Day Ten

I have to admit that today has been the best day yet, although it's only been ten days and I have about 170 more to go. The day started with Chris and I going over to the ANA camp to look at their equipment; to figure out what they had, and start setting things up for them. Of course, we had to do our usual 30 minutes of socializing, as is custom for the Afghan people. There really is no sense of urgency within the Afghan culture, so socializing is part of the norm. Of course, I'm the type person that likes to focus on what I need to get done, do it, then socialize afterwards...but I've learned to accept it and do what I have to do when I get the chance. I certainly don't want to offend anyone.

I've listened to the Afghan people talk and it baffles me at just how fast they speak. Sometimes I wonder how the hell anyone can understand what they're saying. Today, I recorded the Afghan Captain on the phone. This video will show you exactly what I mean. [As of post time, the video wouldn't load - it's peak internet usage time right now and the web is slow - I'll try to post it again in the morning]

After about an hour of discussion, the PA Major (through the interpreter) asked me if I could copy mini DV videotapes to DVD. I proceeded to tell him I could and that is was "easy" for me to do. No problem. Next thing I know, we're all standing up and being ushered out the door. I asked the interpreter, "does he want me to do this now?" His response was yes. Hell, I was there to set up their equipment, not make DVDs for them. But, this was my chance to shine and show them a capability they'd never seen before, let alone be able to do themselves.

We headed back to our side of the camp, where we ran into a roadblock with getting our ANA's through the gate. Chris and I were told that we'd have to get clearance through the TOC (not sure what it means, but it's the central point of operations for the camp - Tactical Operations Center maybe - it's an Army thing), and until then, they could not enter the camp. It was the first time that Chris and I had ventured off our side of the camp alone, and our intentions were never to bring them back with us when we'd left our office about an hour earlier anyway. Normally, Sandy is with us and has all those arrangements worked out 48 hours prior. We didn't know that. I went back to the office to get Sandy, and we walked to the TOC to get clearance. They gave us a letter - which we took to the gate - and all was well.

Back at the office, I was able to give a little training to one of the ANAs on video importing and digitizing. As luck would have it, I was unable to log clips and digitize them automatically like I normally do. I had to do everything manually, which was frustrating, but still workable. I troubleshot everything to ensure it was all working properly, and everything I had set up was running fine. I narrowed the problem down to the actual format of the video the ANA's had given me. In the U.S., we shoot video in NTSC format. In Afghanistan, they use PAL. I think that might've been the problem with digitizing automatically. All my test tapes I had used with my camera worked perfectly. It had to be their camera. I'll find out more tomorrow when I go over to the camp again and get to look at it. Standardizing things could be an issue.

My next problem was hard drive space. The thing I need to teach these guys the most is that they don't have to shoot sixty continuous minutes of the same event. Full sixty minute tapes take up so much hard drive space, and would certainly bog down any system if you put enough of them on one. I ran out of space in the middle of the tape, and was unable to put any more footage on my computer. I'm not sure that the ANAs quite understood what the problem was, but they were very gracious about it, and asked if I could just put the General's part of the video onto DVD. That I was able to do...in NTSC. My DVD burning software would not allow me to burn in PAL format, so the DVD they got was in NTSC. It will play in a computer, but not in a PAL DVD player...one that, oh...the General might have at home for example. I told the ANA Major to explain that to the General when he gets the DVD, and let him know that we're working on standardizing things. Hopefully that's good enough...for now.

The ANA guys stayed in the office for lunch and then left shortly afterwards. I spent most of the rest of the day troubleshooting the NTSC/PAL problems, and gathering old equipment that wasn't being used around the office (more on this later).

