And here it is, February, and I haven’t posted anything of real value since Thanksgiving… I’m gettin’ lax… need to fix this.

Today was an interesting day; any day when you get your ass chewed by both the Sergeant Major and First Sergeant, and then the whole deal evaporates without much further… that’s interesting.  To explain…

We had a short day today, and the Medics were mostly down in the motorpool, moving our vehicles around.  Since they recently reconsolidated all the medics back into Headquarters Troop, all medic vehicles needed to be moved into a single spot where they are parked next-to each other, and since two of those tracks are deadlined and don’t start, that involves using a tow bar to move them.  We had a partial tow bar, but the connecting feet for it were locked up inside a different track, and the soldier with the keys to that track is away at a Field Exercise.  Sooo…. I go wandering through the motorpool to find someone else’s tow bar that we could borrow.

This is where it gets silly.  Only tow bar available is connected to a mortar track that’s inside one of the maintainance bays.  Elsewhere inside the bay, Alpha (’Apache’) Troop is preparing to conduct a Change-of-Command ceremony… they’re getting a new Captain.  When I first check the area, the ceremony hasn’t started yet, so I go get a few soldiers, some wrenches, and a Humvee to move the tow bar (’cos those things weigh around 400 lbs.).  We return to outside the bay, I tell two of the soldiers where the tow bar is and what door we’re taking it out of, and start ground-guiding the Humvee into position.

Now, inside the bay, these two soldiers take some good initiative without paying enough attention to their surroundings.  One of them opens the large bay door (which I hadn’t planned to use… I was going to use the smaller side door), and the other one starts wrenching away on the connecting-bolts for this tow bar… and neither of them noticed that the Ceremony was underway.  Granted, there was a Bradley Fighting Vehicle parked between them and the ceremony, but you’d think they’d have heard the music playing…

So, I step inside to start assisting with the tow bar, and before I get five feet past the threshhold, the Sergeant Major is in my face, giving me The Look, and quietly hissing at me “What the hell are you doing?” etc, etc.  He tells me to have my platoon sergeant see him, and spins on his heel and walks off.  I get the Humvee driver to shut off the engine, have the soldier who opened the bay door close it again, and get everybody outside… and did the right thing.

Soldier who opened the door?  “Get down.  No, don’t push, just stay in the Front Leaning-Rest.”  I get on the phone, call SFC Gladden, and quickly explain to him what happened and that the Sergeant Major wants to see him, tell the soldier who’s on the ground to recover, and step back inside to prepare for the ass-chewing.

The ceremony ends, everybody is milling about, Sergeant Major spots me and snarls “Where’s Sergeant Gladden?”

“Sergeant Gladden has been called, Sergeant Major.”  I’m rigidly at position of parade-rest.

Sergeant Major tells me to follow him, leads me toward the First Sergeant, and gives him a nutshell description of what happened.  I say, “I was outside, helping move the Humvee into position.  As the NCO in-charge of the detail, I should’ve been the first one through the door to assess the situation, and should’ve kept better control of my soldiers.  My fault.”

First Sergeant is giving me this sideways look… he can tell the situation is just a simple screwup… and in the traditional Army view, my response was perfect.  I didn’t try to stall, dodge, or shift blame, and that’s exactly the right thing to have done.  He gives me an additional few minutes advice on keeping aware of one’s surroundings, and lets me go.

So, at closeout formation, Sergeant Gladden asks me “What happened?”  I re-explain to him, and ask what the Sergeant Major had to say… and he says “Nothing.  He didn’t say anything to me about it.”

Paraphrasing:  Somewhere in Hagakure, there’s a chapter where Tsunetomo discusses qualities of personal retainers, and he asks ‘Who would you choose as a retainer?  The man who has never made a mistake?  Or, the man who has made one mistake, and lived to talk about it?’

It was an interesting day.

So, I’d purchased this Sony VAIO laptop, a VAIO CR220E/L which came pre-installed with Vista Home Premium and a bunch of other software from Sony, and it ran okay for a while… but not well-enough to satisfy me. It took too long to boot up, and a lot of the extra software was pure bloat (Windows Media Center, a bunch of AOL crap, extra Sony interface that just duplicated the functions of Windows, Norton 360 trial edition which I don’t need since I have access to DoD protection software, and so on). I spent a long time trying to uninstall a lot of that crap, and then… system failure.

