In total, NMPS falls just short of being a complete waste of time. The entire weeks' schedule could very easily be achieved in a single afternoon. If you have completed the ECRC checklist, expect to have very little to do here; however, you still have to show up everywhere and be told that you already did it. It's frustrating, but still not overly time-consuming; you will have plenty of time to yourself, so make friends, especially friends with rental cars.
Here's a few things you may not have heard:
1. Rental cars are available, just call the coordinator and ask for one, and the accounting data will be added to your orders.
2. For some reason, they go out of their way to say don't wear a flight suit. Ignore this, bring a flight suit and wear it everywhere. It is not a big deal what-so-ever. I recommend a Khaki flight suit since you already have to pack a bunch of brown T-shirts.
3. You will want a few pairs of civies for liberty at NMPS. Just bring them and plan on mailing them home. My wife is coming to South Carolina on the final weekend of Fort Jackson, so I just brought an extra duffel bag, which I will fill with all my overflow gear and send back with her.
4. If you require eye-wear, that might be worth getting sorted out before you show up here. Everything else, don't worry about, get it done if you have time, but don't sacrifice valuable family time to do it. The final day of NMPS is when they make the legal appointments, so if you want most of Friday off, get your will and POA taken care of ahead of time.
5. Do not expect any real connection between NMPS and Fort Jackson; I thought having the eye-wear forwarded to Fort Jackson would be no problem, but they won't do it, I have to have them shipped to my wife and mailed to me. They don't know anything about Fort Jackson, so don't ask.
6. NMPS is undermanned by activated reservists; the staff is not interested in hearing your pissing and moaning, so just leave that shit at home. A smile and a cooperative attitude will earn you great customer service, act like an asshole, and you will politely be told to go stand in line somewhere.
I have a very light schedule tomorrow, I plan on meeting up with a buddy and possibly doing some drinking. We all leave on Saturday, the first day of Fort Jackson is Sunday.
Showing posts with label NMPS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NMPS. Show all posts
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
D-303: Immunization
I got five more shots today! FIVE! I got seven at WPAFB three weeks ago; and it's not as if I haven't seen a doctor in 10 years, I deployed in 2006. What are all these shots for? I really need to start keeping track of these things. They tried to give me another smallpox, but I diligently searched for my paperwork and by the grace of God found it; another disgusting smallpox scab would have sent me over the edge.
In spite of the lab work I had done at WPAFB, they need three more vials today, apparently there is some ambiguity over what my blood type actually is, so I guess that is worth sorting out. The HM3 who stuck both of my arms came away empty, so he had to send me over to the actual lab, where a civilian skillfully drew the vials without making me pass out, which is no small feat.
There is a spirit of docile acceptance among the IAs; everyone knows this is just part of the drill. There is a lot of waiting around time that we fill with cheerful griping. A few of us are going to Sushi tonight, which I am grasping to as the light at the end of the tunnel as I await my 1300 PHA appointment.
Note: For all of you aviators out there, a PHA is not the same thing as a Flight Physical - well, actually yes it is, but it is called something different and has a different number form, so your flight physical won't count. So if you want to save yourself about a half hour at NMPS, make sure you get a PHA when you are running through your checklist. However, like everything else on that checklist, you are going to repeat it all here at NMPS anyway, so I wouldn't spend to much time worrying over it.
In spite of the lab work I had done at WPAFB, they need three more vials today, apparently there is some ambiguity over what my blood type actually is, so I guess that is worth sorting out. The HM3 who stuck both of my arms came away empty, so he had to send me over to the actual lab, where a civilian skillfully drew the vials without making me pass out, which is no small feat.
There is a spirit of docile acceptance among the IAs; everyone knows this is just part of the drill. There is a lot of waiting around time that we fill with cheerful griping. A few of us are going to Sushi tonight, which I am grasping to as the light at the end of the tunnel as I await my 1300 PHA appointment.
