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Green Days: Behind the Fence

Tue, 01 May 2012 22:36:00 -0400

I had completed Army Basic and Infantry Training, Airborne School, and with the Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP) behind me I now had a home: 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. This was where I would spend the next four years, preparing for the literal front lines of a fresh war zone. At my new home I would learn the tactics for securing a hostile airfield by way of an airborne assault. I would become proficient with a large array of weapons. I would learn unusual skills, like how to hot-wire cars and tractors. I would absorb everything I could about high-explosives, fashioning charges that would blast my way into buildings or through otherwise impassable walls of concertina wire. I would be taught to see in the dark, descend from helicopters, kick in doors, and saves the lives of the wounded and dying. But before any of that, I had to be a bottom-rung private in one of the world’s more intimidating social settings. Passing through the main gate of the tall brown fence that surrounded 3rd Bat was my coming of age, or at least the beginning of it.

Upon arrival, no one beat the shit out of me, despite my expectations. The leadership style in my squad was strict but mostly good natured, and they treated me like a new family member more than they did an object for torment (although there were occasionally elements of torment if I got lazy or screwed up.) My squad wasn’t necessarily typical, as some of my friends were not so warmly welcomed by their new “families”. In particular, one friend of mine quit almost right away; the apex of his experience was being choked to near-unconsciousness by a sadistic superior. After quitting he was forced to work menial kitchen duty until his new assignment came in for a non-Ranger unit.

I explained previously about the difference between the tab and the scroll. Wearing the scroll is a special point of pride, because it means serving in an active Ranger unit, whereas the tab indicates having graduated from Ranger School, a short-term and relatively risk-free accomplishment. The latter is no small feat, of course, but the “Bat Boys” (those serving in one of the Ranger Battalions) never miss an opportunity to point out the distinction. However, as proud as I was of the unblemished new Ranger Scroll sewn on my shoulder, I didn’t have a Ranger Tab sewn above it. As long as that remained the case, I would a “Tabless Bitch”.

During my tenure, Tabless Bitches (we Bat Boys who hadn’t yet graduated Ranger School) were the lower-ranking enlisted personnel waiting for their turn to earn their tab. Bat Boys with tabs were in leadership positions; at the lowest end of the leadership spectrum they were in charge of a small team. In combat, being a Tabless Bitch usually meant carrying a rifle, a grenade launcher, or a SAW and taking orders from your team leader. In garrison, it meant mopping and buffing floors, cleaning toilets, mowing lawns, carrying heavy things, and otherwise attending to menial chores. The motivation to become a leader was strong.

My typical day started with the morning Charlie Company formation at 0600h. The morning formation is a quirky military ritual orchestrated to, in part, account for the presence of everyone in the company. Rigid hierarchy is evident in all military things, and it’s most visible during this ritual. I would line up next to my team leader, who would inform the squad leader that everyone was present. The squad leader would inform the platoon leader that his two teams were present. The platoon leader would wait for all of his squad leaders to report in. At the proper moment, everyone would stand at attention. Each platoon leader, in turn, would report their platoon’s presence to the company first sergeant, who would then give the good news to the company commander. If there was further news or instruction for the day, the leadership would take this opportunity to tell it. Thereafter, every squad was cut loose to independently conduct the day’s physical training (PT.)

Rangers never, ever jog. They run, and they run fast. This is mostly for cardiovascular conditioning, but also partially to maintain the prestige of the unit; in contrast to the regular Army, Rangers wear distinctive PT uniforms, and no Ranger squad leader wants his squad seen running slower than a non-Ranger. Runs would start at a dead sprint and seem to get worse as it went on. I’m a heavy kid, so every day was a struggle to not fall behind. (I was successful most days.)

Rangers typically finish morning PT, get cleaned up, and have a morning dip of Copenhagen. Always Copenhagen snuff; the long-cut variety is deemed uncouth. You had better not be seen with any of that sissy Kodiak wintergreen garbage. Rangers don’t smoke, either. If they do, they do it on the sly. (Smoking messes with your run-time, and is therefore strongly discouraged by the leadership.)

Ranger squads eat together. 3rd Battalion had its own private chow hall. Rangers are served more than the standard Army ration at each meal, a perk intended to suit the increased physical expectations. (Somehow this reminds me of Google’s free-food philosophy, although we certainly don’t have the same physical demands at Google.)

Sometimes a work day would mean going to the shooting range. Rangers get a relatively enormous allotment of live ammunition, another perk provided by the Regiment’s Special Operations affiliation.

A work day could mean combat lifesaver training with the medics, where one could learn the particulars about staunching bleeding from a bullet wound, giving IVs, or even relieving the trauma caused by a tension pneumothorax.

A work day could mean doing basic combat drills on the soccer field, laboriously stepping through each person’s position and responsibilities for a scenario like reacting to contact. This would be rehearsed over and over until finally even the squad leader was bored to tears and called it a day.

Otherwise uneventful work days might mean studying various fields guides, especially the Ranger Handbook, and quizzing each other on various facts. (What’s the maximum effective range of an AK-47?)

Some work days were dedicated to inspection preparation, when we Tabless Bitches would clean every molecule of grime from every surface in the barracks, and when that was done we’d clean our weapons until they gleamed. (At every visit to the post’s dental clinic, a Ranger asks if they have any old dental cleaning picks they don’t need anymore; these were perfect for picking stubborn bits of carbon from the chamber of a rifle.)

Some days’ work didn’t really get started until nightfall, when we’d jump from airplanes and practice assembling on the ground in the pitch dark.

Often, we’d be in the field. For the mundane excursions, we’d stay on Fort Benning, practicing patrols or assaulting a mock objective surrounded by trenches and concertina wire. Occasionally our field trip meant travelling to another location, arriving via parachute and sometimes participating in a joint exercise with other units in the Special Operations family.

My first training deployment, and probably my favorite, was to Panama. It was my first deployment with the Regiment, and it was the Regiment’s last rotation through the Jungle Operations Training Center before the post was handed back over to the Panamanians. My squad leader was a combat veteran from the Panama invasion in 1989, so I had already acquired a keen interest in that particular locale.

In Panama, we stayed in barracks for part of the time. The barracks were right on the beach, facing the Caribbean. We were given an extensive class from the local instructors about all the indigenous plants and animals. (All of them were aggressive and lethal, as far as I could tell.) We did our morning runs along the beach. We even tanned.

Then we headed into the jungle, switching to a full tactical scenario: moving quietly, staying low, and paying close attention to our surroundings. Motivation for that last one wasn’t hard, since this particular training exercise had a very real element of danger. I walked within striking distance of a Bushmaster snake on my first day, and things only got more interesting after that.

The Panamanian jungle is a hot and humid, which anyone could probably guess, but the most wicked part is the topography. You’re either walking steeply uphill, which quickly saps your strength, or steeply downhill, which is somehow just as exhausting and fraught with ankle-twisting peril. I was drenched with sweat, and was sickly fascinated by the way sweat would actually squirt out of the small circular vents in my jungle boots. I was dirtier than I had ever been before; I learned that sweating day after day while expending a high level of calories will manifest itself in a strong ammonia smell. My undershirt felt toxic.

Even the plants were aggressive. No matter how carefully I walked, stiletto-sharp spines from Black Palms pierced through my clothes and even the canvas of my boots to bury themselves into my skin. The tips snap off beneath the skin, causing minor infection within the wounds if not dug out quickly.

I learned that sleeping in the jungle is an acquired skill. For one, it’s loud, and it might as well be an alien planet for all you can tell from the sounds. There’s also the matter of trying to get comfortable sleeping on a steep incline. There’s no comfortable direction to position your body. (There’s one extremely uncomfortable direction.) My first night trying to sleep in the jungle, I spent hours trying to find a comfortable position. Within an hour of finally falling asleep, I suddenly woke up… to bites. Malicious little jungle ants had worked their way into my clothes, and were systematically taking little chunks out of my skin. It was dark, so I couldn’t see them all. I was eventually reduced to standing there and waiting for one to bite me, so I could kill it. Ouch, slap. Ouch, slap. And so on.

Throughout all of this, I was tired, but I was also filled with wonder and a sense of primal vitality. Something had clicked together in my head. I recalled my RIP instructor saying that Ranger life meant spending your days being tired, dirty, and covered with cuts and bruises. To be a Ranger, he said, you have to enjoy being in that state. At the time, standing in a cold, boring field on Fort Benning, that didn’t make any sense at all to me. Standing in sweat-soaked boots on the side of hill in a jungle, I suddenly understood. This was what being alive felt like. It made the rest of my life seem like numb sleepwalking.

We returned from the jungle to our barracks at Fort Sherman, and capped off the experience by navigating the Green Hell obstacle course, which seemed like a vacation after being in the bush for a few days. Afterwards we all headed out for two days of recreation in Panama City, a wild time which I will probably never talk about in any quotable medium.

For the first time since joining my new family, it felt like a family. I now had one challenging and exotic training deployment under my belt, and a sincere eagerness to tackle whatever challenges came next.

[Comments.]

