RETIRED WARRANT

Ready for the weekend

After a really busy morning, the day has finally calmed down a bit and I finally have a chance or write something for my blog. It will be cool to have the three days off to rest up and get a few things done.

Today will be a nice to just stay at home and off the streets. It seems that the teachers in Mexico are all holding some huge protest about low pay down along the border and so they have already said the south I 5 and I 805 will be closed south of the I 905.

I wonder if they are having problems with wages and stuff in Mexico, why are they protesting at the border? It does not make much sense to me?

On the way to work all the radio talk shows were best of repeats so nothing new there. The roads were empty this morning, probably a few folks starting the weekend early. Anyway I hope they are still empty on the way home. Today is payday so I think I will just buy food to take home so I don’t have to cook. Either that or I will buy something I can throw in the oven and cook fast.

Well time to start getting things wrapped up so I can start the weekend. Happy Labor Day weekend everyone.

Backward Campaign

Well today has been another busy day of teaching. This afternoon after lunch I have to give one of the students the antenna test. He missed the test the other day due to a motorcycle safety course so he will make up the missed class time this afternoon.

He just purchased a motorcycle and the Navy requires its people to attend a safety course before they can bring it on base. They only teach it certain times and he was doing well in class so we let him go and I will spend this afternoon with him getting him caught up.

Also with the three day weekend coming up we had to do a holiday safety brief. It is good to remind folks to be safe over the long weekends.

Other than that it has been business as usual both at work and at home. The end of the month is here almost, so tomorrow it will be a short day for the students but I will have my end of the month reports and all due. I will enjoy having the three days off though so that will be fun. I should get well rested.

This morning listening to the radio they were talking about some alarming statistics about illegal immigration and crime and the sanctuary city thing. I guess our mayor was on a couple days ago and denied that San Diego is a sanctuary city. Well if you believe that then I have a bridge for sale that goes from Coronado to San Diego.

It does seem that a lot of these politicians are starting to see the light as far as illegal immigration and keeping their office is concerned. More and more of the politicians are changing their tune and starting to express that something must be done about it.

The other thing that has been going on in the news has been that senator from Idaho that pleaded guilty to lewd behavior in the Minneapolis Airport Restroom. I guess for the longest time people have thought him to be gay and he has denied it all these years. He has also backed anti gay legislation and backed anti gay group, but now it appears he may be gay or bi-sexual.

There are a lot of people calling for his resignation and I would be part of that crowd. I am not against him for his political party, or his stance on gay people. I believe that any elected official that gets convicted of a crime is unfit for office and needs to be removed. I don’t care if they are republican or democrat. They must follow the law and if they break the law must step down.

I think this guy will be gone as the Republican Party does get rid of most office holders who mess up. It probably wouldn’t happen if this were a democrat as any behavior seems ok to the radical left.

Oh and speaking of that last night on one of the talk shows they were talking about John Edwards. This guy is really running a backwards campaign. Now he wants everyone to dump their SUV’s and go green. Humm, doesn’t this guy travel around in limousines and private aircraft? Doesn’t this guy own a few mansions and didn’t he make all his money off of frivolous lawsuits against hospitals and doctors? This guy is a real piece of work but then I am not surprised that some nut jobs on the radical left will follow him.

Well I suppose that is it for today. I want to make some improvements to a power point I have been working on.

Idiots behind the wheel

Well I have been really busy today and am taking a brief time to write something before I go back to work. I have already worked through lunch getting a few things done and now it is time to take a breather for a little while.

The way to work this morning was interesting again today. I was following one of the people that lives up a few streets from me. He ran two stop signs and a red light and luckily I didn’t have to follow him past the red light.

I then got behind someone who was too busy talking on her cell phone to use her turn signals. So it was just a little frustrating watching these people on my way to work and knowing that there are a lot more of these folks on the roads here.

I got to work and had to light off the full OTCIXS/TADIXS for a demonstration and introductory lesson. I was glad everything worked great and everything went smoothly. I got through about half of the classroom work and will finish that up tomorrow. Then we will roll into the lab and that really goes fast.

I did take a little time trying to figure out something game related for a fed mate, but he won’t be happy with the answer. Laila and I have been playing around with the way we post op and we were trying to have him use the same method but with the ships he uses it will not work.

Anyway I am now being requested to look something up so let me check that out and get this one posted for the day. Work comes first and I guess I have taken enough of a break today.