Note: For all of you aviators out there, a PHA is not the same thing as a Flight Physical - well, actually yes it is, but it is called something different and has a different number form, so your flight physical won't count. So if you want to save yourself about a half hour at NMPS, make sure you get a PHA when you are running through your checklist. However, like everything else on that checklist, you are going to repeat it all here at NMPS anyway, so I wouldn't spend to much time worrying over it.
Monday, April 7, 2008
D-304: NMPS
It has finally begun, I had a nice weekend with my wife, said a long and very sad goodbye, and left for my first intermediate stop. Port Hueneme, a small SeaBee base in Ventura County, California, is where I will be attending NMPS (Naval Mobilization Processing Site).
Avoid changing planes at LAX at all costs. I arrived in Terminal 5 with my connecting flight leaving from Terminal 9. Not only did this constitute a three mile death march, but I was forced out past security and had to re-screen. Naturally, the spare laptop battery in my backpack was a device so alien to the security idiots, that they had to check it for dangerous materials of some kind by wiping it with a rag and feeding the rag through a machine. The retardation of these clowns is the staple of hack stand-up acts across the nation, so I won't bore you with any more analysis here.
The week was kicked off in style by United losing my luggage. This is the second time in two consecutive United flight where my bags did not arrive with me. I stayed up late to do a load of laundry at the BOQ, as I was a little funky from a day's travel. I will leave it to your respective imaginations to figure out how I managed to wash the only shirt, socks and underpants that I possessed. I arrived at 0730 for my first brief of the day in faded Lee jeans and a lavender polo with a little lime green horsey on it.
The first brief was long, but the short message was this: "You are about to endure a very long, boring and painful week filled with repeats of all the tasks that you've been driving to Wright Patterson Air Force Base to do all months long. I know it sucks, but just shut up about it." I realized that this speech was carefully crafted through months of dealing with a new batch of 50 or 60 cranky, bitter, non-volunteer Sailors every Monday morning. It was probably an important thing for us all to hear. The bottom line; this is stupid, but it's going to happen. I just wish I hadn't done any of it on my own, as it seems there is ample time here to repeat every checklist item.
The class has around 80 people, about half Chiefs and Officers. With few exceptions, virtually everyone seems to be giong to JCCS-1 in some capacity, so I have uncovered some more gouge, including a welcome aboard letter from the CMC which seemed a little dated, but was enlightening none-the-less. Mostly, the letter is the first thing that gave the impression that JCCS-1 is an actual command, and not just a place where I will stop before being shuffled off to some Army command.
The rest of the morning was spent filling in forms, with block by block instructions from some NMPS staffers. "Block 1, last name comma first name; Block 2, date of birth in day-month-year format," and on and on for two hours or so. We then filled out some online health assessment, "have you ever though about hurting yourself, do you have a family history of heart disease," and on and on.
Last, we were fitted for uniforms, and by fitted, I mean of course that we were directed 12 at a time to an outdoor CONEX box filled with piles of uniform parts where we were basically just supposed to find shit that fits. I was warned several times about the "one size fits all" mentality of the screeners by my CO, and decided that a few things were far to important to be treated so cavalierly; namely, the comfort of the shoes and the comfort of the pants that I would be wearing for the next 10 months in the world's most unforgiving climate.
I took my time trying on shoes, and ultimately decided on a 10.5W, which is insane because I never buy shoes smaller than 11.5, but that's military issue for you. Pants were somewhat more tricky, because as I stated earlier, we were outdoors. I looked around and noticed that everyone was trying on their pants over the top of their uniforms, and deciding on sizes. I found this unacceptable, I asked them to pop open another CONEX for us to change in, seeing as how the uniform supplier was a female, and I didn't think it was appropriate to drop my pants in front of her. They said that they couldn't, so I got over my modesty and dropped my trousers right out in the open, and slipped on a pair of large-long, which were too long, so I tried large regular which fit nicely. The moral of the story; if I decided not to drop my pants in front of the world, I would have spent 10 moths in Iraq with my pants to long.
