Much has happend since last we connected.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this thing and quite a bit has happened since last I wrote. So this could be a doozy…guess we’ll find out. First off, for those of you who may not know, I was on 3 different continents in November, the majority of that time being spent in Weatherford, Parker County, Texas, US, North America, Earth, ad infinitum. I had a good time and between visiting family, friends, and studying for some certification exams I needed for work I stayed insanely busy most of the time. Thanks to those who were able to make hanging out happen and to those who couldn’t I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you. Seriously. It was my intention to visit with everybody I’ve known since I was born but less  than a month just didn’t turn out to be enough time. The plan, as it stands right now, is to stay here until I’m done with this place which is probably going to be August or September, it all depends on how my financification is going at that point. After that I will see you all and not have to rush it because I’ll never have to come back to this place again (at least that’s my hope and dream).  Barring not getting to see everyone though, I’d say my vacation was a pretty big success. Although would like to offer one bit of warning: If you do a European vacation then make sure you have at least some semblance of a plan. The whole impromptu thing didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped and involved a lot more backtracking and expense than I really expected. I went from Spin B -> Kandahar -> Dubai ->London -> Edinburgh -> London -> Paris -> London -> home…all in a week.  While I had a great time and saw some amazing things (every bit of London, the Louvre, The Eiffel Tower, Edinburgh Castle, etc) I also got a lot of great pictures and vides…however I was a big idiot and took all the pics off of my camera and put them on my computer at home so I don’t have them up here. I did upload a few to facebook though so here they are:

This is the city of Edinburgh:

If you couldn’t tell, that’s me with the Eiffel Tower:

This is me in the largest collection of scotch whisky in the world:

In other news, I’d like for everyone to take a moment of silence for a friend who left us quite suddenly while I was at home.  I hadn’t known him for very long but we knew each other very well and we were very close. I’m talking about Gary, my beloved beard. I shaved him off and immediately regretted the decision.  I’m a monster. I will say though that his death probably did some good. I’m fairly certain at least 47 families of birds now have homes because I dumped Gary’s remains outside. It’s kind of like he was an organ donor but instead of using it as organs they used it as building materials…thank God we don’t do that with people because that would make some pretty disgusting (although possibly tasty (ah cannibal jokes, they never get old)) houses. By the way, if anyone ever doubt you when you tell them I have ADD just point them to that last paragraph; all doubts will be removed.

In other other news I’m officially back on base and have been for a few weeks now. Everything is pretty much as I left it with a few small exceptions. The first being that the DFAC is now labeling their food as to what level of performance it is on the following scale: high performance, medium performance, and low performance. It is in no way useful. I’m also pretty sure that their calorie counts are WAY off. I say this because they have an eggwhite omelet with cheese listed as having only 90 calories, whereas an egg white omelet with cheese, bacon, ham, pepper, etc is also 90 calories. To quote Pete from O Brother Where Art Thou? “That don’t make no sense!” So I just eat what I want regardless of it’s performance. I’ve also coined a new phrase regarding the DFAC. Instead of telling people “I’m going to the DFAC I’m going to start telling people that I need to DFACate. I think the allusion is accurate considering the quality of the food. We had Xmas lunch today, which actually wasn’t too bad. They even had a swan ice sculpture (no, I’m not making that up).

Also new to Spin B is the addition of road signs. That’s really awesome. Never again will I forget which of our 2 roads I’m on because now they are labeled. That being said, I’d really like for someone to send me a GPS so that I can use it to navigate the base.  Please make sure it has the newest maps Afghanistan maps on it. I really would hate to get lost because of some stupid, outdated map.

I think that’s pretty much everything. I’ve decided that since I’m probably going to be here for a while now I’m going to go ahead and get my tiny living area the way I want it so I’ve ordered a few things, both practical and decorative so I can enjoy my stay at Hotel Tent a little more. Pics to come in the next blog once everything comes in. Until then. <insert some kind of rhyme involving amoritizatoin, pasicfism, and poultry>.

