Helping with homework and Afghanistan

I've been helping my step daughter with one Robert Browning poem

 and one Wilfred Owen poem and their translation  or what the poet was trying to say into more modern English, it's been a while since I've read any Robert Browning but I've enjoyed putting my ten penneth worth in .... it certainly exercises the grey cells putting things into context and turning a poem which at first glance seems distant and boring into something lively and real.... I've got to admit I'm not particularly a Robert Browning fan, but it's interesting eeking out the meaning behind the poems :) Wilfred Owen however strikes a chord with me ......

The only other thing of note besides making raspberry jelly with grapes with Freya today..... was a rather amusing email from a military recruitment agency head hunting for somebody with IT LAN/WAN skills and also with a military background preferably Royal Signals.... they are looking for somebody to head up the technical WAN/LAN side working with the Royal Signals under the ISAF comms group in Kabul.... it pays handsomely at £278 a day (yes that's over £8000 a month salary it's a daily rate so 30 days) .... and they stipulate it's "unarmed" however it comes with accommodation,food, free flights and insurance.... you have to wonder if it's a tad dangerous at £8000 a month salary....(hmmmmmmm.... I wonder who I would be replacing and did he fly back to Brize Norton in a box ...or several boxes ...?)

After all reconfiguring a Cisco router or re-installing a Windows Server isn't "that" fraught with danger...you might drop a server on your finger whilst moving  it, or slice your hand open on a badly machined bit of metal work but that's about it really......

So that only leaves bombs, bullets and IED's.... I've never actually managed an Ethernet network under fire... and to be honest with you it's not up there with swimming with dolphins or spending a night with Angelina Jolie whilst Brad Pitt films on location across the other side of the world.... I did however "think" about it for a short while.... over £8000 a month is VERY tempting but £8000 a month and being brown bread is pretty  much completely UNattractive from a life point of view ;¬) ... and lets face it, you don't get any medals for increasing bandwidth on a WAN in Afghanistan... you just end up being broadcast all over the news as some unfortunate/greedy civilian who is much shorter than when he flew out there and has no need of a hat...or has inherited air conditioning of the skull courtesy of a Russian made 7.62mm round or worse.....

So basically no amount of money would tempt me out there.... I guess I'm simply not greedy .... or stupid enough...  bravery doesn't come into it ...... bravery is going out there on a soldiers pay, which kind of makes the whole thing rather obscene really.... in two months I would have earned an average infantry soldiers entire yearly pay......without so much as putting my life on the line in comparison .......makes you think doesn't it.... the  military are willing to pay obscene amounts of money for civilian contractors but not the men who put their lives on the line out there on a daily basis  ?

The contract is initially for 6 months but has the possibility of stretching to two and a half years, that's 912 days @ £278 a day, which comes to just over 1/4 of a million for just over 2 years work......and I doubt if I had decided to go for the position that I would have been the only IT comms/security specialist out there ......