For those in the aircraft maintenance complex in the air force, when we deploy we fly out (usually) on our own aircraft, whereas most of the air force flies to deployments on a contractual flight. This is because when we deploy as an aircraft unit we deploy as a squadron, so we go with our own planes to the location, then rest of the air force, as far as I know, deploys under a different concept where when they deploy they are working with people they've never worked with before from a multitude of bases. So when we come home from a deployment theres usually a bunch of us on our own plane landing at our base and theres a meet and greet at the bottom of the airstairs (mobile stairway used on some aircraft for ease of deboarding... is thats a word lol). The meet and greet usually consists the top leadership of the base coming out to shake our hands and say welcome home. Now Ive deployed multiple times, but nothing prepared me for the meet and greet that comes following the homecoming after an ORI. Holy shit, Ive never shaken so many Colonel's hands at one time. I think what surprised me the most out of all this is the fact that it was a larger meet and greet for a fake war than a real war lol.
Needless to say I jsut got home from the exercise Ive been preping for, for 6 months now. Its pretty much considered that we got a satisfactory as a wing. Which is ok, its not excellent or ourstanding, but its a pass. Due to a couple of safety incidents that happened this time that haven't happened in the past practices (yeah figures they would happen on the true inspection) our leadership thinks that we as a squadron are either going to get a Satisfactory or an excellent. Not quite sure yet. Final results come out next week.
I came home on the 2nd to last chaulk becuase of the increments I was in charge of (aircraft tools in this case, which should leave late in the redeployment process since the planes still need fixed occaisionally.
So I had my bag drag at 0230 eastern time last night. Then had to process my out of my bay (I actually ended up in the same open bay this time, 2 beds down from the last time, however last time we had like 20-30 people in the bay... this time we had 80 people... it was packed) then sat in a room watching movies till my plane left at 8am. Not alot of fun lol.
Besides that. We're on the verge of being home owners. Liz did alot of work while I was in Michigan this week. The house passed VA, and the seller agreed to drop 5k due to the roof needing changed soon. So we're getting it for 124,900 and signing on the 15th.
Then on the 20th I deploy. So liz will end up moving on her own, but alot of friends have offered help which is very appreciated. I'll get home from this deployment and have my meet and greet with the Wing leadership then go to see our house for the first time with our stuff in it.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The Big Zero Two
Sorry its been so long. Been pretty damn busy lately. I tested for TSgt on Tuesday of this past week. We'll see how it comes out here in a few months. Its nice not having to study now though. Frees up some time... Which was spent preping for Williams 2nd birthday. Which is today. But we celebrated it yesterday, on Liz's birthday. We had a party consisting of some family and a neighbor lol. We thought we were going to be all good and not have to rush trying to get everything setup... And it was going great until the kitchen sink backed up.... A call to maintenance, a super snake into a cut drain pipe later our sink was unclogged and I had a huge mess to clean in the basement. If it hadnt been for that we would have been right on time with the party lol.
It was a hawiian themed party that Liz put alot of work into. Kinda turned our kitchen bar into a tiki bar with a grass skirting of some kind hanging from the ceiling and slightly flared to make it look like a grass roof. Lots of leaves. You know those paper turkeys you can get for thanksgiving that are 3d in that you unfold them and the paper makes the body of turkey? Horrible description I know, but Liz found a palm tree along those lines where its the palms that fold out and hang from the wall.
Liz found a great recipe for hawaiian pulled pork that cooks for 20 hours. As well as made up some chicken teriaki (spelling?). We also had beer (kokanee for me, which is about as un-hawaiian as you can get being as that its from Canada, but we did have some Kona beer which is made from the Kona Coffee Company in Hawaii as well), and pina coladas.
But, the coup de gras was Williams cake. I'll try to get pictures loaded onto flickr here soon for it. Liz spent a few hours making a pig cake with fondant just for William that looked really cute. William however only ate alittle bit of it... mainly the back lol.
Rodney
It was a hawiian themed party that Liz put alot of work into. Kinda turned our kitchen bar into a tiki bar with a grass skirting of some kind hanging from the ceiling and slightly flared to make it look like a grass roof. Lots of leaves. You know those paper turkeys you can get for thanksgiving that are 3d in that you unfold them and the paper makes the body of turkey? Horrible description I know, but Liz found a palm tree along those lines where its the palms that fold out and hang from the wall.
Liz found a great recipe for hawaiian pulled pork that cooks for 20 hours. As well as made up some chicken teriaki (spelling?). We also had beer (kokanee for me, which is about as un-hawaiian as you can get being as that its from Canada, but we did have some Kona beer which is made from the Kona Coffee Company in Hawaii as well), and pina coladas.
