Monday, October 09, 2006

You thought you could get rid of me...HAAA!!!!

So I'm back. The last month or so has been a bit hectic. The base just finished it Operational Readiness Inspection, and I've found myself in a another new job. Let me elaborate:

For all of my civilian tax paying friends, an ORI happens about every two years. It is a compliance inspection to ensure that a base isn't running amuck. There are "regulations" for everything, and as a base does its day to day business, they should be following these regs.

During an ORI a team of highly trained military members comes to a base and inspects every single process of every single unit on the base. No stone is left un-turned. It is a very stressful time for the base. After the week-long inspection. The inspection team assembles as much of the base population in a large auditorium for and announces grades for each unit and those grades factor into an overall grade for the entire base. The overall atmosphere is like a pep rally in high school. The only down side to this is that your dirty laundry is aired to the entire base if your unit gets a bad mark. Well our unit got an excellent rating which contributed to the base also getting an excellent rating. I should mention that the ratings range from Outstanding, Excellent, Satisfactory, Marginal and Poor. So all in all, we kicked butt.

This should be my last ORI. I drop my retirement paperwork in about 20 days, and my last day in uniform should be around the 14th of August. Now...

I think I mentioned awhile back that I had changed jobs. By trade I'm a heating and AC guy. Since April, I've been the Unit Deployment Manager. I'm a travel agent sending people in my unit to war. Well, last week, I was "promoted" to being in Sheppard AFB. Definitely not a position I jockeyed for, but my bosses think I can handle it. So here I am.

The last year of a military career should be stress free. We train NATO pilot's here and they crash from time to time. If that happens, yours truly will have his team of experts set up a mobile command post for the NTSB and all the big dogs on base. You think that is stress free??? I think not...


Anyway, I'm done ranting. I'm back now, so check in often.

3 comments:

Wendy said...

wow. A lot has been going on. But, you are so close now...how excited are you?

MomThatsNuts said...

The countdown begins...and Cadet is thinking Marines at this point...I am going to support whatever he wants to do, but I sure do wish he would reconsider the military. It sounded like a good idea til we were a year out...now it seems real and scary...Im glad your still blogging I MISS YOU...nice video...

mom

Phil said...

It sounds hectic Paul, but that's great you have your paperwork in.

Rockin Video
Sorry I'm never around, I do this to a lot of people. I seem to run in cycles