I began watching the public TV documentary 'Carrier' earlier today. It's about a deployment aboard the USS Nimitz, the class leader of 10 of this nation's 12 aircraft carriers. I believe it was filmed in 2005, although it's hard to tell. The Navy is heavy with tradition and things are so slow to change that except for the aircraft and more modern electronics, it could have been made in 1985.
One scene was especially striking. Once the ship got underway, the captain called a meeting of all the chiefs. That's Chief Petty Officers, the men and women who make up the Navy's middle management. Officers may think great thoughts and become the subject of historical novels, but the chiefs make sure everything gets done, from keeping the head clean to arming the Super Hornets on the flight deck. As I looked at the assembled faces in the 'Goat Locker' (the traditional name for the chiefs' mess), I had a strange thought: had I stayed in the Navy and studied a little harder in the Nuclear Power Program, one of the faces there could have been mine. I would now have 18 years in, enough time in the nuclear rates for a sharp sailor to become a Senior or Master Chief.
And as I do whenever I see a program about the Navy, I thought of Dave Robertson. My best friend Peter and I went through 'A' School with Robertson; I went through boot camp and Nuclear Power School with him as well. He stayed in the Navy, but not in nuclear power. He was stationed in Italy the last time I heard from him almost five years ago. He said something to me in that last e-mail that crosses my mind almost every day and makes me feel a certain sense of guilt. In an earlier conversation, I had mentioned to him that Peter and I, almost inseparable in "A" School, were still best friends. He seemed surprised that neither of us had stayed in and said, in reference to the two of us, "We really need men of your caliber now." It was one of the greatest compliments I have ever received.
I spent my last year in the Navy being bitter and homesick. I was immature, selfish, and tended towards having an over-important sense of myself. Had I stuck it out, who knows what would have happened. I see that same attitude in some of the kids interviewed for 'Carrier' and I want to yell at them to make every moment of their time count for something. Because someday, you will have some sense of envy for the next generation running that ship.
I've installed Ubuntu on my PC, not in a dual-boot setup, but as the only OS. Why? Because I want to prove to myself that I can get by without Windows.
The sad truth is that I can't entirely abandon Windows for one reason: the iPhone I'm using to create this post. I could unlock it and use the plethora of open source software available to manage it, but we have a significant investment in DRMed music from the iTunes store that I am not willing to abandon. However, I'm hoping that running Windows virtually for iTunes alone will solve this problem.
Installing Ubuntu is now easier than installing Windows. I've installed many Linux distros over the years and this version of Ubuntu beats them all. Suse 10.3 offers more serious management tools, but Ubuntu's driver management is unbelievable. I have a newer Nvidia card; the company does not offer open source drivers. However, Ubuntu offered to install the "closed" driver after informing me that they would not support it. Fair enough, considering the support is free.
So here I go. Piss off, Steve Ballmer.
The Lovely Kelli finished student teaching today, meaning that she is now certified to teach in the state of Indiana. She will soon be certified in Kentucky as well, for her new job is with the Jefferson County Public School system. For those of you outside this area, Jefferson County is mostly the Louisville metro area.
I can't begin to explain how proud I am of my wife. On top of student teaching (7AM-3PM daily), she worked 30 hours a week at her day job (4PM-10PM). Including that hour to drive home, change clothes, and go to work, she was hard at it for 15 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 10 weeks. During most of that time, I was off work. Yet, she still managed to take me to the doctor and check on me often. I could not have done what she did. I admire people who have a strong will and a drive to succeed; Kelli has that in spades.
I missed this earlier: ABC news has revealed that some footage used in Algore's global warming scare-fest was lifted from the film "The Day After Tomorrow." You can't imagine how shocked I am to hear that someone with Gore's history would embellish "facts" to push his agenda.
There is valid research and exploration to be done with regard to our climate and the changes that are (and probably have been) taking place. While both sides of the global warming debate have valid points, idiots like Gore does no one any favors by fictionalizing a crisis that may be natural and possibly not a crisis at all. Real scientific research is supposed to be politics-free; however, I can't help but think that an agenda may be at work here.
NOTE: I wrote this post in September, 2007, but it was not until today that I realized it had never been posted. It's not really relevant to anything right now and I don't remember what triggered the mood in the first place.
I released a new episode of the podcast last night, a short history of the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you don't know who Fitzgerald was, just know that he was the man who wrote The Great Gatsby, one of the greatest novels produced during the 20th century. He was a tortured man, an alcoholic whose body gave out when he was only forty-four. He left behind stories that defined his age, but more importantly to me, he left behind a short story that had a greater effect on me than any non-fiction I have read since.
