Howdy folks!
Twenty three days and counting until I make the long trek back to the
States for a little R&R. You can't imagine how much I am looking
forward to that! To get to see Ann and the kids and most of you will
be a wonderful thing. I know already that going back will be very
difficult, but it has to be done.
News on my deployment looks like this: My billet is due to expire on
May 11th, which is 79 days before the new fiscal year for the
military. 79 days is the most you can request someone to do on a
short duty assignment, so that's why they work it that way. All this
means that, as it appears now, I may be shipping back home in May. Of
course, it is a bit premature to talk about. With the events in
Fallujah and the negative attitude of the Bush administration towards
Iran, you can never know when the war machine will start or stop. All
this depends on a pretty stable Iraq by spring. Hopefully that's what
we will have.
Ramadan is winding down in the next five days. People are really on
edge. I will feel a lot better when it is over and people are back to
relative normalcy. The weekend before the elections we upgraded our
threat condition here from Bravo to Charlie, which means we can only
be on the streets between base and our housing, and we have a curfew
of 10 p.m.-6 a.m. We are allowed to go to grocery stores, but not
restaurants or any entertainment type venues. We thought that would
go back down after the elections, but with the beginning of the siege
on Fallujah, and some local incidents that have stayed mostly under
the radar, we have decided to leave that in effect for the near to
distant future. It's not a bad idea; I would rather be safe than take
risks when we don't have to. I think we are all beginning to realize
that Americans have no safe haven anywhere. We are getting to the
point where we are uniformly disliked wherever we go. Kind of like
the French..
Anyway, good news- I have now taken over all the web development for
the coalition. I will bet none of you knew I was a web
developer....That's ok, neither did I. I am taking some training and
working with our Collaboration At Sea team in Hawaii to get the
coalition web sites up and running on our secure networks. It will be
a process of learning the ropes for me, but the guys in Hawaii are
pretty talented, and are thankfully patient enough to put up with my
questions. By the end of January we would like to have everything up
and running. I have some work cut out for me.
A couple of quick changes- My phone number over here has changed, as I
found a cheaper cell phone long distance rate from another company.
The new number is 011-973-36-720-731. Also, as you may have noticed,
I am switching over email to Gmail, Google's Internet email option. I
really like the interface and the way it stores messages is much more
intuitive. Plus, one GB of space per inbox is nice for saving
everything.
So, to wrap, here is the new info:
IT2 Sean Feiler
COMUSNAVCENT N63
FPO, AE 09501-6008
(011) 973-36-720-731
[email protected]
www.geocities.com/seanfeiler1
I believe that is it. Everyone take care, I look forward to hearing
from you as always. Check out the website for pictures and the like,
I try and change it once every couple of days or so.
Regards,
Sean