People Covered in Fish

Interesting Times

2008-04-21T09:00:00.006-05:00

I feel a little sad about PCIF reverting back to dead blog status after what I thought was a rather successful run. I will certainly pick it up again when I have more time. I don't know how other servicemen, especially those in the Iraq, are able to manage blogging along with keeping the world safe for democracy. I suspect it has something to do with shipboard life.

I'm basically on a 24-hour clock. Sure I have a little downtime here and there, but as far as what's going on in the world, I couldn't tell you. I have lost all awareness of the presidential election, let alone any of the other issues that interest and I used to write about frequently. Not that the news isn't available, but here I am, Chief Engineer and Senior Watch Officer on a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf, and I am just a bit on the busy side. We find a way to use all 24 hours and then some of every day. I can't say the same is true for other services, but I've been wrong before.

When you stand ten hours of watch every day and don't make port for a month or longer, all the days just kind of bleed together. I'd have to think real hard to remember that it is Monday (it is Monday, right?). I could spit on Iran from here.

So, if you're a reader or someone I've traded links with or just randomly Googling me, perhaps there will be more to say later, but there is much going on right now that there is not much to report. Red, Mom, and the rest of my family: I love you and will get in touch as soon as I can. I have been keeping my Facebook page slightly more regularly updated with photos and other random junk.

Stay frosty, blogosphere.

Everybody Relax, I'm Here.

2008-03-09T21:54:00.003-05:00

In case you were wondering, I've been inactive because of the amount of work I've had to do getting set up with my new department and ship. There's always that period of adjustment and for me, it's about two months to really get things going the direction I want them.

Anyway, I'f you've been reading the news, you'd know my time is occupied with keepign the world safe for democracy:

Cole replaced off Lebanon by two US warships: official

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Two US warships have taken up position in the eastern Mediterranean off Lebanon, replacing the USS Cole, a US Navy official said Wednesday.

The Cole, an Aegis destroyer that was attacked and nearly sunk by suicide bombers in Yemen in 2000, was headed to the Gulf after transiting the Suez Canal, canal authority officials said.

"The USS Cole was relieved by the USS Ross and the USS Philippine Sea in the eastern Mediterranean," the navy official said.

The Ross is an Aegis-guided missile destroyer and the Philippine Sea is a cruiser.

"It's a sign of our commitment to stability in the region," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

The Cole was deployed to waters off Lebanon to signal US concern over a protracted political crisis in Lebanon.

Feuding between a western-backed parliamentary majority and the Syrian and Iranian-backed opposition has left the country leaderless since November.

So forgive the inactivity - connectivity at sea is iffy and loading Blogger is 50% at best. Should really switch over one of these days. Not to mention OPSEC concerns. I'll post when able.

Achievements in Tolerance

2007-11-30T13:56:00.000-05:00

I liked the comments I got yesterday regarding the crime and punishment of Gillian Gibbons, because they were shining examples of the air of political correctness and non-confrontationalism that has overtaken the discourse on terrorism and politics.

Why doesn't anyone ever tell these bloody savages they have to be sensitive toward schoolteachers who make innocent mistakes? Why don't they have to be concerned about insulting our cultural sensibilities? I think it's condescending to the Sudanese to not expect from them what they seem to expect of us. Why do we treat them like children not capable of dealing with such concepts?

I am all out of patience for the uncivilized bastards that apparently represent the majority of the Religion of Peace. If I meet a Muslim on the street, I will treat him as I would any other person until given a reason to do otherwise. I will judge him on the content of his character and by his actions. I will buy him a smoothie if I make friends with him. That doesn't change my view of Islam in particular and religion in general as a tool to keep people from thinking for themselves and acting in their own best interests.

The only thing attempting to understand and tolerate the insanity perpetrated by fanatical Muslims has earned us is 50 years of death and destruction, but in small, tolerable, forgettable doses (until 9/11 finally got our attention). Wouldn't I love avoiding entanglements with other countries like George Washington cautioned, unfortunately the world has gotten much smaller than it was then and the nations of the Earth only grow more and more interdependent. I reluctantly acknowledge that requires an active interest in foreign affairs, but it doesn't require that we tolerate cruelty and murder.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the incident in the Bible (as reported in Twain's Letters from the Earth) in which God sends bears to maul 50 children for making fun of a man's bald head.

Unfortunately for the kids, the man was a prophet.

The Moral: Don't judge all followers of a faith by it's harshest adherents.

More and more, it seems Islam's harshest adherents make up the majority of its adherents. The only thing non-judgementalism achieves is indecisiveness. Religion, schmeligion. This has less to do with religion than it does a cult of death and fanaticism hell bent on world domination. The current military dictatorship in Sudan overthrew the previous government with establishing a caliphate as one of its stated goals. That's a theocratic dictatorship, simply put, which bent under international pressure, even though they've been getting away with this kind of thing for years.

Thousands of this cult's "harshest adherents" are demonstrating in Khartoum demanding the head of Gillian Gibbons. Perhaps it will all go away with a little bit of understanding and tolerance. I hope there's somebody protecting her, because for the next two weeks, as she serves her reduced sentence of 15 days in a Sudanese prison. Her life will be in danger until she is deported, perhaps even after - some British Muslims are even demanding harsher punishment.

I'm sure groveling for forgiveness at her egregious offense has been a tremendous help so far. Perhaps she's learned her lesson to be more sensitive when it comes to religion (Tin Foil Hat Tip: Newsbusters), maybe cutting her head off will really put her in her place.

This one's funny:

Tolerance s*cks said...

I like your initiative for greater religious understanding (Your new pet).

I will adopt a gay child and name him Jesus.

Maybe we can arrange a play-date?

To these two I said:

Robosquirrel bloody well said...

Anon, where are the Muslims denouncing the harsh insanity of it's "extremists"? I'd not be surprised if they are unreported and obscured by the MSM - people who want others to be nice to each other don't make the news much. However, if they wanted to be heard, they could be heard.

Here is the statement from CAIR, for example: *crickets*

tolerance: That's pretty funny, I laughed out loud at that! BUT - The hell with religious understanding. I understand that the belief in imaginary, capricious, vengeful beings leads to innocent schoolteachers being whipped and killed by crazy people. Religion is an excuse for people to do unnatural things to each other and a crutch for people of weak character.

Belief in whatever you want, as far as I'm concerned, but when it encroaches upon my or anyone else's right to exist or act in productive self-interest, then we have a problem.

There is respecting the beliefs of others, and then there is turning a blind eye. We've been boning Africa for years by ignoring and paying lip service to the atrocities that happen there. Sudan needs to know in no uncertain terms that they are on our list of things to do.

Previous:
All I Need To Know About Life I Learned From Star Trek
Patriot Day
Thank You, Drive Through
Twisted
Savages
They're Really Very Nice Once You Get To Know Them

All I Need To Know About Life, I Learned From Star Trek

2007-11-29T10:34:00.000-05:00

Geek that I am, the unfortunate situation of Gillian Gibbons reminds me of the first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "Justice" where Wesley Crusher is sentenced to death for falling in a flower bed.

Wesley Crusher was just an innocent kid playing ball with some other kids, but ignorant of the law and harshly judged for something that was an innocuous accident; in contrast with Gibbons, who I would gather is familiar with sharia law based on her chosen occupation, but is in prison awaiting trail for a similarly innocuous crime.

Like Star Trek, vistors to other countries or planets are subject to their laws. But as Jean-Luc Picard says that "life itself is an exercise in exceptions", and to every living creature within the sound of his voice, "there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute!" Take that, Sudan.

I've heard comparison drawn to Michael Fey who is famous for getting caned in Singapore for for theft and vandalism. His crimes weren't innocuous, and although the punishment may seem harsh to us in the U.S., he was living in Singapore and subject to the laws of the country. Gibbons named a teddy bear at the suggestion of her seven-year-old students. What do you suppose they've learned from all this?

If Muslims are so offended by such innocent things as cartoons and teddy bears, and willing to express their displeasure at such things by flogging and beheading people, how can anyone consider devotees of that cult peaceful, or worthy of diplomacy? Bloodthirsty savages.

Meanwhile, the enablers and apologists at the AP titles this story "Briton Charged in Religious Hatred Case". (Tin Foil Hat Tip:Michelle Malkin) Way to take a stand for religious freedom, free speech and all that, MSM.

In other news, I got a new pet.

His name is Mohammed.

Savages.

The Environmental Hysteria Channel

2007-11-07T20:18:00.000-05:00

I am suffering from extreme boredom right now. I'm really in the mood to go see a movie, but looking at what's playing in theaters in nearby Waldorf, MD, and Fredricksburg, VA, I find that every single movie at the multiplexes looks like garbage. I saw an ad on the Intarwebs for a Jackie Chan movie called "The Myth", apparently released in China two years ago, but now available on DVD in the U.S. That, I'd like to see - I am a devoted fan of Jackie Chan. I even ate at his restaurant in Yokohama!

I'm loathe to turn on the idiot box right now, because (A) I know it will suck my brain out and I will watch it all night; I have a long drive to Jacksonville ahead of me tomorrow and I need some sleep and (B) watching Heroes on Monday really soured the whole cathode ray-brain sucking experience for me.

Don't get me wrong, I still love Heroes and it's still my current favorite TV show, but I was so... vexed by the initiation of NBC's Green Week during my program that I nearly turned it off. It was a short video of a few of the actors from the show planting a tree on Kirby Plaza, where the final showdown of Season 1 finale took place. I managed to suppress the urge to vomit and finish the show.

I originally thought it was just the Today show, what with the advertising blitz last week about Matt Lauer going to Greenland, Ann Curry trying to get to the South pole, and Al Roker in Ecuador (heh - go a little farther south and it's freezing in Peru!) I started watch Lauer's bit about the polar bears, but I got bored by all the platitudes and cliches and switched to the Brian Willams' interview of Mel Brooks.

Last night, they did the same thing with The Bionic Woman yesterday; all the shows this week have some kind of Environmental Hysteria subtext. Ugh.

I don't have a problem with putting issues of the day into the storyline of a TV show. if it makes sense and flows with the plot, go for it. I can handle it. But throwing it my face with "Green Week"? NBC has certainly drunk the Kool Aid and expects that their audience has too. What about those of us that like a little science to back up our speculation about the impending doom of the human race? Am I to believe that humans are causing global climate change or, indeed, that they can do anything at all reverse it just on Matt Lauer's say so.

The entertainment industry expects you to buy every bit of crap they push at you because they thing you'll do anything they want if they have a pretty face tell you to do it. It's the most condescending thing I've seen in recent memory.

EDIT - Oh by the way: Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming ‘Greatest Scam in History’

Sesquipedalian

2007-11-07T16:26:00.000-05:00

These mornings, with the TV right at the foot of my bed in the hotel, I find myself watching about an hour of Fox and Friends before I head to class, more or less. Sometimes they sound reasonably intelligent when talking about issues of the day... and sometimes my jaw drops with disbelief at how moronic or rampantly irresponsible the things they say are.

Such is my feeling about all television news shows. I think the worst part about them is that the majority of the TV news audience thinks that it's getting actual news. Let me digress from my original point for a minute:

I have a Baccalaureate of the Arts in Journalism; yes... journalism. I took one broadcast journalism class in college because I was having such a great time at my volunteer DJ gig at Radio K and wanted to focus on radio journalism. Everyone else in my class wanted to do TV news and that was the focus, scripts, teleprompters, presentation, etc. That class was full of some of the most vapid, empty-headed sheep I've ever met in my life. All good-looking, but not a brain among them.

I was actually on Fox and Friends a few months ago - Brian Kilmeade came to Mayport and a bunch of us from different commands went to stand on the USS MCINERNEY flight deck behind him all morning in our whites for background and for him to call on us randomly about the various stuff they were talking about on the show. One story was about how oldest children are the smartest, so before the folks in the studio in New York started talking about it, Brian asked which of us were oldest children. I, of course, raised my hand.

"Would you say you're smart?" he asked.

"IT'S A TRAP!" shouted Admiral Ackbar from somewhere in the back of my mind.

"I guess so," I said.

So the studio goes to him and he shoves the microphone right in my face and asks the same questions again, but then:

"Why do you think you're the smartest?"

Nothing going on in my head, camera pointing at me, microphone touching my lips... "I went to graduate school..."

"Are you smarter than your siblings?"

Oh God. They're watching. "Oh yeah."

Hahaha. "Do you have to dumb down the dinner conversation?" Crap.

"Yeah." Not the whole truth, but we're talking about someone for whom 30 seconds is a long time.

"What's the biggest word you know?" Crickets chirping in my skull.

"Ah... sesquipedalian."

"What's it mean?" I've got nothing.

"Er... I forgot." As soon as the mic leaves my lips and short-attention-span man walks away having a chuckle at my expense, I'm thinking, "Uses long words!" I had the irony right in the palm of my hand!

Later, the folks in studio looked it up and reminded me on camera that it means "given to the overuse of long words."

I am theorizing that even for these TV professionals, the microphone/camera combo has strange magical ability to suck the brain clean of thought. Anyhow, I've strayed from my point...

This morning on Fox and Friends, the trio was discussing the recent cases where police used TASERs to subdue a violent 14-year-old trick-or-treater and a deranged 82-year-old hammer-wielding grandmother. There also have been cases of smaller children being 'tased' in the last couple years.

There also is growing concern over TASER-related deaths as Silja J.A. Talvi writes in In These Times, a Chicago publication "dedicated to informing and analyzing popular movements for social, environmental and economic justice; to providing a forum for discussing the politics that shape our lives; and to producing a magazine that is read by the broadest and most diverse audience possible." That was their mission statement; the column is obviously biased against TASER, Inc., but it's well written and interesting. Believe it or not, it is difficult to find unbiased reference material on this topic.

I was agape, yet unsurprised, that Hot Blond Chick on Fox and Friends this morning said there should definitely be an age limit on who police can 'tase'. Let's think about this for a second. Aside from the obvious physical differences between, say, children and adults and the elderly, what are cops supposed to do? Card the person to ensure they are age-appropriate for 'tasing'? For a program that supposedly courts a conservative audience, I definitely raised my eyebrows at the suggestion of making police officers' jobs yet more difficult. No wonder we have Marines and soldiers being shipped back here to the states to stand trial for doing their job.

Here's the thing: if a police officer is telling you to stop doing something, the wisest thing to do is cease doing whatever it is. All law enforcement officers are trained to a "Use of Force Continuum" which are levels of steady increasing force used to apprehend or subdue a subject. A typical one goes something like:

1. Presence (using the effect of the presence of an authority figure on a subject)
2. Verbalization (commanding a subject)
3. Empty hand control (using empty hands to search, relieve weapons, immobilize, or otherwise control a subject)
4. Intermediate weapons (using non-lethal chemical, electronic or impact weapons on a subject)
5. Deadly Force (using any force likely to cause permanent injury or death to a subject)

So by the time the officer tells you to do something, he's already working his way up. Persisting in your foolish course of action will cause the levels of force to increase.

OK, does an old woman with dementia know this? Probably not in any meaningful way, but if there comes a point where the officer has to decide whether to continue allowing this crazy lady to come at him with a hammer, allowing himself or a bystander to get seriously injured, or subdue her in a way comparable to the force he is encountering from her, the officer is going to 'tase' her. What's he going to do, whip out his baton and beat on her? He's sure as hell not going to shoot her.

But what about the children, you say? I say if the officer judges that they are a danger to themselves or others, then respond on an equal level, which is how the police (and we in the military, by the way) are trained. That includes a violent six-year-old, or 14-year-old in handcuffs if the situation warrants. Just like the military, nothing ever happens to a police officer the way it happened when they were training. Nothing ever happens by the book.

Now, based on some of the stories I've been finding on the Intarwebs that have taken place over the last three or four years, it does seem to me that the use of the TASER has become liberal amongst law enforcement officials. I don't think that it is always appropriate to 'tase' a child, but it certainly could be warranted. With use of force training, you are always instructed to use the lowest level of force necessary to control the individual and if you can get the job done safely without using a TASER, then don't use the TASER.

Law enforcement officers have seconds to decide whether and how much force to use in a given situation. A moment's hesitation can quickly lead to a situation getting out of control and result in the officer or the offender getting more seriously injured. Adding a step between lethal force and soft or hard control saves peoples lives, usually ones who aren't putting other people in danger, so why should it be more difficult for the police to use that option?

I hesitate to second-guess a cop in the line of duty, because when things happen you have act quickly - it's the same with me as tactical action officer on a ship in the Persian Gulf. If I'm lucky, I'll have 10 seconds to respond to an imminent attack. It's important to look at this stuff with a critical eye, but give these guys the benefit of the doubt.

Hooters and Also Health Care

2007-11-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

I realize I've been back in the US for three weeks now and have been woefully light on blogging. Let me give you a give a quick navel-gazing update.

I spent the first two weeks back from deployment almost exclusively with my son, who is 18 months old and doesn't really understand why I've been gone for half of his life. We had a terrific time, as you can see in the picture. We spent all day every day watching the Wiggles, playing together and hanging out. Red had to work most of the time, but we were able to get some time together as well.

I left Sunday to start school at the AEGIS Readiness and Training Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. I've been getting my butt kicked as I get all learned up - the AN/SPY-1 radar is all Big Gray Boxes and 'trons, folks. It's not easy, like pumps and engines. At the end of one week, it's readily apparent that more studying is in order. Thank goodness I'm the Engineer and I'm not actually in charge of this equipment.

I was perusing Technorati a bit and I noticed that over the course of the deployment I've gotten a little linkage, which is nice.

Amy Ridenour at the National Center Blog found my comments about military health care in an article about criticism of the National Center's paper SCHIP Expansion: Socialized Medicine on the Installment Plan. Though the SCHIP bill was vetoed, I still think it's relative because the advocates of socialism will not and have never stopped trying to scam an often unaware American populace.

I hold military health care up as a shining example of why not to elect anyone who intends to nationalize the health care industry. The only things the federal government really ought to be doing is defending its citizens and maintaining/building infrastructure, in my opinion - and that infrastructure part should be limited to what it takes to defend the country, like freeways and such. Local government is more than capable of filling that hole in front of your driveway.

Anyhow, Ms. Ridenour's linkage to me was in response to a column by Philip Boffley of the New York Times where he states:

No one has the nerve to brand this country’s purest systems of “socialized medicine” — the military and veterans hospitals — for what they are. In both systems, care is not only paid for by the government but delivered in government facilities by doctors who are government employees. Even so, a parade of Washington’s political dignitaries, including President Bush, has turned to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for checkups and treatment, without ideological complaint. Politicians who deplore government-run health care for average Americans are only too happy to use it themselves.

I believe that was exactly what I called the military health care system, but it's certainly much easier to write in sweeping generalities than to actually ask anyone in the military.

Boffley continues:

Meanwhile, the two current butts of the “s-word” are such hybrids of public and private elements that it is hard to know how to characterize them. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, was denigrated by one Republican congressman this week as “a government-run socialized wolf masquerading in the sheep skin of children’s health.” It might better be thought of as a “double-payer system” in which the states and the federal government put up the money, the states take the lead in defining the program and the actual care is typically delivered through private health plans by private doctors and hospitals.

What Boffley fails to realize is that states and the federal government have to tax their citizens in order to pay for things - that's what socialism is. It takes choices away from the individual and gives them to the government which doesn't earn a damn thing which seems to result in a lack of give-a-crap about spending the money it does take. He concludes by cautioning the reader about discounting any government health care plan as socialized, when that's exactly what it is when the government runs something instead of individuals running it for profit.

Ms. Ridenour also has a follow-up article today, well worth reading, regarding Rudy Guiliani's comments comparing the British and American health care systems' records on prostate cancer.

As I said a few months ago, I haven't had too many problems with the military health care system because I don't get sick much and usually just tough it out when I do. I haven't been seriously injured or anything - just a couple persistent chronic exercise injuries. My few negative anecdotes come from corpsmen (great at triage, sometimes iffy at regular medical care) and from my wife, who hasn't been in for a check-up in far too long, because she feels like the care she gets from military doctors is inadequate. She's used them much more than me, what with gynecological and prenatal care.

We stopped taking my son to the navy hospital for his check-ups because of having to wait hours sometimes for his shots and for the doctors. As long as there is an alternative that will accept our insurance provided through the Navy, we will use that instead of Navy doctors. Boffley also talks about Medicare in his column, which is indeed socialized. A comparison could perhaps be drawn between Medicare and TRICARE, which I use; the difference is that I earn my TRICARE coverage through military service while Medicare is provided by the government to anyone at all. Though both are government programs and taxpayer funded, one provides an obvious return on investment - taxpayers caring for the military professionals they expect to keep them safe and provided from and employer to an employee, while one is provided forcibly by taxpayers through the government to people for whom they have no self-interest in providing health care.

Please also realize that the doctors and corpsmen are most often good at their jobs, it is the system that doesn't always function well. So why shouldn't I be able to chose another place to receive health care when I am dissatisfied? Well, I can't - I have to go there, unless they refer me somewhere else for some reason. Red and Jack have the option of going elsewhere. For now.

EDIT: For something really weird, see this post translated into German!
Leute Haben in Fisch Bedeckt: Sirenen und Auch Gesundheitswesen

Geekgasm!

2007-11-03T21:07:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting here in the hotel room vegging out after a great run with the DCH4 and I saw a trailer finally for Beowulf. I have no idea how long they been showing trailers, but I'm a big fan of Neil Gaiman and have been waiting for this movie for a few years. I thought MirrorMask was terrific, in case anyone else saw that.

And just as I was thinking about how cool that was, yet another trailer comes on for Hogfather. Good grief, one of my other favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, finally got a Discworld novel made into a TV movie. It looks very cool, the effects seemed very good, I only hope I'm able to catch it, since I will be home for Thanksgiving. I don't think I'm alone in wishing the Discworld novels could get a good screen treatment.

Whew, anyway, coming down off the geekgasm now. Thank you, drive through.

USS Gary (FFG 51) vs. Godzilla

2007-11-03T09:11:00.000-05:00

I was pointed to this by a friend in my class. It never made the Army/Navy Game, but it's hilarious!

The Coolest Guy on Earth

2007-11-02T14:03:00.000-05:00

I can't believe i forgot about Pat Sajak's birthday this year. Shame on me. Happy 51st, Mr. Sajak! Speaking of television, why is everyone so hyped about the Patriots-Colts game Sunday? Is it going to be that good?

First Cup of Coffee: Rules

2007-10-22T10:38:00.000-05:00

Been listening to the national news a lot about the annual California wildfires and reminiscing a little about the Okeefenokee wildfires not so long ago... well seven months ago, anyway. I don't remember the media being so irate about Georgia being on fire.

MSN this morning has an article bemoaning the fact that not every damn aircraft was fighting the fire - the lead states:

LOS ANGELES - As wildfires were charging across Southern California, nearly two dozen water-dropping helicopters and two massive cargo planes sat idly by, grounded by government rules and bureaucracy.

Egad! The deuce you say! Goodness knows liberals hate government beauracracy, that's why they prefer it so small... er...

Moving on, paragraph the second:

How much the aircraft would have helped will never be known, but their inability to provide quick assistance raises troubling questions about California’s preparations for a fire season that was widely expected to be among the worst on record.

No kidding? But idle speculation make for terrific alarmism to panic the unwashed. Kind of the like yelling fire in a crowded theater, so to speak.

Paragraph the third:

It took as long as a day for Navy, Marine and California National Guard helicopters to get clearance early this week, in part because state rules require all firefighting choppers to be accompanied by state forestry “fire spotters” who coordinate water or retardant drops. By the time those spotters arrived, the powerful Santa Ana winds stoking the fires had made it too dangerous to fly.

How sad. Who knows what sort of damage could've been done, had the firefighting aircraft been able to fly around dropping fire fighting agent as best they could instead of on target with a professional spotter. And if only we could've gotten the two planes and 24 helicopters off the ground during those dangerous winds and killed some pilots, why then we'd be able to blame George bush for killing those guy by making them get in the air and fight fires when he knew it was unsafe!

Additional commentary from John at OPFOR: On the use of UAVs to help identify fires in southern California, Brig. General James Poss says "This is the United States Air Force you are talking to. We designed these things to locate targets -- to help us start fires, not put them out."

News articles aren't designed to be read farther than the third paragraph, I majored in journalism, they taught us this. Most people won't get farther than paragraph two. Even on the Internet, articles are written this way by news organizations and you can tell they're sticking to the format because right after the third 'graph is where the advertisement goes. If you make it past the advertisement, you're more intelligent than the MSM gives you credit for.

Below the ad, it becomes instantly clear the C130s weren't even outfitted for firefighting. Waiting for the upgrade for four years - jump right into my nightmare the water is warm! My last ship was 23 years old and still waiting for basic vital safety upgrades. It's all about cash, and it all has more important places to be spent, like the Army and Marines for fighting the GWOT. I can deal with that. It's not until paragraph seven that you get to Gov. Schwarzenegger's response.

I've spent nine of the last thirteen months living with helicopter pilots and working closely with the air bosses of two detachments to ensure they have everything they need to fly safely. Aviation safety rules are written in blood, folks, and if a small number of aircraft remained on the ground, it was in the best interest of their crews.

Odds and ends about this: I loved the press conference that Harry Reid gave saying that one reason the fires are happening is global warming, then turning around three minutes later and denying he said it (Tin Foil Hat Tip: Bloviating Zeppelin and Rush Limbaugh). The politicizing of disaster response has become really irritating, yet provides keen insight as to who the leaders in Washington are and who the politicians are.

I think the Healthy Forests Initiative may help (Tin Foil Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin), but it's too late to make a difference now and if it passes won't show results until after President Bush leaves office at which time some Democrat will likely take credit for it.

That's it, just the rant. Thank you, drive through.

Cowardice

2007-10-19T11:48:00.000-05:00

Wow, so finally after a week ashore I'm starting to get riled up about politics again. I've been listening to this whole deal about the letter that Harry Reid sent Clear Channel about Rush Limbaugh. Now that it's nap time for James, I've got a few minutes to share my thoughts with you, Internet.

Rush's auction of the smear letter sent to Clear Channel president Mark Mays just earned $2,100,100.00 on eBay for the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. Rush is matching it, for a total donation of $4,200,200. Wow.

If you're not up to speed, Rush spoke on his show about people who have claimed or exaggerated military service in Iraq in order to make false claims about he conduct of the war on terror - feeding the media the stories they want to print about the U.S. military committing atrocities afar in the hopes that an embarrassing withdrawal from the Middle East will result.

So on the floor of the Senate, on the clock, so to speak, the Honorable Senator Reid said,

If we take the Republican side at their word that last week’s [at the end of September sometime - sorry I was still deployed. -Robo] vote on another controversial statement related to the war was truly about patriotism, not politics, then I have no doubt that they will stand with us against Limbaugh’s comments with equal fervor.

I am confident we will see Republicans join with us in overwhelming numbers. Anything less would betray a double standard that has no place in the United States Senate.

Reid got 41 moonbat senators to sign a letter demanding that Clear Channel force Rush to apologize for his comments, trying twist Rush's keen observations and convince the great unwashed that Rush had trashed the military.

