Day 79 / FEB 16

DAY 79 / FEB 16

            Had my second close call with being late this week.  I woke up at 8:16 for an 8:30 appointment.  Not good, but I still managed to snag a mug of coffee before getting there.  It's a good thing there is nothing to prepare for these meetings.

            I've been spending some time with Google Earth.  And I must say that it's a fun little program and is becoming more and more useful everyday.   I already mentioned its ability to assist with Geocaching, but today I learned that it can also find distances between here and there.  And, it also cleared up the confusion of why we flew from Colorado to Newfoundland to Ireland to Kuwait.   I always thought it was a strange route, but looking at it (after determining I was exactly 7046.3 miles from home) I noticed that the most direct path (that is not THROUGH the Earth) goes over the top of the world to get to here.   Interesting. 

            Also on google earth, I checked out Area 51 (with all the aliens and UFO lore), the nuclear bomb site in Nevada (there are a lot more bomb craters from tests than I would have figured – way more!).   You can find low flying helicopters and airplanes near airports.  I also even found a meteorite impact crater in Saudi Arabia (I think).  

            Also new today, while wandering the numerous, mostly useless links on the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) site, I discovered a language program.   They have a bunch of languages to choose from and so, just to give it a whirl, I picked Arabic and started the first course.  Its actually MUCH better than I thought it would be and I'm actually picking up how to read the language as well as understand it spoken.   There is a section for SPEAKING it as well, but there are too many people around for that.  This is really a good way to learn a foreign language.   There is no "(this word in english) = (this word in Arabic)".  Its more of an intuitive learning system, like you learned English when you were a kid.   For example:  The first page shows four basic pictures (a cat, a dog, a boy, a girl).  The speaker plays the Arabic (and shows how it looks) word for one of them.   In the beginning, you more or less guess as to which is which.  So, after the first set, you get an idea about which is which.   The next page has four basic pictures as well, but it will also have another object in the picture (a cat and a car, a boy and a girl, a dog and a man…) and so, with a little process of elimination, you can deduce what pictures it isn't and which it could be by the first four words you learned.   It keeps on building like that, adding a small element to what you already know as it goes along.  I'm only on the second lesson – taking it slow so I can understand it better – but I already feel a smidgen of knowledge sticking with me.   If the rest of the courses are like this, I could learn a lot this way.  The problem is that with my internet as slow as it is, it takes about 10 minutes to load one part of one lesson.   Each lesson has about 5-10 parts.  So, you can see that it is very time consuming in the waiting department.  But still worth it.

           

            Every day I am amazed at the level of waste in the Army and I'm sure the government as a whole.   I think that I should get out and make something stupid (like a computer circuit card from the 70s) that breaks a lot and costs $25k each and then sell it to the Army.   I know they'll buy it because they I've seen them do it!  Another example:  we have a satellite thingy (OPSEC term) that costs about $445,000 for the satellite thingy AND the humvee it comes on.   There is a very important part on this satellite thingy that has a tendancy to overheat and kill itself.  Guess how much the PART is?   If you guessed anything less than the cost of the whole system as a whole – you're wrong.  The part costs $450,000 BY ITSELF!  I guess you could say that they sold us "said part" and included the rest of the system and the humvee as a bonus!   A one-time-only bonus.  When the part breaks, we pay that much to get a new one!  Crazy!!   Ok, not enough… how about the little flying plane that takes pictures.  First, lets take a REAL plane, that holds REAL people and could hold the same stuff that makes these fly on their own – it would cost about $200,000 for a really good one.   These things that the Army buys cost $550,000! Each!  And, they have a tendency to crash.  Since they've had them (for about a year), we've crashed between 3-10 (not me personally, but people around here who have them).   They found most of them.  Most.  Somewhere out there is a $500,000 plane just sitting in the elements, rusting.

            So, like I said, its time to make something that will break easy and is very expensive and sell it to the Army (or maybe just the Department of Defense in general).   Maybe I'll take a truck, fill it with electronics from Radio Shack, give it a serious sounding, letter-number combination name, and offer it up for $1,000,000,000.   I know they'll buy because we already own a couple.

            Anyway, enough.  The rest of the day was uneventful – no bombs, or booms or anything falling from the sky except a few drops of rain.   Oh and the highlight of the day was lasagne!  Whoo hoo!  A decent dinner for once!

            And also, we finally made it back into the double digits of days since we were mortared last!

            Milestones… I have to make more and celebrate them all.

 

            PS.  I finished "Deception Point" yesterday.   It was decent.  Kind got a little far fetched at the end; and I don't know about the author's claim that ALL of the technology in the book is real… but I can't prove otherwise.   I have the most trouble with the government making a submarine that can go as deep as they claim it does in the book.  Oh and the rifles that shoot "snow bullets" or overly powerful waterguns.  

            I plan on starting the new Stephen King book – "Cell" – very soon.