Battle Rhythm, Col's from SW Texas, and Death by PowerPoint

Whelp, i am kinda getting into the swing of things out here. my "battle rhythm" is coming together. everyday i wake up early and head to the office by 0545. A group of us meets up before driving over to the dfac for breakfast around 730. We eat from 730-830. Then back to the office till lunch around 1230. Eat lunch till 1330. Then back to work. I head over to the gym around 1530 till about 1700, then dinner, and then back in the office by 1800. work until 2200ish, and then go to bed. All throughout the day there are meetings (which help break up the monotony of the office) and there are always random things that come up...but all in all it is pretty easy to follow.

For the past three days i have had to sit in on a conference with about 60 other people as we talk about the transition between phases of a large contract i am working on out here. Everyone who is anyone important attended...there was one particular leader that sat on the "big boys table" who made the entire conference worth it. Dont kid yourself = the conference was boring, but this guy had comments! he had questions and comments about everything! and the things that came out of his mouth were noteworthy. here are a few of my favorite:

- Infinity Important!!!
- Heaven forbid if we have to go back and dig fox holes...
- Praise the Lord! (on numerous occasions)
- Billions and Billions and Billions.
- wipe your butt
- The army needs to go back to Army 101 (keep in mind that he is an Army Col)
- Simple. If it aint that simple, we need to make it that simple. it is just simple.
- Did someone set up a communist organization overnight? (Are you kidding me?!?!?!)
- Y'all aint walking the dog; the dog's walking y'all
- We are going back to MRE's, washing soucks in a bucket, drinking bottled water, and baby wipes.
- No shit?

Tying in with the three day lectures - i was tortured by non-stop powerpoint presentations. at least the projector made the screen large enough for all 60 peeps to be able to read what was being talking about. one overall comment on the presentations and ppt : Do not send someone to give a presentation that cant speak in a mic and do not put a million words on the slides. one of my friends out here sent me this link after we survived the conference: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?no_interstitial

Reviewing Documents

I had an interesting meeting yesterday with my fellow coworkers and supervisors, including my commander. Every month we have to do a review of what transpired the previous month - which shouldnt be that hard because everything that happened in the past is in the past and you just have to report about it. Well, unlucky for me, i wasnt out here last month so i didnt know what to report about. I found a couple of older reports and mirrored mine after them, so i can honestly say i gave it the good old college try. well, i had to turn the report in a couple of days before the actual due date so that my supt could review it before it went up to the commander. No problem with doing this, it makes perfect sense. The guy read it, made some comments, i corrected some things, and sent it back into him. no big deal, right? hmmm...

it wasnt as bad as it could have been. The commander cut me some slack because it was the first time i had done anything remotely close to these reports and i wasnt even here for the reporting period. But there were things that erked me that my supervisor should have told me - like format issues, attachments, whole slides that should have been included, and other misc data that i should have gotten from person x. Im sorry - but what was the point in sending it to the supervisor in the first place if he wasnt going to tell me that i was missing some major things? I could have sent it to one of my coworkers and they would have told me about the right things...but the supervisor specifically wanted me to send it to him. FRUSTRATING. and then the guy had the gall to say did you get that memo? honestly!?!? Are we living in the freaking movie Office Space? and to top it off, i had two reports! (at least i knew i had to do two reports, nevermind the fact that both of them were missing the same things and had the same format issues!)

needless to say, when you submit something to someone for review and they review it, it should be good to go. Dont throw the new guy under the bus in front of the commander...lesson learned: ask coworkers before sending things to the supervisor!

On another note - the internet connectivity is so slow out here that it takes forever to upload pictures. I tried to upload a couple last night, but after 30 minutes i gave up and went to bed...someway I am going to get pictures up...

Meet and Greet

So I had my Commander's Meet and Greet today...lets just say that the way the army does things and the way the air force does things is completely different - and i do realize that i am generalizing the army but i cant help it.

