About midway through finals week, one of my roommate’s left. He said he was going home for a few weeks and didn’t really give a timeframe for coming back. That weekend, my other roommate moved out entirely to go live with his girlfriend. I had the whole place to myself!
I relaxed a little more. I kind of let myself spread outside of the confines of my room. All good things must come to an end, however, and my remaining roommate returned yesterday.
I almost wish he hadn’t left, because I got used to living alone. I could wander around the apartment in my underwear whenever. I could leave dishes and pans in the sink for a couple days. I didn’t have to get my clothes out of the dryer as soon as they were dry. I could leave a mess of razors and face cleaning stuff in the bathroom.
But now I have to go back to living-with-other-people mode. And it’s annoying.
Today a census dude showed up at my apartment. This is strange because my roommates and I all filled out our census and I put it in the mail myself, but apparently no one else in our building did because this guy was tasked with canvassing the whole building.
Brad answered the door so he got to go first. The guy was asking him the basic questions, and then he asked Brad what race he was. Brad kind of gave him an incredulous look and said “white”, which is quite obvious if you look at him, but I know he has to ask this question every single time because he doesn’t actually know Brad and he could have answered in any number of ways.
So he gets to me and asks me my race and I answer “human”. He kind of chuckled and said he had to write it down because that’s what I answered. I didn’t make any effort to correct my answer.
I almost felt guilty for giving this guy an answer he clearly wasn’t looking for, but I think in the grand scheme of things I’d rather be marked down as “human” than “white”.
I think someone has given out my Google Voice number. Last week I got missed three phone calls from three unknown numbers within the span of six hours. One of them I can trace back to a gas station in New Berlin, I don’t know where the rest came from.
My dad called me a couple days ago and says he’s been getting a couple of phone calls from people asking for me. My dad lives in Florida. I have his number on my phone, and I haven’t given it out to anyone. We’re both boggled as to how anyone can make the connection between us as I haven’t seen him in more than two years and we typically only communicate through email.
Just 20 minutes ago, I got this voicemail in my Google Voice mailbox. I missed the call because my phone was on silent. I can’t even tell what the person on the other end is saying except for the bit at the end.
So if anyone knows anything about this, please let me know!
I am having the world’s most embarrassing day and it is not even noon yet.
Last night I simply could not sleep. I tossed and turned for what must have been at least an hour. I’m woken up this morning by a phone call. I knew that the weather today would be shitty so I was expecting this to be my instructor telling me that she’s canceling this morning’s flight. It was my instructor, but she was asking whether or not I planned on coming in this morning. I had overslept. So we plan on me coming in at 9:30 and I apologize for oversleeping, and then I’m getting ready. I had apparently not re-set my alarm for this morning and it was still set for 10AM, which is when I woke up yesterday.
I get to the airport and my instructor had left me a practice exam to do while she was in a meeting. This practice exam is in preparation for a test that I have to take before I’m allowed to fly solo, and it’s kind of a big deal. There’s a certain number of failures, which implies that the test is somewhat difficult, and if you bomb out you’re done in the flight program. The practice test is short answer, which is the bane of my existence. I can take multiple choice tests all day but short answer is the worst because then I actually have to recall the things I’ve learned.
The practice test went well though, and I did pretty well on it. My confidence was building and my instructor and I went over the questions I missed and a couple of things that weren’t on the practice test. She asks me if I wanted to take the pre-solo written now. I was feeling pretty good about it and I know it’s a multiple choice test and by now I just want to get it done with so I agreed. She did some admin stuff, and made a phone call, and then she asked me if I had an E6B with me. The E6B is a little metal plate with some slides and charts for computing numbers quickly. I don’t entirely know what it’s used for. I told her my E6B is at my apartment because we haven’t really used it yet. She told me it wasn’t a big deal, if there were any questions involving the E6B it’d only be one or two, and I’d probably be OK guessing them. Another instructor pipes up to say that his student (a friend of mine) just took the test and didn’t even need the E6B. With that she sent me up to the terminal to take the test.
