Fine, fine, pictures

Fine, you want pictures? You get pictures. Never let it be said I don't listen to my audience. :)

From 2010-11, Desert

Playing lots of scrabble with the Vegas family before I left. This is a game Ray and I did. Thems some big words!

From 2010-11, Desert

I really dislike being hungry while having to do these work-out-in-the-field, things. So I mostly brought my own food with me wherever I went. Probably saved a bundle of money this way, too. The fridge was too cold, though. It kept freezing my milk and cream cheese.

From 2010-11, Desert

This is where I spent most of my time. We set up our sensor in the back of an SUV, powered off an inverter connected to the alternator. Then we just let the car idle all day and used it to power our computers. Neat, huh? Mostly just sitting in a car for 4.5 hours a day, though. Unless something needed to get fixed, then it was exciting. But boring success was the norm for this trip which is good news, I guess.

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake Afghanistan from up on the hill where we were collecting. By the by, all these pictures were from my cell phone. Pretty neat, huh?

From 2010-11, Desert

There were a *lot* of these driving around. Though not nearly as many as the humvees.

From 2010-11, Desert

Painted rock. Everyone who comes here paints their battalion's symbol on this rock or another nearby one. Neat tradition.

From 2010-11, Desert

Who *is* that handsome lad with the dorky hat?

From 2010-11, Desert

Rattlesnake! Glad I saw him. I'd have taken a better pictures, but my camera doesn't have a very good zoom, and I didn't feel like getting any closer. You understand, yes?

From 2010-11, Desert

Welcome to fake Iraq! Would you like some fake concrete barriers that are actually made out of styrofoam and have blown over in the wind?

From 2010-11, Desert

How about this totally cool-looking fake mosque in the morning sunlight?

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake buildings made out of shipping containers with fake crenelations? How about that fake hospital down at the end of the lane there?

From 2010-11, Desert

I doubt any of these fake, yet expertly messy, phone lines is carrying anything. And I doubt they sprung for the full Sports package on that satellite TV.

From 2010-11, Desert

Check out all these props. Mostly old, junked computer cases and rusted-out bicycles. Certainly adds to the ambiance, yes?

From 2010-11, Desert

Would you like some fruit OH I FOOLED YOU it's also fake. Look closely. You can actually see how it's all molded out of foam. Except for the Bananas and Watermelons. They're just wooden.

From 2010-11, Desert

UXO. Do not mess with. These things were *all over*, though this is the biggest one. Again: taken from a significant distance.

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake Afghanistan from up on the hill. You can see our car, too.

From 2010-11, Desert

Down in fake Afghanistan now. Not as cool looking, but much larger, and still under construction. Concrete buildings, too.

From 2010-11, Desert

Fake Afghanistan also has its own mosque.

From 2010-11, Desert

And finally, this is what you can do when you're out in the desert and bored, but don't want to disturb *too* many rocks because they might be on top of critters or UXO.

You can click over to the album to see a few more pictures I didn't include.

-N

Notes from the Field: Part 2

Day 10: “This is our second-to-last collect day and it’s been pretty busy, so far, which is good for making time go by, but not so great for the collect.  Anyway, I got up at my customary 4 AM, made lunch, ate breakfast, and then took apart the computer I was using and got it downstairs for the car.  We drove out, got set up, and then went out to Fake Afghanistan, which is less exciting than fake Iraq.  It’s actually still a little under construction, they’re expanding it out some more, so there’s no activities or crazy training exercises going on here, though I did notice a few of those fruit stand props.  Also we’re up on the hill again, in one of the collectors. 

