The End

Well the last few days was a blur.  I had to pack everything up and ship it off, though ended up leave quite a bunch of stuff behind as it just wasn't worth it.  I tried to make sure I got some souvenirs for everyone back home, and frantically finished all my work.  Getting back home itself was a bit crazy (had to wait in the freezing cold for the plane for a couple hours), but I made it safe and sound.  

The whole experience was amazing, sad, crazy, hard, and inspirational.  I had so many ups and downs emotionally.  I hope I understand more of the Afghani people, and I truly hope the best for them in the messed up situation they unfortunately are living through, through no fault of their own.  They are just people like you and me.  It is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life.  I will also miss my co-workers.  Most I will probably never see again as they are from different offices around the country.  I hope the best for them as well.

It is great to be back home.  Just having my own bedroom and house to myself, and my comfy bed, are luxuries I never quite appreciated as much.  Even something as simple as clean running water is not something to take for granted.  Driving my car also felt pretty crazy.

One day in the future perhaps I will revisit this experience and go into additional detail.  But for now I am signing off.  Thanks everyone for staying with me on this wild ride.  Till next time,

~ David

Day 172 (9 days to go…)

Today is Thanksgiving. We watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving in the morning and watched some football at night. They had some pretty good food at the DFAC. There was Turkey and cornbread stuffing and non-alcoholic wine. Of course it was nothing compared to the meal that the McNeeleys and my family always prepare (I am SO mad I missed this!), but at least it was decent. I miss you all and was thinking of you this day. We do have a lot to be thankful for though.

Speaking of being thankful, I am down to single digits! Woot!



~David

Day 169 (12 days to go…)

Well according to my Donut of Misery, I am now under 1 million seconds! To put that in perspective, I have been here for almost 15 million seconds (14.8). The constant pings that I run against Google to check the internet connection are sent at about one a second. I always run it for 1 million pings (which takes almost 2 weeks to finish). This means I will only have to run that command one more time!



~David

Day 167 (14 days to go…)

Today an actual American PX store (finally… been waiting for almost 2 months) opened on base. All the products are in English and they take US Dollars instead of Euro. What a concept lol. They also have brands and products that are more familiar to us Americans lol. Before to get stuff like that you had to go to Eggers (which has been nearly impossible to get to lately.)



~David

Day 163 (18 days to go…) - Light at the End of the Tunnel

Well today I official have only 10% to go. According to my personal definitions, this means that I am now “almost done”, I will be going home “soon” and I can finally see “the light at the end of the tunnel”. ^_^



~David

Day 161 (20 days to go…)

Well, three more weeks!

For the past month or so they have been tearing down another old housing unit. A coworker of mine, Ross, used to live in this one so I thought I would post some pictures taken throughout the month.

They have been tearing some of these old housing units down because they have been building all these really nice permanent housing units. Only two to a room also. UNFORTUNATLY they will be only for other NATO countries… not for US personal. I donno why the US personal always get the short end of the stick on this base even though the US pays for most of everything. I hear the rumor is that we want to ‘look good’ to the other countries or something… meh… So while they get awesome new housing we US personal have to deal with showers with half the floor rotting out from under you. Like take a look at this picture I took a bit ago.

Notice the date… yah… apparently a date from BEFORE I even got here till sometime after now is “ASAP”… Lovely treatment from our brave men and woman coming over here…



~David

Day 157 (24 days to go…)

Well as predicted, the status quo was kept. Now we need to see if the two sides can actually come together to solve some of our major issues.



~David

Day 156 (25 days to go…)

Well today (tomorrow for me) is a big day our nation, a ritual we practice every 4 years. Tomorrow is Election Day. Honestly I have serious issues with both candidates, but regardless one will win. It will also be interesting on how the Senate and House races go. I have been following the races pretty closely and places like the FiveThirtyEight Blog that analyze all the polling show that the status quo will likely be kept. Basically President Obama will win reelection, the Democrats will keep the Senate (but not get a super-majority) and the Republicans will keep the House. Essentially not much will change.



