Part VIII is here.

In the fall of 1986, I also purchased an Apple ][gs. The short story of the acquisition is the Surface Forces, Atlantic Officer’s Wives Club had a scholarship and annually held an auction to raise money. We were *ahem* encouraged to find worthwhile items to donate for this endeavor. I did track down a few items that did make some money for the scholarship in the silent auction part of the evening and later, a ][gs went up for the main auction. I, being the hobbyist I was, lusted after the 128K of the newer version of the workhorse, the new mouse “pointing device” and it’s early graphical user interface (GUI). They brought it out and wanted to start the bidding at $900. No one raised their hand or spoke. It was a great item, but no one seemed rich enough. Finally, after much cajoling from the CNSL Chief or Staff’s wive, we began the bidding. I think someone first said $600. Anyhow, the “battle enused” and I won at $825. My evil plan was to put it in the paper and make a few dollars, as I couldn’t really afford it at the time. As I walked out to the car with my prize, one couple said they wanted it and asked if I’d take $850. I turned them down politely, and the next day put my ad in the paper.

One call came that week, and, after the initial fact finding by the caller, and I guess the attempt to see how little I’d take, I never got another call. I sold it to my sister for what I paid for it the following week. I will admit to having pulled it all out of the boxes and booting it up for a few hours, before I reboxed it for shipment.

Somewhere in this time period, I got a look at a program by Owl Software named “Guide.” I can’t find any links to it, but I saw it running on the Apple ][ series. It may have been at AppleFest in 1983 (held in Boston). Anyhow, I was intrigued for you could mark a section of text and when a user clicked on it, another document would load and be displayed. You could use it for acronyms, of more detailed info on a topic, and there seemed to be no limits to the “depth” of the linking. I thought you could generate a document coveinr all aspects of a topic, to the very minutest level of detail, yet the reader wold only have to dig in as far as necessary to make sure they followed/understood the writing. Of course, now we know this as HTML, but, if you’ve followed the series, this is my second encouter with software that used the methodolgy of the Wolrd Wide Web, years after I had seen it.

Also in this time frame, probably around early 1986, I convinced the spouse we should upgrade to a Mac, now that used ones were on the market. I do recall seeing the 1984 SuperBowl commercial for the Mac, and then kept my eye on the development, but it was too expensive. I finally found one two years later, when someone else was upgrading their system, and I bought their Mac 512K, complete with the single external 400K 3.5″ floppy.

Now, about 4.5 years into owning computers, I moved from 1Mhz (8 bit words)/48K/134K (storage) to 8Mhz (16 bit words) /512K/400K (storage) Moden spped had moved from 300 bps to 1200 bps over the same time frame.

From here I began learning about “object oriented programming” (OOP) from a program that was part of the Mac purchase (if new) or $30 if purchased separately with HyperCard ( I bought it when it came out in 1987). It allowed you to manage data and pictures and place buttons all over the background, and you could “program” on a set of cards, much like having a rolodex, and each card was a new surface to work on. Not only did you do much of the work graphically, you cold then attach code to any of the “objects” on the screen. I, once more, figured out some things I wanted to do and then figured out how to make HyperCard do it for me. I hacked up someone else’s public domain address book, and I transmogrified it so I could also keep track of who I send Christmas cards to each year, and also for the current year, where I made it print out all my mailing labels for the year I was working on them.

I also found out it was much more fun to create a “this is everything” letter for Chritmas, then I’d cut and paste each one going out, depending on how much contact I’d had with the friendd/relative that year. Ah, the magic of word processing…

Next “expose:” Retreading other serial posts, the HyperCard in Navigation and 4th Dimension helps lay out a long range project.

Sikorsky YR-4B (HNS-1) in NASA wind tunnel testing

1943 – The Navy accepts its first helicopter, a Sikorsky YR-4B (HNS-1), at Bridgeport, Conn.

Click on the picture for more history of this helo from Fiddler’s Green.

