I suspect I know the answer, but will be trying things out in a few moments. I suspect why one domain and assocaited blog moved so easily is that is wasn’t associated with my first domain and therefore main account. I thing two hosting sites, both pointing the blog and its clone to the same name servers didn’t help…..

Anyhow….I have arrived and even I can get to my blog the “right way.”

I believe I have all the links resetablished to keep the internal functions of the blog intact (going back to older posts), thanks to “find and replace” in WordPad….

Back “online” tomorrow…

For those who have re-found me, thanks for hanging around….

UPDATE:  Superceeded.  The move is over, this post remains for historical purposes.

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I have been reluctant to post as my domain pointers in the big name server system in the sky has stil not occurred. I keep getting told to be patient, yet…I transferred one other blog in 10 minutes….and the first night I migrated this blog over, so it would pop up all ready to roll about midnight 2/13-14 and I could move back and forth between the two then to make sure I had everything over.

Anyhow, if I post it here, I have to move everything over again (but I believe I have the right sequence, so that the comments, categories, the blogroll and posts keep aligned. I have one more pleading email out to the new hosting place, asking why, after all the basic settings seem to be in place, that the transfer, despite even reclicking the “buttons” at the control panels on each end of the equation once more a few nights ago…..

So…I have everything set up as of the post before this one to re-import (actually reconstruct the databases via SQL) right away.

The good news at least this place has not vanished and the new one not available for the last few days….

Thanks for you regular visitors for clicking in to see if I wrote anything new….I have two posts in my head, not to mention on Wednesday, there will be more of the Z-5-O story in Ropeyarn Sunday and Open Trackbacks…

Dummy Test Link

So my buddy and I are doing our almost daily dump of life’s adventures, and I mention the recent issues of the “lost” Iranian .50 caliber sniper rifles….

And he says (he lives in very Northern Georgia, not far from, as he finds out, from the Barrett Rifles Factory in Murfeesboro, TN) there was a news story just very recently:

Some “Middle Eastern Men” arrive at the Barrett Rifles factory, and ask for a tour of the facilities and would like to know about purchasing some quantities of weapons…..I jokingly quipped “so I guess the ‘quantities’ were not about 10?”The local and State of Tennessee law enforcement people got on this case, so….looks like the “Middle Eastern” men won’t be getting the tour, nor is Barrett Rifles selling them anything.It looks like this happened about the 26th of January, according to a post at Bear Creek Ledger. BCL linked to Nashville’s News Channel 5 site for the confirmation of the story. I can’t say this has made the rounds on the MilBlogs, and I’m a little surprised at that. It sounds like it was one man, in a pickup, with about $10K and he demanded access to the plant. Pretty “cheeky” as the Brits would say, if you ask me.Connecting the dots: CNN shows video of jihadi snipers killing our troops. The Information Warriors of the enemy see the response of the America public Congress and decide if some is good, more is better. In a “bang for the buck” analysis, the cost of a $12,900 rifle teamed up with a decent quality video camera, and and a semi-competent assistant to handle the recording…you can counter many billions of dollars spent by the US Government. So…when the media’b’Allah doesn’t think their reporting has anything to do with the effect on the war sentiment, all they have to know is (if they are American taxpayers) they are helping to fuel the budget outlays to counter the cheap publicity they willingly provide the enemy. Now, by demanding the dollars to stop in this endeavor is just handing the enemy a huge victory in addition to “paying it forward” for the defeat of our troops.Good on the employee at Barrett for reporting the case, bad for not stalling him long enough for the arrival of LE under the circumstances.Trackbacked at:

Third World County
Woman, Honor Thyself
The Pirate’s Cove
Stuck on Stupid
Right Truth

V(oice) A(ctivated) L(aptops) for OUR – I(njured) T(roops) as it were.

Yes, we did a big drive last year for about 14 days. I just thought I’d make a point of reminding anyone who comes by to read that the project to get laptops placed in the major medical facilities for our permanently of temporarily disabled soldiers/sailors/airmen and Marines is a year round effort, so if you have a few spare dollars, now that the Christmas bills are paid down, maybe consider this worthwhile program to help get our troops back into life.

The latest news from FbL, the lady who co-parented the project, is here.