It was a bit of a trick to get up here.  We had to drive out *really* slow because 1) we were behind someone slow and 2) the roads are just dirt, so anytime anyone drives over them it kicks up dust, and in the early morning there’s no wind to blow it away, so it just builds up and makes visibility a pain.  When you’re dealing with tanks potentially coming down the road, you tend to drive a little extra conservatively.  By the time we got out, the sun was coming up, which was good, because our navigation up the hill was a little ad-hoc last time, and we weren’t sure we’d be able to find our location again, especially in the dark.  With the sun, though, we were able to find our old path and meander up the hill. ”

“They gave us a safety briefing when we first got here about Unexploded Ordinance (UXO).  Basically don’t touch anything that isn’t obviously a rock.  I don’t know about unexploded, but there is non-rock stuff all over the place out here.  Old shells, even .50 caliber ones.  Nothing bomb or missile-looking, or we’d definitely call it in, but you had best believe I’m very cautiously watching my step everywhere I go. 

Oh, and I don’t know if I told you: I saw a rattlesnake.  From a distance, mind.  We were walking around ‘painted rock’ where everyone paints their emblem when they come in for rotation, and I spotted one on the ground.  Good thing I was looking out, lots of places for critters to hide among the rocks.  Anyway, I kept well away: he looked pretty small and didn’t even move, which was fine by me.  I want no part of that accident.  And, of course, ever since I’ve been watching my feet when I get out of the car or when walking around.”

And...that’s pretty much it. The majority of our work consisted of driving a car to some predefined location, setting up an antenna and a sensor, and then sitting there and watching it record data for four hours, switching hard drives once in the middle of the test. If everything went correctly, it was really boring. Lots of time to kill, which I passed either by staring out into the desert or messing around on my computer.

And you did read that correctly, traditional wake-up time was 4:00 AM for about two whole weeks there. Which actually isn’t too bad, considering that I’m two hours behind Texas. If I ‘sleep in’ to 5:00, that’s like my normal wake-up time back home, theoretically. It means I get to Skype with Jessie in the morning sometimes, if I don’t have to rush off to work right away.

Also, in case you can’t tell I wrote a *plethora* of e-mails to Jessie, as well as sending her text and picture messages on our sexy new phones all the time. A pretty nice way to stay in communication, as it turns out. The one downside is that when we were downrange (in ‘the box’) we had really spotty cell-phone coverage. Though the fact that we could make phone calls out there *at all* is kind of a marvel of modern technology, wouldn’t you say?

-N

Notes from the Field: Part 1

Well the desert collect has pretty much wrapped up. All that’s left is for me to pack up my things, hang out with the Vegas family for a few days, and then go home to see my pregnant WIFE who I miss so much.

I’ve been writing to Jessie a lot, so allow me to blog by posting some choice quotes from my correspondence with her:

Day 2: “The training for the downrange stuff was mostly boring.  'Here's what you have to do.  Don't play with animals.  Don't touch anything that could even potentially explode.' But there was one point where they actually showed full on video of graphic explosive damage.  Potentially not from here, but GRUESOME.  Hand blown apart.  Messed up face.  Leg in tatters.  They ended with a 6-second shot of a dude *getting his leg amputated*.  Doctor cutting it and everything.  I couldn't even watch.  Snuff film kinda stuff. ”

Day 4: “I’ve been sitting in the car for two hours and we just got a radio call from Ed to remind us to switch hard drives at 10:00. Most excitement we’ve had all day.”

Day 7: “So we’re hanging out in what I’ve dubbed ‘fake Iraq.’  It’s pretty cool, I can show you pictures when I get back.  (This whole thing is unclassified, except for one little uninteresting bit).  Out in ‘the box’ which is the range where they send people out to train for shooting tanks and mortars and other, less interesting things like troop movements and supply stuff, I’m sure.  It’s a pretty big place out here.  Lots of room for different things to be going on at the same time, it’s miles on a side, at least, I’m sure.  Just a big empty space for army training things. 

We’re currently sitting in an SUV at Mediana Jabal which is, and no kidding, a fake Iraqi city. It’s mostly made out of shipping containers, but they’ve done a really impressive job of dressing the whole thing up.  They’ve got fake walls on all the boxes with fake bricks.  Fake two-story buildings with fake crenelations, and a big, pretty, fake mosque in the middle of the town.  There’s a bunch of fake power/phone lines all over the city, all haphazardly.  They even have fake fruit stands and storefronts, like a fake internet cafe and a fake hospital.  The fake fruit is really weird, because it’s all plaster and paint. 

