You're listening to software, radio, special operations, military news and straight talk with the guys in the community.

Hey, what's going on? This is rad with another awesome episode of software, radio and I want to welcome you my listener to the show, but first I have to let you know that in order for us to keep the fireplace on the lights on me on this podcast.

I have a merch store and it's at softwareapp.com, just go to softwareapp.com, check out the merch store, download the app and then also we have a book club which is softwareapp.com forward slash book hyphen club.

Go check that out and roll in the book club, get something awesome sent to you and just start reading something, you know, it'll be great.

Especially when you start collecting all your books, put them behind your podcast. That way you have a background.

Now today I have a special guest to talk with you about. We're going to talk about explosives. We're going to talk about real estate investment and we're going to talk about running a podcast and dealing with tragedy and my guest today is Aaron Hale of the Aaron Hale podcast, former explosive ordinance disposal technician.

Aaron real quick, was that army Navy? I started in the Navy switched over to the army. I jumped ship. So I'm sweet. And with that, I would like to welcome my awesome guest, Aaron Hale to the show. Welcome Aaron. Thanks for having me. Yes, it's a pleasure. Okay. For those that don't know, Aaron has a hard time visually seeing. So he see he hears me. He hears us. But what I see is I see his jackal up above his door or his window. What is that animal with those horns up there? Can you explain that to me real quick?

That is a black buck antelope. I actually went hunting after losing my eyesight. I don't know if you're familiar with the book campaign, but Johnny Joey Jones and I, and a few other wounded veterans went out to an exotic ranch and in South Texas south of San Antonio. And it was pretty cool. It was a former army sniper, former EOD tech.

And one of the, you know, the guys on the range and we all three went out and it was a team effort to get the reticle on that animal. But I actually shot the smallest animal that week of all the other.

You know, yeah, we're sure. And for the longest distance. So you had to aim small, miss small like a male Gibson talks about patriot. And your vision is really just gone, right? You're not able to see you're being team effort to put the reticle on the target, right?

That's right. These are prosthetic eyes. I no longer have my originals. These are supposed to be exact duplicates. The prosthetics that painted them.

Apparently didn't put a good job because people comment on how good looking my eyes are. Oh, yeah, though you are. You know, I've looking right at you. I got a beef. It's all good. And I would say that, you know, how old were you when you decided to join the military? What was it that, like, just said, Hey, this is for me.

It's not as patriotic a story that is most or some. It was more of an active necessity, you know, pivot point and transition point in my life. I wasn't very ambitious. I grew up in kind of a, you know, cushy, happy, pleasant, you know, childhood.

And I didn't have a whole lot of work ethic ambition. And when I got to college, everybody who knew how to work hard quickly passed me by. And I'm pretty much found myself out of my butt really quickly.

And it was a very embarrassing time. I gained a lot of weight from too many liquid calories and needed to find a path. I needed to, you know, grow as a person mature and the military offered that growth opportunity to become a better man and to get that tuition back. I just wasted.

So I joined the Navy. I wanted to see the world of love to travel. I decided then that I would be, I would go to culinary school because I'd love to cook. My whole family is a very creative or artistic family.

My creative spark was in the kitchen. So I decided I wanted to join the Navy as a cook, knowing full well, that was not a glamorous job. But at least I had to get some OJT while I was doing my four and then getting out and going to school.

Of course, eight years later, I'm still in the Navy. And, you know, of course, blind exchange.

Cooking in the Navy for, like, was there a specific, like, you know, the captain has to have a specific meal and you got that for him specifically. Is it like, is he just what's in the galley? Tell me.

You know, I do make decisions based, I like call it pals, a 40 70 rule. You get it about, you know, need about 40 to 70% of the information to make a decision.

Me, I was just barely on that 40% line. And I just weighed all the different options and said, Navy's for me. I'll be a Navy cook.

And it's good enough. Let's go. Little did I know that at the time, Navy cooks were considered in the Navy much like hotel restaurant management on the civilian side. So I got short duty in Naples, Italy, on my first duty station.

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