I found myself in possession of a system that wouldn’t boot at all, not even in Safe Mode. It’d load, but the login screen would never appear. I ran the recovery options on Norton Ghost, backed up all my personal files, and tried to run the recovery utility from the little drive-partition that Sony had put all the OEM software on, and… it wouldn’t run. Luckily, the recovery utility was still uncorrupted on the C: drive, so I restored the drive to original delivery state, and started resetting it to the state I wanted it in.

This time, when I attempted to run Disk Cleanup, it mistook all my personal files, all the Sony recovery files, and part of the Boot Sector as files to be deleted, and I was again the owner of a computer that wouldn’t boot, only now it was unrecoverable as well. Luckily, I still had the backups of my personal files from the first crash.

Sick of dealing with the Sony software package, I did a complete reformat and clean reinstall, setting up a dual-boot system of Windows XP Home Edition and Windows Vista Business, both purchased at the PX. This way, if one of the OS-s crash, I can use the working one to recover. They installed fairly well… Note to anyone who contemplates doing this: install XP first, and Vista second. You can end up with ugly conflicts in your Boot Manager doing it the other way around.

This leads me to my current gripe - finding Windows XP drivers for the hardware in my VAIO CR220E/L… Sony is not providing any kind of support for XP anymore (they cite ‘legal reasons’… meaning, they’re under pressure from Microsoft to only support Vista, and they’re too cheap to continue to support XP). I thought I’d purchased a computer from Sony, not a Vista Operating Station.

So, I’m still hunting for drivers on the net; I’ve located the drivers for the basic chipset, the video array, and the modem, but still haven’t located drivers for the PCI Bridge, the sound array, and the Sony memory-card reader… and Sony doesn’t list component specs for any of their computers anywhere that I’ve found thus far.

It’s all very frustrating.

EDIT:  In looking at my website stats, I’m getting a lot of search-hits for the same issues from other people… here’s what I’ve been able to find.  Sony-Asia has XP Downgrade Drivers for cr2-series laptops on this page, though for some reason, their American counterpart doesn’t want to refer you to them.

http://www.sony-asia.com/support/download/232001/productcategory/it%2Bpersonal%2Bcomputer?site=hp_en_AP_i

Check your particular make/model for its components list… some of these drivers may not be for you, but a lot of the standard ones (modem, camera, memory-chip socket, etc.) should work for you.

Vista drivers for the CR220e are on this page.

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu-list.pl?mdl=VGNCR220E

Check out the sidebar; there are some new pages.  I’m adding new content, organized by subject-matter, and I’ve relocated all the Flash Games to the new ”S3 - Training & Operations” page.

Other improvements are that the Flash Games and all External Links now open in a new window!

Keep checking back… I’ll be adding more new content over the next few weeks.

There won’t be much dialogue in this post, just photos of Thanksgiving dinner in the Camp Hovey Dining Facility.  For those who aren’t familiar with US Army traditions, there are three meals each year that the cooks go full-tilt on (Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve), and the Officers & Senior NCOs put on their dress-blue uniforms to work the serving lines.  Everyone you see wearing a Stetson is a member of my Cavalry unit.

It was a most-righteous meal, despite the fact that it wasn’t with the family back home.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Not much happened over the weekend for me; it was mostly all about getting prepped for the field.  Starting this Sunday we’ll be out at a remote site for a while, so for that time I’ll be offline.  Thankfully, while we’re out there, we’re in hard billets, not tents… you count your blessings where you can find them.  Currently, the plan is to have me spend as much time with Bravo Troop while we’re out there, learning their routine from CPL Santana, and the official move to B Trp gets made on our return, around the week before Christmas.

Anyhow, Monday & Tuesday I was away from the area on Retreat with the Chaplain and 31 other troops.  It was mostly pleasant, fairly relaxing, and surprisingly light on the theology, concentrating mostly on secular/practical stuff.

