"Some of the mayor's roughly 500 constituents will want to know her views on the issues affecting the Eastern Oregon community; others will want to talk about her underwear.
The mayor's lingerie is a hot topic here, with some residents upset that she posted pictures of herself wearing only a black bra and panties on her MySpace page. She was on one of the town's fire engines.
Kontur-Gronquist's MySpace page is blocked to all but her friends, but the pictures were at one time available to all users. In an interview with the (Pendleton) East Oregonian, the mayor said she did nothing wrong and those who are offended need to get over it."
Please repeat after me: do not take naked pictures of yourself and post them on the Internet if you don't want people to find them. (That goes for mayors, professors, and stars of High School Musical 2)
Today's Stupid Guy Trick in which women are making very bold strides is the challenge to to swallow a whole tablespoon of cinnamon. In the past, women burned bras. Today, they try to swallow cinnamon. Wonders never cease.
For some reason, ebaum's world and Livejournal don't embed well, so you'll have to do with links.
Granted, they do go to great lengths to find the stupidest people they can, but still, after watching this, I am about to claim to be a Canadian.
Edit: I had to do some searching, but apparently, this is American Idol finalist Kellie Pickler, a North Carolina native. (I am so glad I didn't go to public school).
One of our subscribers sent me this story today. We all knew this one was inevitable when the latest iPhone commercial rolled out -- now didnt we?
"Oh joy! I can't wait for the next ground delay or long taxi due to weather somewhere to get a smart ass with a freakin I-phone shoving it in my face saying "It's NOT raining there... SEE !" Too late ... already happened to me. We push back, get advised of a ground stop in MEM due to storms in the area. Go to the penalty box and wait. My Captain does the lecture over the PA... not one minute later, we get dinged from the F/A "Some guy with an IPhone says the weather is good, and wants to know what the real reason is for the delay. Is something wrong with the plane?"
I want to tell this clown what he can do with his IdiotPhone - but the Captain does it even better. He gets on the PA and makes the following announcement :
"If the passenger with the IPhone would be kind enough to use it to check the weather at our alternate, calculate our fuel burn due to being rerouted around the storms, call the dispatcher to arrange our release, and then make a phone call to the nearest Air Traffic Control center to arrange our timely departure amongst the other aircraft carrying passengers with IPhones, then we will be more than happy to depart. Please ring your call button to advise the Flight Attendant and your fellow passengers when you deem it ready and responsible for this multi-million dollar aircraft and its passengers to safely leave."
Needless to say, the pax was pretty embarrassed. The F/A later told us the rest of the plane was outright laughing at this dude. What a clown."
But for now, some quotes from this essay I'm writing.
I always ask for peer reviewers, and have even offered money for them, but no one takes me up on this. Ahem, hey lurkers (you know who you are), what if I offered a password and login to pr0n sites in exchange for peer reviewing, huh? (I expect eleventy billion replies to that).
Anyway, quotes:
...The British military leadership during the First World War was notoriously incompetent. So much so that the bravery of British officers was generally a tactic to compensate for a lack of ability —what we in the 21st Century might call “Leeroy Jenkins-ism”. Sir Archibald Murray was a prime example of this, except for the fact that he didn’t even have courage to compensate for a lack of ability...
...Additionally, officer evaluations have moved away from a qualitative “top-third, middle-third, bottom-third” system, to a system entirely dependent upon the writing skills of the commander, and his ability to unlock the supposed “magic words” of superlative evaluations. And even then, one questions the value of an evaluation when promotions are almost automatic. As a result, I seem to care more about what a hot chick I’ve never met writes on my Facebook wall than what my battalion commander writes in my official evaluation.
This essay is about the Army's Pentathlete model of leadership*, T.E. Lawrence, and the stupidity of the Captains' Career Course. I'm hoping to publish it somewhere. Quotes: During the summer of 1916, Lawrence's sole task in life was, and indeed, his whole creative abilities [as an British Intelligence officer in Egypt] were spent on the most laborious and challenging task of…wait for it…creating a postage stamp for Saudi Arabia.To Lawrence’s credit, the postage stamp did have a flavored backing; indeed, many Arabs could not affix the postage stamp to their mail due to the fact that they would suck the flavor off.Had Lawrence been alive today, he would likely have been the ultimate “PowerPoint Ranger”.
