Ready to go to Iraq

15 Oct 2009 Thursday

I am ready to go to work in Iraq. I have spent the last 4 days in the central network operations center and the regional operations center for Kuwait. The central network center for the Theater has responsibility for the entire area of Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait and few surrounding countries. The regional center has responsibility for Kuwait.

Forward bases and camps have Information officers (IMO) and Network Service Center (NSC). Technical problem (incidents) for systems, networks, and circuits are recorded in Remedy and solved at the lowest level possible. If incidents, problems, service requests cannot be resolved or completed at the local level they are escalated to the regional centers. There are regional centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait. As needed, problems are then escalated to the central operations center in Kuwait.

For the last three weeks I have in-processed, trained, watched PowerPoint presentations, been briefed and watched other people work. Now I am ready to go to work. I continue to be enthusiastic and energized about the position in Iraq.

The Iraq team is working short-handed so one of my top priorities will be to recruit more people.

Logistics and transportation take time. Today, I hope to be transported to another Kuwait base for a flight out but I am not optimistic; maybe tomorrow and then on to Iraq on Saturday or Sunday.

All the best,

James, Yogi In Iraq