Pressureangle's Journal

6:43pm: Wow, it's been a long time again.

So much to write, so little bandwidth. I've fallen out of habit.

I'm back in Jalalabad, via Helmand Province with the USMC and Kandahar with the Army. Southern Afghanistan sucks, nearly as bad as Iraq for dust and desert.
The Kunar river valley is beautiful, as before. Just today, I found a rock with two very large rubies in it (unfortunately, both broken off) There is an enormous amount of gemstones up here, not just occasionally but everywhere. I've yet to discover exactly what I'm looking at-certainly not diamonds, rubies or emeralds but certainly semi-precious and some that are merely interesting.
My contract ends in January, and due to administrative oversight (ne incompetence) my window to return remains undefined. I'm eyeballing a position in Somalia with an 'Open' salary...I know what that means. Nobody will take the job at any price...I'll be reviewing the position carefully.

10:09am: Summer's over
Looks like I'll be going back in a week or so. Boo Hoo. Well, the money spigot will get turned on again, at least. I give all you faithful taxpayers my word that the money will be put to good use.
I did find a sailboat in WA that I'll buy, if the current sale falls through;






Oh well, it's sold. Maybe it'll get put on the hard and sold next summer lol.

5:53am: Well, surprise surprise
So I was limping around at work for a couple weeks, trying to make it to my vacation date before having my knee investigated-it went lame after running. (shame on me, I knew better) The Navy Corpsman diagnosed a torn meniscus. So, stateside doc says the same, x-rays, MRI, all that jazz. No problem, an outpatient arthroscopic trim and it should be fine right? So afterwards while I'm in recovery he tells my POA that there were some findings that very much surprised him, but she couldn't be specific to me. I went back today for the 7 day follow-up. He tells me that most doctors would straight up tell me I need a knee replacement. I have cat 2 or 3 arthritis on every surface but one, and the articular cartilage is entirely missing from the medial femur. He was shocked that this was not the issue that brought me in, and hadn't been causing debilitating pain.
I've long wondered if I'm physiologically devoid of nerves in my skeleton; I've broken quite a number and the bone itself never seems to cause pain, only the surrounding tissues. I suppose I could donate marrow and find out for sure...
So now I have a two-week rest period to 'allow the angry joint to reduce'. As a final touch, he gave a Cortisone shot-I wasn't too keen, but he said it was therapeutic not merely to reduce pain-so I accepted. Let me tell you, I've had some severe pain from time to time in my life, but only two other events came even close to that! I screamed 'Jesus Christ' right out loud, so loud that the entire waiting room looked at me when I came out, with obvious concern/dread/curiosity. WOW.
Now I have to plan this knee thing into my work exit, because of the insurance. Bugger. Doc said we'll try 'resurfacing' the medial femur, as long as everything else stays as it is. Jeez. Of course, there's the possibility that I'll just drive on without serious pain, and put it off for a few more years.
Oh yeah, one of the side effects of Cortisone is insomnia, and another heartburn. Dangit.

8:03am: Catching up again
It's been quite a while since I posted here, again. I'm currently at home, awaiting an arthroscopic surgery for a torn medial meniscus. Shame on me for taking my R&R at the same time. Shame on me for going out running with no ACL. I knew better.
I realized while home that I don't love my job anymore. It's the people, really-I have to live with a couple guys I don't like; arrogant and of less intelligence and ability that I'm accustomed to. Bah.
I figure I'll sign up for a third year and do about half of it, if I can stand it. I've always heard that wage is second to satisfaction in workplace hierarchy; now I know it's true. The money won't keep me there forever.

