Dream of Waking

So here’s the huge news. When I get out (barring stoploss, April 21st, 2010), I’m going back to school. Illinois has a program known as the Illinois Veterans Grant. It pays for tuition and fees for any Illinois public college for service members who are Illinois residents. I can also collect my Montgomery GI Bill benefits while using the grant. The gist of it is I have four years of free school and enough money to probably not have to work. I’ll put the rest of what I know in question and answer form.

Q. Are you… ?

A. No, we’re not moving back to Springfield. The grant pays for any IL public college and I think it’d be wasteful for me to use it all at the Springfield schools when I can get a more diverse education elsewhere and still not foot the bill. To put it this way, if I can get UIUC to accept me, I’m going there so we’d be moving to Champaign-Urbana. UIUC has some kind of quota for war heroes it needs to fill in it’s student body, right?

Q. What about re-enlistment and the Army and ‘Merica and freedom (insert guitar riff and fireworks)? If you get out, the terrists win!

A. At the end of my enlistment I’ll have served my country for six years. I’ve seen what we do overseas and I don’t like the path we’re taking or the path we could be on should McCain get elected. The Army is a pretty sweet job if you’re enjoying a comfortable lifestyle in the states but the deployments aren’t going to end any time soon (or ever, beyond Iraq) and they’re unpleasant to say the least. I can respect those who chose to dedicate their lives to this job but it’s not a choice I will make for any reason. A career with the Army is just not for me.

Q. How long will you be in IL?

A. Well, that depends. I’m getting paid for up to four years of full-time schooling and that can be undergraduate or graduate level. I’ve got plenty of credits right now, I’ve got more from my Army experience, and I plan on taking classes while I’m enlisted so I’ll be pretty close to a degree when I get out. I’ll finish that degree and either go for a masters or doctorate or I could get another degree but I don’t think I’ll call it quits until I’ve gotten at least a couple years of school done. I’d hate to leave IL without taking full advantage of the benefits I’ve earned there.

Q. What are you going to major in?

A. Fuck, I don’t know. I know computers. I can always do computers. But I’m kind of getting burnt out on computers and I’d hate to get a degree and then get a job and instantly hate it because I’ve already fried myself with this computer job. I’m considering other fields of employment. One’s that involve being in less servitude than tech support slave. There’s better jobs out there and I’ve got an opportunity to choose my future. I’m considering commercial flight.

Q. What’s the catch?

A. I can’t find one. It sounds like there should be a catch. The Illinois Veterans Grant is explained here and it sounds pretty clear-cut. Equivalent of 4 years of tuition and fees at any Illinois public college and you can also collect GI Bill benefits. I qualify for the new Post-9/11 GI Bill and all those details are here. This one’s slightly murkier. From what I read, I’ll get a monthly BAH equivalent to my current rank based on the zip code of the school, $1000 yearly for books, and as far as I can tell they’ll match the tuition and fee the IVG pays, which makes that money free to use as I wish. If I’m attending a school as expensive as UIUC, those GI Bill benefits could be enough to live on without working. The BAH covers my house payment, the GI Bill covers groceries and bills. In a good college town, I could feasibly stop driving and bike everywhere. My whole goal here is to do what I should’ve done right out of high school; get in a good school, do some school work, get a degree, and not work myself out of it in some menial job that goes nowhere.

Q. Okay so you’ve made these life changing decisions. What’s next?

A. When I get back, I need to talk to a cousellor at the on-post education center about this plan. If it pans out, I’ll be applying to schools immediately so I can get a location nailed down. Get out of the Army, sell the house, buy a new house, move, wait for school to start. That’s all post-Army stuff. In the meantime I’ll still be taking online courses and working to get my GPA up so I’m more attractive to prospective schools. But come on, who wants to say no to a war hero?

Q. What about after you decide you’re finished?

A. When I’m done with school Katie’s going to throw a dart at a map and that’s where we’re moving. I can guarantee that dart won’t hit Illinois. We’re kind of itching to see more than the midwest.

Q. So Springfield…?

A. … Is still out of the question. We’ll visit lots, promise.

I’ve been home for two weeks. I’ve already gone to Springfield and back. I had a ton of fun with all my friends which serves to remind me how much I miss them. I’m sitting in my own house with my computer and my cat and I’m chugging a Yoohoo. I saw Iron Man and it was awesome. I played Rock Band and it was awesome. I bought a Wii and No More Heroes and it’s awesome. I saved a broken external hard drive and that was awesome. I cleaned my gutters with a robot and that was awesome. I mowed my lawn with my riding lawnmower and it was awesome. I got to watch The Office season 4 with Katie and it was awesome. I went to Knight’s with Jim and Matt and got a sunburn and it was awesome. Katie and I ate at the thai place in Nashville that makes pad see-ew right and it was awesome. I got to see Mom and Frank and they bought me and my friends dinner probably 5 of the 7 nights and that’s awesome. We had a pool party at Jim’s parents’ place and then Matt’s parents’ place and it was awesome. We had a party with a 40″ pizza at my parents’ place and it was awesome. I’ll probably do more awesome stuff or remember more awesome stuff but it’s going to be totally lame when I have to go back to Iraq and I can’t wait until this Army shit is all over with.

Well today was the day. I’m officially promoted. I got a lot of “it’s about time!” and “Oh excuse me, SERGEANT Hub” and I’ll get more tomorrow. I’ve got pictures and even video that I’ll somehow post tomorrow.