How about this for deck quals?:

H Frank Gregory, now a Lieutenant Colonel, subsequently demonstrated the XR-4 from a platform mounted on the tanker SS Bunker Hill. in May, 1943, 24 landings and take-offs being made. Additional tests were conducted in July 1943 with the XR-4, and the first YR-4A, operating from a stern platform on the troopship SS James Parker. In the course of this 20-hour test, the two helicopters made 162 landings and take-offs.

That was before they had NWP-42!

To my former shipmates from HC-6 (LCDR Al Jacka), HSL-32 (LCDR “Buzz” Buzzell) and HSL-44 (LCDR Marty ??? (age…sorry)), this one’s for you!

Part VII talked about getting ready for the deployment to the Med/North Arabian Sea.

I packed the Apple //c, the 9″ green screen monitor and the ImageWriter ][ in a footlocker (with padding) and off went. I know the computer was moved by VERTEP (vertical replenishment) (meaning it was on a pallet with other stuff, staged on a flight deck and picked up by a helicopter (usually CH-46D Sea Knights)) from a rolling, pitching deck, and deposited on another rolling, pitching deck of another ship 9 times. Yes, that’s right: NINE times.

And that little Apple “portable” kept on operating. It’s “operational availability” was 100%. We also moved a few more times by hauling the equipment down the ship’s gangways and up others a few times, too.

I had gotten reasonable proficient with the integrated suite of programs of Appleworks (which, still exists for the Mac today) because of this cruise. As the Combat Systems Material Officer, I was responsible for helping the ships stay at the highest level of readiness possible. As equipment failed, and the ship’s submitted their reports and parts requests, I was on the hook to figure out the status and keep the Commodore on the status of the repairs and parts availability. I set up a database in AW for tracking the repair parts and the estimated time the repairs would be effected.

I formatted a letter, where the body of the letter contained the current status of all casualties to the ships assigned to us. AW took care of inserting the most up to date data at printout time. All I had to do was maintain the database file when new information arrived. This sounds pretty mundane and routine for the current sate of the art of software and office suites today, but my point is in 1985, Apple had produced a very effective program to do this. I’m not sure if AppleWorks was the first of it’s kind (see the Wikipedia article linked above “one of the first”), but as far as I can recall, it was. Another milestone development, from which many other companies have gone on to “emulate” and market very well, but it was Apple software vision that most likely paved the way for all the other developments of Office software with integration.

Back in those days, Apple made the hardware and software. Years later, the software department of Apple was spun off as it’s own company, Claris. Certainly the great advantage of writing software application within the company lead to exceptionally smooth operations for the end user.

We were standing “port and starboard, chow-to-chow” watches, which meant two teams of us traded the watch when each mealtime came around. While on watch, if an update to a part status came in, I could hand annotate the info on page 1 (the casualty report status letter) of the Staff Watch Officer’s Notebook. As soon as I got off watch, I would go and make any changes, then printout a fresh copy of the letter and go back to the watch station and replace the outdated page.

The trend of my learning, documented in this series, is that I learned programs and systems more effectively and quickly when I had to face a real challenge of my management time. I then would have excellent motivation to sit down and focus on the documentation for the program I needed to get the job done.

Next time: Owl Software’s “Guide” program and stepping up to a Mac

Moving right along from Part VI, where I chronicled my attempts to “obtain” Zenith Z-248 computers from the Supply Corps. It didn’t work….

So, now I’m about 3.5 years into owning a personal computer. In Oct 1981, I had a 1Mhz processor with 48K of RAM. BY the spring of 1985, I had moved up to a 1 Mhz processor with 64K of RAM. Wow…consider how long that was compared to now. Macs were still in my future…

Apple //c with 9″ “green screen” monitor

Anyhow, I was now moving from a fixed grey hull to the life of a nomadic “tactical DESRON” troll. The Apple //c was around
by now. I was digging throught the classified ads of the Virginian Pilot and found someone advertizing a //c and it also included a 1200 baud modem! I Watched the ad for a few days and the day after the ad went out of the paper, I called and asked if he still had the computer. Yes, was the reply. I told him I’d give him $1200 for everything. He balked, I fingered the freshly withdrawn $20s to get his attention and asked “How do I get to your house?” He gave me directions.

