Congratulations Chief Selectees!

The FY10 E-7 (Chief Petty Officer) selection board results are out (click here for the list).

I am happy to see several current and former shipmates on the list and offer my personal congratulations to Chiefs (Select) Romias, Blanding, Coffee, Distefano, Wangen, and Taunton.

For those who aren't familiar with the Navy ranks, getting selected for Chief is a major milestone in an enlisted sailor's career. Promotions below the rank of E-7 are based on taking an advancement exam. The Navy says, "Okay, we have quotas for 500 guys to promote to E-6 this time," and they rank order the guys who took the exam by the exam score and promote the top 500 (numbers are totally fictitious, just making up an example).

For promotion to E-7, it's the first time in an enlisted sailor's career that his or her service record gets looked at by a selection board. The guys still take an advancement exam in order to be declared "board eligible," but then the selection board looks in depth at their past performance evaluations and awards.

About this time every summer, the selection board results are announced, and the new chief selectees begin a period of intense training in Navy customs and traditions culminating in an initiation ceremony when they get officially promoted to chief in September.

You will notice a big difference in the sailor's appearance before and after the ceremony, too. Sailors E-6 and below wear utilities (hence the term "blue shirts" referring to sailors E-6 and below). Chief Petty Officers wear khaki uniforms like the officers do. So the promotion to E-7 marks a major crossover from the "blue shirt" to the "khaki," and a large number of new uniforms to be purchased at the uniform shop.

It's a tremendous honor to be selected for Chief. Chiefs are the backbone of the Navy. They have the experience of being around the block enough times and having lived through deployments and difficult situations and can use those experiences in leading their sailors. They also have the in depth knowledge and experience with their gear to be able to troubleshoot and fix it thousands of miles from any friendly ports for repairs.

I've written before about the career progression of a submarine officer. During a junior officer's first tour at sea on a submarine, he is technically "in charge" of a division of a dozen or more sailors, but it's really the Chief who is running the show. The Chief traditionally has the responsibility of training the junior officer on how to manage the division, and I will always be grateful for the chiefs like STSC(SS) Golliker who taught me very important lessons in leadership as a JO.

Congrats Chief Selectees!

Travel Log: Legoland and Wedding #2

We had a busy day today.

First, we made the pilgrimage to Mecca trek to Legoland.


It's a good thing we checked the Legoland website before we went. If we hadn't done so, then our trip to Legoland would have been very much like Clark Griswold's trip Wally World to in Vacation. It turns out, they're CLOSED Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the off season. (Aside: Actually, the reason why we went to see the Sequoias on the way south was because we couldn't go to Legoland on Wednesday.)

I was really glad we went. They had a lot of the old stuff we had seen before...

Lego Mt. Rushmore
(Yes, that's a giant Q-Tip coming out of GW's ear)

...but they also had a lot of new stuff, too. Here's some of the stuff they've added since the last time we were there.

NY City with the new Freedom Tower added

Las Vegas

In case you've never been to Legoland before, the displays above are by no means static. They have a lot of moving parts - cars driving around, helicopters with blades spinning, trains running, breakdancers dancing, bands playing, etc.

They've added a whole new section called Land of Adventure which is sort of an Indiana Jones themed place set in 1920's Egypt. Flashback to Disneyworld: Our favorite ride at Disney is the Buzz Lightyear ride where you actually get a laser gun to shoot at targets through the ride and rack up points. They added a very similar ride here at Legoland where you ride in a car and shoot guns at targets in an Egyptian archeological type theme.

Jeeps N Guns
YEAH!

(Okay, so it's not a Jeep. Someone tell me what a better name for them would be.)

When we came off the ride the first time, the air rang with a loud and repetitive,

"AGAIN! AGAIN! AGAIN!"

Then my wife told me to calm down and be quiet and so she could ask the boys what they wanted to do next. I bolted and ran back to the entrance and the boys followed me, so we went on it again.

