Petro's Great Adventure VI

Hello again.

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:

1. How are things NOW in Iraq
2. How are things GOING TO BE in Iraq
   
3. When will US forces leave Iraq

Short answers:

1. They are going good, considering this part of the world and it's history
2. How things will be in the future depends A LOT on #3.
   
3. If we're smart 40 years. If we're stupid, 16 months.
   

Anyway, my line of reasoning is elsewhere, or at least the start of it is. When you have problems of Culture, Politics, Economics and Religion there are no simple answers and no easy solutions.

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

Petro's Great Adventure V, Happy new year.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccpetro/3153920303/

Yeah, I know, I just wrote.

And nothing new has happened.

But it's a holiday, and I'm sitting here watching a progress meter CRAWL across the bottom of the screen, so I've got nothing better to do.

Many of you have heard my hammer theory of complexity at one time or another. Partially this theory owes its insight to Greg McNutt, and partially to being in the trenches of IT/System Administration for WELL over a decade now.

Basically it goes like this:

How many parts does a traditional hammer have?

No, actually it has three parts (I know some of you answered three, but most people forget about the little wedgey bit that actually provides the pressure to keep everything together).

A Hammer, the most basic multi-part tool is a very simple system, and when it starts to go wrong, you can relatively easily determine what is going wrong and fix it. It's either the handle, the head, the wedge, or the user.

In most systems it's usually the user. But, as I am wont to do, I digress.

As you add complexity to a system--add parts to a tool--it gets harder and hard not only to figure out what is malfunctioning, it gets harder to tell IF something is malfunctioning.

I'm certain there is a line, made up of several curves that could describe this, but it's not linear, nor is it smoothly no-linear.

For instance Pliers also have three parts (two handles and the pivot pin), and it's much harder to tell what has gone wrong.

Sometimes with complex systems it's easy to tell. When you plug a 120volt/60hz piece of electronics into 220/50hz mains, and the lights go out and there is the smell of smoke you can be relatively certain that what you have is NOT a mild performance problem.

However, when you are looking at a stack of Dell 2xxx servers each with dual dual core CPUs, internal RAID systems, dual Fiber Channel Host Bus Adapters hook multi-pathed into a pair of 4gb SAN Switches talking to two or three SAN Storage Arrays each with redundant storage processors hooked up to disk array enclosures of different speeds with different drives (not in one DAE, That Would Be Wrong, but in different DAEs), and you're running VMware's enterprise server on that stack of Dells, and you've got a 1950 running Virtual Center to control them, and, and, and...

At some level you're just glad it's mostly working. There's a lot of parts in there, and there's really no one (Other than maybe the World Renown Jacob Cherkas, and even he's wrong about once a week or so) who can look at the totality of the tool and tell you it's right, it's wrong, or it's in the middle.

I mean, it's running slow? How would you know? Maybe if you were to get the whole system stable for a week and bench lined it then you'd know...nothing. You'd know what it did THAT week. The next week you changed a bunch of stuff and invalidated your benchmark.

So is the tool broken? In one sense it's pretty easy--if you're still driving nails, it's working. Assuming you're using a hammer. If your pliers are driving nails, things might not be right.

Speaking of tools, now that I'm getting off that subject, one of the odd things about this part of the middle east is their paper products.

One issue that comes up from time to time in the states is that the toilet paper might approach the texture and heft of a paper towel. This is often the case in the military and in government buildings where the people who do the purchasing don't really have to live with the results.

Here it's the opposite. Sort of.

The toilet paper we use is very similar to the kind the military gets back in the states. It's not *quite* John Wayne paper, but it's not Charmin.

Apparently, however, Middle Easterners don't really distinguish between toilet paper, facial tissue and paper towels. They use mostly the same stuff to handle all three or more jobs.

Which is annoying because they still allocate the paper towels as if two or three would get the job done, when in fact it takes a LOT more sheets of the soft stuff to absorb the water that one or two thicker sheets would.

Go wash your hands, then try to dry them with kleenex (use the kind without embedded lotion for greatest accuracy). Now go back and wash off the remaining little bits of tissue on your hands, and shake your hands over the trash can until MOST of the water is off, and wipe your hands on your trousers.

The annoying part is that some parts of the base have good paper towels (The Gym, and the Chow Hall, which has a big room full of sinks that one must walk through to get into the facility with plenty of hot water and both kinds of paper towels), and others don't (Work and trailer restroom facilities).

