and think about the times you spent and what they meant

Today was a much, much better day. (Everyone) pretended like nothing had happened (per usual) and (everyone) was courteous and professional. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I tell you.

I spent the day catching up on unfinished tasks from yesterday and then getting ready for the next MRX. The exercise scenarios are pretty much good to go, only a few minor changes to be made: with each PAO unit that comes through, we change the dates/locations in our scenarios to match the actual time/place the unit will be in country.

I suppose this is a good place to give a short explanation of what the MRX even is, no? It's a 96 hour exercise meant to validate a public affairs unit's ability to execute its mission in theatre. The unit runs its 24-hour operation out of the installation public affairs office, and we drop injects to mimic what they can expect once they get to Iraq. The injects let us measure their capabilities in different areas:

- fake scenarios (press releases, response to query)

- acquisition missions (46 skills, time management, product completion)

- press conferences (research, media advisories, SME prep)

And so on. Depending on whether the unit is an MPAD or a PAOC, we tailor our injects accordingly. 

So anyway, in addition to making the date/location changes to the scenarios, I was asked to draft an example press release to accompany each one - this will make the grading process for the unit's press releases more uniform, as the grader will have an example as a reference. In this last MRX it wasn't a problem, but in the Sept MRX we had some confusion caused by graders giving conflicting corrections to the unit's releases. To eliminate that, and since I spent a good deal of my tour working on press releases, we decided I'd be the best person to draft examples for the exercise.

Now that I've bored the SHIT out of you... I totally just lost interest in this post.

"do you ever want to lead a long trail of destruction

and mow down any bullshit that confronts you?"

- Green Day "Having a Blast" -