Less than 24 hours until Spring Break...

...and all I have left to do is study for a CLS (Combat Lifesavers) exam, write a book report, attend ROTC classes tomorrow, and finish and draft my clinic design documents.

Granted the CLS exam is probably really easy and the book report is only 1-2 pages. It's that last one that might keep me up all night/day.

But the good news is that once it's all done I'll have made a significant step towards finishing clinic AND I'll be on break!

Which is good. My car is in the shop now and my girlfriend is going on a trip so break will likely mean catching up on lots of sleep and doing lots of work.

And lots of work I have to do. The clinic design documents will include my schematics for our device's analyzer but over break I get to actually layout the schematics on a PCB and route all the traces to get them all ready to fabricate. It's no easy task, especially since there are parameters for EVERYTHING (how wide is this trace, how close can it be to this other trace, how close can the both of them come to this part right here, etc).

But all in all its fun. This is the real engineering! And I'm feeling more confident now that our design might actually work.

This semester has been a lot busier than I was hoping it would be but I guess that's just how it goes. Idle hands, eh? Better to be too busy than bored, although being bored for ONCE while I'm here at Mudd would have been an interesting change of pace.

How many days left to graduate? 65.5 all included. Man that's close.

Schuyler Williamson

Lieutenant Schuyler Williamson gazed out the bus window at the passing lights of Fort Hood. It was hard to believe that he was finally back in America. Everything looked so strangely peaceful and routine. He felt a slight tremor inside and wondered whether it was caused by exhaustion or excitement.

The convoy of busses came to a stop at the Division parade field. To his left, under the lights across the field, Schuyler could see the crowd of family members and friends who awaited his battalion. He knew that his wife was somewhere in that crowd, and his parents, too.

He filed off the bud with his Soldiers. He and the rest of the battalion from the other busses formed up into a formation in the street, where the line of busses blocked them from view of their families. The night air as cool and smelled like home.

A chant from across the field started softly and grew progressively louder and louder.

"Move that bus! Move that bus! Move that bus!"

It reminded Williamson of the television series Extreme Home Makeover.

As soon as the unit was formed, the busses drove away, and to the wild cheers of the crown Williamson marched forward among the Soldiers of the platoon, the company, and the battalion, that he had experienced a year of war with. The formation halted in the middle of the parade field. A senior officer from the Division spoke some words welcoming them home. Williamson's eyes scanned the crowd for his family, to no avail.

The senior officer's brief comments ended with, "Families and loved ones, go get your Soldier!"

With a roar, the crowd of loved ones surged forward, merging into the formation of Soldiers. It was chaos-hugs, smiles, tears, people everywhere. Williamson kept looking through the crowd, but he could not find his family.

"Schuyler!" It was his father's familiar voice.

Williamson turned to see his dad moving toward him. Then her saw her. Rushing past his dad, moving as quickly as she could through the crowd towards Williamson, was Kristen, his wife. She collapsed into his arms, a year's worth of worry and loneliness flowing our in her tears. After a long embrace, Williamson reunited with his parents. They looked as happy as he had ever seen them.

Then he felt a tap on his shoulder from behind. It was one of his Soldiers.

"Sir," said his Soldier. "I really want you to meet my dad. He doesn't speak English. But I really want you to meet him."

Williamson stretched out his hand to the man. The Soldier's dad squeezed the lieutenant's arm with a firm two-handed handshake. He looked directly into the eyes of his son's platoon leader, offering a wordless expression of gratitude for bringing his son home alive, breaking into tears as his son spoke.

"Sir," said the Soldier to his platoon leader, "I just want you to know, I will fight with you anytime, anywhere."

Watching all this, Kristen finally understood why her husband was so committed to serving his Soldiers. He was their platoon leader.
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Call me a sap but this here story nearly made me cry. That Soldier regarded his platoon leader with the utmost respect, a respect that was likely well earned. For me, there would be no greater honor, no greater reward or achievement than to hear these words from one of my Soldiers. This platoon leader did something right, something to build in his platoon a trust of and respect for his leadership. He probably sacrificed a lot of what he held dear. He probably gave up calling his wife once or twice so his Soldiers had more time to talk to their wives. He probably stuck his neck out once or twice to keep his platoon healthy and at peace. He might have had to see a few Soldiers die as a result of his bad decisions. He bore the weight and the responsibility of not just accomplishing the mission but getting his Soldiers home in one piece. As the Army paradoxically says, "Mission first. People always." It is my one prayer in life that whatever this lieutenant did right to receive the respect of his Soldier I one day do as well.

Ben Weakley

All acronyms are explained at the bottom of the text.