(more…)

Katie and I’ve been pre-approved for our home loan.

I’ve been home for a couple days now, I just haven’t taken the time to really alert the internet. I was on the local news too.

http://www.wkrn.com/node/36405

I’ve got to spend two hours getting more briefings today. There’s a whole week-long process of getting “reintegration” briefings that simply can’t wait for the work week. Thank god they’re only a couple hours in the morning and then I’m done for the rest of the day.

I have less than 10 hours left on this base. I’ll spend six days at another base, a day or so in Kuwait, and I’ll be home in a week.

Words don’t describe how thrilled I am. I cannot express my happiness in words. I don’t have the vocabulary.

Fresh off my coming home announcement, here’s an enormous list of things that made this deployment suck a little less.

(more…)

Katie’s asleep and she’ll probably kick me when I get home for posting it here before she actually knows but seeing how she’ll be asleep past my bedtime, I should at least put this somewhere.

I leave the base I’m at on July 13th to come home.

I have to go to another base from here first and then to Kuwait but the important part is that once I leave here I only have to catch a couple flights and I’m home. Start counting days. I’ll be home within a week of leaving here.

I hate to follow two nonsense entries with another one but this needs to be pointed out.

Nintendo sends George W. Bush a Nintendo DS Lite and Brain Age for his 60th birthday.

That’s exactly what I want for my birthday.

The word “blogosphere” itself gets on my nerves. Who coins this garbage?

Boring days ahead before I leave. This is a good thing. I’m all packed up, almost. Still have one box to mail out and to throw my junk into the shipping container but other than that it’s all over. I’ve taken down my poncho walls and feel very exposed even though I’m the only one down here right now. I’ll have my camera with me the whole way home so I’ll try to get a bunch of pictures of the process. My memories are as reliable as pre-second edition Windows 98 and taking pictures of things helps me to remember them later. My memory is very visually connected. I won’t remember something if you tell it to me but if I’ve got it written down or I see something related to it, I’ll remember. Then again I have big issues with seeing faces that look familiar but I can’t place a name or a memory to them. Like I’m recognizing total strangers. I tend to think I’m haunted by the ghosts of my past.

So if you’re blind, I was testing my Flickr account yesterday. Apparently it’s working. So go see new pictures here.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/emnii/

Sunset, originally uploaded by Nihilate.

This is me testing my Flickr account. By the way, kind of funny that my “this time in the past” entry is about deploying to Iraq and now I’m less than two weeks from coming home.

Between counting days and working with my replacement, I haven’t been doing much of anything besides sleeping. If I just sleep away the next two weeks they’ll pass by much quicker. I might get briefed today, which is one more step closer to going home, but we tried to do that yesterday and it didn’t work out too well.

I swear I’ll edit and post those boring pictures I took last week before I leave Iraq.

I wouldn’t do it.

I was going to take pictures of my day and make an entry about Saturday in Iraq and I did take some pictures but a lot of stuff I did I couldn’t take pictures of. So it’s mostly “what brian eats on Saturday in Iraq”. I’ll still post the pictures but it won’t be anything special. Just more boring pictures.

Doom is still not boring. People are still making new levels for Doom. I’m currently trying to make it through a short partial conversion called Zen Dynamics. It’s insane. The weapons need reloading, there’s a bunch of new monsters, and there’s little health. It’s hard but I want to keep going just to see what else is in it.

I’m not particularly attached to my testicles though we’ve seen plenty of good times. I just think $30,000 isn’t really enough to justify missing one.

This might be working.

Okay so I’ve got my domain transferred and my new webhost purchased so I’m just setting stuff up right now. At some point I’ll make the switch and hopefully no one will notice the difference.

Go to davidlynch.com and see. Watch his daily weather report. Read his interesting questions. Download a ringtone or two.

I’ve used this quick little guide from Lifehacker on encrypting email in Mozilla Thunderbird to setup keys for all my email accounts. The only one that really matters here is my “default” email account so here’s the public key for brian(lol)dreamofwaking(what)com:

—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32)

mQGiBESUJqoRBAD+e591wpRWrtsbi3FA4Us433OxqdpoCTYpinMZO9JLLce7m479
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FmhwaM9s8+rDX+QJd8rmoTRfiV0r6qq0JR+9r61KjMv/A+VrhyynmfeTBwCgtt+r
R2JdfEags9HLNdy8nuutZGsEAINuN56gPJUh72v8VAA3v/naWJ0MYeKijurKH4fM
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9rFjAKCnluHaFcHD56cv9BYykJ2rArH3EQCeOLRrSK+Lwuabd+43DCvEbFFk3KA=
=UvlG
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
I’ll update my “where to find me” page to reflect this. Note: I’m using an enormous 4096-bit key because I’m insane. Also note that this kind of thing works two ways. You can send me encrypted emails but I won’t be able to send an encrypted email back unless you set up something similar (as in, PGP and not something else) on your end too.

Bad news, kids. My host is going under by the end of the month. The good news is that I’m resourceful and I’ve got a new host and domain registrar lined up. So Katie and I are backing up our stuff and I’m getting the domain transferred so stuff might break for a time. I’m going to get the new host set up before I move anything over though so downtime will hopefully be minimal. I’ve got everything backed up so nothing should be missing when I do swap over though. Bear with me.