I picked up the //c, the modem and an ImageWriter ][ 9 pin dot matrix, serially interfaced printer. Home I went with my find and had my 300 baud modem sold shortly there after.

One of the programs that had come with the //c was “AppleWorks.” AppleWorks was a combination word processor, spreadsheet and database program, and I think it also had an intergrated communications management function. This was the fore runner of the “office suite” software packages we are so reliant on anymore. I had obviously done word processing, and had played with the very first spreadsheet, Visicalc (written to run on the Apple ][ first), and also had been doing work with dBase II in C/PM. Now I had the three functions all resident within one program, which, came in very handy later on at work.

While on this adventure, and I’m not completely clear on the dates, I was able to attend the Apple Expo in Boston. I think it was in 1983, while I was at Department Head School in Newport (yes, this part is out of sequence). I recall being fascinated with speech recognition software for the Apple ][ series. You could have 64 voice files per “library.” You would speak the command, then type in the command it would execute. You could interact with the disk operating system, so you could easily increase the “vocabulary” by using some commands to load other library files. I spoke to one of the programmers and found out Apple was employing several Ph.Ds to engineer the digitizing of speech. Part of the discussion was about how we speak in analog streams, yet we still think of speech as sets of words with “white space” between them. No so for the computer. The computer has to be powerful enough to constantly be guessing which part of the captured wave form comprises discrete words, no small task. Obviously, we have come a long way, but some of the extra money I spent on Apple products went to thier extrensive R&D efforts that brought us the first viable GUIs and many other things we now take for granted.

I can’t recall the exact circumstances, but as we geared up for the Mediterranean/North Arabian Sea cruise, one of my Apple Club friends began dabbing with the IBM PC stuff and showed me a program named R:Base 5000. It was a database manager, and you could type in english like questions and it would roll out the answers from the data tables. I got a copy and loaded it on the Z-248 the staff had gotten for administrative work. We packed up our cruise boxes and I devoted a blue and white footlocker to be the carrying case for my Apple //c computer anf the printer, so I could use them to do my work while we made the world free for democracy.

I tell the story of the cruise in the series A Journey into History.

Coming next: The Watch Officer’s Notebook and rugged computers

Sometime in late 1989, there I was, watching Marty, the valiant rotary wing aviator and Det Officer-in-Charge (OIC), and one of his boy wonders saunter past me in the centerline passageway, wearing their flight helmets, and carrying helmet bags that appeared to have helmets in them. Me, having recalled the warning to always heed the “little warning bells in the back of your head” at Prospective Executive Officer (PXO) school, I called to marty to inquire at what looked to be out of sorts.

It went something like this:

Me: “Marty, what’s in the helmet bags?”
Marty: “Oh, tapes, XO.”
Me: “Really, what kind?”
Marty: “Music cassettes.”
Me: “Why, pray tell, are you taking music cassettes up in the helo?”
Marty: “The training device in the console can also play music.”

Interesting. Never forget sailors (and officers) will always figure out the capabilities of anything you provide to them. I will admit to also being much like that as a JO. Certainly if one person doesn’t, the next one will, and the word spreads.

Me: “So, you’re gonna be cranking up the tunes while you fly your mission?”
Marty: “Sure, it gets boring up there.”

That, well not exactly the precise words, nevertheless, portray the conversation. They headed out to pre-flight and off they went into the skies over the Med, or the Persian Gulf, to head bang while conducting surface surveillance. I’m sure they were not the only crew in the fleet to figure out they had a built in stereo system to chase away the boredom while being vibrated along with several thousand other parts of the SH-60B airframe.

