Shattered Faith

Shortly after lunch the other day we had two vehicles come in complaining that their radios weren’t working correctly. So I picked the Humvee and got to work. The bottom radio would not let you key it to talk. I could not figure out the problem for the life of me. I was replacing cables left and right, and mind you a lot of these cables required me to completelt remove the radio system so I could get to the back. It takes time and effort and I frankly do not enjoy it. To add insult to injury these soldiers had crap absolutely everywhere in the vehicle. Common courtesy would be to clean the fucking thing first. So I just started throwing their stuff around if it was in my way. About two and a half hours later I find the culprit. One of them decided to make some contraption to play music and hooked it to the headset system. This contraption was keying the whole system, meaning nothing else could key the radio to talk out. Lovely. Working on these convoys is the worst part of this job. I didn’t think I would be doing this too – it wasn’t in the job description. Oh well. Hopefully we wont have a lot more before it’s time for me to leave.

We had two people quit and go home recently, so they replaced them with two dudes who worked at the calibration shop. The fat guy apparently wasn’t pleased and decided to quit the next day. The other guy decided to stay unfortunately. I have the habit of not liking people initially, but this guy really does seem like a douche. I guess I was on the defensive at first for fear that he would decide to work in my office. I’ve grown accustomed and quit fond of working alone. The first day at work I was on the computer and he walks up to me with his hand open… and says nothing. Well what man! What the hell do you want? Apparently he wanted the keys to my office. My fucking mindreading must of been off that day – maybe it was too early in the morning. Later on our foreman told him he could have priority on the computer to fill out some forms for the security department. He turns to me and says “Ha! Hear that! I have priority on the computer”. Like I give a God Damn.. what was the point of saying something like that? So yeah, I don’t like him. He doesn’t have a security clearance so he can’t come into my office. He’s working on power supplies right now since the original tech was one that left. Hopefully he can stay in there so I can hate him from a distance.

9 weeks people. 9 weeks.

I’ve been looking at some apartments online in preparation for my eventual move. There’s a place that seems decent enough for about $750 for a two bedroom, two bath. unfortunately unless my sister can contribute to the rent somewhat I wouldn’t be able to afford it. With any other monthly expenses I would be spending more than the GI Bill would be giving me, and that’s not a thought I’m too keen on. Hopefully we can work something out. I really couldn’t find anything cheaper than that that’s not in some shit area downtown. Although speaking of shit downtown, I did find a foreclosure for $19,000. Hhhmmmm. (continue reading…)

I’m typing this up on my new computer. Ooooooooooohh. It came in yesterday and I took off a few hours so I could copy all my stuff over and play with it. So far I’m rather impressed. The whole thing is piano black with leather accents which looks fantastic albeit a fucking fingerprint magnet. The blacklit keyboard and touch sensitive media controls are a nice touch. I had some issues with the controls last night until I realized it’s easier to kind of swipe your finger over them instead of pressing on it. The keys are tactile enough and it’s large enough to pleasently type on it, but I think I would have prefered individual keys ala Macbooks. It has a slot loading DVD burner which is always nifty but it’s a little loud. The embedded webcam can double as a ‘biometric security’ feature that will log me into the computer by analyzing my face. Apparently it takes a little bit to work consistently so as such it’s been a little finicky. A neat feature if a little gimmicky. However it can also log you into websites my scanning your face, so once I can actually get on the internet I’ll give that a try. Dell has come a tremendous way style wise with these new laptops. While it’s not a macbook quality wise, it’s close enough at a fraction of the cost. Color me pleased.

I’m down 12 pounds from when I initially started tracking my progress. I can’t see a difference in the way I look yet but I tried on the pants that I couldn’t quite button anymore and they fit almost perfectly now. Yay for results. I’m feeling really good about this and I have no doubt that I can keep it up and reach a long term goal.. when I decide to set one. I’m going to stick with the cardio here for now. I’ve been rocking the treadmill and I’m glad I made the switch. I’ve had to deal with heel blisters, rubbing thighs and nipple chaffing but It’s been worth it. It kicks my ass which tells me I’m actually doing something. I’m going slow and steady right now, but I’m consistently doing between 3 and 4 miles when I run. Eventually I plan to incorporate some kind of high intensity interval training into the mix, ala sprints. I know I really need to do weights, but I just don’t care for the facility here. I’m unfamiliar with most of the equipment and it gets absolutely packed. I’ll prefer it at home when I can go during off times and not worry about looking like an ass since there won’t be many people there. A retarded excuse, I know – but I’m full of them.

