ActiveX Headaches - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 172

Sent my squad leader a text this morning “MOU Today” and then headed into the naval sub base outside of Silverdale. I continued with my normal morning routine of checking both my army and navy emails. I then surfed the web for a while getting caught up on all the world news. I then completed a SkillPort. I’m still working through every Windows 2008 server SkillPort I could find. There are a ton of them going over every portion of the new server OS, so I’ll have plenty to keep me busy for a while. The only problem is trying to space them out enough to where I don’t get burned out doing them.

I went to my car for lunch. It’s getting pretty cold outside, even with my blanket on me in the car I’m still almost freezing. I may have to start eating my lunch inside…it just feels weird eating lunch in the server room and they don’t have a lunch room in our building.

In the afternoon I surfed the web for a while and then helped my co-worker try a few things on the machines we’re still having issues with. We are still having the ActiveX issue on just two machines, it’s very strange because all the others work just fine. We’ve re-imaged them, tried uninstalling various software and reinstalling. We’re still waiting on the help desk request that my co-worker initiated with the company that makes the product. We had zero luck today getting anything to work…it’s frustrating.

So frustrating in fact that my co-worker said we’re leaving early today! We left about an hour early…time to start the (holiday) weekend. Well…after I work on my schoolwork. My kids came over tonight, so we all hung out and watched some shows together.

Spiderman Cometh - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 171

This morning I sent my squad leader a text “MOU Today”, then went back to sleep. I slept in until about 0800 and then slowly got up and got ready for the day. I had an appointment for the exterminator this morning, but they could only give me the time frame of between 0900 and 1200. Once I got up I just started doing schoolwork, which is actually one of my MOUs so I wasn’t technically lying to my squad leader.

The exterminator came and did his thing both outside and in the crawl space of the house. We were starting to see a pickup of the number of spiders around and none of the girls in my family care for those too much. So this should get rid of them for a while. I then did a little yard work before relaxing on the couch and watching some college basketball on the “WatchESPN” app on my AppleTV. I have missed watching college basketball pretty much the entire time I’ve been in the army up until now. I’m glad to be back home!

The rest of the day consisted of eating lunch and finishing up my schoolwork for the day.

PCM & Refills - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 170

Yup...that pretty much sums it up (at least army PT anyways)

Headed to the morning formation and boy it’s starting to get cold. Even though I was in full winter PTs, I could still feel the cold air all over. After accountability the first sergeant released us by platoon. Everyone else headed in except for our platoon. For some reason our platoon sergeant wanted to stay out in the cold and do our stretches and exercises. I don’t care too much for when we get released by platoon because I can’t easily sneak off when we are released and just leave.

Once we finished our stretches and easy exercises we were supposed to walk around the WTB complex a few times, but I just headed straight to my car…I was getting pretty cold by this point. A lot of the exercises we did earlier to get the blood pumping were ones that I just can’t do…a lot of us couldn’t do because of the various injuries that brought us here.

I ate breakfast in my car, then went into the SFAC to check my army email. I then used their bathrooms to change into my ACUs. Once changed I hung out for a while in the lobby just to stay warm until my next appointment. I headed to my monthly PCM appointment and we went over how I have been doing. For the most part I’ve been doing pretty good. I’ve been using the traction device nightly and I have been taking less medication as a result. I still get pain and headaches, but they seem to be less frequent and less severe than before which is a good thing. I had my PCM get me refills of my pain medications, then headed to the pharmacy to pick them up.

After that I hopped in my car and headed home where I finished up the day doing schoolwork.

Weekend Wrap-Up - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Days 168 & 169

This weekend was pretty laid back…my kind of weekend! My wife and I did a little shopping for some white elephant presents, which we give out at Thanksgiving. We went out to eat and also ended up purchasing an entertainment center with an electric fireplace in it. Now I can “start a fire” with a remote control. We needed a little something extra in our entertainment room because it does not receive any of the forced air head like the rest of our house. Next appliance in our entertainment room will be a mini-fridge!

Other than that I helped my father-in-law move a few things into his storage unit, then just took it easy for the rest of the weekend. There were no Seahawks this weekend, so it was all pretty mellow.

Stuck on ActiveX - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 167

First time at any job where I've left the office and found a 

deer just chillin' eating some salad.