The epilogue to this happened a few years later, when I was inspecting Atlantic Fleet ships for Combat Systems readiness. I poked my head into the Electronic Warfare module of a DDG-38 Class ship, and pushing back the curtain, saw the Electronic Warfare On Board Trainer (EWOBT), an IBM PC system, equipped with a CD-ROM, off to the side. This computer was fielded to keep EW operators proficient by running training scenarios, complete with audio of various electronic emitters fro the CD-ROMs provided. The headset hung close by on a hook, and there was a heavy metal band music CD laying out of it’s jewel case on top of the case. Once more, being curious, I asked the EW on watch what the CD was there for. “Oh, we can play music CDs on there, too” he said without flinching, or thinking. I had had an EWOBT on my ship (same as the one discussed above with the musical helo), and had no clue the EWs were most likely playing tunes while on watch, looking very much like they were sharpening their skills as EW operators. Oh, well.

I made a point of letting the officers on the ships that the EWs might also be enjoying some entertainment on the mid-watch.

In Part V, I described some of the wonderous “cutting edge” technologies, such as a Z-80 co-processor and a 300 bps modem. I paid the bleeding edge pricing, ‘coz I wanted them.

I had left FCTCL for Dept Head School in Jan-June 83, hauling my trusty Apple ][+ along for the geobachelor thing. I kept working on th TAGG program, cleaning it up and writing the manual. AFter some extra schooling enroute, I flew south (way south, as in Chile) to catch my ride as Engineer Officer on USS CONOLLY (DD-979). The ship’s schedule was 3 more months of UNITAS, then home for Chritmas and then off to Portland, ME and 10 months in the new Bath Iron Works facility. My CO, CDR Harry Maxiner, had prepped the ship for the overhaul, by having them get as much material as possible to complete the ship’s force portion of the ROH work package, while we were on cruise. He was another man who thought way ahead. Besides being the Naval emmissaries we had been sent south to be, the work that should have been held off until early February 84, was being knocked out daily. Some readers, if you were along for that ride will recall the installation of extra flourescent lighting in the bilge areas, and the replacement of fasterners with stainless stell ones all over the ship. This project to complete the “Ship’s Force Work List” (SFWL) resulted in a few things:

We found out COMNAVSURFLANT had a pile of Z-248 computers to be issued to the ships. Having spoken to some of the shipyard and SUPSHIP people about the upcoming yard period, they indicated they had developed a computerized interface for the ROH (regular overhaul – back then every 5 years, stretched from 3) work pacakge. We could update our work for the SFWL via a computer and modem it into the SUPSHIP Offices, and we could get status on all the shipyard and other organization’s job status in return. Pretty sweet deal. I set about, when we returned from UNITAS, to convince SURFLANT Supply to give us a few of those Zenith computers. We begged, we pleaded, the CO went and knocked on doors around the various offices, but…the “Chops” were not letting us have anything. This adventure gave me my primary education on “programatics.” The computers were bought with funding justified to support an application to assist the shipboard disburing officers, and that was all they could be used for. Handing them over for ROH work package tracking was a non-starter, and would have been a violation of the expediture of public funding. I didn’t “get it” for a while, but my later years helped me comprehend this issue much better. Net result: Updates of work lists by hand…

I will say this about the Supply Corps. They didn’t just get a bunch of computers and toss them aboard ships to the DISBO. They contracted for the design, production, support and training for the life cycle of the plan. By centralizing their effort, a lot of standardiztion saved the day. That, I saw them do with programs for the Ship’s Store, the spare parts and one other area (I can’t recall exactly what it was), all were raging successes. The black shoes never had the logic wear off on them for the most of the rest of my career.

