Random Thoughts From The Other Side...
Well, since I have a pretty normal girlfriend I don't really have a whole lot to blog about right now (well...maybe a little update)...so we're going to go with more of the random thoughts right now rather than Anchorage women...
The Blockbuster and I are doing fine - we go out pretty regularly, we really don't fight (although there was one night where we got kicked out of The Shed where she was upset over the circumstances of that particular incident), and everything is pretty standard. She's a direct type of person so I get the feeling if I were screwing up she would tell me, but she seems happy with me and I seem to be "the good boyfriend" amongst her group of friends. She's the classic "cool girlfriend" - not needy, lets me hang with my friends, knows how to have fun, and very low maintenance.
For example, we were hanging out watching a movie one night when I got a text from a friend (a female friend) asking me out to a movie. I'm not sure if she was asking me "out," but it certainly seemed that way. I, stupidly - at least I thought, showed her the text and she was really happy I was honest with her and she was with a "wanted" man. Other women I've been with would have probably burned my house down after cutting off...well, let's just say important parts of my body.
That being said, she's still not "wowing" me. I think this is a byproduct of my past experiences in Anchorage. It's not as if I liked drama - far, far, far, far (did I mention how far?) from it, but through all my experiences I've trained myself not to get excited about a new relationship anymore. I can remember when I would talk about a good night kiss for days after a first date. Everyone knows that phase - the honeymoon phase - of a relationship, and then if it sticks you settle into a more normal phase. Well, with The Blockbuster I've skipped the honeymoon phase and landed squarely in the normal phase because the normal phase was dominated by my suspicion she would inevitably turn out crazy. All told, I'm filing this under "good problems to have."
Now for the random thoughts...
As you might have picked up by earlier posts I work for the Air Force. I recently got a new job where I'm partially in charge of setting some new areas on base and I've discovered a few things...
First - I've learned new things about the universe. While I've been setting up these new spaces I've been reading A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking. It's extremely nerdy, but very enlightening. One thing I'm getting from the book is that nothing is constant. First people thought that motion was constant, but it's really relative. Even time isn't constant according to experimentation. If you look at quantum theory it looks like nothing is really settled at all.
However, I have found the one constant in the universe - the bureaucratic mentality.
While I've been reading the aforementioned book I've also been making several, several calls to several base agencies. To get systems, for example, a form needs to be signed by a guy at Hickam AFB then go to another guy down the hall, but in a different organization, at Hickam AFB and then come back to our base so the comm person can start building our systems. Now, when asked if it would help if we called the people at Hickam the sergeant gave me a very emphatic no as it would get him in trouble for bothering the people he needed to sign the sheets he needed.
In another case one agency certified an area as good to go with official forms without talking to another agency that they needed to check with. When the second agency refused to fix the problem they should have fixed weeks earlier (hence the certification) it took four hours of e-mails from multiple people and calls to get... a fully functional area? No. A fully operational certification? No. A million dollars? No. No, what we got was a sheet of paper from that agency saying we were okay and they would respond if we needed help, but the real utility for that is getting us the second sheet of paper which is only good for getting us the third sheet of paper in the above paragraph that is sitting at Hickam AFB.
The last example was when I called a meeting because one project I'm running requires four separate groups to work together to make it happen. Another squadron had the same exact project - I don't mean similar, I mean exactly the same and they are already more than a month late than the already delayed project completion date. Every single one of these groups have already had delays in the previous project, but despite their own experiences it took me 45 minutes to explain to these people why they had to take a half hour of their time to get on the same page and avoid delays from our end. For the record, if you didn't catch that, I took more time explaining the meeting to get them to go than it would have taken them to read my e-mail and just show up.
Are you still following me?
If you still are, good, you may have a future as a civil servant. If not, you still have enough brain cells to make a contribution to society so please, please, for the good of humanity stay away from any job with government - especially the armed services.