And even better, and I don’t know if it’s for us, or for something else, (I’m guessing someone else) but there’s fake people out there today!  Bunch of army dudes in their fatigues (not fake, it’s real army guys) and dudes and dudettes in fake (?) garb, walking around and doing role-playing stuff.  I’m not sure if they’re doing specific scenarios or what, but there’s a lot of dudes out there.  Mostly Iraqi-looking.  Probably a really good training scenario.  I even saw, no lying, *goats*.  Real ones, being led down the street by some army dudes. Not even sure where those guys come from. ”

“Ooh.  Fake explosion, I think.  Either that or somebody just dropped something really heavy.  Ooh, now gunfire.  Pretty far away, though.  I feel safe.  There’s a whole bunch of people around here, too.  Either it’s real and far away for a different exercise or, and I suspect this one is correct just due to the radio chatter, it’s a fake-ish explosion for whatever training stuff they’re doing over there.  We have a special range radio they can use to communicate with us and I’m monitoring it closely.  If it was a real problem, we’d hear about it, so no need to worry.  We’re safe.  And I’m not getting out of the car anytime soon.”

Day 8: “...while we were setting up and collecting they were doing some pretty serious training.  I didn’t see most of it (definitely trying to stay out of the way) but I definitely heard the explosions, and I was outside the car walking around when one of them went off.  Loud!  And then they had Ambulances drive up.  That’s all I know, cause that’s all I could hear. 

I overheard some other people talking, though.  Evidently it was some sort of IED training, or at least part of it was, and they had a stunt guy pretend to have his leg blown off.  Sounded pretty dramatic. ”

More in a second,

-N

It’ll be a long day

So...how’s it going for everyone? Good? That’s cool, that’s cool. Me? Sitting in the desert for a few hours, that’s all. Not a whole lot to do. I mean, there’s some tumbleweeds over there. Even got a little green on ‘em. Don’t see that too often, nosir. Quite rare, quite rare. It’s on account of the rain, you see. Had some rain last week. That’s what puts the green on them tumbelweeds, gives em a little color, you understand. Normally, o’course, they’re just brown and dry. Not much water, you understand, on account of it being the desert. Mostly just brown tumbleweeds as far as the eye can see. Not today, though. Nope, today we got a touch of green on those puppies. Just a touch, mind. Ain’t like we’re going to get a whole lot of color all over, but just a touch is enough. Yep, get just a little rain out here and you get just a little green. If we got more rain, we’d be more green, but then we wouldn’t be a desert, y’understand. Then we’d be just like anyplace else, if we got enough rain. Green and trees and whatnot. But out here we don’t get much rain. That rain last week is probably all the rain we’ll get for, oh, at least a month. And this time of year is when we get any rain at all. Yep, during the summer it’s just dry as a bone, and all those tumbleweeds are brown and dry all summer long. They have to wait until it gets on into fall and winter, sometimes, before they get a little rain. But that’s when it turns green, you see, when it gets some water. Plants need it to grow, tumbleweeds no different. Ain’t nothing grows without water, not even in the desert. Nosir. Not unless it rains.

I think this place is getting to me.

So I’ve made it successfully out to Barstow (not Baker, as previously reported to some) and have started my two weeks of work. Not a whole lot to report, actually. The collect is unclassified, but they generally frown on tossing about information too freely, even if it isn’t restricted, so if you want to know about it, you can ask me, but I ain’t postin’ it up on no internet site, nosir. AAH! keep it together, Noel. You’re not a hillbilly yet.

The biggest adjustment has been the wake up time. I got up at 4 AM today, though I could have probably slept in a little bit extra. I didn’t want to have too much to do and not enough time to do it. On the plus side, I did get to see a very pretty desert sunrise, and my rigorous plan of making myself go to bed and get up early paid off, it wasn’t that hard to get moving. For the most part, everything on the project is going quite well, yay for that. And most of my days will probably consist of sitting in cars, letting equipment run and pondering the green-ness of tumbleweed. I’ll take boring success over exciting failure, though, given the choice.

