asoldier.net

Don’t like being taken advantage of? You should read this.

So we just moved from Fort Polk, Louisiana where our housing was military managed, and our utilities weren’t our problem. We moved to Clarksville, TN where military housing is low-grade. We chose to live off-post in order to find a nicer place to stay, and avoid the hassle of living on a large post like Fort Campbell.

We lucked out. My wife (Stephanie) and I found a beautiful 1-story, 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home with a MASSIVE back yard, all for $615.00 per month. Too good to be true, that’s what it seemed like. Turns out, it is.

Around the same time that we moved, for various reasons, the price of electricity went up, a lot. So we took steps to drop our electricity bill to something reasonable. We were looking at bills in excess of $150.00 per month, which we’ve recently managed to drop to $120.00 using various insulators, energy-efficient bulbs, motion-sensitive light switches, etc. Then we got our first monthly water bill. It was $95.00, and the following month’s bill was an excess of $105.00. After getting haggled repetitively by Clarksville Water & Gas, Stephanie finally gave up and explained the whole scenario. So wearing ACUs and all, I marched up to the local branch and waited in line for an hour. When I was finally able to be seen, I explained that I was taking all available legal action against them since they refuse to reimburse us for the overcharge.

Here’s the thing. When the first bill came in, we had a plumber from our realty company come and check the house for leaks. He found nothing. The second high bill of over $105.00 we had him come out again, and again, he checked everything +, and found no leaks… or any reason why our bill should be that high.

Our bill states we chewed through 10,000 gallons. TEN THOUSAND gallons is hard for a family of 5 to go through. I don’t wash my car, rarely use the dishwasher. We don’t have an ice-maker or water dispenser. We don’t own a pool, and we don’t water our grass etc. There is absolutely NO reason for being overcharged like this.  So I am currently in contact with the BBB, and I will be in contact with the SEC and IRS momentarily. I will not be taken advantage of. You should feel the same.

Beauty of Autumn

Originally uploaded by asoldierdotnet

It didn’t last as long as it should have. One day it was a beautiful 82 degrees… the next, a sorry 38 degrees… which ruined most of the awesome colors, and turned everything into a dingy brown, or mucky grey.

Fortunately God invented magic, and scientists discovered it in time to clones these wonderful flowers.

Here’s a list of movies I’ve seen on DVD and in theaters lately, and my personal rating (opinion)

Crank 2 [dvd] (4/5)
9 [cinema] (3/5)
GAMER [cinema] (7/5) or on a scale of 1-10… 11

“They” are starting to crack down on bloggers and social network users who blog/talk about their military jobs.

OPSEC is key to the survival of our nation’s defenses. What does this mean? OP SEC means Operational Security. It means you shouldn’t talk about anything that our enemies could use to hurt our soldiers. Got a friend deploying soon? Getting ready to go yourself? Keep it off of your blog. It’s easy enough to find out what unit you’re from, and our deployment dates already end up on the news, but you don’t need to help spread problems more.

What does this mean? It means precisely this; shut the hell up.

When you find out your uncle is about to go to Iraq, shut up. When you find out your unit you just transferred to is going to Afghanistan, shut the hell up. When you find out your buddy got shot, or someone in your family is wounded, shut the F#*& up. Why? Because:

You just told the enemy what unit is where. You just gave up to the enemy’s intelligence agents where their attacks were effective, how effective, and also, you gave yourself up as a domestic target. Not to mention you just made everyone who’s already busting their ass to keep you safe work that much harder to protect their own ass just to stay alive long enough to see their families again.

I’m in the Army, that much is obvious. This means yes, I will deploy. When, where, how long, and what I’m doing over there? Do you really think I’m going to make it that easy? Sure, you could do a web search and find most of that info out by yourself, but it doesn’t mean I’ve got to make it easy. Every tidbit of information that every single person gives up makes it THAT much easier for someone who wants to hurt us/you to “google” it and mess our lives up.

A simple “I’m alive” message or “he’s alright” tweet is enough. When he/she gets home, or when YOU get home, you can gab and talk and share all of your experiences all you want. Our enemies can’t get nearly as much relevant information from old war stories. Save it, keep an encrypted journal on your laptop. Be smart about it.

