Lunch with the Wife - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 271

I sent my squad leader a text today now that he is back from his pass…”MOU Today”. I then headed into the naval shipyard in Bremerton. A desk in the other side of the office happened to be open, so I was able to use that desk for the day. I checked my army and navy emails, then surfed the web. I spent the entire day either chatting with co-workers in the office or just surfing the web. Most of the time spent surfing was checking out individual company sites and their employment sections. I have to admit that the internship with the navy has turned out to be a dud. Unless they need physical help moving something, I really don’t do anything except surf the web. I let everyone in the office know that I would only be working half days when I do come in from now on. I am running short on time in the army and I now have two classes I am taking.

I left at lunch time and headed to my wife’s work to have lunch with her. After lunch I headed home and did schoolwork…nothing too exciting to report today.

Half & Half - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 270

This morning I did go to the naval shipyard in Bremerton. There is a new guy in the office and he’s been given my desk and computer. This seems appropriate because he’s an actual employee and I’m just there as extra help from time to time. I just sat in a chair passing the time on my iPhone. The new guy actually ended up heading to the Silverdale office at the naval sub base for the rest of the day, so I was able to hop on his computer.

I checked my emails and surfed the web until lunch time. I left for good at 1130 as I will do from now on when I head into the navy because I am now taking 2 classes. I need the extra time to make sure I can get everything done. I ate lunch at home and then did my schoolwork. After schoolwork I watched a little college basketball on WatchESPN…my favorite time of the year for sports.

This evening I went and visited my wife at work. She works in the marketing department at a local casino and had to work late because they are promoting “Fat Tuesday”. We had dinner together and I played a little craps before heading back home.

It’s The Final Classes - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 264

Sent a text to my squad leader “MOU Today” and then headed into the naval shipyard in Bremerton. I walked in the office and saw that someone had cleaned up my desk. Not that it was dirty or anything, but it had a pad of post-its, a few pens, and some notes. Now it had nothing except a pad of paper and a pen…even my name tag was taken down. I guess someone thought I wasn’t coming back…I’ve had a lot of appointments at Ft. Lewis lately and didn’t even make it here last week. Today is the only day I was going to make it this week. No problem, not like it’s a real job…or like I even did much of anything. It’s really just an excuse to not go to formation at Ft. Lewis.

I did the usual and checked my army and navy emails, then surfed the web. I decided to check and see what my medboard status is on AKO.

Here’s today’s results for my medboard status on my AKO:

227 days remaining
Start Date: 6/26/2013
Goal Finish Date: 4/17/2014
Estimated Finish Date (No Appeal): 8/8/2014
Estimated Finish Date (W/ Appeal): 10/11/2014

My current step in the process is PEBLO Counsel & Soldier Election (I’ve actually done this, but it’s not showing up yet). My actual time waiting for this step shows 12 days. The army average is now 8.93 days. Current days I am over the army average is 3.07.

I can’t put much stock into any of these numbers, I guess it’s just entertainment for me. I continued to surf the web and read the news. I then causally scanned for some jobs. There are two new guys in the office that just got hired, so I chatted with one of them for a while. He was previously in the army and then did some civilian contract work over in Afghanistan. I ended up taking off after lunch…as I think I’ll be doing from now on when I go to the navy. Because I’m now closer to getting out, I need the extra time to finish up my schoolwork. I am taking my last two classes at once so I can try and finish my degree before I get out of the army. I went home and started my schoolwork. My final two classes...Finance and Web Design. These are going to keep my busy!

When my wife came home we went to the YMCA and I had a decent cardio workout. We then went and had dinner with my sister and her family as we do every Wednesday night.

Bored - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 251

I sent my squad leader a text “MOU Today” and then headed to the naval shipyard in Bremerton. Started the day off as usual checking both army and navy emails. I then surfed the web for a while. I’ve mentioned this before, but after a while surfing the web can just get boring. I was bored out of my mind today, wondering what am I doing here? I surfed every news site I could find, read boring articles just to pass the time. I just thought this internship working in the navy IT department would actually be something that would keep me busy. I tried to do the server checks, but there was something wrong with the database…so I couldn’t even do that to pass the time.