XXXX The following topics comprised more classroom time and discussion in the Captains' Career Course than the topics of irregular warfare, counter-insurgency, the overall Iraq political aims and strategy [ha!], and the Army's Pentathlete model of leadership.
Ranges of Soviet Artillery Systems
The internal office politics of the Directorate of Evaluation and Standards (a bunch of instructor pilots who look up regulations and restrictions and haughtily display their knowledge) and how much the speaker hates the guy that sits next to him in the office.
How and why a leader should tell a female soldier that her nipples are poking through her t-shirt when it's 120 degrees F outside and she's wearing a standard-issue tan t-shirt.
My antics at the bar over the previous weekend.
I guess the course should get mad props for #3, because it's distinctly patriotic. Nothing is more American than the inexplicable moral outrage that stems from inadvertently suggesting the outline of a woman's nipples.
...Nothing could possibly go wrong with this, right?
The insurance company had a tow truck tow my Jeep to a shop and had the rear window replaced, since the movers saw fit to demolish not only the window but also the hinge assembly. All was well and the body shop decided to tow the Jeep back to a place where I could pick it up at the airport. As soon as they made a tight turn, the whole fucking Jeep hard top fell off the Jeep and into the street.
Kind of let that image sink into your mind. It's actually funny in retrospect. But I digress.
I have no idea how this happened. Did they take a turn way too tightly? Accelerate too quickly? Take out the bolts and forget to secure it? WTF?
(But, luckily, they're claiming this as part of my insurance so I get a free top. Yay. I think.)
Focus: What's the stupidest "XTREME ENERGY DRINK" you see sold? How much is it being sold for? What's with everyone at AAFES stocking up on those "Monster"-brand drinks, too? What's the stupidest "XTREME" gimmick you've seen recently?
Since February, I've noticed a bizarre $20-30 transaction in my bank account. It looks so similar to gas purchases, I pay it no mind, but the fact that it said "Sprint PCS" Electronic Fund Transfer perked my curiosity. Last month, I called Sprint PCS and informed them that I thought I was a victim of identity fraud, since I didn't have a Sprint PCS account.
This month, I see the same transaction again in my bank account. A little perturbed, I call Sprint PCS and ask for the Fraud Department.
Operator: This is Sprint PCS, may I have your Sprint PCS phone number?
Me: I don't have one. But for some reason, you guys keep billing me as if I have one. I'd like to speak to the fraud department, please.
Operator: Well, now that I have you on the line, can I interest you in starting a Sprint PCS account?
Me: Are you fucking kidding me?
I don't think she hears this. She transfers me immediately to the fraud department, where I explain the situation.
Operator #2: Well, it's going to be difficult to get you back your money.
Me: I don't quite see the complication. Sprint PCS took money without permission. It went to pay for someone's phone bill. Either Sprint PCS or the person who stole my bank account number should put it back.
Operator: Well, it's actually your responsibility to tell us about this as soon as it happens. It's your fault you haven't called us since this started in February, therefore you're liable.
Me: You know, you should be a rape counselor.
Operator: Excuse me?
Me: Nothing. So why can't you just have whoever stole my identity pay me back all the money he took from me?
Operator: Well, he could have just been using your account to pay for his phone bill. Lots of people have Sprint PCS phones that no one else pays for.
Me: Wait. So, if I were to pay with a credit card, I'd need the verification number on the back of the card. But to have money taken out of a bank account, I can simply put down anyone's bank account number with absolutely no written permission or verification whatsoever.
Operator: Exactly.
Me: I take it back, I think I want a Sprint PCS account now.
But since I don't Craisglist, I will post it here.
Every morning, I feel the need to have a massive coffee with espresso. I have to admit, it's one of the most enjoyable drugs that one can take legally. Most military bases now have little kiosks located in various buildings around the installation that are basically miniature Starbucks. At Fort Drum, they're all owned by Dunkin' Donuts.
Now, invariably, during the morning rush, I always seem to be stuck behind the following person.
Invariably, the person in front of me will not be in the military, rather a contractor. And no, not one of those badass Blackwater contractors, I'm talking about an obese elderly lady that gets paid three times what I make to sit around all day and fill out papers that really have little connection to the military to begin with.
