Blog of Chris

“I’m not rich yet.” Well, they say rich is a state of mind. I have no boss and I’m not starving, so I must be rich.

Sorry for not posting in so long. I’ve been pretty busy with the new business and the Army.

I’ve posted some pretty decent-looking graphical ads on CraigsList, and gotten a tremendous response. I spent an ungodly amount of money for a teeny, tiny business card sized ad in the CityPaper (which is on week 10 of its 13 week run) and has gotten me exactly zero business. It did get me an interesting phone call, and those who know me well will know what I am talking about. I have been running the CL ads for a week now, and they’ve gotten me 2 new tech support clients, 1 web site client, and 1 offer for decent subcontract work installing network systems for chain restaurants and stores.  The moral of the story is:  No matter what you’re paying for, you can probably get it for free on the internet.

Uncle Sam has kept me busy too. Last Sunday I had my official change of command, where I took command of the company from my predecessor. I took the guidon, gave my speech, and shook lots of hands. The best part was Jimmy, james, John, Paul and Mandy showing up for support, and then taking me out to Fogo de Chao to celebrate. (Fogo de Chao is a new Brazilian BBQ restaurant downtown. It’s one of those deals where they come around with all kinds of different meats and they cut as much as you want off a spit… it was good, but you must remember to pace yourself)

I spent the first four days of this week in San Antonio at an Army conference. My unit will be participating in a Latin American aid effort in 2009. We’ll most likely end up doing renovations on schools and medical clinics in a few small towns in the Dominican Republic. I had to represent Maryland and tell them what construction assets we could bring to the table. There were representatives from the Dominican Republic and Jamaica there, which was interesting. As a joint operation, there were also representatives from the Navy, Air Force and Marines, some reserve, some active, and from all over the U.S. It was also neat to see what goes into planning major operations at echelons above Corps.

One navy Ensign aside, I was the lowest ranking officer at the entire conference (see below). It was mostly majors and above, representing entire national guard battalions. As commander of a separate engineer company with no higher engineer headquarters, I am in a pretty unique position when it comes to mission planning.

Apparently, my promotion packet has finally been submitted. We’ll see how long it takes at wherever it has to go. It would have been nice to get promoted before my 2 weeks of duty in June, but at this point I’m not counting on it.

We will be renovating the rappel tower and obstacle course at a Maryland Military facility in a few weeks. I’m trying to balance running this business by myself with being occupied full time by the military, and it’s kind of a pain in the butt.

On a more tasty note, I finally got a food processor for the sole purpose of making pesto. My Aunts came down a few months ago and taught me how to make it out of Rosemary. I got tired of buying the expensive pre-made pesto in a jar, so now I just make huge batches of it at home and put it on everything. (My latest batch included pecans instead of pine nuts, and Asiago cheese instead of Parmesan… it’s still awesome)

That’s it for now. If anyone still reads this, let me know. Sometimes I think I need to be in a combat zone in order to have anything interesting to write about.

-C