From the road
Mar. 31st, 2007 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI’m here at be-yootiful Ft. We-gotcha. Actually, for all it gets lots of grief, I like Ft. Huachuca. It’s in the high desert, about 5,800 ft. Right now the spring is really starting, the cottonwoods are snowing, and where the vegetation is barbed, they stick like fleece. The mountains to the southeast are dusted with the remnants of last weeks snow, and the hills have the yellow-green of new growth through last years frost blasted thatch.
It also has that smell, the whiff of water, plants and dust, which is unique to places like it. The Mojave gets that way too. The temps are 75/45, which some depression (65/35) predicted for mid-week. I can live with that (esp. because I have a second blanket now).
The Staff NCO course I am here to take isn’t going to be hard. One, I’, tolerably clever, and the biggest bug-bear is a 3-5 page, double-spaced, one-inch margins research paper; requiring not less than 3 referenced sources, with cover sheet and bibliography.
I also have to brief it, and teach a couple of classes.
Making sure the briefing lasts the minimum eight minutes might be the hardest thing (I don’t think going over twelve is going to be too much of a problem, once I hit, “What are your questions” the clock stops, even if we go on talking about it for three hours).
Getting here had its moments. At LAX I saw Miss Rhode Island from the Miss USA Pageant. Sadly she seems to be as vapid as the stereotypes claim. How do I know it was Miss Rhode Island… she was wearing a sash which said so, and the tags on her luggage (being checked a bit ahead of mine) said, Miss RI, Miss USA.
I then happened to be in line immediately behind her for coffee. The chit chat she was having with her companion was banal enough. Maia and I might sound the same. Then someone she knew from the pageant (perhaps, it was a very brief encounter) came to do the public display of semi-affection. During this Miss RI (still wearing the sash, a bit of worn satin with two rows of rhinestones trimming some silver edging) announced that Trump wanted her to sign with his agency. It was at this point her phone rang. Someone from “the Journal” and she had to take it.
That was when the vapid (or at least very clueless) made itself plain.
Call me jaded, but she was gushing. Not about being one of the recognised runners up (I don’t think, from the conversation, that she won, but rather that she made the court), which would have been understandable, but about the things she’d gotten to do in LA (which I later heard she loved, having come here in Dec when the contest did some of the preliminary eliminations: across Christmas… WTF).
I’m an Angeleno, and many of us affect a blasé attitude to “The Industry”, and I’m at least as jaded as most.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
akirlu still teases me about not noticing Warren Beatty in a hallway at a movie theater. I’ve worked at the edges of the film business, off and on. Swing-gang work, and studio projectionist, but saying how wonderful one’s two weeks were because one got to attend a movie screening, and go to a party at the Hard Rock (Hollywood, I presume) don’t strike me as things to go on about. That’s no the way most of the time here is, even for the people she met at such things (Ryan Seacrest and Danny Bannaducci… to me those are just a pair of second tier radio personalities, not people to swoon over). The Micheal Keaton’s, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullocks, and … have to work to attend to, the parties are just part of that work, this wasn’t a weekend as a guest in Malibu, or the Hamptons, it was just a “premiere”.
Then she went and said, “I don’t know if I should mention this, but Donald Trump asked me to model for agency.” Arrgh! She’s talking with what I can only assume is a gossip magazine’s reporter, she’s on the record and talking about a not-done deal, which is supposed to be; so it seems, under at least some fig-leaf of secrecy.
But she her pageant coach (whom I assume is the person traveling with her) is a lawyer, and can handle the business end of things, like contracts. Given the apparent youth of the person with her (and her not paying enough attention to the conversation to shut down that entire line of conversation as soon as it started) I don’t think she’s passed the bar all that long ago. In any case I suspect Donald Trump has lawyers who are very good at writing contracts, and Miss Rhode Island is going to be moving from better looking than all the others, to just one of the crowd of good looking women.
For this she is giving up school?
I shouldn’t say it like that. If that’s her bliss, she ought to go for it, and the time to strike is while the iron is hot. I just don’t think she’s got the best set of plans, for what is a cut-throat business, and she’s not going about it with the focus needed, unless leaking the, not yet signed, deal is part of a specific strategy… seem to be silly, and clueless, and so talk about “secrets” in which case she has the technique down cold.
Saturday 31 Mar
Gyahhh. The Sierra Vista Public Library seems to be the only place about which has wi-fi. Rumors of a coffee shop seem to be just that, rumors. I recall where one was (and of the sort which might have had some) but it seems to have gone the way of all flesh. We thought we might have to drive to Tuscon, but no, the public is served.
