I think about Winston Churchill a lot. A successful writer, correspondent, painter, politician and businessman, he is known for his bold principled stand against Hitler. However, zoom in and a more complex narrative emerges. After Neville Chamberlain negotiated the Munich Agreement in 1938, which sought to appease Nazi Germany by allowing them to take control … Read more
Devote the back half of your life to serving others with your wisdom. Get old sharing the things you believe are most important. Excellence is always its own reward, and this is how you can be most excellent as you age. Arthur C. Brooks How do you ensure you don’t get the most out of … Read more
Recently, I had to produce form 40A’s in order to claim military leave. As a computer scientist, I found the process to be horrific and felt compelled to share my solution. I didn’t get much help with UTAPSWEB FOR IMAs CHEAT SHEET VERSION 101210. That document is filled with unhelpful and unprofessional statements like: Changes … Read more
It is not easy to quickly decipher military pay tables for us IMAs. In order to do some recent financial planning, I had to calculate my pay. I’m an O-4 with between 14 and 16 years of service. Here is what I did. IDTs You can find the official military pay tables from the DoD … Read more
Hello fellow IMA. My apologies to you. Life is not easy. In the civilian world, you work hard, play office politics and with a little luck you might get promoted. Not so in the reserves. Here your promotion depends heavily on your ability to decode a bunch of Air Force personnel jargon and to make … Read more
In a meeting last week, I had a moment of clarity that put a question directly in front of me that I’ve been dreading to answer: How much of my heart should I put into my work and at what cost to my family and other work interests? You see, the meeting ended abruptly at … Read more
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Here is a post that I hope is helpful to others out there who can be paralyzed from taking action to getting professional acquisition certifications. What is the official name and background of this program? The official name is the Acquisition Professional Development Program. The Acquisition Professional Development Program (APDP) promotes the development and sustainment … Read more
Here are some of the questions I had when starting as an IMA. How do you schedule IDTs? You have to be on a .mil domain or else you need to use arrows-r. utaps Who pays? IDTs and the 2-week annual tour are centrally funded. What are my work requirements? I am cat A with … Read more
UTAPS is terrible software. I wasted a half hour today going through the source code to figure out how to mark an IDT as complete. I have no idea how folks who don’t understand web codes can navigate this system. Why not include a button? Really?