The second effect of the early completion of much of the planned work was the free time made available for the crew to train for the end of the yard inspections, in my case, the “LOE” (Light Off Exam). Captain Maxiner wanted to know whare we were in the process and I sat down, once more at the Apple ][+, armed with dBase ][ and designed and programmed an application to track the items to be done for the LOE. It was an early lesson n relational databases, but you have much more manual work to do to connect the different data tables. I would print out the report of all items daily and hang in on the side of the file cabinets forward of my desk in the Log Room. The people responsible. mostly my five division officer, would mark up the status by the end of the work day and I’d edit the progress/chnages into the computer. Each morning, the CO also got a copy, fresh as of the end of the day before. This helped keep him on top of things without coming down to the Log Room of the Engineering spaces. Not that he didn’t but he didn’t need to come nearly as often. It was a fun project, and helped a lot of us keep on top of the many individual tasks necessary to pass the LOE on the first try. The same POA&M (Plan of Action and Milestones) tracking program was filled out to get us ready for the post-ROH REFTRA (refresher training) in GTMO, where we were also going to have the OPPE (operational propulsion plant exam) Equivalent exam at the end of the 6 weeks down south. Both REFTRA and OPPE went very well, and because we could devote more time to training, and less time to paperwork.

Near the end of overhaul, the Weapons Officer, LCDR John Taylor, was being relieved. He turned over the Senior Watch Officer duty to me. This entailed managing the watch assignments for inport, and also the officers when at sea. About this time I had moved up to an Apple ][e, but was pretty much like the Apple ][+ from a performance standpoint. Using the ][e, I did another database project, where I entered the entire crew into the tables, then recorded their status for the seven major watchstanding duties: Command Duty Officer (CDO), Officer of the Deck (Inport), Petty Officer of the Watch (POOW), Duty Engineer, Duty Operations, Duty Supply and Duty Combat Systems. I also recorded their date of achievement, from their service record entries, and I had the computer assign a weighted value by paygrade. This accounted for experience. Besides just then tweaking the major qualifications portion, all we had to do, as we headed into port, was put in the desired inport section assignments. The initial printout then added up the values and gave an overview of the experience any one section had, as well as the body count. If these values were markedly different, it became an easy task to move people between the sections and balance things out. Someone asked me wahy I spent all the time writing that program, beacuse they could do it faster by hand. I told them they could the first time, but every time after that, I’d win. They got it.

During the ROH, I had the opportunity to pick up my first hard drive, the first one Apple produced. A few days ago, I found a picture of it, but, in amongst the many bookmarks I have, I can’t track it down. It held a whopping 5 megabytes of data and was about the size of a shoebox. That doesn’t seem like much, but given floppies held 134K of data, this was a huge axpansion of capability, not having to constantly dig through showboxes full of 5 1/4″ floppies to run anything. Cost (as best I recall): $1200.

I picked up my first paying job near the end of this tour, when a shipmate, who had retired, hired me to come and assist his programmers in getting their dBase ][ application up and running. I drove for 2 hours to NC, worked most of the day, had the program doing all they wanted it to do, and was paid $200 and a steak dinner. Not bad for one day of work, but it was a result of almost 3 years of creating and managing databases.

Next segment: Auctions, portable computers, SQL before it was SQL, and how to buy smart.

Well, was it a nuke, or wasn’t it?

Back in 1965, the Navy conducted a series of tests (two underwater ones at San Clemente Is and three surface shots) that simulated an atomic bursts, by building a really, really big pile of conventional explosives (TNT) and yelled “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” while ships were parked on concentric rings around the penninsula of Kaho`olawe Island.

More info on Sailor Hat here.

I know of this, because we used to use the Navy training film to fill classroom time while the training devices for the team trainer were down.

Maybe they just stuffed lots of semtex in a hole and fired it up, just to see what we’d do…It’s called OPDEC (Operational Deception) if they did…

>Part IV concluded the story of TAGG and adventures into the BASIC and HP-GL programming launguages….

The Tidewater Apple Worms club helped me learn more. One day I mentioned I was considering getting a modem. Bill, who I knew by aquaintance only, said I couls borrow his for a week, and see how I liked it. It was a Hayes 300 baud modem, the internal card type. I was amazed at the offer, and later in the week, went over to his house and he pulled it out and handed it to me. Back home to begin the inderstanding of serial digital to analog communications. I got to where I knew what “ATDT” menat and how to change the volume of the modem’s speaker and other important things.