Lieutenant Ben Weakley surveyed the scene before him on a steamy Baghdad night. A PLS truck stacked with Jersey Barriers marked the spot where the next section of wall would appear. An M-88 wrecker was positioned perpendicular to the tail end of the truck, acting as a crane to download each two-ton block of concrete. Weakley's Engineers were supervising an ad-hoc collection of transporters and mechanics who together were tackling a mission that none of them had trained for--surrounding residential neighborhoods with high concrete walls.

As Weakley talked with his platoon sergeant, a man's scream pierced the night.

"Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!"

Barriers on the back of the PLS had tumbled, partially crushing a Soldier under two of them. He was one of the mechanics.

Without a word, Weakley's experienced platoon sergeant took charge of the rescue mission. The accident had knocked the steel cable off the M-88's guide-wire spool, so the cable could not be used to lift the barrier.

"Get breaker bars and tanker bars," the platoon sergeant ordered. Soldiers scrambled to their vehicles and returned with the bars. Teams tried to re-align the guide wire on the M-88's crane and to create some breathing space for the trapped Soldier, but both efforts were unsuccessful. The Soldier was slowly suffocating.

Weakley reported the situation to his TOC and called a 9-line for medical evacuation.

"First Squad," ordered the platoon sergeant, "Bring up your ESV and use the blade to push the barrier off him." The Engineer Stryker Vehicle had a bulldozer-like blade on its front. First Squad rushed into action. The squad leader operated the vehicle. A team leader jumped up on the PLS to comfort his wounded comrade and to position the ESV's blade.

The squad leader inched the blade into position against the barrier. Soldiers grabbed hold of the casualty. As soon as the blade moved the barrier, the Soldiers pulled him free.

Weakley judged that the casualty was litter urgent. There was no time to wait for the helicopter MEDEVAC.

"We'll CASEVAC him directly to the CSH," he ordered. "Put him in the back of the ESV and let's go!"

The Stryker didn't move.

"First Squad, let's go!" he repeated. Then he saw what was causing a delay. The movement of barriers that had freed the trapped mechanic had inadvertently trapped the team leader who had been assisting.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," the squad leader who had operated the ESV was saying to his buddy, holding his free hand. "We'll get you out of here,"

"Sergeant," Weakley told the squad leader, "We have to go to the CSH right now."

"I can't leave him. I won't leave him. Fuck all this!" cried the distraught squad leader.

"The mechanic is litter urgent, Sergeant. Let's go!" ordered Weakley.

The mechanic's CASEVAC convoy was waiting. The team leader's injury did not immediately threaten his life or limb.

"Oh, God, what have I done..."

"Now!" the platoon leader commanded, looking directly into the tearing eyes of his battle-proven NCO. The message got through. The squad leader snapped up, ran to his waiting vehicle, and led the convoy to its destination.

The CASEVAC convoy sped to the CSH in minutes, saving the Soldier's life. The platoon sergeant was able to free the team leader, who suffered a broken hand.

Later on that night, Weakley sat talking with his platoon sergeant in their CP back at the FOB. Neither of them could sleep.

The squad leader who had operated the ESV appeared in the doorway.

"Come on in," said Weakley.

The NCO remained standing in the doorway. Then, looking at his platoon leader, he said, "Sir, we all thought that if something bad happened you were going to freak out and get somebody killed. You proved us wrong tonight, LT."

It had taken a while, but Ben finally sensed that he had earned the trust of his platoon.

---------------------------------------------
TOC: Tactical Operations Center
ESV: Engineer Stryker Vehicle
MEDEVAC: Medical evacuation by aircraft
CASEVAC: Casualty evacuation by ground
CSH: Combat Support Hosital
NCO: Non-commissioned officer
CP: Command Post
FOB: Forward Operating Base
LT: Lieutenant

Crazy week

Oh boy. Oh boy, oh boy. It's going to be a crazy week. Somehow they all are, aren't they?

Seriously, though, there are a lot of things coming up. This Friday is one of the major training days for ROTC and that means I go into overtime as S4, the supply officer. All of our 80+ freshmen and sophomore cadets need full equipment (kevlar helmet, ruck sack, load carrying vest, mock weapon, etc) and all of the evaluators need special equipment (mock AT-4s, mock claymore mines, radios, etc). But first I have to return the equipment we were using a week or so ago. Plus one of the officers has requested that I issue to all of the juniors all of the equipment that they'll need for the ROTC assessment camp (called LDAC) this summer which includes cold weather gear, wet weather gear, protective knee and elbow pads, protective eyewear, notepads, pens and pencils, and a few other things I can't remember right now. It's not going to be an easy feat and it's not going to be quick. I'll probably be down there in the ROTC office quite a bit this week.

