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.

Major weirdness in Korean telecomms…

So, I’m sitting in my room last night, and I get this text-message on my cellphone… something like “Tonight I give all my love to you thise night, sealed with a kiss.” Complete with the misspelling.

I’m thinking that somebody’s Drinky-girl girlfriend has dialed my number by accident, so I text back “WHO IS THIS???”

Text comes back from that number, “I like to linger with you, but you want to be there,,,”
I respond “Who is this? Are you sure you dialed the right number?”

Response comes back, “Hit me baby one more time to my cold heart,” and that’s when I figure it out… I’m getting spammed. Apparantly cellphone spam is enough of a problem over here that there’s a function pre-programmed into cellphones to report the source to the phone company. I didn’t get any more texts from that number, but I’m dreading the possibility that the spammer may now have my number on a list that will be sold to another spammer. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen.

So, I went shopping for a laptop computer at the PX when I arrived in-country, and their selection was really lame. Undeterred, I got online and checked the AAFES (Army & Air Force Exchange Service) website to see what they offered, and found the laptop I wanted… a Sony VAIO. Ordered the item on 19 SEP, the $1299.00 was debited from my account immediately, and I was sent two confirmation emails that the item would be shipped directly from the vendor on 03 OCT.

It comes around to 05 OCT and there’s no notification of shipping, nor a tracking number for UPS associated with the order on AAFES’ website, so I pop off an email to AAFES asking ‘What’s up?’

I get a response saying, “It was supposed to ship on 04 OCT… give it a few more days.” That’s like saying “the check’s in the mail.”

09 OCT rolls around, still no shipping info, so I email again, asking for a phone# I can call to see if they’ve even shipped it yet. I get a response within 24 hours, but it’s from some functionary saying “I forwarded your message to the person who works with that vendor, and asked them to email you.”

10 OCT I get an email from the next person, saying “I’ve contacted the vendor, and should have a response from them soon.”

11 OCT I get an email saying “I’m glad to say your order was processed yesterday, and they should be shipping it very soon.” I respond by asking whether the vendor is going to upgrade the shipping to priority to compensate for their delay in processing my order.

Today, the 13th, I get an email stating “the date of 3 Oct 07 you received when you placed the order was an expected ship date. That date was not guaranteed. Unfortunately the vendor will not be upgrading the shipping” with a pat apology.

The money was debited from my account within five minutes of my placing the order online. It’s now 25 days later, and they still haven’t even shipped it yet???

If there are any other US Servicemembers who read this thread, I highly advise that you avoid AAFES-dot-com and take your business elsewhere. They’re just like any other corporate entity… once they’ve gotten your money, they don’t give a flyin’ fig about you as a customer, and will happily stall you, give you the runaround, and tell you “oh, that wasn’t guaranteed” rather than try and be truly helpful.

Caveat-flippin’-Emptor.

(Update: 19 OCT - Finally get an email from some lady at AAFES’ Quality Assurance Dept. stating that the laptop was shipped on the 12th, but tracking is not available, since it went USPS.  Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery.  Final verdict?  AAFES sux.)

Yesterday, I got to walk around the meagre shopping-district outside the gates of Camp Casey, here in Dongducheon. I was hoping to find a good desk-lamp, and maybe some wall-art for the room. (Since I’ve been here for less-than 30 days, I had to be escorted by an NCO… SGT Morton, whose off-post experience is barely more than mine).

By my observations, the bulk of what’s for-sale in the area just outside of the gate is Phone Cards, Used Electronics, Hip-hop Fashions, and Filipino Juicy-girls. (A “Juicy-girl” is one of those barflies who try to get GI’s to buy them overpriced drinks, usually as a prelude to prostitution. The term is a corruption of the Hangul words “joo say,” meaning ‘a drink.’ According to reports, most of the Juicys around Camp Casey are Filipino… at least the ones giving me and SGT Morton the come-on through the club doors were.)

