Feedback contains information on updates and some background information that might be of interest to some readers. It also has comments from web site readers that might have wider interest than just to me. To that end, and to possibly prevent having to respond to the same questions and comments again and again, this page provides responses that answer some of your questions, even some you've not yet asked. Be forewarned that I write for enjoyment as well as for enlightenment, and hope that you'll appreciate my humor. If not, then send me a comment and maybe I'll post it here. Or maybe not.

As with other areas where I post items of interest, I'll include dates and have the newest first so you don't have to go scrolling through a lot of "old news" (is that an oxymoron?). To speed up page loading, entries have been divided by year, with larger years' entries split.

Jack Terwiel     

2002	2003	2004	2005: Jan-Jun  Jul-Dec
2006: Jan-Jun  Jul-Dec	2007: Jan-Jun  Jul-Dec	2008: Jan-Jun  Jul-Dec	2009: Jan-Jun  Jul-Dec

December 31, 2005 – A Few Cosmetic Changes
You may have noticed when you opened "Feedback from Jack" that there was a change just above the start of entries. The Feedback column has been divided into entries by year. This is more logical than the previous ad hoc approach based on file size. At the time of this writing, this file that you're reading contains three months' worth of entries. The same entries are contained in the 2005 Jul-Dec files. The change was made to control file size, resulting in faster operation. As we proceed into 2006, you will continue to find new entries here. At the end of June, a new entry will be made in the menu above for 2006: Jan-Jun, and this one will be reduced to just the previous three months.

Osan AB Page: The Osan AB page has also been "cosmeticized." Two entries on the navigation menu, "New Facilities" and "Other Facilities", have been deleted. They are incorporated into the "Projects Menu" containing all recent and ongoing construction. Deleting these navigation buttons made room for a new entry. Under "Links" you will now find   Kalani's Osan  . Kalani O'Sullivan has been doing valuable historical research on both Gunsan (Kunsan) AB and Osan AB. His ongoing work on Osan's history is at the point where it's a valuable adjunct to the "Then and Now" and "What Was It Like" photo displays on this site. Plus, he has done a lot more historical research on the respective histories of the two bases than you would find here.

December 24, 2005 – Why the New What's New; Hill 170 Construction; Apology to AAFES; Winter Scenes; No Problem Here; and a Look Back at the Osan RAD
Why the New What's New: If you tried the What's New scroll for November, you'll know that the date display at the top was out of sync with the news items. It just got overloaded, so I decided that I needed to replace it. I've been working on the new code for most of December, and I'm pleased that I met my self-imposed goal of a Christmas Day delivery. If you saw the scrolling info for the four Army areas, you'll recognize the source code of the new What's New. Based on a suggestion from Bob in Thailand, I created the tutorial for those who want more structured information on how to use it. I hope you enjoy using the new version, and you can expect to see improvements from time to time as I learn more about what it can do. And as I get suggestions from you on how to make it more friendly.

Hill 170 Construction: The Hill 170 construction has slowed, but I got a couple of photos to keep you updated. Here's a look from across the road, and here's one looking across the site.

Apology to AAFES: I've been carrying photos of the theater landscaping project under MWR, when in fact the theater falls under AAFES. That's been corrected now. Sorry, AAFES. And if you want to see a show, here's the marquee today.

Winter Scenes: When I was younger, and not just a kid, a field of snow was an open invitation to build a snowman. However, the new ballfield was untouched. I guess the young troops now have too many other things to occupy them, and the pay to support the diversions. The Defender Pool has been shut down for the winter. But it looks like the water still flows, creating this frozen waterfall effect. It does make for treacherous walking.

No Problem Here: One of Osan's big problems is parking – actually, the lack thereof. This car carries it's own solution, a portable, guaranteed parking space. (Actually, it's a military vehicle probably used by the Protocol folks who support visitors.)

Osan RAD: Osan retirees had their quarterly Retiree Appreciation Day at the Challenger Club on Dec 10. Wing Commander, Brigadier General Joe Reynes, was the guest speaker. He briefed us what's coming in Osan's future followed by a Q&A session. Then the retirees enjoyed the free food, which always brings out a good crowd. About 130 retirees and their wives attended, and Gen Reynes promised to do it again in the future.

December 4, 2005 – USMRAK Membership Meeting; First Snow of the Season; Road Paving
USMRAK Annual Meeting: When the USMRAK meeting started, we had a grand total of two retirees who had showed up. We need to either work on fixing the problem of retiree participation or consider disbanding the organization. Since we lacked a quorum for voting, the incumbent officers have volunteered to remain in their positions.

