Pet Peeves
1.. Being woken up in the middle of the night to fix a computer problem, to find out it’s someone’s personal computer. If I ask if they plan on paying me to fix it, they give me a stupid look and ask, But I thought this was your job?…
2. Having imbecile that get to make the rules because simply, they get paid more than I do.
3. Have those same idjuts make dozens of worthless rules a week, simply to validate their existence.
4. Having half those rules contradict the other half.
5. Having people who know absolutely nothing about your job try and micromanage you.
6.. micromanagers who think that because I can fix some problems in a matter of seconds, that everything should be fixed that way.
7. Having said micromanager demand that propagation of one db server to another shouldn’t ever take 30 hours, even though it’s 70GB’s of information on a server that can’t be brought down off service to do the propagation, but it should only take 2 hours because he/she read somewhere that in a static, non production environment it only takes that long.
8. Having idjut manager get the credit for training me soooo well in my job, that all of a sudden I’ve surpassed him in knowledge….all of a sudden hey.
9. Walking almost 2 miles in 100+ degree temps, while watching a ton of overpaid staffers driving to work in gov’t owned suburbans, and no passengers, pass you up, and they work in the same area as you.
10. People who can’t read or spell.
11. People who forget their password on a DAILY basis. They can’t even get it right when I write it down for them, tell them that it’s against best practices, yada yada yada, don’t lose this password. They don’t, and still can’t get it right whilst looking at the goddamn paper.
12. Having an officer demand that I come over to his section (only a half mile away) to show him how to fuckin reboot his goddamn machine.
13. Said officer gets pissed when I call the guy next to him to reboot Major soandso’s machine. Pissed because even though I got the job done, I didn’t do it personally.
14. Living in a building with 57 other men, never being able to turn on the lights to see anything because someone may be offended…
15. Said offended person saying it makes no sense that I’d get annoyed because I can’t see a goddamn thing, and I have to carry a flashlight in a new $100k mini-warehouse with a perfectly good lighting system.
16. Grown men who haven’t gotten off their mom’s nipple, yet.
17. Grown men who apparently can’t aim their fuckin dicks and piss in a damn whole instead of all over the goddamn toilet.
18. Grown men who need to wipe their ass with no less than one whole roll of shit tickets and clog the goddamn toilets, everyday.
19. Having to adhere to speed limits like 20 km/hr or slower on every road, and having a battalion of MP’s actually enforcing these dumb rules.
20. Knowing that the D-Day invasion order was hand written on 6 pages of notebook paper, and somehow we got the mission done, but having a 93 page document on how I am going to live in my 7′x6′ area doesn’t seem to be going a bit overboard.
I’ve been trying over the past few months to decide what is the reason we’re here. I think it all could come down to a simple validation. The US government needed to validate the reason for the existence of us, needed to validate new TTP’s, needed to validate with the world community that we’re the super power. I’m not trying to say that gaining validation is bad. Everyone seeks it in their own regard, and techniques have to be in order to be feasible and worth the risk. The whole process of validation has seemed to get so, so distorted over here. It’s redefined reality in many ways, and not just for us. We have redefined the reality of a whole other Country. Sometimes, I’m not proud to wear this uniform. When I first put on this uniform, and the first 8 or 9 years wearing it, I actually felt like we were doing the right thing. We protected those in which couldn’t protect themselves. We stopped, or at least tried to stop (Somalia) the corrupt and greedy few from slaughtering the rest for no other reason than that they could. We stepped in, gave ourselves as targets, and fought back. The missions were simple, clear, and concise. Protect the weak, reduce the weapons, make the land more forgiving (demining ops), and reduce the negative influence that will detract from the overall goal, having a peaceful people coexisting with one another. It’s not always a clean and simple operation, it was always plenty messy, but I always felt that even though we didn’t have the God given right to do this, we were obligated by creed and humanity to do so.
Now, though, it seems we’re trying to shove a square block into the triangle hole. We’re not realizing for some unknown reason that this will never work. The more we push, the more damage to both the block and the hole we’re doing. Force only works if the probability of compatibility is high. I’ll never blame the soldier for this. I’m sure there are thousands that feel that they’re doing the right thing, and a lot of them probably are, in small little pockets.
Here in Kuwait, things just get surreal. The over abundance of officers seeking so badly to have a valid reason in life make conditions here damn near intolerable. No amount of Starbucks and Pizza-huts will ever compensate for the fact that they can’t see past themselves. This is a post full of Mid-life crisis men and menopausal women, coming to the age when they are driven by their insecurities, that are making, creating the law here. They know there is no oversight, they know that what they say is law. They don’t seem to know, realize that everyone here is an adult, that we haven’t lived the past 30 years because we had a babysitter but because we know how to wipe our own asses and look both ways when we cross the street.
I’m done for now. I have work to do…
