January 17, 2008

Decapod Visitor

Every morning we conduct a FOD walk down on the parking ramp where our aircraft stay. That is, all hands line up at double-arm interval, and together we walk, staring at the pavement, picking up anything that might get kicked up by rotor wash.

The pavement is concrete using the local bedrock for aggregate, that rock being limestone formed from coral. It's light-colored and speckled. Pavement is laid out in ten foot squares, each square bordered by expansion joints. In the center of every square is a "pad eye", a hole exactly six inches across and four inches deep cast into the concrete. Across the hole is a steel arch an inch think, used to tie down aircraft (or anything else that looks like it ought to be tied down). They also serve as grounding points.

We're in the rainy season here in Okinawa, so typically every pad eye is full of water. Dirt and organic debris accumulate in the bottoms. Marines that have earned punishment are sometimes sent out to clean pad eyes with a plastic spoon.

During today's FOD walk, we noticed a visitor in one of the pad eyes.

/images/crab_crop.jpg?size=450x&q=95

It was a terrestrial crab, that presumably hiked 200 yards from the tree line, 30 yards along the flightline, then decided to zip into some sheltering water when big predatory-looking mammals started milling about. (Or maybe he was just nocturnal, and looking for a hangout during the day.) We tried to remove him, but he slipped beneath the steel loop and grabbed the concrete with half of his limbs- the other ones wouldn't fit inside. That's why we wanted to move him: poking out like he was, the poor guy was in danger of getting squished by rolling aircraft or ground support equipment. Still, he was not inclined to move.

I took several images in the cloudy early morning, which was a problematic photographic environment. Seeking better light, I came back at noon. The pad eye was empty... did someone remove the crab? Or did he get up and leave on his own?

Full size image is here. At first I thought the photos were all out of focus or excessivly noisy, then I realized that the carapace had speckled camouflage. This particular image was taken with flash, although that washed out the interesting water coloring.

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January 15, 2008

When Life Throws You a Curveball, Do You Make Curveball-aide?

My cowoker Cpl Ose has been unhappy out here for a while. He doesn't like our new Gunny at all. So Ose managed to finangle orders to a unit in California a couple of months earlier than he would have normally received, and was all happy.

Then about a month ago, he met a girl.

The sun rises with her smile, and the stars twinkle just for her. He is so head-over-heels it's hilarious (and sweet.)

So now he's all tied up in knots about his orders. Should he try to get them cancelled? He doesn't want to leave her!

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January 14, 2008

Failure to Brachiate

As mentioned in my previous post, it was drizzling a nasty persistent rain today. A new Lance Corporal (from a different shop) fell off the top of one of the helos, which is about 25' onto concrete. Luckily the kid's only got a badly-broken elbow. Could have been a lot worse- we wear cranial protective helmets because falls from that height can be fatal.

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January 13, 2008

When Inspiration Fails, Start Running

Monday morning, 0500, PT time. In the rotating cycle of who leads the session, today is Gunny's, mine is Wednesday.

Except that Gunny is on leave, so we skipped over him. Whoops. Wish I had a plan.

It was cold and drizzling a slow, steady, depressing rain. As we stretched out, the Lance Corporal gallery started to mutter about what they were going to do in the weight room after I took us to the gym, where it was nice and dry. I can't stand being seen as too predictable, so I took us off running along the Habu Trail, the base perimiter track. Did I mention it was raining? My glasses fogged and misted up, making them so useless I put them in my pocket so I could at least see things nearby. We ran out about a mile and a half, stopping twice for calisthetics, then ran back about a mile. The last half mile I cut everyone loose for an individual effort run back to the barracks.

Then I got to share a bitch session with Cpl O on that last individual effort section, as we were the two in the back. LCpl C falls back every group run, complaining that his knee hurts. He's been to the sports medicine clinic, and they can't find anything wrong with him. But after trailing all morning, whenever we call individual effort back to the house, he takes off like a jackrabbit. So he can run fast when he wants to. Cpl O's and my opinion was that he's undoubtedly in pain. But guess what, we two old guys hurt every time we PT. Setting a pace to stress 19 year olds is murder on us 30+ types. But we do it, because it's our job as Marines, and because being fast can save your life in combat. So our pain-wracked legs and backs give us very little sympathy for someone that complains it hurts when he runs, but then makes great time when it's in his personal interest.

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January 10, 2008

My Eye! My Eye!

We PT as a shop three times a week, which is the Marine Corps standard. Mondays and Wednesdays are standard issue running around and doing calisthetics. Fridays we try to mix it up with something more fun, usually a game of some kind.

Today we met outside at 0500, where Cpl P (whose day it was) announced that we were going to run to the gym (a mile), then play raquetball. Now, unusually, our OIC had showed up. That's unusual because officers do not generally PT with enlisted. Running PT is an enlisted function, and if officers are there it can interfere with the NCO's authority. In addition, officers can almost always carve an hour or two for PT out of their normal workday, so they don't have to get up extra-early like we do. Lastly, leaders are expected to be more enduring than their troops, so if the officer falls out, it looks bad.

Now, our OIC falling out is not a credible risk on a normal day, as he's built like a truck. (Callsign: "Shreck"). So I suspect I could dust him on a very long run, but I wouldn't catch up to him until mile five or six.

So anyway, P announces that we're going to play raquetball, and our OIC snickers. "You do realize that not only do I own my own raquet... I own my own gloves and goggles?" But too late now, we set out on our run.