Osan's First Snow Day: We got about 5 centimeters (2 inches) of snow overnight, the first snowfall of the season at Osan AB. I thought you'd like some snow scenes: A look down the hill toward Burger King; a very cold magpie, who would normally have flown away; some folks with their dog; flag football undeterred by the snow; play starts; practicing a pass play; spectators with their cool buddy:and footsteps in the snow. When the snow falls, the U.S. mobilizes the snow plows and sand/salt trucks. The ROK mobilizes their basic trainees with brooms and shovels.

Road Paving: Osan has started repaving the roads. The overnight snowfall made for an interesting scene because the alphalt was still hot and melted the snow, causing the water to puddle on the fresh oil. As the asphalt cooled, the water froze making for treacherous walking.

November 27, 2005 – USMRAK Membership Meeting; Hill 170 New Construction
USMRAK Annual Meeting: C'mon, guys! It's only once a year – wait, maybe that's the reason. We don't have them often enough. Okay, if this year's attendance is as poor as last year's, we'll have to do something drastic. Don't make me beg! Oh, okay. "Please, pleeeeease come to the USMRAK annual membership meeting at the Yongsan South Post Multi-Function Training Facility. That's the multiplex theater near Walker Center." And if begging and pleading is not enough, how about whining. "I work my fingers to the bone on briefings to get you up to speed and this is the thanks I get." Having begged, pleaded and whined, I'll close this entreaty with a neighborly, "Y'all come now, heah?"

Hill 170 Construction: Here's an update on last week's photo of new construction on Hill 170 across from the defensive position. The construction has expanded to the other side of the road, then into concrete, continuing on down the hill to the next manhole. This part appears to be comm related.

November 20, 2005 – Where to Park; Hard Hat Sidewalk Update; Hill 170 New Construction; and Miscellaneous Updates
Where to Park: The family housing construction up on Hill 180 creates a unique parking situation. This photo shows a sort of "cul de sac" created by the curving road. It will be interesting to see how many cars the HTACC occupants will eventually try to squeeze in here.

Hardhat Sidewalk Update: Last week I had this photo of a new sidewalk taken with the zoom lens giving the impression that poles with boxes hung off them were very close together. Here's a better perspective from the opposite end. The third pole on the left has one box and the next pole has the other. They're not "next to each other" as they appear in the zoomed image.

Hill 170 Construction: There's some new construction on Hill 170 across from the defensive position.

Miscellaneous Updates: The Osan AB What-Where listing (formerly Facilities, Fones and Fotos) has been updated. There's now a picture of the Teen Center in Building 781. There's also an update to the Shopping Mall phone directory in PDF format for easy printing. And a listing for the Pyongtaek home heating oil delivery service has been added to the Songtan Quick Clicks menu on the Osan Info page. Now I know where to find it quickly when folks call.

And finally, Bob Furrer was kind enough to provide a photo for the "now" part of Then and Now for Osan AB (K-55) in 1954. The photo (slide-1 right) was taken from what Bob believes is closer to where he was standing when he took the 1954 photo, making a better side-by-side comparison. Thanks, Bob.

November 13, 2005 – Family Housing Artist's Concept; New Home for CE Readiness Flight; Hard Hat Sidewalk
Family Housing: The family housing construction site across from the hospital has a new sign. It is the artist's concept drawing for the two 12-story housing units and the 3-story parking garage.

New Home for CE Readiness Flight: Building 995 started life as a base administration function for publications and forms storage and distribution. When on-line access for these became available, the building was no longer needed and underwent a renovation to become the temporary home of the post office during shopping mall construction. After the new post office opened, the building underwent another renovation and has recently reopened as the new home of the CE Readiness Flight.

What was the customer parking side of the post office is now an entrance to the CE Readiness Flight offices. The front of the building is unchanged except for the parking lot full of CE vehicles. The Mobile Command Post caught my attention because of its unusual position. Looks like it caught someone else's eye, because that's a parking ticket on the windshield.

Hardhat Sidewalk: Across the street from the front of the CE Readiness Flight a new sidewalk is under construction. I wonder why, according to this sign, a hardhat is required for a 6-inch high construction site. Probably because of the concrete poles with sharp-edged boxes hanging off them alongside the construction site.

November 6, 2005 – Ginko Delight; Bargains Galore and More; Off We Go
Ginko Delight: The most vivid of the autumn colors around Osan AB is provided by the Ginko tree. It also produces fruit which ripens and falls at this time, and the fruit is very popular among some Koreans. As I wandered the base yesterday morning, the ROKAF area just past the service station produced some very nice colors Looking up through the trees as I passed the area I saw a silhouetted figure who was there to pick up the Gingko fruit.