I got up there and talked to the lady to administers the test. She asked me if I needed a pencil or any materials. I couldn’t fathom what materials I would need beyond the E6B which I am now not concerned with, so I went into the testing room which what I have; a pen and my coat. She handed me a blue binder and piece of scrap paper. The test is computerized through Blackboard so I logged in, and started it. The questions were worded a little different from the practice exam and some of them covered topics not even hinted at in the practice exam, but it was a multiple choice test and I considered myself pretty knowledgeable as far as I’d been in the course. Then I got to a question that referred to figures and diagrams. This is a computerized test and there were no figures or diagrams on the screen so I assumed this was one of those E6B questions that I can disregard. I made an educated guess and moved on. I got to another question that referred to figures. Okay, two questions out of 36 isn’t that bad. All told there were about 5 questions involving figures. By the end of the test, I was slightly concerned. I submitted my answers and logged out.
Then I noticed that blue binder the lady gave me. I opened it up, and lo and behold, diagrams and figures. It was a little late now, though, because I had already submitted my answers and logged out. Oh well. At least I get multiple tries at this exam, right? I returned the binder and my scrap paper and the lady kind of looked at me like I was done, even though Blackboard didn’t immediately give me my score, and she clearly wasn’t going to tell me. Okay, I guess that means my instructor will let me know how I did.
Back in my instructor’s cubicle, another of her students is already there. She was astonished at how fast I had finished the test and asked me how I did. I made a face and told her about the blue binder. She assumed that I had failed and asked me if I wanted to try to get a retry now based on the fact that I’d missed out of the blue binder, or if I wanted another day to study and I could give it another go tomorrow. I knew that the difference in taking it with the binder would have saved my score so I told her I wanted to try to re-take it now.
She called the lady to administered the test and told her I didn’t know about the blue binder and that I failed. As soon as the words “failed” exited her mouth, I had to interject that I didn’t actually know my score and that I may not have failed. I was not looking forward to re-taking that test and if I passed, then the blue binder is moot. My instructor hung up with the lady, so she could try to check my score. Her account wouldn’t show her my score, so she asked me to log in to see if it’d tell me. Sure enough, I got 26 out of 36. Quick math revealed that I got a 72%. My instructor called up the lady to ask what was needed to pass and she’s told a 70%. Even without the blue binder and the diagrams, I passed.
That shit is embarrassing. I am so totally okay with bombing out on a test. I’m okay with bombing a test because I’m too dumb to realize that I have the testing materials and I’m not using them. But no, this time I get to limp across the finish line, with a barely passing grade. I almost would have rather failed the test and re-taken it and gotten an appropriate score, rather than slide through with the absolute minimum score.
I know my agonizing is ridiculous. I know passing is passing, and no one really cares how well (or poorly) I did on my pre-solo written exam. But I am seriously embarrassed.
I still have a theater class and a philosophy class to get through, on this rainy, embarrassing, shit day.
Spring break was pretty enjoyable. Got to spend some time helping my friends move into their new house, played some games, had a good time. I found a new love for Wii Fit Plus. Biked almost 20 miles on the first nice day of the year, and then got my nipples pierced again. That was a fun day!
I came back to Carbondale last night. Okay drive but it was all in the rain. Both of my roommates were gone. This morning I found out the little refrigerator that I use to keep my soda in was turned off for however long they were gone for. It was gross though because my roommates keep some meat in the freezer section and it had all de-thawed and stank.
Then my xbox 360 died. Not like the last time it died, where it was acting weird and not turning on but ended up working fine. No, this time it won’t turn back on without showing a screen that says E79 error. E79 is hard drive related, and since it won’t turn on with or without the hard drive, the internet tells me that the console is fucked. I have the good fortune of having just received a big check from the government for god knows what, so I didn’t have much work convincing myself that the best solution was to replace it entirely.
