“It has to do more than play games” was the admonition from the now Ex.

Two guys in my shop owned Atari computers. One had the 400 and one the 800 model. Sometimes they brought them in and we’d fire them up at lunch and play “Star Raiders.” Even now, for such a small amount of RAM and a slow processor, the graphics were pretty good 3D effects…in B&W, of course. So, I had the bug.

The spouse agreed we could get a computer but, (see opening sentence) it would perform a number of tasks. We began the journey to find the best computer to allow me to stop wandring into game arcades and going thru a handful of quarters, as well as have some money making ability. The options we shopped were: The TRS-80 series, the Atari 400/800, and the Apple ][+. I had no idea there was an IBM PC out there, but a few months ago, seeing a note about the anniversary of the IBM PC, I now realize it pre-dated the Apple ][ series.

Our analysis was:
The TRS-80 was good for business related stuff, but sucked for games (my priority).
The Atari series sucked for business, but was great at games (her priority).
The Apple ][ series, was adequate at both, but not superior at either (seemed like the best bet).

So the Apple ][+ it was, sometime in October, 1981. We found the Byte Magazine, and the local computer stores and began shopping for the best price, knowing Apple was the most expensive choice. We finally bought it and here were the specs:

Apple ][+, 6802 1 Mhz processor, 48K RAM.
We added:
Two 5 1/4″ floppy drives, capacity 134K, unless it was used as a system boot disk, then it held 143K on a single side.
80 Column video card, the Videx Videoterm, specifically for word processing tasks
Zenith 12″ green screen monitor
C.IOTH StarWriter daisy wheel printer with parallel interface.
EZ Write Professional (I may have this title wrong)
and we had a printer interface cable made (I had no clue as to standard interfaces, so I paid $89 for the education).

Total outlay, in 1981 dollars from an O-3’s household budget: $5400.

We still had a free bedroom, one being set aside for the pending arrival of the first born, so the computer was placed then, upstairs and I went to work learning the seeming magic of electronics. We talked to some of the computer store salespeople (most of who couldn’t answer any questions, but would let you go and play with the display models by yourself) and found out there was an Apple club in the area. The Tidewater Apple Worms (TAW) met every Saturday in one of the large classrooms at the Naval Amphious School on the Little Creek, VA base. We wandered in to see how we might learn…..

(to be continued)

Part IV

Sorry, I got distracted, but I continue on the journey. Just so you know, along the way between parts Iv and this one, I typed this up: Why We Shelved TASMs. That post details much of what the falout of the report we generated, but also some dealing I had years later, as a result of this exercise 20 years ago this past August.

We arrived back in Norfolk, and returned to our digs on the ground floor of Building “Whiskey-5” (“W5” as the sign on the building said). As usual, our plate was full and I looked at the Ops Boss and asked when we were going to get to work on the tactical analyis. He said he had the next operation to plan (he did) and went back to sorting through the large stack of daily messages. Being the Ops Boss, he owned the two operations types, OSCS(SW) Koch and RMCS(SW) Rumbaugh, and they were put to work. Oh, well, off to the small shared conference room I went, hauling box after box, after box of raido logs, DRT traces, radio-telephone (R/T) logs, weather reports, intel messages and much more. For quite some time, I would sit in there, with charts, dividers, logs and notepads, piecing together engagements from first detection to simulated impact.

I managed to pull a total of 59 complete engagement sequences out of the piles of data. This data not only included the track of the intended virtual, constructive or cooperative target reckoned by the shooters and search aircraft, but the overlay of the actual tracks. While the times of position didn’t always match, I plotted the ded-reckoned tracks to allow some degree of checking apples to apples. For the flight of the simulated TASMs, I plotted the ded-reckoned tracks, based on the engagement plans, printed for final approval by the CO before the simulated firings. During this, I read the tactical signal logs between the shooters and reviewed any other available data.

I don’t recall how many total engagements were run. Some were disgarded for the fact that not all elements of the detection and tracking process were there. Some were not written down, some were not included in the records, most likely to not being packaged up properly. In any case, for 4 dedicated days, an average of almost 15 engagements a day wasn’t too bad for extracting some meaningful info.

In order to manage the data, I hauled in my new toy, a Macintosh 512K, to the office, and ran Excel as my database manager. The data was all kept on 800K 3.5″ floppies, as internal hard drives weren’t a common thing with home computers yet. I seem to recall the printed out data was a 8 page wide by 2 page high form, which I peeled apart (tractor feed paper in an ImageWriter ][ dot-matrix printer) and taped together to show the Commodore. Included in the spreadsheet (which wasn’t even available for the IBM PC yet), was my first serious work in making calculations using spherical geometry. It took a bit of reading in Bowditch, then dusting off the college level trig, and spending quite a bit of time making sure the parenthesis were placed properly to do computations between two fixes. I also did a lot of testing of the formulas, just to make sure I’d get the right answers. This was done so for every fix of the target, I would compare the “miss distance” between the apparent position (from the shooter’s track files) to “ground truth” (the target’s navigational files, which were assumed to be accurate in any case). The speadsheet would indicate the azimuth and distance of miss all along the sequence to engagement.