Later in the day, after the morning mist had mostly cleared, I walked around again. Near the elementary school were some more Ginko trees and below the trees was a lady gathering the Ginko fruit. Ginko trees are also inside the main gate, and the sidewalk leading to the gate is littered with them. When you step on the Ginko fruit, it emits a foul smell, sort of like sour, used sweat socks and the smell stays with your shoes.

Bargains Galore and More: Also during the walk around, I spotted at the shopping mall a sidewalk sale, probably the last of this year. Speaking of AAFES, some vendors occupied container buildings on a converted tennis court during shopping mall construction. The old tennis court is now empty and awaiting its new (or original) mission. And speaking of mission, the Red Horse folks take their's seriously. Their trademark Red Horse statue is camouflaged for the upcoming exercise.

Off We Go: While on Hill 180, I heard the familar roar of the Dragon Lady and got this shot of the U-2 against the overcast sky as it was passing overhead. Won't be overcast where this Lady is headed. (Undertcast, maybe, but definitely not overcast.)

October 30, 2005 – Housing Photos Late, Service Station and Dead Fish
In case you didn't see it in What's New, housing update have been added for 22 and 30 Oct. I got lazy last weekend. The Osan driving community and visitors who drive to Osan will be pleased with their Christmas present this year. Opening 20 Dec are four new service pumps, thus doubling the current capacity. Actually during construction the current capacity is cut to two pumps. Patience!

During today's walk around base, I checked the Trans Water Wheel Fish Pond. Two more dead fish were floating, bringing the total to three. One live fish was briefly visible, but disappeared in the murky water before I could get the camera up.

We drove to the East Coast yesterday traveling mostly off the main roads (making for a pleasant trip) to view the autumn colors. Stopped at Gangreung (Kangnung per old style) and saw the NK mini-sub that grounded here. We also drove up to Sokcho to take care of some fishy business. And just showing off the camera a bit, here's a picture of a village. Note the light area near the bottom of the mountain behind the village. It's a temple as shown in this 12X zoom. On the way back, I made the mistake of joining the east-west expressway 55 (formerly 4) and averaged 15 MPH from Wonju for more than two hours before finally joining up with the Kyungbu (Expwy 1).

October 15, 2005 – Lots of Photo Updates
There are a lot of new photos that you can access from What's New on the home page. A retiree gave me an update on the AMC Terminal situation, so I dropped by and took a photo. Still extensively torn up on the right side, but it's not a very good photo. I'll try again, maybe using zoom. (UPDATE) I tried, I zoomed.

The "click direct" capability on the contruction pages has been fixed. I first noted it on the Family Housing page, where clicking on the What's New item took you to the top of the page rather than to the update item. The cause was a timesaver I used to cut and paste section of a page and then type only the update information. Turned out I was also cutting and pasting the "click direct" code and that was confusing the program with multiple copies of the code. I discovered and corrected the problem, which also existed on some of the other pages.

(UPDATE) I forgot that in the What's New link to Feedback I mentioned that I had a few photos to show. The first is a sunrise through the clouds to the east. The wire lines and poles diminish it. The second photo, looking to the west, shows the patterns drawn on the clearing sky. By the time I was headed back out the gate, this look back at the new housing shows how nicely the sky had cleared. And finally, here's one I took last week of a dragonfly taking a break No, it's not dead, just resting (not to be confused with Monty Python dead parrot routine).

October 4, 2005 – Some Photos
New digital camera has still not arrived, so I pulled out the old 35mm film camera on Sunday to take some shots. As you'll see, I'm pretty rusty as all the photos are fuzzy.

There are update photos (dated 10/2/05) of Chili's, the Osan-ni enlisted dorm and all three of the family housing areas, the Mustang Valley Village expansion, the Hill 180 senior officer housing, and the Hill 180 family housing, including the demise of the Mustang Pool and adjacent buildings.

September 20, 2005 – Welcome Back, Jack
Photo updates are temporarily on hold. While back in the U.S., I managed to lose my digital camera (stupid mistake on my part). When the new camera arrives any day now, I should be able to resume posting photo updates. And there is no truth the rumor that I intentionally "lost" the camera as an excuse to upgrade, although the new one will have more capabilities.