IED has Started Out with a Bang

That's right, the Impromptu European Departure is in full swing. After a very brief stay in Dubai (thanks to my flight being delayed for several hours) I got into London at around 9 PM local time. But since that is something like 1AM in the Middle East and I'd been up since 5 AM I was quite tired and decided to just get to my hotel and call it a night. The last 2 nights I've had my own room and bathroom...and it's amazing. I'll never take this for granted again...at least until I've been home for a week and get re-spoiled. It's now 7:40 here in the UK and I'm about to try to navigate the London Underground to Kings Cross station where I should be able to get a train ride to Edinburgh, Scotland. It's a 4 hour ride so it should be cool to see the UK countryside for most of the day. Right now the impromptu plan is to get there, spend today, tonight, and tomorrow there, then catch an overnight train to Paris and just sleep on the way. That should put me in Paris in time to visit the Louvre for a full day (looks like it's open until almost 10 PM on Fridays) and maybe do something else the next day before heading back to the UK for some London sight seeing before heading back home. Should be a fun trip. So wish me luck: it's all golf, whiskey (or is it whisky?), kilts, and bagpipes for the next few days (hey, if they're allowed to think we all ride horses then I can think they all wear kilts, it's only fair).

Boredom: It's what's for dinner...and lunch...and maybe even breakfast.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this so I guess it’s time. Again, nothing much has changed so I really didn’t see much use in updating but here ya go (get off my back David Maxfield, geeze):

1.       I’m now working 6 days a week instead of just 5. It’s still midnight to 8 and all that good stuff.

Well, that’s about it. Sorry for that novel there, I’m hoping you could keep your eyes open while you were reading it, or at least took it in several sittings instead of trying to do a marathon (seriously people, you aren’t impressing anyone).  In other non-work related news: my vacation is officially set up. Got my plane tickets booked and everything. The plan right now is that I leave Dubai for London on the 8^th of November and then leave London for DFW on the 10^th. Here’s the fun part though: since I’m on a small base they only have flights going out of here once or twice a week so I get to leave here up to 10 days before I’m scheduled to actually be on vacation (that's if a flight happens to be going out of here exactly 10 days early). If this happens then I may have to make my very own IED. That’s right, an Impromptu European Departure. I might be able to get a whole week or more in Europe if it’s cheap enough to reschedule that flight. I can’t come home early for tax reasons so the extra time would either be spent in Europe (14 thumbs up), Dubai (3 thumbs up, but one of those thumbs has a cherry on top so it’s close to 4 thumbs up), or Kandahar (it only gets 1 thumb and I would use it to stab myself to death).  Since I won’t have any idea how long I’ll have until I actually get there I’m making no plans whatsoever so any suggestions are welcome.

And now, as promised, another misconception I had about the military before coming out here:

This is…well, I don’t know what it’s official name is. But  they put it on the front of the vehicles so if they hit a mine it will blow  that thing up instead of the vehicle (you know, where the people are).  On a side note, I’ve seen what the mines can do to these huge metal vehicles…it ain’t pretty. Fortunately though, all the vehicles I’ve seen that “got toe up” (to use the vernacular) never had any damage done to the cab.

Basically, thanks in large part to Microsoft, I really expected something that might be considered a “mine sweeper” to look something rather more like this:

I guess video games really don’t translate out too well into real world situation. Also, I’ll have to take “military explosives training” off of my resume now because if Microsoft go this wrong then who knows what else they got wrong. I’ll bet there might not even be any numbers in the middle of a mine field to help guide you through it. I guess it’s good that I found this out before I went into one… Microsoft: ruining lives every day.

You asked for it

I’ve had a few people complain that I haven’t updated this in a while. Well complainers, the reason for that is because there’s really nothing new going on here. Here’s a quick recap just in case though:

I’m still working 40 hours a week…well, I’m still going to the place I’m working for 40 hours a week. There still isn’t much actually going on there. So I’m really working about 2 hours per week…

I’m still living in the same tent. We’ve all completely abandoned any hope of ever getting out of these things. Although some people have taken it upon themselves to move out into other tents so it’s not quite so crowded any more.

That’s really about all my life consists of (I know, I can see the green hue of your collective jealousy all the way over there).

So, since I really have nothing new to write about I think I may start updating this with some of the misconceptions I had about the military before I got out here. The first one is the physical shape of our service men and women. While the rate of obesity is definitely much lower with the soldiers here than it is with the general population back home, the fact that it even exists is fairly surprising to me. Several of the people in the help desk are in about the same shape as most IT people I know…which isn’t really saying much. It was bad enough that most of the people in the helpdesk are now required to go to the gym at least once a day. This leads me to another misconception that I had and that is the purpose of camouflage. I thought it was to hide you from the enemy…but seeing as how every bit of the terrain here is a very light brown color with absolutely no foliage and the camo the soldiers wear is a dark brown/green pattern I don’t think it would really be very effective in concealing your whereabouts. But what it does an amazing job of concealing are lovehandles. That’s right, the camo here is simply to give us all a false sense of security in thinking that the soldiers can run a mile or do a chin up.

