another "Me too! Me too!" post

found this over at Myron's, who found it over at Grouchy Old Cripple. something i've been wondering for a long time. i'll let the picture say the 1000 words or so i'm thinking.....


edit imagine my surprise calling AAA today. everything was in english, except one sentence that notified the caller if they wanted spanish, they should press "ocho".

i need to surf the net more

because i ignored my computer for the long weekend, i have to play catch up, and in the world of the blogosphere, there just ain't no catching up possible. things move too damned fast. but here's a gem i found that has me rolling. this is another in a long line of posts about folks with too many brains and too much time, coupled with a huge sense of humor...

• Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

  
  read the whole post here
  a hilarious hattip to vigilis thanks dude. made my morning. guess i'll have to use my foil hat for something more useful, like shorting out burned out fuses or something.


• and when was the last time you laughed out loud? go over to Gus's site, watch the three videos, and then lay down for a while to recover. ever wondered what parts were cut from the starwars movies? how about what it would be like to try to communicate with someone with only a rudimentary knowledge of english? check out his videos, vote in his poll, and come back to thank me for sending you there.



• and check out these quotes at irritant #4. i'm still wondering what they call that fake duck.



• and for something completely different, check out the picture posted over at dave's not here. he's a contractor currently working in iraq. he's posted some great shots since he started his blog. i've linked him for a long time, but i don't seem to link to many of his posts. don't know why. he has a pretty good blog.



• and here's one i found backtracking a sitemeter hit. chinese renounce buddism . i don't usually visit sites like this, but the blogger running it has a wicked sense of humor. i may just have to bookmark the site for a later visit, just to see what kind of craziness gets posted. check out the other entries, and scroll down to the post about the first siting of suri cruise. laughed my ass off. the author could be a submariner with that sense of humor.

myron found a funny

and i'm stealing it. here's a link to a funny commercial. a horror film gun commercial at that!

serious hat tip to our buddy MYRON.

my favorite all time joke. period

we were talking today, and the subject of our favorite jokes came up. here's mine. it's about 30 years old. or should i say, i've known this joke for at least 30 years. it's probably a lot older than that.

a young salesman was driving the farm roads, looking for a customer. fresh from college, filled with all kinds of ideas, and armed with a stack of farm machinery brochures, he was sure there was a sale awaiting him out there somewhere.

he pulled into the drive in front of a farm house. an old woman was sitting on the porch shucking peas.

"madame, my name is Jones, and i represent the Smith group of farm impliments. is the man of the house around?"

"he's out back, feeding the pigs" came the reply.

now was the perfect opportunity to show the farmer the convenience and economy of the company's feeding equipment. as he walked around the house, he spied the farmer standing under an apple tree, holding a pig up. the pig would take a bite, and the farmer would lower the pig as it chewed the bite. once the bite was swallowed, the farmer would hold the pig up into the branches again, and repeated the process.

"Holy Crap!" thought the young salesman. this is going to be an easy sale for sure. he goes through his introduction again, and then continued on with the spiel. "I can garauntee to save you a lot of effort and time when it comes to feeding your pigs sir!"

"wall, ya know, it ain't that much effort sonny" replied the farmer.

"But, what about all the time it takes you to feed the pigs?"

"what's time to a pig?"

overheard on the radio...

hillary clinton, the woman i would most NOT want to see eating an ice cream cone.

crude, rude, and right on the mark

as promised, our bay to breakers tale

first of all, i'd like to post a link to someone that took a lot more pictures than i did. she seemed to be focused on the naked people, so be warned, but she was within minutes of us, and i saw all the same stuff as she took pictures of, except, well, she took a lot of pictures, and, well, uh, i didn't. here's the link to sansanparrot's flickr slideshow
here's a link to another slide show by honan. i was probably right out of frame on many of these pictures. i might even have the photographer in a shot on hayes street hill myself.
that said, let the story begin.

click on my pictures for access to larger images.

as i posted the other day, we got up way too early for a sunday. drove to vallejo, and caught the ferry into san francisco, which let us off just a couple of blocks from the starting line. here is what the gathering place for "zone 2" racers looked like. zone 2 was "walkers and strollers". ayup, that's us. i tried to get a picture of the flurry of tortillas and beach balls that filled the air, but i think i must have snapped the camera during that 5 millisecond period of time where none were visible.

here's my long suffering spouse and me, snuggling together waiting for the race to begin. i joked with her that we didn't need costumes. we already were the bear and the chipmunk

alcohol seemed to be the morning git up and go juice, not coffee. some folks were a bit classier than others. no getting picked upside down and drinking beer shooters for some. here's a nice guy we met while waiting for the race to begin. he and his family fly up from southern california every year and make a week of it. they were wearing something approaching penguin costumes, with "March of the Drunken Penguins B2B06" on the back. They started the day with champagne

we crossed the starting line with our fasted time yet. this year it only took us 17.35 minutes to cross. usually the first runner is crossing the finish line in 35 minutes or so before we get across the starting line.

we wandered along, finally getting to the bottom of the hayes street hill. looking straight up the middle of the picture, you will see almost 1/2 a mile of street packed with people, with most of the participants BEHIND us.

san francisco is famous for hills, and in the world of distance running, hayes street hill is one of the ugliest. we were walking, and it was still a trek. we made it to the top, and looked back down the hill. this is what we saw

the top of the hayes street hill was also a natural collection point for some of the most interesting, bizarro, or funny folks around. this guy was my favorite of all. his mugging was hilarious. i called him the moaning lisa

we boogied on. like an idiot, i stuck the camera in my backpack, because it looked like it might start dumping rain all over us. so i missed more damned funny/weird/interesting folks along the way. the two links above show many of the shots i would have taken had i actually had my camera out. idiot.

getting towards the panhandle area, i pulled the camera out just to take this shot. i would like to make a public service announcement if i may: ATTENTION! Just because the cops won't arrest you for being naked does NOT mean the vast majority of naked people in this event should be. Please refrain from doffing your duds unless you have had at least one glamour or sex magazine approach you for a photo shoot. Thanks for your cooperation. end of announcement

along about 7 1/2 miles after you start, you see
and we did it in our best time yet
i know, 2 3/4 hours to walk 7 1/2 miles is pathetic, but when you are sharing space with 70,000 other crazies, it takes a while. hell, it took us until the 40 minute mark to get to the 1 mile marker. now THAT is pathetic.

but, crossing the finish line isn't EVEN the end. it takes another 1 to 1 1/2 miles to hike to "footstock", which is really the end of the line

we hung out here, got our tshirts, grabbed some chow, and then got in line to ride the bus back to the starting line. that took almost an hour. then the less than 7 mile bus ride back took an hour. i was a whipped puppy by this time. the ferry ride back to vallejo was a lot quieter than the one we took in the morning. the skies opened up and a deluge hit the area as we were pulling away from the pier. good timing.

i'm already thinking about what i'm going to wear next year.




and here was one of our favorite costumes. i didn't get the picture, so i had to hunt through flickr until i found him. i knew there would be at least one picture out there.

so, here's a safe for work picture of a nude male with his cock out. sorry.

Courage under pressure

this is a picture of what calm and training can do for you.


the story: first of all, i won't link the story in the paper, because you need to register, and the sacramento bee isn't all that great a paper to deal with that hassle

anyway, so a guy gets robbed at gunpoint, and calls in the make and model of car, and a description of the occupants of the car. a sharp officer sees this car about 2 miles away, parked in a shopping center, with 4 people sitting in the car.
he approaches, and when the driver sees him, backs up, hits the patrol car, and then drives forward, striking the officer. not just striking him, but flipping him up onto the hood of the car. the officer held on with one hand, unsnapped and unholstered his weapon, pointed it at the driver, yelling for him to stop. which the driver didn't. the officer then proceeded to pump rounds through the windshield into the car. he was then thrown off the car, which proceeded to roll until it hit a palm tree
.
the officer removed one bad guy from the gene pool. his injuries were not life threatening.

i hope the department pins a medal on this officer for demonstrating quick thinking and courage while his life was in serious jeapardy.

ok, here's a link to the original story that may get you past the password thingie. this story has been in the papers for a couple of days now.