It seems Chuck Z, the other co-parent of VALOUR-IT, is headed back for his 34th surgery as a result of his wounds in Iraq that, in a bittersweet manner, led to this all being a project that has helped many recover their ability to communicate with friends and family.

Oh, and if you missed the link above, you can donate here!

The current subtopic of this series is the Combat Systems Training Team (CSTT) issues. To recap, in 1992, COMNAVSURFLANT did have a long standing instruction mandating the establishment of CSTTs on all ships. COMNAVAIRLANT did not. Not to cast any disparaging remarks, but I recall on several occassions, the offer had been made to some AIRLANT counterparts, to provide them a floppy with the instruction already formatted in WordPerfect for use. A few quick edits and an admiral’s signature and Voila! Ready to levy new requirements on the Fleet…..in particular, the carrier sailors. When the accident first occurred, I had flashbacks of standing in my office, telling them we were happy to provide them with the documents, because we liked it so well, we thought they would, too.

It didn’t happen, until after the event that ended lives and careers.

Had CSTTs been in place that night, more than likely a “simulation/deviation” that would have been briefed for the drill would have been “No live ordnance will be used. When the order is given to ‘Arm SeaSparrow,’ the Sparrow FOC (Firing Officer Console) Observer will stop the operator from leaving the space and question them as what actions they would carry out in a live fire situation, and, if correct, tell them to resume their station and report to the TAS (Target Acquisition System) operator NSSMS was simulated armed.” Problem solved, safety ensured, operator still has to show “smarts.”

It’s not like it would have been a new precedent, where one community “gave” something to the other.

Next post: Explosives Handling Personnel Qualification/Certification Program (EHPQCP)

A about a year ago, I decided to leave Blogger and to get my own domain. Here were some observationsfrom my earlier days of “the Struggle.”

As I approach the ending point for a really great deal for a years worth of hosting ($10), I am stuck trying to figure out how to move to a more advantageous host, yet not lose a years work of worth.
Here’s something I learned (which ties into why my comments didn’t work for the last week): I should have tied my blog to my domain name right away. Why? Because now all the links I have placed “out there” or those links into me from other places, will all be broken, and I’m not about to pay to leave a digital bread crumb trail. I’ll just have to hope some of my small reader ship does a little bit of typing to find me, if I move later this month.

The reason my comments didn’t work is because I thought I had followed my directions to have my blog links migrate over to www.chaoticsynapticactivity.com, vice the chaoticsynapticactivity.netfirms.com. While you could still see the posts, the blog pointers got lost by not picking up the post title when you tried to post a comment.

Anyhow, this is first notice that I’ll be experimenting to make sure I can successfully connect post to my domain name, and then I will no longer be chained to any one hosting service.

If anyone is interested in any results of that and you use WordPress, leave me a comment, and I’ll make sure to cut you in on how not to get bruises on your virtual blogging shins along the way.

In the meantime, do what you have to to get your domain name secured, then make sure you know how to “mask” or redirect your link titles…so you won’t get lost in the “translation”…

Open trackbacks! Now, if I could just get comments working…if you have one, email it until I can get the background issues cleared up. I’m sure I can kludge it in when I get it….

So, post your work here!

Sea stories?? Yes…it will be here in a few hours…busy day here…it also will be in the “Australian” theme of the previous two weeks….UPDATE: Here is the promised story

I had a Royal Australian Naval Officer, LCDR Kim Bailey-Jones, as my project officer for the PERRY Class FFG Combat Direction Systems computer program. This was a standing exchange billet, as the RAN had 4 FFGs in their fleet and cost shared in the maintenance and upgrades for the program.

Money was getting tight in the 1994-95 time frame for the military in general, and we regularly received calls from the main program sponsor, Program executive Officer – Theater Air Defense (PEO-TAD) to recall funds from the authorized “SEATASK.” On most occasions, I was asked to respond with how to we might absorb a $1.1M cut (for an overall funding line of $11M) for the various PEO-TAD projects covered. LCDR Jones sat down and sharpened his pencil and typing effort in a spreadsheet, so as to make his point in the upcoming Quarterly Progress Review to our TAD sponsors.

