The Journal

Yeah, if you like Role Playing Games at all, Dragon Age Origins is absolutely fantastic.  Probably the best RPG since Baldur's Gate II and could even be better, I'll know more once I finish my first character.

Zevran and Wynne have some funny conversations.

Finished playing through Borderlands.  The difficulty in finding really good weapons annoys me.  I really wanted to use Shotguns but I never, ever, not once, found a shotgun that would work well.  I also had a lot of trouble finding good Assault Rifles.  You know, the two weapons my character was supposed to specialize in.

The one time I found an Orange Assault Rifle I thought I had finally hit the jackpot, until I looked at the stats and realized that it was a piece of crap and the only exceptional feature it had was magazine capacity, nearly 200 with my upgrades, but that's the least important stat of them all.

I ended up using SMGs and Assault Rifles most of the game, unfortunately my Assault Rifle was usually 10 levels lower than me and Green colored, which implies that it could have been so much more powerful if I could have found a good one. 

Also, the storyline goes from thin to incomprehensible at the end.

Yet, I kept playing all the way through to the end.  Took about 15 hours.  So that tells you that the gameplay is good enough that I just kept coming back, always looking for that elusive shotgun or rifle and just slaughtering bandits by the thousands.  I had 1,066 human kills, personally, which puts me well above mass murderer and into my own personal one man war I think.

Someone tell me if Dragon Age: Origins is worth $50, it's too new for me to get a good impression from the reviews and I don't really want to pirate it just to get an idea of how good the game is.  It has promise, but I don't have a lot of time and money to waste right now if it's not a really great game.

Quick Summary of Borderlands, at least for the first several hours and nothing I've read contradicts this:

It's a first person shooter mixed with a Diablo 2 style role playing game.  With even less story than Diablo 2, which wasn't all that strong to begin with.  It's basically, welcome to the planet, you are here to find the legendary vault that probably doesn't exist and is rumored to contain anything, go kill bandits and wildlife for hours and hours.  The game play is better than Fallout 3.

Just watched the new Star Trek again today.  The opening scene pretty easily goes down as one of my favorite scenes of all time.

I would probably start playing WoW again right now, but all I've got is my 4 year old laptop that just doesn't quite get the job done. 

A couple of my classmates have started receiving class dates for their next class.  So far all of the Signal guys don't start until June 29th.  That's 8 months after I graduate OCS.  Then it's a 4 month class.  Meaning it's a full year from the time I get commissioned to actually getting assigned to a real unit.  This is assuming my class dates are the same as theirs, not guaranteed but fairly likely.  This means 8 months of snowbirding.  Snowbirding is an Army slang term for sitting around not doing anything while you wait for the class start date.  You'll be happy to know that it's going to cost you (the taxpayer) about $32,000 for me to sit around for 8 months and not do anything productive.  However, I think I'm probably going to be quite the proficient raider in WoW by the time my OBC class actually starts, and if I've got any discipline at all I should easily be maxing out the PT test with a full 300 points.  Before I went into the field and didn't do PT for 4 weeks I was pretty damn close to maxing my push-ups and I was maxing my sit-ups.  I just need to drop about 2 minutes off my 2-mile run time to max that, which shouldn't be difficult at all with the proper training (e.g. wind sprints instead of the long distance running we do in OCS).

I should drop another 5-10 pounds too.  I'm currently working on it.  I downloaded a really good calorie tracking program to my phone that has tons of pre-programmed foods so that I don't have to manually input them every time, and allows me to add my PT as well so that on days I do things like 10 mile ruck marches it doesn't think I'm eating too much when I eat those extra 500-1000 calories.  I did a little research online and you EASILY burn 1,500-2,000 calories doing that kind of PT, especially with the 50+ lbs of gear you are carrying or wearing.

I am really tired of dealing with crap at OCS and of living 600 miles away from my wife.  Way too much bullshit and way too little real training here.

I don't think the training is much better at my next school, but most of the bullshit goes away and we get treated like responsible adults instead of children.  We're supposed to be learning to be Lieutenants, we're Senior Officer Candidates so we're supposed to practically be Lieutenants and are just being evaluated to make sure we know what we're supposed to know, the Basic Officer Candidates even have to salute us and call us sir like they do any other officer, but we are given almost no privileges and very few responsibilities.

At the next school, Signal Officer Basic Course, we'll actually be Lieutenants and the training should be more about learning how to be a Signal officer and less of the hazing and time wasting that goes on here at OCS.  Plus it's a 21 week course, compared to the 9 weeks of basic and the 12 weeks of OCS, and we don't have to live in a barracks, so I'll actually be able to get my own apartment and live there with my wife.

Bleh, back to the field.  We have approximately 3 weeks in the field, finished one week already but still two to go.  We're at the end of a 24 hour refit, a chance to take showers and do laundry, and I really don't want to go back right now.