I ate lunch at my desk and continued to surf the web. The highlights of the day were filling up my bottle with water from the water cooler and then making multiple trips to the bathroom. I continued to surf the web to the point I just couldn’t do it anymore…I then turned to my iPhone to pass the time. A little Plants vs Zombies helped with this.

Out of the blue my co-worker asked if I wanted to see the process he does to scan for vulnerabilities. I said sure, and watched over his shoulder as he ran a scan, showed me the results and then remoted into various machines to fix the vulnerabilities. This is a never ending process for him, because it seems vulnerabilties are always coming up. Watching him do the whole process kind of tied things up for me, I’ve heard various discussions around the office and didn’t know exactly what they were talking about until I saw the process. It’s similar to what I used to do at a previous job…only I didn’t run the scans, just fixed the issues.

By the time he was finished showing me, it was time for me to leave…which I did. When I got home, I did schoolwork. A pretty boring day overall!

Ratings! - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 250

This morning I had planned on texting my squad leader, but totally forgot. I was in a rush to get ready and leave to the naval base in Bremerton. I didn’t remember my squad leader until I was already at my desk and by then it’s a little too late…morning formation is already over. I did my usual morning routine and checked my army and navy emails. When I checked my medboard status on AKO it was still messed up showing 0 days remaining and the final date as unknown. It has been like this for about a week. I was going to wait until Friday to email my PEBLO, but decided to do it today instead. I sent her an email letting her know what I’m seeing when I log into AKO and asked her if she had any idea why it’s been like that for a week.

I then continued to surf the web for a while. I decided to check my army email and to my surprise my PEBLO had responded to my email. She said she is expecting my ratings today or tomorrow! I was a little in shock, it seems I’ve been waiting for so long…now it’s about to happen. I was a little nervous as well wondering what my ratings were going to be. Of course I wasn’t pinning all my hopes that I would see my ratings today or tomorrow, I’ll believe it when I see it.

I surfed the web more, browsing the news while periodically checking my army email to see if there was any response. I ate lunch at my desk and continued to surf the web. I then received a call from my PEBLO saying she had my ratings. She didn’t tell them to me over the phone, but said she would email them to me. At this point I’m still surfing the web, but checking my army email every minute or so!

Finally I received the email, my heart was pounding a bit as I opened each attachment to find out what my ratings were. I ended up getting 40% from the army and 50% from the VA. I’m still not sure what all that means, I am meeting with my PEBLO on Friday to get all the answers.

Here’s the breakdown of my ratings:

The army:

Tension Headaches: 30%
Degenerative Disc Disease of the Cervical Spine: 10%

The VA:

Tension Headaches: 30%
Cervical Spine Degenerative Disc Disease: 10%
Right Knee Strain (Osgood Schlatters Disease): 10%
Tinnitus: 10%
Hearing Loss: 0%
Left Shoulder Injury: 0%

The funny way they do math takes the total of 60% from the VA and rounds it to 50%.

Now I started surfing the web to make sense of all this. I found out a lot of stuff, but some was conflicting. What I gathered is that I’ll be medically retired from the army, but will receive pay from the VA (the higher of the two amounts). If what I gathered is correct, I’ll receive a blue (medically retired) military ID. This would be awesome because I would still be able to take advantage of the commissary on any base. That is going to save us some money. I’ll know more I think once I see my PEBLO.

It was hard to do much the rest of the day except think about my future. With my ratings now in, this should be the beginning of the end for my time here at the WTB and in the army. I’ve heard the max time I would have is 90 days, but it could be shorter depending on circumstances.

After work I headed to Costco to pick up another canvas photo we ordered. We decided to get canvas prints made of the various cities and landmarks we have visited around the world. It should be pretty cool once we get them all and put them up in our house. Once home I did my schoolwork, then my wife and I headed to the YMCA. I was in some pain, so instead of the elliptical we just walked around the indoor track at a pretty decent speed. It all worked out pretty well, I didn’t make anything worse, the pain meds started to kick in, and I think I got at least a little bit of a workout.

SPC Mac Gets His Ratings! - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 244

Sent a text to my squad leader “MOU Today”, then headed off to the naval shipyard in Bremerton. I started the day off as usual checking my army and navy emails, then surfing the web. My MedBoard status on AKO is still jacked up…wonder if that means anything? After surfing the web for a little bit, I started the daily server checks…my new job duty here. I was only able to access about three of the servers, all the rest I didn’t have access to. I guess it’s a start though. I sent my co-worker an email showing all the servers I couldn’t access. Maybe they can fix the permissions before the next time I come to work here.

