You know, that’s exactly what I’ve said, every single time I’ve eaten beef, anywhere in Europe…“What weak beef! I bet that cow couldn’t have done more than 20 push-ups. I can actually taste that a 2-hour run would have taken that cow the better part of an hour.”
🙄
We were told at the time, that the Brits has a surface group in the area, and didn’t want a sub submerged in the same area. Neither we, nor our radar saw anything. But in 21 years spent in the navy, I’ve never seen seas like in that 1st deployment. Modern subs, with round hulls, are optimized for submerged steaming, only cruising on the surface when arriving/departing ports or when operationally necessary (i.e. shallow waters or transferring personnel).
I’ve probably been out in seas just as bad as that 1st deployment - when the boat is rocking at 600-800 feet submerged depth, it has to be really, really bad on the surface, but being submerged, I really didn’t get to see it on those occasions.
There were about 6 of us…you know, 5 making fun of me. We were offroading on trails in a wooded/forested area versus open mud/sand fields. As I was choosing directions on which trails to take, I used signals as was habit.
My first deployment in a fast-attack submarine, in the fall of 1991. We were working under British operational control, and they ordered us to cruise surfaced, in the North Sea. I was standing watch as a lookout, with another lookout and the Officer of the Deck (OOD), in the sail superstructure of the boat. We were wearing body harnesses and lanyards, clipped into the superstructure - normal procedure.
I was a sailor aboard USS SUNFISH (SSN549), a Sturgeon Class boat, where the sail superstructure was 25 feet tall. We were in 48 foot seas.
The 3 of us on watch that night were washed overboard more than 10 times each. Often all 3 of us at the same time… flung overboard, hanging by our lanyards, trying to roll around and grab onto the ladder rungs, or one another, to get back into the bridge pooka. None of us broke any bones or lost any teeth, but we were pretty battered and bruised by the end of it.
That was the first time I got to see the entire boat out of the water… at the top of the wave, I could see the stem planes, stabilizers, the end of the towed-array housing, and the propeller. At the bottom of each trough, we’d see just a tiny hole of sky, through the water, as it all crashed down upon us, and we all hold on, trying to stay inside the superstructure.
We pulled into the Navy Base at Rosyth Scotland the next afternoon. The windshield, booked in for surface operations, was completely missing, as well a the port running light. We sustained damage to our observation periscope and main communications antenna as well.
The experience was both scary and exhilarating.
Predictability is so much more important than being nice. Just follow the rules.
I’ve been made fun of, signaling while offroading.
I have a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30 with Ubuntu on it. IIRC, it’s 18, and the specs don’t support upgrading it anymore with Ubuntu. I was thinking of going to Mint, but I haven’t really kept up with the various available Linux flavors, for the last few years. 2 of the 3 USBports have stopped working, but that’s a $30 part replacement. The wifi see,s really slow as well, but I’m not sure whether that’s a hardware or software issue.
I still read the same things I used to…there’s just a red banner indicating that I’m banned, and I can’t comment. Since they banned me, I’d be happy to leave entirely, if I found the same variety of content. That might be here, but I’m simply not that familiar with Lemmy and how it’s set up, and have too much on my plate with other commitments to spend much time investigating, especially when I only have a few minutes to kill, and know what I want to read or see.
I’m permanently banned from Reddit. I don’t like Lemmy nearly as much, but it’s probably just that I’m less familiar and haven’t figured it all out. Finding subs that I liked in Reddit was much easier, but there’s the obvious moderator issues with Reddit - mainly that I’m banned.
My mom (boomer) has been scammed twice, and it’s not been a simple issue of naivety or even stupidity…it’s been that, and a bit of greed, thinking more about what she’d get out of the deal, than how much sense the whole thing made, in each case. The underlying thing that attracted the scammers in each case, were her Facebook posts about going on multiple vacations and cruises.
The first one was the scam about an inheritance in probate, in Nigeria. She just had to send the money for the courts to get past probate, and then she’d be able to claim the inheritance left by her mysterious relative. Now, the maternal side of my family is Polish and Romanian, and the paternal side is British and German. I just don’t know who she may have thought bounced over to Nigeria and keeled over.
The second scam was the Exxon executive, who woke up in a hospital bed after a car accident, missing his wallet. The hospital was holding him captive in his hospital room until he could pay his bill, which somehow she could help with, by sending Amazon gift cards. The greed part comes in with him apparently having his phone, and being able to send her pics of his cars, properties, and bank statements. The stupid part comes in from about a thousand different directions and 4 dimensions…I mean, she even met his “daughter” in a video call, and adoption was discussed (the mother was apparently long dead). My mom spent a full career as a RN - in hospitals (in the US) - where they don’t incarcerate people until the bills are paid. Additionally, one would think that since any Tom, Dick, or Harry, missing their wallet, but with their phone, would be able to get ahold of someone - anyone, who might be able to contact a financial institution or work colleague, to secure proof of funds availability, replacement credit cards, or access to their finances. An executive with Exxon should definitely be able to show at least enough bling to pop themselves out of “hospital jail,” one would think. Finally, Amazon gift cards?
With my sister going through their correspondence, we found the name he gave my mom to be one letter off the correct spelling of the Exxon executive in the photo of himself that he sent her. The location of his grand home, on Google Earth anyway, appears to be the pool maintenance shed at a motel in TX.
Me: “Mom! It’s a scam.”
Mom: “No! I love him, and he loves me! I’m flying out to meet him, and help him out of the hospital. His daughter is picking me up from the airport.”
Me: “Wait. You said you were thinking about adopting his daughter when you got married - to this guy you’ve never met in person. The daughter is an adult?!”
Mom: “No. She’s 16 and has her driver’s license.”
Me: “So wait…she lives in his house with no adult supervision, since her father is hospital-bound. She has access to the car, but somehow can’t help with transportation, banking access, or the replacement credit card/replacement ID situation?”
Mom: “You’re so negative. You just don’t want to understand.”
Me: 🙄😒🫤
Wow! We have 5 vehicles in our household, a camper, and we used to have 2 motorcycles. 1 vehicle was inherited after a death on the family, 1 vehicle was found in a sales-paper/magazine called “The Trading Post.” The camper was bought new from a dealership via eBay, and we saved $13.5k buying the 5th wheel version of the same camper that we walked through locally in VA, in its tag-along version - I just had to drive to IA to get it. The 3 other vehicles and 2 motorcycles were bought through eBay, and they’ve all been good experiences.
Boomer: What?! Just walk into the building, go up to the receptionist or bossman, and demand to be interviewed for a job, and fill out an application form. Refuse to leave without a job offer. They’ll be so impressed by your dedication, they can’t do anything else, but to hire you! What are you waiting for?
Or as a young man in the navy, being told to make sure to act right in foreign countries…“you’d never want to have to deal with their legal system.”