Time is not your friend.

I wish to drink a beer with Anthony Swofford and then engage in a lengthy session of bullshit that is both meandering and meaningless. I wish to knock his socks off with my incisive mental clarity and scalpel-sharp wit. I wish for him to know that I am a hopelessly tragic motherfucker just like him, willing to attack substantial pieces of living room furniture with a chainsaw because that sort of tomfoolery just makes Grade-A sense sometimes.

Not only that, but it's goddamn hilarious.

Moving toward nothing comes easy when you've managed to divorce yourself from anything that seems even remotely consequential. I'm not talking about the end of a marriage, mind you. The sort of waking and walking death that Hagakure says all good samurai should be able to walk stalwartly through life with. This perpetual acceptance that the next step you take may be your last and therefore you should make it important, significant, and memorable. That your body should be able to execute two precise moves after death.

Anything less, the traveler should know, will bring generations of shame and dishonor upon your name and family.

Tony and I could climb to the top of a hill in Los Angeles and spit drunken epithets at the crowds coming out of Dodger Stadium with a 10,000 watt PA system. Huge, reverberating, ballistic assaults of profanity aimed squarely at people who didn't do a damned thing to deserve this sort of maltreatment. We would smash half empty bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale (and Pigface had it right on the liner notes to Notes From Thee Underground - fuck all beers except the one and only Newcaslte) into the hot asphalt of the street until it spelled out 'FART' in tiny diamonds of glass and wasted CRV, wasted until the myopic Vietnamese woman with gout picked it all out of the tarmac to recycle.

We could, in hushed tones, discuss the finer points of 7.62mm ballistics while surrounded by the concrete scented coolness of my garage. I would take the black Pelican case from the careful hiding spot in the closet, pop both of the well-oiled locks and latches open, to reveal in profile a Remington 700VS. 2.5 pound trigger, 24-inch bull barrel with muzzle brake, 6-20x Springfield Armory tactical scope with mil-dot reticle and NVD-compatible lighting, custom pillar bedding, A3 McMillan stock and Harris bipod. The rifle speaks to both of us in terms that we can mutually understand but not on which one could place a human voice. At least I am sure that this would be my perception of the event.

However, I am but one of six billion slightly over-evolved gorillas on this ball of mud hurtling around an inconsequential yellow star. My life is not so special or precious that I will be the subject of an After School, Barbara Walters, Anderson Cooper, or Snoopy Special. I do not see myself requiring any form of cinematographic eulogy equipped with an epic ensemble playbill for double mana points and the ability to cast magic missile three times in one round.

I'm just one guy with thirty thousand words at his disposal. I'm just one guy who finds himself nearing the middle of his life and wondering where it is that time actually goes.

I am on Blogspot. Talking nonsense. I have no chainsaw. I sold the Remington two years ago. I have no Newcastle. I know no one living in the hills above Dodger Stadium.

Which is ultimately why I will never drink beer with Anthony Swofford.

Checking Out

Well, we're off to the happy sandbox.

I'll probably not be posting for some time to come, so enjoy the archives (for what they're worth) and don't hope for too much in terms of new content. We'll resume somewhere around 3rd quarter of next year.

Let's Punt!

NIACT (for those of you that don't know,) is where you get sent when the Navy in it's infinitestimal wisdom decides that you ought to go IA. IA (for those of you that don't know,) is a sort of blanket spanking delivered to "less useful" (cue the dickfingers for the quotation marks) service for not being able to do anything in Iraq and Afghanistan other than dispatch it's less well behaved sub-component and shuttle various bits of kit back and forth.

What this garbage really means is The Navy, isn't really doing anything at the moment, and therefore gets to send large numbers of it's people to the desert. Which is great, because I am informed by my usual collection of highly unreliable sources that there is a huge problem with sinking trucks there. Especially since some bright soul took all of the guardrails off of every curve and bridge in Iraq, leading to a number of issues with vehicles piloted by adrenaline and testosterone enriched 18-year-old American personnel flipping their shit into ditches and rivers. The guardrails were removed because the insurgents figured out (for all of their other myriad powers) that members of the United States military do not have x-ray vision and therefore cannot see 155mm artillery shells duct taped to the back of a guard rail.