Yeah, it's that good here. The worst I can find to gripe about are the paper towels...No, that's not the worst, but the rest of the stuff was to be expected.

I've been reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver on my Kindle (http://www.amazon.com/Quicksilver-Baroque-Cycle-Vol-1/dp/0060593083/ and http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-kindle/dp/B000FI73MA ) (Yeah, I also have it in Paperback, but not here).

If you haven't read it...It's largely a historical novel of some degree or other accuracy about science and pseudo-science and economics (which is neither) and sex and violence and such.

A lot of the characters in the book have the same names and occupations as "real" people in history--Newton and Huygens and Leibniz and others whose names aren't as familiar.

Anyway, the last set of "Security Focus" newsletters I've gotten have had the quote: "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants," by Issac Netwon (the real one, not the caricature character in the book) is quoted.

This made me think.

Or rather it made me think about something else.

Do we *really* see further because we're standing on the shoulders of giants, or do we see further because those "giants" spent a lot of time tearing down the trees and leveling the mountains of Ain't So.

I mean we used to know a LOT of things that just weren't so. If you know that The Earth is the center of the universe, and that drinking mercury is good for your health, and all the stuff that goes with that, then you have spent a lot of time looking at stuff that isn't real. Once you start ripping apart the incorrect theories you can see a lot more plainly.

Maybe we shouldn't call it occam's razor, but rather Occam's axe, or Occam's shovel.

Anyway, I kinda lied to Bob a couple weeks ago. Sorry about that.

He had asked me what there was to do in my free time, and I completely forgot there is a "Moral, Welfare and Recreation" facility on base. This goes by the name (of course) of "The MWR". They supposedly have stuff to do there, and even (allegedly) offer dancing lessons (mostly Latin/jazz/salsa). One of the features is (no kidding) "Indoor bathroom Facilities".

I'll try to remember to stop by there in my copious free time and get a more exhaustive list of what they offer.

For those that are wondering, Most of my time is either here (72+ hours a week) or sleeping (42+ hours a week). Some reading (as above) and some working out in the gym (at least every other day) and of course the random internet wanderings.


Anyway, have a happy new year.
Regards,
Petro.
:wq

Merry Christmas from Baghdad (Petro's Great Adventure IV)

This is going out to a lot broader audience that I-III, so if the Baghdad part surprises you, or you wonder what that's all about see http://petroiniraq.blogspot.com for more details.

Life where I am now isn't bad. It's not even particularly uncomfortable compared to what most of the world has to endure. My bed, though a bit lumpy and worn, is free from vermin. I have ready access to clean running water (Hot *AND* Cold, AND flush toilets). The food, though plain, is safe to eat (how healthy it is is debatable, but there is a lot of debate about what is healthy anyway).

I have very little to complain about compared to the average person on this planet. Even that which vexes me most--the separation from my wife and children--is only temporary and totally my choice.

This isn't true of all the military and contractors here in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've got troops out in places where "comfortable" means a 20 man tent and a cot--at least they aren't sleeping on the ground. Where using a porta-potty is great because they don't have to dig the hole. And where rain is the closest thing they see to a shower for weeks at a time. And the food is at best T-Rats. Eating MREs for long periods of time sucks. Not as much as they used to, and they can be down right tasty, but they do suck day in and day out. T-Rats however suck so bad that most soldiers who've been exposed to them won't even talk about it. The memories are just too painful.

And there are contractors of various of sorts in many of these places.

The moral of the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen that I work with and around continues to amaze me. Lt. Colonel DeLange(USAF) the Enterprise Ops Chief and Lt. Pool (USN) are here today at their desk. CW02 Anderson (US Army) is as well. All three dedicated professionals. Well over half the people still here (meaning not out of the country on leave) came in today to work in spite of our being authorized "Minimum Manning Levels" (meaning 2 people to handle the phones/emergencies).

An incredible percentage of military personnel--both American and other countries (the British and Australian are the largest two other contingents here on Victory, with Turkey, Japan, and Albania having a noticeable presence as well)--wish you a good day or some other cheerful greeting in passing on the street.

Anyway, if you're so inclined say a prayer or send good thoughts or wave your crystals or whatever at the soldiers in harms way. Whether you agree with them or not, *they* believe that what they are doing is good, right, and proper and whether you think they are correct about that you have to respect and honor their willingness to put themselves not only in harms way, but in really miserable conditions to do it.

