Valour-IT isn’t just for Memorial and Veteran’s Day. Our young (and some not so young) citizens, who stepped up to the plate and have been injured can use a little help.

Matt of Black Five reminds us to not forget those who have given so much. There’s the Valour-IT logo on my sidebar, there’s one on my Charities page, or you can click HERE on the Soldier’s Angels site if you feel you haven’t found a link to get to the place to donate a few bucks (or many).

This program, I’m convinced, will not only be a great morale booster to our injured troops, but will pave a road for many disabled, be it in the military or at their job on a construction site somewhere, in and out of the United States, setting a process to model for a long time to come. Join in a be a part of something bigger than you can imagine by helping soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines communicate with their families, their “shipmates” and others in their lives.

Also: Fellow Bloggers, military related or not, please consider passing this info along via your readership. Link here, link to Black Five, link to Soldier’s Angels, but….please just link it!

Thank you for your consideration.

Trackbacked/Crossposted to:
Diane’s Stuff

Capt Lex sent us to the archives for entertainment a few days ago. One of the linked choices was a story about life at sea and the availability of (fresh) water while keeping oneself in a state of good hygine.

He pointed out, in his fine style of prose, that aviators are regularly pilloried for being the ones who waste so much of the water, that others must suffer. He later learned, when assigned as “Ship’s Company” (that means the aviators share the joy of black shoe life, well, at least get a healthy taste of it), and that it is sometimes malfunctioning machinery, specifically the components used in water production or waste steam/heat recovery are the culprits, but, the ‘Shoe Navy has a cabal that always requires pointing the finger of blame at those who would slip the surly bonds of earth. It’s a union thing, I’m sorry, I gotta stick with the homeboys here.

Here’s my “water hours” story. It was a cool November in 1989. We had taken in all lines several weeks earlier in Charleston, SC and sailed east in our plucky little (453′) FFG. Equipped with two evaporators, and carrying a few over 200 aboard, conversing water was not a huge task, but did require us all to be mindful of only using our share. The CHENG and his A Div Officer did a fine job of maintaining the plant, so we weren’t constantly sweating the laod on this topic.

As we sailed through the Med, enroute Port Said to transit south through the Suez Canal and head for the Persian Gulf. The Chop (Supply Officer), Lt Wayne Aiken, had been on the previous cruise. At the Planning Board for Training the week before the transit of the Canal, Wayne suggested we accelerate the laundry cycle to get all the beding done, then we could make the transit easier on the water use, since you’re not allowed (by Navy sanitation requirements) to make water in enclosed waters, which the Canal certainly was. we copuld then top off the fresh water tanks, and shut down the evaporators at the 12 mile limit off of Egypt, yet still have plenty for food service and normal showers on the 24 hour transit, with reserves while the evaps caught up on the other side of Port Suez. I agreeed and the department heads and the command senior chief went about working up the details.

Over the next few days, the plan went like clockwork. The sheets got done and a few of the divisions got their dungarees taken care off off schedule. Early on the day of our scheduled arrival at Port Said (the north end of the canal), we had launched the helo on a Dawn Patrol, and brought them back aboard before we enetered Egyptian territorial waters (12 NM). I recall being on the bridge and, in addition to monitoring our navigational approach (I was navigator, too), I kept an ear out for the communications between the helo and CIC to make sure we didn’t break boundries.

We headed into the anchorage, the Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW) letting the bridge know the evaporators were “wrapped up” as the Officer of the Deck (OOD) completed the entering port checklist. We anchored about an hour later and the CHENG called up, saying we were losing fresh water fast. Immediately, the chain of command was sent around the berthing spaces, looking for running showers, or other “appliances” in the heads. They all reported back, that nothing was running, and there were no findings of pooled water in the spaces. We were still using water. This was a real problem, more frustrating as we had taken the time to make a plan just to keep a problem like this from happeneing.

