Fat Boy PT - (Korea) Day 41

A random photo of the flags in my conference room. They are usually
on the side of the room, but depending on the ceremony we will
move them to the front of the room

This morning work call was at 0800 because of an early meeting. We had a couple of meetings to setup for in the morning and that was about it for the day. I worked on a little SkillPort after that. What is nice now is that when you finish a SkillPort lesson the hours show up on your ERB soon after you're finished. (An ERB is basically a snapshot of all your important military information).
We went to a KATUSA snack bar near our office for lunch. KATUSA snack bars are run by Koreans and sell only Korean food. I had some spicy pork with some cucumber kimchi. It was pretty good. I also learned a new phrase in Korean. Since SPC Roy is Korean he taught me some bad words…lol. Every time I said it, he would start cracking up. I will now greet my roommate when I get back with this new found information.

We had to do some mandatory training on "human trafficking". Unfortunately the website we were supposed to do the training on (JKO) was not working. I ran into similar issues when trying to do the training to come to Korea. We ended up getting all the slides and our office used the conference room and reviewed the slides on the projector as a group. We learned all about human trafficking and how we can be punished by the UCMJ if we participate in human trafficking. We then had to sign our names on a sheet that said we went through the training.

After work SPC Roy had to go to "Special Pops" PT. Special Population PT is what he calls "Fat Boy" PT. The special population that is overweight and/or cannot pass their PT test has to attend this PT. It is a bit more rigorous and tries to help the soldiers get in better shape. The rest of us just went to the gym. The problem was that nobody showed up for SPC Roy's special PT. He came to the gym and our sergeant decided to give him the special pops PT himself. We ended up having to join him as well. I got an extremely good workout on my abs! We did all kinds of exercises that I've never seen before. We did upside-down push-ups, lots of leg lifts and variations of leg lifts. We sat on the wall and suicide runs on the basketball court. I felt like I was back in basketball practice. It wore me out!

After that it was back in the room and a little video chatting with my wife before watching a few TV shows on my laptop before bed.

Keith Miller

It seems that the Army is always having problems with their websites. I just started taking a correspondence course online and it is a pain to get it started! You would think that will the pride that the Army and Signal Corps takes in their work, that they would at least have their websites work properly on a regular basis. Even goarmy.com has problems and broken links. Anyways, I bet I will have a head start on must the guys going to basic though.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - 12:41 AM

Surprise!! Extra Training (AIT - Fort Gordon) Day 104

Everyone at RBK that is in Charlie company had a wake up this morning at 4:00 AM (30-45 minutes earlier than normal depending on who is on hall guard). We were told to get in ACUs and be in formation in 15 minutes. Great...this day is already starting off pretty crappy. I hurried up and got dressed and shaved. The shave took longer than normal because of the number of people trying to cram in the bathroom all at once. Precisely the reason I set my alarm to go off 15 minutes before wake-up, so I can get everything I need done in the bathroom before the rush.

We get out to formation and march over to the chapel, which is where a lot of our training is at (it has a big projector and screen with a lot of seats). The training consisted of a number of “death by PowerPoint” shows. Each one had a different sergeant who usually had soldiers read the slides out loud. It consisted of Cold Weather Injuries, Ethics, UCMJ, and LOW (Laws of War). FYI: we are not allowed to do any mercy killings as a soldier.

As we were marching to class I remembered an incident that happened yesterday, but forgot to put in the journal. For the second time since I’ve been here we have had a person actually run into a sign while marching. It is funny every time too! It’s always very loud, so there is no playing it off.

I learned in class today that a girl in Charlie tried to commit suicide last night. Turns out she was actually at our table at Hooters this last Saturday. I guess her fiance broke up with her and she took it kind of hard.

At this new school house we do things a little different than at Dixon Hall. Every morning before class the entire formation sings “The Army Song”, “The Signal Corps March”, and then we say “The Soldiers Creed”. We then do it all over again after lunch before we head in. Speaking of after lunch, our small detachment of 447 soldiers all got smoked before going in to the school. The leader of our formation told us to fall out, but the rest of the 551 formation wasn’t ready yet. So we all did a number of push-ups. I think all the sergeants there hate 447. 

During the afternoon break a sergeant saw someone with a cell phone in the break area which is against the rules. So they ended up having an impromptu shakedown of everyone in the break area searching for cell phones. I happened to be using the facilities at the time, so I was not part of this shakedown, but I heard they caught a few people with phones. They will be taken away for a week.

After class today we hung out at the IET center for a while, then ate dinner at the DFAC before all the people from Dixon Hall were let out. We then had formation for more training at 17:45. We marched all the way to the end of Barton Field into the garrison building. Here we learned we were going to have ACEP training...and not just tonight, but for a few weeks. ACEP stands for Army Center for Enhanced Performance. Their goal is to make better soldiers. What I got out of tonight’s training was that we should not think negative thoughts, focus on the positive things, talk to yourself (positively), and set goals. It was hard to get motivated or even pay attention though. I’d been up since 4:00AM attending class pretty much the entire time. When class is over it’s really hard to be motivated to do even more training.

Overheard Quote: “We Piss Excellence!” (When asked what positive phrase did Charlie company come up when they had this same training about 5 months ago)

Straighten That Pinky (Pre-Basic Training) 31 Days until Basic

Today we were asked to come in at 10AM to the recruiter’s office for some Future Soldier Training. 6 of us showed up ready to go. Ironically the gal who is going into OCS (going to be an officer) showed up 15 minutes late. The recruiter initially focused on the two recruits who were shipping out next week. These recruits have the ability to get a promotion (up to E3) if they can pass a test issued at MEPS showing they understand and have memorized all the stuff that we need to learn before going to basic. This is stuff like the rank structure, the general orders, and some of the military movements (i.e. right face, attention, saluting etc).

The recruiter then had us all stand together and practice the movements as he sounded off. It had to be pretty comical for him because we must have looked like a bunch of idiots. He would say “Right Face” and half the people would turn left with the other half turning right. As I was saluting the recruiter said, “straighten your pinky finger”. I said, “I can’t...it’s broken, it doesn’t straighten”. So they all laughed, then had me lift it up slightly so it doesn’t stand out as much. I’ll take any suggestions and help I can get before basic. I think it got even funnier when the recruiter took us outside to practice marching. Picture one guy in uniform marching around a bunch of people dressed in civilian clothes. We marched all over the parking lot, taking random lefts and rights at his command...by the time we were done I think it started to come together. Just have to remember quick snappy movements and keep my pinky slightly lifted when saluting.