OK, so I got over hankinbaghdad's teasing that I'm an "LJ Supa-star!" every time people added me to their friends list.  And I'm sometimes amused by backtracking how these people find out about me.  But now, I'm stumped.  At least two people in the Russian Federation have added me to their friends list in the last week, and I have absolutely no idea how they ( Read more... )

We're in Mosul, finishing the work on the ISP that was once the bane of hankinbaghdad's very existence. Travis is doing the server work and training the engineers on wireless, and I'm handling the enormous dedicated-capacity satellite system ( Read more... )

hankinbaghdad left Baghdad at 6am this morning, en route to Amman. His escort just returned from the border, so he's safely gotten through the most dangerous part of the journey (Faluja, least pleasant of CNN's "Sunni Triangle").

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my new office. We're situated directly across from the incomplete hulk of Al Rahman Mosque, an enormous ( Read more... )

In Iraq, Christmas is only a holiday for the Christians. It is a lot like Jewish holidays in the States.

So, hankinbaghdad and I worked today. The day was fairly relaxed and we had a really fun party later in the evening ( Read more... )

I have clearly been desensitized to the brutal necessities of building a new regime on top of a bloody, repressive one ( Read more... )

We picked up hankinbaghdad from a small town on the Iraq/Turkey border today. He is tired, culture-shocked, and wary of the breakfastfoods, but otherwise in good health. It's really good to see him. Jayme and I haven't had a good love-and-sarcasm conversation in a while ( Read more... )

Baghdad was without power for 24 hours yesterday, coming on sometime today while I was at a customer site. The story is that someone mortared the power plant in Al Dora, the industrial sector that includes the power plant for the city. Ain't no grid here, folks ( Read more... )

Up on the roof again, drawn by the sound of very loud explosions. It appears to be a battle a few kilometers away. We miss the first round, but are in time to see an Apache or Cobra helicopter firing at ground targets. It is making a shallow-angle dive while firing its nose cannon - something like a 20 mm vulcan. There are flashes of light in ( Read more... )