Please note that although I am being glib, IED's scare the shit out of me. Gallows humor is something of a compensating mechanism here.

(Also, NIACT is Navy Individual Augmentee Combat Training and IA means Individual Augmentee.)

I am now an Individual Augmentee. Not by choice, mind you, not by a long shot.

The problem here (as I intimated in a previous post) is that for an AT, general helicopter nerd, and (if I must say so myself) principal apex predator of the SH-60B avionics world, I am vested of a very weird set of skills. And I do mean weird.

Want things wired together? Want things to work outside of their design specifications with a minimum of paperwork, muss, fuss, and "approval" from "appropriate authority"? Need the Swiss Army Knife of Navy Petty Officers? I'm not your guy. But I can do lots of other things, most of which are not particularly useful. However, I am viciously good at video games and have a penchant for being able to get things done in less than optimal situations. That, coupled to the fact that I am a phenomenally huge idiot, makes for someone that absolutely, positively will not quit.

What is going on in Afghanistan is Big Shit. What is going on in Iraq is also some Big Shit. Big Shit is something the Navy has not been able to deal with in an organizational capacity since about 1945. Tactically we're great, but you read some of our instructions and it's like we're managed by a horde of angry cats in a room tiled with keyboards.

Hence it should not come as any surprise that the IA process is a huge clusterfuck. The Navy Mobilization Processing Centers (NMPS) are run principally by Reservists that (for whatever reason) seem to reap a considerable amount of joy from Core With a Capital Hard Fucking With the Active Duty people headed out for an IA. I was personally witness to an E-5 who took it upon himself to verbally waylay an O-5 who happened to have missed an answer to a question and asked it again. (The last time I saw something like that the situation produced an E-4.) Time spent sitting in hallways, in theaters, in rooms, only to be addressed not like fellow professionals but more like recruits on P-1 day at an RTC. I have never seen disrespect like that from a single source, and it didn't go unacknowledged by the victims. It did go uncorrected despite little conferences between various people that grew in volume from the highly discreet to the highly public over the five days we went through NMPS.

Alternately, NIACT was a breath of fresh air. Army personnel that genuinely cared about our welfare. They weren't spouting quotes from various instructions concerning Mentorship Across the Entire Domain of the Naval Enterprise, and Actualizing the Desires of Your Personnel Through Naval Military Professionalism Education.

It's enough to make an old AT1 long for the days when being in the Navy didn't just mean a series of increasingly questionable personnel policy decisions. When we were professionals, when hard work and knowledge were respected. When the cut of your jib was measured by what you could do with the knowledge in your head, not by how well you were politically connected to the popular people. In talking with the Drill Sergeants it became evident that there is something very wrong with the Navy at the moment. It seems to have lost it's way and become convinced that it can be a real corporation some day if Fairy Godmother will just grant it that wish. (And it proves itself sufficiently contrite and worthy by writing giant voluminous piles of administrative jibber-jabber sufficient to coat every ship in the Navy with an inch thick layer of paper.)

We're sending 6,000 people on IA assignments this year. 10% of the force, 50,000 sailors, have been sent on an IA tour since the process started in 2003-2004. By the time it is done, conservative estimates seem to indicate that approximately 15-20% of the Navy will be sent out as Individual Augmentees at some point in their career.

I wrote on my critique of NMPS that if they've dropped 50,000 people through their meat grinder so far, why does it feel like amateur night?

The Bard, in Ceasar, wrote:

The abuse of greatness comes when it disjoins remorse from power.

It seems as though you're volunteering (or being voluntold and just trying to make the best out of a bad situation,) and the first thing you get to do is take a big bite out of a shit sandwich. That the Army, who has no real reason to give two shits about you, cares more about your welfare in the 30 minute bus ride from the airport than you've seen come from the last five years worth of senior leadership. That their desire to see you well trained so that you can come back alive isn't just disingenuous policy-mandated window dressing. It all counts for something with them. There is a distinct feeling of gravity to the Army that is lacking in what is now "A Global Force For Good."

It is my most sincere hope that one day, soon, the Navy will realize that it rides on the backs of the men and women inside it and not over a blue and shapeless ocean. Failing to take care of them, whenever and wherever possible, is an abdication of that responsibility.

