ACAP All Day Part II - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 68

This morning everyone came to formation in ACUs. We stood in formation and waited…and waited…and waited some more. Finally our first sergeant came and we did our accountability. Everyone else would get into trouble for being late to a formation, but when you're the first sergeant those rules don't apply. It also inflates their head and their big egos when everyone has to wait on them.

Everyone was in ACUs because we had to do a PMI (Primary Maintenance Inspection). This inspection consisted only of showing our dog tags (ID Tags) and our ID card. We all headed up to the bravo company headquarters and stood in alphabetical order. Luckily those of us with 0830 appointments and earlier were able to move to the front of the line. I headed to the front and showed both items, was marked off the list and then I left.

I headed to north Ft. Lewis where I parked and ate breakfast in my car. Day 2 of our all day ACAP class had us start checking out some various web sites. We then went over the resume, breaking it down into sections. We went over the header, the objective, and the experience sections. We discussed "Wordsmithing" which is basically tweaking statements and phrases to sound a lot better. We went over action statements, basically in the experience section of a resume, the user should use an action statement instead of just listing their job description. This will leave a better impact on the person reading the resume.

We then had to pair up with others and give a 30 second "commercial" about ourselves. This was basically practicing for the interview process when the hiring manager asks you "tell me a little about yourself". We rotated through about 5 different people doing this process. After that we were dismissed for lunch. I headed to my usual spot…my car and the radio.

When we arrived back from lunch we did a lot more resume talk, going over the education portion and any other miscellaneous items. I had the instructor take a look at my resume and got some valuable feedback. We were dismissed a little after 1630.

PMI - (Korea) Day 150

PMI: SPC Mick with his big helmet...lol. He looked like the guy from Space Balls in it.
(It was an XL borrowed from Special K) This was how we practiced our site alignment.

Work call this morning was at 0830. We setup for two meetings, one in our conference room and one in the top secret conference room. After that we all put on our full battle rattle and headed out with our sergeant in two cars. We headed across post to a field for "PMI". It's funny that the army uses acronyms non-stop. Half the time I don't think most of the people even know what they stand for. I knew what we were doing, but I had to look up the acronym. PMI is Preliminary Marksmanship Instruction. Since we are going to the range next week this PMI is required. We met up with other soldiers from various offices and shops that were all planning on heading to the range next week as well. The instructor went over a lot of the basic safety and other important instructions. We then did a couple of drills with the rifles. These drills were the same exact drills that I did in basic training.
One of the drills had us practice site alignment. During this drill a partner holds a little silhouette on a piece of paper and while looking down the site on our rifle, we tell them to move it in a certain direction until it matches up with our site. Once this is accomplished they mark it with a pen. We do this three times and hope to have all three marks close together. The second test was to have us keep the rifle still while squeezing and releasing the trigger. A quarter was placed on the end of the barrel and we had to squeeze and release 6 times in order to pass. It was all pretty basic stuff. The stuff I hated doing in basic because it seemed like we did it over and over and over again.

We signed off on the attendance sheet (the key to getting access to the range next week) and headed back to the office. We setup for a meeting and then Special K and I ran off to the Sweet and Treat snack bar by the office to pick up lunch. I had them make me a sandwich and we headed back to the conference room for a working lunch. I had to flip slides during this conference, but it wasn't too bad, I was able to watch some NBA while the conference was going on. I just had to pay attention and click the little arrow key when I heard them say "next slide please".

After we cleaned up from the conference our KATUSA, SPC Mick and I headed down to the secret conference room for some training. When we arrived we almost caused a security breach. We weren't told, but it was a US only meeting and bringing in the KATUSA was forbidden. Ooops. We had training on how to flip slides for a special meeting that is lasting all day tomorrow. We are going to take turns doing this all day…sounds like fun.

We then all had to turn our "I love me books" into our sergeant for inspection. He wanted to make sure we have been keeping them all up to date. He also found new covers and dividers he wanted us to use because they are cooler I guess. We then cleaned up the office, cleaned up the top secret conference room and then left.

When I got to my room I just kicked back and relaxed. It's a little strange not having any schoolwork to do. I ended up downloading some entertainment and went on a TV show watching marathon. I'm still trying to get caught up on all my shows that I've fallen behind on since going to basic training and AIT. It's nice just to sit back and veg out for a while.

Overheard Quote: "Oh Prick! Why did it do that?" (some civilian intelligence guy trying to fix some of his PowerPoint slides during our "slide show training")

A view of where we were conducting PMI. This shows you just how 
close we are to downtown Seoul.