true love if I forward them. Sorry I'm not looking.

My take on the Milblog Conference

The 2007 Milblog Conference brought everyone together, the support team of spouses, family and Angels, and the official DOD people with Secretary of Defense’s Office of Public Affairs New Media Directorate, Pentagon Channel and other military type public relation people. CNN, Fox News, Time, Washington Post, Wired Magazine and the Weekly Standard represented Mainstream media. After the opening address from the President himself stating his support of the milblogging community I learned that there folks from the White House present and interested in what we had to say. There were regular bloggers along with people who were just fans of someone in the room, there and the military pundits, some of who are ex-military and others that just write about the military. And of course there was us active duty military bloggers who have actually served in Iraq or Afghanistan at one point or another, some identified with their real name others just going by their handle. Even though a majority of the room was conservative, there were some liberals added to the mix and from the ones I talked to, they had a great time.

Each day as technology changes, new mediums arise for a person to tell his or her story. With common access to the WWW, more and more voices have the ability to add their tale to the great global web. The story that milbloggers tell is a tiny one compared to the millions of blogs out there but look at how much affect the military has on the world?

We take up a huge percentage of our countries GNP and yet, the only thing the average civilian sees of us is provided by the news which lately is filled with some scandal or deaths. I’m not bashing the MSM, they have a story to sell and in the like the title of Megadeth’s album “Peace sells, but Who’s Buying”, they have a mindset of not being able to sell the peace. So where does Joe Public turn for a glimpse of the rest of the story? It’s the milblogger who is writing about the pauses and the card games and how the dust gets into everything. We’re selling those moments between the glam of shock and awe, scandals and dead people for the amazing price of nothing. We’re regular guys, don’t get sponsors for what we write nor does the military tell us what to write, we write because we like to, we like the connection it gives us to the people back home.

We heard from the spouses what milblogs meant to them, how it give them something to hold onto when their significant other was deployed on most days, we were the only stories coming from the front. From the support sites like Soldier’s Angels, Books for Soldiers and other support groups, they were able to get an instant grasp on how they could focus their efforts and see instant results. To the regular civilian, milblogs let them have a personal connection to someone on the ground, raw and unfiltered by editors.

Other repeating topics, the rift between the MSM and the milblogging community was brought up numerous times. From the milbloggers, the embeds and the MSM talked about how Marine PAO’s were cool and the Army PAO’s were very not (of course I knew that). How much help Valour-IT as been to the people who had lost use of their hands, Chuck Z tells of how he was helpless in the hospital and had once asked a Soldier’s Angel to pick his nose (and told a couple hundred people about it). He’s a technophile like me, feels more naked with out his laptop then without his pants suddenly both were gone. Then Valour-IT swept in and provided him with a voice activated laptop and suddenly he wasn’t a helpless gimp in the bed and had joined the human race again.

All of the strands that connected our little corner of cyberspace came together on May 5th from the top of the White House to down to the enlisted grunt in the ground and I think we all left with a greater understanding of how important citizen journalism can be.

People at the Milblog Conference and what they're saying

This is my continually updating list of people I remember meeting and a list of who’s talking about the Milblog Conference, many of the do a far superior job of telling it then I could have. It’s hard to take notes from the middle of a tornado but I’m picking up pieces all over the place. So far, it sounds good. I’ve also taken over 3 gigs of pictures and videos; they’ll be making appearances over the next few days.
Here's the list

Thanks Andi for putting it all together, here's her post

My other mom Carla does an excellent post

Dadmanly reminds us all of what we actually said, oh yeah, I did say that, great job!

American Soldier was there with his lovely bride and daughter, it's strange to think I've been talking to him for 3 years, good peeps, I don't know how I forgot him on this list.

Matt of Blackfive (I'm not worthy!) ran my panel and is one cool cat, he'll do good anywhere

Meeting Cat was great, she's always been a good friend.

Lorie Byrd of loriebyrd.com took some excellent notes through out the day, if you've missed out on the action, she can probably fill you in here.

Dog Snot of Incoherent Ramblings was there and does a good round up

Air Force Sister rounded everything up, another one of my buddies from cyberland (I seem to have a few of them)

Lex was one of the smartest guys in the house and folk flocked to him, the fighter pilot stories always draw a crowd. Good seeing him again.

And can't forget LL of Chromed Curses who has some excellent dirt on everything, you're the bomb!

My wife liked hanging out with CaliValleyGirl

Met the Half of the Spear and The Fast Squirrel at the Car Pool, milbloggers are quality drinking buddies from the get go.

Kathi my wonderful supporter from Soldiers Angels posts about it

Fuzzilicious has a couple of posts up, I'll be seeing you soon!

Lt Smash has not blogged about it but I just wanted to let you know, thanks for the ride and good luck with everything.

It was great seeing the lovely Tammi again

Talked and drank with Noah from the Wired Magizine's Danger Room who seemed to fit in well.

RSM of course has a few posts up, finally meeting him was was icing on the cake, he's a medical guy like me.

AntiMedia was there and has a couple of posts up, as usual good work and great meeting you.