I logged into the GoArmyEd website and signed up for my last classes. After my FTR yesterday, they said once I get my ratings that the process may move pretty fast. I was under the impression that I would have 90 days, but they informed me that the 90 days is the absolute maximum. So now I’ll be doubling up and taking my last two classes at once. It will be a lot of work, but it will also be nice to finally just have it all done.

I surfed the web some more and chatted with co-workers for a while until lunch. I ate lunch at my desk and then took apart a server we had back in our office. It’s getting a hardware error when starting up, so I took out all the pieces I could and used an eraser to clean all the contacts. I put everything back together, but it’s still coming up with the error. I didn’t have much hope that it would be fixed, but I figured it would pass the time.

I then received a text from SPC Mac who was in my platoon in Germany. We both left within weeks of each other and we’re both going through the medboard process. He ended up at Ft. Gordon and had quite a few more claims than I did. He even started the whole claim process a couple weeks after I did, but he just received his ratings from the VA. He had some ankle issues and other various issues such as depression. He received 60% from the army and 80% from the VA. He’s so happy he could piss himself! He also had a great PEBLO who told him to make sure it’s the worst day of his life when he had his appointments with the VA. Now I’m a little scared, because when I went to the VA I was trying my hardest with all the tests. Not to say SPC Mac was lying, but he made sure they knew how much each issue hindered him. I have the habit of sometimes playing everything down a bit. I’m happy for him, he got screwed over quite a bit while in the army…almost to the point where he didn’t even want to go through the medboard process and just quit. Now he’s very happy he stuck with it and made it through the process. Unfortunately I hear the Seattle VA is one of the slowest in the country. I guess we’ll see how much longer it takes for me.

I continued to surf the web until it was time for me to head off for the day. I headed to Costco and picked up a canvas print we ordered. We decided to start ordering one canvas print of a selected photo from the various places we visited while in Europe. This first one was a pretty cool picture I took in downtown Amsterdam. After that I headed home and did schoolwork.

Actual Work - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 242

Sent a text to my squad leader this morning “MOU Today”, then headed off to the naval shipyard in Bremerton. I started the morning as usual and checked both my army and navy email accounts. I then surfed the web, first checking my MEB/PEB status on AKO and then just surfing and reading the news. All my MedBoard information was messed up on AKO. It was similar yesterday and has been messed up in the past, but usually it is all back to normal again the next day. Today it shows me as having 0 days remaining with unknown as a status for when I’ll get out for both no appeal and appeal dates. Makes me wonder if it’s just messed up, or if they are changing something with my records. I guess time will tell.

I continued to surf the web until lunchtime, when I ate lunch at my desk and continued to surf the web. There was a department meeting in the conference room along with all the other units around the area that video conferenced in. The director gave news that he was leaving, he was offered a promotion and will be taking the job in two weeks. He’ll now be the CIO of another part of the shipyard. We were told who will be acting in his place and what the rest of the year looks like budget wise.

After the meeting, I headed back to my desk and…yes I did some more web surfing. With about an hour left in my shift one of my co-workers called and walked me through the process of server checks. They have daily, weekly, and monthly checks that need to be done on each server. I was told about this before, and shown how to start these checks…but the training was never finished. Now I have the complete training and will start performing the daily checks each day I’m in the office. Not very exciting work, most of it is just reviewing the logs and transcribing any warnings or errors to a database…but at least I have a job to do now instead of just surfing the web all day.

When I left for the day, I headed to the dealership to swap out the loaner car I’m driving and pickup my car. Wow…it drives so much better now! When I arrived home I met up with my wife and we headed to my in-laws for dinner. We hung out there for a while before going home. Once home I had to do schoolwork, since I didn’t have any time during the day to do it. It made for a longer night, but I got it all done and turned in.

A Little Hardware Time - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 237

This morning I got up and headed to the naval shipyard in Bremerton. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I totally forgot to send my squad leader a text…oops. I did my usual morning routine and checked my army and navy emails, then surfed the web for a while.

