So, fueled by greywar's return and my own return to a more normal schedule, I've decided to update my readers (all three of you). My supervisor went on leave last month. He's the Chief MLI and that means he's the senior enlisted person in the school. Before he left, he told me that I'd be holding down the fort for him while he was gone and that he had wrapped up a lot of stuff, so I just had a few loose ends to tie up and then manage anything new. To give you an idea of how the three ...

Busy blogging day for me today... Maybe I'm making a comeback to regular stuff or maybe I'm just teasing the three of you that still check this site once a month. HAHA! So, what better day than today to have a power outage in the school? I mean, it is the 65th Anniversary of DLI and we had a representative from the Pentagon touring our school when it happened! HAHA! Perfect timing. So, apparently, if you have one of those fancy motion detectors installed that turns your lights ...

Just another no news flash from email, just less sexy than my last one . In a report released by Reporters Without Borders , North Korea " remains, as in 2005, the worst internet black hole in the world ". I'm guessing this really comes as no surprise to the average person, but I guess it requires reporting (without borders). And as far as Reporters Without Borders goes... Well, Doctors Without Borders seems like a nice organization. They try do a lot of good all over the w...

Today we are celebrating the 65th Anniversary of the Defense Language Institute. There will be a number of special things going on today, to include the inaugural induction ceremony to the DLI Hall of Fame . We have a bunch of special visitors coming out, including Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey. Rumor also has it that the Governator will be visiting, too, along with members of both the state legislature and the US Congress. I can't even imagine how far we've come in training lin...

Browsing news headlines in email this morning and I just had to share this one. South Korea moves to legalize miniskirts . Now, I've spent some time in Korea and I never knew it was against the law to wear mini skirts or short, hot pants. Even in the winter with snow piled up and wind whipping through the city, you'll see women all over the place wearing short skirts. According to the article, the law has been on the books forever but hasn't been enforced in decades. Of course, wh...

Well, another funeral detail cycle has come and gone. We had a busy last week on duty, though. There were two full honors services last Friday and then a two man service on Monday. The service on Monday was actually for a retired Sailor of 22 years but it was being held in a funeral home in downtown Salinas and the funeral home recommended to the family that they not have rifles fire in the middle of town (the funeral home was located just a block away from the John Steinbeck Library, ...

When you are in the service and stationed overseas, you get military TV channels. The Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) has tried to do their best to provide decent programming for the people overseas but one thing that you're stuck with is military commercials. They don't charge companies for air time and they can't give it free, so during show breaks, they play military made/public service type commercials. Many are "Name this State quiz" or "Once upon a time in histo...

I was asked on Monday if I could do the Tuesday funeral services and since I had nothing going on, I said yes. I was told that the firing team leader had all the phone numbers and would contact the team to make sure they were at the meeting place on time Tuesday morning. The funeral was in Gonzales, CA, which is about 45 minutes away, so I wanted to meet about two hours before our arrival time, just to make sure we had plenty of time to draw the rifles and practice a few times before the se...

Just a quick note - My car stinks. On the way to PT yesterday morning, a skunk ran out in front of my car. I heard a solid thump as something on the under carriage hit it. By the time I got to the parking lot, the skunk spray smell was thick enough to nearly gag me. After PT, as I drove home, I noticed that there was no body in the street, so it survived at least a little while. And so has the smell. When I came out to the car this morning, I could still smell a trace of it. ...

I was getting ready for a funeral this morning when I realized that I hadn't yet cut and pasted my last funeral's post from the word document I used to write it. I volunteered for the Friday funeral at the Tuesday practice. There weren't too many details in the initial print out I got from the NCOIC, but I called the funeral home and found out more. It was just a two man funeral scheduled for Friday afternoon. I got a volunteer from the crew (one with a military license) and found out...

So, our base is fairly small, as far as most military bases go, and parking has been an eternal problem. We have lots and spaces that are designated for various categories of people here. We have Staff and Faculty, Student Commuters, and On-Post Students. Like I said, lots are marked and mixed lots have spaces that are marked individually. The vast majority of spaces in the area of the schools are for Staff and Faculty with some spaces marked for Student Commuters. The On-Post students a...

I volunteered for the funeral Friday at the Tuesday practice. I knew that my schedule between then and this coming Thursday would be pretty hectic with all the graduation ceremony preparations, so I figured I'd volunteer for a service when I knew there would be some space. That way, if any services happen this week, I can be safe in not participating without feeling like I'm not doing my fair share. I called the funeral home on Tuesday to check all the information I had in email. There ...

Well, the time has come for another class to graduate. This will also probably be the last class of mine that I watch graduate. I've been here three years and will likely move on to another duty station before the next class I get finishes this course. This class was special for me. It was the first Proficiency Enhancement Program (PEP) class in the Korean program and the entire class was placed in my department. The PEP class is something that we are moving to in hopes of producing ...

I volunteered to take the funeral on Thursday earlier in the week. Originally, the overall NCOIC wanted me to take one of the new Soldiers that had just started the detail the week prior. When we got to practice on Tuesday, we found that all the Soldiers that had been brand new to the detail the previous week had been replaced. We still had our crew of Airmen that had been with us for a few weeks but we've been hoping to get a second team trained up so we didn't have to always rely on the ...

So, yeah, not so busy day at the office today. I graded all the homework and have some spare time before my next class, so I'm catching up a little on my JU habit. HAHA! A few months back I'd seen stuff going around the net and on tv about Sudoku. The numbers logic puzzle thing, you know? It looked kind of interesting. The first one I ever tried was at a Jiffy Lube. I was reading the ESPN magazine in the waiting area and they had a baseball Sudoku. I didn't have a pen, so I just sta...