2006 bay to breakers

ok. here's a link to my paltry 10 photos from the bay to breakers HERE. i'll be back to write about the day when i can. there are thousands of pictures on flickr about the bay to breakers. just type bay to breakers in the search box, and advanced search for 2006 if you are really interested.

yawn, damn it's early.

up at 0dark30 to catch the ferry to san francisco. today is the Bay to Breakers, a crazy 8 mile long block party. today is going to be a bit wet, but i don't think it will damnpen the craziness.
i've never passed the start line before the winner has crossed the finish line. it's nuts.
i'll try to remember to take pictures to share.

wish me luck

variations on a theme, prawns and garbonzo bean paella

no, i haven't gone nuts. i've been there a long time! i've been exploring different ways to make paella. and guess what? there are as many different paellas as there are cooks. and really, anything with saffron rice can kind of be classified paella, can't it? i have made chicken/chorizo/prawns/clams paella on the stove/oven for 4, and i've done a variation for 8 on the grill. so last night, i thought i'd try one a little simpler, no chicken, no sausage. i'd seen a recipe titled garbonzos and prawns while first figuring out paella, so i took what i knew about making paella, and modified it to have just those ingredients.
i also tried something a little different. a fusion recipe, if you will, since i'm a dyed in the wool american mutt, and i love most cuisines i've tried. since i love vietnamese and thai food, A LOT, i decided to use a Thai fish sauce rather than clam juicea as one of the ingredients. if you have never had fish sauce, it's pungent and a bit sweet.

Prawns, Clams, and Garbonzo Bean Paella for 2 (and a half)

NOTE: i went with as little fuss and muss as possible, so i used a few canned products. i know, i know, the horror.... but it made prep time a lot faster, and i don't think i lost a whole lot in the final flavor. the seafood and fish sauce are such strong flavors that you loose the subtle nuances (fancy word) in the background.


ingredients:

• 1 cup paella or arborio (rissotto) rice
• pinch of saffron. the books all say around 5 threads per serving. too picky for me. i just used a nice pinch. don't use too much because it can overpower the dish.
• 2 cups liquid, including around a Tbs of fish sauce, a can of chicken stock, and the rest water or white wine. i skipped the wine in this dish. if you can't get fish sauce, or don't like it (hey, i know it happens) use an 8 oz. bottle of clam juice and make the remainder of the 2 cups with either chicken stock or plain water

as always, if you try this recipe, or it inspires you to try something different, please let me know how it turned out. i'm always looking for fresh and clever ideas to improve my own cooking skills and recipes.

for a complete list of my online recipes, follow the link here

we're a daddy

remember me posting about our new mascots?

as usual, click on picture and select on the all sizes icon at the top for a selection of sizes available.

well, we're a daddy! so far 3 of the 4 eggs have hatched.

these chicks have a highly tuned survival trait. they didn't cheep, twitch, move, or in any way bring attention to themselves. and of course, mom and dad (yes, both parents care and protect the young) were having a heart attack while i was trying to get close enough for a picture this poor bird is squawking and chirring to it's utmost to get me to divert away from the nest
while the other is trying like crazy to get me to go it's direction. you have to give these birds kudos for their vigilance. i felt kind of bad stirring them up so much, but i wanted to get the pix before they left the area.
of course, once i started walking away, they had to escort me. they stayed about 15 feet in front of me, leading me away from the nest

the difference between the killdeer chicks, and the flying rat chicks that hatched inside the wall is amazing. any time one of us walks out of the door, the pigeons flying rat chicks start yammering away.

i foolishly forgot to cover the hole after last season's swallows nest adventure, and ended up with flying rats.

messy.
i won't forget this time.

