Dream of Waking

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.

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.

Visceral Games may or may not be killing me. Visceral Games used to be known as EA Redwood Shores. EA Redwood Shores made Dead Space, one of my favorite Xbox 360 games.

Visceral Games is now making Dante’s Inferno. It’s a God of War-esque button smasher. They took a low-key walk through hell and social commentary, and turned it into blood soaked tits and violence. It is a remarkable departure from the source as well as an enormous shift from the tone of Dead Space.

Dead Space has a lot of action and violence but it’s deliberate. You’re encouraged to conserve ammo by taking aimed shots at limbs. There’s an equipment upgrade system that allows you to choose what upgrades you want and how you get to them. It has a lot of scares and shocks but it’s also nearly impossible to fight off a crowd by panicking and wildly blasting away. There’s only two actual guns in the game! The rest are industrial tools!

After Dante’s Inferno, Visceral’s focus will shift to Dead Space 2. There is so little information that has excited me about Dead Space 2 that it may drop off of my wanted list entirely. From what I’ve read, it features more wide open environments, more aggressive gameplay, and a no-longer-silent protagonist! So what, they’re turning Dead Space into Dante’s Inferno in space?

For being an unreleased and, thus far, barely developed game, I am amazingly bitter and unexcited about what should be an impossibly easy sale.

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.

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.

So I wait.

Social networks officially banned from Marine networks.

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.

No one keeps the case, art, or manual. If my searches on ebay and amazon.com are any indication, nearly everyone buys their game, throws out the packaging, and lightly scratches the disc but keeps the game in perfectly playable condition.

This really sucks. To those of us insane enough to care about the details such as packaging, as time goes by our selection of buyable games will continue to diminish. Thanks to others’ lack of concern, the prices of complete games will artificially jump up just for the fact of having the whole game in one piece.

What is so hard about keeping the game in the case with it’s manual? It makes sense! It’s one package that keeps the disc safe and the manual handy in an attractive package!

Two days ago, the server I’m hosted on apparently took a dump. Of course, this is perfect timing what with Memorial Day weekend and all. I wasn’t even expecting this to be back up before Tuesday. Funny enough, I got an invoice for this month’s payment while my site was down, before my hosted email even came back up.

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.

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.

Tonight I ate ramen for dinner and finished season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. I must be home alone!

Katie’s in Springfield for a month. Being home alone is pretty lame. There’s no one here to talk to except Chester and the cats. They’re not exactly talkative either.

So I bought World of Goo on Wii a month ago. I was enjoying it, it’s a fun puzzle-physics game. I got to a level and was stumped so I stopped playing. I came back to it tonight, youtube’d the solution and it’s even more straight forward than it looks. I cannot for the life of me get this one right. It’s annoying and it sucks. So fuck you, Fisty’s Bog. You can eat my ass.

It fucking sucks. Yesterday was okay. Today blows.

There’s nothing more demoralizing than being told you’re an important aspect of the squadron and then being treated like you’re just another body. It just reinforces the notion that I’m on day shift solely to be abused.

Looking back at my most recent entries about work, they’re all negative. I’m not just posting the negatives. I’m posting the extraordinary negatives. When something extraordinarily positive happens, this place will be the first to know but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Until April 21st, 2010.

That’s how many points I missed promotion cutoff by this month.

Edit on 28MAR09: Somewhere in time, this article was edited. It wasn’t edited by me. I don’t know who edited it. It’s a shadow of its’ former self and missing everything bad I had to say about the promotion system and I don’t have the will to work up a furor and write all out again. So here’s the long and the short of it; if you suck your first sergeant’s dick enough to get a board appearance, you’ll get promoted to E5 or E6. Leadership abilities or job proficiency be damned.

Original: The Army’s promotion system beyond E-4 is garbage. It is not designed to promote the best people for the job but the ones who play to system’s requirements.

Lots of words ahead that no one will read. TLDR: Working hard won’t get me promoted so I have no desire to work hard.

(more…)

This would’ve been an enormous rant about how much I hate my coworkers. Katie defused that one and I channelled it all into the upgrade.

I’m back on night shift again. It’s making me pretty miserable. I can’t tell whether it’s the rigid twelve hour shift, the lack of meaningful work to do, or because I don’t have anyone to talk to but it sucks. My R&R leave is coming up in two months and really it couldn’t come sooner. I can’t wait to get away from this place.

Expect this to be updated frequently. It may be the only thing I do here frequently. Also expect this to be a totally selfish list.

1. Katie (lulz sex)
2. Watch Akira with the lights out and stereo turned way up.
3. Play Gears of War on xbox live.
4. Eat sushi

I’ve disabled user registration temporarily because the version of WordPress I’m using has a vulnerablity in it involving new users and I haven’t had the time to upgrade. Not that I get any new users.