Technical Difficulties

It's a slow week at the project because the civilian crane crew is otherwise occupied. Personally, I think it's a high-level conspiracy to retard progress. The public works department told Mad Dog that we need to slow production and the captain of the base told him that there's no hurry: if the bridge takes another year it's no big deal (we have a goal of completion by February). Logic would say that's a good thing; we should be able to kick back and work a few less hours every week. But the battalion has a different vision, a competitive vision that pits our productivity against the productivity of all other Naval Mobile Construction Battalions, and the crew is stuck in the middle. I'm stuck in the office because it's legal to write me off as indirect labor and because I don't have a dump truck or bulldozer license so there's not much for me to do out there except guide the operators. And I'm really not in the mood to direct hot, dusty traffic.

So I'm in the office, with little to do because I'm a few days ahead with my administrative work, and wanted to take advantage of some quality writing time. I logged on, opened Microsoft Word, pecked for a few minutes, and hit save: nothing. I worked at it for a bit and I can't save anything. So I called the computer people and left a message. In the meantime I'm going to have to e-mail myself anything I want to commit to paper (or, more realistically, my hard drive).