Monday morning we all fall in at PT formation; we on the Retreat roster are in ACUs.  We get sent back to our rooms to change into civvies, and muster for the bus at 08:15.  After a few last-minute roster changes to accomodate soldiers who are ill, we get rolling.  Chaplain’s burning Unit Funds for this trip, booking housing and food for 35, so we need a minimum of 30 if they’re going to get a repeat of this event in December.

Where I’d originally thought we were going to be staying at Dragon Hill Lodge in Yongsan, it turns out that USFK has a small, outlying site in Itaewon specifically for religious retreats.  The rooms are rather barracks-like, but they’re only $20/night (as opposed to $110/night at Dragon Hill).  The D-Fac is fairly pleasant, there’s a small chapel and a bunch of meeting rooms in quonset huts… we get lunch and start in on the class sessions.

Chaplain Hampton (a 2LT, prior enlisted, he was a SSG) gives us a class on Stress Management, which is funny for me, since I really don’t stress-out over much of anything, and then he does a class on Relationship Issues for USFK Soldiers.  That class might-as-well have been titled “Don’t Marry A Juicy-Girl”… Chaplain H is getting concerned about the couples who are showing up in his office for counseling prior to marriage. 

Now, here in Korea, if you want to get married to a foreign national (regardless of the country of origin) there is a lot of paperwork involved in getting the marriage license approved and getting your prospective spouse a Visa for US entry.  It seems that within the past few months, the Chaplain’s seen quite a few cases in the squadron of soldiers becoming engaged to the Juicy-girls in the clubs, and the process going sour for them due to (1.) the girl being already married back in the Phillipines, (2.) the girl having children she hasn’t told the GI about, (3.) the girl having a criminal record that she hasn’t told the GI about, or (4.) the girl being a carrier of an STD that the GI doesn’t know about.  Of course, any of these will put the kibosh on her getting a Visa, but learning of these from your prospective bride can be pretty traumatic for a 20-year-old who’s never been away from home before.

Throughout that class, I just sat there smirking; my only added comment to that class was, “Look, guys, if you’re shopping for a wife, you’re not going to find a good one working in the clubs in Dongducheon ‘ville.”

We break for the evening, and the plan is for us all to eat at Outback Steak House (yeah, they’re everywhere), then go bowling at Yongsan post for a while, then be released to our own devices until midnight.  Chaplain tells us that Outback is within easy walking distance.  Yeah, it’s an easy walk, around two miles, but it’s all downslope.  I was probably the only one who considered the uphill return trip at that time, squirreling some cash away from my wallet for a taxi.  There’s probably some cool stuff to see in Itaewon, but since the group was moving at a forced-march pace, I was only able to get one picture during the trek.

We get to Outback, and the plan is for Squadron Funds to pay for $15/person, with us paying any remainder.  This is where it got messy… Outback’s manager will not accept a US credit card over the phone, so the Division Ministry Team rep must be summoned from Camp Red Cloud to physically present the card at the resteraunt.  He shows up after 45 minutes, we finally get our orders placed, and our food starts coming out in a haphazard fashion.  It seems Korean resteraunt tradition doesn’t involve serving all diners at the same table simultaneously.  My steak was cooked properly, but the baked potato was only the size of a tennis-ball, and the vegetables consisted of three sad, little broccoli florettes with a few carrot slices that were just above mush.  Whatever… don’t expect Koreans to do a stellar job on American food, and vice-versa.

Time finally comes to settle the check, and the management has just lumped it all together and divided the remainder by 32, saying we each owe $14.80.  At this point, the Chaplain almost loses his cool… (that was interesting… I’ve never seen that happen before) … and there’s a big snarl until we finally get the waitress to bring us some menus for us to figure out our individual tabs.  Everybody pays (we think), and then it turns out we’re still around $65 short, and the KATUSAs are all looking at each other embarrassed, since they hardly have any money… thankfully the SFC from Division Ministry Team gets the remainder put on the govt. credit card, and we get moving toward the bowling alley.

