Day Eleven
06 August 2007
*YAWN* Oh man that felt like too much sleep. Holy crap, it’s 10:30! Well it’s so late already I guess I’ll just get up, get ready for the day, and grab some lunch before going next door. Today’s goal is to set up a VTC in the DOC conference room and try to finish up the desk wiring. *sigh* It’s hard to think of this as an exciting adventure even as I’m slinging an M4 rifle to my back and making sure I have a functioning 30 round magazine full of ammo. Would Rambo be setting up a VTC?
I went for a boring lunch to go with my current mood. Chicken nuggets and mixed veggies. The food, though seemingly bland and mundane, was unexpectedly good. I think they seasoned the nuggets with something and the veggies were crisp and fresh. Hmm… I wonder if this meal is foreshadowing my upcoming day. With a diet coke in my ankle pocket and a round in the chamber of my rifle, I head over to the DOC conference room.
The boxes are opened; the contents set up at one end of a huge, glossy wood conference table. The cables to connect each piece together are fulfilling their respective destinies and the power cables are set into a power strip. The only thing left to do is plug in that power strip and get to testing. Now where is that outlet? With a team of three relatively intelligent people, finding an outlet on the wall of a large room should not be a difficult task. A room such as this should have a number of outlets, after all, given it’s intended purpose.
Mountains of boxes were moved away from the walls after the first couple of circuits around the room were unsuccessful, but to no avail. Several more circuits were conducted before we started making plans run an extension from a connecting office. Just as we are about to send someone to find an extension cord, someone decides to move the chairs set up on the stage. And, lo and behold, an outlet is finally discovered raised a good foot from the base of the wall. With at least some of our professional dignity intact, we set up the VTC equipment as far as we could and now must wait for the secure network to be up and running for final tests.
Back in my room I decide that it would be great to have a VTC setup in my home. The Tandberg system is really nice but incredibly expensive and, of course, there must be a full system at both ends to make it work. It would be a very expensive Christmas! I did however find a 57” Mitsubishi TV for less than $2000! It would fill most of my living room back home and more than fill my little space where I currently live, but hey, a deal’s a deal. (I didn’t buy it, in case you were wondering.) To get my head out of the clouds I head back over to check the progress in the JOC.
The desks are coming along nicely. Those rat nests of wires have been cleaned up and now there is just some repairs to make on the outlets and connectors set into the desks. Well, I’m just getting in the way here so I guess it’s dinner time.
Being out of that boring mood from earlier, I had a wonderful dinner. I really couldn’t decide between the entrees so I went for both the deliciously fragrant curry chicken and the mouth wateringly juicy looking roast beef. The mashed potatoes were fluffy and hardly resembled the spackle from previous Iraq DFAC dinners. To top it all off I had a couple scoops of mint chocolate chip ice cream that really hit the spot. With a happy but heavy stomach, I went to stretch out on the bunk to digest.
At 2200 I’m told the TacSat radio has to be set up and functional like right now right now, so my NCO and I grab the gear and head out to the latrine trailer. This is the only place the radio can be. The plan is to set it up right next to the satellite dish that supports all of our comms and run the cabling through the same way too. Now, the radio’s antenna is flimsy rod of metal with two webs of even flimsier metal attached to it. This antenna has to fire a signal out to geosynchronous orbit (Approximately 23,000 miles into space.) and receive a signal from the same place. This kind of distance requires pointing accuracy with less than one degree of “wiggle room” just to get a signal from a satellite, let alone a signal strong enough to communicate over. Due to this extreme requirement, a GPS device is usually used in combination with finely tuned antenna pointing aides (like electronically controlled servos to move and stabilize the antenna during movement) to get the optimal signal strength. “So,” you ask, “what kind of cool stuff did you use to point that antenna??” I had the best tools available: my hands and a compass. This should be fun.
I had to assume that this antenna should be pointed at the same satellite the big dish was pointing to, so I tried to get them pointed at the same azimuth. To do this, I climbed between the support arms of the dish and leaned back (thus exposing my entire body to the strongest concentration of RF energy possible; kid’s, don’t try this at home!). I measured the azimuth as quickly as possible and got the hell away from the feed horn. This was my solution. I’m not proud (okay maybe a little). After a half hour of being hunkered down behind the antenna looking down the sights of the compass, I finally declared that it was ready to be tested.