As we were gathered in the large command auditorium, and it was LCDR Jone’s turn to review his project’s status. He got to his budgeting slide and said: “If you can’t give me this much, then just cancel the program and save the money (which was several million).” Of course, he has pre-briefed the “bombshell” up the chain of command and had approval to say such a thing.

Bottom line, the expertise required to safely and responsibly maintain the program needed 4 discrete fields of expertise, and his bottom line funding line represented the barest of funds to keep those four people on staff for such work. Well, the PEO Rep, an Engineering Duty Captain certainly was taken back, but, when Kim made his case, his logic was infallible and there really wasn’t much to be said, but just to note the amount of funding that must remain in place if the FFG-7 Class was to stay at sea.

Oh, I had a Canadian Armed Force officer on staff, too….

The ramp up to the mission of making sure our ships could safely employ a major weapons system, in this case NATO Sea Sparrow System (NSSMS), was not as difficult as it would seem, but it certainly required a multi-faceted approach. For almost three years, I had been assigned to inspect the combat systems readiness of the Atlantic Fleet’s surface force. That meant, for those not familiar with the “ownership” of ships in the Navy, all ships, except aircraft carriers (those belong to the commanders of the naval air forces in the Atlantic and Pacific areas – COMNAVAIRLANT, in my case), and the ships directly related to supporting submarines, those being the submarine tenders (AS) and submarine rescue ships (ASR). Any other ship belonged to Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Atlantic (COMNAVSURFLANT). If “it” had a weapons system more complex than a M2 .50 caliber machine gun on a tripod mount, then the ship required an annual Combat Systems Assessment (CSA) (which began in the late 1980s, but were canceled sometime in 1994 or 1995 – but that’s another piece of history for another time).

The foundation of the NATO Sea Sparrow readiness inspections in the aftermath of this incident came from the existing CSA check sheets, which had been in development for several years at this point. Prior to April, 1990, the Atlantic Fleet CSA procedures had been put together by training teams, which not only were tasked to do the fleet training, but also the CSAs. In April that year, a new department within the NAVSURFLANT Combat Systems Mobile Training Team (CSMTT) was established and manned. A complete review of every existing check sheet began, ensuring the listed standards were from an official document, and not from “It’s a great idea, because I did in on USS LAST SHIP” files. In addition to the scrub, the located reference, to the page or paragraph, was inserted as part of the inspectable point.

Those check sheets, for the administrative areas of training, Combat Systems Training Team (CSTT), Personnel Qualification System (PQS), Explosives Handling Qualification/Certification Program (EHPQCP), Battle Orders, watch bills, and safety (those I know for sure, but probably a few more, too), as well as grading criteria for setting up, executing and debriefing a battle scenario using the NSSMS were all tossed into the package for review by the Pacific Fleet counterparts and Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet (CINCLANTFLT) staff. The advantage was the check sheets had been in use for a few years at this point, and had always been made available to the Fleet. The CSTT drill procedures had been around for some time, but had not been widely enforced, as the Engineering Department versions in the form of the Engineering Casualty Control and Damage Control Training Teams (ECCTT/DCTT) had been since the post-Vietnam era via the Operational Propulsion Plant Exam (OPPE) requirements. In mid 1991, the CSA process was revised, and a major “go/no go” pass/fail criteria was the established CSTT by command letter, which elevated the emphasis on the use of internal “experts” to be able to keep the crew up-to-date on procedures, as well as providing an on the job training path to induct new crewmen into the teams in place.

Why is the discussion of the CSTT important in this history? Once the CSMTT and the Fleet Training Groups took up the issue of ensuring a CSTT on surface force ships was established, had scenarios, were qualified and had a training plan process, the trainees could receive more realistic training, as the safety aspects of the running the scenarios was paramount in the set up, debriefing and execution of the drills. The COMNAVSURFLANT instructions and Training and Readiness manuals (TREADMAN) on the CSTT were revised to reflect current operations and then it was trained to. COMNAVAIRLANT did not have any requirements on the books to have the CVs stand up and maintain a CSTT. This key process in conducting training became a factor, very directly, in the events of the night of October 2nd, 1992.

to be continued….

