manrymission.com

I visited some project sites in Mosul today, east of the Tigris River. Chris Johnson and his 1-8 Infantry Battalion are responsible for the neighborhoods I visited today. The Iraqi Operation Lion’ Roar is still ongoing; however, the curfew has been relaxed a little. So there were people and cars out and about this afternoon. It was nice that most everywhere we went, the residents were smiling and waving.

Rick was once again able to coordinate for dedicated air coverage for our entire move. The 4-6 Air Cavalry unit provided two OH-58D Kiowa Warriors. Having eyes in the sky gives me a good feeling. We traveled today in the REVAs again. I was glad that today’s move only lasted for an hour, not like the 9 hour days in Sinjar and Rabiyya!

Our record for today was 1 win, 1 loss, and 1 tie. At the first site we visited, the contractor has done really good work. The construction is progressing well. That was the win. At the second site, a different contractor seems to have done no work at all. The pump station is in total disrepair. That was the loss. The tie was at the third site. At this location, the contractor is still finalizing his design and has not broken ground yet. I knew that before the visit, but I wanted to check the site before construction starts.

All in all, it was a very good day.

Since I was so upset about not getting to put up lights this year, I decided to decorate my wall for Christmas. The first time Mugs visited my family in Natchitoches during Christmas, she was utterly amazed that Mama had decorated the bureau instead of a Christmas tree. So in true Manry tradition, here’s my Christmas wall:

Last night, some of us got together for a white elephant gift exchange. Sarah had printed out mistletoe and taped it to the ceiling, so you had to be careful where you stood. I was able to give everyone that came a homemade Christmas card from Gabe’s second grade class at Fredericksburg Christian Schools. In the picture above, notice all of the cards on the white paper. Each kid in Gabe’s class made me a Christmas card. They also made extra cards addressed to “Friend”.
CDR Charles Kliewer joined us for the festivities. He is a US Navy Submariner assigned to the US Army Corps of Engineers for a 6-month deployment to Iraq. He is here on FOB Marez attached to the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) as the liaison officer (LNO) for USACE. He’s still looking for his submarine! Here’s a shot of Charles and Rick unaware that mistletoe is lurking above.

This morning, I slept in until about 0800. After making some coffee and checking email, I just lazed about most of the morning. I got to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” on AFN. For lunch today, we decided to go to town. So we drove over to the DFAC on FOB Diamondback. The display wasn’t quite as extravagant as Thanksgiving, but they did have a giant Frosty appropriately covered in frosting. Santa Claus was also at the DFAC, so we had one of the DFAC workers take our picture with Santa and Frosty.

The DFAC worker liked it so much, that he asked me to take a picture of him and his buddy with Santa. The he had his buddy take a picture of the two of us with Santa. Next it was a picture of just his buddy with Santa. Then it was a picture of me and his buddy with Santa. Finally, it was a picture of just him with Santa. Here is picture number 2, me and the first DFAC worker.

For Christmas this year, I got a deluxe care package from Richard, including homemade peanut brittle. No one is allowed to tell Howard that I got homemade peanut brittle.  He never reads this blog, right? From Abby, I received the Grumpy ornament, and from Gabe I got silly putty. Zeke gave me a Santa Pez dispenser, while Josiah sent a coffee cup where you can design your own decoration. Mugs gave me a desktop bowling game and a stress-relief football to squeeze. It feels like Stretch Armstrong, if you remember that toy. I guess it feels like Stretch Armstrong even if you don’t remember that toy!

Merry Christmas from Mosul!

Over the past week or so, I’ve spent my free time working on a redesign of the blog. Free time for me is basically from 2000 to 2200 each night. The time I spend working on manrymission.com is a means of relaxation. My other outlet is running. I usually go for a run at about 1900, take a shower afterwards, and then watch some TV, read a book, or work on the blog. All of this week has been devoted to the blog redesign.

One of my favorite parts of this design is the cubic globe in the header. To create this, I downloaded some satellite imagery from NASA’s Visible Earth project. I then used GIMP to tile the imagery into 6 tiles. Finally, I used GIMP to create a cube and paste the appropriate image tiles onto the cube faces.

You may have noticed that I haven’t made any design changes to the blog lately. I’m actually pretty happy with my current design. The changes I’ve made recently have been transparent to the user. I’ve been focused on improving the blog’s position on Google search results. So I did some work on the keywords and description information in the header of the blog’s source code. Then I created a sitemap and indexed the site with Google. I’ve focused my efforts on queries for manry and manry family.

Today, if you Google manry family, the manrymission.com blog appears on page 3 of the results. If you Google manry the blog comes up on page 7. My goal is to make it to #1! So I need your help. You can help move manrymission.com up the Google ladder by searching for manry family or manry in Google and then clicking on the link to manrymission.com in the Google results. Google tracks the link you click in the search results to help decide a page’s search ranking.

Incidentally, if you Google Mugs Manry, manrymission.com comes up as the #1 result!

I’ve been busily re-designing the blog appearance in between meetings, conference calls, and site visits. When you’re working 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week, there’s plenty of time to play around on the computer. Hopefully (hope is not a course of action) the blog looks a little better than this store on FOB Diamondback.

So what do you think of the new appearance? Incidentally, this is not an actual 7-Eleven. It is a T-shirt shop run by a local contractor. I have no idea where he got the 7-Eleven propaganda materials.