Another half an hour went by as NCO loaded comsec into the radio itself and turned it on. The moment of truth…. BOO YAH! Perfect signal strength! Oh yeah, one shot one kill, baby! Yeah, it’s what I do. After a radio test, we pack it up at 2330 and head off for bed.
The incredible events of the night have me up until 0200 but soon enough it’s…
18 January 2009
Day Ten
Day Ten
05 August 2007
There is still a lot of setup work to do as we get started on unpacking the phones around 0900. The phones are pretty easy since all we really have to do is set the network configuration to enable DHCP and plug it in. These switches don’t provide any power so the phones here have to be plugged into the wall too. The desks have built in power outlets (that we did not re-wire, by the way) but there are only so many. This problem is solved quickly though when the contractor poet produces a box of cheap multi-socket power strips. Each socket has a little on/off button below it in a different pastel shade and the voltage meter of each strip is framed by a large red heart. These guys have the weirdest stuff.
A corn dog and a pizza later and we were back at the DOC finishing up the phones for the G offices. Not all of them were working or anything but we had done all we could from our end. It would have helped had the lines been tagged but, alas!, t’was not so.
I went back to the room and puttered around the internet trying to find out more about Cisco IP phones and 3Com switches. I was kinda irked that of the hundreds (if not thousands) of pages I found dedicated to these products, only one small paragraph had anything at all to do with what I was working with (How to factory reset a 7900 series IP phone), and even that wasn’t really helpful at the moment. Ah well. It’s dinner time anyway.
After some satisfactory ribs, warm cheese tortellini, and an interesting attempt at a quesadilla, I had another kind of task. Apparently the building contactor next door was having some trouble installing a drier for his printer. I figured I could use the opportunity to learn some 25 Bravo stuff (they’re the computer guys). He stays in a pretty nicely appointed trailer on the DOC side. It appeared to be an easy fix. I went to the printer manufacturer’s website and started the download of the whole driver suite for the series. It was a rather large file (40 something megabytes) so we chatted about the usual stuff. Where we were from, how we liked it out here, what we planned to do when we got back home, etc. The download was done in only eight minutes! It would have taken all day on the connection in my room! It took twice as long to install but it worked out. The test page printed just fine and that was that. With a quick handshake and a thanks I was out the door. I decided right then and there that I wouldn’t rather be a Bravo than a Sierra.
It was nearing midnight when we realized that no one had seen the contractor poet or his techs since dinner. Knowing this place they could have been arrested or at least detained. Possibly kidnapped…shit. Off I went to the DOC ready to spring them from whatever evil had them captive. If only I had a stylish cape for the occasion. Or a tail, of course, but that could always come in handy. As soon as I turned the corner I found them hanging from the ceiling by green ropes. Wait…there was a ladder there. And the ropes were coming out of a box of CAT5. Hmm…Ooooohhhhh. They were just running some more lines. Well, at least I had good intentions. HAHAHA.
Back on the GC side, my NCO and I were having a smoke when an interesting character came into the conversation. He is know as Wathic Wathic, apparently, and he has a bunch of metal bars sticking out of his left leg near the ankle. He went into the story and I was impressed from the start. He was driving to get to work (here at the GC) and had planned to drop off his nephew with some family on the way. Down a side street, a couple of cars pulled in front of his and slowed to a stop. A bunch of guys carrying AK 47s (a normal thing here, actually) got out of those cars and approached his window. They said they knew he was helping the Americans and if he didn’t stop they would kill him and his family. He told them to fuck off which caused the first guy to reach into the car and pulled Wathic Wathic out through the window! WW got to his feet and was promptly greeted with a butt stroke to the head. He grabbed the AK and held on tight. The guy told him to let go so WW punched him in the face and started to run down the alley. They were shooting at him, of course, and at one point he fell. He turned around and opened fire on them with the pistol that had been hidden in his jeans. He may have hit one of them because they scattered at that point and took off. He realized he’d been shot and hobbled back to his car; quickly coming to the realization that those guys had taken his nephew. They phoned a few days later and said his nephew was fine and would be returned for seven thousand dollars. “Kill him.” said WW, “I don’t have that kind of money.” and hung up. A week later they called again asking for five thousand. “Kill him.” Another week later they called again. This time they worked out a deal and for twenty-five hundred dollars, WW’s nephew was set free. And what makes it even more incredible is that this is the second time he’d been shot for helping us! And he’s still here doing all he can to help the coalition! Meeting the Iraqi Rambo is a pretty eye opening experience. This man knows the difference between right and wrong and that the right way is going to be hard and painful but worth it in the end. And just knowing he exists will keep my hopes for this country alive.
