One down, one to go.
We did our final report today for the marketing class – knocked it out of the park. I’d put together a “promotional video” which included a bunch of pictures of things getting blown up by airplanes. You just can’t lose.
Things blowing up tugs at the heartstrings of the aerial warfare class.
Next week! Systems Engineering final. There is no good way tug at the heartstrings of a systems engineer. Is what I’ve found.
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Mr. Lileks was on a roll this week, put together another one of his patented retrospectives here. Keep clicking “next,” at least until you get here. I swear I’ve been in that room, or in a room just like it – my father’s second (third? one loses count) career was as a systems analyst – click the sound link embedded here to find out what a systems analyst did – and worked on this very system, I am convinced.
It all seemed so very… advanced, back in 1969. Tape drives! Punch cards! Girls in mini-skirts!
I was too young to really appreciate that last bit. The summer of love was going on all around me, and I was only dimly aware that everyone else seemed to be having a lot of fun, or at least, that they were pretending to. Desperately.
When I was a mid, we got a brief from one Captain Dick Stratton, USN. Spent six years and a bit (or, as his bio tells it: 2,251 days) as a guest of the NVA in the Hanoi Hilton. Said the part about being a POW that sucked the worst was that mini-skirts came and went and he missed the whole thing.
Although I’m not sure that’s really true.
And no, I’m not all ready to forgive Hanoi Jane for what she did, although I’ll grudgingly allow as how she may have done useful things since then.
But some things – like manning a AAA piece that’s aimed against your countrymen in a time of war, simply because you disagree with the policy of the government that sent them there – are simply unforgivable.
(I know what some of you are thinking: You’re thinking, “He should have said “an” AAA piece.” But I regret to inform you, Mr. Language Person, that while it may look like it should be pronounced Ay-ay-ay and therefore deserving of a phonetic contra-elision, it’s pronounced “triple ay.”
Hence, the “a.”
C?)
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Fortunately, a lot of time has passed since then, and as a country we’ve learned so very much about how to properly disagree with each other.
For example, ABC news reports today (full with editorial disclaimers) that some of the newly declassified and translated documents coming out of Saddamite Iraq purport that Iraq actually had al-Qaida ties, and collaborated on plans to attack America. That may or may not be true, but time and patience will certainly tell.
Unless of course, for some reason, you are personally invested in the idea that it’s not true. Couldn’t be. Can’t.
Because if it was true, then W isn’t a liar. Which means that everything you fervently believe in stemming from that foundational preconception trembles in the balance, before collapsing in a pillar of salt.
In which case I’d say that maybe you’d already made your mind up for whatever reason, and probably weren’t worth talking to.
So it’d probably useless to point you over to this fascinating alternative history – too broad to excerpt – asking, what if we hadn’t gone in?
As I say, good thing we’ve come so far in our discourse.
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Heard a friend of mine, my east coast counterpart actually, on NPR today. Reporting from Guantanamo, which is where he’s been sent on one of those 12 month “Individual Augment” thingies that Navy has gotten so keen on in the last few. We’ve got senior naval officers down in Gitmo, as well as over in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Now, contrary to your first assumption, sending career naval officers over to the Green Zone in cammies and carrying carbines does not prove, in and of itself, that all is lost.
No.
They’re merely helping out, in whatever small way they can. And just between me and thee, it’s causing a bit of a ruffle in the ranks, rutting around in the dirt being considered sojer work, for the most part. Beneath our dignity, like.
Which, sack up, says I. There’s a war on, innit?
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If land warfare is anything like flying the ball at night, that last paragraph is just about a dead solid karma equivalent to hurling your hat to the deck in a tantrum because the JO’s are having a hard time getting aboard. Having done so, you are virtually assured your own very private night in the barrel.
That’s the bad news. Good news is that it’s tax free over there.
We’ll see.
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So, Saint Patrick’s Day. Hope all of you wore the green for Eire. Raised a glass of Guinness – for strength! – and wished each other slainte. Because even if you’re not a little Irish, everyone’s Irish today.
Besides – don’t you have a little Irish in you?
No?
Want some?
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Have a great weekend!
I heard Dick Stratton speak last year. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, nearly crying at the end. He looks GREAT. He sounds GREAT. He appears to be doing very well, as does his wife. He really is a wonderful speaker, not only touching, but funny.
You’re so BAD!
I worked in rooms with those huge computers, too. This one on my desk with a monitor that weighs less than 5 lbs. is nothing short of a miracle!
Ahem, Sir,
HC’s yes. SEALS yes. SEABEES yes. But why would they send senior or semi-senior Navy officers of your type to such places? You (or some persons very similar to you) have done your unique nights in barrels. What’s served in sending your types to the sandboxes?
Is an O-6 THAT cross trained?
Of course, I meant HM’s– Hospital Corpsmen which are often part of Marine units– Not “HC’s.”
