Kuwait Take One

This is the first video I made in 2004 while attached to HMM-764, it covers most of the first month of deployment. My first and longest time Kuwaiting, we were the first reserve CH-46 squadron to go into Iraq and had to unpack our helicopters and make sure they were fully ready to fly which took a good part of a month. Be careful, it might cause a teary eye or two.

I wish I had an iPhone

Being the tech geek that I am, yes, there has been a part of me that looked at all over those iPhone owners out there with envy and longing, I wanted to reach out and stroke their new little toy and make the buttons light up. But if you’ve read me for a while, you know most of my tech investment over the last few years has gone towards cameras (have I mentioned that I needed one?), computers and external hard drives, the basics that I need for blogging. As far as cell phones go, I’ve always gone for one of the cheaper cell phones that Sprint is offering, you know, that one they’re promoting that is next to free for signing up for 2 years? Yup, that’s mine. Every MP3 player I’ve owned has been has are definitely non-Apple in design and unique. Face it readers, I’m a cheapskate and I didn’t buy more then what I needed to business.

Then this beautiful piece of art comes out that does everything, plays movies, music, surfs the web, makes phone calls, takes pictures has a sleek beautiful interface and that has my secret little boy inside jumping up and down yelling “mommy, I want that!” I could blog, check out the news, map directions even more important, I could be cool and maybe it would make me happy for a while but that's the flawed logic of a child.

Being an adult, I’m much better at slapping that child down, “WHACK!!”, which I did using the logic of “Holy crap, a 600 dollar cell phone, how many cell phones have you broken, lost or dropped out of cars?” Lots, I tell you. I would cry great crocodile tears if I broke a 600 cell phone and believe you me, after the past couple of weeks, I don’t need to be crying about anything.

What brings this up this lovely Saturday morning? I saw this story on Computer world titled “Top 10 – plus one – funniest iPhone YouTube videos”. If you have half an hour to spare, check them all out. Want to see if an iPhone blends? Oh yes, a very great site that guy runs show called “Will it Blend”, now I know what I want to do when I grow up. You want to be one up on the cool kids with the next great Apple product? Well the secret is there. What about that gorgeous VLogger girl iJustine who got a 350 page phone bill? Not all bloggers are as nerdy and geeky looking as I. Problems you can encounter using an iPhone while driving? These videos won me over from the dark side and reminded me that, hey, I really don’t need this phone right now.

Mr Cheapo camera phone is still working just fine.

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Postsecret? If so click play.



I'm taking a course on Navy Leadership all of this week, great course that's filled me full of ideas. I'll probably post about it tomorrow.

Okay here's a cheery post

The wailing must end sometime, I made this video of climbing Thumb Butte with my buddies and 2 of our kids fourteen years after that other Thumb Butte video. I still sound dorky and have found out that a small palm sized camcorders are very shaky. I did have a great time and look forward to my next trip up there.

Getting ready for an Arizona run with the son

Collin are hitting the road tomorrow to go see the family. After the craziness of Comic-Con, I Opted for something a milder, such as converting old 8mm to a digital format and editing some of it to post online.

The result of my day of making movies, the first is a really short clip of when I could still fly, I'm too slow and chunky for such things these days (and I don't have a rope).


The first is a clip of my good buddy Larry and I at Granite Dells in Prescott Arizona doing some rappelling. If you listen long enough you can hear his ditty that he made with one line “Sean Dustman plummeting to his death…" and his shoe falling off twice. He also pulls some tasteless pranks such as screaming about the rope not hitting the ground when I'm on my way down and offering some friendly greetings to the guy from the next video, Dan.


The second clip is an earlier day rappelling with Dan, not as wild but the close up of his knees shaking is pretty funny.


The third is with Dan and my ex wife getting stuck and unstuck in the snow in 1997, I had totally forgot about it till I saw the video, anyway, it shows what I look like without any hair and my favorite old Nissan.

Back in the day

My old roommate, James is heading out to Iraq and he left his 8mm camcorder in my care (if I transfered his 8mm to DVD) and I started going though some of my old 8mm tapes and made the following video of me and a couple of friends climbing around Prescott Arizona back in the early 90's.