Poll Results: More Overdue Than a Library Book

So, there's a new poll up. Let it run for a month and see what you think of that business. The last poll posed a question for the ages, asking when addressing people in the Navy, you usually:

Yell "SHIPMATE" at them. Because from where I stand, the Kool-Aid just tastes that good.
Yell "BOATFRIEND." Because 'shipmate' is regarded as a perjorative term now, and I'm too sensitive to jam people up like that.
Yell "HEY YOU! IN THE BLUE!" Just to see what happens.
Find a large group of people having a pointless discussion and proclaim "LET'S GET SOME MORE MEN OVER THERE." Because you can never have enough men standing around pontificating.
I don't address anyone. Addresses are for letters. I am a shoe and only speak over e-mail.
I said I wanted to check the BDHI grounds to see if it was shorted to ground and my LPO/CPO told me never to speak again.
I was using the sound powered phones the other day when the batteries died. I haven't been able to find any or talk to anyone since.
This is not the Meatloaf answer.

And the results?

ONE person apparently likes Shipmating people, because it is good.
THREE people are down with the Boatfriend.
TWO people sow confusion and disorder in the friendly ranks by being as non-specific as possible.
ONE person thinks we need more men over there. And believe you me, we definitely do.
NOBODY fesses up to communicating only via e-mail.
ONE person apparently has had someone check the BDHI grounds for shorting to ground.
ONE person can't, err, find sound powered phone batteries. This is fine, since I can trade you some fallopian tube for a few if you can't get them from supply. Send me an e-mail.
AND SOMEONE FINALLY GIVES MEATLOAF TEH LURVE.

What does this all mean? Well, it appears as though we're totally down with calling people Boatfriend (which is the new Shipmate, by the way, check MCPON message traffic,) and generalization.

New poll is up, vote away.

Where'd Who Go?

So where, pray tell, have I been? I think the more relevant question is where haven't I been. I certainly haven't been to the boat, as I was pulled off of my detachment with about two weeks left before we were supposed to depart for long cruise.

Don't worry, gentle reader, for your fair scribe is most certainly not in any manner of trouble. Unless you count being sent on an Individual Augmentee assignment as "trouble."

We had just finished with the last of the Wing inspections for our pre-cruise Detachment Readiness Inspection (DRI). This is the usual number of hoops you're required to jump through prior to leaving because they want to make sure your crap is screwed down the right way. There are program, equipment, and procedure inspections to ensure that you do know what you are doing in more than just a theoretical sense.

So anyway, here it is Friday, we've just finished with the DRI, and my OIC comes down and pulls me out of the shop.

"Hey, AT1." LCDR O'Malley is one of those affable people with a perpetual ability to seem calm. Something about flying from postage stamps in the middle of nowhere with severely inexperienced pilots in the other seat tends to do that to you, I suppose. "Talk to you for a second?"
"Sure sir," I say, jumping up from the desk. There's an inexplicable knot that forms suddenly in the pit of my stomach, "I'm not in some trouble, am I?"
"No," he says as we walk through the hall and out of the building. "It's about that IA assignment."
"Okay." There is a long pause here, I knew I was under the gun for this but had not heard anything in some weeks. We were sort of hoping that the Wing IA people and U.S. Fleet Forces Command (USFF) would forget me long enough for us to get underway and make a decision for them. The problem with this particular Individual Augmentee (IA) billet is that there are three people in all of Pacific Fleet that meet the requirement. I'm one. The other two? One is at an FDNF-J (read: Japan) squadron and the other is somewhere so undermanned it defies any logical explanation.
"You've been selected," this cut through the now over-pressurized atmosphere like a knife. "You're leaving in September, 290 days in country."
I say the only thing I think appropriate in a situation like this: "Fuck."

So where have I been? Navy Individual Augmentee Combat Training, and back to the squadron for a month so they could get my paperwork straight.

