Stick a Fork in It…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

Done 🙂


Heading back to the ‘world’ today…

Went over to the Seamen’s Club and got a beer and a burger in celebration. This is a little known outfit, but they provide one hellva service to sailors that crew the ships spread all over the world supporting the US military and other organizations. They provide phone, email, decent food and all kinds of BEER 🙂 And it’s all reasonably priced!!!

You can see their locations from the placemat below.
And since we were talking about Singapore, we decided to celebrate with Tiger, which is brewed in Singapore 🙂
We may not be coming back with ‘all’ of the pieces and parts, but we are coming back with ALL of the folks in one piece and that is the most important part.

Went out to Sam’s Anchor Inn for dinner, got Kobe beef teppanyaki style, along with shrimp and all the fixings, along with painted label San Miguel beer-

Our token one good meal of the trip. Now looking ‘forward’ (NOT) to 2 hour flight, 3 hour layover, 9 hour flight, 2 hour layover, 5 hour flight to get home… sigh…

Armed Forces Day…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

President Harry S. Truman led the effort to establish a single holiday for citizens to come together and thank our military members for their patriotic service in support of our country.

On 31 Aug 1949, Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson announced the creation of an Armed Forces Day to replace individual services appreciation days. The single day celebration also stemmed from the unification of the Armed Forces under one department- the Department of Defense.

And has anyone seen this advertised anywhere? Any media coverage (Stars and Stripes DID cover it)???

/Crickets…

BUT they sure have covered the so called end of the world! WTFO???

Since I’m OCONUS I have been thanking all the folks I came in contact with yesterday to thank them, and a few (mostly senior folks) actually knew what I was talking about… sigh…

Here are a couple of pics of a “Challenge Coin” I was given by Jim Land. This one is pretty special to me. Here is the obverse-
And this is the reverse of the coin
Take a minute and thank a service member, active retired or otherwise… I’ve set this as an auto post, so I ‘hope’ it posts on the right day…

Notes to self…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Find some place else to stay next time…
Air Farce bases have some ‘stupid’ internet policies- Block any thing about weapons (e.g. blogs, firearms companies, NRA, etc), and this is the pop up

Your page is blocked due to a security policy that prohibits access to Category Weapons

but you’re allowed to go to Brady bunch, VPC and all the other anti-gun sites…

Don’t walk close to the compound fence at night. DAYUM those floodlights are bright… AND I got busted for smoking in a secure area! WTF???

Why is it, if you’re inside the fence, everybody walking by on the outside ‘ignores’ you??? Are they pretending we don’t exist???

Japanese econo-boxes (e.g tiny cars) have more features than most full size american cars! My tin can with roller skate wheels has automatic wipers, automatic headlights, auto dimming rearview mirror, and a rear windshield wiper…

Now if it just had THREE squirrels for power, instead of the two…

With four full sized Americans in three bags in it, it had to downshift to low gear to get up a hill. Pretty bad when the big diesel truck was pulling away from us going to up the 9% grade…

After five “days” of less than four hours of sleep, dingy (is that a word?) does not BEGIN to describe how tired we are. One guy literally went to sleep in the middle of the conversation!

Once again, truly impressed by the kids out here on the pointy end… They are good, and proud of what they are doing! And in casual conversations, many more (both male and female) are gun owners/shooters! Yea for them!

There was something elzzzZZZZZZZ

10 Lbs in a 5 Lb bag- Take 2…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

Here we go again… Take two, plus some pics. Reconfiguration is complete more or less…


Different CONEX boxes, different cable reels and other toys.

And creating welding 101 🙂 In the right center you see some folks squatting on the deck. They are welding padeyes to the deck, and as Danny observed before, painting them with White Lead, since they are temporary. Now it’s raining at this time, so they did some creative welding/painting, by using the torch to heat up the padeye/weld, paint it quickly, and use an umbrella to deep the rain off for a couple of minutes until the paint dried… Pretty creative!!!
And Danny wanted some more pics of the ROV, it’s a HYSUB 150/3000 (info HERE). This is a pic of the swing out derrick used to launch the ROV over the side of the ship, which does have DPS (1 meter accuracy).
Here’s another view of the derrick and cable sleeve. As you can tell, it’s a pretty ‘healthy’ assembly…
And here are some pics of their control station- Since we’re not planning on using it, we don’t have any of the ROV crew aboard.

My timing SUCKS!!!

Posted on by March 6, 2013


Alternate title- Well, THAT was just special…

Sigh…

Pushed it a ‘bit’ late leaving the work site, so we decided to take the Expressway back up to where we were staying. Now the tropical storm eye wasn’t quite here, but the wind/rain was getting interesting…

For those who’ve been over here, you remember the Expressway is made with volcanic rock in place of ‘gravel’ seen in most roads in the USA. It sheds water really well, but it’s also SLICK when wet!

