Long Days At Sea
Today was a busy day, but that didn’t make the time go by any faster than usual. Normally when I’m busy the time passes so quickly I end up wondering what happened to the day. Today the day ended and I ask why it didn’t end sooner. Heh. Had some meetings in the morning and watch in the afternoon that was interrupted by some training exercises. Now that everything is done, I want to get some sleep, but can’t justify going to bed so early in the evening. I’m hoping that there’s a good movie on tv that I can catch before heading to bed.
Last night we had some connectivity issues that delayed the emails that I send to Posterous to post to my Twitter and Blogs, as well as the emails that I send home to my family. This morning it looked like everything was sent out, and this evening it seems that we have a better connection than we did when we left home. Hopefully that was the last time we have problems sending and receiving emails, but I think that might be asking too much.
I remember my first deployment, when there was only one email address for the ship and every email that was sent to that address had to have the intended person’s name in the subject line. Once the email was downloaded over an old school modem (read 28.8k) into the computer, some guy had to sort the emails and forward them out to the people they were sent to on a different computer. That guy was me. I once logged nearly six straight hours in front of that computer downloading a huge backlog of emails over a connection that I believe cost the government about $8 per minute. Of course I shouldn’t complain, most people remember deployments before that when there were no computers or phones and had to rely on postal mail to hear from friends and family.
Today’s entry was a little longer than usual. Partially because I skipped the one from yesterday and partially because I had something of interest to post this time around. You don’t realize what you’re missing until you’re miles out to sea and you’re isolated from the rest of the world. I’m trying to focus on the immediate future, and not be bothered with that ever so faint light at the end of the tunnel signaling the end of deployment.