Lost in a Dream

Back in Minnesota...Closing remarks for the blog.

2009-09-13T13:58:00.003-05:00

So I'm back in Minnesota.. feels good to be back.

The blog will be closing.. Hopefully some soul out there will walk away with a greater understanding of what an IRR recall feels like.

To those sitting there bashing me using your anonymous tag.. Comment moderation has been enabled, and I will not allow you to sit here and post and call me a whiner... I will be deleting all inappropriate comments .. My workplace and my mother's workplace follow this.. This is not a troll's heaven to stroll by and try and rip me to shreds behind an anonymous tag. I had not seen a blog like this in my searches a year ago.. Looking for someone who had gone through an IRR recall and what to expect. You can call it whining, but it is really just a documentary of my feelings.. If you don't like it.. Hit the X and move on.

I don't care about the Army anymore. I actually did a lot of good work at Camp Delta.. I was not sitting around milking paychecks like some. I believe I deserved more than an AAM, but in the end, it doesn't matter.. and I've moved on and don't care about that anymore.

Good luck to all of those that I considered friends and such at Camp Delta.. I hope you are safe and well on future deployments.

The end.

And so it ends...

2009-09-12T10:23:00.003-05:00

Just as easily as it begun......it ends.

I stood in line for 9 hours to get my DD-214, just to get down to the Bde S-1 to have them tell me the accounting code on our mobilization orders is not allowing them to book anymore flights using it. Of course it was past Eastern business hours, so they could not get a special amendment to all of our orders to book plane tickets. They told us to come back at 2PM tomorrow (Saturday) and they should be able to book our tickets then. However, there was a catch. No flights leave out of El Paso after 6-7PM. If we weren't on a plane by midnight, we would have to go back down on Monday to get our DD-214 changed....

So, everyone was spazzing out.. I was trying to remain calm and find out what they could do for us. It sounded like best case scenario was fly out Saturday evening on the Army's money.. Worst case... Tuesday night? There is no way I am hanging around until Tuesday night.

I went back to my room, looked up one-way flights to Minneapolis.. Bam, a $91 one through Frontier Airlines... good enough.

We signed out of our rooms, took a taxi to a hotel and stayed the night...ate dinner at Applebee's, six of us.. and shook hands and parted ways.

Once I check my bags into Frontier, this nightmare is completely over and I can probably start sleeping better again.

What a year, and what a day.. one of the worst days of my life yesterday. I can't believe they run people through a whole day of nonsense and then tell them you can't fly home. It was quite ridiculous in my opinion. To make it better, a bunch of guys doing "school" in the Texas National Guard felt that it was necessary for them to cut in line to get their DD-214's first. These guys were just sitting around Ft. Bliss milking paychecks and taking WAY too long to put together their DD-214.

Maybe one more blog post.. Maybe not...I can't wait to see Becky again.

Off to hit the airport shuttle.

Back in El Paso..

2009-09-07T03:59:00.004-05:00

What a long series of flights...but it's finally over...almost.

One thing I must address...To the anonymous poster who claims to be a spouse of someone in the 146th ESB..who was bashing me and has now apologized..You have to understand a few things about myself and my blog. Number one, I am not an idiot and would ever endanger anyone by speaking of or posting information that could get people killed. Number two, you don't need to tell me to get out of the Army..because I am getting out.. for the second time. You don't have to respect what I write, but please respect the fact that I actually did come back to the Army...show up, and not be a total nuisance and/or worthless body to the 146th ESB. Number three, I am not a whiner...If you ever ran a blog, there is always going to be content that could be considered whining. I've seen it in nearly every blog I've read. My only gripe was us being awarded awards that were sub-par for a lot of our performances for the 9 months.

And take a deep breath.....................

With that out of my system.. We are now here in El Paso.. We arrived here on Saturday afternoon and were in our rooms by 3PM.. Typical 2-man to a room, rooms. Funny, because the whole barracks is empty.. and we are sharing rooms. Whatever. A group of us reserved hotels at the Hyatt in El Paso for $82/night just to get away until Monday morning. We went out to the eat the first night, and went to the mall today.. We were planning other things, but everyone's jetlag began to kick in I think.

It looks like my initial prediction of being on a plane back to Minnesota on Saturday, September 12th is fairly accurate. I think we may even escape out on Friday..but we'll see. It will be a few busy days.. but only 3-4 more of them. It's hard to believe that it's already Monday morning. I am almost down to double digit hours left in the Army.

Another notable mention.. I have now booked our stay to the Riviera Maya, Mexico for September 29th to October 8th. I figured at this point there is no real chance of me staying anytime beyond the 20th..Absolute worst case scenario.. so I figured I am safe to book at this point. I did it on CheapCarribean.com ... Very nice site and great prices. The prices dropped about $150/person the past 2 weeks.. I even chopped off $50 with a coupon code. We booked at a really high end place.. costed a decent bit of money, but we are also staying there 9 nights, and I was buying 2 packages. We will be staying at the Iberostar Grand Hotel Paraiso .. this was one of the top picks on TripAdvisor .. I couldn't find hardly any negative reviews of the hundreds, so I figured this may be the best all-inclusive, adults-only resort to book at.

Becky is happy and is anxious for me to get back home. It will be nice to have 2 solid weeks off before going to Mexico. Right upon leaving for Mexico.. I believe my terminal leave (pay) will end from the Army.. so while in Mexico I will not be earning any pay. I suppose a week or so after returning, I will probably be heading back to Ecolab so my savings doesn't start to sink from me being lazy.

I forgot how stupid Texas is.. Liquor stores closed on Sundays..They are so far and few here in El Paso. I think it's impossible to get a liquor license. There are literally less than a dozen liquor stores in El Paso from what I could see on Google Maps.

It is nice to be back and shower in a normal shower/water..have ice cold A/C all the time, not have the power go out.. I sat next to the Major in the Ohio National Guard on my flight from Dallas to El Paso. He was going through Fort Bliss to prepare for a "mobilization" to the DC area.. Not really considered a deployment to me..but whatever.. Not a big deal. He was armored and now air defense artillery. I had to run the thought by him about the AAM's we had received. I totally did not know that the MSM can only be awarded in garrison..not in Iraq/Afghanistan. However, he stated that everyone should be receiving ARCOM's as long as they did not screw up and did a decent job. He said there is a lot of politics and people do get screwed over and rushed or forgotten about. I just had to laugh, because I knew I was right about the ARCOM being the standard award.

I signed up for a $24/week internet at the barracks in Fort Bliss.. big rip off, but it's all we got. The WiFi signal is also really weak..but it will suffice I guess. I will post an update later on this week and be wrapping up this blog within the next 5-7 days.

Last day in Iraq...

2009-09-03T03:20:00.003-05:00

This is it.. Well, kind of. We are going to fly to Kuwait sometime today...There are R&R flights that fly out of Kuwait everyday.. two, actually..one going to Dallas and one going to Atlanta..This is common knowledge in theater. Supposedly, assuming we get to Kuwait today..We are "booked" on the September 5th flight back to Germany then to Dallas..continuing onward I would imagine to El Paso and staying over Labor Day weekend in Fort Bliss until we can begin outprocessing starting on Tuesday. I am putting my "I'm flying home back to Minneapolis" prediction on Saturday, September 12th.. If that doesn't go, I would say Monday, September 14th or Tuesday, September 15th.

That's the nitty gritty of what most people can be told.. I just don't care about the award issues anymore. We make jokes about it here.. One guy leaves his green award protector in the middle of the floor so everyone can step on it.

The new unit is here..67th ESB. 146th ESB had to be out of their housing by the night of the 31st. I don't have much more to say about that.

People may ask why I bash the Army, or why I bash the unit...Well, I bash it because I can..Not because it is considered a low blow. The US Army serves its purpose, to supposedly defend the United States..this is true..although we are fighting abroad a lot.. We are preventing the fighting from coming to us. This is true. The Army's job is not to make everyone happy or feel rewarded or even be satisfied with the way their career is going. The Army's job is to win any conflict or war thrown at them.. That is it. The Army is getting a bit soft now.. With all their caring about educational benefits, blah blah.. People enrolling in school while in Iraq..blah, blah.. They are just trying to appeal to different crowds and lure them in. It could almost be considered false advertising.

So I can rightfully be angry at the Army.. does this mean I hate my country? No. Does this mean I am a bad representative of this nation? No. I just did my job for a year, ignored the politics as bad as I could and am getting out...again.

I am just trying to keep a positive attitude for the next 10-12 days and get out of the Army.. lots of flight time ahead.. so I got the PSP charged up and ready for the big flight across the ocean. It will be a chaotic 2 weeks.. we've had it pretty relaxing and downright boring here in Camp Victory.

I may not be on the Internet much in the next 48-72 hours.. so I will post when I make it on the internet at Fort Bliss...

A kick on the butt on our way out the door...146th ESB should be ashamed of themselves.

2009-08-28T17:37:00.001-05:00

I know the anonymous people who are reading this hope for good news... I hope for good news too. This post will go to show my thoughts and facts behind how the Army awards people and what we received today...and what has happened to me in my time in the Army.

We were told to show up at 6PM to have our awards presented to us.. Surprisingly -- Going into it, we had no idea which award we would get.. But we figured it would be an ARCOM -- The Army Commendation Medal.. This is pretty much the cookie cutter medal for any PFC - SGT who did his job over here in Iraq and didn't get into any trouble. Ones who really went above and beyond should be looked at for MSM's -- Meritorious Service Medal. This a lot higher award and really will get denied for any ranking PFC-SPC unless they did some real great things. There is one above it called the BSM -- Bronze Star Medal. This is one that a lot of people in the ranks of SFC, 1SG, CSM, 1LT, CPT strive to mold their award bullets to get themselves this award approved.

These has always been a fairly cookie cutter system on how the Army recommends people for awards. It is based on rank and rank alone. I can live with that...Kind of. Now I did not mention the lowest award one can receive, the AAM -- Army Achievement Medal. This is what a person receives sometimes as a result of doing a good job at a field exercise and sometimes for a 1-year tour in Korea for a PFC-SGT. The guys who did 2-3 years at any given unit in Korea, Germany, and the US will generally receive the ARCOM, not the AAM. This is NOT the award you should be giving out for 9 months of service in Iraq.

So what the heck happened? We went down there at 6PM.. Hopes up to get this over with painlessly. We got down there and everyone was wandering around.. Clearly there was going to be a company formation.. So they start lining us up in the order they want to present us the awards with. The company forms, we are called up on stage.. and they start reading the orders. We are going to be receiving the AAM -- Army Achievement Medal.. all 10 of us except 2. They were submitted for the ARCOM and received it. It was almost embarrassing -- No, it wasn't almost embarrassing...It was a complete embarrassment as if we were all screw-ups. This is where my rant mode will turn on.

So I could understand if certain IRR individuals received this award because they refused to do decent work, or they got in trouble fraternizing with married women or something... But no, they gave this piece of crap award to all of us. This is a complete slap in the face. They will make sure their own, the guys in the Florida National Guard, receive their ARCOM's at a minimum. Many of the SGT-SSG may possibly receive MSM's, and I know anyone SFC and up was probably submitted for a Bronze Star. I know for a fact one of them has already received their Bronze Star. We tried so hard, a lot of us put in some really long hours and some of the guys some time at some out-sites that would make people reading this barf. One of them had an infestation of BATS in their living quarters... There was some marks of human feces smeared on the wall from the formers that had lived there, Iraqiis.. And bat crap in the hallways everyday. They ate MRE's every once and awhile when hot food wasn't available. This guy worked 16-18 hour days a good chunk of the deployment was what was he given? An award a total shitbag would receive.. the AAM.

Now I didn't go an out-site like this, but had I.. I would've probably do what he wanted to do.. Throw the entire award, medal and case, in the dumpster in front of everyone's faces who was in the formation. It is a disgrace to someone like him. Me? I worked my tail off, just on my own good will. I figured they would give me the standard award of an ARCOM. It didn't really bother me either way.. I just didn't think the unthinkable would happen... given the AAM. Our bullets looked pretty good and we had 4 of them.. This is a cookie cutter ARCOM.

I threw the medal away.. I kept the orders because I know they'll ask for them.. but I had to give myself some type of relief to my mind that this was a complete embarrassment.. That they are saving the good awards for their own and giving the IRR the garbage. Many of us worked a lot harder than lots of these others that were sleeping on shift, complaining about work 24/7, and they will receive the ARCOM.

My one and only unit in Korea tried to process me for an ARCOM as I was leaving the Army.. It got downgraded to an AAM and had the ball dropped on it.. I left the Army with NO award. The 146th ESB has basically done the same thing. Anyone in my chain of command should be ashamed of themselves for presenting this award to a few of the hardest working E-4's and E-5's I saw. I'm positive one of them may read it, and they won't comment..because something in this blog post is true.. They know we were screwed, but someone was too afraid to submit people in for what they deserve in IRAQ..not Korea, IRAQ.

And to top it off.. they tried to give us our "final assignment" .. HAHA, get up at 4AM to participate in an inspection of their shipment containers for Customs... i.e. be the bodies to drag out all the heavy crap out of these shipment containers. They claim they are "short on personnel" .. Last time I checked we are just waiting for our flight.

I hope these people have great careers and continue to burn bridges by doing gestures like this. Handing someone like me a bullshit award like this after 9 monthes in Iraq...it's a slap in the face and many others felt offended today. I hope I never run into any of you in my chain of command in this seemingly small world, anyone that I feel did me wrong. I don't EXPECT *GOOD* awards, I just expected an award that would possibly leave me with a smile on my face knowing I made a difference in this war/conflict. Apparently I did not. They always say what goes around may come around in the grand scheme of life.

I can't wait to leave.. Crappy award or not. We have a few days left at Camp Victory before moving onto Kuwait.

We didn't go out on patrols and do convoys, so some people may see this blog post as a big whining festival and that we were completely safe the whole deployment.. That may be true, but it wasn't our job to do patrols.. I deal with computers. I did not sign up to kick in doors. Just because we don't kick in doors doesn't mean we didn't deserve a decent award.

To those who are concerned by the hostility in this blog post -- It is nothing to worry about. It is a BLOG, not a fairly tale about someone's perfect deployment or life. I now remember why I left the Army and will never, ever reenlist.

Rant mode off.

Leaving Iraq soon...Finally.

2009-08-24T14:02:00.003-05:00

So we got the word, and about 10 days later left Camp Delta.... Why didn't I post? Well, I got lazy for one.. Two, people are really getting stupid about the boundaries of what is considered an OPSEC violation and what is not..but whatever. Generalizations about movement are fine -- just not exact flight times -- which we don't know anyways until we're standing with our vest on, bags in hand, and out in the sun waiting to board the plane or helicopter.

The first group of us IRR that came with the unit left Camp Delta early, and we have been at Camp Victory for about two days now. I ended up sending 2 footlockers home, along with the box my 19" monitor/TV came in, and a box for my Dell Optiplex GX270. I left behind my Dell Optiplex GX200 running the Internet as the router in PfSense. It seemed to be doing fine, good enough at least to last them a week or so. The next unit probably wouldn't use the idea of proxy'ing anyways. It depends how hardcore of a nerd they have coming I guess. Nonetheless, it is no longer my problem. I left behind a few pages of written documentation, a CD with Pfsense on it, and a CD with iSite, the software used to aim the satellite dish.

We took a helicopter from Camp Delta to Camp Victory.. it was a mess of bags. We each had 2 duffle bags, a huge rucksack, and a personal bag. It was probably about 120F with us standing out there a solid 30-40 minutes waiting for our helicopter to show up. Once we got in -- once again I got the seat known as the "hellhole" .. The one where the wind comes in through the open windows in the helicopter and blows in your face... Now this isn't like "Oh driving in a convertible" type wind cooling you down.. This is like "Wow my glasses just flew off my face" type wind.. so hot you can hardly breathe too. We flew over areas that were clearly sandy desert. Of course it wasn't a direct flight either.. We had 2 stops, both needed to refuel, so we had to get out of helicopter and stand on the sidelines baking until they finished refueling.

Once we got there, there was a sigh of relief. Step one was now complete.. We got a ride to the transient tents at Victory, ate, took some showers and conked out.. Today was another nothing day. I think our other IRR guys are trying to all get here from various places.. I think it was supposed to happen today, but I haven't heard from them. Oh well, the internet is cheap here and fast.. I think we have a scheduled flight to leave here in the first couple days of September to Kuwait...so rushing us around at this point will do them little good. All we have to do here is get our proper paperwork to leave theater, get our awards, turn in weapons, ammunition, our optic scope thing we never used, and that is probably honestly it. Some dumb formalities may attempt to happen, but I doubt they will be doing much in the middle of August outside.

Expected dates to arrive home in Minnesota? I am guessing I should be in Texas by Labor Day.. and possibly out of the Army in the next 7-10 days after arriving there, at absolute most. Becky and I are planning a vacation for September 29th to October 8th.. but I will not purchase those tickets until I have a very solid understanding that I will be leaving Fort Bliss with my discharge in hand on time with a flight back to Minneapolis.

It was an interesting experience, I would never come back here as an enlistee of the US Army though. My dad and I have spoken of a possible continuation of a career as an officer in the Air National Guard...but that is just heresy at this point. I am not honestly sold on it at all yet. It's just a thought that may fade away and go poof in the next year or two.

I got a dumb cheap backpack that has some tacky embroidery and says Camp Delta Al Kut on it.. overpriced, but I thought it was kind of a nifty token to get. I will be bringing Becky back the perfect gift.. I found a tacky stuffed fluffy camel here with a boonie hat. He looks really funny -- it's the stuffed animal that no kid ever owned.. a camel.

I'm excited but I'm not quite done yet.. The chips will really be cashed out once I board that plane in Kuwait to head back to the US. I imagine demobilization will consist of a minimal amount of BS for people like us. People are not patient at all when they demobilize and are getting out of the Army. I heard from another IRR guy who got lucky and got out back in March.. that it took them like 3 days from arriving there to have plane tickets in hand for the next day.. That would be optimal. People are saying 3-5 days.. I assume the worst and expect 7-10. I don't plan to bring any undocumented medical issues to the table, so it should be swift.

MMORPG's? I spoke of them in my previous post.. And I can see the guy across the way in my tent playing a druid in World of Warcraft. I think I may go back to either World of Warcraft or EverQuest... Not immediately, but I definitely will be doing something other than twiddling my thumbs while Becky is at work during my week or two off before our vacation. I won't dive bomb right into them the minute I get back, as I would like to spend maximum time with Becky in the first week or so. I just miss gaming, I know it could be considered pathetic..but it's becoming a VERY common thing for people to play games on a regular basis.. even World of Warcraft is becoming a familiar name that most people do now know.

I think I have achieved my savings goals..very close at least. I managed to pay off my credit card, get the extended warranty for the GTO, buy myself some toys, and still walk away with a good chunk of money to be applied towards a new house. I am going to investigate this 0% down payment VA mortgage once I get back.. I've read about it for hours and hours here.. but I have to start seeing how much mortgage they will give me so I can start looking for a house to buy.. I would rather pay no down payment and have money available for unexpected costs in the beginning than be charging it off on a credit card.

With that said, I should have some updates in the days to come.. Not much happening here.. Good things ahead though.

The dreaded month of August.. another PT test? Itch to head back to MMORPG's..

2009-08-06T16:50:00.002-05:00

I knew it was going to feel like this.. this month is going to drag like none of the others. I'm sure it won't be as bad as I dread..but it will be the last entire month I spend here.