This person will almost invariably not be in a hurry, unlike me. (As we are about to find out, there's a large cultural and psychological difference between different types of coffee buyers). With that said, they will stare longingly at the menu for a few seconds (as if they hadn't had enough time to do so in line) and order their drink.
The drink will not be a simple coffee or something with a shot of espresso. Oh fuck no. It's not like these contractors need any level of alertness or energy to do their jobs. Nay, verily, they will be ordering a massive blended iced mocha super-sugar cream, followed by a blueberry muffin. I think that on some subconscious level, they think "Hey, I read somewhere that coffee and a bran muffin is somewhat healthy for breakfast. Why, I'm doing just that when I order this thousand-calorie-plus iced coffee and blueberry muffin. I obviously must be well-suited to take Christie Brinkley's place in those workout commercials where she works out with CHCK NRRS." (Notice that, much like the sacred name of Yaweh, I took out the vowels in "Chuck Norris" in order to prevent him from becoming enraged and ripping my face from my skull. Oh and by the way, the fat lady's musings will be in Huttese.)
Thanks, lady. We're all waiting behind you waiting for our precious drugs so we can operate at a million miles an hour, and you make us wait while you boldly contribute to America's growing obesity epidemic.
And by the way, You're a wonderful human being.
This wasn't the most annoying in-line escapade this week. Seems yesterday I got stuck behind this elderly couple that was searching for a good two minutes for a coupon so that they could save 25 cents on a piece of bright neon yellow posterboard that originally cost 99 cents.
This means that one of three things is true about this scenario.
1.) They went looking through coupons in the newspaper and thought that saving 25 cents on a 99 cent piece of posterboard was, indeed, a good bargain. And damned if they didn't need to buy a piece of posterboard right there and then. 2.) They went looking through coupons and realized that at some point in the future, they might want to buy a piece of posterboard. So, to prepare for that time in the future when they would need a posterboard, they clipped the coupon and stored it in their purse for safe-keeping. For God only knows when they might need to buy posterboard...wouldn't it be nice to save a quarter on it? 3.) They needed posterboard and furiously looked for a coupon to get 99 cent posterboards cheaper. What a bargain.
Focus: What's the most asinine or annoying thing you've seen someone do in line in front of you? (I expect many examples from Wal-Marts in the South here).
"First of all, the E70 has a full keyboard, not some shitty stripped down, tap-and-pray smudgy piece of shit. Nokia uses a technology that's even more advanced than the iPhone's tap screen, allowing you to actually feel the keys you press as you're pressing them! The technology is called "tactile response," and it allows you to do things like dial a phone number without staring at your screen like a shit-chucking ape. In fact, every other cellphone ever made has this technology, sometimes called 'buttons.'"
"There's no such thing as an iPod. The word "iPod" is a marketing tool for a hard drive with software that plays mp3s. Yeah, doesn't sound so sexy now, does it you chimps? "
"The Nokia E70 not only plays mp3s, video, has a full browser and Wi-Fi, IMAP and POP3 email, and Google Maps, but you can even run terminal software to telnet or SSH into remote servers. What that means in non-geek is that my phone is invincible. I can literally do anything. I can reboot my web server if I want, and sometimes I do just because I can:"
(Yes, there are actually screenshots of Maddox using Telnet to reboot his server in the article.)
This is actually kind of sad, because great republics (Rome, France) didn't fall from outside conquerors, they withered and died from the inside. If an apathetic and ignorant public does not know the rights that they have, why stand up for them?
It appears I needed more than brake pads. I needed new rotors as well. They were quite warped. I wondered why the brakes felt so funny.
Additionally, I brought the Jeep in and the mechanic started talking about the New York State Inspection. My car is still registered in South Carolina, hence it doesn't need an inspection. The counter to this argument is that on Fort Drum, you need a NY state inspection. Fortunately for me, I never got rid of my Fort Bragg NC sticker, so I can basically drive through the gate at will and no one says anything to me.
While I was getting the Jeep "inspected", the mechanic, of course, tells me that everything is wrong with the Jeep and it's a miracle it's even driving down the road. I know I'm probably due for tires before the winter, but I can hold off on it for now. Nevertheless, the mechanic told me that my tires would not pass inspection, even though they probably have more tread left on them than most new street tires. And, of course, I must replace all four tires at once, lest I cause catastrophic damage to the Jeep.
