人生行路 — The Journey of Life

After completing a school on the CONUS east coast about a week ago, I rebooked my flight to an earlier time due to confusion over the time length of the school. I eventually find the base travel office, rebook the flight, and get to the airport the next day.

Resultingly, the first two flights were overbooked. I was able to get on the first one to Chicago. In Chicago, they’re too overbooked to get me a flight, so they stick me on the next one along with a happiness bribe of $200 in travel vouchers. No problem so far; I’ll take it.

I get to Narita, and there’s no guitar. It’s been missing for a week, and it’s driving me nuts. Supposedly they drop off the guitar on base for people like me, but they still haven’t. I’ve lost my patience, and I’m going to just go and buy another one tomorrow.

Okay, sorry for ranting. I just feel the need to disendorse United Airlines. I won’t be paying them another dime, ever, though the Navy still could force me on them again and probably will.

Easy: don’t list APO/FPO states on an address form.

If there’s anything to be said about usability, I shouldn’t have to email you about how to enter my address merely because I’m at an FPO.  Zander Insurance wouldn’t let me enter “AP” as a state, so they lost my business.

LifeLock ended up looking too creepy for me, so the safe bet was TrustedID, which listed “AP” as one of the available states.  Good on them; they understand.

Unfortunately, Zander isn’t alone.  For as long as forms have simply listed 50 states, military members — and often residents of U.S. territories — have been left out.  Or rather, companies have unnecessarily limited their customer base by doing this.

I encountered a related problem a couple of months ago when ordering from Kashi.  I emailed them to ask about entering an FPO address, and they replied that because UPS is their exclusive shipper, they can’t send products to FPOs.

A senior officer back when I was in college told us mids once about how he had his identity stolen.  His SSN had been taken off a check back in the day when military exchanges and commissaries required patrons to write their social security numbers on checks.  Very fortunately in Navy terms, he was at a shore command, meaning that he had normal access to a telephone and whatever resources necessary to clear his name, though it was still an absolute pain and could have been much worse than it was.

Not so if you’re talking about a single Sailor underway.  No spouse at home to try to take care of it, and no Fleet and Family Support Center.  Perhaps there might be plenty of phone calls to the NLSO, but I can’t imagine such a nightmare.  The cost of being on the satellite phone so much is scary enough.

Making matters worse, SSNs are what make Navy administration run, period.  Recent GMT efforts have surrounded the securing of “PII” (personally identifiable information), but that doesn’t equal immunity by any standard.  Making matters worse, everybody knows your FPO address.  That alone should be harrowing for anyone on anything equal to or larger than a smallbuoy, let alone a big deck.

Google searching for “identity theft insurance” comes up with doubts over its worthiness.  Ultimately, some say, “insurance” is reactive rather than proactive.  Preventing having to react is the whole point for somebody underway and unable to wage combat over financial institutions and credit reports.

I looked at two specific services today with interest: LifeLock and TrustedID.  LifeLock was the first I’ve heard about, having seen many of their advertisements in airline magazines during some recent overseas flying, and their advertising is especially attention-getting, with their CEO going so far as to advertise his actual social security number to demonstrate his confidence in his company’s product.  Despite some apparent hiccups with one of their founders having been involved in credit fraud (irony?), the sleaze looks to be out of the company.  I admit that I haven’t seen any advertising for TrustedID, and that LifeLock looks better as a result.

The oddity of it all in this context comes in that whenever an attempt is made to open an account in a customer’s name, they will call you.  Oh wait, they can’t when I’m at sea.

Accordingly, I emailed LifeLock today (before finding out about TrustedID) and asked if I could give them my parents’ phone number or have them email me instead of calling me.  If I ever need to open an account, I can give my parents advance notice to say yes.

It’s nice to have such good support from back home.  Many sailors aren’t so lucky.

I bought iBank 2 at the exchange just a few hours ago. In short: it stinks, and this is coming from a computer and financial nerd. I’ll keep using Yodlee, which continues to improve as time goes on.

What needs to come next for us sailors, however, is non-web based software that will update with an internet connection and allow for viewing offline. Being able to view and predict finances without using the slow Internet on the ship was the point of buying the software, but I can’t even use it regardless.

“Crap” being used in reference to bad purchasing decisions is a hat tip to Stop Buying Crap.

It didn’t really dawn on me that today is the last Sunday of 2007, but the chaplain mentioned it at the worship service tonight. Time to reflect, but in a different way than I usually do.

Rereading Joshua Harris’ Boy Meets Girl last night uncovered a way of thinking I’ve been stuck in ever since giving my life to Christ. Simply put, I tend not to forgive myself. Okay, let’s get more specific than that. I don’t like to forgive myself.

Harris calls my bluff, though. It’s a form of reverse pride. My refusal to forgive myself is me telling God that my standards are higher than His. Let’s face it: God’s standards are pretty darn high, which makes it even more amazing that He offered His Son to undergo anguish, torture, and death on a cross so that we could meet that standard.