Green Days: RIP

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 19:53:00 -0400

There are two kinds of Army Ranger. Graduates of U. S. Army Ranger School wear the Ranger Tab on their shoulder and are referred to as Rangers, regardless of what unit they serve in. They are informally referred to as “tab wearers”.

There is only one Ranger combat regiment in the Army, and that is the 75th Ranger Regiment. Personnel serving in one of the 75th’s battalions wear a scroll insignia on their shoulder. In contrast to the tab wearers, these Rangers are known as “scroll bearers”. This distinction is one of the many things I learned in the Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP), where I was taken immediately following Airborne School. RIP is a training and selection course for the 75th Ranger Regiment.

RIP wasn’t quite the hazing marathon I had been expecting. I battled fatigue during routine classroom instruction, such as history lessons about Ranger unit lineage in wars past. I memorized the Ranger Creed. There were practical classes, like map reading. There were also several field exercises to teach us more combat skills… and in some cases, unteach us things from Basic Training that didn’t square with Ranger doctrine; Rangers have a special disdain for training standards in the broader Army. Finally, of course, there were challenging physical training sessions each morning.

RIP wasn’t a hazing marathon, but the instructors weren’t exactly friendly, either. RIP students were kept firmly in their psychological place. For example, the foot-path leading to the barracks entrance was adorned with a large arched sign in the shape of a Ranger scroll, mounted atop two wooden columns. We were told that because we hadn’t earned the right to walk under that scroll, we must walk around it instead.

There was still the occasional punishment-by-exercise. Ranger instructors were more imaginative at this compared to the other instructors I had encountered thus far. Push-ups? Bo-ring. Go grab that pull-up bar over there instead, and hang there until I tell you to stop. (You’d be surprised how fast your grip will give out completely, leaving your forearms pumped full of blood and your hands hanging like useless claws.)

Overall, RIP was unmemorable for me, perhaps because I was so tired, but three events do stick out in my mind.

First, this was my first Army experience where I witnessed people actively quitting. Since Ranger Regiment is a voluntary unit, aspiring students can change their mind if the going gets particularly tough. I saw tired, shivering students throw in the metaphorical towel. I was amazed. I thought, this isn’t even that hard yet and people in better shape than me are quitting already. That was the first time I realized physical conditioning wasn’t everything.

When someone who hadn’t already been assigned to a unit decided to quit RIP, they would go into a limbo-status to await new orders. Meanwhile, they acted as the “OpFor” (opposing force) unit for training exercises. I encountered this pretend-unit two years later while I was in Ranger School. They posed as “insurgents” from an enemy militant faction known as RQHM: the “RIP Quitters and Hold-overs Movement”. Morale was not high in the RQHM.

The second thing I distinctly remember from RIP is an off-handed comment made by one of the instructors. It was during a lull in some field exercise, and we were all extremely tired, dirty, and suffering from any number of minor contusions. The instructor, in a rare moment of open reflection, told us that Ranger life means spending significant time being tired, dirty, and covered with cuts and bruises. He said that to be a Ranger, you have to enjoy being in that state. That comment stuck with me because I remember thinking: well, so far I feel like this really sucks, so maybe Ranger life isn’t for me after all. I kept the thought to myself.

The third thing I recall was an absolute catastrophe.

At the end of RIP, you have to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test with some minimum score. It’s not a very challenging bar; I believe the requirement was 80% of the maximum score in each of three events: push ups, sit ups, and a two-mile run. I was not even a little bit worried about this. During practice sessions I was easily exceeding the threshold required to pass the test.

By test day, I had already received my orders indicating where I would serve. My shiny new orders had me reporting to 2nd Ranger Battalion in Fort Lewis Washington. It was my first choice, and I was thrilled. One easy fitness test to go, and I would be on my way to the big-time.

This is how the fitness test is scored for push ups: you assume the starting position, hands in the dirt, arms extended and locked, your body perfectly straight, your head up and looking forward. The instructor tells you to begin. You bend your elbows to lower your body toward the ground, body remaining straight, until your upper arms are parallel with the ground. Then you raise back up and lock out your elbows, back to the starting position. If you did this correctly, the instructor will announce the repetition count at the top. If you didn’t do it correctly, he’ll announce the previous repetition count. What you want to hear is something like “One, two, three, four,” and so forth. What you don’t want to hear is something like “One, two, two, two—lock your arms out—three, three, all the way down!” and so on. Having repetitions thrown out during this timed test is a serious psychological impediment.

My instructor for the final test was Sergeant Rowling. He was a giant. He had bulging arms and a bulging Copenhagen-packed lower lip. He was mean, and one of the more strict instructors. He was also the first instructor I had encountered who decided my push up form wasn’t very good. During training and practice tests, I was regularly exceeding 80 push ups in under two minutes. With Sergeant Rowling doing the grading, I ended up with about half that number. That’s not a passing score.

I was in shock. I was angry. I felt cheated. I felt embarrassed. I was called into the back office with a handful of other students who hadn’t passed the test. Another instructor was there, and he told us, “You have failed to meet the requirements on the test. This means you have failed RIP. You can be re-assigned to a non-Ranger unit, or you can repeat RIP with the next class, which starts next week. If you don’t want to join the next class, let me know right now.”

I raised my hand. He looked at me coldly. “Yeah?”

“I don’t want to repeat RIP. I’ll do the push ups right now. I was robbed.” It all just blurted out of my mouth. My face was hot.

“Too late. You failed. That’s all. You can recycle next class or go to a regular infantry unit. Those are your choices.” Then, it sunk it. I had finally failed.

I agreed to recycle into the next class, but I had a few days between to think about things. I could drop out any time and go to a regular unit. To be honest, I felt very ambivalent. The failed test had put me in a crushing depression.

I called my parents to give them the bad news. Both of them were supportive. They told me I should do whatever was in my heart, they would support me completely if I decided not to pursue a Ranger assignment, that I was brave for joining the Army in the first place, and whatever I chose would be perfectly honorable. I imagined that I could hear a little bit of relief in their voices, or perhaps it was an acknowledgement that their son had finally fallen victim to his crazy, ambitious vision. I had been a soft, undisciplined computer kid; becoming an Army Ranger was just a crazy expectation to have, after all.

I thought about what the instructor had said about being a Ranger, the bit about needing to like being tired, dirty, and beaten. I wondered if I really had the inner strength to thrive in that world. I wondered if the failed test wasn’t a blessing in disguise. Maybe I should take the universe’s hint and find an easier path.

And then I thought: fuck all that noise. I’ll make it or I will die, but I’m not joining the RQHM.

My second tour through RIP was easy. All the class work was review at this point. I was in better shape than the first time through. I was particularly obsessed with good form during my fitness tests.

At the end of my second RIP class, I passed the fitness test with a comfortable margin. I was now officially bound for my permanent duty station. This time I had missed out on the assignment to 2nd Ranger Battalion; my previous orders for that unit had been nullified when I failed the first class. I was now assigned to 3rd Ranger Battalion, which had been my last choice. 3rd Ranger Battalion was just around the corner from RIP, in Fort Benning, Georgia. I was so sick of Fort Benning at that point, spending another four years there seemed like a sentence. But I didn’t care; my least-preferred Ranger unit was far better than being sent off to a random Army unit.

Our graduation ceremony was held at the Ranger Memorial. I was given my black beret by none other than Sergeant Rowling, that sneering Ranger-hulk who had flunked me at my first attempt. I had no hate left for him at this point. I smiled and shook his hand, and thanked him. He just nodded and said, “That’s my job.”

Later: “The first thing that happens when you show up at Ranger battalion is they beat the shit out of you. They need to see how tough you are. So be ready.” That’s what my visibly-nervous RIP roommate said, and it seemed to be the general consensus among people in the know.

Soon I would be leaving for 3rd Ranger Battalion to find out for myself.

[Comments.]

Green Days: Airborne

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:12:00 -0500

Compared to Basic Training, Airborne School felt like paradise.

People from all over the Army attend Airborne school, and many do it after they’ve already been in the Army for a while. They come from all different job roles, even non-combat jobs like cooks and supply clerks. Some of them are even… (wait for it…) female! That last one is totally awkward for males who have been isolated from women for months in Infantry Basic Training. You know how a guy in high school may act awkward when a girl they “like” is around? It’s like that, but much, much worse. Men are idiots.

Like Basic, the Airborne instructors still occasionally dole out push ups for punishment, but no more than ten repetitions. Contrast that with Basic where the standard set of push ups is anywhere from twenty to total muscle failure. Airborne was cake.

There were still lots of rules to follow, but the focus was much more narrow than Basic. The majority of the rules are specifically intended to help you not die from a parachute accident. (It’s always nice to have a clear goal to focus one’s attention.) This goal makes Airborne School precise to the point of comedy.

An Airborne School instructor wears a black baseball cap and is addressed as “Sergeant Airborne”. When the Sergeants Airborne give instruction, it is choreographed with the utmost precision. For example, a Sergeant Airborne might stand at attention before the group, clearly speak a series of careful, unambiguous words of crucial instruction, and then slap his thigh exactly twice before extending his arm outward (fingers carefully extended and joined) to indicate a colleague, who will in turn demonstrate some particular task in a similar precise fashion. You couldn’t help but laugh, but I intuited that was part of the point; they want to hold your attention throughout each portion of instruction so as to better help you not die from an accident. The amusing choreography keeps your attention.

