I loaded the audio book Lone Survivor into my iPhone just for this occasion. Now, Paquito was not a US Navy SEAL. However, he too was a US service man from Texas placed in harm's way at a historical moment -- Al Ramadi, Iraq exactly at the 2 year anniversary of the US liberation of Iraq.

All of the stormy weather here in Fort Worth, Texas today should just be sauce for the goose.
My Idea is to try to lap my half marathon route twice today. The news folks claim that there should be a break in the stormy weather in about two hours.

I want to thank my current employers over at Bell Helicopter of Fort Worth for letting me take time off to complete this tribute.

The US military is going through the 1991 "Ultra-SlimFast" diet yet again. Long live the Economy. May we not see the events of 2001's 911 yet again.

Remeber: "Mas sabe el Diablo por viejo que por Diablo"

Thanks to all the folks that helped with the testing.

More features will come to iMilDotCalc shortly. This will perfect the parity between the iOS version and the Mac OS X version of MFConsulting's range estimation software.

If you are one of those folks, then one would have to thank Mimi Martinez for all her patience, love, care and courage during my upbringing. Have a very Happy Birthday Mom!

I am hoping to complete all of the prerequisites that Apple Corporation requires before allowing applications to be distributed on the Mac App Store. I will be publishing a version of MilDotCalc for Mac OS X. Some of you have already use versions of MilDotCalc on Maemo (Nokia N770), Windows desktop OS and Linux versions.

This latest version is written in Objective-C. I really wanted to write it using the very Sexy MonoMac, but I felt that I had to experience Objective-C sufficiently before using more of the amazing Mono on yet another computing platform.

Next stop will be a version of MilDotCalc on iOS (iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad), followed by a version release on Android -- looking forward to dust off my Java skills from yesteryear.

All this computer programming has happen during the very brief moments that I can squeeze in between my 12 to 14 hour days as an Active Duty US Air Force Security Forces Ground Combat Skills Instructor.

I recently got back from Dobbins Air Reserve Base where I was teaching the Law Enforcement Emergency Response to Active Shooter Situations. Will be traveling next to California and later on to Ohio for more anti-active shooter training.

I am a very public, transparent and vocal person by nature. However, since I have been activated as a Security Forces Instructor, I have had to keep my communications to a very minimum. I guess is sort of like "The first rule of Fight Club".

If all goes well, I will either serve out my active duty orders through Aug 2011 or cut them short and return to my very, very missed life as a geeky computer programmer. Hey employers, for a limited time I will jump on-board your IT staff for as little as $70K a year! An operator is standing by...

Anyway, I will write again soon.

It never fails... No sooner do I pick up a set of ARCv orders -- good for 6 months -- that I receive two different contracting opportunities doing Mono! On the one hand I am very frustrated that I can't take advantage of these two gigs, but on the other hand it is very cool that more Mono related work is finding me.

Ever since I joined the Air Force Reserve I have been delaying my completion of an Associates Degree in Criminal Justice given by the Air University's Community College of the Air Force. No, I am not trying to find a job in government or civilian law enforcement, but there is no such thing as to many degrees or credentials. Therefore, back in January of 2010, I enrolled at Tarrant County College to pursue the completion of three classes (one writing, one speech and one math) to obtain the before mentioned degree.

I am only taking one class this semester (Fundamentals of Speech), to get acclimated to the work during the day go to school at night routine. It is going very well. I have a surprising amount of home work for that one class but it is not too difficult.

Finally got around to see the movie United 93 (directed by Paul Greengrass). It was tragic and left us thinking a lot about how much my life and the world as a whole has changed since September 11, 2001. I also watched Bloody Sunday, and Green Zone -- both also from director Paul Greengrass.. I liked the films very much. The Green Zone over simplifies quite a bit the events that led to the state of affairs in which Iraq finds itself today. However, I think that the spirit of the story is correct and I recommend some of my teenage friends and military co-workers to watch it.

Then a bullet fired at my son ended his life...

I know it has been five years, but I still miss him so much.

Paquito:

Maria, Monica, Mami, Tita, Christian, Ryan y yo todavia te extrañamos muchisimo. Que Dios te tenga a su derecha junto con Papi, Cuco y Gabo.