Lex sez: “Next week! Systems Engineering final. There is no good way tug at the heartstrings of a systems engineer. Is what I?
Lex sez: “Next week! Systems Engineering final. There is no good way tug at the heartstrings of a systems engineer. Is what I’ve found.”
Now, Now sure there is! It’s called DOORS!
Good Luck on the SE final!
In ’69 I was a 72″ 150lb B-ball star (in my own mind) and my Dad was a mech engineer manager who helped put men on the moon with his skinny ties, black suits and slide rule. Life was good and wasn’t that complicated. You were expected to think outside yourself not about yourself.
Jane Fonda. How in heck did she go from “Barbarella” (woof-woof)& 1966 G.I. pin-up of the year, to Mata Hari-Hanoi Jane and now sort of a Gloria Swanson chracter with Barbara Streisand’s brain?
Is that irony Lexl?
In 1971 I took a Computer Programming class for 3 credits…boring. After working out the math algorithm we had to use a key punch machine to program those punch cards and then see if it worked (document a desired outcome) from the IBM (360?). I think it was in Fortran or something like that. Learned real quick what I didn’t want to do for a living…
re St. P’s- Had me corn beef n’cabbage (broke Lent, I know) and a couple Bushmills while watching UCONN (barely) beat U of NY at Albany (never heard of ‘em). Guiness?- I’d rather eat my bread than drink it.
B2
That Lileks piece made me a bit nostalgic for the ol’ Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) air defense system, which went into service the year I enlisted (’63) and was retired two years (’83) before I was. The heart of that system was the FSQ-7 computer:
Each Center was built around a huge A/N FSQ-7 computer with 60,000 vacuum tubes requiring 3 megawatts of power and running the largest computer program written up to that time, with 500,000 lines of code. This program used an area in system memory called COMPOOL that could be shared by several subroutines. This would become one of the founding concepts for the COBOL computer language. The communications devices from Burroughs allowed each center to communicate with other centers, creating one of the first practical computer networks.
I spent nearly half of my professional life in the service of that system, albeit on the sensor (radar) end, not the computing end. The half-million lines of code used in the FSQ-7 seems rather puny compared to the 40 million lines of code in Win/XP.
We’ve come a long way, baby!
Regarding IA’s , its not a sign that all is lost. It is a sign however that the services as a whole are being under resourced. I understand the whole “there is a war on we have to help” line that is spouted over and over again, but the simple fact is that the Navy is putting up bodies to ease Army shortfalls, for Army missions; that the Army is trained for and has the most experience doing. Plus like Reese points out the burden is not falling equally. Seabees, IS’s, Corpsmen, EOD, and other rates are really getting chewed up. (A Civil Engineer I know has had to go twice in the last 18 months and both times he was most definitely not a volunteer–he still complains about it).
It’s a frightening sign of the times when the senior leadership in their daily briefs see’s detailed personnel count of “who’s available for transport” and “whos protected” and how close specific brances are coming to their “red lines”.
I’d rather see the 60,000 personnel the Navy is losing in the next few years go to increase Army end strength if that is what is needed to help them. Besides there is a reason people join the Navy and it was not do Army things. It was to fly and go to sea. I’ll go on any ship any time and be on cruise as long as needed. The people being sent to the Green Zone are needed elsewhere.
The IA’s are in the end a self defeating thing because they help DOD mask the real shortfalls that are out there when the Armed Services are prosecuting 2 different deterrence operations and 4+ wars at once. MAKE THE ARMY BIGGER!
Lex,
I do not agree with you about the IA’s. They are masking a bigger issue which is the under resourcing of all the services for the level of effort that the GWOT requires. I would rather see the 60,000 personnel the Navy is going to lose in the next 5 years go to make the Army bigger. Plus like Reese points out the burden is shared unequally. Seabees, medical people, IS’s, CT’s, and EOD are getting used and abused over and over again.
IA’s are a way to mask the fact that there are 2 deterrent actions and 4+ wars underway right now and each one who goes is a loss to a unit that has to provide them. Plus to put it bluntly, I agree with those who say its not what they signed up for. There is a reason folks join the Navy and its generally not to do Army things. If they had wanted to be in the dirt they would have joined the Army or Marines.
Need me to go to sea on any ship? I’m there. Be on cruise as long as you like. However IMHO the Army needs to be bigger and it needs to do those missions that it does best. Make the Army and Marine Corps bigger, especially in light of the fact that the war will be a long one.
“There is no good way tug at the heartstrings of a systems engineer. Is what I?
“There is no good way tug at the heartstrings of a systems engineer. Is what I’ve found.”
Tell them how you’re going to allow them to do extensive process modeling on “it” and they just might perk up and ask “when do we start?”
Oops! I did not think the first comment got through……..
Heh, maybe aviators with a carbine is not a sign of the apocolypse, but how about submarine nuke geeks? Now that is a scary thought…