KBR as a company has come under increasing scrutiny from the military and legal persons a lot more as of late. Investigations into shoddy electrical work killing people, missing equipment due to negligence, etc. I don’t really care if they continue with their contracts or not. As long as I can finish out my year so I don’t get fucked on taxes then I’m set.

3 weeks until I’m home again. That came by really quickly. Let’s hope the 3 months afterward fly by too.

Although it will be balls hot. BALLS HOT. (continue reading…)

So McCain has been going on forever about how inexperienced Obama is, and now he chooses a VP canidate with less than two years experience as a Governer and a mayor of a small Alaskan town prior to that. Oook. I’m assuming his tactic was to attract bitter Hillary supporters. Now while Ms. Palin does indeed have a vagina (I’ve seen it) I’m not sure that a staunch conservative, pro-life, etc etc woman is going to do the trick. At least if McCain wins the election and dies we’ll have a pregnant princess with no experience to run our country. That’s kind of cool.

All of us night shifters are switching to day shift the day after tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to it in the least. We’re going to have 9 people here with very little work to do. I don’t want to sit in a chair staring at these douchebags all day, that’s not my idea of a good time. The work climate has been pretty bad lately, with one of our guys getting HR complaints againsth im (he deserves it thought because he’s an assface). Our manager has been stalking around late at night trying to catch us sleeping or participating in other tomfoolery. CJ and I were in our connex last night around 8:30, and we weren’t actually sleeping. Our manager comes by and pulls on the door, but doesn’t knock. We keep it locked so he didn’t come in but we thought we heard something – I wasn’t sure though. About 30 seconds later we hear it again. I get up and unlock the door and see him standing there. Today we get into work and our foreman told us that our supervisor (so many fucking bosses) said that Mr. Manager came by last night and said “we took awfully long to answer the door and looked like we were sleeping”. Well no shit we took awhile to answer the door YOU DIDN’T FUCKING KNOCK. I think someone needs to work on his room/building entry protocol.

I wish I had exciting things to write about. Like riding around in helicopters that rain hellfire and smite evildoers. Putting myself in the line of fire to pull out a wounded buddy. Creeping up to an enemy bunker on my elbows and knees prepared to kill all inside with just my trusty knife and lucky rabbits foot.

Of course I would not enjoy doing any of this in the slightest so I think it’s all for the best, no?

So instead I’ll tell you what I’ve actually been doing. I go to work, which for the past couple weeks had been Captain-less and pure bliss. We and the other guys on my shift watch and participate in Jeopardy, The Daily Show and then The Colbert Report. Sometimes we watch a movie afterwards, otherwise we just bullshit on the computer and talk shit to each other. Sometimes we sing 80s songs, usually in a falsetto. I think I’m to blame for this one. Brandon and I played the shit out of some ping pong today. It was nice to play that game with someone else of my skill level. One who isn’t good enough to slam the thing and actually have it hit the opponents side of the table, but one who is good enough to keep up a somewhat challenging volley. I wish we had tennis courts here. Although if I was sweating during ping pong, I can only assume how horrid a tennis game would be.

About two days ago it officially got ungodly hot here. Walking from my room to the bus stop results in beads of perspiration on my brow. This land is forsaken, I’m telling you. I’m reading a book about Alexander’s conquering of the area, and his Persian eunuch describes this land fondly. Sure, I bet Babylon was great. All gold and shiny and stuff. But I’m sure this place sucked just as much ass back then as now, albeit without air conditioning (GOOD GOD). Your ’sweet winds’ feel like a damn hairdryer blasting in your face on high. The smell of your ‘Persian spices’ is just the B.O. from the nationals that clean the showers, or the tantalizing odor when the shit truck sucks out the excrement from the port-a-potty. Screw Iraq.

I got the new Tori Amos album the other day, American Doll Posse. It’s another concept album that I can’t be bothered with understanding this concept, but her past albums have been like that for me. I’m happy to say that it’s not underwhelming like The Beekeeper. She’s still doing the whole rock band sound which I wish would stop. What happened to the girl with a piano from Little Earthquakes? Or playing on harpsichords and other interesting instruments. It’s not a bad album by any means, and this makes me happy. But I wish she would go back to her roots that gave her such a huge following to begin with. Get your shit together, girl. The new Bjork is on the way and I’m looking forward to that one!

The new layout is still a work in progress, so keep Christopher Robin company for a little while longer. Thanks.