watched a big ass airplane today

there is a company out there trying to convince various firefighter organizations to hire them. they use a 747 supertanker.
today, we watched them do a demo run over the runway. this plane carries 24,000 gallons of water. that's in the general vicinity of 200,000 pounds of water or fire retardant. this picture is from their website, but it's exactly what we saw todaywhat i found amazing is that the plane was fully loaded, yet took less than 1/2 the runway to take off.
here's a ground shot from the rear. look at the difference is size between the 747 and the general avaition planes sitting around. biiig airplane. it looks like a building.

ooooh. i'm going to have to get THIS

a very serious hat tip to important stuff- or not for this lead.
a lot of you younger tykes won't remember this show, but was one of the greatest westerns on television. Richard Boone played a character named Paladin. from dictionary.com comes the definitions applicable to the name:# A paragon of chivalry; a heroic champion.
# A strong supporter or defender of a cause:
The protagonist is a "troubleshooter" if you will. in other words, you have a problem with bad guys, you hire Paladin, and he comes in and shoots the trouble.
it was a very cool show. i can even remember some of the words to the theme song. if you remember Have Gun Will Travel here's your chance to recapture some of the greatest television ever. if not, check out these disks, and be amazed. i wonder if the local rental place will carry this. probably not. i am definitely going to have to buy the entire collection.

Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam? Paladin, Paladin, far from your home...
or something like it. damn, i'll be humming that song all day.

joel found another bubbleblogger

and his site is Draamal's Daily. a fast and black sailor to boot.
joel has a small writeup that may be of interest. i'd never even heard of yahoo360, and i have a ton of crap on yahoo, including a flickr account.
shows to go ya, there's always something else to find or learn on the internet

anyway, welcome Drammal!

Why the NSA tracking my phone habits doesn't freak me out

As promised in an earlier post's response here's why I'm not as weirded out by the government tracking phone habits.
a little background. i was an enlisted submariner, serving for 6 1/2 years onboard the USS Seawolf(SSN-575) from 1974 thru 1981. the boat's missions were many, but one of the things we existed for was "Special Ops". I won't go into any detail about what that meant, but if you are interested in an almost fictionalized version, i suggest reading Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage . while i can neither confirm nor deny the events as related to the boats in my squadron are true, i will unequivocally state that the "spying" we did provided valuable information to the government, and the folks that make policy for our country. BMB didn't cover even a small portion of what we did. i firmly believe that what we were doing increased our leaders' knowledge of what "the other guy" was doing. i can't say if we were instrumental in avoiding a conflict that could have escalated to a nuclear exchange. i can say that if we were caught, it might have.
our government needed all the input it could get to counter a very real and dangerous opponent.
today, the opponent isn't a monolithic government entity, but more a loose collection of "freelancers". but make no mistake about the danger they hold for our country. if the NSA can figure out that some wackjob has been talking to another whackjob who has a friend that's a whackjob calling from East Assistan, and they nab said whack with a trunkload of C-4 on his way to the local Outlet store mall... more power to them.
on a much more personal note, i've been subjected to surveillance. two stories come to mind.

story 1: the navy's security group out of Skagg's Island (navy's gone from there now) held training on all the boat's at Mare Island. they talked about phone security, and some of the bad guys they had caught spying on us. one day during lunch, my buddy angelo picked up the phone in crew's mess, and handed it to me. "bothenook, phone call." he was infamous for this stupid trick. i picked up the phone, listened to the dial tone, and stated "navy security sucks. are you listening?" the dial tone stopped, and a sepulchral voice answered "why yes, yes we are" and then the dial tone resumed.

