Wednesday, September 7, 2005

A Little Glitch


Man the military amazes me.

Before I begin my rant, I want to introduce you to my niece/nephew at the left. Looks like he's about the size of a jelly bean. You can follow along at my sister Katie and her husband Marc's website chronicling the birth of their first kid. Type the password "babybrun" to take a look.

Three little tidbits of knowledge were revealed to me today. Here's a list of the latest morale boosters the United States Air Force have developed for those of us deploying overseas:

1) Blocked Websites: And this is a kicker. I just found out today that the Air Force blocks even more websites on their servers over there than they do here. I think the intent is to keep guys from surfing websites that they're not supposed to, ala porn and gambling. But they expanded it significantly to "non-required" websites, such as Fantasy Sports, news websites and, of course, weblogs. End result is that I won't have access to this site while I'm over there. I guess I have the option of emailing my posts in, but pictures will be non-existent. If any of the 10-15 blog surfers that come by have any suggestions, I'm open to them. This was, more than anything else, a way for my family to keep tabs on me.

2) Power-Point: I also found out that my high-speed very important job over there is going to be working the 2300-0700 shift as a power point presentation creator. That really makes sense to have a pilot Major sitting in the dark typing powerpoint slides 10,000 miles away from home.

3) Deploying Isn't a Big Deal Anymore: I had this false impression that the military was going to, at the very least, have the families standing on the tarmac when we headed out. They used to. Now, I guess it's not that big of a deal anymore. Instead of a "send-off," Emily, who has bent over backwards to get released from work long enough to see me off, gets to drop me off at work and say goodbye. 8 hours later I get on the plane. That's it. No big deal. In fact, throughout this whole ordeal, I have had the feeling that noone really even cares that we're going.

What have I gotten myself into.

1 comment:

  1. Your site is probably categorized as "Message Boards and Clubs", which are all blocked. You can go here http://www.websense.com/ register to find out exactly (go to top row , pull down products, click on database, URL look-up), but isn't necessary unless you're curious. What you can do is e-mail them, let them know your categorized wrong and you should be listed as "News and Media" suggest@websense.com

    This has worked for most bloggers. It may not be exactly the correct catergory but it'll get you unblocked.

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