Things are looking up

We have a second meeting with the base management about getting more/different housing. Apparently they didn’t know that we’ve been living in “transient tents” for the last 2-3 months. Good times there. Now if I can just get on a set schedule I’d be set. Since I’ve been here my hours have been noon-4, 2 days a week; no hours at all per week; 6 am – 2pm, 5 days a week, 7am – 2pm 5 days a week; 7pm – 7am, 5 days per week; and now I’m working midnight to 8am 5 days per week. I’m hoping it doesn’t change again for a while. As far as work goes I’ve actually been busy the last week working anywhere from 12 to 15 hours per day. The new unit is coming in and with them they have computers; all of which have to be completely reloaded. So I (and 2 other people) have reloaded ~80 computers without an imaging server at all. For those of you who know what that means, you’ll appreciate how tedious my life has been for the last 10 or so days. But there is hope! I’m at work now and the last computer we have is being loaded as I type this.

In other news: I’m not sure who I need to talk to about getting a sentence stricken from the English language, but if you know who it is then please let me know.  A soldier unloading a truck the other day looked down at me, rpg in hand, and said “hey, you want a free rocket”. This should be stricken for 2 reasons:

1.      1. The answer is always yes.

2.      2. The answer is always yes.

Number 1 is the case and thus it’s a redundant and useless question and just wasting time and energy of both people involved in the conversation. Number 2 is the case because there’s no end to the destruction, chaos, and all around havoc (IE FUN!!!) that can happen as a direct result of having a free rocket at your disposal.

Someone asked me the other day if I could expound on some of the acronyms I’ve been carelessly throwing around in these blogs. To this I say STFU and RTFM. JK :), I’ll let you in on the secret. Please bear in mind that I haven’t actually looked any of this up so who knows if any of it is correct.

1.       DFAC – Dining FACility. This is where I go 2 or 3 times a day to eat. If you would like to experience this for yourself then simply find a crappy middle school cafeteria and go and eat explusively there for several months and you’re living the military life.

2.       MWR – Morale, Welfare, and Recreation – I didn’t look that up, although someone told me what it meant so maybe that’s the same thing. I’m sorry I lied to you…This is where people go to “have fun”. I’ve yet to go there though. Bunch of people sitting around a small TV watching a movie that someone else picked out just doesn’t sound that stellar to me.

3.       PX – Prettyfigginsorry eXcuseforastore: This is where you go if you want to buy some chips, a monster energy drink, or an excruciatingly small selection of toiletry items. Chances are if it’s something you absolutely need then you’ll have 1 choice. Otherwise they probably won’t have it.

I’m pretty sure that’s the only things I’ve thrown out there at this point. If you have any question please see my assistant…which is me.

My last post was just a joke

I wouldn’t do something that stupid without following it up with something equally as stupid (but slightly more interesting). I’ve had several people ask me what went on over here for Independence Day. The answer to that question is “the same thing that happens every day, Pinky.” The one major difference being that the DFAC was excessively decorated. It looked like Uncle Sam ate so many freedom fries that he exploded and his patriotic goodness went flying all over the place. We had table cloths, streamers, banners, an 8 foot tall statue of liberty (no, I’m not making that up), etc. Among the festive decorations they also made several cakes in various shapes. One was actually shaped like an alligator (no, I’m not making that up either). Supposedly there was a bar-b-q going on somewhere too but I couldn’t find it (nor did I really look for it). Other than that though it was business as usual.

In other news: I saw my first camel spider when I was walking around last night. For those of you who don’t know what that is here’s an image of one http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/6147284.jpg Most of these that I hear about from the people here are big enough that they would be able to fill a backup spot to destroy Tokyo if Godzilla ever got the flu and couldn’t make it to work, but this one was just a little guy (probably about the size of your average wolf spider). So I stood my ground and he scurried off into the darkness. If it were full sized then I probably would have chosen not to wrangle with it (That’s right, I said “wrangle”; thank you to the truck driver at Petro for adding that form of that word to my vocabulary just before saying I was “g******* inconsiderate”).