Last October, I put up the “teaser post.” About this time in 1993, Capt Phil Balisle (now Admiral) came into my office and informed me I would be detailed to lead a team for Commander, Atlantic Fleet, to validate all Atlantic Fleet units properly under stood the safe employment of the NATO Sea Sparrow systems aboard their ships. The Pacific Fleet would have a team visiting their vessels, and we would work from a common set of checksheets during the course of the follow up to the investigation of the incident. I was given, from Commander Naval Air Forces, Atlantic, LCDR Don Diehl, from the Guided Missile School at Dam Neck, FTCS Goss, and from my own command, FTC Dann, and told to get to work.

The requirement levied upon us was to go to each ship, except those in such operational status that they could not show us the system, as was the case for the USS O’BANNON (DD-989), and ensure the men standing the watches were school/PQS/OJT on paper qualified, and, by practical demonstration, knowledgeable in actual operations of a simulated engagement in a training scenario.

Having already having spent some energy over the prior two years standardizing Combat Systems Assessments (CSAs) with the West Coast CSA Team, some ground work was already done, so the agreement on the plan for the standard inspection clicked quickly.

I read the report from, I believe Admiral Cebrowski, and the executive summary had some chilling words (I believe I recall them accurately):

Unfortunately, the system (NATO Sea Sparrow) worked exactly as designed.

That set the tone for where the deficiency was that turned that night into one so many would like to have gotten a “do over” card for: The people screwed up. All too often, that is the case in the course of operations. Equipment: “CHECK!” People: “Hold on, we have a problem.”

In the first few days of my assignment to this tasking, I attended a meeting set up by Commander, Air Forces, Atlantic (AIRLANT), where a large group of aviators were to determine just how many switch operations, cover lifts, or button pushes were required to get each of the weapons off any aircraft in the inventory. I think one pilot briefed than in an A-6E, it took 82 separate things to launch a Harpoon Anti-Ship Missile. So, there was sat, all morning, and after lunch, started up again. Finally, one aviator sitting at the table in front of me (I was the “shoe” in the room, so I took a cheap seat along the wall), out of frustration, made this salient comment:

If that man thinks he has permission to shoot, it doesn’t matter how many things he has to do, he’s going to launch that weapon.

The heads, mostly fighting to stay awake after hours of laboriously presented technical details, nodded in agreement. The meeting, didn’t last too much longer, for the primary point had been made by that statement. Unfortunately, as I came to understand more of the details of that night, this aviator was more correct than I would know at the time…..

More later…

In this post, I talked about our propensity to commit “overkill,” specifically in regards to the current issue of the Immigration debate.

Several things have come to mind in for this idea of only the “legal” guest workers will have the card that defines them as a legitimate hiring candidate, so how does an American get a job when the “system” is put in place?

My ideas on how to “fix” the problem we face:

• Why not make the “entry point” to a job the holding of a Social Security Number? No, I’m not in the way back machine, but don’t we already have a master directory of people? Yep, we sure do. I’d suggest, rather than build an entire parallel system, to upgrade the SSA systems to allow internet access for employers to validate the potential employees. I’d further comment you shouldn’t need a measure requiring the collection of physical data of the person. It should be pretty obvious, if a Hispanic person, who claims to be Jose, has given you an SSN in your office in Topeka, KS, that says it belong to Peggy Martin of San Antonio, TX, that something is amiss. This method may not keep every illegal out, but I suspect it will catch a large number of them, who are relying on stolen SSNs to get buy.
• I’m sure there’s a lot to be hammered out in the drafting of the “guest worker” sweepstakes, but the comments by the President indicate there will be no excuses for employers who hire illegals, because the Government will have this new system to let them know someone is illegal. Remember I’m not a lawyer, but I did have to get involved with the military justice system for one of my duties. I believe it is a better approach to not say “We’ll hammer you if you have employed illegals,” but “We’ll hammer you if you KNOWINGLY hired illegals.” The premise of this hinges on the comment about and having a beefed up Social Security system to help employers screen out illegals. Now, if an illegal gets through your doors, as an employer, based on falsified papers, then I wouldn’t see that as an actionable crime. If you let them through, knowing they were illegal, then it’s hammer time. This allows us “undocumented Americans” to still be employable, as the employer will only be at risk, if they are criminally involved in hiring the wrong people. That takes the pressure off of them to not hire anyone, unless they can positively determine the validity of someone’s presence at their hiring desk.

Now, on to technical issues about a new and special system to track “guest workers:”
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