Who is Wingman709

Greetings and welcome to my blog page and very first blog post. I am new to this and not really sure about blogging, but I figured what the heck, why not try it out and see where it leads.

First of all, my name is Mark and I go by the online name of Wingman709 which is also my Xbox Live Gamertag. I am one of the hosts of the Xbox Podcast which you can check out on iTunes or at www.xboxpodcast.com.

Now you may be asking, how did you come up with that name? I took two things that were special to me and put them together. The first one is a series of books written by Mack Maloney called Wingman. I use to read this series of books when I was in High School and I really enjoyed them. They are not great works of literature, but they were very fun to read. Especially for someone who loved airplanes.

The number 709 comes from the tail number of one of the best jets I have ever crewed. While I was serving in the United States Air Force, I spent two years in Aviano, Italy. While I was there, I had the honor of crewing an F-16C Fighting Falcon with the tail number of 90-0709. This jet was one of the best planes I had ever worked on. She was a workhorse that never broke. The pilots loved the jet as well as the rest of the crew that was assigned to that amazing plane.

So there you have it, the origin of my Gamertag and online persona. I have also gone by Wingman15 (15 is my favorite number) but when I got my Xbox Live Gamertag, that name was already taken so I went with 709. Ever since, I have pretty much moved over to using the 709 instead of the 15.

As for myself, I live in the suburbs of Chicago and work down in the city which means I get to spend 4 hours a day commuting. It gets old but I am very thankful for NetFlix. Watching movies on the train helps to pass the commute time.

I am a Network Administrator for a large college in Chicago by day and Xbox Podcast host by night. I also have a wife and two wonderful kids so all of this keeps me pretty busy.

What I plan on doing with this blog is to just post different thoughts each day. They will be on pretty much anything. So one day I may be talking about a video game that I am playing, or complaining about some big company that is doing people wrong, maybe I will talk about the weather and how it changes every 5 minutes. Who knows, you will just have to check in each day to see what is on my mind.

Also, please feel free to post any comments you wish. If you want my thoughts on something, just ask and I will be happy to reply. Thanks for visiting and I hope you come back again.