Streaming My Consciousness

This is from a blog post from a french infantry unit stationed with a US unit in Afghanistan. I’ve translated it for the benefit of those who don’t speak French (and as an exercise for my own language skills – it’s been a while!)

TO OUR AMERICAN BROTHERS IN ARMS

For some time now we’ve been sharing our lives with two units, the first and the fourth company of a prestigious American infantry battalion which shall remain unnamed due to military secrecy. To the average person, it’s a unit just like any another. For those of us who live with them and have gotten to know them, we know now that we have had the honor to live alongside two of the most famous units of the U.S. Army. Units that were presented to the world in a series of films about “Ordinary men. Extraordinary times.“

Who are these soldiers from across the Atlantic, what are their daily lives and what support they provide daily to the men of OMLT? Few of them belong to Easy Company, the company that is the focus of the television series. It is now known as ECHO Company, and has become a support and logistics company.

A distinct accent. They are American. Not to say that they do not speak English. How many times did I need to write down what I tell them rather than lose precious minutes trying several pronunciations for a word seemed trivial? Whatever the state they’re from, each has its own accent, and even they admit that in some situations they have trouble understanding themselves.

Norman cabinets (Note: I’m not familiar with this particular idiom, but I’d take it to be roughly analogous to “built like a fridge”). Raised from an early age on Gatorade, protein and creatine, they are all two heads above us and their muscles remind one of Rambo in his finest hours. So not only do we already have this handicap that amuses them so, but we are often confused with the native Afghans: We’re but small fry, even for the beefiest among us.

Core values. Here one discovers America, as it often is depicted: the values they have here are brought to a climax, amplified by closeness and loneliness of the post in the middle of this Afghan valley. Honor, Patriotism. Everything here is a reminder: the American flag flapping the wind above the outpost just as it’s depicted on the care packages. If recruitment is often at the heart of the American inner city, dominated by gangs, nobody here has any other purpose than to carry high and proud the star-spangled banner. Each one knows they are supported by an entire nation, which does them well by anonymously sending them everything a soldier could find in short supply at the front: books, chewing gum, razor blades, powdered drinks (Gatorade, of course!), Toothpaste and so on. So much so that everyone knows he is supported in the difficult mission he is assigned. This is the first clash with preconceived notions: the American soldier is not an individual. The team, group, and the battle are at the center of all of his attention.

And what soldiers! We haven’t encountered a bad one. It’s strange how critical we can be! Even if some of them appear a little pudgy, they all give us lessons on daily life in the infantry. Beyond the wearing of the battle dress which seems to never bother them, (helmet, goggles combat rifle) long hours of guard duty at the outpost does not seem to bother them too much. The sole presence is a one square meter platform on a wooden tower above the stockade walls for 5 consecutive hours with night-vision binoculars, always focused on the direction from where the danger might come. No distractions, no breaks, standing like real statues. Ditto for the outpost as soon as night falls. All movement is in the dark with only a few red lights indicate the presence here and there of a soldier on the road. Ditto for vehicles whose lights are blacked out. Everything is done in the dark, fully understood at the JAPY pump. And in combat? If you saw RAMBO you’ve seen everything: always there to come to the rescue when one of our teams is in trouble, and always in a very short time. It’s one of their secrets: they can go from casual t-shirts to full battle dress in three minutes flat. When they arrive near the enemy position their mode of action is simple and confusing: they charge! Experts at the assault landing, they shoot first and ask questions later, which puts a damper on procrastination.

Here, seldom with raised voices and from 0500 the common tasks are done in short order and never grudgingly. In short, what we have been able to see, the helicopter en route, stopping next to a broken-down vehicle to see if all is well in the combat sections who stand in support of us even before knowing whether the mission is perilous, the American soldier is a fine soldier, a worthy heir of those who liberated France and Europe.

For those who do us the honor to welcome us into their combat outposts and every day demonstrate the finest qualities of military, for those who feel every day the heavy deployment of the U.S. Army on Afghan soil, for all those we owe this article, hoping to never discredit them and to continue to hear that we are all the same “band of brothers.”

While I’m on the topic of Slashdotting, I had a conversation with Clif the other day about what it takes to scale up sites to handle the onslaught of traffic generated by people looking for web coverage of Election Night. It’s one of those nasty scalability problems where if you get it wrong, you’re utterly screwed and don’t get a do-over or a few hours to fix it. If you’re in the business of selling eyeballs and your site goes dark during the Big Game, you’re pretty much hosed. And broke.

Data Center Knowledge has a neat article about what goes on behind the scenes to ramp up for an event of this magnitude.

I was perusing a technical support community on LiveJournal today and ran across an entry that made my jaw drop.

This poor IT worker had been working on building a new laptop for a VP’s admin assistant because her Outlook client was running slowly. Coming from a VP, it was a rush request and he got it ready for an early morning deployment. So far so good, doesn’t hurt to look good in front a VP who doesn’t dish out praise easily or often. About the time he gets the machine ready to go, another employee comes running into his office with a major problem.

A director who is working on a three-month mission to darkest Africa has ended up with a cracked laptop screen, rendering the entire unit unusable. Since they are only two weeks into this three month mission, it’s a little hard to get parts or a tech to them and they are almost SOL. As luck would have it, another team is heading out there for something, and can hand carry a replacement laptop out to them. Here’s the catch though, they’re leaving the building in 20 minutes for the airport. The only computer that’s ready to go is the one he just got done building. The only thing to do is to quickly setup the user’s email and hand the computer to the team, and wish them a good trip.

“I call my manager to make her aware that the laptop will be delayed a couple of hours as I build a new machine to replace the one I just sent out. She’s not happy, but I don’t care really. I know I did the right thing. ‘Dead in the water in a third world country’ trumps ‘Slow Outlook’”

The tech made a snap judgment call that seemed to be the right thing to do to ensure the business keeps running smoothly. All is well and good until office politics kick in and he gets called into a meeting. Whereupon he had to explain to the VP, his AA, the Program Manager, and the newly installed Help Desk Manager why he made that decision. 15 minutes later, he “left the office with a new bodily orifice, and stronger desire to drink.” Seems a little excessively painful for doing the right thing.

Alas, this is all too common in the business world. Ego and a sense of entitlement grab a hold of many senior executives who feel it’s their right to get new hardware out of IT simply because of their position. It made me realize how tremendously blessed I am to work in an organization where this sort of thing is an extreme rarity. Our executive team is very well grounded and humble, and this sort of ego trip just doesn’t happen.

That’s not to say that the executives don’t have the occasional drop-everything-emergency, but they do have the wisdom to discern what really does merit the IT department’s full attention and what can wait for us to get a chance to get around to doing it for them.

It’s those sorts of seemingly insignificant things that make Resurrection an awesome place to work. The positive impact on everyone’s stress levels of not having an executive team that behaves they’re royalty is something I can’t even begin to put a dollar figure on. Added to that is being secure in the knowledge that my manager will back me up unless I’m very obviously in the wrong, in which case I need to suck it up and take my lumps.

I’m sure that’s one of the things that made us one of the best churches to work for serve. It is truly a blessing to be part of this team.