story 2: a navy van pulled up two houses down from my navy housing unit. a sailor in dungarees got out, pulled a ladder off the van, and leaned it against the pole. he climbed up, tinkered in the junction node, and then left. after that, my phone line always had an echo in it. there were something like 15 of us off of both the seawolf and the parche living in that 2 block radius. i told my ex-wife to watch what she said on the phone, because there was probably someone from Skagg's listening in. she took this as a challenge. she and her friend cindy decided to see if they could liven some poor bored bastard's life. i can only imagine the conversations they had. one of my neighbors, a Crypto chief from Skagg's came over to my house one night, and had a little conversation with me. he asked me to tell my wife to chill out with the phone, because it was upsetting some of his more "delicate" sailors that were assigned to monitor the calls. so i did. and that, of course was like pouring naphtha on an already raging fire. she went to all of the other wives in the area, and soon they were spending every evening their husbands were on duty calling each other and discussing everything from menstrual cramps to the most twisted and mind warping deviance. after a while, the echo went away from our line. i never knew if they gave up, or if they got better equipment, so they could record, transcribe and sell some of those conversations to some of the dodgier magazines and publications out there.

so, i've lived with KNOWN surveillance, and i've participated in some sort of activity associated with it as well. does it bother me that joe blow, agent in charge of tracking phone calls, knows i called Brownell's ordering a new feed ramp for my marlin M60 22? nope.
again, if you think your information is somehow inviolate, you haven't been paying attention. ever use a credit card? apply for a car loan? use a cell phone? those records are already being kept and used by commercial entities, and now, apparently by the government as well.
i'm not involved in anything illegal that i feel i need to hide from anyone. and if i were... well too bad for me. thinking the govt would change its behavior because it upset me is a little polly annaish. if they want to get and use data that is already being collected and utilized elsewhere, and it's going to be used to track down those who's main goal is to bring death and destruction on me and mine.. have at it.

the bottom line is that i've seen up close and personal what good can come from monitoring communications. think what you want, but for me, it's not a problem.

edit here's a link to a clip of Tony Snow answering the usual diatribe by helen thomas masked as a question, this time regarding phone "tapping".
i like this guy.

introducing one of the bubblehead computer gods

man, am i glad to be able to introduce this guy. i'd like to direct your attention to Myron Howard's blog. for those of you bubbleheads that frequent Martini's BBS you are already familiar with myron. he's been instrumental in keeping a lot of submarine related info up and running over the years. and now he's doing a blog. very very cool. just to whet your appetites, here's a post about Getting my dolphins and Don't piss off the COB. welcome to the bubblesphere myron. glad to have you aboard.

edit before i forget, i'd like to point those of you who haven't heard yet to Eric's SubReport Blog. Eric is the hard working genius behind The Sub Report, linked over there to the right. want to find out what's happening in the world of submarines? check out the sub report. want to read what eric's interested in? read his blog.

killdeer update

well, i promised an update or two regarding killdeer mascots. still there, eggs still intact. momma bird walked up to me when i was just standing there not moving. she was really trying to get me to walk away.
she wasn't too sure what to do with me when i didn't move towards or away from her nest.

on another bird note: one of my previous co-workers was down from idaho and stopped by. we showed him the nest, and he started to laugh when a meadowlark starting singing nearby.
"you know, the meadowlarks sing a different song in idaho. it's a lot clearer. you know, the idaho meadowlarks sing a pure phw, phw, phwdededphw. the california meadowlarks are more like phwde*cough*cough*. i guess the smog makes the difference"
smart ass

da' cook swims, or floats, or bobs, or....

check out the latest from our new old guy cookie over at the cook shack. he dips into the old memory bucket and comes up with a ladle full of sub school memories. his pictures and writings about the submarine escape trainer tower, or as he calls it "the bouyant ascent ... the submarine escape training tower" should warm the heart of any of the sub school grads that did a free assent with a steinke hood over his head. hohoho, blow and go.

when i went into the nuke pipeline in 1972, they had already taken nukes out of the sub school loop. i guess they figured that the two years of training (or more in the case of the electronics techs destined to be reactor operators) were enough to prepare us for the boats. when i was in hawaii in 77 going to "C" school, i got the chance to play in the tower there. they were using the facility mainly as a decompression chamber for diving accidents, but the tower itself was still functional... if you knew the right people. unfortunately, i didn't, but hanging around the chamber and talking to the "real divers" was enlightening, as i was training to be a scuba diver at the time.

enough about me. it always seems to revolve back around to me.

go check out cookie's entry. it's good stuff.

an open post to the NSA and CIA and any other alphabet soup agency

Sirs: feel free to monitor my calling patterns, listen to any phone calls i may get from the Sudan, Yemen, or any other place where there is a lot of sand and bad people that want to kill americans. i guess that would include the beach areas of france too.