The issue with this is that the squadron has no say, none whatsoever, in my deployment. They were forced to pull another AT1 out of the shop, get him qualified, and then send him on deployment with a two week notice. This leads me to the problem with Direct Callout IA sourcing, that being the ripple effect it has on the organization tasked with providing the body. Most IA billets are for some sort of general duty, meaning that you can fill them with someone that can follow directions and doesn't think tuning up detainees with a Louisville Slugger is a good thing to do on a Tuesday night after Letterman. These are easy for a type commander (whether that is a Wing or Destroyer Squadron) as you simply set up a rotation between commands. There is a notion of anticipation there where you are able to anticipate the loss and then deal with it as the need arises. Direct Callouts on the other hand are much more difficult. Usually, USFF goes out with an IA sourcing requirement with a very short list of names attached. Commands are then required to prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, why it is that USFF can't have someone. Now as a matter of course everyone is going to say 'you can't have my guy.' This forces Fleet Forces to choose someone from the list, and it is usually the guy that, in the eyes of the Navy, isn't doing anything productive at the moment.

That would be me. I'm not the division LPO at a fixed wing squadron in Japan. I'm not a Chief at a fighter squadron manned at 30% of what it is supposed to be for that particular rating. I'm just some random helicopter nerd in a community seen as superfluous and fiscally annoying. So yeah, Fleet Forces is going to take me and not the other two guys.

The big components of the long game now have nothing to do with making sure that I have enough parts to survive a nine month deployment, it’s getting copies of evasion charts, teaching myself some working knowledge of Dari and Pashto, and trying to figure out what they mean when they say I’ll be occupying an officer’s billet for the nine months I’m there.

The job that I’ll be doing is interesting to say the least; it involves more playing PlayStation for the Navy for some interesting customers. My only gripe is the bastards aren’t going to let me keep all that cool cold weather gear I’ve been issued. I’ve been told that you can arrange for it to be “lost,” and that claims can be submitted.

They Once Shot People For Lesser Crimes

I've spent the last month or so engaged in a series of very long days, (some of them in excess of 20 hours) and a stint on the ship. I feel like an Airman all over again due in large part to the fact that I am being “trained” as a Maintenance Control supervisor. That, perhaps, isn't the right word as it is not so much a matter of “training” as it is a series of well-timed kicks to The Business from my LCPO when I'm not on time and on target with a particular requirement. The up side of this is that I have become quite accustomed to being in the right place at the right time with the answers. The down side is that I managed to lose ten pounds in two weeks on the Aviation Electrician's Mate Chief Petty Officer Peek Maintenance Control Training Direct From the Bowels of Hell Diet.

Lessons learned? Objectivity, man. Objectmotherfuckingtivity.

I've been a maintenance supervisor before. I find where I was before to be a state of such facile puerility that it defies other description. Supervision is, frankly, making stuff go once someone else makes up their mind as to what ought to or ought not happen. This means that in other posts where I've talked about accomplishing many feats of manual labor in the name of Naval Aviation? We're not doing that anymore. Specifically, as Chief Peek put it, “I need a supervisor, not a worker. You can't be in Maintenance Control and running things and on the bird at the same time.”

Sort of a mindset change for me as for the last fifteen years I am the first one to pick up a wrench and go to it when things need done. Now I have to wrap my head around the fact that it is someone else's turn to do that now, I need to make sure that they're trained to do this and that they'll make it through the job, shift, or cruise with all of their biological bits configured as when the model left the factory.

But that isn't it all.

I snapped while we were on the boat – to mean I got madder than I've been in a decade and lost my temper in a pretty uncharacteristic way. I'd like to think that I don't anger easily, and as a matter of fact, I know there are a number of things out there that make other people florid with rage about which I could give two shits. As a matter of fact, short of setting me on fire or trying to put a stick up my butt, I really don't care.

Except for all things related to safety.

During an aircraft move our brake rider came up with a plastic stick used to push the accelerant into the sealant on the two part kits we use. He's found this in the cockpit and it apparently it went flying with the aircraft, pilots, and crewman as a sort of polyvinyl-chloride passenger.

The LPO has a go at yelling for about ten minutes. I like the LPO and all, he's a good guy and he means well, but ass chewing is DEFINITELY NOT his forte.

We dismiss from the hollering and go back to work. I tell my guys to go and get some chow as Food Alarm has been declared (sort of like going to General Quarters or calling an Engineering Casualty) on the mess decks. One of them scoots past, I ask him where he is off to and he replies to check fluid levels. There is something missing from this picture and I cannot quite put my finger on what that is for a brief series of seconds.

