Speaking of stupid stuff.....

Friday 23 November, 2007
1830

So what was it I said yesterday about people doing stupid stuff?

Yesterday at about 1900 local (1100 eastern time), shortly after I finished my blog entry and posting photos and sending music emails (but before I was planning to call my family to say hi for Thanksgiving), the network went down in our building. I didn’t think much of it at first, since it cuts out fairly often and usually comes back pretty soon.

This time it stayed down awhile, though. When I noticed there was no power to the router in the hallway, and then that the outside security lights were out, I realized there must be an electrical problem, so I got my keys and went to the distribution panel to reset the circuit breaker.

Imagine my surprise when I got there and found two technicians with the network junction box all torn apart! “What are you doing?” I asked them. “We are upgrading the network” was the response. I told them it was Thanksgiving, and they just gave me a blank look. They had no idea why that might be important or even relevant.

It turns out that somebody at AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange Service – the PX system) decided that Thanksgiving Day would be a good time to disconnect the internet service in our barracks and upgrade the capacity. I’m very happy they decided to upgrade, but WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

On what many people would consider the most important family-oriented holiday of the year, several hundred people here were cut off from VOIP phone calls, IM, webcam, email, or any other computer-based contact with their families. The network stayed down until about midnight. So for the exact block of time when it was neither too early at home nor too late here, we were down. And of course the regular phone lines were jammed. I couldn’t even get a dial tone in my office to call the US.

*sigh*

I don’t know how high you have to go in the PX system before there is an American in management, but none of the people I talked to (the contractor’s technicians or their first-line AAFES supervisor) were American, and I don’t think the next-higher manager is either. So they really just didn’t get it.

What’s ironic about this is that on the military side we are totally inundated with cultural sensitivity training. For example, during Ramadan we are not permitted to eat or drink outdoors during the day, in order not to offend Muslim sensibilities. Too bad our own exchange system didn’t manage to train their employees to have some cultural sensitivity towards *us*…..

Music: BAP – “Lena”
Mood: Amazed

Thanksgiving

Thursday 22 November 2007
0001

Thanksgiving already! Opening day of deer season was last week – only the second time I’ve missed it in the last 20+ years. I miss the crisp fall air (sometimes downright frigid!), and being outdoors from before sunrise to after sunset, just watching the day go by and feeling the rhythm of the woods.

I always enjoy the annual Thanksgiving editorials in the Wall Street Journal. People are probably tired of me forwarding them every year, but when I read them they always bring a tear to my eye:

The Desolate Wilderness:http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=65000666

And the Fair Land:http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=65000667

I haven’t felt much like writing here lately – I’m not sure why. It just seems like I haven’t had much to say. I still don’t have anything especially profound to say, but I do feel like writing, so here it is...

I think perhaps one reason I have not felt like writing is that I’ve been following a number of other war-related blogs. I got connected to them through “Stand-To”, a daily email compilation of news stories and blog entries. There are a surprising number of military blogs out there, and most of them seem to be written by people who are (or have been) downrange at the sharp end of the war. Reading what they write makes my thoughts and observations of life at Camp Arifjan seem kind of self-absorbed and uninteresting. I started this primarily for my family and not to gain a big audience, but somehow it still feels that way.

I’ve been very busy lately. Part of it is that my NCOIC is on leave, and part of it is that I’ve been tackling some fairly aggressive projects, trying to get things done that need doing but haven’t been addressed. And then of course there’s the bureaucracy, which makes even the simplest things hard….

I recently wrote about DA Form 3953 – the Purchase Request and Commitment, or “PR&C”. I finally got one awarded today that I submitted on October 10th – and the steps in between would be hilarious, if they hadn’t been so frustrating. It’s like something out of “Catch-22” except you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. I would have to go back through all the emails to reconstruct all the steps, but it was just one thing after another. This document number assigned by Supply is wrong, this DODAAC assigned by the property book officer isn’t in our database, your competitive vendor quotes are deficient (can’t remember why), but you still need them even though you want to sole-source the purchase, nobody knew the correct exchange rate (supply said to call finance, finance said to call resource management, and resource management said to call finance), then contracting said: your KD to $US conversion uses the wrong exchange rate, so get this new form signed by three people to authorize the 0.15% increase in $US funding even though the KD amount is correct, oh by the way the “Approving Authority” signed that form on the wrong line, go do it over, etc etc etc. Unbelievable.

That particular process nightmare was to buy new batteries for a UPS (the old ones are at the end of their service life), so naturally while we were struggling with it we had a power outage Fortunately the aging batteries held the load and didn’t fail. Had they failed and crashed our servers I’d have been ticked off. But they didn’t….so on to the next issue...

I’m probably ill-suited to work for the government – I get so frustrated with bureaucratic delays. I’m OK as long as things are going OK. I don’t mind filling out the forms and going through the process. What gets to me is when people do stupid stuff, or stuff that seems stupid to me, and it slows things down unnecessarily. I’m pretty operationally-minded – the key is execution. In the vernacular: “Git’R’Done!” I think back to my days as a platoon leader and company commander, riding around in the boonies shooting and blowing stuff up and generally having a great time, and I don’t remember feeling so frustrated with bureaucracy. But I didn’t drive a desk as much back then, either. Oh well.

