Saint Aloysius School's Veteran's day Program

The program was wonderful, as usual, and the coffee and donuts were nice as well. I saw several of the other congregation members there, and was surprised at how many were Vets. I held off making a Veterans’ day blog entry until after this program, perhaps I was just being lazy. While I have always had a great overall respect for the men and women who have volunteered to serve and are still serving, I had considered my contribution small compared to a Viet Nam or Korean War Vet. It occurred to me today during the program that while keeping the “Evil Empires” at bay from the rest of the world was a quiet endeavor, it was no less important to the children of today than the efforts “in country” of other wars. And while it is not as visually dramatic as the efforts of our active duty military today, it is just as important. It is something that I am proud of, my small contribution and the difference that it made in the teams that I was a member of. Perhaps if we had done better in being aware of the “bigger picture” and sharing the real day-to-day import of our jobs to the nation, it wouldn’t have taken 3 years of retirement for me to realize it!

The pictures aren’t the greatest, but then I don’t have to worry about the legality of showing a bunch of minors on the web. Thanks to all you Vets, brothers and sisters in arms, may God bless you all and may God continue to bless America.

a little night music

hey, there was supposed to be some text here..........

during K's homework time last night B was playing piano while I loaded the dishwasher. It took twice as long as it should have because I was enjoying the intensity that the boys had while playing.

the monday jack

It has been quite a week, both online and off. I had a crazy weekend of espresso blend coffee and blogged from work this weekend, the weather turned cold and we had snow, and Jack is as cute as ever. Here are some pic’s of him today being himself having some choclate chip cookie batter of mom's delicious design. enjoy!!

Halon on submarines??

The BBC reported the accident with updates today.

Halon is normally used around highly valuable computer, telecommunication, switching equipment and in the engine rooms of ships. Its advantages as a fire extinguishing agent was that it had lower toxicity other chemicals and that since it was a covalently bonded, it did not form conductive ions which made it usable on electrical equipment. Production has been banned in most countries since 1994 as part of the Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting substances. We use it here at the nuclear plant in computer, switchgear and relay rooms. The commercially available systems that we use consist of storage tanks, actuation control systems, alarms/lights (gives you the 30 second evacuation warning) and each subsystem has a manual override capability. The purpose of the override is so that if the discharge is inadvertent (unsanctioned as the Russians say) it can be stopped, however, it is a spring return mechanism designed such that once released, the 30 second timer starts again. When concentration reaches about five percent the atmosphere will not support human life and breathing apparatuses are required.
I have also found through my training as a fire/hazmat responder here that the face pieces of the EAB’s on the boat would most likely sealed fairly poorly in the event of an actual emergency (you’d stay alive but use a lot of air).
I can see using an agent like this in a building, if the warning goes off, run out the door. I can even understand using it on a surface ship, once more if the warning goes off, run out the door. I can not understand using a system like this on a submarine, even if it were “overengineered” like a lot of the things on boats. Additionally, having an automated system like this on a boat doesn’t pass the “good engineering practice” or common cense test.
My prayers are with the dead, crew, and families of the NERPA.

final thoughts - for now

For those submariners that are so vehemently opposed to women in submarines, I was initially shocked at your reactions. Do could you think so poorly of the character of the Officers, Chiefs and Enlisted outside of the Submarine force that you automatically are against their volunteering to serve. Is their Honor in question? their Courage? their Commitment? After some consideration I realized that this is not the case and that perhaps what Submariners really fear is that women in Submarines will bring and bring out all of the negativity in themselves, the negativity that they can and do cover with Submarine “bravado.” Perhaps having the diverse experience of working for women, with women and as their supervisor as well as having some distance from day-to-day Submarine operations has given me some larger perspective. In hindsight I thoroughly enjoyed my active service in our boy’s club. Perhaps we should not complain too much and draw too much attention to ourselves. Perhaps on this issue too, we should remain the Silent Service.


co-posted at TSSBP

Some good reasons to not allow women on submarines????

Berthing/heads/hot racking- hey all these issues have their negative side, and with planning the lack of space can be dealt with.

Feminine products-
I seem to remember a male sailor flushing a pair of underwear down the toilet (for whatever reason-stupid coner nub) and when they opened the SAN tank to recover them, he went in. It was a great objective lesson for the entire crew.
On surface ships female sailors are have the same storage area for all of their stuff as their male shipmates and still stock their “things” along with other hygiene items (just like the ELT’s on the boat). So, yes it would be tough for a long deployment or a detergent patrol but, the guys do it.

Strength/stamina-from experience I can tell you that there are some pretty weak male sailors in our submarine fleet and that I have seen two female sailors carry a hydro rig up five decks on surface ship ladders, so this is a wash.


Eve’s curse-I have allowed, on occasion women who worked with/for me to “take it easy” for the day during their menses; however, it was at about the same frequency that I allowed my male shipmates to “rest” after a night of “heavy steaming” or being up with a sick child/spouse/girlfriend/dog.


Fraternization-there are specific regulations on this subject and as several of my submarine brethren have noted, Submariners follow the rules. So, a female sailor who gets fraternizes and/or gets pregnant onboard/underway is definitely in violation and gets punished as applicable.

Pregnancy-There is an entire instruction dealing with this issue (OPNAVINST 6000.1C dtd 14 JUN 07). Service women “Are expected to plan a pregnancy in order to successfully balance the demands of family responsibilities and military obligations.” “Are expected to perform military duties within the limits established by their condition.” And “Have the same rights and responsibilities and are subject to the same administrative and disciplinary actions as all other naval personnel.” So what this tells me is that if a sailor gets pregnant to avoid a deployment, or on deployment or at any other time to avoid her duty, she is derelict and should be punished much in the same way as a sailor who fails to get enough rest or gets too much sun exposure and cannot perform their duty would be punished. This would also be implied for a lack of planning that results in a unplanned pregnancy.


And lastly, I hate to even address this issue but MM brought it up over at TSSBP: “equality for blacks and minorities, there is still huge disparities with them in the sub service.” While I doubt MM’s credentials to actually make this statement, in my experience there is a deviation between demographics in the country and in the Submarine Service. I attribute this to two things neither of which is as nefarious as MM implies. First is opportunity outside the Navy. If a person of color has the academic chops to get past the NFQT and volunteer, he has a better chance at getting a scholarship than his pale counterpart, so why sign up when college is a “better option.” Secondly, is opportunity inside the Navy. I have seen several nukes of color both in the pipeline and after get snatched up for some great programs to make them officers. Once there, I was told by one, he looked downstream and determined that he didn’t “want to go through the hell that Submarine JO’s go through” and he is in the supply corps now. I forsee the same happening with women.

I am not a proponent of women on submarines

I worked with and for women on both of the submarine tenders that I was assigned to under “nuclear circumstances,” without issue. My reasons are purely selfish and they are these:

I liked not having to worry about making gender specific comments (like “quit being a little sally!!” or “hey you guys” and the like).

I did not like not being able to talk about how much I liked or disliked certain physical attributes of some or all women.

I did not like having to continuously remind myself that there are fat, ugly, nasty male sailors too, and that I could not treat a female shipmate that was that way differently.

I did not like having to not get assigned to work with certain shipmates and to not look at those shipmates when they were working in a Drape CSCA (because man, did she look good in anti-c’s).

I did not like having to tell my electrician buddies that they couldn’t make a “dick out watch” as payment for a bet.

I did not like feeling like I needed to keep my teeth brushed and plenty of deodorant on when working.

So overall, it was inconvenient for us to all not act like a bunch of rude horny teenagers with bad mouths and poor hygiene. On both ships, if you acted unprofessionally, you got what you deserved.