Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: freakazoid on March 07, 2009, 05:37:44 PM
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HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIii! =D =D I'm currently at boot camp on our last week, in case you don't remember it is for the Navy, we graduate on Friday and then I get to stay in this town for A-school. Hooya last week!. 2 months of no contact, no idea what is going on now that Obama is the new president. Our Chief is one of the if no the hardest RDC here,which is why we are one of the best devisions. Just completed Battle Stations nights ago, so freaking tired the next day since it was an all night thing, but it was really fun. I had to reclassify my rating because of how much credit debt I have, which was the worst day. When us nukes were going at this special meeting we had to fill out a thing asking questions like have we ever been in jail or done drugs and stuff like that and one of the questions was if we had more than a certain amount of debt so I had to try to get a waiver approved for it. 2 weeks later I was called back over there and he told me it was denied, I was pretty depressed after that for a while. One of the reasons for joining was so I could get use the bonus money to pay my debt off and now I had to reclassify because of my debt. So I reclassified to be an AECF, which was one of the things I had looked into going into. I just can't wait till Friday. =D =D PEACE OUT EVVERYBODY!!
All you need in life is three things,food,water, and 8 count body builders.- PO :lol:
I have so much respect for him.
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Book Camp? :) The Navy is pretty hardcore!
I'm glad its working out for you! I remember Army boot camp, after the initial shock it was actually quite fun.
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Book Camp? The Navy is pretty hardcore!
:P
I'm glad its working out for you! I remember Army boot camp, after the initial shock it was actually quite fun.
I don't know about fun, but it has gotten better. The first few weeks, especially the first week, was pretty rough. "Oh you don't know. Drop, 8 counts begin. Come to the ready, mountain climbers begin."
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As a contrast, I had the nicest CC (Company Commander) in the whole place whn I was in. We got a radio our second week in and he bought us irons to crease our uniforms. We looked mighty funny marching at graduation with our one lonely "E" flag. =|
We had this kid from Arkansas. Dumb as a rock, caused us to fail EVERY inspection. So for our second to the last one a couple guys did all his stuff perfectly for him. The idjit thought they did his rack wrong, so he tore it apart and redid it,,, wrong. So the last inspection we took his stuff, bedding and all, hid it in the CC's locker and rolled up his mattress like he didn't even exist. We FINALLY passed one and got our only flag. :laugh:
Good luck! Don't worry, you didn't REALLY want to go to nuke school. =D
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By "reclassify" you mean you changed MOS? Not sure on Navy terminology.
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By "reclassify" you mean you changed MOS? Not sure on Navy terminology.
Yes, in my day we called it "rate" as in "My rate is ACEF." Not sure if their using the same terminology today.
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I went to boot at GL ('78). Special unit, though. I doubt it was any easier on us. We did everything all the others dir,
and then practiced at least 4 hours. I was in the color guard and carried that %^@! heavy Great Lakes flag. The Bears
games were pretty good though. We got to see a couple of those, and the parades were decent, too. Especially since we got turned loose for a couple of hours after we hit the finish. I think we were the only company in boot that got to have a few drinks along the way.
They tried to talk me into that nuke crap. I figured 4 years was enough to commit to, and the nuke track was 6.
AQ (Aviation Fire Control Tech). The rate no longer exists, but we took care of the weapons systems on aircraft (Nimitz).
I actually enjoyed my time spent serving. Would've re-upped if I hadn't been married. It ticked me off to be serving my country and still qualifying for food stamps.
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Yahoo for graduation. And to top it all off we got overnight liberty so I get to visit my family even longer. We went and visited Chicagp, was pretty sweet. :D
As a contrast, I had the nicest CC (Company Commander) in the whole place whn I was in. We got a radio our second week in and he bought us irons to crease our uniforms. We looked mighty funny marching at graduation with our one lonely "E" flag. undecided
You guys got a radio!! :O That sucks about only getting the battle E flag, :P We didn't make Hall of Fame, no one did, but we did get the CNO flag.
AQ (Aviation Fire Control Tech). The rate no longer exists, but we took care of the weapons systems on aircraft (Nimitz).
