Monday Squared

Another day in paradise ;)

Not too much has been going on this morning. Greg reenlisted this morning. I thought it was supposed to be this afternoon, so I didn't get to go. He said that they changed it from this afternoon to this morning and that he was going to call me but he didn't. Oh, well. At least it is done and now he'll get his bonus and can pay off his boat. Saves on the paperwork for the boat, too.

I'm not feeling in the mood to do much of anything today. I'm supposed to debrief MAC Tretchler on his fitrep today, but it is with LT Reavy, who has moved to another building, and I can't get hold of her--or anyone else, for that matter--on their old or new extenstion. It is somewhat frustrating. They are all in the process of moving because Fred Barranger and the Admiral seem to think that there is all kinds of room over here. In my opinion, it's just another way to fuck over their people. If they really cared about us, they wouldn't make us jump through hoops like this all the time for nothing. It seems like every word out of the mouth of the upper echelons of NPDC is how they are all for supporting the students, yet every action they take does just the opposite. Demagoguery is what it is--they say things to sound good, and then they do something that isn't good. Gotta look good for those cameras, whether or not what they actually do is the right thing, the best thing, or even what they said they were going to do. So, once again the students end up getting f****d over because NPDC doesn't have its act together--nor will it ever at this rate. I flashback to just last week when NPDC was all upset because of the number of student UICs that TSC-HR had picked out to use. What they don't understand is that if we consolidate UICs, students will end up getting f****d over, again, because they will have to be serviced by whatever PSD services the UIC that we assign--which means that a student in Norfolk could possibly have to drive to Oceana to be serviced by a PSD, even though there are 2 PSD's on this base. All because Fred Barranger, who thinks he knows everything but doesn't have a clue, thinks that we are building an empire! The man is a moron! Once again the student loses out because some GS-15 thinks he knows everything, and wants to prevent empire building, when all he does is screw over all the students.

This training revolution has got to change. We aren't doing what is in the best interest of training. We aren't doing what is in the best interest of the Sailors. We aren't doing what is in the best interest of the Navy. We aren't doing what is in the best interest of the country. Until we get off of our high-horse and take a real look around at how we are messing up training, we are going to continue down this path, and this path is going to lead us to the most expensive failure the Navy has ever seen in the training world; it's going to lead us to the most under-trained fleet ever, and our failures are going to resound in lives and equipment lost. Try to convince people of that when the only thing they see is $. It's impossible. All instructions in the Navy are written in blood, they say, and when we finally realize the training revolution is failure, we will only realize it when the memo's declaring it dead are written in blood, too.

God, help us, and God help those poor sailors whose lives are going to be sacrificed for a flawed premise.