Work is going well.. Everything is kind of on cruise control now from my point of view.. We are just continuing to do what we've done the months prior. We are pretty well staffed at the moment, so shifts are not that tough.

The unit wants everyone to take a "diagnostic PT test" by Saturday.. this is kind of ridiculous to an IRR (recalled) person who won't even be in the Army anymore in 60-80 days time. We took our "record PT test" in May, and that was supposed to be all they wanted out of us. I imagine I could probably slip by with the minimum score in pushups/situps, but I am really not stressing out about it.. We have just a little over a whopping month left here... I really don't see them putting IRR guys on a PT program to improve our fitness.. what the hell for? A little common sense will tell me it's not going to happen. If it does, they will have burned their bridges with me if I end up over an the gym doing PT 2 hours a day my last 30-40 days in Iraq. Total bridge burner, and I hope they never come across me ever again in this small world. So we'll see..........

Our last internet payment has been made.. I actually found out our local Iraqi that we go through for internet.. Could accept wire transfers the whole time.. but he never told us. I just ran the question by him one day out of curiosity... and he gave me all the right information to do it. Sure it costs $30 to do it, but the terrible USD -> Iraqi Dinar conversion really makes the wire transfer look easier and better. We have to pay him in Dinar now, because he only likes $50/$100 USD bills, which we would have to get from Finance here.. but they won't give us those dollar bills due to them trying to keep the USD off the local economy. This is why we used the Dinar for 2 months. However, I was able to successfully make the wire transfer this month. Much easier.......We peaked out at currently 34 people on our Internet connection.. so we were able to drop the bill per person to $65 instead of $100 or $80 like previous months. It's really amazing having 34 people on a 25KB/s down and 3-6KB/s up connection.. it's not HORRIBLE, but it is definitely now struggling. If this were months ago, I would've increased our service to the next tier to help compensate for all these new people on our internet.. but it's too late now.

Everything is kind of winding down here.. In about 2 weeks, I'm going to pack up my desktop computer in the footlocker, put a lot of my extra personal clothing in there and send it home. I still have a lot of extra snacks that I will have to bring down to work.

I haven't played any of my MMORPGs in over a year.. World of Warcraft the most notable. I have also played Lineage 2, Ultima Online, and EverQuest. I won't do into too much detail here.. but, I've been getting an itch to head back to one of them once I get settled in back in Minnesota. Immediately I would throw out Ultima Online.. it's a horrible game now and nobody plays anymore. Lineage 2 -- I would definitely never return to the retail servers.. the grind to level there is ridiculous. I was playing at a private server called L2Godz for a few months.. very small community and relatively fun. The bout in my mind is between World of Warcraft and EverQuest. A lot of people think EverQuest is dead, but it is not. I played it quite heavily for just over a year right at its release over 10 years ago now. I've come back to it on several occasions briefly for a month or two, but I get blown out of the water at how far behind I am and end up quitting. World of Warcraft -- I still have lots of friends mingling around in there. It would be the most easy game to return to and definitely the most popular. These games have been knock to suck the life out of people, their careers and relationships.. but, over the past 8-10 years playing these games off and on, I have learned to control myself. EverQuest has a nostalgic value to me.. it's a really really big game now.

We'll see.. More to come in a week or two.

Annnnnnnnnnnddddd I'm back.........

2009-07-22T17:57:00.003-05:00

Doing what I do best... Fixing computers.

Things feel different now.. July is slowly fading away.. My birthday is at the end of the month. I'm looking forward to making our final internet payment.. Now I know how being a bill collector sucks. We were almost bill collectors in the beginning.. Letting people have service to the Internet and having overdue payments. Now, we cut their service off at the port the morning that the payment is due. I guess I learned that it's best to let the people come to you.. it's just easier that way. I don't need to be banging on people's doors asking for $20 or $100.. It's just annoying, and nobody ever has the money ready for you.

In the past, we have paid a guy that can't actually come onto the FOB (Base)... He's a local national, an Iraqii. I've corresponded with this guy probably 50-60 times over e-mail, but I've never met him. One of our maintenance guys has always taken our money out to the ECP (Entrance Control Point) .. The maze of huge walls that a vehicle has to drive through to get onto the base... To deliver our $1900/month internet payment. I figured I would ask him if he's with the times and can accept a wire transfer. I know international wire transfers cost $40 .. But even with the crappy exchange rate from USD to Dinar.. it is still just as good and MUCH easier. Our finance office converted $1900 from USD to Dinar.. and I know for a fact that our other satellite dish pays through wire transfer.. So I'm assuming I can walk into there with $1900 cash and tell them to deposit it into my direct deposit account I have setup for my Army pay.

Either that or I walk out of this country with $1900 cash in my pocket and pay for the internet bill using my savings account. That would be the ridiculous way, but I could do it.

Life at work is OK.. There were talks of a diagnostic PT test.. but they seem to be fading as quickly as they come. Now it seems they just want to get record PT tests for those who haven't passed one yet. If they gave me one.. I really couldn't care less if I passed or failed 2 months before I'm out of the Army again... I remember my active duty unit wouldn't have dreamed of administering an APFT 2 months before I got out of the Army. People know it's just the last thing on your mind as you're getting out.. The focus is about getting your job back, taking a small vacation, and going back to work.

My mind is pretty much focused right now on creating some training materials for the whole imaging process and server-related tasks I perform here... Backups, cleaning out old stale computer accounts in Active Directory, managing the file server and print server... It seems my high hopes of leaving this country by early September because of my IRR status is quickly eroding too.. It is looking like mid-September right now.

The feeling is getting better that I'm leaving soon.. but it's still not quite here. I think in about 3 weeks I will start to feel better.. after gathering this Internet money, paying him off, and being done with this thorn in the side.. I've never spent so many god damn hours worrying about our crap internet in my life. It will be great to go back to Comcast for $50/month.. and some people complain about $50/month internet in the US.. These guys here throw $100/month at you in desperation .. It is really amazing. I thought a $1900/month internet bill was ridiculous, but it actually has not been that bad. We have our most users we've had the past 5 months right now.. and can lower the cost to $65 for the month... so that's good.

Becky is doing OK.. I know she wants it all to end.. I do too.. but the only way to make it all end is to just keep going to work, calling each other, and going to bed.. 60 more times or so.

It has been a long run.. I can hardly remember our first weeks/months here.. when the guys from El Salvador were still around here.. when it actually got down to the 40's at night. I hardly remember my old room at our old living area. I'm glad I've gotten pictures of every bed I've slept in.. I will try and remember this stuff years from now.. even though I won't want to.. but I'll at least have some pictures.

That is all for now.......

In Kuwait again..

2009-07-06T19:01:00.003-05:00

So I've made it back to Kuwait.. Not a whole heck of a lot to say.. I'm not real glad to be back, but I guess acceptance has kicked in. Becky was sad to see me go.. I was pretty sad too.. But something inside of me keeps telling me that it is almost over.. the longest haul of not seeing each other is now behind us...and my next flight back to the US will be my last official flight for the Army in my life short of returning to Eagan after demobilizing.

Feelings are real mixed... everything seems to be moving slow here.. I guess it's because I'm not back to work yet.. Maybe getting back to my room at Delta and going to work daily will make things move a little faster.

Air traffic is backed up big time here in Kuwait.. I've only been here 24 hours, but there are lots of people who have been waiting to go back to Camp Victory for 4-5 days... So I bought a one-week internet card.. being pessimistic like I usually am. The reason it is backed up are big sandstorms in the Baghdad area. They have been sneaking in flights here and there.. but no constant stream like they usually do I think.

Tough to sleep good in Kuwait.. too many people going and coming all night and day and making noise in the tent. I slept most the afternoon and some of the late evening, but I woke up at 1AM to all sorts of people making noise and leaving all of a sudden in the tent.

The internet is terrible in Kuwait.. This provider is horrible. Camp Victory's ISP definitely has a lot better grasp on what real internet is.. Ours in our room is a lot better than this too.

I guess the next hoop to wait to jump through will be my birthday on July 30th. After that, I guess we are just waiting on the new unit to arrive.

That is all for now.. my brain hurts.

Vacation winding down..

2009-07-01T14:10:00.002-05:00

I figured it would go too fast.. They always do.. Especially when they
involve getting back onto a series of planes to go back to the Army.
This will be the last time I ever have to do this.

I haven't really done anything significant other than mess around with
my computers here at home. I have played some of my Wii games and
enjoyed my new "networked media tank" .. "The movie player" I call it.
I have had to overhaul a big chunk of my home network. I relied on my
old server machine too much while I was gone. I needed to fix that
while I was home.. I pushed the reliance from the old server to my IBM
xSeries 235 that has VMware ESX on it with 6GB of RAM. Without knowing
too much about it, it basically allows me to run lots of computers
inside of one physical case. This is what I needed.

I also figured out how to dedicate one of the Gbit ports on the NIC to
SAN traffic only from the NAS to the ESX server. I have both power
supplies plugged in.. it's loud, but it's not terrible. I have all of
my main equipment plugged into my glorified APC power strip I bought
that has network functionality.. which means I can reboot any of this
equipment remotely if it "hard locks" .. which has been a problem..
Becky is not home, I was working on something and I screw it up and have
to wait for her to get home.. and of course she wouldn't want to deal
with it after a long day.

My new Asus EeePC looks pretty promising. The keys are pretty small but
they are WAY more manageable than my Nokia N800. I gave my IBM Thinkpad
to my dad to see if he can figure out the problem.. I just can't trust
that thing once I have to ship my desktop PC away in a foot locker.

I have taken half of my saved money throughout the past 10 months and
just made the huge payment that made myself completely debt free. This
is a step I was going to make a few months prior to beginning to look
for a house when I get back. I figured paying it off 4-5 months in
advance will possibly give my credit score a small boost.

All in all, I can't believe that I will probably go back and have less
than 2 months remaining in Iraq. The big countdown at the top is the
400 day marker from my initial recall on September 7th. That 400 day
marker is when the Army is supposed to have me "Released from Active
Duty" .. REFRAD. I am personally hoping that I will be out of the
Middle East by the beginning of September. We are just waiting on news
that the new unit is arriving in Kuwait. I am honestly not sure what
stage of mobilizing they are on, as I believe they are an active duty
unit.. But I imagine the ball has probably almost begun to roll.

I miss my old life.. Being back, the GTO, the computers, my fish.. I
will miss them, but I know it won't be as long as an absence as the long
haul we just went through.

I will probably stop by Ecolab tomorrow to say hi to the people who
couldn't make it to the party on Sunday.

Back in Minnesota..

2009-06-24T10:39:00.004-05:00

So I'm back.. I can hardly remember all the flights, waits, lines.. I didn't actually sleep in a real bed for over 48 hours. I got rushed through Ali Al Saleem.. Kuwait. We got there at 1AM, got released until 3AM.. Had to be back by 6AM.. I got a flight that day.. At 11PM at night.. but the Army needed us ready to go by 11AM. We were running around for 12 hours straight of hurry up and wait.

Once I actually got on the plane to Germany.. I started to feel better. The layover in Germany was very short. Once I got to the US, the problems started again.. I was booked through United.. who has a very limited presence in Atlanta.. I needed connection flights to Chicago then onto Minneapolis. I waited 2 1/2 hours at one gate on a standby list that I didn't make.. I actually got on my flight and it took off on time. My layover in Chicago was very short.. 45 minutes at most.. however, the previous flight to Minneapolis was canceled completely because of plane issues. There were 60+ people on the standby list for the flight I actually had a boarding pass for.. Lucky me there I guess.

Reuniting with Becky has been very enjoyable. I miss my old life. I realize now this Army stuff is definitely not for me.. It never really was. I am not super stressed out that I will have to head back.. I know that the worst long-haul of the deployment is over.. so I am OK. I am not honestly sure how and if our wave of IRR will be treated any differently, as we may have different "Oh shit" dates of getting released from active duty. I have no problem with training the incoming unit, but if it means me "volunteering" to stay 3 extra weeks beyond the large part of the unit going back....Bahh, I don't know. I will deal with it when it comes.

I'm spent a good deal of time with Becky the first week.. When she's had work, I have been working on my VMWare ESX server... I had purchased a used IBM xSeries 235 off EBay about 18 months ago for about $150 shipped to my door with 2GB of RAM in it and no HDDs. I bought 2 - 34GB Ultra160 SCSI HDDs with the HDD caddies off EBay for $80 together... This was a year ago. I decided to buy an identical second Xeon processor and had to get a VRM too. Then about 3 months ago, I decided to buy 2 sticks of 2GB RAM to bring my total to 6GB.

Keeping all of this in mind, I had purchased the Thecus 7-bay NAS and filled it with 1TB HDDs...I used 99% of the space for an iSCSI target and saved like 60GB for an NFS share.. I knew it would come in handy.

I put both the 34GB HDDs into a Raid-1 for redundancy.. But I knew my limitation then would be that I couldn't install many VMs into 34GBs. However, ESX can install OS's onto NFS shares.. I thought that was pretty cool. I just mounted the NFS share of 60GB into ESX.. and it uses it as literal "hard drive space" .. over the network. I also saw a problem coming up that I didn't plan for.. the server had a burned out onboard Gbit network port. There was a 10/100 NIC card inside of it.. but that was not going to do. The "serious" part of my LAN is going Gigabit.. I only have a 5-port switch so far.. but that is enough. I found a dual Intel PRO/1000 PCI-X server NIC for $30 on EBay that I could pick up locally.. I snagged it because they are compatible chipsets in ESX.. how cool is that, now I hooked up all 3 NIC ports.. 2GBit and 1 10/100.. They are set to load balance using the 2 GBits first and then the 10/100 as a failover.

More to come..

Chaplain Briefing.. Thoughts on VBC.. Waiting to leave for Kuwait

2009-06-15T03:59:00.002-05:00

It's been a pretty boring past few days.. A good boring though, kind of. I would much rather in the US, but at the same time.. These are days I will never have to spend at Camp Delta.

The first two days were pretty nice.. Both our A/C units in our tent were doing well.. the Internet was decent enough.. and then guess what, our A/C unit near the door starts just blowing warm air.. Great. So I walk over to the KBR Billeting Office and ask if I can put a work order in.. I put the problem, tent #, my name, etc on a work order.. Great. Not so great, that was about 48 hours ago and still a broken A/C. Do they not work weekends? 1 A/C unit is not enough to keep the temperature down during the peak hot hours of the day. It suffices, but I end up real sweaty by the time the sun goes down. I saw some random guy in normal clothes bolt into our tent this morning with a flashlight at 8:30AM and look around.. then he left.

Whatever, I am definitely seeing why this "war" here in Iraq needs to end. Too much war profiteering going on by companies doing contracting for the US government at ridiculous rates. I bet that guy who bolted in, felt the temperature of the air and left, marking it off as fixed or something.. He probably thought the temperature was acceptable at 8:30 AM!!!

This place appears to be a breeding grounds for captains, majors, and light colonels....That is all I am seeing around here. That and civilian contractors. There are very few enlisted around here. I am sure they are here, but I have heard through the grapevine that people struggle to justify jobs on Camp Victory (VBC).. They find something to do, and that is all the justification needed. Internet in everyone's rooms probably doesn't help the madness.. I bet lots of these guys never leave their rooms.

I love this place, and I hate it at the same time.. It is relaxing to have zero responsibilities, but it is annoying to see people driving around doing a whole lot of nothing. I just need to get out of the Army and continue the life I was becoming happy with.

In any case.. My chaplain briefing was on the 13th.. It is done. Tonight I have to turn in my weapon and ammo, sign out of the battalion, have my bags packed, and take them down to Baghdad International Airport to get my boarding pass and time of flight. They make you take your bags with on the remote chance that you get a red-eye flight to Camp LSA (Kuwait). Apparently a whopping "few" people have got it in the battalion. I would rather have an early afternoon flight tomorrow myself.. rather than scurrying around in the middle of the night.

I heard our liaison in Camp LSA (Kuwait) is our infamous IRR leader that dragged us through the mud all the way to New Mexico.. SGT (SSG now?) Powell. It will be glad to see a familiar face there.. I think they put him there, because another one was half-assing it and people weren't using the liaison like we're supposed to... Hard to use them if they're not available daily.

It should be a passenger/cargo plane to Kuwait.. no helicopters...

Hot in my tent... Oh, and you definitely have to go sparingly on changing clothes.. There is no washers/dryers for the people just rolling through Victory.. for 5 days.. I think Camp LSA has washers/dryers.. I brought packets of powdered laundry detergent with. Doing my own laundry for the first time in 7 or 8 months............

Ate lunch.. Purchased Asus Eee PC 901 from NewEgg

2009-06-12T05:59:00.004-05:00

So I bit the bullet and bought it .. However, the one factor that made me pull the trigger is that I had almost forgot that Roger, Sandra, Jenelle, and Rory .. my uncle, aunt, and 2 cousins had bought me a gift certificate for NewEgg for Christmas. I was going to save it for a new computer, but this seems to be taking precedence over it at the moment. I will probably just leave my Thinkpad behind and take the new computer back to Iraq.

The tent is getting a little warm but the A/C is barely keeping up.. Tent still empty.

Heading on vacation.. The journey

2009-06-12T03:21:00.003-05:00

I've finally begun my first steps back to Minnesota... I left Camp Delta on the morning of the 11th via helicopter. It was an intriguing experience riding in this Blackhawk helicopter. We stopped way too many times.. 6 or 7 total. We refueled two times and had to get out and stand in the open sun while they refueled. The hot air was just blowing in your face like you are standing next to a hot furnace. It was better when I got to sit in the front area by the two crew chiefs with their machine guns.

Nonetheless, I finally made it to the fabled Camp Victory.. Actually I landed in "BIAP" .. which is Baghdad International Airport.. and waited there for a ride back with our unit.. who made me fill out some final paperwork and then dropped me off at the transient tent billeting office. I dragged my bags to my tent.. I coincidentally met up with my old night shift supervisor who was just coming back from leave. They really have the internet situation under wraps here at Camp Victory.. two separate companies are farming money off this satellite internet situation here. It costs about $100/month for it.. or $10/day or $25/week to get Internet. Since I will be here 4 days and was told my itinerary is basically doing nothing.. I figured I would buy the week.

The internet is actually pretty damn good. As of 11am in the morning, I still have the tent to myself.. 2 air conditioners in here. We had the tent to ourselves last night, but all the guys came barrelling in around 10pm-midnight and promptly left around 6am. I expect that to probably happen again tonight. It is surprisingly quiet around the tent city.. I like it.

I'm supposed to leave here on the late evening of the 15th I think.. Although I may not physically leave until the morning of the 16th.. Not sure how that works.. but.. All in all, it will be a long week, but I should be home in about 6 days.

On other news.. Bad news.. I did not write on my blog about my "vertical line down the center of my Thinkpad" .. It started out as one, then a few days ago .. one was added. In the past 24 hours, two more have appeared. The machine feels like it's running a little hotter than in its past. The machine itself is over 4 years old now.. How much use have I actually got out it? I would say I used it for about 6 months in Korea..Random times here and there as I would fly around in my last year in the Army.. I paid about $1000 for it.. It has definitely paid its purpose. But I think it's headed for display issues.. Knock on wood.. I think I'm going to expect the worse. My Nokia N800's power adapter is only 110V input.. So I would have to go finding a 220V-capable power adapter even if I had hopes of using that. That unit had its perks until I really started desiring my quick clickity click I like to do on a normal computer or laptop. So I'm back to the drawing board as I sit here.. Looking at the Asus Eee PC 901 XP.. It's $279. I hate to do it, but I will probably end up pulling the trigger. I am not going to be left with a broken computer after paying $100 for our internet payment in August and have already shipped my desktop computer back.