As an AECF I'm going to be an FC, I hear we get to shoot them off and test them, should be fun, :D
By "reclassify" you mean you changed MOS? Not sure on Navy terminology.
I don't know what a MOS is. Like 280plus said, we call it our rate.
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Well congrats, I figured boot camp would have killed you. What's with this internet access while still in boot camp? The day after graduation I was in front of the office doing various exercises for the sins of reading a book and drinking a soda. Laughing all the while mind you but still exercising. E-mail would have got us shot probably.
On the AECF, I would recommend the ET over the FC rate if you get a choice. Lots of good C schools and re-enlistment bonuses.
What's the Chief's name? Might know him.
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Did they give you the warning about getting stuck in a porthole?
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Too bad they closed the Playboy Club. When I was In Waukegan we used to go to Chicago for the weekends and Hugh would let active duty people stay at the club hotel for $20 a night. We had fuuuuun! =D
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What's with this internet access while still in boot camp?
Now I am no longer in boot camp, right now I am actually sitting on base where the A-school is at. My first post I was in boot camp but when we went to the NEX we where allowed to go over to the recruit heaven side, it has an arcade room, internet access and a subway, pizza hut, and a few other places to eat inside. Only got to do that twice.
What's the Chief's name? Might know him.
Chief Readus.
Did they give you the warning about getting stuck in a porthole?
No?
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Perhaps I'm a bit biased, but AT would have been a better rating. :P They have computers & email in boot camp, now ?!?!?!?!? Man, how things have changed since 1975........
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Great Mistakes!
I went to extreme lengths to NOT go to Great Lakes for ET A school when I got out of BE&E school in Orlando, I volunteered for sub duty and got to go to A school in Pensacola.
Good luck and I'll second the part about you didn't really want to be a nuke. Being a nuke sucks. Going to sea? Nukes standing watch 2-3 days before, In port? no shore power? Nukes steaming regular watches, no liberty. Back home? nukes still on steaming watch for two days just in case.
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You squids sure have it easy in boot. Radios, irons for your uniforms, ball games? Sheesh...
Congrats on your graduation, Freak. Good work.
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Freak,
Congratulations man! My buddy was trying to get onto subs, but couldn't because of his asthma (hadn't had it since a kid though). So he had to settle with carriers. He is in nuke school right now, I think. He may have just got done, come to think of it. He is in Charleston though.
Good luck with everything. Do they still haze you guys who haven't gone over the equator yet? I have heard some hellacious stories concerning that.
Thanks for serving. You should be proud. I'm sure your family is.
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1975 was my year too Thor, where'd you go to boot?
BTW, I (we) just lucked out and got a crazy E-6 Signalman for a CC. I doubt anybody else had irons for creasing the uniforms. We kept one complete set untouched/unworn for locker inspections and that's what we creased with the irons. The joke was you could drop them on the floor and they would fold themselves. =D
One time an insoector asked one of us, "How'd you get such nice creases in your uniforms?" The guy says, "IRON SIR!!" The inspector says, "You're not very smart son, the least you could have done is say you used a Wisk bottle." :laugh:
Most of the other companies didn't get a radio till like 5th week, some never did get one. They hated us. :cool:
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Great Mistakes!
I went to extreme lengths to NOT go to Great Lakes for ET A school when I got out of BE&E school in Orlando, I volunteered for sub duty and got to go to A school in Pensacola.
Good luck and I'll second the part about you didn't really want to be a nuke. Being a nuke sucks. Going to sea? Nukes standing watch 2-3 days before, In port? no shore power? Nukes steaming regular watches, no liberty. Back home? nukes still on steaming watch for two days just in case.
That's a bit over the top, IMO (3383 surface-ship reactor operator, onboard USS Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71 from Jul93-May97, following boot at NTC Orlando May-Aug91, ET 'A' and NNPS at NTC Orlando through Nov92, and Prototype Training in Ballston Spa NY through Jun93). Definitely nukes were first-on/last-off, maintaining steaming watches because no one wants a nuke ship in their harbor (or because there's no pier big enough to handle the carrier anyways, in a lot of our cases), but no liberty? Not at all - we just rotated duty days, same as every other department on the ship. On the carrier, we were able to take down one plant and leave the other up to run hotel loads, and have 1/3 of the department on duty every day on a rotating basis (and we were free to make arrangements with members of our division to either substitute duty days to get a longer stretch off at a time or, quietly, to pay someone what they were willing in order to take a duty day outright, which some people did). Can't speak for sub sailors, mind you - but on the carrier, nukes just had to deal with the first-on/last-off crap, not sacrifice liberty entirely.