I do know a little about auto maintenance, but I'm in that sophomoric phase where I think I know a lot more than I really do. Which is actually worse than knowing nothing at all. Literally, a conversation between me and a mechanic could easily go like this.
Mechanic: Ah, let me gauge this thingy here. Oh no. Now that's bad. Me: What? Mechanic: Well, your flux capacitor here. It's not operating at 1.21 gigawats. Me: Ah, of course, I remember hearing about that part on like foreign cars and stuff. I didn't know I had one of those. Mechanic: I mean, you can drive on it for a while, but once you hit 88 miles per hour. Me: Yeah, you're probably right. I guess I should really should get that fixed...
At any rate, I continued paying for an inspection, since I can legally get away with not having it inspected, but the mechanic kept insisting.
"Just put your top up and we can gauge the visibility through the windows"
I take a look at the open-topped Jeep.
"I guess you can call that 'unobstructed 360-degree vision', if I'm not mistaken". Never mind the fact that I will be putting the hard top back on in winter, thus completely making an inspection on the windows meaningless. As long as I still have the "Fort Bragg" sticker on the Jeep, I'm still technically on the right side of the law. I think.
The focus question comes about because there were so many really bad auto maintenance places when I was at Fort Rucker in Alabama. I took my old Saturn SL2 in to the auto shops and every one of them would remark "I've never worked on a Saturn before". When I traded the Saturn for the Jeep, I thought this issue would be over, but as fate would have it, one person was installing a trailer hitch on my Jeep and remarked "I've never worked on a Jeep before". You know, not like they haven't been making them for the last 60 years or so.
Focus: When you move to a new area, how do you decide what auto place to take your car to for maintenance more complicated than a simple oil change or tire rotation? Word of Mouth? Website Reviews? Just take it to the dealer?
RIP 1997 Saturn SL2. Killed at the hands of mechanics in Daleville, Alabama after 140,000 miles :(
I want to revise this one in the morning because I ramble. The 4th paragraph seems to make little sense looking back on it. I just tied together a couple of different random Myspace thoughts and need to edit it quite a bit. But let me know what you think...
As you may well know, I despise Myspace.And for a long period of time, I despised about 90% of Myspace users.Wait, I still do.Anyway, in July of 2006, I sold out and got a Myspace profile.I really searched deep within my soul before I did this, but I just kept getting flashbacks from my youth when I used to play with my Transformers.
You know without a doubt that your Transformers are the greatest toy in 1986, but all your friends are playing with their stupid little Go-Bots.Unfortunately, the only way to play with your friends is to play Go-Bots with them, occasionally pointing out that even Perceptor—yes, the Autobot that transformed into a damn microscope of all things—was still cooler than all of the Go-Bots put together.You try to convince your friends that in the future, they will have felt badly about themselves for playing with Go-Bots instead of Transformers, but no one will listen to you.And you eventually decide to play Go-Bots in order to maintain some sort of socialization with your friends.So it is with keeping your Facebook profile and getting a Myspace just for the hell of it.
The S-1 shop of my old battalion has the distinct honor of being named for the Spotlight on Stupid twice. To review, one might remember how I, as an officer, had approximately 22 months worth of unrated time. I might have actually set a new Army record...
From the article: "A private school in Detroit called St. Hugo of the Hills is ordering their students to take down their Myspace pages or they will be removed from the school. Last week, a letter was sent home to parents saying that the school staff would be constantly monitoring Myspace in order to find students breaking this absolutely idiotic rule."
By the way, the "Myspace" tag and the "idiots" tag seem to always be together in LJ entries. Coincidence?
As American high school students reading and math skills dip lower and lower, spending on schools is well on the rise. Digg.com brought up a few good articles on this today.
First is from Pat Buchannan (if you don't like him, skip down a few lines)
"Since 1990, the share of students lacking even basic reading skills has risen by a third, from 20 percent to 27 percent.
Only 35 percent of high school seniors have reached a "proficient" level in reading, down from 40 percent.
Only 16 percent of black and 20 percent of Hispanic students had reached a proficient level in reading.