Soooo I did. I went to Best Buy first but they didn’t have any of the bundles with Halo: ODST and Forza 3. I found one at Gamestop. It was possibly one of the best experiences I’ve had at a Gamestop. I asked the lady behind the counter if they had one, she said they did and got it for me, and rang me right up. No Game Informer, no reservations, no warranty, no bullshit. In and out in less than 5 minutes.
I got it home and agonized over opening it. Unopened, I can still return it for a full refund. Once I opened it, though, it’s all mine. I stared at it for a while. I plugged my old xbox back in and tried it again. Same crap. Then I bit the bullet, took out my knife, and broke the seal.
Don’t get me wrong; I did want a new xbox. I wanted a bigger hard drive and quieter console and more reliable hardware. I just didn’t want it like this; my old xbox in a state of limbo, not entirely dead but definitely a brick until I open it up. I’m still going to need a transfer kit to move all my savegames and downloads from my old hard drive to my new hard drive.
I did it. I have a new xbox, huge (well, 120 GB) hard drive, HDMI support, another controller and headset, and Forza 3 and a bonus copy of ODST. Life is almost good again.
Thursdays are fantastic. On Fridays I only have two classes and they’re flight classes that require little prep and homework, so my weekend almost begins on Thursday. Since my classes on Monday are the same low-prep flight classes from Friday, I really almost have four whole days to get Tuesday’s homework done. It’s fantastic!
This has been a long time coming, eh? Six years in the making. It’s not my last working week either, that was months ago. This is my last actual week. Rather uneventful too. Just getting some paperwork stamped and signed, and standing around to get an award for spending six years fixing computers.
In four days, my Army obligations will, for the most part, be officially over. I have plenty to be spiteful of but I can’t for the life of me dig up those graves. I just so happy that this is all finally over and I can go back to a normal life and move on to being more than just the dude who fixes your printer.
Here’s the short list of people I want to publicly thank; Martinez, Parlier, Thomson, Reina, Wilson, Key, Hice, Laforest, Blythe, Lawson, Saro, Burditus, Killman, Sweet, Jackson, Jones, Welsh, Baker, and O’Rourke.
I stop shaving on Wednesday and I stop wearing the uniform on Thursday. Beyond that I’m just working on being a real person again.
I’m tired of bad news. I’m deleting two links from my bookmarks, for at least a month, and doing my best to not visit these sites.
I’m done with Digg and Reddit.
Digg has slowly devolved into strictly stupid pictures and top 10 lists. Reddit gets huffs and tisks at every wrong doing while rarely doing anything about them and is a general wellspring of negativity.
Now I am batshit insane about getting new news but only when it’s stuff I care about. I could not care less about top 10′s, dumb pictures, and I can wait for good tech news if it means I don’t have to wade through a sea of bitterness. So I’m back to relying on old favorites, Slashdot and Ars Technica, and Google News.
I suppose this is as good a time as any to announce that I have my early Army release date set. As of January 22nd, I’ll be officially out of the Army. That’s 90 days early and I start my terminal leave (using up some vacation days) on January 8th. I could’ve started terminal leave a lot earlier but I’ve been telling everyone in my unit January 8th and if I spent all my leave time, I wouldn’t have any to sell. Selling leave isn’t a great trade but I’d rather have a big bundle of cash right before I start school than two months of not working and still getting paid.
So if I wasn’t doing much work before I’m definitely not doing much now! I start the out-processing rigmarole on December 15th, which will either be super easy because not a lot of guys are getting out the same time I am or absolutely impossible because everyone will be on Christmas vacation.
In case you don’t know me at all, I am super excited about getting out of the Army and finally moving on with my life. Ever since the beginning of my last deployment (November 2007) I’ve felt like I’ve been stuck in an enormous rut; unable to progress in my career with nowhere to go and no help to look to. I’ve been doing the same goddamned job for my entire enlistment in the same unit on the same post. I’ve gone nowhere and seen nothing but 1-32 CAV and Iraq. It is well past-time that I start something new.
