Heat and CIF

We had our first serious heat injury of the cycle today. After our platoon run this morning one LT had a core temp of 107 degrees. For anyone who doesn't know that's fry your brains warm. They ice sheeted* him, put an IV in him and toted him off to the hospital for treatment. This was at 0650 this morning. I can't even think what it is going to feel like when we do real work out doors. He came back to us by the end of the day but it was pretty scary.

Lesson learned, drink water, the heat really will kill you.

I can't remember ever being this hot. It was 103 when we got in my car at 5 o'clock.

In other news we got our CIF issue today and they gave us complete cold weather gear including Gortex tops and bottoms, complete sleeps systems, mittens, over boots, polypro underwear, neck gators, the works. I never got that much cold gear when I lived in Rochester. The Army is a very silly place some times.


*Ice sheeting is a way of cooling a person down. You keep sheets (like for your bed) in an ice chest. Then when you need to bring someone's temp down you put one laid out below them, one in there crotch, one under each of their armpits and wrap one around their head. You then take the sheet below them and fold it over the top. It will cool you down in a hurry if your not to far gone.

BOLC II vs. LDAC: Part 1 - Living conditions and time management

So for the benefit of anyone coming to BOLC II at Benning in the near future I'm going to try and set out some of the things that I see as significantly different between this course and last summer's LDAC (summer 06) experience. Tonight I'm going to focus on two subjects. First is housing. The second is time management.

Housing here is more comfortable. My platoon is mostly on the third floor with the exception of the females that are on the first. Each person gets a room with one room mate with the exception of a few people who have three rooms. Some people who are infantry have their own places off post but that is the exception not the rule. Each room has two wall lockers, beds, desks and desk lamps. Eye balling it the room is probably 12x18.

Generally it appears that no one cares what your room looks like. Keep it as clean as you like or be a pig, the option is up to you. You are issued linens. However you can user your own linens if you choose. I'm keeping my guitar under my bed. It really is quite spacious.

I think there are two bathrooms on the floor. I haven't walked all the way down to the other end of the hall to check. But I never see anyone from the other platoon in our bathroom. Showers are a step up from last year. The stalls actually have separators on them.

As for time management. It has been really laid back. All be it it was only the first day. But for the most part the philosophy of the cadre seems to be that once you know the hard time it is on you to get there. No babysitting here. All the movement is also up to you, so no piling on to cattle cars and school buses to get from place to place. No inane counts of people getting on and off the bus. Its good to be a lieutenant.

I think that free time is best summed up by the phrase the cadre OIC for the platoon used. "If you don't have anything to do, don't do it here." What this means is that when there is nothing to do you get time to yourself.

I like the cadre. They seem to have an interest in training smarter not harder so that we can all finish doing training and go drink beer. And that is an army you have to love.

The first week is mostly in briefs and processing. If something doesn't apply to you, you don't have to go. This means people who have been to LDAC or CTLT don't need to go to finance meetings etc.

Also of note my mailing address for anyone who wants it is:

2LT Andrew Nortrup
D/1/11 IN
BOLC II 6th Platoon
BLDG 2749
Fort Benning, GA 31905

Travel and Benning

So it begins. I've made my journey to Ft. Benning for BOLC II (Basic Officer Leaders Course Phase 2), reported in, gotten my room and am ready to go.

The journey itself was long but enjoyable. My father traveled with me. We did two ten hour days traveling from Maine to Atlanta. Our first day got us 600 miles south and into Virginia. The second days drive brought us to Atlanta. This morning we parted ways, my father taking a plane home and I traveling south to my current location. Total distance was about 1300 miles.

With one exception the travel was uneventful (the best kind of travel if you ask me). The one exception concerns ants. Somehow, I collected an infestation of ants in my suitcase. We noticed them on the first day. From time to time we would find an ant wandering through the car. We promptly crushed all such creatures. Mostly we just thought they were stray ants that had been on the car when we started travel. So on the second day of travel we were pleased to find that fewer of them traveling around the car.