I broke down, after I took it back to Bill, and bought one myself. In 1982 dollars, we were talking $250 for the priveledge of communication at 300 bits per second, but it opened a whole new world. baout this time, I also decided, when the price dropped to $99, to buy a “Language Card” for the Apple ][+, which was a fancy name for an extra 16K (yes, K, no type here) of memory, bringing me to a whopping 64K of RAM.

One of my neighbors came over and asked if I could help them at work, beacuse Peachtree (one of the very first accounting pacakages) seemed to have a bug. I told her I’d give it a try, and, upon arriving at their office, found out Peachtree was written in Apple BASIC, and I could look at the listing, as it wasn’t compiled. I tracked the problem down and was able to successfully patch the bug out of existence. I wasn’t smart enough back then to know I shold have sent off a report to Peachtree. As a result of my work, not only did they pay me, but they asked if I’d like “this.” “This” was the entire, unopened copy of Apple PASCAL, which was sold to them when they got the computer (even thought they didn’t need it). I seem to recall the list price was $475, so I nodded and said I thought I might find a use for it. I did. I went and took a course in PASCAL at the local community college. While I didn’t ever use PASCAL directly for anything, shortly after this, I started working the dBase II, and the programming language was essentially PASCAL beefed up for doing datbase programming.

Along with dBase II, I had to get a “co-processor” card, which, as most people are aware of now, is like plugging a second computer in. I got a board with the Zilog Z-80 chip and was then able to boot up in CP/M, an newere operating system, which was very much like the PC-DOS/IBM-DOS/MS-DOS that came into wide use later.

I heard you could make money compiling mailing lists and being able to sort them for customers. I set out learning dBase II building an application to enter and printout labels, customized to do a selectable amount of columns of labels. Never did make money on that, but I learned database design and report building well.

By this time, it was getting harder and harder to find people in the club to answer questions, now mostly about software, for few were building applications. Most were using their machines to prduce word processing or use pre-packaged applications, so I was running ahead of the pack I had been running with. Now I had to start digging up books on the subject.

Next stop: Lobbying for Z-248s from the Supply Corps, the POA&M Application and how the Senior Watch Officer could balance watchstanding sections in a few keystrokes.

Part III told one story of automation at my training command (1st shore tour). This part is another way my hobby helped at work.

HP 7470A Two Pen Plotter

The “Training Aid Graiphics Generator” (TAGG) was spawned while I was at Dam Neck, because the support we got from the training support sucked. Need to be filled linked with supervisor upset no one seemed interested in getting the work done for his shop, so, off I went to fix the problem.

I arrived at Fleet Combat Training Center, Atlantic (FCTCL) in Sep 80. I was assigned to instruct the pre-Commissining crews of the PERRY Class frigates. When I arrived, we had the course material to teach the Baseline 3 program for the ships, which was also installed in our mockup. At the time, the Fleet was upgrading the systems at sea, and coming out of Bath Iron Works and Todd with Baseline 4. Big disconnect. We were saddled with teaching from “IGs” (Instructor Guides) that were now outdated, and running a mockup with software that wouldn’t ever be seen by the sailors we trained. Granted, it wasn’t a wasted effort, but certainly not satisfactory. For the first two weeks of the four week course, we taught the crews the console modes, which was done using slides depicting what they would see as they performed their functions. These, of course, were also outdated.

What to do? Well, get the materials updated. One part involved the updating of the entire set of IGs, to include the editing of the Terminal and Enabling Objectives. My shop got to work on this, and this part is fodder for a later sea story. The other part was getting the slides redone. Come to find out, the Naval Training and Education Support Center for this function is done by an office full of draftsmen (civil servants) all the way over at the Norfolk Operating Base (NOB) about 40 miles away. Time line to get it done? Somewhere between 6 months and a year. This young LT declared that unsat, and began figuring out how to tighten up the OODA Loop.