Among high school seniors, only 29 percent of whites, 10 percent of Hispanic students and 6 percent of black students were proficient in math.
"The test results also showed that the overwhelming majority of high school seniors have not fully mastered high-school-level math.
At the same time, however, grade-point averages have risen nationwide, according to a separate survey by the National Assessment, of the transcripts of 26,000 students, which compared them with a study of students’ coursework in 1990."
"...schools may seem to offer the same courses to all students, but that the content of those courses is sometimes less demanding for poor and minority children.
For example, the group found, a ninth-grade English teacher at one school assigned students a two- to three-page essay comparing the themes of Homer’s “Odyssey” to those in the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” At the same school, assignments in another class covering the same material were considerably less demanding. There, students broke up into three clusters, with one designing a brochure for “Odyssey Cruises,” another drawing pictures and the third making up a crossword using characters from the “Odyssey.”
The one posting three times (using what I think is supposed to be some sort of bizarre dialect of the English language) or the girl who posts her entire home address and her mother's home address on line? (I guess you have to click on this to read it. Is there any way to get LJ to post more high-quality pics?)
Poll #943451Stupid Myspace Girls
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5
Some of you remember the article I posted the other day regarding Army aviators rescuing four puppies trapped underneath the rubble of a tornado-wrecked home. After the event happened, I realized that this is the sort of story I would like the media to publish about our military, instead of the usual detainee abuse or war crimes committed by a disproportionately small number of US troops. I went home and, in the span of about 30 minutes, whipped up a news article to send to the local newspapers. I called the Dothan Eagle, and they recommended that I send them the story via e-mail. I posted the news story here in this Livejournal asking for people to peer review my writing. But as always happens when I ask people to tell me what they think of my writing, I got the usual crickets chirping.
Inspired by this confidence, I decided to simply submit the story myself. I attached the word document to an e-mail, including my cell phone number should the Dothan Eagle wish to contact me.
I was beginning to think that this was a bit of a lost cause until this afternoon, when I heard rumors that the article actually had appeared in the local paper. A quick Internet search this afternoon verified this.
As looked at the article, I noticed that the article was almost an exact copy of what I had written in my Livejournal (save for the fact that, if you look closely, one of the few parts they delete are the references to the "sarcastic UH-60 pilot from the 82nd Airborne Division who wrote this story"). Nowhere in the article does it credit me for actually contributing. Although, at the same time, no one else takes credit for writing the article as well.
Which raises a few good questions:
1.) Are the standards of excellence in journalism so high at the Dothan [Alabama] Eagle that a person with no formal training in journalism can simply whip up an article in 30 minutes and have it published? I don't know if I should look at this as a credit to me or as an insult to the Eagle.
2.) I never got a call from the Eagle asking to verify the story. Which is actually kind of bad for a number of reasons. First, Ed Speeckaert is actually a UH-60 pilot and not a CH-47 pilot. (My bad). I would have liked to have fixed that before it got published. Secondly, is my word as an Army officer so beyond reproach that I can just send anything to a newspaper and have it published with absolutely no confirmation of facts? I'm thinking my next story needs to be "Professional photographer is in the Wiregrass seeking nude female models. Please send pictures or video to [e-mail address]. Women with fewer than 28 teeth or under 21 years of age need not apply. And please, no fatties."
3.) What is it called when you copy and paste someone's work into your own publication and don't cite or credit them? Would it still be plagiarism in this case? Technically, no one else claimed the work as his or her own. At the same time, they took careful steps to erase any semblance of my identity out of the article. Although that could also be because they don't find some of my comments particularly amusing.
This is why I stick to Livejournal. Complete artistic freedom. Albeit without editing.
4.) Way to improve on my title. Originally, I thought the title was a little verbose, but I'm bad at titles. I figured professional journalists could improve upon this. Imagine my surprise when I see that they not only copied my title verbatim, but that they also neglected to capitalize many of the words. (Although I should probably look that rule up).
5.) With all said, I'm glad the local paper published this story about soldiers saving puppies, because you don't read much good news these days. Although I guess one could argue that you really don't read any "news" these days, just Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears stories.
And to think my high school teachers wondered why I never pursued a career in journalism...