But, the coup de gras was Williams cake. I'll try to get pictures loaded onto flickr here soon for it. Liz spent a few hours making a pig cake with fondant just for William that looked really cute. William however only ate alittle bit of it... mainly the back lol.
Rodney
Monday, February 23, 2009
C:Sleep Mode
Been a little while since I posted. Lets see... William got sick on friday which in turn made Liz sick on sat... which made me sick later in the day on saturday... And its been a stomach bug... did I mention I also had weekend duty this weekend? Yeah, not so much fun with a stomach bug. I studied some for my WAPS test (testing for Tech) on saturday but had zero focus yesterday... couldnt even keep my attention on movies I was so gone being sick lol. Woke up this morning to take William to daycare and Im still sick... but atleast williams at daycare... Liz was sick with william by herself this weekend.
Im taking this week off to study for tech. Think Im gonna go take a short nap then get to it here in a little bit. Because I need to make tech this year damnit lol
I really liked the references to Pron, girls and Lost lol
Im taking this week off to study for tech. Think Im gonna go take a short nap then get to it here in a little bit. Because I need to make tech this year damnit lol
I really liked the references to Pron, girls and Lost lol
Friday, February 6, 2009
Thats a H00t
Been a little bit since I did a regular update. Not much going on here right now. Just been studying for Tech, working, and building my photoshop skills. I have alot of photo manipulations Ive been working on at DeviantArt. After I test this year Im going to find a school to get a bachelors degree in graphic design through. Should be fun.
Ive had a couple drum practices this week, that was fun... until I got a text message from the neighbors asking me to quiet down lol... I gotta set up a way to practice where it wont bug other people.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
a-a-a-Ow-k
Is it just me or does Bruce Springteen sound like Bobcat Goldthwait singing Glory Days during the Superbowl Halftime Show?
Friday, January 23, 2009
Taking nerdiness to a whole new level
With the arrival of my graphics tablet I am turning into a
I found that picture, didnt make it... wish I had though lol
I found that picture, didnt make it... wish I had though lol
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Alpena, Michigan. A winter wonderland...
...if you like that sort of thing. For me Im all about warmth and theres a definate lack of it on the Lake Huron coastal community known as Alpena.
I went there for a Operational Readiness Inspection practice. FOr those of you who dont know what that is... Its "being deployed", usually to "Korea" but in this case it was "Japan" (Alarm Red WoooHoooo).
So it all started out on Sunday the 11th with a cat knocking a vase off our dresser and it shattering on the floor at 530am. Liz and I got up to clean it up. Vacuumed all the glass shards up and had just laid back down to go back to sleep when I get a phone call... "Why aren't you processing right now?" Asked the voice.
To which I replied, "uhhhhh.... Because no one told me to be there right now."
ANd the voice responded with, "Well you need to get there now.''
Apparently I was the only one who didnt get word that our processing time for the flyaway was at 6am. Luckily I had known I was processing on Sunday, albeit I thought it would be later in the day, so I was fairly well ready for it.
There started a really long, grueling day of hurry up and wait. It takes 8 hours to process for a deployment. They basically take you from one place to another to do paperwork or get this and that and then you wait to go to the next place. And it all culminates with a 4 hour wait in the "holding cell", the last room you see of Fairchild before you get on the plane and leave.
I then loaded on a C-5, one of the worst flights you can take if you get the smallest bit of motion sicknes by the way... The seats are looking backwards so it really messes with you equilibrium. It was a four hour flight to Alpena (amazingly, it was also a four hour flight to Savannah Georgia, not quite sure how that time vortox worked). We landed, and it was probably about 5 degrees out wiht now breeze that night, luckily. So it was cold but not as cold as it would get. Thats when we started our inprocessing which took forever because of the long line. By the time we got to our room (I'll explain in a bit why I use that in a singular tense). It was 2am by the time we went to sleep in our cold bay full of beds... Yep thats right, Basic Training style for the week. Not for everyone though... only for guys who weren't important... But that doesnt mean that all non-important males slept in the bays, there were rooms with two to a room and a bathroom down the hall. That was mainly for important people but they did manage to put some non-important people in those... I just wasn't one of them. So I got to lsiten to guys complain about how hot their rooms were and how they had to sleep with their windows open at night... while I slept ina room that created ice on the wall when I left my bag next to it at night. The heater blew across the top of the room keeping it hot up high but down low it was below freezing. Luckily I brought my sleeping bag. Even in that I was sleeping in thermals to stay warm lol.
Anyway, after four hours of sleep I went back into work to set up my CTK, and being one of the few people who drive a forklift I sat in an open cabin 10k for 3 hours moving cadillac bins, pallets and then using the 10k to lift deicing fluid up above the deicier to fill it up... To say the least I was freezing cold during all this.