The answer came in the form of an (you guessed it) an Apple ][+ computer, with the addition of a Hewlett Packard HP7470A two pen plotter. I convinved the boss to get this very expensive equipment (around a grand for the plotter, and I got him to get us 2). Now, the problem was getting the new toy to draw our slides. Apple BASIC programming language was about all I knew, so I embarked on that journey to create a specific program, where an instructor could sit down and in a few minutes, be printing out a slide (on paper or transparency plastic). The other knowledge element was the language needed to “talk to” the plotter, HP Graphics Language (HPGL).

I didn’t realize, until 1993, the way I went about producing the program was very much in line with what became accepted as the process for developing a functional software package, and that story comes much later. I figured out the requirements, then I flow charted (some of it, I was bad about doing this part well), then began the coding process. I picked a lot of brains back then, the people of the Tidewater Apple Worms (discussed in Part II) was my brain trust and helped me over plenty of programming hurdles.

What I ended up with was a program that asked the operator what type display (the two variants of the tabular OJ-194 Tactical Data System Console were the Digital Display Indicator (DDI) and the Digital Read Out (DRO) type), and what tracks to display (up to 16 vehicular tracks or points). The tracks could be modified with overlaying symbology, such as engagement status, and course and speed vectors. I added “rules” that mimiced real world constrains, such as you could not engage a friendly vehicle, and onlyy one item could be shown as “hooked” (selected) into the program to help keep the display accurate. Two different slides would be produced for each teaching point, where one was the operator’s keyboard of Variable Action Buttons (VABs) to the left, with a 360 degree radar scope display, showing the selected TDS tracks/points, and the other slide was a DRO/DDI with the info from the tracks shown, above the upper half of the radar display. I had to program the entire set of TDS symbols into the program’s imbedded database, using the draw commands to talk to the plotter. I seem to recall that came to about 100 items.

Net result: An instructor could crank a slide out in about 10 minutes, either camera ready to take to the photo lab in Gallery Hall to make 35mm slides, or have a transparency for an overhead projector, all in color (I had programmed for multiple colors and prompted for pen changes, if required to complete the slide). It was, just a little faster than 6 months with the draftsmen.

I did find out that you could have program data encroach into your video memory area, as the Apple reserved enough memory for two pages of display, yet the operating system didn’t safeguard against variables and other stuff overwriting this area, when memory filled up. So, sometimes, you’d make a slide, then go to make another, and the video display for the computer was very strange, right before the program crashed.

I worked that program thru the 6 months after I left my assignment and went to my next school to tweak it to get rid of the errors in the video. It was a pretty stable program for those days, and I got it running pretty well and did my best to idiot proof it. I also prodcued a users manual, and kept my old command updated with new versions. TAGG was even flexible enough ti be used for any TDS console training, so it had a larger reach than just for the FFG-7 ships. The DD-963, DDG-993, CG/DDG and LHA training courses all could use the program, too.

This effort concluded when I submitted the program to the MILCAP program. Yes, I did the estimates for the cost savings ($13+/silde vs $1.40/silde (in 1983 $)) and computed many slides wold be made. The purpose of the MILCAP is to take an idea out of the trenches and put it into the lap of those who are part of the support mechanism, more equipped to smooth “it” up and do life cycle maintenance. And, if along the way, you save “them” (read taxpayers), they cut you in on a sliding scale, beginning roughly at 10%. As the Zenith Z-100 and Z-110 desktops were beginning to find their way into the offices, as a result of the USAF Contract, I had also taken the time to review the programming manuals and indicated I would make the necessary mods to allow the use of the program on those platforms. It was evaluated as very useful, and had been used extensively, and was aout to be used more, then it got buried because “we’re using Zenith computers now.”

Regardless, it took a huge load off a few offices of insturctors, while also taking the workload off an office full of draftsmen using hand cut out colored strips of plastic to make training aids and therein may have been the rub…

Next segment: The wonders of moving up to 64K (!!!) of memory, a Z-80 CPU card, dBase II, modems and a free copy of PASCAL.

In Part II, more details of my “hobby” developed, assisted by about 15-20 devotees to the cause of the Apple ][ series personal computers.

