Upon returning from a fun Connections conference in Orlando last week, followed by a couple of days at Disney with my wife and daughter, I learned that I am being called up from my current reserve status to active duty in the US Army. My orders require that I report to Ft. Leonard-Wood, Missouri on 22 May 2004 for a period of 365 days (unless extended). Here's some more info about my military status:

have been a member of the US Army since 1995, and received an officer commission in 1997. I have been inactive since 2001, but have remained in the Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) since then. Monday (26 April 2004) I received orders which transfer me from inactive to active duty status effective 22 May 2004, as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, for a period of 365 days. I am to report to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri where I will be in-processed and trained for up to 30 days, at the end of which time I will receive orders transferring me to my permanent unit. I am currently a First Lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers, and my last position held was as a mechanized combat engineer platoon leader. At this point, however, I have no idea what kind of unit I could end up with or what kinds of duties I may have. I'm going to do my best to make sure I've cancelled all of my commitments and picked up all the loose ends in my civilian life in the next 25 days, after which time my wife and business partner Michelle will be monitoring my email account and managing our businesses.

I'm going to get a separate, non-technical blog set up at http://armysteve.com in the next few days, where I will post additional updates about my experiences. Hopefully I'll be back before ASP.NET 2.0 is released, and I'll get to avoid the annoying “it's really cool but it's beta so I can't use it” phase of the product... .

Update: http://armysteve.com/ is now up and running.