12:03pm: Action News
I started looking at Twitter, after meeting Mike Boettcher on the flight down here from Kandahar. Mike is a 30 year veteran embedded reporter, recently retired from ABC News and working independently for a year with his son Carlos. They're currently embedded with 2/8 Marines, based here at Camp Leatherneck (one side of Camp Bastion). Mike's Twitter is a crisp first-hand view of what's going on out there, if you're interested.

http://twitter.com/mikeboettcher

11:41am: Time passing
This has become a surreal life, out here in the Afghan desert with the Marines.
The Marine Corps itself is a culture as different from the average American as imaginable; very little of the mall-crawling civilian is visible here. Beyond that, communication with the outside world is controlled in the extreme, in contrast with my previous posts with the U.S. Army. USMC is the spearhead of the military, and Operational Security is taken much more seriously here than in the less "Kinetic" areas which the Army holds.
I have the good fortune to have discovered what few know, that the Afghan Wireless cellular network has nationwide GPRS; poor fortune to be housed within the range of a great number of electronic countermeasures, which come and go most of the day, cutting the signal off for a moment or an hour. The military MWR (morale, welfare, and recreation) center is nothing more than 20 telephones and 20 computers (at least it's in an air-conditioned tent) with a 1/2 hour time limit and poor bandwidth.
After a year and a half away from home, I'm wearing out. Worst of all, we're Army contractors 'on loan' to the USMC, and the Marine Corps being the smallest of the services is accustomed to scooping resources whenever possible; they want complete command and control of us, even to the point of telling the Army that they can't access us without going through USMC. Then on top of that, we have to interface with the USMC through other contractors, which is altogether outside the scope of our legal contracts and obligations. Of course, Corporate legal and stateside personnel are looking into it but the hard fact is that nobody wants to derail the gravy train so they all whine like steam whistles but won't take a stand.
I have about 18 days until my R&R and when I come back, only 3-1/2 months to the end of contract.

I think I'll stir up the hornet's nest when I come back. That'll break the boredom.

11:31am: delayed post...

I was in Jalal-Abad from January to April. It was gorgeous, and the people were great. Afghans put a lot of weight in a developed relationship, and relationships are very easy to establish with them. I will miss the friends I made there. I may even go back someday, to visit.

POTD; the gardens at the Jalal-Abad Provincial Reconstruction Team site.


 

3:39pm: A River runs through it
1. It must be the River Styx.
2. I must be on the wrong side of it.

I'm told the mound in the distance is an ancient rock formation, but it looks very much like Satan's Buttocks.
I'm with the U.S. Marines now, which gives a rich and complete definition to the word "Expeditionary". Internet has been a problem, obviously, as it's been 9 weeks since I could post here.

I'm currently making connection through the Afghan Wireless cellular system. I bought a Bandluxe C100 Aircard with external antenna, but with all the moving I had to chase it around the globe twice to get it...works pretty good when the Marines aren't preparing a convoy full of vehicles equipped with electronic countermeasures. If there's one good thing here, it's that the internet is unlimited (GPRS, 15-50kbps) for only $20/month.

I have no idea where we actually are, something like 100 miles from Kandahar (a nice place) in the Afghan desert. Iraq has nothing on this, it's just as hot here with much higher humidity. The 'Wind of 120 Days' brings huge sand-bearing tornadoes daily. We live in tents, in bunk beds, with box springs and no mattresses.

This is not an adventure anymore, it's a job, even at this enormous pay rate.

WOO HOO! Tomorrow is the 6-months-to-end-date.

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

--Rudyard Kipling

6:10pm: What would Forrest Gump do?
I'm stuck in Kuwait again.
I'm sure that I've said how badly this place sucks sometime in the past, and it hasn't changed any. I'm certain it never will.
The schedule rarely allows more than 3 hours of sleep at a time, or risk missing a flight possibility or roll call. Food is on the opposite corner of the compound from the terminal. The tents are full of stinky bastards who will steal your blanket if you make your bed, and take your bed if you don't leave something on it. I had to be very rude to somebody who took my blanket.

