Much catching up to do. I have Days Off so it's worthwhile for all seven of my regular readers to start checking in again.
Wednesday, 22 December 2004
Toad repair
Toad, Barbaloot and I are holed up in Children's Hospital, getting Toad his palatoplasty and two tympanotomies. All went well, though Toad looks like he went through a round with Tyson, then a tequila hangover.
Much catching up to do. I have Days Off so it's worthwhile for all seven of my regular readers to start checking in again.
Much catching up to do. I have Days Off so it's worthwhile for all seven of my regular readers to start checking in again.
Sunday, 19 December 2004
Thursday, 16 December 2004
Monday, 13 December 2004
Quote for the day
Roughly $822 million was spent in support of President Bush in 2004, compared to $925 million spent on behalf of Sen. John Kerry.
So much for two of the fundamental lies behind campaign-finance reform. One, that McCain-Feingold, or any other piece of legislation, can "get money out of politics." Two, that "money rules." It turns out that sometimes, strangely enough, elections are decided by voters weighing the issues and making up their minds based on the candidates' positions.
Ryan Sager at Tech Central Station.
We at WUTT! have asserted the latter point for some time. Nice to be proved right in a big race that counts.
Though it certainly helps, money can't buy an election. It's necessary but not sufficient.
Sunday, 12 December 2004
Addition to Wish List
One more thing I want to add to my Beggars-Would-Ride wishlist, of things that are achievable but not available for immediate purchase:
I want somebody to offer to recycle old, intermittent, half-lighting strings of Christmas lights. There's too much valuable copper in there for this sh1t to just get shlepped off to a landfill. We're about to ditch a few hundred feet of them because half of the light and they are virtually immune to troubleshooting.
The bulbs can be ground and melted into glass cullet to fill out concrete park benches. The plastic, well, it's probably as valuable as the copper, kilo for kilo, and it could make nice Tyvek envelopes for FedEx someday if it were recovered. The problem, as usual, is identifying what kind of plastic it is so it can be recycled effectively, even if in some cases recycling translates into removal of halogens prior to conversion to Number 2 Diesel fuel.
Here's your bumper sticker:
My Huge SUV burns otherwise-unusable recycled plastics
I want somebody to offer to recycle old, intermittent, half-lighting strings of Christmas lights. There's too much valuable copper in there for this sh1t to just get shlepped off to a landfill. We're about to ditch a few hundred feet of them because half of the light and they are virtually immune to troubleshooting.
The bulbs can be ground and melted into glass cullet to fill out concrete park benches. The plastic, well, it's probably as valuable as the copper, kilo for kilo, and it could make nice Tyvek envelopes for FedEx someday if it were recovered. The problem, as usual, is identifying what kind of plastic it is so it can be recycled effectively, even if in some cases recycling translates into removal of halogens prior to conversion to Number 2 Diesel fuel.
Here's your bumper sticker:
Friday, 3 December 2004
My new email signature block will read:
"This email message is certified free of slogans, quotes, special backgrounds, special stationeries, digital images, and unusual fonts, in accordance with Air Force Instruction 33-119, Air Force Messaging."
Somebody in the headshed must have objected when he saw a subordinate's email signature was neater-looking than his, and put his Corfam down hard.
Another proud tradition done in just like nose art. Bummer.
A guarantee to deploy
I can't leave this a draft forever. Rather than hack at it further, I release it to the wild.
When I enlisted in the Air National Guard in 1981, I was viewing it as a way to avoid the brewing Central Asian mess. President Carter had pulled the US out of the Olympics in protest of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. I didn't want to go to war. Stupid long-haired me.
Since joining, I settled myself down and matured real fast, and reread the contract. I stayed in the Guard because I felt good about what I was doing, to the point that I wanted to deploy so I could prove my worth.
The first invasion of Iraq came and went, and I was not deployed. I completed 20 years of service and received my letter, allowing me to retire. I had time left on my contract, but small children in the house. I seriously contemplated retirement, but I was also unemployed as a civilian, and not dealing well with that fact. The Guard was the only income I had.
When the WTC and the Pentagon were attacked, that desire to deploy became more urgent, and was finally fulfilled. Just days after accepting a new position with a civilian employer, the phone call came---on my cell, as I was headed to Logan Airport from the job site. I was at Cheyenne the following morning, with bags packed.
* * * *
Phil Carter prompts me to post this as I read his post, "Not your Father's National Guard."