Note: i am a firearms enthusiast. i love to shoot. i talk to people on the telephone about arranging range trips, buying ammo, and other assorted activities associated with shooting. i am not now, or in the near future planning on launching a middle aged white guy jihad against the government. not yet anyway.

Please feel free to do what you need to, especially if it pisses off the ACLU and various other moonbat, america hating groups.

Thank you

bothenook

another boat sailor out there

and he's a firecracker. Hiya Cookie. anyone that has copies of bob harrison's poetry available for posting is a good guy in my book. a little history: Bob Harrison was a skimmer cousin of Uncle Sid, the master chief. sid and bob hung out over at Martini's SubBBS. Bob wrote some great poetry, and many of his poems were about submarines and submariners. he died a couple of years back, and it was a sad day at the BBS.

so anyway, check out the cookshack. he has some rants and recipes as well. my kind of guy.

he has a link to the Hillbilly Ecosystem, which is a whole new animal from the TTLB ecosystem, or even the web diva's psuedo bass based KisP ecosystem.
looking over the selection, i'd have to say i'm either a heavily armed recluse, or a heavily armed truck driver.
some folks out there are way funnier than i am. way funnier. it's a good thing i'm so good lookin', otherwise nobody would ever talk to me.

tip o' the dixie cup hat to bubblehead (idaho) for the lead.
edit and yet another one from joel's site: welcome to an active duty bubblehead posting as Trickish Knave. aloha, buddy.

where in the world are you?

if you don't mind the chance of a spamalanche, how about marking yourself on the map in the right margin at the frapper logo.
i've signed on to 3 or 4 maps, and haven't seen an appreciable increase in spam. not saying it can't happen, but it hasn't happened yet to me.

anyhow, where you?

breathtaking

breathtaking
Originally uploaded by bothenook.

why i want to take another road trip from seattle to anchorage. it's almost impossible to believe there are still places like this on our planet. around here, you couldn't swing a cat without hitting someone.

paella for 8

paella for 8
Originally uploaded by bothenook.

we invited friends over for dinner this weekend. all were either big fans or at least familiar with paella.
This is the same basic recipe i used on my Paella for 4. the major differences are as follows:

• used an 8 serving paella pan from the Spanish Table in bezerkly.
• i used the weber bbq grill instead of the stove. this was both easier and harder. once i added all of the ingredients, i just walked away for 30 minutes.
• i reconstituted about 1/2 cup of dried garbonzo beans to add to the mix. i revived them with a soak overnight, and then brought them just to a boil. then i turned off the head, added the juice of 1/2 a lemon to the water, and let them cool for a couple hours before use.
• i found and used a loose spanish chorizo sausage, so i mixed that with the spanish stick chorizo i had already.
• i left out the tomato

paella is easy to make. and it's easy to eat.

home sick

i tell ya. i like having time off, but i wish i wasn't sick so i could enjoy this wonderful day.
my brain is scrambled. i've tried posting a couple of places, and had to pull the posts because they read like a drunken dislexic with a severe case of the shivers tried to type out my thoughts.
i'm going back to bed now.

and another bubblehead surfaces

found via a comment made on another bubbleblogger's post (hiya vig)
welcome to someone with so much to say, he has FOUR blogs listed in his profile.
ok, everyone, wave and say high to Reality Frame.

d'oh. i wish carter would go home and raise peanuts

and shut the f**k up.
i was perusing my list of usual haunts in the news bookmark folder and came across an article/editorial written for the international herald tribune
a short paragraph from the article here:

Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas, the United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life.

hmmm, let's see. palestinians elected a government run by hamas, one of the no BS, real deal, blood on their hand terrorist groups. carter bemoans the fact that the Israelis are withholding some $55million dollars from the palis, and then goes on to say :