~David

Day 154 (27 days to go…)

Brian got me addicted to this game. I have always thought this game was retarded… and I think I still do… but it’s freaken addicting. It’s called Minecraft. Basically you start in an (essentially) infinitely large world where everything is made of blocks. Most things are made up of 1 meter cubes: dirt, stone, trees, even water and lava (though they ‘flow’ into other empty blocks). You can mine these blocks (some require certain tools) and then use the materials to create or build all kinds of stuff. It is essentially like Legos in that regard. The deeper you go the more cool minerals and gems you can find. You start off with nothing and you have to make tools with the various materials you find. It may sound weird and if you Google it may look weird but it IS addicting. Anyways I blame Brian! Now excuse me as I go finish that underground subway I am working on building in Minecraft…



~David

Day 151 (30 days to go…) - A Month In Review

Well, let’s get this over with. Another week in review!

Well not too much on my mind to talk about for this month. I have mostly been busy with the release both before and after. There are a couple of small things. I beat that Kingdom Hearts game for example. So yah this post might skip around a bit.

It’s been cool to have Brian around. One funny thing is that he has basically the same diet as me. It’s remarkable. He hates vegies as well and refuses to eat any. Our choices in food when going to the DFAC are usually nearly identical. After being with all the salad eaters around here… and everyone joking saying that “there is no food in your food” and that all I eat is carbs, it is good to have someone to relate to lol.

I will say the tough thing about working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week is not the actual work part of it. I mean sure its long hours and when you count sleeping, TRYING to fall asleep (which can take hours at times) and personal hygiene times, there is not much time for anything else. Still dealing with all this is not so bad and you kinda get in a rhythm. No the toughest thing is letting your schedule slip. You have no time to readjust your schedule. Sooner or later you will get busy working on something and stay an hour or two later than you should… which means you get to bed an hour or two later, and then get up later… yah it’s a domino effect. Case in point, when I first got here I worked 9am till 9pm. This quickly slipped to 10am till 10pm. After a bit I started staying up later and later so I could communicate with my colleagues back in VA so my schedule slipped till 11… then 11:30. It stayed here for a while as I around 11 or 11:30 is when a bunch of people would go for lunch and I would always try to make that. It was hard to leave at 11 or 11:30 though because of the flip side. That was the time people went to ‘Midnight Chow.” Even though I normally wouldn’t go, I would be the one holding down the office while everyone else went (our office must be manned 24/7). So eventually it slipped till 12, then 1… etc etc. My schedule now is like 3pm till 3am (though as I am writing this it’s after 4am… >_>). SO yah… slipping schedule… Perhaps soon I can go hit breakfast at 6am before going to bed. :-P.

Speaking of going to bed, one funny thing that keeps happening, not just this month but ever since I got here, are these bazaar dreams. Basically I dream that I wake up having returned home to Virginia (it varies whether I just returned or have been home for like a week). I am glad everything is over and I breathe a sigh of relief. Suddenly though I try to remember events that haven’t happened yet (but would if I had already returned) like Thanksgiving. I draw a blank and suddenly realize that it must be fake and thus a dream. I get bummed out and then wake up. Totally crazy but it has happened more than a dozen times. I guess I’m just a bit homesick but seriously, you would think my imagination could come up with a better story than that! Like I had to return early or something… jeez. It gets old after a while lol… like watching a rerun of a show over and over. What is funny is that I actually THINK this while still in the dream. Lately as soon as I realize that it’s a dream I am like “Really? Not this again… this is lame…. I’m going to wake up now.”

Well in any case not too much longer. I still am very glad I came out here. It has been an adventure and I love adventures. It has taught me a lot and shown me what to be thankful for. Some of it is just the little things, like being able to go where you want, when you want.

Well that’s about it for now.



~David

Day 150 (31 days to go…)

Well Happy Halloween everyone. I didn’t know if anyone was going to do anything here, but at the last minute I figured I should at least do something small. I ordered some fangs off amazon a couple days ago, and they barely arrived just in time. It turns out some of the girls also decided to dress up. Don’t they look so cute? In any case I decided to go bite Dani. :-P

Also they decorated the DFAC all spooky like. I wonder what some of the other nations who probably don’t know much about Halloween thought lol.