Then the big excitement came. Upon arrival at the hotel in Atlanta we opened the trunk of my car to find a swarming colony, complete with larva, of ants on top of one of my suitcases. Man were they pissed off. The luggage and was thrown to the ground and there was much stomping of ants. To their credit several of them managed to get bites off before they died. Eventually we shook out all of the clothes and got rid of most of the ants (I think). Ultimately the suitcase was sacrificed to the ants and deposited in the nearest garbage can. I'm pretty sure that the bell hops at the hotel think that we are crazy after watching the antics that this process produced.

========

Other than that life looks like it is going to be exciting. I have a complete calender of the major training events for the next 2 months. If you send me an email I will send you a copy of it. I won't post it here for operational security concerns. Some of it looks pretty bland and some of it looks like more fun.

I've been issued a very small quantity of my equipment, but it includes some older model interceptor body armor, complete with 2 ballistic plates, knee and elbow pads, and a molly vest.
On a side note, it is really, really, really, really, really (x10000) hot at Ft. Benning.

More to follow as I have it.

Super Grub

Finally have my desktop system working again! GRUB was kicking my ass.

Every time that I booted I would get a Grub "Error 15". I could boot manually using a Grub Boot CD but that is slow tedious and annoying.

My problem was this: I have three drives. They are listed here in no particular order because no two pieces of software agree which one goes first

Drive 1: SATA
Set first in the boot order in BIOS.

This disk has 2 partitions. The first partition contains my home directories. The second is supposed to be the boot partition.

Detected as (hd0) by Grub Boot CD
Detected as /dev/sdc by Ubuntu
Detected as (hd2) when I run 'sudo grub' inside Ubuntu

Drive 2: SATA

Three partitions. Root, Swap, and an ext3 partition for backups of the home directory.

Detected as (hd1) by Grub Boot CD
Detected as /dev/sdb by Ubuntu
Detected as (hd1) when I run 'sudo grub' inside Ubuntu

Drive 3: IDE (Channel 0 Master)
Has a single NTFS partition for my Windows XP installation.

Detected as (hd2) by Grub Boot CD
Detected as /dev/sda by Ubuntu
Detected as (hd0) when I run 'sudo grub' inside Ubuntu


Using the Grub Live CD I can get the OS running with these Commands:

Code:

root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=/dev/sdb1
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic
boot

My /boot/grub/devices.map file looks like this:

Code:

(hd0)   /dev/sdc
(hd1)   /dev/sdb
(hd2)   /dev/sda

And my /boot/grub/menu.lst file looks like this: (useless comments omitted)

Code:

## ## End Default Options ##
default  0
timeout        10


title  Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic
root  (hd0,1)
kernel  /vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=ffa6418a-8fdc-4c0b-90db-e6bb33ba518e ro quiet splash
initrd  /initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic
quiet
savedefault

title  Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic (recovery mode)
root  (hd0,1)
kernel  /vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=ffa6418a-8fdc-4c0b-90db-e6bb33ba518e ro single
initrd  /initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic

title  Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic
root  (hd0,1)
kernel  /vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=UUID=ffa6418a-8fdc-4c0b-90db-e6bb33ba518e ro quiet splash
initrd  /initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
quiet
savedefault

title  Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic (recovery mode)
root  (hd2,1)
kernel  /vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=UUID=ffa6418a-8fdc-4c0b-90db-e6bb33ba518e ro single
initrd  /initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic

title  Ubuntu, memtest86+
root  (hd2,1)
kernel  /memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

I posted this on the Ubuntu Forums and got a response that recommended using a piece of software called Supper Grub. With a name like that I was skeptical but man was it effective.

Turns out all I needed was to reinstall Grub on the MBR. I'm pretty sure that I made the mistake during the Ubuntu Install when it asked where I wanted to install the boot loader. Because Ubuntu labeled drives differently then they had been on my Gentoo installation I entered the wrong thing. (At least that is my best hunch).

It is worth noting that I'm pretty sure that Ubuntu still has the order of my drives mixed up. This, I'm sure will cause everything to get a little fouled up (2 minutes worth of annoying) next time a Kernel update is pushed. I need to investigate this more.