Hmmm…what else is going on here? Oh yeah, a new unit is coming in and the old one is leaving. This, for whatever reason, means that we now have to have people at the helpdesk 24 hours a day. This means I start my 12 hour shifts on Saturday night from 7PM to 7AM. What this means to me is that I will be insanely bored. I’ve been up here at night so I could use a desk to do some studying and there is nothing that goes on at all. So it will probably essentially be 60 hours of free time per week (as though I didn’t already have enough time to spend alone in my head (seriously, it’s scary in here. They’re talking about shooting Indiana Jones 5 in the Portugal section of my brain)). The good news about being here at nights is that I was told they are going to try to give night shift priority on getting into the CHUs so that could be  plus. And I should have plenty of time to read.

New discovery of the year (patent pending): I've discovered an alarm clock that actually works for me. It's not very efficient though as it requires a helicopter to hover about 20 feet over your sleeping area. Thanks for that middle of the night wake up call army, you're the best.

I guess that’s it. Oh yeah, one more thing: if I were an X Man then my mutant power would definitely  be stretching out something that is essentially nothing into a 500+ word essay.

Remember me?

It's been a while since I've written anything on here...so now  I can't say that.

Please keep all body parts inside the bus and when we get off remain single file.

Tour time! These are the best photos I could get without "compromising security". Per the last photo show this will be from my bunk out:

This is my new living area.The top bunk is mine as well as the left half of that cabinet:

 These are a couple of shots of the outside of the tent/housing area. They're still dangling that CHU (containerized housing unit) carrot in front of our noses to keep morale up...not sure how well that's working. A month ago it was going to be in a month. As of yesterday...it should only be about a month away. It's like those "free beer tomorrow" signs I think. Anyway:

This is a closer pic of the fence that separates me from Pakistan. I was hoping to actually get a pic of the city that's a few miles out but, as you can see, I was unsuccessful:

This is my friend Blimpy Boy. Normally he'd be flying in the sky so fancy free but I guess he was in for maintenance today. On a side note, Pakistan was having many small dust storms today. Those pillar-ish things to the left are some of them:

This is one of the bigger tents. Not really part of my normal day but they're kind of interesting...I guess. This particular one belongs to motor pool (don't ask if they have motor beach balls or motor water noodles...they don't like that):

Up next is the DFAC. Sorry for the fuzziness/vasoiness of the inside pic. I had several drinks in my hand and almost dropped the camera:

These next few pics are of all our entertainment! I know you're excited about this. The building on the right in the first pic is what the military so lovingly call the "hadji store" (aka, it's run by the locals). This is the only place on base to buy things like cigarettes, electronics, and cheesy souvenirs (anybody want a scorpion encased in clear acrylic?). The building to the left of that is the coffee shop. The tent to the left of that is the gym and the mwr is right next to it and identical in looks. The second photo is our world class basketball court and volleyball court. You may recognize the basketball court from the recent games that were featured on TV where the Dallas Maverics won the title. That's right, I had court side seats.

Up next we have the amazingly versatile building that serves as both post office and PX. The PX is the right side and PO is the left. That big blue shipping container on the left is where I have to go 3 days a week to pick up the mail for my company.

Our next stop is the place I spend the 2nd largest portion of my time. 40 hours a week I "work" in this building. On the second pic you'll see a gray-haired man on the right. That's my coworker, Pete. Pete is either insane or hates his family because this is his 7th consecutive contract with this company. Although, in defense of Pete's sanity, he showed me pictures of the base in Iraq where he spent 5 of those years and it had all these crazy things like...oh...what are they called....oh yeah: trees and large bodies of water and animals that don't look like they could kill you buy looking at you:

Up next is the med station. This is where I spent about 4 hours of my first day here. Several EKGs, urine samples, vital checks, IV bags (took 4 sticks and 3 people to hit a vein, that was fun), throat cultures, etc later they gave me some aspirin and told me to get some rest.

This is the fire department. I know nothing of what goes on in there but I suspect they are even more bored than I am. I haven't gone in there yet but supposedly they sell t-shirts. I was told to talk to someone called Optimus Rhyme. I have no idea if he's THE Optimus Rhyme or not, but I'll find out one day.

And last but certainly not least we have the water station! People have been asking me if water is available enough to stay hydrated. Well, these things are everywhere on base and it's all free. Just walk up and get as much as you want/can carry and walk off...very nonchalantly...just like nothing was wrong...

That about wraps it up...that's everything I have at my disposal at this point. I can sense your jealousy through the toobz so don't even try to cover it up. What can I say? It's hard living the glamorous life...but I make it work.