In boot camp, we NEVER had a radio, and didn't get any geedunk or phone privileges until Week 6 IIRC. Took a trip offbase the weekend before Graduation Week, subject to good performance - our company went to a water park, which was better, IMO, than those who went to Disney/MGM, and had full access (off-duty) to phone and Exchange during that last week. We always had an iron for uniforms, though, and weren't permitted to keep an "inspection set".
Glad to hear things are working out for you, Freakazoid, even if you didn't get to go nuke - at least this way, you're not locked in for 6 years active duty, if you decide not to re-up. Hope you continue to enjoy your time in service, and take every educational opportunity you can!! Let the Navy pay for a degree, and do classes at sea whenever you can!
Come to think of it, take lots of tours in your port visits, too - one thing I really regret, out of all my port visits in Italy, was I never once made the trip to Rome. At least I got to Paris when we pulled into Cannes, and visited Bethlehem and Jerusalem during port calls in Haifa, although our liberty in Barcelona Spain was cancelled on account of rough seas (couldn't hook up the liberty barge for the boats, so we sat in port and looked out at the shore for 3 days. That sucked.). Go see as much of the world as they'll let you.
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Yes, don't be an idjit and never use your education benefits. When I went to my 30th HS reunion I was surprised to discover that of all the folks that went into the service (at least 15) I was the only one that went on to get a degree with the GI Bill money. That's a lotta scratch that's yours and it's just plain foolish not to use it up.
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In boot camp, we NEVER had a radio, and didn't get any geedunk or phone privileges until Week 6 IIRC. Took a trip offbase the weekend before Graduation Week, subject to good performance - our company went to a water park, which was better, IMO, than those who went to Disney/MGM, and had full access (off-duty) to phone and Exchange during that last week. We always had an iron for uniforms, though, and weren't permitted to keep an "inspection set".
Same here, but our trip off base was to a private lake. More like a company picnic. It was still fun. Heck, I even won some money at horseshoes and drinking.
An inspection set would've been nice. I don't know how many hours I spent on shoes and boots alone. I still remember setting shoe polish on fire to get that "ultimate shine".
All in all, it wasn't bad. I had a little trouble not laughing at some of the head games they tried on us. I flunked my swim test because I had to do 50 before I got in the water due to some imagined infraction. Funny thing is, I ended up on our company swim team a week later. I hadn't bothered learning how to float, and my arms weren't up to treading water that long I guess.
The use of your education benefits is wise advice. It saved me a ton, and my son is getting ready to use his. He just finished his time in the Marines.
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That's a bit over the top, IMO (3383 surface-ship reactor operator, onboard USS Theodore Roosevelt CVN-71 from Jul93-May97, following boot at NTC Orlando May-Aug91, ET 'A' and NNPS at NTC Orlando through Nov92, and Prototype Training in Ballston Spa NY through Jun93).
Hey, I was on TR with you! Probably never saw you though, your type doesn't come out of its hole much. I was in AIMD from Jan 95 to Dec 99.
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That's a bit over the top, IMO
Not so much for submarines.
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Um....wow. All I can say is wow. Internet access? A week before graduation?????????
After 3 months of marginal contact with the outside world via weekly mail calls (and all packages were inspected and any geedunk that wasn't healthy was removed), we got a half day of "family day" the day before graduation. We were allowed access to the PX with our family, unlimited payphone time (at our own expense), and were given a list of items approved for purchase.
Graduation instruction included something similiar to this:
"You will not run to your family and show ridiculous signs of outward affection! You will behave like a Marine! And if you throw your mother****ing covers into the air like this is some kind of gawd****ed mother****ing high school thing, so help me I will dig your asses right there on the grinder in your Alphas. Dumb ****ing ****ers think you're Marines already? See if I don't work your asses in the pit! ****ing retards!"