Rush took that letter, the text of which you can read here, and put it up for auction on eBay for charity. This is the beautiful thing about Rush's show and real conservatism. He looks at everything as an opportunity and I think it's a terrific example. It's a real charity helping real people, it's people making a conscious decision that is in their own self-interest, and it's a live demonstration of the positive attitude required to combat the spineless cowardice that the leaders of the left think America needs.

Night of the Living Democrats

2007-10-19T08:23:00.000-05:00

Just messing around on JibJab. Maybe more at nap time...

Packs of Wild Dogs

2007-10-12T13:32:00.000-05:00

Just to let anyone who's interested know that I made it home yesterday to Jacksonville from Salaverry, Peru. I was pretty wiped out after about 24 hours total between leaving the ship and touching down in Jacksonville International Airport.

When we arrived in Salaverry, I realized once again that just because cruise ships visit a port doesn't make it paradise. Interestingly, the NCIS told us that one of the primary dangers of this port was (I am not making this up) packs of wild dogs.

Salaverry is a port surrounded by a shanty town just outside Trujillo, the second-largest city in Peru. All the liberty to be had was reportedly in Trujillo, but I was only out for one day - at my farewell. It would also have been my relief's hail (hence the traditional name for the get-together "hail and farewell"), however no one knew where he was. We half expected him to show up the last day in port beaten, bleeding and filthy, probably missing a shoe, dragging a suitcase with a trail of skivvies behind him and say, "No one picked me up at the airport!" as he limped up the brow. Luckily, he is a smart and resourceful person and arrived the next day with plenty of time for a good turnover as Chief Engineer.

I left the ship right before it got underway and spent most of the day sitting at the Trujillo airport reading "Sourcery" by Terry Pratchett and waiting for the restaurant and shops to open so I could eat something and buy a phone card to call my wife. Then flew to Peru for a red-eye flight to Atlanta and then a quick hop down to Jacksonville.

So I'm home for two weeks and enjoying doing nothing almost as much as I miss being the Engineer. Luckily, I get to do it again in a couple of months and get to spend the intermediate time playing with my son and spending time with my wife. It's already been an eventful couple of days and I'm just getting up to speed on what the hell is going on in America, as well as becoming reacquainted with my family.

I just started monkeying around with MySpace, by the way, but there's not much there.

People Catching Fish, Part II

2007-09-23T10:31:00.000-05:00

(Pictures finally updated 28 SEP 07, 1230ish. And yes, BZ, we are hard core killers of fish.)

Today is Sunday, holiday routine, and 17 days left aboard USS HALYBURTON. I am going to miss her. They say that two best ships in the Navy are USS LAST SHIP and USS NEXT SHIP, and I tend to agree with that. I’ve been fortunate to have served on three ships so far with Captains who range from excellent to at-least-they-don’t-throw-chairs-at-me, all with excellent crews, fun-loving wardrooms and generally terrific places to serve.

Occasionally, when tasking is light or during holiday routine days like today, we’ll stop or slow to bare steerage way so that we can maintain a position while waiting for a suspect vessel to show up, conserve fuel and go fishing.

We’ve caught a couple of whoppers, too, but haven’t gotten them up on deck. Finally, while I was on watch a couple weeks ago, we got word to the bridge to execute preplanned responses for a fish on the line and stop the ship. One of our chief petty officers got a sailfish up on deck.

I haven’t been fishing off the stern, but it’s pretty cool to watch the guys amuse themselves catching these monsters in the middle of the Pacific, or pulling catfish and red snapper up out of water in Panama at the southern mouth of the Canal. I did go on a fishing trip in Panama to a part of Lake Gatun, however. That’s the lake in the middle of the Panama Canal that used to be a valley until it was dammed up to become part of the Canal. Even though it was almost a hundred years ago, there are still the remains of old trees sticking up out of the water. Some of them were cut off, but now they’re stumps about a foot under the surface just waiting for an unsuspecting motor boat. We hit more than a few as we navigated the arm of the Lake that we were on.

The peacock bass are plentiful there. We caught a whole cooler full of them, most only a couple of pounds or smaller, but there’s no size limit, so the guide just told us to keep everything. There’s also tarpin in there, along with some jellyfish and other wonderful critters. I decided against swimming for that reason, but Jimbo was not so worried about it when he went on the trip the next day.

The trip was terrific. The first one I caught was pretty small, but I did end up catching the big fish, about six pounds (the one sitting on top in the cooler above). There were just the three of us (one of my hull technicians and one of my oil kings signed up as well), one of whom had never been fishing in his life. It was cool watching him have a blast catching fish for the fist time ever, baiting hooks and everything; definitely a manly day. On top of spending the morning catching about 40 pounds of fish, when we got back, there’s a little restaurant where they will clean and cook the fish for you, served up with limes and fried plantains. I got a heckuva sunburn from the waist up, but the itching has, for the most part subsided at this point.

And now for something , an update on the 500 Miles Club, I’m poised to meet my goal, with 13 usable days left I have 428.5 miles down and 71.5 miles to go. I think our scale here is filthy liar, but according to it, I’ve dropped about 15 pounds. That’s nice. I’m hoping to keep the routine up after I leave. I get about two weeks at home before going to Virgina for school for about six weeks. Then it’s Christmas and another deployment.

More later, Internet cooperation allowing.

Previous:
People Catching Fish
500 Mile Club

People Catching Fish

2007-09-23T09:14:00.000-05:00

I’ve been having a hard time with the Internet this week. The satellite seems to want to cooperate for downloads, but not uploads, so it’s been taking days to post this. I write things out in advance on Microsoft Word I don’t loose the text, but often the repeated attempts to connect or post are distracting and I have to stop to do some actual work. I tried all afternoon two days ago to post a reply to Fetching Jen, but had to stop due to obligations and frustration.

20 SEP 07

It’s been a heckuva couple of days out in the EPAC. We’ve been boarding a tuna boat all night that was packed with crew – almost two dozen. We haven’t found much except two prostitutes, a stack of cash and a case of Johnnie Walker, but we’re still searching. There’s tuna, also – which is more unusual than you might think.

The interesting part is that not only are we here with this tuna seiner, we’re also out here with an American supply ship who we are scheduled to conduct underway replenishment (UNREP) with this morning. We’re sending one of our Lieutenants Junior Grade to command the tuna seiner while we refuel. Unfortunately, I just got the word that they are having engine trouble and we’re going to have to delay the UNREP, though we’ve got some pallets of stuff we’re going to receive (called vertical replenishment; we’re hauling them with our helicopter) while we’re waiting to fix it.

UNREP was first conceived during the Second World War as a means of extending the range of our Navy. It was so innovative that it was actually classified at the time so that other navies wouldn’t figure it out. With UNREP we are able to stay on station longer and remain mission ready. We can get fuel, stores, mail, personnel, just about anything, really.In the eastern Pacific, we don’t get much opportunity to practice it because there isn’t usually a supply ship in theater, but we’ve had one hanging around for the last month or so and it’s been extremely helpful.

We start out about 1000 yards (1/2 nautical mile) astern of the delivery ship and then move into position 300-500 yards astern, keeping the delivery ship about three degrees to port or starboard to ensure a lateral separation of approximately 180 feet. When we get the signal, we increase speed to a full bell and drive up alongside and cut speed to a standard bell so that we coast into position with the fueling stations lined up.

When we’re in position, one ship or the other will shoot lines across with a special 7.62mm round that is designed to propel a big rubber projectile with shot line attached to it over to the other ship. I did a midshipman cruise on USS MERRIMACK (AO 179), a CIMARRON Class oiler about a hundred years ago and they used to prefer to shoot lines, because they were better at it by virtue of doing it more often. I saw every ship in the USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (CVN 73) battle group that way. When there’s a lot ships like that, they’ll take two at a time, one on each side. I also learned semaphore, since outside of UNREP, there’s not much for a midshipman to do on an oiler.

Once the shot line is in hand, they’ll heave around on it until the messenger is in hand. That’s the first line across, which the spanwire will be attached to, and sometimes the CO and the master of the delivery ship will send each other gifts and boxes of cookies and things like that. The spanwire is taken to the fueling station and the messenger is tied to the phone and distance line, a line with flags on it to judge the lateral separation between ships and a sound-powered phone line for communications, and hauled back to the delivery ship. The conning officer constantly monitors the station-to-station line-up and the lateral separation between ships and makes small course and speed adjustments as necessary.

As Chief Engineer, I am stationed in the Central Control Station waiting for the station to receive and seat the probe so I can get a fuel sample and begin receiving fuel. I monitor the process and perform visual tests on fuel samples to ensure the quality of the fuel we receive. I let the bridge know when we have about 15 minutes left to go and when we secure pumping.

For more info on UNREP, check the links above or feel free to ask.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day 2007

2007-09-19T16:21:00.000-05:00

Ahoy there! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, landlubbers. Even had it on the Plan of the Day. Turns out we spent most of the day shooting at another boat, to it's all in the spirit, arrr!

Anyone else having a piratey celebration?

Patriot Day

2007-09-11T09:14:00.000-05:00

Today, we half-masted the holiday ensign and observed a moment silence at 0746 local time while moored pierside at the old Rodman Naval Base in Panama.

On this day, I can’t help thinking about how much has changed since I joined the Navy. I was commissioned in 1998, when we were wrapped comfortably in the illusion of safety. Even when the USS COLE was bombed in Yemen in 2000, nothing changed much. Bill Clinton launched Tomahawk strikes in Afghanistan and called it good, situation handled. Our defensive posture, the way we conducted business, it was all the same – until September 11, 2001.

I remember being pissed off that we were not immediately deployed somewhere to exact retribution on whoever was responsible. I remember the next day when we found out that one of our previous commanding officer’s, Captain Gerald F. DeConto, had been killed at the Pentagon.

No one asked me, but I think our big-picture overall strategy in fighting terrorism is correct. It’s multi-layered and forward-leaning and we’re fighting it like a war – because it is a war. It doesn’t just focus on Al Qaeda; that would be a mistake, since there are plenty of other terrorist organization that desire harm to come to America and our allies. Even the FARC in Colombia has declared American servicemen military targets and some middle eastern terrorist organizations are setting up shop in Latin America; Islam has even gained a foothold in some countries down here. I’m doing my part right now, trying to help cut off money to drug trafficking/terrorist organizations (the front-end, in the supply chain of terrorism).

It’s also a culture war. Osama bin Laden's own words prove that although the Cults of Liberalism and Islamofacism are completely disparate and philosophically at odds, the end goal of both is the destruction of all that has made America the greatest country on Earth. By living your life to the best of your productive ability, promoting and practicing capitalism, democracy and exhibiting the best qualities of Americans, you do your part too.

Here’s the President’s address for this Patriot Day:

Patriot Day, 2007

A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

September 11, 2001, was a defining moment in American history. On that terrible day, our Nation saw the face of evil as 19 men barbarously attacked us and wantonly murdered people of many races, nationalities, and creeds. On Patriot Day, we remember the innocent victims, and we pay tribute to the valiant firefighters, police officers, emergency personnel, and ordinary citizens who risked their lives so others might live.

After the attacks on 9/11, America resolved that we would go on the offense against our enemies, and we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor and support them. All Americans honor the selfless men and women of our Armed Forces, the dedicated members of our public safety, law enforcement, and intelligence communities, and the thousands of others who work hard each day to protect our country, secure our liberty, and prevent future attacks.

The spirit of our people is the source of America's strength, and 6 years ago, Americans came to the aid of neighbors in need. On Patriot Day, we pray for those who died and for their families. We volunteer to help others and demonstrate the continuing compassion of our citizens.
On this solemn occasion, we rededicate ourselves to laying the foundation of peace with confidence in our mission and our free way of life.

By a joint resolution approved December 18, 2001 (Public Law 107-89), the Congress has designated September 11 of each year as "Patriot Day."

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of
America, do hereby proclaim September 11, 2007, as Patriot Day. I call upon the Governors of the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, as well as appropriate officials of all units of government, to direct that the flag be flown at half-staff on Patriot Day. I also call upon the people of the United States to observe Patriot Day with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and remembrance services, to display the flag at half-staff from their homes on that day, and to observe a moment of silence beginning at 8:46 a.m. eastern daylight time to honor the innocent Americans and people from around the world who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of
September, in the year of our Lord two thousand seven, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-second.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Environmental Hysteria: Oppression Soothes the Conscience

2007-09-07T14:36:00.000-05:00

Very little time, sorry. I would like to comment on this article, maybe later, but I think it pretty much says it all. There are some links to other articles in a similar vein at the original website. Lazy blogging, to be sure, but I've got crappy bandwidth and some obligations to meet. The article is from Sp!ked Online Magazine:

Monday 3 September 2007
Is carbon-offsetting just eco-enslavement?
In offsetting his flights by sponsoring ‘eco-friendly’ hard labour in India, David Cameron has exposed the essence of environmentalism.
Brendan O’Neill

If you thought that the era of British bigwigs keeping Indians as personal servants came to an end with the fall of the Raj in 1947, then you must have had a rude awakening last week.

In a feature about carbon offsetting in The Times (London), it was revealed that the leader of the UK Conservative Party, David Cameron, offsets his carbon emissions by effectively keeping brown people in a state of bondage. Whenever he takes a flight to some foreign destination, Cameron donates to a carbon-offsetting company that encourages people in the developing world to ditch modern methods of farming in favour of using their more eco-friendly manpower to plough the land. So Cameron can fly around the world with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that, thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over double, are working by hand rather than using machines that emit carbon.

Welcome to the era of eco-enslavement.

The details of this carbon-offsetting scheme are disturbing. Cameron offsets his flights by donating to Climate Care. The latest wheeze of this carbon-offsetting company is to provide ‘treadle pumps’ to poor rural families in India so that they can get water on to their land without having to use polluting diesel power. Made from bamboo, plastic and steel, the treadle pumps work like ‘step machines in a gym’, according to some reports, where poor family members step on the pedals for hours in order to draw up groundwater which is used to irrigate farmland (1). These pumps were abolished in British prisons a century ago. It seems that what was considered an unacceptable form of punishment for British criminals in the past is looked upon as a positive eco-alternative to machinery for Indian peasants today.

What might once have been referred to as ‘back-breaking labour’ is now spun as ‘human energy’. According to Climate Care, the use of labour-intensive treadle pumps, rather than labour-saving diesel-powered pumps, saves 0.65 tonnes of carbon a year per farming family. And well-off Westerners - including Cameron, and Prince Charles, Land Rover and the Cooperative Bank, who are also clients of Climate Care - can purchase this saved carbon in order to continue living the high life without becoming consumed by eco-guilt. They effectively salve their moral consciences by paying poor people to live the harsh simple life on their behalf.

Climate Care celebrates the fact that it encourages the Indian poor to use their own bodies rather than machines to irrigate the land. Its website declares: ‘Sometimes the best source of renewable energy is the human body itself. With some lateral thinking, and some simple materials, energy solutions can often be found which replace fossil fuels with muscle-power.’ (2) To show that muscle power is preferable to machine power, the Climate Care website features a cartoon illustration of smiling naked villagers pedalling on a treadle pump next to a small house that has an energy-efficient light bulb and a stove made from ‘local materials at minimal cost’. Climate Care points out that even children can use treadle pumps: ‘One person - man, woman or even child - can operate the pump by manipulating his/her body weight on two treadles and by holding a bamboo or wooden frame for support.’ (3)

Feeling guilty about your two-week break in Barbados, when you flew thousands of miles and lived it up with cocktails on sunlit beaches? Well, offset that guilt by sponsoring eco-friendly child labour in the developing world! Let an eight-year-old peasant pedal away your eco-remorse…

Climate Care has other carbon-offsetting schemes. One involves encouraging poor people who live near the Ranthambhore National Park, a tiger reserve in Rajasthan, India, to stop using firewood for their stoves, and instead to collect cowpats and water and put them into something called a ‘biogas digester’, which creates a renewable form of fuel that can be used for cooking and the provision of heat. One of the aims of this scheme is to protect the trees of the national park, as tigers are reliant on the trees. It seems that in the carbon-offsetting world, beast comes before man.

In these various scandalous schemes, we can glimpse the iron fist that lurks within environmentalism’s green velvet glove. ‘Cutting back carbon emissions’ is the goal to which virtually every Western politician, celebrity and youthful activist has committed himself. Yet for the poorest people around the world, ‘reducing carbon output’ means saying no to machinery and instead getting your family to do hard physical labour, or it involves collecting cow dung and burning it in an eco-stove in order to keep yourself warm. It is not only Climate Care that pushes through such patronising initiatives. Other carbon-offsetting companies have encouraged Kenyans to use dung-powered generators and Indians to replace kerosene lamps with solar-powered lamps, while carbon-offsetting tree-planting projects in Guatemala, Ecuador and Uganda have reportedly disrupted local communities’ water supplies, led to the eviction of thousands of villagers from their land, and cheated local people of their promised income for the upkeep of these Western conscience-salving trees (4).

The criticism of these carbon-offsetting schemes has been limited indeed. Since The Times revealed the treadle pump story last week, many have criticised carbon offsetting on the rather blinkered basis that it doesn’t do enough to rein in mankind’s overall emissions of carbon. Some talk about ‘carbon offsetting cowboys’, as if carbon offsetting itself is fine and it’s only those carbon-offsetting companies who go too far in their exploitation of people in the developing world who are a problem. In truth, it is the relationships that are codified by the whole idea of carbon offsetting - whereby the needs and desires of people in the developing world are subordinated to the narcissistic eco-worries of rich Westerners - that are the real, grotesque problem here.

More radical eco-activists argue that carbon offsetting is a distraction from the need for us simply to stop flying and producing and consuming. They claim that carbon-offsetting gives people in Western societies the false impression that it’s okay to emit carbon so long as you pay someone else to clean it up for you. They would rather that we all lived like those treadle-pumping, shit-burning peasants. A group of young deep greens protested at the Oxford offices of Climate Care dressed as red herrings (on the basis that carbon offsetting is a ‘red herring’), arguing that: ‘Climate Care is misleading the public, making them believe that offsetting does some good.’ (5) The protest provided a striking snapshot of the warped, misanthropic priorities of green youthful activism today: instead of criticising Climate Care, and others, for encouraging poor Indians to stop using machinery and to burn cow dung, the protesters slated it for giving a green light to Westerners to continue living comfortable lives.

Carbon offsetting is not some cowboy activity, or an aberration, or a distraction from ‘true environmentalist goals’ - rather it expresses the very essence of environmentalism. In its project of transforming vast swathes of the developing world into guilt-massaging zones for comfortable Westerners, where trees are planted or farmers’ work is made tougher and more time-consuming in order to offset the activities of Americans and Europeans, carbon offsetting perfectly captures both the narcissistic and anti-development underpinnings of the politics of environmentalism. Where traditional imperialism conquered poor nations in order to exploit their labour and resources, today’s global environmentalist consensus is increasingly using the Third World as a place in which to work out the West’s moral hang-ups.

The rise of the carbon-offsetting industry shows that a key driving force behind environmentalism is self-indulgent Western guilt. It is Western consumers’ own discomfort with their sometimes lavish lifestyles - with all those holidays, big homes, fast cars and cheap nutritious foods - that nurtures today’s green outlook, in which consumption has come to be seen as destructive and a new morality of eco-ethics and offsetting (formerly known as penance) has emerged to deal with it (6). It is no accident that the wealthiest people are frequently the most eco-conscious. British environmental campaign groups and publications are peppered with the sons and daughters of the aristocracy, while in America ridiculously super-rich celebrities (Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt) lead the charge for more eco-aware forms of consumption and play. The very nature of carbon offsetting - where the emphasis is on paying money to offset one’s own lifestyle, in much the same way that wealthy people in the Middle Ages would pay for ‘Indulgences’ that forgave them their sins - highlights the individuated and self-regarding streak in the Politics of Being Green.

Carbon-offsetting also shines a light on the dangerously anti-development sentiment in environmentalism. As the British journalist Ross Clark has argued, the success of carbon-offsetting relies on the continuing failure of Third World communities to develop. Clark writes: ‘Carbon-offset schemes…only work if the recipients [in the Third World] continue to live in very basic conditions. Once they aspire to Western, fossil fuel-powered lifestyles, then the scheme is undone.’ Delegates to the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005 offset the carbon cost of their flights by donating to a charity that replaced the tin roofs of huts in a shantytown in Cape Town with a more insulating material, thus reducing the level of heat that escapes and protecting the environment. It sounds good, but as Clark points out: ‘The carbon emitted by delegates’ flights will only continue to be offset for as long as the occupants of the huts carry on living in shantytown conditions.’ If they were to improve their lives, and replace their insulated shacks with ‘much more power-hungry bungalows’, then the carbon-offsetting scheme will have failed, says Clark. The shantytown-dwellers will have reneged on their side of the bargain, which is to remain poor and humble so that wealthy Western leaders can fly around the world in peace of mind (7).

Again, this is not ‘cowboyism’ - it is mainstream environmentalism in action. From the increasingly hysterical attacks on China for daring to develop, to the emphasis on ‘fair trade’ and ‘sustainable development’ in the work of the myriad NGOs that are swarming around the Third World, the green message is this: poor people simply cannot have what we in the West have, because if they did the planet would burn. The treadle-pump scandal revealed in The Times only shows in a more direct form the way in which today’s environmentalist agenda forces the poor of the developing world to adapt to poverty, accommodate to hardship, and effectively remain enslaved for the benefit of morally-tortured Westerners.

It is time to end this eco-enslavement, and put forward arguments for progress and equality across the globe. I would never pick up shit and use it to warm my home, or spend hours on a treadmill in order to raise water. Would you? Then why should we expect anyone else to do such things, especially in the name of making some rich snots feel better about themselves?

How I Spent My Summer

2007-08-24T15:57:00.000-05:00

(or “Support the Troops”)

Been trying to post for a while, but the Intar-webs have been uncooperative.

My wife forwarded me an email from my Hotmail account from my college roommate and best man asking what I’d been up to this summer. The Navy’s Internet servers are set up to block free email services like Hotmail, which is why I had to switch the contact address on the blog to my work address. It’s a big pain in the ass, but I digress.

For starters, yes, we did run down the go-fast I was talking about in the last post. Endurance and the appearance of being totally crazy won that one for us. We chased the four guys in that boat for 22 hours, running at top speed the whole time for about 450 miles. They were maneuvering erratically a lot of the time because the seas were rough and the weather was bad. If you’ve ever tried to drive a speedboat on rough water, you can probably relate.

When they finally slowed enough for us to catch up to them, we fired warning shots across their bow again and they stopped. When the Coast Guard law enforcement detachment got on board, they found the boat was full of vomit because these guys had gotten so seasick, and a key of cocaine that they hadn’t jettisoned for speed. They told us they had finally stopped because it was so dark they didn't think we could see what we're aiming at, and that we might've actually shot them. The key in the boat plus the bales we picked up when the chase started is enough to put them away for a few years.

We dropped them off with the DEA in Guatemala. Good riddance, they were interefering with our participation in other cases and screwing up our port schedule. I enjoyed the comments people left on the last post – this deployment is considerably lower stress than the last one, but communication outside the lifelines is always nice.

That said, there was one comment I found interesting:

Robert M. has left a new comment on your post "500 Mile Club":

No offense, I admire your service, but I'm against drug laws, so unless the boat you were chasing contains PCP, I can't, in good conscience wish you luck.

Interesting post though.

Posted by Robert M. to People Covered in Fish at 14 August, 2007 16:30

I’ve found in the past that when people qualify statements with “no offense” they’re about to say something offensive. It’s just like if a sailor tells me, “No disrespect intended,” or “permission to speak freely.”

I find your comment intriguing, however, Robert, because you are, or were, an ardent supporter of the war in Iraq and I could probably peruse your blog and find that you have expressed disdain for the “I support the troops, but not the mission” mantra, if I had reliable web browsing capability. Regardless, it is inconsistent to be against drug laws, unless it's PCP.

From a purely philosophical standpoint (unless your personal philosphy incorporates reality), the situation is indeed simple. Legalize drugs, let people destroy themselves. From an objectivist standpoint it doesn’t matter one way or another whether drugs are legal or illegal; I wouldn’t use them because they’d limit my potential and I wouldn’t support anyone else using them, either - though I wouldn't stop you unless I cared about you or were in someway responsible for you.

I also know that drugs support terrorism – it is not within my power to legalize drugs and I don’t believe that is a panacea anyhow, unless you are going to find yourself a valley in Colorado with a bunch of like-minded people and let the world fall apart so you can rebuild it later. I’m not ready to give up on the world yet.

The Uribe Administration in Colombia has been very supportive in curtailing the illegal drug trade, they also recently found a submarine capable of transporting 11 tons of cocaine. The reason Uribe has been so helpful in the War on Drugs is because he, like I and the Bush Administration, understand that it is an extension of the Global War on Terror. It’s in Colombia’s self-interest to help us in our mission because they’ve got a terrorist group, the FARC, running about half the country and using coca farmers and cocaine smuggling to support their activities. Legalizing drugs in the United States doesn’t prevent them from funding their agenda of murder and destruction or plotting the downfall of a popularly elected democratic government. If you know anything about the history of Latin America, you must know how special and rare a thing that is. These people are already starting to succumb to populism and socialism, why is it wrong to try to preserve democracy where it exists?

Here’s the case I just got done working on before arriving in Panama yesterday. I thought it was cool because it made the news; we participated in the search but didn’t end up getting the bust.

Feds Nab Suspected Cocaine Smugglers in Pacific
Suspects Allegedly Caused the Vessel to Sink to Hide Contraband
By JACK DATE and THERESA COOK
Aug. 22, 2007 —
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Wednesday that it stopped a vessel allegedly smuggling an estimated five metric tons of cocaine, worth an estimated $353 million.
Authorities arrested four suspected smugglers Sunday, but not before they apparently intentionally sank the semi-submersible vessel. A Coast Guard detachment made the arrests and recovered 11 bales containing 1,210 pounds of cocaine. More than four metric tons of cocaine are believed to have gone down with the watercraft.
A CBP P-3 Orion aircraft, based in Jacksonville, Fla., began tracking the semi-sub Sunday, after the crew noticed the suspicious vessel while conducting a routine patrol in the Pacific Ocean, according to a CBP press release.
"The P-3 aircraft then guided a U.S. Navy ship to the scene as the suspects scuttled the vessel along with the majority of the contraband aboard," the CBP statement said. The Coast Guard then moved in to make the arrests and seize the cocaine.
CBP's Office of Air and Marine maintains P-3 aircraft for transit zone surveillance needs in Corpus Christi, Texas, in addition to its Jacksonville, Fla., base at Cecil Field. According to CBP, the Jacksonville operations center has confiscated more than 32 metric tons of cocaine, with a street value of $2.2 billion, so far this fiscal year. The aircraft are also in use by the CBP in Central and South America.
In March, the Coast Guard announced that it made the largest maritime cocaine bust in U.S. history. The Panamanian ship stopped in that bust was allegedly carrying more than 40,000 pounds of the narcotic or approximately 20 tons.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

It turns out not all the drugs sank with the SPSS. The P-3 got the scuttling on tape, so we knew exactly what was going on when the DEWERT arrived on scene. When the USS DEWERT’S small boat approached the four guys in the water, the conversation went something like this:

Coast Guard: “So, what are you guys doing out here?”
Smugglers: “We were fishing and our boat sank.”
Coast Guard: How long have you been out here?”
Smugglers: “We don’t know.”
Coast Guard: “Where did you leave from?”
Smugglers: “We don’t know.”
Coast Guard: “Where are you headed?”
Smugglers: “We don’t know.”
Coast Guard: “Where did all these bales of cocaine come from?”
Smugglers: “We don’t know.”

