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I may know why that FCIF dropped..... So there I was, walking into caddy shack to fly my daily suckfest sortie out of the Deid. Looked at my flight orders and saw I had one Col Patrick Rhatigan flying with me on that fine day. Didn't know the dude, so whatever. Everything was going fine until he noticed I was wearing my Alma Mater's ball cap during my preflight. He asked me if I was going to take it off before we departed. Getting the hint, I said yessir. He then asked me "if you didn't take off your cap, how would you quick don your oxygen?" I thought to myself "The same way I don it every time I test it during the preflight..." Fast forward a a few minutes, and then he asked me if I was going to unroll my flight suit sleeves. Because "what if we caught on fire and your arms got burned?" I figured if we were on fire, and my arms were at risk, we had much bigger problems. Don't remember much of the sortie, probably because no one did much talking, as we didn't want the Colonel to chime in. After we landed, I was on my way into MX debrief, and for some reason he followed along. Once we entered the outer door, he asked me why I didn't call the area to attention. I wish I remember how I responded. I probably just stared back at him with a confused look on my face. The next day....... So there I was, walking into caddy shack to fly my daily suckfest sortie out of the Deid. As I was scrolling through my seemingly endless FCIFs, I noticed one labeled "Approved Headgear." From Col Rat basically stating that ball caps were not authorized, and then went on to list all of the headgear that IS authorized. That FCIF was because of me. I was so proud of it.

https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-races-to-sniff-one-last-girl-before-losing-sense-of-smell-from-covid/

woke up thinking about this incredible post the other day, had to RT for old times sake

This was my experience as well. I had a situation where I needed help with a recalcitrant agency and after I called my congressperson's office there was a miraculous change in their demeanor in less than 24 hours.

Just think how many 11Fs that frees up to work the staffs, 365s to the Deid/Korea, RPAs, etc. Brilliant move.

And backfill the mass exodus from Laughlin!

Flown with a bunch of former RF-4C, RF-111 , etc guys in the civilian job. Great stories abound. Many of them convey some regret that they didn’t get a “better” (their words, more or less) fighter- F-16, F-15, etc. I tell them that it’s all relative- people would kill to have F-4 and F-111 opportunities these days. Their jaws drop when I describe to them how ridiculously awful modern day AF is, and how they’d find it completely unrecognizable.

That’s pretty close to the cumulative airline v O5 pay difference over 10-15 years. $150k in the AF, $200-250k in the airlines.

ARPC is doing extra-legal bs. They put you in the IRR but not with a commission. They refer to this as the parking lot. There is no legal basis for this but they do it anyway. When you get hired by the guard or reserve you will go to a recruiter who will then put your name on the list for people to be approved for reserve commissions, aka the scroll. Then a few months later you will have a reserve commission. It is at this point you can petition the AFBCMR to resolve your break in service, possibly, by extending your RegAF DOS to butt up against the day you received your reserve commission.

3 same. Filed a congressional with shitloads of paperwork dotted. All of sudden the “sorry we can’t do anything” answer became oh yea we can fix this IAW regulations

That really was a phenomenal post. Someone needs to dig this dude up again and buy him beers.

I also got TBNT, I honestly was surprised they got back in less than a week given how many applications they got. Most squadrons get back to you in like a month, so I assume they had some quick filters or had a few people in mind already so don't take it personally. Every squadron wants something different. I've rushed squadrons where they ended up choosing somebody with 20 flight hours over somebody with a CFI and 500 hours. I talked to an F-16 guard pilot who applied and rushed for 4 years before he was selected as a finalist. You just have to keep applying and be persistent till the last ominous no. This will likely be my last year due to age but I'll keep applying till I no longer qualify. Go grab a drink and enjoy your birthday!

IMHO, congressional folks are not the turds they’re made out to be (with certain exceptions). If they actually know, they’ll work it. If they don’t, they can’t help. The one and only time I worked with my representative, it got fixed immediately. I almost guarantee that letter will at least start something.