Responsibility for delegated authority.*

I'm a big fan to the Constitution (right up there on my list of favorite documents ever). But despite all of the wisdom encased in that document it fails on one serious point. That is providing a clear job definition of the work that the vice president should do.

The original document stated that the vice president should be the person who came in second in the general election (which honestly makes impeaching the president so much more appealing). The 12th amendment changed the manner by which we elect vice presidents but the document as a whole leaves very little clarity on what the office is responsible for.

I don't have a problem with the fact that the President has delegated significant amounts of power to the VP. In his own way Cheney is a very capable administrator with a lifetime of Washington experience.

The problem is who do you assign blame to when he does something wrong. As obscene as it seems the office of the VP is not a normal cabinet office. He is an elected official and serves at the will of the people. Everyone else is nominated and approved by the Senate and serves at the pleasure of the President.

The motion to defend the office of the vice president as part of the executive branch is indeed theater and is in my opinion low theater. As a matter of tradition the VP is a member of the executive branch. If he is breaking the rules, congress shouldn't act like an unhappy parent and withhold his allowance. They should follow the steps that are granted them in the Constitution. That is impeach him.

The hard part is deciding who to impeach. Do you impeach the President for poor delegation or do you impeach the Vice President for breaking the laws that he was given to enforce.

I say impeach them both. The vice president has broken laws and ignored the constitution. He has abused the trust of the American people and it should not be permitted.

However, to return to my previous point, the job of VP is not defined beyond Senate tie breaker and presidential understudy. Therefore any additional power that he holds is delegated from the President. As we say in the military you can delegate authority but never responsibility. The president of the United States has granted incredible power to the VP. Failure to ensure that that power is used correctly leaves him just as guilty.

*This post was originally posted here as a comment.

On "International Forces"

Last night we were watching the Colbert Report interview with Tom Hayden. During the interview Mr. Hayden said something that really annoys me. He commented that we needed to get U.S. troops out of Iraq and bring in an international peace keeping force to replace us.

We really need to stop giving people who use this buzz phrase the time of day. Any foreign government who is willing to contribute troops to the stabilization of Iraq has already contributed. I don't see the French, Germans, or Russians diving in when the most capable military in the world calls it quits. In most cases our current allies are maxed out on their military commitment. Most of the governments that are supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom are already hearing cries from their home governments to pull troops out of Iraq (just like the United States).

Even if there were governments who were willing to contribute if asked nicely. Not a one of them could hope to front the number of troops that it would take to get the job done. There are an estimated 135,000 American troops in Iraq. With additional coalition forces the total rises to 150,000 troops. Numbers like this are not possible without the United States.

So please, when someone tells you that we need to get out and bring in international troops. Tell them to please start thinking before they open their mouths.

I haven't had time to watch the entire Republican Debate, but I've read several things about and watched the above video.

I haven't made up my mind on Ron Paul but I think he has the tip of a great observation. That is that American policy over the past 50 years has caused people to in the Middle East to hate us. I don't think he had time to fully articulate it in 60 seconds.

It is certainly true that the core of the Al Quiada operation hates us completely. It is very much an irrational hate, and something that no amount of policy changes will resolve. You can find philosophical underpinnings of this movement in Qutb's book Milestones. The people who subscribe to this point of view are the people willing to commit suicide in the hopes to do us harm. These are the people that we must hunt down and remove from circulation.

The most of the people in the Muslim world are most likely not willing to engage in actual conflict with the United States. However many Muslims do dislike us for a variety of reasons. If the United States made an honest effort to understand these reasons and apply them to our foreign policy the world would be a safer place. It is also easy for a real terrorist to hide among people who just dislike the United States. If the United States followed a foreign policy was realistic in addressing the dislikes of the worlds Muslim population, terrorists would loose supporters, recruits and a population to hide among. It is possible that if we had done this sooner 9/11 may not have occurred. Ultimately there is no way to tell. Hopefully we can try it now and see it help prevent the next attack.