For some reason, I’m often gripped with a sort of paralysis regarding my writing here. One might chalk it up to writer’s block, but I think it’s more existential than that. I’ve written about the echo chamber effect of blogging (or Narcissistic Blogger Syndrome); this is an offshoot. It’s a sense of shouting into the void, a screaming against the blackness in the vastness of the internet. Scale out further, though, and the mind reels; just as I’m one tiny voice among billions, so is our world a mere speck in the unfathomable universe, all of our joys and struggles ultimately amounting to nothing in the cosmic calculus.
Thus is born religion, a search for meaning as the mind’s eye zooms out to encompass the universe and finds reason lacking. Not being of the religious sort, though, I risk falling into the classic atheist’s trap: of placing supreme faith in the flawed entity of man. For if there is no supreme being, no higher force, then what else is there but man’s reason, intellect, emotion? But to have faith in man means continual disappointment. Our flaws make us unsuitable as objects of worship, or even as dependable actors; for if nothing else, every man disappoints in the final act of dying. And so, we find ourselves back at religion again. But, as Han Solo said, “Kid, I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff, but I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful Force controlling everything.”
I wrote about this denial of a universal “plan” here, at a soldier’s funeral.
The only part of his sermon that I remember was the usual part that chaplains and pastors and such like to give at a funeral of a young man or woman. There’s always a bit about “God’s plan,” which I inevitably find absurd and offensive. The same thought shot through my head as he spoke the words: God’s plan? It’s in God’s plan that this young soldier – not even twenty-one years old – is dead now, while so many others, unworthy of living, still walk? If that’s God’s plan, well…
After all this pontificating, though, I come to the meat of this post: all of the preceding words seem terribly trite and unoriginal. Men were debating these very issues before the birth of Christ, and here I am, two thousand+ years later, typing the same stuff. Everything’s been said already! By an accident of birth, I’m a latecomer to civilization – it’s all downhill from here!
Maybe my real problem is that my thinking is too large-scale and I should concentrate on contributing to Cute Overload.
No, it’s not the Gay Military Acquisition System or the Ghastly Mostly Absorbent Seatbelt – it’s the Great Minnesota Air Show.
The Navy’s Blue Angels were the main event, and put on a great show as usual. My favorite part is the “tactical surprise” or sneak pass (done by the Thunderbirds as well), where the crowd follows the four-ship flight, only to be ambushed by one of the solo planes, approaching right at the edge of the speed of sound. (This video gives you an idea – flying that fast, you can’t hear it coming).
But the real show-stealer was the F-22 Raptor, a plane whose performance is so extreme that it might as well be science fiction. It did maneuvers matched only by the little aerobatics planes: things like flipping over in midair (!); full performance turns inside the space of the airfield; standing the craft virtually on its tail and flying forward at only 90 knots; and a vertical climb that ended in a dead stop in midair, followed by sliding backwards before flipping into a dive.
It’s mind-boggling to write about it and even more so to see it.
Check out the new layout for my pictures. It’s a work in progress, but you can get the idea.
I’m on a quest for a good web-based, database-driven photo gallery solution, and they seem to be in short supply. For years I’ve just been generating galleries locally using whatever software I had available (for a long time, BreezeBrowser, then later, Adobe Lightroom). The problem with this approach is that every time I wanted to rearrange galleries or change their appearance, I’d have to go back and re-generate all the pages and re-upload them. With a web-based solution, I could change the appearance easily with stylesheets (the way I can with WordPress and this blog).
I tried Zenphoto for a while, but didn’t like it (too hard to adjust the themes). Now I’m using Piwigo, which seems OK, though not exactly what I want. All these PHP-based gallery things are made by Europeans, which means they have all kinds of weird Engrish and bizarre user interface conventions that make no sense to my simplistic American mind.
I guess I’m stuck with it, though, since I don’t want to use Flickr or Photobucket or Picasa or whatever – I’m paying for all this web space, so I’m damn well gonna use it!
Clouds over Bloomington
Dramatic clouds over the armory, taken on 14 June 2010.
OK, got it.
This was actually drawn on the board in the classroom this week, by our warrant officer, who I think will be called Mr. Malaprop.
If you can figure this out, you’re hired.
(Click for larger image.)
Five years ago, I was still in the war, a lowly E-4 multichannel transmissions systems operator/maintainer, writing whatever I pleased on this blog and worrying about little other than counting the days until we loaded up my dirty little truck and went home.