My mind keeps me up until nearly 0300 but soon enough it becomes…
05 August 2007
There is still a lot of setup work to do as we get started on unpacking the phones around 0900. The phones are pretty easy since all we really have to do is set the network configuration to enable DHCP and plug it in. These switches don’t provide any power so the phones here have to be plugged into the wall too. The desks have built in power outlets (that we did not re-wire, by the way) but there are only so many. This problem is solved quickly though when the contractor poet produces a box of cheap multi-socket power strips. Each socket has a little on/off button below it in a different pastel shade and the voltage meter of each strip is framed by a large red heart. These guys have the weirdest stuff.
A corn dog and a pizza later and we were back at the DOC finishing up the phones for the G offices. Not all of them were working or anything but we had done all we could from our end. It would have helped had the lines been tagged but, alas!, t’was not so.
I went back to the room and puttered around the internet trying to find out more about Cisco IP phones and 3Com switches. I was kinda irked that of the hundreds (if not thousands) of pages I found dedicated to these products, only one small paragraph had anything at all to do with what I was working with (How to factory reset a 7900 series IP phone), and even that wasn’t really helpful at the moment. Ah well. It’s dinner time anyway.
After some satisfactory ribs, warm cheese tortellini, and an interesting attempt at a quesadilla, I had another kind of task. Apparently the building contactor next door was having some trouble installing a drier for his printer. I figured I could use the opportunity to learn some 25 Bravo stuff (they’re the computer guys). He stays in a pretty nicely appointed trailer on the DOC side. It appeared to be an easy fix. I went to the printer manufacturer’s website and started the download of the whole driver suite for the series. It was a rather large file (40 something megabytes) so we chatted about the usual stuff. Where we were from, how we liked it out here, what we planned to do when we got back home, etc. The download was done in only eight minutes! It would have taken all day on the connection in my room! It took twice as long to install but it worked out. The test page printed just fine and that was that. With a quick handshake and a thanks I was out the door. I decided right then and there that I wouldn’t rather be a Bravo than a Sierra.
It was nearing midnight when we realized that no one had seen the contractor poet or his techs since dinner. Knowing this place they could have been arrested or at least detained. Possibly kidnapped…shit. Off I went to the DOC ready to spring them from whatever evil had them captive. If only I had a stylish cape for the occasion. Or a tail, of course, but that could always come in handy. As soon as I turned the corner I found them hanging from the ceiling by green ropes. Wait…there was a ladder there. And the ropes were coming out of a box of CAT5. Hmm…Ooooohhhhh. They were just running some more lines. Well, at least I had good intentions. HAHAHA.
Back on the GC side, my NCO and I were having a smoke when an interesting character came into the conversation. He is know as Wathic Wathic, apparently, and he has a bunch of metal bars sticking out of his left leg near the ankle. He went into the story and I was impressed from the start. He was driving to get to work (here at the GC) and had planned to drop off his nephew with some family on the way. Down a side street, a couple of cars pulled in front of his and slowed to a stop. A bunch of guys carrying AK 47s (a normal thing here, actually) got out of those cars and approached his window. They said they knew he was helping the Americans and if he didn’t stop they would kill him and his family. He told them to fuck off which caused the first guy to reach into the car and pulled Wathic Wathic out through the window! WW got to his feet and was promptly greeted with a butt stroke to the head. He grabbed the AK and held on tight. The guy told him to let go so WW punched him in the face and started to run down the alley. They were shooting at him, of course, and at one point he fell. He turned around and opened fire on them with the pistol that had been hidden in his jeans. He may have hit one of them because they scattered at that point and took off. He realized he’d been shot and hobbled back to his car; quickly coming to the realization that those guys had taken his nephew. They phoned a few days later and said his nephew was fine and would be returned for seven thousand dollars. “Kill him.” said WW, “I don’t have that kind of money.” and hung up. A week later they called again asking for five thousand. “Kill him.” Another week later they called again. This time they worked out a deal and for twenty-five hundred dollars, WW’s nephew was set free. And what makes it even more incredible is that this is the second time he’d been shot for helping us! And he’s still here doing all he can to help the coalition! Meeting the Iraqi Rambo is a pretty eye opening experience. This man knows the difference between right and wrong and that the right way is going to be hard and painful but worth it in the end. And just knowing he exists will keep my hopes for this country alive.
My mind keeps me up until nearly 0300 but soon enough it becomes…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)