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25 Dec 2008
Merry Christmas from Tallil
To all my family and friends, Merry Christmas! Santa came 8 hours earlier here than the East coast of the U.S...he brought me a stocking filled with beef jerky, shampoo, socks, stationary, pringles, candy, a cookie, some candy and several toothbrushes!
We have several wonderful boxes of "any soldier" type care packages because the mail hasn't caught up with us yet. I only posted the APO address a few days ago, but don't lock that in yet! I'm in Tallil right now, but my job is going to be in another camp, serving as the Liaison Officer to our Sustainment Brigade.
I'll post more info once I'm safely there... so let's do a quick review of the hops so far:
1) in-processing for 2 weeks at Ft Jackson, SC.
2) Ordnance refresher for 2.5 weeks at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD.
3) Join the Kansas 287th already mobilized at Ft. Lewis, Washington. 6 weeks there.
4) Ft Lewis to Germany to Kuwait, where we stayed at Camp Buehring for 4 days (most units stay 10-14 days).
5) Buehring to Tallil, Iraq. Meet the commander and the support team here, and got my duty orders.

Five hops in 12 weeks. And number six is coming!

The Internet is super busy tonight, as you can imagine on Christmas. I'll circle back with more photos and hopefully a quick video on living conditions...and an ingenious way some soldiers are rocking out!
 
ACI , Army Deployment , Family , General
posted by  henry at  13:05 | permalink | trackbacks [153]



20 Dec 2008
In Kuwait
We touched down in Kuwait City, Kuwait and were off the plane by 7am. An hour later, we were headed North. It's now 3pm Saturday (7am back in Virginia). We've been assigned a tent, dropped our stuff, and set out to explore. MWR has internet spots for 30 minutes at a whack, so here I am!

It started off this morning about 35 degrees as we exited the plane, but we're around 80 right now. Like a summer day in the Virginia Blue Ridge.

There's a lot of sand here. We agree that someone should plant a tree...
 
ACI , Army Deployment , Family , General
posted by  henry at  07:08 | permalink | trackbacks [255]



18 Dec 2008
Snowbound
Well, we're still in Fort Lewis. The Seattle region has received a week of record lows-- mid 20's, and with only an inch of snow on the ground, the military post and Air Force base are both nearly shut down.
Surprisingly for this Virginia mountain boy, the Northwest-most state in the continental US spends most of its winter around the 40 degree mark. The "pineapple express" Pacific ocean currents keep the temperatures warm near the coast. I haven't even seen any salt on the roads-- meaning it isn't worth the cost to have salt/snow removal vehicles for how rare this is.
The impact on us is that our B, C and D bags are long gone. Our "A" bags were loaded & sealed on a truck yesterday morning, and we're living out of our carry-on. So the packing list and planning pays off, because members of the other unit that's going with us are running to the PX to buy toothbrushes, underwear, shampoo, etc.
So we're hanging out, waiting for the word to go. In the mean time, we've at least got the computer lab two blocks from our off & on barracks. I was able to write a little code to help my blog here: apparantly, some dispicable characters are trying to steal my Google juice by spamming me with comments for pharmaceutical products and fake watches. No more. Comments require approval now. Furthermore, until the 100 posts per night die off (really!), I've disabled commenting. If you'd like me to open any of these blog posts for comments, just email your thoughts to me and I'll post it right away.
It's not like I'm turning away legitimate comments, though. With over 45 posts, there are only 6 relevant comments!
Seattle Times reports record weather: As temperatures dropped this week, electricity use spiked as residents crank up their heaters and other appliances work harder. Puget Sound Energy said Tuesday that its peak electricity load Monday night broke a record set in 1998, and natural-gas use broke a record set in 2006.
 
ACI , Army Deployment , Family , General
posted by  henry at  14:22 | permalink | trackbacks [8347]



15 Dec 2008
Christmas Party at ACI
Saturday was ACI's annual Christmas party. The first one I've missed. Lots of things I've missed for the first time: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and soon Christmas after 20 years of marriage and 12 years of operating ACI. On the other hand, ACI is doing VERY well without me, and our marriage is super-strong. I'm enjoying staying in touch with folks, and the opportunity to serve my country. So many Army buddies have already been deployed 3 or more times!

I do want to take this opportunity to praise my coworkers at ACI (that's everyone!) for doing great in both October and November. We have a monthly open-book financial review, and for the first time, we made a profit in the month of November. Normally, with vacation/holiday, November winds up with a small loss. Plus there's usually not a lot of MatWeb Advertising renewals because customers' budgetss are waiting for the new year. Dale and Laureen overcame those obstacles and continue to do great things. Zero3 supermarket refrigeration controls is on the verge of making some big steps, so the business is going great...wish you were here!, or I was there.
 
ACI , Army Deployment , General
posted by  henry at  00:04 | permalink | trackbacks [64380]



4 Dec 2008
Final Exercises
Over the last week, we’ve had a series of exercises and classes about all hazards in country: from camel spiders to suicide bombers. I had never heard of camel spiders, but the wikipedia entry shows them the size of a ping-pong paddle. They can be about lobster size! Search it on YouTube and the most popular videos are from soldiers in Iraq.
The Army has a program for senior NCOs to stay active-duty for 1-2 years after their deployment, ensuring they impart us newbees with their recently gained wisdom. They have also brought on Arabic-speaking actors, built a small Iraqi village, and run us through scenario-based training for manning the base ECP- Entry Control Point; manning a QRF– Quick Reaction Force; defeating IEDs – Improvised Explosive Devices; conducting presence patrols (connecting with the locals, no acronym for that one!); convoy operations; and an additional day at the range focused on SRM – Short Range Marksmanship. We’re combining it all together today, with a live-fire from our HMMWV convoy (HMMWV is the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, the Hummer. It’s more accurately called the M1151 because we’re using the new up-armored HMMWV’s). Live-fire means we’re using real bullets for our gunners. Tomorrow, we switch back to blanks and run through the convoy STX – Situational Training Exercises. That’s our culminating exercise where we put it all together, interact once again with both friendly and hostile Arabic-speaking civilians, and wrap this Ft Lewis training up.
The Army has a fantastic culture of continuous improvement: after every training event (or real missions), we conduct an AAR– After Action Review. Our emphasis is on “no thin skins” – every voice is equal, and no hurt feelings. It’s about saving lives and improving our mission performance. Organizationally, the Army has a better reputation for this among our sister services in the Navy and Air Force, so hopefully it catches on elsewhere. Certainly in the software-development world, our company has practiced close-out meetings as a required step of each project , or along each milestone for larger projects. No thin-skins, what went well and what ideas for improvement do we have, from the junior to the senior staff, everyone has equal input. Among process development and process improvement quality models, this is always a key component: who else knows better on how to improve than the folks who just did it? Moreover, the best ideas often come from the bottom. What better way to give junior soldiers or staff a real feeling of belonging as they make a positive contribution to the unit?
 
ACI , Army Deployment , General
posted by  henry at  06:45 | permalink | trackbacks [468]





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