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Or you could get into the compatibility menu and turn on "white on black" and manually turn the brightness down. Yea, it's not truly compliant but damn if it doesn't leave more money in your pocket. Works good enough.

Yikes, that adds to the "doh" factor by at least 2x...

And then... Exactly. All the places you listed are awesome but some other suggestions are nice areas too, it just depends on what you want. Your advice is good for the young, single college scene (masshole's target audience I'm assuming) so you're right on that, maybe I'm just old now and have better recommendations for the married Captain crowd vs the cadet crowd.

Although you do have to BFM starting your masters until you have 6 years in which is an interesting gambit considering many of your peers will be done with their degrees before you start. I didn't see that requirement (6 years) for the Operational Warfare Concentration which you can do as a WIC graduate. That looks like a good deal for those dudes, 12 credits of MA work for completing WIC, yes please. Not that you can likely complete that any earlier but I think it's a move in the right direction.

Anyone ever used this? Looks like frickin' laser beams for your pistol.

Congrats man...I think a celebratory barrel roll may be in order once you get back in the seat!

How long do you need to be there? That's the next piece of the puzzle. $1600 a month (i.e. $53 a day) is pretty tough to meet at an extended stay place and most apartments want 1 year contracts...have you considered temporary housing on one of the college campuses? I've done that in the summer when I was taking a summer course and it was cheaper than the alternative. If I were you doing something at G-town, I'd stay across the river in the Rosslyn-ish area if you do get some kind of apartment. Although be aware there is no metro stop in or near Georgetown so a car is probably a bigger consideration if you have somewhere to park it on both ends (sts), it's a (relatively) fast hop across the Key Bridge. There is also student-type apartments right off campus in georgetown. BL - start as close to your destination as possible since it's in a nice area and work your way out from there based on price and desired qualities of the place.

Shack on Columbia Heights. I did ROTC at Howard and it always seemed kinda ghetto once you were slightly off campus, although it has gotten much better in the last few years.

You're DC geography seems off. Silver Springs (MD) is due north right at the point of the diamond the actual city of DC makes. Foggy Bottom is in the city where the State Department is located (southeast of Georgetown), Crystal City is right next to Bolling AFB/National Airport due south of the city. Where are you actually working/going to school/needing to be on a daily basis. What's the duration? What's the priority between nice area and cheap? What brick just said is about right, don't live in MD unless it's bordering the NW of the city and either Falls Church of Rosslyn would be excellent depending on where you're actually trying to do.

NBD man...you're right, I've always heard it called NSA or NSAv i.e. Non-Standard Aviation associated with the aircraft you described. Don't have any info personally but I do know a couple dudes who were previously at Cannon and are now at HRT, PM me if you don't hear from anyone here and I'll ask them in person and get some gouge for ya.

Wrong NSA dude...possible sarcasm detector issues, not sure if serious.

Let me google that for you.

Oh hell yeah, I'm all for that, I was just commenting on the broken windows phenomenon someone else pointed out and how that's kinda what we've been getting Chief'd with lately. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about AADs being masked now that I've spent a bunch of time going out and getting one...I guess I'm for everything being "unmasked" because you should be able to show off what you took the time to accomplish, but not sure if that's possible without the monstrosity we have today where all it is is a box and God help you if you haven't checked it by a certain date. There has to be a better way...

You didn't blow their mind, you played right into their hand. They see a bunch of broken windows (belts, sock color, patches, etc.) that aren't on their own a big deal or really an indication of further non-compliance but they're adopting the NYC crime mentality and trying to quash the little things. Exactly. I vote we fix the big stuff and then maybe the little stuff won't really matter anymore. The only reason people are pissed about the little stuff IMHO is because a lot of big stuff is F-ed up beyond belief.

Offer incentives until somebody takes the job. If the cost of offering those incentives begins to outweigh the benefit of filling that particular job then stop doing it or find a way to do it differently. That's what a perfect market would do anyways; clearly the military is not quite able to do that but that's the theory.

I think that was posted here before somewhere. Good article either way...the Boss man will be in for a big surprise when a lot of dudes can get out and the outside economy is looking better, but like the old hats always say, the institution will live on without us who choose to punch.

Was this officer rated? In that case probably none. The fact that you need a combination of voodoo and the Rosetta Stone to tell if a person's OPR is actually good or just sounds good tells you something is rotten in the way we do performance reports and feedback...

No shit huh?

Ok, great; not every rater feels this way and even if they talk the talk sometimes they don't walk the walk and dudes who are average in the jet are at the top of the heap on the rack & stack. May want to revise this sentence chief. But I know what you mean, and what you mean is in direct conflict with your above statement. If "your going in argument as a CGO is that you are tactically sound," they how do you discriminate based on downrange performance if you expect that everyone is "tactically sound?" That's the rub...as an institution we assume everyone that's "qualified" is "proficient" or even "excellent" at their primary job and this is simply not true. IMHO a boss that truly does discriminate first and foremost based on primary job duties (as informed by his own observations and those of his instructor/evaluator corps) is doing it right. So shut up and color, am I reading your advice correctly? There are actual requirements and then there is unnecessary BS or undue ass-pain. Dude, if you're aircrew and you can't appreciate some good ole' fashion bitchin' you would not fit in with the guys I know and work with. Since I'm forced by an ADSC to bend over and take whatever Big Blue has in store for me, I figured the very least I'm gonna do is request some lube. Saying "yes sir, how many buckets full sir?" will put you on the fast track to leadership but it does no good for the organization in the long-term. Is everyone meeting this baseline? I've found that it's relatively easy to rack & stack based on primary duty performance alone because frankly everyone is not Captain America of our tactical mission, it's just the facts of life. Other stuff (i.e. additional duties, etc. etc.) comes into play in rack & stack when it's something that actually made a large, positive impact on unit ops or when two people truly have very similar performance in their primary duties and are of the same experience level (i.e. you always expect better performance to follow more experience). So there's my thoughts and I think your assumptions of across-the-board tactical prowess are where you go wrong along with your overly compliant attitude toward the Man's unnecessary shenanigans.

My new commander recently wanted a rack & stack cheat sheet, so everyone in the squadron filled out this form that basically had your year group, your duty position (CO, AC, IP, etc.), if you had BAC +, MA, PME done in correspondence and/or in-residence, and the first and last lines of your 1st and additional rater blocks from your last 3 OPRs. That pretty much summed it up to me...all those bullets in between the first and last ones in each section mean absolutely dick.

Sure it is, but it conveys what the administration is saying publically is the reason for the veto threat. Do you have reason to think there other more devious issues at play (such as tricare fees as the Free Beacon speculates)? That's exactly my point...tricare fees are not a major driver of the administration's veto threat of the Defense appropriations bill according to the analysis/reporting of several other, more credible news sources. WRT the Free Beacon being a credible media source, here is is straight from the horse's mouth: They do not even attempt to claim that they are unbiased or apolitical or bipartsian or whatever. The debut article from the editor was literally called "Combat Journalism" with a subhead of "Taking the Fight to the Left." It's an opinion outlet pure and simple, take it for what it is rather than a hard news organization.

A much more fair and balanced look at the story. And this article has a better explanation of the reason for the veto threat:

Didn't know where else to put this, but the Supreme Court just upheld all of "Obamacare." Chief Justice Roberts joined the 4 more liberal members. Opinion attached; warning, it's long.

What are those?

Or on second thought let's call in NATO and talk about this.