This morning I sent my squad leader a text “MOU Today” and then headed to the naval sub base near Silverdale. The I.T. office isn’t really an office. Instead it is a server room that also has some desks in it. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before in all my years of doing I.T. work. Because the “office” is in the server room it’s louder than normal because of all the fans running in the servers and also a little bit colder than normal because the A/C in the room has to keep it cool enough so the servers don’t overheat. As I was walking through the server racks I noticed one lone Mac Mini sitting among these giant HP and Dell rack mounted servers. My co-worker didn’t know what it was there for, now I’m curious.

My co-worker and I headed across the street to the naval regional 911 center once again to try and get the computer working. We tried until lunch time, but gave up and headed back to the office with one of the broken computers. My co-worker has put in a help ticket to the vendor to see if they have any idea why these two lone computers are not working.

I ate my lunch in the office today and then continued working on the broken PC. My co-worker and I have both tested and tried everything we could think of to get the program to run in the browser, but there is something with the ActiveX control that just doesn’t work…and it’s very frustrating. I ended up testing various ideas on it until it was time to leave for the day.

I headed home and did schoolwork and then went to the YMCA for a workout. I’ve been doing cardio, but figured I need to mix it up with a little strength training now as well. I could tell right away that I’m definitely out of shape! I started out using the universal machines that I used while in Germany, but at about 50% less weight to start out with…and I was straining! I gotta get back in shape, but with the holidays coming up I’m sure we won’t have a normal routine for a while.

Free Turkey - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 166

This morning I headed into Ft. Lewis. I received a message earlier in the week from my squad leader telling me that he put me in for a free turkey and that I need to pick it up today. I guess a free turkey is worth a drive to Ft. Lewis. I headed to morning formation, or what I thought would be morning formation, but nobody was there. I never got a text or anything telling me that the formation was somewhere else or cancelled, but it is definitely not at the usual spot so I head back to my car. It's so cold that even with my blanket I can't sleep. I do stay in for a bit and eat my breakfast, but at 0730 when the SFAC opened I headed inside where it's warm.

I checked my army email and then played games on my iPhone to pass the time. After a while I headed to the pharmacy refill area and picked up some prescription refills I had called in last week. I waited in the hospital waiting area for a while, just because it's so cold outside. I played a few games on my iPhone, then proceeded out into the frigid air. I headed back to the WTB and checked in with my nurse case manager. The quick check in is required and is pretty much the same every week (how am I doing, do I feel like hurting myself or others, what is my pain level today, do I need any medications, have I heard from the medboard yet?) Once finished with my NCM check-in, I headed to another building in the WTB and picked up my free turkey. It was a pretty fast and easy process. There was a civilian standing in the multipurpose room next to a table with some frozen turkeys on it. I walked up, he checked off my name, and I picked a turkey and headed to my car.

I then headed home and did some schoolwork. Later on I watched some college basketball. I am actually pretty excited that the WatchESPN app is now on my AppleTV. I now have access to all the ESPN channels and can even choose to watch certain college basketball replays. This is pretty cool!

Image & Secure - (MedBoard: Joint Base Lewis-McChord) Day 165

It's never easy to say goodbye, but my old friend "the beard" is gonna 

leave tomorrow...he's not welcome at Ft. Lewis while I'm in uniform.

I got a text from my squad leader this morning (he sends group texts all the time to his squad) that stated "100% weigh in everyone in PTs no ACUs". Screw that…I replied with my usual "MOU Today" and proceeded to get ready to head into the navy. If there is something that I need to head into Ft. Lewis for, I have to know the night before because I need to get up a lot earlier and leave a lot earlier in order to drive all the way there by morning formation.

I headed to the naval sub base outside of Silverdale today. I imaged a machine, then went through the security checks making each change line by line. At one point I had to restart the machine and one of the security check that I fixed was "turning off automatic login". The image I was using was created by my co-worker a while ago and he couldn't remember the password for that image, I had to re-image the machine and start over. I made sure to set the password before I did anything else.

I ate lunch in my car and listened to the radio for a bit. When I went back into the office, I finished up the security on the machine and then put through a system access request for what they call the legacy network. When I get this access I'll be able to do some more work, which I'm hoping will keep me busy. The access request is just a PDF that I had to fill out and email to my supervisor here. It always seemed to take forever in the army, I guess we'll see how long the navy takes.

I headed home and did schoolwork for the rest of the day. I'm really hoping to finish my degree before I get out. I have 3 more classes to take in order to do so. I'm hoping congress will get a budget passed and tuition assistance will be available before I need to sign up for my last two classes. I'm going to sign up for my next class soon and it will actually start before the January 15th deadline that congress made this last time. I'm crossing my fingers!