Downsides of this Asus Eee PC? 12GB SSD .. Could be bigger.. but I imagine I could simply upgrade it later if I wanted to or cared. No DVD/CD-ROM obviously.. I would have to buy an external. So how the hell do you reload the OS out of the box? I guess you don't..? No gaming could ever be done on it.. well nothing requiring any kick.

High sides? It's cheap as a used "normal laptop" .. It's small and lightweight. I actually am not a fan of these huge screens laptops have now. I like the cheap netbook concept. It's got 3 USB ports, so there is room for expansion.

I'll probably buy it.. I'm a tech junkie that has a fear of being in the position some of these guys in my unit have found themselves.. With broken computers and no hope of getting one that works. I was going to buy one of these.. but I figured I would see how long the Thinkpad would go.. It's almost on the home stretch, but it's scaring me right now.

That is all.. I will have to go find the MWR here that has reasonable phones, so I can call Becky if anyone else comes in the tent.

Once again.. Lost in a dream

2009-06-04T10:41:00.000-05:00

I am not sure why bad things always happen to me.. but they just seem to find me. My impromptu date I was supposed to be heading out of Camp Delta towards Camp Victory for my leave was June 6th to the best of my knowledge.. Either a mistake was made, or I will not be leaving until the 11th. That is awfully strange considering I think I was supposed to be on a plane leaving Kuwait towards the USA on June 10th... Which is when my leave is supposed to start. Whatever. I will really be angry at the Army for missing Becky's birthday if it boils down to that. I really am starting to remember all the reasons and more why I did not choose the Army as my career. I brought this to the attention of the guys who keep track of leaves and schedule our flights, so hopefully there was just a small mistake made that can easily be corrected.

Agghhh, you just can't win with the Army. I have told Becky that we will just work with whatever is thrown at us. It will all be over soon enough here. June is my month of leave.. July is going to be the month of preparation for the new unit.. August.. the new unit should be arriving.. early September or late August.. we are hopefully out the door by the seat of our pants.

I begun making initial brainstorm preparations for my vacation after this is all over. The destination? Beach .. 10 days ... Lots of possible locations in Mexico .. Bahamas, Aruba, Costa Rica, or Rio de Janiero.. There will be more to come on this topic as time goes by. I am really leaning towards Costa Rica or Rio.. People say both have really nice beaches. I just need some relaxation time to blow off lots of steam after this is all over. I can't wait.

Another long month.. Approaching vacation

2009-06-01T20:35:00.005-05:00

What another long month.. It's like everytime I turn around to do a blog update.. Something happens, and I don't get around to doing it.

In any case.. What has happened the past month? Not a lot.. People are coming and going from their 2-week vacations back in the US.. They come back fairly happy and quickly get tired and angry again... I actually had my 22" Westinghouse LCD die on me here.. Prompting me to buy a 19" LCD/TV combo.. Paid too much, but sometimes it's like paying for those huge pops at the movie theatres.. The convienence overwhelms the price, and you buy it. We got AFN cable TV here ran to our rooms.. It's a whopping 8 channels or so, but I occasionally watch the movies channel.

Another notable mention.. I finally decided to throw my name in for promotions. Reason? Oh, after my Ecolab compensation for deployment stopped coming.. I started to feel shorthanded on my savings goals I had for myself. I will definitely not hit my goal of all debt paid off plus $25,000 .. but I'm still in contention for $20,000 I think. It will be close. I have my plans to be in the home buyers market when I return. In any case, I was promoted.. Whoop de doo.. It's kind of a "reel them in" approach the Army takes to recalled people.. give them a promotion and hope they see a future and career in the Army. You wouldn't believe it, but a small population will stay in the Army. I thought it was outrageous, but the Army can always snag some. They brainwash us with reenlistment propaganda on the Armed Forces Network (AFN) TV.

I am still "the man" for our Internet.. PFSense, our linux software router, is working wonders and I'm getting 10% total data cache hits on our Squid proxy. I collected everyone's money in the past few days and have to give it to a guy.. who will take it to another guy, to pay him for this month's service. We went through some tough times with Internet problems, I think in the end our dish was off just a snitch .. We fixed it and our problems went away.

Becky is really looking forward to me coming back for these 2 weeks.. I am not so hyped until I see Kuwait, and I'm waiting in a line to get onto the plane to take me back to Europe then the US. I mean I'm happy to come back, but there's a lot of BS you have to go through.. lots of flights, waiting, hot tents, bugs... I'm not looking forward to the trip, but I am excited to sleep in my own house and relax for 2 weeks. It will be short lived, and Becky will be sad to see me go.. but I should be back by September.. We are definitely past the worst part of the long-haul part of the deployment.

When I get back in early July, I expect to see gears shifting.. I expect our "We're leaving" rumors to solidify into real dates and see training plans to train the new unit. I am not sure, being an IRR guy, that I will be with the "stay-behind" crew to train the new unit for 2-3 weeks. It would be good, but to be honest, I would rather this all be over and get out of the Army. I will put together some documentation to supplement our changes we've made to the Imaging process with these computers here to make it work better.

Sorry for the lack of blog updates.. Morale is pretty low for me.. My acne I had earlier in life has been flaring up on my back and chest a bit.. I believe it's stress related. I will probably see a dermatologist after this is all over.. I'm not having acne haunt my life again. They don't care about shit like this in Iraq. They've been procrastinating sending a guy to Camp Victory to get wisdom teeth extracted for almost a month now.. It's ridiculous.

Thank you to Jill and Ecolab for sending that last box.. I totally forgot to say thanks. I've been eating the snacks out of it.. I think I'm going to have to start bringing some of my snacks down to work to feed to the hungry wolves at our workplace.. My stomach is simply not big enough for all this food I have left.

That is all.

What a Lonnngggggg Month...

2009-04-26T21:37:00.004-05:00

I repeat again... What a long month.. I never thought so much, yet so little could happen in a month. A few days after my post at the end of March.. we ended up moving to a new area of the base. These units are actually a bit bigger and separated from each other. What is the downside? For us guys lower on the totem pole, some of us have to have a roommate now... so that is what I now have. It's not really that bad. We quickly learned each other's quirks and just try to get along. Life sucks here.. everyone knows that. I mean the quality of life is OK, but the thought of being so damn far away from normal civilization.. it's a strange feeling.

The first problem was we did NOT get to take our newly improved internet service with us. We got handed a slow dish that was being used by 5-10 people at our company's building. We got everyone's unit wired and online. We then started collecting money and it looked like about 19-23 people would be in. We upgraded from 512Kbps/512Kbps to 2048Kbps/256Kbps. This is a 10:1 share though. Meaning you are guaranteed 10% of your bandwidth at all times of the day. Sometimes it will give you more than 10%.. certain times of the day. This provider is definitely a little bit more BS than TS2.. our former provider. TS2 was a 20:1 share at 4096/768, but we still saw 15KB/s uploads when we needed it and 100KB/s downloads most of the day. On our current provider.. We get maybe 30KB/s down and 3KB/s up most of the day.

So I can't make Skype calls anymore.. I was kind of bummed about that. Instead I'm using a NobelCom phone card to call through DSN to Commercial.. using the military phone network to call an 800# and then call Becky. It costs about 2 cents a minute.. not bad compared to AT&T's rip-off rates of 6 cents a minute. AT&T -- That's another big F***ing scam here in Iraq. They claim to be doing all these great deeds of providing quality phone service at good rates here to soldiers. THAT IS A TOTAL LIE. They are nothing but total crooks. AAFES is definitely being paid off by AT&T to sell their phone cards only to soldiers. These AT&T call centers at 15+ cents a minute is another big joke for people in more remote locations.

We are working on a project here involving directional WiFi and using DD-WRT firmware on some Linksys routers we bought on EBay.. More to come on that.

I ordered a Dell Optiplex GX270 SFF PC with 2GB of RAM in late March for about $120 on EBay in late March.. it still hasn't arrived here. It's been roughly a month.. it should've been here about 2 weeks ago. I guess I'll keep my pants on.. I just hope it gets here soon or that whole project is going to go to waste, and I'll just end up sending this thing back in August towards Minnesota.

I will try to take some pictures and upload them.. of our new room and courtyard here.. etc.

I'm getting a bit tired.. I will write more in the days to come. I have more content, but it comes in surges. My leave is exactly 40 days away I believe.. Becky is getting excited. Still seems aways away for me.. but whatever.

Reloaded IPCop.. and more.

2009-03-28T06:00:00.004-05:00

So apparently I got in a little over my head.. that IPCop installation was well over a year old.. Had a lingering problem with one of the add-ons (I think) that was causing it to reboot every 8-12 hours. I couldn't crack the problem, so I figured I would just reload it while everyone was at lunch. IPCop is nice like that.. It only takes about 20 minutes to actually nuke it and reinstall. It does a real nice job of finding older NIC drivers.. I wrote down all the TCP/IP info before I blasted it.

All in all.. I will be running with only my 3 main add-ons that I've used back in Minnesota for over 7 months now with ZERO crashes. They are Advanced Proxy (Squid), Update Accelerator, and Net-Traffic.

AdvProxy just allows more configuration changes to squid over the built-in "Web Proxy" tab. Update Accelerator is a HUGE plus here.. since our bandwidth is limited and golden.... When it senses someone is downloading a Microsoft update, Adobe update, Apple update, Antivirus update.. It lets them download it, and it downloads a copy for itself into a cache folder. My cache was up to 2GB just with "updates" ... I even got a few comments about how people installed new Windows updates or Apple Quicktime in seconds. It beats the hell out of waiting an hour.

Net-Traffic just shows how much UP/DOWN bandwidth we use each day.. Kind of handy.. Nothing real special.

I wasn't able to find any add-ons that show bandwidth taken by internal IP.. To be honest, I don't really care.. unless someone gets in a bad habit of keeping Limewire/P2P programs running 24/7.. then I will find a solution.

In any case, seems to be working well.. Our cache needs to rebuild... I set the limit at 1800MB for now. This is an old P3 with only 128MB RAM. Speaking of which, I think I will end up tossing this one in the trash can over paying $20 to ship it back.

I did buy a Dell GX270 with 2GB of RAM off EBay.. $110 with free shipping. It's a small form factor case with 2 regular sized PCI slots. I picked up 2 Intel PRO/1000 NICs for $13 apiece as well. Both of those are enroute to Iraq.. I "will" take that machine back with me.. That would make a perfect torrent slave. I just noticed the benefits of a 5-10GB Squid cache would be sooo beneficial here... I did come across a problem with only 128MB RAM and 20 users.. The proxy logs began to be absolutely enormous and were eating the CPU alive every 5 minutes when it went to generate reports/graphs.. so I just turned it off to make that problem go away.. I always wanted to try a really big cache and possibly give pfSense a whirl.. Another distribution of a "linux router/firewall" .. Supposed to be the best for speed and efficiency.. based off FreeBSD.

In any case, Becky is in Duluth.. I gave her the thumbs up to begin "scouting out" rings.. yes, special rings.. I told her that if she couldn't handle looking, without getting.. anytime in the next 6 months.. that she shouldn't even enter a jewelry store.. But she said she could handle it.. I hope she enjoys herself.. Her mom got a new puppy named "Dudley" .. I'm sure she loves him.

Freak problem with my Thecus N7700

2009-03-22T22:31:00.003-05:00

Oh.. this one yields another post.. My 7-bay NAS enclosure I purchased about a month ago.. Spazzed out on me today. Scared the hell out of me. I wrote a support ticket after I manuevered my way into getting it running again.

Symptoms? I noticed it was having some problems reading from the iSCSI volume last night while burning a DVD for Becky. But it passed.. I noticed CPU usage was spiking to 100% on the N7700.. very strange considering I was just pulling data at 8MB/s over one stream of data.

So tonight.. I was sending over 150GB of crap from one computer's network drive to my iSCSI volume on the N7700.. I wasn't there to see it, but I think the computer crashed.. Becky manually restarted it. When I brought it up, the iSCSI volume was unreadable.. I checked it, IP unreachable.. Had Becky manually restart the N7700.. It came back, drives 5 and 7 were non-existant? what the hell? I had her pull them out and put them back in.. 5 came up fine, 7 had thousands of read errors and crap. So I try a graceful reboot.. Same thing. So I go to their tech support site.. Looking for something to try.. I see a firmware update marked March 10, 2009.. What the hell. It does it and comes back up.. RAID volume is now back.. GREAT. Drive 7 still marked with 53 reallocated sectors? Don't know what that means.. but the drive itself is still functioning fine. The array is now back and I'm sending the 150GB to it again.

I paid $900 for this damn thing, it better not have fits like this all the time.. Either my 7th drive caused the array to shit itself until I basically did the firmware update.. which reloads the entire linux OS, or the Thecus enclosure itself has issues.. Or maybe the firmware had bugs? God I would hope not. It was up about 3 weeks running perfectly before this happened. I know I will have possibly a few bad drives that will unveil themselves over time.. When I built my 4-drive RAID5 array in Korea 6-7 years ago now, 3 of those drives have been RMA'd. The warranty was good for 5 years. I haven't had a drive failure since I left Korea.. As I feel safe with the N7700.. I will move my old 550GB array over to the N7700's 5.5TB array when I deem it totally stable. Firmware updates are the devil.. I never do them unless I'm actually having a problem possibly related to a firmware issue.. I never do a firmware update to "make my machine better" ..

And the world keeps spinning...

2009-03-22T21:59:00.002-05:00

Weeks go by here like I would've never believed.. It's just like you go to sleep, wake up, go to sleep, wake up.......I would hate to live my entire life feeling like this. Thankfully there is more to life than the Army in my world.

So we finally got our new internet up.. DataNet (sp?) .. our former provider.. was apparently quite oversold on their bandwidth.. meaning they were supposed to be gaurantee'ing us a certain level of service that we were never seeing. Bullshit is what it is. Our switch to TS2 (www.ts2.pl) was definitely not textbook. Hell, it was a nightmare for the guy with all the equipment in his room. I don't think he was getting much sleep... because he is on night shift. Our Linksys router was locked down with a password we didn't know.. and I had been wanting to give my IPCop machine a whirl.. So the golden opportunity arose.

I got it up and running quite fast.. I am still working on tweaking Squid to the maximum levels that this P3 with 128MB RAM can handle. Squid is the proxy server everyone is running through. It is setup in transparent mode, which means everyone is forced to go through it for all internet requests. I found out that my IPCop machine was using up some swap.. Which is like the "Oh shit, I ran out of RAM, onto the Pagefile" (in Windows) .. I found out it was because it was processing a half million lines of proxy logs every 5 minutes.. That was just too much. Although I like analyzing our cache hit rates and total % of bandwidth hit rates.. I think I have a general idea that I have it in the right spot now. The machine turns back on automatically after our power outages.. Funny, my computer doesn't in my room. That must be a BIOS setting that I have never cared about.

I may possibly pickup a Dell GX280 with 2GB of RAM on EBay, if I can find someone that will ship directly to APO. I will need a second NIC though too. I have 2 NICs + onboard NIC in the existing IPCop machine... One is doing nothing, just waiting for one of the others to break.

Enough about IPCop.. Our internet is running great now.. Lots of cache hits mean faster webpage loads. Means less requests out of the dish. We are currently at 19 people on the dish with a few on their R&R leave.

I have eyed up a few locations that I am interested in taking a vacation at, after this is all over.. I'll have to find the best website to get good vacation packages at.. as buying airfare and hotel separately for Mexican vacations just isn't as cheap as buying a big vacation package.. Possible destinations I have eyed up... Cancun, Cozumel, Acapulco, Mazatlan, Costa Rica, Bahamas, or Rio de Janiero. Some seem a little overboard, but they are all in the same boat really.. I want to do nothing but sit on a beach, swim occasionally, eat good food and relax. No site-seeing!

My leave is coming up in just a little over 2 months now.. I'm glad I added into my Facebook.. I keep forgetting what day it is actually supposed to be.

Becky is mailing me more of my chocolate/peanut butter rice krispie bars and some nice headsets I bought off the internet.. I'm finding out linux REALLY HATES USB headsets.. My onboard sound card is working just beautifully, but I don't have good headsets with 3.5mm jacks.

It's taken me over 2 months.. but I'm finally almost to the end of season 3 of 24 .. I play old GTA - San Andreas in linux to waste time occasionally.. Great game, I just never finished it.. Slowly I'm getting there....

I'm about halfway done training my 2nd replacement for Ghost'ing.. both IRR guys. The current one I'm training is from Fargo.. Everytime I think of Fargo right now I think of the possibility of them seeing what we saw in 1997.. god awful flood.

I really wonder how my life would've changed had that never happened. We would've never moved to Duluth probably, I may have never joined the Army, and I definitely would've never met Becky. I miss Grand Forks sometimes.. I have dreams once in a blue moon of myself wandering around the block of Lanark Ave.. going over to the baseball field at Lincoln Elementary School to play kick ball or something.. or going sledding at Lincoln Park's hill. Most of these places don't exist anymore.. I tried going back to them and looking around.. but nothing feels the same. The school is gone, our street is gone, our house is gone. I hope this garbage doesn't happen to Fargo.

March...

2009-03-07T19:40:00.002-06:00

So, some good news hits the plate.. Becky passed her veterinary tech national exam.. This was the one she was really worried about. She also took a state exam, but she hasn't got the results back yet. It is my understanding that the national exam holds more prestige, as you can be treated as a certified veterinary technician in any state. So that was real good news.. It means a good raise at work once she receives her certification card.

Lots of news I think.. Some I know I will forget... I am training up two of our IRR guys to take over the primary role of doing the Ghost'ing. One is almost trained up to the point where I believe he can produce good work. Training with the other one starts this week. I would say by the end of March, I should be working on my 3PM-11PM shift they want me on now. I know they had plans for this swap, but a lot of these plans were shot down when we got the new IRR guys, and we lost a couple of our 25Q's to outsites... Some temporary and some more permanent.

I keep getting packages.. I'm almost getting overwhelmed now.. I think my old IRR buddy has finally got back from his R&R, so I'm going to ship off his 4-5 boxes of Hickory Farms stuff this week. I have tons of beef jerky and random snacks now.

WOW! What actually prompted me to write this post.. I had the "click of death" going with my Seagate 1.5TB external.. Well, I was having problems getting a 830MB movie off.. I couldn't quite click through and copy it fast enough before it went into the clicking haitus .. so, I opened up a DOS prompt and typed in the exact copy command beforehand, and I copied it.. Woohoo, I decided to spend the last few moments browsing through the movies... It wasn't doing it.. So I decided to try copying another movie through the DOS prompt.. it worked! Wow.. I tried copying a movie through Windows Explorer to my desktop.. Still works. I don't know what the hell happened, but apparently the drive got stuck somewhere and I just possibly unjammed it? The drive is still shared to our LAN.. so I will let the random people grab their movies off it again. Good deal if this actually works again. I really wasn't looking forward to RMA'ing it and losing all this data. It will NOT be leaving my room! If people want movies, they can give their external to someone our LAN or me.

What else.. I ran into some old friends on Facebook.. one from old Wendy's and another Army guy from Korea.. Looks like he got the same letter back in September.. Man, they must've been yanking everyone. He didn't show up, I wouldn't expect him to.. He definitely disliked his job in the Army more than me.. lol. It's nice to see old faces on Facebook sometimes.

