Well this is quasi-interesting.
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.
The downfall of disc based media in video games
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!
Well then.
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.
Bike Accident!
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!
Clarksville, TN in a nutshell
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.
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.
Home Alone
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.
Fuck Fisty’s Bog
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.
How’s day shift?
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.