My Last Week in the Army
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.
Getting Out
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!
Heaven hits me hard
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.
There’s a hole
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?
Unless it's not a sinkhole at all.
Updating my dumb site
I'm on what is basically a two month vacation from work. I'm in classes. Classes that are required for promotion. A promotion I won't be getting by my own choice. I don't think the Army gets much better than this, honestly. My hours are steady again and my schedule doesn't change every fucking day. I'm in this class with fifteen other people who do the same job I do and a couple of them are even worth talking to! I can bitch about stupid stuff that typically goes on at my normal job and these guys actually know what it's like!
Non-shocking fact: most of these guys did other jobs before to get to the rank that I would be getting promoted to (which is hard to obtain in my job), before they reclassified to my job. This is why my points for E6 are so high. All the E6s are reclasses. And what do you know, I'm far more knowledgable than they are at this job! This is another way the Army is fucked on promotions that I didn't even consider. It's easier to jump the ranks in a different job and reclass to computers than to come up the ranks, gain the skills and knowledge, and then get promoted to E6 in a timely manner. I just took my first test and a lot of what this first week is covered in AIT, which even reclasses have to go through, and it's almost surprising how many of them struggled with it. It may not be stuff we do every day but it is a perishable skill that needs periodic refreshment and these are the guys who've come out of training much later than I did.
I don't want to bash these guys though, they've done their time in other jobs and fulfilled the requirements to be where they are today. The system that put them here is inherently flawed. Some of them toted a rifle for most of their Army career, and now they're punching buttons. To put them in the same position of responsibility as someone like me, who's done the job for four plus years, says to me that the job is interchangable and that all that matters is the rank you wear. That's insane. If I were to be swapped with an infantryman at my rank I would absolutely lost, because I don't have the experience of doing that job that the responsibilities I'd inherit requires.
This wasn't supposed to turn into a rant, I swear.
It begins.
Today I scheduled my first pre-seperation counseling. This will probably be the longest year of my life.
Time for party hats?
ABC News: Gates Announces End to Army Stop-Loss
This is easily the best news I've read since President Obama took office. Though the article says stop-loss will be phased out over the span of two years, this gives me a huge amount of hope that I won't be stuck on the next bullet train to hell. Stop-loss is a despicable practice that turns volunteers into conscripts and I am undescribably happy to know it will finally end a nightmare that has affected countless lives.
Here it is
The definition of clueless leadership.
The single notion that repeated, long deployments are not the source of the increased number of suicides is absolutely ridiculous. That "resiliency" that develops is apathy. It's depression, and anger, and loss. It's knowing that even though you're putting in your time overseas, the Army needs one more body to fill up that plane going back to another meaningless fight so you can watch as the world you know disintegrates. It's the hopelessness of knowing that the deployments will never end for you. "Resiliency" is what's driving us to suicide.
Election
Note: This entry is getting a lot of attention! I've disabled mandatory registration for a limited time to encourage discussion.
Ever since I enlisted, I've taken more notice to politics. It seems like my day to day life changes everytime the President farts. It gives me great interest in seeing the outcome of this election be in my favor. That said, I support Barack Obama as the next President of the United States.
It was basically a no-brainer. Obama has never supported this war in Iraq and he's the one of the few politicians who seem at all concerned in ending it. I'm in a combat manuever brigade. My deployments will not end until the war in Iraq does. A Republican administration will do nothing to take us out of Iraq. McCain himself said he will keep us there for another hundred years. They say we won't establish permanent bases in Iraq but when I go to the bigger bases that's all I see. New construction. We're digging in for the long haul. Under Republican rule, this country will become another hardship tour duty station such as Korea or Germany.
When I get home from this deployment, I will have roughly 18 months left in service. I'm only "guaranteed" (and that guarantee is only Army strong, which is to say it can change at any minute) 12 months stateside. 18 months is a long time to dodge another deployment to Iraq at this pace, no matter where I'm stationed. I've basically hinged my ability to avoid stop-loss on this election. If Obama is elected, I stand a good chance of getting out of the service on my scheduled exit date. If he's not, I can guarantee I will be stop-lossed and involutarily extended for up to 18 months; 3 months prior to deployment, another 12 to rot here while the rest of the world turns without me, and 3 months after.
Katie and I have a lot riding on this election. If I'm stuck in Iraq for another tour, I can almost promise that once I am let free I will not endure another minute in a country under the rule of Republicans. God knows they've sent the country to hell in the last 8 years, no damage will be repaired if another warmonger is elected. By the time I get home the U.S. will be as much of a bombed out wasteland as Iraq is after we got done removing it's tyrannical dictator, and ours will still be there to show for it. To hell with my plans for school, to hell with the pittance of benefits leftover for veterans after the nations budget has been gutted for more war spending, I'll be packing up everything and moving elsewhere. I'm told Alberta is a nice place to live.
Sergeant Hubbard
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.