More hiking around the ship. Nothing, until the Ops Boss, LT Tom Strother, found a garden hose, draped over the side of the flight deck, running at full output. He also found an airman from the helo detachment, with a long handled brush, dutifully scrubbing down the helo, as was standard procedure, after the flight. The problem was, he was supposed to have a nozzle on the garden hose, so he would only use the water required.

In this case, we lost almost half of our fresh water over the side, courtesy of the well intentioned maintained, keeping the risk of corrosion on the very expensive flying machine of HSL-44 Det 4. Marty Keany and I had an interesting chat a few moments later.

We regrouped, we did make water in the Canal, but it was super chlorinated, which, is it’s own reward.

When I checked off the Command, one of the helo pilots, Carl Bush, was a great cartoonist, drew a cartoon of me. The view was from behind me, sitting at my desk. The 1MC (General Announcing System) was blaring “WATER HOURS ARE NOW IN EFFECT!” and I had a cartoon thinking bubble saying “All RIGHT!” in response. There were other details, like an overflowing In Basket, and an empty Out Basket.

Yes, Capt Lex, it was the aviators this time.

Get them before they sell out faster than Tickle Me Elmo dolls….

Get one for yourself and all your loved ones to prevent the repetitive stress injuries of too many rotations of the wrist late at night….

The story begins here.

The Tidewater Apple Worms (TAW) club opened up an entire new world. They produced a newsletter, bought large quantities of 5 1/4″ floppies, then split them up as people had ordered them. The tutorials were excellent, as members who had owned Apples freely shared their knowledge of hardware and software. Far better than the salespeople in the few computer stores around the area, it was drinking from a firehose, but I gulped as hard as I could, and it paid off.

Byte Magazine was about all there was to read, unless you were a real hobbist in the computer field and built your own “home brew” systems using empty chassis and adding your own processor and interface cards. That was too deep for me, even while on shore duty. Much of the education I focused on was programming the computer, and I spent many hours typing in program listings in assembler and Apple BASIC languages. By entering these listings from Byte and a few other sources, mostly for games, I picked up the programming concepts. In addition to the programming to get some games to play, I also spent time with the EZ Write Pro word processing software. My wife picked up some typing jobs, and was able to make the computer make money, certainly, I wasn’t at the beginning.

I “flew” my first flight sim on the Apple. It prvided an X/Y/Z readout on the screen, as you used keys to steer and accellerate/decellerate, while consulting the map in from a page in Byte. I guess I began “flying” IFR, before progressing the the VFR stuff later, when the still surviving early version of Microsoft Flight Simulator came out.

In EZ Writer, if you wanted to make a part of your text bold, you would “mark” the text with a (I can’t get them to just plain print here) set of characters we now know and love as HTML. Same for italizied and larger print for headings. So, in 1981, I was using HTML, not realizing it would come back to me in 1996, when I was asked to take over webmaster for my company.

I also learned how to *ahem* secure my investments by archiving programs. Copy ][+ and Locksmith seem to come to mind as some programs that were useful. Given there were no well stocked software stores, it was useful to know if a program, despite the writing on the box, would do the job. On the other hand, one of the assets of the TAW was the “public domain” library of programs.

Back in the day, people actually would write software and publish it in the public domain. Read: FREEWARE, and mountains of it. The Washington, DC and Dallas Apple clubs were well developed and also had amassed very large software libraries. The clubs would graciously share their stuff, if you shared yours. It didn’t matter too much that you couldn’t provide the same volume or quality, but if you were making an effort, you got help. There were many programs, some very polished, some that worked fine, so long as you didn’t strike a wrong key, and some that was just plain buggy beyond belief. But, people shared their work and it wasn’t until many, many years later I came across the term “shareware.”

In that first year of ownership of a “PC,” I learned much in the weekly Saturday meetings. I actually felt bad, for I was taking all this help, and really didn’t know enought o reciprocate. Part way thru the year, the newletter editor announced they had to resign. I looked at the spouse and said: We can do that. She agreed. I volunteered us to take the duty.

Next episode: Davy Jones and the Manpower Auditors meet Stoneware