It's hard to imagine being that young again, I miss those days sometimes.

An afternoon in DC in less then 7 minutes

Video of spanding an afternoon with two DC blogging buddies wandering about all over DC. A great afternoon, my lovely bride does a lot of the talking but we all take turns (she looks better then me anyways). No Conference clips here though.

Cooking with Sean

My friend Stacey was talking about making Crepes for her mom on mother's day which made me crave crepes and I'm still playing with the new video camera. I made a minute instructional video on how to make crepes, check out the fine flipping technique! My wife is up in San Jose picking up the dog so I'm at home sick with a cold that I picked up in DC and bored. Yes, I'm a dork.

For MaryAnn,
I filled these with cream cheese, boysenberry syrup and sprinkled powered suger on top. I ate them to fast to take a picture.

For making one serving of the mix I used half cup bisquick, a little under half cup of milk and one egg, made 4 crepes.

PS. Happy Mother's Day to all of my mom readers!

Highlight Video of the Milblog Conference

taken by me with the camera that was sponsored by USAA for winning the Navy Milbloggie. I wanted to get more footage but was actually pretty busy doing interviews and such.

Another video from the conference

Posted by Mary Katharine Ham over at Town Hall where she asks about the new Army OPSEC rules. View the video Here. She interviews Blackfive, Bill Roggio, Sarah from Trying to Grok, Me, J.R. Salzman from Lumberjack in a Desert and one of my other mom's, Carla from Some Soldier's Mom. Thanks Mary.

(I'm a much better writer then screen personality)

Here's the videos from the Pentagon Channel

I did an interview with SSG Lee McMahon from the Pentagon News Channel and she used my clip for the Around The Services show, great job SSG! The first clip is from the earlier show but includes most of President Bush's address to the milbloggers.
The second clip talks to the bloggers, including me (talking about my wife and what I've got out of milblogging), Holly Aho and Andi. The president is not in it though. Thanks Pentagon Channel!

Vlogging Seaworld with my son

It's one of the cool things you can do when you have offspring.

Travel Vlog to Arizona

Video of our trip to Arizona which includes some of the places we went, my mom's latest project and blackmail video of my son singing Gwen Stefani. No, not really blackmail because I don’t believe in blackmailing people, I prefer instant gratification.

We had a great time, my wife and my son are great traveling companions on any journey. She didn’t make this trip but will the next one.

I also posted a bunch of photos here

We made it back to San Diego

It ended up just being me and my son going to Arizona, the brides mom came in this week and it's hard to be at two places at once. Helped my sister tear apart the inside of a house for a day then the next 4 days were spent driving around and visiting friends all over the state. How my week was spent?

My other son, Alec (he’s not really my other son but I call him that) gave me a very cool Behringer guitar and amp and is turning 16 this summer, don’t worry son, I’m kicking into that fund too. He's the one on the left

My real son has shown an interest in Vlogging, so I helped him with his first entry while he was playing video games. (Just in case he joins the military later in life, it’s easier handling post traumatic stress when you already have defense mechanisms in place) We also made some movies of us doing wacky things going across the state, going to put the clips together in a movie before he goes home. I'm related to my two favorite traveling companions. Collin and I sang, took pictures and video everywhere and had a great time. Expect more pictures soon.

Friends I visited?

Jason, haven’t seen him in person since 2000, he tried giving me and Collin a cat, they were cute but I don’t want to be responsible for Gatsby eating it when we got home. I’m not sure if the dog thinks cats are good eating or not. I'm happy that you're doing alright buddy.

Justin, who I haven’t seen since I came out in November, he needs to come to San Diego and eat lobster. He used to make fun of me for being a corpsman, about being a male nurse. Know what he is now? A male nurse.

Larry, who might as well be my brother, I visit him every trip out there and hopefully we’re going on a family beach camping trip this summer

Nathan and Aimee, whom I use to double date with all the time in high school, I haven’t seen them since 1993, it was great seeing them, they're very good people.