And then on top of that we have a MAJOR clinic deadline for Monday morning in exactly one week. We are finally organizing a formal design review of two of our device's critical components (an air inlet and an analyzer) one of which I am heavily involved with and that means that a whole lot of work needs to get done from now until then.

The analyzer, you see, is an interesting piece of work. The basic idea (as I may have said before) is to shine a light on a filter and see how much light gets through. The less light that gets through, the more black carbon there is on the filter. Simple idea, right? Unfortunately, like most things, its simple to conceive and pretty difficult to actually complete.

You see, there are a couple of main concerns with the analyzer that could adversely affect its performance. The first is electronic noise and stability. Detecting the low concentrations of black carbon that we'd like to involves regulating an LED to +/- 2 nA!! Not to mention that our detector has to be low-noise enough to see these small signals. The second is in making sure the actual optics are doing what we'd like. We just found out that there is a difference in measurement technique if the incident light source is collimated or if it is diffuse; they will get you two different measurements for how much light is attenuated. The third is random artifacts that have to do with particle collection on a filter. Turns out you get all kinds of multiple scattering and things like humidity or particle morphology can affect your measurements. There are a lot of things to work out and its pretty important that we hit a home run at our design review in a week or so.

But like Raffi says, this is the interesting part; this is the actual engineering. Here's hoping we all can pull it through.

Conflict Resolution / What to do when you find out how much you suck as a Clinic team leader

Clinic is a mighty beast. For some with the right combination of luck and skill, it can be a fantastically challenging thing, perfectly suited to their level of expertise. The problem is technical enough that it appeals to them as engineers and yet contains enough breadth to pretend like it's a full engineering project (which it is). For others, it can be just the wrong problem at the wrong time. Like the homework solution that seems to elude you even after hours of constant struggle or the test problem that seems ever just out of your reach.

My clinic project seems to have been both. At times it feels more the former, and at other times more the latter. Today it feels like more the latter.

Even before I took over as team leader I knew I would have big shoes to fill. The previous team leader, Raffi Attarian, is a stellar engineer and an experienced project manager. His leadership during our first semester took what could easily have been a flaming fireball of hell and breathed life into it. He was meticulous, tireless, and had a knack for thinking about things from every angle.

But it feels like I don't have those skills. Even with what I would consider three years of fantastic leadership training with ROTC I still seem to be dropping the ball. Two weeks ago I scheduled a site visit and only today do I realize (at Raffi's prompt) that I don't know what we're going to do when we get there. How could I not have thought that through? That feels like project management 101! And this came on top of a particularly challenging week for our project where it feels like we've been cornered into a difficult project with no easy way out.

So certain people expressed their disappointment/disapproval over the way I have been handling things. All in all I agree with them. But while accepting it is a big step, it doesn't make it all go away. Now I have the even harder task of constantly accepting those failings while working to correct them.

Along the way I may take criticism from those around me. They may not let me forget so quickly my past mistakes. On some levels it is their right to voice their concerns. I have to have a thick skin, an open mind, and an undaunted spirit to continue where it seems only failure lives.

And I must redouble my efforts to fix what has come undone around me. No, this does not necessarily mean I work twice as hard. It does mean I need to progress twice as much but to do that I have to follow what I've been taught:

1) Assess the situation

2) Create an appropriate plan

3) Execute that plan with fervor

4) Repeat

Here's hoping that I don't make the same mistake twice. That I can do some good this semester on this clinic team. That the leadership mistakes I make in the future never cost me the life of a soldier.

The inability to read anything anymore. Ever.

Maybe it's just today and the fact that I didn't sleep much last night and that I worked out hard yesterday and twice today, but I just cannot read anything about the philosophy of religion right now!

Two sentences in, while David Hume is using Cleanthes and Demea to argue about something I can't comprehend, I feel the familiar smack of my forehead making contact with my keyboard.

So I redouble my efforts, get up to walk around, then sit back down. But like clockwork after two sentences suddenly Cleanthes is wearing a toga and telling Demea to pick up the box of birthday hats next to him and I know that I've stopped reading the real article a few minutes ago.

So what am I doing now? Blogging, first. But more than that I think you just need to know when to quite, how to apply my time effectively to get the most done. Sure I could sit here for the next two hours and struggle through another 1/3 of the article and remember none of it. I would tell myself I did something but I would have accomplished nothing. Like my friend says, work without progress.

So I'm moving on to something else, something more engaging. Hopefully this way I can actually get some things done tonight, get to bed early, wake up early, and read that article with a fresh mind.

My girlfriend is making fun of me again

Dear Diary,

Just because I put a lot of thought into writing these blogs she thinks she can make fun of me! Don't worry, Diary, I won't let it get to me. I value our time together.

Nathan Jones