I've been playing GTA: San Andreas in Wine in OpenSUSE.. The OpenSUSE effort is still holding up strong.. almost 3 months now entirely in Linux. My only major gripe, that I will probably be ordering a pair to compensate for it.......... USB Headsets, do NOT work very well in Linux. I need to get some quality Plantronics/Creative 3.5mm jack headsets .. My onboard sound controller is picked up well and is using ALSA sound drivers, but the USB headsets are using OSS.. which only allows one application to use sound at a time.. How old school.. But anyways, the game is great....... I've played it on and off over the years, but I've never finished it.. Figured I might as well give it a whirl.. Nothing else here is occupying my time very well.

Our Fahaka Puffer, "Puffy", has been getting trained to eat clams instead of his usual nightcrawlers.. Puffers need tough stuff to chew on to keep their teeth grinded down over their life, or they'll get bucktooth billy going on and I will have to knock him out and clip his teeth.. which I REALLY don't want to do.. Becky is doing a great job training him.. She fools him by bringing the clam behind the nightcrawler container he is so used to seeing.. then drops the clam in.. he sucks the meat out and chews on the shell for awhile. We are currently only giving him a half-shell until he figures it out and gets used to it.. Then we'll try the whole shells, so he'll really have to crunch it up before he gets the meat.

Maybe more later.. getting tired.

And another three weeks continue to pass..

2009-02-24T21:46:00.005-06:00

So I got reminded that I hadn't updated the blog in awhile.. it's amazing how you just forget about things here. The routines I develop are quite solid and makes the day go by.

What is new? Well, I am training another guy (an IRR we just got) on doing what I do 6 nights a week. I believe I will train one more afterwards, and then be officially switched over to a normal tech control person and a backup or fallback person to do the ghosting. I had it in my mind that I would need to train at least one other person eventually.. for at the minimum, so I could go on leave in June. I'm not sure what this switch will bring.. Back to the phones definitely, not looking forward to that.. Whiny users. But, it will probably bring an extra day off or two once all our guys stop getting sent to classes and get back from their leave.

I lent my 1.5TB HDD to our commander for a few days .. When it came back, it made a sound.. known as the "click of death" .. It is basically toast. I'm not sure if he dropped it, or the sensation of running hard for a day straight and then being unplugged and out in the cold made it stick.. but it is trashed. I am able to barely get a 750MB movie off of it and then it goes into its mad clicking. That sucks. Seagate sucks. I will never be buying a hard drive from them ever again. I have usually bought Western Digital in my life, and they will be the drive I buy soon here. These 1.5TB drives had a terrible firmware problem that could "sometimes" fix the issue. Seagate really screwed up bad with this drive. I have a warranty and all, but I will never fully trust this make/model ever again. It will probably end up as a filler drive in my RAID array.. In place of a 1TB drive someday.

Onto the topic of RAID arrays.. I am still working on my "project" via VNC/Remote Desktop back in Minnesota. It involves a lot of movies.. we'll just say that.

I decided to purchase a Thecus N7700 NAS Enclosure as my base of the array. It has 7 bays and runs on a Celeron processor with 1GB of RAM. It has two Gigabit ethernet ports on the back and is iSCSI capable. I never understood what iSCSI was, but now I do.. Wow! This thing produced some wild benchmarks. It rang up at $900 though. This is totally diskless.. No hard drives included. I think the WD Caviar Black 1TB drive will be the drive I end up purchasing 7 of. I am waiting for the price to drop a few bucks and I will grab. It's amazing what a $5 drop does when you need to buy 7.

I have been getting a constant flow of packages from my parents.. Becky.. and now Ecolab sent me one. I have way too much food now! All these boxes from Hickory Farms to eat too.. I have just barely almost finished one, and I have 6 more boxes to eat.

Also in the news.. I have been running every other day.. Generally 40-60 minutes. When I run in the gym, I sweat too much, but I can keep an eye on my mileage and write it down in the gym's book of mileage. When I run outside, there is really not much to look at, but the wind and cooler air help keep my body cooled down. I have tallied up about 100 miles in 4 weeks.. Nothing exceptional, but I am trying....... I bought Becky and I some Injinji socks.. She told me that when she goes to work and comes home, her feet are sweaty and gross a lot.. Normal really for a person. These socks are about $12 a pair, but I bet they are worth it.. I got her 2 pairs, and I got myself 4. You would say.. What's so special about these socks? The toes are separated with fabric.. Each toe has its individual compartment.. It's pretty funny looking. We'll see. I'll have an update when I receive them here. She just sent them today.

In other news.. I don't like talking about politics, but I can't ignore the fact that I think it's just time for Norm Coleman to give up and call it a defeat.. I am tired of hearing about it, and I think he honestly lost. I could've been one of those tossed out absentee ballots if my mom didn't pull some strings at the last moment. Minnesota actually lost my entire absentee voter registration.. Good for them. I'm glad I was notified the day before the election too.. Not you know, maybe a week in advance or anything.. the DAY BEFORE. But anyways, the deadbeat mortgage holders of America should be all filing foreclosures and moving into apartments until they learn how to be responsible financial managers and prepare for the worst.

My stack of cards sitting on my desk.. One playing card for every day left until my 400 day mark.. Is definitely growing smaller. I tear one up and everyday and throw it in the trash can.. It is my ritual before bed. The fan from the A/C was tipping it over the first few weeks here.. now it doesn't do it anymore.

My linux endeavor is still going well. I got World of Warcraft to work just beautifully in Wine.. However, I can't really find the honest to god time to dedicate to it. It's just nice to know that it's there if I need something to do. I also setup Morrowind in linux too. Yet another old game.. Funny thing is, Oblivion works beautifully in Windows on this machine.. but the Direct3D conversion in Wine is very messy and slow at the moment.. And Oblivion was created for D3D. I get a whopping 5FPS no matter what the settings or resolution in Linux/Wine. In Windows, I can have it cranked up to full and get 20FPS. I was hoping I could get it to 10FPS and at least play it.. But oh well.

Times are boring here.. I had to modify my sleeping schedule for my new schedule at work. I get up at 12:30PM, shower, and then sometimes conk back out until 2:30PM.. head to work at 2:45PM. Go to dinner at 5:30PM.. Work until 11PM.. Go home for 30 minutes, walk over to midnight dinner at 11:30PM. Come back home, sit on the computer for maybe an hour.. Get tired fall asleep around 1:00-1:30AM, conk out until 3-4AM.. Talk to Becky, call on Skype if the internet is cooperating.. And conk out for the day around 7-8AM. It's kind of a strange schedule, sleep all over the place.. It's what we do here... Sleep and eat............

Oh, final note.. Becky's modded Wii and our "backup" games are doing great. I bought her a Wii steering wheel so she could enjoy Mario Kart more. I also bought an old N3B military jacket with a coyote fur hood.. No stains or cigarette burns.. I got it for $30 + $10 S/H off Ebay... Becky took it to the dry cleaners today.

And here's some pictures of the jacket and socks.. Becky modeling both.

Time flies.. (when you're having fun?)

2009-02-04T22:26:00.004-06:00

Isn't that how the old saying goes? Humm...

It's hard to believe it's been two weeks since my last post. Not a whole lot has changed here. Gradually people are going to start going on their R&R leaves.. People will probably have to increase their shift schedules a bit maybe.. But it shouldn't be too bad.

I received my order from Hickory Farms... minus one box. I am not sure if it got lost or what. I will give it another two weeks to see if it trickles in. I haven't even begun to dig into it. We ordered 7 boxes total. Three are for my friend I have to mail to him. I just got his address yesterday after a 40 minute phone conversation with him troubleshooting & talking about his new base. It sounds like his internet is pretty good there.. a hell of a lot better than ours.

At work, most things are unchanged. I am getting better at imaging.. We have two primary networks here.. One is always soooooooooo slow compared to the other.. and has me staying much longer nights than I should be waiting for the laptops to get their initial updates before I pack them up. I noticed Panasonics are not accepting this "generic image" provided to us. On the first boot, it just locks up before it hits the Windows logo screen.. I try safe mode.. nothing. That sucks. I will have to try and make my own images for the Panasonics I guess. Some nights have all Dells, some nights are all Panasonics. I even see some Thinkpads and homebrews occasionally. Thinkpads accept the image.. homebrews do usually too.. but these damn Panasonic toughbooks.. agghhh. I will survive. The absolute worst night we've seen yet is about 15. The easiest is maybe 1 or 2. I could handle 15 if most were on the "fast network" .. if they were on the slow network, I would have to leave them for the next day.

In any case.. Enough about that. I decided to purchase a Wii for Becky.. but not just any Wii.. I always wanted to mod a console, but I was never taught how to solder, or bothered to buy the tools and learn to do it. Sooo.. they offer "premodded" consoles on the internet. You pay a bit of a premium for it.. But an average Wii is $249. The WiiKey2 is around $40-50. After shipping, I think I paid around $350 after my discount code was applied. Not too bad I guess. The glory of it all? I can now play "backups" .. I will leave it at that.. But Becky is now in hog heaven I think :)

I am still working on increasing my "movie collection" on my externals back in Eagan. I spend my nights here managing my uTorrent WebGUI for my Netherlands server... and surfing through new torrents.

Oh, I've started running again.. I am waiting on some better socks from my parents.. These 100% cotton ones are killing my feet with blisters. I am only averaging about 3 days a week due to a shortage of good socks.. I run about 6-8 miles a day when I do. I'm just trying to establish a 7min/mile training pace, but my best distance run without killing myself was 7.2 miles in 50 minutes. I have aways to go before I can go that easily.. I usually set the treadmill to 7:20/mile pace and just keep running.. the last mile I usually crank it up to 5:30 and then 5:00/mile pace the last half. That usually kills me pretty good. People around me look at me like I'm insane. But, all is well. I've never ran on treadmills before, but I'm finding they beat up your feet pretty bad compared to running outside. I'd rather run indoors around Camp Delta though I think. There really ain't much to look at out here.

The Audi was giving Becky some problems.. Go figure. I think it was a really tough couple weeks of winter for the car just sitting in the parking lot going unstarted. I don't think there is anything actually wrong with it. We replaced the battery on a hunch.. That may have not even been the problem.. Oh well. Now at least I know it is new.

I am still running OpenSuSE.. gradually getting all my stuff running smoothly. I run a VM with Windows 2003 Server to run any Windows-only apps (that don't work in Wine). I started trying to play a MUD.. I played for 3 nights and haven't been back in 3 nights. It was fun, but only on nights with no lag. Text-based RPG.. It really is kind of fun. I am getting used to Linux again though.. It's almost been a month I think. Hard to believe. This is probably the longest I've ever sat in Linux without dual-booting back or reformatting. I may actually have taken a step off the deep end. I am hearing bad things about Ventrilo not working in Linux. That is not good. If I ever planned to play World of Warcraft again, I'm not sure what I would do there. I think it works with Wine, but I will have to look into it.

My webcam is DEFINITELY never going to work.. a Microsoft webcam.. of course. My USB headset has thrown a small fit, but I think I finally got it working. It is not capable of using ALSA .. which is now the Linux standard for sound.. but instead it uses the old OSS drivers. OSS can only play sound in one program at a time.. This can be a problem, however... there is a solution.. ALSA-OSS .. aoss .. You run your program "aoss amarok" and then "aoss wine Wow.exe -opengl" or whatever.. and it lets you play your mp3s (Amarok) while you play World of Warcraft.. like Windows does. Everything is much tougher in Linux.. You learn how truly nice some parts of Windows are.. and truly how junky some parts are.

Enough rambling.. I will try to post every weekend.. Get myself in a routine...

Another week rolls by.... Fun with OpenSuSE

2009-01-20T20:06:00.005-06:00

Not much to report this week.. The other guy I was working with in reimaging these computers has been reassigned to another base.. so I'm by myself now. I'm actually making some good headway in getting these images cleaned up. A lot of them were real bloated for just having XP, some patches, Office 2007, and a few other programs. They were pushing 10 gigs. I nuked the patch uninstallers, deleted pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys and any other temp files I could find. This brought them down to 4-6 gigs at most. Now my biggest problem is that Panasonic is retarded. Apparently any model of the Toughbook has 5-7 variations.. revisions so to speak. They use different chipsets in them all. What a headache for drivers. I have 3 good DVDs loaded full of every driver known to man on them. Very little has not been found if I have to resort to using all 3. I'm trying to make images for each variation, but that may be a useless endeavor.. we'll see.

The first folks are going to go on their R&R leave here this next week starting February. Once it starts to hit the Tech Control, they will probably have to be working 7 days a week to cover the loss of manpower. A few guys from the tech control are in a class now at another base. I honestly don't feel like attempting to take a load of 2 classes from Saint Leo (my college) or doing anything else educational. My focus level here is zero in regards to anything other than computers.

Becky finally took her 2 certification exams. She was real stressed out from it all, but she is done now.. She will not know if she passed for 6 weeks. I am proud of her either way. I don't think I've ever studied that much in my entire K-12 life. She probably tallied more hours of studying for these exams than I spent my entire senior year...........

I picked up some great deals on summer sausage, cheese, etc at Hickory Farms during a sale they had about 2 weeks ago. Prices were slashed from like $40 down to $10 .. plus I had a 20% off coupon code and 10% cashback... and free shipping to APO. So I am waiting for my boxes of meat............

Oh! I almost forgot.. I am now in OpenSuSE 11.1 .. I figured I would cure my boredom real fast by dumping Windows and getting back into Linux again. It is really quite functional thus far. I am using Firefox .. I can use VLC Media Player, Amarok (mp3 player), mIRC using Wine (IRC), Kopete (the Trillian for linux/KDE), my VNC viewer, Skype (to call Becky). What is lacking? My wonderfully new Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 (I believe).. doesn't have a driver that works in linux really. There is some offshoot made by a French guy.. but it doesn't compile and I really don't care that much. VMware is next on the big hitlist .. so that I can get a Windows XP install up and running in a virtual machine. I bet I could use my webcam through a virtual machine.

In any case, it's been an adventure in linux. I forgot how damn stable it really is once you get it up and running. I have Compiz Fusion installed as well.. The crazy "cube" thing you've maybe seen screenshots of. It's a lot of eyecandy but not super functional.

I won't go into massive details here.. but I am getting back into torrenting. Not here though. I am doing it all through VNC back to home and to a dedicated server I am renting at LeaseWeb.. It's about $40/month, but it is letting a lot of the pressure off my Comcast connection at home. It's more or less a hobby.

Last thing on the chopping block.. Ironically, I was talking to my friend walking back from midnight dinner a few nights ago... I was telling him about how my company had never done massive layoffs in the company's history.. and I'll be damned, the next day I heard the news. I don't know how ironic or unlucky me talking about that was. It sounds like they cut a few of the mid-upper paygrade folks when I heard some of the names from IT. Tough times for the US. If Ecolab is cutting, this country is in for some hurt the next year.

Now if I could just get all these cool widgets working in linux...........................ahhhh dependency hell.. Boy I should just switch to Slackware and put me out of my misery. That is one surefire way to get yourself back to Windows... Try Slackware and you'll never go back to Linux unless you're a genius or have A LOT of patience.

Amarok is the most amazing mp3 player I have ever seen. It absolutely kills WMP and WinAmp in terms of out-of-the-box functionality and wizz-bang features.

Leave dates posted

2009-01-10T02:35:00.002-06:00

Most everyone got their first choice.. I put mine out a bit.. The earliest was February 1st.. the last day you could take leave was July 31st.

I tossed out some numbers and put mine surrounding Becky's birthday. I was given 6/6 - 6/28. I know that I will leave 6/6, but I believe I will actually have to be on a plane headed back towards here on 6/24 or 6/25. They put 4 days before and after your primary slotted days to allow you extra time to get there, and back.

My counterpart's leave is in like 3 weeks.. so I'll be working everyday until he gets back. June seems like sooo far away.

Apparently I repeated some of the things regarding my new job

2009-01-08T22:07:00.001-06:00

Ah well.. there are some new things I am finding in my last post as opposed to the one a few weeks ago... Deal with it :)

My new job here, our terrible internet, some mortars, and more

2009-01-08T21:42:00.004-06:00

I usually have my Blogspot Dashboard up to look at other's blogs I have on my watch list.. but it just dawned on me that I haven't updated mine in almost 3 weeks! Wow, time is going fairly quickly.. Kind of.

To start things off here -- I haven't explained my new job here. It's ALOT more primitive than the way Ecolab does it.. but it is essentially reimaging the machines using Ghost images, and sending them back to the user. Our Ghost images were created by the unit before us, and many of them are VERY bloated and not created correctly. I mean these images should be about 3-5GB at most! Some are to the upward of 11GB. Some of our models of laptops don't take well to the Ghost Boot CD's USB drivers, so the (3) external USB drives we have are loading up in USB 1.1 mode.. which is insane if you're transfering 10GB. We have very limited resources and time to really recreate these images. I am reading tricks to create good images.. Things like removing pagefile.sys/hiberfil.sys prior to shutting down.. or removing it via a Linux LiveCD or like BartPE. Some of these images are so junked out they are even lacking a few drivers.. how annoying.

So... they are getting done.. well. It is me and another guy doing them. One guy works one night, the other works the other.. So you work one day, off one day.. However, if a big load comes in, which it has.. Both come in. Our hours are 7PM-7AM and we are being pushed to a 2-3 turnaround time.

We don't have an effective system to handle more than 15-20 reimages per night. The biggest lag in the process is making all these small little changes after we apply the Ghost image.. which shouldn't be necessary.

Anyhow, that is the new job. Our internet is still slow as hell and nearly unusable about 8-10 hours in the day. I have my IPCop machine here now and have passively suggested if I can implement it, but noone is grabbing hold of the idea. Our problem is not the router.. it is not monitoring/blocking the necessary P2P ports. I have a firm belief that people here are abusing the UPLOAD speed and that is basically causing a denial of service for everyone on the dish. Abusing the download speed will not cause what we are feeling here. Standard P2P ports need to be blocked entirely.

But hey, if people don't want to feel what it SHOULD feel like here with blocked P2P ports and a caching proxy server (squid).. be my guest. No skin off my back -- just headaches, more movies watched, and more time sleeping. I have been running IPCop under my desk.. and I am getting cache hits on about 5-15% of the pages I go to.. Not bad.

That feels like all I do here is stare at the computer and sleep.

This is a sign I am becoming extremely bored.. I am considering reformatting and installing a Linux distribution.. and I suppose re-installing Vista so I can dual boot and play games if I want to that aren't supported by Wine. I am looking at OpenSuSE.. Debian was always a really good one. I have never actually forced my primary desktop computer to SIT in linux for more than a few weeks.. And I have never tried the Enlightenment WM.. That was the god of the seven suns of spectacular graphics back in the day. I looked at some screenshots of that window manager and Compiz Fusion.. There is some amazing shit going on in Linux nowadays.. It blows Vista out of the water.

