Great accomplishments are overrated. I prefer to “go with the flow.”
How about you?
Cartoon shared from Calamities of Nature.
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work
(Continued from “Forty Years Ago–A Departure”.)
The flight from Houston had a short layover at Los Angeles International before continuing on to San Diego. From there it was but a short trip to the San Diego Naval Training Center.
A few weeks earlier, I had ridden with a friend to the Manned Spacecraft Center, where he worked. He was loaning me his car for the day so that I could look for a job.
Even though I had already had several jobs, I had very little experience at actually looking for a job and, looking back now, I really didn’t have a clue then on how to do it. I basically spent the day driving around, eventually ending up in a shopping center in Baytown.
I really didn’t start the day even thinking about joining the military, but there I was, at a Texas strip mall that housed recruiting offices for Marine Corp, Army, Air Force and Navy. With the ongoing Viet Nam conflict, the first two had absolutely no interest for me. While I don’t remember much about it, my first stop was in the Air Force recruiter’s office.
The stop at the Navy recruiting office was more memorable. The recruiter talked about a number of options, but there was one that really caught my attention, the Navy nuclear power program. Not only did it offer interesting opportunities in the Navy, but the job experience gained might later lead to opportunities in civilian nuclear power. The main drawback was it required a six year commitment instead of the more common two or four year enlistments.
In the ensuing weeks, I qualified for the program through the advanced programs test, passed a physical, and enlisted in the Navy with entry delayed until the end of December.
One of the benefits of the program was that I would be entering the service at E3 pay grade, a seaman – equivalent to a private first class – instead of seaman recruit (E1). Completion of recruit training would bring automatic promotion to Petty Officer Third Class, equivalent to corporal.
Three different job fields were included in the program: electronics, mechanical, and electrical. I hoped for electronics, but I wasn’t going to learn which field I was going to be in until after further testing in boot camp. Of course, electronics was what most of those who enter the program hoped for and not everyone could get it.
January 1, 1972 was a holiday, of course, so there was no processing of the new recruits. Instead, we got to watch football games in the receiving and outfitting transient barracks.
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Control modules similar to these, designed in the 1960s, continue in use in the 2010s.
Old technology doesn’t necessarily mean defunct technology.
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Our preference is to flee the heat and humidity of Arkansas by heading to the mountains – when we can.
This year, that’s not an option. I’ve got contract work through the hottest part of the year, so we’re not planning on a trip until later.
This fourth of July weekend, though, I had the opportunity to make it a four day weekend, if, on Thursday, we were able to get done with everything that needed to be done at work so we didn’t need to finish up on Friday. I texted Karen to let her know, “May take tomorrow off and make it a 4 day weekend if we can finish this exam on the simulator tonight.”
“Ok, you probably need a break,” she replied, and then a little while later, she asked, “Do you want to take a day trip or overnight for something different to do?
I texted back, “Don’t know as hot as it is. It’d be different if it were cooler.”
Karen: “Biloxi MS is to be in the mid to low 90’s maybe a shower or two. – Day drive look around – just an idea.”
I liked the idea, but decided to check to see just how long a trip that would be. “That’s over an 8 hour drive by google,” I texted.
So there we were the next afternoon, south of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, with the heat mirages shimmering off the blacktop, without even a clue of the road construction traffic backup we would run into east of Vicksburg, Mississippi, or that we would end up in an extended crawl in Friday rush hour traffic in Jackson, Mississippi going into a long holiday weekend.
We didn’t take our motorhome, though there were plenty of recreational vehicles on the road.
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a bit of a surprise.
While I wasn’t expecting it when I got up this morning, I’m going back to work tomorrow morning — another contract job back at the place I retired from, working in training, as usual. They need help and found some money to pay for it.
So it’s back to setting an alarm clock, figuring out when to get to the gym, commuting — all of 20 minutes, with light traffic — and all the sundry things that go with work.
But, it’s only for a few weeks.
Except for that six month contract that looks like it’ll start January 3rd.
The retired part of “semi-retired” lasted 6 months this time.
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I’ve been spend a bit of time working on the civil war blog, Daily Observations from The Civil War, and, as a result, have been missing from here for a bit. However, since much of what will be posted in that blog is going to be time relevant, I want to get a good handle on it before things really start happening.
