Middle of a CQ shift Musings
So I had set out at the beginning of this shift to get through a serious amount of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It turns out that either DS9 is either the absolute worst of the Star Trek franchise, or it simply doesn't get off the ground before I've already grown annoyed with all of the "Main Characters". So instead I've spent a good bit of my day reading Cracked.com, which is a great website if you are looking to be entertained with stories of some very off the wall things and random bits of information.
With half my shift wasted a way and what appears to be no more interesting articles on Cracked I decided to haphazardly start blurting out some of the things I've been thinking about lately.
1) Deep Space Nine season 1 is just plain boring. The inclusion of "Chief" Miles O'Brien seems to purely be to remind people that this story takes place around the same time as Next Generation, but without all of the awesome characters we grew to love over the course of that show. Miles is a character who's rank and authority are a genuine mystery to me. He is frequently referred to as "Chief". Knowing that Star Trek borrowed it's rank structure from the Navy would put him as a Non-Commissioned Officer. This makes sense when you look at the formality of most of his interactions with the officers on DS9 or Enterprise. Yet over and over again in DS9 it seems that his position, authority, and rank don't all add up. Working from our model of Enterprise with a Captain being in command of the vessel, a Commander being 1st Officer, and a Lieutenant Commander being both 2nd Officer and Chief of Operations. We should safely assume that DS9 being commanded by a Commander, and the 1st Officer being a Bajoran Major, that the Chief of Ops would either be a Lieutenant Commander or a Lieutenant. Instead Miles gets the posting as an NCO. The point at which I quit watching DS9 he adamantly refers to all officers by rank or Sir/Ma'am, yet is seen giving orders to an Ensign on more than one occasion. What the Fuck?
2) I've actually gotten tired of being thanked for my service. I know where it comes from, because I was once an outsider who didn't understand that not all Soldiers did the things that they were always talking about on the news. I get that unless you personally know me, or recognize the patches I wear that you have no idea if I am a Special Forces bad ass or a desk jockey. It isn't that I don't appreciate the appreciation, or that I place no value on my personal service. It's just that, to be totally honest, I have no idea what to say and, for me, it has turned popping in to 7/11 on my lunch break to buy cigarettes into an awkward encounter. Let me be perfectly clear here, I appreciate your desire to express gratitude for my service, but at this point a simple nod of recognition and a smile would make my day just as much as you actually stopping and wanting to shake my hand.
3) When the hell did I get so jaded to video games that I no longer find it enjoyable to play games on a PC that can't pump out a decent level of graphics on games that are 2-3 years old? It's not like I'm trying to play the latest Crysis on a tablet or something, but running Civ 5 on a the lowest settings is not as fun to me as Civ 4 on max. I recently (at this point in my life that means within the last 6 months) upgraded the graphics card in my desktop at home to where nearly all of my PC collection runs on max settings at 1080 or 720 (with the exception of Witcher 2 which is a total GPU whore and probably doesn't smoothly run maxed out on any system). Maybe it was the pure amount of time I spent playing Xbox 360, but I'm rapidly loosing interest in games that aren't beautiful. And I fucking know better. I know that I've spent 3 or 4 times as much of my life on Civ 2 than I have spent on 3, 4, or 5, and for good fucking reason. Civ 2 was an excellent game that has set the standard for me for what I expect from turn based strategy. On my "under powered" laptop I'll limp along playing 4, wishing that I could be enjoying 5 even though by all objective standards it is an inferior experience to 4. To make matters worse (Read: First World Problems), I just traded in my 360 for a Wii U, and until Assassins Creed: Black Flag comes out I'm stuck playing Mario Party 8 and New Super Mario Bros which my children insist on playing with me. Granted, I made the switch so they could enjoy more games with me, it still blows knowing that I really can't do much Me Time gaming with it.
4) I've always known that when you start a new job that it will be challenging until you get into the rhythm of that job. Being a Soldier was a challenge for quite a while, but after about 18 months it got considerably easier. All the patterns started to click, the responsibilities became manageable and I actually started enjoying it. I've been an NCO for over 2 years now, and not only is it not getting easier, it's getting harder. Success is rewarded with greater challenges, patterns change every few months with new leaders coming in over me, rules and regulations changing, and the soldiers under me constantly having new issues to deal with. And just when an opportunity to make life easier approaches (one of my soldiers is ready for promotion), the process of making that happen becomes a task that I have to almost single-handedly accomplish, even though when it was my turn to make the job I did it all on my own. Now that I am less than 1 year from exiting the service, in addition to my job not getting any easier, I also have the added responsibility of looking for a new job.
