I was welcomed to Keesler AFB with a hurricane -- then I'm welcomed to Wright-Patterson AFB with an ice storm and the coldest temperatures in recent memory. Someone's trying to tell me something.
I was assigned to the Communications Group as a generic "Communications Officer." There were a ton of us there. The Comm Group "matrixed" us to other organizations on the base to do various "comm officer" stuff. These organizations had to pay the Comm Group for the support... so, essentially, we were whores.
My first "assignment" was to be the comm officer for the Advanced Cruise Missile DSO. Damn, that sounded pretty cool.
It wasn't.
This DSO was located in a pair of old quonsets that had been converted to office space. I later found out that these buildings had been officially condemned for over two years. You may be wondering why a program would be occupying a such a place; well, not only was the building condemned, so was the program. It was no longer funded and was being quickly phased out.
My first assignment was to a dead program located in a condemned shit-hole. Perfect.
Oh, and just to drive home the point about this building, I arrived one morning to find a family of ground hogs running amok inside. Not mice. Not rats. Big fucking ground hogs. (And guess who got to clean up the shit...)
Finally, there I was: in the real Air Force, sitting in my tiny, windowless office, in charge of the IT systems for the DSO. But it wasn't even that glamorous. I was a "contract technical monitor," which meant I was in charge of two contractors that did the real work. All I did was occasionally sign my name to the odd form or two.
To be honest, I hadn't the slightest idea what the hell I was supposed to be doing. No one ever told me anything; just "here ya go, Lt. Have fun." I eventually figured out some things that I ended up doing, but who's to say whether it was what I should be doing? It really chapped my ass that all I was doing was pushing a pencil. I was a programmer! I should be programming something! Shit, I'll re-write print divers in Ada! But, no, there I sat doing contracting work.
So much for my Computer Science degree. Taxpayer money well-spent, right there.
The two contractors that worked for me were cool, though. They would let me play around with the systems and "help" with various system administration tasks. Big no-no all around for legal/contractual reasons, but what the hell. One of the contractors, George, introduced me to Linux and amateur radio -- both of which I would not dig deeper into until a few years later.
There were only a few other people on the program, and no one did much of anything -- it was a dead program, there just wasn't much to do. The only other Lieutenant on the program was an engineer. When the Executive Officer retired from the AF, Lt Barker took over as XO. He was also a grad from USAFA, and this guy was a piece of work. Any little thing I did (arrange for redundant connectivity to base comms, bring the server room environmental controls up to spec, etc) he took the credit for. I don't mean he told people on the program that he did those things; no, he took official credit for it all on his performance report (OPR)! The fucker actually had the gall to show me his OPR, too.
Then we have the program director -- a Lieutenant Colonel. He was a complete jackass, but at least he was entertaining. He came into my office one day complaining that his computer stopped working. After he educated me with several of his own theories on what may have happened, I asked the question. Yes, THE question:
"What were you doing right before your computer stopped working?"
It turns out he was doing some Spring cleaning. Apparently, he was bored and decided to delete old files from his computer, so he did a search for all files older than a certain date and proceeded to delete them. Keep in mind, this was when Windows 95 had just been released. Yeah, he wiped out almost all of the critical operating system files.
There was one day the Lt Col joined a conversation a few of us were having about the X-Files tv show. This really got him going. He regaled us with a tale of how he knew there were ghosts because of some green spot he saw on a ceiling as a kid. Oh, and he heard a door slam all by itself. That's right: "heard," not "saw." It was probably the dog... gullible fuck-wit.
Another day he joined a similar conversation about aliens. Oh, he knew for a fact that aliens were real:
"I used to work on a really black program. I can't say anything about it, but all I'll say is that there's no doubt in my mind that aliens are real."
Who says crap like that?! I can only assume he was drunk on the job most of the time. But he was probably just an incompetent boob.
Outside of work, I was a hermit. I basically lived for the nightly phone calls and rare visits from my fiancee (she was still in Colorado finishing school). I didn't have any friends that I hung out with, and I never saw my neighbors at the apartment complex. Well, once I saw the girl next door. I said "hi," and all she said was, "I can hear you brushing your teeth in the morning." Okaaaay...
I was on the top (third) floor of my apartment building, so there was no one above me, but the people below me partied late, partied long, and partied often. Assholes never invited me. The walls and floors were so thin I could hear and smell everything. I swear I got high one night as I slept while they were having one of their wilder parties. Good thing I didn't get pegged for a random drug test the next day.
Mercifully, my time at the condemned DSO came to an end after a little over a year. And I was the absolute last person there -- somehow the comm officer had to clean the place out and lock it up. Took me a fucking week; not a swinging dick stayed to help out even for a day. Yeah, I had friends stationed in Germany programming military simulators, and I was in Ohio cleaning toilets.
Go Air Force.
Couldn't wait to start my next assignment.
I was assigned to the Communications Group as a generic "Communications Officer." There were a ton of us there. The Comm Group "matrixed" us to other organizations on the base to do various "comm officer" stuff. These organizations had to pay the Comm Group for the support... so, essentially, we were whores.