Barstow isn’t bad either, considering I was in China Lake last time. Barstow actually has a population. It’s mostly still fast food joints, but at least it’s got a few healthy ones, and even a Wall Mart and a Home Depot if we need supplies and stuff. I’ve picked up a ton of food, all sitting in my room, at the moment. O’course, there’s not a whole lot of time to appreciate the city. The days may be boring but they can be pretty long, too. Nothing absurd, I don’t think, though.

So I’ll just pass the time blogging and writing e-mails to Jessie. Not much else to do, on account of the isolation.

Yup.

-N

Home, home on the range

Writing from the Desert, more or less. I’m currently in Barstow (not Baker, as previously reported) a much more civilized home base from which to do testing than was China Lake, which was really just a tiny main street and a bunch of fast food joints. This place has a much larger main street and a whole lot more fast food joints. Some of which even sell healthy food, so I’m excited about that.

I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier as time has progressed, and even though I don’t have to meet anyone until 9:00 today, I still got up at 5:00 because I’m probably going to have to get up at 4:00 tomorrow and I don’t want to waste all the effort. This means I’ve had time for a leisurely breakfast, a stroll around the hotel, and a morning skype-call with Jessie. The internet in this place is unfortunately slow (I’m pretty sure it’s either shared or *dramatically* throttled) so I can’t get video of her, but she can get video of me, which is nice at least.

I’ve also set up my Xbox, so all is well. I’m planning to do a little bit of exercise, take a shower, and then goof off with video games until It’s time to meet up with people. The work promises to be generally boring, but pretty long. Maybe 10 to 12 hour days. I doubt much longer than that. Today is mostly ‘fill out forms and attend safety briefings’ day for me and my travel buddy, and then tomorrow the testing begins in earnest. I’ll try and drop little updates on people as things happen but other than ‘sat in a car for many hours today: glad I brought books’ I doubt there will be much to report.

-N

Skype is so great

I’ve gotten a taste of Skype, and now I’m pretty much addicted to it.

It started out with a few ‘calls’ to the Pittsburgh residence to get the families to say hi to each other and check out how slick video calls can be, and now I’m using it pretty much all the time. Jess and I have been Skyping back and forth at least once a day, and usually twice. It’s really great to see her, and it’s really great to see the house behind her, looking all normal and familiar. It’s much better than I would have guessed. It’s good for Jess, too. She gets to see my face, she calls me ‘cute’ over and over, and it usually makes her feel better, too. She has stomach cramps and headaches and she always says that just looking at me and relaxing makes her feel so much better, so evidently my super powers work over Skype, too. She wants to cuddle me, too, which we can’t do over skype, but we’ve gone from audio calls to video calls. By the time I’m 80, who knows?

The pregnancy is going well. If I can convince Jess it’s a good idea, I may have her post up some of her weekly ‘pregnancy e-mails’ here. They’re great reading. It’s just two more weeks until we get the ultrasound where they try to divine the gender of our baby. That’s a thrill waiting to happen right there.

I’m still in Vegas for a few more hours, at least. I’m meeting up with someone at 3:00 today at the rental car center to head down to Baker. Not much happens today, other than checking into hotels and meeting up with people. Tomorrow we have a meeting to go to, and then it’s off to do some data collection, or something. Honestly, the work promises to be long and pretty boring. Similar to other collects I’ve done in similar scenarios, if everything is working correctly, there’s nothing to do. It’s only when stuff goes wrong that there is any excitement, so if we’re good at our jobs (and we are) it should be a snooze-fest.

Even extra snoozy given that we have to get up so darn early. I’m expecting to be getting up at 4:00 AM most days, so I’ve been moving my days up earlier and earlier. I was up at 5:00 today, so plenty of daylight still ahead of me. I plan to do some laundry before heading off today.

