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Let me start off by saying hello and welcome. Whether you stay or go, read or not, post, spam, troll or anything of the sort is up to you. I am merely posting my thoughts, ideals, views and other things that i consider interesting little tidbits of information that I pick up during my day to day while here in the Air Force. Now with that said, If you are looking for anything even remotely considered as Sensitive Information, you are in the wrong place. This isn't that kind of blog. Yes, it is true I'm an intell student on a Joint operation base, and yes i have top secret clearance, I, however, am little more than a professional janitor awaiting further orders to go do some real ninja s**t. If you think you can steal anything useful from my blogs good luck, both I and my wingman proof read these to ensure nothing even remotely restricted gets leaked out. Now, with that little disclaimer said, we can begin:

In order for me to begin talking about my military experience and and personal views, and that is all that this journal is about, expressing my personal views, I need to go back. Way back. To my first decision on joining. See, I am 19 years old. I am married, and no, it's not out of a shotgun, baby on the way, Marry her or die, type deal. No, I did it the old fashion way. I met a girl, i didn't hate her, she could cook and the sex was great. So, i gave her a ring.

I'm kidding. It was much more romantic than that, however, the basis is still true and that is this: I, a college drop out with no real legal job to speak of and no means to make money, needed to support this young woman before I moved on. So began my journey to the recruitment office. I want it to be stated now above and foremost that I hate recruiters. I grew up an Air Force brat so I know quite a few stories about the ways a recruiter has screwed military personnel out of freedoms, cash, opportunities, and more often then not, their very lives. Needless to say meeting this man was not something to look forward to in my eyes. However, I needed to set up an appointment first.

I went online to find the nearest recruitment office. First off, the Air Force has a very delightful web page that makes everything look much more dramatic than it really is. Secondly, and much more relevant, some of it's information is obsolete, dated, or just plain wrong. I found that the nearest recruitment office was in the Carson City. A little over an hour away.

I picked up the phone, dialed the number, reluctantly, and got a nice message saying the line was no longer in use... Delightful. I tried several times before calling the Reno recruiters, who were a two hour drive away. That's not round trip. I got a hold of them, shocked that the number was right. The difficulty to get ahold of the recruiter was the first step that made me want to reconsider my military career. However, it was after my phone interview, during which I got some wonderful advice about drug use from a recruiter, that i was starting to look forward to it. Besides him being an hour away the guy was pretty cool. Really energetic happy guy that gave me better advice in a two minute phone call than my MTL has given me yet.
Anyways, I asked the Reno Recruiter for information on the Carson cell. He told me not to worry about it and started setting up my profile there. A week later, my mom comes in holding a business card. On it was a number written in blue ink above two numbers printed on the card stock. She informed me it was a recruiter from Carson. I was utterly perplexed that he hadn't been updated on the website, nor had the Reno people known of him. Turns out the Reno people just wanted me to DEP in there because they would get a bonus for it. None of which i would see. Dicks.

I made the phone call set up an appointment and then i was off to the races, so to speak.
A week past and my time to meet the recruiter came. He was a staff sergeant and judging by the many certificates, plagues and accalades on the wall of his office, he'd seen some bad bush as sec fo. (sec fo is short for Security Forces, which would be the MP's or military police.) I brought my prior Air Force dad and my lethargic older brother with me. My brother was considering joining as well. My dad was there to make sure i didn't get screwed over. After a talk with the recruiter, who crushed my dreams for a particular job set and basically told me that i'm a worthless bum, but that it was ok cause the Air Force will change that for me, I went home.