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From CNN:

First woman pilot with any US flight demonstartion team.

Major Nicole Malachowski is Position #3 with the USAF Thunderbirds.

Message in the bottle: She decided at 5 years old, she wanted to be a fighter pilot. Not only did she do that, she has 200 hours of combat time in F-15 Eagles.

Check this as a philosophy for success:

“People talk about glass ceilings or breaking barriers,” she said. “I don’t even understand those concepts. Those words have actually never existed in my life.”

BZ to Major Malachowski for the following of her dreams and attaining them!

CNN Lou Dobbs reports video is here.

H/T: Black Five

Scanning remarks on Little Green Footballs this morning yielded a link to a blog discussing emotional reactions and how we differ in the “Western world” from those in the Mulsim world.

“Tribal Emotions” is this offering from Elphidelphi. I think Ben (ths contributor) is onto something.

[…] Seneca and Cicero are describing a habit still very much alive today: the control we maintain over our emotions. Indeed, this is an essential aspect of the civilized world. Modern western readers will at first disagree with the idea that their free and open society is marked by the suppression of emotions. Are we not bombarded on a daily basis with appeals to “open up,” to let our emotions out? But those who have lived their entire lives in the Western Oasis often don’t realize that, even at their most exuberant or their most forlorn, they don’t even approach the extremes of unchecked human emotions. […]

I also think, as I read his short essay, that this ties into “opening up” emotionally here in the “West.” There certainly is a place for emotional displays, but, in a civilized society, it certainly is useful to have your moment, and then get back in the game. Unchecked emotions can, as Ben describes (and the media’b’Allah as well) lead to long term problems, which, would pretty much detail why we see peole burning churches and killing nuns because they have their feeling hurt when discuss the violence endemic to their culture.

My take is we are seeing a crack in the wall here in the West with the angry, foul language filled, high volume, shreiking political and cultural discussions. Scan a few of the left wing blogs, if you have a strong stomach and have “heard those words” before and they do not offend you, but the vicious verbal and typed attacks (records for the rest of civilization in archiving engines) are legend “over there.”

The bad news is I suspect the “touchy feely, get in touch with your inner child” crowd is driving the problem. In doing so, they are asking us to do here, what Ben talks about over there: Opening the old wounds and meditating on them. I think, if you’re strong enough to analyse that event well, then it may moderate your daily living. If you’re not, then it’s just one more seeping, ugly issue that you have re-placed on your plate to operate with the rest of your life. Great….

Many years ago, I was told profanity was used because you couldn’t express yourself. I found, while in leadership postitions, the use of profanity in the process actually made things worse, and not better, thereby either causing things to take longer, or getting less than an acceptable job done, if it got done at all. Sometimes it actually takes some personal discipline to hold your tongue and to think of the proper words before you open your mouth, but it always yielded a far superior result.

In both the international and internal political/cultural arenas, this exercise of self restraint would serve all of us well.

I love physics. Years ago, I figured what wasn’t physics was chaos…but then that actually has an order of its own, when you peel back enough layers.

Phyisicts have been looking for the one common formula for years, that will explain everything. Here is a book on the topic, in case you’re interested in finding out more on the issue.

Now, just like the people who slave away in physics, in the molds of Newton and Hawkings, we have a corelary in the political world, and I would suggest, the cultural aspects of society as well. I will call it the Grand Unified Blame Theory (“GUBT” in subsequent references). Just as the physicists want that one single formula, from which all other formulas are derived, so they can understand the weak forces, strong forces, light waves, gravity, etc, etc, etc, in the political world, there are those who seek to find the one individual that, one “uncovered” will explain all the ills of the world, society, and the planet. From Global Warming, to the wearing of burkas, they seek, with seemingly endless energy, the person who is the root cause of all that is evil, all that is bad, and all that has brought strife, pain and misfortune to “the masses.”

The research, biased and unbiased (mostly very biased) goes on, yet there seems to be no end in sight….not only are there legions of scientific personnel involved, but extnesive numbers of those in the “press” have joined in, thinking they can help answer the greatest question of not only our time, but of all time.

At the moment, the magnifying glass is on President George W. Bush. Within the last two weeks, we have found out he is not a facsimile of, but in fact, the Devil himself. If that were the case, then he would be the one, single cause of all the pain and misfortune of all humanity, before now and in the future, but they are grasping at straws. Just as the physicists struggle, so will the sociologists, professional and amateur, to come to grips with the answer to the GUBT, whereupon they may cast in stone the truth, stripping away the descriptor of “theory.”

