Devin Noel's blog

Tera’s Kuwait Visit (book)

Ξ February 25th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |

 

 

Well I’m in Kuwait for 3 weeks of training although it stinks having to be away from Devin for this long I’m loving

Kuwait. Week one I stayed on Airfjan base in Tent city I had a tent all to myself and loved it. I met a great group of guys that were also on base for classes. We hung out and played cards together after classes and just had fun together I was sad when they left but we exchanged email addresses and I’m hoping to keep in touch with them.  Friday I ran into Eddie who a Army guy I met line dancing when I was here in December he let me know line dancing was Saturday night and he hoped to see me there.  Friday night I Hung out at the MWR with my card guys as that was the last night they were going to be around. Then after Cards I headed back to the tent to finish up some homework.

 

Saturday I went and got the WORST pedicure and Manicure I’ve ever had. I think the woman who gave them to me had something against me even though I’ve never met her. She made my fingers and toes bleed I was walking funny the rest of the week. Saturday night I went out Line dancing and had the time of my life but I realized one major thing. If I wear the same pants line dancing again I have to wear a belt with them.

 

Sunday I don’t do much ran into Jim ( a guy I work with on

Kabul) we had lunch and chatted about anything and nothing then I hit the MWR to say hi to Devin and submit my homework.

 

Monday was the first day of my System Administrator class. I met John from

Camp Buering he’s another ITT employee who was in class with me. He was my savior for the week. He helped hook me up with a place to stay Monday night and rides to and from base all week so I was able to see wonderful downtown Kuwait and it’s been great. Monday night he helped me get my stuff packed up and took me out to dinner with him and a lady who works at the ITT help desk in

Kuwait we had a pretty good time then he dropped me off at another ITT persons house where I spent the night.

 

Tuesday after class John and I picked up my stuff from the ITT gentleman’s house and moved me to Heather and Tom’s house. It was also Tom’s Birthday so the four of us all went out to a great Japanese restaurant called Wasabi’s I had some great Sushi there and an Awesome salad with crab sushi and avocado’s it makes my mouth water just thinking of it. After Dinner we went back to Tom and Heathers where I got the grand tour of the house and promptly started drooling. I have realized I could easily live in

Kuwait even if we didn’t end up staying in a place as elegant as Tom and Heathers the default ITT apartments were still 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms it would be sooo nice to have that much space again. I could believe they are larger then our house on Kwaj was.

 

Wednesday, After class John and I came back to the house followed by Jay a coworker of Johns we waited for Heather to get home so we could give her a ride to a friends house where she and Tom were babysitting for the night. After dropping Heather off we went to the Airport so John could pick up his insurance papers for his car. We ate at Frudruckers which is the first time I’ve ever eaten at one of those it was decent. The three of us (John, Jay and myself) all chatted and they gave me some ideas of what their base is like. After we were finished  eating John and I started to leave but realized we couldn’t find his parking ticket. We spent about ten minutes looking for the devilish piece eof paper when he decided we’d see how much it is for parking without it so we drove up to the line and our jaws dropped when we found out it was 10KD for parking without a ticket (about 35$ USD) So John dropped me off at the ticket spot hoping I could cheat and push a button to get a new ticket, no it didn’t work more like I was to much of a chicken to do it while there were cars in the line so I never actually tried to push the button. John went back to where we parked to see if the ticket fell out of the car while we were entering or exiting the vehicle. When neither of us had any luck I went back to the car and we searched it again about when we were about to give up I got out of the car to look under my chair and floor mats because who knows. I had already run my hand around the seat and looked under the chair as I was sitting in it. Low and Behold, all the way under my chair is the parking ticket how it got their we shall never know but we were relieved there wasn’t going to be a giant fee for parking. We pulled up to the parking thing and a Kuwaiti driver was irate that we made it in front of him so he started flapping his arms honking his horn and flashing his bright’s at us it was mildly amusing. Even funnier was once we got up to the Parking booth John started up a long conversation with the attendant their making the Kuwaiti even more frustrated. After we got out of the line the Kuwaiti got next to us on the road flapping arms at us and probably cussing us out in some language we didn’t understand. Other then that it was a pretty uneventful ride home and late when I got back so I passed out.

 

Thursday Tom and I went out to the Hard Rock Café for dinner. This was another first time in a restaurant for me as I’ve never eaten at one of these before either. He had an awesome steak with a very interesting topping I had a rib eye. My rib eye had great flavor but I think there was more fat then steak on it also. We were going to hit the Mall after dinner but as we were looking for a place to park a collection of about 30 kids with foam spray accosted the Porsche and sprayed it with Junk. Come to find out this weekend is Kuwaiti liberation weekend and everyone is celebrating. So we turned around and went back to the house and watched TV.

