We are at Rose Atoll, approximately 170 nautical miles east of Pago Pago at one of America’s newest marine monument. I was here two years ago when the governor of American Samoa came with us on a diving expedition to the outer islands of his territory. It was after his expedition, President Bush in one of his last acts as president declared this a national monument.
Rose Atoll
The weather was HOT! Temps were in the upper 80’s and the water was blue and tempting! Of course there would be some very happy sharks if I were to take a swim and from what I read there are carnivorous fish in the area. I will have to ask one of the scientists if that is true. You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet or in the papers.
I did not work outside much today as I was concentrating on a network issue pertaining to permissions to folders on file servers. If you were to ask me a network question ten years ago I probably would have looked at you with a blank stare. What I learned about computer networks and e-mail systems were all from my experience with NOAA. I still have much to learn in this business. With technology rapidly changing, if you do not evolve with it you will go the way of vacuum tubes or put it more retro, DIP (dual in-line package) chips. Even network technology is evolving to where what I am doing now will be obsolete in less than two years.
I would attribute to growing up during the Cold War Space Race from the 1960’s along with short wave and later ham radio that enhanced my interest in technology. I was always interested in communications and only got into computers by default in the early 1980’s. The retro days of Kaypro, IBM PC, CP/M, MS-DOS and 2400 baud modems tying up phone lines, act as if to be a PhD of great intellect debating about anything on bulletin boards. You could see where that evolved into the Internet just like the way CW (Morse code) evolved into digital communications. I am a cantankerous old geezer when I complain that today’s documentation lacks schematics or wiring diagrams that will allow me to troubleshoot down to component level. Nowadays it is repair by replacing or calls to the vendor for modules. Results from built in test programs from internal computers telling you what is wrong, or experience determines the priorities of backups since the backup server lost a drive.
Tomorrow I will continue with network folder permissions, replace modules in a close circuit television network and the never ending but important task of preventive maintenance. That sums up my day in the life on board a ship and I like it. It reminds me a lot of the military where you had that camaraderie. Many of the chiefs and officers in NOAA I have sailed with before when we were all juniors.
My current CO, I first met when he was a port captain in San Diego seven years ago and helped me with logistics when I first came to the Ka’imimoana. The CO of the Ka’imimoana, I sailed with her when she was an Ensign on the Rainier and I went to her “wetting down” party (promotion to LTJG) in Juneau, Alaska nearly eight years ago. The Chief Boatswain on this ship I knew from the Rainier days, the Chief Engineer, I sailed with him on the Townsend Cromwell in her final cruise to American Samoa in 2002 and the Third Mate on the Ka’imimoana was on that cruise as well. It’s a small close knit community as if we grew up together. Remember the good times, bad times, break bread, share drinks, divorce, marriage, kids were born, became grandparents and will likely attend each other’s retirement ceremonies and eventually one or the other’s funeral.
It is time to hit the rack as it seems like I am always wrapping this up exactly 24 hours apart. Oh baby hold onto something as we ride in that swell! I bid you good night from the South Pacific, manuia-po from Rose Atoll.
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