You learn how to put on a parachute, and how to double-check someone else’s parachute. You learn a precise language for everything; it’s not a rubber band, it’s an “elastic retaining band”. You learn the exact procedure for boarding a military airplane. You learn the exact procedure for leaving the plane; when to stand up, who to watch for signals, how to pass signals along, when to go out the door, and exactly what to do when you go. You learn what to do if your chute doesn’t open. If it does open, there is a series of “performance points”, which are imprinted onto your brain through hours and hours of repetition.

But more than anything, you spend a lot of time learning how to hit the ground. This happens to be something that can be practiced without needing an airplane, so it’s practiced very, very often. Airborne is three weeks long, and I had a headache for most of it.

A military parachute isn’t like the civilian parachutes where you do a delicate and elegant little stand-up landing. Instead, to borrow a crude expression, you hit the ground like a sack of shit. In most cases you’ll have all your combat gear with you when you exit the airplane, so one could say you have a sack of shit attached to you when you yourself hit the ground like a sack of shit.

The specs are such that a military parachute will deliver its occupant approximately eight miles per hour (12.9 kph) toward the ground. From personal experience I can tell you it feels more like twenty miles per hour. Sometimes it is twenty, if there is wind or if you happen to swing like a pendulum right before meeting the ground. It will definitely knock the wind out of you if you’re not precisely ready for it. Sometimes it will knock your helmet off, or even knock you out cold. There is also the occasional compound fracture. Or worse.

This is all a way of saying I remember Airborne School as “Hitting the Ground Like a Sack of Shit School”. (They have a nice euphemism for this: “Parachute Landing Fall”.)

It starts simply enough: the student will stand on a three-foot cinder-block platform, and jump off into gravel. The Sergeants Airborne critique the student, who then does it again. (And again, and again, and again.)

Then the student will progress to what I like to think of as the “Throw You at the Ground Machine”. Ascend stairs, proceed to a platform several feet off the ground, and snap into a harness. Strike a pose and walk off the platform. The Sergeant Airborne, holding a taut rope, waits until the swing is just right, and then releases the rope, flinging the student into the ground. This is performed again, and again, and again. Worst headache of my life.

A third student-flinging exercise is similar to to the Throw You at the Ground Machine, but instead of stairs and a platform there is a tower and a fake airplane door. There’s no guy holding a rope this time, and (thankfully) no ground collision; you’re clipped on to a steel cable which provides a nice ride, simulating the mid-air portion of your fall.

I wasn’t particularly afraid of jumping out of the plane, but I do remember a distinct feeling of sadness and emotional fatigue the day before my first jump. I was sitting outside the laundromat on the main post, waiting on a dryer and feeling dramatically sorry for myself. I sat there mentally recapping all the tedious drills I had been put through since joining the Army. I thought about how foreign my new environment was. I missed my friends and family. And, to top it all off, I thought: they’re going to make me jump out of a plane tomorrow. Woe unto me.

At that moment, I wish future-me could have appeared to let me know this would be the most comfortable and awe-inspiring jump I would have in my military career.

I’ve got a whole ‘nother blog post in my head to describe what it’s like to be crammed into a military aircraft, strapped with a testicle-torturing parachute harness, right along with a hundred of your closest (at least by proximity) friends. However, it’s best if I save that one for later, when I can tell it in the context of a Ranger Battalion pitch-dark jump onto tarmac. That is much more entertaining. For now I’ll just cut to the chase.

The plane was a thousand feet over the ground when I walked through the door, my right boot pushing off from the platform and propelling my body into the air. I tucked my chin into my chest and gripped my reserve parachute against my belly. I counted: one-thousand, two-thousand, threUHH!

The silk had caught the air. My body swung beneath it, feet pointed back toward a plane that was now flying away from me. I will never forget looking down at my boots and seeing the airplane in the backdrop beyond my toes. And it was quiet. The quiet was totally obvious in retrospect, but after the tense, chaotic noise of the airplane I was surprised and struck dumb at how peaceful and serene the open air was. Everything I had learned went right out of my head. Not from fear or panic, but from simple awe.

I managed to pull it together in the next few seconds before hitting the ground. I performed a proper little parachute landing fall, but on this trainee drop zone it almost didn’t even matter: the whole thing is soft dirt. A feather mattress would have been more jarring.

There were a few more jumps after that in order for me to complete my Airborne training, finally earning my wings. However, nothing would ever compare to the surprising serenity of that first jump.

As all the normal Army people were packing up and going home to see their families, I was packing up to meet my new family. Me and a few other graduates were escorted by two Sergeants Airborne to a parking lot. This was where cadre from the Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP) were scheduled to take charge of us.

The Rangers arrived, and I suddenly realized the magnitude of my decision to sign that Ranger contract. These guys were built like tanks, if tanks could have muscles. They looked like burly tattooed bikers with short haircuts. They wore black berets and starched uniforms with razor-edge creases. They looked at the Airborne instructors with a lazy half-sneer, and I realized the Airborne instructors had suddenly become nervous, fumbling with their words. Oh my god, the Airborne instructors are afraid of them, I thought.

And just like that, I was in the custody of these intimidating strangers, with no idea what was going to happen next.

[Comments.]

Green Days: Basic Training

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:01:00 -0500

When your muscles begin to fail midway through some critical physical activity, it creates a very distinct sort of panic. Even more so when that activity involves clinging to a rope, suspended dangerously high above the ground. It’s more than just panic. More like panic mixed with a raw, atavistic terror felt in the bottom of your stomach. In contrast, running out of energy while doing push ups is certainly unpleasant, but the consequence is just collapsing on the ground until you feel better. Losing your grip while suspended an injurious distance from the ground is quite different.

I’m clinging for life up there, wondering what a broken leg feels like. I crane my head back, looking over my shoulder, way down to the ground. Two drill sergeants are standing there in their crisp, clean uniforms. Their silly Smokey Bear hats are tilted back, because they’re staring up at me. They’re doing that half smirk, half sneer thing I hate.

“Get up that fucking rope, Shamu!” yells the witty one. They both laugh. The other squirts a little tobacco juice into the dirt from behind his bulging lip.

I blink dirty sweat out of my eyes and reach deeply within my psyche for a little extra oomph. Somehow, I manage to ascend the remaining few feet, clamber over a log, and make my way across the latest in a long series of punitive obstacles. Just another day in the life.

The funny thing is I didn’t even know I was fat before I joined the Army. I thought I was a pretty sexy guy, if not a little husky. Sometimes my dad would poke me in the gut with his index finger and make the Pillsbury Doughboy “tee hee” noise, but he was always trolling me for kicks. Me, fat? Hell nah.

The day I finally realized I may have been overweight was when some drill sergeant made a fat joke about somebody else. I chuckled to myself and turned around to see who the fatty was. There wasn’t anybody behind me. Comprehension and disappointment dawned at that moment.

The weight was flying off, however. Just a couple of weeks into Basic Training and I was already significantly lighter than when I had started. The fact that I wasn’t the absolute worst recruit in the group was a huge motivating factor for me. As long as there was one or two fatter, slower kids, I felt like a success. I seemed to be making faster progress than the other fatties, too, but it had not come without significant pain.

Since arriving at Basic Training, I had realized it was worse than I expected in some ways, and not nearly as bad in others. The dreaded “Shark Attack” I had been warned about turned out to be no big deal. It was just a bunch of drill sergeants running around screaming at us to hurry up, pick your heavy bags up and put them on your shoulders, don’t look at me sweetheart or I’ll make you sorry, do some push ups, get back up you turds, on and on all the way across the courtyard and up the three flights of stairs and into the open bay that would become our home for the next few weeks. I saw one drill sergeant kick a guy in the ass when the guy slipped on the stairs, but that was the only actual physical abuse I witnessed. I was glad; I had really expected to get the crap kicked out of me.

The bad part was my own complete lack of physical conditioning prior to joining the military. It was not necessary for anyone to kick my ass, because my ass kicked itself on a daily basis. I had never climbed a rope before. Never before had I run continuously for more than three quarters of a mile. My soft computer-hands developed large, bleeding callouses from traversing a set of monkey bars before and after each meal. My tendons ached. My joints felt more than just sore; they felt like they were coming apart. I was so tired I could fall asleep within a few seconds of laying down.

We were under strict orders never to leave the compound. The only respite we were allowed was an hour or so on Sunday to attend the church service for whatever denomination we happened to hold allegiance to. I feigned piety right away and used that time to write letters and feel sorry for myself.

Basic Training is quite disappointing, honestly. Getting in shape is the best thing you get from it, but the rest is a series of activities designed to either a) purge your individuality or b) teach you introductory-level skills. The quality of instruction for the skills is suited for the lowest common denominator, so you instinctively sense what you’re learning probably isn’t nearly enough to save your life in a combat scenario. It feels like getting a brief lecture on boxing in preparation for a real life professional bout. You eagerly pay attention, but you feel woefully under-prepared.

