Shenanigans at RSOI

Well, it's happened again. No posts for almost a week, then Jessica and I hit you with back to back posts. Whammy! That's why this blog brings "the ruckus".

I'm still at an undisclosed location on the Korean peninsula, involved in a massive Army staff exercise. We're supposed to wrap up at the end of this week, but let's all hope for an early end to this misery. There's not a lot of things to get excited about during a staff exercise. There's very little "real world" pieces moving around out there; the vast majority of activity takes place in a giant computer simulation where "puckers" move little computerized tanks and troops around on a artificial battlefield. They're called "puckers" because they don't use a mouse, they use a "puck" which is like the controller that drafters use in CAD. Why it's called a puck, I don't know.

Anyway, the majority of my time here has been spent receiving requests to send fake helicopters to imaginary troops and deliver imaginary supplies. The real kick in the teeth is when you start to feel a sense of accomplishment because you got your fake request in the fastest and "made the mission happen". There is no mission. The order gets signed and a "pucker" moves a computer icon from one place to another. Hooray!

The nuttiest thing I saw during these two weeks of aggravation had to be the "Classified Three-hole Punch". There's an office across from ours in the compound that has three hole-punches sitting on a table next to each other. They're identical except that they're each painted a different color: industrial grey, bright blue, and deep red. It took me a second to realize what I was looking at. These were for punching holes in documents of different levels of classification. The grey was for unclassified, blue for classified, and red for secret. I guess that they didn't want the tiny little secret paper dots getting mixed up with the tiny little unclassified paper dots and making their way into the trash where a dastardly North Korean could find them and piece together something from that one letter "R" that he found. Of course it begs the question, how would he be able to discern the secret paper dots from the unclassified paper dots? I guess those guys are just that good.

The International Language of the Finger

I got the finger from an old Korean lady today. This is really shocking, for many reasons. First, I can't remember ever getting it "for serious" in the states, Home of the Finger. But here I am, 10,000 miles away, getting it from some dried up old hag who can't drive. Oh, yeah- I guess that's a BIG surprise- it was a driving-related incident. I won't go into the details, other than to say she pulled in front of me in an intersection, creating a gridlock situation for all four directions. I thre my hands up in an irritated gesture (but not the finger), which was so offensive to her that she stayed put even as other traffic moved, just to be in my way, and when I honked at her, she gave me the bird.
The second issue is that a Korean gave me the bird over a driving issue. I won't bore you with the standard "Koreans drive like maniacs!" line, but this is a place where motorcycles drive on the sidewalks and old people pull carts like horses in the street, right in the middle of the lane like they are a car. Here is a picture of a guy with a cart I stole from another website that looks to be a photojournal of Korea. Just picture this guy in a lane on a highway:

Also, how does she even know about the finger? I did't think it was a universal signal, but I guess it's just one more American culture export we are so kind to share with the world. Go USA!!

Know when to walk away/Know when to run

Day Four of the exercise has come and gone, and the sun now sets on the Korean peninsula. Wonderful. Another day closer to ending this Exercise in Futility. Get it?!? I'm in an exercise, and it's and exercise in futility! Huh? Nothing?

Anyway, the majority of my time down here has been spent working out and playing cards. Your tax dollars at work! The guys that have been working down here have been the IT guys. They've been scrambling to fix everyone's internet, phone, VTC etc. And it's been a challenge. Two solid days of working on getting everyone straight, and it's still not quite right. But pretty standard for the Army. If they get it at a 70% fix, we'll work around that.

Before I sign off, I'd like to share a little nugget of fun with you. I'm currently on a shared computer in a Cyber Cafe on the installation. When I logged on to check my hotmail, the name of the previous user was still in the log in screen. It was lonewolfhunter@hotmail.com . Lonewolfhunter?? Are you kidding me? Who could take themselves seriously and enter that as email? I guess lonehunter and wolfhunter were both taken. Why not drop 'ol lonewolfhunter a message when you get a chance? I'm sure he'd love to hear from you. 'Snarf!

It stinks, and I don't like it.

Another exciting entry today. It's been over a week since the last post, but I don't want everyone to think that we've forgotten about you. Today I'm posting from an undisclosed location on the Korean peninsula where I'm currently involved in a training exercise that rivals all others in the amount of downtime that I have.

Yes, I'm talking about RSOI. For those uninitiated into the ways that the Army works on the Korean peninsula, I'll give you a quick rundown. If the North Koreans choose to attack S. Korea and the "balloon goes up", the U.S. Army will quickly mobilize a bunch of forces onto the peninsula in support of the operation. Part of my job will be overseeing their Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, and Integration. Hence, RSOI. Basically getting them off the plane/ship and into the fight in the least dicked up way possible. That, at least, is the goal.

So every year, the U.S. forces on peninsula come together and practice what it would be like for all these forces to arrive and how we would best deal with them and move them out to where they need to be. However, we do all this with no actual forces involved. Thousands of grown adults pretending imaginary forces are coming on ships and planes into theater, then unloading their imaginary baggage, then pretending to move across country to an imaginary battle that is not taking place. It's like the worlds most involved Dungeons & Dragons game with tanks instead of swords and wizards. I call it dorked up.

My biggest problem right now is convincing myself to "get into the role" of the exercise. I can't seem to get past the fact that it's so artificial and that no actual soldiers are moving around or helicopters inserting troops anywhere. It's fake. There's people that are thinking up "problems" that will happen during our time here so we can "solve" them and feel good about "overcoming an adversity". Am I using too many "quotes"? "Sorry".