I keep a TON of information on the web, about myself and what I do… but I don’t share trade secrets, or critical information someone could use to hurt my family, myself, or my friends. <3

I’m addicted to games… FPS games to be specific. Halo 1,2,3, COD 4, WaW, GRAW 2, Vegas 2, etc. I finally decided to start the clan. I call it Frag League. There are only going to be a couple of rules. There will be training for new members. Tactics battles, clan matches, and 1v1 matches. MTF

I’m at a crucial point in my life where I’m forced to decide on which path to take. For some, this is an easy decision. For me, it’s tougher than it should be.

College has always been something I wanted to do, but I never had the balls to actually enroll and start classes. Even if I enroll, my military career will not progress significantly until I’ve finished a 2 year degree. And even with that, I will still be shy the 200(appx) points I’ll need for promotion to E-5. Either way I go, I’m somewhat F#@*ed… then there’s my online portfolio. Let’s be honest, even with all of my blogs, sub-hosting, and portfolio of useless garbage, I’m not worth enough to start a business based off of that. So freelancing, probably not a smart idea at this point. I could get out and get a VA small-business loan. Smart? Probably not considering the economy. It’s hard to say what I should do. I could use a little nudging… but eventually, (soon), I’m going to have to grow some balls and do something.

We needed some key tags since we’ve had to cut a few locks… here’s the template in case you need a few tags too.

Adobe Fireworks PNG:
White text works best. I recommend thermal lamination to preserve your tags.

Has anyone ever made any money off of this stuff? I mean besides the scam artist obviously. Seriously, show me a system that let’s you make a little money on the side taking a couple hours a day and I’ll check it out. Heck, send me your referrer ID and I’ll even help you get a few extra bucks!

I’m in the process of investigating 3 ad-based “click for pay” systems; but the results are still days away.

Since I’ve got you here, consider checking into services you’re already paying for. Web hosting, domain hosting, pro office/ document services, paid media sites, etc. If you purchase services from anything remotely related to those, check their websites for an “Affiliates” link. Even if they don’t make it obvious, give them a call. Most of the time, they offer some kind of referral system that allows you to benefit from getting people to buy their services. If you get enough people to sign up, the system may even pay for that service, which means more money for you!

After you’ve signed up enough people for the service (assuming it’s a monthly service and not a one-time purchase) you’ll get a recurring payout, in most cases. You can use the money to pay for your next month’s usage, or cash out. (Paypal etc) Essentially, it’s a legit way to make a little money just by sticking a link on your blog, flirting around with Twitter or Facebook, etc.

One company in particular that I know has an excellent payout is Site5. Here’s the skinny:
Click that, and you’ll see, those rates are pretty reasonable. Not to mention, if you keep it up, you could pay off your account, and even upgrade to a better account, which pays itself off!

It’s just a suggestion. Not to mention Site5‘s reputation for having 99.9% uptime, and their 24/7/365(+1 on leapyear) live chat support, helpdesk, faq, forums, etc etc etc. Basically if there’s an issue that you can’t, don’t have the time to, or don’t know how to solve, they’ll hook you up, or let you know who to talk to.

Now I’m not saying that there isn’t the occasional glitch… but after nearly 5 years of hosting with them, the only issues I’ve had, were ones I caused myself. They update their hardware and software regularly, and maintain their stuff quite well. There really isn’t a downside to Site5 that I’ve seen so far. If you find one, let me know and I’ll add it to the review.

If you find a way to make money at home legitimately, or you have a business that lets people work from home legitimately, let me know. I will investigate it, run it by the BBB database and get it checked out. If everything is OK, I’ll post a review on it, and I might even sign up. That is, if there’s not a hidden $70.99 charge somewhere.

Site5.com Homepage

You may not know it but it’s pretty simple to update your blog using your phone. Give it a shot.

So the hitch fell off of Mom’s car halfway to my new post, in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas. If you know anything about Arkansas, everything is disconnected, and nothing is where it’s supposed to be.

So I ended up staying the night in the car with my gear in front of a shop that was supposed to be open in the morning… but it turns out that the place isn’t going to be open for a week!

Wow…

So anyway, one of my bestest friends and surrogate sister drove almost a hundred miles to come pick up my stupid trailer with all of my military crap and hauled it to her house where we could maybe find a hitch.

Before we could even make it there, one of her tires blew, in the middle of a bridge, on the interstate with 70mph+ traffic. Insane right? Well, we made it to my Sis’ house, and it turns out, we’ve gotta drive back the wrong way to Memphis to get the temporary hitch from Uhaul!

Lovely time we’re having. Anyway, I should be back in action in the next week or two, pending more b.s. from temporary housing etc. We’ll see.