A lot of the files on my mp3 player were broken, so I cleared them all out and I've been slowly putting my music back on the player. It's a slow process, and I am very far behind on getting all of the music I like. I haven't bought a lot of cds since I got home from Iraq, and there are huge holes in my collection, especially when it comes to older stuff like classic rock, the great hair bands, and "real" punk.

One of my greatest music moments happened in Iraq. We had gotten intel that there were some bad guys in a little village out in the desert and our platoon was assigned to be the outer security for a dawn knock and search of the village, which consisted of maybe two dozen little buildings. We had a hard rock soundtrack playing in our truck to get us pumped up while we drove to the town. I was the gunner on our truck.

When we got to the village we drove a quick circle around it and started peeling off to our respective spots. Rage Against the Machine's "Guerilla Radio" was playing as we pulled into our spot, and the sun was huge, just poking over the horizon in front of us. As I swung my gun around to face out, two Apache helicopters flew directly over us and split off in opposite directions to circle the town. It was like a clip straight out of a recruiting video. That's probably about as pumped up as I've ever been about being a soldier.