So on Tuesday, I went to visit SUNY Albany and chat with their admissions people. I stayed overnight at Paul's place, and he gave me directions on how to get there, and further instructions on how to get to the visitor's parking lot. His parking directions included the phrase "Hop the curb", which I wasn't eager to do in my rather low-slung car.

When I got there, it was clear that no curb hopping was necessary: there were fine signs pointed the way to the visitor's lot. I followed the signs and ignored Paul's directions.

Foolish me.

The signs led all the way around campus, but notably not to a visitor lot. I only got to a visitor lot by ignoring the signs entirely.

Then I walked to the building on the map labelled "Admin". Except sometime between when the map was printed and now, that building was reassigned to contain parts of a couple of different departments. I had to ask around to get directions to the new Administration Center, which was not even on my map.

Once I got there though, I was able to talk to the nice people.

As a side note, college students sure look young. They're just as old as most of the Marines I was supervising, but the military haircuts and work outside in the sun give Marines an older look, to me.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I'm south of Albany right now, visiting my old school buddy Paul. He had an interesting night when the remnants of Hurricain Ike blew overhead on the way to Canada. Paul lives in a lovely old Victorian estate, with a 150 year old maple next to the house. The maple survived the storm, but one of its branches was blowing vigorously enought that it smacked one of the house's chimneys, and broke off the top foot! He woke up to the sound of the ceramic inner flue shattering, followed shortly by a pile of bricks hitting the ground. Fortunatly, the debris fell away from the house instead of landing on the roof.

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I'm at my mother's now. She asked me to do some maintenance on her PC, but while I was installing WinXP SP3, it failed to reboot. It just power cycles itself early in the boot process. Not even Safe Mode could avoid the reboot cycle.

A little diagnostic work and I discovered that somehow during the SP3 upgrade, the GDI32.DLL system file did not get installed correctly. That DLL is essential to getting the display system working, and even Safe Mode doesn't like to live without an output device.

"No problem!" said I; the SP3 upgrade had set a system restore point, so I just had to revert back to that image and perhaps try again. Pop in the ole' WinXP disc, boot from CD, and Bob's my uncle. (Hi, Uncle Bob and Aunt Jean!)

Unfortunatly, this PC was built by one of Mom's coworker's sons, and did not come with a WinXP disc. Which makes me suspicious that it perhaps may not be exactly properly liscenced. Which is the system builder's fault. But non-the-less, I was trying to help my Mom keep her computer up to par, and instead I bricked it.

All is not lost though, as I'll be visiting my friend Paul on Monday, and I expect I'll be able to borrow an XP disc from him for a few days, long enough to get Mom's PC back on it's feet.

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go mow the lawn before it rains. Which it's been doing quite a bit of, recently.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:25 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I'm getting the hang of driving in the US again. I no longer pull into the wrong lane, and I've remembered how to make turns on red. But I still tend to walk to the wrong door of the car. Luckily the need to shift with my right hand has broken me of triggering the wipers when I want a turn signal, and vice-versa.

I'm still not all the way there with knowing which gear to downshift into after when accelerating out of a turn.

Lastly, I went though my glove compatment and purged the following maps: Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Atlanta Metro Area, Cobb County GA. I just need to get a decent and up-to-date New York map. I'll be on some interstates this weekend, so perhaps I can get one from a rest stop.

Posted by: Boviate at 03:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I made it! Really, I made it a couple of days ago, but today is the first day that I'm back on the internet.

On Monday, the three of us from Okinawa sperating at Pendleton came back to the processing center nice and early. My medical paperwork got fixed in less than fifteen minutes; a doc looked it over, decided that every section was indeed properly completed, and signed the cover page.

The three of us then cooled our heels until lunch while the civilian working our case typed away at the computer in our cubicle. She told us that we should be done that afternoon, so during lunch I drove us back to the transient barracks, and we all changed into civvies and loaded our luggage into the trunk. I was initially irritated that the rental agency didn't have any compacts, sticking me with a mid-size; it turned out to be a good thing, as we three plus luggage would have been a tight squeeze in a smaller car!

Our paperwork was finished by 1400 or so, and each of us sat down with the civilian and went over it, signing about a dozen different pieces of paper. We got our tickets, and were officially on terminal leave!

The first flight was leaving San Diego in two hours, so we had to boogie to get there. Traffic was decent in mid-afternoon, so I got the other two dropped off at their terminals, then went looking for the Enterprise rental lot. Which was no where near the airport, so I spent quite a while getting stressed out trying to find it. All ended well though, and I got to the airport in plenty of time.

Plenty of time for the chaos to start. I was supposed to fly to Las Vegas, then take the red-eye to Philadelphia, then a commuter turboprop to Elmira-Corning. Well, the plane to Vegas was late, so I switched to a Phoenix connection. I got there and got bumped to a different flight. It was still a red-eye to Philly, so I didn't mind.

That flight was hugely annoying, in that I was able to get no sleep. I arrived at Philly with almost five hours to kill before my 1000 flight to Big Flats. Then that flight got cancelled, so I moved to the 1125 flight. That got cancelled, so I was moved to the 1930 flight, which did not make me happy. So I changed to a 1620 flight to Binghampton, which is only an hour's drive from Big Flats. But a seat opened up on the 1410 flight to Big Flats, and I jumped at it. So I did arrive at my original destination, just a few hours late.

My luggage arrived eight hours later, to my total lack of surprise.

So here I am!