Anybody can make it through infantry basic training. Well, almost anybody.

There was this guy I’ll call Private Snivels. Private Snivels was one of the fatties who was worse than me, and his real last name was alphabetically close to mine so I was always next to him. That was fine by me. I looked practically normal in contrast. (I very quickly learned to fade into the background in all situations, playing “the grey man” whenever possible.)

Private Snivels had an infantry airborne contract, similar to me. Not even halfway through Basic Training he started to freak out about Airborne School. I remember trying to calm him down, but I’ve never seen such raw fear (and frankly, cowardice) in a person before. Helping Snivels was wasted effort.

If there was missing food, it was Snivels. If somebody forgot to make their bunk, it was Snivels. Late to formation? (Snivels.) Lost a piece of gear? (Snivels.) We almost felt sorry for the kid. We would have, if he hadn’t been such a selfish coward about every aspect of every day.

If you’ve seen Full Metal Jacket, you might think I’m cribbing the story, but this guy didn’t evoke sympathy in the way that character did. We didn’t perform the fabled blanket party counseling session like one may expect. We just helped him out where we had to, and let him fall on his face at every other step. There was nothing else we could do.

I’ll never forget the farewell talk our primary drill sergeant gave on the eve of graduation. He spoke from the heart about the accomplishments we had achieved, the deep meaning of what our future commitments would represent, and the brotherhood we would have for the rest of our lives. This was moving even for the cynical among us, because this man had been the fiercest of the enforcers for our every waking hour, but here he was pouring his heart out in a sincere manner. He finished by saying how genuinely proud he was of each one of us. With one notable exception.

The drill sergeant made a special point to address Private Snivels directly, in front of the group. He said he had never in all his long days as a drill sergeant seen such a cowardly, pathetic excuse for a man. He continued in this vein for quite a while before concluding.

I will never forget that talk, because I felt such a strange mixture of emotions. What began as sincere pride turned to contempt, which then became great pity, and then pure sympathetic embarrassment for another human being. I had never heard someone so fundamentally and irrevocably injured with words.

I don’t know if Snivels even cared, and I don’t know what happened to him after that.

We all marched in a formal graduation ceremony, lock step and looking identical, ridiculous hats and all. My folks were in the crowd and couldn’t even recognize me until the ceremony was over, when I was finally able to walk over to them. I can’t blame them, really. I had been physically transformed from the last time they had seen me.

I enjoyed the luxury of a single day to relax and catch up with my folks. Then I was off to Airborne school, where I would learn how to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

[Comments.]

Green Days, Ctd

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:38:00 -0500

I landed in the Atlanta airport, and made small-talk with the other would-be soldiers. Unsurprisingly, most discussion revolved around what to expect over the next few hours. Nobody had a solid understanding about what was going to happen. We were waiting for a bus to take us to Fort Benning, Georgia, we knew that much at least. Beyond that? Hard to say.

I assumed it would be just like the first scene of Full Metal Jacket. I expected to be kicked, choked, berated, and thoroughly abused by some jerk in a Smokey Bear hat, immediately after stepping out of the bus. The others had theories that more or less sounded like mine.

When we finally got on the bus and headed toward Fort Benning, everyone settled into an anxious silence. Nobody slept. Everybody just stared out the window at the evening darkness, mentally preparing for the unknown.

When we arrived, it was the most anti of anti-climactic events. It turned out that our final destination that night was not our basic training unit, but something of an in-between place. A military purgatory. It was called the 30th Adjutant General Reception Battalion, the first of many arcane names I would learn over the next few months.

It was a holding pen. I was assigned to a bay (a large open dorm area) with a few dozen bunk beds and matching foot lockers. The bay was constantly filled with nervous chatter. Some people were trying to be tough guys, walking around with their chest puffed out and talking about how remarkably bad-ass they were. Most just kept to themselves, trying not to attract attention.

The odd thing was that no authorities were being jerks to us yet. They weren’t nice either, but nobody had insulted my mother or asked me to choke myself yet. The enlisted personnel in charge simply put us into groups, showed us where the chow hall was, explained the rules, and otherwise walked us through the administrivia that lay before us.

Time stood still. I have no clue if I was there for 4 days or 4 weeks. I can’t even remember what exactly happened. I know it must have been where we got issued our uniforms and equipment. I vaguely recall some mundane chores, like waxing the floor with a large mechanical buffer (this device would become extremely familiar to me over the next two years.) The only things I distinctly remember about this place were a) hating everyone I was there with, and b) wanting to move on to the next thing, regardless of what it was. Maybe that is the real purpose of 30th AG: break you down with boredom so you’re eager for the next eight weeks of punishment.

There was one event I do recall, which involved my first dose of Army-style negative reinforcement. A first sergeant came to visit purgatory, recruiting people for the Old Guard. I was one of a dozen or so people who met the basic physical characteristics for that unit (something about height) so we were taken aside for this first sergeant to talk to us.

If you’ve never been in the military, it’s important to recognize that when someone of a lower rank (private/E-0 in my case, aka “e-nothing”) speaks to someone of higher rank, a certain communication protocol is to be followed. If the private is answering a question in the affirmative, the private will reply “Yes, sergeant,” or “Yes, first sergeant,” or “Yes, sergeant major,” whichever the case may be. If you simply say “Yes” without the proper suffix, it’s considered a dire breech of etiquette. If someone slips up and forgets, an agitated superior will commonly reply with, “Yes… what? Yes… asshole? Yes… fuckface? Yes what?” That is what passes for a “helpful hint” in the military world. You are supposed to quickly reply, “Yes sergeant!” and look appropriately remorseful for the indiscretion.

So this first sergeant is asking us all where we were born. He comes around to me, and I say “California.” Full stop. He blinks and looks at me like I’m insane. I have a touch of speaking anxiety normally, so in this awkward scenario my physiological responses are all already in the red zone. I have no idea why he’s still looking at me. Somebody next to me is mumbling to me, presumably trying to save my ass with a hint, but I can’t hear it.

“California, asshole? California, fuckface?” he says. I blink back, with zero comprehension. Is he calling me an asshole? I think so. I have no idea how I’m supposed to react to that. I’ve been called an asshole before, so I’m not particularly upset about this. I do what comes naturally, and flash him my winning smile.

I’m halfway through my punishment before I put all the pieces together and figure out what I did wrong. The punishment in this case involved “elevating my feet”, which means putting your feet up on a counter (or any sufficiently elevated surface) and doing push ups. Not pleasant, might I add, especially when you’re a fat kid. At some point he took pity on me, or maybe he just didn’t want sweat all over the floor. He allowed me to get up.

“You ready to sit back down?”

“Yes, first sergeant!” See, I can learn.

Incidentally, I decided not to join the Old Guard, and stuck with my Ranger contract. After all, my recruiter had really pulled strings to get me that contract! (Or so I thought, anyway.)

Then it was back to the drudgery of the 30th Adjutant General Reception Battalion. After some indeterminable length of time, I was told which basic training unit I was assigned to, and the day came to ship us off. We packed up our gear and formed up outside.

This time, our mode of transportation was not a nice comfortable bus. It was a “cattle car”. This is a big dirty trailer-looking thing, with poles to hang onto inside (like a subway) and inadequate seating. Each cattle car came equipped with a real live drill sergeant, yelling and cussing at us. They crammed more of us into the cattle cars than I thought could possibly fit, especially considering the hundred pounds of gear we were each carrying in an awkward green duffel bag.

As the vehicle pulled out of the driveway and proceeded to our destination, the drill sergeant politely informed us that we should keep our “motherfucking heads down until told otherwise.” He went on to advise that we should also carefully consider shutting the fuck up. We were en route to “Shark Attack”, he said, sans further explanation.

I stared down at my ugly new boots and waited.

[Comments.]

Green Days

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:58:00 -0500

I’ve decided I should write down as many of my Army experiences as I can before I forget them. It’s been over ten years since I left, and the memories are getting a little fuzzy around the edges.

“Sorry, I’m extremely homosexual.” That was my typical response when military recruiters would call the house. Nothing worked faster to get a Utah-based military recruiter off the telephone. In other words, I wasn’t very interested in joining any branch of the military.

I had taken the ASVAB test at some point in high school. I scored high enough to catch the attention of the recruiters, which I interpreted to mean they noticed I was capable of signing my name to a piece of paper. Later, I discovered the algorithm pegged me for a natural born MLRS operator. (I still have no idea what criteria resulted in that oddly specific choice.) Regardless, I didn’t care. At this point in my life (around 19) I wasn’t very good with authority. I wasn’t particularly aware of foreign affairs. Hell, I never even watched the local news. I had safety pins hanging from my earlobe and angst in my heart. It was the special sort of angst that grows only in teenage boys who were relocated to Utah right before high school. I was not a military hopeful.

Then, overnight, I changed my mind about the military and marched straight to the recruiter to sign my name (life) on the line.

I have two versions explaining why I made this decision. The first and most common version is the version I tell people casually, when a joke is more appropriate than a serious explanation: I say I joined to make up for not playing sports in high school. The second and more truthful version is the version I usually only share with people I consider good friends. (This is the first time I’ve spoken or written about it in public.)

