Stolen Valor

With Veterans Day being tomorrow, I want to wish all my brother and sister veterans the best and bestow grateful thanks for their service. 

Whether the veteran did a couple of years in the military, or made a career out of it, they deserve the thanks from our nation for standing up, heeding the call and serving honorably, in whatever capacity or field they choose.

Something that irks me to no end is the individuals out there that are called “Posers”, who claim to be a military veteran or member and have never served a single real day in uniform.  They go to great lengths to purchase uniforms, medals and accoutrements, then devise lengthy tales of their “bravery” to impress others.  At times some have even gained access to bases and used privileges that they are not entitled.

Often they claim to have been a SEAL, or worked classified operations when there is not a shred of truth to any of it.  They wear all kinds of medals and ribbons to “prove” their “heroism”.  It is not just limited to the United States, posers have been exposed in Great Britain and Canada.  In one famous case, a Canadian even posed as a U.S. Marine! 

When I was a Coast Guard special agent, I personally worked two cases of two men claiming to be Coast Guardsmen.  It was really easy to expose them and we confiscated their uniform items.  One had never had any connection to the Coast Guard and the other had been a junior enlisted man who was thrown out of the Coast Guard for disciplinary reasons.  He bought some officer uniforms and was going around inspecting people’s boats at marinas.  Even though uniforms and medals are supposed to be controlled items, they can be purchased on line through sites such as eBay, or Army surplus stores.

Sadly, there are no federal laws on the books that they can be prosecuted for impersonating a military member, it was viewed by the Supreme Court several years ago that these individuals were exercising their First Amendment rights.

There are websites out there to expose these posers.  Nothing legally can be done, but with the Internet, they can be shown as the fraud they are.

http://www.thesandgram.com/2013/03/25/a-band-of-brothers-in-search-of-posers/

It is a slap in the face to all the many people who have honorably served our country.  Stolen Valor.  Shameful, in so many ways.

Anyway, to all who have really served, Happy Veterans Day!

                       

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Age Isn’t Always Just A Number

Sometimes your muscles and bones remind you that you’re not 18 anymore, you really are getting old.

Motrin is my friend.  Usually in 800 milligram amounts.  Why, you ask?  Because sometimes the areas we pin hunt are really rugged areas, like this:

            

The picture doesn’t do justice to this twenty five foot deep ravine, choked with fallen trees and brush.  Of course, the boundary line went right through it, and so did we.  Very carefully.

Fortunately, there were no spills.  Here.  I did take quite a digger face plant on ground that was more level and where there was no reason for the fall.  Except that I’m clumsy, or getting old and the feet don’t lift as easily as they used to.

One thing we’ve found very helpful is hiking poles.  I have a pair that I got in Finland some years back.  I almost gave them away, thinking who’d need them?  Somehow, they ended up in the Journey’s storage compartment for use someday. Well, that day came and they sure are handy.  Marti uses one and I use the other.  We still have other gear we carry when we pin hunt, so only one hand is available for the pole.

The other useful item we’ve been able to use is fellow volunteer Laura.

                

Having her along helping us has actually increased the ground we cover and pins we find.  She has some pretty sharp (read: younger) eyes and has been able to find pins and tree markings a bit faster than we do.

We have our routine down to a science, once we locate the trees that have special markings indicating a nearby pin, I use the metal detector to locate it and then often have to dig through leaves and dirt to expose it.  Then  Laura jumps in and wraps the pin with plastic tape (to make the pin easier to find for the next hunters in the next survey, about five years in the future).

               

Marti is the “Map Maven”.  She has the map that is our guide to the areas we’re checking.  As the pin is wrapped, she crosses the located pin off the list as “found” and points us in the next direction.

              

Long sleeves, long paints, gloves and orange vests are part of our working outfits.  The orange vest are for protection from hunters, it is hunting season around here.

Every area we survey, we find encroachments onto Corps land, like this driveway.   Marti is standing next to the truck  where the property line is and I’m taking the picture from where the next pin is located.  Drawing a straight line between Marti and where I’m standing, you can see someone needs to relocate a part of their driveway.

               

We’ve been averaging 4 to 5 miles of hiking through all kinds of terrain every time we pin hunt.  It’s a lot of fun and very satisfying work.  Especially when there is plenty of Motrin to come home to…  ;c)

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

                     

Finished The Verizon MiFi Switch

I find it amazing that so many Verizon customer service reps had never been informed about the Millenicom shutdown and to expect all kinds of former customers to come over to Verizon.

With the problems I was having switching and getting my device registered and set up with Verizon, we went to a Verizon corporate store for help.  The reps were very nice and tried to help, but had never heard of the Millenicom issue.  They wanted me to take the Verizon double up package, but we don’t need 40GB of data, and the cost was more than we wanted to spend ($40 more per month, $130).

Back to the phone.  One issue that was clouding up the rep’s response was that I was calling them on our Verizon pay-as-you-go phone that we need in this area where our AT&T phones don’t work.  They got confused thinking I was calling about the Verizon phone and not my Verizon MiFi.

After bouncing around between a few customer reps, I finally got a guy who put me on hold and looked into the Millenicom issue.  When he came back he had the correct answers and set up my account and billing information.

We stayed with the 20GB/month plan.  By signing up for a 1 year contract I got the same $89.99/month cost as I had before, the only addition is now I’ll pay tax on that amount.  I could have gone to a non contract plan for $99.99/month (plus tax) but figured the $120 bucks looked better in my pocket.  It’s not like I’m not going to need Internet for the next year.

A slight bump to the budget, but one worth it.  We don’t stream video or download movies so it’s all good.  And Internet is nice to have here is sunny South Carolina where it’s 38 degrees and raining out, with snow just to the North and East of us.  Good day to stay inside.  :c)

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