b06timmer

I was on the Ranger (CV-61). (https://i.imgur.com/Wma9k84.jpg)

We also had the Bear's and the trawlers. I think that had a lot to do the spy John Walker Jr.. He gave the Russians the cryptographic codes for the Navy, and they could read all of our communications. That's why the Bear's knew exactly when the carriers were changing station.

I was an AT and programmed the "code of the day" into each aircraft, every day. Mode-4, IFF.

Edited to add: CVW-2 for airwing. West Coast.

I did two Western Pacific tours (West-Pacs) while in the Navy. On the first one in 1979 we had the F-4 Phantoms and on the second one we were introduced to the Tomcat's. For me, this was a mind blowing experience.

The F-14 is a very large aircraft. It had electroluminescent exterior lighting that looked straight out of a sci-fi novel and with its differential rear stabilizers it looked like a living machine, especially when landing.

I was an electronics tech in a bomber (A6) squadron so I didn't know much about the workings of the aircraft, as mentioned in the article. I will say that I am always in awe when I see that aircraft and will always be.

While in the US Navy (1977 ~ 1981) I can distinctly remember the unique facial structures of the people in Southeast Asia and being able to tell what country they were from because of this. A couple of decades later with the mixing of populations by various means, and their diet changing in that-time frame, I couldn't reliably tell anymore.

Am in New Orleans and folks are talking about an in-river levee to keep the salt water from intruding into the river from the Gulf of Mexico, because of the low river levels.

I know there are water restrictions in most of the USA but I never thought it would hit the Mississippi river.

I thought OS/2 Warp was really neat. I worked IT at Bloomingdale's and at the time they were a strictly IBM house. They used IBM computers running OS/2 Warp in their Bridal Registry kiosks. Since this was a kiosk they had touchscreens and they worked very well and had a "sparkle" in the screen, as the early touchscreen CRT's did. If you lost power, or shut them down incorrectly you would get a bunch of DLL errors and have to re-image the PC.

This was the late '90s and early 2000's.

That's why the were called PS/2 mice and keyboards. I still have a couple of serial-to-PS/2 adapters here somewhere.

I loved the old Compaq web site, as everything was easy to find. It may have been the merge with HP that made things more difficult.

CL is like a breath of fresh air.

I did the same thing on a server for a major department store chain in the '90s. I booted a Linux diskette and copied the SAM file to it. I also ran l0phtcrack, or John the Ripper on a 486 (?) PC in my apartment. I think I bought a rainbow table and something else to expand the iterations it would use on the hashes. I let it run for over a week and had a couple of thousand clear passwords. This was for every store west of the Mississippi and included most of the "big-wigs" in our chain.

I was going to send the information to our security people in another state but decided it probably wouldn't be a wise thing to do.

I come across the HDD where I have this stuff archived every now and then and it makes me smile. This was also in the "Free Kevin" days.

When payday rolls around again I'll get this, thanks for pointing it out.

Early explorers, journalists, etc., wore Rolex watches because they could barter the watch to get them out of a jam.

I currently have a Seiko 5 mechanical watch. It doesn't hack or keep time particularly well (runs fast) but I love it all the same for its quirks.