My coworker had setup a spare server for us to use that wasn’t connected to any network. He said there was an error when he was trying to boot it up. He wanted me to open it up and re-seat all the RAM and look for anything else that I could re-seat inside it. I opened it up, and did just that…took out a lot of pieces and put everything back in making sure everything was secure. After that the server booted up fine. I guess we’re going to use this as a training server for us in the future.

I surfed the web some more to pass the time, which started to move really slowly today. I ate lunch at my desk and continued to surf the web. I noticed as I tried to find stuff to occupy my time, that everyone who came in our office to chat with my co-worker hates their job here. I’ve noticed this before, but it just seemed even worse today. The moral here is low and everyone it seems is counting down the days until they can retire. I never really wanted to work here because in truth I’d like to work as far away from a federal government job as I can get. If a job were offered to me though, I’d of course take it if I didn’t have anything else available…a man’s gotta eat! I really can’t imagine working here for real though, I don’t want to hate going to work everyday. The negativity in this entire building can get to you after a while. I really want to work with good people…happy people. Heck, I don’t even know if I’ll be getting a job in the I.T. field when I get out. Technology changes so fast, and I’ll have been standing still for over 4 years while in the army. I guess time will tell what I’ll be doing once I get out.

I left at 1500 and headed home to work on my schoolwork. Another day down, another day closer to getting my degree and getting out of the army.

Surfing Makes for a Long Day - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 235

I sent a text to my squad leader this morning “MOU Today”, then headed to the naval shipyard in Bremerton. I slid right back into my normal routine…check army and navy email, then surf the web. I then surfed the web some more…then some more. I forgot how long the day can be when I have nothing to do. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that I don’t have to get up as early, I don’t have the long commute, and I don’t have to pay the toll to cross the bridge. It’s just the fact that when I "work" for the navy, I usually have nothing to do.

I ate my lunch at my desk, and then surfed some more. I found an interesting forum that I was able to waste some time on. The forum is “The Physical Evaluation Board Forum” (www.pebforum.com). I came across it while trying to find out the average wait time for VA ratings (where I’m stuck at now in the medboard process). This forum has a lot of great information. There are a ton of questions asked with a lot of great responses from people that have gone through the process.

Later on in the afternoon a co-worker loaded a test copy of Windows Server 2012 on a spare server we had that isn’t connected to the network. This was just for us to play around with and test. I really don’t like the new GUI that it uses. I get where Microsoft is trying to go, they want the same look and feel for all of their products…from a phone to a server. The problem is that what works on a phone or a tablet doesn’t work so well on a desktop or especially a server. It all seems a little dumb to me.

I surfed the web a little more until it was time to head home for the day at 1500. I then did schoolwork and cooked a little dinner for my wife before she got home.

DRMO - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 220

A view of all the old computer junk that we returned today.

Send my squad leader a text “MOU Today”, then headed into the naval shipyard in Bremerton this morning. I do the usual and check both my army and navy emails, then surf the web. The internet speed seems extremely slow today for some reason, but that wont matter too much because I’ll be doing physical labor today!

We loaded the TMP van up with a bunch of old equipment that we have been accumulating once again in the office. There were rack servers, desktops, various cables of all sorts, mice, keyboards, scrap metal and some other odds and ends. We filled up the TMP and by the time we were finished, the back was sagging down quite a bit from the weight. When we finished up, I took a quick early lunch. I knew this was going to end up going through our normal lunchtime and didn’t want to have my stomach growling all the way through it.

A co-worker and I took the van to the naval submarine base located outside of Silverdale. As we approached the gate, I was half expecting the guards to have us pull aside so they could thoroughly inspect our van. In the army whenever we did training for guard duty, a low riding vehicle was always considered suspect because it could indicate an IED (Improvised Explosive Device). We had no such problems at this gate though, the guard saw we were in a government vehicle and inspected our badges, then sent us on our way.

We headed to the DRMO site on the base and I backed up to the loading dock. My co-worker took in the pile of paperwork and a few minutes later a lady drove out some pallets for us to load everything onto. I took everything out of the van and put it on the loading dock, then my co-worker played Tetris and piled everything carefully on the pallets. Once we finished we found out that in addition to the paperwork we turned in, we had to attach additional copies onto the actual equipment. Luckily this was just one piece of paper for each type of equipment (i.e. rack servers). We completed this easy enough, then took off and headed back to the naval shipyard in Bremerton.