Being rude for me is very dangerous. I don't have much latitude for accommodating ignorance, stupidity, or inconsideration. Once I become rude, it is a very short distance to becoming violent. I haven't been violent in quite a long time now, but every day here brings me (and I'm certain, many others) closer to ceasing to think rationally about my purpose and giving in to blindly beating the crap out of some idiot who stole a blanket I paid $3.00 for.

I'm hugely offended in part, because these idiots are all making +$50k/year, tax-free up to $91k. Is it too much to ask that people who make more money than I ever have before, usually for doing not very much, not to steal or misappropriate my $3 blanket when they can go buy one in the PX themselves?

I did have a nice week at home, for what that's worth now. Between the expense of being out of theater and the abuse of being stuck here for more than 48 hours, it's hardly worth it. Except for having a nice hot shower and clean laundry now, I'd be too sour to write. But it's a very pleasant afternoon, about 80*, sunny and breezy. Maybe I'll make tonight's flight.

6:44pm: Hooray! ...um... Boo!
Man, you couldn't have created more buzz around here if you'd whacked a hornet's nest like a Pinata...The President mentions $40 Billion cuts in Defense contracting...waste...contractors contracted to administer other contractors...Duh. I had a big smile on all day, because we're the top of the contractor food chain-that is, we deliver the end value to the customer directly. The overhead of other contract companies being involved in our business has been the chief annoyance since day one; their only goal is to maintain their footprint. Well, it looks like they'd better start scrambling for jobs, real jobs, because we're full...

OTOH I wish he'd just let the gun thing alone.

8:49am: Writer's Block: More Island Time
1. 'Human Action' - Ludwig Von Mises
2. 'The Great Thoughts' - George Seldes
3. 'Coming Out of the Ice' - Victor Herman
4. 'Two Years Before the Mast' - Richard Henry Dana
5. 'Classic Stories from the Golden Age of Science Fiction' - Waugh/Greenberg

7:22pm: Nascent Economy
So far Afghanistan is a very interesting place. Afghans are friendly and giving, much moreso than Iraqis. Of course, my experience is limited to professional soldiers and bazaar merchants, who may clear a year's salary (average per capita yearly is ~$380) in a day, if they have anything good to sell. They are a clear, happy, intelligent people from what I can tell. Also noticeable are the scars-Every Afghan has some noticeable scar, indicative of a very hard life before now.
Strange is the economy here...people living in stone homes, no running water or electricity for the most part. They do, however, have a brand-new 3G cell/internet system. I'll be glad to see that, I'm connecting to this through my LG Chocolate GSM at the speed of light-about 2 KILO bps. On the other hand, it's nice to have anything at all, and it's only $20/month unlimited (ha) BTW, if anyone wonders what 'LG' stands for, it's 'Lucky Goldstar'. No wonder they changed that for the U.S. market.
On the base here, we have Afghans, Americans, Canadians, Dutch, Krygys, Uzbeks, Pakistanis, and doubtless some other nationalities I haven't noticed. Crazy, this UN force. The Scenery is Magnificent, at the foothills of the Himalayas. We're in the Kunar River Valley, about 10 miles from the Pakistani border, the Hindu Kush Mountain Range. I'll post photos when I get some bandwidth.

Man, who'da thunkit?

9:51am: Changing seasons
I've noticed since in Kuwait, which is an entry point for both Afghanistan and Iraq, that the age of the civilians coming into Iraq has risen considerably since I came in. I'm wondering if that's representative of the type of work they're doing-I overheard a chemical engineer who works on water treatment plants. Lots of civil engineering types, where before there was a lot of young agile direct support types. I saw a lot of UN vehicles around too...I think things are going to open up pretty fast in Iraq. I'd like to go back to tour Baghdad in a few years, when you can walk around with no more chance of being kidnapped than in Mexico City...

Somebody's going to make a lot of money here. I wonder what Halliburton stock is trading....

10:32pm: The Sky is Falling
I'm stuck in the Kuwait logistical area, where I have to transfer theaters from Iraq to Afghanistan.
There is no worse place to be, even frozen eternally in the ice in Hell's inner circle would have the upside of being quieter and less crowded.

