So we finally got our money from Voc Rehab about a week and a half ago. I guess if you scream loud enough for long enough it finally works. I also received an email from Judy Biggerts office yesterday as well. So I guess things are moving in the right direction… Kind of.

The American Legion has been attempting (and I use this term loosely) to help me for the last 9 months or so. Unfortunately, the American Legion here in Chicago is as incompetent as the VA here. Hard to believe, but it’s true. Thankfully for me, I screamed loud enough to the American Legion National Headquarters and someone heard. He actually heard so well that he has visited this website and read through most of it. He even congratulated me on my marriage. So the National Headquarters contacted the idiots down here, so you figure that it’d be taken care of then right. Wrong. They still have no clue. Yet once I contacted the fellow Marine from the National Headquarters in 5 minutes I was able to explain what my issue was to him and he understood completely. How is this? Is it because he’s a Marine as well? Are we Marines so pompous to believe that our intelligence out-rivals the intelligence of the other services? Well, yes we are and apparently it’s true. The moron from the American Legion here in Chicago didn’t even know what service I was a part of. He told me, “…that’s the way the Army does it…” That’s great idiot. How does the Marine Corps do it though? The folks here in Chicago still don’t even understand my issue so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

All-in-all, we’re making progress. I’ve got a great guy from the National Headquarters working with me now trying to get things straightened out and we’re moving forward and that’s good. I just wish we could move forward quicker. I’ve been waiting for 6 years for someone to care about my situation though so I suppose I can wait a few more to get all of this handled. Thanks to everyone whose been emailing people and helping support me and my wife through this all. We love you all and are grateful to have friends and family like you. Have a good one folks!

So I’ve been promising voicemails for a few days now - probably a week honestly - so I finally took the time to put them up here. It’s long. It’s uncut. It’s fairly safe for child ears. I think there’s a F-bomb about 9:55 in. Did I mention it’s long? I also pop a few p’s and hiss a few s’. It starts out with 2 voicemails from the American Legion. Now do not contact the gentleman from the American Legion. He’s trying to help. Don’t pester him. He’s doing his best with a case that’s screwed up from the jump. The audio is a bit quiet for some of them, but I had a hard time getting the levels to be correct while taking it into the microphone. It kept peaking, especially when Labarbara was talking. At about 3:00 minutes you hear some extra background noise, which is her rifling through papers.

Now around that same time she tells me I can apply for the pell grant and the such. She never told me that I was able to use those, nor that I had to fill out a fafsa. I’ve been working with her since about 2003/2004. That’s a long time to not tell someone about this.

In the second voicemail she says that what I’m saying is alarming. Really? What I said in the last several emails wasn’t? Because I was willing to bring my death to her doorstep it was then all of a sudden alarming. Awesome.

My favorite voicemail is the second, but the third almost takes the cake. At about 6:45, she mentions I’m not getting paid for being married. NO WAY! It’s like I told her that. Now if you listen longer, she says that if I’m not rated at 50% or more they can’t do it there. In other words, you need to be disabled more than I am to get help in my home state. Awesome. Thanks for the help, dumbass.

So with no further ado, here’s the file:

American Legion and VA Voicemails

Please right-click and save it. It’s about 10mb. 1mb for each minute I suppose. I didn’t do any audio filtering or adjusting levels. I just put it as is, so in order to keep the quality of the audio up I didn’t compress it any more than the simple compression that comes standard in the LAME mp3 codec. Enjoy and pass the word around. I’m starting to get media attention. God bless everyone.

No new posts lately. Mostly because I haven’t had time to do much with this site. But I figured I’d start out with something new for everyone. So for my first trick, a series of letters (and soon voicemails and any other correspondence) with the VA. The only thing edited out will be the emails (although I REALLY wanted to leave theirs in):

Email 1:
Date: December 14, 2008 12:15:21 PM CST
Subject: Winter Quarter
Labarbara:

Here are the start and end dates for my next Quarter.

WINTER QUARTER 2009
Start Date: January 12, 2009

End Date: March 28, 2009

I’ve already registered for a full time course load. Also, while I’ve received one of my payments thus far, I am not being paid for my dependents. Why? I was being paid for my wife for my disability before they re-rated me, but now I’m not being paid for my wife on my disability nor my Voc Rehab subsistence allowance. I realize you can’t do anything for my disability, but my Voc Rehab you can. Please let me know when this can be fixed. Thank you.