I walked two miles to the nearest public library, checked out as many practice and study books for the ASVAB that they would let me take and walked back home. I studied my a** off after that. I studied so much I missed my anniversary with my, well at that point, fiance. Feeling confident I called my recruiter and told him that I was ready. That weekend, I was taken to a base in Reno to take the ASVAB, the single test that could dictate what my job was in the military. A test that if i messed up, i would not be able to take again for at least, another two years, a test that determined if i even made it into the Air Force or if i was just wasting my recruiters time... These were the things being told to me by my recruiter as he walked me into the testing facility... yeah thanks, d**k.
Took the test found it to be relatively easy and went home. A few days later my recruiter calls and congratulates me on my test scores. Apparently, I did really well. He then tells me to come to his office. He never told me my score. I went to his office and again no score. I went to Medical Processing or meps and took a second test that i barely passed.(I actually slept through a good part of that test, woke up, and raced through it.) I passed the medical and set up a profile and all that jazz and went on my way.
Got back to Nevada, asked about my test scores and he distracted me with many other important but non-asvab related papers.
Once you swear into the military and wait to get your job, you get put into a program known as Delayed Entry Program (or Dep for short.) Once a month, all Airman waiting to go to basic go to the recruiters office. During this time, the recruiter is suppose to lead the group in a series of vigorous exercises that are meant to help get the trainee in shape before leaving for the basic. We played dodgeball. No. I'm not kidding, i played dodgeball, soccer, football and did a quick short ten minute work out. None of these things were as active as they sound. We'd work/play for about ten minutes, then rest for a half hour then repeat.
Jumping ahead...
As months passed I started planning my wedding, moved to a new town, and just prepared myself for the upcoming date to leave for basic. After being told to meet my recruiter at his office at twelve, and not have him show up till three and then dismiss the meeting completely because he forgot and had to pick up his dry cleaning, I left and went to in & Out and took the wife shoping. Finally, in the women's lingerie section of Target. I got that call. I left Oct 3. One month and eight days after my wedding... (which was beautiful and went off without a hitch.) So started to preparation. After some fighting with my wife and some other issues, It came time for me to leave. I learned all the information i was told to learn, I got my weight up so that i could pass the weight/height requirements that exist at meps though, technically, the Air Force doesn't have said requirements yet because meps is run by the Army and they do, all branches are subject to it.... Anywhoo, After all that s**t, I left. I went back to meps for a secondary check up. I arrived at 12:30 in the morning and had to wait to the next morning to go. So i got my key from a teenage kid behind the counter who I would have sworn i went to high school with if i wasn't on the other side of the country.
See, now, I'm the kind of guy that as a kid, i was so excited and nervous about the first day of school i stayed up all night. Well, the same was true for this. I was up almost all night however, around 5:30, a half hour before i was to get up, I passed out. It took two alarms, the room phone ringing and my cell phone to wake me up. I'm pretty sure the guy in the next room started banging on the wall too. I turned everything off and picked up the room line to hear a pissed off guy on the other end say, and I quote, "Aren't you suppose to leave, or do you just not give a ********?" Thinking that it was the kid at the front desk, I got pissed and was about ready to chew him out and run to the front desk and whoop some a**. However, the next line threw me. The man on the other line dropped his name. Chief master sergeant James Roy. Now, that frightened me cause he was Air Force. I didn't learn this till later, after I started basic, but the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force is Chief Master Sgt. James A. Roy. It scared the ******** out of me when i learned this for about two weeks until i saw a photo of the man.
Anyways, they sent a car to pick me up, took me to the Meps center, we waited outside for like twenty minutes, and then went inside. Besides some jokes about me being sleeping beauty and some other off color jokes at my expense, that was the worse that happened. As it turns out, i actually had to wait on them to be processed!
So, here is another ******** up part of my experience. I was asked to confirm certain information and, after telling my recruiter, joking with him, and telling him about it again, my recruiter did not update my information in the system that i married nor that I moved. Two big deals. SO! I changed all that information which took an hour, shitty... and signed a lot of contracts, bio metricly shitty, and had to wait. impatiently shitty.
After a quick briefing. In which i met the group of people that i would be traveling to basic training with, we left. We took a plane, had to catch a connecting flight, and a second connecting flight. See, here's the great part. My second connecting flight did it's final boarding twenty minutes before my first connecting flight was scheduled to land. It was also on the other side of the air port. Needless to say we missed it. ******** genius guys.
We waited and took our final plane and arrived really late at night. I'm still not sure when. They herded us all into a blob that was called a line for some reason and told us we had five minutes to call home and tell them we arrived safely. We did so, then proceeded to sign in. We had a few people not on the roster and without any of the paperwork our recruiters gave us. I'll go into detail about that later. Once everyone was accounted for, we loaded onto buses and off we went.

That was my first 10 months of being in the military, and I hadn't even started my first day.

More to come. Got to run.
Then i was on my way....