So, the walking pace has increased from “forced-march” to “irritated Chaplain” speed, the group gets strung out due to red lights, I get stuck trying to police up the stragglers in the rear, and around 10 of us have trouble finding Yongsan base, and then the bowling alley on-post.  Two free games and the shoe rental is covered by Unit Funds, but around half of the troops are speed-bowling since they don’t want to be there, they’d rather be out drinking in the clubs.  I’m not much of a bowler, never have been, and the last time I bowled was on-post in Germany almost 12 years ago.  I was lucky to throw a 112 on my second game.  Partway through bowling we learn that it’s snowing outside; big wet clumps of snow coming down, and the drinking crowd is chafing about having to stick around for a group photo… there was a really weird vibe towards the end of that event.

Me and two other troops caught a taxi back to the Retreat Center (thankfully I’d stashed a 10,000₩ bill away for just that purpose), and went to sleep.  Luckily, none of the others missed curfew… that would’ve been a real mess.

Following morning we get breakfast, most of the snow has already melted away, we get one more class on Trust/Power Dynamics for Soldiers, there’s a brief AAR, and it’s back on the bus to head home.  I think I’ll probably sign up for the Retreat planned in December, too.  The first time you try to do anything, it doesn’t always go according to plan… next time should run a lot smoother.

So, I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving Dinner here on post, with the Officers & Senior NCOs all working the serving lines in their dress blues… that should make for some fun photos.

Well, whaddya’ know… I’ve actually got a subscriber to the feed from my blog.  I have no idea who it actually is, of course, since they didn’t respond to my email when they registered, but hey, it’s something.  Hi, ado****51! (I’m not listing the full name to prevent crawlerbots from harassing that person).

So, I get to wondering who else (if anyone) is reading my minor-league ramblings, and I decided to check my stats page and look up a few IP addresses for location.  I’ve got one-or-two readers in California, and someone in Washington D.C. is reading too.  (The D.C. one doesn’t surprise me  (see edit) … probably a Dept. of the Army rep who’s just making sure I’m not leaking operational details.  Whoever you are, hope you’re enjoying the show, and if you’ve got any suggestions or guidelines, I’d be happy to hear them.  Email me via the address in the “About this Website” page.)  Aside from that, someone in Seoul is reading (again, probably a govenment functionary; that’s the fun of blogging about life in another country, complicated by the fact that I’ve identified myself as a U.S. Soldier).

It’s actually a bit amusing about who takes interest in my writings, and why.  Current SOFA (Status Of Forces Agreements) mandates that U.S. Personnel aren’t allowed to malign the host government or people, Army regs are fairly restrictive about what topics I can speak out on in an official capacity (ZERO… let’s make it clear here, all opinions on this site are solely those of the Author, and do not constitute official representation of the unit, the US Army, the United States Government, or anyone other than myself).

And, as far as Korea goes, the only negative opinions I’ve gained of Korea thus far is that the peninsula gets viciously cold in the winter (we got some snow last night), and those silkworm pupae snacks the street-vendors sell are food that I refuse to eat.

Not much else happening tonight… tomorrow, you’ll get some new photographs and a story.

(Update 24 NOV 07: New info on my few readers via Geobytes ( http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm ), yeah I’ve got a few in California, though the one I thought was in D.C. is actually in New York (that IP is owned by someone in D.C.), and I’ve got someone in Canada who also reads… probably friends J. & E. (& little K!)… Hi, guys!  I can now brag about being Coast-to-Coast and International… yeah… to all of six or seven people.)

John Dvorak is an editor for PC Magazine, and he wrote a column several years ago titled Free Porn Magic For You!, discussing the topic of misleading headlines, and keyword searches in Web Search Engines.  It’s a fun, well-written piece, and can be found online here…

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1752122,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K000

Why do I mention this?  Shamelessly plugging someone else’s work?  Because of the keyword search value… who knows?  Maybe this will attract some new readers?  Maybe this will just irritate people searching for free porn?

I don’t care.  On with the show.

This weekend, I did a whole lot of nothing, and it was good.  For those who expected more pictures of Korean stuff, you’ll have to wait… sorry.  The only noteworthy event of the past three days was a fire-alarm in the barracks at 04:00, and to the sumbitch who pulled the alarm, you’d better hope nobody finds out who you are… the whole barracks was rather upset at having to evacuate the building and stand in formation in 38-degree weather at 04:00 in the flippin’ morning.