I continue to consider what this deficiency might be for a moment longer, turn back around, and find him on top of the aircraft with no cranial.

Ladies and gentleman, please realize this ain't no drum machine and to tip your waiters and waitresses.

For those of you that may have heard: that HSL rotor strike fatality in 2001? I knew that Chief. I liked him. Some of the people I work with now knew him very, very well. The sort of knowing someone well where it gets you an invitation to their wedding as a participant in the ceremony. (Not like bride or groom, either.) I don't like the fact that he's dead, and as a matter of fact I tend to be an absolute dick about anything safety-related as a result.

Your boots worn out? Wearing tinted lenses in your cranial goggles after sunset? No float coat preop signed? Boots not laced up? No gloves on the flight deck? No foul weather jacket in foul weather? Not paying attention to detail? Driving tow tractors on the flight line too fast? Anything else spring to mind?

Expect me to say something about it.

In this case I did say something about it. I said something for about thirty seconds at a volume that probably would require hearing protection should the NAVOSH folks come out and measure the dB levels generated by my vocal chords.

And then I promptly proceeded to get my ass chewed by the LPO. Words like “you just can't do stuff like that” and “hugely disproportionate response” were used. This would be where the New Navy and I part ways. I'm sorry, but the images of a Chief's face and brains scattered across a flight deck are permanently seared into my mind. We'd already had someone slip off of the aircraft during a wash job the night before, and I'd told my guys it was a good thing he was wearing his cranial at the time. This other kid was still in the process of opening cowlings on the aircraft and really had nothing to grab on to should he have slipped.

So does this mean I was right to fly off of the handle?

I don't know. In hindsight I probably should have just quietly told the kid to get off of the plane, but at the time, and under those circumstances, and considering that this is his first real rodeo. It's hard to say that I wouldn't do it again. I apologized to my Chief and LPO for having done this, was shitcanned to days for the rest of the time we were on the boat, and now find myself on very uncertain footing.

Things changed while I was gone. I mean they really, really, changed. You can't yell at people anymore without being censured by your upper chain of command. There are penalties there for misbehaving or lacking vigor when it comes to work, but they all lack teeth and rely on huge mounds of paperwork to document every last little infraction. One of the things I was told later is that yelling at people “constitutes verbal assault, and that's mastable.”

Wait, what? You're joking, right? They wouldn't seriously send a guy to Captain's Mast for yelling at someone? Would they?

They wouldn't, right? In my case, no. But I've been given a stern pointy-finger type lecture that lets me know we're not having any more of that.

John Paul Jones, I apologize for what we've let your service become.

Command Level Confusion: Redux

Charlie and I are in the hanger getting ready to pull blades off of our phase bird. The bulk of the detachment mechs are on the day shift right now getting the FCF finished on the other aircraft following what can only classify as Holy Shit It's Maintenance. (Meaning we took the Main Gearbox (MGB,) out and replaced said in a matter of two weeks. This includes the week of waiting around to get the new MGB.) So now we've a need to pull blades off of the other aircraft for the previously mentioned phase inspection.

Let's see here. A checklist, if you will:
Integrated Electronic Technical Manual (because you can't do a damned thing without The Book,) x1
1/2"-drive 13/16" socket, x1.
1/2"-drive 18" long breaker bar, x1.
24" extension for the breaker bar, x1.
1/2"-drive ratchet, x1.
MAF bags (for four sets of bolts and an extra for FOD,) x5.
Overhead crane (with valid pre-operational inspection and licensed operator,) x1.
Blade stands x1 pair.
Blade lifting clamp with swedged inspection date and RFI tags, x1.
18' rope, x1.
Spotters, x2.

ADC Bloom (one of the night shift Maintenance Control Chiefs) is strolling through the hanger and sees me going up the side of the aircraft with ratchets, MAF bags, breaker bars, and sockets in tow. We already had the blade clamp connected to the crane and on the blade, all that was left for us to do was have me run up the side of the bird and start pulling the bolts.

I'd like to say that the clanging noise that echoed through the hanger was a socket that came off of the ratchet I was carrying. It wasn't. It was Chief's jaw hitting the concrete floor.