What do you think of when you have a sit down, informal, meet and greet with someone? most people that i know say you sit down and talk about your life, share stories, see what is similar...that type of thing. What did i experience with my new commander? not that. I had a thirty minute meeting with this guy in which i literally said 14 words (i counted, my co-part over here warned me about the meeting!). 14 words! in 30 minutes! the guy went on and on and on about things that are expected. I mean, ok, yes, i get it that as a superior officer you have to lay the foundation of what you expect. you can tell someone that in five minutes. And you should tell them those expectations after you meet and greet the person and know a little about them!

Maybe it is just me, but i work better when i know the people around me. You have to develop an understanding of how people think based on their background - then you will be able to understand why they do the things they do (or at least have better guess as to why they did something). I dont want to work for someone that just sees me as a body in an office, especially out here in the desert. Do i trust this guy? nope, he is my commanding officer and will do what he says, but i dont trust him because i dont have the feeling of commraderie or friendship or even stewardship. from that first meeting, i basically am here to do a job and that's it - he doesnt want to know how i do the job, just get the job done.

Fun times...

Army = AWESOME

I wish computers came with a sarcasm font - because the army is definetely the easiest and most well rounded group of individuals to work with. Let me explain this to you with my experience on the second day of work: an email arrives in my inbox asking me to fill out the attached form regarding something that we just had a meeting about. I dont know who the guy is that sent me the email, nor do i really care. I dont even bother opening the attachment to see if i can even help the guy out. In my mind i think that it is an army dude asking me to do an army thing, and I am not army. Anyways, I vector the email into the right direction. someone in my office tells me that there is a navy chief who should answer the question - so i send it to him. He in turn forwards it to 2 MSgt's and that is when chaos broke loose. Apparently the attachment had the word "secret" written across the top and bottom. However, there was nothing that needed to be classified as secret because the page litterally asked five question: who, what, where, when, and why. Well, because the 2 MSgt's forwarded the email to someone who saw the attachment as "secret" and didnt bother to actually see what so was "secret" about it - they started an investigation. Im telling you the Comm IT guru's and everyone started tracking down people within the email distro because a "secret" document had been passed without useing the "Secret" Internet channels. Computers were confiscated (luckally mine wasnt) and military people were being threatened with Article 15's! For those non-military types, that means some serious paperwork was going to be handed down on people, paperwork that could jeopardize your career. Some time later, the Army peeps got it through their head that nothing had happened and that no "secret" document had been emailed through. By the end of all of this I wanted to actually meet the captain who started all this nonsense... I guess the Army is just a little too jumpy when it comes to having the word "secret" on their letterheads.

I finally made it...