After that we were cut loose, which was a nice surprise because it was a gorgeous day and I've never been to California (besides Lake Tahoe). I ran into a hinge from VAW 125 who has a rental car, and went with her and a helo guy to an outdoor restaurant on "the 1," which is a very cool piece of highway flanked by mountains on one side and the Pacific on the other.
We have to go back to NMPS at 2000 for some reason, I think I'll kill the time with some Battlestar Galactica.
Avoid changing planes at LAX at all costs. I arrived in Terminal 5 with my connecting flight leaving from Terminal 9. Not only did this constitute a three mile death march, but I was forced out past security and had to re-screen. Naturally, the spare laptop battery in my backpack was a device so alien to the security idiots, that they had to check it for dangerous materials of some kind by wiping it with a rag and feeding the rag through a machine. The retardation of these clowns is the staple of hack stand-up acts across the nation, so I won't bore you with any more analysis here.
The week was kicked off in style by United losing my luggage. This is the second time in two consecutive United flight where my bags did not arrive with me. I stayed up late to do a load of laundry at the BOQ, as I was a little funky from a day's travel. I will leave it to your respective imaginations to figure out how I managed to wash the only shirt, socks and underpants that I possessed. I arrived at 0730 for my first brief of the day in faded Lee jeans and a lavender polo with a little lime green horsey on it.
The first brief was long, but the short message was this: "You are about to endure a very long, boring and painful week filled with repeats of all the tasks that you've been driving to Wright Patterson Air Force Base to do all months long. I know it sucks, but just shut up about it." I realized that this speech was carefully crafted through months of dealing with a new batch of 50 or 60 cranky, bitter, non-volunteer Sailors every Monday morning. It was probably an important thing for us all to hear. The bottom line; this is stupid, but it's going to happen. I just wish I hadn't done any of it on my own, as it seems there is ample time here to repeat every checklist item.
The class has around 80 people, about half Chiefs and Officers. With few exceptions, virtually everyone seems to be giong to JCCS-1 in some capacity, so I have uncovered some more gouge, including a welcome aboard letter from the CMC which seemed a little dated, but was enlightening none-the-less. Mostly, the letter is the first thing that gave the impression that JCCS-1 is an actual command, and not just a place where I will stop before being shuffled off to some Army command.
The rest of the morning was spent filling in forms, with block by block instructions from some NMPS staffers. "Block 1, last name comma first name; Block 2, date of birth in day-month-year format," and on and on for two hours or so. We then filled out some online health assessment, "have you ever though about hurting yourself, do you have a family history of heart disease," and on and on.
Last, we were fitted for uniforms, and by fitted, I mean of course that we were directed 12 at a time to an outdoor CONEX box filled with piles of uniform parts where we were basically just supposed to find shit that fits. I was warned several times about the "one size fits all" mentality of the screeners by my CO, and decided that a few things were far to important to be treated so cavalierly; namely, the comfort of the shoes and the comfort of the pants that I would be wearing for the next 10 months in the world's most unforgiving climate.
I took my time trying on shoes, and ultimately decided on a 10.5W, which is insane because I never buy shoes smaller than 11.5, but that's military issue for you. Pants were somewhat more tricky, because as I stated earlier, we were outdoors. I looked around and noticed that everyone was trying on their pants over the top of their uniforms, and deciding on sizes. I found this unacceptable, I asked them to pop open another CONEX for us to change in, seeing as how the uniform supplier was a female, and I didn't think it was appropriate to drop my pants in front of her. They said that they couldn't, so I got over my modesty and dropped my trousers right out in the open, and slipped on a pair of large-long, which were too long, so I tried large regular which fit nicely. The moral of the story; if I decided not to drop my pants in front of the world, I would have spent 10 moths in Iraq with my pants to long.
After that we were cut loose, which was a nice surprise because it was a gorgeous day and I've never been to California (besides Lake Tahoe). I ran into a hinge from VAW 125 who has a rental car, and went with her and a helo guy to an outdoor restaurant on "the 1," which is a very cool piece of highway flanked by mountains on one side and the Pacific on the other.
We have to go back to NMPS at 2000 for some reason, I think I'll kill the time with some Battlestar Galactica.
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