I have a suggestion to help you determine the one person of great human angst. You need to test your theory by taking out of play that person who your research suggests is the single person worthy of your blame. Isolate them from their duties and all society, and then see what happens. See if the greenhouse gases instantly disappear (ok, well, abate at some quite noticeably accelerated rate), if all killing stops, alternative energy scientific breakthroughs occur and dead dinosaur fuels are obsolete (oh, yeah, that should make the “victims of oppression” in the Middle East want to pass out daisies and turn in their suicide belts), if the poor and downtrodden are suddenly provided with wealth unimagined, that snail darters thrive and spotted owls no longer have to nest in K-Mart lighted signs. It shall also mean the end of earthquakes, Cat 5 hurricanes (or tropical storms that cause the evacuation of Florida), volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, forest fires, and tornadoes. Cancer will no longer appear in any life forms, obesity will disappear, stem cell research, will cure everything from “owies” to Alzheimer’s, with no pain, using a single, small, easy to swallow pill, dispensed from every street cornet free of charge. Taxes will no longer be taken by the Government, and roads will no longer develop potholes. Snow will fall everywhere in your yard, except on the sidewalks and driveways, and will not cover any roads, be they one lane dirt tracks, or 10 lane Interstate.

BUT… only if the isolated person is “the ONE” being that is the proximate cause of all that is bad in the World.

Amazingly. last week, former President Bill Clinton thought someone was naming him as “The ONE,” and reacted accordingly. I think his staff hadn’t gotten the word to him that the final series of experiments hadn’t conclude on George Bush. Maybe he should spend more time smoking cigars and playing poker with President Chavez, Ahmadinejad and Kofi Annan, to make sure he gets the straight story, which should keep his blood pressure down and keep him from having another heart attack.

On the other hand, if only interactions between people get better, then I submit you have merely found a small factor of the forumal, and you must spread your research to encompass the entire universe, known and unknown, for the final answer…..

Anyhow, my poor attempt at humor is to cause you to get a grip. Just as soon as you think you have found “The ONE,” there will be someone else taking their place, so why not just do what that sage philosopher, Rodney King pondered: “Why can’t we all just get along?”

More to say later on the cultural ills of the world, and how to get rid of those who cause them.

Oh, and note to President Clinton: I’m sure Hillary would be happy to know, after she was hurt, that you “tired harder” than anyone else to make sure it didn’t happen. Only the results count. Intentions, good as they may be, pave the road to hell.

Trackbacked to:

The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The Amboy Times,

From Maps of War, a Flash presentation that tracks what “empires” controlled what territory in “the Old World.”

I can’t get it to play nice here, just like I still can’t get YouTube embeded objects to not mess up my layout, so go there and enjoy the history lesson in a few short moments.

Nothing like a dose of history to open your eyes…

Just a bit of humor for the day:

Definition of Fictoid:

A fictoid is a bit of fictional history, making a statement or telling a story in one sentence. A typical fictoid tells who did what, when and where. A fictoid may even be partially true, but is never entirely true, or it would be a factoid. In fact, a fictoid is just a fictional factoid.

I may have to buy the book to find out if I’m right, but for many years, I have long told the story of the farms out West where they breed small, slick skinned creatures named “naugas”…..

Welcome to another Wednesday. Link up your work so others may read it. Not saying I’m some powerhouse blog in readership, just another junction in the cyber-hiway, and it may get you another reader of three.

Yesterday I was discussing the absense of Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missiles (TASMs) from the surface and sub platforms. During the recounting, I mentioned a story about Adm Harry Harris, now the Commander of that lovely garden spot, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with the thankless job of supervising the “detainees” captured terrorists (I can say it, he can’t). Here is it:

So, there we were in late November ’85, freshly arrived in the North Arabian Sea with the SARATOGA Battle Group, lead by Adm David Jerimiah of CRUDESGRU EIGHT. It was a deployment to make sure the bad guys of the region knew we were hanging around, with things that go “BOOM!” and a way to get them to their doorstep. One of the threats that was normally faced in that region went TU and was out of play. We sent the USS CAPODANNO (FF-1095) down south of Yemen to put some eyeballs on it, as it was being towed out of theater, just to make sure the intel was correct. It was. This act of the enemy’s misfortune had the added benefit of freeing up one of our own platforms, which gave us someone to exercise with regularly.

As Adm Jerimiah sat at lunch, scanning a message, with Capt Wes Jordan sitting next to him, he commented his staff couldn’t get the tasking done in 48 hours. Commodore Jordan “graciously” offered to peruse the comminique from CTF 74 and offer his assistance. He read it, then looked at the Admiral and said “My staff can plan this in 48 minutes!”

He gets up, and walks from the Flag Mess up to the O-7 level, where we have the watch station (they wouldn’t let us set up in CDC). He walks in, tosses the meesage on the chart table between LCDR Steve Nerheim and I and says: “I told the Admiral you could plan this in 48 minutes. That was five minutes ago. You’ve got 43 minutes.”

Tasking: Plan a joint TASM attack with surface and submarine assests. CTF 74 mentioned the subs don’t get a chance often to practice that type of coordination, or even receiving the LINK 11 data for Over the Horizon Targeting (OTH-T). Note the salient points: Surface and sub attacking a surface target together. Purpose is to get the sub some experience using surface supplied info. extra salinet info: Our staff is assigned as “AX” (the anti-submarine warfare commander) duty for the battle group. SARATOGA is “AS” (anti-surface warfare commander).

Yes, you’re now wondering why we are doing this, as the lowly sub guys, and having the junior 4 stripper as the boss. It’s because the Commodore is really, really (and I mean really) good at “volunteering” his staff for, well, anything that needs to get done. You get my drift, I’m sure. That’s how this happened.

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