Andy, who just started blogging and has earned a coveted high spot on the links. Not many of my friends from high school are bloggers, have to take care of them when they start. I haven’t seen him since 1991, he lives down the street from my uncle and is actually making a living as a photographer.

More on the trip later, have to go make some breakfast.

A fine start to the morning

I drive a huge ugly peeling diesel suburban who is in serious need of some loving care of which I plan on providing in the near future but need to wait till the time comes along. I know she’s old and a bit battered but she’s one of the most comfortable vehicles I’ve ever had the pleasure of owning.

This morning, I was minding my business driving to work and pull up to the front gate and the Marine guard there says “Good morning Doc, looks like you could use a new car”. A complete stranger! Talk about having to eat a serving of humble pie. Sigh!

I’ve switched units so I’m working with a bunch of new faces, new challenges, so far so good. I miss the old crew but I like the change of pace.

I posted a video that my old Doc made of flying around Iraq, good stuff!

Dog Beach!

What a cool idea, a beach where you can take your dog and let him or her run free. San Diego has it’s own Dog Beach at the end of Ocean Beach. We did a trip down there today and let Gatsby run free.

Of course you know how I am with new mediums, here’s the video and here are the pictures.

I’m a Big Dork

For the first time in years, I’ve decided to spend this Christmas at my home and not drive to the ends of the universe to visit family (I must be getting old) so I gathered some of my local buddies and invited them over for some free grub on Christmas day. Last week I went out and bought a ham and some fixings and Josh got a turkey he was going to fry (yes, we’re going to have leftovers for weeks, trick is to pack them in to serving sized ziplocks and toss them in the freezer)

Anyway Ultrastar Theaters offered to the military and their dependents a free movie on Christmas Eve and….. us and another couple picked Charlotte’s Web of all things to see. I loved the movie and book when I was a kid (my wife had never seen it) and I blame it sometimes for the total lack of fear I have of spiders. The movie was just as I thought it would be, I had to wipe tears out of my eye and left with a smile on my face.

Then the ham jokes started, “Are we eating Some Pig?” or was it “Humble?” Sigh.
Even with the jokes, dinner was great, “Humble” was tasty and the fried turkey was done just right. Merry Christmas everyone and here is my first real Vlog entry (excuse the mess, just got done with dinner)

Okay one more post before Christmas

My wife is coming home tonight from a trip to north California and I've been posting videos on YouTube all day (and unpacking). I made this video when I our helicopter broke down in 2004 and we were forced to sleep in the aircraft, just letting everyone back home have a taste of what life was like in Iraq (plus it will give you, my readers a face and a voice to go with the blog).

I've also uploaded more videos on my YouTube account Merry Christmas everyone, I got to get crack-a-lackaling on cleaning!

Dodger Dog

My wife’s best friend passed away this past fall and this is a video clip I took of him last Christmas when we had Christmas dinner with her family, great dog even though he didn’t get along with trains or me kissing his girl.

Still unpacking boxes into our new place, Christmas tree was the first thing to go up and internet put in. There are many many books that are looking for homes, eventually they will be up in order along with most everything else.

From my family to yours I wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

us and Gatsby

and Dodger

Long ago in a galaxy far far away

I was about to depart MCAS El Toro and head up to NWS China Lake and the guys I worked with wanted one final chance to get back at the jokes I’ve pulled on all of them over the years. Back in the day, we were a bunch of party animals (I’m too old to hang these days) and on this final night of me being in Irvine we started playing a bunch of drinking games. Someone came up with this idea of doing crazy deeds and everyone else would do a round of drinks. Little did I know, every time I would leave the room, everyone would fill up their glasses with water and fill mine with alcohol.

The next morning I woke up with a checkerboard shaved on one side of my head and video tape of the entire night. It’s always good for the self esteem to check into a new command with a freshly shaved head.

Great night other then the loss of my hair, another good thing that came out of that night was this video. It’s likely something that you’ve never (belay that, some other people have posted something like it on You Tube) have rarely seen. At least my buddy kept down his lunch.

What can you do with a drunken Sailor?