It's already happening. Is Belgium developed enough to count? Because the farmer revolt isn't a minor dispute. Keep inflation above 6% and the natives are going to get mighty restless, especially if unemployment starts rising, which it *always* does during a recession. Also, how rare are you talking? It's been 100 years since the US had a major disruption. That's actually a long time, historically. We're due. We haven't, actually. Nothing is more dangerous to a society than demographics, and we are going the way of Europe as far as birth rates go. And immigration isn't a solution. Low skilled labor won't prop up an advanced economy, and poaching skilled labor from the rest of the world just outsources the problem for a while. Social Security and Medicare are excellent gauges of our country's ability to leverage a smaller population of more productive workers to pay for everyone else. It isn't going well. The only way out of debt without pain is growth, and our growth has been abysmal *with* unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus for well over a decade. What's it going to look like without the debt fairy? Agreed, but no one is arguing the extinction of the species. This is a bit too vague. I would consider the system unchanged if: - The dominant 5 currencies are all still fiat - Central banks are still engaging in Quantitative Easing *and* inflation is managed (<3%). - The Eurozone currency block maintains the same membership. In particular, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain remain while the Euro maintains relative parity with the dollar. - Tariffs, or a schism between the west and China, basically some sort of end to the free trade arrangements between the alleged superpowers. Taiwan must still be independent. - Social Security and Medicare largely remain true to their current incarnation. Same for the social safety nets of the European nations - And this will be the interesting one. 9 years you say? Then our debt will have to be *above* ~$50 trillion, since deficits are a feature, not a bug in this Keynesian world. The extreme austerity required to prevent this would be, I think, a sign the system failed. Changes to any of the above will be accompanied by massive social disruption. We disagree here. I see a system that magnifies bubbles to increasingly dangerous levels. And the growing income inequality, a direct result of the Fed's policy, clearly indicate that "everyone" is not getting richer. Inflation is going to kill the argument that "income inequality doesn't matter since everyone is still better off," an argument I've made for years, erroneously. Inflation will bring the ultra rich back to being rich and the "enriched poor" will be poor again. It could be something like crypto, but I doubt it. Whatever it is, it will tie a currency to a fixed asset. It'll be the only way to restore trust in a reserve currency. Surely. Believe me, I hope I'm wrong. But there were a lot of people holding your position in the mid 30's. They ignored the signs, as I think we are now. The pandemic just accelerated the timeline a couple decades.

USAF Dr/Col, "You guys suck now, you have sucked, and you will continue to suck!" Big Blue, "BUUURRRRPPPP!" also, good thing our very own AF congresscritter is investigating important, meaningful things...

Honestly I'm not sure how this isn't getting highlighted on the amn/nco/snco Facebook page more. BTW, I used to be heavily critical of the usefulness of that page, but I've recognized in the last year, whoever is running it has SIGNIFICANT access to congress. When you can read between the lines on what bills are going up for decision with what stories they request info about it becomes clear they are a data feeder to someone's office for inside information about the AF and DoD.

i have seen first hand how the "leadership" at JBSA and BAMC tried to personally fuck my brother over. at that moment in his life he needed help...help that "leadership" says they're all too willing/able/happy to provide. it's nothing but bull shit lip service. they talk the talk, but when things get uncomfortable they are cowards and cover their collective asses at the first sign of trouble. without getting into specifics, instead of helping, they isolated him for over two years (great for mental health huh!), charged him, lied about his character/job performance, actively manipulated his peers to lie under oath about him, falsified his training reports, and all together almost drove him to end it. it was close, and our family got very lucky. not one single "leader" at that place walked thru the fire with my brother. not one. almost like the story of the good Samaritan...they simply looked at an Airman in need lying in a ditch, who needed help...spit on him, walked to the other side of the street, and made sure their OPRs were still spit shined with their bull shit. i'd say everything my brother told me about that shitty place and the cowardly medical "leadership" is word for word in line with what that O-6 just wrote about. fuck them. i mean that with every ounce of sincerity. fuck them. i hope that letter makes it's way to a congressional investigation and real consequences come to those who deserve them.

