Increasing Productivity

We are turning the JOC into a garage gym.

I like the think that I inspired it, in part. When I go to the bathroom, I hit the pull-up/dip tower for a few sets. It's on the way. No matter what happens to my morning or evening PT time, I get at least those sets in.

One of the guys saw me doing it and decided it was a good idea. But having to walk outside was inconvenient.

So he is working with our engineers to have pull-up/dip tower put in on the JOC floor. He also found a stash of kettlebells that appeared to be collecting dust. Another guy found some extra gym mat material lying around too.

It's all government property so it is not stealing. We are simply reallocating resources in order to be more efficient with what the tax payers have so graciously given us.

It could of course end in disaster.

Army, Navy, and Air Force guys... public forum... PT... competitive nature... it will be fun to watch.

I, of course, won't be sucked into any immature contests. Not me. Not as one of the token Air Force guys and representative of the Special Tactics community. Nope.

It's a healthy outlet.

And it is not all meatheaded games in the JOC. One of the SEALs is watching a Discovery Channel documentary series about the Earth. He's actually taking extensive notes and making a test on it.

He may actually give us the test.

At first he was being made fun of... but now everyone is watching over his shoulder.

Baby grizzlies are cute. And Snow Leopards are awesome. Apparently that footage from Pakistan was the first time they were ever filmed in the wild.

Watch Out Coach

Michigan Football is not in the top 25 going in to this season.

Last season their record was worse than it has ever been before.

The season hasn't even started and their are apparently reports that last season's success and this season's expectations were built on a practice and workout regime that exceeded NCAA maximums.

There is a very experienced SEAL here who is even less amused about this than I am.

He points the finger straight at the head coach for changing everything before even trying to figure out what worked. Now the coach has quite possibly killed recruiting for the next few years on top of the current damage done to the program.

I don't know. A lot of players and staff jumped ship before giving Rodriguez a chance.

At least that is our ill-informed understanding of events.

But all is not lost here in Iraq.

One guy has been taking a lot of heat for his silly mustache. In fact, he inspired me to grow a silly mustache.

To strike back at his tormentors he drew a mustache on one of their ID cards. Now the mustachioed vigilante's ID card has been stolen and hidden.

The cycle of violence continues... will we ever learn?

I will say that he was right about the mustache. Even the must mudane social interactions are funnier.

Green is Unbecoming...

I admit it. I'm jealous of my counterpart in Afghanistan. He'll complain about being stuck working in a Operations Center too.

But he isn't.

Most of the time he's working a desk. But he also gets to go out and play somewhat regularly. His complaints about staff work ring hollow when he is just coming back from a mission.

One of the enlisted guys was teasing me about it, saying that I'm an officer and that I should embrace it.

I told him that he's right, but that my narrow window in my career to gain real field experience is closing. He knows, and said that I'll join the ranks of many other officers who don't really know how things are supposed to be and that my NCOs will quietly clean up any messes I make in my ignorance before anything really bad happens.

He made me feel much better.

I do like the big picture officer stuff. I like being responsible for the training and readiness of my team. I like putting it all together.

But one of my goals as a leader is to be ready, willing, and able to go whereever I may have to send my guys or my team mates. Unfortunately the actual opporunity to physically lead from the front seems to be eluding me.

So it goes.

It's also a funny time here. Some of the new guys aren't so new anymore and so they are hitting the initial wall. Now they are very comfortable with their jobs and are realizing that they will be doing that same thing every day over and over and over and over.... it's no longer new and exciting and so their morale is taking a slight hit.

It's a pretty normal pattern. One guy was comparing the daily routine to prison. There are big fences. Guards. Set work hours and details.

I told him that prisons have indoor plumbing, you can get alcohol (ok, so it was brewed in a toilet-still...), and your family can visit.

Me and the NCO that was boosting my morale, we are flying home on the same bird out of here. So soon, yet so far away. Now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, time seems to be stopping some.

Also pretty normal, I think.

Must have just been one of those days for everyone.

Every now and then I guess the repetive nature of things here gets to be a little much. But we have warm food, running (if not necessarily potable) water, hot showers, beds, roofs, and there really aren't that many people trying to kill us at the moment. It's really not that bad.

It's just a bunch of sheepdogs stuck in a cage I guess. And we don't like it. But it's our job and we'll do it to the best of our abilities like any other mission.

My Iraqistache

One of the guys here has a mustache. He grew it just for this trip. He was smart and did the embarrassing act of growing it while at home and in-transit.

Now he just has to deal with the embarrassing part of, well, having a mustache.

I think since Teddy Roosevelt we've had a shortage of officers who can pull off a mustache.

I am not one of them.

But I'm gonna do it anyway.

Why not? I have no one to impress here and it seems like something fun to do. The guy with the mustache says it will improve my morale. Everytime I look in the mirror I'll laugh. Everytime someone looks at me, they'll laugh (more so).

Win/win.

It also seems like a nifty way to celebrate my last few weeks here.

I announced it in the JOC. I got my wife's blessing. I'm posting it here.

Guess I have to follow through now.

What horse are you?

One of the guys got a haircut today. This made it apparent to all that there weren't that many hairs to be cut.

In defense of balding warriors everywhere, he felt the need to recite a list of bald characters that no one would mess with.

Bruce Willis is bald. He even played a bald SEAL.

Sean Connery, who may have played a former member of the British Special Boat Service (roughly speaking, a British SEAL) in The Rock, is bald or at least has played balding characters.

Ed Harris, though he played a Marine in that movie, made his list.

And Vin Diesel also played a SEAL in The Pacifier.

It was quickly pointed out that those were all fictional characters. One of the larger Special Forces guys pointed out that our real balding SEAL is too long and lean to be legendary.

