My partner

I got introduced to my new partner today. She seems to be a nice enough woman, she came from another division of the company that did work in Cuba. Her background is in databases and networking.

I think a lot about death now.

This job has me thinking about death…a lot. I’m sure some of my friends have possibly noticed a difference in me. The nature of this job has you thinking about death. For one it is the reality of the job. The job raises the chances of you dying a very nasty and very violent death. I’ve had to think about the fact that there may not be enough of me left to bury and I think that would be horrible for my family. People that I work with tend to talk about it more and it is part of the culture. Thankfully no one at my company has been killed or injured while in service in Iraq and I more than anyone want that tradition to continue (especially while I’m there) but, the reality is that something can happen.

On the other, hand this has been a golden opportunity. Most young people don’t think about their own demise when you do have an opportunity to think about it, it can give you great insight. For me I started thinking about how have I lived my life. How have I treated people? Was I good to them, bad to them? Did I bring joy to their lives? And the big question was, how could I be good to people and best utilize the rest of the time I have on this earth?

The way I see it your life is only important to you. In the grand scheme of things ou are nothing more than the sum of your collected experiences. Your experiences, while they may have been shared with others, ultimately are only important to you and will die with you. What is important is what impact did you have on others. You won’t be remembered for what you said; you will be remembered for what you did. I know my friends and family are uncomfortable with me discussing death and especially my death so I don’t mention it. It’s the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.

I’m good at keeping to myself and dealing with issues on my own. I do advise people reading this to get a will and/or living will. Get one ASAP it’s not that expensive but, it can be the real difference in preventing your child from going into foster care instead of your brother’s house or having your property tied up in probate. You are probably more valuable than you realize and the more prepared you are in life the better prepared your family and friends will be in your death. Do them a favor and tell them how you want things to be handled they’ll will have enough on their minds when you leave them. Over the last three months I have come to terms with the eventuality of my on demise and I have to say once you pass that fear of confronting it you can become liberated. Once you see for yourself that you only do this life thing once you will spend more time focusing on the beauty of today.

All this backstory is really tragic but, what the hell do you do?

My official title is Field Engineer. The job is one of the most visible jobs you can take because you are an engineer that interfaces directly with the customer. That interface can be on any level from the project manager level to the user level. That being said that means that if you fuck up everyone from the top level down knows about it and you can kiss your career goodbye. Your fuckups can cost the company money. But, if I must toot the horn of the guys that work with me they are money makers and on a personal note I have to say that I’m think they are some really good people.

This job is different from other jobs because as a field engineer you are afforded a lot of freedom in budget as well as ability to act independently. In other positions I’ve held with my company you may have a good idea but you have to wait for management to agree that it is a good idea before you go with it. Here, they have a “You break it you buy it” attitude. The section’s mantra is that it is our duty is to fix the problem, PEROID.

Let me get into that later and let me just answer the question. As a field engineer my job is to provide onsite technical support in order to ensure the sustained functionality of the system. We can do pretty much anything, we’re engineers in what I feel is the truest sense of the word, if there is any problem with the system we need to be able to engineer a solution. We are trained to maintain, repair, modify, and improve networking, software, hardware, mechanical, construction of the site, teardown of the site, fiber optics, satellite communication, and projection units among other things. Basically anything that the system interfaces with or uses to complete it’s mission we need to know how to service. Now then obviously I didn’t go to school and major in McGuyver so let me explain how it works.

We go as a team and each person on the team has strength in a different area. My strength is in software and software design I was picked primarily because of my knowledge of how to operate in Unix, Linux, and Windows environments. The second reason is because my management believes I can pick up the rest. From as software point of view, it’s not rocket science and it’s something that any programmer would know how to do out of college (hell, in 2004 I thinking a good portion of high school students could probably do it as well). There is also a psychological component to it as well there are probably people that are technically superior to me as far as in the software department that interviewed for the position but, there also is the need to operate in high stress environments to be able to have to do a lot of physical labor and the ability to be an able body in a worse case scenario (although I highly doubt the US Marines will find themselves in a overrun situation during OIF). My colleague’s strengths are obviously in different areas we will work with one another and the plan is that we will teach the others our skills so we can operate in their environment.

Our goal is to impart our knowledge on the Marines. In my view we don’t need to be there these are jobs that can be handled by Marines. They have wire dogs to do fiber optics, they have network guys that can blow the door off of most people I know, they have guys down at the motor pool that can disassemble and rebuild a diesel engine faster than I can find a 10mm ratchet. I think that the DOD just wants a civilian presence there just in case there is a massive FUBAR. But at the end of the day my job is not to run the system for them but to show them how to run the system. So that’s what I do in a nutshell.

The section I’m in is notoriously difficult to get into basically because of the massive amount of travel, the proximity to the customer, and quite frankly the freedom that the FEs get in order to operate. This section is one where you don’t choose to work for it they choose you. Everyone with the exception of me is prior military I think it is an unwritten rule of the section to hire prior military people. It’s not something that is in the job description I think there is a mentality that comes from being in the military that comes with it and being so closely aligned with the military I can tell that it helps. I’ve seen some Sr. Field Engineers interact with the military guys and you can tell that there is an “understanding” that only comes from being in the military.

To be honest some of the guys I work with would do it for the job first and the money second. About 99% of the guys I work with come off to me as super patriots. This is odd to me I, on the other hand, am not a super patriot, I’m an American to my heart however, my motivation can be found on the capitalist side of the fence.

But, that is personal and irrelevant to the job (NOTE: Throughout the course of this blog I will attempt to keep my personal feelings about Iraq out of it as it applies to job. My goal is not to make this a rant about policy or the military or religion but more to give you all on the ground insight). FEs are also known as Road Warriors. Even in peacetime our job is 80% travel. We can be anywhere there is a US military presence in the world at anytime. You can be in Camp Lejeune for three weeks get home and even before we leave the airport you can get a call saying that they need you to be in Korea tomorrow (it happened just like that for a coworker). If they need us we are there. As you can see this job can be intense. This job can be hard on families even as a single man this job has taken its toll on me. The hardest of the hardcore are often divorced and have adult children. It is hard for me to fathom the stress on family men .