~David

Day 148 (33 days to go…)

Well today is a beautiful full moon, one of many I have seen here. This one has a bit of a special meaning though. The next full moon will be only about 2 days before I leave. In this way the moon will now act as visible timer counting down my days here with the different phases. All I have to do is look up lol.

In other news (I use that phrase a lot... I need to find a better transitional phrase lol), Brian here is big into Rubik’s cubes. He can regularly solve one in under a minute. It’s pretty crazy. He just ordered another one so when I saw a very peculiar one so I decided to get it. I will have to show it off when I return. It is really cool.



~David

Day 147 (34 days to go…)

Well the past couple days I haven’t felt good at all. With me it is always hard to tell if it is just my allergies that have flared up or I caught something like a cold. I am PRETTY sure this time though that I caught something. My throat has been raw, I have had a massive headache, and my nose just won’t stop running. Sleeping is hard enough as it is lol. Ah well, usually I recover pretty quickly. I just have to get through the next few days. >_<



~David

Day 144 (37 days to go…)

Today while eating in the DFAC I noticed that had this long (50 foot or so) strip of white paper where (I am assuming) kids wrote in crayon little messages encouraging and thanking the troops out here. They drew all manner of little pictures. I have seen these kinds of things done many many times in schools or churches, but I never thought I would be on the ‘receiving’ end so to speak lol. One thing I did find funny was that many of the messages said “Happy Easter”. Apparently it took a while to get over here lol. Something I never thought about when writing any messages to soldiers oversees.

In other news, according to my ‘Donut of Misery’ Excel document I am down to my last 5th, or 0.1 years. ^_^



~David

Day 140 (41 days to go…)

Well last night was a bit miserable. It has gotten a bit cold recently especially at night when it gets down to the lower 40s and even 30s. Last night was the first time my roommate in the back turned on the heater in our room. It smelled a bit bad but as most of you know I can barely smell so I don’t care about that so much. The problem is the fact that the room is so small and so poorly insulated. Also I am on the top bunk and heat rises. When the heater kicks on, it very quickly makes the entire room hot, probably close to 80 degrees or so as I was still pretty hot with no covers on. Then a couple minutes later when it kicks off the room quickly cools to probably around 60 degrees. I was still cold with my covers and blankets over me. The heater goes through these cycles every 10 min or so. Because of this I didn’t get much sleep last night. Apparently this is something else I am going to have to get used to lol.



~David

Day 137 (44 days to go…)

Our office has a ceremonial knife that is passed around. You receive the knife when you are the next person to leave. Right before you do leave, you carve your initials into the knife and pass it on to the next person. It has been a while since anyone left so Jamie has been holding on to it for quite some time.

Today I came into the office to find the knife sitting beside my computer. It would seem that I am the next one to go.

~David

Day 136 (45 days to go…)

Today we say goodbye to Jamie, the tech lead. He came over here as an SA and was kinda thrust into the position of tech lead… a position he initially didn’t really want. Still he performed above and beyond and is a primary reason why the release went so smooth. It will be weird not having him around. He will be happy to get home though. Here’s to ya Jamie!

We held a nice dinner to say goodbye to Jamie and to celebrate the ASI. Jamie got here about a month before I did so I knew that when I saw him go, I would be following him shortly. On that note I am officially 3/4ths or 75% done now. Just a bit over a month left.

~David

Day 134 (47 days to go…)

Well, I am still working on search on a few problem servers. Been dealing with it the past few days making sure everything gets working correctly. I found out that certain things were interrupting the indexing process before it could fully finish. How annoying. Still most servers have it fully operational. Customer feedback has been very positive so everything is looking very well.

It is very nice when something you spent hours… days… weeks… basically a year on is finally being used out in the open. At this point it is done and you can’t do anything more besides put it out there and watch it sink or swim. I send my congratulations to my fellow members of the Search Team. We did it!