Once back in the office, I surfed the web for a while. I also searched around for some other online training I can do besides SkillPort, because the Linux training on SkillPort will not work on these government computers. Near the end of the day I could tell I did a little too much because I was already starting to feel the pain. I think this is the last of the old equipment we’ll be moving while I’m working here. Once my shift finished, I headed home and took my pain meds, by this time the pain had already started to come on pretty strong.

I then started working on my schoolwork. This class “Business Policy & Strategy” is a lot more involved than any of my previous classes. There is quite a bit of reading involved and then a lot of short answer questions and case studies have to be completed each week. The teacher is a stickler for grammar as well, if you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time I’m sure you’ve caught more than one error. With all that said, I will have to work a lot harder to finish this class and get a decent grade. I’m so close now…after this class I have two more before I graduate.

With the holidays, my pain, or my wife tired, it seems we have not gone to the YMCA and done any kind of workout in quite a while. We’re gonna either have to commit or cancel our membership. I want to go, but there always seems to be a reason we don’t end up going. Today the reason was definitely me, even though I took my pain meds I was still in quite a bit of pain and in no mood to work out. I feel myself getting bigger and heavier. I’ve past the point where I could eat whatever I want and do nothing, but still stay as skinny as a toothpick. I have to start eating healthier and getting a workout at some point.

A Half Day Sounds Good - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 216

Sent my squad leader a text “MOU Today”, then headed into the naval shipyard in Bremerton. I started my morning routine as always checking both my army and navy emails, then surfing the web a bit. I’m going to try and remember to post my medboard status as far as AKO shows each Friday. I check it everyday hoping to see some changes, but I think a weekly update here will give you the idea.

214 days remaining
Start Date: 6/26/2013
Goal Finish Date: 4/17/2014
Estimated Finish Date (No Appeal): 7/21/2014
Estimated Finish Date (W/ Appeal): 8/12/2014

My current step in the process is VA Ratings. My actual time waiting for ratings is 136 days. The army average is now 143.74 days. Current days until I reach the army average is 7.74.

I was supposed to shadow a guy from another office today to see exactly what needs to be done while conducting server checks. He came back and told me the software he uses had it’s trial period expire, so he can’t use it anymore! Guess we’ll try again later. I continued to surf the web until lunch time. I ate lunch at my desk, then decided to leave for the day. I found out my kiddos will be coming over earlier and I need to pick them up from the ferry.

Once I picked up the kiddos, we headed to Costco for a quick bite to eat (for them) and then home. I did my schoolwork while they watched some TV shows. Once my wife got home we all headed out to the movies and saw “Lone Survivor”. I had just watched a great documentary about this guy. The story is about a navy seal team that goes on a recon mission in Afghanistan. They end up surrounded by Taliban and one by one the entire team dies, except for the “lone survivor”. It’s his story about the mission and how he made it out. There are some pretty intense fight scenes and some of them are pretty hard to watch…but the movie as a whole is pretty awesome!

More than Just Surfing - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 215

Sent my squad leader a text this morning “MOU Today”, then headed into the naval shipyard in Bremerton. I started the day off as I always do, check my army and navy emails and then surf the web. I chatted with my co-worker for a while and he says he has a plan to actually have me start doing something soon. He’s setting up and configuring one of the few Linux servers that will end up on the network. He’s been spending each Friday at home doing Linux training because the training will not work on the government computers. He wants me to start learning Linux and then give me some hands on experience with the new server. We have a while before it will actually go online, so this will be some good practice time.

I was then given the access to perform “server checks”, but when I started to check it out, I found that I don’t have the necessary tools to complete a lot of the required actions. I guess it’s baby steps for this project…at least I have the access now. I ate lunch at my desk, then my co-worker showed me how he can boot the server from the Linux disk. He told me some stories about the time he worked at the VA. Booting from a Linux disk was very handy in recovering data from computers that were having issues.

I started a SkillPort on Linux, but the government computer was unable to run a lot of the training. The government computers are locked down so tight, they become somewhat unusable at times for certain tasks. I then surfed around the web for alternative training solutions, which should work fine…but will not show up in all my army transcripts like all the SkillPort training does.

I get a call from my NCM to confirm my next pain clinic appointments because she was out sick the other day when I tried to visit. I tell her than Monday is going to be hell because of the staff duty shift I have to pull on Sunday night/Monday morning. She says she’ll look into it.