You guys do realize that the Brit’s have had a female in power for the last 70 years? And even if it was a male, that doesn’t mean all males are in charge. Just one. And males also are ruled by that one male. Oh and the royals have just been figure heads for quite some time. No real legislative, executive or judicial powers. Just influence. Patriarchy is a word used by people who don’t understand the actual argument and in the hope others don’t understand either.

Only because the other tanker we've got left is approaching 70 years old with an AP from Boeing that occasionally tries to kill everyone on board. The 46 was supposed to be operational years ago. Wasn't supposed to have tools in the fuel tanks. And a remote vision system that added not detracted. Meanwhile the 330 from LM is fully operational with added capes (and on time to buyers). Yet we're talking about passing it yet again for more 46s for some reason. Especially bad when Boeing has the following track record: 135: A/P tries to kill them. 46: Years late. Fod. Non working boom. NMC. Over budget. New 747: Overbudget. Years late. 737 Max: Grounded for 2ish years. 787: Batteries caught on fire. Grounded for awhile. Also initially late to buyers. Now a great platform. 777X: 5 years behind timeline so far. Wedgie: Not great capes. Old. Still going to take 4-5 years to hit the production line per reports despite being an existing design. P8: Seems solid? Off an existing airframe. Don't follow the navy too much. TX: TBD Airbus recent failures: 380: Wasn't designed structurally for cargo. And economically not the best for airlines. LM Recent Failures: Fat Amy over budget and behind. 50/50 on LM and the scope. From my perspective Boeing has put out nothing on time or budget in the last decade or two. Aside from the 787 they've rehashed new designs rather than push the envelope.

It'll be riots either way, but how we exit is a big question mark. We now get to choose between runaway inflation or the collapse of the credit markets. The only eventual emergence from this mess involves the complete destruction of the modern financial system. Keynesian economics and MMT are dead. But it has to be unwound over time, rather than allowed to implode. Our entire system only functions with the fed "printing money" through two incredibly stupid mechanisms: - Bond purchases to artificially suppress interest rates so the government can maintain insane deficit levels. This in turn suppresses the private rates and encourages unproductive, irrational (wasteful) investing. Reference pretty much every SPAC from 2020/2021, and the housing market. - Forcing reserves down the throats of the banks such that the Fed has to offer a *higher* rate for overnight deposits than the fed funds target. So we force banks to take these reserves to "stimulate" the economy, then we pay them to do fuck-all with them. If your system *requires* a government entity with the unconstrained ability to spend money that does not exist, your system is broken. And everyone in the industry plays along with the bullshit excuse of "that's just how banking works" or "the modern world needs these instruments to keep the transactions flowing." It's all horseshit. We've been riding the high of a slowly and artificially decreasing interest rate since Volker blew everything up in the 80s. That allowed for ever-increasing borrowing, which only stimulated growth by taking (stealing) it from the future. Sounds great, except once you hit 0%, the party ends. And here we are. Now we have to reconcile the fact that 50 years after the wide scale adoption of fiat currency, the experiment failed. We've run out of countries with cheap labor to exploit and the boomers didn't have enough kids to sustain the growth rates they wanted. But they made billions in what effectively became a Ponzi scheme. It'll start with a recession, soon. Then once the credit markets crack, the Fed will step in and go back to the only thing they know: printing. That'll be the unofficial signal to the world that high inflation is baked in for the next 5-10 years. But now the loss of earnings means no raises. There's a lot less distance between the Sri Lankan riots and American riots than we think. With a savings rate of 4%, there's no slack to handle inflation like we had in the 70s. And the collapse of globalism thanks to China and Russia is only going to pour plutonium onto a uranium fire. At the end we'll end up back on the gold standard, or something similar. It'll be a generation or two before the world trusts fiat currency again. But they always go back to it, because rulers always have bigger dreams than they have wallets, and voters are easily bought. Lots of people have seen this coming, but they had no idea just how much the government could spend to prop it all up. Turns out inflation was the party-crasher we were waiting for.

The constraints were set because they used an existing framework: AFCS PAQ. You can argue they should have used a different framework or created a standalone program, but the constraints aren’t arbitrary and definitely aren’t unique to this CAIP program. https://afciviliancareers.com/recentgraduates/

Fixed it for you.

Oh I've seen that happen for sure, and I'll even admit there are a few positives to being attached to an AD base. But in the context of not having to deal with a MTF, I'll take civilian medical care over an MTF every time. To my other point, I just meant that I've had shake my head at some friends who jumped to the Reserves at their last duty station and were surprised that it was same bullshit, different patches.

I flew a MAX today. Still here to talk about it.

The fact that you used the specific word malevolence is chilling. Firmly reinforces my already deep seated belief that I will not let an Air Force medical person do anything with regards to my wellbeing beyond what is minimally required, ie PHA and dental, and that only begrudgingly.

Yeah, don't think I've seen that bundle of services (clean floors, clean pipes) offered around here.

FedEx v UPS Unless you find someone who has worked at both, realize you are going to get a biased perspective for each job. This is just one pilot's perspective, YMMV. I agree with the assertion that Memphis is an absolute warzone, unfit for raising a family, much less safely getting to work. 100% no-go for in-domicile living; it's just a place I endure until training is over. When I'm turning through Memphis, I'm staying at the hub in a sleep room for a few hours. I've heard from both company and union that 70% of FedEx pilots are commuters. The reasons for that are not only the horrific daily violence in Memphis, but it's the trip construction that allows ease of commuting. The 777 on one end is the extreme international-only option, usually one large trip, meaning one commute to work per month. On the other end is the 757, with potential for many small day-long trips, multiple blocks of off time, requiring multiple commutes to domicile. The MD/76/Bus are somewhere in the middle. Commuting into either FDX/UPS is a totally different animal than the pax world. At FedEx, there is no seniority booking of jumpseats (JS). The jumpseat is YOURS if you book it. When I attempt to select a JS that is full, I have no idea whether it's filled with JetBlue pilots or FedEx pilots. It honestly doesn't matter...those pilots have been guaranteed a ride to work/home. The mitigation: FedEx pilots are able to book the JS 3 weeks out; all offline JSers only get the week prior. So we have the opportunity to book anything we want before it fills up. It's location dependent, but generally speaking, FDX JSs are not that difficult to book on a regular basis. There are a few hot spots, like Seattle, Denver, South Florida (where rich airline Capts live) that are more difficult, but certainly not impossible. I also agree with Prozac WRT to UPS weekend JSs. After the last sort on Saturday morning, there is a huge deadzone for jumpseats until the Mon night sort. So the opportunity to weekend commute in jeans/tennis shoes on FDX is near zero depending on location. But that is only one way to commute to work. We also have a travel bank system for deadheads (DH). To clarify, a DH is a positioning/depositioning leg on another airline (wearing business casual v jeans/tennis shoes). A jumpseat is when I book myself on FDX to travel. There have been some exceptions to this during COVID, but let's not digress into irrelevancies. So hypothetically, I'm MEM-based, but I live in random city XYZ. On paper for pay, all my trips must begin/end in domicile. It's entirely possible that the revenue legs for my trip are cities (ABC-DEF-MEM-DEF-GHI). But the trip on paper will look like (MEM-all the cities with rev legs-MEM). So commuters "deviate" each end of that trip. Meaning I'm not going to MEM simply to take Delta from MEM to city ABC where my trip starts. Published in the pairing (pairing=trip) is the actual cost of that Delta ticket, paid by FedEx. If I deviate that leg, telling FedEx that I'm not going to be on that Delta flight, the cost of that ticket is deposited in my travel bank. This money was real when FedEx was going to pay Delta, but it will never be paid to me outright. I can use this money to book air or ground transportation from any city to get to city ABC where my trip starts. You can book on any airline you choose, or even a limo service to have a Cadillac show up in your driveway to take you to work if your travel bank allows it. Once some seniority is realized, a pilot can potentially bid hometown lines...living in city XYZ, and bidding trips that operate XYZ-ABC-DEF-XYZ. This pilot will be at home in XYZ, being paid for the layover on each end of the trip. I know this sounds confusing, but once you're living it, it makes a lot of sense. It's a highly flexible position for the pilot. There are some rules on when you can spend the travel bank (within 3 days of a trip), and the money can expire too. Here's one to really bake your noodle. Let's say I've saved up $10k in my travel bank, and my wife and I are going to Paris. As long as I have a FedEx trip within 3 days of my personal travel to Paris, I can spend that $10k on PERSONAL TRAVEL that is not affiliated with the FedEx trip at all. So I can spend my airline miles to get her into business class, and I can outright buy my business class ticket with FedEx money. All perfectly legal. That's another thing I forgot to mention, airline status. When FedEx is buying all these tickets on Delta/American/United/Foreign carriers/etc, my personal frequent flyer number is automatically linked to that ticket purchase. Any intl leg over 2.5h block must be in business/first, and 5h block sequence domestically must be booked in first. So to the airline, it looks like I'm the big spender, accruing points at a fantastic rate. Because I am. 🙂 PreF, I gather you're going to live in the southern half of Indiana...that makes the domicile choice between FDX IND and UPS SDF a literal coin flip. You can drive to either of them. I wouldn't consider that a variable. IND is FedEx's #2 domestic hub, where every airplane is represented with IND DHs. After about the first year, you'll be off reserve and able to bid a fair amount (if not all) IND DHs. So you'd be MEM on paper but actually driving to/from IND as I described above with city XYZ. That's a quick primer on commuting at FedEx. WRT to your other concern, Fred Smith vs Raj, everything I know about Raj so far--he's a fireplug who isn't waiting for a handout. There is a reason Fred chose him to nurture his baby. Only time will tell, but I haven't heard anything about Raj that gives me pause. And when you talk about culture, FedEx had some of the worst culture in the industry in the 80s/90s--crashing airplanes because the d!ickhead Capt was king. Thankfully that culture has become more CRM-centric. There are always a few turds in every punchbowl, but that's not FedEx-specific. Nine of of ten Capts are just older versions of myself, which is terrifying enough! Go with questions.

But the guy said she was “really hot” How an Unqualified Sex Worker Allegedly Infiltrated a Top Air Force Lab

That spot has tuned into a pilgrimage for some who go there and relive that wonderful event.

Samsies as @nsplayr. Bought some for me and the better half. As stated, crappy website and $10k annual limit per SSN, but it's something in this sea of turd options. It's always Woulda/Coulda/Shoulda and that hindsight is always correct/you would have always played it expertly. If you'd sold at $80k you'd have felt like a genius looking back now, but you'd have gone through a stretch of kicking yourself when it rode from $80-$137 as "having missed the boat." I had a stock I had bought for $1.18/share and sold north of $8/share in my Roth and felt pretty good about a 700+% gain. Until it went up and hit a high of almost $250/share and would have been north of $300k in profit (if I'd actually held it that long; which I probably wouldn't have). Counter point: held another one (wasn't gonna miss out on those gains this time!) and watched it go from $30k in the green to about $1500 up now. It's all gambling with a longer timeline to help fix mistakes (if you don't buy a total turd). Just keep plugging away and investing in the simple stuff (TSP stock funds, ETFs, Mutuals, etc.) and sit for the long haul for a majority. If you wanna gamble with some, it's everyone's prerogative. But, 99.69% of us aren't going to play it perfectly, most of the folks that were loudly spouting their market prowess sure do get quiet when they're wrong which gives most an improper picture, and there's always a victor's bias with folks that "called" this or that move, while not addressing the majority of folks that were stone cold wrong (or even just right, but at the wrong time).

I busted out the stud finder one just this afternoon. Never gets old - just ask my wife.