Warmest Regards,

John P. Neumann

Email 2:

Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 1:10 PM

Subject: Fwd: Winter Quarter

This is the email I sent to you on December 14th. The server logs stated that it was delivered as such, so I’m assuming since you’ve returned none of my emails nor my phone calls you’re simply ignoring me. Did you know that I lost my home because you (the VA) can’t get my money situation handled correctly. Nor can you re-rate me appropriately, nor can you diagnose me properly. Did you know that because of these wonderful issues that the VA has put me through I’ve taken up smoking, as well as, drinking more often, contemplating suicide most every day several times a day and had to move in with my in-laws which has further compounded my problems and is beginning to affect my marriage. All because I served my country and you folks can’t do your job adequately enough to simply give someone what they are owed. Thanks. From the bottom of my heart thank you for making my life more of a living hell than it was before.

Hopefully this will get your attention enough to at least acknowledge that you’ve gotten my emails or my calls.

-John P. Neumann

Another Forgotten Disabled Veteran

Begin forwarded message:

Email 3:
On Feb 5, 2009, at 3:42 PM, Philpot, LaBarbara, VBACHGO wrote:

Joyhn: I am so sorry. That was sent back in November. I have jsut sent it to Serena at the school again. I will put a rush on it as soon as she sends it back. Did not mean to ignore you. Would a revolving fund loan of $200. help or is that to little to late? lbp

Email 4:
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 10:13 PM
Subject: Re: Winter Quarter

Labarbara:
A loan would not be helpful at all. I already owe enough people money and since the VA is taking money from me without any reason I don’t need them taking anymore money from me. I’ll be emailing Sarina Payne letting her know you’ll be sending it over so she knows in the morning.

I’ll also be calling her at noon to make sure she sends it back to you and I’ll be emailing you to find out whether or not you received it shortly thereafter. While you’ll be putting a rush on that how am I going to be recompensed for not being paid for my wife (a dependent) for last quarter as well as this quarter thus far? I know that putting a rush on things at the VA means it’ll take less time (months instead of years), but I still have bills to pay this month so I need to know when to expect the money to be in my account. Thanks.

jpn

Email 5:
On Friday, February 06, 2009, at 08:45AM, “Philpot, LaBarbara, VBACHGO” wrote:

John: I know that you have turned in the paperwork for your wife and that you now have a dependent and that your actural rate is higher that what you are receiving. However; as we have tried to explain to you, here in Voc Rehab, we cannot pay at that rate until the Comp and Pen department has input into the master record. At that time, we will retro you back to any subsistence payments that were paid at the lower rate. Until that time, your payment will remain at the single rate. Our hands are tied.

Did you speak with Serena yet? If it comes in this morning, I can probably get it input before the day is out. The person that has to input it, leaves at 2:30.

Email 6:
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 1:43 PM
Subject: RE: Winter Quarter

I spoke with Sarina. She said it was sent this morning.

Email 7:
On Feb 6, 2009, at 2:13 PM, Philpot, LaBarbara, VBACHGO wrote:

By the way, I searched further and found that Serena had sent the 1905 back to me and it had already gone over to be processed. I overlooked it yesterday, when I went looking for it. The interesting thing is that though it was sent to Serena on November 9, 2008, the first time that she sent it back shows a date stamped as received in the VA on January 29, 2009. That is the one that was already sent over for processing. You should have something in the next week or so. lbp

Email 8:
On Feb 18, 2009, at 9:27 PM, John Neumann wrote:

I received a voicemail today stating that you still can’t seem to find my paperwork. Per your own email, you stated that you already had it and it was submitted. So do you have it or not? If it was your pay, I bet it’d be taken care of the first time though. Then again, I’m just a young white veteran who fits a statistic saying that I’m more likely to kill myself than other vets. I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY THAT STATISTIC IS SO DAMN HIGH AND SO DAMN APPLICABLE!?! Please let me know when the VA is going to stop screwing me.

-Another F*$%ed and Forgotten Disabled Veteran

PS. The best time to contact me is not when I’m in class, which would be Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then again, I can’t afford another train ticket BECAUSE I CAN’T WORK BECAUSE I’M DISABLED BUT THE VA WONT RE-RATE ME, so who’s really sure if that’ll matter next week or not. Oh, and I was in the hospital last Monday again. Not the VA’s. You guys can’t pay people right, so what the hell makes anyone think you can be proper doctors - which none are, they’re all students? So I missed last weeks classes and this Mondays.

