Oerdin's Iraq thread - Continued

[Chemical Ollie]

A policeman gets better pay than a scientist? Here, I think they get about the same, if you compare a B.Sc in a junior position with the average traffic cop. Both have a 2-3 year degree, but the cop got paid during his studies while the scientist had to take loans or live by parents/savings. On the other hand, the scientist (in a private business) would make much more than the cop if he get promoted. Public work get lousy pay-off.

One of my teen buddies (not the UN peace keeping veteran) was a leutenant in the army (Panzer Grenadiers), working/studying his way to captain when the government shut down his regiment due to end of Cold War budget cuts, so he had to choose between moving faaaaaaar away or changing his career. So he spent a couple of years in the police academy and is now a weapons instructor/patroling cop in the local town.

I have a Master's degree and a job at the mid-level of a private enterprise. No personnel of my own, but quite many budget responsibilities, like 250 k€ annually. And I certainly get better pay than any government employee, except the real hotshots. like town mayors and parliament members. I passed my former school headmaster in pay when I was 25.

[Dinner]

Shocking as it is Highway Patrol Officers make a pretty penny more then scientists. CHP has a nice union which lobbies to the state house for cushy raises though, as debeest mentioned, this will likely come to an end soon. They can slow the rate of increase but they'll have a hard time getting the unions to give up that which they already have.

[pchang]

Depends upon the type of scientist and what the scientist is willing to do. Geologists are not much prized in the US, but microbiologists with promising research on new drugs are highly prized.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Shocking as it is Highway Patrol Officers make a pretty penny more then scientists. CHP has a nice union which lobbies to the state house for cushy raises though, as debeest mentioned, this will likely come to an end soon. They can slow the rate of increase but they'll have a hard time getting the unions to give up that which they already have.

I think that public servents (cops, firefighters, and teachers) SHOULD make more than scientists.

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Shocking as it is Highway Patrol Officers make a pretty penny more then scientists. CHP has a nice union which lobbies to the state house for cushy raises though, as debeest mentioned, this will likely come to an end soon. They can slow the rate of increase but they'll have a hard time getting the unions to give up that which they already have.

...and the best part is, it's only slightly more dangerous than your current job!

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Oerdin
We were forced to record the sermon today though the sound quality was some what poor...

Techno tip - don't know if you can do this or know already...

Speech recordings using a single microphone sound lousy because we've got 2 ears and expect to hear speech with both of them. Just bouncing the same signal onto both channels of a stereo doesn't alter this...

HOWEVER... add a delay of 1-5 milliseconds on one of the channels, and the speech becomes a lot deeper.

Like I said, don't know if this is feasible for you... although if you can sample the tape onto a laptop then something like Nero's WAV editor could do it pretty damn quick.

[SIZE=1]
The military has a shortage of translaters so they hire locals to fill in the blanks though generally they use them in towns which are far from where they live. A few guys will only work in their home towns and one 18 year old I worked with in Al Kut got his mother shot by insurgents. That particular guy was really to young to be a translater. I kept telling him not to tell any of the locals his name or where he was from but he kept doing it any way. Thus the shooting.

ROUGH! Now THAT'S the sort of story that should be getting the publicity.

[Dinner]

There is a dirty rumor going around that our replacements will be delayed a month in getting here.

[Lonestar]

Oerdin, you know how you should treat rumors in the military.


Like they're Gospel.

[oerdin's sis]

Originally posted by Oerdin
CHP has a nice union which lobbies to the state house for cushy raises though, as debeest mentioned, this will likely come to an end soon. They can slow the rate of increase but they'll have a hard time getting the unions to give up that which they already have.

So does my grocery union, but we are getting slammed from every angle.... Hope Wal-Mart doesn't want to get in to "public safety"!! Hope my contract doesn't go on a 5 month strike, with no pay!!

[Dinner]

It is no longer a rumor. The CO said USACAPOC (the big whigs back in Fort Bragg who are in charge of Psyop) hasn't gotten a finalized list of the people who are deploying and they haven't even began to issue orders to people so our relief has been delayed 30 days. They've only had eight months to plan this so I can see how they didn't have enough time.

This could potentially screw me in several way not least of which is having to stay in this crap hole even longer. Number one the CHP only tests once per year and their written test is given in October. It now seems like I will miss that date. The 304th Psyop Company in Sacramento is scheduled to deploy in April with their stop lose order taking effect in January, however, my current stop lose order doesn't end until 90 days after I go home. If we don't get home until November then the current stop lose won't end until Febuary. That means these bastards may try to send me on another deployment by continually keeping me in stop lose status.

In other news I had to explain the relationship to showing up for work and getting paid to my translater. I gave him the written counciling that the 1SG told me to and I also explained to him that he would no longer get the $200 per month for living on post unless he slept every working night on post. Last month Shukar only slept on post a total of four nights but he still wants to recieve the full $200. I explained to him that would not be happening in the future nor would he recieve pay for days which he didn't show up to work. This upset him but I remained firm. The $200 extra is to be on call 24 hours a day and since he simply leaves and goes home then he is not on call and thus will not paid extra. If he wants the extra money he will have to do the work required to get it. Further more there will be no more free days off except for the one day per week he agreed to in the contract. He always seems to have a reason as to why he really needs one or two extra days off; from now on if he doesn't work then he will not get paid for the day.

This may seem hard nosed but when a translater gets paid $200 extra Titan Corp charges the government $1000 extra. Plus the cost to the government for each of those days Shukar would have gotten paid but not worked would no doubt cost many times more then his salary in contractor charges which tax payers would have to pay. I'm tired of hearing excuses about why he can't show up for work and I'm tired of paying him for work he didn't do. From now on adsenteeism will hit him in the pay check.

[Lonestar]

Teach the Prole a lesson. You could be a Foreman!

[Dinner]

Goodie my car battery died; you might wonder why (good question). The Singar radios which I have in my humvee only work if they have a "fill" in them. The fill ia basically the algorytheme which tells the radio which frequency to "hop" to at what time so that your communications will be encrypted. If you don't have the right fill then you will not be able to talk to anyone on the net. Simple right?

Wrong, the hub battery keeps you from losing your fill when the radio is turned off but the Army hasn't had fill batteries to issue to teams for several months now. Or at least the active duty has been refusing to share them with us if they do have them. It doesn't help that the active duty guys have been issued a new radio set which uses a different battery then the old radio set which we reservists are still issued. The end result is that I have to keep the radios turned on or go through the lengthy process of filling the radio encryption each time I start the car. Leaving those hulking piece of ****e radios on has sucked the car's battery dry.

[johnj92131]

So what do they have you do for the day when your Humvee or radio is down?

[Dinner]

I jump start the humvee and go out any way. I just make sure not to turn the humvee off.

Yesterday, I was going up to the division headquarters so I could use the classified e-mail system to e-mail my daily report when a Captain I know said he had something he wanted to show me. He pulled out a gold plated AK-47 that supposedly used to belong to Uday Hussein and was taken off of Uday's dead body when he was killed in his safe house here in Tikrit. The Commanding General was out of town so the Captain had taken the Golden AK out of the CG's office as was showing it off to every body.

I realized I'd spent half a year in and around this part of Iraq but I had never bothered to visit Uday & Qusay's safe house or Saddam's spider hole. I know that Saddam's spider hole has had a large cement slab put over the top of it so there really isn't much to see there but it might be worth driving over to Uday's safe house just to say I've been there.

[Barinthus]

Yeah! And take a pi$$ in a corner somewhere so you could say you did it on his house