I do some more surfing, reading the news and checking out various Linux training sites. I then get a call from my squad leader saying that my staff duty shift has been moved to Wednesday night/Thursday morning. This is good news because I will actually be at Ft. Lewis already for appointments on Wednesday, so I don’t have to make a special trip in for it. I also don’t have any appointments scheduled on Thursday, so I’ll be able to go home and crash. The only thing I’ll have to worry about is being a zombie for a day or two after the staff duty shift.

I got another call from my squad leader later on in the day asking if I wanted to take a PT test so I can go to the promotion board. I tell him I have no desire at all to go to the promotion board. In fact, I’m already checked out mentally from the army. I’m a civilian that dresses up in army clothes once in a while when I have appointments and such.

I left work at 1500 and headed home to do schoolwork. Later on at night before bed, while watching some TV shows with my wife, I had an Epsom salt bath for my feet. This was something my acupuncturist said she wanted me to start doing every night for 15 minutes to a half hour. I had a hard time trying to find Epsom salt at the navy commissary or exchange, so I just went off post to Walgreens and made the purchase. I took a 2/3 cup of Epsom salt and put it in a tub, then filled it with hot water. Epsom salt baths I’m told are an easy way to let the magnesium and sulfate from the salt absorb into your skin. I guess it will reduce inflammation, help muscle and nerve function, and even help ease migraine headaches…along with a host of other benefits. I figured I’ll give it a try…I got nothing to lose and it sounds like it may be good for a whole range of health benefits. I soaked for a good half hour and did notice my feet felt pretty good afterwards, they felt rejuvenated!

Surfin Safari - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 212

Sent a text to my squad leader “MOU Today”, then headed into the naval base in Bremerton. I did the usual morning routine…drink my coffee, check my army and navy emails, and surf the web. Today was actually pretty boring! There wasn’t a lot of interaction with anyone, I just sat there surfing the web the entire day! I had lunch at my desk and continued to surf the web. There is only so much we surfing you can do before it gets boring.

I ended up passing the time alternating between surfing the web and playing games on my iPhone. I also found a couple other people’s blogs they made during their medboard experience and read them to pass the time and to see if they were going through a similar experience as I am. You can check them out here:

My MedBoard Experience & Afterwards
First Hand MEB Experience

I feel like my life is on pause. I feel like my life is in limbo…my professional life that is. I can’t even really search for another job because I have no idea when I’ll be getting out. Sometimes I can get pretty frustrated, I just want to get on with my life. I just want to actually start doing some real work for a company. I want to feel like I’m doing something useful.

It Feels Like a Half Day - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 209

It’s Friday! I sent my squad leader a text “MOU Today” and then headed into the naval shipyard in Bremerton. I checked my army and navy email and then continued to surf the web. I first checked my MEB/PEB status via AKO and it states the following:

213 days remaining
Start Date: 6/26/2013
Goal Finish Date: 4/17/2014
Estimated Finish Date (No Appeal): 7/15/2014
Estimated Finish Date (W/ Appeal): 8/04/2014

My current step in the process is VA Ratings. My actual time waiting for ratings is 129 days. The army average is now 144.15 days. Current days until I reach the army average is 15.15.

It’s interesting how the days remaining sometimes stays the same and sometimes fluctuates. My finish date constantly moves to a later date, but one thing keeps getting closer…the time until I reach the army average for the VA ratings process. It’s no guarantee that I’ll get mine on that day, but it gives me a date to look forward to I guess.

I kept surfing the web until lunchtime and then just decided to go home. It’s Friday and there is really nothing going on…there is no reason for me to stay and I think I’ve read all the news I can take for today. Once home there was no college basketball on, so I changed gears and checked out HBO Go on my AppleTV. I’ve watched quite a few documentaries using this “app”. Today I watched a pretty interesting one on a photo journalist named Tim Hetherington called “Which Way is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington”. This is the same photo journalist that worked on the movie Restrepo. He ended up living a very interesting life, but died during the war in Libya.

I then decided to get busy on my schoolwork, I’ve started a new class and this one seems to have twice the work than my previous class, so I’ll be pretty busy for the next 8 weeks!