Suffice it to say that the planes are flying, but since I don't carry a weapon, I'm not getting on them. At the rate they're taking standby requests, I'll be here another two weeks. There's very little to do. At least the internet is reasonably fast. 

Maybe I'll order a copy of Dante's Inferno and see if it gets here before I leave.

9:03pm: Leaving on a Jet Plane
I'm finally leaving for Afghanistan, Sunday. It's been a long time coming, and I've lost some of the mental readiness. Now I have to put my brain in gear and be finished by tomorrow evening. I suppose it's not too far away from ready since I never unpacked a lot of things but still, somewhat unexpected.

4:01pm: Anything New?

NO.

Click.

stupid colored fonts.

5:09am: Some things never change
Back at Falcon.
I'm ok with that. I needed to come back for at least a day to get my bag of hit-the-ground-running stuff.
But of course, it can't just be that simple. Our HR person dropped the ball, and I don't have clearance to enter Afghanistan yet. So I'll be here for a month, they say. The retired Colonel in the office says it only takes about 3 days...I smell some more ass-covering. I'm not unhappy to be here, but they are moving new people into Afghanistan with no leadership. That can't possibly be good.

The time home was nice if short, had Honeybaked Ham and Turkey for Thanksgiving and flew to Phoenix to visit some friends. Had to drive to Miami for a day, to renew my passport so it didn't expire while out of the country. Didn't sail, didn't ride. Went to look at the car completely disassembled. Nice.

I'm going to open a Scottrade account, and buy some stock. I think there are some magnificent buying opportunities there-Ford and GM for two. Probably some oil companies as well. I think that in 3-5 years it'll make 10-15 times.
Place your bets, when they're cryin' I'm buyin'.

5:32pm: Final farewell...probably
Tonight's the night, though there's a possibility I may come back for a day or a week or a month...going home for two weeks.

Adios, Falcon.

10:06pm: Short Timer
Suddenly I find myself facing the reality that I'll be leaving this place, and likely won't come back.
This has been my home, I've made some good friends here and I'll be very sorry to leave. I really hadn't thought it would be an issue but I've grown to quite like the military workplace, and actually being appreciated for being competent. It was a difficult decision to go to Afghanistan instead of stay here, now it's going to be difficult to pack and leave.
Heh. If you'd told me I'd be sentimental about a dirt patch in Iraq a year ago, I'd have told you that you're crazy.


"I mean, you can't stay with the same high forever, right?"
-G.T.O.

6:34am: Battle Damage
One of my co-workers confided in me a couple of months ago, something that was illegal and distressing on a number of levels. I chose at the time to advise him of the potential consequences, but did not report him - doing so could possibly have involved soldiers and had career implications. As it turns out, it did anyway without my involvement.
Recently an officer from a different unit stated that my coworker had involved himself in the same activities, and had no prior knowledge. I decided that if it was important enough that he mention it to me, I was obligated to report it up to my leadership. They yanked him out of here, and quite likely will send him home. He has been on the HR radar since before he came into country for one reason or another so my action is only the last straw, really.
I believe that everyone should be responsible and accountable for their own actions. He violated every agreement he made with the company, and worse he violated every trust and personal confidence he assured. He has earned his just rewards.

So then. I torpedoed the guy. This leaves me with a dilemma- I broke his trust. I promised not to expose him, in order to see what he was up to. I deceived him. Though I didn't turn him in the first time, I intentionally discovered as much as I could about his activities under the cloak of camaraderie, gathering evidence to bank as political capital later.
Of course, since he couldn't 'clean out his desk by 5:00', I chose to lie to him about my involvement until he got a flight out. My justification was that I was avoiding conflict, avoiding the possibility that he could drag some more soldiers through the mud and take them down with him, and avoiding the possibility that he would smear the company as well.