It looks like if I want to get a decent desk-lamp, I’ll have to catch the train to Seoul.
(First one who gives me a ‘Seoul Train!’ pun gets slapped…)

The real amusement for today, though, is here at the CyberCafe on post, and requires a bit of understanding of hexadecimal math and simple computer programming to appreciate.

For all you non-geeks out there: Hexadecimal math is Base-16, a legacy of the old 16-bit operating systems that were used back-in-the-day (the last mainline 16-bit OS was Windows 3.11). Hex coding is still used by many less-than-stellar programmers to develop new apps, but it has its flaws, one of them being how to handle Negative Integers.

Now, normally there is no provision for negative numbers in Hexadecimal… the programmer will have to assign a switch prior to the numbers to be able to accomodate subtractions below zero, but it’s a complicated process. Too complicated, apparantly, for whoever wrote the app that controls login and credit time here at the CyberCafe.

I had a card account with less than one hour of time on it, and gave the girl at the counter $3.00 to add another hour. Instead of adding it to my credits, she subtracted it, and then subtracted it again, which rolled the Hexadecimal in the ‘hours’ block backwards into negative space. It seems there is no provision for negative numbers in their Timer/Credit subroutine, and thus, I now have credit for 944,365 hours on my account.

By my math, that means I could stay continuously online here at the CyberCafe for just a little over 107 years. I’d say this constitutes a glitch in their programming, don’t you?
I think I’ll be able to get away with it as long as I don’t attempt to cash the unused credit hours in… which would probably amount to controlling stock in the company.

Or, more-than-enough money to buy a schoolbus-full of Filipino Juicy-girls, complete with the schoolbus.
Or, at least a decent desk-lamp.

(Follow-up: 16 OCT 07 - Sometime today they must’ve run an audit on their User accounts, and corrected the error.  I’m back to paying for terminal-time at the CyberCafe… whatever… I should have a computer in my room soon-enough.)

I had a friend that I don’t think many of you knew about; a lady named Anna whom I worked with at BJC. She was the secretary to the radiologists, a bright, funny, bubbly blonde whom I traded jokes and links with by email… most of the “Tangent Light Link-o-rama” was material that I’d traded with her.

Anyways, just a few months after I was fired from my job at BJC, she was also dismissed from her job with WashU. Her story was similar to mine… personality conflict with a supervisor (layman’s terms, her boss decided she didn’t like her, and began looking for an excuse to fire her). Anna took it pretty hard, and unfortunately sank into a period of depression and heavy drinking that she never quite rebounded from. She spent several periods in rehab, but every time she’d return home she’d start drinking again and not eating right, and it finally cost her life.

Anna died Tuesday, Oct 2nd, the day before her 49th birthday.

I wish there was more that I could have done to help her… I wish there was someone I could easily assign blame to… I wish… I wish my friend was still alive, goddamn it.

Good night, AnnaBanana… I’ll miss you.

Fun with Justice!

AFN has been broadcasting commercials about UCMJ Article 88, one of the Punitive Articles of the UCMJ (meaning, you can get punished for violating it). Article 88 covers Contempt Toward Officials, and only applies to commissioned officers, making it punishable by up to one year imprisonment for “Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

About a year-and-a-half ago, one of my former commanders, Maj. General Paul D. Eaton (ret.) was one of the former generals who spoke out against Donald Rumsfeld, offering astute opinions as to why he should resign. I kinda’ wondered why he hadn’t spoken out about this sooner, but now understanding Article 88, I see why.

A pity… Paul Eaton was probably the best goddamn officer I ever had the good fortune to serve under.

Anyhow, while Article 88 doesn’t apply to Enlisted personnel, we get the exact same coverage under DOD Directive 1344.10 which basically states the same restrictions. While I couldn’t be prosecuted under Article 88 for blogging (just as an example) “George Bush is a f***ing idiot,” I could instead be prosecuted under Article 92 - Disobeying a Direct Order or Regulation. So, for a while, I have to keep almost all of my political opinions to myself.

“…the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present…”

Hmmm… I don’t see the Attorney General on that list… hehehehe…

Alberto Gonzalez is still the antichrist, dammit!!!

Take ‘er easy, people.