SOUTHCOM was thrilled about how this case went down and sent a congratulatory email that filtered down to me that I thought I’d share.

From: Stavridis, James, ADM (L)
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 10:31 AM
To: ALL SOUTHCOM HEADQUARTERS - LOW
Cc: Nimmich, Joseph RADM (L)
Subject: Drug Submarine Captured with Over 5 Tons of Cocaine from Colombia Headed to USA [U]

CLASSIFICATION:UNCLASSIFIED

Shipmates, here is a news story about a Colombian Drug submarine that our team at JIATF-S with other interagency partners (Customs, Coast Guard, Navy, DEA) tracked and caught as it transited through our area.

Like the similar submarine now parked on the traffic circle outside our HQ, this should be a reminder to us of the seriousness with which our opponents take INNOVATION. They constantly strive to out-think us. We are engaged in brain-on-brain warfare, and through innovation and your good ideas, we will win.

The submarine caught in this news release carried over 5 tons of cocaine -- enough for every High School student in the USA (all 17 million of them) to be subjected to 80 hits of cocaine. And if you can bring in 5 tons of cocaine, what else could you carry -- a NUCLEAR weapon of mass destruction? Terrorists? Biological agents?

This is serious work, and you are all part of a VITAL national effort -- be proud of what you do, and always, always, always, think innovatively -- our opponents certainly are doing so!

-------------------

Subject: U.S. Interagency Team seizes semi-submarine loaded with millions of dollars in cocaine

MEXICO CITY (AP) _ A submarine-like vessel filled with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine was seized off the Guatemalan coast, U.S. officials said.

Four suspected smugglers were operating the self-propelled, semi-submersible vessel when it was located and seized on Sunday evening by officials from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, the Border Patrol said in a news release Wednesday.

When the suspects realized they had been spotted by drug-surveillance aircraft patrolling the eastern Pacific, they scuttled the vessel but were unable to escape.

Coast Guard officials, guided by the reconnaissance plane, intercepted the vessel and detained the reputed smugglers, who were transporting approximately 5 metric tons (5.5 U.S. tons) of cocaine worth US$352 million (EUR260 million), the Border Patrol said.

The interception occurred off the coast of Central America about 480 kilometers (300 miles) southwest of the Mexico-Guatemala border, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a separate statement.

Several drug-carrying submarines operated by Colombian drug cartels have been discovered in recent years.

So now after six weeks underway, I get to enjoy a bit of liberty. Just taking it easy today, going out fishing in Lake Gatun tomorrow and then out in Panama City with the other officers for some dinner and fun. I get to call my wife and my family today too, so I’mm looking forward to that after going for a run around the old Rodman Naval Base.

500 Mile Club

2007-08-04T14:15:00.000-05:00

The last couple of days have been interesting, but not particularly rewarding. We stopped a coastal freighter suspected of having several tons of cocaine onboard. We found nothing, but couldn’t access every tank and void due to some freight containers stacked strategically on top of it, making it inaccessible. Anyway, we let them continue to port. Such is the way of Counter Narco-Terrorism operations.

We are currently shooting at another drug runner. No kidding, they just started as I was typing. When we get into a chase, all uninvolved personnel remain inside the skin of the ship. The last thing I need to be doing right now is crowding the bridge or combat watching the show, like all the additional officers, chiefs and senior petty offers are probably doing right now. It happens every time, despite the fact they should stay out of the way. So I'm staying out of the way - I have the next watch, so I'll get my piece of the action soon enough.

They have these boats that we call go-fasts; they're large, low-profile speedboats with three or four outboard engines and they can hold a couple tons of cocaine. They guzzle gasoline, though, so they stop at fishing boats strategically spaced throughout the eastern Pacific to refuel, sometimes to offload the cargo. This way, they leapfrog the shipment up to Mexico or other Central American countries where the product is processed or shipped to the U.S. They don't need to drop off in the U.S. because the border is so porous it's ridiculously easy to get the product in.

So we sit out here doing our best to intercept them. What stinks about these go-fasts is that they can go up to 40 knots and therefore can outrun us. So we use our helicopter to stay on top of them and shoot out their engines. Last time I did this in 2002, we weren't allowed to shoot from the helo, so we would follow them and drop message blocks with sternly-worded notes that they should stop. Even without shooting from the helo, sometimes all we have to do is pursue and wait until they break down or run out of gas.

When they’re fully loaded they don’t go as fast, which is why they dump their cargo in the water, like the one we were just shooting at did. They also know we’ll stop to pick it up – if we don’t they’ll come back for it and the drugs still get to the U.S. We’ve got a P-3 following him and when he breaks down or runs out of gas, we’ll be there. So we’re going out to collect the bales of cocaine that he just dropped in the ocean.

These moments of action are infrequent, we’ve been here for five weeks (I think) and this is only the second go-fast chase. The cargo ship was the third boarding; the other two were fishing vessels with no drugs onboard, but we rendered medical assistance to one of the fishermen on the second one. The rest of the time, we are training and fixing things and doing other things for fun.

For example, we started a couple of fitness challenges, like the Million Pound Club, for weightlifters. Say for example you lift a 20-pound weight 10 times, that’s 200 pounds. You do that the whole deployment and try to make 1,000,000 in 180 days. I signed up for the 500 Mile Club, where you add up the total of cumulative miles you run, walk, bike, etc. You can only do half on the exercycle, because it’s too easy to do the whole thing that way. Since I’m only going to be on deployment for three months (my relief arrives in October), I’m doing the full 250 on the exercycle, so I can actually accomplish 500 miles before I leave. I’ve got 188 miles with 65 days left to go, so not too bad so far - especially considering I broke a toe in El Salvador. Everyone who makes it gets a T-shirt, but I’m the only one who has designed one so far. I’ll post it if I get a little time later.

Hopefully the chase goes well and we can nail these guys. I wish I could take pictures of any of this, but if I do, it's all considered evidence and has potential to make or break a case. Had to stop writing for bit because we needed to do some fuel calculations, figure out how long our legs are for chasing these guys. Time for watch, wish us luck!

Alive and Well

2007-08-02T12:32:00.000-05:00

And once again fighting the War on Drugs. You probably figured that out if you ever stop by here. Sorry for the long silence, but operational committments are keeping me rather occupied and the Internet by satellite is, as always, iffy.

I just got word today about the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis yesterday. Happily, my family and friends are, as far as I know, fine. I never thought I ever be thankful that most of my family dislikes going to the city, even though they all live in and around it. The bridge is right outside the University of Minnesota campus and collapsed during rush hour - I used to drive it every day in college (when I owned a car). My daughter and I drove it a couple of times when I was home in March. It's a surreal thing, here; I'm just getting my head wrapped around it. I'm sorry for the families of the victims; so far there have been only four confirmed deaths and 79 injuries, but there are still 20-30 people missing.

I'm back in the EASTPAC and doing some exciting stuff. Once we've executed, and I'm sure it won't compromise OPSEC, I'll post a little about it. If I find it posted somewhere, there is a neat story out there of a couple of Jacksonville Starbucks stores collecting donations of coffee for my ship for her deployment. One of the baristas is the wife of one of our sailors and she was dismayed to hear that we were drinking Maxwell House, or worse.

Also, I'd like to plug my best friend Joel Hafvenstein's new book, "Opium Season: A Year on the Afghan Frontier". It's a riveting account of his time spent as an international development consultant in Afghanistan trying to help poppy farmers make an honest living. He's talking about going back, but I wish he wouldn't.

Mahndisa, I got your post, I'll try to make time to respond, but I haven't really been following the stock market, so I've got some catching up to do.

I Blame George Bush

2007-06-19T11:43:00.000-05:00

Anyone notice how gas prices have been steadily falling since Memorial Day?

Coincidence or science?

Previous:
Environmental Hysteria: 'Tis the Season

Justice

2007-06-18T11:10:00.000-05:00

I started writing this last week, but my illness got the better of me. I've been down for the count for a bit and with the initial passion and confusion gone, I've been hesitant to revisit the events of the 1st of June.

On March 31st, I was ordered to Homerville, Georgia, to represent the ship at the trial of a First Class Petty Officer who had just reported to my department. He was charged with one count of murder, two counts of aggravated assault and one count of illegal possession of a firearm during a crime almost three years ago. His previous command had tried to prevent his transfer so he could resolve the issue (which happened right after he reported to them), but he was cut orders and sent to us in March.

This is a terrific petty officer, and I was really happy when he got here because there hadn't been any senior leadership outside of the Chief in that division for nine months. The first I had heard about the incident was that he had been driving his truck with three other people and the bonehead in the passenger's seat found his concealed weapon (which he had a Mississippi permit for and hadn't yet obtained a Florida permit for; but he was in Georgia, anyway) under the seat and fired it out the window three times.

The blanks began filling in when I heard that he wasn't on leave for just another hearing, but on trial for murder and I was going to the trial. I left work, had dinner at home and drove directly to Homerville.

There are two motels in Homerville and the new one was full, so I got a room at the old one. There were probably vacancies in Waycross, but I didn't know that it was only 30 miles away. It was crappy, plenty of bugs (no avoiding them on the edge of the Okeefenokee) but quiet and the bed was OK. I went for some snacks, but everything closed at ten besides the one gas station. The lady at the counter got to talking to me and I found that every person in this town not only knew about the trial, but but knew at least one of the men involved, including the victim.

The basic story was accurate, but my sailor (EN1) had never come straight out and said he was charged with murder. He had been in town for his wife's family reunion and out drinking with some of the guys, one being his borther-in-law, TJ. They had gone to a party; when they arrived, one of TJ's buddies had just gotten the crap beaten out of him and put in the hospital. None of the guys in EN1's truck knew who had done it, but TJ was angry and tried to get into the party to start kicking some ass, put was pulled away by some girls and they all went to visit this friend in the hospital.

TJ was tha only one allowed in the hospital, but the testimony (which I missed) was that he had kissed his friend on the forehead Godfather-style and promised to get even. After the four left the hospital, my knowledge of the events is unclear. TJ found EN1's 9mm under the seat and when they pulled up to a car he thought had the people responsible for hurting his friend, TJ pointed the gun out the window and fired three times into the car, killing one man and wounding another.

Since EN1 was driving and it was his weapon, he was charged with murder the same as TJ. This trial was like nothing on TV. Between the Prosecutor, the judge and EN1's lawyer, there was a weird semi-jovial mood as you'd expect of coworkers. TJ was also present with his lawyer and it made for a disgusting three-way trial. TJ's lawyer was the biggest asshole I'd ever seen, personally attacking the prosecutor, admonishing EN1 for wearing his uniform to court and other uniformed servicemen for coming to support him and speak on his behalf, call it "wrapping himself in the flag". Absolutely despicable. I ended up standing behind him in line at Subway during recess and concentrating very hard on not dressing him down.

I spent a lot of time with EN1 and his wife during recesses and while the jury was out. They tried very hard to remain optimistic, but the three years of pain from this trial showed. The jury was only out for a few hours before they came back with a unanimous "guilty" vedict on both EN1 and TJ.

The baptist minister father of the murder victim was understandably relived and told EN1 and TJ to get right with God, but everyone seemed especially upset with EN1 because he had worn his uniform to court and thought he was hiding behind it. The man served honorably for 12 years. The uniform helps to tell everyone who he is. He's not some local hooligan, but a proud member of the Armed Forces. Everything about the trail was offensive to me. TJ's lawyer and the prosecution ganging up on EN1. The jury's complete lack of comprehension of the evidence. It was a travesty and horrible to watch.

I went to the jailhouse with EN1's wife and mother-in-law to drop off some clothes for him. His wife couldn't hold it in anymore at that point and I held her while she cried until EN1 got there. They visited as long at the sheriff's deputy could let them, then I went to the house to visit with his family. They still hadn't told the kids what was going on and they kept asking when Daddy would be home. I told them he worked for me and he's a good man.

I'm proud to have served with him and the command is still doing whatever we can to help him and his family out, but it's essentially out of our hands. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to go through. I never thought something like that could happen to a good person.

A Culture of Fitness: The Final Word

2007-06-18T05:42:00.004-05:00

I have a feeling regular readers know how I feel about this sort of thing:

Anonymous bloody well said...
I hate you so much. Just so much. This is the most self pitying, pathetic, inept piece of drivel that I have ever read. Do yourself a favor and end it all. Scratch that, do ME a favor and end it all.

Geez, hate is an awfully strong emotion to describe someone you don't know... or perhaps you do know me and you haven't got the sack to say it to my face. Go on, tack a name on that comment if you dare. I dislike Anonymous commenting. It smacks of cowardice; I allow it however, because I think it's occassionally justified, but more because it says more about the commenter than any response I might give.

I don't do favors. You don't like it, don't read it. I write about what vexes me. If you had half an ounce of courage, you'd back that comment up with your name. This is all me, this is what I think, I don't care if you don't like it.

EDIT: To be absolutely clear, I don't have problem with my command or its policies. I think that I have a very good command, with a very good CO, XO and CMC, but I have a gripe about this one thing, which largely involves personal preference and principle. I am very satisfied overall with my department head tour here. Being a department head, the right thing to do would probably be to step up and do something about it. However, my level of indifference and the short-term nature of it (we hope to get underway Monday) don't inspire me to try to change it. Picking my battles, I guess.

The bottom line on the command PT is that I like to PT, but:
1) I know how to PT by myself and I don't need somebody counting cadence to tell me what to do.

2) It removes all individuality from the process - we all PT at someone else's level of capability, not our own.

3) It removes motivation from from the individual - why PT yourself, unless you're already super fit and a total gym rat and would do it anyway? Net benefit = zero.

4) The people running it here are incapable of doing it well. Running in formation on a waterfornt full of Navy ships is nothing more than showing off. When you have a sloppy formation, no one sings cadence with you and you run about a quarter mile, you haven't got anything to flaunt.

5) The people running it are doing it for bullets on their evals and could give a crap about what anyone else wants. There are about five guys on the ship who wanted to this. The CO was indifferent and he, the XO and Command Master Chief don't always join in. I don't have a problem with that - I'd opt out if I could, too. These five guys have no problem taking adavantage of others to accomplish their goals, and that irks me to no end.

I don't care what anyone else thinks of that. With any luck I'll have my electrical plant up and running with no (or few) discrepancies and I'll be underway this time next week on my way to intercept drug smugglers from South America. And then I'm free to PT on my own.

Crikey.

2007-06-07T07:40:00.000-05:00

I dropped ten pounds in two days. That can't be healthy. That might explain why I feel like crap right now. Or it could be the chest cold I've been fighting. Or perhaps a hangover from hashing yesterday.

Who knows? It's a mystery.

A Culture of Fitness: Irony

2007-06-06T06:31:00.000-05:00

Isn't it interesting that now that I have been relying solely on the command to make me exercise, I actually failed the weigh-in? I think so, yes.

We use the BMI chart for judging whether a sailor is overweight or not. The thing is, and it seems even the Navy knows this, the Body-Mass Index is bullshit. The medical establishment admits it, though grudgingly and quietly. It makes lots of assumptions about you in order to neatly peg you as obese, overweight, normal or underweight. Of course, the Navy is flexible; if you are over the limit for BMI, they'll tape you - which allows even more error depending on where and how tight they put the tape. If you scrunch your neck down and suck in your gut, you pass. So naturally, yesterday, the Chief doing the taping had the tape snug around my neck and wasn't even touching my waist with the tape.

I know I'm carrying a bit of extra weight at 190 and 5'8" (up from 183 last deployment), but it's not as though I don't have any physical ability or endurance. In fact, the thing that has been most detrimental to my physical fitness over the last couple of weeks has been mandatory command PT. Everybody get together and do lame calisthentics, 100 jumping jacks, 100 pushups, etc. The pushups are really killing me with the tendonitis. The running in formation has given me a muscle strain in my knee and hastened the return of my shin splints.

The thing that pisses me off the most is that I was doing just fine before all this garbage started and now I'm concerned that if I do manage to pass the weigh-in by Friday, I may fail the physical test because I'm hurting so damn bad.

To dull the pain, I've been popping 800mg tablets of Motrin a couple of times a day, a couple Excedrin once in a while, a multivitamin and ginseng. I've also been taking fiber tablets to help with the poundage. Now, with two days to go, I've added a run at lunch every day this week and Hydroxycut. Good grief, I hope it works, because I feel like crap. Vision... blurring...

The good news is that the Physical Readiness Test is next week. Assuming I make weight Friday, it'll all be over by Tuesday.

This sucks. I like to run and lift wieghts and listen to my MP3 player. I enjoy a good workout - I always feel terrific afterward. In fact, I'm going hashing today.

If I'm borderline obese, as the BMI says, then I have serious doubts about claims that obesity is of epidemc proportions in America, especially given how we measure it.

Remember

2007-06-06T06:29:00.000-05:00

Happy D-Day. More soon.

Environmental Hysteria: 'Tis the Season

2007-05-16T06:58:00.000-05:00

Price-Gouging-Investigation-mas, that is!

It seems to me that the Democrats' idea of reducing America's dependence upon foreign oil is making oil so expensive that only the very rich can afford it. Therefore, the rich are taxed and the poor ride the bus!

An Oregon senator is one of those leading the charge against evil profit-making oil companies this year.

Legislation supported by Sen. Gordon H. Smith (R-OR) that would ban gas price gouging was successfully added Tuesday to a fuel economy reform bill approved by the Senate Commerce Committee.

"Oregonians are sick and tired of being pummeled at the pump. Gas prices have jumped 50 cents just this month. It is time to push automakers to improve fuel economy," Smith said. "The real question is not how we will do it, but when will we do it."

"When it comes to price gouging, the legislation I am supporting goes after profiteers who prey on the vulnerable in the wake of a disaster," Smith continued. "A disaster is not a license to increase profits. [What disaster? - Robo] The government must be given the tools investigate egregious abuse and to prosecute the criminals who perpetuate it."

Legislation Smith is supporting along with Senators Ron Wyden and Maria Cantwell to ban gas price gouging in the aftermath of disasters was included as an amendment to a fuel efficiency bill approved by the Commerce Committee. The price gouging provisions establish tough new federal protections that would guard against profiteering and market manipulation by oil and gas companies.

This latest legislation is in conjunction with Smith's ongoing work to reduce American reliance on foreign oil, including his efforts to:

- provide incentives to support domestic automobile manufacturing and the purchase of efficient vehicles

- create new incentives for vehicle manufacturers or parts suppliers to re-tool, expand, or establish manufacturing facilities that produce advanced technology motor vehicles or components

- encourage the development of renewable energy technology, spur economic development in rural America and further enhance the nation's energy security.

Oregon gas tax is 24.9 cents per gallon - not the most expensive, by any means. But if the state really wants to reduce the price of gas, all it has to do is lower the damn taxes. They don't care what Oregonians pay for gas, only that they make it look like they care in case people remember when election day rolls around.

If the MSM and Congress can recycle stories about price gouging and investigations and bills against price gouging, is it OK if I just recycle my post on price gouging from last year?

I have heard rumblings over the last few weeks of left-leaning officials have been making an effort to convince people that they are experiencing price gouging as a result of events in the Middle East, hurricane season, and greed on the part of oil companies. Certainly, gas prices have decreased appreciably since Hurricane Katrina, so perhaps that would lead some to believe Big Oil was taking advantage of their pain. The MSM has made sure to make a big stink about oil companies reporting record profits while minorities and women suffer from the effects of the severe storms this year. After all, conflict sells newspapers.

Yesterday, Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor said consumers need to be protected from gouging when gasoline is in short supply. I couldn’t agree more, which is why I think state and federal governments need to lower or eliminate taxes on gasoline and stop gouging consumers.

In order to continue selling gasoline to you, the consumer, oil companies need to make a profit. So for the time being, let’s assume the industry 9.1% profit margin is reasonable (I think it is) and examine why the price of gas is so high. The price of gasoline depends on a number of factors. As of September 2005, 50% of the price you pay for gasoline is to pay for the crude oil, 8% goes toward distribution and marketing, 27% goes toward refining costs and profits.

Federal and local taxes account for about 15% of the total price of gas in the United States (down from 31% in 2002). Federal excise taxes are 18.4 cents per gallon, and state excise taxes average 21 cents per gallon. Some states also levy additional sales taxes, as well as local and city taxes. In Europe, gas prices are far higher than in America because taxes on gas are much higher. For example, gas prices in England have risen as high as $6 per gallon, with 78 percent of that going to taxes.

To put it in perspective, I was driving home from work today and saw that gas was $2.35/gallon. That means 35.25 cents per gallon goes directly from my pocket to the government: 18.4 cents to the federal government and 16.85 cents to local governments. Multiply that by the 19.1 gallons in my tank ($6.73 per fill-up), about four times a month, which means that I pay $323.17 a year in taxes on gasoline (for just one of my two cars, not counting extra driving on vacations and fluctuation in prices, we have to assume some things are static for this little mental exercise).

Since 1990, the Gasoline tax has transmogrified from a scheme for deficit reduction and then to a use tax. Due to the faulty and politically charged pseudoscience of global warming and general environmental hysteria, gasoline taxes were nearly double what they are today in order to discourage use and force people to seek alternatives. The problem is the same as it is with use taxes on alcohol and tobacco; the tax doesn’t discourage use and the government becomes dependent upon revenues from the tax so it doesn’t really want you to find an alternative to the commodity it’s taxing. It remains to be seen whether the recent spike in sales of hybrid vehicles is a fad due to the spike in gas prices or will be an ongoing trend.

Some folks will say that they don’t mind paying taxes like this because it benefits society as a whole. The problem is that it doesn’t, since government is incapable, by design, of using your tax dollars effectively. It collects taxes on your income before you even get to see it, and then charges taxes whenever you buy something and still can’t get that pothole down the street filled. That has a lot to do with our current expectations of government to coddle and support us, when they should be worrying about infrastructure, defense and civil preparedness PERIOD. I understand that government needs money to perform these functions, but getting us coming and going is excessive. No tax means $2.00 per gallon of gasoline. No income tax, but a consumption tax on gasoline means that even if gas is slightly more expensive, I’ll be able to afford it. But I digress; I’ll save the consumption tax (fair tax) argument for another day, along with other things the government can stop doing to the petroleum supply chain to help consumers sleep a little better at night.

A Culture of Fitness: Chronic

2007-05-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

Here's how the notional command PT schedule is upposed to work:

Monday is Departmental PT, which I assume means the department is supposed to PT together.
Wednesday, the whole command does a formation run down the pier, shouting, "Look at me!" to the other ships.
Friday, each division PTs together. Most of them go to the gym or on a fun run together.

To kick off each session, everybody forms up and does calisthentics, which usually consists of way too many pushups and dodging pier traffic. It's been exacerbating some chronic injuries and it's only going to get worse. We only do this because about five people really really wanted to do command PT, meaning they like to inflict thier personal whims on everybody to make themselves look good for advancement and maybe help them become Chief Petty Officers.

I know, I'm complaining. It's the military after all, isn't this what we do? Look, I'm stationed on a warship, and when we're underway, we don't do any of this. People have to manage their time and fitness on their own, and most of us do pretty well at that. So why do I need to go out there and PT together with 150 of my closest friends when we're in homeport? I like to run, sometimes even when there isn't beer waiting for me. But I'm also in some pain and have to spend plenty of time around my shipmates as it is.

Anyhow, during the Monday and Friday sessions, I've been able to break off from the group and run on my own, which has been nice. I usually run around the basin to the main gate and straight out to the beach, down the sea shore while the sun rises and around the golf course, then back to the ship. I have no idea how far it is. For the Monday session, I gathered the department up and told them that I was planning to run down the beach - everybody groaned before I could finish. I told them anyone who wanted to run down the beach with me was welcome, but we would run past the gym for anyone who wanted to stop off there.

So I ran down the beach by myself. I saw the CO heading that direction as well, but I ran into him once and while we paced each other he asked if I had come from the beach and said, "You're a better man than I!" He's a runner, but he's used to the level terrain, I think, whereas I'm used to running off road. I get bored on the streets and sidewalks.

The tide was all the way in, I mean it was right up to the dunes. The sunrise was gorgeous, too. There wouldn't have been a lot of room for the department to run with me if they wanted to (and they probably would've stayed in formation too - creatures of habit, I suppose; I just wanted a "fun run"). Down the beach a way, I found a seagull tangled up in the roots. It's wing was contorted and looked like it might've been broken. I pulled the roots up a bit and got it untangled, but it didn't want much to do with me, so I left it alone.

I ran in the water some and then up off the beach and through the golf course. That was a nice run. Not like tomorrow when we'll be trotting up the pier with only half of the formation singing cadence (if that), and only going a half mile or so. Ugh. I'd run more after that, but I want to get back to work and double time wreaks havoc on the shin splints.

Sea Cows

2007-05-11T14:57:00.000-05:00

There are currently two manatees, a calf and a cow, between my ship and the pier. Sure, I get irked about environmentalist nonsense, but I do consider myself a conservationist. I see no problem with conserving natural resources (driving a lower-mileage car, for example) or being nice to animals (even the ones you eat), as long as it doesn't involve imposing your will on others.

Note the propeller scars on the tail and back of the cow. I think responsible boaters should keep an eye out for the animals and to not run them over with their boats, but they're not always on the surface and you can't always see them, even if you drive slowly. If you're in an area where manatees live, just be careful, please.

Environmental Hysteria: I've Got A Bridge to Sell You

2007-05-11T14:09:00.000-05:00

I'm having some writer's block issues while doing my Ensigns' fitness reports. Therefore, I blog.

Happy belated Earth Day - seems like I'm getting in the habit of forgetting Earth Day, due to it being a particularly silly sort of a day. It reminds me, however, how annoyed I am by the cult of environmentalism and that I haven't done an Environmental Hysteria post in nearly a year.

The emergence of the "carbon offset" left me scratching my head for a bit while I was busy doing other things. I suppose the idea really began to gain momentum upon the release of An Inconvenient Truth and Al Gore's questionable claims of greenitude.

Anyway, it was nice to see some sanity with respect to the carbon credit scam in the Financial Times. Here's how it works (from Wikipedia, sorry):

Carbon credits create a market for reducing greenhouse emissions by giving a monetary value to the cost of polluting the air. This means that carbon becomes a cost of business and is seen like other inputs such as raw materials or labor.

