Ensigns Log: Stardate 41416.2, Coming Of Age

Boy oh boy, where to begin. I suppose I’ll begin my tales at the start of this adventure; the 15th of July. As you all know, I had been spending my time “Maxing and Relaxing,” at the Transient Personnel Unit in Naval Station San Diego. It seems like so long ago that I was at a point in my life where relaxing was all that I had to do. I left TPU on the 15th bound on a jet plane for Michigan, Amsterdam, and finally Doha, Qatar. That was a loooong flight; about 23 hours. I slept very little the two days I was heading over here. On my way over to Qatar, I met up with a couple more Navy personnel who were going to my ship. Four of them were enlisted personnel, while two of them were Ensigns just as young as I am. The Ensigns were both from the Academy, Ensign Beals and Ensign Ricks, while two of the four were Enlisted personnel had already been on ships before this one. We arrived at the ship, safe and sound, and exhausted from the trip.

After the jet lag had warn off, we met first with the XO of the ship. He is a big black man who always gets second portions of his meal, which is quite the contrast between the CO who is a tiny woman, and who always gets little portions. What also seems fascinating is the way the two of them view life and this ship. The CO sees the glass as 98% full, while the XO sees the glass as 98% empty. Not to say the XO is a down in the dumps type guy, but he does get on everybody’s tail about things an XO is supposed to. For example, ships general level of cleanliness, the food not being up to snuff, personnel on the ship getting out of line, people using I-pods while on watch, correcting men at half-mast, those sort of things. The captain on the other hand sees the ship as it can do no wrong. She is always full of life and excited to be here doing what she loves best; she is in command of the best Frigate in the Navy. She always is enthusiastic, saying things like, “Its great to be in the Navy!” and “Moboards are fun!” (More about moboards later)

For the first couple of days, I really had no job but to stand watch, and to observe all I could. Because the ship has 18 ensigns aboard, all the jobs had already been filled before we arrived. The CO had to be a little creative when she assigned these jobs to us. Ensign Beals was made “FSO” or Food Service Officer. When I ask him what he does all day, he throws his hands up in the air and says “NOTHING, but get yelled at.” Ensign Ricks was made Administration officer, which is pretty good. I wouldn’t like that job because I would feel as if I wasn’t really doing much to help fight the ship. I was then put in charge of the repair division aboard ship. That’s right, I was placed in engineering! Go figure. We own three different work centers, and all the damage control lockers aboard. There was already a division officer for R-Div, so I was put in charge of ER-09 Work center. That is a bag of worms that I could speak forever about!

ER-09 is all the DCPO’s from various divisions. Each six months, they turnover and get replaced by new DCPO’s. So, if you were a division officer, and you were requested to hand over one person from your division, would you choose the person who was at the top of the pile or at the bottom? I am in charge of the pirates and the derelicts aboard the ship. The first time we held “quarters” at 0800 inside of the ER09 cage it was horrible! Each of the men chose a place to sit down, pass around the 13 week report (basically like a work list), smoke and joke, listen to I-pods and generally waste time until 0900. That made me so sore! I quickly instigated a change, and now we have quarters outside of the cage where nobody has the chance to listen to I-pods. I have also made my work center supervisor create a worklist that is itemized and delegated to each man. I have more ideas of how to streamline ER09, but that beast is slow to change. I am sure in future blog entries, I’ll discuss the trials and tribulations ER-09 has proven to be.

It has been so busy around here that it seems to take forever to write anything on my blog. I’ll be sure to write more in the future, but the entries probably won’t be as long. In the future, I’ll make each entry about a specific thing. The next installment will cover the politics of me, and where I fit in with other ensigns aboard ship. Until then, fair winds and fair seas.


BTW: Oh ya, to day I found out that we have 96k distributed between around 100 personal computers. That means about 9.6K each of connectivity.