I made cinnamon rolls for the family here, which turned out pretty well except it didn’t rise the first time. I added the yeast and everything and nothing happened. I think I bought some dead yeast. So I just bloomed some yeast from another source and then sort of kneaded the yeast-slurry back into the bread. It was a mess, yes, but at least the dough rose. I tell you, though, between that false start and heading out to the casinos It took me all day to make a single batch. Came out good, though.

-N

The Desert, and I’m sick

Spending the last week in the middle of the desert did leave some interesting highlights. It was about a 30 minute drive out away from the last vestiges of civilization known as China Lake. It’s a base of some sort, and they shoot a lot of stuff out there because there is so much ‘nothing’ to hit. We actually went out into the dried out remains of China Lake proper, which put us pretty far away from anything. As such, I got pretty good at bringing all my food and a lot of water with me. Normally I’m not a fan of bottled water, but you have to drag it all the way out there somehow, and you end up going through a lot of it during the course of a 100+ degree day.

For the most part, I spent my time sitting in my car. Which was nice, because it was air conditioned. Primarily for the comfort of the equipment, but I got to tag along. We’d get out there pretty late, and stay even later, so I’m not sure which was more tricky. Setting stuff up in 100 degree weather, or taking it down in total darkness. (Bring a flashlight).

The one good thing about being that far away from civilization is that you can see the stars really well. We lit up our worksite with some work lights, a little, but on the drive up Jess got tired and we switched chairs so I could drive. We were out on some highway. No lights for miles, and I haven’t seen the stars that well in years. The milky way was clearly visible, and I really enjoyed that sense that each of those points of light was a star, and that those that weren’t were probably whole galaxies. Very, very pretty.

The reason we didn’t have more light at our work site, however, is that at night, in the desert, the land comes alive. Mostly with bugs. There were dozens of moths flying around the light, bunches of beetles on the ground, and pointing your flashlight up revealed a squadron of bats divebombing the confused moths. I saw a camel spider (see picture, that's two of them) twice, yes they’re pretty huge, and also a couple of scorpions. Yep, real big ones, too. We also caught glimpses of desert rabbits a couple of times on they way home, too. There’s a surprising amount of life out there. I heard stories about coyotes, but never saw one, luckily.

In other news, I’m sick. I started feeling not so great on friday, which was the day Jess and I came home. Nothing like being achy and sore on a plane, that’s for sure. I survived, though, with the help of the PSP to pass the time . This morning, though, I got it real bad. I woke up with a fever of 101, which hasn’t happened in approximately a really, really long time. (Mom will have to give you exact dates. ) It’s come down a lot since then, but it’ll be a while before I feel like doing any jumping jacks, and the doctors say I may never play the piano again.

Hey, my birthday is coming up. 28 soon. I still feel the same age I always have, though. I’m ‘now’ old. Seems like a good philosophy. Less time spent worrying about age.

Also, many exciting games coming out. I plan to go out and get Mercenaries 2 tomorrow when it drops. And Spore comes out the day after my birthday, which is nice.

Speaking of video games, I should tell you about hanging out with Derek. He’s my best man for the (rapidly) upcoming wedding, and I tried to convince him to let me get him his ‘guy in the wedding’ present early, which I’ll leave out for the sake of any other ‘guys in my wedding party’ that might read this. He declined for the moment, so I’ll have to pick it up for him later. Other than that, we ate some sushi, played a lot of Wii games, and petted the neighbor’s cats. Derek has a balcony that is connected via a little, tiny ledge to his neighbor’s balcony. This means that every once in a while, the neighbor kitties walk over and meow for attention. They are obviously brothers, and one is more aggressive than the other. He reminded me of Tigger, except more social. He really liked petting, and I managed to get massive clumps of hair off him using my patented, ‘butt scratch’ technique. They really seemed to like me, even if the aggressive one did get a little nippy at times. I’ve dealt with Tigger, though, so I know what’s up.

Right, so enjoy that news and I’ll let you know when I get some more.

-N

P.S. Oh, and one other thing. That final test on Thursday? It didn't happen. Whole thing got canceled. We did some other little tests, but nothing big like we were planning. And then on Friday, we flew home.