We're close to done though.  2 weeks in the field, 1 week of academics, and 2 weeks of nothing at all.  All I have to do is get 2 GOs on my leadership evaluations, one for planning and one for execution of a squad level mission, and then pass the History II test (WW1-Present), and I'll have met pretty much all the graduation requirements.  Then it's just waiting for Elizabeth to come visit me for the Formal and the Graduation ceremony.

I haven't got my orders yet, so it's not official, but it looks like I'm going to get the new BOLC B class that replaces BOLC II and BOLC III.  OCS doesn't change, it just gets called BOLC A instead of BOLC I.  However, that means that I graduate on October 29th and will take a couple weeks leave, then drive to Augusta, Georgia (Fort Gordon) and sit around doing nothing important until my BOLC B class finally starts in March.

We picked branches yesterday.   I got Signal Corp.  I was ranked 35 in our class of 173, so every single branch was open to me when I picked, except the ones we didn't have any slots at all for like Aviation, Medical, Finance, etc.  I could have taken Engineering, even though I didn't put in a packet earlier we ended up with a couple more EN slots than we had people picked up with packets.

I'm off to either Basic Officer Leadership Course II or Officer Basic Course (aka BOLC III) next.  We're in a transitionary period and don't know yet whether we'll be the last class to take BOLC II or the first class to go straight to an extra long OBC.

OBC for Signal Corp is at Fort Gordon, Georgia and lasts 18 weeks long.  It will teach me all the technical aspects of being a signal officer, whereas up until now all my training has been general U.S. Army Officer training and not branch specific in any way (except that it's all really the basics of Infantry training).

The good news is that since I'm married I may be able to have my wife move in with me.  The Army might or might not pay for her to move there (they will once I get to a permanent unit but not for temporary training units), but they will let me live at my own residence instead of a barracks and I can put most of my stuff in Ohio into storage and my wife can come live with me while I'm there.

Yay!  I almost feel like a normal human being again, we're now allowed to eat snacks and drink caffeine/carbonated beverages during the day when we're doing academics (but not the field exercises).  That caffeine helps because for any given class at any given time about 1/4 of the students are standing up along the wall so they don't fall asleep sitting down, and if you actually fall asleep during class you can get in really serious trouble.  It's important to look around occasionally and make sure that if you see someone nodding off that you poke them and remind them to go stand up or drink some water.

Even better, I've actually got enough free time that I can write posts on LJ now.  We get both Saturday and Sunday passes now instead of just Sunday passes, and next week we actually get off Thursday night and don't have to be back until Monday afternoon.  And best of all Liz is coming down that weekend to spend those 4 days with me.  I'm already setting up an itinerary to make the most of them.  There's actually a decent amount of stuff to do around Fort Benning, the brand new National Infantry Museum for example, and some pretty good restaurants if you are willing to drive off-post into Columbus, GA, which is just 5-10 miles up the highway.

Also, I just applied for HRAP (Hometown Recruiting Assistance Program), which is up to 14 days of free leave.  Free in that it doesn't use up the 30 days of leave you get per year, and you get to spend them at home, but you have to do ~25 hours / week of work for the recruiting station.  Hopefully I get that, plus two weeks of normal leave, so that is almost a whole month at home.  That's best case, probably won't happen, but I can hope.

Whee, I like having my computer again.  And even better, Liz is coming down next Friday to spend Labor day weekend with me.  I've been coming up with plans in anticipation.

0430 is way too early in the morning.  Especially when you don't go to bed until 2200-2230.  Getting up at 0430 so that you can clean and go do PT for 1.5 hours before breakfast just adds insult to injury.

The U.S. Army mail service sucks.  Just so you know.  I'm still trying to get my laptop, which my wife mailed last Friday and has been sitting in the battalion mail room since Wednesday.  We've finally figured out that waiting for the Cadre to take us to get our mail is a waste of time and you should just bend the rules and go get your mail yourself.

The main post PX (Wal-mart style store) is pretty good though.  I'm going on pass tomorrow and heading down there to buy some stuff I need, like a mouse for my laptop and a nice set of civilian clothes, basically khakis and a polo shirt.

I'll probably start posting semi-reliably once I get my laptop on Monday.

Basic Training sucks. It wasn't actually all that hard, but going as long as 4 weeks (a whole month) without phone privileges, and therefore without being able to talk to your wife, really really sucks.

I have a few days respite though, we graduated on the 5th, and our orders don't say we have to report to OCS until the 8th. So we got hotel rooms and are just kicking back and relaxing for a little while, I even decided to sleep in until 0745 this morning instead of getting up at 0530 like I should have.

I got my PT scores way up and my waist line way down. That's the good news. I scored 242/300 on the final PT test at BCT, with 49 push-ups, 71 situps, and a 14:23 two mile run. I put on my civilian jeans yesterday, the ones I was wearing when I shipped off to BCT and that I just got back, they have a 34" waist which used to fit me pretty comfortably, now they have about 2" of slack. So I tried to put on my civilian, really nice, leather belt and it turned out to not be able to cinch down far enough either. I ended up having to wear my Army issued belt to keep my jeans from falling down.

