X-ray specs

But seriously, we just did a night fire range. I could often see the tracers burning through the target's chest.

Maybe put up some new ivans, guys? Just a thought.

Dr. Wafel Zinraal's Diary, May 29

Grounded again. The air's too watery here for the pollen ram to get a good pump-through going to the engines. We continually have to touch down to harvest clover. And when we do, it's always a fight with the Trillin Empire's apiary defense squadrons. Chafee's x-ray spectacles are put to good use when we do, letting us home in on their shifting internal chakra cores and bring them down before they can really threaten us.

Hurrah for diesel!

First Sergeant says, "Let's get those HMMWVs fueled up."

Wilco.

First, wrangle drivers, keys, dispatches. 30 minutes.

Drive to the fuel point, 10 minutes.

Discover the fuel key doesn't work. 1 minute.

Drive halfway around post with a friendly DoD cop who says he knows where to go to get it fixed. 10 minutes.

Discover that it's 5 minutes past 4 PM and none of the civilians are working. 1 minute.

Call up Barracuda, our supply sergeant, who says she knows who can fix the key. Drive back to the fuel point where she's arrived to hand it over. 5 minutes.

Wait for her to drive halfway across post, return with a functional key. 15 minutes.

Fuel vehicles. 15 minutes.

Drive back. 10 minutes.

I love this job.

The Ranger, on Market Economies

"Can you believe those goddamn communists charge money to lay by the pool?"

Dr. Wafel Zinraal's Diary, May 25

"You're a damn fool!" the old groundskeeper said. His words may yet come to haunt us, but for now, the buzzsaws are cutting a path through Lord Tiggles'* romping garden. We should reach the boneyard within  a week, where we'll be able to obtain an uplink to the Akashic satellite network. With a little deft programming from Avari's squad, we should find the information we'll need for navigating the ultramonsoon that forced us down in this godawful place.

*Lord Tiggles, as you all know, is the thankfully-deceased pet cat--by which I mean a cheetah hybridized with assault rhinoceros DNA--of Baroness Krantznovikova of Tierijev, infamous for hosting a birthday party for Carmen Sandiego all those years ago.)

Pissin' in a cup

4:30 wakeup for a day only half-filled in the first place. First Army's crack squad of E-7s there to tell our fully-certified UPL how to do his damn job, fucking up the paperwork, backup labels printed on regular paper instead of actual labels, signing in the wrong place and having to wander back halfway across post to reprint a roster while eyeballs swim...

Pre-validation, and wtfuckery

So, before we came out here we had to fill out a spreadsheet for First Army detailing all the training that we'd done. They built a memo from it, I looked over it, the CO looked over it, we agreed it was fine. We got here, and the first day we have to sign the memo and turn it over to them so they can build a training schedule. Unfortunately, somewhere between now and then it somehow lost at least one training event, and we made the mistake of not reviewing it completely. After a fight with a whiny light colonel two days later (that being the time they took to build the goddamn training schedule), we managed to get the requirements for that event knocked down to just the 5 people who hadn't completed it with us at home station. The schedule showed that event taking place yesterday evening.

Yesterday afternoon, we learned that every single one of us would have to attend. Shortly thereafter, we learned the same thing about the 3-day counter-IED training that the majority of us had done twice already, because they incorporated a 15-minute class and a 30-minute class on two of the tasks we missed. The entire remaining duration will be filled with counter-IED training. For a non-combat deployment.

The Spergeant, on genitalia

"Cocks are hot."

The Spergeant, on promotional offers

Spergeant: "Hey, get this: Order two subs you get a free side of french fries. You wanna order your sub on my tab?"

Freight Train: "Fries, huh? That's tempting."

Sp: "You wouldn't get the fries, I'd get the fries. It's my order."

Me: "So you're gonna buy him a sub just to get fries?"

Sp: "No! He has to give me money for the sub."

I screwed my entire company

I saw it, read the part where that one exercise in Cali was part of the validation for a whole bunch of different training events for deployment. And then I heard when the CDR and 1SG said they'd decided to cancel it because it was all kinetic and didn't apply to our non-kinetic mission. I think the neurons even fired briefly on what that'd mean.

But I didn't say anything about it. And now, here we are, with a bunch of boxes left unchecked, because I didn't speak up.

Because I didn't speak up.

Story of my goddamn life.

Dr. Wafel Zinraal's Diary, May 14

The dirigible's fueled. Laser cannons are primed. Chef Gaultier is preparing a bunch of rimpon protein shakes. Not sure why, nobody drinks them. Except that lunatic Chafee down in engineering. But maybe that's how he keeps this tub running, despite the dragon attacks and radio-acidic rain. This is gonna be a long trip though...

"Undisclosed Location"

Seriously? What is this secret squirrel shit. You can just say you're not sure where we're going.

Unless it is secret squirrel shit. Hmm. We'll see.

Back in rainytown

For the record, I love the rain.

On a more work-oriented note, it's a bit scary sometimes, to see how much more motivated I am to do work when I'm the prime mover, rather than having to react to someone else's requirements.

Less scary, possibly only due to familiarity, is how much more motivated I am when I can get away from my comrades for more than 15 minutes at a stretch.