Of course I’ve been told for years that there’s plenty of other jobs and places in the Army but I never saw any of them and even if I were to stay in I wouldn’t have seen any change until at least 2011. I showed a few people I knew a few things early on and they held on to me as long as they could and then handed me off to the next guys who did the same thing, my own career be damned. I think it’s safe to say that, like all soldiers, I’ve been used up and abused and now I’m ready to be cast aside.
So what the hell am I doing anyway? I’m going to school! Southern Illinois University Carbondale! I’ll be studying aviation flight for two years before moving on to finish out the two years for a bachelor of science degree in aviation management, and since I have so many existing credits anyway, I may take a minor in computer science. In four years I’ll be flying planes for a living. I really couldn’t be more excited!
This week I turned in the paperwork that will bump the end of my enlistment up to January 8th. Provided it gets signed, and I’ve been assured a number of times that it will be, I’ll be out of the Army in less than 90 days.
Two weeks ago I blew the rest of my Amazon trade-in credit on five new games. I got F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin (PC) (obviously), Far Cry 2 (PC), TimeShift (PC), Red Faction Guerilla (X360), and Dead Space (X360). I’ve given them all a shake to see which I’m more interested in, ended up playing all the way through F.E.A.R. 2. I’m playing Dead Space a chapter at a time, which has been about 45 minutes to an hour of gameplay at a time.
I’m absolutely struggling to bring myself to finish TimeShift. I’m probably three levels from the end now and it is so mediocre that it hurts. I knew it wasn’t a great game to begin with but I had some hopes that it’d take the time suit in some interesting directions. Nope.
Katie and I have been doing some cleanup and repairs to the house to get it ready to sell. Selling the house is the biggest question mark in the entire shift from Army to school. A lot of our plans hinge on it going well, so many that it makes me nervous to have such a single point of failure. What’s worse is I can’t wrap my mind around anything else that could be done to alleviate our burdens if selling the house doesn’t go well.
In less depressing news, I sincerely can not wait until I get to school. There are so many things I want to do there and so many things to look forward to. I may have fucked up my first college run something fierce but I’ll be damned if it goes anywhere near that bad this time.
So I got a letter in the mail about a month ago from SIUC saying that they would accept me regardless of prior academic standing due to my status as a veteran. Which is only slightly off-putting but awesome nonetheless. But that wasn’t a letter of admission, I’d have to fill out a little form stating that I’d present my discharge paperwork to the school prior to registering for a second semester. So I dutifully filled out the form and managed to lose the return envelope I was to send it back in. No big deal, I’m resourceful dude and I have any number of methods by which to get this piece of paper to them.
I call the admissions office to ask if I can fax it to them. The first person to answer sounded a little overwhelmed and I think they shut off as soon as I said “veteran” because they immediately transferred me to the veterans advisory office. I spoke to someone there who gave me a number to which I could fax this letter and called it a day.
Two weeks pass and no letter of admission. I’m getting anxious. This letter of admission is the one piece of paper I need to start the process of getting out of the Army early enough to start school in January rather than have to wait until August of next year. I’m stuck in the field so Katie emails the admissions office a letter I dictate to her over the phone.
Over the course of a week of slow email conversation the admissions office gives me another fax number (apparently the one I had used before was just the veterans advisory fax and they’re not the ones who needed my letter, the admissions office does) and I fax off the letter again and admissions tells me that they have it and I’m in and I can expect a letter in the mail in the next couple weeks.
There’s a hole in front of division headquarters. About three weeks ago a mass email was sent that said that the section of road in front of division headquarters was closed until further notice to repair a sinkhole. A sinkhole. Not that there’s no sinkholes on Fort Campbell but the ones I have seen are no more than two feet deep and maybe three feet around. All manner of construction equipment has been milling around in front of the division building for three weeks. They’re still doing repairs.
This division headquarters is basically brand new. It was completed last year. I know some jobs have been overtasked and undermanned but you’d think that when building a brand new, rather expensive division headquarters, someone would’ve consulted some engineers about the structural integrity of the land within 50 meters of the building. Maybe put some dirt in that sinkhole before dropping a large building right next to it. These sorts of things would make sense, right?
