11. October 2007 by DB.

Howdy all

Time for the monthly update from Northern Virginia.  Not too much has happened in the last month.  We did run up to Westminster, MD to help our brother-in-law at the Maryland State Wine Festival.  By volunteering to help pour wine we got into the festival for free.  We’ve been helping out at various festivals since we returned from Germany.  Usually, I attract the lunatic fringe (”Do you have any wine that tastes like grape jelly?” or “Why is your dry wine tart, it doesn’t taste anything like my dandelion wine.”), but this time I got lucky.  Just poured lots of wine, although more and more of the customers tend to chug the sample. 

At the end of the month we took a week vacation and headed out to visit some friends of Marcia’s from Mt. Home. They are retired in Phoenix so we hopped on Southwest for a quick jaunt out there (anybody we know fly for Southwest?).  We also got to visit with some friends from Germany while we were there.  After a couple of days in Arizona we flew to Albuquerque, where we met my sister and her husband and then drove up to Santa Fe to see the rest of my family.  It was the first get together of all the sibs and my parents in quite awhile.  We had a great time in Santa Fe; we also were looking at the area because we’re considering it as a possible retirement spot once Marcia decides to retire.  After Santa Fe Marcia and I flew to Dallas to see my oldest daughter, her husband and their two children (that’s right, I’m a grandfather twice over).  We just did a patented Miller “Drive-by” visit (less than 24 hours), but I got to reconnect with Brandon (almost 3 years old) and met Ethan (1 year) for the first time.  Nice thing about being a grandfather was that I got to spin the kids up and then hand them back to their mother.

We flew back to Baltimore on Saturday and drove back to Virginia that night. 

Well those are my highlights for the month.  All is well in Northern Virginia.

I do have one question for you all though;  What happened in the 11th after I retired?  It seems like all the experienced field graders were moved out of the squadron or off base within six months after I departed.

Well take care everyone and keep in touch.

Later
DB

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11. October 2007 by Andy.

Yes, its true…I have a new job.  Its taken 9 months, but hey I’m not with CVS! 

 17 September SAIC called to let me know they won the contract for the AOC Training making me an AOC Training Specialist.  Even though its the AOC, it just like running a training flight in a squadron; training requirements, IQT, MQT, stan/eval/ etc.  8th AF is going through a re-organization and my shop is moving over to the AOC floor next to the 49th Test.  Actually the 49th is moving to a new location on base and the 8th AF AOC is expanding to take over the whole building.

 My hours are 80 per two weeks, no more no less.  If I work more one week, I can work less the next.  Seven holidays (actually paid ones!), plus two additional holidays at my discretion, no work on weekends or weeknights!  Yep, life just got better.  Wife is upset now…home too much and bugging her to boot! LoL

Chuck: sorry to hear how they mis-treated you at Boeing…their loss!

 Reed: no ducks yet,  but I cannot wait to try our my new Remington 11-87!

James: reading a new history book on WW1 by John Keegan - pretty good so far…

Yes, I can spend time reading again! 

Ooops, forgot to sign off.

 Until next time, take care!

Andy

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11. October 2007 by James.

Hi BOB,
 
Chuck, this blog may be a little too high tech for me.  Next thing you know you’ll be advocating getting rid of Peachtext and 5.25 discs on our Z100s and moving over to Wordstar
 
Sorry about your Boeing job.  It may still work out just fine.  Who knows?  I’ve heard horror stories from my civilian friends about their work organizations.  One friend of mine from college who has been in mid level textile manufacturing his whole career was once sent on a two week tour of a Chinese manufacturing plant only to learn upon his return that he was let go for unknown reasons.  I guess in the AF we had to deal with the occasional so-so commander or vagaries of some MPF system, but the personnel problems never seemed that bad to me.   

We had a fairly busy month.  We traveled the 1000 miles to Whiteman AFB to see Gary Harencak’s change of command ceremony.  Gary took over from Greg Biscone who is going to be Deputy J3 at Centcom.  He’ll be busy.  Gary’s kids were in the audience.  His son, Michael, is a cadet at the Academy.  His permanent party commander is Major Kathy Winans.  What a small AF!  Bill Winans is also stationed at the Academy. 

We moved into a new apartment about 10 minutes from our old one in a growing section of Savannah.  A friend of mine with a truck helped us move all the small stuff and we hired “All My Sons” to move the furniture.  It was strange moving without going through Transportation to handle everything.  This move worked really well though.  Four guys showed up, wrapped all our furniture and drove it straight to the new place.  There was no inventory, other than mental, and the whole process was over in two hours.  There wasn’t a scratch on anything.  We were very pleased.

My father is doing okay at the nursing home.  We go daily for a few hours to feed him, etc.  After six months of observing how the nursing home works, and I assume this place is typical, I’ve learned it is vital to have a family or friend presence in the home.  It’s easy for the staff to ignore people and their needs otherwise.  Sad, but true. 

The anniversary of the Revolutionary War Battle of Savannah was a couple of days ago and there were several celebratory events leading up to it.  I attended one lecture at the Savannah History Museum on the French participation in the Revolution.  We could have done without D’Estaing, but we might still be having afternoon tea if it wasn’t for Lafayette, Rochambeau, their Navy and other resources. 

Oh, and one thing I learned this month is that it is very important to carefully thread your Maytag washer input hoses onto the water inlet valve.  Otherwise, you might strip the threads on the $22 water inlet/valve part and incur a $118 Maytag Repairman visit (He actually does work sometimes!)

Talk to everyone next month.

James

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11. October 2007 by Ponch.