Email 9:
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 2:45 PM
Subject: Re: Winter Quarter

So I need your opinion now. Do I pay the car payment or the car insurance? If I don’t pay the car payment my payments will go up for defaulting on the loan, but if I don’t pay the car insurance then I can’t drive the car, thus the purpose of paying the car is now a moot point. I could not pay my phone bill, but then if I happen to fall again because my Service Connected Injury gets worse - as it consistently has been - then I’ll have no way to call for help. I could just wait for hours until someone got home though. I need to know what you’re opinion is on this, that way I can make a better informed decision.

Amusingly enough - although in my eyes it’s not at all amusing - I’ve received an email from Sarina Payne at AI already. I actually received it at 8:31 this morning stating she’d send the form over again for the third time. Yet, in your message you asked when was good to contact me so I gave you the option of ALL DAY Tuesdays or Thursdays and I haven’t had a phone call, let alone an email. I must say that your attempt at concern is befuddling. It is ok though. Because today I started contacting Senators, Congressmen and women, newspapers, radio stations and other Social Networking sites with my story. Oh it’s not just about you and your departments inability to do simple tasks like file paperwork. No it goes well beyond that. So watch for my story soon. I know a few reporters who have a soft spot in their heart for Veterans and who loathe the VA. Remember the Wounded Warriors articles from the Sun Times? I doubt it, but those are the types of folks I contacted.

Hope you’re working diligently on keeping those of us in the system down.

-Another F*$%ed and Forgotten Disabled Veteran

P.S. You know a great deal of parallels can be made about Blacks and Veterans. The biggest one is that we’re both part of a system of control that attempts to keep us in the place we are. Down.

Email 10:
On Thursday, February 19, 2009, at 03:48PM, “Philpot, LaBarbara, wrote:

John:
I have no way of knowing who you have contacted. No one has called me or wrote me on your behalf. Your certification was found stuck to another file. My apologies. You should have the money deposited within the next 10 days. I am sending the authorization for the next term starting in April so that we don’t have this problem again. If you have time, I would like for you to come in for a meeting. You have had quite a bad time of it and your feelings are totally understandable. You are not forgotten and I hope you can soon concentrate on school. lbp

Email 11:
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 10:26 AM
Subject: RE: Winter Quarter

Yet again you fail to do your job adequately. It’s been 10 working days now and yet my bank account still seems to have no money from you in it. I can’t imagine why that would be other than that you’re just so enraptured with your other cases mine seems to slip by you, even though you profess to give a shit about my case. “You are not forgotten…” Really? Because it sure seems that way. Let me break it down for you. The VA is taking money from me that isn’t rightfully theirs and no one gives a shit. You aren’t paying me and no one gives a shit. And all the while I have bill collectors calling me while I live in my in-laws basement. To top it all off, because I’m having all of these money problems, my marriage is going down the shitter because we can’t make ends meet so it makes it a bit more stressful. So what the fuck are you going to do about this?

-Another F*$%ed and Forgotten Disabled Veteran

Email 12:
On Mar 5, 2009, at 4:24 PM, Philpot, LaBarbara, VBACHGO wrote:

John:
You have every right to be angry. I keep doing what I think will get you paid and again something goes wrong. I promise you that I sent it again as a rush on the 19th and wrong on my part, I see that again it has not been input into the system. I will personally see that it is input in the morning. I will email you the minute it is printed. I will not even try to tell you the in’s and outs of problems this one little sheet of paper has been through. lbp

Email 13:
Subject: Re: Winter Quarter
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 17:16:26 -0600

You don’t have to tell me “…the in’s and outs of problems this one little sheet of paper has been through.” . I’m experiencing it. I don’t have another 10 days to wait for my money. I have bills due. I have bills past due at this point. I need the money by Tuesday at the latest. I’m not going to continue to play these bullshit games. How many other Vets keep getting screwed like me? What makes me so fucking special? Is it that you fucks want me to kill myself? Because just so you know, when I do hit that fucking point, I’ll be doing it on the doorstep of the VA’s fucking office. Figure out how you are going to get my money by Tuesday. I heard once that the government works full time to fix their issues. I wonder how long you’ll stay at work to fix this.