He hadn't brought his gear, so he checked out kit from the gym like the rest of us did. And he was the only one that actually knows the rules, so we just divided up into a group of three and a group of four, and wacked balls around inside the court. All was going well until I took a hard richochet in the face, right over my left eye. Nothing too strange to me, I am used to participating in athletic activities that involve me getting struck by stuff.

The goggles they issue don't fit over glasses, so my regular spectacles were the only protection I had. The impact knocked them off, I cursed as the other guys laughed, I picked the glasses up and put them back on and we got back to business.

My vision was a bit blurry immediatly after the impact, but that's normal, and it goes away in a few seconds. Except it wasn't! After a minute of play, my left eye was still very blurry, although my right was fine. I started to get worried. Was I concussed? Was my eye injured?

Then I realized that my left lens had popped out of the frame. I called a time-out while I found it on the floor, popped it back into the frame, and blessed 20/25 vision was mine once again!

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January 08, 2008

Go LSU...umm... LSU Fighting Initialisms!

I understand that LSU won the BCS championship, proving that they are this year's best team in Minor League Pro Football.

And yes, I know that they're the Tigers.

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January 07, 2008

Law Abiding

The Japanese really do obey laws like it's cool. My OIC doesn't bother to carry his car keys around. Whenever he parks, he just tosses his keyring on the driver's-side floor and walks away. He's got a pretty good car, and it's never been stolen.

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January 04, 2008

The Spirit of the Algonquin Round Table

The art of the scathing review is far from dead. P.J. O'Rourke takes on Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s collected diaries here. Just because a guy's dead is no reason to not get in a few solid kicks, eh?

I got some added amusement out of this because Rachel and I read several of Schlesinger's books during our AP History course. If memory serves, I wrote a paper agreeing with one of O'Rourke's points, that Schlesinger was rather charitable to President Jackson.

Found via Newmark's Door.

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January 03, 2008

Always Stick With the Plan

It's the rainy season here in Okinawa. For the last two weeks, we had one clear day- Christmas day itself. So I've been spending my leave time indoors, doing my introverted thing. Reading, playing on the computer, and whatnot.

Today was not as bad weather-wise: partly cloudy, dry, not terrible at all. So I went grocery shopping. Crazy life, eh? The commissary (military grocery store) is at Camp Foster, the next base over. It's a 10 minute drive to get there, except that the Foster Commissary Gate is closed for renovation, so you have to drive all the way around to the far side of the base to get in. But the route there takes you through the old heart of Ginowan City, such as it is, as about 80% of Ginowan City was rubble in 1945. Still, at least there's some local color to look at during the drive.

I got down to my car and realized I'd left my camera in my room, locked up because of the field day inspection we had this morning. Normally I take my camera with me wherever I go, because you can't predict when a cool photo opportunity is going to come up. But I'd already walked downstairs, and I was just going to go to the grocery store, so I left without it.

I was just getting into downtown Ginowan when traffic started to back up. It's a four lane road, but the shoulder was packed with parked cars. But that's not a legal place to part at! In the US, this would not have surprised me. But. The Japanese do not break laws. They simply do not break laws, at least in public. Plus, parking illegally in Japan is punished much more severely than in the US- fines are huge, and repeat offenders lose their licenses.

Then there were vendor stalls on the sidewalks, and families at the stalls, and then the line started- whole families in a huge line down the sidewalk, four abreast, going on for a half mile. Most were dressed quite nattily- suits and dresses, or in traditional kimonos. I kept driving along as the traffic slowed down, getting more and more nervous. There were kids scampering around. The illegally parked cars were compressing the driving space, and I'm still not completely comfortable driving on the left. There was a huge crowd whose purpose I didn't know.

Then it hit me- the shrine! In a few more blocks, I went past the Futenma Cave Shrine, which was having the New Year's prayer festival. The throngs of people were waiting to go inside and pray for a good new year. Why wasn't it happening on Jan 1st or 2nd? Well, Shinto is a practical religion. There's no reason to stand around outside in the rain if you don't have to.

So in summary, it was an absolutely brilliant chance to take some photos. And I had considered bringing along my camera, and decided not to bother.

*stupid* *stupid* *stupid*

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January 02, 2008

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen

I'm a conflicted about this book, which is why it's taken me two months to get around to writing a review. Let's get the dollars and cents out of the way first. I paid one hundred twenty-eight dollars for this book. Sad to say, that's not even close to my personal record for expensive wood pulp and ink. But at least the other books in that range were textbooks.

That's not really a fair criticism though, because I bought HMJCtW in Hong Kong Dollars, so it really cost about eighteen bucks in American currency. Sloppy thinking like that suffuses this book.

Francis Wheen is a columnist at the The Guardian, Britain's most profitable left-wing newspaper, which should have been a clue about what I was getting into. For every reasonable screen about how UFO believers are idiots, there was another chapter about how only idiots could believe that a free market could efficiently distribute goods and services. He spends a chapter bewailing Margaret Thatcher and her distruction of the British coal miner's union. He also spends a chapter on post-modernism in literary criticism (see the Sokal Affair), but his half of his objections to the "po-mos" is that they supplanted Marxist literary criticism as the academic vogue; and Marxist criticism is just as irrational as the po-mos.

Lastly, the books was heavily cover-blurbed as being hilariously funny. Maybe this is one of those "English humor" things that this poor colonial doesn't follow, but this book is rather profoundly unfunny. Reading it was like getting stuck at a dinner party next to an aging hippy that made a bundle in the stock market and is now ethically confused but bitter and unwilling to shut up.

I didn't learn a damn thing from this book, except that writers all-fired up to expose idiocy may, in fact, be idiots themselves.

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