It’s true; I probably broke my hand. On Monday my company commander wanted us to pair off and do some combatives, particularly escaping the mount. I paired off with one of my coworkers, who happens to be a pretty big dude. In the process of escaping the mount, he rolled on top of my hand. I’m not sure what went wrong or whether it was the force of the impact or just the way he rolled onto it but I felt a very sharp pain in my hand. So we stopped for a minute and I shook it out and went back to it because I thought it had just been squeezed a little hard.
When I got home and started to get dressed, I had a hard time putting my clothes on because squeezing anything between my thumb and index finger really hurt. As soon as I got back to work I went to see my medics to see what they think. They gave me motrins and tylenols. Not a lot of help there. I spent the rest of the day avoiding using my hand.
The next day I went in early for sick call. Something was obviously wrong with my hand and I want a doctor to see it, or at least get it put on paper. I got an early appointment and the PA has me try to move my hand in certain ways and it hurts so he sent me to get x-rays. I got the x-rays then I was sent back to the waiting room. I waited there for an hour and a half. After the one hour mark I asked the receptionist to remind my PA that I was still waiting. A half hour later he called me in and said that the radiologist hadn’t come in yet and he couldn’t tell if I had broken it or not but he was going to treat it like it’s broken. He gave me a wrist brace, some stronger painkillers (because the motrin and tylenol didn’t do anything), and a followup appointment.
My hand swelled up pretty bad but that’s pretty much gone now. There’s a good size lump right over where it hurts the most. The brace is annoying as hell. I still can’t do some things with my left hand, like open a Cliff Bar or zip a ziplock bag.
I sincerely hope this doesn’t crap all over my planned trip to Knight’s. If I’m still in the brace I’ll probably just take it off and be careful about my hand but still go. If they put me in a cast, that pretty much keeps me from waterslides entirely. I can’t really ride my bike because I’d have a hard time braking and shifting and I tend to squeeze the hell out of my handlebars.
Thankfully my allergy clinic appointment is the same day as my followup and if they find me allergic to grass (which they probably will), hopefully I won’t have to go this again. I think this combatives program is the CO’s way of culling the weak and he’s going to cull me into a VA hospital. The end of the year can’t come fast enough.
Recently (May?) the Army lifted their ban on social networks. From work I can get to Facebook and Twitter and otherwise. We hypothesized that the motivation behind this was that it makes it easier for soldiers to tell share their stories and communicate easier. I guess the Marines still have their heads up their collective asses and continue trying to stop their service members from sharing their perspectives.
Here’s a friendly heads-up to the senior leadership of the Marine Corps: those who want to get their stories out will. If they have to jump through a million hoops and fight off a command that strives to stifle them, those stories probably won’t be told in a positive light, if there was a positive light to them to begin with.
The scabs have begun to peel. It’s worst on my tricep. There’s a lot of thin little lines and they’re all breaking and peeling and coming off. My forearm looks gross. It’s broken a couple times and it’s peeling so it’s four shades of brown and two of pink.
I don’t look happy, do I? I’m not. I’ve lost all my hair. One minute it was there, the next it’s gone.
No one spends more time on their hair than my mother. She’s losing her hair too. My mother has breast cancer. She’s gone through surgery, now she’s going through chemotherapy. Now she’s unhappy. So since she’s lost hers, I’m losing mine too.
Other people may say, “oh you’re in the Army. You used to shave your head all the time. This is no big deal.” It is a big deal. Before I shaved my head for convenience. Sometime in the last year or two I realized that that was exactly what the Army wanted. They wanted me to just give in and take the easiest route. Taking all your hair is one of those psychological measures the Army takes on new recruits to demonstrate how they’re no longer people, but soldiers. It’s a measure of control. So I stopped shaving mine. I let my hair grow till someone who matters says something about it. My ridiculous, thinning hair is my middle finger to the Army.