And so this is my story. At least part of it. And this is actually only part of the ongoing battle and problems I’ve encountered with the VA. Don’t worry though. There will be more. I’m taking this to the streets. I’m taking this to the world. No longer will I sit by and let the VA’s ignorance be undocumented. Nope. This is my show now.

So to every red blooded American that cares about Veterans and their healthcare and disability, do me two favors. Contact Judy Biggert on my behalf. You can contact her from here . And then contact Governor Pat Quinn, the newly appointed Governor of Illinois due to our last one’s idiocy, on my behalf as well. You can contact him here . You can help make a difference here. And this is just the beginning. Once I’ve fought my battle and won, I’ll begin taking on other Veterans cases and doing the same thing here. We need to unite. We need to help each other. We need to become the Band of Brothers that we swore to be when we enlisted. Thank you.

I forgot to post my information, so you can contact them appropriately.
Name: John P. Neumann
Service: Marines
Service Dates: 2000 - 2003
City: Bolingbrook
State: Illinois

So I hacked together a basic working menu while I waited for shit to render out for my 3d Modeling class. The site still looks ugly as shit due to the disgusting ads at the top, but until we can afford a different hosting solution, it is what it is. Regardless, Hope to actually post a bit more often. I may even start linking to my flickr account to show off some of my work. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll just use Jenn’s so I can keep my shit private for now. Regardless. Say welcome back to some information folks, ’cause it’s coming.

By-the-by: Huge congrats to my sister and tony on the marriage! Awesome wedding and you guys rock. We love you both dearly. Alright. I’m out. Peace.

btw: If you noticed that the page doesn’t validate now, it is not my fault. GoDaddy’s free service adds extra markup to close out tags so they can throw their junk into the top frame. Why they need to screw with my stuff, I have no idea, but they do. I’ll try to hack a fix for it.

It’s live, but it’s crippled. We now have ads at the top, which sucks, but whatever. It’s free hosting that comes with the domain name. Hopefully in the next few months we can switch it back over to real hosting. Also, the menu is kind of broken right now, so please be patient while I either A) fix it or B) redo the entire site. The latter is probably more likely to happen since I’ve spent the last 3 hours getting the site back up and the last hour using diff to compare what files are doing things differently and have found nothing, thus far. Frustrating. Anyhow. The site is live and will stay that way so sweetness and keep an eye out for some cool art stuff going on.

But unfortunately it’s over. The site is going offline in a few days. I may just take it down myself. We just don’t have the extra money to keep it going. We’re hoping to at least be able to salvage the domain name, but we’re not even sure about that right now. Hosting it ourselves would be fine, but that costs half of what it would cost me to get it hosted normally, so what would be the benefit. It’s still expensive - not really expensive in the idea of it, but more it’s expensive to our situation. So thanks to everyone who’s supported the site. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed. Thanks to everyone who’s paid attention. And thanks to everyone who’s listened. I may try to find a dyndns domain and transfer it over to that, but I don’t know yet. I’ll be pulling the site down on Thursday and I’ll let anyone know about whether or not I’m moving it somewhere else or not. It definitely blows, but… can’t really do a thing about it. Thanks again.

Ok. So I’m not publishing my new site publicly. If you want to see it, ask. I use an alias, for reasons I’ll keep to myself and the new site isn’t exploding right now anyways, so whatever. I haven’t had much time to dedicate to it, so it’s rather lackluster right now. Hopefully time will get better.

Ok. On top of that, this site will be going down… soon. After my car gets fixed, at that time we’ll determine if we can keep running this site. If not, it sucks but hey. It was a fun run and nice while it lasted. If we can, then GREAT! But we’ll still be having some downtime because we’ll be transferring servers.

Finally, I find it pathetic that Ron Paul supporters were given the nix today. Whatever. Screw you McBama! I’m not voting for either of you bastards now! I’ll do a write in at this point, especially since my vote wont count anyways. We live in Husseins home state, so we know it’s going to him. Ron Paul 2008! Join the Revolution!