And last but not least... Mortars & rockets.. It is actually surprisingly a regular thing here. They are pathetic at best.. You would basically have to be the most unlucky son of a bitch here to have one land directly on top of you to actually mess you up. None have landed near our living quarters.. I was in our tech control building when one hit aways away.. Our work area is littered with Dell server, so all I hear is our A/C and the servers.. I went out in the main area and asked if someone had slammed the door and it was actually a nearby mortar.. Funny. I don't feel threatened by them.. I have been in more threatening situations in my life before.. Near car wrecks definitely. I guess if a mortar lands 20 yards from me, I may be telling a different story.. But until then.. *knock on wood*

We have 3 more weeks until the first guys go on R&R leave.. I don't think anyone knows when their's is yet.. But I will let the blog know when it is. My wishlist had March, April, and May on it. The Army was never very good with wishlists.. but regardless, I will get 20 days I believe.. They actually only want to give you 14, but you may hit some real delays trying to get out of the Middle East... lots of cancelled flights and delays... so they began to compensate people with 6 extra days. Good enough for me.

As I used to tell Christina and Melissa about at work -- Fatwallet.com is proving itself to still be useful here. I picked up a 24" Samsung LCD monitor for $240 off the internet.. At the time, it was going for $380 at Newegg. I had it sent home, and it is waiting there. I also found Hickory Farms is currently running a HUGE sale and free shipping to APO addresses. I bought 5 boxes of these $12.50 meat/cheese things.. I also got 15% with a coupon code and 10% cashback from Fatwallet. So these things were originally $50, but I paid about $8-9 for each with free S/H.. What a deal!! Good snacks here.. That is the #1 problem here.. We have lots of snacks, but not the type I like. Becky is sending some of my chocolate rice krispie bars I used to make. I'm trying to find a supplier on the internet of massive amounts of good beef jerky for cheap... Ahh the internet......................must... log....offf......................

Windows Explorer - 100% CPU usage when browsing movie folders

2008-12-25T18:07:00.003-06:00

In regards to the title.. I've tried everything noted on several websites to force Explorer to not show any form of thumbnail. When I go to folders containing anywhere from 10-200 movies on my external USB HDD.. CPU usage skyrockets to 100% and stays there for a variable amount of time depending on how many movies are in there. Supposedly it is getting stuck on ones with strange codecs or malformed ones.

Nothing seems to fix it. So I'm deciding to give a program called xplorer2 Lite a shot. Back in the NT/2000 days, I used to setup a manual shortcut to "Windows Explorer" on the desktop. I've become so accustomed to using "Computer" on the desktop and all the various ones in the Start Menu. I put the icon for xplorer2 Lite in my quick launch bar and on the desktop. We'll see if I can adapt to using it. Oh, and yes, it fixes the problem. Apparently this problem is known at Microsoft.. it affected XP, but it was fixable in XP.. not so fixable in Vista.

Bah.

Fly traps.. Note to self

2008-12-23T23:13:00.002-06:00

Must buy these before spring here.. The flies are going to be nasty.. They are pesky ones, ones that when you slap they may not move.. and if they do, they fly back to the same spot 50 times.. -- Catchmaster Gold Stick Fly Traps.

Dining facility excellence, state/federal tax, and awesome Amazon...

2008-12-23T21:38:00.005-06:00

I definitely have to comment on the great food at the dining facility here. This is not even regarding anything to do with Christmas, but just simply altogether. I haven't had breakfasts like this my whole life. Breakfast is the meal that makes or breaks my entire day as some people who really know me will know (that was a lot to say). I wake up around 5:30PM.. Generally skipping dinner and building up an appetite for "Midnight Chow" as we call it. It is a very strange combination between dinner leftovers and breakfast. It opens up around 11:30PM. I generally eat an omelet made in front of me consisting of ham, cheese, tomatoes, and peppers. Then I eat some kind of a main entree like salisbury steak, or some type of veal, or steak. Usually some bacon or rice...and then carrot cake.. REAL CARROT CAKE, every night! I love it. They have just about every canned beverage they would have a gas station in the US. Lots of different juices. They have BBC on one TV and american stuff on the other two. I usually sit and watch BBC (British), because nobody else sits there.

For breakfast.. you go through a line where they fill up a cup full of the ingredients you want in your omelet.. then you hand it to a cook.. within 2 minutes you have your omelet. I add jalapenos to mine in the morning. Then I will always get bacon and 3 pieces of french toast. Their french toast here is superb. I get a bowl of halved pears, 2 boxes of orange juice and sit down again.

The place is entirely ran by Iraqiis.. managed by American contractors. I accidentally spilled something on the floor the other day.. they told me to toss it back on the floor... Within 10 seconds, some guy swooped by and cleaned it up. Everytime you take anything from their serving areas, they clean it up or move more food forward in the pan so you can grab it more easily. It is really amazing. I have never seen anything like this in my whole life. Oh, before you enter the dining facility, your ID is initially checked by a guard from Uganda. You walk in and wash your hands (mandatory). Then you scan your ID to show you were fed.

For the dinner, they have pasta/taco bars, healthy bars, ice cream stations, ice cream bars.. Everything you could possibly need to leave here weighing 25 lbs more.

So onto my note about state and federal tax.. I knew I was going to be federal tax exempt.. I also knew that our governor passed a law in 2007 stating that all military wages earned outside of the state of Minnesota (physically) were exempt to state tax withholdings. So it finally came.. They backpaid me for withholding federal/state tax for November and December in one check... Merry Christmas to me I guess.

Money is definitely becoming a good strongpoint to this.. as long as I don't spend tons of money on crap. I noticed mortgage rates are dipping to the lower end of 5%.. I guess I wouldn't have had everything in line and ready to go to buy a house anyways if I was just living normally.

I bought a webcam from Tigerdirect. Everyone was bragging about Amazon and free shipping.. WELL, what people don't know is Amazon subjects LOTS of their stuff to manufacturer's limitations of shipping outside the country.. (Apparently we are technically not part of this country). They refuse to ship certain items, alot of them, to APO/FPO addresses. It is bullshit in my opinion. I was trying to purchase a keyboard wrist rest and a mousepad with a wrist rest.. Made by the same company (Belkin).. They could ship the mousepad but not the keyboard one, what a crock of shit! How could that be.. Whatever. I can generally count on Newegg/Tigerdirect.

Scattered brained thoughts this morning.. I know..whatever, that is what a blog is supposed to be.. If everything was a perfect story it would be boring as hell.

Oh it rained here.. God.. I have NEVER been somewhere where it rains one inch and the WHOLE place turns into 100% M-U-D. I had to devise a "dirty shoe" area made of plastic bags inside my door. My pants for my PTs are trashed.. Time to bring my stuff to laundry I guess.

I have mail.. not sure if it's the cards Becky sent me or a package from my mom.. I will have to get up to check.

Oh I have some great words about Comcast's new policy of "Fair Usage" regarding bandwidth restrictions now.. Apparently if you go over 250GB downloaded in any month now, you go on their excessive users shitlist. But -- let me rewind about a year.. They put out a service costing $140/month for HUGE speeds!!! What the hell is the point of paying for speed if you can't use it. Comcast needs to get their shit together and understand that we are all not the perfect "Check your e-mail, surf for ten minutes, and get off" crowd. We like to watch videos, we like to eat that bandwidth... I understand we are a physically large nation and it costs money to pump it across, but whatever. I will be staying with Comcast until they remove me from the network when I return.. At that point, I will be switching to Qwest.

We lost one guy in our 3-man group. Now it's just two of us.. He works one night, I work the other.. Seems simple enough. The power went out tonight in the building, so there was a little work undone -- I will finish it all up tonight on my shift.

I wish Saint Nick would fly an 8TB 8-bay external eSata raid5 array to my room..............High hopes I know.

Shared satellite internet in my room, my new job, and the outlook..

2008-12-20T18:22:00.005-06:00

So I finally am kind of settled in here.. it's been almost two weeks. So here's what my life is like here... without any more detail than a local national working here would know.. and comparing it to what I remember working for 41st Sig Bn in Seoul, S. Korea for 3 years.

I work at a smaller tech control facility.. known as a "TCF" in the Army. It is generally the "hub" of networks coming into the post, and distributing it amongst the various buildings to smaller switches in those buildings. Nothing much to do in there, except watch for circuits or lines going down and attempting to find the problem...physically or logically. Bumping KIVs and watching lights occasionally go red, then go green.. I was hoping there would be more... well, there appears to be a bit more. We have a very small datacenter as well... Not much to do other than let it run.

Our unit has the great task of taking "software broken" machines from other units and reloading the OS, the essential software, testing it, and giving it back to the unit... Known as apparently "baselining" in the Army, "reimaging" at Ecolab, and "formatting" to me..... Norton Ghost is used for the common models.. the rest we have to load manually, attempt to get a Ghost image.. if not, oh well. We don't get loads like I've seen at Ecolab.. I mean we maybe had 25 on the shelf when we began.. about a week later we have none. Maybe 2-3 come in daily now. I'm not sure if we will need to clean up our process too much. The surges will hurt us a bit, but we are going to a "2 guys on, 1 guy off" 7PM-7AM schedule. You get a day off every 3rd day.. and those 2 guys on, if their shelf is clear at midnight.. they go home. Not so bad I guess. It could be worse... always.. in the Army.

So -- for the most part, I am happy at beginning of week #3 .. too many things have changed in the first weeks already. I am hoping people pipe down a bit and let people learn their assigned jobs. Of course rotating jobs a few months down the line would always be good for resumes.. but you can't expect someone to remember anything a year from now, only having ghosted/reimaged machines for 3-6 weeks. When I was on active duty, my unit loved me.. and abused me.. more reasons why I left the Army. I taught those who wanted to learn and wanted to work, and pushed the others aside who would sleep through my sergeant's time training classes for 5 hours. Leaders in the Army (active duty?) often shove unwilling-to-learn soldiers to willing-to-teach ones.. and no learning is done.. I say just put them in the shitty jobs and let the shitheads get taught their lesson of complete boredom... Send them to headcount for a month -- they'll be begging to get put back at the TCF to learn.

In any case -- I've had success with my first few.. good guys, I am fearful of the others though. I am not a computer god, but I live and breathe troubleshooting.

Life is well here though -- Hot showers.. sometimes, clean restrooms, my heat works, my A/C works, the food is good.. and I have my stack of poker cards.. One for every day left until I "supposedly" am supposed to be out.. October 11th, 2009. I rip one card up everyday.. it's something I did last time I had left than a year left in the Army. I sent a few coworkers, my parents, and Becky,.. the pictures I had taken from Camp McGregor to here.

Becky is sending my desktop PC and her 19" LCD monitor.. mine (22") was too big. My wireless keyboard, mouse, and some accessories will also be coming. This Thinkpad is driving me bananas -- it is just too slow.

Our internet is really shitty about 1/2 the day.. primetime hours it is terrible, almost no service at all, because of those people sitting on Limewire letting people leech off them and kill our con nection. At night, it is decent.. Maybe 15-20k/s download speeds.. We have 15 people sharing it.. Virtually no port restrictions that I am aware of. I would like to setup my IPCop machine that Becky just sent to me and is enroute.. (just an old Dell P-3.. don't need anything fancy) to run everyone through a transparent caching proxy server to save the satellite connection from common hits (Google, MSN, Yahoo, MySpace, Facebook, etc).. On a caching proxy, when the first person goes to a site, it will save all sorts of content onto the hard drive of the proxy, and when the second person rolls through ten minutes later.. it may be able to pull 10-15% of the site off the hard drive of the proxy... Saving the satellite dish from 10-15% of the bandwidth that would normally be pulled. It seems real minute when sitting on Comcast cable at home, but it would make a big deal here. I could also watch who is abusing what ports, how much bandwidth utilized, when, graphs, etc.. very good monitoring on it. It is basically used as a "Linux router" as some would call it. It's a distribution put together just for purposes of "software routing" instead of "hardware routing". It is just as fast for the purposes of 10-15 people. I could block off Limewire, Kazaa ports.. and other troublesome ones.. Put QoS bumps upward on Skype/Yahoo ports, so that people would have higher priority on packets inbound/outbound on communications on those programs. Once the cache on the proxy gets pretty decent, you will see the internet load up "faster" to the common sites especially.

I am not sure who to talk to, to give this a run once I get it ready to implement.. People would be scared that I am stupid and this won't help...etc...etc... I could try implementing it at 3-4AM when nearly noone is awake to test it out... It has two ethernet adapters, one for the input (satellite internet), one for the output (to the switch/computers) .. it runs the DHCP and everything as well. It can be run with no keyboard/mouse/display.. all controlled through HTTP once its up. I have been running it for 4 months without a hiccup at home on a UPS. It works beautifully.

In any case, I will bring it up more when I have the machine and am ready to implement it. This connection could use a little more management.

The "no-internet" blues in my room

2008-12-10T10:57:00.005-06:00

Short post -- The higher-ups are supposedly working on getting the ball rolling on getting the internet started on this satellite dish. From the looks of it -- looks to be a lot more people on it than expected. I guess people have no hope that a second dish will go up. Who knows. I will be working a night shift here from 11PM-7AM. My sleep routine is still screwed up. I am going to watch a bunch of movies tomorrow morning after I get home.. to try and stay up until about noon.

I am having Becky look for my old PT uniforms.. The laundry turn-around time is 2 days here, and I only have 3 sets of them.. So if I go running two days in a row -- I'm down to one pair.

Life is fine here -- it's just boring as hell without some form of internet in my room. I have a feeling that by Friday evening, we may have some internet flowing into our rooms.

Swiping your credit cards overseas is a mess of foreign fees and impossible to keep track of. I'm going to have to put some work into trying to keep track of this or swipe it a lot less.

That's all for now.

Arrived at.. Permanent location

2008-12-07T11:00:00.002-06:00

So I made it here... after having delayed flights, canceled flights, and all sorts of issues for 4-5 days. We had to leave our bags "palletized" .. meaning they were strapped down on a huge pallet for 2 days.. while we were buying underwear, socks... everything that was in our bags that we couldn't get to.

My mind is pretty scatter-brained.. I need to get some sleep tonight. We are here though -- the dining facility is good. The PX is pretty basic, but it's OK. The barracks are actually quite nice. I have a very small room to myself. I have a bed, a wall locker, a night stand, and a small desk... It is pretty decent overall. Internet is readily available at the MWR... People supposedly buy satellite internet service here at the barracks. The price ticket is not cheap at all. It will be something that is investigated and brought up this week. Maybe by the end of the week I can have some functioning internet in my room.

The showers are very nice.. I can't spit out too much due to OPSEC in regards to actual units residing at my new "permanent location" .. but I can say there is a very small presence of actual US Army here.. the MWR is pretty quiet and our showers are probably not used by more than 100 people a night at most I would bet.

More to come later.. I need to give Becky a call. I think these phones here are actually SPAWAR phones and not the AT&T calling center phones.

My new computer --- possibly

2008-12-01T04:21:00.005-06:00

If internet is non-existant.. I may be way more prone to buy an offline gaming computer if I can't surf the net..

Here it is .. It is pretty bad-ass.. People would ask, why a 17" monitor? Well, it needs to be able to fit in a footlocker.. hence the Shuttle XPC case and the small monitor.

Areas to improve would be Corsair RAM & the video card.. but...this would probably be my computer for the next 3 years again.

NewEgg's WishList system doesn't have a link I can display to the public.. kind of stupid,, but.. here is the screenshot of my choices.

The term "combat veteran"

2008-12-01T03:05:00.007-06:00

So here we are.. in a tent in Kuwait, air conditioned, rationed showers and sinks, shitty internet, but it exists.....and porta-potties....yet we have about 5 different fast food restaurants that are way overpriced.. and a reasonable pizza joint. We have just about every good thing available to us at the amount.. except privacy.

But we are supposed to move to our "permanent location" soon -- I am hoping for internet, but preliminary gossip is saying that they have no internet easily available there.

I hate the variance in internet at the various locations in Iraq -- some bases have all barracks wired and you just have to pay per month and they flip the switch on... Wow, that would be nice. Some -- it may not exist at all.

Soooo -- the term "combat veteran" .. Go look up the term "Camp Victory" in google and see what you find. This is the camp near Baghdad that they are using to display to Americans on how good the living conditions, internet, and ammenities are for US troops. They attempt to display the idealism behind a "home away from a home" .. So far, I've slept in open-man bays and had virtually no privacy in over 2 months. I've had to pack and repack my bags at least two dozen times now, moving from place to place. But.. those "combat veterans" at Camp Victory deserve all the applause.. as they come back from their "tough tours" in Iraq.. Whatever. I am going to live a similar life.. just not all the ammenities they have. I will sit on a base.. every day. Americans just give all the applause to these "combat veterans", because they wouldn't want to go to this shithole themselves and leave their families for a year. There is a big false concept behind the combat veteran. The ones who deserve the term generally end up with PTSD, can't hold a job, and spend night after night at bars. Then the Army tries to recall them back to active duty to serve another tour in Iraq.

So things could be worse -- Yes. But why should they be? I mean it's not 1968 or 1991 anymore.. We are in 2008.

Bah.. maybe I'm jealous.. maybe I'm pissed off that this is actually happening to me. Maybe I am pissed, because I've had some form of internet the past 3 months.. And now there is a dreading fear that I will have none.. Well, I should have some at work.. If I get to sit down somewhere.. that is. I really honestly don't even care anymore. I'm tired of moving, tired of open-man bays, and tired of the Army.

The term "Combat veteran" and its abuse in use

2008-11-27T14:38:00.000-06:00

I will explain this tomorrow.. I'm really seeing things I wish I never knew about it in this war.. or understood.

Arrived to Kuwait -- Tired, still

2008-11-27T14:21:00.002-06:00

So we finally made it here.. We arrived at Kuwaiti City's International Airport. We were terribly tired after experiencing about a 7-9 hour layover in Liepzig, Germany. I had a hell of a time with their keyboards on the internet kiosks.. Definitely different layouts on their keyboards. The Y and the Z was switched.. That definitely annoyed me.. If you look at how much you use the letter "Y" .. it gets frustrating quickly.

Anyhow -- we are now at Camp Buehring.. Due to the wonderful world of Army OPSEC and going overboard on worrying about details.. I will have to be vague about anything we're doing. I don't think we will be here long.. It is really a mixed feeling being in the Middle East. Part of me doesn't want to accept this Kuwait "staging camp" as being Iraq.. We have Burger King, a big PX, Taco Bell... all sorts of souvenir shops and vendors outside the PX.. a huge MWR facility that I haven't even ventured into to explore it at all yet. Yet, we are on rationed water.. meaning, you have to put shampoo in your hair, turn off the shower, turn it back on, rinse .. turn off, lather up soap, scrub, turn on shower, turn off... The other day I had to shave and brush my teeth with bottles of cold water due to the generator power being out on all shower/sink facilities.

We sleep in a 40-man tent.. A/C in here, on cots and plywood floors. There seems to be an issue with rodents.. Over near the first sergeant, two rats were caught in traps. Disgusting in my opinion.. beyond disgusting. Speaking of which, my company.... Ecolab.. Wow, the military must have some really bullshit contracts for soaps/sanitizers.. They seem to preach keeping your hands clean, but they don't hand out sanitizer to everyone. Our bathrooms here are disgusting portapotties...Half the time the sanitizer dispensers outside of them are empty... I'm not very impressed, but hey.. it's the Army. The rodent situation is definitely disgusting.

Thank god I won't be here long. I have provided my address that I will be going to in a few weeks at most. Hopefully my next stop will be better.. I have been informed that I may be a "R&R Leave Replacement guy" .. meaning I will have to go replace the guys who are about to go on R&R leave as the months roll by. This may mean a lot of moving around for me... Hopefully not any real convoys.. but..we'll have to see what happens.