The project migration went well thanks to Mono 2.4, and MonoDevelop running on Windows. We managed to achieve the goals that were originally stated in the statement of work for that engagement. So immersed I became on all things CentOS, that I ended choosing it for the overhaul I had planned on all of MFConsulting's computer network.

This overhaul entailed the retirement of four physical computers (www.mfconsulting.com, mail.mfconsulting.com, ftp.mfconsulting.com and the internal Primary Domain Controller – a SLES server that uses Samba 3.x) and substituted them with five virtual machines running on a single multi-core AMD Phenom II server running VMware ESXi 4.0. The results have amazed us all at MFConsulting. We have a better performing network, a reduced carbon foot print and the matching power and cooling bill.

The total price tag, counting software and hardware, came just under $1,000.

While the virtualization project was in full swing, my precious Monica came down with a perforated appendix. With all the prayers and the support of friends and family (Tita, Mami, Pedro Figueroa, and all of the Temple Christian School third grade) Maria, Monica and I made it through the toughest week since we lost Paquito back in March of 2005.

Two days after Monica was released from Cooks Children's Hospital, I went to perform my US Air Force Reserve Annual Tour at our new training facility at Mineral Wells, Texas. We had one of the largest Security Forces classes that we have trained ever. The class participants had a fantastic attitude and were highly motivated. May the graduates go on to their respective deployment sites in Iraq and Afghanistan to uphold the law and help bring back all of our compatriots safe and sound.

There was a recent article that came out on the Citizen Airman magazine that mistakenly states that I worked at IBM and that Paquito's job in the Army was sniper. To correct that, know that I previously worked at Microsoft not IBM and Paquito was a 13F or Fire Support Specialist.

Since we wanted to support Windows versions that we knew only had .NET Framework 1.1 I decided to make it the minimum Framework version. That left me P/Invoking winmm.dll for wave file sound playback. That was easy enough in Windows and I must admit that I ignorantly assumed that P/Invoking in Linux would be almost identical and just as easy...

About two solid days of Linux audio architectures and libraries research, I ended opting for programming my own shared library using ALSA. I also learned a bit about Pulseaudio, sox and esound.

You can look at how I use afileplay in Moihang here.

The other somewhat interesting thing that I tried to accomplish with the development and release of this application was to create a build system for a WinForms app that can integrate with the menus on the GNOME desktop as well as having an Inno Setup script for building the Windows Installer. Just last week I received an email from a fellow that wanted to support build systems for Linux as well as Windows programmers at his shop. He wanted to better understand the way that MonoDevelop generated Makefiles could help with that goal.

Well, I used the incredibly awesome MonoDevelop myself to create the initial build system (did a bit of manual tweaking but truly minimal) and ended up with something that autotools built quite nicely and maintainable.

I will stop talking about this now and give you the URLs already for download and further information on Moihang and the Afileplay library.

Moihang's product page.

I hope to continue improving Moihang -- time and professional obligations permitting. I want to create a Gtk# version of the UI, maybe a Maemo version as well. I want to change the actual hanging depiction from my initial “easy way out” bitmap file sequencing to a 2D drawing system (GDI+, GDK, etc.).

For now, use it if you like and give me feedback or hack it some. Enjoy!

Around the turn of the century -- I love to sound that old (Logan's Run kind of old!) -- I discovered Linux and Free BSD and above all... C#

As Dewey Cox would say: “It's been a beautiful ride”.

Yet playing a wave sound file on Linux from a desktop application is, in my opinion, somewhat harder than in Windows. Of course, there are obvious reasons for this. Microsoft as well as Apple and other commercial OS providers could always dictate a simple, standard and unified way to give you an API call with just a couple of input parameters (file name and/or path usually). The Bazaar nature of Linux programming with its multiple desktops and various low level audio interfaces give you many choices lost of granularity but with all that, comes a lot of homework for those who just want to have a sound clip play when an event in their application takes place.

My beloved daughter Monica is always asking my wife Maria and I to play 20 questions and other word guessing games from the back seat of the car whenever we go from point A to point B – In Texas that may take a long time since point A usually is at least 30 to 40 miles from any point B. One day, we started playing hangman in the car using a piece of paper and a pencil. Both Maria and Monica liked it, and I decided to make it a cross platform desktop app for all our computers.