The Special Forces guy said that if the SEAL would start lifting more, the SF guy would do more aerobic. They'd meet in the middle.

The SEAL took umbrage. He said he was strong enough to do whatever he needed to do and didn't want to sacrifice endurance.

Eager to be helpful, I egged each guy on.

First the SEAL claimed to be a racehorse. Then he was told he was more of a greyhound.

Somehow I went from being a little Clydesdale to a Shetland Pony.

According to wikipedia, "Shetland ponies have heavy coats, short legs and are considered quite intelligent. They are a very strong breed of pony, used for riding, driving, and pack purposes."

So I guess it's mostly a complement, or at least in keeping with the small Clydesdale metaphor, unless he was calling me hairy.

Other major developments of the day include the revelation that there is only one type of fresh water seal (the aquatic mammal, not the Frogman variety). It apparently lives in a lake in Russia. The largest lake in the world.

It was also decided, while the freshwater seal was being researched on the World Wildlife Federation web page, that Pandas aren't cool. They are helpless when born, even by human standards, have a crappy diet, and won't reproduce to save themselves.

Koalas, however, are cool cause they nature's stoners getting high of eucalyptus while they chill in the trees.

Paperwork

Today's grand accomplishments involved paperwork.

I resubmitted supply paperwork with the proper signatures. Now it can be passed around, signed by more people, and then hopefully passed to the guy with the purchasing authority.

I foolishly thought I'd have the equipment in hand by now when I was told it would be no problem a few weeks ago. Now I'll be lucky if we have it before I leave.

This led to a bunch of us complaining about the silly supply and budget bureaucracies in the military. You can use this ammo, but not that ammo because that ammo was purchased from a different type of funds. You can buy this more expensive jacket with these funds, but not the cheaper just as effective one because it's part of a different program that needs different funds.

It's a dark art.

I'm still waiting for the paperwork to get bounced back to me again because something isn't right. Which would be mildly amusing because I've had two different supply guys look over my shoulder while I filled it out, and the guy who would be bouncing it back this time is one of those two.

I also re-learned that valuable lesson of always going to the man who is actually in charge and not the man formally in charge. In most military organizations, that is the operations senior NCO. He will tell you who to go to and tell the boss if it is something that must be done.

One of my projects got stalled waiting in the operations officer's inbox. I forwarded it to the NCO.

Then magic happpened.

I am pretty confident that the NCOs get more crap dumped on them and more junk filling their inboxes than the officers they shelter. But they seem to get through it all a lot faster.

Generally speaking, any positive adjective used to describe an officer is really a description of the NCOs working damn hard to make that officer look good.

Not that there aren't some true winners in the NCO corps. Just like there are some complete morons earning officer pay... the jury still being out on this one.

But as a whole, if an officer can provide the necessary top cover, command direction, and then get out of the way... the NCOs will get the job done, and do it well.

Which I guess brings me back around to the supply NCOs I've been working with. Most of my problems are probably the result of not being as smart as I should be on their voodoo. Yes, a weatherman just called someone else's job voodoo. They definitely know their stuff, manage multiple systems, and none of them have been arrested to the best of my knowledge.

Still, I want my stuff.

And in my world, an easy purchase involved going to a store or website, throwing something in my cart, and checking out. It doesn't involve a staffing sheet that needs the commanders of multiple sections to sign it. It doesn't involve writing a justification memo for yet another person to sign. And it definitely doesn't involve doing that all twice.

And so I complained about supply.

But all is forgiven because they manange to maintain an endless supply of cookies 'n cream.

Homestretch

I realized that we're entering the homestretch here. The shift is subtle as we start making contact with our replacements, we start getting their arrival dates, and our discussions are more about transition planning than our own current work.

I know my replacement. It'll be an pretty easy hand-off since he's been here before.

I always talk about how small this community is but every now and then I still get surprised. The titles seem to change but the names really don't.

Right now on one of my projects I am coordinating with two people back home. One of them I worked with pretty often in his last job and even went to a training course with him. The other guy I've also worked with before pretty extensively in his last job and am now doing some planning work for him again.

It's a mixed blessing, but I think I've got a good working relationship with both of them. If not, it's real easy to ruin your reputation because everyone knows everyone. One stupid mistake and it will unfortunately follow you forever.

Deadly serious adult games governed by middle school playground politics.

Lest you think I'm joking, last night in the JOC one of the Air Force ground warfare guys hid an Air Force pilot's stash of Diet Pepsis. The pilot, a fighter guy who has mostly worked air to air combat in the past, does not have a lot of experience working with us ground guys. He dared the Air Force NCO to throw out the hidden Pepsis.

He actually double dog dared him.

Really. Those exact words.

So the NCO threw out the Pepsis. I'd have done the same thing.

The only reason I found out about it was that the pilot was impressed and wanted to buy the NCO a beer. But we are in Iraq and while we are trusted to limitless ammunition we are not trusted with even limited amounts of alcohol.

So the pilot, showing the resourcefulness and outside-the-box thinking we demand of our leaders, burried the NCO's desk in cans of near-beer.

Most of us on the day shift had no idea why there were so many Coors Cutters on this particular NCO's desk. The cryptic note left by the pilot was our only assurance that the NCO wasn't planning on drinking 30 near beers in the hope that he'd get buzzed by the cumulative effect of the .03% alcohol content.

I have no doubt some Private has almost blown out his bladder trying that.

Also, on the way back from dinner an experienced Army Special Forces Senior NCO and a Navy SEAL officer essentially reenacted the scene from Forty Year Old Virgin where two of the characters went on riff explaining how the knew the other, um, preferred the company of men.

Sleep well knowing that we are safeguarding your freedom.