~David

Day 131 (50 days to go…)

Well I was up until about 7am in the morning. Then I came back in around 11am. There were a few delays with the release but overall everything went extremely well. There was good teamwork and everyone knew their part. When issues arose we solved them very effectively. Everyone was very tired (some were still up when I came back in at 11) but proud of how everything went.

So there it is, search is live… kinda. It is still indexing on most servers which takes several hours the first time. I worked on that for most of the day.



~David

Day 130 (51 days to go…)

Today is a very big day. We are about to push a major release to all of our servers which our company has not done in about 9 months. Included in this release is all the search stuff I have been working on so I am very excited. We have a big night ahead of us as the release begins at 10pm and doesn’t conclude till about 10am the next day.



~David

Day 128 (53 days to go…)

No lie… Two days later and I just got Freddy’s package with his copy of Fate Stay Zero. I have no idea what took it so long. Well whatever, now I have two copies! :-P In any case, a very special thanks to both of my friends. I have been busy so I haven’t started watching it yet, but I will very shortly.



~David

Day 126 (55 days to go…)

Another developer, Brian arrived today. He is a branch lead so he is also going to be taking over the Tech Lead position when Jamie leaves. I have spoken to Brian many times over IM but have never got a chance to work with him directly so this should be cool.

I also received another package today, this time from my friend Bonatz. Besides some Cinnamon Rolls and some doughnuts, it also included something else. See back before I left I had my friend Freddy put a bunch of anime on an external hard drive. One of the shows was Fate Stay Zero, an epic prequel to Fate Stay Night. Well it turned out he only put the first of 2 seasons on it as the second season was not out yet. Over a month ago when I finished the first season (and it of course left you hanging) I asked him to send a disk with the second season which he did. Well it never came unfortunately and I have been waiting in anticipation all this time.

While waiting I told my friend Bonatz about the series. He watched it all and also thought it was epic. After several weeks he got tired of not being able to talk to be about the second season so he said he will send me a copy in his next package to me. So I finally get to watch the second season! Thank you so much! I have no idea what happened to the one Freddy sent. Murphy’s Law says I will somehow get it in a day or two.



~David

Day 122 (59 days to go…)

Well today was pretty fun. The Germans threw a huge party in the garden to celebrate Oktoberfest! A few of us went over there. Course there was no REAL beer… General Order 1 or whatever… but it was still fun. There was food and drink and good music. Here are some pictures.

Hmm… even this non-alcoholic beer has like 0.5% alcohol. So I guess if you drank 20 or 30 you MIGHT feel something… :-P



~David

Day 121 (60 days to go…)

Another package came today from my grandparents. They always love sending me stuff.  Inside was some treats including some more honey buns. Thank you very much. I do think I am good now on honey buns for the rest of the time out here now lol.  I seem to have several boxes full.

~David

Day 120 (61 days to go…) - A Month In Review

Well guess what time it is? Actually it’s way overdue but WHATEVER. It is time for a month in review.

This month has been a bit more crazy than previous months. There was the attack I mentioned earlier; then soon after that YouTube video that came out insulting Muhammad. As you can imagine, things have been pretty locked down over here. I would like to take some time to say a few things about that video.

First of all, I am a big proponent of free speech. That DOES include speech like this video. The author of this video (ignoring any restrictions he may have had on him due to other offenses) absolutely has the right to create a video like this. I applaud YouTube (thus Google) for acknowledging this fact and not taking the video down. HOWEVER, just because you have a right to do something, does not make it right! This great nation, the United States of America, was founded on freedoms… freedoms I will fight for. It does mean that some will abuse said rights. That is an unfortunate necessary evil to preserve these great freedoms. Once you start chiseling away at these rights, banning something you do not agree with, you break the entire foundation on which these rights were founded. So yes people can publish completely offensive material and, although I may thoroughly disagree with the message, I will always stand up for their right to produce said material. This may be a pamphlet promoting Nazism, a book teaching child predators how to seduce children, or a video completely insulting a religion. That is the price of freedom.