Thanksgiving was OK -- We got dicked around with a lot today.. but finally were released to eat Thanksgiving dinner at 6PM. I guess some folks are used to eating Thanksgiving at noon -- I think we normally eat in mid-afternoon.

In any case -- I better post this before this terrible internet disconnects me again.

Time off in El Paso with Becky, waiting to fly to Kuwait

2008-11-22T15:00:00.008-06:00

It's been a long few weeks.. Becky came to El Paso.. we had dinner at some nice places and picked up some electronic trinkets for me. I finally stooped and bought an iPod Classic 120GB & a Seagate 1.5TB external HDD. We had an extremely large amount of movies floating around in electronic form... so I decided to scoop them up. This may have been one of the best things that is going to happen this entire deployment besides the money... These movies. I'm devising plans on a small PC (frequently called a HTPC when put next to a large TV) running MythTV, to be able to play movies from a nice menu system with previews and reviews of the movie... Without re-encoding all of these movies and burning to a conventional DVD format to play it in a regular DVD player. To make a long story short, my 1.5TB hard drive is down to 70GB free space. WOW!

All in all, it was a great time.. we had a lot of fun and Becky was very excited to see me and spend time with me. I think it was harder to say goodbye than the first time. I think the R&R leave will be much easier for her. I will go back to Eagan and sleep on my $800 mattress instead of this garbage. There are some pictures of us on Facebook. I miss her a lot already, but there is not much I can do but just call daily. I may cut back to every other day -- it depends what kind of telephony service & costs are available at my final destination.

Anyhow! -- I can't give the utmost of details as to a whole hell of a lot of information.. But some of our guys from the 146 left last night.. We were supposed to be leaving later today -- we were postponed until tomorrow.. later in the day. We are making a few stops to refuel and heading to Kuwait for supposedly about 10-14 days from what I am hearing. I think the goal is to replace these guys, so they have a flying chance at getting back for Christmas. The Army has never seemed to give two shits about getting anyone anywhere for holidays... But that is the current rumor going around.

Most of the guys have their assignments -- I was given a rather informal and awkward one so far. I think I am going to be moving about a little bit.. Supposedly I am going to be the 25B (my job in the Army) who replaces other 25B's, so they can go on their 3 weeks of R&R leave. We are all going to be slotted a 3-week period between February and end of July to go back to the US. When they leave, I will be the one that fills their shift for 3-4 weeks, and I move onto the next person going home for leave. Keep in mind, these people may not work a half mile apart.. We have people spread out all over Iraq. Soo, I was hoping to get my room and huddle down for 10-11 months.. but I may be living out of a bag. We will see. I hope the amount of bullshit in Kuwait is minimal.. I have really had enough here.

Our newest orders say "To be released from active duty no later than November 5th, 2009" .. That doesn't exactly line up with my "Come back to the Army for 400 days" orders that would get me out October 11th, 2009.

I really hope a lot of these folks in this company gain a little maturity. I smelled alcohol on the breath of people coming back from their pass.. standing in formation, uniform on, giggling.. drunk, rolling up late... I mean I really hate being back in the Army -- but it doesn't mean I'm out to get in trouble or be stupid. I am hoping the company doesn't slot the IRR guys for the bullshit that they didn't want to assign to their regulars.

I really enjoyed having my bags taken from me and thrown in a truck and locked -- and two hours later being told that we're not flying for 24 more hours. I am glad I packed some extra underwear, socks, t-shirt, and hygiene items.. towel, shower sandals.. etc, in my carry-on. I absolutely LOVE sleeping on a bare mattress. Thank you Army.

This post is not directed to put down the unit as a whole.. nor is it intended to judge me before you meet me in person.. It is just a braindump of my thoughts -- the battles going on in my head. Sometimes anxiety is one of your worst enemies in the Army. The worst days and weeks of your life are the ones you remember forever. We will call this "The Adventure" .. I think it will be over a hell of a lot sooner than I think..once I hit the ground at my camp in Iraq and set up my decks of cards (One card for every day in Iraq) .. Tear it up and throw it away.

My iPod case sucks -- I think I got that Griffin iClear one.. it's made of tough acrylic.. but it scratches easily. It's a piece of shit, and I will have to find one that doesn't scratch as easily. The PX doesn't have anything worth a damn, so I will have to explore my options online once I get to my final destination. Supposedly we are supposed to be there by December 5th.

All in all, once we get settled in.. I don't think Iraq will be too much different than here. Hell, we've been living in 50-man open bays for 2 of the 3 months we've been back in the Army. It will be god damn nice to get a 2-4 man room.. some piece and quiet for a damn change.

Maybe an update tonight if I hear anything worth mentioning.

Here are a few pictures.

MN still withholding income tax

2008-11-12T00:04:00.002-06:00

This is such a tough issue to get addressed after I've already left that part of the journey of Finance.... Per Minnesota's Department of Revenue, if I'm on active duty in the military serving outside of the state of Minnesota, my income is not taxed by the state of Minnesota.

I told that to the woman at Finance 2-3 weeks ago and she blew me off like a bad day.. telling me to get it back at tax-time. That was the totally wrong answer, as I suspected. She was just lazy and didn't care. Typical.

I guess if the world ends, I can't get the issue addressed, and I get $3000 withheld by the state of MN in 2009, I will be getting a very large check in early 2010 from the IRS in MN.

I would rather gain the interest myself rather than let Minnesota get the interest off my money. Why isn't this a standard procedure in DFAS? Citizens of Texas pay zero state income tax by default -- why do I have to fight to get my withholding removed? Gah. Another day down the toilet.

Signal Exercise over for the IRR guys

2008-11-11T08:21:00.004-06:00

Wow, I just realized this is my first day touching the computer since I wrote that post on Friday evening. My weekly internet subscription expired Saturday evening -- but I didn't even realize it until Tuesday morning.

It was an interesting exercise -- I had to pull some long, cold shifts during the night though. Certain aspects of the exercise were going very well, but there was a part of it that was just not working, despite the hours poured into troubleshooting the issue. I had my guesses on what may have been wrong, but it can be tough to test my theories when sites are spread 5-30 minutes apart.

Since coming back to the Army, I realize my desktop/computer troubleshooting skills won't be used as much as I had hoped. Most people, after reading that, are probably like "What the hell? Who really wants to work?" .. Well, what these "most people" may not understand.. is the boredom of staring at 5 boxes of equipment, 12-13 hours a day, for 10 months straight. But hey, maybe those folks work at gas stations, security desks, or other places that involve a lot of boredom... Personally, I can't stand it... I was "used and abused" in the Army.. always busy, and always being abused for my technical computer knowledge. I would rather just be abused for another year rather than get bored out of my mind.

I was informed that I may be actually working at a tech control facility on a FOB (forward operating base) that is growing in size. This is good news to me -- to Becky it means safety, consistency in shifts, and that I should have some internet at work to write e-mails home. My biggest pet peeve is a routine shift schedule. This will make things fly for me. Weeks will pass by like nothing.

I am extremely excited to see Becky in a few days -- on Saturday evening to Wednesday evening, then I must return back to base. We booked a plane ticket on Saturday afternoon to return on Thursday morning, and we also booked a king bed jacuzzi suite at the Travelodge in El Paso, TX. I always wanted to see what these jacuzzi suites looked like. I know the Travelodge isn't the highest star hotel I could've got for under $100/night, but it definitely isn't one of the worst. As long as they have a pool and the room looks decent, it will be fine for $75/night. It is actually very close to the airport and a lot of restaurants/shopping.

It will be sad to kiss Becky farewell again for an unknown number of months.. but it's going to happen, and she knows it. I submitted my wish list of early June, early April, and early May as my 2 week blocks for leave back to Minnesota. They actually will give you about 17-20 days from what I hear, because you can experience some hardships/delays trying to get planes back to the US from the Middle East.

Two of my three travel vouchers were denied saying that I had not enclosed orders with them.. Wow, that was awesome to here. I will have to deal with that ASAP this week. I still have copies of what I sent to them.. so I will have to resubmit them to Bn S-1 somehow in the next two days.

I bought some new fish lighting for three of my tanks. Some of my fixtures had issues, some were using light bulbs too power-consuming for the situation nowadays.. My electrical bill was hitting $200-240 at its peak in the summer.. I'm hoping to see that decline greatly now that the A/C is off for the year. Becky cleaned the tanks, and she said the tanks look brighter.. and maybe I can finally get rid of that brown algae that, I believe, is growing due to lack of light in some tanks.

I believe we have a reflexive fire range tomorrow and some briefings.. and Thursday/Friday we have Base Defense.. It is not quite as crazy as I thought it might be.. I'd rather be in a tower rather than a front gate... Front gate will always see more annoying tasks in a base defense exercise/class.

This Verizon pre-paid cell phone is really turning out to be a great deal, as long as I never talk to anyone who isn't Verizon. I call Becky daily for 99 cents a day. I can call my parents as well for that daily total of 99 cents. Unlimited talk time, which is really amazing. It is turning out to be a good deal and a lifesaver compared to looking for payphones and crap. I may have to utilize payphones in Iraq, but I am positive they will be much more readily available. If cell phones are available at anything less than 15 cents a minute in Iraq and I supposedly have signal where I'm at.. I may pick one up.. If it's anything more than 20 cents a minute.. forget it, I'll find a payphone I think. We'll see how lazy I feel. A twenty minute call costing 4 dollars isn't too horrible. 28 dollars a week, 112 dollars a month... ouch. 10 cents a minute would only be 80 dollars a month.. still terrible. I would like more information on cell phones in Iraq, but it is surprisingly hard to find. They claim that they sell Iraqi cell phones at the PXs there... so people must be using them.

Ah whatever -- time for bed. Veteran's Day today.. a light schedule, but I will have to do one thing today in the afternoon.

And the beat goes on........

2008-11-07T23:12:00.003-06:00

We had day one of our "Signal Exercise" today... a bunch of equipment that came from Fort Bragg to here via freight and hand receipts to accommodate a few signal field exercises.

I got to meet my team -- 2 E-5 25Q's and an E-4 25B.. and myself. It will be four of us. All males. They seem like good guys, I distanced myself socially on day one to not be too forceful with socializing. I volunteered to help put together things I had no idea what they even were. This is what any good person would do (in the Army) when watching another person struggle as they grow tired of hitting stakes or turning a wrench.

But.. they still don't know where they are going. I have a feeling had I landed with a female in my group -- we would be going to a bit more cushy of an assignment -- but instead, we are open to anything now.

I feel regret for coming back tonight sitting in my bed as a damn wasp keeps running into my LCD screen of my laptop. I can't turn on the lights to find the bastard, I just give him a good whack with a dirty t-shirt and hope he doesn't come back. What does this mean? I have no control of my life again.. for a year. The Army determines what I eat, what I drink, where I bathe, where I sleep, and when and where I work.

Aghhh --- Off to bed.. I have to be up at 5AM.

Obama wins, Driver's Training...tired.

2008-11-06T00:23:00.003-06:00

So I managed to get my voting issue fixed at the last minute.. I love how things always go wrong at the last possible moment.

The Minnesota senate race had 2 million+ votes casted, and it is down to about 400-500 deciding the winner. They said they will initiate a full recount and not be 100% complete until December.

I'm glad Obama won; I don't have too much more to ramble on about this topic.

Folks are starting to get their travel voucher $$$ back to them. Some have already got the full amount, some have got a little, some none yet... I should be getting back well over $1200 in total for my expenditures.

We did driver's training yesterday and today. Yesterday was doing day-driving, changing a tire, and tieing tow-knots....but, also night-driving as well. This means turning your lights off completely and using night-vision goggles. It was pretty interesting. I was up in the machine gun turret with my NVG's on. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Today was obstacle driving with cones... Easy does it. Except for the wicked dust storm today.. In my ears, eyes, mouth, everywhere... Tomorrow is supposed to be the convoy live-fire exercise.. Not exactly looking forward to that. I think it's going to be a long day.. I'm not sure what the "Signal Exercise" is going to amount to on Fri-Mon either... Are we sleeping in our beds here? Where is the equipment? What are we supposed to do? ... Aghhh, the hell with it.. Must...get...out....of......Fort....Bliss.......

I really could use a packing list too.. We need to start thinking about getting rid of our massive amount of extra crap.

I'm trying to figure out why the Minnesota Department of Revenue told me that the military should not be taking out state taxes if I informed them to stop the deduction... but the Finance group at SRP in Ft. Bliss told me to get my money back at tax-time... Sure, that's an option... But I guess that lady doesn't understand that I am supposed to be deducting $0 in state taxes, and that "A dollar today is better than a dollar tomorrow" .. Sometimes I just hate how the Army screws with you, even after your day is supposedly over. It's never god damn over in the Army. That is why you couldn't pay me a half-million dollars to reenlist. No f'ing way. I prefer the quiet life.

USPS losing mail or Dakota County losing absentee ballot applications?

2008-11-03T22:46:00.002-06:00

So I received this in my e-mail, today, November 3rd at 2:25PM. Take in mind I filled out my FPCA (Federal Application), which requests an absentee ballot back at Fort Gordon about 4 weeks ago. I sent it to the same address as my FWAB (Federal Write-In Ballot). This seems like a big bunch of garbage. Either the USPS lost my FPCA or Dakota County lost it. There is no option C. I placed it sealed in the official USPS mailbox in a blue iron mailbox at Fort Gordon. I will resolve this, but this is just another method of state rules not bending enough for deploying/deployed uniformed service members. I will be sure to write something up to the county about this. Here is yet another story of a uniformed service member getting jacked or almost jacked out of voting when they did all the steps correctly.

Mr. Heinz,

We received your Federal Write-In Ballot for the general election. This ballot will be rejected because the Federal Application must be completed. I am attaching the Federal Application which needs to be completed and sent in by fax to our fax number 651-438-4391 or scan in and sent to our elections email address of elections@co.dakota.mn.us. Please return as soon as possible for I can forward to you by email your ballot or if we receive the Federal Application your Federal Write-In Ballot will be valid if received by November 4^th. If you have any questions, please contact me.

Thanks,

xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx
Dakota County Elections
Phone: 651-xxx-xxxx
Fax: 651-xxx-xxxx
xxxxxxxxxx@co.dakota.mn.us

Combatives, Issued weapons, Humvee Rollover training, and more

2008-11-01T12:16:00.005-05:00

So another week flies by.. Not quite as fast as some others. We hit an unfortunate bump yesterday morning at 7AM when we tried to go do "Reflexive Fire" with the M16. They said we couldn't fire on this particular range until we have zeroed and qualified with our weapons.

Sooooo... we laid around waiting on standby all of Friday morning to see if our group's NCO could find us a zero/qualification range. We weren't scheduled to zero/qualify until Kuwait (!!) originally. I guess that means we couldn't do our Convoy Operations training on Saturday either... So, we seem to have caught a lucky day off. Good for us I guess.

All in all, the Army has been trying to push us beyond 6PM a lot. It is not fun.. What is absolutely killing me is that I don't have a routine at all. Everyday is different. Some days we are up at 4:30-5:00AM -- some days we are up at 7AM. Some days we are done by noon.. Some days we aren't done until 9PM.

Civilian clothes no longer exist -- so to speak. We've seen a gradual declination in our ability to wear civilian clothing. At Camp McCrady, we wore them everyday after work.. Fort Gordon, everyday after work... Biggs Airfield, we could get away with them a little bit...Not a lot though... Camp McGregor, they seem to be non-existant.

Time off also seems to be disappearing as well. Well, days off.. We have a decent amount of time off.. Just very few solid days off.

There's a reason I haven't taken any pictures of our base.. because there are signs that say to not take pictures. So I'm following OPSEC there... Actually I've violated OPSEC in no way, shape or form.. I understand what to say and what not to say.

A few big problems we are facing right now -- We were issued way too much RFI gear and our battalion is telling us that we can only fly to Kuwait/Iraq with 2 duffle bags, a rucksack, and a carry-on + laptop. Our orders state 3 duffle bags, a personal bag, a carry-on + laptop. I don't see why the battalion needs to be pushing our bag limit downward. We got issued a lot of Gen 3 extreme cold weather gear.. Snow-suits, basically. People here and there in the battalion keep telling us we will need to look into bringing it home with us, storing it for the year, and sending it back to us at the demobilization point. Plain and simple, wrong answer. The company/battalion gets to put their excess gear in containers and ship them back to Florida.. And we get to supposedly send ours back with our own money. Haha, no. That is again, soldier $$$.

The battalion CSM recommended the battalion send our gear home at their expense.. Well, that solves the immediate problem, but we will still have to pay $100+, 11 months from now, to have our spouses/girlfriends send it back to us at the demobilization site.. Nobody would reimburse that or care at that point.

The only feasible solution would involve us putting our gear in a container, labeling it properly, sending it to Florida, and having someone go into it as soon as we get orders to leave Iraq.. and have it send to our demobilization site. We will not be able to leave the Army without that gear..or without a statement of charges. It is my understanding there is the concept of "Combat Lossing" gear, but that seems a rather poor excuse for handling excess gear properly.

It's not all bad though.. Although it is now my understanding that the mobilization process is considered probably the worst part of the deployment for a lot of people out there. So it should all get better once we leave Camp McGregor/Fort Bliss.

My 4-day pass is approved -- Becky and I already made her arrangements to fly here on the morning of Nov. 15th and return on the morning of the 20th. We made reservations at the Travelodge from the 15th to check out on the 20th. This room there called the "1 King Bed Suite w/Jacuzzi" sounded interesting for $70/night, so we decided on that one. I decided to bring her here, because I saw that no flights even leave El Paso on the night of the 15th. I would have to wait until the morning of the 16th to fly out.

In any case, all seems to be well for the most part... besides having all this extra gear. We had an internet outage yesterday and people were blaming it on me, basically.. for having a router. What some of these folks don't understand, is that every paying customer gets an allotted amount of bandwidth.. Say 50KB/s download speed and 10KB/s upload. The fact that I had two buddies using my pipe.. via router, does nothing to affect others speeds or functionality. I was just willing to sacrifice some of my bandwidth to allow them to get on without paying $15/week. Actually, since they are now paying for it, more overall bandwidth is being consumed as a result.

What's even more interesting, is that internet problems were occurring this morning, and my router is turned off and unplugged. Obviously the problems had nothing to do with me, but the guys from the ISP who came last night blamed it on me... Whatever. I am not an idiot, and I wish these people would going into god damn panic mode when the internet is down.. pointing fingers.

More to come.. Sunday is supposedly the zero/qualification range.

Working the weekend........

2008-10-26T23:43:00.004-05:00

We're now at the end of day 3 here at Fort Bliss. Saturday and Sunday we've been up at 4AM. Saturday, our day did not finish until almost 9PM. Today, it was done around 1-2PM, but we had to assemble some of our gear for tomorrow.

I guess I'm just going to jump on the "I want to leave Fort Bliss ASAP" train and hope the fly-out date comes quicker. These days are very long and boring. We are supposedly having an uber-long day tomorrow that I'm not looking forward to as well.

It seems that it is just very difficult for the IRR guys to swallow all of this "tactical training" we are doing. We seem to see it as irrelevant to our position and don't seem to care. Sure, it may be the wrong attitude.. but it's how a lot of us think. We may gripe under our breath in the barracks, but we still do everything everyone wants us to do. We only have one black sheep in the group, and I believe she will not be in my company. At heart, we are all hard workers.. There is a reason we showed up and didn't go to Canada or file for an exemption or deferment.

