Navy Work Stories: The Port That Comes After the Second

Before we begin this round, I want to take a moment to thank our Veterans. These guys are the best of the best. They stood their watch with honor, courage, and commitment. They kept this country safe. They have sacrificed their lives for us. They have worked sleepless nights while you have rested comfortably.

To the Veterans of the United States Military, you stand properly relieved. Your watch has ended, but mine has only begun. You have permission lay below.

To the Veterans of Foreign Militaries, whether you guys were serving at a time of war or a time of peace with the US doesn't matter. You did what you had to do to protect those you loved. We may not have been on the same side of the conflict, but we still stood together for what each of us believed was right.

American or Foreign, I salute each and every one of you.

This one was both funny and awkward. I had just joined the Security Forces, hadn't even been on duty for a full 12 hours yet working the night shift. Roving the ship with my partner and we happen to catch these two gettin' lucky in a fan room.

I learned shortly after that this was NOT an uncommon thing. I think during the entire 9 month deployment I was with Security, there were roughly 50-60 personnel caught having sex.

So, this is kind of cool. Terrible, but it has a cool ending.

I never did get the full story of how it happened but from what I understand one of the aircraft shifted and rolled forward, completely crushing this guys foot.

He gets medevac'd off the ship ends up losing his foot and gets fitted with a prosthetic.

Now here's the cool part. This guy was such a bad ass that on the day we returned to Home Port from deployment, they fly him BACK out to our ship just so he could be the first person to walk off the brow! To some of you, that might not seem like such a big deal but traditionally the CO is the first person off the ship. It was a huge, HUGE honor for this guy.

Yep. Feeding nearly five thousand people three meals a day ain't cheap, so how does the Navy do it? Buy the cheapest food they can.

Edit: see, kids, this is why you never, ever believe anything a sailor says. I had always, without fail been told that is what NSHC stood for. Apparently not.

Seriously. I can't stress this enough. Here's a pro-tip to anyone considering enlistment. KEEP YOUR NAKED PHOTOS IN YOUR EMAIL. I can't touch your email without reasonable suspicion. Go ahead, save the email! But for the love of god DON'T download the attachments!

But if you save that crap on MY servers, I WILL find it and I WILL be forced to report you. I had to give a written report to my divo on a monthly basis of any image files found on the network.

This was a great day. Snuck about a dozen nerf guns on board and we had an all out war in the server room. Our collective assholes puckered up nice and tight once the divo got beamed by one...

Until he grabbed the gun out of someone's hand and started shooting back.

Ugh. Just because you have an IT cert, doesn't mean you know how to do my job. A YN is a Yeoman. A paper pusher. A secretary. A YN is not an IT.

I don't give a crap if you're a First Class, Chief, or even a Master Chief. If you're not an IT, ET, or any other I-Branch rate don't tell me how to do my job.

Besides, it's only A+. That's like the IT version of a GED.

Best abuse of power EVER. I would have gotten in so much trouble if I'd ever gotten caught for this one. Internet privilege on my ship was like winning the lotto.

If you were a Chief or above, you had unlimited internet access. So, I made a fake Chief account, gave this guy the log in information and showed him how to use the Run As command to run his internet browser under the "Chief's" account. Voila! Internet access!

In return, he cooked all of my meals personally. CS3 Smith, if you're reading this, I still love you man.

This Chief was great. Most times, I was lucky to get a thank you for fixing someone's computer.

Admittedly, a can of soda from the ship's vending machines only cost us 65 cents, but this Chief instantly earned my love. I made damn sure to go out of my way to take care of him in the future.

OC (oleoresin capsicum) spray is like pepper spray on crack. The OC the Navy uses is like, a hundred times more potent than pepper spray you can get from a store.

The best way I've ever heard it described was "It felt like every cell in my eyes were being pierced by needles while the Devil pissed on my face"

But this poor girl? Wow. She either had absolutely no pain tolerance or was way too much of a drama queen but as soon as that stuff hit her face she was screaming.

Me? I couldn't breath because I was laughing so hard.

As an IT, there were times when I could go a week or more without ever seeing the outside of the ship. (And before one of you Nukes say it, I know ya'll had it much worse than us)

But anyway, I was talking to a friend of mine and we started to wonder if it was possible to forget we were on a ship. We rarely ever felt the ship rocking in the water because it was large. This sparked an idea and over the next three months I wrote a sci-fi novel about these people living in a space ship so massive that after generations they forgot they were even on a ship.

Yeah. When you're out to sea, it's easy to run out of things to do so I was super happy to let this suck away all my free time for a few months.

I've still got the rough draft. Keep meaning to go back and fix it up and see if I can get it published.

Dog Tax #1

So, I dun fooked up and missed my Tax on my last post. So, to make up for it, here's two. This one is of Thor after he got his eye replaced with a Cybernetic one. He's a nerd like that.

Dog Tax #2

Ignore the ugly one on the right. My dog is much better looking than I am.