Military

One Last Goodbye…

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One more watch. Monday morning we start tearing down Camp Cluster. That too will be a training evolution with folks looking on to make sure we do it right. It’s raining here. Hard enough that they are issuing flash flood warnings for the area. We’ll be packing away tents wet and dirty. That will mean … Read more

1 Down, 2 to go

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For being in the middle of a FEP there sure isn’t much happening on watch. I just finished my second watch of the FEP. Nothing happened. A Red Hat asked me to explain various tasks and systems in the communication’s suite. Pretty simple stuff. I’ve got two more watches in this FEP, the mid and … Read more

FEP Me

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Our FEP has begun. I was on watch from 1200 to 1800. Woo hoo. What fun. Voice comms were a problem everywhere. I’m walking up to the van to assume the watch and before I even get there they tell me to go to HDC and trouble-shoot their VHF/UHF. Off I go. Receive but no … Read more

Boredom & Surprises

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The Boredom — This morning we sat through several briefs that are required for deployment. Most of them were pretty dry, boring stuff. Death by PowerPoint, as they say. The Good Surprise — we did our Physical Requirements Test (PRT) today. I did 40 sit-ups (better than before but still in need of work), 61 … Read more

MIUW 104 vs Navy SEALs

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Preliminarily (do you suppose that is really a word?), I don’t like it much when my watch starts at noon. I can’t sleep until it is time to get up for watch but there’s really not enough time to do a whole lot before watch either. I ended up standing around waiting for time to … Read more

Taking a Break

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Well, we get a day off. The schedule said that we were supposed to work straight through the weekend but yesterday afternoon they shut things down, reduced everything down to security watches and sent everyone home. I don’t have to go back on watch until 1800 Monday. So I end up with almost two days … Read more

It’s An Enlisted Man Thing

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The following quote is from this article (dead link). Last night, while you were sleeping, the teeth of hurricane Isabel came through this area and tore hell out of everything… We have thousands of trees down…power outages…traffic signals out…roads filled with downed limbs and “gear adrift” debris…We have flooding…and the place looks like it has … Read more

Busy Night

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With only two of us to stand watch we’re standing eight hour watches and leaving the mid-watch unattended (the Commo is pretty cool). Last night was a pretty busy watch. Message traffic took about two hours to go get the traffic, sort through it, print out the messages for the read board. Then I had … Read more

Back To Camp

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So, after two days at school I’ll be returning to camp and standing watch. Since there are only two ITs the Commo has asked us to stand up a watch from 0800 to 2400. The other IT and I have divided that into two eight hour watches. He’s standing the 0800 to 1600 and I … Read more

Cool Java Joints & Portable Comms School

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OK, so, first I have to tell you about this really cool little joint that I’m hanging out in. It’s called Coffee Breakers and it is down in Imperial Beach. If you’re in the San Diego area you should check it out. When they close at nine I’ll probably head up to Starbucks. Today I … Read more