That said I do condemn this video. I also believe that the man behind the video IS ABSOLUTELY partially to blame for the deaths during the protests over this video. Words can be more powerful that any sword or gun. Just because one didn’t pull the trigger doesn’t mean one can claim to be innocent. That is a very naïve way of thinking. Actions have consequences. The blood of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith (or ‘Vile Rat’ of GoonSwarm as he was known in Eve Online. He was a very prominent player, a diplomat in game, and known by almost everyone, including me, that plays. Most had no idea of his position in real life though.), the rest of the Embassy Staff that was killed, and everyone else injured or killed in the protests are on that man’s hands. In addition he jeopardized many more lives, people like the brave men and women in the military over here risking their lives so that that man can RETAIN his freedoms. Was it worth it? Actions have consequences.

Of course the men participating in the attack are also to blame. It was a video by one man, yet they blame the entire country and kill innocent lives. They absolutely have the right to protest but so many went way too far. At that point they become nothing more than criminals, thugs, and murderers. Yet many demand an official apology from President Obama. Apologize for what? Obama didn’t make the video, in fact he condemned it. There is no reason and nothing Obama can apologize for. They also call for the man to be punished. Again for what? I remember one statement that attempted to justify the protests by asking how the American people would feel if films were created insulting Christian figures or historical figures like Abraham Lincoln. This statement just shows how little they understand about American life. We absolutely value the freedom to express whatever you want, whether we like it or not. In fact comedy shows like South Park mock all kinds of things like this all the time. Also it just so happens that a movie is coming out, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Which I do want to see BTW). Can you imagine if ‘Muhammad, Zombie Hunter’ came out? It just shows how far off their way of thinking is compared to true freedoms. >_<

So yah… that’s that. In other news I am now 2/3s done! I finished the Legend of Zelda game I have been playing at night. That was an awesome game. I never had a chance to play it on the Nintendo64 and am glad I finally got to play it on my 3DS. Back then it was way ahead of its time. I started on a new game, one of the Kingdom Hearts games. For those of you that do not know what Kingdom Hearts is, it is kinda heard to explain. Basically two companies got together, Disney and Japanese gaming company Square Enix (popular for RPG series like their Final Fantasy series) and created a game (and later a series of games) where every movie or show by Disney and every game by Square Enix is in its own “world”. These worlds are under attack by the Heartless. You, the hero, have your world completely destroyed by the heartless at the beginning of the first game. You take up the Keyblade and must journey through all these different worlds to save them and achieve your goal while also killing any heartless on the way. One moment you might be sailing on the seas and meet one Captain Jack Sparrow, then the next fall into the digital world of Tron, or find yourself in a dark castle run by a true Beast and all the servants having been changed to things like a clock or a candle holder by some dark magic. You might meet characters like Cloud from Final Fantasy or a fairy called Tinker Bell that can make you fly. It is a pretty awesome series of games, and they have become immensely popular.

Well that is about it for this month… until next time!



~David

Day 117 (64 days to go…)

Well it’s another Friday today. Unfortunately because of everything going on it seems I won’t be able to go to Eggers for the foreseeable future. At least the DFAQ here has been getting a bit better. They have steak-night on Fridays too now. Not nearly as good as getting the steak right of the grill like at Eggers, but it’s not bad. Still Fridays mean another week is just about over, and that is something to be excited about. Nine weeks from now and I will be getting ready for my trip back home the next morn. ;-)



~David

Day 115 (66 days to go…)

Today was rainy… very rainy. It has rained before, but usually just drizzling for a bit. Today was several hours of pretty hard rain. I took a few pictures to prove it below. Apparently this time of year is always rainy.

Mike, the fellow coworker from Hampton like me, left to go to Bagram today. He is taking over a Site Lead up there. It will be weird not having him around here. For a while it was me, him, and Dani that would always go to meals together. It seems like I have seen so many people come and go.

It was good to have someone out here that at least knows what in the world I was talking about when I said ‘the HRBT is a nightmare’ or ‘I usually see the fireworks at Mount Trashmore on July 4th.’ Ah well… That is one of the things you have to get used to out here, people are from all over not just the US, but around the world. Referring to ‘common sense’ landmarks or phrases doesn’t always work. It is interesting though because you get to hear stories about places all over. It really gives you a different perspective on things.



~David