The Official Blog of Rob Smith

I’m at one of the other bases that our company occupies, and I’ve been reflecting on how different of an experience each group will have to look back on once the deployment is over. The base I’m at now is huge, and our people here have a large modern building all to themselves. They just [...]

Today we had Thanksgiving dinner and it was pretty good. It’s still open for another hour or two so I think I’m going to go back for more food in a little while. Then maybe I’ll try to watch some football tonight. Today wasn’t a day off by any means, we have no days off [...]

It’s the rainy season here, and although it doesn’t rain too much, the mud still gets terrible as I’ve mentioned before. The grounds here in our compound are mostly dirt, and haven’t had any gravel spread over them in a long time. So, today we had some gravel delivered by a local company and our [...]

Yesterday I used Skype to call home and I was able to talk to my mom, brother Ryan, and all of my grandparents. I also tried to call my dad but he was sleeping and didn’t answer the phone three times. I guess since he is 61 years old now he needs extra opportunities to [...]

One of my jobs here is to determine who gets to go home for Rest & Relaxation leave each month. Every deployed soldier is entitled to fly back to the U.S. and have 15 days at home (or wherever else they want to go) during the course of their deployment. So, in reality, each soldier [...]

So I never ended up completing my mission the other day; I was supposed to bring a rifle to Baghdad to deliver to the evidence technicians. Unfortunately, the night I was supposed to fly there, the helicopter was delayed due to weather. Eventually at 2:30am they canceled the flight for that night. I ended up [...]

I’m still waiting for my flight, so I figured I would stop in at one of the public computer places here. It’s very difficult to get around by air here, the flights aren’t scheduled very often and you often need to go to another place to get to where you want to go. Anyway, I [...]

So, I’m not sure if or how to write about someone’s death on the blog, but hearing about Rick from TicketNetwork passing away was very sad. My desk was right across from his for a few months, we worked closely on a few projects, and his son is a Captain in the Army, so we [...]

We’ve been very busy around here lately. In general, Wednesdays and Thursdays are our busiest days of the week, but this week is especially bad because we are dealing with several different projects and missions at the same time on top of our normal responsibilities.
Most of my days are spent in some part of [...]

So far I’ve largely avoided talking about other members of my unit on the blog, out of concern for their privacy. But a few have expressed a willingness to become part of www.therobsmith.com, so I am more than happy to accommodate them. As I hinted yesterday, today we have a special treat for the loyal [...]