This morning was not fun

This morning was one of those mornings where I got up when the clock went off and then just hit the snooze twice and stayed in bed. I still managed to get up and get a shower and all and got online before 6 AM but I was really not very motivated to get going this morning.

Anyway the first thing that happened when I logged on this morning is that I found out one of our members hit one of our allies. Then when I saw who he hit I got even angrier. Jedi’s fed carries the same banner as our fed so there can be no confusion about that one. Also this fed mate would have had to be pretty low in PR to attack that empire. Needless to say I am pretty angry that someone would hit a member of our training fed.

Also this person failed to post OP when he came in so I will be watching. He is never on when Joe, Sam or I are on so I usually don’t see him, but Laila is my eyes and ears when I am asleep and lets me know what is going on. If this guy has a problem with not hitting allies and not posting OP then he can do it someplace else, as I will have no time for him.

The way to work was a nightmare this morning. The guy 2 doors up either lent or sold something to a friend and the item was too big to fit in the guy’s trunk. So they kind of tied the trunk halfway shut and he drove really slow to get out of our little subdivision. Guess who was behind the guy?

Anyway, once I got out of the subdivision I was fine until I got to the freeway and then it was a parking lot. Because it was a parking lot everyone was using the off ramp lanes to get a jump on traffic meaning they could like pass a whole ten cars before forcing their way back into the freeway lanes and extending he backup further.

I don’t know why people have to do dumb stuff like that. When one person cuts another off on the freeway it starts a chain reaction for miles behind as people brake for the brake lights ahead.

If everyone would just follow the laws and be courteous the freeways would run smoothly. Of course this is California and everyone is too busy fixing their hair, talking on their cell phone, or reading the paper on their way to work so that is probably too much to ask.

Well time to get ready to go give the test and get going for the day.

Double Sign Alert

This morning getting to work was a mess. As I was getting ready to go this morning I had the news on and they were talking about a double sign alert on the I-5 south at 28th street. That is right in front of the base and also just south of the Coronado Bridge. I guess the first one was due to big rig roll over accident and the second was for a van that ran off the road and hit a light pole in the backup.

As a result, all the traffic switched over to the I-805 and that was backed up when I got on it, something that is rare for a Friday. I did get to work, in plenty of time, it was just interesting to see how all the traffic switched freeways.

On the way in listening to the radio they were talking about some black hole that has been discovered that is one billion light years across. That is pretty big. They didn’t talk much about it other than to say the have found it. I hope it is not headed our way.

Laila’s internet has been repaired. It again was another wiring problem. I guess it was possibly related to the typhoons and all the bad weather that have been having lately.

Anyway they have it fixed now so we are back up until the next typhoon I guess.

I now have the dates lined up for my next visit to the Philippines so I can use up this years vacation time. Laila will be happy with that. Now I just have to get off today so I can start making the plans.

So I guess that is it for this week here. I will try and get something posted over the weekend, but sometimes I get busy and forget all about it, so I’ll have to see.

Internet problems still plague us

Laila’s Internet is still all messed up so she was on dial up again this morning until her prepaid phone card ran out. We got logged off early so I went ahead a left a little early so I could get everything unlocked and turned on for both classes who will be in lab today. I was going to stop and get something for breakfast but went ahead and just bought a couple of donuts on the quarterdeck on my way in the building.

Listening to the radio and watching Fox News last night all of a sudden it seems the politicians have got the message. They are all starting to talk tough about illegal immigration. I am tired of the talk and want to see action taken.

I like what Rick Roberts is doing here in San Diego. He is publicly broadcasting things said and actions taken by the local office holders. People have had it with the political correctness, and the pandering for votes. If these politicians want to hold their office it is time for them to do what they were elected to do. Since 70 to 80 percent of the people do not want illegal immigrants then the sanctuary city crap has to be scrapped.

The example of Tulsa, Oklahoma was used this morning on the show. They cracked back on the illegal immigrants and the ones that were not arrested left on their own. Isn’t that a neat concept? Enforce the laws and they will go on their own.

Right now the country is all riled up about what happened in Newark, New Jersey and the fact that an illegal alien child rapist was allowed to go free and stay in this country, and then took part in the execution of three college students.

I was watching Geraldo Rivera debating Tom Tancredo last night on Fox and Geraldo is playing the race card. News for you Geraldo, illegal immigrants are not all Mexican, and if there are no illegal immigrants in this country they can’t commit crimes against the citizens of this country.

One caller had it right this morning. How do you get rid of illegal immigrants? One illegal immigrant at a time!