Although, my first impulse was to make a Gtk# app -- 90% of our computing at home is done on Linux on top of a GNOME desktop -- I instead decided to use WinForms because I wanted try to create RPMs for openSUSE in hopes that I could virally propagate the good news of .NET and WinForms to billions of .NET/Mono embracers that I always read about in slashdot and OSnews <-- sarcasm alert.

Tomorrow, I will make another blog entry where I will share more about my humble solution to the simple programmatic playback of wave and au files while on Linux. Also, the Martinez-Figueroa family Hangman clone: Moihang

I invite you to hug your loved one today and to tell them how much you appreciate them. Also, shake the hand of any service member or veteran you may know and thank them for their devotion to their country, family and friends.

Welcome Home US Service Members!.

A crowd of smiling faces made up of men and women of different ages and ethnic backgrounds is lined up next to the metal handrails that delimit the walk way just outside of the US Customs doors. They are holding home made banners that welcome our troops and are shaking the hands as well as hugging all 302 of us servicemen that just got out of the rotator flight arriving from Iraq.

It was so beautiful and so emotionally charged, since I could not stop thinking about the homecoming that I was receiving in the name of my boy Paquito. In just a few hours I will be repeating that scene but this time, I will be coming out of the DFW airport's arrival gate and the welcoming crowd will be composed of my wife Maria, my mom Mimi, and my sister Tita.

Monica, my almost 8 years old daughter, refused to pick me up at the airport, because she wanted me to surprise her in her classroom as I pick her up while still wearing my uniform.

There were so many tense moments as the base was attacked with rockets and mortar fire. So many times that I felt exhausted and overheated while I rode the turret of our uparmor hummer at asphyxiating hot temperatures for over 11 hours carrying an excess of 50 pounds of body armor, personal equipment and munitions. The stress of those hardships now fade and are replaced by the euphoria and happiness of our return.

I dedicate this homecoming experience to my son and to every son and daughter that did not make it back. Thank you America for your love and support

However, I can tell you that I specifically work securing everything (personnel and materials) that rest within the many miles of perimeter fence that surround the base. I work on a portion of the base that actually gives me what I consider is the best mix of Kirkuk's views. From some of my posts I can see the oil fields with these gigantic oil reserve tanks and ever burning torches that illuminate the day and night skies. I also post at locations where I can see the very busy streets, markets and neighborhoods.

I have had very little interaction with either Arab or Kurdish people, but the little I have had has always been very pleasant and inspiring. From the looks at their streets and way of life I can tell you that things are so very different from what I had seen before in Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe.

I have gone back to programming a great deal while out here. I have put together a multiple choice test taking system that will likely become the standard Skill Level preparation tool for our Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron. It uses an Access database file as its data repository - for legacy issues (Don't Ask) - and a SQLite Ver 3.0 database file for the multiplatform version of the program. My App, SF Tester, was written using .NET Framework and runs perfectly well in Linux thanks to Mono!

The US general election is the next milestone in my electronic calendar - kept in my omnipresent nokia N770 - and then Thanksgiving, Christmas and so on.

Can't wait to get home and see my loving Maria, Monica, Mami, Tita and all of my good friends and supporters. God bless Kevin Shockey and his family, Jay Duggan and his family, the 610th SFS and all of the Mono Project developers that keep the advances coming.

There will be many pictures once I get back.

The preparation usually involves attending a 2.5 to 4 week long training at a regional training center. Here the service member learns and practices combat skills, law of armed conflict, concepts and principles relating to the rules of engagement, first aid, land navigation, and much, much more.

Since I belong to the United States Air Force Security Forces, I also received training on many small arms as well as the qualification that is required before being armed with them. Lots of emphasis went into recognizing the threat that Improvise Explosive devises pose on our forces and the civilian populous.

I also got a lot of drive time with a number of tactical vehicles like our 5 ton truck and our uparmor HUMVEEs. We also received a number of immunizations and performed our physical fitness test.

We also received a ton of equipment to use while at the AOR. The down side to all of this cool gear (special uniforms, boots, ballistic helmets, body armor, cold weather gear, field mess kits, etc) is that it makes for some very heavy bags to drag around airports. But better to have it and not needed than to need it and not have it. ;)

All in all, I feel that I am now as ready as I can be to deploy to Iraq or anywhere else where my service could be used to protect our men and women serving our county.

The military has done their part to get us ready to go, but one can not say enough about the many other folks that make it all possible.