I wasn’t a delinquent teenager, but I like to think that’s because I was smart enough to evade the police. In my late teens, most of my social circle was comprised of bona fide delinquents, and we were all continually up to no good whatsoever. I could probably write a hundred blog posts from those days. Near the end of it all, I had a couple of uncomfortably close calls with mortality that made me reconsider my perspectives on life and what I wanted to do with it. Very simply put, I didn’t want to waste my life in a stupid way, so instead I decided to find something a little more noble.

So why the military and not, say, a university, like a normal person? This is embarrassingly ridiculous, but Full Metal Jacket, Commando, Apocalypse Now, and Predator all played a significant role in seeding the idea. The all or nothing nature of infantry warfare appealed to me. I loved the idea of elite commando units ninja-ing through the jungle. If an alien landed and started hunting us, I wanted to be right there. It was infinitely more exciting than turning 20 in Utah, of all places.

This decision probably seemed absolutely insane to observers. I hated being told what to do. I was not even close to athletic. I may have been a quasi-delinquent, but I was also a computer geek, with a body forged by years of sitting motionless in front of a keyboard. I couldn’t run a mile without doing the full-blown Fatty McGee. I tried doing push-ups and it was not pretty. I knew nothing about the military. I couldn’t distinguish a sergeant from a general.

Ever the stubborn kid, fueled by testosterone, I proceeded straight to the recruiter’s office and asked him what they had for me. He handed me a glossy magazine showcasing different Army jobs, and I flipped through it while he told me about the GI Bill and other various benefits I had zero interest in.

Then I saw what looked very much like the following picture. This might even be the actual picture:

I pointed, and said “What’s that?”

“Those are Airborne Rangers,” he said, and then showed me a video about the 75th Ranger Regiment.

“That’s what I want to do,” I told him.

He explained in carefully chosen words that being a Ranger is actually pretty hard and especially hard for people who are not in very good shape. He then talked for a while to make sure I understand this was for real, not a game. Rangers deploy six or eight times per year, he warned. Then he decided who cares, he had a quota to fill and I was obviously eager. (He didn’t say that last part, but it was written in his eyes clearly enough.) “Let me see if I can pull some strings,” he said.

He got on the phone and started talking to what I only later realized was very likely a dial-tone. “Hey, I know they’re really hard to get, but can you help me with a Ranger slot? I have a young gentlemen here who… yes, I’ll hold on.”

Intense silence.

“Yes I’m still here. You have one? Great, I really owe you one. Thanks so much.”

I’m smiling like a big dummy at this point. He hangs up and tells me how they’ve got just one left, but it’s not guaranteed to be available for long. I’ll have to act soon if I want it.

And, of course, I took the bait. Hell, I didn’t even need bait. They had me at swamp commando training. I committed right then and there.

A few months later, after a series of near-delinquent going away parties, I was on a plane bound for Georgia, where I would begin my training.

TBC…

[Comments.]

Pork and Cabbage

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:15:00 -0500

I think this recipe came from my great grandmother. My mom taught me. Here’s her method with a couple of my own minor tweaks.

Ingredients:

Pork steaks (w/bones)
Cabbage
Garlic
Cilantro
Cayenne pepper
Black pepper
Mushrooms
Sugar snap peas
Bean sprouts
Macadamia nut oil
Tamari sauce

(Use your best judgment for quantities. I have no clue.)

Cut the meat from the pork steaks into little pieces. Throw the pieces, with the bones, into a big pan with some macadamia nut oil. Cook on medium-high until the pork is mostly brown (don’t overdo it.) Turn the heat down to a simmer. Chop up a bunch of cilantro stems and toss them in with chopped garlic. Lots of garlic. Add pepper and cayenne. Add a little water. Simmer on low heat for a long time, until the pork is cooked. A mild simmer with a longer cook time means tender pork. You can optionally use corn starch if you’d like more of a sauce.

When the pork is cooked, remove the bones. Gnaw on the bones, or give them to the nearest feral male in your household. Add the mushrooms. Add the chopped up cabbage. Let it simmer until the cabbage cooks down. Add the bean sprouts and snap peas. Add the tamari sauce. Stir it all up, and simmer until the texture is how you like it.

Best served over rice. Feeds a mob.

[Comments.]

I’m short on time, so no blogging today. Instead, I drew a...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:34:09 -0500

I’m short on time, so no blogging today. Instead, I drew a picture of Whitney Houston ascending to heaven.

Every day I’m jugglin’.

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:08:00 -0500

Every day I’m jugglin’.

Power

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:03:00 -0500

Everything depends on power. I don’t mean money power or political power, I mean flowing electrons.

Think for a moment about the broad impact that energy has had on human history. You may not believe that wars are waged primarily because of oil reserves, but there is no denying the overwhelming impact fossil fuels have had in shaping the Middle East. In Africa, a billion people live in poverty, in large part due to the “resource curse”. The ability to understand physics and harness energy brought a close to World War II, and subsequently fueled the Cold War. Simple fluctuations in fuel prices have had a profound effect on the global economy. It determines how your city is laid out, or where it was built in the first place. It shapes how trade is conducted. It determines how much or how little you can afford to travel. For some, it’s the difference between clean water or disease. It is the key resource that impacts everything we do. All of this without even having to mention the global warming issue.

A time will come—maybe in fifty years, or maybe a thousand—when the availability of energy will fundamentally re-shape humanity. I hold an optimistic view that this change will be a positive one, but that’s far from certain.

Imagine that every city-sized community on Earth has the ability to produce practically unlimited energy, for nearly no money. There’s an initial investment cost, of course, but say that it is roughly equivalent to the cost of building a section of freeway through the city. What changes?

Everything changes. Every city on Earth could sustain greenhouses growing food around the clock, irrespective of climate or season. Desalination plants could bring clean water to areas previously ridden by disease. Corrupt governments lose their grip on resources as a control mechanism. The cost of travel, including air travel, plummets. Mechanisms for space travel that were previously infeasible become feasible. Entire floating cities could exist in perpetuity with minimal trade requirements. Worldwide manufacturing output is radically changed.

The entire meaning of cost and trade changes dramatically, as the very means of production—which has shaped our understanding of politics—fundamentally changes. Free energy will mean a point of delineation for us, where all previous assumptions become void.

It does not signal the full realization of a Utopian society, of course. Energy is the key resource, but not the only resource required for society to function. Humans will still have to produce goods. However, how long before even that requirement is alleviated? It’s difficult to imagine, but also fascinating: what does the world look like when the means of production is sophisticated machinery powered by free energy? (It’s hard to imagine without comparison to the future-Earth society depicted in Star Trek: The Next Generation.)

Maybe I’m only half-right about all of these fantastic outcomes. The pursuit of free energy remains the most important possible pursuit for moving humanity forward while eliminating mass human suffering.

This is why I get so crazy excited about what EMC2 Fusion is doing. In the long history of humans chasing after fusion power, that line of research is the only one which has proved to be viable as scale increases toward actual production. Very soon they will enter their third major R&D phase, which means a 100MW reactor about the size of a basketball court. The prototype will cost $200M, or roughly what it costs to build a few miles of a freeway. Full-fledged production at scale would be far cheaper.

It’s safe, leaving zero radioactive waste. Its fuel is virtually limitless and naturally occurring. Its design is already published and broadly understood by physicists internationally; once proven at production scale, countries everywhere will rush to begin manufacturing their own. No other alternative energy research comes close to the potential that this has.

If the full-scale phase has disappointing results, it will be a sad day for a lot of people. There have been so many successful phases leading up to this point, however, the possibility of this thing actually working is becoming more and more compelling with each passing year.

Pay attention to this, folks. We may live to see enormous global change in our lifetimes.

[Comments.]

How to Move to New York

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:59:00 -0500

In late 2009, I needed a change of scenery, so I switched departments at work to one that wanted me in New York. Moving to NYC is unlike any other moving experience I’ve had. Here are tips that worked for me in my move from Atlanta to Manhattan. Your mileage will certainly vary, but hopefully the general spirit of these tips will give you some useful insight.

Erase your preconceptions about New York. Before I moved here, I thought I couldn’t have a dog or find a place to go jogging. After moving, it seems to me like a dog-owning, joggers’ Mecca. If you think everything here looks like Times Square, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find otherwise. There are neighborhoods in the heart of Manhattan with low-rise buildings, tree-lined streets, and beautiful sprawling parks. This city is diverse.

Things are expensive here. (And also really cheap.) You can eat a $50 steak across the street from a food-truck serving huge meals for $5. (Both are excellent.) The rent is too damn high, but that is partially offset by your lack of a car payment. You can buy really expensive Broadway tickets, or you can get free Broadway tickets with a little inside knowledge. You can pay for a boat cruise in the harbor, or you can see the same thing for free on the Staten Island Ferry. This list goes on and on. The longer I live here, the more deals I find out about.

Come to terms with the reality that your expectations of living space are going to be radically altered. Unless you are among the 1%, you cannot afford the square footage you’re used to. Most people see this as a serious disadvantage. If you look at it the right way, it’s a blessing.