By way of example, assume a factory produces 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions in a year. The government then enacts a law that limits the maximum emissions a business can have. So the factory is given a quota of say 80,000 tonnes. The factory either reduces its emissions to 80,000 tonnes or is required to purchase carbon credits to offset the excess.

A business would buy the carbon credits on an open market from organisations that have been approved as being able to sell legitimate carbon credits. One seller might be a company that will plant so many trees for every carbon credit you buy from them. So, for this factory it might pollute a tonne, but is essentially now paying
another group to go out and plant trees which will, say, draw a tonne of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

As emission levels are predicted to keep rising over time, it is invisioned that the number of companies wanting/needing to buy more credits will increase hence pushing the market price up, and hence encouraging more groups to undertake environmentally friendly activities which create for them carbon credits to sell. Another model is that companies which use below their quota can sell their excess as 'carbon credits' also, the possibilities are endless hence making it an open market.

It is suggested that initially the quotas should be liberal, which would make the demand for carbon credits, and their resulting price, low so that business find it easy to transition towards paying for credits. Then over time, the quota of emissions a government sets (based on, say, international agreements) will gradually be reduced until the target level of emissions is reached.

Thank goodness this scam is completely voluntary for the time being. I remember while I was working on my MBA, there was a bit of rhetoric from one or two professors about businesses' social responsibility - which I called them on. Businesses are for-profit enterprises and not about making people feel good about themselves. If you want to imagine you are protecting the environment then go chain yourself to a tree or something on your own time.

Here's what the FT investigation found:

■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.

■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.

■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.

■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.

■ Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.

This is no way to run a business and those companies that waste their precious resources on this crap deserve to go out of business. What this amounts to is racketeering - pay this money or you will be punished. Maybe it could more accurately be called tithing. A voluntary contribution to the Church of Environmental Hysteria to allow socially concious businessmen to feel good about the evil Captialism that has made them so succsessful, therefore implying they ought to be ashamed of their success. A sin tax. Paying for absolution of the sin of success.

Crosshairs

2007-05-09T05:39:00.000-05:00

Good grief, it turns out I was a terrorist target:

Six foreign-born Muslims were arrested and accused Tuesday of plotting to attack the Army's Fort Dix and massacre scores of U.S. soldiers — a plot investigators say was foiled when the men took a video of themselves firing assault weapons to a store to have the footage put onto a DVD.
...They also allegedly spoke of attacking a Navy installation in Philadelphia during the annual Army-Navy football game, when the place would be full of sailors, and conducted surveillance at other military installations in the region.

The guy giving the press conference just said they missed a golden opportunity during the Army-Navy game and that they were surveilling the ships inport. One of those was my ship. I hope it was our menacing force protection posture that discouraged them from thinking we were a soft target.

More:
Bloviating Zepplin - Ask

Webcomics = Terrorism

2007-05-05T15:45:00.001-05:00

OK, this is way over the top.

Matt Boyd, writer for the completed web comic MacHall, and now Three Panel Soul, was recently fired from his job where he was working under a government contract. He was overheard by a fearful coworker while discussing the purchase of a rifle for paper target practice, around the same time as the VT shootings. The coworker reported this and he was promptly fired, without even the opportunity to clean out his desk.

Three Panel Soul began a short series of comics about the events here.

Some of his former coworkers saw these comics and called them in as a threat, and later Matt was visited by four police detectives at his home. The coworkers also claimed the woman pictured in comic #21 resembled one of them, apparently unaware that Matt does not create the art for the strip. The comics were called a borderline terroristic threat.

I'm sorry Matt worked with hypersensitive whiners, it's a shame about his job. Is this the sort of work environment people with real jobs deal with every day? I'm glad I'm allowed to play with multi-million-dollar weapon systems for a living.

Open Source

2007-05-05T15:25:00.000-05:00

Whew, the sure-fire way for me to beat a geekgasm is to venture into fanfic/'shipper's territory. I like to geek out on sci fi, but I've always stopped at that line. When I do creative writing, I invent my own characters and plot. Fanfic just ain't my thing... and 'shipping is kind of creepy. (Take Harry Potter 'shippers, for example.)
Anyway, I was reading the Intar-webs a few days ago, as I am wont to do from time to time, and I found this article at Michelle Malkin describing the Army's self-destructive policy toward blogging.

The original Wired article states:

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

Well, heck. I understand the need for OPSEC, honestly, but milbloggers are the best public affairs resource the military has. However, even the most innocuous information can useful to an adversary. I don't post future destinations or details about ongoing operations, but I write about day to day life here on the ship and it's available to anyone and there's just no telling what information could be of use to someone looking to harm U.S. servicemen or high-value targets. Somebody on my ship and another ship have already gotten into trouble for posting details about my current visit to Mayport and ships' schedules.

Everything I write here and elsewhere becomes open source, available to anybody at all that wants to look. Just in the last 100 hits on PCIF, I've got one from Malaysia, Argentina, India and all over the U.S. (including the Pentagon); I've also had hits from plenty of middle eastern and from China and South Korea. (All South Korean military officers are spies. No kidding.) Anything I write will be unclassified and if I am informed that my posts may be harmful to ongoing operations, I'll take them down. I post on a variety of topics, some of which are military-related and some that are tangetial to operations my ship participates in.

I don't think that silencing milbloggers is good, but we all need to realize the potential harm it could do. I think training and spotchecking will help, but milbloggers need to take personal responsibility for the information they put out there. It turns out that the Army actually is not restricting milblogs any more than they already do, but it's good for us to be reminded that the Internet is not a private medium and that it never forgets.

That's what I get for taking three days to post about breaking news.

I personally enjoy how my old friend Josh handles this. He's currently a reservist called to active duty in Iraq and his Iceblog is pretty entertaining. Wish him luck.

Also:
OPFOR - Aw Hell.
Coconut Commando - No More Blogging For The Commando?
Mary Katharine Ham - How to Lose the Information War for Good: The Death of Combat Blogging

Twitch Geekgasm!

2007-05-05T12:32:00.000-05:00

I can't help myself, honestly. There's only three new episodes of Heroes this season and I've started getting enthralled with all the Heroes 360 Experience content.

I think it's fantastic what many TV shows do these days with extra content for fans to discover by paying attention. I don't watch much on TV, but what few shows I do watch, I really like. Shows like Lost and Heroes have all kinds of cool interrelated websites and easter eggs which supplement the plot and depth of plot. I should start including easter eggs on PCIF.
What kind of an easter egg, I have no idea.
If you've never seen an episode of Heroes, NBC has them all online. If you've ever enjoyed any sort of episodic storytelling, I highly recommend you join me in my drooling fandom.
For more content, the graphic novels are terrific.
Besides, any show that has Malcolm McDowell pulling off a grandfatherly archvillan has got to be considered amazing by anyones standards. (Archvillain, of course. Grandfatherly? Wow!)

Could I write about current events that are irking me? Sure... as soon as I'm done obsessing.

A Culture of Fitness II: Command PT

2007-05-02T16:05:00.000-05:00

I remember being annoyed with this particular idea while on shore duty, but appreciative of two things: that my command built time into the very tight schedule to allow students time to PT, and that physical training resources were available to those who sought them out.

I want to see the statistics on number of workdays lost to athletic activities. I don’t know how well founded in reality my complaint is due to lack of ability to find the data. I personally have injured myself chronically while exercising, and so perhaps I expect that many others have done the same. I hurt myself due to lack of training and overexerting myself. Once I got on a program that a friend who is also a personal trainer helped me develop, I became better able to exercise without exacerbating my injuries. My tendonitis, shin splints and bad ankles will likely stay with me the rest of my life though, and get progressively worse.

My gripe with the Navy’s “Culture of Fitness” is that there is no training for anybody on how to achieve physical fitness or how to avoid injury. Just go do pushups. Go lift wieghts. Go run. Thanks for nothing. I am an advocate of personal responsibility, but one doesn't know what one doesn't know. If Big Navy wants to dictate PT three times a week, Big Navy better be prepared for the consequences of people not knowing what the hell they are doing.

My gripes with Command PT are several:

- Time taken away from work day. Today, we had Command PT. Liberty now expires at 0600 for all hands on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, in order to prevent lost work time. So I need to wake up at 0400, and leave my house no later than 0500. I got here today and the gate was still locked. It remained locked until after 0600 and after a couple of guys who were already onboard came down to the gate admonish the 100 or so of us (including the CO, XO and all Department Heads) standing there for not going around to another gate. This, after we had called the quarterdeck and said someone was on their way. In the time it took to get to the other gate and back, the gate should've been open and the majority of us waited.

So we started late, finished on time, but had quarters an hour later as planned. I had to wait half an hour for the shower (one for 25 officers, imagine berthing with 50+ guys sharing 3 showers).

- Personal Responsibility. What is the incentive for people to exercise on their own. I have several people who make a habit of working out in the morning who now have to cut their workout short to get to command PT. Others of us exercise later in the day. Why should I do that now? I've wasted enough time and have too much to do to be a gym rat all day long.

- Idiocy. If you're going to out in public and yell cadences and run in formation, at least you could try to run a huge group PT, you should have some idea what you're doing. I thought we looked ridiculous today. You have to go at a slowish pace so that everyone can keep up, but you call cadence faster than the pace you're going. Your guide goes into the middle of the formation where no one can see him, let alone guide off of him, and the whole crew accordions down the pier while other ships look on. It's embarrassing. Plus nobody sings cadences about the surface Navy. There's a reason for that.

Look, I understand that Command PT can build esprit de corps and camaraderie if done well. I have personally never seen it done well in my entire time in the Navy. Except in ROTC, when the Marines were running it.

Go figure.

Burnination

2007-04-30T12:53:00.000-05:00

Dear Georgia, Will you please stop being on fire now? I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle on account of all the dang smoke.

The visibility here in Mayport dropped to the extent that I can't see the aircraft carrier on the other side of the basin, and this has happened periodically over the last few weeks, depending on the direction of the wind. OK, I'm not living in Waycross, needing to be evacuated from my home, but there are wildfires cropping up west of Jacksonville as well, not to mention that I live about a half hour south of the Georgia border.

Here in Jax, it's all about the smoke, though. It varies in degree to a little brownish and hazy to "I can't see 50 feet in front of me". We came into port two weeks ago with our low visibility detail manned up and sounding one prolonged blast on our ship's whistle every two minutes.

Conditions remain exceptionally dry and therefore are impeding the revival of my lawn and raising the ire of my homeowners' association, to whom I say, "Sit and spin." Frankly, I'll be happy if my house doesn't spontaneously combust.

Anyway, don't worry about us, we're fine, not on fire and going about the business of keeping from being on fire.

Three Seashells

2007-04-29T09:32:00.000-05:00

Sitting here watching "Curious George" and waiting for Jack to quit fighting off a nap, naturally, I thought of finishing up a post I started a few days ago.

I wasn't even going to bother posting about Sheryl Crow's Helpful Tips for Saving Mother Earth, but there I was on the ship last week, sitting in the head. Also known as the Thinkin' Seat. Am I the only one who actually comes up with some good ideas and solves problems while in the head? I doubt it.

I reached for the toilet paper and to my surprise, someone had put a roll of one-ply there. It's always two-ply, but it appears that someone bought a few crates of one-ply. I am Anti-One-Ply. One-ply tears as you pull it off the roll, not to mention when actually, uh... operating it. I can't imagine it saves anyone any money, because you have to use three times as much to get the same, er... capacity.

I wonder what kind of person could actually get away with using three squares. Then again, in the Middle East, they don't use any at all. I rode along on a Bahraini patrol craft while conducting maritime intercept operations in 2000 and sure enough, there was not a square to spare. I held out as long as I could, but I did eventually have to do it Arabian style. This experience has served me well in other third-world countries, unfortunately.

Sheryl Crow claims it was all a joke, but I would've thought she'd herald the enlightenment of the Middle Eastern cultures. Red wonders if she also uses three squares during Aunt Flo's monthly visits.

American Bloggers for Inclusive Debates

2007-04-25T14:30:00.002-05:00

I can only assume that I was dropped from the American Bloggers for Inclusive Debates inadverently or due to my infrequent posting. That's fine; dropping the extra blogroll from my sidebar helps PCIF load faster and saves some space.

Just the same, I like what they purport to stand for and will leave the link on the sidebar. Just FYI, if anyone is wondering.

UPDATE: Apparently, I'm still there or back on. Just, y'know, FYI.

Previous: My Point, and I Do Have One...

Mistakes Were Made

2007-04-24T14:44:00.000-05:00

That phrase is the mistake. If I hear it again from a senior Bush administration official, I will be likely to bang my head on the closets solid object.

During Alberto Gonzales' testimony was when I started thinking about it again, and I made a note to vent about it. For everything the Bush Administration does right, they capitulate to criticism in the most passive-aggressive way. It must be this wishy-washy compassionate conservatism thing that the President ran on in 2000.

The problem is two-fold: one, that they backpedal and say that mistakes were made, when clearly none were. Quit apologizing all the damn time! Yes, It's an apology.

Two: The passive voice. The sentence in which there is no subject - no initiator of positive action. I find it ridiculously cowardly; so much for the courage of one's convictions. How about "I made a mistake"? Or "There are some areas which we could have done a better job"? Better yet, "No one made a mistake".

Nothing Between the Lines to Read

2007-04-21T11:47:00.000-05:00

I am fundamentally puzzed by people's need to blame people other than the perpitrators for the tragic events they cause, I assume that those people are somehow trying to extract meaning from the meaningless. In my experience, this results in confusion and misinformation more than anything else. The Cynical-C blog pretty much says it all on the VT massacre, as far as I'm concerned.

Some people are going on and on about lack of gun control being the problem. Personally, I'm with Fred Thompson, who is the other guy who probably won't run for President for whom I'd like to vote:

Whenever I've seen one of those "Gun-free Zone" signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I've always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don't mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.

(Tin Foil Hat Tip: Born Again Redneck)

But this is driven by an anti-gun control agenda (or support of the Second Amendment, if you like), which I am in favor of. Perhaps it's a counter-arguement to the folks pushing gun control on account of this, but it still makes me uneasy that people are using these people's deaths to sell something.

Why blame anyone other than the crazy dude with the gun for this tragedy? What special meaning does any of these people hope to find in this event? What sort of decrepit evil does it take to use the event as a means of pushing an agenda? It was like blaming KMFDM for Columbine. I dig me some KMFDM, and I don't even own a gun, much less feel like shooting people.

Y'know, unless they're terrorists.

"Now Sid, don't you blame the movies, movies don't create psychos, movies make psychos more creative!" - Skeet Ulrich as Billy Loomis in Scream

Also Blogging:
Well, everybody, really... here's a few -
Pat Sajak: The Really Big Story (Maybe)
Crazy Politico's Rantings: Virginia Tech Tragedy and the Gun Debate
cryptogon.com: Virgina Tech Shooting: I've Already Seen Enough <- entertaining conspiracy theories.
Dr. Helen: Does the US Need Better Reporting Laws for the Mentally Ill?

Cartagena

2007-04-21T11:17:00.000-05:00

So, I'm sort of on deployment right now, but not actually. The ship deployed as scheduled to perform Counter Narco-Terrorism Operations, and we were lucky enough to get a Caribbean port visit before transiting the Panama Canal in Cartagena, Colombia. Besides the liberty, an added benefit is imminent danger pay due to the presence of drug cartels and terrorists.

So we got to spend three days at anchor in Bahia de las Animas at the Colombian Naval Base. I only went out one night in the old Walled City, which has been turned into a plaza with lots of shops and restaurant. We ate at Cafe del Mar, which is actually built on top of the wall, overlooking the beach. We were able to sit at our table and watch the sun set. Since it was dark, I couldn't see my food when it came. It was come assortment of seafood, though and really tasty with that Chilean merlot. I bought a kilo of coffee, too, considering how fast I go through it. (I got a sweet new coffee maker in my stateroom with a timer and no pot, so I always have hot, fresh coffee available. It's all bungeed down and completely meets the requirements of my caffeine addiction.)

The second day, as I took over the duty, I got word from Doc that my Chief Electrician's Mate had broken an ankle while dancing. He's quite a character, especially on liberty, and has lots of stories about all the scar tissue he's accumulated over the years. He was out with some of the other chiefs and was bragging about what a good dancer he is, so they dared him to prove it. Except my Chief Engineman, who said he would leave if EMC started dancing. But, he saw EMC start to shake a little and they all cheered him on, told him to get on the dance floor. As soon as he went out there and tried to spin, he slipped on a loose tile and went down.

Naturally, they all laughed.

He hobbled all the way back, thinking he had sprained an ankle or torn a ligament and he refused to go to the hospital until the Captain ordered him to. Turns out he's broken his leg in four places, not his ankle, and he's going to need surgery and pins and two months of physical therapy at least. So we flew him home to Jacksonville.

The last day, I decided to stay on the ship. It's hot and humid and extremely uncomfortable if you're not into that kind of thing, which as a Minnesotan, I am not. We had to run all three air conditioning plants just keep it bearable inside the skin of the ship. I listened to a lot of "Weird Al" Yankovic, played some Civilization III, read some Ayn Rand, and went to bed at about 2300.

Around 0100 I started having this strange dream someone was pounding on my bulkhead and yelling, "Matt, there's a fire." Nobody calls me Matt on the ship, so I had to be dreaming the acrid smell of burning insulation as well. The quarterdeck watch rang the bells and called away a Class Alpha fire in the centerline passageway - That had to be a dream. Alpha fires are paper and wood and other similar combustible materials and there's no way anything like that was on fire in the certerline passageway.

Then I woke up. I was dizzy, I still wasn't comprehending exactly what was going on, except I saw smoke in my stateroom. I threw on my tennis shoes and said, "Air Boss, there's a fire!" Which was funny to him later, since he was the one pounding on the bulkhead earlier. I went out in the Officers' Country passageway and pounded on some of the other doors yelling, "There's a fire, get up!" and then out through wardroom into the cetnerline passageway, where smoke was billowing out of a fan room and filling the whole superstructure. I went out past the quarterdeck and down to the Central Control Station to get a handle on the situation. I was still a groggy from being roused out a dead sleep and there were a lot of conflicting reports about what was going on, so it took the watchstanders and I some time to figure out what was actually happening.

It turns out that the turbocharger on one of my ship's service diesel generators failed, causing extreme heat in the turbo and exhaust. That heat ignited the lagging on the exhaust designed to contain the ordinary exhaust heat and started a Class Alpha fire in the overhead of the diesel enclosure. That fire also burnt a lot of wiring inside the enclosure and caused other damage, not to mention the damage the seawater we use for firefighting caused.

We thought we'd be able to get patched up in Panama, but our Big Navy boss told us to go directly back to Mayport. So we went home two weeks after we left to get repairs done and get back out to sea as soon as we can. We got back Wednesday. It was a rough week. The fire happened on my birthday, too, which added to the fun. I can't wait to get back out there and run down some cocaine smugglers, but right now I'm just concentrating on getting my stuff fixed.

Anyway, no one got hurt and I'm deployed to, er, Mayport for the time being. Might be here long enough to be at Jack's first birthday, which would be cool, but I'd rather be underway doing what I'm supposed to be doing, honestly. It feels so wrong to be home right now, as much as I love it. Is that weird?

Disservice

2007-03-23T10:48:00.000-05:00

I couldn't believe it when I heard the reason Michael Auberry wandered off from his Boy Scout troop in North Carolina: He didn't want to camp any more and he thought he'd hitchhike home.

I'm completely disgusted on a number of levels. The more I hear about other people's experiences in Scouting, the more I realize how lucky I was to have the troop that I had. It didn't even exist before my 12 of us Webelos were ready to be Scouts and so we started Troop 477 from the ground up. Most of us were there because we wanted to be there, though there was always the occassional kid whose parents made him go. Most of those boys didn't last long and stopped showing up eventually.

My troop was great; we'd go camping every month, even if it was just in the Scoutmaster's backyard. We had high adventure campouts every summer and a week long summer camp. Even with all that fun I had, there certainly were times I wanted to go home. What does a young man do in that situation? Deal with it. Talk to the Scoutmaster.

The Scoutmaster should keep the boy involved, not make special concessions.

Most of the Scouts on the trip had gone on a hike Saturday morning, but Michael Auberry, saying he wanted to sleep in, stayed behind in base camp with a few other Scouts. News reports say he got up around 10 a.m. and disappeared about an hour later.

Sleep in!?

When boys didn't want to get up on our campouts, Mr. McClelland (one of the Assistant Scoutmasters) would walk through the campsite singing "Oh what a beautiful morning." No kidding, it was really annoying, but we got up and had a heck of a lot of fun.

The kid's parents apparently have forced him to continue participate in the program regardless of his apparent distaste for camping. It's not fair to Michael Auberry for his parents to make him continue doing something he doesn't want to do, and it's not fair to the other kids in the troop who want to have fun to have to put up with Michael Auberry. I have this attitude about the Navy as well, and have good retention in my department, because the people who want to stay do and there is no pressure on the people who want to go.

The whiny little snot asked his Dad to give him five dollars if he didn't have a good time. His dad said they'd do something together. I wonder how many campouts day goes on? Then Michael asked for a "helicopter ride out of here" when he was found. Is Boy Scouts his way of sharing the burden of parenting his child? Letting other men teach him how to be a man? Apparently he's not having much success on his own so far in that regard. I wish him luck.

TANSTAAFL

2007-03-16T15:14:00.000-05:00

Well, the grout is sealed and between that, planting my palm tree and cleaning the garage I'm thinking about this Walter Reed problem.

I'd like to qualify what I'm about to say with full disclosure: I have no idea how real hospitals are run. What you are about to read is largely anecdotal, constructed of my own opinions and philosophy... kind of like everything else I write.

Since I earned my commission in 1998, I've been part of the military heath care system. I've handled the inefficiencies and frustrations by not being sick, though that doesn't always work. I've been lucky enough to never have been hospitalized for anything, but Red started dealing with them during her pregnancy and now Jack's got pediatric appointments. The bureaucracy is no different from any other administrative machine the Navy concocts, as far as I'm concerned.

There is a running gag that a corpsman treats everything with Motrin. To be fair, they're 800mg Motrin tablets, so they'll cure what ails you, as long as it's not a sucking chest wound or something. I've had a corpsman operate on an ingrown toenail during a deployment, but it grew back just as bad. Sick call is quite different from the type of treatment you get if you go to an actual Naval Hospital. When I did, a doctor took care of that toenail and it hasn't bothered me since.

Of the two Naval Hospitals I remember dealing with, only one had a campus full of old buildings, but there weren't any patients living in them as far as I knew. I suspect there are many military hospitals like this - they've been updated and remodeled, but still have old buildings that have not yet been taken care of and that aren't normally used. Heck, most military bases are like that.

I imagine a place like Walter Reed is bursting at the seams and the staff are trying their best to keep up with demand.

From the original Washington Post article:

Vera Heron spent 15 frustrating months living on post to help care for her son. "It just absolutely took forever to get anything done," Heron said. "They do the paperwork, they lose the paperwork. Then they have to redo the paperwork. You are talking about guys and girls whose lives are disrupted for the rest of their lives, and they don't put any priority on it."

Welcome to socialized medicine, Mrs. Heron. I've lost count of the number of times I've needed to reproduce documentation that's been lost by administrators, updated information that was subsequently not updated in the "system" or changed to something entirely different from the information I gave them. It's frustrating and a part of life when you allow the government control of it. What I've described here are minor annoyances - the military health care system only has to provide for members are retirees of the U.S. military. Imagine the magnitude of problems a system required to provide for 300 million Americans would have. Universal health care, indeed.

Now, I've received decent care most of the time. Jack's pediatric visits go well, though we've had issues with his doctor being available and have been seeing a nurse practitioner alternately. The hospital and the doctor keep telling us that he doesn't need a nine-month "well baby" appointment (whatever that is, Red was expecting to have one), while the nurse practitioner says that he should have one. Well, there's nothing wrong with the boy, but I'll go along with having one.

When Red was pregnant, she had to see all the pre-natal physicians because most of them were being deployed to Iraq and there was no telling which one would be available when she had the baby. As it turned out, a civilian doctor at the Newport Hospital delivered Jack and was there while Red was in labor, the Navy doctor got there right when she was ready to go into the delivery room.

Based on my experience, I'm inclined to believe Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, chief of the Army Medical Command:

While acknowledging "pretty distressing" conditions in some rooms at Building 18, Kiley said the problems were neither widespread nor symptoms of a system that allows soldiers to languish. The building is not "emblematic of a process of Walter Reed that has abandoned soldiers and their families," said Kiley, who was commander at the hospital before becoming surgeon general in 2004.

"I want to reset the thinking . . .," Kiley said. "While we have some issues here, this is not a horrific, catastrophic failure at Walter Reed."

I have no idea how this compares to private medicine, since this is the only experience I have. I'd venture to assume that other than being able to pick your doctor, and being much better at managing processes and capacity, it's probably not much different.

The key is process and capacity management and the ability (or lack thereof) to handle it. I would argue that a privately run hospital, operating as a business would have the ability to use cash flow to add to capacity and invest in process improvement as it benefits the hospital. Military hospitals are run using tax dollars, and let me tell you, things are tough all over, if you're not on the ground in a combat zone. From the second story in the Washington Post series:

The conflict in Iraq has hatched a virtual town of desperation and dysfunction, clinging to the pilings of Walter Reed. The wounded are socked away for months and years in random buildings and barracks in and around this military post.

The luckiest stay at Mologne House, a four-story hotel on a grassy slope behind the hospital. Mologne House opened 10 years ago as a short-term lodging facility for military personnel, retirees and their family members. Then came Sept. 11 and five years of sustained warfare. Now, the silver walkers of retired generals convalescing from hip surgery have been replaced by prosthetics propped against Xbox games and Jessica Simpson posters smiling down on brain-rattled grunts.

The point is that Walter Reed ran out of capacity to accommodate demand 10 years ago, and has been deteriorating ever since. Now that its been put on the chopping block by BRAC, do you suppose it was on the top of the list for expenditure of your tax dollars? Not until the Washington Post story. None of the repair that Building 18 needs are free, just like none of the health care my family and I receive is free. The money has to come from somewhere.

I'm not defending anyone involved here. I think the conditions that some of the soldiers and marines lived in were deplorable and the fact that it took the Washington Post, the resignation of the Secretary of Army and... was there a General?... just ridiculous. If there's one thing I've learned in my eight-and-a-half years in the military, it's that if you make a mistake, or if you know of a problem, do not be the senior man with a secret. Tell your boss, try to resolve it, have a plan. It's clear that someone did not follow that rule.

More:
Michelle Malkin: Milbloggers on WaPo Series: Broken System, Biased Report
Bloviating Zeppelin: What We Want
Smash @ Michelle Malkin: Healing Walter Reed - The Rest of the Story
BlackFive @ Michelle Malkin: @WR

I Win

2007-03-06T15:56:00.000-05:00

I want you to know that my ship did extremely well last week dring INSURV, all the hard work and preparation definitely paid off and I couldn't be prouder of my sailors. They did a fantastic job. We were above Fleet average and class average in all but one area (not Engineering). I appreciate your patience with the blog while I deal with real life.