I would start by thanking my wife Maria and my beloved Monica for all of the sacrifices that they have already made and for their willingness to do much more. My two girls are truly my reason to live and the most important reason for me to remain alive and anxious to return home. My mother Mimi Martinez, my sister Maricarmen and her two sons – Christian and Ryan – also commit to do without uncle Paco for six months.

Then there is the members of my local community. Monica's School, Temple Christian School and their great staff and students, our favorite Pizza parlor, Charlie's Pizza in Fort Worth, as well as our local TV station, Fox 4 news, NBC 5 and Telemundo. Important to include the staff at the Shooting Gallery on Lancaster Ave. Fort Worth for all their support during my training sessions.

I thank the members of the Mono and Open Source Community who keep putting out a superb product and always have words of encouragement and strength.

I want to also give a big embrace to my friends and their families. Matt Gutierrez, Jay Dugan, Dan Garvin, Rino Amenta, Raymound Cheung, Heath Mitchell, Jose J. Cruz Falcon, and Harry Burgess.

Last night, For 4 News – our local Fox affiliate – aired a small piece on my deployment and my family's reaction to it.

I don't want to close this entry without thanking Chris Vaughn, Tom Pennington, and The Fort Worth Star Telegram for a very beautiful piece that appeared in yesterday's paper. The article honors my family and the sacrifices and efforts of so many reservists and their family members.

I was thinking of keeping my friends and family updated through this blog of my happenings and the occasional mussing during my period of mobilization (pre-deployment, deployment and post-deployment).

Two days ago, we returned from a week long vacation in Orlando Florida. The idea was to give Monica a full set of memories that will hopefully help her cope with Papi's 6 month separation. Her fears show up in nightmares, drawings, and conversations with her playmates that we sometimes overhear.

On the eve of her last day of school (first grade), she received some merit certificates and a medal for her academic achievements. Just as Maria and I were about to reach the teacher to thank and wish her a good summer break, a group of parents of Monica's classmates presented me with a basket of goodies (sodoku books, deck of cards, toiletries, candy, pens, pencils and stationary) to help out with my deployment. As if that was not moving enough, the teacher asked us to follow her to her classroom were she then gave me 22 letters that the kids had handwritten themselves to thank me for my service and to wish me well. The letters had all of these great drawings done on crayons and many personal thoughts.

I have known that I was deploying this summer since the beginning of January 2008. I never kept it a secret from prospective employers or the customers of my consultancy. I will share with you that it had an adverse effect on my earing potential. To the point that it once or twice made Maria and I question if we could make it through to the beginning of mobilization. Thanks to some creative accounting and some belt tightening, Maria found a way for our family to make this happen.

I bring this up because my story can not be that much different than that of all other junior enlisted reservist or national guardsmen households that struggle to provide service to our country. In the end we learn that the support our troops slogan is indeed alive within our community but rarely palpable through corporate and commercial entities.

If you are tunning in to my humble accounts expecting a blow by blow description of the daily grind at the airbase you will be sorely disappointed. To avoid getting myself or my brothering into trouble or worst yet, compromise safety and security, I intend to be somewhat vague and to intentionally exclude operational details from my blog entries. However, I think that I will still be able to provide a pretty unique perspective since there are not many 44 year old Air Force Staff Sergeants in the Security Forces career field with an extensive IT background focused on Free and Open Source culture who are admittedly democrats and are native Newyoricans that have been successfully transplanted to North Texas for 10 years.

I figure it would be a nice memorial to share a letter I received earlier this month.

Stacy Walters

As a civilian citizen of the United States of America, I can't wait for all of our troops to come home. Later in November, I will vote to try to make that wish happen.

As a military member, I promise to do EVERYTHING in my power to make sure that I protect the lives of our sons, daughters, husbands, wifes and neighbors so that all will come home to their loved ones.

Lets us have all Americans present during the rebuilding efforts or our own nation.

God Bless you Mr. Walters and your son.

Thank you Mari, Monica, Mami, Tita, Christian, Ryan, Titi, Kevin, Jay, Monche, Garth, Gina, Chris, Matt (Gut), Dan G., Gonzalo, Paolo, Jackson, Miguel, Sebastien, Niel, Joseph, C.J., SMSgt Carreon, Mirella, Adam Farmer, Harry B., PFC Johnson, Pedro, Angel and so many others that over the years support me and keep me strong and motivated.