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C — A man toting a 3-foot sword apparently met his match when he broke into his ex-girlfriend's apartment: The woman's roommate grabbed a sword of his own and sliced the intruder, police said.
The roommate, a sword collector, fended off the ex-boyfriend, who was cut on the arm, police said.
Elvis Javier Polanco, 18, was treated at a hospital and charged with burglary and aggravated assault, Beaufort County sheriff's Capt. Toby McSwain said. He said Polanco broke a window and climbed on his friend's shoulders to get into the apartment.
The roommate, Louis Delgado Hernandez, disarmed the intruder while the woman called police, McSwain said.
I am not a cheap whore for your amusement. Learn better pick-up lines.
I got this message out of the blue from someone in the Fort Rucker area. It's in reference to my profile quote, which is "Come to the Dark Side: We have cookies". (As a side note, I had a T-shirt printed up with this saying on it...one of the dozens of obnoxious and funny t-shirts I wore to the Lizard Lounge in Honduras. God I miss that place.)
On Friday, I was in the locker room changing after PT. The gym always plays 106.7 KMX (the only radio station in town) over the loudspeaker. That morning, I overheard the DJs saying that "Dothan, Alabama" is now on the map.
A little geography.
Fort Rucker, Alabama is literally in the middle of nowhere. I often feel embarassed when we bring in students from NATO and other countries. I sometimes have to explain to them that "Yeah, Fort Rucker isn't really indicative of the whole US". The "gateway city" to Fort Rucker is Daleville, Alabama, and the local "big city" is Enterprise, Alabama. The major metropolitan area is a town called Dothan, Alabama some 20 miles away. Literally, when people say "downtown", they mean Dothan, Alabama. Never heard of it? Well, you're not alone.
So what could put Dothan, Alabama on the map?
Barnes and Noble. And with Barnes and Noble comes its own Starbucks. (Well, not a true, bona-fide SBUX, but it's good enough for me).
There is always a push to put Starbucks in the Fort Rucker area, but Starbucks always balks, due to the fact that the permanent party population of the area is quite small. Too small for a Starbucks, if that were possible. What I don't think corporate HQ is realizing (and I ought to write them, as I am a stockholder), is that there's a large flight school population. They could easily make tons of money by opening up the Starbucks at 4 AM (right before students have to arrive for morning flight line), and serving coffee.
Come on, Starbucks, I want my stock to shoot up.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I think I might finish two books this weekend, or at least by Monday or Tuesday. Marcus Aurelius "Meditations" and "The War of Art" (not "Art of War"). They're short (maybe 100 pages each with big font). I wanted to knock these out before I moved on to the TE Lawrence book, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom". I kind of empathize with Lawrence because, well, he was just some bored lieutenant, underchallenged, working on a staff. With so much free time that he went ahead and translated Homer's Odyssey. I can identify with that.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
We're doing the Military Decision Making Process in class. We're using a pitched tank battle as the vehicle for teaching the process. I know, we try to keep up with the latest in doctrinal theory. Anyway, we plan this battle and we fight it in a simulator. The simulator is basically thirty computers running a strategy game. Except it looks like it's based on a video game straight out of a 1982 Atari 2600. With the interface to boot. It's so simplistic, that there's no real strategy to winning...just mass your forces, dig them in, and see (and thus) shoot the enemy before he does the same to you. There's no element of surprise, no psychology, no civilians, nothing.
I felt bad, because I'm playing the role of the Engineer, and of course, the game doesn't simulate kids picking up land mines, or the fact that the host nation might not be a signatory to land mine treaties.
But it it's 1982-era strategy games they want to play, I can do well at that.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I finally got my household goods today. I need a new bookshelf. I also found all my old Eagle scouting stuff and my old baseball cards. Thanks to mom and dad for not throwing that away.
(Dad is a perpetual "de-junker". He nearly threw out my baseball cards. One would think he would have learned his lesson from having the same thing happen to him when he was in college).
How anyone can do business like this and still make a profit is unbelievable.
It's actually quite a simple move. In the military, we usually look at missions in the forms of specified tasks and implied tasks. For example, if your specified task is to fly a helicopter from Point A to Point B, your implied tasks might be ensure your crew is rested and fully-qualified, ensure you have fuel, ensure the aircraft has enough maintenance hours on it to complete the mission, file a flight plan, etc.
