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 27, 2008 – Internet Explorer Resolved; Miscellaneoous Images
Internet Explorer Probem Resolved: As explained in the previous posting below, Internet Explorer has some quirks that cause it to act differently that other browsers. Using a trick I learned to resolve other problems, I applied it to the problems I was having with the home page and left navigation. I applied the fix, which basically says, "if you're IE, do it this way; everybody else do it this way." It worked.

Miscellaneous Images: I took a walk on Saturday and with pretty clear air I was able to take a picture from Hill 170 showing the nearly-empty CE compound and the surrounding Jin-wi and Songtan areas. Near the 51st Fighter Wing headquarters, I found this flower surviving freezing nights.

December 14, 2008 – Update for Internet Explorer Users; Miscellaneoous Images
Update for Internet Explorer Users: I was able to track down some errors that occurred with the code upgrade and I believe these have all be repaired. In some cases, I had to back up to the previous level of code that worked. In other cases, I had to learn some more of IE's quirks. For example, on the Visitor Info page, some of the links started displaying in blue. I learned that IE with the new level code likes to have some commands in a particular sequence, unlike all the other browsers. So that's fixed, too. And tracking fixes is the reason that I'm finally catching up now on posting images from the past two weeks.

Miscellaneous Images: Last Sunday we had our first snow that you could actually see on the ground. You had to look fast because it was gone pretty quickly. But to prove that it happened, here's what it looked like downtown and here's an untouched area on the base. The snow did have a negative effect, as these flowers look traumatized by the snow. But the snow almost makes it feel Christmasy, sort of like the Christmas Tree in front of the base theater that looks like it was donated by Charlie Brown (the "Peanuts" character, not the Songtan Tailor)..

November 26, 2008 – Apology to Internet Explorer Users; Other Fixes
Several people noted to me today that they were unable to get some of the links on the home page to work. For example, the retiree and widow newsletter links were not working. When I checked the problem this evening, I realized the when I upgraded the code, Internet Explorer requires the full URL on some links. In other words, where I had a relative link from the home page to the location of the newsletters, IE requires that I start each URL with http://www.rao-osan.com and then put the rest of the path to the file location. As a note, IE is the only browser that requires this, as far as I know. So I apologize to IE users that I didn't fully check out everything before posting the newly upgraded web pages. If you find other problems like this, let me know via e-mail.

I had found the problem with the USFK Retiree Council and USMRAK image links on the home page and had fixed them. I thought the IE problem only affected links that were used with images. Obviously, that was an incorrect assumption, so I've got more checking to do.

Other Fixes: In checking out the code, I found a problem at the top of the Feedback page that I hadn't kept up to date on the semi-annual pages. That's fixed now. Also, I've created a navigation bar at the top of the Songtan renovations page that was updated today. Expect to see a similar navigation bar at the top of other pages where several different topics are covered. As an example, the construction of enlisted dorms at the Osan AB construction page readers will be able to navigate to each of the dorms separately when I get around to updating that page.

November 22, 2008 – Web Page Updates Completed
Reference the comment of Nov 16 below: I broke the code and the dam burst. I was focused on trying the get the left (navigation) menu to work in the upgraded code and each time I clicked on the button, the code replaced the navigation menu in that small frame. Once I decided to keep the selection menus as they are, everything started going more smoothly.

As a result, there are only a few places that you will see . On virtually all the pages you view now, you'll see . (There is intentionally no symbol in the Guestbook.) What this means is that the web pages should load more quickly and are more likely to be free of coding errors.

Speaking of errors, it was quite interesting for me to see the progress I made since starting the web site. By progress, I mean there were fewer errors and fewer code 'kludges' as I learned the standards, so this upgrade also gave me the opportunity to look at all the pages and fix a lot of the older coding errors and deviations. The newer the code standard, the less tolerant of deviations in the coding. Every page with the new symbol has been validated and that's a personal triumph for me.

However, being human and as a result of the compressed time I did the transition, you may still find some discrepancies. If you do, please report them to me. Be sure to include the brower (e.g., Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, etc.) and browser version (for example, I've checked Internet Explorer, but only versions 6 & 7). Now it's time for me to start catching up on some honey-do's that I've been ignoring.

November 16, 2008 – Changes to Some Web Pages
I spent long (and mostly fruitless) hours this weekend trying to upgrade the code used to display web pages to you (see related Nov 5 item). You'll notice at the bottom of many pages a small box showing that the code has been validated for XHTML 1.0. My plan was to upgrade to XHTML 1.1. However, a couple of key tools were removed from the toolkit of that version and I tried several work-arounds to prevent a massive rebuilding of the web site.

In the end, I gave up and stuck with the same code. What I did do was to try to change some of the backgrounds on many pages to introduce a little bit of standardization. Most of the pages that you get by clicking one of the left menu items still remain multi-colored matching the color pattern of the button you click to access the page. However, I did try to keep some of the page groups (and the associated menu bar on the left) glued together by sharing the same page background.

