The World Is Way Too Flat

Thomas Friedman had no idea just how far reaching his concept of the flattening of the world could be applied.  From computers that are manufactured in India and call-centers in far flung developing countries, the world as we know it is truly flat, and getting flatter. This is best evidenced by one of the recent emails that I received in my inbox. I saw that someone had added me as a friend on Facebook. The name was unfamiliar to me, I didn't know where I knew a "Mostfa Amqaser" from. Intrigued, I clicked on the "confirm requests" tab saw a picture of a young man in what appeared to be digital camoflauge. Thinking to myself, oh probably some Marine or something. But then I look closer at the picture and think "hmmm, that building that he's leaning up against looks an AWFUL lot like the guardshack on P-5 that the Iraqis stand watch in. Even MORE intrigued, I click on the person to see if he included any sort of identifying information on his limited profile without actually having to accept. Turns out, a young Iraqi Marine had facebook friended me. Seriously? Which leads me to my next question: "Iraqis have facebook?!"

Goodness, the world really is flat. They can't protect their own countries most valuable asset but they can network with the best of us. Go figure. It's a global world we live in, indeed.

Needless to say, I did not accept his facebook request. Even if for some reason I thought it was a good idea, Kristi, a girl who was on ABOT for the 3 months before me (everything I need to know in life about ABOT I learned from Kristi Coonfare, so THANK YOU!) explained to me that if you accept their facebook friend request, then they will think that you like them. I'm pretty sure she came back with at least 5 offers for marriage. I've got one husband so I think I'm good there.

Hmm let's see what else. Well, yesterday I stood my first watch by myself. While I have been qualified for some time now (~2 weeks), they hadn't put out a new watchbill so there were basically 2 qualified STWO's standing watch at the same time and by now we have gotten sufficiently frustrated with one another so it's for the best that we each have our own watch section.  It is hard when 2 people are both qualified and have different ways that they like to run things and different opinions on how to handle certain situations. So that problem is solved and I now have my own watchteam. I took over the 6pm-midnight watch which is WAY more calm and quiet than the afternoon watch.

My only real responsibilty (other than not getting attacked) is to type up the summary of the day's events for the Commodore to include in his nightly email to his boss and to put the finishing touches on this very very long brief that is a summary of everything going on out here and send it out to like a million people. Ok, maybe not a million. But at least 50-100. Well, last night was my first time sending out this brief since it was my first time on the night watch. My job is to import the intell slides into the brief at 10:30pm when they finish them up. Well, as I'm trying to execute a simple "copy & paste" maneuver, somehow these overly complex slides corrupted the brief. I should probably explain that this is a brief that they work on from 6pm-10pm every night, the Commodore approves it and then it is sent to everyone and their mother in the Gulf, including a 3-star Admiral. So you can see how a "corrupted data" message and inability to open the file would cause multiple gray hairs, heart attacks and coniptions on my behalf. Time: 10:40pm.

Luckily, after dragging an IT1 out of bed and a half a mile down the platform, we were able to recover the data. Time: 11:20pm. Now we're back to the original problem of not being able to import the intell slides. Apparently they were these slides with a text overlay on a map, and the map was part of the "slide design".

Good news, if you even need to import a complex slide design from one brief to another, do not call Ghostbusters. You can now call me, because I know how to do that. Time: 11:50.

So then I have to "optimize" the brief to take it from 12MB to like 3. This process takes exceedingly longer than initially expected and while it is optimizing, I am scrambling to find the email that has the list of all of the people that receive this email.

File optimized, attached to email, receipients included, digitially signed by me and proper classification included. Hit send. Time: 11:59pm.

WHEW! I had no IDEA that first watch was going to be SO stressful. Thank goodness that despite the weather being calm, we saw very low fishing traffic, and no tankers to bring in and the Iranians decided to play nice tonight.  Of course, all night I dreamt that when the intell slides imported and got sent they were actually gray background instead of black and I would wake up to an inbox full of O-6's chastizing me for messing up the slides. I nervously logged into my SECRET email this morning and was pleased to see no negative backlash from my night of powerpoint hell.

I have high expectations for tonight's watch to be much quieter. It is a pretty good watch team, although every is really junior (myself included, so I can't really judge). The radar operator is 23, the ASTWO is in his late 20's, the tactical supervisor is 22, the intell watch officer is 25 and I'm 24 so overall it is a VERY junior team. Luckily though, the night watch is not as complex to execute and I think that I will be successful there. We have a really nice intrepreter too who did the best he could to calm me down while I was freaking out, despite having zero powerpoint skills of his own. When the watch was quiet, he started explaining some basic stuff about the tenets of Islam and helped compare it to more western religions so it was pretty interesting. I really like this interpreter; his English is very good, he's not lazy or apathetic, and he rolls his eyes at the Iraqis to us, which we can all appreciate.

Speaking of the Iraqi's and technology and the world being flat, they are in the process of installing 2 computers on their side of the room. Now, in addition to the Vietnam-era field radios and the CB radio's, they will have 2 unclassifed computers AND a SVOIP (secure voice over IP) phone by which to email and talk to KAAOT. This is huge and a great step forward to them being able to take control of KAAOT in December (23 days to go- thank goodness!) and eventually ABOT too. However, despite their best intentions, they are having problems hooking the computers up to the network so right now they just play solitaire on them; they are a glorified watch distraction, now up there with magazines, movies, and "arts and crafts"

Alright well, I need to go finish up my laundry/CLU cleaning which I do every Sunday morning. Unfortunately a pair of my desert cammies ended up in the washing machine with our red area floor rug that I wash once a week and now my desert cammies are more like "dessert cammies"- they're PINK!

Ugh. I'm trying to do some damage control on them but probably to no luck. I'll take a picture of my new cupcake cammies later. Again, thank you all SO much for your emails- I love receiving them and I will keep everyone updated on my planned move to the NIMITZ!