"...Hamas has so far refused to recognize the sovereign state of Israel as legitimate, with a right to live in peace. This is a matter of great concern to all of us, and the international community needs to probe for an acceptable way out of this quagmire."

well, color me stupid, but if i was looking over my shoulder all the time trying to avoid suicide murderers, and i had the means to cut funding to pay for the explosives their wacks carry, that's inhumane?
and part of the big issue with carter, although he doesn't come right out, but it is implicit in his discourse, is that the US is withholding funding and aid to the palis because of hamas. well, WTF does he think? this is a government inimical to our entire philosophy. why on earth should american tax dollars be spent supporting a regime that espouses the exact same philosophy of the groups we are fighting around the world.
carter needs to go back to his peanut farm and raise goobers. he is embarrassing me as an american.

how did you keep your sanity underway?

vigilis over at Molten Eagle has posted a "compare and contrast" about the amount of room in a super-max prison and a typical submarine. i responded, and thought a little post expanding the thought was in order.

what do submariners do to keep their sanity while underway? for us on the old seawolf, liberty ports were non-existent. following overhaul, we went to san diego for degaussing, and keyport/dabob bay for torpedo trials and ship silencing testing. that was the infamous "East Pac" run following our refueling. when we went to sea, it was for a long time, with no pitstops, unless something broke. a pitstop in pearl in 74 for a new evaporator basket comes to mind.

so how did we keep our act together. it could be argued that we didn't, but that's for another post.

i can't tell you how many sets of "Flintstones" or Sesame Street sheets covered bunks. many of the married guys "borrowed" their kid's sheets just to have something of home nearby. and in that environment, the expected ribbing simply didn't exist, because we "got it".

some took "listerine" to sea with them. listerine had about the same visual characteristics of Scotch. that was in the days listerine came in glass bottles, and you could tell there was a whole bunkpan full when we were on the surface. rattle rattle clink, rattle rattle clink in time with the rocking and rolling of the boat was usually a dead giveaway.

others played cards or acey-duecy for hours on end.

many qualified every watchstation they could, just to pass the time. i was a nook, with my sonar supervisor card, torpedoman of the watch card, diving officer of the watch card, and junior officer of the deck card all filled out.

many, like me, had our noses buried in a book. i usually took something like 50 books to sea, read them, and then swapped for others. i can remember being pissed that we were out at sea because Stephan R. Donaldson was releasing a new book in the Ill Earth cycle, and i wasn't going to be able to read it for a couple of months. sad, but true.

We made bowling pins out of tape and rags, and rolled EB green duct tape rolls in a makeshift bowling alley in the engineroom.

I learned to embroider. go ahead and laugh. it helped pass the time, and the motorcycle i embroidered on a workshirt was "BITCHIN"

we had a saying in the nuke world that we had raised sarcasm to the level of a performing art, and we practiced day in and day out.

i watched more abysmally bad movies than any free man should be exposed to.

i laid down on the deck under the after escape trunk once when we were in Nanaimo Bay for weapons trials. we had to disassemble the entire hydraulics systems on the boat after an A-ganger mistakenly struck down amines for the CO2 scrubbers into the hydraulic oil storage tanks. that necessitated a total teardown and rebuild of every hydraulics system on the boat. including the torpedo tubes. hence... nanaimo bay weapons accuracy range in British Columbia. but i digress.
here we are in beautiful Nanaimo, clear sunny skys above, with a few big poofy clouds to break up the monotony of nothing but blue. i pulled out my camera and took a picture of the sky through the hatch ring.
when we got home, i took the picture down to a poster shop in san francisco, and had a big poster printed.
the next time we got underway, i taped the poster over the hatch opening. it didn't take long before folks from up forward headed aft just to stand under the hatch looking up at a clear blue sky. i can't tell you how many times looking up at that poster helped clear my mind and help me cope with the fact that it had been months since i'd seen the sun, with a lot more time ahead of me down in the tube.

so, bubbleheads. what did you do to keep your sanity?

a different view of 5-o de May-o

i almost blew coffee out of my nose when i read Rob's take on cinquo de mayo. need a chuckle? check it out.