So, now we've got a bit of time to spend with family and get ready for the impending deployment. I've been leaving Jack with the day care lady (his "Nanny") while I try to get the house ready for all the family and friends coming into town for the baptism this weekend. Mahndisa brought up a good point in comments about the philosophical conflict between my wife and I on baptizing my son. Well, folks: happy wife, happy marriage. Additionally, the compromise is that we are doing it in the naval tradition on the ship in the bell.

I have my work cut out for me at the house. First, just look at what the chinchbugs did to my lawn. I came home off deployment and it was dead. Red and I raked up most of the front yard and threw it away, then reseeded it. I think we're going to have to re-reseed it.

I just took a break from trying to finish up he tile in my sunroom. We had the sunroom installed, but didn't buy a floor, anticipating using the carpet left over from carpeting the house. But Red changed her mind since it wasn't indoor/outdoor carpet and we laid tile. I'm cleaning up the grout now and I'm having difficulty getting my fingers to move the way I want them to. Pardon my typing.

If you've never laid tile, don't. I mean, wow, it's a lot of work and I have an extreme sense of personal satisfaction from working on my very own house and putting a bit of myself into it, but every time I work on the floor I end up hurting a lot by the end of the day. It's also extremely time consuming, and as a result, I have to bring Jack to day care instead of spending my time off with him. Full circle, eh?

So here's some project progress pictures, since I'm really proud of doing this myself for the first time and I'm high on the intrinsic satisfaction of my personal accomplishment. I've started hearing about what's going on the world again - I've been listening to the news, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity while I work - and I want to find out a bit more about the whole Walter Reed "scandal" because I've got a bit to say about it. If you want to know what socialized medicine would be like, look no further than the military health care system, folks.

I'd like to elaborate on that after I finish the floor and pick up Jack from day care.

Hooray for Diversity

2007-02-25T23:19:00.000-05:00

I was informed this week that DESRON had nominated me for the Federal Asian Pacific American Council (FAPAC) Military Meritorious Service Award. It was quite an honor, however I found out that I am not eligible due to my Irish/Scottish/Norweigian/Swedish heritage. Turns out OPNAV had me down as an Asian Pacific Islander.

January and February are the time of year when we celebrate everybudy's culture, it seems. Except mine, of course. Heck, I even watched the first part of the Ocsars tonight when Ellen Degeneres was pointing out how diverse the nominees are and ended with Steve Carrell - at which point everyone laughed. What? I don't get it.

Then I turned off the TV when I found out Al Gore had been nominated. A) Hollywood has no shame and B) I am really out of touch, aren't I? Maybe I'll take the month of March and just absorb enough pop culture and current events to get me through the deployment. Or perhaps I'll teach my son to walk and cuddle with my wife... hmm, I don't know...

But my point, and I do have one, is that it seems to me that there is irony in the fact that many forces, particularly in the entertainment media, have been pushing a predisposition toward inclusiveness upon you and me while simultaneously excluding any fair-skinned folk. Additionally, people are selected for inclusion based upon only their physical traits and not the quality of their character or level of skill or pick your own vastly more reasonable criteria.

Irksome, to be sure, but barely twitching the needle on the Vexometer. My problem lies in social interaction with people who aren't completely ambivalent and expect others to walk around on eggshells because they are __________ (fill in your favorite conversation crippling social construct). I was trying to get inspection preparations done this week and lost a bunch of people to and "African-American heritage program", so I couldn't get anything done. Annoyed, I referred to the program as "crap", wondering if anyone else had their priorities straight. The sailor that I was talking to later approached me and said I might want to be more careful, since there are people on my ship would cry racism at the drop of a hat.

I don't care what color your skin is, which chromosome your father gave you or which boat your ancestors sailed here on, folks. Be a productive person and achieve your goals. There's nothing diverse about diversity.

Insomnia

2007-02-25T23:17:00.000-05:00

10 hours to INSURV and my mind is racing. Thing is, we're in pretty darn good shape, if you ask me. we've been working on material readiness for over a year and had the cleanliness push over the last eight weeks. I only had to bring Engineering department in for one weekend and then just Saturday. I feel like I can take the beating.

This is my third one, but I've never been a CHENG for one. It won't be fun, but this too shall pass. Hope I didn't miss anything.

Jitters

2007-02-24T11:40:00.000-05:00

I always get those pre-game nerves. Fear of failure. Performance anxiety. Saturday before the big inspection, I think we're as ready as we're going to get.

Of course, it always seems like something comes up last minute. Something breaks and you have to borrow some parts from a buddy on another ship to make a critical piece of equipment work. Or maybe you have a fire. Not that any of that happened, of course.

Yeah, I've been having a great day. Usually the disasters don't start until the inspectors are on the ship.

I have duty today, which is good because I had to have the whole department here anyway, for the final push. Most ships preparing for INSURV have to work nights and weekends for at least a month to get things ready. I feel pretty confident in our level of preparedness since we've been working on this since 14 months ago (six months before I reported, MPA and I were already plotting our plan of attack). Are we going to knock it our of the park? I don't know, but I think I'll get through it and still be the Engineer in March.

I am currently covered in dirt and oil and who knows what else from climbing around in bilges the last two days and am looking forward to a long hot shower tonight. I have to keep walking around because on top of getting Engineering ready, I'm the Command Duty Officer and have to ensure the rest of the ship has its act together.

So I've essentially been walking around the ship all day pointing out what's wrong and making people fix it. It's good to be in charge, I guess.

American Dreamz

2007-02-05T12:04:00.000-05:00

("Dreamz with a 'Z'"!)

After living in it for seven months, Red and I are finally moving into our house. What I mean to say is that we've been living in it, but we started doing that a little over a week before the last deployment and all our stuff was eventually delivered two days before I left for six months. We couldn't move a lot of it in because it had been destroyed ($4000-$5000 worth of damage) and had to wait for it to be assessed, the rest was due to Red single-momming it with a newborn baby while I was away. End result, most of our stuff is either in boxes in the garage or unpacked and piled up on horizontal surfaces.

So once we got back from Minnesota for the holidays, we began trying to get the place straightened up, slowed by the packing up of Christmas ornaments. I finally got a bunch of plywood up in the attic space above the garage for a floor (it was just bare sheet rock and I couldn't put anything up there. Now I can put all kinds of junk up there and forget about it.

Then we bought a boat storage rack. I thought I'd just build one out of two-by-fours that I could attach my existing roof racks to. Brilliant, right? No! Red needed to have something that looks nice, so we shelled out for a Yakima Ground Control Unit online. It's not bad - frankly, the way my projects go, it would've probably cost just as much or more, with tools and time spent. But there's a difference in satisfaction level between building and assembling.

The directions on this thing threw me because it says unless your studs are 32 inches apart, you have to buy a Universal Mounting thing. Well, I was convinced after having done my work in the attic that my studs were less than 32 inches apart, so we stopped midway through assembly to price those ($32 each), but we couldn't figure out how many we'd need. So I told Red, "I can mount it to a couple of two-by-fours..." at which point she got upset and stormed in the house saying she didn't want it to look like a piece of crap.

It's a garage for cryin' out loud! I told her, look, I'll paint them, let me finish. So, I painted them, mounted them to the wall, and finished assembling the rack, at which point we discovered our stud were indeed 32 inches apart and that the rack sticks out too far to make enough room for more than one car anyway, which pretty much defeats the purpose of doing all that in the first place. I could've done it with some lumber or chains and rubber hose hanging from the ceiling. Maybe next time common sense will prevail.

Saturday, after Jack went to bed around 8:00, we started laying tile in the new sunroom. I also spent all day Sunday doing it as well, missing the entire first half of the Super Bowl and the only halftime show I've had any interest in for years (Prince is awesome!) It looks great, though, and gives me much more satisfaction and pleasure than watching the Bears blow it. (I'm a Vikings fan.)

I am extremely sore today, and have no idea when we'll be able to grout it what with underway days and INSURV and company in town for Jack's baptism on the ship, but I'm sure we'll figure it out.

I'm sure there's something productive to do... better get to it.

Impending Doom

2007-01-31T12:10:00.000-05:00

There's a bunch of stuff going on in the world, so I hear. I saw something about Hugo Chavez granting himself power of decree, which annoyed me at first, and then I remembered the only people he's a threat to is Venezuelans. My focus has been largely inside the lifelines over the past few weeks and will continue to be until the end of the month.

It's funny that I listen to the news every day and nothing quite spins me up the way it used to, when I'm more concerned about keeping this ship afloat for the next five or six years. Lately, it may as well be a fact that the world will cease to exist after March 2nd, since that's really as far out as I'm planning anything at the moment, due to our upcoming visit from the Board of Inspection and Survey.

I've posted about it before, but it's the most painful inspection that any ship goes through. It happens every five years and the really bad ones can get Chief Engineers and Commanding Officers fired.

Anyway, I know that we are going to be ready and it won't be pleasant, but we'll make it through. Deep down, however, there's that creeping fear of failure. That's been why this blog's been deader than I'd like since I got back off deployment in December. What little time I don't spend on the ship, I spend at home getting as much time as possible with my family before I deploy again - in April.

The operational tempo has been unusually high lately, due to world events and what have you, in all the services. It's been nowhere near as high for me as it has been for others, but as far as the Navy goes, this is pretty high. It's rough on families - to give you an example, I was underway for Red's birthday, I will be underway for my anniversary, and for my and Jack's birthday's. That's all after returning from our last deployment.

What have you been up to?

I Am Awesome

2007-01-14T13:06:00.000-05:00

I have to write my fitness report. It's got to be done last Friday, so I'm finishing it today. I can't ever think of anything to write about myself, so when I draft it, I start out with

LT Armstrong is awesome
Here's how awesome he is:
1.
2.
3.
That's why LT Armstrong is awesome

So it's stupid, but starts me thinking. This one's tough, though. It only covers 30 days. I was on leave for a week and a half, nothing happened for a week (because everyone else was on leave), and then we were underway for a week to train with our new helicopter detachment (HSL 44 Det 10) and get preparations done for INSURV.

I Just Want To Be Friends... With Benefits!

2007-01-14T12:36:00.000-05:00

As always, I delude myself into thinking that the Internet is wondering why I haven't called or written. Espousing opinions on varied and sundry topics ends up taking a back seat when I'm swamped and don't have time for slow, annoying Internet to down/upload things as applicable while on the ship.

I mean, honestly, with INSURV in five weeks, the only thing that is really vexing is INSURV. I guarantee that I'll have more time for you March, Internet.

Off the ship, I've discovered that since coming home, I remain a stranger in my own house. Red is so used to handling everything that she's doesn't want me to help, lest I screw up her system, which consists wholly of piles of paper which she stacks on every horizontal surface that I'm told I own. She and I had a good discussion about this last night, and I really need to spend some time on home improvement projects.

No, Internet, I don't blame you that my front lawn is dead, or that my sunroom needs a floor AND leaks AND has mold, or that half of my stuff is still in my garage and I haven't fully moved into my house yet (in seven months).

My son, though he barely knows me, will not let me go and reaches out for me to pick him up at every opportunity, even when being held by others (like Red). Tyring to integrate back into family was even harder over the holidays, flying to Minnesota and getting Jack out of his routine and not really spending any quality time with Red. And now we're back, she still doesn't want to get a babysitter so we can go on a date once in a while.

So the last thing I need is the Internet eating up my time. I'm up for the occasional quickie if I can get 128K, even 64K, on the ship. At home, our time together will be sparse.

I'm not breaking up with you, Internet (especially since my mother and grandmother read People Covered in Fish); I just want to see other people. I just got Red to let me clean the office during my holiday tomorrow. Even though I'd love to blog and browse and email, I need to work on my family. You understand, right? Oh, I'll still visit and write once in a while, but I just can't give you the attention you really deserve.

The Only Good Republican

2006-12-29T07:01:00.000-05:00

Fellow Eagle Scout former President Gerald R. Ford has died. The sheer tactlessness of the media's really getting me torqued up about it.

Sure, it's bad form to say what you really think about someone after they die. Thirty years ago, Ford was reviled for pardoning President Nixon and ridiculed as a buffoon... just like every other Republican president since. Hmmmm! Coincidence? Or Science?

But time sure seems to put history in perspective. I feel like a bit of an outside observer; having been born in 1976, the first time I remember being aware of who the President was was when Reagan was shot in 1982. Looking back on the Ford Presidency now, it seems he was a pretty good President, but didn't have the time to make a difference. Though pardoning Nixon cost him the 1976 election, I think he made the right choice. Can you imagine the ensuing trial? Months on end of revisiting and prolonging Watergate, then Nixon in prison for years. The 1970s were painful enough, no one needed that, no matter how much anyone wanted it.

So it's giving the press yet another opportunity to gloat over its two biggest perceived vistories in the 20th century; Watergate and Vietnam. Heck, it's even giving Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theorists a little juice. The MSM and moonbats get to simultaneously impugn Ford's character over Watergate, and criticize President Bush over Iraq.

There's plenty about Iraq and Bush Administration policies that can be criticized (though I prefer constructive criticism and rational discussion to moonbattery), but Gerald Ford had the tact to keep it under his hat, unlike certain other former Presidents. He knew exactly how Bob Woodward would use that interview.

The Ford interview also belies a certain lack of familiarity with the situation. He seemed to think that sanctions would've accomplished something in Iraq, after 12 years of failure doing exactly that. I'm of the opinion that military action was warranted in Iraq, but much, much sooner. If only we'd had a President who was willing to make an unpopular decision at the time...

Merry Krissmachannaramasolstikwanzawinterfestiveenimas!

2006-12-24T05:42:00.000-05:00

Merry Krissmachannaramasolstikwanzawinterfestiveenimas! I was vexed about soemthing last night when I thought about posting, but not so much now. It wasn't a "war on Christmas" thing, I remember that much. I'm actually kind of happy not to wake up completely incapacitated by this cold today.

Jack woke up about his usual time (0430) for a bottle and to cuddle in bed with Mommy and Daddy. But my cough is pretty bad and I didn't want to wake him or keep Red awake on our family day off - therefore, I blog.

Red's family tradition has always been to open Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve and then stockings on Christmas Day. Since my family tradition involves driving all over the Twin Cities for two days to four different Christmasses, and she gets very pouty about not doing Christmas her way, we do Christmas her way. (Of course, living in Jacksonville makes it difficult to visit my grandmothers over Christmas).

So we opened gifts. Not a lot of money to spend on each other this year, but I wen't ahead and used the credit card for a Dyson vacuum cleaner that she had told me she wanted. With the way that Red and the two cats shed, Jack picks up a lot of hair when he crawls around on the floor - this vacuum is supposed to be really good at taking care of that problem.

Red was whelmed at the gift. It was a pop fly to center field, definitely nowhere close to a home run. Especially since, right after we opened gifts, we saw a TV commercial mocking Stereotypical Chubby Stupid White Male for buying his wife a vacuum cleaner for Christmas. Dr. Helen would be a better one to delve into that than I am.

It was difficult this year to find something to give her, and she found it difficult to find something to give me as well. I've been gone for six months and we pretty much have everything we want. Isn't that nice? We've got a nice little house, the cutest kid on Earth, and all we really want to do is work on those two things.

My Dad asked me for a Christmas list for us and I couldn't think of anything at all, except for I want to build a stone patio in the back of the house, put a nice grill back there, fix the bathtub faucet and finish moving the rest of my things out of the garage and into the house/down to the curb for the trash collectors (as applicable).

This reminds me of one of the heady conversations that Egon and I had in Scotland while walking around. We ended up talking about taxation and redistribution of wealth. In a sense, I suppose I could be considered wealthy. For immediate purposes (for the time being) my family doesn't need anything. Every paycheck Red and I get, we are able to pay our bills and buy groceries and put gas in the cars. We could cut back in some areas and have more money left over if we chose to do so, but we haven't budgeted it out at this point.

Federal taxes take 12% of my income before I even see it. That's crap, if you ask me, because it's my money, and I earned it. I'd like to decide where it goes. It's also ridiculous that I'm a government employee and the government bothers taxing me at all. Why not just pay me less to begin with and keep the bloody money?

Child support takes 25% of my income, no sliding scale, nothing. Minnsota state law supports that regardless of how ridiculous an amount that is. It is currently just about equal to my mortgage payment. What vexes me most about it is what a stupid kid I was. My reasoning went like this: I've got orders to Japan, and I'm never going to see my daughter. I've got to make sure she's provided for. I know! I'll call the county and have them garnish my wages!

I know, I know. I haven't always been the ferociously independent libertarianistic objectivist you see before you today. At one time, I actually thought the government was here to help. It seemed like a good idea at the time, when I was 21 and had no idea how any of these things worked and failed to see the 18-year impact of what I was doing. I think this is how most of these goofy socialist ideas get into people's heads and once they start to suffer the negative consequences of placing their faith in the state to do everything for them, most people come around to thinking more or less like I do.

The net result is that my ex has three kids, including mine, and is able to do a lot of things that she wouldn't ordinarily be able to do, like get through tough times when her husband gets laid off or is going to school since they are a three-income family. Red and I get by day-to-day, but don't really make any headway on paying bills.

Is it fair? Some would say yes, of course it's fair. The state has imposed fairness upon you because you are forces to provide for your daughter as though she lived with you. Since you have more money and are worse off and she has less money and is better off, all is right in the world.

The state doesn't care whether I see her or not, or fulfill my obligations as a father, only that the wealth is redistributed accordingly. I hope that it's being put to good use, because if I had that money, I could put it in a college fund or something for her. I could also use that money to fly up to Minnesota and see her more than once a year, or fly her down to Florida.

Additionally, had I thought to try to reconcile with my ex ten years ago and be friendly toward each other, we could've worked together to decide how much she needed and I may have ended up having a more amiable relationship and I may have ended up communicating better with her and my daughter and maybe, just maybe, things wouldn't be as screwed up as they are now. (Mind you, I am not going into full details here, Internet.)

Of course, I don't ultimately blame the state for my problems - that, again, is giving them too much power. My problems are entirely of my own making. What I'm getting at here, is why do we trust in the almighty government to decide who is too wealthy and who is too poor? What incentive does my ex have to improve her quality of life before my daughter turns 18 and the child support stops coming in? None. She's living, at least partially, a life of dependency. Come June 2015, she will have to quit cold turkey.

From my own point of view, the child support obligation is review every two years and generally increases significantly each time, right around this time of year. Suddenly, this delicate balance that Red and I have with getting our bills paid is upset and we have to figure out how to meet all our obligations with $400 less per month.

Is any of that fair? No law is going make people less poor, nothing will make poor people any richer except for poor people doing it themselves. I think state-imposed fairness does more harm than good. All I really care about is my daughter, and I personally think that she is the one who gets the short end of the stick no matter how you look at it.

On a side note, I found this great article on socialized medicine which makes a similar point. Some of you know I have similar feelings on charity, i.e. that charity keeps people destitute because of their dependence upon it.

SECDEF's Farewell

2006-12-22T12:31:00.000-05:00

While filtering through my message traffic last week, I recieved this message from former SECDEF, the Honorable Donald Rumsfeld. I've been meaning to post it, because I thought it was a really nice message to all of us who serve and that some of you might appreciate it:

For these past six years, I have had the opportunity and the privilege to serve with the greatest military the world has ever known. To all the men and women in uniform across the globe, I wish that I could look you in the eyes, shake your hands and express my heartfelt gratitude for your service. You have given me a complete sense of pride in our mission, and an abiding confidence in our country, especially in those who volunteer to risk you lives to defend us.

As I complete my second tour as Secretary of Defense, I leave knowing that the true strength of our U.S. military lies not in our weapons, but in the hearts of the men and women in uniform, in your patriotism, in your professionalism, and your determination to accomplish the mission.

President Abraham Lincoln said “Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.” That remains as true today as it did during President Lincoln’s time. I have seen countless examples of this resolve when I have met with those serving in this long struggle against violent extremism.

I visited a base near Fallujah two days before Christmas where marines have been engaged in some of the most intense house-to-house fighting since World War II. A staff sergeant asked my why there wasn’t a way he could extend his tour beyond his unit’s service limit in Iraq.

A young man I met at Bethesda Naval Hospital was in the very early stages of recovery from multiple wounds suffered in Iraq. He looked up at me with a tube in his nose, and said, “If only the American people will give us the time we need, we can do it, we are getting it done.”

A soldier I met in Afghanistan said, “I really can’t believe we’re allowed to do something this important.” I feel the same way. I can’t believe I have had the chance to be involved in something so important to the safety of the American people and the future of our country.

What you are accomplishing is not simply important – it is historic. When the cause of human freedom requires men and women to stand on the front lines in its defense, you stepped forward to liberate more than 50 million citizens in Afghanistan and Iraq. You captured or killed tens of thousands of extremists, taking the fight to where they live, rather than waiting for them to attack us again where our families live. You helped alleviates the conditions that foster extremism in places like the horn of Africa, the Philippines, and elsewhere so that your children and grandchildren do not have to face our current challenges.

This month has two important anniversaries – the free elections of the Iraqi National Assembly and the seating of the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. We remember the images of Iraqis proudly raising purple fingers in the air after voting in their first free elections, and the images of Afghani girls singing with joy as their new president took office. Those were historic chapters in the saga of human freedom and you made them possible.

This long struggle is complex and remains unfamiliar and little understood. Some may believe that there is no need to remain engaged. The enemy is counting on us to falter. You are the ones who experience success and who endure the setbacks of this struggle. It is a daily test of your personal will. We all know that the cause of freedom is well worth the price.

In 10 or 20 years, when you are talking to your children or grandchildren, you will look back on your service, at what you have accomplished, with a great sense of pride. You will know that you were part of a truly proud history. Indeed, that you were the makers of that proud history and an inspiration to generations that followed.

It has been the highest honor of my life to serve with you, the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces. You define and embody the American spirit. You have helped millions triumph over tyranny during this time of great consequence. You have my eternal respect and you will remain in my thoughts and prayers always. May God bless you and your families, and may God continue to bless our wonderful country.

Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense.

Backpacking in Scotland

2006-12-20T13:24:00.000-05:00

EDIT: The published version of this post has a plethora of break tags that I didn't put in there. Scroll down for the post and if you know how to get rid of them let me know. I've exhausted my scanty HTML skills.

Still fighting this crud I got last week. Light-headed and headachy, coughing fits last night, fatigued, lovely stuff. (ooh! I think my ear just drained!) I'm on a 24-hour SIQ chit, which means I go to the clinic tomorrow to get another one (*sigh*). This did not preclude me from standing my duty day yesterday or getting some work done today. Nor will it mean I won't be working tomorrow, so I don't honestly know what the point is.

Therefore, I blog.

During our Scotland port visit in October, I was lucky enough to be able to take a couple days leave and visit my best friend Egon. Egon and I have known each other for 15 years and he's currently married to a lovely British woman and living the dream in London as a struggling writer. Well, he doesn't stuggle too much, as his wife is paid in British pounds.

		When I left the ship, it seemed like the first time in months I had been free. I walked down the brow in the early morning while everyone else was getting ready to go to conferences and straight out the nearest gate of Her Majesty's Naval Base Clyde in Faslane, Scotland (about 20 yards from the brow). As I hiked down the road to the Garelochead train station, I got this picture of my ship, USS HALYBURTON, nested between USS SAMUEL B. ROBERTS (outboard) and the Turkish FFG GOKSU (inboard - formerly USS ESTOCIN).
		My view of Garelochead. It's a little town at the head of the loch (go figure). The train station was up on the hilltop overlooking the town and the base.
		There's Egon, standing in front of beautiful downtown Oban after we got off the train. Oban is the largest town in the western highlands and known for its whiskey distillery, among other things. We tried to get on a tour, but we missed the last one by 20 minutes. The whole area surrounding the distillery smelled like a smoky single malt. Luckily there was a cafe across the street where we could enjoy that, plus all the bars in town were well-stocked with Oban. I highly recommend it if you're a scotch drinker. Or if you'd like to be.
		Egon, having done this sort of thing a bit more than I have, found us a great hostel overlooking the waterfront and sitting on top of a pub. Perfect!
		Interestingly, many of the pubs in town (and presumably the rest of the U.K. prohibit football colors from being worn inside. This is to prevent the inevitable bloody and literal violence that ensues when football fans of opposing teams converge on the same location. I was worried about that when I walked into one wearing the hat you see here. The fellow who drove the ship's poop truck gave it to me in exchange for buying him two ship' ball caps. Luckily, it turns out that this is a 2003 Rugby ball cap. I don't know if rugby fans are similarly violent, but I wore the hat anyway. Here, we're hiking to an abandoned castle.
		There wasn't a walkway, but it's not as though the traffic was so bad we had to walk on this rock ledge. We just did. The castle is in the background. I have some pictures, but not readily available. We had to hike up a muddy, rocky slope to get there. There are so many old castles in Scotland and England, that I guess not all them qualify as historic or worthy of being preseved of sending tours through.
		Just a neat picture of the harbor entrance.
		This shot was taken from the top of what became a running gag for the entire next day, a former sea cliff. Egon and I, being best friends, naturally come up with in-jokes that no one else would get unless they were there. ("When I think about you, I touch myself! CLICK") When sea levels were higher, the area you see here was underwater and most of Scotland's low-lying coastline was underwater. Now it's low areas surrounded by steep cliffs shaped by water and glacier erosion. I know, I know that still doesn't explain it. It was funny at the time, I guess you had to be there.
		The view out of our third-story hostel window before heading to the Isle of Mull for the day. Not as great a picture as I thought it would be, but there was a terrific view of the harbor and nearby islands (part of the Inner Hebrides). Of note, our room was a four-bed (two bun-beds) dorm-sytle room. We checked in early and went out for a few drinks and some dinner, then came back and met our roommates - two 20-year-old American college girls studying abroad in London. Unique for me and a little awkward for two 30-year-old married guys, for a moment, anyway. We all got along just fine and there wasn't a bit of impropriety. In fact, we hardly spoke, all they seemed to want to do was sleep. They did end up on the ferry to the Isle of Mull with us the next day and we ran into them a couple of times throughout the day.
		On Mull, we did a walking tour of the castles there. Rather, our intent was to tour multiple castles, but they were a lot farther apart than we thought. The only castle we physically toured was Torosay. The one you see here, I shot from the ferry on the way to Mull. It's called Duart Castle and it's much older and across the swamp from Torosay
	We hiked toward Duart Castle after touring Torosay and realized that it was a lot farther than we thought It also started raining off and on. But it was a pleasant walk through the sheep pastures and provided Egon and I more opportunity to catch up and espouse heady thoughts at one another. ("Boy are there a lot of sheep," and "Hey, do you think we can hitch a ride on that helicopter?") We also got to see a rainbow and were in a perfect position to photograph the castle through it.
		To save ourselves some walking between the ferry terminal in Craignure and Castle Torosay, we rode the miniature railroad, which is, not surpsingly, really small. Not small enough to be uncomfortable, just small enough to be novel and make you thankful that the ride was short. Apparently, there are a lot of weird train-related hobbies in Britain. I'd heard of trainspotting, but not touring the country to ride tiny trains. BloZep, any insight?
		I'd like to point out here that Egon is around six feet tall and I folded myself into the same train car with him. And our backpacks.
		Egon and I parted ways on the train back to Faslane. I got underway the next day for Neptune Warrior and had to deal with this. Just for frame of reference, this is a picture out of the port bridge wing door of my ship in 30-foot seas.
		Yes, it was beautiful Scottish weather the whole time. Hope you enjoyed the pictures, I know I enjoyed the visit.

