one of many in the wild, wild net.

I woke up today at 6AM, went to work at 9:30AM, and found out at about 10:10 that they closed the base.  In the timeless words of Homer, “Woohoo!”  Homer Simpson, not Homer of Greek literary renown.

I drove around today, and via a circuitous route I wound up at Barnes & Noble next to the mall next to my apartment.  I browsed around for a book that I eventually found out was just released today (The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr by Ken Gormley).  I instead bought two books that I thought might be interesting to read based on the reviews on the back of the books… I know, not very good indicators, but indicators that served the purpose well enough of enticing me to spend money to read what they have to say.  They are Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff, and Have You Seen My Country Lately? by Jerry Doyle.  The former written by a UC Berkeley Cognitive Linguistics professor, and the latter by a conservative radio talk show host… trust me when I say that I try, in my own quite possibly misguided ways, to look at truly fair resources for reading material, and when I can’t find it I try to balance out what I hear so that I get more than one side of a story.

Anyway, I got into Moral Politics, and after getting through the first chapter I put the book down and started thinking about my own political aspirations.  I’ve toyed with the thought of running for office some day–most likely when I retire from my current office in 15-20 years.  It’s been in my head for a few years now, and I’ve told it to Law and my Dad.  Since I commissioned, I’ve gotten to be involved in stuff that has required interaction with Congress–I’ve never done anything that I could consider “interacting with C0ngress”.  I’ve never even thought that in my lifetime I’d be doing something that could be considered “interacting with Congress”, let alone doing something now.  Suffice it to say, I’ve realized in this last year that I’m alot closer to Washington than I previously thought.  I also realized this last year that the real power apparently is in the Legislative branch of our Government.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but Laws are made in Congress, both at the Federal and State levels.  Anyway, I’ve narrowed down that if I run for office, nationally I want to be a Congressional representative in either the House or Senate.  Local government, I wouldn’t mind running for State congress or even mayor of a town.  As I understand it, these are full-time obligations but not full-time jobs… so definitely I would have to have a source of income other than being in the government.

Blah blah.  Anyway, I was thinking I should, at some point, start keeping a page of what my platform stances are on today’s issues.  I feel I need to declare as soon as possible what my stances are, as that’s something I want to get on record as early as possible so that if I run for office in the future, I’ll have something to point to.  As my views change, so will the page, with narrative explaining why that view changed.

If my speech betrays a politically naive person, consider this–by education, I’m an engineer, and as a private person I tend not to research things I don’t have much interest in.  My knowledge of things not related to engineering is severely lacking but ask me about possibilities and I’ll talk all day about them.  I’m ultimately not interested in what we can’t do, but what we could do–we as a city, a state, a country, and a human community.  As each day comes and goes and I learn a little bit more about my world and my society, and at some point I realized that to effect the greatest good I’ll have to do something that will test the limits of my capacity to make things happen.  I think that working in the Legislative branch will test these limits, while at the same time I can provide the input that I want to give to the leaders of our Nation (or perhaps become one?).  There’s alot I want to say, and I don’t type or speak fast enough to communicate everything that’s whizzing around in my head.

Anyway, more on this later.  I’m at a B&N, it’s 8:30PM (close to my bed time), snow is still coming down, and I have to eat something still.

-TJ

- Plan ahead, organize thoughts, lay out a strategy to engage in any problem that comes my way.

- Lose my gut Go to the gym and sweat 5 times a week to become stronger, faster, and more durable.

- Buy a house – consult with USAA, make a plan on how to do this by April.

- Enroll in grad program for Computer Science and Engineering, or something close to it.

- Eliminate any reason for me to frown in public.  I should be having the time of my life, why do I feel lost?  Again?

- Buy the goddamn Rosetta Stone for either French or Russian and learn a new language.  Finally.

- Don’t get paralyzed by the act of planning.  Make a best effort, then execute.

So I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.  Months.  Since halfway through OTS, really.  How should one view the heirarchy of military rank?  I’ve seen it two ways.  One is where the Commander leads from the front, providing guidance to his troops, directing them to pursue the vision and mission in his mind which he constantly communicates to his unit.  The other is where the Commander lets his unit know that he is there to serve the unit, that from his level in the organization he has a strategic view and upward reach to help lower tiers of the unit succeed in accomplishing their parts of the mission.  Both of these views have their merits, and both are accurate portrayals of military heirarchy.

