August 20, 2007

The Halo Diaries

Heh. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to upload this. These are my officers, or at least a few of them. They had lots of time to play Halo 2 in their staterooms on the last float. One pilot in particular developed a reputation as a poor loser. Normally, no one wants to play with a complainer… but this guy is so funny that they set up a hidden camera to get the footage seen here.

WARNING: Contains foul language. Lots of foul language. Also moaning, complaining, unfounded accusations of cheating, self-hatred, other-hatred, and controller-tossing.

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August 17, 2007

I Have a Cunning Plan

I hope I'm the first one to think of this. I'm going to offer charter flights. We fly people down to the South Pole, the customer puts their left hand on the pole that marks the Pole. The customer walks in a counter-clockwise circle 365 times. Having crossed the International Date Line 365 times, I declare the person a year younger. Target customers: actresses, victims of mid-life crises, and Jack Benny.

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August 16, 2007

Confrontation

Very stressful day today. With my SNCOs and OICs gone, I had to stand up in front of an E-6, a CWO-5, and an O-5, all three of which wanted something to happen. I felt bound to tell them that I would not permit it to happen, and that I would do anything I judged as necessary to to prevent it from happening.

This was quite stressful, both externally and internally. Externally, because no one likes getting yelled at. Internally, because I'm a Marine. The day I joined up, I swore and oath to obey orders, and here I was telling superior officers to go pack sand.

But in the air wing, we swear a second oath, when we gain an inspection qualification. CDIs and CD/QARs swear that they will particularly and exactingly uphold the orders and directives that cover aviation maintenance, and that they will make decisions according only to their professional knowledge and judgment, regardless of external factors.

So I decided that an aircraft that was scheduled to fly a very important mission was unsafe. I did it like the INTP I am, which is to say, partially intuitively, based on a large pool of evidence; and most distinctly in a manner not precisely in accordance with standard operating procedures. I don't really like confrontation, and I especially don't like confrontation when I don't already have my arguments logically arranged and my words chosen and honed. But I had stand there and say "It's unsafe. No, I cannot point to any paragraph in the mainenance manuals that specify the situation is unsafe. But it's still unsafe. No one is flying that aircraft, even if I have to tackle the pilot." You don't get ahead in the Corps by telling a Major, a Chief Warrent Officer, and a Staff Sergeant that, either separately or all together.

I do feel very pleased about one thing. When I got my CDI stamp at this unit, I got a brief from the QA chief, a gunny. He told me that QA would stand behind any CDI 100% of the time. That even if he disagreed with a safety decision, he'd back any CDI up, and then discuss the matter privately later. Well, after I'd gone back and forth with thee three superiors a few times, they sent me to go talk to QA, wanting QA to go out to the aircraft and double-check my inspection. I walked to the QA office, and none of the QA guys that particularly like me were in the shop. In fact, the only guy that was in there I think doesn't really like me much at all. I explained the situation, and told him I'd been told to ask him to come out to the plane and check my work. He didn't even get out of his chair. "Do you think it's unsafe?" he said. "Yes, Staff Sergeant, because…" I started to reply, but he cut me off. "Then tell them I said it's unsafe too."

Backing like that makes me feel, well, hell, honored. I mean, this guy was willing to go to bat against the third-highest officer in the unit, just on my say-so. I know the bond of trust that comes from sharing common danger; but I guess a good Marine doesn't need combat to have esprit de corps.

It was a bad day in several other ways too, but that was a big part. Maybe I'll post more on it later, but I think right now I need to decompress a little. I heard Mr. P_ back at my hometown church though I'd never make it as a Marine because I was too independant-minded to take orders. I think he'd be surprised how much I agonized over having to speak my mind about this, and how much it's still bugging me. I know I made the right choice, but I feel pained about how it went down.

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August 14, 2007

Danner Boots

I'd believed I was the only person in the squadron that loved Danner boots. Today in line for a sub at on-base sub shop, I noticed that a Lance Corporal from my unit was wearing a pair. So we spent a couple of minutes comparing boot notes. We were also both amused that we were doing this- who thinks of tough Marines as guys that can discuss, at length, the merits of a dozen different brands of an article of clothing? But in our jobs, one's boots are more important than any other article of clothing.

Also, I gave him some hell, because he works "upstairs" in the S-6 shop, maintaining computers and telecommunications. So my boots are steel-toe, scarred from impacts, muddy from unimproved flightlines, and stained from hydraulic fluid and other nasty chemicals. His are pristine and practically sparkle with cleanliness. The S-shop guys are used to give as good as they get, though. We accuse them of not knowing what hard work is, and they accuse us of not knowing how to maintain a proper uniform.

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Sublimation

Today it was back to work! Hooray! Who needs vacation time anyway! I love working!

*cries*

I'm not the only one laboring away today… seems my sister is soon to be the proud possessor of a daughter. I'm looking forward to an email with the final results. Although I confess that the whole height and weight and length thing has never enthralled me. I just settle for "small", "medium", and "large" babies. Odds are it'll be "large".