I Am Time 2006 Person of the Year

2006-12-18T11:18:00.000-05:00

No kidding.

I may be a bit behind the curve on this; mostly because I don't read Time, and I haven't listened to the radio or read the news that much over the last half year (what's all this about the Democrats controlling Congress?) However, I am pleased to inform those few loyal remaining People Covered in Fish reader that I (and all of you) am the 2006 Person of the Year.

This, of course, is my second time winning this distinct honor, and I'd like to thank all the little people I stepped on to make this possible. Excuse me while I update my resume. Here's a list of the notable people I share the honor with.

All sarcasm aside, it's an interesting choice, if really lazy. Everybody wins!

It's not all of you, really. Well, it is all of you, and every goofball with a MySpace account, etc. In my twelve years on the Internet I've left a pretty big footprint (much to my chagrin). But my grandmother has had little impact on the information age. She's afraid of the Internet and won't buy a computer. Good for her, I say. Somebody's got to hold out.

Sick day today, Rogue won't stop sitting on me and giving me head butts. Let me tell you about sick days in the military. You report to work as usual and then go to sick call. At sick call the corpsman tells you

1) Yes, you're sick, now get back to work.
2) Yes, you're sick, you get a 24-hour SIQ (sick in quarters) and then you need to come back in every day to make you're still sick until you're not sick any more.

I took the Robosquirrel option in which I attempt to go to the naval hospital closest to my house at which point they tell me to go to sick call at Branch Medical where they tell me to drive an hour back to Mayport to go to sick call there. And then I go home because I'm the boss, it's Christmas stand down, and I've already got all the work covered for the day. Though my option was more of hassle, I prefer the end result.

For the rare person who would see fit to cast aspersions upon the quality of my service, let me just say that I am working while at home today, by phone and email. This has also happened to me before: I had mononucleosis once as a division officer abotu four years ago and the same thing happened. I was forced to drive to work while half-conscious just to prove I was still sick and be allowed to drive back home. I get this sick once a year, tops. The rest of the time I just power through. Those few times I don't, I've proven to be a danger to myself and other and nearly killed myself in two separate incidents of driving while ill.

Screw it, I'm Person of the Year, I earned it.

Where to Begin?

2006-11-26T08:16:00.000-05:00

Two months without posting and not a thing to say about it.

I wasn't completely cut off from the world, you understand. We get a little TV by satellite as long as we're heading the right direction, but I don't normally watch it. I'm on a couple of news email lists, but I never have time to read them. We were inport twice over the last couple of months, which is less than I'm used to and a bit of a challenge; but we got a couple of newspapers and magazines, whose headlines I may or may not have perused.

So even when the Internets work OK and I have the capablilty of staying in touch with the world, the world is completely different from the one I thought I left (and yet exactly the same). The Democrats took both houses of Congress? Geez, what have you people been doing? But it seems to make little difference (in a month, anyway).

In fact, somehow there are good TV shows on that have managed not to get cancelled. I admit that instead of watching football on Thanksgiving, I watched the Eureka marathon on SciFi. I remember seeing promotions for the show in June before I left for the start of the deployment, but I have no idea how long it's been on. It's a terrific show, it has great characters and a really neat story. I highly recommend it.

I saw the premiere of Heroes before I left for the second half of deployment, but that was it. It is now apparently a big hit, after almost getting cancelled. I have not been able to catch up on that or Lost and now I'm underway again tomorrow, so I'll be renting those if I don't decide to download them somewhere.

Anyway, there have been more important things to do these three days than watch TV. There is a list of things that Jack wasn't doing when I left at the beginning of October that he does now.

For starters, he sits up by himself, as long as you help him up - like a poseable action figure. He wants to climb everything, but is so far unable to do so (just wait until he can).
He gets up on his hands and knees all by himself and can't quite crawl, but rocks back and forth for a minute and then throws himself forward on his face. Silly, but it's still mobility. And when he drags himself around on his stomach, he's relatively quick.
He is enthralled by the cats and will not do anything else but watch them when they are in his field of view.
He eats baby food.
He says "Mama". I was positive his first word would be "Kitty".
He plays with blocks (his favorite thing is dumping them out of the bucket; his least favorite is falling on them after he's scattered them everywhere). I've managed to convince Red that perhaps we should stick to softer toys until he has more control.

I'm sure Red could easily add to this list, but in three short days, I was surprised at how much growing up he's done in eight weeks. Another 12 days away and who knows what he'll accomplish?

So yes, after deploying for five and a half months (with a three-week stop for repairs in homeport), and being inport for five days, we will be getting underway for not more than four different undertakings: ULTRA-S, the inspection (oh, I mean "assessment") more or less formerly known as CART II, if you're familiar with that sort of thing; and a port visit to Philadelphia for the Army/Navy game. What? you only counted two undertakings? Your point?

The Army/Navy game should be cool, and I would like to be more excited about it, but I'm at the point now where I would really rather stop missing my son growing up for a while. I'm already going to miss his first birthday and I've been lucky to get what I've gotten so far. This extra stuff immediately after the deployment blows. Not just for me, but for everybody. I can see it in the sailors and everybody. They're tired. It's been a tough deployment and it been great to be back for Thanksgiving weekend, but it's like none of it mattered.

We don't even get a homecoming, because of a few different reasons and finger-pointing. No laurel hanging from the bullnose, no band, no party on the pier, just aboot in the ass and a "get back to work". It's a shame, really, this crew deserves better.

So I will suck it up, go to Philly, hopefully tailgate and drown my sorrows in many an ice-cold Yuengling and maybe meet up with my buddy Pie from Newport. I'll go hashing, I think, and take leave if there's a gooned-up liberty policy (which you can always expect when a big-deck is the Senior Officer Present Afloat). I may be on TV, my captain very likely will be (he's a former Navy quarterback).

And I've still got a two-month gap to fill in here, but I've got some work to do.

The Miracles of Modern Technology

2006-11-22T06:44:00.000-05:00

Those of you who have been checking up on me, I tell you now how much I've appreciated it over the last couple of months. It's been rough - ocean crossings are never much fun and always long and difficult for the crew. You've been assuming I haven't posted because I'm busy - which I am - but in fact it due to the lack of bandwidth and reliable Internet. I haven't even been able to get online for weeks.

So this weekend I might have some time to post about the european deployment and what-have-you, but right now I'm bogged down with inspection preparations (we have an assessment on Monday; remember ULTRA-S?) Our local Afloat Training Group is giving us a "free look" to assist us in succeeding on Monday, meaning I'm working my sailors extra hard today.

But I am back in frigid Mayport, Jack and Red are doing fantastic - in the last six weeks, Jack has begun sitting up on his own, getting on his hands and knees and just about crawling. Last night was a less than wonderful homecoming due to my having been awake for 72 hours and falling asleep when i really wanted to spend time with my family. I'm hoping now that I've rested a bit, Thusrsday, Friday and Saturday will be more rewarding.

More later, have to go kick butt.

Across the Pond

2006-10-08T10:46:00.000-05:00

Finally done with a harrowing maintenance period in Mayport and off on the second half of deployment.

These Mayport deployments are interesting in that they follow the template for your average battle group deployment, what with a carrier and a mix of cruisers and destroyers. Mayport, Florida is the home of most of the Atlantic Fleet's frigates (I'm on one of them) and the deployments tend to have us going to South America, like I did for the first half, Counter-Narco Terrorism Interdiction in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific and the occassional trip to the Mediterranean Sea or northern Europe.

In between most of these, we get to go back to Mayport (since it's so close to the SOUTHCOM Area of Responsibility) for about two weeks to get things fixed. Meanwhile, the sailors get to go home at night, work regular hours for the most part and get to see their families. I had great time with Red and Jack, I missed them both a lot and they've both changed so much. Red has lost a lot of her pregnancy weight and I was gone for three-quarters of Jack's entire life so far, so you can imagine how much he's changed in ten weeks. I got a whole bunch of equipment repaired all at once, which was pretty overwhelming, but I'm really happy about getting it done. It did put a bit of a damper on the homecoming.

Another six weeks to go, heading to the U.K. for Neptune Warrior, a massive training exercise for us and all our NATO friends. By all accounts, it is intense and a little crazy, but I think we're prepared. I'll blog about it as time allows. What I'm really looking forward to right now is a visit to Scotland, where my best friend Egon will meet up with me and I wll take leave, and England, where I'm sure I'll figure out some way to spend my time.

I was stateside long enough to get a glimpse of the sort of stupidity that's going on a month before election day. I don't feel particularly compelled to discuss any of it. Last weekend I visited my in-laws and got enough of that from my wife's uncle Moonbat. I like being able to focus on my work and not too distracted by every breathless report of scandal. I've got my absentee ballot clipped on the wall in front of me and all I have to do is research the judges and the referendums before I send it off.

On the way across the Atlantic, we and the other ships will be doing a few exercises to practice for Neptune Warrior and trying to avoid the weather. I've been watching how most of the named hurricanes and tropical storms have been swinging up through the middle of the Atlantic and how relieved everyone in Florida was... except I knew our track would take us right through the area they've been going through. The weather will be rough enough as it is in the North Atlantic in late fall (can you say 30 foot seas?) I rarely get seasick, but I've already got a patch on and intend to keep it on throughout. I can't afford to be taken out by seasickness when I've got so much work to do.

Lots of deployment yet to write about, stay tuned.

Baited Breath

2006-09-23T16:04:00.000-05:00

Taking a quick break from enjoying my family time to express my annoyance with the dead-pool media throwing up on the front pages today that the number of U.S. citizens that have honorably given their lives fighting to end islamofascism now equals that of the number of people killed during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Y'know, I've kind of fallen off the world lately. I'd nearly forgotten that every numerical milestone statistic screams across tickers on cable television news and big bold headlines on every major newspaper.

WASHINGTON - Now the death toll is 9/11 times two.

U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now surpass those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America’s history, the trigger for what came next.

The latest milestone for a country at war came Friday without commemoration. It came without the precision of knowing who was the 2,974th to die in conflict. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Reminded me of this:

Spottswoode: From what I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.N.C.E has gathered, it would be 9/11 times 100.
Gary Johnston: 9/11 times a hundred? Jesus, that's...
Spottswoode: Yes, 91,100.
Chris: Basically, all the worst parts of the bible.

And this:

Kim Jong Il: It will be 911 times 2356.
Chris: My God, that's... I don't even know what that is!
Kim Jong Il: Nobody does!

At least somebody's counting the number of people we've saved in Iraq and the number of terrorist attacks. Is anybody counting dead terrorists?

Nothing more profound than that, I'm afraid - Jack's awake from his nap. When I asked him about this whole body count thing, he promptly spit up all over himself.

So there you go.

Bittersweet

2006-09-20T14:18:00.000-05:00

Well, it wasn't quite what I expected, but I'm home finally.

It just happened that Red had to work today when we pulled into Mayport, so after I had met with all the maintenance folks waiting for us on the pier I hitched aide home with MPA and his wife. Went out for a run and started some laundry - boring stuff that I just don't get to do underway. Later, I'll make some dinner. Ah, cooking my own food.

Red ought to be home soon with Jack. I offered to pick him up from daycare, but she's dead-set on seeing the look on my face. So, I'm cleaning house and thinking or what to buy for groceries while listening to the radio.

And loving it. I'm itching to hold Jack and kiss Red and just relax with my family tonight for the first time in months.

Two more weeks and I'm back on deployment.

2,996 Project

2006-09-14T10:47:00.000-05:00

For what it's worth, I spent my September 11th in meetings about a huge intenational training exercise called Neptune Warrior that my ship will be participating in this Fall. We're doing a Group Sail this weekend to get ready for that exercise, which was the big reason we came to Norfolk this week.

Anyway, since I was doing that - and, yes, enjoying some time off - I neglected to commemorate the vicitm assigned to me by the 2,996 Project:

Name: Lizie Martinez-Calderon
Age: 32
Killed at: World Trade Center
From city: New York
From state: N.Y.
Special Notes: Mrs. Martinez-Calderon was a secretary with the Aon company in Tower Two. Born in the Dominican Republic, she died two weeks before her 33rd birthday. She left behind her husband Marino and two children Naomi and Neftalí.

I originally signed up for this because I thought it was for people to memorialize people they knew or remember. I couldn't find the vicitms at the Pentagon or on Flight 93 on the website, and I can't load it now, but I wanted to also remember CAPT Gerald F. DeConto, a Commanding Officer of my previous ship, the USS Simpson (FFG 56) who was organizing the Navy's response to the WTC attack when the plane hit the Pentagon.

I was the Ordnance Officer on USS Simpson at the time, performing a maintence spotcheck in the Combat Information Center with FC2 Jackson, when the Combat Systems Officer (the day's Command Duty Officer) rushed into CIC and started printing messages. I asked him, "What's wrong, sir?" He said, "New York and Washington have just been attacked."

Work ceased for the most part, all personnel were recalled, the ship made preparations to get underway to support in any way necessary. I watched Fox News for nearly 24 hours straight and we didn't let anyone off the ship the for 48 hours, at which time we relaxed to two-sections, so people could see their families.

We didn't get underway to support Operation Noble Eagle, however; and I have itching to support the war more directly ever since.

Many of my shipmates were there while CAPT DeConto was the CO and remembered him fondly. We sent flowers to his wife and I met her and the rest of his family at the dedication of Memorial Hall at the Surface Warfare Officers School in Newport, RI.

So, back to the business of keeping the ship seaworthy and in prime operating condition. Hope you all have a nice weekend.

Cold-Iron... Almost Halfway

2006-09-09T13:20:00.000-05:00

The transit from Panama to Norfolk seemed incredibly short. According to my calendar it took a week, but we were pretty busy with training the whole time. I was running two drills a day for three days; it went pretty well, but wore out my training team.

Luckily we were given a chance to recharge before that with a steel beach picnic and a Caribbean swim call. I didn't have much time for pictures since I had watch right after and only had time to jump off the ship and swim back to pilot's ladder. There was a wicked current pushing the ship away and two-three foot seas, which you just don't notice when you're on the ship. I got to gawk at the propeller and rudder a bit, which is always fun. I wished I'd had some dive gear so I could've gotten a closer look!

Now we're in Norfolk, and it's almost like home. Naval Station Norfolk is the world's largest Navy base and home to the world's most bas-ass Navy. I've never been a big fan of the area, and I haven't been stationed here any longer than two weeks, ever. It must be nice to have all the Navy's resources right here waiting for you, though. It's gorgeous and sunny, not too warm, and I'm a lot happier to be here than I ever have been before.

We're in America, with shore power, sitting pierside and cold-iron and enjoying a peaceful weekend before the conferences begin for the next exercise - Group Sail. I'm not even sure which battle group it's with, but I do know they want me at these meetings for a change. It's good, I think I'll come away from them more knowledgable about what's going on.

So my first night back in America in two months was good. I went to the Navy Exchange, decided not to buy anything and go see Talledega Nights instead (it was stupid funny, I highly recommend a matinee - but I laughed pretty hard). I had no idea what any of the movies playing were about, which is kind of cool because you're always surprised.

It's the same with the news; I know things are happening and sometimes even know which things they are, but rarely have the time or energy to get upset about them when I have equipment that needs fixing and other work to take care of. Sorry about that, if you're missing my astute political and philosophical analyses - I'm in deployment mode. I stopped giving a crap about Valerie Plame before the kerfuffle started. Rantings of dictators are on the periphery. I'm not going to get to, nor do I want to see the 9/11 movie. My priorities have been elsewhere, but I'm following along with fellow bloggers as much as I'm able.

I met up with some hashers last night after eating a little bar food at Mo & O'Malley's on Granby St. while listening to irish-drinking songmeister Don Bunch. They had a fine stout there called Bareknuckle Stout, surprisingly brought to you by Anheuser-Busch and from St. Louis. I met the Tidewater hashers at Hell's Kitchen and later went to some night club where the music was too loud, the people couldn't dance and everybody was way too cool to for me. Body paint and angel wings are not my thing. I didn't stay long, but i lost my voice trying to talk over the music anyhow.

So while I'm here, I hope to spend some time hashing outside of meetings and general work. It should be a productive, yet easier week of getting things done and being able to leave the ship in the evenings.

Feeding the Trolls

2006-09-09T12:40:00.000-05:00

Always a bad idea.

I dislike anonymous posting, which is not to say you can't, but I'd prefer you to act like a functional member of society if you do. You will notice that I am not anonymous. Though I use the name "Robosquirrel" online, that name is very much associated with Matthew T. Armstrong and my name is right there at the top of the blog. One has only to Google me to find many things I've posted and written over the last ten years.

Anonymous said:

My Dad was a Chief Engineer but retired a Captain (OCS) [and how disappointed he must be in you], you have to be an academy grad [University of Minnesota. When you assume, you make an ass out of you and... just you] because the real guys do not complain or talk the smack that you talk. [Unlike anonymous Internet trolls. Apparently in your illustrious career of being related to an honorable retired veteran, you've never interacted with a U.S. Navy Sailor.] Why your wife puts up with you? [Well, I'm a dynamo in the sack. And I give great foot rubs.]..... who knows? She must be a trained MONKEY. [This would bother me if you had the balls to say this to my face. Or if you could spell] You are nothing but a floating alcoholic. [You live in your mother's basement and masturbate to Dog Fancy, as long as we're belching ad hominems; to each his own. I prefer "beer enthusiast".] Better watch your step. CO get's ["gets"] wind of this and it might be Captains Mass, [You mean Captain's "Mast"? I have done nothing unbecoming of an officer or in any way violating the orders of those appointed over me. I occassionally express annoyance with coworkers. I have neither the time or
inclination to provide you the education you so obviously lack. Your dad was in the Navy and so you're an expert? You're an idiot, know-it-all Navy brat. If your father learned any military bearing, as I'm sure he did, apparently none of it rubbed off on you. Why you don't you sign on the dotted line and try busting rust in a bilge and then we'll talk, you coward.] oh wait? He's probably a Grad too [You mean my CO, former Navy quarterback, CDR Bill Bryne? Somebody has to be.]..... ooop's, all's it will take to clear things up and get you off the hook will be a good cigar! LOL!! [What, are you twelve?]

For the record, the views expressed on People Covered in Fish are no way endorsed by the United States Navy, or my ship. They are mine and mine alone. As I've always said, this space is for me to write about things that vex me, so there will be occassional venting, sarcasm and hosility. The bottom line is that you, Anonymous, don't know me, nor are you remotely qualified to judge the quality of my, or anyone else's, service, let alone to call my wife names. Go piss up a rope.

Thank you, drive through.

ULTRA Super

2006-09-01T14:39:00.000-05:00

I'm out of good coffee. That's going to make me a cranky CHENG.

Heading to Norfolk on the heels of Ernesto. I'm hoping for good weather on the way, as we transit hurricane alley, of course. So far, the coast looks clear. I'm looking forward to being able to have my evenings free, get a little shopping done (like getting decent coffee), but it's a working port, and we have to do an inspection called "ULTRA-S" (Unit Level Training - Sustainment). It's supposed to be part of the new way that the Navy trains, where you demonstrate that you are maintaining proficiency in multiple areas. As with all other inspections, Engineering will account for something like 60% of the whole thing.

One really needs a good strong cup of coffee to deal with this new training cycle, I think - not this weak, coarse-ground, burnt-crotch-tasting garbage the ship buys. The funny thing about this inspection is that no one really knows what it is. There's a page about it in the new Surface Force Training Manual, but it's really vague as to how the ULTRA-S is conducted and what the expectations are and even what is supposed to happen or be observed. The Squadron just decided yesterday that they would observe us doing Group Sail up here in Virginia - as long as they can get observers here. We won't really have to do too much extra if that's the case. Even funnier is that all the training folks in Mayport are getting together on 7 SEP to figure out what they expect out of ULTRA S, one week before we have ours.

I actually did buy some coffee in Panama, about 20 feet from the brow, carried it with me on the pier all day yesterday and left it at the table that me and a bunch of the other officers were drinking at last night. We were back in Colon for two days for the PANAMAX closing ceremonies, to which they don't invite Chief Engineers. I'm getting to like running the ship all the time...I don't know what I'll do with all my "free time" in Norfolk - the CDO-qualified division officers will be standing most of the duty there and in Mayport. Firebug hooked me up in Norfolk, but I took a guy's duty for him so he could spend the weekend with his mom.

So I will be stuck with some of the worst coffee I've ever tasted while spending the week preparing for vaguery in Virginia. The good news is 19 days and a wake-up until Red hands Jack off to me. I'm looking forward to an extended port visit in Mayport and watching my son roll over - oh yes, he's started rolling over!

I know the world's going crazy every day and I don't write much about that anymore, but I'm sure I'll get annoyed about something in the news eventually.

Plate of Shrimp

2006-08-23T21:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I finally got off the ship yesterday about 2000 and got some beer in me. I also slept for about 12 hours, which seems to have done me some good. I looked back at yesterday's post and it sounds a little bitter. Rest assured, I am not bitter. Just annoyed at my shipmates.

Still, OPS came back last night, hands full of shopping bags, saying, "I know you're mad..."

To which I said, "Why would I be mad? You had obligations, I understand. The mission comes first. You know I don't keep count. Just get your uniform on and relieve me so I can go get beer."

"Well," he said. "I feel really bad about all the duty days you've been standing and I'm going to hook you up..."

And he told me his plan. No duty in Norfolk and at least the first weekend in Mayport off. I like his plan. See, OPS writes all the watchbills as the Senior Watch Officer, so he gets to decide who stands which watch as long as the CO buys it. I don't like him feeling sorry for me. I don't want him to feel sorry for me; I want him to take some responsibility. I dislike the expectation that I will just pick up the slack all the time and I really dislike pity.

Anyway, we’re talking about managing liberty and whatnot while my brothers in arms are in the desert getting shot at, which puts it all in perspective. I’d much rather be contributing to the Global War on Terror than worry about when I’m getting my next beer, or how much time off I get in Norfolk and Mayport. I wasn’t kidding when I said the mission comes first.

So here, in SOUTHCOM, sitting pierside in Panama, or doing all these multinational exercises and engaging foreign navies, or even sitting in the eastern Pacific trying to round up drug smugglers, how is that contributing to the GWOT? You may view it as a bit of a stretch, but I’ll tell you the way that I’ve always thought of it when I’ve been stuck doing missions in backwater areas.

Take UNITAS as an example. It’s designed to improve interoperability between the U.S. Navy and our allies in South America so that if there is a security situation or a war, we know we can work together as an international force. That’s really the reason we do any international exercise anywhere in the world, training other navies to be as good as we are, and for us to learn how best to operate with them.

Consider that Venezuela is becoming a belligerent nation and a destabilizing force. We may need to take action someday against Hugo Chavez, and it sure would be nice to have some allies in the region. Additionally, the sort of politics Chavez, Evo Morales and Fidel Castro practice impact the economics of the region and therefore the world, to include the U.S. A lot of oil, coffee, lumber, etc. comes from South America. Think about Venezuela’s increasing ties to Iran and the Muslim presence in South America. Luckily, the navies in question are largely coastal defense types, but that didn’t stop Iran from launching Exocets at the USS Stark.

Also consider that there are some significant rebel/terrorist groups in South America (like Shining Path in Peru, or the FARC in Colombia). There is also a minor presence of various Middle Eastern-based groups, not to bomb us, but to provide financial support. Most terrorist groups get a large amount of funding from various illegal commerce, primarily the drug trade. This is why they call is “Counter Narco-Terrorism Operations” when we come down here to stop drug smugglers on their way to Mexico. (They don’t need to take marijuana or cocaine directly to the U.S. because the laws in Mexico are lax and the border is porous). I’ll probably write more about CNT operations on my CNT deployment next year. This is also why my best friend Egon nearly gave his life to give Afghan farmers an alternative to growing poppies (it is slightly more complicated than that…). I’m glad he’s writing a book about his experiences and hope I get a signed copy.

Think about the Panama Canal and the fact that it is a single point of failure for the global economy. Goods bound for ports all over the world pass through it daily. It ties America’s east coast and west coast together. PANAMAX, the exercise I’ll be doing this week and next, is all about stopping a terrorist threat to the Canal. This is not an imagined threat or an exercise with some wild imaginary scenario. This is based on real life and protecting real world interests.

We’re living in a world that is increasingly interconnected, mainly because of economics and commerce. This is a big reason targets for terrorists are commercial targets – huge potential body count, soft targets and biggest impact-to-resources required ratio. Terrorists are not stupid people and realize America’s strength and the strength of all industrialized nations lies in our economic stability. And trade between the US and smaller, poorer nations increases the strength or those nations as well.

If we help those nations become stronger forces in their regions and increase the capabilities of their militaries, they’re more likely to become stabilizing forces themselves and maybe even our friends.

So when I’m having a beer on the pier in Colon, or I’m refueling from a Chilean Navy oiler, or folding my socks, I’m supporting the Global War on Terror. And damn proud of it, too.

Tedium

2006-08-22T09:47:00.000-05:00

Just thinking a bit about how I'm a little bored and frustrated today and wondering how good of an idea it is to pour my heart out on the blog. Deployments are like that. It's really crazy one minute and the next minute you're just wondering what to do with yourself.

Here's something I realized, though, even when I'm bored I'm doing stuff nobody else gets to do. For example, I am currently the ranking officer on board the ship. I'm, like, totally in charge. And I've got my helicopter on deck conducting ground turns - meaning she's chained to the flight deck and engaging her rotors while we are pierside in Colon, Panama. Come to think of it, that's pretty cool, but it doesn't involve me much other than that I am giving permission for the Air Department to do cetrain things when they ask.

I've got other things going on as well, like high-visibility repairs to items that are mission-impacting. Of course, it seems like every casualty we have these days is mission-impacting. The best part about those problems is that we fix them and usually without any help. Ships get awards and extra money for that kind of thing, so I'm really excited about how self-sufficient we are. I've been on ship that couldn't do much without outside assistance.

This is another one of those liberty ports that kind of blows and I don't get to leave the ship anyway. It's even worse this time; Colon is a huge industrial shipping port on the north side of the Panama Canal where there's really nothing to do and judging by the liberty policy set forth by the Senior Officer Present Afloat (SOPA), USS Kearsarge, it must be the most dangerous place I've ever been. Liberty is confined to the pier for all six ships in port AND you have to have a liberty buddy.

In fairness, the pier isn't too bad for liberty. It's a big shopping arcade for cruise ships waiting to transit the Canal. There are a couple of bars and stores and kiosks. There's a whole bunch of pay phones, too, so I'm definitely giving Red a call tonight.

