Another Fun Day

As I mentioned yesterday, we got our "Tech Refresh" replacement laptops this week. Our 5-year old laptops were changed out for fresh 1-year old laptops. The new laptops have better screens but the same OS (Windows 2000). It took me a bit to get it set up the way I had my old machine. One interesting change is that the new machines do not come with floppy drives. Most of you reading this will likely say, "so what? Nobody uses floppy disks any more!" If you said this, you're NOT in the Navy. If you're in the Navy, you said "How in the world will you process award nominations and evaluation files?!" Yes, in many ways, much of the Navy is still in the digital dark ages. Part of the fun of the military "Chain of Command" is that as paperwork flows uphill to be edited and signed, the digital file flows from inbox to inbox on a single floppy disk. Does Outlook have the functionality to do this? Yes! Does Adobe have the functionality to do this? Yes! Does the Navy (or HS-8, at least) take advantage of these new-fangled software gadgets? Of course not! We've always used floppies, by gum, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well…. We've finally been outpaced by technology. Forced to change our ways. Change is always more painful when it's forced. So my old laptop with it's floppy drive disappeared yesterday, with a sparkly new machine that has all its keys in the keyboard sitting in its place. Sure enough, within 24 hours, three folders hit my inbox with floppies in them, awards, evals, and FITREPS that were mid-chop chain when the UPGRADE OF 2007 hit. Now, what do I do with these floppies. I'm thinking I'll see how many skips across the water I can get on a flick out of the hangar bay. But first, I've got to get the files off these disks! I haven't checked yet, but I'll bet the originators of the files did not save a copy to their hard drive. Hopefully I'm wrong. Otherwise, I'll be on a floppy drive hunt tomorrow. I won't bore you with the details of Admin's plan to overcome our technology gap. Suffice it to say, the plan won't work as currently implemented.

I was up in time for the lecture this morning, but the first part of it I had already seen, so I and a few others skipped the first 30 min and sat through the last 5 minutes, which covered Damage Control (obviously not too in depth), for a signature. Shortly thereafter, I made my way down to the Reactor Training office on the 3rd deck to start my long-awaited tour of the reactor spaces. That took about an hour, bringing us as low as the 7th deck. We saw the top of one of the reactor plants, but only through a peep hole that penetrates the massively thick steel walls enclosing the reactor. We saw a lot of the ships huge machinery, which was noisy and hot. Our tour guide, a LCDR who is in charge of Reactor Chemistry and Dosimetry, was explaining many things as we walked through the spaces. Couldn't hardly hear a word. At times, I could see his lips moving, but all I could here was the scream of pumps and fans. Impressive machinery, but the tour was little more than a check in the block. Seeing the control rods was pretty cool, though.

After the tour, I walked up to the hangar bay to find a "Fun Day" well in progress. The hangar was mostly cleared out of aircraft, and a dodgeball court was set up, a golfing net, a "Damage Control Olympics" course, and about a dozen large grills, cooking burgers, dogs, and chicken. Later in the after noon, a band put on a concert in the hangar as well. During the last dodgeball tournament a couple months ago, HS-8 won. This time, none of our 3 teams made it past the semi-finals.

This afternoon, I was able to go for a run on the flight deck. I lost count of the laps, but it was nice to run with the wind in my face and open sky over my head. Of course, I couldn't hear anything because there were 3 jets doing low power turns, one on the bow, one in the six-pack, and one on the fantail, which made for a somewhat abbreviated lap course. Since there weren't many aircraft in the hangar, the flight deck was full and there was a lot of stab and wing dodging. Still, I enjoyed the run.

This evening we watched "Pumping Iron" in the ready room for a roll'em. This was Arnold Schwarzenegger's first movie, a documentary about his 1975 Mr. Olympia competition against Lou Ferrigno. It was pretty amusing, especially with the non-stop comments from the peanut gallery. That's about it for today. It's not even midnight and I'm calling it a night. Of course, I'll make a detour at midrats on my way back to the room. Also, it helps that my Internet connection died a little while ago. This will be sent via email. Good night.