A Lot to Cover

Instead of doing lots of little posts about stuff I want to post about, I am going to to a somewhat large post today. My first topic shall be my companies field trip.

On July 25th, My entire company was planning to go to Everland amusement park. But since it is the middle of monsoon season it was raining. Imagine that. So instead we went to the Coex Mall. This mall is enormous. It has it's own theater and 4 hotels attached to it. We stayed there from about 1:30 PM to 7:00 PM which was more then enough time for most everybody. I took some pictures there but most of them didn't turn out very well.

These are both pictures of buildings outside the mall.

The second thing I have to discuss is the stupidity of getting drunk. Sunday night at 1:30 am, our entire battalion was called to formation. We didn't have a clue what was going on but we figured that we were going to get in some trouble because somebody did something stupid. We were practicing the military formation of hurry up and wait for roughly a half hour before our commander called us to attention and told us to gather on him. He proceeded to tell us that someone got too drunk at the bar on post and when someone tried to help him out and back to his room he got angry. The drunk soldier hit the bartender and pushed an MP, which is considered assault, which is a minimum sentence of 3 years, then he fled the scene. Our commander just wanted us to be aware of what happened instead of hearing all sorts of rumors. Either way I was none to pleased to get up to hear about how bad one guy screwed up because of alcohol.

You may have heard that President Bush recently visited the ROK. One of the guys in my shop was able to go and see him speak at U.S. Army Garrison (USAG) Yongsan, which is one of the biggest posts nearby and a place where visit frequently to buy anything. I was looking at pictures of Bush's visit on yahoo news and saw this one.

 

See the guy in acu's in the lower left side with the black hair and big smile. That is the guy from my shop. He shook the president's hand and talked with him for a moment. We all thought it was cool that his picture was on yahoo.

The last thing I have is a picture of more gear that I got today.

 

You may remember the last post I made about joining the infantry, well I have just received more gear. This is extreme cold weather gear and acu ammo, grenade, and random carrying pouches. All together this is 30 pieces of new equipment.

That's all for now. A few more posts and I should be all caught up. Have a wonderful day.

Any PC, Any Coordinates, Any Time. Yeah Right.

I will apologize to anyone who may work at geek squad or know someone who works there in advance for this post.

This story begins roughly two weeks ago when my computer decided that it would be a good idea to spontaneously combust. Nothing I tried to do fixed the problem. After a week of no computer the reboot and system recovery discs that I got when I bought my laptop came in the mail from home. I didn't hold out very high hopes of them working but I figured it was worth a try. Needless to say they didn't do a thing.

Along with those discs came a folder from geek squad that had a fancy little card with their number and motto: "any pc, any brand, any coordinates, any time." Ok, I could give them a call. I knew that they wouldn't be able to do anything to help me, but maybe they could give me an idea of what caused my computer to go on strike.

So I pick up the phone and of course get an automated service. After going on a great expedition through a jungle of menu's (which took roughly 15 minutes)I finally got connected to a person.

"Hello. Welcome to the geek squad mission control center. This is agent so-and-so. How can I assist you today?"

Wow. How do I respond to that. Live long and prosper. I don't really know. Just because you work for a place called geek squad doesn't mean you have to be a geek there buddy.

Anyway, I tell him the problem and ask if he has any idea what may be causing it. His response - "Have you tried pressing control, alt, delete or the escape button?"

So that's the infinite wisdom of the geek. If all else fails use esc. Yeah thanks buddy. I'll get right on that. No I didn't say any of that although I really wanted to. Instead I replied with a simple yes.

He then proceeded to ask me my name phone number and address. I told him I was currently stationed overseas in Korea so he asks for my U.S. home address, which I give him. Then he asked if he could send an agent to my home to take a look at the computer.

Where you not just paying attention or do you plan on sending an agent over here? I did reiterate the fact that I was indeed stationed in South Korea as in the country and not the new 51st state of Korea.

Agent Geek then says he will not be able to help me anymore over the phone.  Ok Have a nice day then, and I hung up after a great half hour conversation.

I was extremely worked up after this. That was a half hour that would have been better spent banging my head against the wall. I could have gotten the same information out of the wall.

Needless to say it will be quite a while before I call geek squad again. And if agent ctrl, alt, delete is reading this, move out of your parents house and get a real job where you can respect yourself.

I'm Back!!!

  Well, I am back from my long and very unwanted blogging vacation. I was none too pleased when my computer took a nosedive on me. I ended up buying a new one. A Sony Vaio to be precise. Although it is not the same as my old Gateway it has many nice features.

Anyway. I know I have so much to tell you all, but I can only remember a few things. Things like my hatred for the geek squad, going to the range, a trip into Seoul, and even a formation at 2:00am. Good times. But unfortunately I have some other stuff I have to do, so this is all you, my faithful readers, get for now. I just wanted to let you know I am back. Yay!

Computer Problems

This is Andy's mom, stepping in to pass some news from Andy. He is having computer problems. No - the picture above is not his computer, but it did smell hot. Then - the screen went white and now it doesn't work. I sent his reboot discs to him, but it will take about a week to get there and he doesn't hold out much hope for it helping. In the meantime, no more blog updates from him for now.
He did say that it is Monsoon season, so it's raining a lot. He just told me he nearly drowned while out on his run!
Hopefully he will get this computer problem fixed so we can get some blog updates again!

What A Year It's Been

I can't believe it's already been a year. Yes indeed it was 1 year ago today that my life got flipped upside down when I began my U.S. Army career. I have experienced so many things in the last year, I just wish that I could put remember everything and share it all. I know that this gets said a lot, but there are some things that I have experienced that someone not in the military just wouldn't understand.

I began my Army career at Basic Combat Training at Fort Jackson, SC. I was in 4th Platoon "Night Stalkers", Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 39 Infantry Regiment.

Like most new soldiers I was not looking forward to BCT. It had it's hard times and it had it's good times.

There was hard times

  

But there was also fun times

(pugil training and victory tower)

I even got to eat some MRE's

After 9 weeks of enduring everything the drill sergeants could throw at me, I was ready to graduate. And on September 27, I graduated from basic training . . . 

 

and got to see my family again.

After BCT I moved on to Advanced Individual Training, at Fort "useless" Eustis. Simply for the fact of not making a novel out of this post I will direct you to this post about my time and experiences there.

And that brings me here. On May 7th I began my deployment in South Korea. I have already had many more experiences here which you can read about in earlier posts.

For the most part I have enjoyed the last year. There were points when I had wondered if I had made the right choice and there were times when I just wanted to go AWOL. But I stuck with it and am happy I did.

I am also happy to announce that I am no longer wearing this on my chest

but instead am wearing this . . .

  Yes, I have been promoted to Private First Class. It has a nice ring to it. Pfc Andrew Bruins.

The arms inspection is over. It ended on Friday. I never really had any contact with the inspectors, which was good. Overall my company only got 2 or 3 unsatisfactory ratings which was really good.

The last thing I have for you is that monsoon season has started. It rained Wednesday, Friday and today. There is also a typhoon right off the coast of South Korea that is going to hit us sometime this week. That ought to be fun.

Andy

Hooah! It's an Army thing.