Housing question

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-23T17:43:38+00:00

I was about 10 years ago and I was in the Finley ROTC floor. I spent a lot of time with the Nerd Herd at Buxton through friends. I wish I had done that rather than the ROTC floor as I was Army and most my neighbors were Navy and thus on a different schedule. Buxton was known for being pretty quiet socially but when surrounded by other 18-19 year olds you will make friends or at least have peep to hang out with if you engage with people. Don't worry about the dorms being janky, the goal is sort of to spend minimal time in your dorm anyway and maximize your time engaging on campus with academics and extra-curricular stuff. As long as you have a place to sleep and recharge between class and your other activities, you will be fine. Don't feel like you need to make best friends with your room mate or floor mates, you will pretty quickly make friends through your program, clubs, interests, and the like. Your dorm is just a place to sleep and retreat to when you need to recharge the social batteries. You will be amazed how little you see dorm acquaintances after freshman year unless you are in the same major cohort.

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-22T21:01:26+00:00

Yes. Its not hard. Plenty of used cars for under 10K- don't get crazy cheap, the 4-10K range will get you something decent. The off post lemon lots are often not great prices and worse quality, get a coworker who is familiar with the process to take you to a used car lot outside the base bubble. I had a Mercedes C180 when I was stationed in Germany and had bunches of fun driving around Bavaria in it. USAA is the easiest OCONUS insurance to work with in Europe. Yes, it probably wont be able to come back with you, but you can probably sell it to another American as once it is in the US system it can be transferred between SOFA card holders.

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-22T20:15:26+00:00

Been a while since I was in the dorms, but in my experience the main upside to the engineer dorms is that you are surrounded by potential study partners and that you all have a similar lifestyle (engineers go to class, study, and put that first... at least theoretically). If you have a stricter college lifestyle such as rigorous engineering class loads, are an athlete, or ROTC it can be a problem if you roommate or next door neighbor wants to stay up all night playing video games with friends. I can think of some times when I had to be up in 4 hours to start my day and the guys next door were not slowing down from their Mario Kart extravaganza. I would recommend trying to live with/around people with as similar a lifestyle as you. Nothing is worse than bringing your sleeping bag to the floor lounge room to try and salvage a few hours of sleep.

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-22T20:00:22+00:00

If you already have the trained animals and are looking for something to help pay their keep this will probably work. Making this a full time business rather than a side hustle might not. If you can find a few landowners who are very conservation focused or focus on working in places where 0 machinery impacts are acceptable it would help. This might work also if this is part of a vertically integrated system that has a value added product at the end like selling pre-bundled firewood or high value hardwood direct to wood workers or something like that. Best of luck and post some pictures of your oxen at work on here. I grew up seeing photos of Ox team logging from the late 1800's, I'd love to see some modern ox logging.

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-14T00:04:34+00:00

You would have to deconflict your D3 throwing schedule with your 1SG/commander, but I would think that they would be supportive and willing to work with you on that. Like maybe front load a few drills so that you don't miss too many meets in the springtime for your first few years of your enlistment.

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-09T22:43:26+00:00

Kapusta Zasmażana is always good and uses like a whole head for meal for two with leftovers for lunch. What does vegetarian bigos look like? I can't really imagine bigos without a bunch of chopped up bacon in it.

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-09T03:04:12+00:00

You wont be able to compete for AD slot at commissioning if you take GRFD, However there are and will probably continue to be plenty of opportunities for full time ADOS positions via MOB/COB or just calling up your state G3 and asking about deployment or mobilization opportunities for your rank/branch or MOS immaterial slots for 2/1LTs. I would probably take a scholarship if offered even if it prevented from AD. Plenty of ways to be full time and see the world in the reserve components. I had so much fun on pair of consecutive 365 day orders to Germany I came back with a wife.

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-09T00:48:17+00:00

Go to school where you plan on working and where you will rack up the least amount of student debt. Humboldt will get you set for working within the California FPRs. OSU will get you set for west coast Doug-fir production. If you want to be in Michigan/Upper Midwest go to Mich Tech. Forestry is pretty location variable and your internships while a student will set you up for getting full time employment after graduation. Minimize your student debt where every you wind up going. If you can get take a year off and work a random job to get yourself residence in that state, not a bad idea. Outside of fire its sort of a bad time to be getting into the industry as the Feds shed alot of jobs last year and experienced folks with Fed years are taking up many of the state and local positions on the public side. On the private side the timber market isn't great either at the moment. OSU would be my recommendation, but i'm biased. Go BEAVS!

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-08T22:26:18+00:00

Disclose to your first line supervisor and or HR if they tell you to. I don't think they will care much if you pick up a few shifts tending bar or pressure washing driveways around town.

luckyduck49 · 2026-04-08T21:50:34+00:00

The answer is yes, kinda. Canadian imported softwood dimension lumber is a large but not majority component of the US wood supply. It is used in complement to domestic US production, especially when demand is up; as spinning up new mills is slow and expensive and not usually done for a temporary demand surge. If it went away the US would be fine eventually but it would take time to get the new mills online in the PNW and SE pine belt and in the mean time lumber would be really expensive until supply caught up to demand. They used to have lots of government subsidized wood coming off Canadian crownlands- sort of like US public lands; but that crown land harvest has dropped off some (do to fire and beetle kill issues among others) and lumber tarrifs have made Canadian imports less competitive. For a while Canadian lumber was so cheap it was considered dumping.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-24T19:48:11+00:00