Chris and I decided to go over to the marketplace and get haircuts. It was a beautiful day and many Afghan construction workers were out working on buildings an moving dirt. A convoy of vehicles rolled out in front of us as we were walking and I wondered, "where are they going?" as it passed. Things just seemed to move along normally, as every other day has since we've been here. I went to the DVD place and tried to return my DEXTER Season 4 set, in order to get a set with the last 2 episodes on it. Of course, they didn't have any more, but they are expecting more tomorrow. I'll try again then. They're supposed to be holding one just for me.
We went to the barber shop and waited for the barber to finish cutting the young man's hair that was there before us. The sign on the door read: "Haircut - $3.00" Can't beat that I guess, huh? I'm always a little apprehensive about new people cutting my hair, especially those that don't speak English and may not understand what I tell them I want. This didn't turn out bad though. Chris went first, and the guy did a great job on his hair. I pretty much got the same thing Chris did, except a little bit shorter on the sides...so it was easy to tell him what I wanted and get him to understand. "Just do what you did with that guy...except a #1 blade on the sides," I said laughing. Easy.

Sitting there in the barber chair was an experience in itself for me though. Here I am in Afghanistan, with a local Afghan man cutting my hair. Who would've thought this would be happening ten years ago. I'm always catching myself looking at these people wondering who they are, where they came from, or how they're living. I sat in the chair wondering where HIS loyalties lied, and if he was just that friendly or did he have an agenda? In the midst of that thought, he cracked open a blue box full of razors and grabbed the holder for his straight razor to put the new razor in. As much as I hate to admit it, some negative thoughts ran through my mind during that split second. "He could very easily slit my throat with this thing right now," I thought, as I stared through the mirror at my 9mm Beretta sitting next to Chris on the couch behind me, completely out of reach. It's not that I was ever scared or ever felt threatened at all, it was just the unknown that overwhelmed me. Knowing that Chris was there gave me some sense of security, as I also saw the shiny handle of his 9mm strapped to his chest, and know he would've taken care of business if the situation had called for it. But there was never any danger. Don't mistake my inner thoughts with what's really going on here. The local Afghan people have been very gracious and friendly, and "bad apples" are not the norm. You can never get complacent by any means, but the Afghan people want peace and freedom, and that's what I see most every day.

After haircuts, we went into the jewelry shop where I bought a nice Rolex watch. It's a Rolex...really! Ask any Afghan person, they'll tell you! [insert laughing sound here] Well, it says Rolex anyway. It was relatively inexpensive, as are most things you buy here, and it was one thing that I absolutely needed to buy. I'm not a watch-wearing person, but I needed it. It looks nice right now, but I'm guessing my wrist will be green before too long. Time will tell.

Back at the office, I continued to troubleshoot issues and see what other stuff I could find laying around that I could use. The hard drive space problem was beginning to nag at me, as I knew that could be a rather large problem for the ANA's down the road. The orange and silver hard drive I brought with me wasn't being read by my laptop, and my own personal external hard drive didn't have enough space left on it to use it for what I needed it for. At this point I was getting frustrated when I remembered I had seen something that looked like an external hard drive sitting on the window sill in the back storage room. I went back there, and sure enough, there it sat... covered in about a year's worth of dust and dirt. But much to my dismay, there was no power cord for it. Disappointed, I walked away and started talking about not having power for the drive. I was trying to figure out what else I could do when Chris walked around the corner with a power cord for the drive. "You looking for this?" he said. "Life saver," I thought. He also managed to find another drive just like the one I had found...both 500 GB in size. "One TERABYTE of hard drive space and we'd be set," I remember thinking as I hooked one up to my laptop.

I heard the "ding ding" of the hard drive being connected to the laptop and I thought we were golden. Unfortunately, the computer recognized the drive, but it was nowhere to be found in Windows Explorer. No additional drives popped up...no signs of any drives anywhere. Strange. In my travels as PACAF IG, I had seen this problem before with those pesky Orange Lacie drives the Air Force sent to all the multimedia centers. The computer was reading them when you connected them, but there were no signs of it on your computer anywhere. I didn't want to just let this go. Determined to not let one terabyte of drive space go to waste, I began my search for a solution. Internet site after internet site, forum after forum, chat room after chat room...I searched everywhere for an answer. I scoured the drive company's website for drivers, but couldn't find any to match what I needed. Then, I noticed something. This drive was made for a Mac computer. Immediately, my focus changed. Instead of finding drivers, I needed to find a way to convert this hard drive for use in Windows, if possible. Again, I scoured web site after web site and forum after forum until finally, I hit on something. "Convert your G Drive Q to Windows" the web forum said. "It can't be this easy," I thought. For the sake of making a long story short...it was that easy. I printed out the instructions and followed them perfectly. Everything worked just like the instructions said they would. I now had 500 GB of space to use for video...space that was being used as a paperweight on a window sill for who knows how many months before. One down, one to go.

The second drive didn't prove to be as easy. There was a protective partition on the drive that kept me from formatting for use in Windows. Again, I was determined to make this work too, so I was back on the internet searching for answers. I found a forum where people had the same problem, and found a solution. I would have to venture into the DOS screen and give the computer commands to "clean" this drive. That was supposed to remove the protective partition and allow me to format it. I asked Chris for help, and he yelled out instructions to me from another computer in the back, as I'm typing commands in DOS. My computer still doesn't recognize the drive. I type in the disk drive number and type in 'clean' but nothing happens. That's a problem. I can't clean it if the computer doesn't recognize it. After a few attempts, Chris and I talked about going to dinner when I realized...did I reboot the computer since we switched to the new hard drive? Maybe that's why the DOS prompt doesn't see this one? I decide to reboot my computer and...disaster.

Ninety seconds later...a reboot and nothing. No Windows screen, no DOS prompt...nothing. A hard shutdown and restart...nothing. The worst possible scenario has just happened. Did I just wipe my hard drive? Did I just completely wipe out my operating system, editing programs and everything else that was loaded on my computer? Another hard shutdown and restart...nothing. What did I do? At this point, I'm completely crippled in my capabilities. "I can't do anything here without this," I thought. My heart sunk to my feet. Everything I told the ANA's I could do...I could no longer do.

At this point, I had no choice but to pray out loud...and I did just that. "Lord please...not this, not now," I said. Capt Gerst is sitting behind me, looking at me with his normal, evil grin. About that time the Windows screen popped up. I continued, "please let this thing come up normal with all my stuff on it Lord...please." It did. Amazing. This really isn't an exagerration, as the guys in my office can attest. It's exactly how it happened. Someone certainly was looking out for me, and I'm very thankful that was the case.

After the reboot, Chris and I went through the DOS process again. I was right, the reboot initialized the drive and it appeared in the DOS screen this time. I gave the command to the computer to clean the drive, and BOOM...the protective partition disappeared. Once that happened, I was able to format the drive and it worked perfectly. So much for those "paperweights." I now had one terabyte of hard drive space for the new ANA video section, one of the things they so desperately needed - and it didn't cost them a cent. Perfect! The best thing about it was that we have them here now ready for use, and don't have to wait for the order to be approved and for them to show up in the mail three months from now. A few hours of research and a little initiative proved to be well worth it today. Congratulations hard drives...no more window sills for you two.

I felt great when we went to dinner, completely satisfied with the work I had put in today to make things happen. I couldn't have done that a couple days ago. Dinner was great, as it was Chinese Food night and it was all good. I hadn't eaten all day, so I had my fair share of all of it.

I returned back to the office to re-setup my little video editing station, fully equipped with a terabyte of hard drive space. I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere with work and improving the ANA capabilities here. WOW. One terabyte of space just laying around collecting dust, and now it all works perfectly. Amazing. It might not be a big deal to most, but it is for me...at least right now in this place, at this time. We're headed in the right direction. The days might be long, but nothing that I can't work through. I accomplished some good things today, and feel I have so much more to accomplish in the next 6 months. I just need to stay motivated and focused. If I do that, nothing can stop me...and the possibilities will be endless.