Recognize the trade-off you’re making. The place you have now is a particular size because you do most of your living within those walls. (Now that is a depressing way to live!) In NYC, a significant portion of your life can be “externalized”. That is, you’ll spend a lot more time out in the city than you ever have before. Your living room is now the greatest city on Earth, and all it has to offer. Your kitchen and dining rooms have been shrunk, externalized in part as cafes, food trucks, and restaurants. You’ll entertain your friends at the pub instead of a back yard.

My first apartment in Manhattan was about 500 square feet. It was a place to sleep, shower, and watch television. The rest of my life took place outside of my apartment, in the city that never sleeps.

Get rid of all your crap. As I was preparing to leave Atlanta, I got to know the people at Goodwill on a first name basis. I said tearful goodbyes to all my computer and electronics junk, and donated it to my local hacker space. Furniture, bikes, everything went on Craigslist or was given to family. Alison and I flew to NYC with two suitcases each. One medium sized box, shipped UPS, had everything else. In retrospect, I probably could have done without the box.

There’s something extremely liberating about this. The first time you try to get rid of it all, you’ll come up with one thousand reasons why you have to hang on to that old bed frame, and that stack of obsolete computer manuals, and your collection of vintage gumball machines. This is normal, even if you’re not a hoarder. Try, get rid of what you can, and then wait a day or two. On each successive try, it will be easier and easier to get rid of your crap. By try number ten, you’ll be free.

None of your crap is going to fit into your apartment anyway, so you might as well get rid of it all.

Buy new and really cheap crap when you get to New York. So why not just ship your stuff? If you are convinced your couch, bed, and tables are going to fit, then go for it. In my case, it was more practical (and actually cheaper) to buy new “disposable-grade” furniture at Ikea and Walmart.com. I love it. My building could burn to the ground, incinerating all my belongings, and I wouldn’t even care. Do you know how liberating that is?

Get rid of your cars. Included in the “get rid of your crap” is also getting rid of your whip. You’ll be shocked at how quickly you adjust to this, even if you adore your car. After about six months, you’ll look at people stuck in traffic and wonder if they are insane.

The subway isn’t scary. It’s a New York tradition to complain about the trains, but in reality they are generally efficient for getting you where you want to go. If you’re moving to Manhattan, you’ll be amazed at how walk-able the island is. At first, you’ll be worn out from walking everywhere. Then, suddenly, almost overnight, the whole island just shrinks. Walking from West Village to East Village becomes a nice little stroll you’ll actually look forward to. When the weather is nice, I find myself walking when I otherwise could easily take the train.

You’re probably going to find an apartment and sign the lease all in the same day. Apartment listings have a shelf life measured in hours here. It’s not like other cities, where you can do a scouting trip, take your time investigating the place, interview the landlord with all your nit-picky questions, comparison shop, and then wait a few weeks to mull it over. Instead, you’re going to look, decide, cut some checks, and have the keys within a few days. You’re also going to pay a big broker’s fee for the privilege. (That last part just plain sucks. No bright side to find there.)

The suddenness of finding a place to live throws people off balance when moving here. It was definitely alien to me. If you’re going to do a preliminary scouting trip, spend your time getting a feel for the neighborhoods instead of looking at apartments to live in. You can check Craigslist or a broker’s website to ballpark how expensive the neighborhood is. Sit in the numerous parks scattered around. Sample the restaurants. Figure out which neighborhood suits your personality. Then find your apartment.

When we decided to move to the Chelsea neighborhood, we made a pact that we wouldn’t take the first apartment we saw. We decided we would choose carefully based on our careful criteria, and we would find at least two or three options before making a decision.

Then, of course, we ended up taking the first one we saw. (It worked out just fine, and we loved it.)

Move to Manhattan if you possibly can. It’s going to be more expensive, but it’s worth it. Plenty of Brooklynites will disagree, I have no doubt. I look at it this way: you are only new in New York once in your life. Make the most of it, and move to the center of where you want to be. Sometimes the cost difference isn’t that bad, either. It’s such a diverse market, you can get lucky and find a sweetheart of a deal. If you’re skeptical, find a six month lease so you can stay flexible.

Stay flexible. Your first apartment in New York will not be your last apartment in New York. Keep that in mind when you move here. Get a good starter apartment, and assume you’ll be moving again within a year or two.

Stay a tourist for as long as you can. You’ll fall into a rut before you know it, so be vigilant: see all the sights, visit all the neighborhoods, and do all the activities you can while you’ve still got the fresh excitement coursing through your veins. Don’t eat at the same place twice if you can possibly help it.

Enjoy the people. I’m serious! New Yorkers can be rude, but only if you’re an asshole. (Fact: asshole tourists are the ones spreading that “New Yorkers are rude” myth.) I’ve had smiling locals stop to give me directions when I looked lost. Once, I dropped $20 on the sidewalk, and some random guy chased me down to give it back. The sheer density of this city means people need to get along, and you’ll see that spirit in New Yorkers, if you are open to it. If you are not open to it, and assume that everyone around you is hostile, they’ll smell it on you and treat you accordingly.

Winter is coming. Personally, I’ve sworn a blood oath against the cold. I hate hate hate the cold so much. It is my enemy. My life’s dream is to build a dome over the city.

So yeah, it gets pretty cold here, and you will experience moments of agony. The wind is a real bastard. Invest in good cold-weather gear, including a scarf and gloves.

The dreary Winter makes everyone appreciate Spring that much more. My favorite time of the year is the first nice, sunny weekend where all the street fairs are open and everyone’s walking around with a grin on their face.

And in closing… if you could not already tell, I love this city. I’ve moved around the country quite a bit, but this is the first city where I’ve really felt at home, completely alive, and continually motivated to go out and experience life. That may or may not be the case for you, of course. Everyone has their own experience here, but this city is definitely alive in a way that has a profound impact on the people who move here.

If you have your own experience to share, please write about it and let me know!

[Comments.]

Tracker School

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:34:00 -0500

When I was a little kid, I found a book at the library called Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Wilderness Survival. I saved up to get my own copy, and I read that thing into tatters.

My obsession with wilderness survival was probably rooted in a fantasy fiction series called Lone Wolf, which I had been reading during the same time period. These books were like those Choose Your Own Adventure books, but better. The main character was something like a cross between a Shaolin monk and Conan. I liked to make-believe I was that guy.

On numerous camping and fishing trips, I would alternate between studying my wilderness field guide and pretending I was a forest warrior hell-bent on revenge for the murder of everyone in my monastery. This juxtaposition of practical skills and fantasy role-play was perfect for a little kid like me. I put a great deal of time into practicing a bow drill fire, setting wild animal snares, and practicing my wicked bo staff skills.

Sadly, I never was very good at that stuff. My snares never snared anything, and my bow drill fire never caught. (I still believe I was a born natural at the bo staff, however.) I wanted desperately to be around other people who could teach me wilderness skills. But I was on my own.

The back of Tom Brown’s books advertised his wilderness survival and tracking school. I wanted to go so badly I could hardly stand it. Alas, it was held in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, clear across the country. The fee alone was beyond my family’s means. And, I was just a little kid, so they probably wouldn’t let me take the course anyway. I pined away for this school for a few years, and then all but forgot about it until I was in my thirties.

I’m quite fond of the author Neil Strauss. In 2009 he wrote a book called Emergency, chronicling his time spent learning to be a survivalist. Part of that time was spent at… wait for it… Tom Brown’s Tracker School! I eagerly read about his experiences there, and felt all the emotions of being eight years old rushing through me again. I suddenly realized I not only could afford to attend the school, it was actually located close to where I was living. Woo!

Keep in mind that a lot had happened between being eight years old and 34 years old. Part of that included joining the Army, and then Special Operations as an Airborne Ranger. That meant putting in a lot of “dirt time,” but it never included in-depth training on how to track animals or survive in the wilderness sans equipment. (I’m long since out of the Army now.) I was shocked to learn later that Special Ops teams routinely send operators to train in small groups with Tom Brown, to learn exactly those sorts of things. Evidently he’s been doing this for decades now, as far back as 1964. I wish I had known this when I was in, I would have fought like hell to attend as a part of my team’s training.

At long last, just this past year, I found myself on a bus headed for the New Jersey Pine Barrens. I was conscious that my expectations were unrealistically high for the course. At the end of the week, I realized my expectations had been exceeded! I could write a book on the things I learned at the Tracker School, but of course there is already a good one. Here are the summary notes I wrote down during the final hours of the class:

Huge amount of information… about 14 hours of instruction each day. Emphasis is on quality of lecture, not “roughing it” or individual experimentation. There are several hands-on workshop opportunities (e.g., bow-drill.) Instructors are demonstrable experts, enthusiastic, patient, and have a clear desire to present information effectively. There were four instructors. There are also a handful of volunteers, who seem similarly engaged. They help with cooking, various class prep tasks, chore coordination, and some limited instruction. Finally, there are caretakers who live on site, primitively. Instructors seem to have progressed through these roles. Some instructors still live on site. There is an explicit sentiment of “non-denomination”… it isn’t a Native American curriculum, it is teaching skills for “living” (primitively) not “survival”.