Nikki Schwab wrote about it at washingtonpost.com

Check out the Donovan's of Arrrggghh!! He offered up some laughs though the day.

Milblogs has the video from the Pentagon Channel

John Noonan from OpFor blogged live, what a great guy

My secret buddy Army Girl showed and posted about it.

Holly Aho is a huge name in the Soldiers Angels circles, it was an honor meeting her and the lovely daughter. She has a couple of posts up too.

Hook is as cool in person as he is in cyberspace

Chuck of TC Override hasn't done a big post but here's part of one of his speeches (taken with the camera I was awarded for the milbloggie!)

Murdoc is does a great post about the conference

So does Slab from OpFor

AWTM looks as cute as she writes

Pundit Review covers many of the bases

Bill of INDC was an indepented blogger that made multiple trips to Iraq and has some posts up

Hey look, The Weekly Standard talks about us

I got to meet Princess Cat from A Swift Kick and a Band-Aid, here's her post

Homefront Six does an amazing roundup

It's nice adding a face to Sarah from Trying to Grok

Got to meet Eagle6 who also does a better quality post then I

Finally got to meet Consul-At-Arms, we've been blogger buddies since he started, he's almost like blogging family, meeting him was as natural as crossing the road.

Have you read JR Salzman? You should, he got his right arm and 2 fingers from his left hand blown off by an IED and blogged about it two days later, his lovely wife Josie blogs too. Meeting him was my highlight of the day, amazing people. The copy of the Blog of War below was blown up in Iraq with him.



There are probably people I missed but I am way to tired tonight to worry about it, more later, thank you everyone who helped support this trip out here!

PS a big thank you to Excalibur, Military.com, USAA, specially Patti from Soldier's Angels and MinimusBiz!

DC, here we come!

In a couple of days the fair bride and I are going to be heading to the top milblogging event of the year, the 2007 Milblog Conference! This trip wouldn’t have been possible without the donations I received from my loyal readers, the 790 dollars donated have paid for our plane ticket and a couple of nights of staying at the hotel, big thank you to Corpsman.com, Bane and all of the other donors. You all have our heartfelt gratitude!

This is the wife’s first trip to DC, she graduated from San Jose State with a history degree and consistently spewing off historical facts (with me being a nerdy boy, I find it endearing along with the rest of the package). When I have a question about military history, she’s always been rattle off an answer and give a detailed history behind it. I think she’s going to in bliss for the entire trip, museums for days on end?

Other news, I went out with Fuzzilicious (who’s also going to be at the conference) to look at a new laptops yesterday since it was better then staying at home doing absolutely nothing and it gave me an excuse to wander aimlessly around Fry’s Electronics which is one of my top 10 past times. We found a fairly good deal on the computer that should last her the next few years.

The reason I’m doing absolutely nothing this weekend? My wife went north to drop off the dog with her family, leaving me to fend for myself, so it’s frozen corn dogs, grilled cheeses and top ramen till tomorrow. It’s only been a few days but I miss being able to reach over and touch her, sick isn’t it? Imagine how I feel when I’m in Iraq, when the missing can grow to a painfully large hole in my gut? If you haven’t noticed I worship her and yes, I’m totally whipped.

I lead a dual life (and probably have multiple personalites)

While I have many more blog readers here at Doc in the Box, most of my friends from pre blog times have accounts over at myspace and last weekend while suffering the from a very mild hangover I changed around my top 8 and put all of the important ones up there. The people who made a difference in my life and shaped me as I was growing up, and with along with putting them into the top 8, I did a brief write up on each of them. Sorry about the lack of regular blogging, there has been some interesting stuff going on at work that has been taking up a lot of my time and I’m not suppose to write about it. No, I’m not in trouble nor is anyone hurt but the rules about the subject are fairly direct.

Here’s the write up on them all.

A few words on my top 8, the number one is of course my lovely bride and her having the top spot in my wife is a given, since she is the world to me. Number 2 though 7 are the people who shaped my life, they made me the goofball that you know and love, this is probably the only place you'll see them in one place but who could or would put them all together but me? I'm the glue that the world is made of. One of them helped spark this idea and as we did giggled for most of a day, you know who your are, thanks!

The Number 2 (not in the bathroom sense) is Larry, lifelong partner in crime, ex-roommate and wife to Jen, ex husband of my number 6 and co-father of number 17 (who is my other son). Contrary to popular belief, we have never dated any of the same girls (and it's likely we never slept with any of the same ones either). Over the last decade, other then my wife, I’ve spent more time hanging out with him, he's saved my life more then any dozen Marines and he deserves the number two spot for being with me through everything, no matter how high, low or sideways. We’re there brother.

My Number 3 is Jason, who gets the spot for being my oldest friend in life. He's the first person I met when I moved to Prescott Valley in 6th grade, our first words on the bus were, "can I sit here?", "Sure", "this is my first day", "me too!". And from then till the end of high school we were like a pair of dice in a gamblers hand, always hanging out and shaking things up. He just appeared out of the blue (and on the internet) after a long absence, he’s also the number one ex-husband of number 4. Jason was my best friend years before I know anyone else except for Justin. He holds in his head more embarrassing stories then anyone on this list (I was a geek and as a good wine, I improved with age). Glad you’re there man.