5) It's been 7 months since I've had more than 4 consecutive days off. I'm so tired that most nights it's all I can manage to help get supper ready, cleaned up, and my kids ready for bed. Let alone actually take any time for the things that I love doing. Prior to married life I played 3-5 hours of video games a day, at least an hour of guitar every day, and partied at least once a week. Now I'm lucky to get 5 hours of gaming in a week, I don't even remember how long it has been since I've picked up my guitar, and it's been even longer since I have partied out side of the times the Army has sent me away on mission. I place no blame on my family for this, it's a matter of priorities for me and they are simply more important. My problem is that if I stay up past about 2100, I feel like shit the next day and if I get time when I don't have other responsibilities, I'd probably end up napping instead of doing something more productive. I was never this tired at 17, 18, or 19. Hell, even at 20 for the 6 months I was married before my first deployment, I still gamed, wrote music, and we went to parties. The fuck happened to me?
6) Raging homophobia. Stop it, seriously, all your excuses for holding back this social change are based on ignorance, half truths, or out and out lies. The military kicked out THOUSANDS of troops in critical area's of expertise, soldiers in the medical field or with highly needed language skills, DURING A TIME OF WAR. That's right, homophobia has probably killed soldiers, you still think your "Loving (Diety)" thinks persecuting them is the right thing to do? Here is a fun fact, a guy in the bible worked for 7 years to get permission to marry a woman, TWICE. So when your justification for bigotry was written, it was still about property rights, wealth, and inheritance. So we see a precedent that in the bible, marriage was about money, after the bible it was about money and regency, how is it a social issue that we are trying to amend marriage for money issues? In many places you can't give many of your work benefits to whomever you want, only spouses and children. By reforming the modern concept of marriage, all we are really changing is who can receive economics benefits that are necessary to life in the modern world.
7) If you want to make the world better, get your head out of the bible, get your ass out of a church, and go change the world, or at least try to. I don't care how much money your church gives to charity every year, or how many family's your Thanksgiving food drive provides for, if you want to make a meaningful impact on the community around you, you cannot do it listening to someone interpret a story for you that you have already read and reached a conclusion on. Go do disaster relief work, it was one of the most rewarding weeks of my life. Volunteer at a shelter, any shelter, homeless, animal, anything. Join the military, run for city council. Stop wasting your time re-affirming yourself and start spending your time DOING something you believe in. "But I draw so much of my personal strength from fellowship with like minded (insert name of religion)." You want to know what's amazing about doing something you believe will make a positive change? You get to draw strength from that, and those who you are doing that thing with. I believed that serving my country was both an obligation that I couldn't run away from, and an opportunity to better myself. I didn't need a "god" to get me through it, I had a whole platoon of battle buddies who were suffering right along with me, going through the same trials, and we drew strength from each other. I rescued a dog a few months ago, she was running around stray for who knows how long and was practically afraid of everyone, now she is a loving member of my family. I'm not saying that I'm better than you because of my actions, I'm saying that actions are what change the world, not any kind of "worship".
8) On a much more light hearted note. I find that I am much more into music that is one the rock station than I ever was before. There was a point in my life where if it wasn't made before 1995, that it had to be the heaviest of the heavies, and the more obscure the better. Metallica and Megadeth right up there with Goat Whore, Strapping Young Lad, and Children of Bodom. I'm not sure if the lines of popularity have shifted to be more in line with my tastes, or if I'm getting old and slowing down, but the stuff on the radio today (for the most part) kicks ass. Halestorm, In This Moment, Black Veil Brides, Volbeat, FFDP, and the list goes on. Has metal gone more mainstream enough that it's more prominent bands can start getting decent radio play, or am I just going soft?
9) If you are still with me at this point, know that I have been writing for about 2 hours now and have yet to go back and read the whole blog to make sure I'm not rambling. Since the very nature of the blog is an outlet for me to express the random thoughts going through my head, I don't think I will do much editing, other than spelling and obvious grammar errors. For me, the joy of writing is actually in the flow of concepts onto whatever medium I'm doing the writing in. The transformation of a melody or beat in my head into a guitar riff is an experience that is not only fulfilling for me, but is something that I have shared with friends who I have written music with. Blogging has been my longest running creative outlet, I started when I was 14 and though I have slacked off with it since my time in the military, I still love letting my thoughts on the issues of my world flow out. For a long while I also did creative writing for an online professional wrestling game that has made me some very dear friends, but as stated in an earlier point, I don't have much time for things like that and have unfortunately had to drop the project. It's actually quite fascinating to have an outlet that you can go back and review. Even though I did no blogging the first 4 years of my military career, going back through the history of my Facebook page has given me some interesting perspective on my life. It turns out that right before I met my wife I had nearly given up on the concept of meaningful relationships. 19 year old's are stupid.
