The Start of a New Life

Hey, I have just returned from my year long deployment to Baghdad and now I am ready to restart my life with my wife and kids. In addition, I am trying to revamp my skills in Information Technology. Lets start there.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Today is the day I have started my studies of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has always interested my, but I have only studied what I could do with program code, not what it can do for me. During my first search of AI, I quickly learned about Alan Turing and the LISP programming language. LISP is a different kind of programming language. I never realized it is considered the second oldest active language. The oldest active language is FORTRAN. After a few more searches, I learned terms like neural networks, natural language processing, knowledge representation, automic reasoning, and machine learning. I seem to have a lot to learn.

WRITING MY FIRST BOOK
Yes, I have said it the entire time I was deployed, "I am going to write a book". Now that I am home, I have yet to start. Well, today I made a solid decision. I am going to write this damn book while the knowledge of the war is still fresh in my head. The real reason I have not started, other than being lazy, is because I did not want to think about the war. I wanted to forget about it and get on with my life. Today, I realize that I am being lazy and selfish. I need to share my experiences. My experiences go well beyond the actual deployment to Iraq. They go back to my first deployment in Bosnia when the war started. It then goes through my many projects with IBM, some related to the war. After that, my experience at the Infantry Captain Career Course at Fort Benning, GA and finally, my mobilization and deployment to Iraq. Whew, that is a lot. Well, like I said before, there is no time like the present.