Anyway, I would like to send you some pictures of the EOC (Emergency Operations Center) floor, because that is pretty cool. There's a giant 50'x20' video display that streches across the front of the floor. It's surrounded on both sides by four 50" flatscreen displays. Then on the floor are rows of desks with mics on them and a camera that automatically zooms onto your face when you speak into the mic. It's the kind of stuff that you see in the movies when they show the secret military underground command post. The only difference is that this place has a lot better lighting than in the movies. Also, no smoking. But other than that, pretty close.

I'll write again should any shenanigans take place here in the next week or so. But don't hold your breath.

Inside Karl's Head

This isn't really a Joel and Jessica post. It's actually an ol' blogging trick that I have gleaned recently. Here's the tip: see what's "hot" in news/entertainment, mention it a couple of times in your blog, and hope that the Google search picks it up and sends some readers your way.

So, Jessica and I have been enamored with the Ricky Gervais podcast over the last couple of weeks. He has a free 30-minute podcast over on iTunes that you can download for free. There's about 6 episodes that are up there right now. They are really really funny and I suggest that you check them out if you haven't already. By the way, assist to Justin for turning me on to them.

Most of the show is focused around Gervais and his buddy Steven Merchant "probing" into the mind of their producer Karl Pilkington. Karl Pilkington may be one of the most unusual characters in radio. He's a little bit of an idiot savant of comedy. I don't think anything he does/says is intentional, but it's really funny stuff. Here's a picture of Karl, by the way.

However, there is a little bit of a stir in the world of Gervais and Pilkington. As I said before, the podcast up to this point has been a free download on iTunes. But the honeymoon has ended, and now Gervais is charging $1.99 for each new episode. But this is apparently not kosher with the throngs of people that made Gervais' podcast the "most downloaded podcast" in the world. Many people have rejected the notion of dropping two bucks for a half-hour, non-video podcast. I half to kind agree with them. The shows were funny, but $2 funny? I think I'll wait for the bitTorrent to come out.

Hawaii: Not Just for Elvis Anymore

I'm a little stressed this week, as I'm still trying to recover from our vacation to Hawaii, so don't look for any cleaver comments in this post, just vacation photos. And poor sentence structure.

One of the first things we did was go on a hike through what I guess I can call a tropical rain forest to a waterfall. At the top of the mountain, we stopped to take a couple of pictures:

Between the five adults, we brought two video cameras and two still cameras, one of which was also capable of taking video, and three cell phones. Ah, to be away from it all!!

Surprisingly, we had the beach to ourselves, for the most part. Here is Aidan enjoying the lonely water at Waikiki Beach:

We didn't breathe in Hawaii unless Frommer's recommended it, thanks to Justin's careful research, although I found several of the activities "so last year":

In case you didn't get that joke, it's a 2005 copy of Frommer's Hawaii. Ha ha, I'm hilarious.

After Justin left, we really had fun! Friday, we climbed Diamondhead-here I am at the top, with the crater behind me.

Of course, it's a different experience hiking with a 30-lb weight on your back:

After a week, we felt like natives. Here I am trying to blend in:

Joel took it a step further:

It was especially nice for us to be able to go with babysitters- I mean, family. Here we are at the hotel:

All in all, it was an awesome trip. I just encourage everyone to go now, while it's still "indie," before everyone finds out about this new 50th state. Hope you all enjoy the pictures and aren't too jealous. By the way, Tab, how about some of the Caymans??

Aidan Kaufman

I know, two posts in one day. It's like it's your birthday or something. This will probably blow my load for the week, so enjoy.

In the past, it's been pointed out that my younger brother Justin bears a resemblance to the late comedian Andy Kaufman. Personally, I didn't see it. But that's me.

Well, the mantle has apparently been passed to the next generation. My own son, Aidan, has recently appeared in some photographs looking suspiciously like Mr. Kaufman. Let's see that side-by-side comparison. First, Andy then Aidan.

Well, the jury is out. There is a contingent on the Interweb that insist that Andy Kaufman lives. They are generally creepy and too cryptic for this guy. Perhaps Aidan is the reincarnation of Andy? If you have a minute, drop a comment on whether you think Aidan looks like Andy. We'll tally the votes and post the winning opinion. Happy posting!

Not-So-Super Friends

While we were in Hawaii last week, Jessica went to a swap meet/flea market and bought Aidan a set of toys. It was a set of six for $8; pretty good deal, I thought. Granted, they were not "officially licensed" toys. Just a bunch of made in China knockoffs. But at $8, can't really expect too much.

Anyway, we got them back to the hotel room and showed them to Aidan, who promptly went ape-shit over them. He's been in a little bit of a Batman phase. Every superhero that he sees he calls "Batman". But he gets exceptionally excited over actual Batman stuff.

So he tears into the toys and starts playing around with them. Nothing too extreme, just the kind of treatment that you'd expect a two year old to deal to toys. Within minutes, Batman lost his first arm. We were a little surprised that he didn't last a little longer. But before we could dwell too much on it, Spiderman lost a leg. And it just continued from there.

The toys stayed with us for the rest of the trip and on the plane ride back to Korea, but they were not without casualties. Here's a line up of the previously Dynamic Sextet:



As you can see, only the Thing and Mr. Incredible have survived with all limbs intact. I credit their superhuman strength and non-articulated knees and elbows. But the real tragedy is Superman. Have a closer look:



Both arms, one leg and a head. He got hit harder than Christopher Reeve. Boo-ya!