I got to spend a half a day the other day just relaxing. Being a “down” day for us with no scheduled missions, after I sent the misguided children that make up my crew on their tasks that I wanted accomplished, I settled into my room and enjoyed something that I haven’t had in over a year. Not since I started this deployment.

Uninterrupted internet access in my room.

Yes, it is true. We have installed a satellite internet system in our housing area using our ingenuity, hard work, the inevitable sweat that comes with living in a convection oven, and the Almighty Dollar. The system itself comes from OIF Net, who have been absolutely wonderful in all of this, cheerfully holding hands and answering questions, even when asked for the third time because the answer was there all along, but, well with all the heat and inability to see the obvious sometimes, it wasn’t noticed or paid attention to.

The flashing blue lights of the modem and the flickering greens of the switch and router tell me that all is well with the network. Others are busily pecking away at their keyboards, updating their blogs, emailing loved ones, searching on Google, surfing for porn, or doing whatever they do normally on the internet. My room is basically an armed server room with a bag of black licorice on the desk next to the laptop. I don’t mind the flashing lights; the miasma of technology is a gentle reminder of the real life, the one I will get back to at some point.

Naturally, the first thing that I did was connect and IM The Wife. Actually, I did that simultaneously with checking email, so I suppose technically it was a tie. Still, I like to think that contacting The Wife and having (very nearly) synchronous communication with her was the number one thing on my mind, so it wins by the judge’s ruling. Plus, I clicked the IM icon first, even if the email client loaded faster.

I also got to go skipping around the internet, see some of the old hangouts, and check in on what has happened in my absence. Which means mostly checking all the blogs that I subscribe to on Bloglines. Some are more or less dormant, some had 40 billion new postings, and some I rethought and scrubbed from the list.

One site that I spent a good amount of time on was Joel On Software. He has a number of interesting ideas, and seems like someone would be great to listen to over a couple of beers while he free associates and comes up with novel ideas. Mostly he covers technology, and management of technology, but he is great all around and has some real world experience too. Just when you figure that he is another ex-Microsoft geek, you find that he is also an ex-Israeli Paratrooper. And a pretty smart dude to boot.

I also checked out some older sites that I haven’t kept up on in a while. One I was chagrined to find dormant was Flaneur. The writing there is simply the best. The gem of the bunch, though, is Rachel King. I tripped on this site, particularly her stuff, a couple of years back when they were active. Showing it to an English Lit friend of mine, she mentioned that if there were a female version of me out there with a better grasp of grammar, it was likely Ms. King. Her writing (Ms. King’s, not my friend’s; they have two very different styles) uses a flamethrower of wit to immolate the subject, then pounds out the flames with a thesaurus. I love every word of it. Her Salon reviews are pretty damn good too.

Back to things technology oriented. When I last left the Inter-Web landscape, Ajax was just getting going. It was a novelty, something that makes Google Maps the buzz du jour. It was also something that I was looking into, tinkering with, trying to get my head around. After all, all good techs need that cutting edge thing to have as the subject of their first O’Reilly book. But, too late, there is one already. And Ajax is powering a lot of things, but particularly calendars it seems.

I was at one point contemplating something on developing for PayPal with Java. In my real life, I did a lot of that. Now, who knows? I would have to consult my notes when I get back, not to mention that there are new editions of Java on the horizon. The skill rot with taking time off in technology is amazing. There will be some catching up to do when I get home. However, for now, I have the net at easy reach for at least keeping up to date with news, information, and whatever. And chasing intellectual rabbits down the networked hole to wherever my mind follows.

But, the most interesting part was that the following day, while prepping for mission, I noticed that I felt better, more alive, and more alert. There were parts of my brain that were sparking back up to functionality, parts that had not seen use in the last year or so. Not that some of what I do can be done without any higher thought process. There is a lot that goes on that requires not only thinking, but creative thinking. Which is a nice way of saying making it up on the fly, but you have to know the rules to break them.