We are definitely not going to adapt to PT well though. Probably over a half of the group is overweight.. Half of us will fail some part of the first diagnostic PT test. We were specifically told at Camp McCrady to not do any PT until we were assigned to our unit and conducting PT with them. I will speak for myself -- I always got a 100 in the run, but I usually just passed situps by a hair.. or failed by a few. I am really not really ready to go sign a counseling statement from the 1SG saying I failed my diagnostic APFT after doing one week of PT.

I would rather the unit just leave us be.. PT-wise. We can do it, but don't expect huge results. We came back to do our jobs in Iraq, and then leave the Army... again... for good this time.... preferably with no service-connected disabilities related to doing PT in Iraq. I just would rather not do it.. period. It's no offense to anyone out there.. I was a cross-country/track athlete in high school.. I love running, but I hate all the other crap. PT was the reason a lot of shit rolled downhill for me in the Army. I went to PLDC for 2 of the 4 weeks.. a leadership course to become a Sergeant -- had a tough grader on the APFT and failed the pushups by 2. They sent me back home in shame. I had a 700+ pt promotion point possibility for going to the board after PLDC too. They counseled me for it and said I have to seek advancement in the Army or be barred to reenlist. I chose the bar. I had enough really. Bars are very easy to remove if you actually have an intent to reenlist -- they would just remove it. I had less than a year left in the Army. I just wanted to focus on civilian employment at that point.

I am not sure if we get to have a 1v1 with the commander or the 1SG. That's how things were when you joined an active duty unit. It was actually a part of inprocessing.

In other news -- we were given the thumbs up for the 4-day pass from Nov. 16th-19th. Becky will be making hotel/flight arrangements tomorrow to come here to El Paso, TX -- after verifying that she can take 4 days off from her internship and make them up later.

I hate to grab onto the rotten attitude about the Army at times, but I guess PT and tactical training just bring out the worst in me. Oh well.

Arrived at Biggs Army Airfield & McGregor Base Camp

2008-10-24T19:12:00.006-05:00

I've finally got around to finding some internet.. It's been a long road thus far since my trip to the library at Fort Gordon in Georgia.

We stayed for a week at some reserve short-term barracks at Biggs Army Airfield.. which is technically known as East Fort Bliss. It was pretty ratty to be honest. It could've been worse, but it could've been a lot better. The theme of this leg of the journey was "Haven't we already done all of this processing to mobilize?" .. We ended up basically wasting a week. The first day was spent turning in orders and signing my name a few times... Day two was absolutely nothing. I went to the PX, bought some new comfortable boots. Day three was running in circles verifying paperwork again. Day four was getting our issue. It was a lot of stuff. Day five was supposed to be dental and leaving, but it turned out to be basically just leaving.

Now we are here at "McGregor Base Camp" .. about 20-30 minutes outside of Fort Bliss. It seems OK thus far. The good news is that a lot of the training we did at Camp McCrady will not be repeated here. We should have a minimal amount of training before we get permanently attached to our unit.

I'm going to be a part of Bravo Co, 146th ESB. All of the 25B's that came with us on this journey so far are going to Bravo Co. I am still trying to figure out where all us 25B's are going to be physically going in Iraq... I would guess by sometime next week that we may have an idea who our section sergeant will be and what we may be possibly doing.

It seems the biggest concerns here so far are the IRR guys getting a 4-day pass. We've been back for almost 2 months already, and most of us want one last opportunity to see our loved ones. I hope that goes well. I wanted to fly Becky to El Paso, TX -- instead of fly back to Minneapolis/St. Paul. I hope we can spend some time together.. that's about all I honestly want out of all of this.

Issue #2 appears to be that I won't be able to receive & print my absentee ballot. Two weeks ago I sent in my absentee ballot request, requesting that it be delivered via e-mail -- I figured I could have Becky print it and send it to here. If that failed, I have my Federal Write-In ballot that I already have filled out -- but I would need my unit's Voting Assistance Officer or my Company Commander to sign as my witness. I will make sure that thing is in the mail by Tuesday.

Here are some pictures here of some barracks at Fort Gordon, Biggs Army Airfield Reserve barracks, and some scenery .. You can see some rather funny pictures of us disposing of some useless expendable issue items. We aren't really wasting the Army's money -- but we are being given stuff that isn't hardly even authorized to use anywhere in the Army.. let alone Iraq. I am currently up to 2 duffle bags, a footlocker, a huge rucksack (backpack), and a small backpack + my laptop.

More to come in the days ahead.. I believe we are working Saturday & Sunday .. long days and briefings we are being told... Gotta be up at 4AM.

And for your viewing pleasure.. Me using an item that nobody in the Army is ever allowed to use!

Last days at Fort Gordon

2008-10-16T15:01:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update now that I have no internet on a daily basis... I'm at the Fort Gordon library on a limited time basis.. 35 minutes on the internet to be exact.

We are leaving via airplane for Fort Bliss, TX (El Paso, TX) on Saturday afternoon.. All 20-25 of us.

All in all, I'm doing OK without the internet.. I had Becky send me my Thinkpad, my external USB hard drive.. and some games, so I'm fine.

I picked up another external hard drive and a 5-port 10/100 switch just for the hell of it.

I also had her send me some books to read.. Yes, Jordan reading books.. You know you're reaching the end of the Earth when Jordan starts to read books.

I have no permanent address yet.. which is making voting rather difficult. They have a system where they can e-mail you your ballot.. I checked that on my absentee ballot request..but I don't think I will have solid access to a printer at Fort Bliss..so I picked up the Federal Write-In Ballot as well.. That seems to be the "Oh " ballot in case you can't get your absentee ballot in time.

I will take some pictures here at Fort Gordon.. Nothing too special to see yet though. I have a feeling I'm in for a chance of pace once we leave here.. It's going to be a faster pace for the next month or two.

I can see the trend though regarding money.. I'm not spending hardly any money.. so this is going to be a big "plus" in this whole deal. I bet I'll spend even less in Iraq. So that's good I guess.

Next post will probably come from Fort Bliss.. Hopefully they have some sort of a wifi hotspot. The Nokia N810 has been put on the backburner for awhile.. Don't need it yet. The browser is just too damn slow, that was my gripe with the Nokia. If they worked on making that browser faster, it would be a hell of alot more useful.

Last notable mention.. I'm operating quite scatter-brained right now... I think we will be in Fort Bliss for about 6 weeks.. The heresay on the street is that we're going to barely run into Thanksgiving. One thing average citizens in this country take for granted.. is their ability to spend holidays with family. Some people in the military haven't ever missed holidays.. Those who have, they understand how god damn boring it is sitting in your room on Christmas evening staring at a computer screen drinking a beer or playing a game.

In any case, off I go..

Checking out of Army Lodging..

2008-10-09T23:57:00.003-05:00

Our "Statement of Non-Availability" ends tomorrow, so we are forced to move out of Army Lodging. Oh well, the internet and nice beds were great while they lasted.

Not too much significant happened this week. We did receive our orders to bring us to Fort Bliss, TX on Oct. 19th. It says that our deployment is not to exceed 358 days.. I'm sure they can extend us though.. Not holding my breath on being done Oct. 11th, 2009... Definitely not.

We are waiting until the 19th, because there are still some jobs' refresher courses finishing up this next week.

Soo.. Of course I come with a nice story this entry. Our class is a group of 5 of us -- actually 6. The five of us do pretty well together.. We are bitter to be back, but we stick together well. Coincidentally the oddball is a female. She has completely done her own thing the entire 3 weeks here. She isn't wearing the same headgear as us, she hasn't shown up for class 3 of the 14 days. Well, today was supposed to be our last day of classs... We were done, and we would have next week off waiting for the others to finish... Was going to be a nice week.

She hasn't came to class the past 2 days -- Well, one hour before we were done for the day.. She comes in, escorted by an E-7... And everyone begins to talk about how we have "nothing to do next week" .. So they make quick arrangements to give us more half-assed training and to show up at 0830 on Tuesday morning. AWESOME!

Let me point out a few things about this dangerous soldier. She was never in a real unit -- she went to Basic, to AIT, and was released due to not being close enough to her guard unit. She is from the "deep south" and has an attitude to go with her. She doesn't listen to anything we say, and she has mouthed off to several NCOs and gotten away with it.

If I were an E-5, she would already be standing in front of a commander getting her Article 15 read off to her for disrespecting a non-commissioned officer. People like her get people hurt or killed. She should be thrown out of the Army.

The last few of us here at Army Lodging will be moving over to the BNCOC barracks tomorrow for the 4-day weekend + next week. No internet there.. So I've said my farewells to the internet for now I think.

I did manage to download a bunch of single-player RPGs to play in my downtime. I'm having Becky send me a bunch of books to read.. we'll see how that goes. I will try and read all the classics I never got around to reading...... She will be sending me a blanket too... I guess according to some popular heresay around here -- Soldiers are actually required to bring bedding with them to Iraq now.. None is provided there. So I bought some, minus a blanket and have washed it 4 times trying to get it soft.. I hate cheap sheets.. All they had at the PX were super cheap sheets and semi-cheap sheets. A pillow as well.

I found the blog of an LT in my unit.. 146th ESB. It looks like they are doing a lot of the stuff we did at Camp McCrady.. We didn't get RFI (knee pads, elbow pads, Camelback, goggles, etc) there though. They are living in tent city.. I guess things will get worse before they get better. From what I gathered from truck drivers who'd already been to Iraq.. They said once you actually get settled down somewhere.. You should be relatively happy to unpack your shit instead of living out of a bag for 3 months. I'm up to 2 plumb full duffle bags now, with a carry-on and laptop case. I may look into a foot locker.. They have ones on wheels now. It is a fairly popular trend in the Army to use a footlocker.. Because shit can't get broken in there as easily as a duffle bag.

I'm just looking forward to leaving Fort Gordon.. we are living fairly well here.. but the longer we stay here.. the more comfortable people get. Lots of folks booked plane tickets for this 4-day weekend and are already home.. That ticket flying out of Augusta's tiny airport must've costed these days an arm and a leg... Not me. I'm saving money.

Poor Dow Jones.. Poor America... Must...have...election...

I'll blog when I get a chance in the next week.

Voting .. Ughh

2008-10-04T23:31:00.003-05:00

I was just running some math through my head... This is going to be a pain in the ass to get my vote through. Our deployment date is going to be right around election day... Which means I won't have shit for a permanent address.... I see they can deliver it via e-mail...But that doesn't do me any good if I don't have a computer & printer handy to print it. I think I will send in this absentee ballot request form and just send in a Federal Write-In Ballot about a week after it. They require you to submit the absentee request form in order for your write-in ballot to be accepted.

I heard some fairy tales about this getting all screwed over in Iraq in 2004... Now I know why.

Interesting Articles about 146th ESB -- Another week down

2008-10-04T16:13:00.003-05:00

Not a lot actually happened in the boring training this week.. the focus this week was TCP/IP, and working with Cisco routers/switches... Very basic training in it.. Basically useless in my opinion.

However, I decided to google "146th ESB" .. which is the unit I think all 20-30 of us are going to get attached to... It appears they are having their "send-off" ceremonies to the various companies in the 146th Expeditionary Signal Battalion today and tomorrow. It looks like they are flying out tomorrow.

Before I post the articles -- Let's think about one way I'm sure we will get shafted.. us IRR folks that were recalled back. We've already been back a month... I'm positive that we will go to the unit, report.. and they will be a few days into their training. We will raise a point of "Are we going to get a 4-day pass or a week of block leave prior to deployment?" .. I am quite certain the answer may be no to both accounts... possibly a pass, but any possibility of a week or two of leave is most certainly tossed out the window. Why? Because the families of the people heading to El Paso tomorrow will have already said goodbye to their loved ones until they come home on their mid-tour leave in Iraq. It's not the unit's fault; just a fatal flaw in the process unfortunately.

I would like to bring Becky to El Paso for a few days.. we will see how that pans out. If they shuffling and moving real fast when we get there.. I don't know if that is going to be possible.

So... again.. the IRR gets shafted. I can't say I'm too happy with this entire process. I guess I just have to get used to everything being screwed up and just deal with it for a year.

Here are the articles -- Pensacola unit honored before deployment to Iraq & Send Off - 146th ESB, Jacksonville, FL, 04, 05 OCT 08.

So what's the good news for this week? I got my Thinkpad R52 sent to me by Becky.. I had her send Warhammer Online with it too, but I don't think I will even bother to play it for a week or two at most. I also found out on the internet that all Minnesota residents are given 100% state tax exemption for military salaries and benefits. That will probably save me two or three thousand dollars right there.. I'm no finance/tax expert, but I think they will just continue to take it out of my check, and I will seek a large tax refund at tax year 2008 and 2009.

Agghh, one month down.. 13 to go.

Day 22 -- Life goes on

2008-09-29T16:45:00.002-05:00

It is day 22 on Planet Gordon and signs of human life appear to be non-existant.. We are considering slaughtering the lamb for food...............Just kidding.

It was a boring weekend -- I walked around a lot, sweated a lot, and even did some running the past week. I am thinking it may be time to get the Thinkpad in my hands so I can play some computer games or something to pass the time. The Nokia N810 is great, but I just find the browser too slow on graphics-intensive web pages to be effective for a quick browsing individual like myself.

So I was never even formally processed into the company, so I have no idea where the mail room even is. I really didnt want to go down that route. I checked out the local post office, their lobby closes at 4:30.. Awesome. Next stop was the the UPS store.. They offered PO boxes for a flat rate of 3 months for $40... screw that. Now I used to ninja this stuff at Ecolab, so I figured I would ask them... Can I have it sent here and I pay a fee to have it shipped here? The answer was yes for $5-$8. Better than $40..

My classes are boring.. Basically setting up a windows 2003 environment.. Domain controller, dns, dhcp, wins, exchange 2003, changing group policies, dabbling in IIS.. Alot of unnecessary crap in an E-4s head when all we will be doing is working on probably windows XP desktops and resetting AD passwords.

The rest of this week is routers & switches.. I still cant begin to stress how all of this responsibility worldwide was handed off from green suited soldiers to DA civilians and DOD contractors. They simply dont trust us with big routers, server farms, and such.. Quite frankly I dont blame them.

I did notice that we are using VMware in the schoolhouse.. Makes things a lot easier to reset and try again if you botch something.

No new news on El Paso.. Word on the street is we are taking the good old fashioned bus ride from Augusta, GA to El Paso, TX... That is well over halfway across the nation. Oh, and we will probably be traveling on Columbus Day weekend when everyone else is getting 3 days off in the government.. And we are stuck on a piece of crap bus.

And lets not even get started about the Nasdaq/Dow Jones today.. Dear God. If we drop below $10k in the Dow, we are going to be in for a rude awakening .. Mr. Car Salesman, what do you mean I cant take out a loan? Mr. Financial Advisor, what do you mean I cant go to college?

Get Bush out of the drivers seat!

Unorganized chaos at Fort Gordon...

2008-09-25T18:34:00.001-05:00

I figured I'd take the time this evening to sit down and write about this week's experiences..

First off I will start off by saying WOW, I never thought I'd feel any more unwanted for coming back to active duty involuntarily to go to the sandbox in the Middle East. To the military folks who just received their IRR letter in the mail, read on about the "MOS refresher course" they are supposed to give you.

So bright and early Monday morning, we needed to either find new lodging or reserve it for the next 2 1/2 weeks. We managed to find the one E-7 in charge of getting us to our units/classes. We're talking about 25 recalled IRR soldiers spread out amongst 7 jobs in the Army all needing these fabled 2-3 week refresher courses. The situation was looking grim and my bags were still in my room... So us 5 decided to go and reserve it >. Out of our own pockets.. Until October 10th. That is $44/night times about 20 nights. We all managed to get our rooms reserved until then.. Good deal, for those willing to give the Army a 2-3 month loan until our signed travel vouchers get processed and EFT'd back into our checking accounts.

After we did that, the E-7 herded us into the orderly room of our company. Not a good place to be at 5PM when everyone wants to leave. Immediately they start ragging on a guy about a haircut, us messing around with IET (new soldiers) soldiers just coming into the Army, rape, etc... As if we have never received the speech before. They basically threaten to hang us by our balls if we don't show up to formation tomorrow at 5AM.

So we finally get out of there at 7PM.. And go home. The next day we showed up just a touch late because we had issues finding the formation. Slight asschewing.. However, we found an E-5 who had been there a week prior and was in our boat.. So he took us to class and now we're straight.

So the next day we show up to formation in berets instead of patrol caps, so we don't stick out like sore thumbs. The platoon leader tells us to get out of his formation if we're not on his roster. So what the hell do we do? We hide in the back, and haven't came back since.

The first day they were talking about giving us PT tests, sending us to newcomer briefings, and making us go to Organizational Day. God what a mess, we are just ignoring it all and noone has reprimanded us yet. It seems there is absolutely no formal system in-place whatsoever to retrain IRR soldiers who have been out of the Army for a number of years.

Tomorrow the entire schoolhouse is at their Organizational Day and the instructors are OFF. But not us! Damn it, maybe we'll get to leave early... Life is quite easy here though, but I'm not going to get overly comfortable.

I started running again.. Well, I'm trying at least. It will come with time.

Boy, I'm really missing Ecolab at this point.. and Becky of course.

That's all for now.. I'm sure I'll write again this weekend.

Becky's Thoughts

2008-09-21T20:26:00.003-05:00

So I thought I'd take a shot at posting some thoughts. Jordan's been gone two weeks and its so different without him at home. I miss the little things like talking to him when I get home from work or when he gets home from work. I started a three month internship at a veterinary clinic doing 40 hours a week, without pay. When I'm not there I work my regular job, which is taking care of 6 guys who are paralyzed from the neck down. It's keeping me pretty busy so that I'm not just sitting at home twiddling my thumbs.

I've gotten to talk with Jordan every night so far, which is nice for the transition of not having him around. He's stressed but he is holding it together pretty well. I'm proud of him for doing this and cannot wait for him to come home.

I'm looking forward to seeing him in November, its nice knowing we don't have to go the entire 13 months without seeing each other.

I suppose that's all that's exciting from my end of things. gotta get up early for work!

Becky

A nice quiet Sunday on Fort Gordon

2008-09-21T18:24:00.002-05:00

So I figured I would do some exploring today... It was quite interesting -- so many things have changed on Fort Gordon since 6 years ago when I was here. Drill sergeants are now extinct in the AIT environment. AIT is a fancy term for Army´ś job training. I guess the Army is becoming very shorthanded on drill sergeants due to the conflict/war in the Middle East. They now have ¨cadre¨ who are the drill sergeants. They are basically sergeants and staff sergeants who still continue to pound the military basics into Private´ś heads, but they don´t wear the round brown hat.

That is definitely the biggest change -- no drill sergeants. They are also allowed to pretty much smoke cigarettes upon coming here, as long as they´ŕe in the smoking area. I hope most of these people are single, because I saw a lot of mingling and dressing up on Saturday evening. I am convinced there is a higher rate of cheaters in the military as opposed to the outside world, but maybe I am wrong. I am going to stay out of the drinking/clubbing groups to stay out of the peer pressure here.

I´ve been sitting in my room drinking beers most the day. Every hour or so I drop down and knock out 30 pushups just for the hell of it. Hah!