 So, I finally got internet access installed in my room, and aside from downloading necessary software (stuff from Army websites necessary for my job, a few key Freeware utilities, etc.) I also spent more-than-a-few hours this weekend surfing for pornography (hey, I’m a single soldier in a barracks, not a plaster saint… whaddya expect?).

You can find anything you want on the Internet… as long as what you want is pornography.

Actually, you can’t find everything you want via the internet here in Korea…. one of the sites I hit carried me on a referral link to someplace the Koreans have laws against… I got some kind of popup screen with writing in Hangul and the crest of the National Police.  Needless to say, I shut down the referring page.  Best to not cause a diplomatic incident just for looking for pictures of nekkid women.

So, I’m surfing along…. nah, don’t like that one…. nah, crummy photograph quality… nah, not into midgets… etc, and I hit a webpage with photos of  some amateur girl from Australia.  Some website called Abby Normal or something (actually, I do remember the name, but I’m not posting it here to avoid search-engine problems).  A series of shots of a brunette undressing in a kitchen, and I was smitten with the fact that she was probably the most real-looking girl I’d seen on the web all weekend.

The photo I’ve posted here is modified to comply with fair-usage rules.  Notice her, in terms of nudie photos… there’s no silicone, no heavy eyeliner, no superteased hair, and she’s got a fair healthy body-fat-percentage.  Most of the women on the planet would be happy to look this good, but most guys would just cruise right past her photos, looking for some peroxide blonde with 20k of cosmetic surgery.

To the anonymous girl from Australia, Right On!  As the highest true male chauvinistic complement, I’d Do You, And Not Only Would I Do You, I’d Even Call Back A Couple Of Times Over The Next Few Days Just To Talk And Try And Get A Second Date.

Other than that, nothing much happened this weekend.

Haven’t posted in a while… lotsa’  stuff happens in two weeks’ time.   Let’s see…

Wednesday, the 24th, we had a USO-tour come through Camp Hovey… some country band named ‘Bomshel’, though they were only marginally country (one of their set-numbers was a cover of No Doubt’s Just A Girl).   I got some good pictures.
Thursday the 25th was mandatory Cold Weather Safety Training all day… BO-RING!
Friday night of the 26th we had a Hail & Farewell for SGT Woods, one of our NCO’s who’s PCS-ing to Ft. Stewart.  I stuck around for the chicken wings, the ceremonial parts, and some of the toasts, but when it began turning into a drunk-fest, I had to leave.
 
Technically, I am now an actual Professional photographer.  Our company First Sergeant paid me for copies of the photos I took of the Bomshel concert… granted, it was only $1 to cover the cost of the CD-ROM I copied them to, but it’s my first dollar, dammit, and I’m getting it framed.  Annie Liebowitz, look out. 

This Friday, I go up to Brigade S-1 to get all my promotion points fixed, all my old records input on my ERB, and aside from that, the real excitement is enrolling for Tae Kwon Do classes here on-post (hey, the Koreans invented the artform… might as well learn it here).  The classes are free, but the uniform costs $160.00… thankfully they’ll let me pay for it after payday.  We tested for our Yellow Belts Friday morning, and I’m happy to say that I passed… I am now, officially, G.I. Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip.

This past weekend was a pretty good one for me; Saturday was another foray into Seoul with PFC Choi and PV2 Bernard, this time to visit Gyeongbokgung Palace and take Bernard to some music-store mall to shop for a guitar effects pedal.  The palace is impressive, even moreso considering that they had to rebuild much of it from 1949 on, to restore/replace what the Japanese had destroyed during their colonial occupation of the country (the second time the Japanese trashed the place… first time was in 1592).  The weather was gorgeous, many good pictures were taken, and the restaurant meal afterwards was only so-so.  Regardless, a good day.
 

Most Korean shopping malls are unlike American malls in-that they specialize in one variety of merchandise.  Dongdaemun was all about clothing, Yongsan was all about electronic devices, and Gyeongbokgung is all about musical instruments.  Next time I go to one of these places I’ll have to get pictures to post… imagine 60+ vendors inside a two-block-long building selling all manner of one thing.  It’s weird to see that many pianos in one location.