This morning was strange

Laila’s internet appears to be down hard and I had to talk to her on dial up this morning. We were able to chat on Skype but only for a few minutes at a time as her bandwidth or lack of bandwidth kept causing our connection to drop. It is also causing her to have a miserable time trying to play UC as it takes a lot of bandwidth to load the game pages. She contacted Bayantel and hopefully they will get it fixed in a timely manner.

This morning my class rolled into the antenna practice troubleshooting. We were moving right along when all of a sudden our building and another building lost 400 Hz power. Since the antenna system uses 400 Hz as a reference we had to take a break for a while as we waited for them to get it turned back on.

Last night we watched the season finale of “America’s Got Talent” and the two household favorites finished 1 and 2. The guy with the singing puppets really deserved to win and we loved it when he was the winner, but I also thought the guy that did a lot of reggae music and blues was also very good and deserved to win too. This year the talent was much better than last year.

Next month is going to be great because all the season premiers for my favorite shows are going to be coming on. I love seeing the promo’s for “House”, “Deal or No Deal”, “Dexter” and others coming on.

I guess they are going to have a few more of those stupid reality shows coming on for the new season. They were talking about one upcoming reality show which will feature 40 youngsters that were taken to an abandoned town in New Mexico (so CBS could get around child labor laws) and would run this town without adult supervision. I guess some of the kids had to be treated medically after the taping for malnutrition, burns and stuff. Also this was filmed during the school year and the set did not have any tutors or educators. It looks like it is a very bad move for CBS and they are being sued by some of the parents.

They were talking on the radio that before long the feeding of Christians to the lions will be back at the major stadiums. It may sound a little far fetched, but look at how society is going down the drain. If the radical Muslims succeed in taking over the world that could become a reality. Well that is about it for today.

I’ve got to get back to watching the class now that the power has been restored.

Various things in the news

Today is the second Monday of the week and there is so much going on in the news and all so I actually have something to blog about.

First off Laila is back to having internet problems so we were not able to talk on Skype other than for the 20-30 seconds that I managed to get it up for before it dropped. She has already put in a trouble call to her provider and hopefully they will get it fixed by the time I get home today. Needless to say that kind of messed up the morning routine for us.

On my way to work this morning I was following a silver late model Nissan Frontier pickup truck up the onramp to the I 805. It is one of those metered onramps with two lanes to get on. The lights are staggered and this guy was in the left lane while I was in the right lane. He got to the light just as it turned red and then jumped lanes to catch the light in the right hand lane. All of that and almost causing a wreck to save maybe 15 seconds of time getting on to the freeway, where I immediately passed him. Some people here need to go back to driving school.

Oh and I almost forgot, after a week off, maybe for vacation or something I saw my favorite National City motorcycle police officer back on the beat on my route to work. He was there yesterday and again this morning and both times he had people pulled over. I can’t tell you how great that makes me feel as some people treat the streets through National City as a speedway. They also ignore traffic signals and signs, so I am happy when I see them pulled off the side of the road getting a ticket.

Yesterday I guess our local congressman Bob Filner made the national news by assaulting an airline employee in Washington DC. I guess he feels he has some kind of special privileges as a congressman and maybe now the people of this district will see the news reports and get rid of this guy. The guy is a jerk and this is not the first incident. Usually he convinces people to drop the charges, but this time charges were filed.

Also in the news Michael Vick went ahead and pled guilty to animal abuse over his dog fighting case. I figure he will get 1 to 1.5 years in prison, and I hope just because he is a famous football player he does not get a light sentence. There is no excuse for raising dogs just to fight in competition or killing the ones that don’t fight so well. I guess he was going to fight it until all his friends went ahead and told the truth to protect their own butts. He was then forced to go for a plea and I hope they hammer him.

Then I was watching the news reports of this illegal alien who has been all over the news while hiding out in a church in Chicago. She was caught and deported I guess about ten years ago, and then came back into the country with a fake SSN. She was working at Chicago’s O’Hare airport cleaning planes. That makes me really feel safe, is Osama Bin Laden also cleaning planes at O’Hare since they can’t seem to find him?

About a year or so ago she got caught and was supposed to go to a deportation hearing but instead started hiding out in a church and speaking out against the US Government policies on immigration. She is using the “I have to take care of my American born son (Anchor baby) as he has no father and is ill with attention deficit disorder” defense. Why not just say he has a common cold.

Anyway she went ahead and decided she was important enough to go to California to speak at one of these overthrow the US (no borders) rallies and got picked up and deported by the INS. Now everyone is screaming about how cruel the government is.