Another interesting aspect that has changed in the Army from what I can see... There is no more punishment of doing pushups as corrective training to a mistake. I am not sure if I mentioned this in my previous posts -- but Privates in basic training now have the ability to pull out a stress card one day a week, and the drill sergeant has to leave them alone for the entire day. I would imagine this is an effort to keep more folks sanity in line and to bring down the number of dropouts for reasons X, Y, or Z. The amount of mental abuse one can take is finite. Iḿ sure it was different twenty years ago too. There was a time where they could strike you. Then there was a time where they couldnt strike you, but they could continue to make you do pushups forever.. Now, all of that is gone.

But --- about my actual situation.. Little is known as to what we´ŕe going to do tomorrow. We´ŕe going to leave our stuff in our hotels and take off at 7AM to see if we can get something done by 10AM and get the Army to pay for this hotel for the next 3 weeks.

This whole IRR recall has been a disaster though. Very little guidance, and they expect us to be fit for war in about a month..haha. I suppose at some point I should start running 4-6 miles a day to burn off some of this fat... Now that I dont smoke anymore.

Becky has now started her veterinary tech internship at a veterinary clinic in Apple Valley. This is the start of week 3 for her. It seems to be going well. I am very excited in the months to come to see her work towards acquiring her career job.

Over and out for tonight.

And Life Goes On....

2008-09-21T09:35:00.002-05:00

Well, it has been an interesting two weeks so far. On Friday at 6PM, we left Camp McCrady outside of Fort Jackson headed towards Fort Gordon. I am now at Fort Gordon, GA sitting in an Army Lodging room for the weekend, because things were rolling downhill quickly on Friday night at 11PM, because our new training unit had nowhere to place us.

So.. what kind of things have happened since my last post? We finished up our inprocessing back into the Army. We got our "initial issue" of Army gear as if we were new. These new ACU's (replaced the BDU's) are really strange. They have a lot of pockets and feel significantly hotter than the old BDU. Our undershirts used to be made of 100% cotton -- now they are giving us shirts that are 100% polyester. Pros? Well, I think they dry faster. Cons? They are hot as hell and don't breathe well.

I could gripe about the new uniform forever, but I also got a series of shots there as well. I was given a medical and dental thumbs up. They started up my direct deposit again. I had a small hiccup that may come to bite me later. I always left my mailing address for the military as my parents address in Duluth, MN. They claimed that they were going to have to pay me housing $$$ based on that address, because even with a rental agreement from Eagan, MN.. They can't pay me housing $$$ for Eagan if that isn't my military home address on record.

To make it clear and simple, because I forgot to do something or simply didn't want to.. Change my address. Is the Army aware that young folks can move around quite a bit after leaving the Army? I mean I could've updated it right after leaving the Army and moved 4 times in 3 years and forgot to update it. Then what happens? They call you back and FedEx it to the wrong address. It gets returned to sender, and the Army looks your employer up by your SSN and finds your correct address and then sends it. By then, your 60-day notice just turned into 45 or less. THAT is why I left it as my parents address, my "home of record".

The lady at Finance sympathized with this concept and actually believed in it herself. Why deliver mail to bad addresses when your parents will get you the envelope ASAP. Well, the reason I never adjusted it to Eagan or gave them my phone number... Take a guess. Recruiters would see that you adjusted your address and phone number. They have probably called my parents or sent nonsense in the mail. I have heard of recruiters coming to people's houses and nearly threaten them with deployment if they didn't enlist in the national guard or reserves.

I don't hate the Army as an entity. It is just some people ruin it for the whole. That is any organization though. Things are much different in the Army. Most organizations can fix a pay problem in a single business day. In the Army, it can take months to get a complex situation ironed out. All this ranting about housing $$$ -- What does it mean? The Army may pay me $705/mo instead of 890$/mo. Neither cover my entire apartment cost in Eagan. To be honest, at this point, whether I get either/or, I don't even care as long as I get at least 700$. They are basing the amount based off your zip code. A guy who lived in West Palm Beach, FL was getting $1200/mo, whereas a guy from Fargo, ND was getting $500/mo.

My biggest gripe about all of this is that we don't even want to be here, and they are making it very difficult for us to get proper housing at Fort Gordon. They sent some folks to the AIT barracks, which is against Army rules. They sent some folks off-post and made them pay $80 x 3 nights. They claim we will have to fill out a travel voucher later to get our money back. That is utter crap. We received worthless 1-week paychecks from the Army on the 19th for like 700 dollars and they expected me to shell out a long-term loan to the Army for 120 dollars that won't be paid back to me until I am probably halfway through my tour in Iraq. Why are they not giving us proper arrangements? Because nobody cared and it was Friday night and they wanted us out of their hair. We arrived there at 8PM, and I didn't see my hotel room until 11:30PM and $120 later.

They say Fort Gordon's lodging situation for folks getting trained on new jobs or getting retraining on their old jobs, is a complete disaster. They didn't tell us where to go, who to see, or anything. I really believe I could probably just fly back to Eagan for 2 weeks, and come back to here and say "Yeah I am trained now, where do I get my orders to Fort Bliss". They are not keeping track of us at all, which is pathetic.

Anyhow, I do have a timeline now. We are supposed to leave here no later than 3 weeks from this past Friday/Saturday. Supposedly my unit, the 146th Expeditionary Signal Battalion will already be at Fort Bliss, TX. I am being told that all folks going to the Middle East receive "R&R leave" that is not charged against my vacation pool and the roundtrip ticket is paid for by the Army. This means halfway through my deployment, I will be sent home for 2 weeks and return to finish the last 5 months. According to my orders, they claim that I am supposed to be out of the Army on October 11th, 2009. In the back of my head, I know this will probably be month 10 of deployment, and they will probably just extend all of us to finish the deployment. Maybe not, but I am quite certain they will. Why? Because apparently the Florida Army National Guard acquired the plague when they came up on deployment and had a fallout of 50+ assholes who were too big of pansies to do their job and got out of this for medical reasons. So now 20-30 of us "IRR soldiers" are all going to that same unit to fill all of these slots. If all of us left in early October on month 10 of deployment -- it would render the unit worthless. That is why I believe I won't be leaving in October.

There has been a lot of talk here about the military re-routing all units deploying in early 2009 to Afghanistan instead of Iraq. I think we will slip under the radar and continue to Iraq. To be honest, as a signal battalion with the National Guard, I think I will be quite safe wherever I go compared to the guys that I was sleeping near at Camp McCrady. These guys were truck drivers and will be driving in convoys everyday. That is probably one of the top most dangerous jobs in the Army.

I'm pretty sure it's all common knowledge now, but back in 2003, Humvees were driving around in Iraq with no doors, no A/C, and had no bulletproof glass or special armor. We were taking a slew of casualties from IEDs, which are just home-made bombs. They Army got smart years later and put A/C in all humvees, put armor plating everywhere on the humvee including underneath it. They are also using a radio jamming technology that can possibly set off radio-controlled bombs up to 100M away. I thought that was also long overdue, but it seems like a good technology.

I also had Becky mail me a prepaid Verizon cell phone. The coverage areas are not as good as my normal Verizon cell phone she has, but it only costs me a dollar a day to talk unlimited to any other Verizon subscribers -- which is Becky, my parents, and my sister.

I'll think of other things as time goes by, but I am now clueless as to what I'm going to do for 3 weeks at Fort Gordon, GA. This whole recalled IRR soldier process is a big mess and completely demoralizing. Becky has helped me get through it so far.

more pics

2008-09-09T06:16:00.002-05:00

Jordan posted more pics on his picasa web albums. Here is the link.

I miss Jordan!

Becky

Monday Morning Blues

2008-09-08T14:44:00.001-05:00

So we got up at 5AM today and ate.. I found out that we're actually at McCrady Training Center...our barracks that is. It looks like we've moved to Ft. Jackson now to do medical inprocessing. I can already tell that this is going to be a lot of "hurry up and wait" Army junk.

Example - "Get on the bus...Get off, get on the other bus...stand here, stand there"

So I left this email open most the day...it's finally 4PM and the day is starting to wind down...more to come later.

I miss Becky.

I'm in South Carolina....

2008-09-07T22:36:00.001-05:00

So I've arrived here...Go figure, I have Wifi available but I can't find a payphone at 10:30PM to save my life.

So far the Nokia N810 is looking quite promising...people are impressed. I was sitting outside of our open bay barracks connected to yahoo messenger & skype talking to Becky via real-time voice chat.

As far as the living conditions here...there seems to be some form of air conditioning and half decent showers. The beds and blankets are typical basic training crap though.

Tomorrow will be the big day to find out how stressful this is really going to be. I found a few guys who are coincidentally going to the same unit as me in the Florida National Guard. It looks to be that El Paso, TX will be our destination in about 3 weeks.

That's all for now.. I must get to sleep. This stowaway bluetooth keyboard is really kicking butt though.

I love you Becky!

Sitting in Chicago

2008-09-07T16:38:00.001-05:00

So I'm sitting here at my gate an hour prior to going to South Carolina... Wondering what the hell I've gotten myself into. However, it really wasn't my choice at all. Columbia is a small airport with a high voume of military recruits coming into it. I'm hoping I don't get mixed in too bad with the guys and gals going to basic training. I'm crossing my fingers hoping no cadre gets up my ass tonight. I really miss Becky already.... I can't find any free wifi around here.... More to come later.

Last call.....

2008-09-07T12:41:00.003-05:00

So here I am, 2 1/2 hours before my plane takes off... Writing my final post before I turn off the monitor.

My mind is pretty empty.. I am just scared of the transition back to Active Duty. I just like the feeling of knowing where I will be sleeping, where I will eat, etc. However, in the Army, you rarely know anything about it until you are there.

But alas, I go anyways. I will be writing from the flip side of the equation. We will see what things are like.

Other notable mentions -- Picasa

2008-09-06T15:47:00.003-05:00

I'm getting together all my gadgets to go with me. The Army used to really hate when new soldiers bring all this expensive crap to the training environment, but fortunately I am not "new" this time around.

I picked up a used "original" PSP, not the Slim version. It felt too flimsy. I got a few games to go with it. The best one seems to be either God of War - Chains of Olympus -- or Patapon. I really believe you could have nightmares about the little tribal men in Patapon. We'll see.

I got a 500-in-1 Memory card reader from Targus. Actually I think it is like 12-in-1, but it seems like false advertising when I can't find a place to stick my Mini-SD card in, and I have to use the regular SD converter to get it in.

I also got a real nice case for the PSP. It is made by Logitech -- the PlayGear Pocket. I think you could hit this thing with a baseball bat and it might survive.

Anyhow -- Things are pretty somber around here today. Running small errands, cleaning up the house, moving some rubbermaid tubs down to the garage. We are now making the big supper to eat this evening. It should be grand.. about 8 lbs of roast beef, mashed potatoes, asparagus, and sauteed mushrooms.

I did, however, find a program for my Nokia N810 called Maemo Publishr to publish an entire folder of pictures to either Flickr or Picasa. I actually opt'd for Picasa. I know Flickr has some sort of nice agreement with Blogger.com, but for now I will use Picasa. My first goof-off gallery of photos can be seen here.

That's all for now.

Last few days...not so great feelings.

2008-09-06T00:01:00.005-05:00

I'm finally down to the wire. I have two more nights left in the apartment until this last tour in the Army is over for good. How do I feel? Well, I've done this before, but I've never been en route to the sandy desert in Iraq. It feels like you're about to leave everything behind and on hold.

As I was walking into Best Buy yesterday to pick out a digital camera case -- of course, the security camera man at the door asks me how I'm doing. Well, I'm three days from leaving my life behind for a year and a half -- how would you feel? I just kept walking, and he asked me if he could help me find anything??? I didn't know the security camera men at Best Buy were well versed salesmen.

I'm not really searching for any sympathy by using this blog. I'm just letting any friends I've made along the way in the past 6-7 years since high school know what it feels like it be yanked back into this "war" we have in the Middle East. I'm really taking a neutral position on the war, and I sure as hell don't care about either the republicans or democrats plans for the grand withdrawal of troops from Iraq. By the time the legislation begins to take effect, I would be back in my apartment in Eagan with a really bad farmer's tan and a smile.

I firmly believe I was fortunate in being put into the unit the Army chose for me. I think this will be a safe unit, and it should be a safe trip.

I will dearly miss my girlfriend, Rebecca, my fish, my car, my bed, and all of my colleagues that somehow manage to put a smile on my face daily at Ecolab.

Another day in Duluth..

2008-08-31T22:43:00.005-05:00

My mother and I drove to Duluth in the GTO this morning. We were still quite tired from the late night out. We arrived to Duluth around 1PM and met my uncle, aunt, and cousin (Roger, Sandra, & Rory) around 4PM.

We picked up some ribeye steaks and a few shish kabobs from Mt. Royal. That store has greatly improved over the years. I remember we used to go in there almost 10 years ago to buy toilet paper at midnight to go "TP" somebody's house. If this is unfamiliar terminology, it means throwing lots of rolls of toilet paper into someone's trees in their yard.

Anyhow, it was a good evening of eating here at Vermillion Road & walking around the infamous Canal Park in Duluth. I carried my Nokia N810 around during the Canal Park journey. I was able to pick up all sorts of WiFi from the various hotels and coffee shops down there.

Becky is driving up to Duluth after she gets off work tomorrow at noon in Eagan. Camping will be our last true vacation of any sorts until the flip side of the Army ordeal. In a way I am very sad, but I am ready to go to begin my final 14-16 month journey with the Army. I can't say I will enjoy it, but I am going to try my best to not entirely hate the root cause of why I am ultimately going and doing this.

BBQ & More..

2008-08-31T03:31:00.002-05:00

So it's finally over... But it was so much fun that I wish that it never ended. The BBQ at Christina's house was a blast. Paul & Melissa were both there until 2:30. It was a very comforting & special occasion. We played beer pong periodically throughout the night and the board game "Battle of the Sexes" to wrap it up.

I will be heading back to Duluth tomorrow to spend a day with my Uncle Roger; then, Becky & I will go camping at her parent's hunting cabin for two nights.

This was written offline in the car on the Nokia N810.. More to come at a later date.

Done with Ecolab & purchased USB thumb drive

2008-08-29T23:05:00.004-05:00

So, I decided that I would make one last purchase, based on a $30 mail-in rebate offered on this -- Corsair's Flash Voyager 16GB Thumb Drive. I know I can connect that up in USB Host mode to my Nokia N810, so that will be nice. My only other thumb drive I've ever owned still works, but it's about 5 years old and 128MB. Things have sure changed. I can't believe they can cram up to 32GB now on a USB thumb drive.

Anyhow, my camera and thumb drive are on the way. I can't wait to give the camera a whirl.

My parents are in town, so I'm quite occupied while they are here.

My last day at Ecolab (for now) turned out to be quite awkward feeling, but it was OK. It's always hard to make sure you distinctly say "Goodbye" to everyone before you leave. There are always people who get missed, and they always rub it in after I get done & come back. This has happened before when I was going to and from South Korea in the Army. It is impossible to ensure everyone has been properly informed & said goodbye to.

So that is why I try this blogging effort, to keep people more informed about my life. Even if they aren't interested in the whole thing.... which I don't blame them, they may find some interesting tidbits here and there. Pictures should be good at least.

I'm going camping on Monday-Wednesday up near Duluth at my girlfriend's parent's hunting cabin next to a small lake. I am looking forward to it, but I am not looking forward to pulling ticks out of my back and armpits! Oh well.

That's all for now.

New camera ordered!

2008-08-26T11:58:00.002-05:00

It will be a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS. I have been browsing at FatWallet's Hot Deals the past week looking for a good point-and-shoot digital camera that accepts normal Secure Digital cards. SD cards as opposed to Sony's MemoryStick technology amongst many others.

I finally found the deal on Fatwallet -- Canon Powershot SD1100 IS Digital Camera - $168.95 shipped + 5% Microsoft CashBack.

I applied for the 5% Microsoft Live CashBack. It seems my 5% of $169 sits in "Pending" mode for 60 days before I can claim it. This seems like a safety feature to folks abusing it.

I took free ground shipping, so this thing has 8 business days to get here before I'm gone. I hope I don't get let down!

The Nokia N810 Internet Tablet PC + Linksys USB100M

2008-08-24T20:34:00.002-05:00

DSC01424
Originally uploaded by jnheinz

This is the device I have been talking about. It was very tricky actually getting Ethernet to work, but I believe I have saved myself a whopping $50. I won't be buying the D-Link Wireless Pocket Router anymore.

With the help of an application package called usbcontrol, it was able to finally bring the "100" light on the Linksys USB100M. I went into X-Terminal, switched to super user mode, and typed simply "ifup eth0". I was then able to ping www.yahoo.com and watch the responses.

There was a few tricky elements such as renaming default.script to udhcpc.script deeply rooted in a directory structure as well as making changes to /etc/dnsmasq.conf and /etc/network/interfaces per this article .. I am running the Diablo distribution of OS2008, so I had to use a DUMMY interface (connection) to trick every application into believing I was already connected to a WiFi point.

I did "apt-get install libicd-network-dummy" and rebooted. Now, under the "Select Connections" on the top bar -- there is an item called DUMMY. That is it. Everything now works.

What a battle -- over 6 hours invested. Fortunately, this Linksys USB100M is from a former endeavor many years ago.

Back to work --- for a week, & more.

2008-08-24T15:19:00.006-05:00

And I'm back... doing what I do best. After getting nipped at by angry users over the telephone -- I can see that I probably need to jump ship and transition out of this. I can't really focus on this stuff anymore, when I know that 2 weeks from now.. I will have a completely different job.

For reference -- The Nokia N810 Internet Tablet PC is what I will be sporting in my endeavors ahead of me. It has 802.11b/g WiFi capability, but no Ethernet. I have a 4GB mini-SD card inside of it to store whatever I need. It has loads of nifty features, a QWERTY keyboard, and no bigger than an average Blackberry now.

I also picked up a Think Outside Stow-Away Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard to lighten the burden on my fingers pecking away at these tiny keys. It seems to be working fairly good. I still have to use the Function (Fn) to hit #'s (1-9 & 0). Oh well. It came with a nice bump case too. It seems to be doing the trick.

The part that is bothering me is my lack of ability to use Ethernet. I can already see myself trapped somewhere that has ethernet and no wi-fi, which would put me out of business. The answer -- D-Link High Speed Pocket Wireless Router. The only downside is going to be scavenging for an AC power outlet. As near as I can figure, it is inconvienent, but it will do the trick. It has the ability to give the router power over USB, but that doesn't do my situation much good. My special (small) USB port on this N810 is very special and doesn't seem to work like one on a regular laptop/desktop PC.

These will be the big hitters in my toys dragging along on my journey.

Dells vacation is over..

2008-08-20T18:24:00.002-05:00

So.. The vacation at the Dells is now over... Noah's Ark, Mt. Olympus, and our grand hotel.. The Great Wolf Lodge. It was fun while it lasted, but it just doesn't feel as good as it would've felt a year ago.

On the bright side -- I picked up a $40 Bluetooth stowaway keyboard off EBay while I was in the Dells. I am now using it and it is pretty slick compared to the N810's tiny keyboard.

I'll have to figure out how to throw web links into these blog posts easily. This program, MaemoWordPy, allows me to do offline blog posts, save them, and publish them when Internet becomes available. I forsee that having a strong amount of value.

More to come..

The Wisconsin Dells

2008-08-18T00:43:00.002-05:00

My vacation has begun. I've been waiting to go here for months. I brought along just my tiny Nokia N810 tablet PC to give it a field test... It's working great. We're staying at the Great Wolf Lodge.. It has an enormous indoor waterpark. Tomorrow is Noah's Ark. Off to bed.