The Day After...

Last night, as I lay in bed and my watch beeped the official end of my 4-year commitment to the Army, I thought about the past 4 years and how it has affected me. How have I changed during my stint in the Army? Am I better off becuase of it? There is no single answer to this question. Financially and physically, I am probably better off than I would have been had I never enlisted, but mentally? Certainly not; I can almost feel my brain deteriorating. I am forced to change, but I have a bit of control over how I change. Obviously, I am a different person, better in some aspects, worse in others, but there is still room for improvement and I plan to fill that room.

Today is the day...

Today is the date of my original ETS date. For those of you not familiar with military terminology, ETS is an acronym for Expiration Term of Service, meaning that today SHOULD be the last day of my enlistment. However, since the contract I signed had more fine print than one person should be subjected to in a lifetime, I basically signed my life away for a maximum of 8 years; the 4 years of my enlistment is the MINIMUM time that I agreed to serve on active duty. The military has only to enact stop-loss to keep a soldier in past their ETS date. Of course, the recruiter didn't tell me that; I didn't figure that out until it was far too late. So, here I am stuck in Iraq and likely to be here for several months more. Recently, there has been an attempt to approve a bonus pay of about $2000 per month for soldiers affected by stop-loss. This would be great, but it wasn't approved; supposedly, there will be another attempt to ratify this pay in the next few months.
The reason that I am writing about this is because it was not approved, yet, the US House of Representatives approved a bill granting $417 BILLION for defense spending last Tuesday(June 22, 2004). That amount is virtually incomprehensible and they squabble about a few million that it would cost to pay the people whose lives are being put on hold to serve the military's needs. Personally, I was originally planning on attending college in the fall semester of 2004(read: THIS YEAR). Now, due to my involuntary extension in the United States Army, not only will I miss this fall semester, but I will most likely be unable to submit my application in time to be accepted for the fall semester of 2005; applications are due at the end of 2004 and I will still be stuck in Iraq. I can apply online, but I am unable to take any of the tests that are required by my schools of choice(i.e. SATII). Thus, my life is pushed back 2 years because the Army kept me past my ETS date. That is 2 years sooner that could have had my degree and a job paying at least double what I am making in the military, and yet, the military hasn't even approved paying me, and many others just like me, for my trouble.
None of this would bother me so much, but I actually see how the taxpayers' money is spent. Believe me, whoever coined the term "military efficiency" should be shot; that's more of an oxymoron than "military intelligence." The military, at least the US military, is anything but efficient. I could write a long list of the ways that money is wasted, but I don't think I should. If you really want to know, you should invite me 'round for tea some afternoon and we can talk about it.

gmail

Today I set up my gmail account. It seems like it will be pretty cool, but I haven't really used it yet. If I sent you the address, then you should email me there so that I can try out all the features. If I haven't sent you my gmail address and you would like to get it, email me at my other email address and I'll send it to you. I'd post it here, but I don't really want to test the spam filters of gmail that heavliy. Anyway, it seems that more and more of my time spent cruising the internet is spent on Google-owned sites; there's Google itself, of course, this site, and now gmail. Hopefully, I can get a piece of Google's IPO so that I can be supporting my own interests, too.

Opportunities Lost

Have you ever looked back on your life and wished that you had done something different? Have you ever wondered how your life might be better if you could just change one small detail in the past? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, mostly because I wrote about Priceline.com in my last post and I can't help but think that my entire life would be changed if I had taken that chance. This, inevitably, got me to thinking about other opportunities that I have passed up in my lifetime, times that I took the easy route and missed out big. I have already stated that this was a contributing factor in my taking up trading penny stocks, but I'm going to apply this to other aspects of my life as well. In fact, I already have; this is one of the reasons that I have started running. As long as I am stuck here and am unable to change that, I might as well use my time for self-improvement. Running, saving/investing money, reading, etc., all work toward this goal: to make myself a better person. Also, the breaking of bad habits is important; stop biting my nails, stop cursing, etc. This year shouldn't be time wasted, but time well spent.

Risky Business

When I first began investing a little over three years ago, my goal was to have over $20,000 invested by the time I completed my 4-year enlistment in the Army which was supposed to be June 27, 2004. I was well on my way to achieving this goal before I found out I was being deployed to Iraq. Now, since I make a bit extra money over here and I have almost nothing to spend it on, I am well past my initial goal of $20,000. Because I have already surpassed my goal and I thought it might be fun to add a little excitement to my portfolio, I have been trading penny stocks. There are several different definitions for a penny stock; some consider any stock under $5 to be a penny stock, while others say that the limit is $1. I fall into the latter category. For the past few months I have been trading several stocks that trade for under $1, in fact, I haven't bought anything over 50 cents per share. This is extremely risky because the company could go bankrupt easily, the price per share could plummet, or the company could be a scam. However, I'm not worried about any of this, because it doesn't really matter to me if I lose all the money I've put into my penny stocks; it's all excess, and not even half the total amount by which I am over my initial goal; I only use my "play" money. I have been fairly fortunate so far and I have made a decent bit of money with my dabbling in penny stocks.

*NOTE:I do not recommend that anyone with any financial responsibilities even consider trading penny stocks. Frankly, it is stupid if you have any financial obligations, such as bills, car payments, house payments, etc. It is probably stupid anyway, but I figure my odds are a little higher than I would find in Vegas.

Routine

Things are getting pretty routine around here. I wake up anytime between 6 and 6:30 (AM, of course) and go for a run. Shower, grab breakfast and get to work by 8:00. I sometimes use either my lunch or dinner break to go to the gym and get some food to take back to work. I get done with work about 6 or 7 PM. Every other day I run with a friend, subject to his schedule. I guess that the routine helps time go by faster for a while, but it starts to get pretty boring after a while. Before I was deployed, but I knew that I would be deployed, I thought that it would be great if I had a tool to erase the year during which I would be deployed from my memory. After further discussion with a few people, we decided that it would be even better if we could erase the memory of one day. This way, we wouldn't remember the day before, so it would only be like spending one day in Iraq. The only problem with this would be that it wouldn't be possible to complete any tasks that carry over to the next day because any previous work would be forgotten. Perhaps the best way would be to alter the memory of the passage of time, but nothing else. If there were a way to make it feel as if I'd been in Iraq for 1/100th of the actual time I have without forgetting anything important. Whatever the case, I don't see any of the ideas I've theorized about here coming to fruition anytime soon, I still have a few more than 200 days and counting.

Back to Running

Well, instead of editing my previous post about running or adding a comment, I decided to make a new one so that you, the reader, would take notice. Here is a link to my Running Log at running-log.com. It also includes trips to the gym, etc. Also, runnersworld.com seems to be back up and running... hehe. Check it out.

Yo-Yo

A friend of mine got a yo-yo in the mail yesterday, a Duncan Imperial. It reminds me of the days of yore when my brother and I were semi-into yo-yos, and it's fun to bring one into the office. It's fun to throw it towards someone's face and see their reaction as it passes mere inches from their nose. Yo-yos. Fun stuff.