Posted by: Boviate at 02:02 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Today I went to Legoland USA, in Carlsbad, California. I was a little older than the target demographic, but still, I had a very good time. Lots of legos everywhere, and I came perilously close to blowing my college fund on the "Legos In Bulk" shop. (Priced by the pound!)

The bathrooms weren't as clean as you'd expect at a Disney resort, and I only saw one person in a Lego costume.

I did try Dippin' Dots, which is ice cream made of BB-sized chunks. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't blown away, either. After the park closed, I went to my old stomping grounds in Carlsbad, and cruised the Pacific Coast Highway. A good way to while away a Sunday.

Posted by: Boviate at 08:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The shuttle that took me to Camp Pendleton was a large van driven by a garrulous old man. As I was the most conversationally interesting, he had me sit in the passenger's seat, while the other five troops sat on the benches behind us. He regaled us with many tales of his days in the service, as well as of his son, who is currently in the Air Force special forces school, trying to get to be a Combat Controller.

The driver dropped me and two other guys off at the transient barracks. I paid my $25 (hopefully I'll get to file a travel claim and get reimbursed), but forgot to tip because, well, the Japanese don't do that. It was almost nine PM. The barrack duty stander stamped my orders and took me to a room, with another guy already in it. He'd also come from Okinawa, but his luggage made it uninterrupted, so he'd arrived at Pendleton a few hours earlier. He was dead asleep, but I woke him as I moved in. His name is Cpl Reed.

The barracks is… kind of rough around the edges. Dirty. Worn. Small. Old. The matresses are new, but there are no pillows. There's no A/C. My room faces west, so the afternoon sun heats it up like an oven, and it stayed boiling hot all night. At around 1 AM, a third guy arrived, claiming the last rack. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

In the morning, Reed and I got up and put on our cammies, going to the 0730 formation that the duty had warned us about. Turned out that formation was for people that had completed their term of imprisonment in the brig, and were now getting separated out. My roommie and I didn't need to be there, but we did learn where to meet the duty driver to take us to the Admin folks to get ourselves processed.

At the admin section, we took numbers, waited our turn, then discovered that we should have skipped the wait and gone right to the civilian responsible for processing Okinawa types. She screened our paperwork. Reed looked good, he was ready to leave this very day... except that the furniture was being replaced in the office where tickets were issued, so they had the day off. But he can come back Monday and get sent on his way back to civilian life.

I was not so fortunate. All my paperwork is good, except for my final physical, which my squadron flight surgeon did before I left. The final physical has a half-dozen parts, and the doc and I went over each part, both of us signing the end of all six sections. Then doc had to sign the cover page. But he didn't, so the whole thing is invalid. I, ahem, "debated" the issue with the civilian clerk, as obviously all six parts of the exam were completed, making the cover sheet a meaningless formality. My crushing logic met the immovable object of "The Regs Say…", and I slunk off in defeat. The best I could manage was an appointment with the local air group's medical section on Monday. If I can get that completed expiditously enough, I may be able to leave that same day. Otherwise, Tuesday.

Unless another error gets noticed…

Posted by: Boviate at 08:35 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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My luggage did come on the next flight as advertised. I'm also waking up a little, as it's now daytime back in Japan. Plus I was spending time outside to get some sunlight. And some fresh air. Okinawans don't use very much air conditioning, and I work outside a lot, so the airport's climate control is making me downright chilled.

The USO has a very nice place attached to the airport; no surprise, as there are very large Marine and Navy installations nearby. The USO has a shuttle bus that runs to Pendleton, which is how I'm going to get there. I missed the 1700 run, and the next trip is at 1930, so I'm killing time with the internet and stuff.

They also have a book exchange rack, so I left behind "Magic Lost, Trouble Found", by Lisa Sherarin. It's a fantasy pretty far along to the "romance" side, but it wasn't terrible. I can't really recommend it though, unless you're bored on a long plane ride. Also, I want to smack the book's designer, for choosing a hideously inappropriate typeface for the chapter titles. The first line of every new chapter is also set in italics, which is visually confusing. So in all fairness, I might be taking that out on the author, who surely is blameless as to the layout.

Posted by: Boviate at 08:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I had to fudge all the timestamps on my travelog posts. The blog software has a built-in time zone system, but it couldn't deal with the International Date Line crossing I did. So my posts were showing up out-of-order, and I was pretty confused. Which isn't a hard status to achieve, seeing as how I'm sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, caloric-limited, and dehydrated.

Posted by: Boviate at 06:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Made it! I was pretty woozy on the one-hour jump down here, and it was unpleasantly cold. I should have complained to the flight attendant, but I wasn't very coherent.
*****
OK, too funny. I was writing the above while sitting near the baggage claim. The carrosel had just started up, when the PA paged me and about a dozen Japanese people. I jumped to the correct conclusion, which was that my baggage hadn't made it. Remember the close connection I'd been unhappy about? Yeah, about that.

My bag's on the next plane, which already left. They nicely offered to deliver it to me. Which is great, except I have no frelling idea where I'm going to be. I'm reporting to Seps Company on Camp Pendleton, but Pendleton is a big base, and I don't know where Seps is. I suppose that the delivery guy could ask around same as I will, but I don't want any more hassles than I'm already walking into.

So I'll wait an hour and a half at the airport for the next flight to come in, and just collect it then. The baggage desk guy offered me a meal voucher, which was certainly kind. The food here doesn't look as good as the stuff in Japan was, but I'll deal.

PS Free wi-fi! Those bastards at San Francisco wanted me to pay $10 for the privalege.

Posted by: Boviate at 06:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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