All

Not much goin on in the So Cal except the usual daily crap that feeds my misanthropy.  Like tonight while headed home for lunch some big dude was stopped in the middle of the road beating the crap out of someone else sitting next to him in his car… girl I think.  I was on the cell phone and had just enough time to look over and gasp.  By the time I turned around to go see what could be done, they were gone.  I hope it wasn’t another murder goin on.  That’s been pretty regular around here lately.  Seems like they find a new body every night. 

Oh well prices on houses are goin down, we hope to move soon and get out of here. 

Chuck I’m sorry about the job thing.  Can’t but feel guilty about advising you to hold out for more money.  I never expected they would treat you like that.  I don’t understand how unprofessional and cheap the HR folks acted. How can they get good people to work for them if they treat folks like that. (Again the misanthropy thing gets fed)   No matter… there are plenty of good jobs out there for very talented people like you.  I’m surprised the manager that wanted to hire you didn’t call?  Well screw them anyway.  I’m kind’a in the same boat cause I’ve not heard about the Global Hawk position yet.  Mmmm maybe there is a conspiracy against old Buff guys (misanthropy). 

Oh well..on to other stuff.  Andy any ducks yet?  I have not been out quail hunting this year.  Been busy finishing the Cal Tech school thing.  Now that’s done I will start on getting my CFII.  I still have GI bill money available so I will try to work that issue.  Yuck dealing with the government to get benefits is a huge pain.  Chuck keep trying on the disability… I just found out the junior college tuition is free for kids of disabled vets. No matter what level of disability.  Of course this means going to the government with the tin cup in hand (misanthropy again).  However every little bit helps;-) 

Headed for the hills for three days this weekend.  It’s the annual CalStar Party at lake San Antonio. 

Lots of fun look’n at expensive telescopes and making fun of the weirdo’s that come down from San Francisco (vegetable Lasagna types..oops misanthropy !-) 

All if you havn’t read any of Michael Yon stuff I highly recommend it.  This weeks post is extremely moving. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

Chuck your article on the draft was the best yet…why they didn’t post it, I can’t believe it those no good …were can I buy a sniper rifle… %#@&*…… misanthropy!!!

Peace Out!

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11. October 2007 by The Chuck.

Alright, here we are on 10/11/07, I’m hoping our Bob Blog goes over well, but either way we’ll be fine.  Which is how I’m doing, I’m doing fine.

I’m doing fine after my debacle with Boeing.  I applied for a position with them, and they offered me the job.  However, they pretty much low-balled me on the salary offer.  I talked it over with a couple of folks, and I counter-offered.  They sat on the counter-offer for over a week, without a peep.  Then their HR department called and offered me a compromise . . . which was still a low-ball, but I had discussed it with Cindy during our wait, and decided that even if they came back with the same offier, we wanted the job and the location.  The HR manager said they would love to have me in Kansas in a week (!) but understood that it would take a little longer.  In addition, he told me that would have the lower-level, HR pogue contact me with the “official offer” the next day.  I thought that was great, so that evening I said goodbye to the tech support job, which brought no tears to my eye, and I started to scramble to get the house ready to go.  Then before I knew it, three days had passed, and I had heard nothing.

So I called, and kept getting answer machines.  Finally an HR worker that I had never talked to before answered and gave me HR 101, “if you don’t have an official offer, you don’t have an offer . . .” So it’s been about a month since then so there you have it.  At least the Boeing debacle got me out the tech support job, because I don’t think I could have quit without a good reason (not liking the job is not a good reason) because being “disloyal” isn’t a part of my psyche right now . . . the last time I quit a job was in high school, so I could go in the Air Force, then I retired 32 years later.  I’ll probably get better at being selfish over time.  I’m fine with that.

The moral of the story is whenever an HR dude or dudette is talking; don’t trust a single word they say until you have an offer in writing . . . of course, even then — they could fire you two days after you sell your house, which would be worse that a fake-job offer over the phone . . . maybe the moral of the story is to watch out for HR folks from Boeing.  Ah, those great mysteries of life, I don’t even have the moral of the story for certain, which can be bad for morale.  I’m still fine with it.

I’m fine with submitting my novel to the Amazon.com Breakthough Novel Award contest.  I’ve been collecting rejection slips for my novel The Last Dragoneer and they want unpublished novels.  Grand prize is a publishing contract with Penguin Books, who won’t even look at a non-agented writer.  So I consider this a backdoor submission.  It was nice to have a novel that I’ve edited 20 times and I’ve been refining for a year and a half.  If this goes wonderful, some time in April I’ll know something really good.  I’d be fine with that for certain.

My grandsons turned two back on the 7th.  You’d never know to look at them that they almost didn’t make it a while back.  I’m really fine with that.

I visited a few shut-ins in local nursing homes and was privileged to lead them in the Lord’s Supper ordnance.  That is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done as a Deacon.  They were very pleased that the church was visiting them.  We’re probably going to keep this “new” tradition going, so about every three months, I’ll be doing it again.  We Baptist don’t observe the Lord’s Supper very often, but it’s always a moving experience.

I still haven’t gotten a rating from the VA board.  I’m absolutely fine with letting the combat-injured vets in the front of the line, but somewhere in the 15 months since I filed with them, you’d think they would have gotten around to me.  The unspoken message to me must be “hurry up and die.”  My email query this month was long and laced with veiled sarcasm.  It’s probably about time to write somebody with more clout that you guys.

I’m hoping this Bob Blog is soon adorned with your comments and postings for this October 11th communiqué. 

In your profiles, you can set up your account to get emails from the Blog when somebody posts to the category of your choice.  I discovered that option a little late for some of you that changed your passwords in the beginning.  So if you’re not getting the announcement email, you can subscribe yourself.

FYI: You can comment on my other postings, or even make postings of your own if you want to.  If this isn’t working right, let me know and I’ll get my admin geek to make changes as necessary. 

Until we post again, take care.

The Chuck

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