I think I can do even better on the first PT test at OCS too, because we've had all this time to relax and let our muscles fully recover, we didn't do PT for the last week of BCT either because we were busy doing paperwork and practicing for graduation and stuff like that.

Thoughts about Basic Training:

• The gas chamber sucks, but it's funny in hindsight.
• Riot control grenades set off 2 feet from your hand suck worse. I got blisters from the highly concentrated CS gas. And it wasn't my fuckup, the drill sergeant intentionally set the grenade there because I was at the back of the formation and they wanted to gas us for our final Field Training Exercise to test how well we would respond.
• We would spend 6-8 hours at any given range in order to get 20-30 minutes of training for each person of the 200 man company. 
• I'm very comfortable carrying an M16 rifle everywhere I go now.
• M16 rifles held above your head for long periods of time get really heavy.  Or, even worse, start doing the military press which is where you have to keep lowering the rifle down behind your head and then fully extending your arms to raise the rifle all the way back straight up in to the air again.
• Family day with no family sucks.  I spent the entire day sitting across the road from the barracks at the PX (convenience store) reading the book I bought before I left for BCT.  The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Heinlein.
• "Half Right, Face" is never a good command to recieve.  It's almost universally followed up with "Front Leaning Rest Position, Move!", then "IN CADENCE", and then they start counting while you do pushups.

I've heard you can get your laptop at OCS, some of the time.  I'll try to post more when and if I ever get any free time after I start on Saturday.

Last entry for a while.

I leave for the hotel in an hour, I'll spend the night there and then go to MEPS for processing and shipping out tomorrow.

I've memorized most of the stuff I know that I need to know: ranks, general orders, phonetic alphabet, etc.

Still haven't ran a 16:30 2-mile run, but Basic is going to fix that the hard way for me.

I got some of my wedding pictures printed off in wallet sized so that I can take them with me. It's going to suck not being able to see Liz for the next 9.5 weeks. I'll get to talk to her on the phone, a little, but mostly just going to have to write letters by hand.

This is an indication of the sad state of affairs of PC Gaming:

I was bored and trying to find a game to play, and the game I finally settled on was Master of Orion. The original, released in 1993 for MS-DOS. Incidentally, it runs great in DOSBox.

I have a fast internet connection and access to the Pirate Bay, I could play any game that's ever been released for the PC, up to and including stuff that's not even released yet and got leaked, and I want to play a game that's over 15 years old.

Games just aren't as good as they used to be, and that's not nostalgia talking since I'm not just remembering these games fondly, I'm actually still playing them.

I think that Liz is upset with me because I'm really leaving for Basic training next week. I'm not sure what I can do, I've already signed a contract and swore an oath and don't really have a choice about where I go for the next 3 years.

I think she's so afraid that she's going to get depressed because I'm leaving that she's working herself into a depression before I've even left.

It's really kind of surprising how fast you can make progress when you put your mind to something and stick with it.

My original PT test was approximately 5 or 6 weeks ago, and I was able to do 20 push-ups and 25 sit-ups before my muscles hit failure and I stopped. My run time was only one mile, because I had hit my limit and just couldn't run anymore, and it was close to 10 minutes.

Tonight I did 5 sets of sit-ups with only 60 seconds rest between each set, each of the first 4 sets were 30 sit-ups and the last set was 60 sit-ups, and I could have kept going if I had wanted to. That was a total of 180 sit-ups in ~13 minutes.

I did push-ups yesterday, 5 sets of 20, with only one minute breaks between sets again. 100 push-ups.

And this afternoon I ran 4.1 miles in 44 minutes. And several weeks ago I ran a 17:30 2-mile run, that should be even better now.

6 months ago I weighed 190 lbs at 5'6". Now I'm 160 lbs, same height, and I even almost have a defined stomach. Not quite to the point where you can see my abs yet, but I'm fairly certain that Basic will burn the rest of that fat off.

Fuck.

Decided to load some of my 9mm ammunition. Oops, my 9mm reloading die doesn't fit my reloading press. Oh, and the die that used to cost $30 last year now costs $60 because of the demand spike for firearms. Okay, after much searching I found one today. Got home, ready to load some ammunition, put the brass into the press, and oops. The brass doesn't fit in the shell holder I have, and I could have swore I had extras somewhere, but they are gone now. Off to the store again. Got there, and oops, and they don't have the shell holder I need for 9mm. Well, while I'm here I might as well get the one I need for .45 automatic since I plan to reload those later. Get home again, and oops, I picked up the .45 automatic rim holder and not .45 automatic colt pistol (ACP).

Yeah, it's just been that kind of day.

This is weird, it feels like Saturday because I'm not going to work, but it's Tuesday.