Seriously, it's nice to be back at work, especially because I was expecting that there'd be a huge backlog, and there isn't. The downside is, I already discovered that some of what was done while I was gone, was not quite done to my exacting specifications. But hey, I wasn't there, I can't complain too much… I'll just see to it that the discrepencies get corrected.

Also, I may be on a subtropical isle, but I work with high-pressure gasses. So I got a small case of frostbite today. Whoops. Doc says it'll heal on it's own.

It's been a long time since we had any leave. Everyone was checking back in today, and I shook the hands of plenty of new spouses. Three of the guys married their Japanese girlfriends, one guy flew home to marry his American sweetheart, and two of the squadron's corporals married each other. Awww. So now one of those two is being transferred to a different unit (still on this base) as the DoD disapproves of married couples serving in the same unit.

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August 13, 2007

Clear Skies

Turns out that the stormy weather this weekend was the fringe of a typhoon. This keeps my streak intact- for every typhoon that has impacted the island while I've been here, the bad weather strikes on a weekend. I'm now five for five on that.

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August 09, 2007

Stupid Rain Gods

Well, I had been planning on going to Shuri Castle today, but it's raining in a manner that will make siteseeing not overly fun. I hope it'll clear up this afternoon.

Last night I'd been planning on a quiet evening at home, but one of the guys from my gaming group knocked at the door. "Borman's going-away party. See you at the duty desk in five." So I put my shoes on, and we all headed off to the Dragon Restraunt, which is a chinese place not far from base. We were the only Americans there on a Thursday night, but there were three or four Japanese groups there. It's a family style place, meaning you order an entree and it comes with enough food for three people. Last time, the gang didn't know that, so everyone ordered a seperate entree, and there was a huge mountain of food. This time we kept it a little more restrained, and no one had to gorge himself for the honor of the Corps.

After dinner, people headed to a place called Cocktails for, well, you know. Myself and Brom don't do much drinking, so we called it a night and went back home. There I go, not upholding the fine of Marine traditions of inebriation.

UPDATE: Weather forecast says it'll be T-storms all weekend. So I really should have gone to the caste earlier in the week. Woe is me.

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Pure Genius

I bought a pile of sushi yesterday with the intention of sharing it with my roommate. I didn't know that he was going to a colleague's farewell dinner, and thus stuffed himself at the buffet somewhere else, and had no room for my offerings

Sushi (with raw meat)* will keep for a couple of hours when refrigerated, but overnight is kind of pushing it. So I was forced to gorge myself. I mean, ordinarily I wouldn't have, but I remembered all the times my mother told me about the starving orphans in Ireland, so I had to.** I'm sushi'd out now. Tomorrow is another day, though- and I'm planing on going to go see Shuri Castle, and local restaurant will be the plan for chow.

All that fish reminds me of a recent from-work story. We got a new Maintenance Chief a few days ago, and the guys in my shop can't stop bragging about me. So within a day of his arrival he heard that I was "The smartest Marine in the squadron." Upon meeting him myself, he demanded proof: "How many blades of grass are there in an acre?".

I was back in five minutes with an answer- my experiment showed that there were 160,000,000 blades of grass in an acre. The Maintenance Chief's source*** said "Two hundred million," but be agreed that the difference was within expectations considering different types of grass, lawn care philosophies, etc.

Then at the meeting after the maintenance audit results were announced, the Chief declared that the program manager of any off-track or "needs more attention" program would be writing him an essay about how it went wrong, and what they would do to set it right. Then he said "And since the smartest Marine in the squadron is sitting right over there, he can help you edit them to readability."

That's what I got for being the most junior guy in the room.

* Sushi refers to the rice, so while lots of sushi has raw fish on it, some sushis are other. In fact, I had some very nice omelet sushi.
** My mother never pushed me to eat foods based on that kind of argument, which is fortunate, as even as a six-year-old I think I would have seen through it.
*** An Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

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August 08, 2007

Shopping Cameras and San-A

Went downtown to the local camera shop today. I want a better tripod, but they didn't have any that suited my needs. Still, I needed another camera lens cover retaining string, so I did spend 368 yen. Yes, 368. That's not a post-tax calculation, that was exactly what they charged. The Japanese are not all about the rounding of prices.

And since I was nearby, I hit a San-A, which is the major on-island grocery store chain. Got me a huge pile of sushi. More than I can eat, but hey- sushi here is (a) really good, and (b) really cheap. Even grocery-store sushi is very fine.

I thought about stopping by the Futenma Cave Shrine to make an offering for my aunt's house in Montana to not get burned down, but it started raining heavily, which suggests that the rain gods were already busy. Plus, I remembered that I had to get my sushi home into the fridge before it became evil. 

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August 06, 2007

Leave

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. But the inspection is over, and we survived, barely. Right now I'm on leave. I've only got a few days off, so I decided not to go to Tokyo. Maybe in February, after we're no longer part of the MEU.

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