Backup - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 202

This morning I didn’t text anyone because my squad leader and platoon sergeant are still on leave, I don’t have anyone else’s number. I don’t think there is hardly anyone even at formation anyway. I headed into the naval shipyard in Bremerton only to find traffic backed up way into the city. The navy base only has one gate open for the holidays because I guess a lot of people take block leave during this time. The problem is that there is still quite a few people trying to get in and the backup was just crazy. Traffic lights would change, but there would be no movement. I just turned around and went home. I’m not going to wait for hours in this stupid traffic just to go into a building where only a few people are working, then sit at my desk and surf the web for an entire day…no way!

When I got back home I spent the time watching some college basketball and then working on my schoolwork. I figured I’ll be a lot more productive at home than I would have if I chose to work with the navy today.

Home Early - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 198

This morning I headed off to the naval shipyard in Bremerton without sending a text to anyone. My platoon sergeant informed me that he is going on leave. My guess is that there is probably hardly anyone even at the morning formation anyway during the holidays. When I arrived at my office, there was nobody there and hardly anyone in the building at all. I did the usual checking army and navy emails and then surfing the web until 1100. I decided to just go home at 1100, I’m still in quite a bit of pain in my neck, shoulders, and head. This month has actually been a pretty bad month for pain. I can usually just deal with the chronic pain I have, but it seems to have stepped up a bit and I’ve been feeling it.

At home I took my pain meds and laid down on the heating pad for a while. I did get up for a while and worked on my schoolwork for the day. I then took it easy getting back down on the heating pad off and on for the rest of the day.

Beginning To Look A Lot Like Winter - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 195

This morning I sent a text to my platoon sergeant “FYI: I will be at my MOU with the navy again today”. I don’t usually text him, but I had his number from a previous text and my squad leader is on leave. There is snow on the ground, but I received a text from the navy stating that all the bases are open and operating normally. So I headed off to the naval shipyard in Bremerton. When I arrived, I proceeded with my normal morning ritual and checked both army and navy emails, then surfed the web for a while.

With the snow and the holidays near it seemed like there was almost nobody in the building. I surfed the web until lunchtime, but decided to leave for the day at lunch. I took my lunch home and ate it, did my schoolwork and then took it easy just laying down on the couch with the heating pad under my neck and shoulders. Living with chronic pain really sucks!

One Bad Step - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 194

Now that I have my platoon sergeant’s number I sent him my morning text “FYI: I will be at my MOU with the navy again today”. I then headed back into the naval shipyard in Bremerton for today’s “work”. I started off as usual checking my army and navy email. My army email usually doesn’t have much, perhaps two or three a week, but I do receive items from the WTB, so I have to make sure there is nothing waiting for me such as my checklist. The army email is checked via a web page using Outlook Web Access. My navy email also doesn’t get a lot, usually a few each day of which most are group emails sent to everyone. As mentioned in an earlier post when I surf the web I always start with a quick check on AKO checking out myMEB/PEB status. I’ll try and post numbers up once a week, or at least once a month so you can see how things progress. Here is my status as of today:

212 days remaining
Start Date: 6/26/2013
Goal Finish Date: 4/17/2014
Estimated Finish Date (No Appeal): 6/30/2014
Estimated Finish Date (W/ Appeal): 7/19/2014

My current step in the process is VA Ratings. My actual time waiting for ratings is 114 days. The army average is 146.80 days. Current days until I reach the army average is 32.80.

Nothing new with those numbers, so I continued to surf the web for a while reading the headlines from around the world and locally. I then found out my legacy system account is now setup and active. I logged into the legacy system at my desk. I was then shown what server to connect the event viewer to and what logs I’ll be looking at. I save the settings so I’ll be able to get back to that easily next time, because they are going to show me what I will need to do at a later date…probably after the holidays.

One of the lady’s in another office brought back all the required paperwork for the machines that we will be getting rid of. This is all the equipment we cleaned out of the SIPR room. The process to get rid of it is called DRMO which stands for Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office. Everything gets shipped off somewhere else, where they decide what to actually do with all the crap. Everyone here just says “dermo” sounding out the acronym when talking about the whole process.