 
Otherwise, life is still going well for me… scuttlebutt today is that they’re looking to lateral-promote me to Corporal, and transfer me to Bravo “Blackfoot” Troop to take over as the medic NCO for that element.  It’s normally an E-6 position, which would look good on my NCOER, and it’s not like I’ve had a long time to get settled-in here in HHT… we’ll see what happens.  Hopefully, I’ll make the cutoff score for E-5 in December, and will have hard stripes soon.

And that’s pretty-much the story for now… gotta’ get some sleep; it’s 03:45 here.

Take ‘er easy, people.

Well, it was a long week, followed by an interesting weekend.  All last week I was in Field Sanitation Class, laughably easy since most of what is taught is part of 68W… other than the stuff about inspecting a Water Trailer, and how to chlorinate it for safe drinking.  High point of that class was having to give a 3-5min presentation on the health-hazard of your choosing.  Had to sit through five different briefings on frostbite, and then I got up and knocked ‘em off their seats with a briefing about Depleted Uranium munitions.  Even had a fun l’il slideshow with lotsa’ gross pictures of birth-defect cases.

Saturday I was supposed to have joined an MWR bus-trip down to Dongdaemun, a shopping district down in Seoul.  The trip got cancelled due to lack of interest, but as I was griping about it, PFC Choi, one of our KATUSAs (Korean Augmentee To United States Army), volunteered to act as a tour-guide/translator.  Sunday the two of us took off for Seoul, hitting Dongdaemun and Yongsan to shop.

Now, Dongdaemun’s all about clothing.  Three major malls, and about six square blocks of street-vendors.  Additionally, they’ve got a ton of street-food vendors, selling everything from normal ribs and chicken to various bits of seafood on skewers, to boiled silkworm pupae in gravy.  Needless to say, I passed on the silkworm… Choi agreed with me.  He may be Korean, but he’s not up for eating bugs either.  Only street-snack I partook of was some kind of fish, and I haven’t thrown up within the past 24, so I think I’m safe.

Funniest event of the day was walking around Dongdaemun… we find this street-art sculpture of this bronze cartoon-looking monkey wielding a box wrench.  I snap a few photos and then check the base of the sculpture.  There’s a plaque, but it’s written in Hangul, so I ask Choi, “Hey, can you translate for me, please?”

Choi looks at me askew and pauses before telling me, “It says ‘Please Don’t Throw Your Cigarette Butts Here.’”

All I could do was laugh.  It turns out that street-sculpture in Korea is kinda’ like decorating your living-room… they don’t care about what the sculpture’s called or the artist’s name, they just want something that looks cool.

I didn’t want to buy clothing that day, so we hopped a taxi to Yongsan, which is apparantly the electronic-wholesale-outlet-nerve-center of Korea.  Lotsa’ cool toys, but for me?  I finally found a decent desk lamp, which was followed by sushi for dinner and then a long train-ride back to Camp Hovey.

Choi’s an agreeable kid, speaks fluent English, and he’s willing to continue this schtick as a guide/translator as long as we’re up for it.  Next weekend will probably involve a mass-platoon trip to Seoul to some cool restaurant at the top of a tower overlooking the city.  All we have to do is split the costs of Choi’s train fare and food, since KATUSAs only make around $62.00/month.  No shit.

Other exciting news is that I’m now Promotable.  Yup, it’s SPC(P)  now… somewhere, in some DA computer, there’s a flag set showing that I passed the E-5 board, and since I didn’t lose the rank due to UCMJ action, I’m on the company’s Promotable Personnel roster.  Means I don’t have to go to the Board again… cool, huh?  What it does mean, though, is that I’ve got an appointment at Brigade S-1 to get my ERB updated… it don’t show any of my records from my previous service; none of my awards, no secondary MOS, no previous duty-stations, none of my schools, nothing.  Scuttlebutt this morning amongst the NCOs is that they’re looking to lateral me to Corporal, since we’re about to lose two of our E-5s.

Aside from that, I finally received my laptop yesterday, though I’m doing this on the library computer… I still don’t have an antivirus program installed yet, and I’m not taking her online until I do.