Remembering The Blog

I didn't forget about you guys, really. I just forgot about the blog. My apologies!

One month, no updates, and I forgot to write down the interesting things that have happened in that time, so bear with me while I journey around my memories for the details.
Actually, in the last couple weeks it's been hard to do anything without being interrupted/distracted by someone here regarding work. I need to hide to get anything significant done.

I'll start with the thing everyone is probably thinking about. "When are you going on vacation???"

There have been a lot of things going on here lately, between increased activity from the outside (mortars, etc), an accident, network-related problems (my job) and the future.

Oh right, vacation. Some of you wanted to know when I'm coming home.
The answer --> I don't know. :)

It'll definitely be some time in October, but I don't know if it will be the first week or middle. But there are a few things I want to do when I get home and can't wait!
1. See family and friends.
2. Play hockey & volleyball.
3. Eat a real Philly cheesesteak.
4. Eat artichoke and beef fondue.
5. Drive my CAR on a SMOOTH road, with the windows down, and not have to worry about all the dust that could get inside.


So what has been going on in the life of Gavin in Iraq?

I'll start with the typical / expected details:
I'm burned out at work. I work too much and the results don't end in a fix much of the time. If I had the time to learn about the backend equipment and software better, I could possibly fix things up a little without relying on others to do it. It's not that the work is hard anymore, I understand a lot of it. It's just that there are a lot of things going wrong that are beyond what I work on and I don't want to mess with it until I know I won't make the bad worse. There are fixes, but they either take too long to do, are temporary, cost too much, or we're not allowed to do it.

A week ago a helicopter crashed in/near one of the housing areas. I did not see the damages done, if any, but I heard that four people were killed. :(

In the next 3-4 days following, in probably unrelated incidents, we saw a large increase in attacks on the base. The "incoming" alerts and anti-mortar guns went off at least 4 times a night and I noticed at least 7 on one night. There were also a few during the day.
On one of the days, there were a number of soldiers wearing body armor.


On the bright side, I met a really talkative (not in a bad way) contractor who happens to have a lot of contacts for other contracting jobs all over the world. He gave me all kinds of info on jobs and said he could guarantee me one job. I have to find out a lot more on the details, but I am liking the sound of the job. It would place me in Africa, working 4 months at a time, approximately 40 hours a week, making good money. I worked 5 months here at an avg of 75-80 hours a week, so 4 months at 40 hours is not bad at all!
Even if the Africa job doesn't pan out, there are a lot of other possibilities. I'm also going to speak with a guy here who had offered me a job and see if he still has something available. I wouldn't mind staying here if the pay was better.