I first read 'Winter Dreams' when I was 17; it was an assignment in my American Literature class. It is the story of Dexter Green, a young man who finds success at a young age. When he returns to the country club where he worked as a child, he meets Judy Jones, a young woman he had first seen years ago. Beautiful, disrespectful and intelligent, Judy has a string of gentlemen vying for her affections. Dexter becomes one of that group, but soon finds himself the center of her attention. He is ready to marry her (even breaking an earlier engagement to do so) when she does as she has always done: she flits away to some other man.
Heartbroken, Dexter sells his business and moves to New York. Years go by. One day, a man comes to his office and while talking about their childhoods, the visitor mentions that one of his friends married a young lady from Dexter's hometown, a woman named Judy Jones. The visitor talks about Judy's marriage and how her husband cheats on her time and again, much to Dexter's chagrin. When the visitor leaves, Dexter stares out his office window, trying to remember the Judy he knew. It is then he realizes that the woman who haunted him has not existed for years, replaced by a struggling mother who has little choice in life but to forgive her husband's many infidelities.
I read the story early in my Junior year, unaware of the tortured life I was about to start living in the spring of 1988. Like Dexter, it was over a girl, and I allowed myself to be manipulated in exchange for those moments during which I was the center of her world. As an adult, I can look back and see a scared girl with no father figure, no self-worth and a self-destructive personality. At 17, she was all I wanted. When we broke up, my life turned from a ride on a roller coaster to a dive from a high cliff. No matter what was said to me by friends and family, I was inconsolable. School ended and, again like Dexter, I left town.
All of us have had a Judy Jones in our lives. It may have been a woman, a man, or a dream that pulled us away from what was really important in life. It's critical, I believe, not to delve too deeply into our past mistakes for we can not change what we were and what we did. But I do believe it's healthy, sometimes, to know "the rest of the story", as Paul Harvey says. In my case, Judy Jones is divorced and her life is a train wreck. I pity her, a feeling she would despise if she knew about it. I feel relief when I see her, relief borne on the wings of a marriage in which I trust my drama-free spouse. My life that could have been does not haunt me, but teaches me that my heart does not always make the best choices and that time will put everything to rest.
Unfortunately, not everyone learns these lessons. If you are in your 30's or 40's, you are surrounded by certain co-workers and friends who dream of the good old days when they were wild and free. They have forgotten the heartaches, the broken promises, the petty jealousies and all the rest. As my Uncle Gus used to say, as he pointed to the ground, "THESE are the good old days."
I'm going to quit apologizing for my lack of posts here. Last week was my first full week back at work and I quickly discovered that my time management skills have gone down the tubes (not the internet tubes; sorry, Senator). I haven't put out a podcast recently, either, which really upsets me. I'll try to remedy that this week as well.
Being possibly the world's worst Catholic, you would not think I would be excited about the Pope's visit to the US. But I am. There is something about His Holiness that sets him apart, some presence that makes me feel comfortable even when I see him on TV. Pope John Paul II was in St. Peter's chair for most of my life, so Benedict has some big shoes to fill. John Paul was surprisingly hard when the times called for it. Benedict is less so, I think, but he still gets his message across in this age of possible Muslim domination. The fact that some terrorist leaders have threatened the Vatican tells me his message has hit home.
The Lovely Kelli actually went to Detroit to see John Paul when she was a teenager, but unless Benedict visits the US again, I will probably never see him in person. The White House is rolling out the red carpet for His Holiness, which tells me how much President Bush respects him as both a spiritual and political leader. I believe many non-Catholics dismiss the Pope as some faraway old man, but almost every Protestant faith's bedrock beliefs come from the Church. So when Benedict speaks, he speaks with more authority than as a leader of one sect of Christianity.
Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard has an interesting column out about arctic sea ice and the polar bear. We will, it is believed, begin to experience ice-free summers at the North Pole within most of our lifetimes. This is seen as a major threat to the bears as it deprives them of much of their habitat.
I need to do my own research on climate change, but it's difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of scientific reality versus political agenda. With this in mind, I have several fundamental questions with regard to our long-term understanding of climate:
1. How long have human beings had the ability to measure and track temperature accurately over multiple years in remote places such as the North Pole, Antarctica and mid-ocean?
2. How long have human beings had the ability to measure deep current ocean temperatures accurately?
3. How long have human beings had the ability to accurately measure carbon emissions?
4. How long have human beings had the ability to accurately measure the emissions coming from Al Gore's 3-monitor setup? And how long before the working man can afford that type of screen real estate?
These are the questions which make for sleepless nights, friends.
Sorry I haven't posted for so long. Being back at work is wonderful, but I'm having to learn about time management all over again. I'll get better.
I'm thinking this morning about Petty Officer Michael A. Monsoor. I always ask where this nation finds such men, and I realize they are found everywhere---our neighbors, the people we work with, the sons and daughters of the people with whom we grew up. There is something special about a country that can produce such as man.
Why is Yang worked up about censorship in China? I mean, it's all about making money there, right? What else matters?