November 5, 2008 – Osan Construction Page Updates
One of the most vexing problems of maintaining a web site is to ensure that what you display is shown uniformly by all the browser. At least, you should try to meet that standard with the major browsers. I personally use and prefer Firefox. As a web site developer, it does what you tell it to do. The problem is when I bring up the same page in Internet Explorer, it may or may duplicate what I see in Firefox. In fact, it may not even come close.

The series of pages that I use to photo-document construction around Osan AB has been a good example. Most of the stuff displays properly; however, the navigation menus at the bottom (and the top of a few family housing pages) were not consistent. I finally decided, after sending out the November newsletter, to tackle the navigation menu problem.

I'm happy to say that I achieved what I think is a reliable and stable solution. I've tested it in Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer V6 and V7 with a virtually identical display in all of them. I also tested Netscape and the navigation displays are correct, but it displays a double border on the right side of the photo display 'frame'. I tried several fixes, but was afraid that fixing a problem in a relatively minor browser (sorry Netscape users) could mess up the others, so I left it.

The only problem I noted when I started one of the construction displays for the first time on another computer was that the bottom display came up displayed as a verical menu with dots next to each line. That can be fixed by refreshing the display to show a horizontal menu — two or three menu options display side-by-side without dots. Now it's time to go seeking other menus that need fixing.

Update: The rest of the pages with a similar setup have been updated. In addition, the Songtan navigation bar has an addition, the Wikipedia entry for Songtan Station that contains links to Osan AB and other area items and places of interest.

October 9, 2008 – Newsletter Late Delivery; Ordinarily Resident Work Option
Newsletter Late Delivery: I try to have the e-mail newsletter sent no later than the 5th day of each month. The October newsletter was delayed through no fault of mine. I worked closely with the hosting service to provide the necessary information for them to track down and correct the problem that occurred at their end. Unrelated to that problem is that after the newsletter was sent to 563 addressees today, notification came back that 57 addressees' newsletters were 'undeliverable.' That's a lot!

Ordinarily Resident Work Option: I have been advised by a retiree who is affected by the 'ordinarily resident' rule that some jobs may be retained without SOFA status. If that is correct, then retirees should be aware that one category of Resident visa (for those who are foreign born) does allow work. It is the F-2 Resident visa issued to a retiree who is married to a Korean citizen. The F-1 Resident visa, on the other hand, is a non-work visa and this is the one that is issued to a retiree married to a Korean-born spouse who has become a U.S. citizen and who has the F-4 Overseas Korean visa. I don't know if other categories (such as the E series) would allow a non-SOFA retiree to work in a USFK contractor job.

I would also assume that a retiree working for USFK with a non-SOFA visa would be responsible for paying tax to Korea on the contractor income. And this is the reason that the U.S. IRS provides the Foreign Earned-Income Exclusion for those taxed by the country in which they work. Only income earned by SOFA-status contractors is shielded from Korean taxation. In addition, non-SOFA retirees must pay tax on their vehicles, including import tax for foreign vehicles brought in tax-free, plus semi-annual road use tax, and must have a Korean driver's license (which they should already have).

September 14, 2008 – Chuseok; Osan RAD; Flora and Fauna; Etc.
Chuseok: Today is Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving holiday. It's an important holiday, with the Lunar New Year holiday it's one of the two biggest holidays in Korea. Families travel long distances to be together, putting up with traffic that doubles travel times, or worse. For those who have been here and remember Seoul-Pusan taking 24 hours, yesterday the worst I saw reported was 7-1/2 hours, and that dropped after a few hours to 4-1/2 hours, pretty much the normal travel time. But it looks like the clean air break that the Olympics gave us from air pollution blowing in from China has ended. Here's a photo taken this morning of Jinwi, the small town north of Osan. It was clearly visible for a couple of weeks.

Osan Retiree Appreciation Day: Last weekend we had our quarterly Osan Retiree Apprecation Day at the Challenger Club. Barbecued ribs and chicken were on the menu and the guest speaker was the recently-assigned Commander, 51st Medical Group. Although he had his troops waiting for him to join them at the Wing party, he stayed with 'our troops' for more than an hour. Based on what he said, things may be looking up for retiree medical care at Osan. We had in the neighborhood of 140 retirees and their spouses attend this time and it looked like a new record. I apologize that I was too busy to pull out the camera and take pictures this time.

Flora and Fauna: As I wandered around the base, I saw some interesting sights I'd like to share. between the ballfield and the golf course is a pathway that I take in my rounds. Today, I saw a serious engineering feat. A spider appeared to be hanging in mid-air. The spider is the little dot at the tip of the arrow in this photo. I took a close look at the airborne feat, then got up really close and discovered his web with some of the leftovers from previous meals. The web was anchored to the steel light post, stretched across the path to a small tree, and was anchored at the bottom into the grass or something in the grass. Big job for a little guy! Update: See also here for more spider photos.

Also in my wandering, I found this dragonfly resting on a sidewalk, and this butterfly was resting on a curbstone at the side of the road.