Let me first say this...Government travel is horrible! wow...they need to improve that system. We were told the night before that yes, we would be leaving the next day at 1545. We needed to be ready to go by 1245. This really isnt a big deal cause we finally are getting to go in country and start our six months of fun. Then comes the actual day of travel...The guys show up at 1100 to pick us up. We were like "are you serious? we have two more hours!" I felt sorry for a couple CE Lt's that werent even in their CHU's when the guys came buy to get all our gear. But it was ok...we just rolled with the punches and threw our bags in the back of a truck and headed down to the terminal. Next problem: you have to wear your full battle rattle and have you side arm on you. Um...why didnt anyone tell us this? My group of friends and I had spent all morning carefully packing our battle rattle into the a-bags so that they would fit. To do this we had to take out the plates and roll them up...And not to mention my thigh holster for my weapon was convinently packed at the bottom of my bag! So my friends and I had to dig through all our gear, find our holsters, and put together our battle rattle in 100+ degrees of heat. funfunfun. BTW, this was going on the entire time that the CE troops looked on and laughed at the four CONS troops get ready for a "deployment." Anyways, we make it into the passenger terminal with all our gear and chill out for a little bit. Some guy comes on the overhead annoucing that fligh XX (my flight) will be having their mandatory safety meeting now. Ok, no big deal. roll with the punches. We go to the meeting and here the safety info. then we are told that we have to move our bags onto the pallet area for the flight and are told that after the bags are palletized, we will have roughly 1.5 hrs before the flight. ok, no problem. we go out and see where they want us to move the bags - it is right freaking next to the area that the bus dropped us off at from which we hauled our crap over to the passenger terminal. Do you realize how much crap we have at the point? Ug! so we move it over, and head back inside because the sun is blisteringly hot. As soon as we get inside we hear on the loudspeaker that flight XX is ready for departure. What?!?! we just loaded it and got inside! so we head over to the bus, but are told on the way that we have to have a mandatory water bottle with us. Whatever. We get our bottles and go. by the time we are seated on the airplane and take off it is 1330. What happened to the 1545?
Then we get to the combat landing. I am not a fan of combat landings. First of all we are sitting on cargo nets. those automatically make your butt fall asleep within minutes of takeoff. Then we are all cramped together, no air is circulating, and there are no windows to see where you are going. After a while you feel the plane pitch like it is going to crash into the ground and you stay in that position for a while (go figure! it takes a while to go from 30K to 0!) it takes so long that you kind of get use to it. Then suddenly you level off and slam into the runway. the pilot has to hit the brakes instantly and the entire cabin is filled with the smell of smoking rubber. Great!

Anyways, I finally made it here. It's not as bad as i thought it would be. I have my own CHU with a bathroom. there is internet and phones in each room. I have a car. and for my first real day of work I went to the pool, bbq'd, played volleyball, and hung out with the entire office. I htink i can handle this deployment...

pictures will come up soon...

Military Transit

One would think that the military could send a person from point A to point B in an orderly fashion - especially if you are in the air force. I mean, the commercial world does it all the time and people dont really complain unless the plane is cancelled due to weather, mx, or whatnot. However, such is not the case for the military. I am beginning to think the government likes to waste the tax payers money because they cant seem to get a person to their final destination on time. it really shouldnt be that hard. and if it is, higher an outside consultant from one of the big airlines and reorganize the whole process. Shoot, civilian planes take-off and land every day in the desert!

Random Thought: Socialism and the Military.

Has anyone ever stopped to think about how the deployed environment for military members is nothing more than a socialistic state? For instance: everything is issued to us, we all have to wear the same thing, there is no distinction between selves, everyone gets paid and eats no matter what level of effort you put into your work, and everyone seems to be mindlessly following the next person. there is no motivation to work hard because you end up at the same point as everyone else.

leaving on a jet plane...

Today has finally come. I have known of this day since august, and it is weird to think that it is finally here. This is going to be an adventure...that's for certain!

Lots of people have been asking me what i chose to do with my last couple of days in DR - I can honestly say that i spent them with all the best friends anyone could hope for. Last week my parents and brother came into town for a quick visit. I wasnt sure how four people and two dogs would survive living together in a small duplex, but we managed to survive. I gave all of them the air mattresses while i stayed with my comfy bed. I told them that i was really sorry, but i wanted to sleep comfortably for the last week stateside. They understood, and i think they slept ok. maybe not my brother, but at least he didnt complain. Thanks.

I had a big gathering of friends show up at Wings and Rings last week. We called it "the Last Hurrah!". It was a big success. actually getting the place to agree to host us was a challenge because the restaurant doesnt take reservations and it was a fight night, but i was able to sweet talk the manager into reserving fifty seats for my party. I should i reserved more because some of the late peeps had to wait for a table in a line that wrapped around the building - but it was all good. Afterwards some of us went out to the local bowling establishment and had some fun with the black lights and goofy stunts.

Last night the same group of people went to support our local theater production company as they sang a tribute to Old Blue Eyes. All i can say is TIDR. (if you dont get that, then go watch blood diamond).

whelp, here's to new adventures!