10) I have no more worth while things to talk about at this point. I hope someone actually reads this much of the post, but I certainly won't be holding my breath.
With half my shift wasted a way and what appears to be no more interesting articles on Cracked I decided to haphazardly start blurting out some of the things I've been thinking about lately.
1) Deep Space Nine season 1 is just plain boring. The inclusion of "Chief" Miles O'Brien seems to purely be to remind people that this story takes place around the same time as Next Generation, but without all of the awesome characters we grew to love over the course of that show. Miles is a character who's rank and authority are a genuine mystery to me. He is frequently referred to as "Chief". Knowing that Star Trek borrowed it's rank structure from the Navy would put him as a Non-Commissioned Officer. This makes sense when you look at the formality of most of his interactions with the officers on DS9 or Enterprise. Yet over and over again in DS9 it seems that his position, authority, and rank don't all add up. Working from our model of Enterprise with a Captain being in command of the vessel, a Commander being 1st Officer, and a Lieutenant Commander being both 2nd Officer and Chief of Operations. We should safely assume that DS9 being commanded by a Commander, and the 1st Officer being a Bajoran Major, that the Chief of Ops would either be a Lieutenant Commander or a Lieutenant. Instead Miles gets the posting as an NCO. The point at which I quit watching DS9 he adamantly refers to all officers by rank or Sir/Ma'am, yet is seen giving orders to an Ensign on more than one occasion. What the Fuck?
2) I've actually gotten tired of being thanked for my service. I know where it comes from, because I was once an outsider who didn't understand that not all Soldiers did the things that they were always talking about on the news. I get that unless you personally know me, or recognize the patches I wear that you have no idea if I am a Special Forces bad ass or a desk jockey. It isn't that I don't appreciate the appreciation, or that I place no value on my personal service. It's just that, to be totally honest, I have no idea what to say and, for me, it has turned popping in to 7/11 on my lunch break to buy cigarettes into an awkward encounter. Let me be perfectly clear here, I appreciate your desire to express gratitude for my service, but at this point a simple nod of recognition and a smile would make my day just as much as you actually stopping and wanting to shake my hand.
3) When the hell did I get so jaded to video games that I no longer find it enjoyable to play games on a PC that can't pump out a decent level of graphics on games that are 2-3 years old? It's not like I'm trying to play the latest Crysis on a tablet or something, but running Civ 5 on a the lowest settings is not as fun to me as Civ 4 on max. I recently (at this point in my life that means within the last 6 months) upgraded the graphics card in my desktop at home to where nearly all of my PC collection runs on max settings at 1080 or 720 (with the exception of Witcher 2 which is a total GPU whore and probably doesn't smoothly run maxed out on any system). Maybe it was the pure amount of time I spent playing Xbox 360, but I'm rapidly loosing interest in games that aren't beautiful. And I fucking know better. I know that I've spent 3 or 4 times as much of my life on Civ 2 than I have spent on 3, 4, or 5, and for good fucking reason. Civ 2 was an excellent game that has set the standard for me for what I expect from turn based strategy. On my "under powered" laptop I'll limp along playing 4, wishing that I could be enjoying 5 even though by all objective standards it is an inferior experience to 4. To make matters worse (Read: First World Problems), I just traded in my 360 for a Wii U, and until Assassins Creed: Black Flag comes out I'm stuck playing Mario Party 8 and New Super Mario Bros which my children insist on playing with me. Granted, I made the switch so they could enjoy more games with me, it still blows knowing that I really can't do much Me Time gaming with it.
4) I've always known that when you start a new job that it will be challenging until you get into the rhythm of that job. Being a Soldier was a challenge for quite a while, but after about 18 months it got considerably easier. All the patterns started to click, the responsibilities became manageable and I actually started enjoying it. I've been an NCO for over 2 years now, and not only is it not getting easier, it's getting harder. Success is rewarded with greater challenges, patterns change every few months with new leaders coming in over me, rules and regulations changing, and the soldiers under me constantly having new issues to deal with. And just when an opportunity to make life easier approaches (one of my soldiers is ready for promotion), the process of making that happen becomes a task that I have to almost single-handedly accomplish, even though when it was my turn to make the job I did it all on my own. Now that I am less than 1 year from exiting the service, in addition to my job not getting any easier, I also have the added responsibility of looking for a new job.