It’s highly likely that I will be going back to work for another 6 month stint beginning in January which means that I’ll be working during the 150th anniversary of the run-up to and beginning of the civil war. The amount of time that I’ll have for working on the blog will, thus, be limited – which is the reason for the effort now.
I’m currently working with “Village Life in America, 1852 – 1872,” by Caroline Cowles Richards. I went ahead and back posted entries from the early days of her diary and am pre-posting entries after November 14, 1860 so each will be published on the applicable day.
Things were going fine until I discovered the e-text I was using didn’t match the text in the pdf copy I was using to check spelling and wording against. I had already run into missing text earlier, but had just assumed that an error had been made in electronic transcription.
But, then, I ran into an instance where the entry in the pdf version for a particular date had a lot more information and detail.
It turns out that the pdf version is a “new and enlarged” edition.
In looking into it a little further, it turns out that it is at least the third published edition of Miss Richard’s diary and, probably, has entries included that were left out of the previous editions.
So now I am going back and comparing editions and adding new posts where they were omitted.
Of course, if I used the e-text and pdf for the same edition, there wouldn’t have been any discrepency to be found.
I’ll be incorporating more diaries into the blog, but I’ll make sure that the text and pdf versions are from the same source document.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I had joined with two others on The American Civil War page on facebook. That was 3 weeks ago and the “friend” count for the page was 1,385. Today, it went over 2,500.
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OK. I guess that’s a little overstating it. I’m not really unemployed. The job is over and the contract is up; I can’t sign up for unemployment because I’m making too much money – from my pension.
Students at a nuclear power plant simulator – photo rendered as a painting.
This was my second contract since I retired a little over three years ago. Both have been for about 6 months and both have been doing part of the job that I used to do before I retired – teaching license operator candidates in the classroom and in the simulator.
The class did well in the simulator operational exams administered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week. The last day of the operational exams was Thursday, which was also my last day on the job. I had my box packed and was out the door by a little after 6 PM.
I suppose it will take a little time to get back into the swing of not working.
I think I’ll be up to speed by sometime Monday morning. 
I’ve got quite a lot of work to do around our place this spring, summer, and fall. Of course, we’ll get a little bit of traveling in, too.
Then, sometime in January, it looks like I’ll probably be back at work. That’s about the time the next class should be at the point where I’ll be needed – if they allocate the funds, which I think is quite likely.
I’ve worked a total of about 13 1/2 months out of the last 36 – and when I do work, it’s doing something I know well and get satisfaction from.
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This is a day at work — a week — that’s hard to rearrange and/or reschedule.
It wasn’t supposed to do this until later in the day… but at 4:30 AM we already had a bit of white stuff.
It looks as though we may get a good bit more.
When the Arctic Oscillation went strongly negative last month,
temperatures in Arkansas dropped to 10 to 20°F below normal.
We are certainly getting a taste of winter this year.
… and road conditions are already deteriorating (blue is snow covered, green is slush).
The Arctic Oscillation has become strongly negative again.
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Busy…, wet…, behind — and more photos!
October 30, 2009
I really have intended to work my way through the photos from our September trip. However, I have managed to find other activities to keep me from that goal. I do, however, have a new photo gallery for Day 3 of Rocky Mountain National Park.
Check out Day 3 of Rocky Mountain National Park and my other Haw Creek photo galleries.
Work, of course, takes a huge chunk of time and my time is shifted since the simulator is primarily available for the students in the evening. While I was planning for the contract to be over at the end of 2009, there is a distinct possibility that I will be there until the second week of March.
Karen has a new notebook computer. I spent the better part of a day installing all of her old programs and transferring files. The notebook runs on Windows 7.
I’m going to also be moving from XP to Windows 7. After restoring my laptop to near original configuration, there are still times where I am waiting an excessive time for processes to finish. My new laptop is on order and will be assembled and shipped next week.
Early this year, I rediscovered a love for reading. I used to read three or more novels a week on a regular basis. After many years of only a few books a year, I’m now reading at least a couple of books a week.
This has been the wettest year of all the years we have lived in Arkansas. Much of the state is well over 20″ over the normal rainfall amounts for the year to date. This is already about the 12th or 13th wettest year on record for Little Rock. From what I understand, the wettest year on record was in the 1880s, and there was a little more than ten inches more than what Little Rock has already so far this year — and there is still two more months of 2009 to go.
I’m going to be concentrating on posting the rest of the material from our September trip and building photo galleries. I’ll post on other topics as I have the time and the inclination.
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