Think I'll settle down in front of the computer, pour a piping hot beverage into my Hello Kitty teacup, and let the drivel issue forth. You've been warned.
The computer that was formerly a heap of parts is finally up and running. If I haven't mentioned it before, I've been collecting computer parts through mail order in the hopes of one day having enough of them to build a working computer. Computer nerd wannabes, take note: This is not how it's done. Do not try this yourself. I tried it because I am a big dummy.
See, I was trolling an internet site when I realized that, for about five hundred bucks, I could buy a computer motherboard, which is one of those circuit boards that looks like New York City if you hold it edge-on next to your eyeball, with all the chips and capacitators and trasistitators sticking up like skyscrapitors. The motherboard is just one of many parts that you need, however, to make a computer. I carefully researched what the other parts were, and now I have no idea any more what they are or how they work. My mind's a complete blank. I could no more put together another computer than I could perform triple bypass heart surgery.
But fortunately, I know a guy who's not only computer nerdish enough to put up with my wannabe status, he's some kind of computer hardware engineer, one of the guys who used to sit around in a corporate cubicle and build computers for a paycheck. What he's doing in the Navy is beyond me. Even if he was working out of a storefront, he could make a good living by charging guys like me a zillion dollars to fix their pathetic computer mistakes.
He had a good look around in my computer to check my work. Everything I had was in the right place, but I didn't have a video card, which means no video output -- we couldn't see anything we were doing. A quick road trip to the computer store in Hachinohe fixed that up. Then power up, load the operating system, and holy cow, it worked! Unreal. I would sooner have expected monkeys to fly out of my butt.
So now Tim's got his own computer to clutter with video downloads and spyware, even though he "never downloads anything." He's so happy that nobody cares how much junk he puts on it, or how many times he screws up the profiles, and I'm so happy it's not a silent pile of expensive junk any longer. Everything works out eventually.
Boring weather report: It's winter, and we're in that awkward transition between the time when all the windows of the house are open because there's no air conditioning, and the time when the windows are sealed up tight and we're dressing in layers because there's no heat. The Evil Civil Engineers don't turn on the steam heat until we have three consecutive days of temps below fifty degrees, divided by the hypotenuse and confirmed by a sextant computation, which can only performed at Stonehenge during the equilateral fenestration. Or they just turn it on when there's frost on the windows. At least that's what I suspect.
It's funny, but it doesn't seem that cold when I'm out walking around. I love taking a walk in the morning, when the shadows are long and the air is crisp. Autum air outside is crisp and invigorating, but when it's inside it's somehow bone-chilling cold.
Which is relevant to me, because I'll spend just about all day today catching up on my homework for class. I've got to get it done today because there's no way I'll be able to do it Monday or Tuesday, when I'll be at work, and it's due Tuesday night, when I'll be drop-dead tired after two day watches. I've got my paper started, just need to polish the first draft, but my team project isn't even started; I'll have to wing a first draft on my own, e-mail it to my team member, and hope she likes it. The up side is that Tuesday is the last day of the class, so I'll get a one-week breather until the next class begins and I have to start catching up again.
And that's all the babbling for now.
I spent my first day watch doing dumb things. I didn't want to. They made me.
The dumbest thing was getting one of the airmen into training status. She left on emergency leave about six weeks ago, but when she left, we didn't know how long she would be gone, so I put her training records in to request a suspension. When she came back, I did the same, except I asked to resume her training.
That, I assumed, would have made it possible for her to pick up her training where she left off. Is that what suspend and resume mean to you, as well? But no. When I got her records back, she had thirty days to complete a ninety-day training period, of which she had already used three weeks.
I took the records back to the training department and explained my confusion. "Okay, I can give her forty-five days."
"Of a ninety-day training period? She's been gone six weeks; she's effectively forgotten just about everything she's learned."
"That's all I can do. You could withdraw her from training and then put her in again -- that would get her the full ninety days."
I crossed my eyes at her. "You'd give her the full ninety days if I did that?" She nodded.
I left the room quickly so she wouldn't see the steam venting from my ears.
The head of the training department said the same thing, and so did the head of my department. So I withdrew her from training. Then I put her back into training at the same position. First person who can explain how that was more efficient than just extending her training gets a free case of beer.
After that, the dumbest thing I've had to do was just this morning. I woke from a sound sleep into pitch blackness and reflexively grabbed the alarm clock. It has a snooze alarm, but I've never used it. If I don't give in to my automatic routine, I'll fall back asleep and the next thing I'll hear is the phone ringing, so I sit up immediately and shut off the alarm. Only this time, the alarm was already shut off. That should've been my first clue, but I was too sleepy to take it in.
After stumbling down the stairs and using the hall bathroom, I fixed myself breakfast and settled down at the kitchen table with a slice of melon and the daily paper. As I read the headlines of doom & gloom, the hall clock chimed twice. I don't make a conscious effort to count the chimes, but somewhere in the back of my head there's a multiple personality that does, and he told me through the grapevine that, when I usually get up for work at quarter past four, the first time I hear the hall clock there should be just one chime, at half past the hour.
Huh?
I glanced up at the kitchen clock. Two o'clock? What the hell am I doing eating breakfast at two o'clock?
Worse than that, I didn't even have to work today! There was no reason at all for me to be up early this morning.
I don't know what woke me, but whatever vital synapse I had that usually tells me, It was just a bad dream, Dave, go back to sleep, has apparently been killed off by creeping senility. Pretty soon the cops will all know me by name, after repeatedly picking me up walking to the post office in my pajamas at two in the morning.