I believe I served the greater good, at the expense of my integrity. Or does integrity have many levels and shades of gray? Would the best thing have been to take the initial discovery to the Military Police, and have him investigated and removed immediately? Without opportunity to redeem himself? Take his job, and his entire life plan away from him with a single sentence?

Would that have left me less unsure?

8:47pm: Paradigm Shift
Balad is a black hole. It must be, because I discovered an entire universe of enlightenment, yet know less than I did when I left.

So. Scheduled 6 days, spent 12. Spent time with the PM and Lead. They are absolutely as badly in the dark as they appeared to be from afar. The PM spent seven and a half hours on a conference call negotiating his way out of the sticky mess of Beancountery between independent contracts, only to have them go the other way the next morning. Anyway, an accord was struck.

I'll be going to Afghanistan.

They need people fast, and the PM doesn't want a repeat of the tragedy that was our Iraq program in the beginning. So he put them off long enough to get the nearest of us to ending our contracts installed over there to begin our new ones. Then probably before we're set up and ready, we'll get a bunch of FNG's with the usual spread of competence and motivation.
I'm actually looking forward to this-I've come to dislike professional contractors pretty thoroughly, and I'd be lying if I said I won't relish the opportunity to take out some frustrations on any miscreants that come my way. I already have a plan to keep a videotape file for the 'councellings' and 'reprimands'.

Of course, I'm not doing the Senior spot for the money-certainly the paperwork, accountability, and Goat-Roping isn't worth the extra pay. But I couldn't bear the thought of hearing horror stories about the Afghan program in flames like the Iraq program is. My unit here isn't happy about me leaving early, but they admit they don't need me very much and they'll probably deploy to Afghanistan anyway in the next round and would like to have things run smoother than they have here.

I've spoken with plenty of people who have been there (Kandahar, BTW) and there seems to be no gray area; either they loved it, or hated it. Google Earth doesn't show much but rocks...not much different than here really except I don't think it's surrounded by walls so at least we'll be able to see the horizon from time to time.

POTD:

11:57am: I'm going to Balad for the week, to get my FSR Enlightenment Ceremony. Since the beginning of this 'Training' we've been told everybody has to go through it, and that they would go through in the order they came into theater. Of course that's not how it worked out-they processed the dead wood and left us alone...then when we ask for information updates, we got "Oh it will all be clear...if you'd just get through the training you'd have everything..."
Naturally it's too much trouble for somebody to burn a CD and send it in the FREE mail to us.
Anyway, the guy who normally teaches the class is on R&R so my two classmates are teaching it this week. I suspect we'll have a good round of Poker and some laughs, and I can get some eyeball time while asking what they really want out of the new reports we're obligated to provide. They always send out new report forms, usually with instructions and then totally contradict the instructions with the email text.
I hooked up with a couple other bike riders here, a Major and a Master Sergeant-the Maj is a triathlete and the MSG is a roadie...getting my lungs expanded. I haven't ridden much in a long time.

9:50pm: Anniversary
...of something I missed.

The first three people to reply to this and post the same on their journal will receive something from me within 365 days.
Or don't post it on your journal, I don't care.

Yes, you'll have to send me your actual mailing address.

Bueller?
Bueller?
Bueller?

7:50am: Cold Front
October's here, with the attendant change in weather. In the low 80's high 70's overnight-a big change, 20-30 degrees overnight since a week ago. Daytime temperatures are also much lower although the sun is still quite strong.
Started riding my bicycle every day-feels good to get back on wheels. I've nearly worn the soles of my boots smooth walking.

6:23am: Dorothy's view
Here's a picture of my new neighborhood;




Another very strange view during a pretty thick dust storm. The dust is so fine, the camera sorta looks right through it. Photos don't capture the essence of the event, only the very strange monochrome light which is true to color. Not always the same color, either. Last time it was Magenta, this time nearly flat B&W.

Just in case you think my camera is blind;