Instruction has a clear feeling of practicality. Lessons go into sufficient detail for a perceptual change in understanding. It’s clear that TBJ [Tom Brown, Jr.] hand-picks instructors very carefully. TBJ very rarely misses a class… usually personally gives the Intro to Tracking. If TBJ’s motivations are to preserve primitive skills, he’s already been wildly successful: tens of thousands of people from diverse background have been to the standard class, and it’s enough instruction to be practically useful for broad application in primitive situations. It’s likely that his motivations go beyond this, however. The most interesting aspect of the Tracker School is the diversity of its people, both students and staff.

Oh, and I finally got that bow drill fire going!

There were moments when I was a bit critical, or at least wary, of what I experienced there. During the course I caught a whiff—not anything overpowering or obnoxious, mind you—but just a whiff, that this school has the potential to be a full-fledged eco-doomsday cult, complete with its own spiritual belief system and unwaveringly loyal acolytes. Tom Brown’s boyhood teacher and surrogate grandfather spoke of terrible visions of the future. These prophesies correspond with cataclysmic events of environmental decline, and Tom believes them to be literal prophesies. He writes about these in his book The Quest, and speaks very passionately about this during the course. This belief is clearly the foundational reason for his ongoing work.

Anything that starts feeling even a little bit like a cult sets off my warning radar like crazy. Regardless, if the fabled shit does indeed hit the fan, there are definitely worse people to be friendly with. They will have nice warm fires going and plenty of food available. But personally, I won’t be obsessing much about the apocalypse. I’ll stick to learning the skills, treating the school and its instructors with much-earned respect, and, just in case, I’ll keep my skepticism up in case somebody pressures me to donate my life savings to the end-of-the-world-prevention fund.

I’m heading back to the Tracker School this year for a second helping. The “Standard Course” (which is what I’ve described above) is only the beginning of a very broad offering. I’m looking forward to the “Advanced Standard”, where (I believe) I’ll have the experience to put the things I have learned to practical use, as well as learning new skills. Lone Wolf, eat your heart out.

[Comments.]

I was thinking about the image I have often seen in which you appear to have been assimilated by the Borg, and so I want to ask you how you feel about animals merging with machines in the coming years/decades. How long do you think humans have left as the dominant form of intelligence on this planet? Will the machines assimilate us or just put us in zoos?

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:19:12 -0500

I can’t speak to a time-line, but I’m sure we will all be better off after our technological and biological distinctiveness has been added to a soothing, efficient (if not a little pale) collective.

Social networking considered harmful.

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:01:00 -0500

I used to create content. Now I am just a filter.

Creating content used to be the thing to do on the Internet. Write a blog. Write a nice little how-to. Curate a wiki. Those activities are still possible today, of course, but social networking has created an immense gravitational field, drawing in would-be content creators. The default activity on the Internet today has become consuming and filtering content. Likes, tweets, pluses, reshares, and reblogs. Hash-tagged sentence fragments bolstering an already-trending topic. Filtering people into circles. Commenting for the sake of karma.

Don’t get me wrong; there is great value in social networking data. Sites like Reddit are brilliant, and they rely on harvesting signals from the masses. I like knowing a phone app is useful because several friends have +1’d it. I like local restaurant recommendations, pointers to cool articles, and political pieces of interest that friends clue me into. Yet, I find myself waiting for this enormous social networking wave to break, so we can all move on and just consider it a part of using the Internet, not the overriding purpose of using the Internet.

I’m certainly not the first curmudgeon to be critical of social networking. I feel compelled to write about this, if nothing else, for selfish reasons. Writing these words is an act of creation; a break from serving as a content filter in the social networking machine. The simple process of sitting here and analyzing how I feel about a topic forces me to structure my thinking in a more tangible way, suitable for communication.

I’m not planning to stop spamming my friends with re-shares of things that made me laugh (sorry to disappoint, everyone) but I do plan to make a concerted effort each day toward creating something, even if it’s not necessarily interesting or unique. I feel fulfilled when I create content just for the sake of it.

I suppose this half-rant is really an appeal to social networkers everywhere. Dedicate some time each day to creation. Write—beyond 140 characters—about topics that interest you. Write code and put it on Github. Upload a YouTube video. Make art. Create a new web site that does something neat. Whatever it is, it does not have to be groundbreaking. It just has to be yours.

[Comments.]

Being a good engineering team manager.

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:26:00 -0500

For the last few years, I’ve been a reasonably successful SRE team manager for Google. From this experience, and others in the past, I’ve developed a relatively basic philosophy:

Lead by example.
Keep your engineers happy.

That’s all. The language is succinct, but the practice can be tricky.

Leading by example is critical. It’s a way to inspire confidence from your team, and it’s vital for you to understand the technical environment beyond the usual inadequate managerial abstractions.

However, it’s equally important to identify the boundary between “leading by example” and “stepping on toes.” Do write enough code to stay fresh. Do sign up for on-call shifts. Do your homework when you don’t understand something. Do not write code when someone else would be more willing and capable. Do not force your personal opinions during design reviews; suggestions are fine, but remember that your position adds psychological weight to your words, so it’s hard for some to distinguish your personal perspective from a direct order. Communicate with this in mind.

Then, there’s the happiness part. Keeping engineers happy is a function of providing Silicon Valley style perks: 30” monitors, chair massage, and free food, right? Not really. Those things certainly make people happy, but not indefinitely. Google-style perks lose their lustre after a year or two. I stay at Google because I believe in the mission, and I love being surrounded by brilliant people. I learn and grow at Google. I can put my skills to good use at Google.

The foundation of happiness for engineers is the practice of solving interesting problems. Cultivate that passion in your team. The antithesis of this is bureaucracy; this is where the team manager can shine as a force for good. Team managers matter.

When it’s raining craziness from on high, you are the umbrella. When senior leadership is charting the course for next year, you are the lone representative for your team. You owe it to your people to understand their perspectives and accurately represent those perspectives to the upper echelons. You are a champion and a defender for your team. You speak on their behalf, and you protect their foundation of happiness: the ability to continue solving interesting problems.

I’ve spoken with managers who find it hard to keep people happy versus getting projects done. If you can build an environment where engineers are solving interesting problems, your projects will be done well. For the vast majority of situations, it really is that simple. Some managers may gain short term success by prioritizing projects over people, but that behavior, at best, is unsustainable. (At worst, it is unethical.)

Helping to develop the careers of people in your team is an extension of the engineering happiness principle (i.e., “solving interesting problems”.) Careers stall where there is a lack of passion for the work. Passionate people learn, grow, and get promoted.

When it comes to project staffing, your job is matching individuals to problems they find interesting (do you notice the repetition of this point yet?) This is not easy. People are not fungible resources. They are not interchangeable “full-time equivalents”. They are people, with unique backgrounds, motivations, and personal circumstances. You may have to move a person to a different project to find a suitable match. Sometimes you get it wrong once or twice, but the third time can change “missing expectations” into “rock star”. Sometimes this even means encouraging the person to transfer to another team. Always support transfers when it’s good for the person, even (especially) for your top performers.

Keeping engineers happy also means being honest when they’re not doing well. Practice routine candor with each person on your team. If work is stagnant or in decline, consider it your responsibility to discuss it well before serious remedial action is required. You should treat their performance as your performance, and demonstrate an appropriate commitment to improve the situation. This helps you resolve problems before they get bad. It also inspires the sort of trust and confidence you want as a team manager.

When I look back at my own performance and identify things I wish I had handled better, every case was a result of me getting lazy and not following the principles described above. When I look back at the accomplishments I’m most proud of, they were a result of following these principles to the letter.

[Comments.]

Google Reader Social Retrospective

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:03:32 -0400

Google Reader Social Retrospective:

(From http://bit.ly/tAXNlk)

With the upcoming transition of social features in Google Reader to Google+, I thought this would be a good time to look back at the notable social-related events in Reader’s history.

Late 2004 to early 2005: Chris Wetherell starts work on “Fusion”, one of the 20% projects that serve as prototypes for Google Reader. Among other neat features, it has a “People” tab that shows you what other people on the system are subscribed to and reading. There’s no concept of a managed friends list, after all when the users are just a few dozen co-workers, we’re all friends, right?

September 2005: Ben Darnell and Laurence Gonsalves add the concept of “public tags” to the nascent Reader backend and frontend. There are no complex ACLs, just a single boolean that controls whether a tag is world-readable.

October 2005: A remnant of the “People” tab is present in the HTML of the launched version of Google Reader, and an eagle-eyed Google Blogoscoped forum member notices it and speculates as to its intended use.

March 2006: Tag sharing launches, along with the ability to embed a shared tag as a widget in the sidebar of your blog or other sites. On one hand, tag sharing is quite flexible: you can share both individual items by applying a tag to them, and whole feeds (creating spliced streams) if you share folders. On the other hand, having to create a tag, share it and manually apply it each time is rather tedious. A lot of users end up sharing their starred items instead, since that enables one-click sharing.