My theory on this is called "Bosses vs Customers." Everyone in the Air Force is now a customer at some point. They are a "customer" of Finance, a "customer" of the MPF (Military Personnel Flight), a "customer" of comm. I have had the joy, however, of working in organizations in the Air Force that still had some of this organic capability with the squadrons (they were almost all centralized to save manpower and many of their duties are now "additional duties" by untrained squadron personnel). For example, in my last job we had comm folks. If anything went wrong I could go and have them fix it. They also had to report to a "boss" every morning at 9 AM about current projects. In a word, they were accountable. When you have customers you're really not accountable to them. They don't write your performance reviews, they can't punish you, and they aren't there day after day to make sure you get your job done. So when I go to all these people to get things done now I'm a customer - they don't have to answer to me or my boss - they have to answer to their boss. When you run an organization the main concerns are on the health of your particular part of the world - not on what the low ranking lieutenant needs to get oh, I don't know, a flying squadron what it needs to do real missions.
I guess the bottom line is that commanders with real missions: CE building bases, special forces operators doing their thing, SERE folks rescuing people, pilots flying, intelligence gathering and analyzing data, or AOCs running operations had people in their squadrons and organizations to make their bureaucracies work for the warfighters and the direct supporters of the warfighters. Now those folks near the "pointy end of the spear" are doing the jobs directly (additional duties) or forced to deal directly with the bureaucracies that don't have a real interest in helping you specifically. Generally they have jobs to support the rest of the force and take that seriously on a macro level, but on a person to person basis (the micro level) there really is no interest - after all they do have to get their forms signed before they can be any real help.
I guess I'm just ranting here, but I was selected to do a certain job by the Air Force - I wasn't selected for comm, not for personnel, not for security forces, and not for services. However, I'm doing all of those jobs in my new job.
Until next time, I'll be on hold with someone...
AirForceKush, aka, The Arctic Fox
The Blockbuster and I are doing fine - we go out pretty regularly, we really don't fight (although there was one night where we got kicked out of The Shed where she was upset over the circumstances of that particular incident), and everything is pretty standard. She's a direct type of person so I get the feeling if I were screwing up she would tell me, but she seems happy with me and I seem to be "the good boyfriend" amongst her group of friends. She's the classic "cool girlfriend" - not needy, lets me hang with my friends, knows how to have fun, and very low maintenance.
For example, we were hanging out watching a movie one night when I got a text from a friend (a female friend) asking me out to a movie. I'm not sure if she was asking me "out," but it certainly seemed that way. I, stupidly - at least I thought, showed her the text and she was really happy I was honest with her and she was with a "wanted" man. Other women I've been with would have probably burned my house down after cutting off...well, let's just say important parts of my body.
That being said, she's still not "wowing" me. I think this is a byproduct of my past experiences in Anchorage. It's not as if I liked drama - far, far, far, far (did I mention how far?) from it, but through all my experiences I've trained myself not to get excited about a new relationship anymore. I can remember when I would talk about a good night kiss for days after a first date. Everyone knows that phase - the honeymoon phase - of a relationship, and then if it sticks you settle into a more normal phase. Well, with The Blockbuster I've skipped the honeymoon phase and landed squarely in the normal phase because the normal phase was dominated by my suspicion she would inevitably turn out crazy. All told, I'm filing this under "good problems to have."
Now for the random thoughts...
As you might have picked up by earlier posts I work for the Air Force. I recently got a new job where I'm partially in charge of setting some new areas on base and I've discovered a few things...
First - I've learned new things about the universe. While I've been setting up these new spaces I've been reading A Brief History of Time by Steven Hawking. It's extremely nerdy, but very enlightening. One thing I'm getting from the book is that nothing is constant. First people thought that motion was constant, but it's really relative. Even time isn't constant according to experimentation. If you look at quantum theory it looks like nothing is really settled at all.
However, I have found the one constant in the universe - the bureaucratic mentality.
While I've been reading the aforementioned book I've also been making several, several calls to several base agencies. To get systems, for example, a form needs to be signed by a guy at Hickam AFB then go to another guy down the hall, but in a different organization, at Hickam AFB and then come back to our base so the comm person can start building our systems. Now, when asked if it would help if we called the people at Hickam the sergeant gave me a very emphatic no as it would get him in trouble for bothering the people he needed to sign the sheets he needed.