The Total Force policy was fully in place when I enlisted. The unit that recruited me was a small truck-mobile radar unit that was Checkered-Flagged to Germany, later to Turkey. After Desert Storm, the whole concept of designating a deployment location in advance was scrapped and the Air Expeditionary Force concept took its place. I can be sent anywhere, and am more likely to go as a unit-type code---small teams to perform specific functions, such as fire-fighting, earthmoving, or in my case NBC defense. I'd deploy only with the swinging d1cks to my immediate left and right, as a team, flight or squadron, not as an entire wing.
Parted out like a junked car. One of the Air Guard's strengths, in my opinion, is that we have less churn, less turnover of personnel than our active duty counterparts. We know each other better, have trained together longer, and have turned that to our advantage. AEFs undermined that advantage by splitting us up and mixing us with other forces whose level of training is different. My criticism of AEF has softened somewhat, now that I've gone through it, because it achieves what it sought to do, to even the deployment burden across a career field.
On the Army side, the "parting out" is not as feasible. This means that entire units, built and equipped for a specific Army function such as air-defense artillery, would be repurposed for another function that was needed downrange more urgently, such as military police. I'm glad I didn't have to go through that.
But the AEF concept did make it more likely to deploy if one had a specialty that was needed down range, or that was in short supply in the first place. The more urgent the need, the more likely and frequent the deployment. The tradeoff is shorter and more fixed deployment durations: 90 days, now grown to 120, with a "hard" wall of 179 days at station at any one time without SECAF waiver. In contrast, Army rotations, Guard or active, start at 180 days.
I nearly ended up going to Afghanistan anyway, though 20 years later. I was within a few hundred km of it. And I will almost certainly deploy again.
When I enlisted in the Air National Guard in 1981, I was viewing it as a way to avoid the brewing Central Asian mess. President Carter had pulled the US out of the Olympics in protest of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. I didn't want to go to war. Stupid long-haired me.
Since joining, I settled myself down and matured real fast, and reread the contract. I stayed in the Guard because I felt good about what I was doing, to the point that I wanted to deploy so I could prove my worth.
The first invasion of Iraq came and went, and I was not deployed. I completed 20 years of service and received my letter, allowing me to retire. I had time left on my contract, but small children in the house. I seriously contemplated retirement, but I was also unemployed as a civilian, and not dealing well with that fact. The Guard was the only income I had.
When the WTC and the Pentagon were attacked, that desire to deploy became more urgent, and was finally fulfilled. Just days after accepting a new position with a civilian employer, the phone call came---on my cell, as I was headed to Logan Airport from the job site. I was at Cheyenne the following morning, with bags packed.
* * * *
Phil Carter prompts me to post this as I read his post, "Not your Father's National Guard."
My father served in the Army Reserve during the early 1960s as a way to pay for college; it was then, and is now, an honorable way to serve. But you can't compare service then in the Guard with service now, because of the policy changes adopted by the military which made the National Guard an integral part of America's warfighting force.
The Total Force policy was fully in place when I enlisted. The unit that recruited me was a small truck-mobile radar unit that was Checkered-Flagged to Germany, later to Turkey. After Desert Storm, the whole concept of designating a deployment location in advance was scrapped and the Air Expeditionary Force concept took its place. I can be sent anywhere, and am more likely to go as a unit-type code---small teams to perform specific functions, such as fire-fighting, earthmoving, or in my case NBC defense. I'd deploy only with the swinging d1cks to my immediate left and right, as a team, flight or squadron, not as an entire wing.
Parted out like a junked car. One of the Air Guard's strengths, in my opinion, is that we have less churn, less turnover of personnel than our active duty counterparts. We know each other better, have trained together longer, and have turned that to our advantage. AEFs undermined that advantage by splitting us up and mixing us with other forces whose level of training is different. My criticism of AEF has softened somewhat, now that I've gone through it, because it achieves what it sought to do, to even the deployment burden across a career field.
On the Army side, the "parting out" is not as feasible. This means that entire units, built and equipped for a specific Army function such as air-defense artillery, would be repurposed for another function that was needed downrange more urgently, such as military police. I'm glad I didn't have to go through that.
But the AEF concept did make it more likely to deploy if one had a specialty that was needed down range, or that was in short supply in the first place. The more urgent the need, the more likely and frequent the deployment. The tradeoff is shorter and more fixed deployment durations: 90 days, now grown to 120, with a "hard" wall of 179 days at station at any one time without SECAF waiver. In contrast, Army rotations, Guard or active, start at 180 days.
I nearly ended up going to Afghanistan anyway, though 20 years later. I was within a few hundred km of it. And I will almost certainly deploy again.
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