To shorten this up some I did this same stuff through the next couple days adding in the wear of chem gear as well.
Then on Thursday, we got the redeployment order and started packing up.
On Friday I was supposed to process my cargo with reserve aero postal guys. They suck by the way. They came by on friday morning and saw I had a 10k and asked if they could use it to speed themselves up. To which I said sure, as long as you help me move my cargo when it has to process, because I hadnt had a chance to move it myself yet... When it came time to process they had forgotten where they got the 10k and gave me a bunch of grief for not having my cargo out at the build up area. To which I reminded them where they got the 10k, to which they begrudged me the use of the enclosed 10k to move my stuff out and weigh it for them.... Next time Im not giving up my 10k till Im done with it.
The aero postal guys single handedly screwed up the redeployment of aircraft by not loading a C-5 on time. Which slipped my flight home back about 12 hours. So I finally made it home at about 5pm last night.
I went to get all my bags. Found two of them right away and set them to the side... Went to search for my last bag, found it and went back to grab my other 2... which had disappeared now... I found one of them back in the pile for pick up, so someone moved my bags again... the other was picked up by someone else... All my cold weather gear walked off in someone elses hands....
There ends my week... abbreviated becuase I didnt realize how much I had to type about.
I'll edit this later when I get the 2 pictures I took loaded on the internet
Open Bay in Alpena Michigan
Ice buildup on the wall
I went there for a Operational Readiness Inspection practice. FOr those of you who dont know what that is... Its "being deployed", usually to "Korea" but in this case it was "Japan" (Alarm Red WoooHoooo).
So it all started out on Sunday the 11th with a cat knocking a vase off our dresser and it shattering on the floor at 530am. Liz and I got up to clean it up. Vacuumed all the glass shards up and had just laid back down to go back to sleep when I get a phone call... "Why aren't you processing right now?" Asked the voice.
To which I replied, "uhhhhh.... Because no one told me to be there right now."
ANd the voice responded with, "Well you need to get there now.''
Apparently I was the only one who didnt get word that our processing time for the flyaway was at 6am. Luckily I had known I was processing on Sunday, albeit I thought it would be later in the day, so I was fairly well ready for it.
There started a really long, grueling day of hurry up and wait. It takes 8 hours to process for a deployment. They basically take you from one place to another to do paperwork or get this and that and then you wait to go to the next place. And it all culminates with a 4 hour wait in the "holding cell", the last room you see of Fairchild before you get on the plane and leave.
I then loaded on a C-5, one of the worst flights you can take if you get the smallest bit of motion sicknes by the way... The seats are looking backwards so it really messes with you equilibrium. It was a four hour flight to Alpena (amazingly, it was also a four hour flight to Savannah Georgia, not quite sure how that time vortox worked). We landed, and it was probably about 5 degrees out wiht now breeze that night, luckily. So it was cold but not as cold as it would get. Thats when we started our inprocessing which took forever because of the long line. By the time we got to our room (I'll explain in a bit why I use that in a singular tense). It was 2am by the time we went to sleep in our cold bay full of beds... Yep thats right, Basic Training style for the week. Not for everyone though... only for guys who weren't important... But that doesnt mean that all non-important males slept in the bays, there were rooms with two to a room and a bathroom down the hall. That was mainly for important people but they did manage to put some non-important people in those... I just wasn't one of them. So I got to lsiten to guys complain about how hot their rooms were and how they had to sleep with their windows open at night... while I slept ina room that created ice on the wall when I left my bag next to it at night. The heater blew across the top of the room keeping it hot up high but down low it was below freezing. Luckily I brought my sleeping bag. Even in that I was sleeping in thermals to stay warm lol.
Anyway, after four hours of sleep I went back into work to set up my CTK, and being one of the few people who drive a forklift I sat in an open cabin 10k for 3 hours moving cadillac bins, pallets and then using the 10k to lift deicing fluid up above the deicier to fill it up... To say the least I was freezing cold during all this.
To shorten this up some I did this same stuff through the next couple days adding in the wear of chem gear as well.
Then on Thursday, we got the redeployment order and started packing up.
On Friday I was supposed to process my cargo with reserve aero postal guys. They suck by the way. They came by on friday morning and saw I had a 10k and asked if they could use it to speed themselves up. To which I said sure, as long as you help me move my cargo when it has to process, because I hadnt had a chance to move it myself yet... When it came time to process they had forgotten where they got the 10k and gave me a bunch of grief for not having my cargo out at the build up area. To which I reminded them where they got the 10k, to which they begrudged me the use of the enclosed 10k to move my stuff out and weigh it for them.... Next time Im not giving up my 10k till Im done with it.
