Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Week 1: Survey Says...

Monday Weigh In Results: I did my first weigh-in for WW Online for Men today, and I lost 4.4 pounds. Hoo-yah!

I was a little apprehensive about getting on the scale. I did really well all week at work, but when the weekend came, it seemed as if I left my will-power at work. Turns out I did alright. Although, they say more than 2 pounds per week on average is not healthy.

I really find that keeping a log of what food I eat helps tremendously. I think it's all the grazing and snacking I did that was really killing me.

Feeling Powerless: They craned our screw off... THAT was pretty amazing to see. Oddly, I didn't feel like our Mighty MSP was impotent when we offloaded all our weapons (we could always reload the weapons, right?), but seeing our screw sitting on the pier just really made me feel like the once-Mighty MSP is no-more a warship.

Drydock: Unfortunately, I didn't get to go to Command PT this morning because we had to do our walk-through inspection of the drydock basin at 0630. This is the first time I've ever been in a shipyard drydock. All my previous drydock experiences have been in the floating drydocks in Groton or San Diego. This drydock in the shipyard is absolutely ginormous. They've got all the blocks set up with the proper spacing in the bottom of the drydock, ready for us to set the boat down on the blocks tomorrow. Standing up on the caisson looking down into the basin, it looked like the blocks were set up to receive a dinghy. Our boat is just going to appear so tiny in comparison!

Remote Sensing: I wish I could have taken pictures, but cameras aren't allowed in the Controlled Industrial Area (CIA). Interestingly enough, cameras ARE allowed to orbit the Earth. Here are some shots from Google Earth:

Naval Station Pearl Harbor

PHNSY (Drydocks 3, 2, and 1 from left to right)

Drydock #1 That's what the Mighty MSP will look like by the end of tomorrow.

NPS Online: Totally random, unintended topic for tonight's post... If you're in the Navy and have a little bit of free time on your hands, I HIGHLY recommend the distributed learning programs offered by the Naval Postgraduate School online. There's NO OBLIGATION and CNET fully funded the program, so I didn't have to pay a DIME. I did the Space Systems Graduate Certificate program - 4 classes all online. All of the classes were really cool (at least for geeks like me), but I liked the class Remote Sensing Physics from Space the best.

IF, after you finish the graduate certificate, you want to incur an obligation and finish the masters degree, then you can talk to your detailer about going to Monterey for a year to finish the degree. So it's kind of like a free-try to see if you like the program before you incur a follow-on service obligation (although you lose a year of fabulous living in Monterey).

2 comments:

E.P. said...

Well, coincidence of coincidences I'm pretty sure that's the drydock I was in back in '99 on Tucson. My favorite past time during the SDO tours of the basin was to go down to the caisson and watch the water pouring through. Don't worry though, they've got massive pumps to keep the water level down...right?

RM1(SS) (ret) said...

This drydock in the shipyard is absolutely ginormous.

Yeah. On 7 Dec 41 that drydock held a battleship (Pennsylvania BB 38), plus a pair of destroyers (Cassin DD 372 and Downes DD 375).