5) It's been 7 months since I've had more than 4 consecutive days off. I'm so tired that most nights it's all I can manage to help get supper ready, cleaned up, and my kids ready for bed. Let alone actually take any time for the things that I love doing. Prior to married life I played 3-5 hours of video games a day, at least an hour of guitar every day, and partied at least once a week. Now I'm lucky to get 5 hours of gaming in a week, I don't even remember how long it has been since I've picked up my guitar, and it's been even longer since I have partied out side of the times the Army has sent me away on mission. I place no blame on my family for this, it's a matter of priorities for me and they are simply more important. My problem is that if I stay up past about 2100, I feel like shit the next day and if I get time when I don't have other responsibilities, I'd probably end up napping instead of doing something more productive. I was never this tired at 17, 18, or 19. Hell, even at 20 for the 6 months I was married before my first deployment, I still gamed, wrote music, and we went to parties. The fuck happened to me?
6) Raging homophobia. Stop it, seriously, all your excuses for holding back this social change are based on ignorance, half truths, or out and out lies. The military kicked out THOUSANDS of troops in critical area's of expertise, soldiers in the medical field or with highly needed language skills, DURING A TIME OF WAR. That's right, homophobia has probably killed soldiers, you still think your "Loving (Diety)" thinks persecuting them is the right thing to do? Here is a fun fact, a guy in the bible worked for 7 years to get permission to marry a woman, TWICE. So when your justification for bigotry was written, it was still about property rights, wealth, and inheritance. So we see a precedent that in the bible, marriage was about money, after the bible it was about money and regency, how is it a social issue that we are trying to amend marriage for money issues? In many places you can't give many of your work benefits to whomever you want, only spouses and children. By reforming the modern concept of marriage, all we are really changing is who can receive economics benefits that are necessary to life in the modern world.
7) If you want to make the world better, get your head out of the bible, get your ass out of a church, and go change the world, or at least try to. I don't care how much money your church gives to charity every year, or how many family's your Thanksgiving food drive provides for, if you want to make a meaningful impact on the community around you, you cannot do it listening to someone interpret a story for you that you have already read and reached a conclusion on. Go do disaster relief work, it was one of the most rewarding weeks of my life. Volunteer at a shelter, any shelter, homeless, animal, anything. Join the military, run for city council. Stop wasting your time re-affirming yourself and start spending your time DOING something you believe in. "But I draw so much of my personal strength from fellowship with like minded (insert name of religion)." You want to know what's amazing about doing something you believe will make a positive change? You get to draw strength from that, and those who you are doing that thing with. I believed that serving my country was both an obligation that I couldn't run away from, and an opportunity to better myself. I didn't need a "god" to get me through it, I had a whole platoon of battle buddies who were suffering right along with me, going through the same trials, and we drew strength from each other. I rescued a dog a few months ago, she was running around stray for who knows how long and was practically afraid of everyone, now she is a loving member of my family. I'm not saying that I'm better than you because of my actions, I'm saying that actions are what change the world, not any kind of "worship".
8) On a much more light hearted note. I find that I am much more into music that is one the rock station than I ever was before. There was a point in my life where if it wasn't made before 1995, that it had to be the heaviest of the heavies, and the more obscure the better. Metallica and Megadeth right up there with Goat Whore, Strapping Young Lad, and Children of Bodom. I'm not sure if the lines of popularity have shifted to be more in line with my tastes, or if I'm getting old and slowing down, but the stuff on the radio today (for the most part) kicks ass. Halestorm, In This Moment, Black Veil Brides, Volbeat, FFDP, and the list goes on. Has metal gone more mainstream enough that it's more prominent bands can start getting decent radio play, or am I just going soft?
9) If you are still with me at this point, know that I have been writing for about 2 hours now and have yet to go back and read the whole blog to make sure I'm not rambling. Since the very nature of the blog is an outlet for me to express the random thoughts going through my head, I don't think I will do much editing, other than spelling and obvious grammar errors. For me, the joy of writing is actually in the flow of concepts onto whatever medium I'm doing the writing in. The transformation of a melody or beat in my head into a guitar riff is an experience that is not only fulfilling for me, but is something that I have shared with friends who I have written music with. Blogging has been my longest running creative outlet, I started when I was 14 and though I have slacked off with it since my time in the military, I still love letting my thoughts on the issues of my world flow out. For a long while I also did creative writing for an online professional wrestling game that has made me some very dear friends, but as stated in an earlier point, I don't have much time for things like that and have unfortunately had to drop the project. It's actually quite fascinating to have an outlet that you can go back and review. Even though I did no blogging the first 4 years of my military career, going back through the history of my Facebook page has given me some interesting perspective on my life. It turns out that right before I met my wife I had nearly given up on the concept of meaningful relationships. 19 year old's are stupid.
10) I have no more worth while things to talk about at this point. I hope someone actually reads this much of the post, but I certainly won't be holding my breath.
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