I learned, by rapid immersion, the process of editing and producing a newsletter. It was great, as I had the collected archives of Washington Apple Pi and the big Apple club in Dallas. Now, the practical matter, as with other club type organizations, many have ideas, in this case for articles, but few every find the roundtoit to type it up and pass it along. I wrote some of my own, I cut and pasted many from other Apple clubs (allowed for giving credit and sending our newsletter to them) and for about a year, I was an editor of a documet. Page layout, limited at best, was a skill I developed. Then there was the hours standing at the Xerox machine, clearing the jams, collating and peeling and sticking the mailing labels from the roster generated by the Club Secretary.

The closing of the story comes about a year after I began, when I was to be uprooted and head off for school in Newport, RI. I announced, during “new business” time that I was resigning. The discussion that ensured began with a lady standing up and saying it was a terribly done document, and not worth much. I sat quietly until she paused, then I announced “Sounds like a volunteer to me!” There were a few chuckles and then she got voted to take job. Ah, sweet justice. Also, that certainly was the first time anyone told me it wasn’t any good. Oh, well.

During this time, I had the idea that I could make the computer work for me. Novel concept, and I discussed it with my boss, LCDR David Jones (no kidding, that was his name). He thought automating such things as the tasking we’d recently received to account for all of our day’s projects at the training command, as the Chief of Naval Education and Training’s (CNET) manpower review team was headed our way in a few months, armed with shapened pencils. LCDR Jones championed the plan to buy two Apple ][+ computers, and the StoneWare Data Base Manager software.

Dave Jones was a smart guy. His plan was to capture the daily travels of those of us in the entire department (he was one of the branch heads – the step below the Department Head), which, I seem to recall amount to 287 billted postions, most of which were full. Dave’s branch was the NTDS training shops, to include the various cruisers, detroyers/guided missile destroyers and guided missile frigate platforms, where replacement operators and new crews were training in their specific shipboard Naval Tactical Data System console operations. Other branches were the TACDEW (the great big simulaltor lash up for training, the predecessor to the Battle Force Tractical Trainer), and the branches that conducted tactical training courses such as the Tactical Action Officer (TAO) and the air controller (ASAC and AIC) classes.

Dave’s greatest idea, and a lesson well learned was: If you want data inputs, tell people how to give it to you, so you aren’t the one trying to align it all and make sense out of it. We made a stadnadrd form and all staff were issued a clipboard and a handful of forms. As you worked each day, you wrote the time you started, the activity, the project/course number, then the time you finished. Each day, the forms were turned into the two yeoman and they would then crank them into the database on the Apple ][+ computer. We did this about 8 months, and I had set up the database structure and trained the yeoman on the data input. Together, we (Dave, the yeomen and I) learned about generating reports along the way.

The CNET auditors arrived and the schedule of interviews was published. Our department head chose to send Dave in his stead to the meeting for our department. I recall it was a multiday affiar, with Dave calling for reports in varous formats and sorts, which the yeomen cranked out quickly and delivered them to the classroom in Gallery Hall, where Dave was being grilled. Well, the truth was, he was rocking the auditors back on their heels, as they came to the base with direction to cut billets. Dave kept producing the empirical data, quickly and legibly, showing the department was overworked, and, while some tasking was “out of the box,” he calso could show it was, more often that not, done at the specific direction of either a BUPERS office, or our own next higher command, Commander, Training Atlantic (COMTRALANT) staff, who had over-ridded standing guidance to not add any courses/course material, unless something was deleted as compensation. He had done a fine job in documenting that aspect of the manpower use, as well.

The bottom line: Our department was plussed up 9 billets, while almost every other department on the base was cut, or at the least, left alone. No other department gained even a single billet. The audtiors, initially came across very rough, but realized Dave had not used the computer to make stuff up, but had used it to capture an accurate picture of the workloading of the department.

This was the first fallout of my “hobby” in my career, and how the development of two smart guys in a garage in California made a difference for the Navy.

Next: HP Plotters and the Training Aid Graphics Generator (TAGG) project – Your tax dollars that worked!