The MWR building had outside stairways that had been closed because they were rusting away and dangerous. They have finally been replaced. This one still has the sign on it from the old one that had been closed. Or maybe the sign is intended to advise of the presence of a stairway for those who can't see that it's holding up the sign.

And finally, as I was heading toward the gate, I passed this man carrying a chair. And it occurred to me, if he's going to work and has to carry his own chair to sit down, then the pay must not be very good.

August 16, 2008 – Random Shots
After coming onto the base this morning, I glanced at the ROKAF tower (near the AAFES service station) that I may have noted in earlier posts. It now has a comm dish on it and that's probably the primary purpose for the tower. And the Security Forces car seen earlier at the dual food facility was probably there for a food pickup for the gate personnel. Heading out the gate later, I saw it and noted this innovative window repair on the rear door.

August 11, 2008 – Family Housing Update
The latest update to the Family Housing construction at Osan refers to the newest construction as Phase 3. So what happened to Phases 1 and 2? Phase 1 was the completion of Senior Officer Housing further up Hill 180. Phase 2 was the just completed Family Housing consisting of the 10-story and 13-story buildings. To assist you (and me) in keeping it straight, the titles of those pages have been modified to add the phase information.

July 15, 2008 – Jack's Vacation Activities
Jack is on vacation Jul 14-25. So what does that mean? Generally, based on past vacations, it means that some changes are being made to the web site. What can you expect this time? I've tackled the photo arrays for this go-around. I've tried to come up with a standardized style using a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), changing only the colors to correspond to the subject area colors. So far, I've completed:

• Songtan Photos – the Songtan Renovations page was the learning one, followed by the photo tour of the Sinjang Shopping Mall.
• Housing Photo Archives – the Mustang Valley Village tower (including the Senior Officer house) page, and the Senior Officer Family Housing were also completed. All four of the Family Housing pages were done.
• Other Facilities – the other Osan AB facilities will be next, with the AAFES page being the first one.
• Jul 16 Update: Updates completed with: Community Center/New Challenger Club, DoD Schools, Enlisted Dorms, Military Buildings, Military Services, MWR, Officers Dorms, Post Office and Construction Projects Menu update.
• Jul 17 Update: Okay, I lied two paragraphs down. The four files documenting construction and completion of the Osan Shopping Mall turned out to be not that difficult and can be seen at the AAFES page.

One of the problems I had to contend with was the troublesome qualities of Internet Explorer. I use Firefox, which is one of many code-compliant browsers. However, each time I completed a file, I had to then check it against IE to see what clunkers were introduced. Troubleshooting files to make them work reasonably well in IE is annoying and time-consuming. If you're using IE, you may see some unusual formatting, such as the year selection menu at the top of the Family Housing page. They're supposed to be similar in operation to the navigation options at the bottom of the page. In searching for fixes for IE-induced problems, I found one Firefox webmaster who gave up and just told his site visitors to change to Firefox if they wanted to see his site the way he coded it. I won't do that to you — yet!

With the learning curve completed, the remainder of the file upgrades will be fast but tedious work. From here, I'll start with the active pages such as school construction and military buildings. If I get really bored at some time in the future, I may even tackle the Shopping Mall construction files — but don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

July 13, 2008 – Web Site Code Update and Corrections; Effects of Heavy Rain
Web Site Code Update and Corrections: As I continue updating the code for the major pages on the web site, I'm finding and correcting problems. Some examples are:

• Osan Construction Photos – the 2005 page of Family Housing construction had been inadvertently replaced at some time with the current (2007-2008) page.
• Family Housing Photo Archive – the photos have been divided by year into sub-directories. This may speed up loading, but the primary purpose was to make it easier for me to manage.
• Guestbook – selecting 'Return to MRAO Home' resulted in two copies of the left-side menu. This has been fixed to eliminate the duplication.
• Other Corrections – reviewing pages for code update has allowed me to find and correct a number of otherwise minor errors that should also improve readability.

All but a few current pages have now been upgraded from XHTML 1.0 to XHTML 1.1. As before, this probably has significance only to techies, but the new code is more stable and less prone to error.

Effects of Heavy Rain: The early morning hours today saw a very heavy rain (gullywasher, if you will) that lasted about 30 minutes. There was only one serious problem I noted on base, and that was next to the newly-opened McPherson Community Center.

July 10, 2008 – Web Site Code Update; DoD Actuarial Information
I've started another round of updating the code for the major pages on the web site. You see it on the home page first with icons at the bottom for XHTML and CSS. This means that the code has been validated. If you click on the icon at the lower left on the home page, it will take you to the W3C site that provides the code validation service and explains what W3C is all about.

The code for all the slide shows at 'Then and Now' and 'What Was It Like' has been upgraded from HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.1. This probably has significance only to techies, but what it means is that the code is more stable and less prone to error. Many of the major pages you are most likely to visit are already updated and the rest will be updated and validated as time allows.

DoD Actuarial Information: The Fiscal Year 2007 Department of Defense Statistical Report on the Military Retirement System is available for you to explore all the details of military retirement and the military retiree population in 2007.

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