But for now, I've been Command Duty Officer since we pulled in yesterday. I'm doing by best to just chill out unless there's something I can't delegate to someone on watch. Am I lazy? Mmmmm, yeah, a bit. Also sick of doing this every port; not the duty so much as the failure of my peers to plan. Once again, Firebug had to attend a bunch of meetings and refused to plan accordingly, and tried to point the finger at me, saying it was my fault for not planning to swap duty with him when he's the one with obligations to meet on his duty day. When he told me I would be standing his duty, I immediately told him, "Bullshit!" and said he could swap with Oscar. Oscar commenced whining about how he would need to be here all day Wednesday whether he had duty or not.

These two should get down on their orange and yellow knees and kiss my clown feet that no one made them an Engineer. It is the department head's lot that work must occassionaly be done when you would otherwise have a frosty alcoholic beverage in hand. It can't be helped, the mission comes first. The first day in just about any port, I spend refueling and I work with my folks to get things fixed the rest of the time. I love it, and wouldn't have it any other way. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best billet I've ever had. And it's work-intensive and sweaty and dirty and six kinds of awesome. The riders have no idea how good they have and whine about things constantly. An engineer sees them for what they are - pansies.

It might be apparent that the effect this has on me is frustration because they lack the big picture. I've done Oscar's job before, and it's not that hard. I've never done Firebug's job, but I understand how much it sucks, which is why I never want to do it.

So I've made the most of my pereptual duty by playing a couple of rounds of Scrabble last night. I won both. The first one, Gator joined in late and said we didn't have to give him an extra turn and he came very close to beating me anyway. The second round, on his last turn, I had a score of 180 and he scored 182. I had one letter left in my hand - an "E". My only hope, of course was to able to place it somewhere and end the game. The board was tight, but I finally found and a free spot and spelled "el", tying the game, going out and forcing him to subract his remaining two letters from his score and add them to mine, roundly crushing my opponent.

And I finished off the evening by watching a bootleg copy of Superman, which I've been waiting to see for years, and when it finally came out, it was the exact day I left for deployment. In Asian and South American nations, there is a huge market for bootleg videos for tourists. One of officers bought this, and although I've been resisting the urge to borrow it, I finally succumbed to the temption of it just sitting there in his inbox every time I walked past it. The quality was poor and someone walked in front of the camera once, but otherwise I really enjoyed it and can't wait to buy it when I get home. That and the first season of Dr. Who. I could do it now, but I want to, yes, make sure it's OK with Red.

Tonight, assuming I get off the ship, it'll be a little souvenir shopping, postcards and beer. It looks like there's a little mini-mart, too. Perhaps some groceries.

Lunchtime now. There are tater tots. They're not American tater tots, but more like little balls of deep-fried mashed potatoes.

But it'll do in a pinch.

I Play the Guitar.

2006-08-21T11:01:00.000-05:00

Poorly.

For my 28th birthday (two and half years ago, for those of you keeping track), I told my wife I really wanted to learn how to play the guitar. That kept up for about six months, and I haven’t played much since. Most of what I’ve learned has been through sites where musicians post tablature (“guitar tabs”) for songs that they have either picked out themselves, or copied out of books.

I can play “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd and “What’s Going On?” by Four Non-Blondes, and that’s about it. Egon tried to teach me “Creep” by Radiohead, but that didn’t stick very well. More practice is required! I’m planning on bringing my guitar for the second half of deployment. I also want to learn some kids’ songs for… well, my kids. I really got my daughter Kiddo interested in guitar and bought her one for her birthday, but all she remembers is an “A” chord. So if nothing else, it’s something fun we can learn together, and hopefully for Jack as well, when he’s older.

Now, according to Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times and Ian Youngs of the BBC, the music industry – which consists of people who would like to send you to prison for making mix tapes, by the way - is saying that guitar tab sites like GuitarTabs.com are taking money away from hard-working musicians by teaching aspiring musicians how to play their songs.

No seriously. I can’t teach myself to play songs for my kids, or I’ll go to jail.

The advent of Internet made the sharing of ideas that human have always done for thousands of years really easy and lightning fast. So now, ideas are shared in bulk. This goes for music. When I was a kid, I’d buy tapes or record songs off the radio and mix tapes together and share them with my friends. Now, it’s done in such mass volume that it’s a crime. Now I can’t even learn how to play a song without paying ten dollars for sheet music per song? (Making up a cost, here. I remember that it’s not worth it.)

Now, I understand about copyright law and intellectual property law, but I’m a common sense guy. If I ever do write that book someday, I wouldn’t want anyone to steal it, copy it and sell it as their own. But, playing the songs of artists you like should be flattering to those artists. Why record albums and do concerts and shows if you don’t want people to enjoy the music? Are we seriously going to make laws that say it’s only OK for me to listen to a song if the original artist plays it?

Are there going to be middle-of-the-night raids on night clubs featuring cover bands and tribute bands? “Dude, did Lars Ulrich give you permission to play “Ride the Lightning”? No? You’re so busted!” How far will it go, I wonder? We have a petty officer onboard known only as “The Artist” who worships Prince and is able to perform like Prince, too. I have the video to prove it, which I will upload as soon as I get some freakin’ bandwidth.

What of him, U.S. Music Publishers Association? What of him?

UPDATE: More guitar bloggery from Earl at guitarguitarguitar. Thanks for visiting, earl!

Weighing Anchor

2006-08-19T03:38:00.000-05:00

Actually, we already weighed the anchor and judging by the bumps we just experienced, we're probably in the first Gatun Lock by now.

You can actually watch the ship, or any ship pass through the Canal via the webcams at the Panama Canal Authority. So forgive my overlooking of OPSEC at the moment.We're going to be hanging around Panama for a bit, conducting PANAMAX on the Caribbean side. We'll not be getting much liberty, so I'm looking at Norfolk, VA, as my next opportunity to get off the ship for a bit.

The exercise with Ecuador was interesting if not frustrating. In the U.S. Navy we operate under a concept of decentralized control. We divide the war up into different areas of responsibility and each commander acts indepentently in his area unless directed otherwise by the overall officer in tactical command. We're faster and more flexible that way.

The big difference I've noticed in operating with the various navies of South America over the past two months is that they are extremely centralized, in that one commander has overall control of everything and no one makes a move without getting it OK'ed by him.

Ecuador so far has been the most frustrating example. Twice in 24 hours I was directed by the Ecuadorian commander to recover my helicopter immediately after I launched it, becuase he hadn't said it was OK for me to launch it - even though it was in support of an event the required the helo to be on station at a certain time. In the U.S., if we say the helo must be on station at a certain time, it is expected that the ship will act independently to get the helo airborne and on station on time. The Ecuadorian commander was adamant about having each event finished before we could even prepare for the next one, and therefore nothing started on time.

Peru and Chile weren't nearly as bad, but also very centralized. I'm interested in, but not looking forward to, seeing what working with Panama will be like. There are a lot of other American ships and special forces down here now, so it should be pretty cool.

Want to see a picture of my ship? It's really tough to make out on that webcam, this picture is better.

Valparaiso

2006-08-14T23:07:00.001-05:00

Sunset between Vina del Mar and Valparaiso, Chile.

Wine country outside of Valparaiso

Lemming

2006-08-14T21:21:00.000-05:00

Since I love to read and no one tagged me, I figured I'd share the memeage.

One Book That Changed My Life: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
A book I have read more than once: As a rule I don't do this much. The one that comes to mind is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
One Book I would want on a desert island: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
One Book that made me laugh: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore.
One Book that made me cry: There's been a few, but right now all I can think of is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling.
One Book I wish I had written: Space Cowboy (working title) by Matthew T. Armstrong
One Book you wish had never been written: None. I suppose this is worth expounding upon, but put simply, wishing certain books had never been written puts me in mind of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
One Book I am currently reading: System of the World by Neal Stephenson
One Book I have been meaning to read: The Commodores by Guttridge & Smith

Captive Audience

2006-08-13T14:30:00.000-05:00

One thing I really like about deployments is the fact that everybody’s stuck on the ship, so we may as well train ourselves. What else are we going to do? I suppose we could sit around and watch movies all day, like the Air Department… but no! I spend up to ten hours a day on watch and the last three days when I haven’t been sitting in cool, blue-lit room in front of a radar scope, I’ve been running Basic Engineering Casualty Control Exercises (“BECCES,” pronounced “beckies”). Eight hours of plotting disasters for the watch team every day really tends to fill the time between watches, resulting in a stack of paperwork on my desk that I am ignoring at the moment.

I'm getting a little downtime to enjoy the scenery too. There have been some gorgeous sunsets at sea and the full moon has really made the evenings beautiful. In Valparaiso I also got some postcard-esque sunset pictures.

The watches themselves between Valparaiso, Chile, and Manta, Ecuador, have been slow and good for training time as well. I did only one battle scenario, but I’m helping junior officers get qualified to stand watch in CIC and the bridge during the down time. I also have to give an Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW) board for my Auxiliaries Officer (AUXO) and Main Propulsion Assistant (MPA) so they can help out on the watchbill and also move on to higher qualifications. I’m hoping AUXO will be our fourth Tactical Action Officer (TAO – the watch I stand, which means I will stand less watch) and MPA will need to get up to the bridge eventually. I’m working actively to professionally enable the men who work for me as much as possible.

Of course, we do occasionally get distracted when there’s not much going on during watch and sometimes people get squirrely. Last night was interesting because my Watch Supervisor walked up to me asked a really thoughtful and important question: MacGyver or James Bond?

Good question! At first I was inclined to say James Bond, as were most of the sailors because he obviously gets all the women, but that’s too easy. To me the question is about the gadgets; who would you rather be in a life-and-death situation? James Bond survives by virtue of overconfident villains and Q. MacGyver has a Swiss Army knife and a houseboat-load of pluck. And he gets plenty of girls, but he treats them with respect, and they dig his mullet. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I dig James Bond, but between the two, I’d rather be MacGyver.

So I pose the question to you, blogosphere: MacGyver or James Bond?

In other news, the no-shave chit for a week went well. Beard growth was trucking right along before it was cut down in its prime last night; however, I’m keeping the mustache. Here’s me in my Engineering Training Team Leader gear a few hours prior to its untimely demise.

Mail Call

2006-08-08T19:16:00.000-05:00

Red finally sent me some pictures of Pirate Jack. It really made my day. I'm missing the heck out of them, but I'll get to see them in September and hearing from her periodically makes me smile.

Good day today but tired. Fought a couple of battle scenarios in multiple warfare areas on my watch this afternoon and spent the morning with the department trying to catch up on work. It's tough getting it all done when I'm standing watches in CIC twice a day or so. Luckily, I have amazing people working for me that can make things happen, but I still feel like I'm neglecting them a bit.

The engineers are busting hump trying to get our spaces ready for just about everybody to inspect them. They started with me, then I have an entire month of zone inspections with the Captain (one division a week for four weeks), another inspection in the fall and the really big inspection that happens every five years that eats COs and Chief Engineers for breakfast: INSURV.

The Board of Inspection and Survey was established by CONGRESS in 1868 under Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (who just had another ship named after him) to ensure that the ships of the United States Navy are properly equipped for prompt, reliable, sustained mission readiness at sea. They have been striking fear into the hearts of decent sailors ever since.

It's a leadership issue, and my department has that in spades: they've been starved for it and are eager to get the material status of the ship up to where we want it, so we can show it off.

Anyway, I'm not sweating it because comparing the way things were when I reported to the way things are right now, I see significant progress. I'm really proud of the work they're doing. When it comes right down to it, they take pride in their work and want to succeed just as much I do. It's easy to get worried about these things. My biggest worry is living up to the responsibility and honor of being their leader.

And lastly to really coax out your closet geek, Star Trek Inspirational Posters, courtesy of Ewin.

Not very profound lately, sorry. Have to get up at 0100 for watch.

Holiday Routine

2006-08-07T17:03:00.000-05:00

I really have to learn to stop thinking about things to post right before I have meetings. Today we’re having some well-deserved holiday routine. You may say, but Robo, you just got done with two days of liberty in Valparasio, Chile, you just had a holiday.

Well, sure if you want to be pedantic. I did make some non-restful choices, however. The first night in, ORDO, 1st LT, two midshipmen and I met up with our karaoke buddies from the Araucano for dinner before getting wined and dined (mainly wined) at the Chilean Naval Club, then out with our friends to discotheques all night long. I arrived back at the ship that night at 0500… Woke up at 0830 to go on a wine tour (should’ve gone skiing, ended up spending about as much and would’ve had a better time, but done less shopping). Steak dinner later on and an early night on Friday.

Since we got underway in the afternoon yesterday, I ended up standing the reveille watch (0200-0700), which worked out pretty well with not much going on yesterday or this morning and time to rest up.

So with all that down time, why holiday routine today? Well it’s normal practice in most ships to have holiday routine on Sundays and federal holidays whenever operational commitments allow. There’s no quarters or mustering, few meetings, lay services and we get to take it easy a bit for the day. With the last month or so of zooming around the southeast Pacific with several of our closest South American allies for UNITAS 06, the schedule has been packed too tight for that kind of thing.

I don’t know how long ago, probably since the last time I did UNITAS four years ago, the other countries that participated said that there was too much down time. So in the planning process for this one, the schedule was packed so tight that it was impossible to do everything. At the debrief, the other countries said that maybe that was a bit too much. I agree, it was miserable; but outside the liferails we looked pretty good. The other navies involved (Spain, Peru and Chile) were impressed with our performance, even though we were hard on ourselves.

Ooh, the second class association is selling no-shave chits on the mess decks! I’m going to get one of those! It’ll give me an excuse to grow my mustache back. That’s usually how it starts. Then Red tolerates it for a while and finally tells me to get rid of it. It’s the Circle of Facial Hair. I showed my watchteam in the Combat Information Center (CIC) my military ID with the mustache I had two years ago and they couldn’t comprehend its awesomeness.

Game On

2006-08-02T11:14:00.000-05:00

I took a quick look at my blog the other day and noticed it had miraculously fixed itself. So I'm cross-posting a LiveJournal post for now. We'll see if it works.

U.S. Navy Supports Chilean UNITAS

While we were in Mejillones, some of our sailors did some community service at a retirement home, helping to rebuild a deteriorating building. Later on the mayor of Mejillones treated them to dinner. A bunch of my enginners helped out, especially the electricians with the wiring, and one of my guys (Hull Maintenance Technician Fireman Alex Anderson) was quoted in the above article.

The first half of UNITAS was extremely busy. Now we're doing the final battle problem, a large part of which will involve querying and boarding other ships looking for weapons smugglers. The bad guys have been probing us most of the last few hours, but we're overt and not engaging in open hostilities.

Yet.

Shenannigans always run rampant among the Americans between OPFOR and Blue Forces in these exercises. USS CARNEY and USCGS MOHAWK are playing for the bad guys and the smugglers respectively and have already tried getting us to give away our position on our common circuits... of course, I did the same thing.

I didn't really have to give them our position anyway, they know exactly where we are, and we know they're watching. In fact, one of the submarines on their side, a Peruvian Type 209 called the SS Thompson, called us up and asked us to relay our own postion, course and speed to the OPFOR commander, thinking we were USS CARNEY. We're answering the phone as "orange forces" next time they call.

Looking forward to Vaparaiso and the possiblity of no duty, so perhaps I'll get to see and do more this time. Picture posting is light because it takes forever - I'm trying to do it now, but sleep time is precious!

Busy Bead Aquarium Friends

2006-06-25T07:50:00.000-05:00

If my son needs plastic fish as friends, I've failed as a father. Then again, I think my daughter could use a few friends. We got Kiddo outside of the house once or twice and met a few of the neighbor girls but she's been spending most of my work days playing on the computer and pestering Red and Mom-in-Law about how she will only eat certain foods if they come in the right color packages. But that's another story.

Before we left Rhode Island (hopefully forever, as far as I am concerned) we began to receive mountains of mailings from companies hawking baby products. Those of you who are parent will likely have experienced this. I suspect it's because Red likes to give out our name and address at baby stores. When they ask me if they can have my name and address, I say, "No."

As soon as the commerce machine got wind of our having a baby, we started receiving sample package junk in the mail, most of which we couldn't use, like Huggies that were too small and formula we hadn't planned to use (still breastfeeding, but supplementing with formula). The same thing happens when you move; somehow your name gets on a list and everybody wants to perform lawn service and test your water. Dude! I'm on city water! Give me a break already! More about that sales call some other time.

One of those baby product companies was called Babee Tenda, which has been on the scene for about 50 years selling expensive ugly little high chairs and apparently scaring the crap out of parents to do it. The sales representative sends out cards in the mail declaring a "baby safety seminar" on some date, not disclosing company affiliation or intention to sell you lots of stuff.

I said to Red as soon as I saw the card, "I wonder what they're selling." That just pissed her off and we went anyway. I sat through most of the presentation trying not to roll my eyes and storm out. For hours he didn't even try to sell us anything, but let us know who he worked for and what he was going to talk about, then with a packed hotel meeting room full of paranoid parents and nervous pregnant women, he demonstrated why every baby product on the planet was inadequate to have babies anywhere near.

OK, I'll admit, when I saw the leg of that swing lift up while my son was in it, I was a bit concerned, and yes, I remember knocking the high chair over when I was in it as a child. This feeding table has a low center of gravity and a wide base, and spent a few minutes banging on it myself, checking quality of construction and to see how stable it really was. It turns out they are well-made, but just as stable as one of those modern plastic high chairs on it's lowest height setting. Of course, high chair trays can be kicked off and the plastic isn't all that sturdy.

Then I thought, well, I didn't bother checking any of the things on our baby registry this way. Just this guy who seems to me like he trying to scare people into buying what seems to be a perfectly good product that would sell just fine in a store. They just make more money when they direct-sell it.

The salesman kept going on and on about how the government regulations on baby furniture are inadequate and that the government should do something, but they don't... This in particular annoyed me. The government can't prevent all harm from coming to you; take some responsibility.

At this point, I'm not buying it. Then I see the crib. I like this crib. I remember me and my brother and sisters in our crib, climbing out, getting stuck between the bars, all that stuff. This thing is awesome; it's got high, close rails; no knobs for anything to catch on if kids climb over them, even a door for older kids so they don't have to climb to get out. The safety locks are complicated, but not impossible to operate. And it's convertible, so we can use it for a while, plus it was cheaper than the other convertible cribs we'd seen.

So we bought it, plus the feeding table. I was still annoyed by the sales tactics, though. These seem to be pretty good products, so why sell them this way? Why not something more... honest?

Permanent Change of Station

2006-06-16T11:07:00.000-05:00

Well, I tried posting from the hotels as we travelled cross-country, but it didn't work out. Slow connection or something, but it wasn't much. We're safe in Jacksonville, but not quite finished with the transition. The move took most of the day on Friday the 9th, which should've given me a clue as to the nature of the company I was dealing with. As a result, we decided to wait until Saturday morning to get started on the drive to Florida.

We only managed about 330 miles. It was pouring when we left Rhode Island. I was driving the Hashmobile packed with most of our luggage and the cats, Logan and Rogue. Red was driving Ziggy with Jack, Mom-in-Law, most of the junk the movers wouldn't take (booze, explosives, etc.) and the kayaks strapped to the roof. You can imagine the crosswinds were hell on her the whole way. Turns out that "hand-tight" isn't tight enough for those racks, either; we nearly lost the boats on the New Jersey Turnpike! So we lost some time fixing that and stopped in Perryville, MD.

The next day we made it about 490 miles all the way to Florence, SC, home of the accidental atomic bombing of South Carolina, which sounds way cooler than South of the Border. We pulled into Jacksonville on Monday afternoon, only to discover we couldn't move into our house until Saturday because our household goods had not yet left Connecticut.

Anyhow, WiFi has been available, but time limited due to baby and now visiting Kiddo. I just reported to USS HALYBURTON this morning and clearly have my work cut out for me. Hope to keep the the anyone who is interested informed, but the only time alone for thoughtful blogging I've gotten in a week due to family concerns has been this five minutes I've just spent sitting in the parking lot of Panera in my whites in the car.

Thanks all for the comments, I'll try to update as I get time and hope to blog the deployment depending on connectivity.

Dirty

2006-05-31T14:08:00.000-05:00

Busy changing diapers and all my Fleet Week pictures are awful.

That said, Fleet Week was a blast; or would've been if I'd been there all week with six full summer white uniforms. After one night bouncing between Times Square, Chelsea and Greenwich Village, my whites were completely trashed (and so was I). It's probably a good thing we only had the one night.

I was visiting the USS Klakring for, ahem, "training", but one thing led to another and I ended up on liberty. She was moored outboard USS Mitze, a new destroyer, and across the pier from USS San Antonio, the flagship of the new LPDs. It was pretty neat seeing those brand new ships, I wish I had had time for a tour. Red was a bit apprehensive about me going and even more so upon hearing that the liberty uniform would be whites - no civilian attire allowed. She had good reason to be. I smiled and humored the flirty ladies with the other three married guys I was hanging out with and we all made it out with our integrity intact, just in case you were wondering. I did have a difficult time trying to make some people understand that nobody goes home with the bartender.

We had just gotten off the train in Times Square when immediately a couple of ladies asked to have their pictures taken with me and my three buddies. And as soon as they posed, suddenly about three other families and groups of women got the same idea. That kind of thing went on all day! Just as we were about to duck into the Hard Rock Cafe, we were stopped by a cute stringer from the New York Times and briefly interviewed. Even though I rolled out the, "Hey, I have a journalism degree, too!" mojo, we couldn't convince her to show us to a good place to have lunch with her during the interview. Nice girl though, no idea where the article would be. Come to think of it, I didn't bother to check her credentials. Bad PAO!

At Hard Rock, the manager was all over one of my friends and sitting and flirting with us and gave us a modest discount on our bill. She also pointed out a bunch of great bars and restaurants to visit in the Village. And she gave us her phone number, you know, in case we got lost or needed "anything at all".

We visited some places I enjoyed though, like Cafe Wha?, the Peculier Pub, the Slaughtered Lamb Pub among the places I remember. Also on our way to dinner at what turned out to be a really nice French restaurant (the outdoor seating sold us) some guy walked up to us, handed one of my buddies $200 and told him to buy us a round of drinks on him. We tried half-heartedly to return it, but he scurried away. Dude, if you ever this someday, thanks.

It was terrific, heartening experience. I should've done it years ago. It's so weird walking around a city having random strangers want to be really nice to you. I shudder to think what would've happened had I been single; there were definitely some girls on the prowl.

I also would like to point out a good editorial in the Wall Street Journal today which eloquently sums up my thoughts on Al Gore and all this global warming ballyhoo:

Here's a test. What if science showed conclusively that global warming is produced by natural forces, with all the same theorized ill effects for humanity, but that human action could forestall natural change? Or what if man-made warming were real, but offsetting the arrival of a natural ice age? Would Mr. Gore tell us meekly to submit to whatever nature metes out because it's "natural"?

Mr. Gore's next movie should be about the urge to propitiate the gods with sacrifices, a ritual whose appeal did not go out with the Aztecs. Yes, Al, let us give billions to alternative energy bureaucrats and emissions regulators. This we do as a tribute to your shamanism, although it will make little appreciable difference to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Share and enjoy!

Pushing Rope

2006-05-28T16:32:00.000-05:00

How do you push a rope?

The liberal establishment continues to be surprised by people actually doing things that they say they're going to do. The government drags its heels on the things that it is actually supposed to be doing and suddenly we're surprised when Americans start getting together and solving their own problems again? How are we supposed to establish a socialist utopia if people are self-sufficient and independent? Damn that American spirit!

The AP was shaking it's metaphorical head at the prospect of the Minutemen gaining mainstream acceptance. Global Security cites polls in its "Great Wall of Mexico" article that Americans would prefer a border fence by about 51%/37%, though Rueters has a poll that disagrees. Y'know, if you put any stock in polls. Am I the only one with in government service who doesn't make decisions based upon what a "randomly" selected group of individuals else thinks? The majority of public opinion reporting I've heard with what little attention I've been paying of late seems to support a barrier of some kind, since 400 miles of desert doesn't seem to be cutting it.

President Bush gave a speech May 15th on the idiot box outlining five goals:

First, the United States must secure its borders. This is a basic responsibility of a sovereign nation. It is also an urgent requirement of our national security.
Second, to secure our border we must create a temporary worker program.
Third, we need to hold employers to account for the workers they hire. It is against the law to hire someone who is in this country illegally. Yet businesses often cannot verify the legal status of their employees, because of the widespread problem of document fraud.
Fourth, we must face the reality that millions of illegal immigrants are here already.
Fifth, we must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot, which has made us one nation out of many peoples.

Well, that all sounds hunky-dory, but if he actually puts actions behind these words (in a way that does not exacerbate the problem), color me surprised. At least he's making it sound like he's trying to do something about it. And at least the issue is being addressed in the floundering, retarded way that government handles everything, but addressed nonetheless. Who wants to start a pool on how soon and for how long it will be forgotten again?

A friend who sits next to me in my Prospective Engineering Officer Course started going on and on about immigration one day while I was trying to study. Fred and his wife are wonderful people (well, his wife is, anyway... ;]) that my wife and I are fortunate to know, and he's an outstanding officer. They are also Puerto Rican, so it's one of those issues that sticks in his craw, I suppose. Particularly since he's had some personal unpleasant experiences living in and driving through border states.

Fred told me about driving through the southwest (might've been New Mexico) about three years ago, when he stopped for gas in a small town. A local who saw him demanded to know "what he was doing here" and that he "go back to Mexico." He said that the guy was with the Minutemen and was demanding to see his papers. The fellow gets more agitated and Fred's sitting there in his Miata with military stickers, his wife in the car and being threatened by this ignorant slob. So Fred tells him, "Look my friend, my gun is in my trunk; you want to see who can get there first?"

So Fred is under the impression, possibly an accurate one, that the Minuteman Project is fostering a bit of hostility toward Hispanics in general. My understanding is that the fellow who Fred encountered, if he was a Minuteman, did not adhere to the Minuteman pledge (.PDF). I hope he is the exception and not the rule, but there are probably more of them than we know. I think it's unfortunate that good people are being harassed in the name of a good idea.

Anyway, he doesn't think a wall or a fence or putting troops on the border are the answer to this particular problem and would much prefer a step which the current officeholders will likely never take: welfare reform.

This option is attractive to me because it doesn't strain the military and it frees up my tax dollars so the government doesn't need to take them in the first place. If someone can make more money sitting at home watching The Price is Right while on welfare than they can washing dishes at a restaurant, what you have is a basic economic decision. So Americans who don't want to work don't have to, illegal immigrants who don't want to work don't have to, and illegal immigrants who want to work keep wages depressed and taxes high with virtually no consequences to any of these parties. Result: undesirable behavior is rewarded.

Additionally, as Crazy P has written, many (if not most) of the illegal border crossings have nothing to with hardworking people coming here looking for the American dream.