With that said, let's look at a simple move from Point A to Point B.
Specified task: Move about 15 boxes from South Carolina to Alabama. Implied Task 1: Contact house in SC prior to pickup and house in AL prior to delivery to ensure resident is on hand to receive shipment. Implied Task 2: Give customer ample reaction time to ensure he will be home, thus ensuring a smooth operation.
With simple implied tasks like that, you'd probably call a few days in advance, right?
Not with this company.
After picking up my stuff from my parents' house in SC, I received not one call from the movers. You would think that the people handing your worldly posessions might take their responsibility a little more seriously, but that's beside the point. My first indication that my goods would be arriving at my house was the day they were actually delivering.
They covered themselves by calling several times that morning, to be certain. Nevertheless, I don't know about where you work, but in my line of work, you can't just pick up a phone and carry on a conversation in the middle of a briefing or a class. Businesspeople can't pick up their phone in the middle of a meeting. Students can't pick up their phones in the middle of class. Starbucks baristas can't even answer their phones while serving lattes.
So I think it's fair to say that giving the recipient two hours to be notified before placing his or her stuff in storage is a supremely bad policy. I can't believe the US Government actually pays for service like this from a company. The previous moving company actually called me several days in advance to schedule a delivery. I would assume that that company likes doing business.
After voicing my concerns to the manager, (who referred to some "regulation", and claims that "that's how we always do business"), I was given a make-up day to receive my goods. Monday (today). Again, they would repeat the same procedure. I'd simply have to wait all day for a phone call telling me that my household goods were arriving.
Funny thing is, it's 1 in the afternoon and I've gotten no phone call. Not like this shipment contains my personal belongings or anything.
And not like I have anything else to do today besides attempting to finish reading my book.
I saw one of those teen girl magazines while I was standing in line at the check out counter. It had a headline: "Why guys are laughing at your Myspace."
I mean, I know why I'm laughing at peoples' Myspace. I just want to see what they're telling girls. I really hope they explain HTML tips to girls, but somehow, I suspect that's not the case.
Do you people honestly think it's good business to call someone at 8 in the morning (when they're already at work) that their household goods are arriving in two hours? I know you called twice already and left messages...I WAS IN CLASS. EVERYONE ON THIS BASE WAS IN CLASS. If they were in flight school, they were probably in the air, and I don't know about you, but I can't even drive and talk on the phone. (Well, sometimes I get text messages in flight, so I guess that's OK).
And yes, the last time I moved, with another company, I got a call days in advance to let me know that my stuff was coming. I do think that the problem is on your end. Douchebags.
I'm filing a formal complaint (and, of course, slamming these motherfuckers on the Internet). Way to cater to the needs of soldiers by this "that's the way we've always done it" policy. How long have you been doing this? I thought you would have been a little more capable of doing business by this time.
Until very recently, all pilots, regardless of what airframe they wound up flying, found themselves flying OH-58A/C Kiowas during Basic Combat Skills in flight school. The A and C models (as opposed to its younger and bigger brother, the D model) was a Vietnam-era observation helicopter, which is really just a military version of the Bell 206 JetRanger.
Every aircraft has an operator's manual that you need to know backwards and forwards. Every so often, there would be a change published to the operator's manual. Usually, it allowed for new equipment to be taken off/installed, or it would have a big WARNING: DON'T DO THIS when someone had an accident that the manual couldn't warn against initially. That being said, we'd get a small booklet of pages that we would insert into our operator's manuals, taking out the old pages and inserting the new changes.
The last few pages we replaced were in a section of the book where there was a govenment form (DD Form 2028-2) where one could note any errors or changes to the manual, and mail in these changes to the publisher (postage paid for, of course). Seems that the old form wouldn't suffice. When I looked at the old form and the new form, I only noticed one change between the forms.
(You need to click on it to view it in all its glory. Then go back to this post.)
Yes, the new form felt it necessary to insert a female cartoon character who now encouraged people to "Jot down the dope" on this form.
I should mention that I was inserting this page into my manual in 2003.
Additionally, I notice that there's also two more things that irks me about this form.
