It's been a while since I've written, largely because nothing much is going on here, and because I wanted to answer a couple questions that I've been asked repeatedly, and it's a complicated answer, and it's a political answer, and I really want to stay away from politics here.
The longish answers are started at http://republicofmean.blogspot.com. I'll flush the answers out more as have time to put my thoughts into a more or less coherent order.
The questions are basically:
- How are things NOW in Iraq
- How are things GOING TO BE in Iraq
- When will US forces leave Iraq
- They are going good, considering this part of the world and it's history
- How things will be in the future depends A LOT on #3.
- If we're smart 40 years. If we're stupid, 16 months.
In other areas I'm doing well. Now that my teammates are back from their vacations and from a remote install we did in mid January (I held up the desk here while one of them went up to Taji) I have moved back to the 7:30 to 19:30 shift. I've never really liked getting up early, but we can't all come in at the crack of noon. I'm trying to get settled back into a schedule which will make the time pass better, but when you AT work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, but there's only enough work at any given time for about 5 hours of steady progress it's kinda tough.
Work is sort of slow right now, between being very careful during the election and ballot counting times, and having sort of a hold on major projects while the main Army Unit running this joint transitions out and a new unit transitions in, we aren't running around the country doing installs so we have the whole team (all three of us) here and doing day to day maintenance and smaller stuff. If I could automate this stuff to the extent of my skills and abilities and disregarding those who came after me it would be even less work, but that would probably require violating several government security guidlines and doing more with Unix/Linux than they want in this position.
It seems that the "worst" of the cold weather is behind us, and we're starting to get the insurgents out of their mom's basements again. Or whatever the Iraq equivalent of living in one's mothers basement is. We had a mortar hit over on camp liberty week before last, and there was some sort of a alert last week. They usually get one or two shots out of the tube. If they stick around for three it's usually fatal. It is happening less and less though--I still haven't seen or heard any "enemy" action since I've been here.
The superbowl was (as you all are probably aware) last night (from my perspective it was this morning). Some General somewhere decided that beer would be served. Two per person. This caused much rejoicing in the ranks. Then they decided that this did not include Contractors. Which was mildly annoying to most of us, though for me it was tempered by not caring much for beer, not intending to stay up and watch the superbowl (which started at something like 2AM local). It does seem rather spiteful though. At least they could have let us BUY our beers.
The Government/State Department just signed the Option Year bit of our contract, so we're on for another year. It is VERY unlikely that I'll be here to see the end of that--I'm really missing my wife and daughter and looking forward to seeing them in March.
Speaking of which, here are some video's of the little one (these work best in order):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87853758@N00/3238942841/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87853758@N00/3239787100/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87853758@N00/3238953549/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87853758@N00/3239795732/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87853758@N00/3234616526/
The whole family (Barb, Helen, Alison and I) will be going to Italy for a vacation in March, we're going to spend two or three days in Rome, then two or three days in Milan, then send Alison home and we'll head south for another week and a half of the tourist life before I come back here.
This will be my first time out of the country as anything other than a boot on the neck of the freedom loving oppressed of the world, so it will be interesting. That and I don't speak a lick of Italian.
I've pretty much decided that unless something *very* interesting is available in Afghanistan for 6 months I'm going to go home and pursue more education. Not sure exactly what field, but try to get into something where you don't get dumber as you get older.
I saw two Osprey's taking off earlier. The Marine Corps Bird of Prey, not the fish eating bird of prey.
They have a very distinct profile. I hope the Marines get them working properly. They won't give up until they do.
Anyway, I've got some pictures to post and I'll try to find something more interesting to write about than eat-sleep-work-exercise-eat-sleep.
Regards,
Petro.
:wq
