The Official Blog of Rob Smith

It’s the most exciting fantasy sports time of the year, with baseball coming to a thrilling conclusion and football just heating up. Expect a full season recap of our baseball league once this last week of games is over.
Lots of close games in fantasy football this week. My team won easily and moves to [...]

One thing not many people in the U.S. know is how many foreign national contractors the military has working over here in Iraq. Everyone knows about the mercenaries, often former American special forces soldiers, from companies like Blackwater that the military used to hire. I’m talking about the thousands of more mundane contractors around.
For example, [...]

The place where I’m living is right next to an Iraqi jail, so one of the police advisors who works here brought a couple of us along for his daily visit this morning. He told us that this jail was much nicer than some of the others he’d been to. We had a translator with [...]

A few noteworthy thoughts today:
- Our company is now falling under the command of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is a well known active duty Army division out of Fort Bragg, NC. At first I thought that they might look down on us or treat our people poorly because we’re from the National Guard, but [...]

Just a quick post. Last night around 2:00am I awoke to a giant explosion sound. So, I figured since I’m in a “war zone”, maybe someone was doing a test blast or maybe some insurgents were staging an attack on our base. My roommate woke up too and I asked him what the noise was, [...]

Please don’t send me items “for the children of Iraq”, I have no exposure to any children and probably won’t ever have any. I’m not here to pass out toys to children. I am afraid that because of my father’s suggestion that an entire plane of children’s toys and clothing is on its way here [...]

I enjoyed reading everyone’s banter about the UConn Football Game. Kohanski, it sounds like you are losing your edge. I’ve always loved Perrotti’s short, to the point style of recapping past events. It looks like my fantasy football team, that I was unable to set the lineup for, will lose to Malone’s team by 2 [...]

WT is a secret inside joke between me and my friends, so no one will ever know what it means except for us. Sorry to everyone else. For those who are going to the UConn football game, I hope you have a good time and please be wary with your V-nut consumption, they are brutal. [...]

I’ll be leaving the comfort and bountiful internet access of Baghdad in the next couple days to go to what we think will be our permanent base here in Iraq, and I’ve learned that there is no consistent internet there except for what the Army provides in the recreation building. So, blogging might be a [...]

My three friends Jim Malone, Jim Perrotti, and Chris Kohanski, and I used to have a weekly poker game together. We really enjoy making bets and gambling, not always with money, with each other. Well, usually it’s just Malone, Koho, and me because Perrotti can be a little on the anti-fun side of things. And [...]