Anyhoo, we jump on the Expressway, and the “mid-sized” car (read tin can with roller skate wheels) is a bit of a handful. The guy riding with me is already nervous, since he’s in the left front seat with no steering wheel, no brakes, nothing…

It’s blowing 30ish knots, gusting 50ish knots, raining ‘medium’ (about what we’d call a frog strangler back home) and sideways. So visibility is not the best.

I’m more concerned about staying on the road than I am about speed, so I’m not really looking as I’m also trying to see the road and kinda crabbing into the wind. About that time we come out from behind one of the hills onto the first bridge going North…

Next thing I know, the other guy goes, “did you do that on purpose?”

What?

“Did you change lanes on purpose?”

I didn’t change lanes!

“Yes you did!”

Huh???

“I can see the guardrail now, before I couldn’t!”

Meh… So we get across the bridge, and there we go again…

See above… Same comments from him and from me. He has had all the fun he can stand, so he flops the seat back down and tells me- “Lemme know when we die!” and closes his eyes like he’s sleeping.

So I fight the car up the Expressway for 25 klicks, get off, and- The wind drops off, the rain stops and the sun comes out…

And he looks up and asks, “Did we die? Is THAT why the sun’s shining and there’s no wind?”

My timing sucks!!! And I’m STILL trying to get the seat cushion outta my ass…

10Lbs in a 5Lb bag…

Posted on by March 6, 2013
Well, here we go again… Trying to get 10lbs in a 5lb bag, er… ship…

This is a working ROV on the ship we are working with; it’s not the cutesy little things you see on TV, this one is a workhorse ROV!!! 4600 lbs, 100 inches high, depths to 16000 feet, two manipulators…
And a pic of the ship from the pier…
The big blue thing sticking up through the picture is the port A-Frame support, capable of >30,000 lbs. The other bits and pieces are semi positioned on deck, based on offload and ability to flake equipment out prior to deployment.
This one is from the 01 Deck, looking aft past the ROV sheave. Even though the deck ‘appears’ open, you can see the cable spool that has to be spooled out down the center of the aft deck.
And finally, what I think is probably the ‘best’ headline I’ve seen about OBL. And it pretty much captures the folks out here on the pointy end’s perspective…

And in what is becoming a habit, got another @#&*% Tropical Storm (03W) that has us boresighted… I want to find the sumbitch with the target painted on his back and send him somewhere/anywhere else… sigh…

Happy Mother’s Day…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

To each and every Mother, thank you for being there for us, bearing us, nurturing us, and most of all, putting up with us…


And a special thank you to those Blue Star and Gold Star Mothers out there. Without you, we would not have a military. Your sacrifices go above and beyond what any parent should have to endure.

The Blue Star Mother’s Flag. Contrary to what some think, this is NOT a Brigadier General/Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Flag…

A Gold Star Mother’s Flag- ‘Technically’ this flag is incorrect, the original intent was for the gold star to be slightly smaller than the blue star on the blue star flag and the blue star would form a border around the gold star.

USS Murphy DDG 112…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

USS Michael Murphy, DDG-112 was christened today, 7 May, 2011 at Bath Iron Works, in Bath, Maine. Adding to the significance of the date is that this was also his birthday. Lt Michael Murphy would have been 35 years old. Instead, he gave his life during Operation Red Wings at the age of 29. He gave his life for the other team members, and his memory will live on in this Burke class Destroyer.

More on USS Murphy HERE:

More on Operation Red Wings HERE:

More on the christening HERE:

Of note, LT Murphy and the other SEALS had the option of killing the herders who initially discovered them, but chose NOT to take innocent lives, even though it would ‘probably’ cause them problems. THIS is the kind of thinking that sets US military apart from the bad guys… Sadly, we lost three outstanding sailors that day and only PO1 Marcus Luttrel survived, and he is living every day with survivor’s guilt. I think it is truly appropriate that the “stock” photo used for the commissioning is not the officer portrait, but rather one of the last pictures taken of LT Murphy in theater. The ship’s motto is also true of not only LT Murphy, but the SEALs in general, the motto is “LEAD THE FIGHT”.

A bit busy…

Posted on by March 6, 2013

Sorry for the light posting and commenting…


We took a bit of a different approach into Tokyo this time, as far as I could tell from listening to the controllers, this is the ‘new’ standard approach…

On the road for the next month or so, as usual lousy connectivity, and limited bandwidth at best…

So posting/commenting will be light and for that I apologize. I will throw stuff up when I can. Y’all go read from the side bar, ALL good folks over there!