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

Started working 12's in preparation for going to michigan next week... Too tired to blog and not much to say anyway. So heres an LOLcat

Classical Gas

So should I learn it? Looks rough but I think with enough practice I could do it.

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.

Course Deviation

One of my hobbies is playing with photoshop. I really enjoy working on it and can do it for hours. Because of this I have recently decided to go through and get a graphic design degree. Until then, I read tutorials and interviews on graphic design websites, my favorite being PSDTuts.com. This week I read a couple articles on the mentioned site, one on how to get better at design and the other was an interview with a digital artist. The How-To article mentioned one of the steps towards getting better as joining a design site to post your work and get feedback, as well as inspiration from other designers work.The interviewee mentioned how he had joined deviantart awhile back so he could post his work. I put two and two together and jumped head first into deviantart.

The link to my profile and anything I've loaded to Deviantart is on my new Link application under the Slideshow. IMPORTANT. While everything I do is completely safe for work (my main interest is in logos), there are areas of the site that are NSFW (Not Safe For Work). View at your own discretion. I currently only have one piece loaded.

I'm all for constructive criticism, anything to get me better at this :) So if you don't want to create a Deviantart profile, you can always just leave a comment on here with the name of whatever piece you're commenting on.

Bowling for Christmas

I enjoy covers of Britney Spears. Bowling For Soup did a good cover of Baby One More Time. Here's a cover of Womanizer by All American Rejects that I enjoyed.... right down to the toy accordian.



So there hasnt been much going on here lately... Just working and trying to keep William from destroying the christmas tree/presents. He's been sick the last couple days and now Im feeling the sore throat starting to kick in... this will make like the 5th time he's gotten sick and then given it to one or both Liz and I. Though to be fair this isnt the worst sicknes he's given us... the stomach flu was the worst. But, anyway, back to the main point. Theres not much going on here. Im looking forward to Christmas more than usual this year. Mainly because I was able to buy Liz's gifts without having to ask her for help... She has figured out 2 of the gifts I got her though... Im already thinking up a plan on how to get around her powers of deduction for next Christmas... I cant mention it here but if I remember my plan next Christmas I'll try to remember to mention it then lol

Santa Clausberg

So somewhere along the line I became a morning person.... not sure when... but i have a hard time staying up beyond 10 PM now but fairly easily wake up at 6 AM daily. Even when my alarms fails to go off I wake up on time... Unfortunately, unlike my alarm clock, I dont have a setting that shuts off my internal alarm on the weekend. So this morning, when William cried out for attention (Liz's daily alarm) at 7 AM, I was already awake. So I let Liz sleep in while I got up and got the boy ready for his day of yelling and singing his dada song at home. Usually on these mornings I cant just sit around and do nothing but I also cant leave. I usually reserve these times for picking up or doing dishes... Today I opted out of that... With Liz working at home I never have the house to myself, which isnt a problem until you realize its only 5 days till christmas and you still havent wrapped any of your spouses presents. So thats what I did this morning... William went in his crib because I was working on the floor with scissors... To be fair I was more worried about him holding them to my neck in an effort to get more milk than any damage to himself.

So thats whats I did this morning... I wrapped presents... and not well in some (most) cases lol.

But its better than being outside when its -8 out there. Raven walked out for all of 30 seconds this morning in hopes of chasing birds... Only to run back in complaining about how cold she was (Ravens a cat, and yes she complains... a lot).

Anyway, to stay with the essence of the holidays: