NMPS Day 1

Medical at 0600 was a non-issue. I didn't need any bloodwork so they just took my medical records and sent me off to get chow. I reported to the NMPS building at 0700. Medical is across the street from my berthing. The NMPS building is about a 9 minute walk. Most of the day was lectures on mundane things like how to fill out your travel form. There are about 50 people there mobilizing so they went over every possible combination of travel steps. There was a tricare brief and lots of questions about that. I will say that the tricare select program for reservists looks like a nice deal if you need to buy into a health insurance program. It's about $200/month for a family and the benefits look normal.

We were fitted for uniforms. Another non-event for me since the ACU's fit the same as the DCU's I'm wearing. Most people had to try them on though so it took a while.

The good news is that they accelerated the schedule because of New Years so that we will be finished by Wednesday afternoon. They'll give us special liberty for the holidays as long as we show up for our next duty assignment on time. For me that means I need to be at Ft Jackson on Sunday. If this is the accelerated schedule, the normal one must be mind numbingly slow. We got our medical records back in the afternoon. Mine is mostly complete so I can skip the dental section and some other things. I am scheduled to get the smallpox shot tomorrow. They gave a talk about having a scab for 4 weeks and to not let anything touch that area for the entire time.

I finished at 1500 (since my medical wasn't deficient) so I spent the afternoon working on the JIAT training which my orders say is required for E7-E9 and O3-O6. It's about as boring at the NKO training. All ppt based. Looks like there are 25 courses I need to complete. This is going to take forever.

I continue to be overwhelmed by how manual and human-driven the military machine is. I knew this of course from my Reserve experience but the Active component isn't much better off. I continue to fill out more paperwork providing duplicate information, or just plain identical forms. It doesn't look like any military/government databases talk to each other. Even the pay systems for Reserve and Active are incompatible. For example, when they switch us to active status this week, if we haven't been paid yet for our last reserve drill, we won't get paid because DFAS locks out the reserve side. And medical is so sad it's humorous. Most people are walking around with a two inch thick medical record that contains a paper trail of everything medical that's ever happened to them. The Executive Branch has been talking about pushing an electronic health care standard for a decade. They should start with their own military.

At least my room is nice. Maybe they remodelled it after the last hurricane. The Kurig coffee maker and Green tea is quite agreeable. Not looking forward to the open-bay Army training at Ft. Jackson.