1.) "In this space, tell us what is wrong...". Was it really necessary to write "in this space"? It's at the top of a blank block. People will know that their writing goes in this block. Just tell us what to write.
2.) Apparently, you just fold this paper in half and drop it in the mail. So why is it necessary to have the soldier fill out the "date sent" block? Would the postmark on the back not be an obvious giveaway?
Okay, I just now noticed a third thing. It doesn't say "In this space, tell us what is wrong...", it says "in this space, tell what is wrong". I guess it has a more "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" sound to it. ("What you say?" "Move ZIG for great justice!")
Not that I'm any better, I just laugh at seeing this in an official military publication. I mean, someone had to have proofread that thing. Right?
Today we talked about our experiences, and the topic of "Battle Captain" came up. The Battle Captain is the guy in the tactical environment who runs the Tactical Operations Center. You usually split up the shift into a day shift and a night shift. I always got the night shift. You can read about some of the night shift misadventures here and about a few other really funny ones in my book.
At first I thought that it was my chain of command's opportunity to allow me to carry out techno dance parties at night, but actually, I came to find out that the rationale behind this.
Most units put their strongest captains on the night shift, with the reasoning that a.) most aviation operations occur at night and b.) that battle captain operated largely with no supervision (Ergo dance party. But we did other things too. Naked, I might add*.) So, I felt a little sense of pride at being a stronger officer.
Then I realized that my competition consisted of, in one instance, an officer who got two Letters of Reprimand in the span of a month**. I guess when you swim with guppies, you can't help but be the big fish.
*=Not really.
**=One for going 95 mph in a 55 mph zone on post. The other was for losing the classified material he was working on...and not marking it as secret...and not having a secret clearance in the first place...
Now I know why my Flight Ops specialists can't figure out whether or not the difference between 330 flight hours and 336 flight hours is within a 3% margin of error. ("Sir, I don't know how to do percents").
I will say this...I am not very good at higher-level math. Calculus? The hell with that.
I will say, however, that I do have a good working knowledge of arithmetic, fractions, percents, geometry and basic algebra done without a calculator. Woe unto those who arrive at flight school and are forced to do math with an "E6B Flight Computer" (really a slide rule)
We met with our branch managers this week. They're the people that work in Washington that assign officers to different aviation assignments. They stood up during a briefing and told us some of the funnier things that people tell them.
1.) "I can't go to Fort Drum, NY. I'm from the South and it's too cold for me there" 2.) "What do you mean I can't go to Fort Carson? I'm building a house there as we speak?!" 3.) "You mean I can't get stationed at Disney World?"
and so forth...
They continued, "There is nothing that you can tell us that we haven't heard already. We have seen it all. In fact, we dare you to come up with something we haven't already seen."
You would have thought that I couldn't possibly have more bad luck in the past month than getting food poisoning right before Christmas or having an allergic reaction to bath soap. But indeed, I find more ways to succeed where others have failed.
To be certain, I must note that the Aviation Captain's Career Course takes Ultimate Frisbee seriously. I mean, really seriously.
The end of 2006 was kind of a lull period for me. After the Honduras adventure, the last two months of 2006 were quite dull and frustrating. That's not to say they didn't have their typical Crispin Burke moments.
Take this Christmas, for example.
I had just sealed the deal on my new apartment, and was waiting for the previous resident to move out. The day before I was scheduled to move in and get my household goods delivered, I get a letter from my parents saying that they were leaving for my sister's graduation in two days.
Well, fuck. That left me one day to move all my stuff in, and then the next day to drive myself up to South Carolina. And then one more day for me to drive up with my parents to my sister's graduation in Fairfax, VA. Presumably, when one says that they're going to graduation, I assume that they're going to see someone walk across the stage.
Well, that's what I get for assuming... ( Read more... )
Okay, here's a recap of Toga Party Night. I swear, I think the Task Force Commander is going to gather everyone together in a trial like they did to the Deltas in Animal House. There must have been something in the air last night that just lead to destruction and mayhem. Or, maybe it was because the Air Force people were at the end of their rotation. Furthermore, it was a 1-228th Tag-in night ($2500 tab), plus a Club Med Toga night. (Yes, only at this base) I'm going to write up an in-depth narrative of this in a little bit, but the highlights.
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