February 24, 2007 –
My apologies for the length of the last post, I was typing the comments on the computer while I decided whether or not to actually set up a blog. From here on out, the comments should be more along the lines of one post at a time (No guarantees about frequency, I have a feeling that I will become busy in the coming weeks).
One of the annoying things about being thousands of miles from home is communication. Don’t get me wrong, what we have now is light-years ahead of what our predecessors had (or even what I had on my first deployment). The biggest problem is the unreliability of the communication devices.
Let me give you background. We have four main methods of immediate contact with loved ones at home. The first is the AT&T telephone kiosks. AT&T has been great over the years at making sure there are phones wherever there are troops in the field. We use pre-paid calling cards that can be recharged by our loved ones at home (they offer the best phone rate – around 30¢/minute from Iraq). These are the same cards I used from the ship on previous deployments (utilizing the satellite-based ‘Sailor-Phone’). The AT&T option is easy, but somewhat unreliable. It doesn’t take much for the phone center to lose it’s satellite uplink (more on that later). The second option is E-mail. This is limited by the availability of the computers and the connection speed. I can tell you that in Iraq right now, we are connecting at speeds slower than dial-up. E-mail is nice, but can turn into a frustrating affair. The next two options are relatively new to the deployed theatre: Web-cam chat and VOIP phones. The VOIP (Voice over internet protocol) is awesome when it’s working. The folks at SPAWAR Europe (A unit in the Dept of Defense) have us set up with 3¢/minute rates on a phone that has about the same delay as the AT&T phones (you speak, five seconds later they hear you, etc.). I haven’t seen too many connection problems with the VOIP phones, so this may be the wave of the future. The video chat is novel, but it requires too much bandwidth to be used over here (I did see folks using it in Kuwait, where they have a more robust internet backbone).
The moral of the story is: Don’t EVER get your hopes up about being able to contact home, and be happy when you can. I left you last saying I was going to the phone center to talk to the kids as they got home from school. They don’t usually have too much to say, but I think the most important thing is telling them I love them any chance I can. As I was leaving the tent, I got into a conversation about this very subject and that got me excited about talking to them. I walked over to the phone tent (inside my prison compound of cement) and found out that the phones were out for the night. I sat there for a time and thought of walking the mile in the dark to the VOIP phone center. Intelligence got the better of me and I decided to remain in the safe confines of the tents until first light. I figured getting injured walking in the dark was probably not worth the phone call. One of the many gems they teach in Naval Aviation is: Is the risk worth the reward (ie. Is it worth flying through the thunderstorm just to get home a few hours early?) I decided to skip the reward for a time. So that’s where I am, watching the clock on my computer (I have this cool system clock called ZoneTick that shows time in multiple time zones on my little system tray. Right now it has 13:24 in Baghdad (gotta be military time) and 05:24 in Norfolk (Highlighted in red so I don’t call while they are sleeping) – I guess I’ll have to wait a few hours.
The KBR guys have just entered the tent. They observed us stealing lockers and mattresses from the other unoccupied tents, and decided to outfit our tent with lockers. The problem with that is: there is NO WAY we will fit one locker in here for every bed – we’re squished as it is. These guys don’t seem to have a problem with that, however. They have a work order for 50 lockers to be delivered and they’re going to do it. The tent is starting to look like your home as soon as the movers drop off the last of your stuff. Giant obstructions everywhere – thankfully they didn’t take the full lockers out to put in empty ones. Oh well, I’m going to go observe our contractor friends, just to keep things sane – as if that was an option at this point.
-Grease out.
My apologies for the length of the last post, I was typing the comments on the computer while I decided whether or not to actually set up a blog. From here on out, the comments should be more along the lines of one post at a time (No guarantees about frequency, I have a feeling that I will become busy in the coming weeks).
One of the annoying things about being thousands of miles from home is communication. Don’t get me wrong, what we have now is light-years ahead of what our predecessors had (or even what I had on my first deployment). The biggest problem is the unreliability of the communication devices.
Let me give you background. We have four main methods of immediate contact with loved ones at home. The first is the AT&T telephone kiosks. AT&T has been great over the years at making sure there are phones wherever there are troops in the field. We use pre-paid calling cards that can be recharged by our loved ones at home (they offer the best phone rate – around 30¢/minute from Iraq). These are the same cards I used from the ship on previous deployments (utilizing the satellite-based ‘Sailor-Phone’). The AT&T option is easy, but somewhat unreliable. It doesn’t take much for the phone center to lose it’s satellite uplink (more on that later). The second option is E-mail. This is limited by the availability of the computers and the connection speed. I can tell you that in Iraq right now, we are connecting at speeds slower than dial-up. E-mail is nice, but can turn into a frustrating affair. The next two options are relatively new to the deployed theatre: Web-cam chat and VOIP phones. The VOIP (Voice over internet protocol) is awesome when it’s working. The folks at SPAWAR Europe (A unit in the Dept of Defense) have us set up with 3¢/minute rates on a phone that has about the same delay as the AT&T phones (you speak, five seconds later they hear you, etc.). I haven’t seen too many connection problems with the VOIP phones, so this may be the wave of the future. The video chat is novel, but it requires too much bandwidth to be used over here (I did see folks using it in Kuwait, where they have a more robust internet backbone).
The moral of the story is: Don’t EVER get your hopes up about being able to contact home, and be happy when you can. I left you last saying I was going to the phone center to talk to the kids as they got home from school. They don’t usually have too much to say, but I think the most important thing is telling them I love them any chance I can. As I was leaving the tent, I got into a conversation about this very subject and that got me excited about talking to them. I walked over to the phone tent (inside my prison compound of cement) and found out that the phones were out for the night. I sat there for a time and thought of walking the mile in the dark to the VOIP phone center. Intelligence got the better of me and I decided to remain in the safe confines of the tents until first light. I figured getting injured walking in the dark was probably not worth the phone call. One of the many gems they teach in Naval Aviation is: Is the risk worth the reward (ie. Is it worth flying through the thunderstorm just to get home a few hours early?) I decided to skip the reward for a time. So that’s where I am, watching the clock on my computer (I have this cool system clock called ZoneTick that shows time in multiple time zones on my little system tray. Right now it has 13:24 in Baghdad (gotta be military time) and 05:24 in Norfolk (Highlighted in red so I don’t call while they are sleeping) – I guess I’ll have to wait a few hours.
The KBR guys have just entered the tent. They observed us stealing lockers and mattresses from the other unoccupied tents, and decided to outfit our tent with lockers. The problem with that is: there is NO WAY we will fit one locker in here for every bed – we’re squished as it is. These guys don’t seem to have a problem with that, however. They have a work order for 50 lockers to be delivered and they’re going to do it. The tent is starting to look like your home as soon as the movers drop off the last of your stuff. Giant obstructions everywhere – thankfully they didn’t take the full lockers out to put in empty ones. Oh well, I’m going to go observe our contractor friends, just to keep things sane – as if that was an option at this point.
-Grease out.
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