John Neumann supports Ron Paul

I’ve decided that I’m going to be taking down most of my sites not including this one. The reason. I don’t get what I need to get done done. I find myself starting a project, but instead of completing the project I find technologies that work for the project well, implement them into the scenario, do two things with the real project and drop it. I’ll never touch it again. I’ve got 4 sites - not including the sub-domain on here - that I host from my own server, and I will continue to host them, but I will not be doing much with them. I’ll use them for emails and the such, but really they’re a waste of my time. Example:

I implemented an entire CRM system for myself. I had client lists, phone numbers, etc. I did all the legwork to get it going and it was sweet. It was accessible from the web through an ssl connection with lots of bells and whistles. Annnnd I never did anything with it. No calls, no ads, no flyers, nothing. I had it all setup, but never did anything with it because I’d gotten bored with the project and then other things came along that took priority.

Example 2:

I setup a project management system for myself to help keep myself on task with the things I needed to do with the projects that I was doing. I researched out a plethora of software ultimately deciding on something that was (no shocker here) open source. I used it for… 1 project. A single project. That was it. Now I also transferred my server during this time and I also had to rebuild it from scratch so I did have to put it back on there, but I had the backups, the databases and everything so there was no reason I couldn’t use it again. But I didn’t. The lure of learning the new software was over after I’d figured it out and done my own updates to it and that was that.

So I’ll be using several services to get my work together and keep things centralized from this point forward. They will all be hosted somewhere else that way I can’t decide to get my hands into the nitty gritty backends like I usually do. This will help me out with keeping on task significantly. I have been debating over whether to use tumblr or wordpress with comicpress for my comic strip, artwork and other senseless rants, ramblings and technobabble. I love wordpress and I love the way it works. Almost every site I have worked on in the last year I have included wordpress in, because it makes updates so simple and basic it’s ridiculous. But that’s almost why I don’t want to use it. I love tinkering with wordpress. Figuring out it’s nuances and fixing them, or tailoring it to fix my needs. This site runs on a modified - although only slightly - version of wordpress. Tumblr seems like it’s just click and go. I’ve got a few choices here and there about what I wanna do with it, but overall it’s the way it is. While that seems like a drawback, for me it almost isn’t because then I can’t tinker. It is what it is and that’s it. Nothing more nothing less. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I’d appreciate someone else’s opinion on the matter.

So I’ve been watching this social-networking site brightkite for quite some time now. It’s really a neat idea being able to check in and out while seeing what others around you are doing. It’s also confusing. Sometimes it feels as though you’re required to use too many different pieces of technology to do something simple, like check-in (a feature that lets you tell everyone where you’re at in the world). I had to post from my phone that I was at home, rather than my computer. Odd. Regardless, I think it’s really a sweet little thing. You’re posts are actually notes, and have about the same character limit that Twitter does (140 I believe) so it forces you to keep your goings-on short and sweet. Well, I waited for about a month or two to get my invite to the beta - I didn’t jump on the bandwagon right away - but now I have 3 invites for anyone to use. Soooo… I’m going to keep one in reserve for someone who may or may not use it, so that leaves me with 2 invites left. If anyone would like one, please let me know and I’ll throw you an invite - family and friends get first priority. It’s definitely a cool little tool and I’m hoping to get to use it to it’s fullest extent.

BTW, I also have an up-and-coming art project I’ve been working on for about a month now. If you’d like to be privy to it, contact me. It is very hush-hush and it’s not for children as there is some egregiously foul language that is NOT for the faint of heart. It also deals with certain elements that need to be handled in a rather… tip-toe fashion? Regardless, any interested contact me. Cheers!

So we got here to AZ last night. Wheeee… The drive wasn’t too bad, but sleep was quite deprived so some of us got cranky. And then DJ got a coke bath at Denny’s so that definitely set a different tone as well - although it worked out well and was funny in the end. Anywho. We’re headed to the Grand Canyon in a bit and then it’s off to Vegas! We’re staying at the Tropicana tonight and then Treasure Island tomorrow and the next few days! Tomorrow is the birthday of yours truly so it’ll be sweet to spend the entire thing in Vegas instead of just part of it. We can’t post twitter or flickr updates until we get data services back on our phones, so we’ll be posting a load of updates at once, once we get there. I know it’s not the same, but then at least we still capture the moment and the such. Oh and that picture of me with the wrapper on my head while entertaining proved disastrous. I had a huge red welt on my forehead from it. Stupid Big Red. Alrighty then. Gotta get movin’! Laters!