 

Friday I rode home with Kim a girl I met in CRC and was roommates with on our way out here. It was a nice ride and we are hoping to catch up and do something together before I head out of here.  Friday night Heather Tom and Myself went to a restaurant called Thai Chi where the serve Thai and Chinese food. It was great food and the first time I’ve had Thai in a restaurant. We also had these great fruity cocktails. Toms had mint and apple in it, mine was a tropical concoction with pineapple and coconut and some other stuff, Heathers was Lemons grass. All of them were great.  Heather and I both ordered a curry dish which was excellent and Tom had Pecking Duck which was good. Calling the duck good from me is allot because I’ve never been a big duck fan. Friday night Heather and Tom pooped out on me early so I stayed up until all hours of the night watching survivor.

 

Saturday, was a lazy day Tom and I hung out around the house not doing a whole lot most of the day I caught up on my internet surfing and looked for a good pair of boots. He took a nap. Later He washed the Porsche and I kept him company and pet his stray cats that hang around the House. Kim was supposed to call me around 5pm for us to hang out but when I still hadn’t heard from her by 6:30 Tom and I went out to grab dinner groceries and a few other errands. We ate at a nice Lebanese restaurant with awesome atmosphere, and great food. Then we hit the grocery store. It’s amazing how much I’ve missed grocery shopping I was drooling over nearly everything. We wandered a mall and I picked up something for a friend back home.  After we got back to the house it was my turn to pass out early so I went to bed.

 

Today (Sunday), Tom and I drove around

Kuwait City taking pictures and enjoying the wind in our Hair. We went to a great little Italian restaurant on the waterfront for lunch. On the way back to the house we watched a few people having foam battles between cars. The kids would hang out the car windows spraying foam at the cars next to them. The roads were covered in this stuff, then some of the kids used silly string for it also. Now we’re back at the House and I’m waiting for Kim to hopefully call me back so we can catch up with each other tonight. Tomorrow I’m due to head back to Airfjan for the next and last week.

 

Australia ho!

Ξ February 21st, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |

Well, Tera and I finally decided when/where to take our vacation. Were looking at going down under for about 2ish weeks here in Mayish. Haven’t really checked to see if we can get the time off yet, so it may get pushed back a bit, but at least we finally have tentative plans. My Aussie connections reccomended Sydne for a week then Cairns for a week, which sounds like a good idea to me. Starting to surf around and figure out what all we want to try and do, shoot me an E-mail if you have any really good suggestions.

 

Vista, first impressions

Ξ February 19th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ IT |

So, I spent my day off doing a clean install of Vista onto my laptop. It had been getting pretty crufted up and in need of a re-install, but I held off because I knew my MS Action Pack subscription containing Vista was coming in soon.

Initial impressions are they just slapped a nice shiny coat of new on it for newness sake. Ya it looks a bit better, but I’d say it’s less than the NT to 2K upgrade, maybe even less than 2k to XP. Everything has a failing idiot friendly feel to it. To do anything, you get piles of windows and popups to slog through. More and more barriers are thrown up to actually administer and maintain the system.

They re-organized most of the filesystem, but left shortcuts scattered all over pointing from the old location to the new ones. It has a very kluge feel to it. To top it all of, users don’t even have permissions to good chunks of the filesystem, such as not being able to click on shortcuts to wherever they hid the new start menu folders.

Major problems and compatibility issues

• Nvidia drivers suck. UT 2004 works, I can barely run Half-Life, & I’m afraid to try and run any more recent games.
• The built in audio drivers work, but suck for gaming. I was missing half the sounds in Counter Strike the other night. Not a huge deal, as because sound had been working, I neglected to install the latest drivers from Dell.
• TrueCrypt actually works… kind of. Officially they say it doesn’t. However I’ve used it to read/write to an encrypted volume. The problem occurs when you try and dismount the volume, the system bluescreens (including when shutting down or rebooting).

I’ll probably keep it installed and push forward. Whether or not it’s actually better, we’ll all end up running it eventually.

 

It’s almost starting to get comfortable outside

Ξ February 19th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Middle East |

The past couple days have almost been warm enough to go without a coat, nice sunny & clear. So of course it makes sense that yesterday when I woke up there was about 4” of fresh snow overnight.

Nothing really new or exciting here other than the cheap mini-fridge we just got.

 

Why I want a Toyota truck

Ξ February 15th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |

Top Gear – Toyota Hilux (need a decent non-modem connection to view the video)

I’d love to get a diesel Hilux some day, but you really can’t import em to the US. A Tacoma is basically the same thing, but you can’t get them in diesel.

 

Human endurance testing 1, Devin 0

Ξ February 1st, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |

Well, a day or so after getting home, Tera comes down with a nasty case of the Kabul Crud. So naturally about a week after getting home I’m in bed with a fever, body aches, runny nose and the usual works. One of the nastier flu/cold cold bugs I’ve had, but I’m alive and recovering, finally.

Not much new here other than batteling the bug for the past pushing 2 weeks.

Well, the weather did warm up. It only dips below freezing late at night right now, and most of the snow and ice has melted off except for in the shade. I expect it to get cold again (allegedly there was about 2 feet of fresh snow sometime in February last year), but won’t complain too much if it doesn’t.