With that said, here’s a very short summary of 2007.

• political blogging
• mall preachers
• reaching out
• struggling with repeated sins
• leading Midshipmen
• ship selection
• 24/7 prayer
• goodbyes
• commissioning
• MacBook
• stashed life
• more goodbyes
• legal officer school
• re-meeting an old friend
• final goodbyes
• flight
• stashed in Sasebo
• leading a flight detail to reporting aboard the ship in [location, sorry].
• adjustment
• Sasebo
• bike trips
• apartment hunt
• having to earn respect
• conning
• OOD inport
• small boat adventures
• camraderie
• personal wars
• finding a church
• first guitar
• firefighting school
• The Lighthouse
• connections
• humiliation
• underway
• diplomacy
• shore patrol
• small boat crush hazard
• more conning
• figuring out how to lead worship
• NJPs
• powers of attorney
• dirty looks
• keeping the fervor
• inport
• shore patrol
• another guitar
• The Lighthouse, again!
• Sasebo
• complacence
• screwing up
• mercy
• grace
• more leading worship
• screwing up
• leading worship solo ashore (tonight)

What a ride. I felt like my worship tonight was something of a culmination of these things and more. I don’t know what’ll happen one year, one day, or one minute after I post this. What I know is that God is there, and that His Son’s blood really makes it all worth it.

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.

~Isaiah 6:1-7 ESV

Wow.

Today’s Sunday edition of Stars and Stripes reports that Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), introduced H.R. 4497 earlier this month looking to end gambling on U.S. military bases overseas. The bill’s short title is Warrant Officer Aaron Walsh Stop DOD-Sponsored Gambling Act, so named for an Army Warrant Officer who committed suicide over a gambling addiction that the military apparently never treated.

This looks mostly like a fundamental misunderstanding of why the armed forces provide slot machines and alcohol on base: it keeps the problems on base as opposed to out among foreign nationals. Nobody’s trying to ban alcohol or tobacco from military exchanges or bars, and those combined kill far more of our people and administrative resources than gambling. If he didn’t get the treatment, figure out why and address the issue there.

There’s a good amount of talk going around concerning 7th Fleet liberty restrictions, but let me clarify something here.

I’ve been a DIVO for almost six months now (arr, salty Ensign!!), and I’ve never signed a liberty plan. Period. So no, they’re not around here, so stop assuming that they are just because we’re in Seventh Fleet.

The blame the DIVO portion on the second page of the thread, however, is priceless.

ht: Fewl

Speaking of Hitler, The news world is all over Will Smith right now for comments he made concerning the good intentions of Hitler. Roger Kimball looks to have the best wrap-up that I’ve looked at. In essence, the possibly disturbing part of his comment is not the historical truth that Hitler thought he was doing good things, but that it needs “reprogramming.”

To put this into a Navy perspective, our current policy for extremist behavior/attitudes is simply to kick the individual out. Other than occasional GMT training, not much is said about extremism. Addressing of general attitudes, however, does have to be addressed on a regular basis.

Thus comes into play a challenge to freedom of thought in the military. Unlike within the general public or at a university (one hopes), we do reeducate. We expect sailors to harbor certain attitudes, but where is that limit? Do we stop at honor, courage, and commitment, or do we go farther in? And how far do the core values go in in the first place?

Perhaps more importantly, are the core values valued at all levels rather than being something dictated from on high?

To be investigated further…

Something’s had me a bit riled up in my mind lately, namely the philosophy put out by equal opportunity folks that all ideas, cultures, etc. are equal in merit.

Long ago, a guy named Hitler thought it was okay to kill innocent people in the name of making the state a stronger entity.  Earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court thought that free blacks should not have the same rights as whites.

The potential problems that this poses involves more than the superiority of the idea that ends up on top.  Not only does it negate any notion of societal progress (which EO folks would be the first to say has been made), it negates itself.  If person A says that all ideas are equal, and person B says that not all ideas are equal, person A’s philosophy then says that person B’s philosophy is of equal merit.

Yes, this has been thought up already, but some people don’t seem to understand it.  Let’s take this to a Navy level:  Ensign Retard has an idea.  His LDO department head says it’s a stupid idea.  Ensign Retard counters that both ideas have equal merit.

I don’t intend to put this to the test.

I screwed up today big time. There’s no words to express how messed up it really was. I’m a wretch, and may I always be reminded of that without actually having to screw up.

Meanwhile for the past few weeks, God’s been telling me to fast and I’ve been ignoring it. Time to make my best attempt to make it up, even though I’ll inevitably fall far short.

Meanwhile, I picked up the newest albums from the David Crowder Band and KJ-52. “Do Yo Thang” just might be one of the funniest songs I’ve ever heard.