mwattsun

10 ms·

31.
by mwattsun 4y ago
I'm glad to hear this! This didn't exist when I got out, but there was talk about it. Makes too much sense not to do.
32.
by mwattsun 4y ago
I was an electrician in the US Navy but couldn't get an electricians job out of the Navy without starting over. We could help this shortage if we did more to qualify military electricians as civilian electricians when they leave the mi
33.
by mwattsun 4y ago
I have written anything because it's hard to describe. I'm sort of working on it. As for books, I didn't think I had any but just realized I went through a phase where I read nothing but Arctic and Antarctic exploration books
34.
by mwattsun 4y ago
I've spent long periods of time underwater with about 120 others. I've seen how people slowly go mad under those conditions so I always come around to how they are going to keep people mentally fit during those long months in deep
35.
by mwattsun 4y ago
A fanatic is a person who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt. - Aldous Huxley
36.
by mwattsun 4y ago
I have a buddy who retired around the same time I did who turned his hobby into a retirement project on YouTube. Like Matthias, he also worked on low level code for devices (Philippe Kahn's Fullpower.) In this regard I think YouTube is
37.
Submariners Unsung Heroes of Cold War [Happy Veterans Day](cnn.com)
2 points by mwattsun 4y ago|1 comments
38.
by mwattsun 4y ago
Managers need to stop thinking they are paying for a programmer's time and start paying for results. Paying for time is like paying for lines of code. Do you want to maximize results or do you want to maximize time/LOC?
39.
by mwattsun 4y ago
Good point. To me this isn't a pandemic related issue at all, but an issue of a programmer's right to control his or her work environment. I think managers should ask themselves this question: Why do think traditional public libra
40.
by mwattsun 4y ago
My experience may be illustrative of why you should let some employees WFH. Out of the Navy, I got hired as a programming intern assigned to work on the database for "Mouse Works" for the Macintosh, which became "Microsoft Wo
41.
by mwattsun 4y ago
Airports are a different animal and I refuse to do them if I can help it. Uber drivers in the SF Bay Area compete aggressively for airport runs, so if that's any indication then I'm not surprised Uber is better for your airport. I
42.
by mwattsun 4y ago
As a former driver, I concur that Lyft is better than Uber for a couple of reasons: customer service and serving the needs of the poor. I was able to actually get a human at Lyft to talk to several times to resolve issues in favor of the cu
43.
by mwattsun 4y ago
I've been around a long time and I don't know when anyone ever paid any attention to these tests. The only reason I do is that I was on a missile equipped submarine.
44.
by mwattsun 4y ago
They're probably recorded automatically but logs are still taken as way to ensure human eyes are on the indicators, like security guards have to scan a waystation point to prove they were there. I haven't been in a plant for over
45.
by mwattsun 4y ago
Working in nuclear under normal operations is boring anyway and consists mostly of watching gauges and other indicators. At least on the submarine we'd scram the reactor and run drills. I'm sure civilian nuclear is less exciting t
46.
by mwattsun 4y ago
The accident at Three Mile Island and the film "China Syndrome" turned the public against it in America. The prejudice still lingers. I was working as a reactor tech on a nuclear submarine shortly after and decide before I got out
47.
by mwattsun 4y ago
Great article! I'm glad people are making an effort to update the historical record. Los Alamos is a special place that I enjoyed visiting recently because of the history. William S. Burroughs went to boarding school there and then lat
48.
by mwattsun 4y ago
Awesome. We learned AND gates and the like by learning how elevator controls work. Everyone is familiar with elevators, so no one had any problem learning it. Teaching courses could learn a lot by looking at how the Navy teaches.
49.
by mwattsun 4y ago
In the Navy when I went to Electricians Mate School in 1979 before going on to Nuclear Power School, we studied Boolean Algebra with this manual: Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series: Module 13—Introduction to Number Systems and
50.
by mwattsun 4y ago
People on submarines tend to know the systems they are responsible for very well since their life may depend on it. In this case they knew which valves to turn to stop the flow.
51.
by mwattsun 4y ago
I was on the sub for three years. I am not aware that we had any incidents with the reactor. We had a pipe break and start to flood the sub, but that wasn't nuclear related. In the shipyard we had an incident where the neutron detector
52.
by mwattsun 4y ago
The Nuclear Navy has an extremely high bar for safety, hence no nuclear accidents. Unlike the Air Force apparently, which sometimes loses hydrogen bombs. Go Navy! https://www.google.com/search?q=air+force+lost+hydrogen+bomb.
53.
by mwattsun 4y ago
We never had a single problem with it in the years I was on board. There were few moving parts besides the control rods and a few valves. When I stood watch on the steam throttle the reactor power would spike when I opened the throttle up.
54.
by mwattsun 4y ago
"The SMR’s 12 modules, each producing 50 megawatts" So each module is a little smaller than the reactor of the 1960's era submarine I served on and is based on the same pressurized water technology. I was a "nuke"
55.
by mwattsun 4y ago
> Demand for semiconductors is overwhelmingly not created by the military That may be true, but semiconductors are absolutely crucial to the military. I suppose the military has their own fabs locally located in partnership with Intel, A
56.
by mwattsun 4y ago
We support strategic defense industries [1] in the U.S. so I don't understand how offshoring chip making was ever allowed to happen [1] As a former sub sailor, I'm aware that we kept submarine building capability afloat at New Lon
57.
by mwattsun 4y ago
That's as far away as I've ever been from light, except Northern Alaska. The lack of human made noise of any kind was also disconcerting there
58.
by mwattsun 4y ago
It would have been cool to meet some researchers and have a chat, but I spent a few days hanging out with the town folk who live in Delta. It's a nice town. I went for pizza in a bar bowling alley. They're not all Mormon and for a
59.
by mwattsun 4y ago
My car broke down in Delta, Utah in Jan 2020. I was helped by beryllium miners who worked the mines in the area [1]. Beryllium does not expand or contract when heated or cooled, making it ideal for the frame of the James Webb telescope. Coi
60.
by mwattsun 4y ago
I used to verify all my quotes but it's really not clear in many cases because there's a lot of misattribution. I resign myself to thinking it's the thought that counts. Otherwise I'd be all day fact checking. I can&#x2

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