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Locked on 08/24/2005 10:01:42 PM PDT by Admin Moderator, reason:
New Thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1470204/posts |
Posted on 07/12/2005 8:11:36 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
New verse:
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Upon the hearth the fire is red, |
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Still round the corner there may wait |
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Home is behind, the world ahead, |
Hehehe... Good Night to you too...
Nicely done. :-)
There's big BIG fun to be had here... :-)
Oh, no... I had no idea it was that serious. Well... sleep well. :-)
Whew, The Hobbit Hole website is back up and running, as good as new. (As far as I can tell.)
The old site that came up for a while was actually not a restored backup, but the previous version that was still left on the old server.
The only thing that may have been lost was email. Anyone that tried to send us email during the down time simply would have had it bounce back, undeliverable.
Still don't know what caused the outage in the first place. Guess the internet is only as strong as its weakest link... that link being DNS.
OK... semaphore sea-story time...
I happen to think that Semaphore is among the coolest things I've ever learned, though I'm admittedly quite rusty at it now. But semaphore has a really interesting part in history.
Semaphore is one of the very few message transmission methods that was regarded as *inherently* secure and rarely needs encryption even for the most Top Secret -- Eyes Only sorts of traffic. In fact, back when I was in, the inherent security of message traffic was, in order: 1.) Semaphore, 2.) Flashing Light... and then... 3.) Encrypted radio.
The reason for this was that, of course, in order to intercept a semaphore message you had to be physically in between the two ships passing the traffic. In fact... not just between but RIGHT IN FRONT of the sender of the traffic. Semaphore is hard enough to read by a professional, but it cannot be read at all from the side or at any sort of serious angle. You gotta be looking right straight at the sender to read it at all.
This security is magnified by the mere fact that semaphore can only be read at binocular sorts of distances. Maybe a half mile maximum. Usually semaphore was done at distances of mere hundreds of yards.
My experience was a little different. The U.S. Coast Guard does not have a "Signalman" rating, as does the Navy. In the Navy, signalmen do ALL of the semaphore, flashing light and flag signals, and they get to be damn good at all of them. In the USCG it is the Quartermasters (navigators) that do the signalman's duty on CG cutters.
CG Quartermasters are damn good navigators, but generally they are lousy signalmen.
But my Cutter had the benefit of QM1 Winner. Petty Officer Winner was my first-class, and my boss. He was also a 20-year Navy Signalman that had lateraled over to the Coast Guard for the last few years before his retirement. He was a masterful signalman, and he was determined to make sure that we would be too.
He was so good that he could do "shorthand" semaphore across a crowded room with other signalmen... and it was so fast that it looked sorta like sign language. He could even do it one-handed. At his level, it really *was* like sign language... only faster.
He set a very high standard for us, even as mere CG QM's. We had to be able to keep up with Navy signalmen on BOTH semaphore and flashing light or we'd catch a ration of crap from him about being embarrassed by his squid buds.
We took every opportunity we got to do signalling with Navy ships. Sometimes the signalmen didn't have time to play with us and they'd let us know. But most times if they had nothing else to do they'd let us blabber back and forth and give us the practice we needed. We got pretty dang good it after a while. Of course they were way better than us... that's all they do.
But QM1 Winner, and his instistence on signals practice, was directly responsible for my ship getting an "E" for "Excellence" in signalling in our Navy REFTRA (Refresher Training) exercise in San Diego.
No CG cutter had ever done that before. Between him and our QM Chief who was a navigational God who was a total perfectionist and a whole different story... (but a good story with horizontal sextants used to run the swept channel through the minefield, and also used for the precision anchoring drill-- NO measurable distance from the target).
The CGC Resolute Bridge Gang (QM's) scored the *highest* aggregate score of *any* ship, CG or Navy, to ever go through REFTRA in San Diego. We blew the Navy's doors off.
We had a bridge gang that was just simply as good as we could get. I stand in awe of my shipmates then. Sure, I'm proud of what we did, but I don't think any of us would take credit.
None of us were anything special, but what we learned to do together was *absolutely* special. It was them, certainly not me, but *us*.
We kicked @ss. :-)
:-)
That's good to hear. :-)
Dang... got a little wordy there. Sorry about that. :-)
Hah! Great pic!
I wonder if that's his cheat sheet card stuck in his back picket :~D
"And now for the very first time on the silver screen comes the film from two books which once shocked a generation. From Emily Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights' and from the 'International Guide to Semaphore Code'. Twentieth Century Vole presents 'The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights'."
er... pocket :~D
Most certainly. :-)
It probly ain't a letter from Grandma. :-)
[snort] I remember that. Funny stuff... :-)
Well... niters and all.
It's time for me to circle the wagons.
Have good one. :-)
^Hair, Ramius, and our Grandpa and Grandma.
Man, we were just so good lookin then. :~D
Wow, you don't look that different but Ramius!
Wow, honey, you used to be TALL!
Sorry honey, I've gotten shorter, and fatter. :~D
That's another DVD collection I want to complete. I only have the first two sets so far.
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