I would like to suggest to the internetosphere a conclusion that I’ve reached since pondering this subject from January of this year.  I think the men and women that make up the armed forces should consider themselves standing side-by-side.  All people in the military are of equal worth, from the day zero basic trainee just getting off the bus at Lackland to the distinguished, wisened General at the sunset of their career.  Enlisted and Officers have their roles to play in the organization.  I had a group commander once give propers to his troops, the 150 or so enlisted troops staring back at him, for getting the mission done.  “Without you, there is no mission” is what he said.  True.  Without the commander, there is no defined mission or vision–also true.  What I’ve figured is that we all have our AORs that are important.  As an Airman First Class, they put me on a team of maintainers in charge of keeping a multi-million dollar proprietary piece of shit, and we all had our roles to play.  I was in charge of learning the skills needed to maintain the thing, then to be an active maintainer of said thing.  I had my AOR.  My AOR involved being highly technically knowledgeable on the inner workings of the thing, down to what wires provided what shape and frequency of signals to what ports–and folks, there were lots of wires.  We also had to be highly knowledgeable on the processes and procedures when dealing with maintenance of the thing… and in some respects I hated this even more than having to be technically knowledgeable, because the processes and procedures were not based on science but rather the amount of procedural rigor the designers of the procedure wanted us to practice… I just had to know alot of “crap”.  And all this was in my AOR as an A1C.  As I earned rank as an enlisted troop, I was charged with the above but also growing levels of peer leadership, mentoring, and eventually supervision of Airmen.

Anyway, before I digress even further, let’s get back to the topic.  My AOR now is kinda similar to what it was when I was an A1C, mostly learning, and as an officer being the POC for some high-need resource in the organization… the “go-to guy”, if you will.  Snack-O, although a ridiculous title for a ridiculous job which is to keep our unit snack bar stocked with items the unit’s members actually want and raise money for presents for people going away, promotion, retirement, etc., is under my AOR.  Being a PTL, in charge of leading the unit through PT sessions and monitoring various physical fitness stats, is also under my AOR.  And at the core of my purpose-of-being here in Ohio are my responsibilities as the engineer for the IPT in charge of running a contract for the F-15C MTC–I am responsible for getting myself up-to-speed on the technical aspects of this contract to be able to provide answers to my PM and our bosses, but also to know people who know answers to those questions in the (quite commonly occuring) case I don’t personally know the definitive answer to a technical question.  I once revealed an epiphany to my friend VC over at Living Out Of The Box, that I realized alot of being an officer meant knowing who knew the answer, if I didn’t already personally have the answer.  If I didn’t know, I would know someone or would find someone who knew.

Which brings me to the group commander.  Past and present, the commander doesn’t exist by himself.  He has a vision and a mission, but he can’t do the job alone.  He has resources–people at his front office, people outside on the floor, making the mission happen, day-to-day.  Additionally, he has people higher up in the organization that he reports to.  His AOR may be large, but his actual effective reach is with his team of folks that execute based off of his guidance.  And people higher than him depend on him to give direction below, and honest assessment and status reports above, so that decisions higher than him can be made based on accurate and timely information.

Friends, I see this as a side-by-side level of egality.  We all have our roles to play, with varying degrees of technical knowledge and personal authority.  As one grows in rank, technical knowledge will go down, and personal authority will go up.  I expect and depend upon my current commander to provide me with guidance on what my unit is trying to achieve–I don’t expect him to know the technical details of my F-15C MTC contract better than I do… I expect him to ask me to get that knowledge.  Not to say that he shouldn’t know more than me as the lead engineer, but if he had to ask me for his own situational awareness… that’s my job.  That’s my AOR.  I don’t expect him, in matters regarding physical fitness, to know the BMI measurements of all of his troops off the top of his head… I expect him to get that information from me as the PTL.  Again, my AOR.  It’s his responsibility to make sure his troops are fit to fight.  It’s my responsibility to arm him with the data to execute that part of the mission.  We all have our AORs.

I hope I’m communicating this correctly.  We are all ultimately equally important, and I’m not talking about potential, but the here-and-now.  An Airman guards the gate in the dead of night… important task.  A services troop cooks eggs precisely to-order at the DFAC… important task.  Honor Guard renders the proper respects to the dead during a military burial… important task.  Current leaders eventually move on to other opportunities, and new leaders step into their place… we are all replaceable, and the mission eventually gets done.  Everyone in the military is in charge of something, and we all report to someone, from the day-zero Airman Basic to the SECAF.

