FIX BAYONETS!

Day 381

It’s funny to see different points of view. Lots of people complain about not being allowed to drink alcohol while they’re here, and that’s from our military, where drinking has been increasingly toned down as time goes on. The Korean (and Japanese) military tend to be extremely heavy drinkers within their services. Drunkenness outside the group is definitely frowned on, but within the group, and especially at official parties, the booze flows. So it’s interesting to be talking with one of the Korean officers and have him say, “One of the things I like about being here is that I don’t have to drink. In Korea, you have to drink, even if you don’t want to.” Different cultures, different emphasis, and different pains for the members thereof.

My laptop started giving me trouble the other night. I’d be computing along and WHAM! it shut down on me. Try to boot it up and no joy there! There’s still power to the transformer. The battery is pretty much shot anyway, so I always have it plugged in. It hasn’t run out of juice. The transformer is pretty warm, though. So I get online and look for troubleshooting pages. According to the ones I find, either drawing too much power (which would cause a hot transformer) or overheating of the processor itself can cause shutdowns like this. With visions of gargantuan dust bunnies hiding in the case, I set about taking it apart, and couldn’t figure it out. Back to the net.

I couldn’t find disassembly instructions for my particular computer, but there were plenty of possibilities. Since I’d taken all the screws out of the back of the machine, with zero progress, I put them back and started looking around the keyboard. Ahhhhh! Four little tiny catches that hold the keyboard in place. Tip it out, start yanking out innards until I can find the cooling fans, which are FILTHY. Canned air cleans them off. I still need to find some heat sink compound to go between the processor and the heat sink, because the original stuff has dried away to Lunar dust consistency. But, it’s no longer overheating or turning itself off. Good deal.

Since I arrived here, I’ve been fairly busy and very interested in my job. Now though, as a liaison officer, even though I can recognize the need for the position, I have no great interest in it. With no great interest, I’m suddenly much more interested in how much time I have left here, and have started an intermittent countdown. I don’t think I’d be doing that if I still felt moderately productive.

Day 388

I was down in Kabul over last weekend, for a conference. Nice to be able to visit with some of the old gang (those that haven’t gone home, that is). The second day down there, it started snowing. It kept snowing. It was snowing when I left Kabul and it was still snowing when we got into Bagram. It was sticking in Kabul, but here in Bagram, it’s just turning to slush. Very sloppy to walk around the last couple of days. I’ve even broken out my winter boots (GoreTex) and they’re keeping my feet toasty. When the sky finally clears up, the mountains should be impressive.

While I was in Kabul, I was talking with one of my friends about how we’ve managed to do some things that will go on long after anyone remembers that we were involved. In his case, he was instrumental in helping to start a centralized database for the Afghan government that will really help them to track what’s happening around the country. It’s open to all the donor nations, so they can use it for statistical purposes, too.

In my case, a simple e-mail asking for help resulted in me introducing some people I didn’t know yet (Afghans) to some people I did know (also Afghans), and suggesting that perhaps they could work together. After some growing pains introduced by people with small brains, they did in fact start working together, and the team is becoming very effective. I’m still getting progress reports from them, that show how much they’ve grown in just the last few months.

No one will remember what my friend and I did, except for us. And that’s OK. Enough of these little success stories and we’ll finally have the big success story we’re looking for, because lots of other people are doing the same sorts of things.

Night before last, the snow was sticking here, too. Flakes big enough to fill a frying pan. Well, maybe not just one at a time, but pretty big nonetheless. Then yesterday, it thawed enough to melt most of it off the roads around here, and last night it froze. Quite chilly. I almost needed to think about maybe putting on gloves this morning, but not quite. The huge puddle in the parking area of my billets was frozen just about clear through, though, and hard enough to be driven across.

One of our Brit SOF types has bought several rifles while he’s been here. Like us, they can ship them home if they’re old enough. His dealer also gave him three rounds of .577 Snider ammunition, which he can’t ship because of the black powder. So he pulled the bullets out of the cases and dropped out the powder, which he then lit off with a match on a stick. It didn’t go ‘bang’, of course; small amounts of powder need to be properly contained for that. Then he popped the primers, (one ‘popped’, the other two ‘pffffted’ and now, minus ‘explosive’, he can send the cartridges home.