Maybe others will notice that I’ve shaved it all off and I can help raise awareness. Or maybe you’re reading this and you want to help show solidarity with my mother and shave your head too. Either way I’m going to tell you about my fantastic mother and how she’s fighting cancer and going to be okay.
So this is what my forearm looks like after skidding downhill at 20mph.
By the way, if you’re interested in seeing the full extent of the damages in the form of a not-even-nude picture, send me a friend request on flickr! Apparently my not even nude body is a little to risque for the general public!
I’m an idiot. To make a boring story slightly less boring, I tried to hop a gap on a downhill gravel shoulder and made it across but lost it because my tires were slightly underinflated. It was probably my most spectacular wipeout as I was going pretty fast down that hill. I was wearing my helmet but it didn’t do me a hell of a lot of good this time because my right arm took the brunt of the skid. Anyway, on to pictures!
Here’s the shirt. It’s rather thin, which is why I chose it because it’s kind of hot out, but that didn’t help me much in the fall.
Left hand. Just a couple scrapes. Not pictured: Right hand. Can you break the tip of your pinky? Because it felt bruised, now it feels numb and it’s turning purple.
Right hip. I don’t even feel this. I only noticed it when I stripped down to hose off.
Right leg. This kind of burns but at least it’s clean.
My back and shoulder. It too kind of burns.
After I’d hit the ground, I jumped up because I don’t trust drivers in the area I fell and I didn’t want to become roadkill too. I almost wanted to complete my trip but after getting a good look at my right forearm I decided it’d be better for me to turn around and go home and hose off. I called Katie and she freaked out and yelled at me to go see a doctor. My medics weren’t there today but I went to my assigned clinic and one of the medics there patched me up. The white bandage comes off tomorrow, it’s not so bad. The tan one I’ll probably take off Sunday night. It’s the worst of my injuries. Pictures of both of those forthcoming!
I was driving home at lunchtime last week on a very busy main road. It’s spring, which is roadkill season in TN, so it’s not strange to see something dead on the side of the road. This time, however, it was a dog. Some fucking asshole hit somebody’s dog. It was in an area where it was nice and clear all around so it’s pretty obvious that the driver either wasn’t paying attention or it was intentional. It wasn’t completely mutilated either, it looked like a dog on it’s back, but it was clearly dead. I went home and was kind of sad and wondered who the fuck hits a dog and how long it’d be till the owner noticed.
After my class I was on the same route going home. The dog, which was almost off the road it was so far next to the curb, had been hit again. So now there was a half crushed roadkill dog right next to the curb. Fucking awesome, that’s exactly what I want to see. So now that there’s a mess, it’s only a matter to time before the city comes along to clean it up, right? Or the owner finally notices and does something about it themselves? I mean, as hard as it is to think of such things, I wouldn’t want any of my pets lying dead in the street.
The weekend goes by. It rains, hard, several times. It’s more than a week since I first saw it. What’s left of the dog is still there. A flat, unrecognizable mash of fur, bones, and dried entrails. The blood has been washed away by the rain.
Somebody killed someone else’s pet and no one gives a shit. The driver didn’t give a shit. The owner doesn’t give a shit. The city doesn’t give a shit. That piece of roadkill that (I estimate) hundreds of people, if not a couple thousand, see a day is going to sit there until it decomposes itself into nothing.
This is how this whole town operates. Clarksville, TN. No one gives a fuck. I’ve never seen such apathy in my life. If someone’s car breaks here, they just ditch it on the side of the road. It’ll sit there until the city decides to move it. I was driving home on the same ultra-busy thoroughfare on my lunch hour when I found myself in the middle of a street race. In broad daylight. Some fuckheads want to show off and swerve through traffic at 80mph in a 45mph zone. They can do this because the police don’t give a fuck. When Chester got bit by a loose dog in the neighborhood and I tracked down the owner, he didn’t give a fuck.
It is one hundred percent obvious to me that in this city, you are absolutely on your own and the solution is always get a bigger stick than the next guy. Clarksville, TN is an apathetic shithole.