And they're really doing a heck of a job. Not only at closing with and destroying the enemy--which their doing as well or better than any army in history--but they're doing it at a MUCH lower cost in "collateral damage"--meaning the killing and wounding of civilians and the unintended destruction of property than any real war before us. What the line grunts are doing, and the additional risks they are taking to safeguard non-combatants is really heroic.

And yes, accidents still happen. People still snap. But contrast the incidents in this war against, say, the Rape of Nanking, or the way our opposition here were treating the people of Fallujah before the Marines and Army went in and cleaned it out.

We have EVERYTHING to be proud of with our people. Truely some of the best trained and best lead in the world.

I've been one of them off and on since the mid 80s, so I am well aware of the inadequacies of the Officer Ranks, the NCO ranks and the Enlisted Ranks. It's also clear that despite those problems they are *still* the best non-elite soldiers in the world. And if you want to compare our Elite Units, there are, and have been none better. Yeah, Spetznaz blah blah blah. Yeah Israeli special forces etc. etc. I'm sure they're great troops too. I'm sure that even every once and a while they're as good as we've got. Ours are better.

So whether you're celebrating Christmas today, or it's just another day for you, I wish you the contentment in your life that I feel right now.

Regards,
Petro.
:wq

p.s. Nothing interesting is happening here. Which is probably best.

For those who are just joining us, and for anyone else, these are archived at http://petroiniraq.blogspot.com.

I've put a couple pictures up there, nothing dramatic, just pictures of "home" and work, plus a picture of me taken early last week.

I've been here almost a month, and the routine is settling in. I did have a bit of excitement last week--one of our SAN guys was going to do an upgrade && hardware replacement at our installation in Balad, and I was sent up to backstop him--in case something blew up...umm...if something went wrong I'd be close at hand to fix it, rather than having to go over a high latency network.

Speaking of which, I finally got internet access working in my room. I did a ping back to mutiny.bounty.org, which is sitting in a colo facility in Santa Clara California, and was getting TTLs of 46, and round trip times of over 6000ms.

Not going to be playin Counter Strike over *that* link, lemme tell you...

Anyway, so we were scheduled to go to Balad, which is about 45 or 50 miles up the road.

The preference in theater is to travel by air. The Army doesn't really consider the roads around here to be safe enough for us to just drive. Apparently the people in charge have never done rush hour in Chicago. Actually, I think the streets here, at least on Victory Base and in Balad are in better shape than most of them in Chicago.

When a Contractor/Civilian is traveling around Iraq on military assets you're basically going "Space Available", which means that you make a reservation, then show up, then *if* they have room you get on. Military people have priority, and Generals *always* have priority.

We flew up to Balad with Dell's "Service Delivery Manager". He was intending to fly up on Tuesday evening, fix a couple servers[1] and fly back on Wednesday Night. He was most annoyed that his helo got *50 FEET* off the ground and was called back so a Navy "4-star" could get where ever he wanted to go. RHIP and all, right?

The SAN upgrade went about as smooth as any of these things ever go. He had to upgrade the flare code on both sets of storage processors, and the firmware on all four switches. He actually had to bump it three times to get to the latest. Fortunately he did everything right, and things actually worked.

Yeah, I was shocked too.

But that meant that I didn't really get a chance to do anything. Which was cool.

Balad is a *LOT* nicer base than Victory in most respects. They have more sidewalks, and better facilities. Or at least I think they do because they have an indoor pool, which I took advantage of twice. There is a pool here on base, but (1) it's a smaller outdoor pool, and (2) it's in the brit's compound. Rumor has it that as soon as the brits pull out the Army is going to drain it.

There are lots of rumors, but that's the Military for you.

Balad also gets hit more than Victory does, so I guess it's a bit of a tradeoff.

I still haven't noticed any attacks since I've been here.

We flew back on Thursday evening with no problems. I guess god was just punishing the Dell Rep for being a Dell Rep.

Anyway, not much is happening, so there's not much to talk about. Which is probably good.

Regards,
Petro.
:wq


[1]Rumor has it that last year there was a big push to source a lot of our computer equipment through "local" (meaning Iraqi) companies. Some of these companies would get a bid from Dell's Federal group, then turn around and purchase the machines from the commercial side *without* the warranty, giving a MUCH larger margin. Apparently the push to source our hardware through local companies has greatly diminished.

Here we go with some pictures.