I had lunch at my desk. I have to mention that I am always only one step away from being in a lot of pain for a long period of time. Usually my pain comes and goes, there are certain triggers that can make it worse. Last night I made one misstep where I didn’t see a curb and stepped off of it, which was a slight jarring experience. Before I had any issues back when I was a young lad something like this would never even be cause for a second thought. I knew then that it was going to cause me some serious pain these days though. The funny thing is that the pain just starts to continually build up like a snowball rolling down a mountain. I could feel the muscles in by upper back, shoulders and neck start to tighten up as the night went on. By the end of the night my neck and head were in some serious pain. I took a muscle relaxer to ensure a good night’s sleep, but I was still in quite a bit of pain all day today. I decided to leave at lunch for the day and go home to lay down on my couch with the heating pad on my back and neck after taking some pain medication.

After a while of resting and falling in and out of sleep, I got up and did my schoolwork for the day. I then continued to take it easy laying down and using the heating pad throughout the night. Usually I’m pretty careful about where and how I walk because I’m always only one bad step away from being in a lot of pain for a long time…it sucks!

Surfing and Inventory - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 192

This morning I was going to send a text to my squad leader, but he sent me a text last night stating he is now on leave until the 28th. I don’t have any other numbers, so I didn’t text anyone. I headed into the naval shipyard in Bremerton and did my normal routine checking army and navy emails and then surfing the web for a bit. I then started a SkillPort course. I now bring in my headphones so the courses are at least a little more interesting because they read everything to you.

We had a morning meeting that included a video conference with all the other local bases I.T. departments. It was basically our director telling us what the future looks like for the department. Now that congress has finally created a budget and it looks like it will pass, everything looks like it’s back to normal for our department. All planned items are back on track and they plan to replace 7 open positions they have right now.

After the meeting I was able to complete my SkillPort course. I did a little more random web surfing and then had lunch at my desk. I was told that the backup tapes we brought back from the SIPR room cleanup will be destroyed along with the hard drives. So I had to do a simple inventory of the tapes showing how many of each brand we had. I then moved the boxes of tapes along with the hard drive to another office. The guy in this office is the one who will do the final paperwork and ship them all off to the NSA for destruction.

I surfed the web for the rest of the day until 1500 when I left. When I got home I did my schoolwork and then took it easy.

Loose Screws! - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 188

The admiral and her dog came to visit along with a 5 piece band to play holiday songs

I received a text from my squad leader last night stating that he’ll be on leave until the 28th. With him on leave I figured I should text someone, but I don’t have anyone else’s number, so I just didn’t text anyone. I headed into the naval shipyard in Bremerton. My morning routine was changed a bit because there is an issue with internet access, or I should say lack of internet access. I could only check my navy email via outlook. With no internet, I can’t check my army email which I do through outlook web access. I also can’t check my MEB status or read the news. Now what do I do? I use my iPhone to pass the time.

After a short period everyone is told to gather in a central portion of the building. The regional commander came to visit us. She’s an admiral and she brought her dog (in uniform) and a five piece naval band. The band played a few Christmas songs and then she went around and shook everyone’s hands while wishing us all a merry Christmas. It was a nice gesture and kind of cool. She then left with her dog and five piece band to visit another building. Later our director came around with a Santa bag full of presents and handed out a small present to each of us. I got a box of candy (chocolate covered nuts…which my son later found and ate them all…lol)

I brought in my own screwdriver to get the cases off a few hard drives that I was unable to yesterday with the tiny screwdriver I was given. I had a lot more success with my bigger screwdriver…mission complete! I then completed my inventory spreadsheet for the hard drives and emailed them off to the lady who is doing all the paperwork for everything to be turned in.

I then checked and the internet was working once again. I was now able to use it to pass the time and surf the web. While checking my army email I found that I had a self assessment due for the WTB. The self assessments have me rate the same questions each time with three options which are variations of no problem, minor problem, big problem. The questions range from my satisfaction with my housing to my medical treatment. Any answer other than the no problem requires an additional statement in the comments section. The only two that I always have to comment on are “are my medications working” and “am I still in pain” both comments are usually the same and usually end up something like “my medications do dull the pain, but do not remove it completely”. I can only wish that there were a magic pill to take away all the pain completely.

I left for the day at lunchtime, I went to have lunch with my wife at home because she only worked half a day as well. We both then made the trip to Sultan and watched my daughter’s basketball game. We brought all the kiddos home with us for the weekend. I’m so happy to be able to see them again on a regular basis, that was the one big thing that really got me down while being away from them during my time in Korea and then Europe.