Anyway, these are just some observations I’ve made to date.  If I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.

-TJ

So, I’m looking at my facebook, and realize that all the things that I have swirling around in my brain won’t fit neatly in a one-line sentence about me, written in the third person.  I think I’m starving, and I’m finally figuring out what I need to sate that hunger.  The mental tape-recorder clicked on starting on Sunday, when I finally went to church on my own accord for the first time in years.  Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you… whether or not I like it, I feel like I need to be right with the Lord before I can start fixing my own problems.  It’s an unbearable silence that consumes my senses when I don’t go to church, something I never really cared to note before, but when I go and pray for His forgiveness, I at least feel better somehow.  I had awoken spiritually when I first entered into the military… they say nobody turns more people to the Lord than a TI in basic training.  Well, I needed His help to get through those times, and when times were good after I got out of BMT I kept praying, eventually confirming into the Catholic Church. I think by keeping right with the Lord, I kept myself free from stupid worries, like how people feel about me, whether or not I pissed some people off that day, or whatever–I can focus on important things.  I was once told by my CCD teacher at Keesler (Hi John) that I shouldn’t try to share my burden with God, that I shouldn’t try to “do my part” because I want to take care of myself, but rather just give all my worries over to God.  I’m proud, and I have a big ego, so for the longest time I thought, “you know what, God takes care of so much, and so many people abandon themselves to the Lord, I want to at least try to take care of myself under the watch of God.”  I rationalized that I didn’t have to go to church if I prayed by taking action–sort of a “don’t talk about it, be about it”, but I think I misunderstood.  I eventually stopped praying altogether, and just regressed to my pre-military habits.  I think when I stopped talking to God, I stopped seeing God, and I saw myself as the sole shareholder of my life, even though I thought I was praying by acting.

Anyway, all that has begun to change.  I don’t want to say I abandoned myself to the Lord, but rather I’m putting my trust in God, and I’m making that effort to go to church.  I think the reason I feel like so much has happened in the last 3 days is because I must be undergoing some kind of large spiritual shift.  So I’m not abandoning myself to the Lord, but I am giving Him the reins.  I’ll do my best to be my best, but beyond that I can’t control what gets thrown at me, so I won’t worry about it.  I won’t worry what people think about me, because I can’t please everyone all the time, so I’m just doing what I need to do.  Making that effort to go to church, though… I realize that I like it.  I like sitting there, I like to kneel, I like to take a moment out of my week and pray.  I like to reflect, because that’s ultimately what church is about.  Geez… I’m so wordy!  I think the thing that excited me most about church, though, is the fact that I’ve decided that I would actually get involved in the parish this time.  For once, I stayed after service and actually partook in the coffee and donuts in the parish hall, and I met some folks that attend the 8AM service, one Mr. Walt and the deacon, both retired Air Force from Wright Patt.  If I had that great of a time meeting these guys, maybe I might meet more if I volunteered to do stuff at the church.  I think next Sunday, I’m going to put my name to volunteer.

Well, that was all Sunday.  Since then I got some work done on Monday, but then today I was really busy… at home.  AAFES delivered the washer and dryer here, and since their contractor didn’t have an installation service, I paid for delivery, but not an extra $25 to remove the packaging, i.e. do the garbage.  I ended up getting help from one of my buddies here, Ray G, that I graduated with from OTS.  I’m getting kinda thin on my credit after buying those two appliances, so I’m gonna have to save a bit of dough, as long as I stop buying stupid crap… and since my HHGs just arrived, I think I’ll be good on buying stupid crap to entertain myself for a long while.

So  yeah, now I’m here.  I’ve been waiting to get here in Dayton, OH, since last August.  I’ve been daydreaming about going to a country bar and learning to line-dance with a cutie, about taking some swing or salsa lessons and just having a great time getting to know new people (read: girls that take those classes) and just generally being dumb and acting a fool.  I’ve been kicking myself because I left my violin, motorcycle, and most of my clothes and old uniforms in LA… I should have brought those things with me to OTS, but I think my rationale at the time when I left LA was that I’d need all the space in my car to drive around MontG during OTS.  Well, now that I’m done with OTS, I wish I had brought all my crap with me, because now I have to take leave at some point, drive to LA, load my car, and then drive back here using as little leave as possible… I can’t forsee myself safely doing this in less than one full week.  And I have to rent a motorcycle trailer and subject my car to towing my bike across the country… AGAIN.  Oh well.  Life is a continuous learning process, and sometimes the lessons are hard.