Blogger isn't great about how I can organize these images, but the one above is the outside of my trailer showing the trailer and the "T-wall", a blast barrier.

This is my room. Or at least my half of it. It's not this clean right now.



This is the office where I work.
Dust gets *everywhere*.

I've got the whiteboard and some of the papers blurred out for obvious reasons.

It's pretty tight in here--you can see one of my cow-orkers machines on the right.



I flew up to Balad on a Blackhawk this week, here's me in the middle seat with my body armor and helmet on.

Maybe I should shave.

Anyway, I've got some other pictures, but it's getting late and this a very slow connection.

On the ground

I've got a couple pictures I wanted to put up, but that would require the use of the USB port, and because the USG has been hammered by a virus that spreads via USB drives we cannot use them anymore on most DoD computers. And I mean *cannot* as in denied by Active Directory Policy.

And yeah, I could edit the registry to get around that, but I would likely wind up on the next flight home. Which *would* let me post the pictures, but I don't think it would be worth it.

I've been trying to get commercial internet access--I'm this >< close, but the provider over here that covers the area where my room is does it at a hobby. It's complicated.

When we last left off, I was sitting in the Atlanta Airport waiting for a flight to Dulles, where I would be catching a flight to Kuwait City.

Of *course* my flight was delayed, which put me in Dulles minutes before the next flight was due to leave (note, due to LEAVE, not due to board). This meant a run through the airport AGAIN.

I hate flying. It's uncomfortable, unpleasant, undignified and generally annoying. And this is BEFORE the people allegedly running the airlines get involved in deliberately trying to ruin your day.

The "hop" from Dulles to Kuwait City was around 12 hours, and was done on a Boeing 777. It was not very crowded, so I was able to spread out a little.

The Airport in Kuwait was odd--their were no smoking signs everywhere, but the whole place smelled like an ashtray. It had a designated smoking area (at least one) that was a 10x10 glass cube *packed* with people.

I don't think that cube was vented outside. I think it was just a box. Which explained the smell.

The last hop was on Gryphon Airlines (http://flygryphon.com/), and the Gryphon Rep met us at the airplane (there were a bunch of us) and walked us over to the ticketing counter--we didn't have to actually enter Kuwait formally, which was nice.

Flying into BIAP is a little odd--especially at night. The pilot of the Gryphon airplane (I believe they have only one) informed us that US Military policy was that flights into the military side of BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) come in with cabin/cockpit lights off. Which is probably true. He also brought us on the high speed low drag steep corkscrewing decent designed to thwart SAMs, which he is (allegedly) the only pilot still flying since there hasn't been a missile attack at that airport in 4 or 5 years.

This whole thing is odd because from the windows (at night) flying into Baghdad looks flying into any middle to large sized city airport in the US--there are street and parking lot lights as far as the eye can see, and there is (from 10k feet) no evidence that you're flying into what was until recently a war zone.

It's also odd because *none* of the commercial planes that land go through any of this. It is completely conceivable that as we were corkscrewing into the military side of BIAP running hot and black there was a Al Dente' flight lining up on the other runway on a long slow decent with the cabin lights on.

They probably got a jetway too.

We got dumped out on the tarmac.

I was met at the Airport by my team lead, we collected my luggage and I was taken to the temporary lodging--at 20 man tent. It wasn't bad--it was pretty close to the latrine and showers. Fortunately I only had to stay there one night--by the next day I had been assigned a "trailer".

Half step back.

Everybody working for the US Government/DoD on military bases in Iraq is required to have a "Common Access Card"--a government ID. If you are a Civilian you have some sort of "Letter of Authorization" which is basically the civilian equivalent of military "orders". This LoA states what sort of "privileges" you have--in my case it states I have access to Billeting, Commissary, dining facilites etc. etc.. (Unfortunately it does NOT say that I'm authorized "weapons" (which to the military means guns guns guns, I can have some sort of knife. Thanks guys. I don't walk around Menlo freaken park unarmed and now you've got me in a war zone with no gun)).

Anyway, your CAC is supposed to have a subset of your "Authorizations" listed on it--so that when you present your ID to the guard at the Dining Facility (called a DFAC instead of the more correct "Chow Hall" by the contemporary Army) they know you're authorized to be there. Ditto the PX (aka "the Exchange" aka "Store").

Military peeps don't have these Authorizations on their CAC--they are authorized everything (including weapons), so they don't need it.