Or some other motivationally inspiring words to get us ready for our graduation.......
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Damn, I'm motivated just reading that! :laugh:
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jamis you'd have liked the gunny who lived here a while
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Wussy squids, with your intarwebz and phones at boot camp. :P I still wish I'd been a corpsman tho; still get to do fun Marine stuff, but everyone expects you to fall out on runs. :D Not to mention health care is apparently much more in demand stateside than blowing things up and killing people.....
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What's all this about getting a radio? Mind you I'm in the Army, so the only radio we got at Basic was a SINCGARS to practice on.
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That's how I remember it, too, Jamis. Very few privileges at all. Once we got soda from the fountain in the mess hall, but the DI that allowed that was a newby.
We even had one [expletive deleted] DI that said, while he was marching us to graduation, that there were a handful of us that he was going to pull from the ceremony and start back at T1. He just had to throw one last scare into us. He was also the only DI that none of us shook hands with and thanked after graduation. He stood all by his little 'ole lonesome, no one around him afterwards.
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That's how I remember it, too, Jamis. Very few privileges at all. Once we got soda from the fountain in the mess hall, but the DI that allowed that was a newby.
We even had one [expletive deleted] DI that said, while he was marching us to graduation, that there were a handful of us that he was going to pull from the ceremony and start back at T1. He just had to throw one last scare into us. He was also the only DI that none of us shook hands with and thanked after graduation. He stood all by his little 'ole lonesome, no one around him afterwards.
I was the mouse. Senior's pet. He'd pull me in the DI hootch and give me dounuts and coffee. The heavy would eyeball me through the door and make a finger-cross-the-throat motion....yeah I'd get dug for every one of those donuts.....
Senior "You know he's gonna dig you for those, right?"
me "Sir yes sir!"
Senior "So how many are you going to eat?"
me "Sir, this recruit's going to eat enough to make it worth the diggin, sir!"
Senior "Damnit, that's my boy!"
=D
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I went in on the Buddy Program with three friends. One was the mouse (retired after 24 as a GySgt.), and he used to give the rest of us a "head's up" on the scheduled pit calls. That made them easier to swallow.
The rest of the platoon went on thinking all pit calls were for infractions of one sort or another. We weren't about to out our inside man.
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save all your money for the first year, be very frugal after!
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Hey, I was on TR with you! Probably never saw you though, your type doesn't come out of its hole much. I was in AIMD from Jan 95 to Dec 99.
I came up to the hangar deck AT LEAST every two weeks to take a look at the sky, whether I needed to or not =D.
Small world, though, isn't it?
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What's all this about getting a radio? Mind you I'm in the Army, so the only radio we got at Basic was a SINCGARS to practice on.
Young pup.. I always had to pack a beat up old sometimes functional PRC (prick) 77 around on my back!
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Young pup.. I always had to pack a beat up old sometimes functional PRC (prick) 77 around on my back!
Well the SINGARS are sometimes functional also.
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I'll never forget, there was about 4 of us, maybe five, and one of us had discovered a little mechanical room off the main corridor to where all the racks were. On Saturday nights, after taps and everyone was asleep we would all sneak in there to play cards and smoke ciggies till the wee hours. We did this for at least a couple weeks. We would have gotten our asses in way deep *expletive deleted*it if we ever got caught. Well, the LAST time we did this we were in there and suddenly there was a noise outside the door. We all freaked out and, in our socks and skivvies, came screaming out the door to get back to our racks. We ran smack dab into a friggin' 2nd class PO in crackerjacks that noone had ever seen before and just like in the cartoons we all slammed on the brakes and because we had socks on pretty much slid one into the other in a line. You hadda be there to appreciate the scene. Anyhoo, we knew we were had so we all snapped to attention and the guy says, "What are you all doing?" Someone said, "Playing cards sir!" and he said, "Well, get back in your racks!" to which we all promptly complied. We figured we were going to be SOOOO SCREWED the next day when the word got out. Lo and behold, nothing happened, the guy never said a word to anybody about it as far as we could tell. I STILL owe that guy, whoever he was. :lol: