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spaceman

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Posts posted by spaceman

    Latest Movies

    in Squadron Bar

    Posted

    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.

    • Like 2

    Leadership at the 'Deid

    in General Discussion

    Posted

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

    Volunteer opportunity for anyone interested.  Even though it's sponsored by the AUAB Top III organization, I've confirmed that ANY rank can participate.  Please let me know if you're interested ASAP, since it's a limited number of personnel needed, and it's first come, first serve.

    -----------------

    Good morning Team,

    A great opportunity has opened for us, I extend an invitation to join me and support this event.  Per prior feedback 8 - 15 Wingmen would be sufficient thus facilitating the task and finishing in less time.  This is a great event we have in order to take care of future activities in support of our Airmen.  Again thank you and have a great day!

    ----------------

    ALCON

    AUAB Top III has been tasked with an upcoming Oasis Cleaning and we will need volunteers to conduct the cleaning.

    Oasis cleaning show time inside PAX terminal is 25 March at 1550L (1520L Showtime)

    The Oasis Cleaning Program is a unique private organization that gives us the opportunity to participate in cleaning requests that support commercial passenger aircraft traveling through Al Udeid Air Base.  More so, AUAB is well known for Air Mobility Operations and we consider our partnerships with visiting airlines invaluable. Disrespect towards Airline Representatives/AMCC or failure to meet cleaning requirements will not be tolerated.  The mission is our #1 priority in the 8EAMS and it’s important that we practice excellence in all we do, exceeding high expectations.

     

    • Haha 1

    Leadership at the 'Deid

    in General Discussion

    Posted

     

     

     

    I wouldn’t go so far as to say pretty good by deployed standards...   Have you ever Ron’d at OAIX?

     

    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!!!

     

    Leadership at the 'Deid

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    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.

    • Like 2

    Leadership at the 'Deid

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    At least one of them delivers to the gate, if you call ahead...
    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!

    Pro tip- get a router and split one login.  You can log on three devices at once and the router doesn't count against your total.  Four dudes/dudettes can share the most expensive plan for $45 out of pocket each.  Still a pain in the ass, but hey, fight the system however you can right?
    Dang that's a good idea, I might do that

    Leadership at the 'Deid

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    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:

    Capture.JPG

    Leadership at the 'Deid

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    14 minutes ago, Duck said:

    What is the deal with the internet now. Its been over 5 years since I have been out there and getting ready for my farewell tour. The rumor I heard was that you now pay for your usage and it is expensive. I bet that kills the World of Warcraft crowd that was hogging all my bandwidth back in 2011, bastards.

    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.

    Leadership at the 'Deid

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 3/16/2018 at 3:44 PM, Stretch said:

    At least there is a reliable chance of food at a barbeque. I'm not so sure the same can be said at the chow halls, given the state of the last few meals.

    (Background: They're switching over contractors for food services and don't have the people, processes, or supply chains unfooked yet. A major for EFSS was taking out the trash bags of disposable plates as SNCOs were manning scrambled eggs serving spoons this morning at the BPC for breakfast, trying to make up for the manpower shortage with 'leadership' and bodies from everywhere else on base. Strongly correlated rumor has something about the previous contractor's penchant for human trafficing as part of that bid change decision.)

    The 'Deid - "You're complaining about housing again? Let's give you something to really complain about!"

    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)

    20180317_054925.jpg

    • Upvote 1

    Leadership at the 'Deid

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    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.

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1
    • Upvote 1

    Blended Retirement System Puzzle

    in Squadron Bar

    Posted

    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!

    Blended Retirement System Puzzle

    in Squadron Bar

    Posted

    4 hours ago, nunya said:

    First problem is that the reserve pension won't give you 50% or 40% of your base pay, because you won't have 7200 points.  You'll have somewhere around 5,000, so your pension will be around 34% or 27% of your base pay.

    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

    Blended Retirement System Puzzle

    in Squadron Bar

    Posted

    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!

    New BAH rates are out.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    So I’ll pitch in with a possibly unpopular opinion that I guarantee will trigger Mark1, but the day to day sacrifice of deployments is exponentially worse on guys with kids than single dudes. I missed my wife’s birthday 4 years in a row, 3 Christmases, and a lot of other kid milestones (First steps, etc). Single guys missed Hangout Fest and the Star Wars premiere. I’m obviously exaggerating here, but when you said that, I was looking for my standardized eyeroll emoji.  

     

    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?!

     

     

     

    • Like 2
    • Upvote 2
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