However, I disagree that other measures will not work, and that welfare reform alone will do the job. I think people are looking at this through typical either/or mentality. My proposal is let's do it all. Build that wall, reform that welfare, arrest and deport them. You think it's impossible to expel 12 million illegal immigrants from the U.S.? If Mexico can do it, so can we! Remove some road blocks to citizenship for those who truly want to join the American Experiment and let people come here legally via a guest-worker program (don't we already do work visas?).

Here's another novel idea: hold the states responsible for border enforcement? Send the National Guard under operational control of the state governors. Reward states that produce results with additional funding, perhaps... Now there's your tax dollars at work! We have individual states for a reason, and New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and California should be taking the lead on this (not to mention the northern border states.

And Mexico, as a sovereign nation, you should be ashamed, passing your problems on to the United States so the rest of your people can live in a steadily deteriorating society the deteriorates slower because your undesirables are up making money on the border.

What I mean to say is that this is a complex issue without an easy solution. The least of our concerns should be the welfare of people breaking the law - how about the welfare of Americans? Perhaps the government needs to start looking at how to make Americans happy. (Particulary the ones with desperate men crossing the desert threatening their families, destroying their property and peeing in their shrubs.) I contend that the best way for the federal government to do that is to keep us safe from criminals and foreign invaders, fix the potholes and leave us the hell alone.

But to the original question: how do you push a rope? You freeze it. Similarly any meaningful solution to illegal immigration must start with border security before any headway can be made, not guest worker programs.

More:
Crazy Politico: Reaction
Reuters: Immigration is Mexico's Disgrace
Yahoo News: Mexico Threatens Suits Over Guard Patrols
Maggie Gallagher: My Day Without Immigrants...

Overall, what the Day Without Immigrants reveals is this: We Americans love hardworking immigrants. America is still a nation of immigrants. But America is not a nation that depends on low-skill immigrant workers for our prosperity. In truth, they need us more than we need them.

Previous:
Disparity
What Border Problem?
Invasion
Connect The Dots

Antidote to Misandry

2006-05-28T10:58:00.000-05:00

Tired of polite society trying to metaphorically castrate and defenestrate all red-blooded males? Me too, which is why I enjoyed this essay at The Other Side of Kim du Toit: The Pussification Of The Western Male (TFHT: Dr. Helen, a great supporter of the manly man and the InstaWife).

Share and enjoy!

Con-fusion

2006-05-27T07:54:00.000-05:00

I don't know if I can really call myself a "Milblogger". I'd like to be included under that prestigious umbrella, being likely candidate for a 20-year career in the Navy (a little over 12 years to go!), but my interests don't lie solely in my service. I'm an average guy with a lot of things on his mind who just happens to command rough men who stand ready to do violence on your behalf while going down to the sea in ships.

So my focus hasn't really been on the Iraq front of the Global War on Terror. Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent perspective on Iraq, which he lays out this weekend, which I recommend (I always recommend VDH, make him a regular read, link him on your blog, whatever it takes). The points he makes are points I've also made in conversations with short-sighted folks. A Turkish girl about a year ago insisted my perspective would change if I read about the history of Iraq, which I did; and it solidified my conviction that we have absolutely done the right thing.

So I'm galled that, just when I'm beginning to think the administration has is together, the Honorable Commander in Chief starts admitting "mistakes were made", throwing kerosene on the dying embers of criticism. It's not that mistakes weren't made, that much should be obvious to any observer. What the armchair quarterbacks don't get is that this whole leader-of-the-free world thing isn't as easy as it looks on TV. Mistakes and setbacks are a fact of war - nitpicking every single one does nothing for the cause. Then again, for people who like to keep count of the number of dead soldiers, the cause doesn't mean a whole lot.

Some people liken the Global War on Terror to the War on Drugs (i.e. c'mon, you can't seriously declare war on terror). I've personally, er... participated in the War on Drugs and have found it to be, yes, part of the GWOT. Why else would we be pouring money into Afghanistan to encourage the farmers to find something better to do than growing poppies (as just one example). Also while I was in the eastern Pacific looking for drug smugglers in 2002, international links were being uncovered between regional and international terrorist organizations, the South American drug trade and other organized crime (slave trade and piracy among them). Hopefully I can dig up some references to these relationships.

This is why our neglect of the border and the populist revolution in South America disturbs me. Especially since Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba want to cozy up to Iran.

So what I'm trying to say here is that even though the media at large paints a picture of Iraq and Afghanistan and al Qaeda being separate events and tries to make it sound like the President and his administration are alternately complete fools or persuing some nefarious agenda all their own (or, remarkably, both at the same time). All the while, we have succeeded and will continue to do so.

The ultimate cause that we're fighting for, maybe it's a bit of a high concept for some, because it involves such a paradigm shift from pre-9/11 thought. We thought the world had turned into a wonderful utopia and enlightened place. Or maybe we just thought it was as good as it would ever get. It turned out that the world never was a safe place and rather than dealing with our problems and our enemies, we just ignored them in the hope that they would leave us alone.

People need to realize that nobody knows how to do this perfectly, how to completely stop fanatical lunatics from flying airplanes into things (something we dicussed on my first ship following the USS Cole bombing), how to keep violent and savage people from dominating others. What I do know is that what we were doing before, nothing, only worked for the people who have freedom to take for granted. I do know that is wrong to allow the world to remain a hostile place and leave its problems for my son and daughter to solve.

Setting events in motion now guarantees their freedom from fear of terrorism in 50 years, just as we have nothing to fear from Germany or Japan today thanks to the heroism of our grandfathers. The world is too big to keep everyone from harm, but with Iraq and Afghanistan, the seeds have been sown for a potential change in the way that region operates. This is a long-term change: it took a lot of time to screw up the Middle East and it's going to take a long time to unscrew it.

EDIT: For months I had meant to make reference to this, but at this point, I think I'm just going to supply the links to the famous "Documents Recovered in Iraq That Seem to Indicate Links Between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, That the Pentagon Was Sitting On." This link will be conveniently in the sidebar for you to preuse at your... uh, convenience.

Not like a silly little thing like evidence will sway the believers in the Bush = Hitler philosophy. I wonder who they'll hate in 2008?

Previous:
Fantastic! Incredible! Holy Hellfire, Tell Us About It!

Catching My Breath

2006-05-26T15:29:00.000-05:00

I suppose it goes without saying that posting is and will continue to be sporadic here at PCIF. Those of you with kids probably know that while my interest in current events hasn't changed, my time and inclination to write about them of late absolutely have. I've been getting a lot more satisfaction out of staring at him, rocking him, burping him and changing his diaper. Trying hard to be a good dad and husband; I don't think I could do much worse than this guy. Thank goodness the bar is set so low. Thanks for everyone's well-wishes; Jack and Red are doing great. They're unconscious right now, as I probably ought to be, having been up since about 0430.

Some servicemembers do that as a habit, but I've never been a morning person. Sure, Jack woke us up, but I had to get going anyway because I had my last test ever here at the Surface Warfare Officers School. With the Prospective Engineer Course over in two weeks, there's finally a sense of brushing the dust of this New England tourist town off my boots and movin' on.

Before that, I'll be heading down to New York on Monday for Fleet Week... well, not actually for Fleet Week, but during Fleet Week. I'll be visiting one of the ships for training, but c'mon, it's Fleet Week! My final week in Newport will be consumed with Engineering Casualty Controls Drills evaluated by our friends Afloat Training Group (they're here to help).

So the family and I will be moving down to Jacksonville, Florida, and June will likely involve little to no blogging while we get situated and I turn over as Chief Engineer. Then I'm off on deployment, so, depending on connectivity there won't be much activity here, either. Y'know, for about six months.

My hope is to be able to blog the deployment. It ain't Iraq, but I wouldn't be going if it weren't important. More about that later, anyway. Hope you have a terrific Memorial Day weekend

One-Eyed Jack

2006-05-19T19:00:00.000-05:00

Hello, blogosphere! Meet James Matthew Armstrong, born 9:31 AM, Thursday, May 18th. 8 pounds, 14 ounces; 20 inches, stem to stern. He's got a squint and a scowl and if I have anythign to say about it, his first word will be, "Aaaarrr!"

Red's doing fine, but they're about to dope her up a bit, so I need to go take of my little matey.

Have You Hugged a Cop Today?

2006-05-16T19:53:00.000-05:00

Happy National Police Week, Dad (item 6A, old, but special[.pdf]).

Life Imitates the Onion?

2006-05-16T12:21:00.000-05:00

From the Onion:
I'm Doing My Inconsequential Part For The Environment

Every day, without fail, I meticulously organize my recyclables into five distinct categories, thereby subtracting an eyedropper's worth of garbage from the countless tons of waste that ferment in our landfills. It only takes a few extra minutes, but just think of the impact it totally lacks.

Read the whole thing!

Priorities

2006-05-15T18:02:00.000-05:00

The President is going to be on TV in an hour talking about immigration. Looking forward to reading what you think about it since I will not be watching. Instead, I'll be reading about diesel engines and my ship's electrical plant. (I just scraped by on the last test, thanks for asking, Crazy P. You know what they call the guy who got a 3.2 GPA? Chief Engineer.)

Meanwhile, I thought it would be fun to do a "One-Sentence Story" post, since I don't have time for substance. You may have done something like this before: I'll post the first line and you take it from there. Continue the story based upon what the last person posted.

Ahem...

"There I was. Drunk. Again..."

Privateer

2006-05-14T15:49:00.000-05:00

I was filling out a survey yesterday and it asked about my retirement plans.

I gave it some thought and wrote, "Buy a boat and some guns and go fight pirates."

Maybe I'll go sink some Go-Fasts running cocaine, too.

I think the Minutemen would approve.

pro·gres·sive (n)

2006-05-12T21:54:00.000-05:00

From Judicial Watch (it's a .pdf file) the following quote is on page 60 of a report regarding Bill Clinton's first official act as President of the United States, pushing the morning after pill through the FDA. (TFHT: James Taranto)

The excerpt of the following letter from Ron Weddington, who served as co-counsel in successfully arguing Roe v. Wade was written to a Clinton tranisition team staffer. Emphasis mine.

I don't think you are going to go very far in reforming the country until we have a better educated, healthier, wealthier population....

You can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I'm not advocating some sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can't afford to have babies.

There, I've said it. It's what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and...well...so Republican. . . .

I am not proposing that you send federal agents armed with Depo-Provera dart guns to the ghetto. You should use persuasion rather than coercion. You and Hillary are a perfect example. Could either of you have gone to law school and achieved anything close to what you have if you had three or four or more children before you were 20? No! You waited until you were established and in your 30's to have one child. That is what sensible people do. . . .

Having convinced the poor that they can't get out of poverty when they have all those extra mouths to feed, you will have to provide the means to prevent the extra mouths, because abstinence doesn't work. The religious right has had 12 years to preach its message. It's time to officially recognize that people are going to have sex and what we need to do as a nation is prevent as much disease and as many poor babies as possible. . . .

There have been 30 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery...and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario. We lost a lot of ground during the Reagan-Bush religious orgy. We don't have a lot of time left. . . .

The biblical exhortation to "be fruitful and multiply" was directed toward a small tribe, surrounded by enemies. We are long past that. Our survival depends upon our developing a population where everyone contributes. We don't need more cannon fodder. We don't need more parishioners. We don't need more cheap labor. We don't need more poor babies.

Now, I'm just about positive that not every abortion supporter agrees with this guy. But the fact is that they and people like this guy both see enabling desperate women to resolve the consequences of their poor decisions by killing their babies as a way of improving society. I've mentioned before that I am "pro-choice", but not in the way that these people are.

I've also posted before about Progressivism being the source of many of society's current problems. I remain mystified at the current crop of liberals' desire to call themselves "progressive" based on what true progressives actually believe. I understand that maybe they think "liberal" or "Democrat" has a negative connotation in today's America and that virtually no one has a sense of history these days.

But progressives didn't just start the eugenics movement in the 1920's, they still favor eugenics as means of population control and cleaning up the gene pool today, even if they don't call it that. They've got a lot of nerve calling Republicans discriminatory and mean-spirited in light of the sort of practices that they think are acceptable.

So. "Progressives", let me ask you something. Is that something you really want to be associated with? Do you suppose that because you believe in the same thing for different reasons, that it's OK?

Previous:
Decisions
You keep using that word...

Colorblind

2006-05-10T19:39:00.000-05:00

From the Wall Street Journal (TFHT Cake or Death, Hot Air):

Last year, as two vacancies appeared on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Luttig was widely reported to be on the White House short list, and his candidacy was touted by former clerks who had gone on to influential positions in the current Bush administration. But the positions ultimately went to two fellow alumni of the Reagan Justice Department, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. People close to the selection process said that it was unlikely President Bush would consider Judge Luttig for any future vacancies, as political imperatives all but precluded nomination of another white male for the high court.

Look, it's nice he was being considered for the job and all, and good for him getting a good job and all. But am I the only one who gaped at that last sentence? Does it honestly matter to people what color and sex the folks on the SCOTUS are? Really?

Maybe I'm just a sexist racist bigot homophobe due to my inherent white maleness. I Just Don't Get It, do I? Perhaps I am naive for thinking people ought to get by on their ability and merit, not because they fell screaming out of the womb looking a certain way. Fairness is not equal to preferential treatment and the federal government giving the public the impression that quotas should be used to determine who serves on the bench.

If that's the perception, is it only a matter of time before it is reality? Is that the sort of country you really want to live in?

We do this in the military, as well, by keeping track of our demographics and trying to get more women and racially diverse people into the Armed Forces, even if they don't really belong there because they are not the right kind of person to be a serviceman. Yes, I said "serviceman".

It bothers me that less qualifed people attain positions and priveleges they have not earned; I hope it's not too much to hope that such people make the most of their good fortune.

As for Judge Luttig, well, I would've taken the job at Boeing, too, if I was weighing that with remaining a part of a system that routinely discriminates against qualified people based on the color of their skin.

James at Peace On That has some related thoughts, and I have a test tomorrow.

Pity Party

2006-05-09T19:47:00.000-05:00

No sooner did Patches admit his struggle with addiction to prescription medication and sequester himself in my home state at one of the best hospitals in the world than the serfs faithful to the fallen kingdom of Camelot rallied around their golden boy.

The Boston Globe (not big fans of Patches):

Kennedy's district is heavily Democratic and has sent him to Washington for six straight terms despite other personal problems. On Saturday, a day after Kennedy's announcement, his powerful political friends closed ranks and roundly praised him for taking a very public step to get help, while people at home ranged from sympathetic to fed up.

Rhode Island Democrat Party Chairman and hack Bill Lynch said, "We do not walk away from our friends." Yes... regardless of what's best for your party or the people you claim to represent. That choice of words... "friends" seem to sum up how things get done in Rhode Island. You gotta know a guy who knows a guy.

I'm all for Patrick Kennedy getting help for his mental issues, real or manufactured. Let's be clear what I don't like about all this: 1) Kennedy's politics, 2) Kennedy's ineffectiveness as a politician, 3) the pass he got from the Capitol police and 4) The media's/public's puzzling desire to give him a collective hug. You've got to give it to Little Rhody, they sure like their scumbags. The drug thing seems to give this state a much needed excuse (since a politician's disinterest in doing anything constructive is not criteria for losing his Congressional seat in Rhode Island) to vote him out of office.

After all, he's a man of the people!

Montery County Herald:

'I don't buy the medicine story,'' said Michael Rossi, a nurse waiting in line at a news and video kiosk in this small downtown. He said he thought alcohol was to blame for the crash, not the prescription drugs cited by Kennedy.
Now the good news for Kennedy: The voters of Rhode Island -- including Rossi -- also don't seem to care.

''It's a separate issue,'' said Rossi, who said he would remain a Kennedy supporter. ''He's got maybe an alcohol problem. That doesn't make him a bad representative.''

More...

''Somehow, I still love him,'' said Helen Lisi, a retiree from Lincoln, R.I., who was eating with her daughter at a pub Friday in Cumberland. Maybe it was all that Kennedy had done for senior citizens, she said.

Like what exactly? The only things I can find are things that only make sense to Democrats, not economically.

Rose Iovini, 78, of Providence, said her support for Kennedy was unwavering.

"I think he's a sick boy, and he's doing the right thing. And politics shouldn't come into it," she said. "I think he'll be excellent when he comes back."

All together now: one, two, three...

Awwwwwwwww!

I've been hearing quotes like this on the radio here in Newport all day long. Poor kid, he's had a rough time, people should just leave him alone.

From the AP:

"Patrick Kennedy has a famous last name, but that famous last name is not why people continue to re-elect him," Lt. Gov. Charles Fogarty said. "He has earned the confidence of the people in this state."

Uhhh, yes. Yes it is, Charlie. Kennedy can't string two sentences together, let alone drive in a straight line. He doesn't give a crap about the people who vote for him - he rides his name through life just like many other New England politicians ( yes, you, Senator Lincoln "U.P.S." Chafee). Though he does have a record of which any Democrat would be proud. (That's votes, not his criminal record.)

Interesting are his positions on drugs:

Voted NO on military border patrols to battle drugs & terrorism. (Sep 2001)
Voted NO on prohibiting needle exchange & medical marijuana in DC. (Oct 1999)
Voted NO on subjecting federal employees to random drug tests. (Sep 1998)

About the only thing I see at OnTheIssues.org that I like about him is his vote for a nationwide AMBER Alert system.

I know Nicki will like this:

Voted NO on prohibiting product misuse lawsuits on gun manufacturers. (Oct 2005)
Voted NO on prohibiting suing gunmakers & sellers for gun misuse. (Apr 2003)
Voted NO on decreasing gun waiting period from 3 days to 1. (Jun 1999)
Rated F by the NRA, indicating a pro-gun control voting record. (Dec 2003)

But one has to realize he's not running to appeal to a conservative or a libertarian. He's your typical New England limousine liberal whose sole goal in life is to keep getting re-elected so that -- to paraphrase the Honorable Representative -- he never has to work an [effing] day in his life.

Bill Lynch:

"People have gotten to know him here personally in Rhode Island," Lynch said. "People here respect the fact that he's courageous enough to deal with this in the public eye, which is very difficult."

Pff. Yeah, tell that to Rush Limbaugh.

Previous:
It Runs In The Family
It's Not Easy Being Green

Big Oil Will Devour Your Soul

2006-05-06T22:12:00.000-05:00

Yes, I'm a bad, irregularly posting blogger these days.

Chevron profit jumps 49 pct to $4B

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Chevron, the No. 2 U.S. oil company, Friday said its quarterly earnings rose 49 percent to $4 billion, topping Wall Street expectations and sparking a 2 percent rise in the stock.

The results came as U.S. consumer anger grew over high gas prices and Big Oil's gushing profits. On Thursday, Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, reported $8.4 billion in earnings -- its biggest first-quarter profit ever.

In a world that hasn't gone utterly mad, this would be awesome news for investors, however with the spectre of investigations hovering over the heads of oil companies for making too much money, this news is likely to drive off investors of less intestinal fortitude.

I wonder if "Big Oil" is in the new addition of the AP Stylebook?

Oh well, says the average person, what do I care about fat cat exectutives getting rich while they make deals in poorly-lit, cigar smoke-flled rooms and eat babies? After all, it doesn't affect me if they're getting pantsed and raped like a child-molester in prison by the U.S. Government. I think the government should take that money away from them and give it back to me. They're all just swimming in their money bins, I need cheaper gas!

/Sarcasm.

Cause and effect. Increasing the expense and inconvenience of manufacturing gasoline = more expensive gasoline. I don't know how much plainer it can be said, and I'm not the only one saying it. Regardless, the unwashed masses out there, whoever they are, seem to think that much of the blame lies squarely with the oil companies and gas stations, whose only crime has been to provide a product to the consumer at the lowest price that the market will support.

Some people correctly blame the government, but that just seems to foster a shrug and a grumble. After all, what are we supposed to do about it?

Hello, America! You're a representative republic! Throw the bums out. Better yet, run for office, if you think you do a better job. As long as you are content to be an armchair quarterback, and let guys like Charles Schumer or Mel Martinez, feed you bullshit about things that they barely understand themselves, they will continue to do so. Who are they to decide that profits are obscene? The U.S. and state governments rake in more per gallon than the oil companies so they can piss it away!

Charles Krauthammer had an excellent column explaining the issue in small words even politicians can understand, reinforcing my own rudimentary knowledge of the basic market forces at work here. I agree with the Economist and Wulf at Atlas Blogged, I think the government needs to let the market work and break down barriers that prevent it from operating the way it ought to. Y'know, like taxes. Because a $100 rebate isn't going to fix a thing and neither will villifying the companies that provide the commodity.

A tax holiday! Good grief, if we can remove the taxes entirely for a day or a weekend, could we not afford to spread that across a whole year and decrease the overall tax? Don't do me any favors, fellas.

Better yet, keep the taxes on the gasoline; just repeal the 16h Amendment and stop taking my income. I challenge you to figure out a better solution.

Previous:
What You Don't Know Hurts Everybody
Rocket Surgery
The Real Gouge
Unquestioning Belief In Works Of Fiction
Obscene Profits

It Runs In The Family

2006-05-04T17:13:00.000-05:00

Poor judgment and the perception that they are above the law, that is.

I was listening to Hannity as the news broke on the way home yesterday about Rep. Patrick Kennedy's little accident in Washington. Given Kennedy's history, I'm thinking this story goes deeper, even if it's just to alert people to the fact that he does have a history! Yet, like every other Kennedy before him, seems to suffer none of the consequences...

Well, we'll see. Luckily, Drudge is all over it; and the Boston Globe reports that not only was he on medication, but he was drinking while on it. Perhaps this'll wake Rhode Island up a bit, but I doubt it. People here seems to be proud of their corrupt and/or idiotic politicians; as though it's some kind of badge of honor or something.

EDIT: Funny, I didn't realize I didn't actually finish this post before I published it. Silly Robo.

So, after I hastily published that first bit, it turned out that - surprise! - Pat "I have never worked a [bleeping] (F------) day in my life" Kennedy's addicted to medication. Well, look, I'd prefer to avoid schadenfreude, but I do find it interesting how he's being treated in the news. All of a sudden he comes clean about his current addiction and emotional problems. Well, if I have little sympathy for him, it could be the fact that he's getting pity from the press and law enforcement instead of raked across the coals like others with similar issues.

Not that that would be fair, either, but it's difficult not to note the irony. Or perhaps hypocrisy. Regardless, I find it difficult to stomach the sob stories the local Rhode Island media are telling about poor Patches.

UPDATE: Turns out the Kos Kidz think he should resign for this. I think he should resign for being grossly incompent and negligent in his duty, not to mention essentially being a millionaire on welfare, but who am to judge? Michelle Malkin liveblogged his press conference, which sounds like it was more funny than Stephen Colbert at the Correspondents' Dinner.

Radio Equalizer has a good sum-up of the media coverage and the softballs the poor little rich boy has been thrown. Can we stop the Pat Kennedy pity party already?

My Point, and I Do Have One...

2006-04-30T09:33:00.000-05:00

Hi there, blog-kateers!

Y'know, I've got something like eight drafts in the hopper that I will hopefully be able to publish this week. I thought I'd do a bit of an open thread thing here in the meantime, but hang with me for second, for I intend to ramble a bit.

First off, there's a bunch of new blogs in the sidebar. Let me see, here... I joined this one list thing, American Bloggers for Inclusive Debates, which seemed like a good idea at the time. I've had issues with people who are not interested in discussing topics, but rather wanting to exist in an echo chamber, or just insist that I am some kind of jerk because of the way I think, instead of trying to engage me. I'm an open-minded guy, I'm willing to be convinced... I just don't find many people all that convincing. I'm not much of a joiner (ironically) so we'll see how it goes.

Additionally, you'll find the following: JUST CITIZENS, Sajak Says... (Pat Sajak's blog, no kidding!), OPFOR (the natural progression of the [former] Officer's Club), The Conservative Brotherhood, and the Breckner-Posner Blog - a blog by University of Chicago professors this guy and this guy which I find really fascinating.

As many of you know, if you've been here before, the Idiot Box is my nemesis. Mainly because it is a sweet siren of temptation to not do anything productive with my time. So instead of fixing my ceiling fans (I'm lucky to be alive) or my car (it's lucky to still be running), I watch the Today Show or some other mind-numbing garbage.

Now, don't get me wrong, not everything on TV is garbage, but all of it is a complete waste of time. So the shows I more or less have to plan my schedule around are Lost (four new episodes coming up! Awesome!) and Doctor Who. I catch Penn & Teller: Bullshit! when I can, and once in a while sit down and watch Jeopardy! (maybe even Wheel of Fortune, because Pat Sajak is second only to Jack Bauer in terms of conservative TV heroes) with Red. There used to be so much more, but thankfully they became stupid and boring. (Smallville, anyone?)

So, imagine my surprise when my retired mom-in-law says she watches this Deal or No Deal show and Red says, "Let's see if it's any good." I scoffed, of course. We're talking about one of these silly game shows that are the ugly cousins of reality television (and that's saying something), AND it's hosted by Howie Mandel. What, does he put a rubber glove on his head and inflate it with his nose? No, in fact, I was glued to my seat as a double-lung-transplantee picked briefcases with a system consisting of a bag of numbered ping pong balls. She walked away with $124,000, but just getting there was insanely tense. I think I might be hooked on it... at least until I get bored. Since Mom-in-law is staying with us for the next two months, I'll probably be watching it some more, anyhow.

OK, OK, so the other thing I really wanted to talk about is my extreme disappointment with the quality of leadership in our country right now. Now, as an active duty officer of the U.S. Navy, I have to watch my step here. I've expressed my disappointment with various of the Bush Administration's policies before, despite my desire to really want to appreciate everything they've done for us, particularly in terms of the Global War on Terror. I think that on certain things, like illegal immgration, size and scope of the government, Social Security, Medicare, schools, the environment... domestic issues, the Republicans have strayed from the path of reliable conservatism.

I'm experiencing a certain revulsion at my choice to vote for Sen. Mel Martinez also, due to his apparent RINOness. Perhaps you have similar feelings about your duly elected representatives. So I'm curious what you think you're going to do about it. There are two elections coming up in 2006 and 2008. Your first inclination may be that, well, the incumbent Republican is better than having a Democrat in that seat. Or vice versa. But if that incumbent is not representing your beliefs, even though he claims to, what do you do?

Personally, I have to wait and see who runs against Martinez. I have to wait and see who ends up with presidential nominations. I'm hoping that George Allen is nominated by the Republicans, because so far, I like what I see. The opposition seem to already be trying to dig up skeletons in his closet; which is good, because if they fear him, we can control them. For what it's worth, I'm willing to bet his Senate seat is secure for the time being, which will be good as a political lily pad. I hope his constituents don't suffer as a result of his aspirations, as so many Americans seem to when their representatives run for higher office.

So, if you got this far let me what you think you're going to do, because I sure haven't figured it out yet.

EDIT: By the way, you, over there in Arizona! This is why you must vote against the Honorable Senator John S. McCain. (THFT: Atlas Blogged) He is a bloody socialist. Just because these jokers have a certain letter after their name doesn't mean their going to think like you think they will think. Evaluate candidates on his or her merits, not his or her political party.