Friday Ark: killdeer, our new mascots

i was laughing yesterday about the escort i received by a couple of killdeer. so we went out and looked for them after work.
can you spot the nest?click for larger images

here's the nest up close and personal

and of course, the birds put on another award winning "injured bird" performance to draw us away from the nest

i'll keep an eye on them, and will probably report on their progress as the month goes on. it takes around 4 weeks for the eggs to hatch. these are going to be some tired birds, because i walk the fenceline a couple of times a day to stretch out a little after sitting for hours.

edit:looks like the Friday Ark is up.

i one upped the president today

when i was in DC last, there was a huge phalanx of motorcycle cops that roared down pennsylvania avenue, blocking traffic during the morning rush hour. following behind them was a flock of big black SUV's with flashing lights on top. i figured it was the prez or his #2 man doing the whole "going to work" thing.

well, i've done them one better.today while walking around the fence in our back lot area at work, i was accompanied by two very distressed killdeer, doing their famous "broken wing" bird in distress act. there must be a nest in the gravel, which is a favorite nesting spot for them. they don't actually build a nest, just set the eggs in a little hollowed out area in a field, usually in the open.
when predators, or big galoots like me come along, they go into their whole act to draw the threat away from the nesting area.
today, i was lead around the entire periphery of our facility by two killdeer. every time i stopped, they would stop. if i didn't start walking soon, they would work their way back towards me until i started moving forward. i was laughing my keister off at their antics. great acting worthy of an outdoors movie oscar!
so the prez might have a flock of DC cops on motorcycles preceding him, but i had two killdeer. i think i had the better parade.
for more info about killdeer, click the link above

here's another image of the killdeer caught in an academy award winning performance that i stole and resized from ridemypony.com

another good reason to be a carnivore

i now have yet another reason to be a meat eater. Dental Health! yup.

The Dundee team's research was based on reports that people on a vegetarian diet may be more at risk from dental erosion because such a large quantity of the foods they eat, such as fruits and vegetables, tend to be quite acidic in nature.

Niles, another steak if you please. and get those veggies off my plate.

read the rest of the article here

another bubbleblogger. and he looks like a keeper

i saw this on gus's blog the other night, and meant to post/link to the newest member of the submariner blogosphere.

i'd like to introduce Periscope Journal. go visit. leave a welcoming note. and read gus's review at his link above.

you guys make me feel a little, you know, intellectually inadequate. you post about important stuff, and i blather on about better loads for the .45 ACP.

at least there's room for me on the blogosphere. i read an article about how the blogosphere has grown 60X in the last 3 years. that's a lot of folks without a whole lot of things to say, so i don't feel too alone out there.

chuckle for the day

clever.

only 10 visitors to go!

and i'll hit the blogosphere benchmark 50000 visitors. i quit counting myself right after i started this blog, otherwise it would probably be up around 100,000.
cracks me up. WTF do i have to say that is so interesting?
of course, reading other blogs out there and seeing them snivel when they only have 150,000 hits a day...different pond i'm swimming in.

update: blew right by that mark! my 50000th visitor was from
State : Louisiana
City : Monroe
and came to visit a stir fry recipe i posted some time back.

cool

here's a wedding night video i'd hate to see

don't get me wrong. i think love is a wonderful thing. it makes the sunrise sparkle just a little better, it makes the moon a mysterious and wondrous glowing orb rather than a rock up in the sky reflecting sunlight. love makes tough times and tragedy bearable. but please, don't release the wedding video of this marriage for the sake of humanity and sanity

i'd say that went well

a day without immigrants. i think the whole whitewashing of the movement by trying to hide the fact that it's really about illegal aliens is failing, or has failed, or... hey, we aren't as estupido as they think.
a day without illegal aliens. it went so well, i'd like them to try out a whole month. or maybe a year. that way we could really see the impact. yeah, a year without illegal aliens. let's try that.