Despite all those kinds of frustrations, I am still incomparably happier doing this than I was in my civilian job. When I break through the red tape and actually get something acccomplished I can look at it as a real tangible contribution and feel good about having made a difference.

The air conditioning here is a good example. For all practical purposes we don’t have AC problems anymore, thanks to the work I did over the past year. The ironic part is that almost all the people who remember how messed up it was are now gone. So the people who are here now just take it for granted – it works, so they don’t think about it. That in itself is an accomplishment – that’s how utilities *should* work. :-)

I guess that ought to go on the “What I’m Thankful For“ list: I’m thankful for the opportunity to be here and make a contribution.

I’m thankful for my children, and hopeful that they stay healthy and happy while I’m gone. I wish I could be with them and that we could all be with my extended family this Thanksgiving, but it’s not to be. We’ll try again next year, and with luck I’ll be there too.

I’m thankful for the rest of my family, who are so supportive.

And finally I’m thankful that I have recently (and unexpectedly) re-established contact with several friends from high school. One of my best friends from junior high and I have been in contact for several years, sharing family pictures, etc. He had moved away after 8th grade and didn’t go to my high school, and we had lost touch until just a few years ago.

A few weeks ago he sent some photos of his trip to California. I was looking through them when suddenly up popped one that showed him visiting a mutual friend from junior high, who also was a friend of mine in high school. So I asked him to put me in contact and he did. That friend led to three other friends, one of whom was one of my closest high school friends and with whom I had completely lost contact since graduation. What a surprise that was!

So I’ve exchanged a few “catch-up“ notes with them, just filling in the blanks from 30,000 feet and 30 years. Kind of neat to find out what they’ve been doing and how their lives turned out. I’m looking forward to staying in touch with them.

I also got an email from another high school friend who is a professional singer (Jan Horvath), and has just released a new CD. It is timely in that it’s called “Never Too Late“. She spoke of “approaching the big 50“ and making sure we try to do those things we always dreamed of doing. I guess we’re all probably thinking some of the same thoughts at this age.

I haven’t bought her CD yet, but after reading about her career I think I will: www.janhorvath.com

My last thought is actually kind of a long story, but bear with me:

I bought a CD in Germany this past summer from a band I liked while I was stationed there in the early 1980’s. Coincidentally, this latest CD is a retrospective of their career. They were gaining popularity, and still young and fairly new back then. Now they are mature, a fixture on the German rock scene, and are also old geezers like me. :-) The band’s name is “BAP“ and the album is called “Dreimal zehn Jahre“, or “Three Times Ten Years“. It has many of their biggest hits and personal favorites, but instead of just a re-release, all the songs are newly arranged and recorded, many of them also featuring other famous (in Europe, anyway) singers and musicians.

I like almost all the songs, and can’t stop listening to them. I can even almost understand most of them. I say “almost“ because while they are a German band, the lyrics are sung in “Koelsch“, a dialect of German from Koeln (Cologne). While much of it is recognizable as German, enough of it is different that large parts of the songs are unintelligible to me.

I’ve looked for lyrics several times with mixed success, but today I hit the jackpot – the band’s own website has posted all their lyrics since the last time I looked:www.bap.de (Songtexte)

It’s funny, because they are a German band, and their website displays the original lyrics with a translation alongside – into German! That’s very helpful for me, and makes me feel pretty good that I could understand as much as I did. (I mean, if their German fans need a translation...)

There are lots of very good songs on it, but the title song sticks in my mind more than any other. I’d love to post a link to listen to it, but I can’t find one.

The tune of “Dreimal zehn Jahre“ is very nice – soft rock, with a nice melody and rhythm. The lyrics are sort of wistful and subdued, which fits the lead singer’s voice very well. And they are especially appropriate now, given my state of mind and the thoughts I have today of home, loved ones, old friends, and memories of times gone by:


Dreimal zehn Jahre (Original lyrics):

Dreimohl zehn Johre, wo sinn die all hin?
Met Engel jefloore, jäje dä Wind.
Dreimohl zehn Johre, alles riskiert,
jewonne, verloore, dozojeliehrt...

E Glas op die vun uns, die´t hinger sich hann,
mer sinn uns widder, irjendwo, irjendwann,
wat allerdinx noch paar Daach duhre kann, bess dann!


Translation # 1 (official):

Dreimal zehn Jahre, wo sind die alle hin?
Mit Engeln geflogen, gegen den Wind.
Dreimal zehn Jahre, alles riskiert,
gewonnen, verloren, dazugelernt....

Ein Glas auf die von uns, die es hinter sich haben,
wir sehen uns wieder, irgendwo, irgendwann,
was allerdings noch ein paar Tage dauern kann. Bis dann!


Translation # 2 (my own):

Three times ten years, where’d they all go?
Flown with the angels, against the wind.
Three times ten years, everything risked,
some won, some lost, lessons learned....

Raise a glass to those we left behind us,
we’ll see each other again, somewhere, sometime,
although it may be awhile yet. Til then!


Music: BAP – Dreimal Zehn Jahre
Mood: Thankful