August 7, 2005 – Something Fishy
Transportation Water Wheel Pond: On Jul 16, I provided a photo of some fish that been placed into the pond that very day by a Korean employee. A week later, I checked the pond and discovered, through the murky water, that the fish were gone and only a golf ball remained. So the big question is: Who filched the fish? I suspect that the golf ball was placed there to divert suspicion from the true fish filcher. Could it have been an avid fisherman who was unable to get away to his favorite lake? Does anyone know what the Lost Nomad was doing that weekend?

July 31, 2005 – Development on the Fast Track
RAO-Osan Mobile Update: Yesterday I described how to review the RAO-Osan wireless web site. I included a link to a program that you could download to give you an idea on your desktop what the wireless site looks like. I also promised that when I get time I'd upgrade the site. Well, I found time and upgraded the site today. The upgrade adds tables to formatted data such as the bus schedules. They're much easier to read now. However, if you wish to review these newly-formatted tables on your desktop, you need to remove the program I offered yesterday, then download this one (2.04MB) (right click and save to your computer) and install it. It provides a larger display very close to what I see on my PDA. You need this one if you want to see the wireless site on your desktop because the tables won't work with the old program.

July 30, 2005 – Developments and Non-Developments
RAO Official E-Mail Is Back: My office e-mail is once again working as jack.terwiel@osan.af.mil. However, my public e-mail address retact@osan.af.mil has been "disconnected" from my mailbox since about mid-June. It's still not feeding into my mailbox and they tell me it's really full.

Print Newsletter Still Not Funded: The second quarter print version of Still Serving in Korea has still not been funded. If funding is not released by about Aug 3, it won't even go to the printer until I return from my TDY. Yet one more reason to sign up for the e-mail newsletter. Another reason is you get news faster as described in Hot Issues.

RAO-Osan Mobile: I just added a WiFi card (wireless networking) to my Palm Tungsten T5 PDA. Because I can now access the Internet on a tiny screen, I have renewed interest in keeping wap.rao-osan.com as a mobile supplement to rao-osan.com. After returning from TDY and settling back into the routine, I'm going to explore changing the address to mobile.rao-osan.com to make it more understandable. In the meantime, I've updated all the info as of Jul 28. If you're interested in what I've called "RAO-to-Go" go check it out at wap.rao-osan.com. (Note: This won't work with a regular computer unless you have installed a capability to read the WML programming language such as the Opera 7 web browser or a browser add-on.)

If you'd like to see it using a browser add-on, you can download the M3Gate Emulator (1.73MB) (right click and save to your computer) and install it. Then in your browser address line type http://wap.rao-osan.com and a small M3Gate popup will appears and load the intro screen. After a five-second delay, the main menu will load and you can press on from there. The display on this emulator is small. I hope to offer a better one at a later time, and after I do some reformatting of the displayed data.

July 20, 2005 – RAO Official E-Mail Problems
Osan AB kicked off a local exercise this week. Concurrent with that, my office e-mail Jack.Terwiel@osan.af.mil started having problems. I could receive but could not send, as mail to any addressee came back undeliverable. (After reporting the problem, the e-mail stopped working totally.) In doing some exploring I discovered that I had not received any e-mail to my public e-mail address retact@osan.af.mil since about mid-June. It's possible that problem may have been related to the requirement for AF e-mail users to be placed into a category. Initially, I was placed in the category "contractor", but after complaining that I'm a volunteer, the category was changed to "civilian." Then about mid-June, the category somehow got changed back to "contractor." It was about the same time that it looks like I was disconnected from the retact e-mail address.

How do I know I was disconnected from retact? I have subscriptions to various news sources that I use to create the newsletter items. Most of the subscriptions were made using retact. However, the most recent one was made using Jack.Terwiel and that's the only one that's still been arriving — at least until the e-mail totally stopped.

Because of the exercise, nothing will be done this week to fix the problem, so I've closed the office and I'm working from home for the rest of the week. If you need to contact me, use the jack@rao-osan.com e-mail address, or call my cell phone at 017-477-1441.

July 5, 2005 – Break's Over, Back on Your Head
Osan AB: With newsletters mostly out of the way, major rebuilding of the home computer software and several other home projects, it's back to the business at hand. A long overlooked project has been added even though it's been in operation for a while. It Checkertails, the 24/7 diner across from the new mall parking lot. This is the diner that replaced the OHOP. It's really convenient because it's located right where the tour buses await passengers for in-country adventures, and where the Incheon bus awaits passengers for out-of-country adventures.

Photo Updates: Updated construction photos have been added for Chili's, the shopping mall parking lot, the Traffic Management area, and the senior officer housing construction. I found that I had failed to make some of the large photos pop up in a separate window in some of the photo layouts. That has been corrected.

Select from calendar menu near the top for additional Feedback from Jack entries