I mentioned in my previous email that I had been doing some processing at Ft. Benning. The area/process I was going through is called "CRC", which stands for "CONUS Replacement Center". One of the obfuscatory names I think.

Anyway, on the first day of CRC one of the speakers was giving us a lecture about maintaining a "good" (aka "proper") attitude. He told a joke about a "study" that was done on children and attitude.

Researchers took a huge room and filled it with at least one of every toy they could find, this room had EVERYTHING a kid could want in the way of distractions. The took a kid and put him in there. This kid had a bad attitude, and all he would do is wander around and listlessly kick at the toys. When asked why he said "It doesn't matter what I do, the toys will break anyway, or someone will come take them away or I'll get bored. I'm not having a good time".

So for the second experiment they removed all the toys and filled the room up half way with horse droppings, then stuck a second kid in there. The kid immediately started digging through the droppings throwing the stuff everywhere in his excitement. When they stopped him and asked him why he was so happy to be half buried in excrement he said "With all this sh!t around there's GOT to be a pony somewhere".

I'm sure that someone with limited exposure to the military might find this amusing.

I'm also sure that the *average* exposure to the military and government amoung these contractors was 10 years.

We all knew that there weren't gonna be no pony there.

At Ft. Benning when I was issued my CAC, it did not have any of these Authorizations listed. Other contractors there DID have some listed. So I asked the Cadre at hte processing center about this and was informed that that was OK.

I pushed back--I was afraid that when I got to Camp Victory that I would have problems. The Soldier I was speaking to asserted that I would have no problems, that "no one checked that anyway". I pushed back and she said she'd call and ask during normal office hours.

Which she didn't. I guess she was combing her pony.

Back in Iraq I was given a cot (You can buy your very own cot here: http://www.uscav.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=7547&utm_medium=shoppingengine&utm_source=googlebase&cm_mmc=Google%20Base-_-Products-_-SF-_-V1) in a tent, and given some sheets and a couple blankets. These cots were a little odd in that they're standard military/camp cots, but KBR (Kellogg, Brown, and Root--the organization that runs/maintains most of the facilities here) then went back and put a not-quite-twin sized mattress on them.

And by put I don't mean they bolted, glued, taped or otherwise secured them on. Oh no. They just laid them right down on top.

Yeah. You have this cot, which is about 17 inches wide with a narrow twin mattress-I'd guess about 28 inches wide--on top of it.

Oh, and they were out of pillows.

So Paul (my lead) gave me a ride to the "small PX" where I could get a pillow and pillow case, plus a few other small things.

Except that the...Uh...people at Benning had screwed up my ID, so I couldn't get into the PX. Can't even get a saddle for that pony.

Wonderful. I'm not on the ground and hour and already the Military Bureaucracy is causing me problems.

Fortunately (1) Paul offered to go in and buy me the pillow and pillow cases and (2) I am able to access these facilities with my CAC card AND my LoA. So I can eat, get my laundry done, and buy stuff at the PX until I can get a new CAC issued.

Except that last bit is proving to be a challenge.

CAC cards are so-called "Smart Cards", and as such require a specific bit of hardware to print and load the data on them.

Of the 10 places I've contacted regarding fixing my CAC, 7 of them have broken printers, one was completely out of blank cards, one insisted on an appointment for the 26th (note that I made this appointment on my first full day here--the 17th), and the last one wouldn't fix my card because my LoA lists my end of contact date as the 14th of February.

I'll probably get the same answer when I go in Wednesday for the appointment.

So anyway, I got a pillow--a rather thin thing--and laid down to sleep.

The next day I was assigned a room in a trailer, and moved my stuff over. Interestingly enough my roommate is from East Palo Alto, and formerly worked for Cisco doing junior level IT/Router stuff.

I also started work. Sort of. Heck, a week later and I'm still "sort of" started. Partially this is because of..well, things here are complicated.

Modern networks are by there nature very complex, and when you have what is essentially is two country-wide networks where there is about a 95% turnover in users AND admins every 18 months you're going to have a LOT of barely documented complexity and a lot of "WTF". Where the W can be one of What, Why or Where.

Another big challenge here is hydration management. The Military provides us with bottled water--they have a plant here on base that process water from the (I think) Euphrates and makes about 500k bottles of water a day. I've driven by it, or at least the distribution point for it.

Holy cow crud Batman, that's a LOT of bottles of water (Pics coming as soon as I can).