Number 4 who has almost always had the same song as me playing in her head. I’ve been friends longer with Justin but Justin isn’t a myspace person and doesn’t leave cool comments so he has been moved down to number 5, plus in my twisted sense of humor which is known for its dark patterns, I've placed her between her two ex-husbands which is seriously tasteless but tremendously funny. When we talk, the patterns in our head synchronize and we can visualize what the other is thinking. It can be spooky, in another life we probably were raging lovers but in this one, I’m glad we’re just good buddies. Oh the diabolical ideas!

Number 5 is Justin with whom I went into the Navy with in 1991 on the buddy system. We went in to get back at two separate girls named Shannon (not the smartest thing we've ever done but it didn't turn out too bad). We followed the same set of girls for a while and I’m glad we’re over that. Out of all of my friends, he and I went though the most together in the early 90’s and he’s my brother from another mother. He’s also the ex husband to number 4, glad we’re talking again buddy and we need to have some lobsters and beer when you come down.
Number 6 is Dana, for whom out of all of my friends, I have fought with the most. I have also written her the most and if you like my writing, thank her, she was my first pen pals and thinking about the thought process of writing letters to her has affected the writing of the rest of my life. Recently, I we’ve moved out of the arguing stage for which I am eternally thankful for, sorry about the rough times and thanks for being my non-romantic muse of poetic writing.

My number 7 is Paul with whom I hold to blame for every off colored remark or twisted joke I have ever made. In his black soul rests a multitude of pranks. When he was a regular in my life, if I had a wickedly crazy idea, he had the same one first and that’s saying a lot, well except for the throwing of camel spiders, that was all Jason’s fault. We’ve had our ups and downs, shared a worship of a girl named Heather (not my wife) but neither of us got the prize in the end. I’m glad I didn’t because after marrying my wife, I realized that while that Heather was way hot and cool but she wasn’t the right Heather for me and I couldn't have made her happy. Whatever, it’s great having you back.

Number 8 is Dan (and Kathy), I remember hanging out with Dan in prehistory, I turn around and there is Dan with Kathy on his arm or him on her arm. I’ve had deep conservations with both of them and I look forward to our future ones. They’re there because they’re good people and have been friends to all of us and I could imagine any of us hanging out with them.

Plane tickets and such

There’s a commercial break in Heroes so I’m taking a breather from watching the tube to blog. I was able to purchased the tickets to DC last week which was 519 dollars, don’t worry, using the money wisely! Now saving up for the hotel stay and I’ll put the extra 126 towards that.

Not much else going on, the lovely bride comes home tomorrow from her week long trip, the house is fairly clean and the hamsters are still hamstering. Even though, last night I was in the kitchen and looked down and there was Snickers looking up at me all wide eyed. Eep! I had forgot to close her cage when I fed her. She hopped in my hand and I put her away. That could have been really bad! (pictures of the two of them can be found here)

Most of the weekendI spent the weekend touching base with old friends from back home, responding to emails and leaving crazy comments on Myspace. I miss my wife but when she’s here, I’m focused on her and I do let my blogging and my other internet duties go to the sidelines.

By the way, tonight’s episode of Heroes is excellent, if you’re not watching the show, you’re missing out. Have a great week!

Military Social Networking

I took the advancement exam on Thursday and I’m not sure. There were a bunch of dental supply questions which was the only chapter I didn’t print out and study. Here’s to crossing my fingers and hoping Eni and Meni knew what they were talking about.

I’ve spent the last couple of days since in a vegetative fugue, blog surfing and cleaning house. Last week, I got two separate invites to Together We Served websites, one for the Navy and another for the Marine Corps (where you have to be a Marine or Corpsman to join). The Navy TWS website opened up in October and according to this graph which I believe, is growing quite fast, they are already up to 44 thousand members.

The Marine TWS has been around since the Marines birthday in 2003 and has a well established 75 thousand members.

Both websites have a terrific scams going on (just because I call it a scam isn’t a bad thing, it just means they have an excellent business model), it doesn’t cost anything to join and you get the first 6 months free with the Navy site and 15 days with the Marine one with a full membership. For every 5 members you get to join they tack on another 6 months of full membership free. After that they ask if you want to pay to keep the full membership and or it switches to the free membership which you don’t get to use all of the cool search functions or post on the forums. On your profile, you put the units you served in, battles and schools you went to and you can find people who were stationed with you at the same time. You can search for people by location, medals, when they joined, MOS/NEC, partial names, call signs, college’s attended, very cool stuff.

In a couple of days, I’ve got in contact with 15 or so people I haven’t seen in a decade or more, people who fell off the face of the earth and now they’re back. It’s another sign of the times of how much the internet has shrunk the world.

This week seems to be one of those spurts where people I haven’t seen in ages fly out of the woodwork. I love the interconnectedness of the internet and how it is bringing many far away places right back into my living room. While there’s a great divide going on in politics, flowing underneath it all there are people from around the world quietly making friends with others who even a decade ago would have been unlikely to meet.