Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote:
On 8/16/2015 2:16 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet George Shirley wrote:
On 8/15/2015 3:17 PM, Derald wrote:
George Shirley wrote:

think I was many years before your service Derald. We had folks
that washed and dried our clothes for us.
USS Boston's last crew and her last WESTPAC ('nam) cruise 69-70.
New crew members normally spent their first week aboard working for
ship's MA (good way to learn one's way around a heavy cruiser). I
was a RM, a "critical" rating, and my division's CPO was the ship's
senior PO. When he discovered he had two radioman aboard he rescued
us from the MA after two or three hours but for those hours I
worked in the ship's laundry operating the extractors ("spin dry")
and the dryers.

I was going to be a Aviation Electronics Tech when I went in, got to
the school in Millington, TN and found out that aviation electronics
where huge tubes and hard wired, dropped out deliberately and went
on to Pax River and became a Yeoman, AKA, Titless Typist, was a
good job as I also crewed on prop driven aircraft with VR-1 and got
to fly all over the US, Canada, and the rest of the world for
nearly two years. My flying job was "Flight Orderly," did the
weight and balance, looked after passengers and cargo, nowadays it
would be a Load Master. Made E4, passed the E5 test and got sent to
sea on a WWII destroyer, a real sub chasing gun boat, spent a lot
of time sailing out of Newport, RI and up along the Atlantic ice
pack for thirty days and then we would go back to Newport, get the
ship working good again and then to the Caribbean for thirty days.
What a hardship! Got recalled to active reserves for the Cuban missile
crisis in
December 1962, got out in June 1963. For that six months in 1963 I
got to go to college on the Vietnam GI Bill, they paid me enough
money for that that my wife finished her last two years on it. I was
making good money in a petrochemical plant and it was a hectic four
years what with wife and kids, work, run a gunsmith shop in what
spare time I had, farmed ten acres, worked swing shift at the plant
and college. Good thing I was young and healthy then. Of course I
had the advantage of studying at work since I ran a lone wolf
control room well away from all the bosses and busy bodies. G

I was intending to be a lifer but fell in love and my wife grew up
at Pax River and wanted no part of being married to a swabbie who
would be deployed three fourths of the time and leave her to take
care of the kids and everything else. Love and lust trumps wanta be
a sailor every time. We will be married 55 years come this
December. Guess it all worked out. Two kids, five grandkids, six
great grandkids, and our eldest granddaughter is getting married
soon so there will probably be more great grands to love and teach.


You are a very lucky man George Shirley - I envy you. Alas my life
didn't turn out as planned - not even close.

Boot camp in Dago in 1957 we washed our clothes on a concrete
table with a scrub brush and strong soap, rinsed, and then ran
them up a line attached to a tall pole.
Great Lakes (North Chicago, IL), 1968, same same; hung'em with
clothes stops. On rainy days we used steam heated drying rooms. Of
course, when in school, I did my own on base.

snip

Just got a weather alert for severe thunderstorms, we can only
wish that it is true,
Here's hoping. So far this year, we're ahead of annual "average"
but that doesn't mean much. It'll take more than a few such years
to begin to reduce the groundwater/aquifer deficits. it's over 100F
outside at the moment and the clouds we can

Weather experts my back end.
...and you just noticed?

Naw, I've known it for a long time, TV just makes it worse as they
put these "Emergency" screens on every hour when someone at the
weather bureau sneezes. I think my arthritic back is better at
guessing the weather than the Phd that is on TV.

I've been learning to use this site over the last month or so. With
a bit of experience you can soon be better at estimating the future
weather than those performing monkeys on TV;
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current....99,30.28,1003
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current....99,30.28,1003
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current....99,30.28,1003

You can zoom in and out (mousewheel) and click and rotate the earth
and see what's going on in real time. You can click a place on the
map and get data for that point. (Windspeed, total preipitable water
and wind power density.) I centred it over the US for those URLs,
you can move it to where you want it before bookmarking it yourself
and the bookmark will store the scale, lat. and long. that you set

Enjoy.

Yeah, have an app for that on this computer, I love it, much more
accurate then the gubmint weather heads.

That's good then. I only discovered it a few weeks back when I saw the URL
in the background on a map the weather girl was pointing at.

My best friend used to be the
USAF weather guy at Cape Canaveral in the early sixties when they were
shooting astro nuts into space. He later flew "spook" planes in Nam
and retired with 20 years behind him. Now he farms pine trees in
Loosyanna. We talk weather nearly every day. He's four months older
than me, puir old thang.

Wow!!! Still I bet talking with him makes you feel young.
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy
little classification in the DSM*."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)
(*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)