Now I’m on the verge of promotion to E-7, in a different MOS (locked in the back of a humvee no longer – I’m now a true TOCroach!). I’m in charge of a few soldiers, and as part of the headquarters, I’m making decisions that reach far beyond my immediate presence, and can even extend far beyond my perception. It’s a strange feeling to know that I can make somebody’s life – somebody I’ve never met, in some far flung armory on the other side of the state – a living hell based on some flippant comment or hare-brained recommendation during any one of our innumerable meetings.
Indeed, flippant comments are my stock in trade; I find that levity (sometimes bordering on outright sass) is the only way I can deal with my job. When we’re told to plan for a mission, and the mission consists of nothing but “we’re going to go somewhere and do something,” you can either a) get angry or b) laugh. Most pick the first option, but for me, stuff like that is comedy gold. Luckily, this attitude hasn’t gotten me into trouble; I guess my services are so useful that everyone is willing to put up with my insouciance – so far.
Hudson, get over here!
But I always wonder: is this the “right” attitude to have, as a senior NCO? E-6 seems to me like the last “screw-around” rank, where you have responsibilities but you’re still closer to the bottom than the top of the organization. But E-7, hey, that’s a different story: now you could be a platoon sergeant, a senior drill sergeant, a staff NCO, in charge of a lot of serious shit. Ideally, you’ll be like Sergeant Apone from Aliens: chomping a cigar while yelling obscenities and gesticulating, commanding respect and obedience with only a withering glance. Apone, however, wouldn’t be much good on a brigade staff; he’d probably just put out his cigar on the face of some uppity major and get busted back down to a line company as an E-5.
Anyway, this thinking dovetails with this blog: how does my role as a writer on the internet change with my advancing rank? As a senior NCO, I’m expected to be a “company man,” toeing the line of the command (at least in public), while keeping my grousing about command policies to a minimum. It’s easy to bitch about things when you’re at the bottom of the pyramid; indeed, complaining is the God-given prerogative of every junior enlisted soldier. But closer to the top, such complaining is unseemly, particularly in public – and though this is quasi-anonymous, the internet is as public as it gets.
Many milbloggers in this war have been leaders, though, so it’s not like I’m treading new ground. Some of them have even blogged while leading troops in combat, something that you’ll likely never read about here.
I think there's something missing here
What you see at left is not an accident but rather the culmination of JoKur’s 5-year quest to install a computer in his car. He first had the idea when we were in Iraq, and began the epic mission when he purchased this car after our return. I have fielded countless tech support calls about this damn project, and listened to his endless descriptions of his various crazy schemes.
He was so close to completion – he finally had the right hardware, and the right software, and everything was installed and working – but that only lasted for about five days. Then he got the idea to remake his dash with Bondo.
You’ll notice that not only is the radio missing, but also the heating & air conditioning controls. This means that he needs to fiddle with various cables under that mess (if you look closely, you can see the little blue cable on the left of the dash…hole, which, when pulled, apparently does something).
It's under here somewhere
Here you can see him reaching for something, which didn’t help and we had to drive with all four windows down so we didn’t roast. I just hope that he wraps this up before winter comes again…
Anybody in the military reading this article from the New York Times will find it instantly familiar. PowerPoint Hell, run by PowerPoint Rangers, who are in turn directed by Good Idea Fairies, is a place that we all have to visit once in a while. Inspired by this article, I’d like to begin a series showcasing some of the finest home-grown PowerPoint follies that I can find in my own corner of PPT-Hell (with all consideration to OPSEC, of course).
These quotes come from a recent briefing about Iraq and Kuwait.
The purpose of this briefing:
To gain the Commander’s concurrence and/or decision that results in an approved deployed restated mission statement and commander’s planning guidance.
What? My jaw hurts just reading that, let alone trying to say it.
Next, from the S2 (intelligence) portion of the brief, regarding likely threats inside Kuwait:
Most likely form of threat activities include; verbal insults, hand jesters, rock throwing and theft.
(Emphasis mine.) This line highlights the dangers of spellcheck – sure, “jesters” is a correctly-spelled word, but…
Finally, the S2 (once again) answers the question: just how big is Iraq?
slightly more than twice the size of Idaho
Oh. Since, you know, Idaho is the benchmark by which we measure the size of things. Isn’t there already a state that’s twice the size of Idaho? That’d be California, by the way.
NewGen and the Flying Booms, on tour!
In the parking lot this afternoon. Party trailer for Boeing’s new tanker aircraft? Why here? We don’t have a tanker wing…
Flags in front of the capitol
Not sure what was going on, but there was a sea of flags across from the capitol on Friday.