This morning we did not have PT, instead we formed up in front of the library in PHV at 0800. I was able to walk there from my house in about 5 minutes or so, which was nice. We ended up forming up at about 0815 and stood in formation for about a half hour before being released into the theatre. Today we are having another "Days of Excellence", this involves PowerPoint training sessions, any announcements that need to go out to the battalion and then any awards are given out.
Once seated we listened to the battalion commander speak for a bit before our first training session which was a threat awareness training. This is an annual requirement, but I think I've had it a couple times already since I've been here. The training consists of basically telling us to be aware of our surroundings and what we put out there, whether just speaking too loud in a public area or via social networking sites. We then were given a number of historical examples of spies and terrorist attacks and told we could be put to death if we do something like the examples. To try and keep people awake and involved the briefer would give out $20 to each person that answered a question when asked.
Our next training block was from the S2 department dealing with computer security. This guy also talked about the perils of social networking as well as security incidents with classified material. Once this brief was done we moved onto a shorter brief about donating money.
By this time it was 1100 and after a short break they started giving out various awards to the battalion. There were some army achievement medals given out, some certificates of achievements and some coins. The only thing a couple people from our office received were some scrolls of appreciation for helping with the black history month presentation. Once all the awards were given to the soldiers, they took some time to give out some awards to the civilian workforce. One guy got an award celebrating his 45th year of service working for the department of the army…holy cow!
Once finished everyone left except those of us who were considered newcomers…which unfortunately I was. It was noon and everyone was getting a little hungry, we were hoping this brief would be pretty quick…but hope was lost once the battalion commander started talking. He spoke for a good 30 minutes about himself and his vision for the battalion. He also went into great detail about how we are strategic soldiers and will never be clearing rooms, but then went on to say he watched everyone during the FTX and basically said we sucked ass. Well…no shit, we're not infantry…we're computer geeks.
After the battalion commander came the first sergeant, and he spoke just as long. He had a long dramatic talk about holding our careers in our hands, how important school is, and how bad drinking is. He spoke about these three items for another 30 minutes and then started all the other shops and sections that needed to brief us. Fortunately all the rest were relatively short and we were able to leave a little after 1330 for lunch. Since I was close to home I walked home and ate. I had to call my boss to get a ride to work. Once in the office I started doing some more mandatory online training that I was told needed to get done. Unfortunately I couldn't finish the training because as I've mentioned earlier we only have three computers and I'm the lowest ranking person, so I got booted off by one of our sergeants…ironically it was the sergeant who told me I needed to get the training finished…lol.
Once off work I celebrated by having some pizza, wine and then ice cream for dessert with my wife as we watched an old season of 24 via netflix. I'm celebrating making the weigh in and also finally having a day off after working 18 days straight…I get to stay up late and sleep in!!
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