Well what about this woman. While I see all the news reports that seem to be sympathetic to her, where is the sympathy for the person whose identity she stole? Who’s SSN was she using to work here in this country illegally? Whose taxes are all screwed up now, and whose credit has been damaged? You don’t hear anything about that.

This morning I heard one of the more ignorant callers I have ever heard call into a radio show. I would have lost my patience and hung up on her, but Rick Roberts did a wonderful job great job getting this lady to say totally stupid stuff.

He asked her if we should have the same immigration policy as Mexico and she said yes. So that means they should have medical checkups and a means of support according to Mexican policy. Well she back pedaled on that. At one point she even went so far as to say that Mexico owned California, Arizona, New Mexico and all. Guess she forgot all about the Spanish American War and the fact that Mexico was given back the land they have now and paid for the land now owned by the United States.

Another news tidbit that didn’t get much play was that the Presidents of Mexico and the US met with the Prime Minister of Canada in Ottawa yesterday to discuss the SPP program. That is that program that will merge Canada, Mexico, and the US together sort of like the European Union. It is all being done under the table and the majority of Americans don’t know about it as it does not get much play in the news.

I guess one morning we will wake up and all of North America will be one country and then the average American will ask what the heck happened.

Also yesterday I caught another news item about another Chinese recall, of pajama’s this time. What is with all these Chinese imports? I guess Wal Mart is going to have to find another supplier of goods in the future.

Well I guess that is it for today. I have to get started on getting some work done.

Sea story time

The weekend is over and so it is back to work and back to the weekly routine. This morning I finished up teaching the antenna couplers and we started on the antenna and coupler labs. They pretty much breezed through all of that so I should be able to get them started on the troubleshooting practice tomorrow. That will be a long process mainly due to the large size of the class. We’ll make due though, but there is going to be a lot of dead time as they wait for the equipment since we only have two antenna systems and two couplers.

Sometimes during the break we get shooting the bull about stuff, mainly old sea stories. Today we somehow got on the subject of storms we have been through at sea and damage caused by them.

Back when I first joined the Navy they didn’t have all the weather satellites and stuff that they have now. Yeah we would b alerted of big storms on our route, but the messages did not contain all the stuff that you get now, like satellite imagery and all that stuff.

My first encounter with some really bad weather started when I was on the White Plains. I had been in some rough weather before while on the ship, especially in the Taiwan Straights where water currents collide causing heavy seas.

Well we were in the Philippines when we got word that a killer Typhoon was headed for Guam and the island was going to take a direct hit. The captain pt down liberty call and instructed the crew to check with the ship at midnight to see if we were getting underway of now and we did indeed get underway with supplies for the island at sunrise the next morning.

We headed to the island following the storm as it headed for Guam and that was the first time I have seen waves that high. The White Plains was a pretty big ship but we were getting pummeled by waves that were crashing over the top of the radar equipment. It was pretty cool to look at but also gave me a chance to be a little frightened at the same time. The ship was bobbing around like a cork and sometimes was slammed into the water so hard that you could feel the whole ship shudder. Everything that was not tied down was moving and falling over and even some of the things that were secured for sea broke loose and were moving around and falling on people.

We made it through all that with little damage and nobody got hurt, though we did have many seasick personnel on board. We got to Guam My first letter of appreciation in my career was received from the Governor of Guam for the Typhoon Pamela cleanup. and stayed about a week to ten days there, helping clean things up and helping get services restored.

I remember on other incident when I was on White Plains and that was an odd one. We were north of the Philippines and out of the blue this giant wave came up and almost pushed the ship over. I remember I was in the aft cargo handling area when all of a sudden she ship rolled way over to one side. I saw a fork truck brake loose of its tie downs and it slid into the bull work. As fast as it happened, it was gone, and though I never saw the wave it was a topic of conversation on the mess decks for a couple of days.

Probably the worst heavy sea stories I have come from my tour on the Bronstein. The ship was small and it had an oversized sonar dome on the bow. Just leaving the pier in calm weather made that ship rock and roll. If we got into 6 foot seas or higher the ride was unbelievably bad.

We were on our way to Thailand from Guam I think and we got caught in a storm. I do not believe it was a typhoon, just a tropical storm by the seas were over 20 feet high, maybe 30 feet high. Normally the bad ride didn’t bother me too much as I was never the type to get sea sick. I would just have to carry the load for a few others in the shop that did get sea sick.