Aside: One of the nice things about going during the off-season: No lines. There was only one ride we had to wait in line for (because they had it operating at reduced capacity due to expected low usage). All the rest of the rides we could ride multiple times in a row if we wanted.

Did I mention the ride keeps score?

LW beat me BOTH times we rode!

Oh, I know what YOU'RE thinking! NO! LW's score on the first run had absolutely NOTHING to do with my desire to go on the ride AGAIN. (Nice shootin' Sweetie! :-) ).

We went on the boat ride...


We went on the log ride...


We went on the safari jeep ride...


ES said he wanted to go on this roller coaster, but chickened out at the last minute. I let him walk back down the exit ramp to LW while I went for a ride.


There was nobody else in line, so the operator guy let me ride it

3 times in a row.

He asked if I wanted to keep going, but I said no, I should get back to my family. Each time I flew past my family sitting on the park bench, I made sure to scream like a little girl so ES would think it was horrible and he wasn't missing out on any fun. ;-)

We went on a bunch of other rides, but I won't bore you with more of the same.

We made a few pitstops...


Oh, there's also a 10-stage geocache in Legoland. We found all but one of the clues and I'll have to email the owner to ask about that one.

Each Treasure Chest Icon is a Stage of the Geocache.
The dotted lines are a "breadcrumb" trail that shows
where we walked in the park.

Then we made the mistake of walking into the store. Oh man, they had a LOT of REALLY COOL stuff in the store. I actually contemplated breaking out the roof-rack carrier to take home a Death Star and a Millenium Falcon.

Me checking my empty wallet to see if I can afford a Death Star.

Overall, a good time was had by all, and the boys even said that Legoland made the long car drive from Oregon worth the trip. Hooray!

Wedding #2

Tonight I went to Rich and Jasmine's wedding in Fallbrook. That was actually the reason for our excursion south to San Diego before heading east. Unfortunately, our friend Jen who had agreed to watch the boys for us came down sick with strep throat today. (Aside: I'm sorry you're sick, Jen! We're sorry we didn't get to see you today and I hope you get better soon!) So my wife stayed back at the hotel with the boys while I went to the wedding.

Rich was a stateroom mate of mine on the 725 Battle Wagon and we've been through a lot together.

They picked out a beautiful location for the wedding.

The happy couple.

The sword arch.

The cake was delicious!

Because I know some of you are interested in such details, here's the centerpiece. I think it was like a glass flower thing on the inside. It was really pretty - this photo doesn't do it justice.

Reunion of SSN 725 Shipmates

It was good to catch up with old friends and shipmates. Unfortunately, I missed the memo about the choker whites. No, actually, Rich called me to ask me to be in the sword arch about 3 days after the movers took my dress uniforms and sword away in a wooden crate bound for DC. DOH! I was disappointed not to be part of the sword arch, but I was glad the timing worked out for me to attend the ceremony en route to our next duty station.

Statistics for today:

399.99 Cost of a Lego Death Star

5.02 Number of miles walked at Legoland today (by GPS).

5,002 Number of calories in one of those pieces of wedding cake (probably).

WARNING: I probably won't write a blog post tomorrow and might not over the weekend. Tomorrow we're heading to my cousin's place in St. George, Utah, with a stop in Las Vegas for dinner with some friends. I expect we'll get in pretty late tomorrow night and be busy with family activities over the weekend. :-) Will write more when I can. In the meantime, I hope you all have a good weekend!

Chief Results Are Out

The results of the FY09 E-7 Selection Board are published on BUPERS Online. In other words, board eligible individuals can look at BUPERS to see if they were selected, and people with command access like COs, XOs, and COBs can see the results for their command. We had 2 out of 7 eligible guys get selected.

Congratulations to those who made Chief!

Update: The message is out now, too. DTG 011859Z AUG 08. To see the entire list, keep an eye on this website. They will eventually post the message there at the top of the FY-09 where it says FY09 CPO Selectees.

The message is available as a MS Word document for download here. (H/T to Andy)