Summer of 2006: As part of Brad Hawkes’s summer internship, he looks into what can be done to make shared tags more discoverable (right now users have to email each other URLs with 20-digit long URLs). He whips up a prototype that iterates over a user’s Gmail contacts and lists shared tags that each contact might have. This is neat, but is shelved for both performance (there’s a lot of contacts to scan) and privacy (who exactly is in a user’s address book?) concerns.

September 2006: Along with a revamped user interface, Reader re-launches with one-click sharing, allowing users to stop overloading starred items.

May 2007: Brad graduates and comes back work on Reader full-time. His starter project is to beef up Reader’s support for that old school social network, email.

Fall of 2007: There is growing momentum within Google to have a global (cross-product) friend list, and it looks like the Google Talk buddy list will serve as the seed. Chris and I start to experiment with showing shared items from Talk contacts. We want to use this feature with our personal accounts (i.e. real friends), but at the same time we don’t want to leak its existence. I decide to (temporarily) call the combined stream of friends’ shared items “amigos”. Thankfully, we remember to undo this before launch.

December 2007: After user testing, revamps, and endless discussions about opt-in/out, shared items from Google Talk buddies launches. Sharing is up by 25% overnight, validating that sharing to an audience is better than doing it into the void. On the other hand, the limitations of Google Talk buddies (symmetric relationships only, contact management has to happen within Gmail or Talk, not Reader) and communication issues around who could see your shared items lead to some user stress too.

Spring of 2008: With sharing in Reader picking up steam, a few aggregators and leaderboards of shared items start to spring up. Louis Gray comes to the attention of the Reader team (and its users) by discovering the existence of ReadBurner before its creator is ready to announce it.

May 2008: Up until this point sharing has been without commentary; it was up to the reader of the shared item to decide if it had been shared earnestly, ironically, or to disagree with it. “Share with note” gives users an opportunity to attach a (hopefully pithy) commentary to their share. Also in this launch is the “Note in Reader” bookmarklet (internally called “Tag Anything”) that allows users to share arbitrary pages through Reader.

August 2008: Incorporating the lessons learned from Reader’s initial friends feature, the preferred Google social model is revamped. Instead of a symmetric friend list based on Google Talk buddies, there is a separate, asymmetric list that can be managed directly within Reader. The asymmetry is “push”-style: users decide to share items with some of their contacts, but it’s up those contacts to actually subscribe if they wish (think “Incoming” stream on Google+, where people are added to a “See my Reader shared items” circle). This feature is brought to life by Dolapo Falola, who injects some much-needed humor into the Reader code: the unit tests use the Menudo band members to model relationships and friends acquire a (hidden) “ex-girlfriend” bit.

March 2009: After repeated user requests, (and enabled by more powerful ACL supported added by Susan Shepard) comments on shared items are launched. Once again Dolapo is on point for the frontend side, while Derek Snyder does all the backend work and makes sure that Reader won’t melt down when checking whether to display that “you have new comments” icon. The ability of the backend and user interface to handle multiple conversations about an item is stress-tested with a particularly popular Battlestar Galactica item.

May 2009: Bundles are launched, extended sharing from just individual tags to collections of feeds.

July 2009: Continuing the social learning process, the team (and Google) revamps the friends model once again, switching to a asymmetric “pull”-style (i.e. following) model. This is meant to be “pre-consistent” with the upcoming Google Buzz launch. Also included in this launch are better ties to Google Profiles and the ability to “like” items. In general there are so many moving parts that it’s amazing that Jenna’s head doesn’t explode trying to design them all.

Also as part of this launch, intern Devin Kennedy’s trigonometry skills are put to good use in creating an easter egg animation triggered when liking or un-liking an item after activating the Konami code.

August 2009: Up until this point, one-click sharing had mainly been for intra-Reader use only (though there were a few third-party uses, some hackier than others). With the launch of Send to (also Devin’s work), Reader can now “feed” almost any other service.

February 2010: The launch of Google Buzz posed some interesting questions for the Reader team. Should items shared in Reader show up in Buzz? (yes!) Should we allow separate conversations on an item in Buzz versus Reader? (no!) With a lot of behind the scenes work, sharing and comments in Reader are re-worked to have close ties to Buzz, such that even non-Reader-using friends can finally get in on the commenting action.

March 2010: Partly as a tongue-in-cheek reaction to social developments within Google, and partly to help out some Buzz power users who were complaining that all the social features in Reader were slowing it down, I add a secret (though not for long) anti-social mode.

May 2010: Up until this point, it was possible to have publicly-shared items but only allow certain friends to comment on them. Though powerful, this amount of flexibility was leading to complexity and user confusion and workarounds. To simplify, we switch to offering just two choices for shared items, and in either case if you can see the shared item, you can comment on it.

As you can see, it’s been a long trip, and with the switch to Google+ sharing features, Reader is on its fourth social model. This much experimentation in public led to some friction, but I think this incremental approach is still the best way to operate. Whether you’re a sharebro, a Reader partier, a Gooder fan, the number 1 sharer or someone who “like”-d someone else, I am are very grateful that you were part of this experiment (and I’m guessing the rest of the past and present team is grateful too). And if you’re looking to toast Reader for all its social ~~stumbles~~ accomplishments, the preferred team drink is scotch.

How I Overcame Bipolar II (and Saved My Own Life) - Forbes

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:47:34 -0400

How I Overcame Bipolar II (and Saved My Own Life) - Forbes:

(From http://onforb.es/mMbAZU)

One morning, two weeks into the challenge, I woke up. The haze in my mind had lifted. It was a clear, crisp, brilliant sunny day in my mind—the first such day of sunny internal weather for years.

I thought perhaps this was just a hypomanic phase that would only last a few days before the depression sank back in. So I didn’t get my hopes up. But this time, it felt much different than a hypomanic phase, which always had a very jittery, cranked-up, ungrounded feeling. Rather, for the first time in memory, I felt consistently happy, calm, energized, and grounded.

And it stayed. And stayed, and stayed. And—with the exception of a few down days here and there—it’s been that way ever since. Of course I have moods, just like everyone else. But they are normal moods, not the wild swings between suicidal despair and grandiose hypomania as before.

Pat Tillman’s Atheism

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:32:35 -0400

Pat Tillman’s Atheism:

(From http://bit.ly/rbg65e)

In the 2010 documentary film, The Tillman Story, the story of Pat Tillman and his tragic death at the hands of “friendly fire” is retold. Tillman was the NFL star who gave it all up to join the military cause in Afghanistan after being inspired by 9/11 to do something for his country. He did not do it for the glory or publicity, and gave up a lucrative football career for what he perceived to be a worthy cause. After his death the U.S. government implemented a publicity campaign to use Tillman’s death as a tool to promote the war as a cause so worthy that even a highly-paid NFL star believed it to be worth the sacrifice. What the government failed to mention is that Tillman was killed at the hands of his fellow soldiers during a “fog of war” incident in a steep and narrow slot canyon in which there was much confusion about where enemy fire was originating. It’s a very disturbing film to watch—infuriating in fact—and Jon Krakauer’s book, Where Men Win Glory, presents the story in excruciating detail in a compelling narrative.

Pat Tillman was an atheist. At his funeral his younger brother Richard got up to speak, visibly upset, noticeably inebriated, and with beer in hand proceeded to thank everyone for their warm sentiments, but upbraided those like Maria Shriver and Senator John McCain who made religious overtones in their sentiments, noting about his brother Pat: “He’s not with God, he’s fucking dead. He’s not religious. Thanks for your thoughts, but he’s fucking dead.”

Later in the film there is a radio interview presented with Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich, who was the Regimental Executive Officer at Forward Operating Base Salerno on Khost, Afghanistan, under which Tillman was serving at the time of his death, and who led the military investigation into Pat’s death. I found the following exchange to be among the most disturbing things in the entire film that was missed by most reviewers, starting in reference to the grieving Tillman family who were at the time vigorously pursuing an investigation into Pat’s death and the government cover up of it:

Kauzlarich: “These people are having a hard time letting it go. It may be because of their religious beliefs. I don’t know how an atheist thinks, but I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough. If you’re an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die what is there to go to? Nothing. You’re worm dirt. It’s pretty hard to get your head around that.”

Host: “So you suspect that’s probably the reason this thing [the family’s persistence in getting to the bottom of Pat’s death] is running on.”

Kauzlarich: “I think so. There’s not a whole lot of trust in the system or faith in the system.”

So…if you’re an atheist it means that you’re not going to buy into the belief that death—even a tragic, unnecessary, and friendly-fire death—will somehow be made acceptable by the belief that all will be made right in heaven where all the good Conservative Christian soldiers will meet up once again. This is very disturbing. What this knucklehead nincompoop is saying is that if the Tillman family were good Christians they would have gone along with the patriotic platitudes of the military in assuaging everyone’s grief by pretending that it was all done in the name of god and country. But since the Tillmans are atheists it means that they actually want truth and justice now! How inconvenient. How pathetic. And this is yet another point against religious belief: it leads you to blur your focus on the here-and-now and let slip your grip on reality, and allow yourself to be manipulated by those who have neither the conscience nor the courage to stand up for what is right and true.