There is one place which advertises having it... McDonald's. The will rebels at spending $3, per hour, for the privilege of running my computer on batteries.
My class is going well. The only thing I was really worried about was less of a worry. It seems the PT test is no longer a graduation requirement. Failing it means a "Student met course standards marginally" (the lowest sort of passing) regardless of in-class performance.
But it's not a record PT test, the only scores are "Pass" and "Student met course standards marginally."
I am not built for push-ups. I am lean, and lank, which has made them my bête noire for the past 15 years. As I get older they get easier, not because I am any bulkier, but because I am required to do fewer (the present requirement for me is 34, in two minutes. The form is arms locked, lower the body; as a unit, until the shoulders and elbows make a plane parallel to the ground, and raise the body to arms locked. Lifting a foot, or a hand, terminates the event. Resting on the ground, terminates the event).
Three weeks ago I pulled a tendon in my arm.
But I passed. So all that remains is to write five SOPs, do some power-point slides for the briefing I have to give on the research paper I wrote last week, and make a graphic depiction of how the subject of the paper ties into the Intelligence/Surveillance/Reporting Architecture. Oh, yeah, and teach two classes.
A week from now I'll be home again.
It's a good class. Not so much the training (there isn't actually a whole lot of this which is new to me, and most of it is more than passing familiar. I am a decent staff NCO already). But the nuts and bolts of the classroom talk is new. It's not often I get to be in a room with 15 other interrogators, even less common that they are all experienced (these days it's the uniformw without a combat patch which looks odd), and even rarer than that that I don't know them already.
This class has one of my squad-members, and a couple of people I know, but with whom I didn't deploy. So a lot of new perspective on the art/craft of my job, as well as the nuts and bolts of doing it, under different conditions from the ones I got to practice, is not only available, but actively presented. Interrogators are not, as a rule, all that shy and retiring.
The class had a small melt-down yesterday. People started to worry about just what the grading standard is for the SOPs we have to write. There was more than a bit of a flap. I was more annoyed at the people who were trying to make it more than it was, and who were then asking questions which had been answered; in such a way as to make it seem they hadn't been.
So I stayed late to draft out an SOP for Interrogation Operations. One page, more detailed than it needed to be, but I flew it past the Course Manager, and he said it was fine. So I've no more worries. The worst I can do is be average; which is just fine, all things considered.
A couple of photo posts will follow.
It also has that smell, the whiff of water, plants and dust, which is unique to places like it. The Mojave gets that way too. The temps are 75/45, which some depression (65/35) predicted for mid-week. I can live with that (esp. because I have a second blanket now).
The Staff NCO course I am here to take isn’t going to be hard. One, I’, tolerably clever, and the biggest bug-bear is a 3-5 page, double-spaced, one-inch margins research paper; requiring not less than 3 referenced sources, with cover sheet and bibliography.
I also have to brief it, and teach a couple of classes.
Making sure the briefing lasts the minimum eight minutes might be the hardest thing (I don’t think going over twelve is going to be too much of a problem, once I hit, “What are your questions” the clock stops, even if we go on talking about it for three hours).
Getting here had its moments. At LAX I saw Miss Rhode Island from the Miss USA Pageant. Sadly she seems to be as vapid as the stereotypes claim. How do I know it was Miss Rhode Island… she was wearing a sash which said so, and the tags on her luggage (being checked a bit ahead of mine) said, Miss RI, Miss USA.
I then happened to be in line immediately behind her for coffee. The chit chat she was having with her companion was banal enough. Maia and I might sound the same. Then someone she knew from the pageant (perhaps, it was a very brief encounter) came to do the public display of semi-affection. During this Miss RI (still wearing the sash, a bit of worn satin with two rows of rhinestones trimming some silver edging) announced that Trump wanted her to sign with his agency. It was at this point her phone rang. Someone from “the Journal” and she had to take it.
That was when the vapid (or at least very clueless) made itself plain.
Call me jaded, but she was gushing. Not about being one of the recognised runners up (I don’t think, from the conversation, that she won, but rather that she made the court), which would have been understandable, but about the things she’d gotten to do in LA (which I later heard she loved, having come here in Dec when the contest did some of the preliminary eliminations: across Christmas… WTF).