My first "assignment" was to be the comm officer for the Advanced Cruise Missile DSO. Damn, that sounded pretty cool.
It wasn't.
This DSO was located in a pair of old quonsets that had been converted to office space. I later found out that these buildings had been officially condemned for over two years. You may be wondering why a program would be occupying a such a place; well, not only was the building condemned, so was the program. It was no longer funded and was being quickly phased out.
My first assignment was to a dead program located in a condemned shit-hole. Perfect.
Oh, and just to drive home the point about this building, I arrived one morning to find a family of ground hogs running amok inside. Not mice. Not rats. Big fucking ground hogs. (And guess who got to clean up the shit...)
Finally, there I was: in the real Air Force, sitting in my tiny, windowless office, in charge of the IT systems for the DSO. But it wasn't even that glamorous. I was a "contract technical monitor," which meant I was in charge of two contractors that did the real work. All I did was occasionally sign my name to the odd form or two.
To be honest, I hadn't the slightest idea what the hell I was supposed to be doing. No one ever told me anything; just "here ya go, Lt. Have fun." I eventually figured out some things that I ended up doing, but who's to say whether it was what I should be doing? It really chapped my ass that all I was doing was pushing a pencil. I was a programmer! I should be programming something! Shit, I'll re-write print divers in Ada! But, no, there I sat doing contracting work.
So much for my Computer Science degree. Taxpayer money well-spent, right there.
The two contractors that worked for me were cool, though. They would let me play around with the systems and "help" with various system administration tasks. Big no-no all around for legal/contractual reasons, but what the hell. One of the contractors, George, introduced me to Linux and amateur radio -- both of which I would not dig deeper into until a few years later.
There were only a few other people on the program, and no one did much of anything -- it was a dead program, there just wasn't much to do. The only other Lieutenant on the program was an engineer. When the Executive Officer retired from the AF, Lt Barker took over as XO. He was also a grad from USAFA, and this guy was a piece of work. Any little thing I did (arrange for redundant connectivity to base comms, bring the server room environmental controls up to spec, etc) he took the credit for. I don't mean he told people on the program that he did those things; no, he took official credit for it all on his performance report (OPR)! The fucker actually had the gall to show me his OPR, too.
Then we have the program director -- a Lieutenant Colonel. He was a complete jackass, but at least he was entertaining. He came into my office one day complaining that his computer stopped working. After he educated me with several of his own theories on what may have happened, I asked the question. Yes, THE question:
"What were you doing right before your computer stopped working?"
It turns out he was doing some Spring cleaning. Apparently, he was bored and decided to delete old files from his computer, so he did a search for all files older than a certain date and proceeded to delete them. Keep in mind, this was when Windows 95 had just been released. Yeah, he wiped out almost all of the critical operating system files.
There was one day the Lt Col joined a conversation a few of us were having about the X-Files tv show. This really got him going. He regaled us with a tale of how he knew there were ghosts because of some green spot he saw on a ceiling as a kid. Oh, and he heard a door slam all by itself. That's right: "heard," not "saw." It was probably the dog... gullible fuck-wit.
Another day he joined a similar conversation about aliens. Oh, he knew for a fact that aliens were real:
"I used to work on a really black program. I can't say anything about it, but all I'll say is that there's no doubt in my mind that aliens are real."
Who says crap like that?! I can only assume he was drunk on the job most of the time. But he was probably just an incompetent boob.
Outside of work, I was a hermit. I basically lived for the nightly phone calls and rare visits from my fiancee (she was still in Colorado finishing school). I didn't have any friends that I hung out with, and I never saw my neighbors at the apartment complex. Well, once I saw the girl next door. I said "hi," and all she said was, "I can hear you brushing your teeth in the morning." Okaaaay...
I was on the top (third) floor of my apartment building, so there was no one above me, but the people below me partied late, partied long, and partied often. Assholes never invited me. The walls and floors were so thin I could hear and smell everything. I swear I got high one night as I slept while they were having one of their wilder parties. Good thing I didn't get pegged for a random drug test the next day.
Mercifully, my time at the condemned DSO came to an end after a little over a year. And I was the absolute last person there -- somehow the comm officer had to clean the place out and lock it up. Took me a fucking week; not a swinging dick stayed to help out even for a day. Yeah, I had friends stationed in Germany programming military simulators, and I was in Ohio cleaning toilets.
Go Air Force.
Couldn't wait to start my next assignment.
eddies first office
Comments:
bmccosar (May 13, 2008. 10:14am)
I'm certain there are aliens. I'm equally certain they are on *distant planets*, not flying around the backwoods of Earth abducting Cooter and Jethro.
intrepideddie (May 14, 2008. 03:30am)
Now see, that makes sense. But how do you explain all the anal probes going on in the swamps of the deep south? Wait... don't answer that.
intrepideddie (May 16, 2008. 03:34am)
Bruce, you've got to read this short story: http://strangehorizons.com/2008/20080505/gadgey-f.shtml