April 13, 2008

Honda, I Choose You!

People have been asking to see my car for a while now. Here it is!

/images/piku_car_alone

The driver's side has no interesting stripes. The artwork was added two owners ago, by the Airframes shop.

After taking the car shots I took a photo walk, the results of which I'll post later. Spoiler: I felt humbled, as my skills were unworthy of the subject. Humility is not something I experience often, as those who know me will attest.

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April 10, 2008

Tom Leher Just Turned 80

Ladies and gentlemen, the great Tom Lehrer, in a clip from the American version of "That Was the Week That Was."

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April 09, 2008

Introvert's Lament

I've been invited to join a Marine I work with and her husband on a trip to one of the island's historical sites this weekend. I've not been to that place yet, so it surely would be interesting and educational.

But after three weeks of terrible stress, I really need some recharge time alone. We're surely going to be working Saturday, so I don't know if I can really give up my Sunday for socialization and still stay sane.

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It Is What It Is

We finished the inspection today. They ran our shop "Off-Track", for some stuff that we don't agree with. Some paperwork was not routed to us properly, because the Lieutenant that does the Technical Directives Program never wrote up the right paperwork. We're off-track because we failed to make a Lt. do his job. Here's a hint, oh Navy Chief doing our inspection- this is the Corps. I'm a corporal. I DO NOT tell a lieutenant what to do. I can ask him nicely, and we in fact had a documented paper trail of emails asking him nicely to run the paperwork. In the Navy, chiefs have infamous power onboard ship, such that junior officers are terrified of them. In the Corps, things are different. We take the command structure much more seriously.

But it's over and done, at least the inspection is. Tonight the inspectors are writing up their reports, and tomorrow I and all the other Program Managers and Program Monitors and the CO and other involved officers will have a meeting with the inspectors where the formally present their results. The word is that will be nine Off-Tracks and seven Needs More Attention, which is a grim showing for the squadron. Which is good for us, because we won't stand out so much as being a problem.

And anyway, we get on the boat very soon, and the inspectors can't stop that. The first people start getting onboard Monday, and the rest of us will be embarking the last week of the month. It's our last float for this endless painfull MEU cycle. If the CO wants to know why his squadron showed it's ass during this inspection, I got three words: "Two year MEU."

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April 07, 2008

Off-Track

The reason I stayed late last night was to fix the couple of discrepencies that had been found in the first day's inspection of my program. Today we finished the inspection, with no further hits. All the stuff from yesterday was already corrected.

And they gave us an "Off-Track", which is the worst rating, meaning "Fail!"

I have learned an important lesson from this. Honesty is a sucker's game. I filled out people's paperwork correctly, and thus showed that we had been making mistakes in the past. It would have been trivial to make a couple of "minor edits", concealing our past misbehavior. In which case we'd have received an "On-Track" rating and a pat on the back for being such good people.

Pencil-whips and lies, that's what the Navy rewards. So next time that's what they'll get.

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Flightplan, Starring Jodie Foster

Not a good movie. It's sort of half psychological thriller and half heist movie. But the psychology wasn't interesting, and the plan to steal $50 million was so outrageously stupid that I can't understand why anyone would have thought it would work. I wonder if the first draft had a plan that made sense, but it gradually morphed over dozens of script revisions until no one realized how stupid it had become?

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I Don't Think I Was Really UA

I just spent the last fourteen and a half hours at work, and when I got home to the barracks, I found out that the Sergeant Major is pissed off that I missed the field day formation. Maybe if she had announced the formation ahead of time, I would have been there. Probably not though, I was busy.

Stupid inspection. My program is about half way through it's time under the microscope, and we've "identified issues" that I'll be oblidged to correct, even though all the ones we've "identified" are, in my humble opinion, useless wastes of times. But it's the Navy that's inspecting us. And the general Marine opinion of the Navy is that they've got nothing but time to waste. (Navy aviation units have about 20% more maintainers per flight hour than Maines, despite the Navy also having much newer aircraft.)

What, me bitter? Now if you'll excuse me, I need to field day my room. Again. It's a good thing I don't have any important work I should be doing. Oh, wait...

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April 06, 2008

On Like Donkey Kong

The big inspection started today. The one we had three weeks ago was just a warm up to prepare us for this week. We're being inspected by the staff of the Commander, Naval Air Forces; it's the highest level inspection that squadrons are subject to.

So all week we'll have very senior navy enlisted poking into our business. These guys are looking for any deviations. We don't like them. The way I think of it, I'm a good Catholic, and they're the Inquisition. They'll take any excuse to burn someone, regardless of the justice. Dropping that simile, I think of my job as providing safe gear and aircraft for flight, while their job is ensuring that every ambiguous clause in an obscure order that you've never heard of is being observed to the letter.

My program gets inspected in about a half hour. I think it's good, but there might be something wrong that I'm not even aware of.

And as a bad sign, the first inspectors already rolled through the shop this morning. They were doing the battery safety program. So after we were grilled about storage of our AAs for NVGs and strobe lights, and lithium cells for radios, they asked us where we removed and stored the batteries from the shop computers, which are laptops in docking statements. We looked at them with blank incredulity. We now have a discrepancy we have to document our correcting, specifically: all lithium batteries must be removed for their host device, and stored individually in a locked storage area, when the host device for the battery is not in use. So we're supposed to disassemble our computers every night to fulfill the requirements of a battery safety order that was written when the closest thing to a laptop computer was a Kaypro II.

I'd be willing to correct myself for legitimate safety issues, but that kind of transparent bull crap really sucks out any belief I may have had that these guys are here to help their fellow servicemen.

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Myth-Told Tales by Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye

I thought I had reviewed this book some time ago, but I couldn't find evidence of that. So I'll summarize. The Myth series used to be brilliant comedy. Now, it's just painful. The original author has forgotten how the characters sound and act, and the new coauthor comes from a different comedy tradition, making it painfully obvious who wrote which of the disjointed scenes.

Don't waste your time.

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Soccer? I Hardly Know Her!

You may recall me not having much fun playing football last week, and threatening soccer as vengeance.

I sold the rest of the guys on it, but we didn't have enough people- four on four soccer is kind of lame. So we challenged the Airframes shop. They accepted, and the date was on: Friday at the gym's soccer field, at 0500.

First some preparations needed to be made. We needed a soccer ball. Also, I wanted some cleats, as my running shoes don't work that well on grass, especially grass wet from the morning dew. I'd seen the sign for a soccer shop not far from the base gate, so I drove over and went shopping.

The shop was acually a soccer clothing shop, containing team jerseys for every team I'd ever heard of in the major European leagues, and plenty of teams that were new to me. I didn't particularly need a Man U shirt. The only actual soccer gear they had were two models of balls, only one in a adult size. So I bought that one.

I drove on to the PX, hoping for some cleats. They only had one type of soccer cleats, but they had a pair that fit me, and they were only $17, which is a plus. They also had soccer balls, including the same one I'd bought out in town, for half the price. Whoops. I also picked up a pair of shin guards.

The game itself was a lot of fun. We were eight on eight, with no goalies (because the nominal purpose was excercise, so everyone was to be running around the field.) I don't have a very high PFT, and I can't play football or baseball, so people assume I'm unathletic. But I can play soccer quite well, thank you very much. I'm not a great shot, although my dribbling skills were sufficient to keep away most of the inexperienced opposition. My primary skills are on defense, and I showed them to good effect. I don't think I was beat one-on-one a single time.

The game ended after an hour with an honorable score: tied, one all. Now we're trying to decide who to challenge for next week.

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