I’m an Angeleno, and many of us affect a blasé attitude to “The Industry”, and I’m at least as jaded as most.
akirlu still teases me about not noticing Warren Beatty in a hallway at a movie theater. I’ve worked at the edges of the film business, off and on. Swing-gang work, and studio projectionist, but saying how wonderful one’s two weeks were because one got to attend a movie screening, and go to a party at the Hard Rock (Hollywood, I presume) don’t strike me as things to go on about. That’s no the way most of the time here is, even for the people she met at such things (Ryan Seacrest and Danny Bannaducci… to me those are just a pair of second tier radio personalities, not people to swoon over). The Micheal Keaton’s, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullocks, and … have to work to attend to, the parties are just part of that work, this wasn’t a weekend as a guest in Malibu, or the Hamptons, it was just a “premiere”.Then she went and said, “I don’t know if I should mention this, but Donald Trump asked me to model for agency.” Arrgh! She’s talking with what I can only assume is a gossip magazine’s reporter, she’s on the record and talking about a not-done deal, which is supposed to be; so it seems, under at least some fig-leaf of secrecy.
But she her pageant coach (whom I assume is the person traveling with her) is a lawyer, and can handle the business end of things, like contracts. Given the apparent youth of the person with her (and her not paying enough attention to the conversation to shut down that entire line of conversation as soon as it started) I don’t think she’s passed the bar all that long ago. In any case I suspect Donald Trump has lawyers who are very good at writing contracts, and Miss Rhode Island is going to be moving from better looking than all the others, to just one of the crowd of good looking women.
For this she is giving up school?
I shouldn’t say it like that. If that’s her bliss, she ought to go for it, and the time to strike is while the iron is hot. I just don’t think she’s got the best set of plans, for what is a cut-throat business, and she’s not going about it with the focus needed, unless leaking the, not yet signed, deal is part of a specific strategy… seem to be silly, and clueless, and so talk about “secrets” in which case she has the technique down cold.
Saturday 31 Mar
Gyahhh. The Sierra Vista Public Library seems to be the only place about which has wi-fi. Rumors of a coffee shop seem to be just that, rumors. I recall where one was (and of the sort which might have had some) but it seems to have gone the way of all flesh. We thought we might have to drive to Tuscon, but no, the public is served.
There is one place which advertises having it... McDonald's. The will rebels at spending $3, per hour, for the privilege of running my computer on batteries.
My class is going well. The only thing I was really worried about was less of a worry. It seems the PT test is no longer a graduation requirement. Failing it means a "Student met course standards marginally" (the lowest sort of passing) regardless of in-class performance.
But it's not a record PT test, the only scores are "Pass" and "Student met course standards marginally."
I am not built for push-ups. I am lean, and lank, which has made them my bête noire for the past 15 years. As I get older they get easier, not because I am any bulkier, but because I am required to do fewer (the present requirement for me is 34, in two minutes. The form is arms locked, lower the body; as a unit, until the shoulders and elbows make a plane parallel to the ground, and raise the body to arms locked. Lifting a foot, or a hand, terminates the event. Resting on the ground, terminates the event).
Three weeks ago I pulled a tendon in my arm.
But I passed. So all that remains is to write five SOPs, do some power-point slides for the briefing I have to give on the research paper I wrote last week, and make a graphic depiction of how the subject of the paper ties into the Intelligence/Surveillance/Reporting Architecture. Oh, yeah, and teach two classes.
A week from now I'll be home again.
It's a good class. Not so much the training (there isn't actually a whole lot of this which is new to me, and most of it is more than passing familiar. I am a decent staff NCO already). But the nuts and bolts of the classroom talk is new. It's not often I get to be in a room with 15 other interrogators, even less common that they are all experienced (these days it's the uniformw without a combat patch which looks odd), and even rarer than that that I don't know them already.
This class has one of my squad-members, and a couple of people I know, but with whom I didn't deploy. So a lot of new perspective on the art/craft of my job, as well as the nuts and bolts of doing it, under different conditions from the ones I got to practice, is not only available, but actively presented. Interrogators are not, as a rule, all that shy and retiring.
The class had a small melt-down yesterday. People started to worry about just what the grading standard is for the SOPs we have to write. There was more than a bit of a flap. I was more annoyed at the people who were trying to make it more than it was, and who were then asking questions which had been answered; in such a way as to make it seem they hadn't been.
So I stayed late to draft out an SOP for Interrogation Operations. One page, more detailed than it needed to be, but I flew it past the Course Manager, and he said it was fine. So I've no more worries. The worst I can do is be average; which is just fine, all things considered.
A couple of photo posts will follow.