The aero postal guys single handedly screwed up the redeployment of aircraft by not loading a C-5 on time. Which slipped my flight home back about 12 hours. So I finally made it home at about 5pm last night.
I went to get all my bags. Found two of them right away and set them to the side... Went to search for my last bag, found it and went back to grab my other 2... which had disappeared now... I found one of them back in the pile for pick up, so someone moved my bags again... the other was picked up by someone else... All my cold weather gear walked off in someone elses hands....
There ends my week... abbreviated becuase I didnt realize how much I had to type about.
I'll edit this later when I get the 2 pictures I took loaded on the internet
Open Bay in Alpena Michigan
Ice buildup on the wall
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Money well spent
So for xmas, I got a Walmart gift card from my father-in-law for $100. Its taken me a week to figure out what I wanted from walmart lol. Liz's idea was to get an 8 gb Iphone... which woulda been great except that At&t wont let me upgrade till Im 3 months from ending the 2 year contract... to which I told them "I'll go start a new account somewhere else and get a better deal for being a new customer".
So knowing I need a new serpentine belt in my jeep I decided to see if they would do it.... nope. Only tires and batteries and a couple other little odd jobs they do.
This morning it came to me what I should look up. After reading so much about digital art/graphic design lately I decided to look up what exactly a graphics tablet is and see how much they cost... Turns out what I thought they were, are the really expensive ones that corporations use. I but theres ones out there that do great quality just the interface isnt quite as spectacular.
Im getting the Wacom Bamboo through Walmart for $70 after taxes with the site to store option that gives free shipping. It will take a little while to get here but after this weekend Im going to be working 12 hour shifts for the next 2 weeks with a trip to Alpena at the end of it anyway... whats the point of expedited shipping just to use it for one day...?
So it works like this, the tablet has a wire grid under it that senses where the pen is using elctromagnets. Moving the pen around the active area of the pad is like moving the mouse around. The pen only draws activates when you click a button on the pen. So when using photoshop I can see where the cursor is adjust to where I want to be on the pad then click and make my marks or draw or whatever. This is supposed to make photoshop alot easier to use, as well as more intuitive. I actually came across a tutorial today for a picture on photoshop I couldnt do, without alot of extra work, without the tablet.
To give you an idea of what I thought all tablets were, watch the following video... its badass. If I had an extra grand just laying around with nothing else to buy... I would do it in a heartbeat... Its just awesome.
On another note, related and not related at the same time. We had to get Liz a new camara yesterday. Her old one started dying on xmas day... the screen was going all fuzzy and not focusing... So she did a bunch of research and got a Nikon P80. Its a really nice camara. Pictures are pretty amazing. As close to a dSLR without actually being a dSLR camara. So shes been playing with that a bunch since she got it. The reason this is related to above is she'll be able to do any photo editing with a pen now instead of a mouse.
So knowing I need a new serpentine belt in my jeep I decided to see if they would do it.... nope. Only tires and batteries and a couple other little odd jobs they do.
This morning it came to me what I should look up. After reading so much about digital art/graphic design lately I decided to look up what exactly a graphics tablet is and see how much they cost... Turns out what I thought they were, are the really expensive ones that corporations use. I but theres ones out there that do great quality just the interface isnt quite as spectacular.
Im getting the Wacom Bamboo through Walmart for $70 after taxes with the site to store option that gives free shipping. It will take a little while to get here but after this weekend Im going to be working 12 hour shifts for the next 2 weeks with a trip to Alpena at the end of it anyway... whats the point of expedited shipping just to use it for one day...?
So it works like this, the tablet has a wire grid under it that senses where the pen is using elctromagnets. Moving the pen around the active area of the pad is like moving the mouse around. The pen only draws activates when you click a button on the pen. So when using photoshop I can see where the cursor is adjust to where I want to be on the pad then click and make my marks or draw or whatever. This is supposed to make photoshop alot easier to use, as well as more intuitive. I actually came across a tutorial today for a picture on photoshop I couldnt do, without alot of extra work, without the tablet.
To give you an idea of what I thought all tablets were, watch the following video... its badass. If I had an extra grand just laying around with nothing else to buy... I would do it in a heartbeat... Its just awesome.
On another note, related and not related at the same time. We had to get Liz a new camara yesterday. Her old one started dying on xmas day... the screen was going all fuzzy and not focusing... So she did a bunch of research and got a Nikon P80. Its a really nice camara. Pictures are pretty amazing. As close to a dSLR without actually being a dSLR camara. So shes been playing with that a bunch since she got it. The reason this is related to above is she'll be able to do any photo editing with a pen now instead of a mouse.
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