Pond Hockey

Our friends mother kindly took some pictures of our hockey games at Evergreen Lake on Saturday.


I posted them here on Google web albums.

Getting High on a Working Weekend

Our company is now on knockdown till exodus. We have allot to do so this weekend they put the whole building on knockdown. That means regardless of phase we can't leave post or the company area all weekend. We can only go away from the building during certain times to eat chow. Other than that we are working on our barracks. All yesterday Schumann and myself striped and waxed about half of our room by hand. Because there is only two mops and no buffers we had to do everything with a couple scouring pads to put it down and a sponge to take it up. for the waxing we've been using a shirt duct taped to my swifter. It takes wax about twenty minutes to dry. Yesterday spending the entire time in a small room with stripper had everyone in the company high. Everyone is real excited and regardless of what we are doing it seams that half of the company has left to go home already in their head. Or maybe that was the stripper.

Exodus Lockdown

This weekend is a work weekend. Everyone is to report at a 0800 formation in ACUs. We'll be working this weekend, cleaning and packing. Monday our wall lockers are sealed and we live out of our dufflebag we packed. 0000 on Thursday we are out on the sidewalk till our bus shows up. This whole week we'll be in uniform till that last night. I really don't care much what they put us through... there are only a few more days, and I'll be back home.

We had our last night of class this year last night. Because we tested out on Wednesday night we didn't have anything real to do so they played a couple movies in our classroom and let us sleep. I raced a friend to figure out the max value of a unsigned int on paper. Right now the only way to describe my attitude is cold resolve, I don't care what goes on these next few days, I'll be back soon.

PT is improving!

The picture is of our pt track with Schumann and the graduation stand on the right. We come out to Barton Field to do PT as a company every morning. It is the open grassy field I've ever seen, the dirt track around it is 5K. About a month ago someone high up in TRADOC(Training and Doctrine) decided to "standardize" PT for MOSIs(Initial Entry Training, non MOS qualified soldiers). In our case that meant that PT got retarded. We started doing CD1(conditioning drill one) at the start and end of each PT session. This consists of exercises like the "bend and reach" where you reach up and back down to touch your toes ten times. In between that we have been doing the "military movement drill" which are these dumb looking hopping and shuffling followed by a 30yd sprint. After that we would do CD1 again and a couple of stretches. Needless to say in order to just maintain a decent PT score we had to do quite a bit on our limited own time. Several of us have been complaining about this lack of decent PT. In the past we've had good hard PT. Two days ago they did CD1 and MMD real fast and got right into some hard pt. We did several sets of 50 4count flutter kicks, over 100 4count v-ups, 45 dips, 45 decline push ups, 45 incline push ups, 2 sets of six pull ups and six chin ups, with 12reg/12wide/12close push ups in between, and 10 slow KTEs(Knees to Elbows, on pull up bar bringing knees up to elbows and flexing the arms to bring head to bar). This all within the hour we have for PT. Yesterday they changed some of the exercises up a bit, but it was just as brutal. I'm excited, hopefully It'll help me improve. Without the gym anymore it's been hard to get real good hard workouts. I'm praying it continues.

Forward-dating

No, this is not a post about anyone else. :P

This is more just a bunch of short random things I wanted to write about.

The army is but isn't paying me. Last Friday I was all excited when I checked my LES and realized that a new one was up and I was being paid. It was a complete back pay for the last month. What I failed to realize right away is they forward dated it. In the small print on the bottom it says, "Direct Deposit 20091211". In other words I'm not being paid till the eleventh. Just so you know... I did resolve the issue and I will continue to be paid while here.

I learned a new word today, holler. Say it with a southern accent and it means a slight depression in the Appellations, not big enough to be a valley. Because logically, how can you have a valley if you don't have any real mountains.

Thirdly, I had a run in with one of my classmates today because he was acting like a younger sibling, and he is twenty six. Maybe he was an only child.

Today in class we learned about the satellite systems that we use. And as of Saturday a new bird is up on the WGS(Wideband Global Satellite) constellation. WGS-3 is the third of six of these new birds that can each handle as much bandwidth and the whole last system combined(5 DCSS-III and their backups). Each of the WGS birds cost roughly $300mil. The cost of sending the shuttle up to repair and upgrade an old bird would be roughly $1.2bil. That is why we just put new ones up and let the old ones die when they run out of the fuel needed to stay in orbit. This bird was put up by a Delta IV from ULA. Here is a link to a story about it.

It's Been Ten Days

When the National Guard drafted up my orders they wrote them so as to pay me only till the 28th of October. I didn't discover this till the next pay period(15th of Nov). Immediately I went into the National Guard Liaison's office. They told me it was squared away and I would be paid in eight to ten business days. Today marks that tenth day since my inquiry. I have now lost two pay periods because the thanksgiving holiday made ten days over two weeks. I went into their office on the first when I wasn't paid then either and they told me eight to ten more. I called again today and stated it's been ten days since my first inquiry and he told me to come in to see if we can't make this go faster. Pray it works out. Above is the paperwork they keep asking me to bring. They are three LES(Leave and Earn Statements), one that shows I'm not being paid and the last two where I was paid. Pray for it to go well. I do have another option but by just talking to this other person I would be going out of the official channels and could cause problems in the chain of command. As they say "snowballs" get larger as they roll downhill.