That storm had all but about 15 to 20 of us down and out. We also earned the nickname “Substein” on that trip because the battle group kept loosing us on radar as we entered the troughs. Having been in heavy seas before I was pretty much used to the bad ride, but as the afternoon turned into evening Bronstein started having problems. Some of the waves that were crashing down on the ship wee starting to cause damage, and then some of the spaces in the forward part of the ship started flooding.

What was worse was that we had to go to battle stations so we were restricted to our shop which was below the waterline on that ship. Also we were on our communications circuits allowing us to know what was going on in our spaces but we didn’t know what was going on with the rest of the ship other than a few reports that would make it down to our spaces.

The ship was not riding well at all and here I was down deep in the bowels of the ship hearing that spaces were flooding and that the captain was trying to get us detached from the battle group so we could survey and repair the casualties. He finally got up detached and we steamed as fast as we could for the ship repair facility at Subic Bay, Philippines. When we finally got a chance to look at the damage after we got to calm seas the entire forward part of the ship was destroyed. Lifelines and fire station equipment as well as pyro lockers and anything else forward of the break was gone. The gun tub for the forward 3in50 guns was squashed flat and the gun was damaged. Hatches were sprung and spaces were still flooded as we limped in to Subic for a little over a month of repairs.

That was one point in my Navy career that scared me more than anything in my life. There were times that night where many of the crew felt that we were going to the bottom. You get that really helpless feeling that God has it in for you. But we survived and luckily by the time I went back to the fleet again on Vancouver, Acadia, and Elliot the weather reporting and imagery was such that we were always able to avoid the large storms. Yeah we went through storms but nothing like the ones we went through in my younger days.

You seldom hear of ships going down in heavy seas now days because the technology is better and the ability to get the word out and pick safe tracks is much better in these times.

Anyway, that is my sea story for today. I owed a good post after taking a few days off from posting.

Skype has been up and down

Last night when I got home I found that Skype was still having problems and there was a statement on the net about how they had a software problem and would be back up as soon as possible.

We went ahead and did everything via chat until I think about 8:30 – 9 PM when it finally game up, though it was still a bit iffy and kept dropping from time to time.

This morning when I got up it was down again and their site had an updated message saying it should be up sometime today. So hopefully when I get off work it will be back up.

Laila and I have been using it for so long that I forgot how to configure some of the others so I hope they have it fixed. It seemed odd playing the game without discussing what was going on while making our moves and all. Also it means having additional chat windows open which for me is distracting.

Last night again I was so tired. I almost fell asleep a few times before 11 PM rolled around and I went to bed. Then when I did go to bed about 12:15 AM the dogs started barking and going wild. I went ahead to make sure no one was trying to break into the house or the next door neighbor’s house but it turned out that they were barking at the neighbor’s cat that we are currently cat sitting for. She has finally gotten brave and now ventures around the house checking things out and is now starting to play with the other cats and all. I guess she just had to get used to things.

Anyway I guess that is about it for now. I will try to blog over the weekend if I am not tied up with stuff.

Well I am back with a little time before getting out of here for the weekend. Earlier today I saw something that brought back some bad memories. As I was on my way in to work this morning I heard a ship’s whistle sound one long blast which either meant they were testing it or they were getting underway.

Later while looking for someone I went to the break area and sure enough someone got underway as well as a few others. It seems they will go out and play with the Marines next week so they will pull out and head up the coast over the weekend to pick up Marines at Camp Pendleton. The only one I saw pull out was USS Tarawa (LHA-1) but some of the amphibious ships I saw on the accompanying piers were gone too, so they must have pulled out earlier.

I used to hate that, pulling out on a Friday and pulling in on a Monday. When you are on a ship at sea every day but Sunday is a work day. If something is broke Sunday is also a work day. Also every day you have to stand your watches and all. So pulling out on a Friday when you were looking forward to the weekend is always a bummer. The same can be said with pulling in on a Monday, because you have already missed the weekend and have the full work week to look forward too.

Then of course local operations are the pits because most of the time you are located right off the coast. You can see San Diego, Oceanside and all from at sea and sometimes it can be hard to be so close but yet so far.

At night though on all the ships I was on we usually went out to do what we call “Pump and Dump”. That is where you go out greater than 50 miles from the coast to pump bilges and dump trash. We would usually pick a grid or to on the charts and do what we call, steaming in the box, where you would go ahead and just try and keep 5 miles away from and contacts while staying in your box.

So anyway, I just remembered having those feelings of losing a weekend and kind of felt sorry for the sailors on those ships.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I will try to have a great weekend myself.