Last Day of the Beret - (Korea) Day 196

Looking down at my boot. My job as a door stop. I hold the door open for the
commander (4 star general) so he doesn't have to be troubled with such small things
as a security badge and code to get into the restricted area.

Work call this morning was at 0830. We had no meetings planned until 1030 in the secret conference room. I worked on SkillPorts until the NBA playoffs came on, then I settled in to watch the game. Our KATUSA setup the name tags for the meeting, so at half time we all went down to call stand-by. I of course assumed my position as the doorstop, holding the door open for the commander when he arrives. Once the meeting was finished I was able to go up and finish the second half of the NBA finals. OMG what a game…congratulations Dallas!

We learned today that the SMA of the army announced that we don't have to wear the beret anymore! This is such good news. Nobody likes the beret. It's a stupid hat that takes two hands to put on and does not have a bill to protect from the sun. It serves no purpose except to look stupid. If you line 10 soldiers in a row and look at their berets, you will see them put on 10 different ways. The PC (Patrol Cap) that we will be using is a much more practical piece of headgear. You can put it on easily with one hand and it fits nicely in our cargo pockets. The only issue here in Korea is that we are supposed to sew on our rank. This is fine with me because the pinned on one I have pokes me in the forehead when I wear it.

I headed to my room to eat lunch and video chat with my wife. After eating I headed over to the little sewing shop next to the clothing store and dropped off my two PCs to have their rank sewn on. There was already a big pile of PCs there from previous patrons. I bet this little sewing shop is loving the new policy change! I dropped them off and was charged $6 for the sewing job and the rank insignia. They told me to come back at 1800 to pick them up. Woohoo…no more beret after today. Walking around post you could see most of the people had already stopped using the beret as soon as it was announced. In fact SPC Roy's NCO called him and told him before he left to work.

I headed back to the office and started doing the computer inventory I started last week. I finished our office and our admin office before calling it a day. After that I headed back to my computer and started working on some more SkillPorts. Our sergeant now wants 10+ SkillPorts completed each week. I guess I'm going to shoot for 1000 hours total. Currently I have 280. As I do the SkillPorts the rest of the guys are watching X-Men: First Class. Our sergeant obtained a copy and they played it in our conference room. It's a good movie, but not good enough to watch 3 days in a row.

I got a call from Seaman asking if I could bring our office car and help him out with the mail. I guess our new colonel shipped a number of boxes to the office and they wouldn't all fit in his car. I gave him a hand and also helped carry them all in. I called for help, but the rest of the guys couldn't peel themselves from the movie. No worries…I went back to my SkillPorts and was able to finish up 8 of them today.

We were able to clean up and go home about 1630. I was going to do some schoolwork, but the University of Phoenix website is down. It states that they are having technical difficulties...D'oh!

I ate some dinner in my room and then headed over to the sewing shop to pick up my hats…I can't believe I'm so excited about such a little change. The rest of the night consisted of watching a number of TV shows.

Julie

I know it's working now but what a pain in the ass it was for those few days!

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 04:36 PM

Brandon

I was starting to worry a bit after two days being down, luckily it was still the start of class and we didn't have any big assignments due!

Monday, June 20, 2011 - 07:33 PM