In another case one agency certified an area as good to go with official forms without talking to another agency that they needed to check with. When the second agency refused to fix the problem they should have fixed weeks earlier (hence the certification) it took four hours of e-mails from multiple people and calls to get... a fully functional area? No. A fully operational certification? No. A million dollars? No. No, what we got was a sheet of paper from that agency saying we were okay and they would respond if we needed help, but the real utility for that is getting us the second sheet of paper which is only good for getting us the third sheet of paper in the above paragraph that is sitting at Hickam AFB.
The last example was when I called a meeting because one project I'm running requires four separate groups to work together to make it happen. Another squadron had the same exact project - I don't mean similar, I mean exactly the same and they are already more than a month late than the already delayed project completion date. Every single one of these groups have already had delays in the previous project, but despite their own experiences it took me 45 minutes to explain to these people why they had to take a half hour of their time to get on the same page and avoid delays from our end. For the record, if you didn't catch that, I took more time explaining the meeting to get them to go than it would have taken them to read my e-mail and just show up.
Are you still following me?
If you still are, good, you may have a future as a civil servant. If not, you still have enough brain cells to make a contribution to society so please, please, for the good of humanity stay away from any job with government - especially the armed services.
My theory on this is called "Bosses vs Customers." Everyone in the Air Force is now a customer at some point. They are a "customer" of Finance, a "customer" of the MPF (Military Personnel Flight), a "customer" of comm. I have had the joy, however, of working in organizations in the Air Force that still had some of this organic capability with the squadrons (they were almost all centralized to save manpower and many of their duties are now "additional duties" by untrained squadron personnel). For example, in my last job we had comm folks. If anything went wrong I could go and have them fix it. They also had to report to a "boss" every morning at 9 AM about current projects. In a word, they were accountable. When you have customers you're really not accountable to them. They don't write your performance reviews, they can't punish you, and they aren't there day after day to make sure you get your job done. So when I go to all these people to get things done now I'm a customer - they don't have to answer to me or my boss - they have to answer to their boss. When you run an organization the main concerns are on the health of your particular part of the world - not on what the low ranking lieutenant needs to get oh, I don't know, a flying squadron what it needs to do real missions.
I guess the bottom line is that commanders with real missions: CE building bases, special forces operators doing their thing, SERE folks rescuing people, pilots flying, intelligence gathering and analyzing data, or AOCs running operations had people in their squadrons and organizations to make their bureaucracies work for the warfighters and the direct supporters of the warfighters. Now those folks near the "pointy end of the spear" are doing the jobs directly (additional duties) or forced to deal directly with the bureaucracies that don't have a real interest in helping you specifically. Generally they have jobs to support the rest of the force and take that seriously on a macro level, but on a person to person basis (the micro level) there really is no interest - after all they do have to get their forms signed before they can be any real help.
I guess I'm just ranting here, but I was selected to do a certain job by the Air Force - I wasn't selected for comm, not for personnel, not for security forces, and not for services. However, I'm doing all of those jobs in my new job.
Until next time, I'll be on hold with someone...
AirForceKush, aka, The Arctic Fox
Two separate comments:
1. First, congrats on the gf :) Second... isn't it funny how much more difficult it is to be wowed by someone the older you get? I was just talking about this with a potential boy. (Even though this boy is pretty much everything I've always wanted I still find myself trying to find things wrong...)
When you're sixteen it's so easy to fall in love at the drop of a pin but now it seems easy to critique a person or distrust their intentions. Some people want to go straight to the comfort stage and others want to stay in the "getting to know you with butterflies" stage. How do you balance the two?
2. You know I understand your AF comments. It's all screwed up. If you could see how the people in the building next to mine where they only do what we do back at your old sq operates... Ouch is about all I can say.
In flying squadrons it seems to be pretty common for the non-flyer to get stuck with all the unpleasantries. Welcome to my world the first two years at the old sq. Welcome to my world when I go home. That's another story for another time though.
Keep writing Louis, it's boring out here and I need entertainment.
~M