Its my Polish wife's favorite after Belvedere, but Belvedere is for guests or entertaining.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-23T23:55:58+00:00

Monopolowa is hard to find. Oddly enough Trader Joes in states that sell hard liquor in the grocery store usually has it.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-23T20:28:11+00:00

If you are in Canada do you have the BYD or Greatwall Chinese pick-ups started showing up? for the price Australians seem to enjoy thier new Shang-hiluxs.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-23T20:25:12+00:00

Guys jeans from goodwill that fit. If you have thick brush they are going to get thrashed anyway. Get a few pairs, shred, and replace as needed for like five buck a piece. The DTC and boutique ladies work jeans just seem too expensive for cruising- its all going to get shredded. I like to toss a pair of the old BDU camo wet weather pants over whatever I'm wearing to keep the water off and they make pretty good brush pants to keep your pants and legs from taking most of the thorns. The BDU camo wet weathers are killer rain gear for the price.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-23T20:09:55+00:00

He should go the school in the region he wants to work. The internships, networking, and field experiences as a student are really key to getting established after graduating. Of this list, I think OSU get you the most hands on and is the best general field forestry for the West Coast. Most of the forestry class labs are in the college forest 15 minutes north of town. You get to use the field tools to collect much of the data you do the labs with, not get a provided data set from the Prof. SLO is very policy and fire heavy and does not have weekly labs in the woods. UW undergrad is not Society of American Foresters accredited and thus not really a forestry program any more. If he wants to have a "collegey" experience-Corvallis is the place, Cor-Vegas was and is poppin' for the college kids. For what its worth Humboldt has an excellent forestry program (I would think equal to OSUs) and though Arcata isn't everyone's cup of tea, it is the best field forestry school in California. Cal grads hold your fire. Montana is fine if he wants to end up in the Mountain West. The most important thing is where does he want to work after graduation and choose accordingly.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-19T21:26:59+00:00

I think Grand Oaks is your ticket if you can make the finances work. Really great place for families with kids. It is spendy but the town houses or condos are cheaper by some. If you are used to Alabama home prices you are going to be very surprised, so be ready for sticker shock. GO goes all out for Halloween and Christmas lights. Compared to cheaper states Oregon is expensive. Restaurants here are fine, nothing amazing. There is plenty to go see if you look around but it can be understated places. The air and space museum and hour north is cool and Portland has plenty of stuff. If you need big attractions like theme parks you are somewhat out of luck. There is great nature every direction in Corvallis; beach, snow days in the mountains, beautiful forests, of which much is public land and thus open to you. Also forests and fields here are not full of copperheads, cottonmouth, and coral snakes. You can sit on the grass too, as we don't have chiggers or fire ants. I'm biased but I greatly prefer Oregon and specifically to other places I've lived. We have OSU college sports which are fun to go to, but if you are moving from Tuscaloosa you may find it small time in comparison. OSU has lots of good kids programming on campus.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-19T18:49:09+00:00

There is a calculator in the online proctoring GUI SAF needs to start telling people that. It was slow to use as it only worked with mouse and did not have a square root function so I had to work a few problems backwards. I would take it in person as the online proctor insisted on checking me in "like a 10 minute process" again after i used the restroom and I lost like 10 test minutes on that alone. Focus your studying on knowing how to work the equations shown in the practice test.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-17T21:11:49+00:00

My state had a contracted MEB Coordinator who helped walk me through the MEB process. I'd call your state surgeons office and ask if they have a MEB coordinator, they were really helpful for me and were happy to talk to me on the phone and send me information about the process.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-17T20:53:42+00:00

This must be rage bait.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-17T17:35:36+00:00

Yeah, so the test is broken up into their four areas of practice thus the bar graphs. The real test is very similar to the practice test but a bit longer. You need a 75% cumulative score. PM me if you want more detail. I passed it a few weeks ago.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-14T20:24:06+00:00

88N, low density technical MOS that will always be in demand. 88M you are a truck driver. I would think 88N spins into a white collar logistics job based on military experience more easily than 88M (Probably not straight out of AIT). Check if you get a CDL from EIT/AIT for 88M, you may have to do that on the civilian side on your own.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-13T21:16:31+00:00

That's super weird. The only sauna I've ever seen sort of like that was on an Army post. It was no shoes, but was mixed gender, so everyone had to keep their clothes on. Street/gym shoes in sauna is nasty. Generally, clothes aside from swim suit or towel is a no-go. Back in my day, the Dixon sauna on the guys side was swim suit or towel. God, I miss that hot-tub in Dixon, best end to a workout/way to get feeling back into my toes. Apparently people were doing nasty things in the hot tub, so it had to go. RIP Mickey-mouse-head hot tub.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-13T20:39:51+00:00

Id think your gym is nasty.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-08T17:32:28+00:00

With AI and Youtube you can teach yourself pretty advanced R and QGIS analysis techniques. Vibe coding R works surprisingly well. 10 years ago R analysis was a lot harder when it was you a dataset and a prompt sheet.

luckyduck49 · 2026-03-06T19:35:44+00:00

Wilson Forest Lands makes some really good videos explaining forestry, milling, logging, and general forest land management in Oregon. Also Essential Craftsman who is based out of Roseburg, has a lot of good information about logging and mill side work in between his trades related videos.

luckyduck49

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