"AT1, what'n hell you doin'?" Chief Bloom has a sort of hefty midwest accent that comes out when he gets excited.
"Taking the blades off, Chief."
"You know what yer doin' there?"
"Saw it on TV last week. Got a book up here, too."
"Err." He makes this noise and shuffles forward a few steps, confounded.
"Chief," I turn halfway on the aircraft and face toward him, "I've done this a dozen times before, we've got a book, crane's been preopped, we've got the right tools and number of people for the job, everybody knows what's going on, we briefed what we're going to do, and if anything goes wrong you can hang me out to dry for it."
"Okay." There is some uncertainty in his voice, but he walks on toward the door to Maintenance Control anyway.

Later I find out that I'm going to be allowed to start the process toward getting qualified as a 110 (Powerplants) Collateral Duty Inspector.

AT shit is boring, anyway. Getting dirty and mucking about with the motors and transmissions is way more interesting.

The Floating Five

This is for Phil, who was the first person to introduce me to the concept.

The other day Junior (the other, obviously less senior, AT on the detachment) and I were talking about something when it came up that he needed a couple of dollars for lunch. I pulled my wallet out, grabbed what I think was about seven or eight dollars and handed it to him.

"Here," I speak while stuffing money into his hand.
"Thanks AT1, I'l pay you back," he replies as the bills disappear into a coverall pocket. Have to talk to him about that later to make sure the change goes in a wallet and not out to the aircraft.
"Don't."
"What?"
"Don't pay me back."
"Okay" he says with a certain incredulity.
"Junior, ever heard of a 'floating five?'"
"Nope."
"I lend you five dollars, you throw Aaron five dollars, he gives it to Charlie. Pretty soon someone owes someone five dollars all the time, and as long as no one abuses the privilege, everybody has lunch or smokes or whatever and we're good."
"Cool."
"I'd like to think so."

POLL! IN 3D!

For starters, I apologize to the assortment of readers that I have here for the lack of posting. No one really reads this thing anyway, but I might as well apologize in the event that space aliens find this blog and decide that it ought to be preserved for posterity. Or something like that.

Right. So, the last poll (dating from last year,) posed the question:

Helicopters are clearly the superior form of aviation because:

And our potential answers were:
1. Igor Sikorsky was a sick joke inflicted on us by the Soviets. Have you too, worked on the SH-60, friend?
2. WAT! Ever heard of NHA? No, but EVERYONE LOVES THEM SOME TAILHOOK.
3. This isn't the way we did it when I was in 46's.
4. RRREEEAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHH BOOOM WHIIIIZZZZZ! ARRESTED LANDING ATOP YOUR BUTTOCKS, BITCH!
5. I IZ AN SWO. I LIEK TACO NITE. I HAEV THREEE HOLES IN MY FACE.
6. I was busy eating pizza on the beach. VRC, yo.
7. I was busy cooking pizza by holding it against the windows. E-2C, you know.
8. I was a tube slug. I get per diem. Screw you boat guys.
9. HORNETHORNETHORNET - I named my kids that. All of them.
10. After very careful consideration I've come to the conclusion that the Romeo sucks. Bravos 4 LIFE.
11. FAOLTAEM! And something about Tomcats.

So, it should suffice to say that we had a metric shitload of possible answers. Results? Oh yeah, we need ourselves some results. Not just the same old partisan bickering about how to stimulate the...flight deck parking arrangements. Yeah. About that.

Our results?

- Nobody seems to think that Igor is a sick joke. Good for you, you dissident bowler hat wearing ex-commie.
- One person lurves teh Tailhook. But definitely wasn't at the convention.
- Zero people did it that way in 46's. (Which is hilarious, because I heard that very line this morning.)
- Bolter for the arrested ass landing.
- We, uh, have three shoes here.
- VRC foax apparently don't have an Internet connection for the beach det. Nil.
- Irradiated E-2C guys, for deuce.
- Either no one wants to admit that they're a tube slug, or they thought they were shoes.
- One person apparently named all of their progeny HORNETHORNETHORNET. Reminds me of that thing from New Zealand not too long ago where someone named a kid "Public Bus Shelter Number 16," another one "Violence," but the courts stepped in for "Tula Does the Hula From Hawaii." (Seriously.)
- Two votes to blow up the Romeo. SH-60B fo LIEF. Ya bitches.
- And as usual, nobody liked the Meatloaf answer.