The problem then isn't *staying* hydrated, it's getting a good nights sleep. When waking up and having to go at 2 in the morning entails getting out of bed and making that short walk down a carpeted hall, that's one thing. When it involves getting up, getting your trousers on, putting on your shoes (or flip flops), grabbing your keys and your coat and walking 200 feet to the latrine, then 200 feet back etc., you DO NOT go back to sleep right away. When you have to do this 2-3 times a night you soon learn to cut your fluid intake in the later part of the day.

I'm still very much "settling in". I've got about 72 square feet of space in my trailer, and I've got 2 small wall lockers, a night stand, a bed, some crummy plastic drawers (that are going away soon) and a folding camp chair (these last two were abandoned by a previous tenant. Who also left a small refrigerator).

There isn't a lot going on here. There's a bit of work to be done--some sections have it worse than others--my roommate's group is being hammered by this:
http://cyberinsecure.com/usb-devices-containing-worms-threaten-us-army-all-removable-devices-temporarily-banned/ for example, but we're just moderately busy most of the time. Well, I'm not because I'm still learning the network and the lay of the land.

On the "war" front it is VERY quite around here. The guy that I replaced had been keeping a "Rocket Free Days" counter, and I guess the day he left it stood at 163--that was 8 days ago, and I've not heard any explosions since I got here.

There is gunfire every morning, but that's just the practice/qualification ranges.

A couple people have asked for my mailing address and offered to send stuff that I may need.

Seriously, I've got it pretty good compared to a lot of soldiers here. I have a roof over my head, I can take a shower every day, and there is hot food at the DFAC. I can go to the small PX almost any time, and the Big PX whenever I need to. I really don't *need* much, and what I do need Barb is taking care of (things like prescription meds &&etc.).

The only exception is if anyone knows someone in theater that needs someone to hang on to a G26 or a Kahr PM909, I'd be more than happy to assist. Especially if they can get my LOA changed to allow it :)

If you really want to send something, find some poor grunt in the hinterlands and send him a box of homemade cookies, or a big box of baby wipes. (http://www.adoptaussoldier.org/ or http://soldiersangels.org/index.php?page=adopt-a-soldier).

That said my mailing address this month is:
Christopher Petro
(something removed)

One of the amazing things here is that moral is *really* good among the Military personnel. They are usually more cheerful here than in the states (not everyone of course, some are ungruntled, guess they can't find their pony either).

Overall things are going ok right now. I'm mostly over my cold, and things are starting to be routine here. I do miss Helen and Barb, but these things have to be done. It could be worse, it could be snowing. Which would make that dang pony awful cold.

Regards,
Petro.
:wq

We're off.

First a piece of advice. Look around your house, apartment, domicile, whatever.

Find 10 things and GET RID OF THEM. Do this every week until you feel like screaming. Then do it once a month.

It will make your life incredibly easier at some point.

Next, the purpose of this:

I'm getting on a plane for Iraq in a few minutes. I will be spending the next year (mostly) in Camp Victory, Iraq, which is basically in Baghdad.

For some of you who haven't heard from me in a while that's going to be a shock, but this was my (and to a lesser extent my wife's) choice--I will be working for Raytheon Company providing support for a certain piece of software for the Army.

Barb and Helen are safe and sound in Saint Louis, their mailing address is:


We moved out of our house in Redwood City back in October. We spend *4* days packing 3 "RELOCUBE"s, a small trailer and the station wagon.

Four AWFUL days. Four Miseable days.

And at the end of it we sell had enough crud to (probably) fill another one.

It was awful.

On the 29th of October at about 11:30 we went wheels up and drove out of Los Gatos. It was Barb, Helen and Me plus Muke and Pixel in the Subaru pulling an overloaded trailer.

We made it to Barb's mom's house in Saint Louis by about 10:30 on Friday morning. We may not travel light, but we can cover lots of ground when we need to.

Anyway, the house we had sort of arranged to rent wasn't done yet, but we were able to unload the trailer and get it returned.

It's a pretty nice place, absent a few minor details the Landlord will undoubtably fix.

On November 6th I kissed my wife and child good bye and flew to New Hampshire to process in with Raytheon, and the next day flew down to Atlanta and then drove to Columbus to process in with the Army @ Ft. Benning.

*MAN* was Friday a long day--I didn't get to the hotel in Columbus until about 1:30 in the morning.

Anyway, I spend the next week doing Army Paperwork and medical stuff, wiht typical army effeciency.

That, however is done, and I'm on my way.

I'll write more later.