spaceman

Decent movie but a little bit unrealistic. I heard C-17 guys can't use Bose headsets, so when I saw the pilots wearing A20's while the giant gorilla was trashing the plane the illusion was broken for me.

From the bottom (first) email, to the top, it was an E-8, E-7, and E-9. Failure to meet cleaning standards will not be tolerated! Thanks volunteers!!

Everyone got this volunteer solicitation email chain today; apparently we can't staff the DFACs but we can clean commercial airplanes?!

The skeleton that lives by the entrance to Indy got a new patch recently... At least I don't think he was rocking it a week or two ago

Yes for like 129 nights in a row. The food was pretty good, I had 69 friends there with me and we all lived in the same building, and I flew a C130 every day instead of a fvcking Excel spreadsheet. Overall a much better deployment than this one!!!

It's not that this place is even that bad; by deployed standards it's pretty decent. It's just so much crappier than it needs to be. We're like a half hour from a major city in one of the highest human development index countries in this part of the world, and yet many of the buildings are falling apart, the food is not great, and the comm infrastructure sucks (not just wifi, Nipr and Sipr outages are a constant occurance at work). It's not like the war is right outside the gate, this base could be pretty nice if it wasn't run like a prison and treated like a dump by some of the people that live here.

Or fragging a 24 hour augmented FDP!

I actually can't really complain because AMD will soon be leaving the CAOC and setting up in a new CONUS facility. So this rotation is finally the much desired end of AMD at Al Udeid!

Yes please

Yeah can we please have free unlimited fast wifi that covers the whole base? The internet is really slow on my xbox and I'm getting tired of doing the crossword puzzles in Stars & Stripes at the DFAC.

I was about to say I need to find these guys because it would save a lot of time, but time is exactly what I'm looking to kill when I'm at work! Dang that's a good idea, I might do that

I think it's just the Deid. Tell me about it; everything here is done in the worst/dumbest way possible so the internet situation doesn't even stand out to be honest. I don't have the thing that shows the data caps for each plan here at work but these are the plans:

There's a free service but you still have to make an account and sign in every time you want to use it, for some reason, and it's like dial-up speed. So it's not very useful. The paid service works fairly well, but you have to sign in all the time which is a pain in the ass, and they do limit how much data you get per month. I think the prices range from like $30 to $180 a month and each tier has its own speed and data cap. I have the middle level one that is 100 GBs a month and the speed is good enough for netflix, skype, youtube, etc at good quality. It's $98 a month which is a fuckin rip off but whatever.

True enough. I think we'll just start sending someone off base for a shwarma run every day. Also, BPC DFAC wins the award for least appropriate smiley face (x2)

AMD is trying to have a compnay picnic at the barbecue area by the Bra, and apparently whoever will be manning the grill needs to receive food safety training from the EFSS before we're allowed to do it. I'm rolling my eyes as hard as I can.

That guy's Facebook page says he's self employed and single. I'm shocked!!

Thanks for the insight guys. I guess it does make more sense to stick with the traditional system. Hoss, that's a good point about health insurance. I worked as an engineer for a couple years out of college and I think I was paying like 10 or 15% of my salary just to cover myself. Free tricare when I went AD was/is a big plus!

Oh yeah, good point. I guess I kinda assumed I remembered how the reserve retirement works, so I read up on it and you're absolutely right. I have like 700ish points from my reserve time, so if I stick around until I have 20 total years I think I'd have something like 6000 points. Thanks for that excel tool, this is way more useful than the calculators I was trying to use on USAA and Vanguard. I gave it an initial wag and it doesn't really look like that extra 5% into my TSP is going to make as much of a difference as I thought since it'll only be 8 years of contributions and then stop. I guess if I didn't have my prior service years it might make a little more sense... As far as my career plan, I REALLY doubt I'll stay AD for 20 years, so I think shooting for the reserve retirement one way or another is a decent goal since it'll barely take me past my ADSC anyway. That way I'll at least get some benefit from my dorky army reserve time besides mostly free college. In a really perfect scenario I'll just get a sick airline job right away that'll pay so much that my AF retirement becomes trivial, but that's like a whole other thing

Happy New Year gents! I have been trying to figure out for the past month whether I should opt in to the new retirement system or not. I have a sort of nonstandard situation, which I'll explain, so finance at my base has no fricking clue and I haven't found anyone in the same boat as me to compare notes with. I know many of you guys are financially way smarter than I am so maybe you can help me figure this out. OK here's what I'm working with. I'm an O-3 commissioned in June 2013, but I was enlisted in the Army reserve for several years before that. My reserve time got me 7 good years towards a reserve retirement, and a few hundred AD days. So, according to my SURF at least, my total active service date is August 2012. My ADSC is up in September 2024. I'm 31 right now. So based on that, my options that I see are: 1. GTFO when my ADSC is up in 2024 (age 37). 2. Stick around for 20 AD years until 2032 (age 45). 3. Hang out until I have 13 AD years, add that to my 7 reserve years, get out and take the reserve retirement in 2025 (age 38). Or switch to the guard at any time and accumulate some combination of at least 20 AD and guard/reserve years. #1 and #2 are pretty obvious whether I should switch to the BRS or not. #3 however seems like a reasonable compromise though since I wouldn't have to do a whole lot more to gain at least some kind of retirement. I feel very unlikely to stick around active duty for 20 years anyway. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the guard/reserve retirement is similar to the AD version where you get 50% of your high-3 base pay (or 40% with the BRS), with the difference being from the reserves you don't get paid anything until you turn 60. I also don't know much details about how I'd go about getting a reserve retirement straight from active duty; most people do some AD time first then switch to the guard and I'd be doing the opposite. I might try to go to the guard anyway when my ADSC is up so it's probably not a huge deal. My point is I think I can at least get myself a guard/reserve retirement out of this thing. Alright so anyway, I feel like scenario #3 is what I'm going to end up with. I'm already putting 10% of my base pay into my Roth TSP, so if I switch to the BRS I'll get an extra 5% for free, which will continue from 2018 until at least late 2025 when I get out (so ~8 years of contributions). Then after I get out it'll just sit there and grow until I become old. When I turn 60 I'll start getting my little reserve pension which will be 40% of my old base pay. Alternately, I don't swap to the BRS but do everything else the same. Then I'll get 50% of my old pay starting at age 60, but I will not have gotten those 8 years worth of extra 5% TSP contributions plus their associated gains over the last ~22 years. How can I estimate which will be worth more to me in the future? I can't quite get the BRS calculator (http://militarypay.defense.gov/Calculators/BRS/) to match my situation, and my attempts to use other generic IRA calculators has left me more confused than when I started. Any ideas? Thank you for reading this diatribe if you made it this far!

Yeah but you get an extra $250 a month for family separation so that totally makes up for it. I say this as I'm about to say bye to my two month old kid to do a nice non flying six monther... I can't wait to spend that extra $1500 of FSP! Where's my fvckin eye rolling emoji?!

Good talk guys. Sicario didn't really seem to need a sequel, but the new one does look cool!

Know Your Rights!!!

Well no shit dude FY 17 is in four days

Dude why stop at WIC?! Just proficiency advance your entire career and you could be a civilian again in just a few short months with almost no effort required! Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

You guys make some good points. Thanks for all the great info! Wife and I are feeling a lot more optimistic now that we have an actual plan coming together!