Let’s see, other things on my brain… I’m going to ASBC in a few weeks, which means I get to drive back down to MontG and hang out for another 6 weeks of fun in the sun.  Honestly, I don’t know what to expect… I heard that ASBC is cake, and that it’s just as sucky as OTS, and that it’s basically a six-week-long drunkfest… I guess it just depends on who you ask.  My resolution before OTS was to try to make as many friends as possible, and I think that goal somehow perverted my basic character so that by the end of OTS I was highly disappointed that I had only a midget’s handful of people I’d consider friends.  This time my resolution is just to relax, focus on the goal of doing well at ASBC, but not going crazy about it.  All the extracurriculars aren’t worth a damn in the end, and people respect you more if you act normal to yourself rather than try to be something you’re not… I saw this in OTS, and all my friend-making effort wasn’t worth a damn because in reality I’m not a friendly or outgoing guy–I’m meek, but I also want to be the best there ever was.  General, vague terms, yes, but that’s what’s at my core.

I’m cutting it off here, before this turns into yet another rant-fest.  I have other things to do tonight, like make a bed that I can sleep on for a change instead of that damn cot.  Yeah, peace out.

-TJ

PS: Welcome, facebook viewers… this is the first post that’s also posted to the notes section in facebook.

Wow.

Where do I begin?  Last post was of “TD-14″, i.e. Training Day 14… pretty early on in the program.  Today I’m writing as a brand spankin’ new Second Lieutenant… I graduated from OTS today.

I think the one thing I’ve been thinking of can be summed up by one word: “next”.  What’s next?  What do I want to do next?  Here are my goals for the future as they are now:

Short-term, i.e. objectives to knock out ASAP:

• Learn a new spoken language (as opposed to computer language)
• Restart violin or start fiddle lessons… it’s the same instrument but different styles of playing.  I think.
• Go to comedy clubs, be social.
• Take swing dance and/or ballroom dance lessons

Long-term goals:

• Position myself so that I get to develop UAV technology at some point in my career
• Increase my effectiveness as an officer & leader

As this changes, I’ll be writing it down so that I can put my thoughts into words.

Well that’s all I got for now.  It’s been a long day and all with graduation and all, so now it’s time for a little warcraft, then a little bed.

Good nacht.

So. Today I went on base for something (I’m off today). That something didn’t happen and at this point is no longer relevant to the story I’m relaying.

After that, I went into the office to check my email. And…

I got my OTS class date!!!1!11!!one!limit of sin x over x as x goes to zero!!!1!1

YES! I’m (tentatively) signed up to be in training beginning 5 NOV 08. I was starting to think that this day would never come, but apparently and thankfully I was wrong. Alot of my plans for the next few months were up in the air because I didn’t have this date. Now I can plan some leave, plan my apartment stuff, plan where I’m sending all my shit, etc etc.

Unfortunately this means that I will not be able to be around for the holidays. OTS lasts 12 weeks, so this will take me all the way to early February 2009. Last year I took four days, and it seemed quite short as I didn’t have enough time to hang out with some friends back home. I am hoping to take a month off this time before I go, and it looks like I’ll be able to get a mail-in ballot sent to my parents’ home so I can even vote for our next president! GOD I’m so excited!

Anyway, for all 3-5 readers of my blog, I will probably be in town by early October or even late September. I’m going to take a real vacation, and I’ll be moving out of my apartment before I do this so I don’t even have to renew my lease agreement. Woo fucking hoo.

The next piece of news that I’m waiting for is… where am I going next? I put Los Angeles as my number one, Wright-Patterson in Ohio as my number two, and Hanscom in Massachusetts as number 3. As soon as I find out, you’ll find out.

Out!

-TJ

Forgot to mention, I’m now a Staff Sergeant.

“Sergeant Olaes”…. that’s gonna take some getting used to. I’ve been saying it over and over in my head since yesterday when I officially became Staff Sergeant Olaes. I’m not overly excited about it. I mean, it’s cool and all being the same rank as my first supervisor in just under 4 years, but for some reason I’m just kinda like “yep, here I am, what’s next?”

So yeah, now I’m Sergeant Olaes. I’ve been thinking about “Sergeant O” though, that has a nice ring to it.

-TJ

Well, I’m in trouble for being mediocre. Time to face the music…
-TJ