What does this mean? It means that the readership around here is primarily composed of Hawkeye riding shoes that eat their young, don't like the MH-60R, name their kids after fighters, and are card-carrying Tailhook members.

Demographics: an area of considerable expertise for me.

Note: To achieve 3-D effect for this post requires two people. One to sit stationary in a chair and a second to move the monitor closer and farther away from the viewer's face while yelling (preferably in a booming voice): "POLL! IN 3-D! OOOOEEEEEOOOEEEEEOOOOO!"

WAT

This is a Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

This is sitting on my kitchen counter.

This is clearly superior. We'll be having it large with the pictures here shortly.

Care and Feeding of the Average Airman

For starters, I owe Sid a big thank you for kicking me in the butt. I realised today that I've been away from teh_blog for about a month now and haven't really had time to do anything with the content here.

Being on detachment does that to you. Your life sort of blends into a long procession of days, maintenance actions, tool checks, flights off of the line, and lunch runs to buy a sack of fat pills from McDonald's for the det because the gearbox is out, the blades are off, Maintenance Control wants a FLIR swap done, and there's always the three minutes of training you do with the random kid standing in the hanger with the confused look.

Speaking of kids.

When I had my Check-In interview (Is that hyphenated? Who knows.) with the CO he made mention of something that I hadn't really heard of before now. "Covenant leadership, AT1," Commander Flannagan says, "you know what that is?"
"No sir. I've heard you use the term several times at quarters, but I'm not sure about the specifics." Honesty, when dealing with the CO, is always the best policy.
"It's like this, these kids give us four to six years of their lives, they make a covenant with the Navy. Their end of the bargain is to give us that time. Our end is to take care of them, to make them understand what is going on, and help them as much as we can."
"Aye sir." I think of Senior Kenning and the dozens of others that taught me to do this, but never saw fit to attach a name to the concept. Walking out of the office I decide that I like the CO, he seems to be a reasonable sort of mammal. (And he knows my name now.)

Winters in southern California tend to be a little wet toward the end of December. The weeks preceeding Christmas were no exception. Long stretches of gray days and cold wind give way to rain that comes at first in fits and starts only to turn into a soaking downpour. One of the airframers and I had gone over to another squadron to find a rather specific sort of fastener, and we'd stopped off at the smoking area on the way back to the building so that I could have a coffee while AM2 burns one.

The rain is still coming down pretty good and has been for the last two days. Given the fact that I'm encased in a set of Gore-Tex pants, coveralls, white t-shirt, heavy camouflage jacket, and the all-important liner means I could really care about the fact that we're being rained on in the name of Camel and caffeine. Glancing around, I notice an Airman who had checked in about three weeks prior standing out there as well.
"Harper," I motion him over from under the tree doing a good job of funneling water down his neck. "C'mere."
"Yes AT1." He walks over quickly and I notice that the uniform shirt he is wearing is soaked, as are his pants, and he's got the tell-tale bubbles coming out of the sides of his boots. (Meaning he's probably swimming in his shoes right now.) The same boots, coincidentally, that he was issued in basic training.
"You got a foul weather jacket?"
"A what, AT1?" I get a quizzical look in response.
"Hey, AM2, meet you inside." I motion for Harper to put out his smoke and come with me.

Fifteen minutes later we've got AEAN Harper suited up in a dry set of green organizational coveralls, a foul weather jacket, and a brand new pair of safety boots from Supply.

I couldn't do anything about the socks - forgive me as I didn't have a spare pair with me that day and those things don't come from the Supply cage.

As we part ways, I tell Harper to remember this as he's thanking me profusely for fixing things for him. He sort of looks at me a little funny, and I pause in the hallway.

"Remember this, because next time you're going to have to take care of the new guy. Remember this because if we don't take care of each other, no one will. Remember this because even though it wasn't right that you were here for three weeks before anyone helped you out, don't do that to the next guy that comes along. Fix what you see, make things better."

"Yes AT1." He smiles, lessons for the future sinking in.