KIPASS issue alive and well

[B.D.F.]

I am surprised you have not heard the term kludge before. Though to be honest, it IS a little disconcerting hearing the term from a gentleman who was in the silent service for an entire hitch. Brings up a mental image of some stuck throttle rods, hammered on the ends and wrapped in dirty bed-sheets, with a CPO explaining to the guy on the next watch: "yeah, the neutrons were running a little fast and that throttle thingy did not work so I cut into the harness on these wires over here and put in a toggle switch. When it starts to run a little hot, flip the switch and she'll cool down pretty good. "Kludgy" but it works well enough for me".        And while I am thinking of this, I always LOVED what the limeys call the reactor on a submarine: 'the kettle in back'! Out frickin' standing!

You folks should see some of my kludgy fixes, or what I like to call 'permatemp' solutions: an emergency, temporary solution, for the absolutely bare minimum amount of time, or until it fails, whichever comes last. The it is replaced by another permatemp solution but perhaps (and that is a big perhaps) of a higher grade..... less temp and more perma, maybe.

Brian

P.S. Tree: nice job on the career thingy. I have been hip- deep in the double dolphin guys and I have the highest respect for them; been to the sub school and especially, the escape tower too (outside contractor, commercial diver) and I only have two words: brass balls (and that has nothing to do with gender, the same would apply to any female in the silent service IMO). Thanks for your service and my compliments on your obvious abilities in executing that service. 

P.P.S. I have never, ever used that emoticon before by the way....

It seems to me that Tree mistook a normally open switch for a normally closed one and misdiagnosed it as stuck open when it was stuck closed and responded accordingly...somehow it worked but is still (in his words) kludge?

Could be something entirely different which would make this another one of my kludge posts. I kinda like that word kludge.

[Tree]

It is interesting to reflect on the chapters of my life.  Submarine Service being just one of them.  I identify with Homer Simpson sometimes.  Funny as hell when I think about the stuff that I had to do, or saw some other poor bastid doing, just to keep the lights on and the propeller turning.  Some of it was downright frightening.

OFF TOPIC (What topic? :0)

How about a trivia question for the group?  When you hear a sailor say "It's cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey", what does he really mean by that?

[B.D.F.]

As the story goes: A monkey was the plate on which cannon balls were stored back in cannon ball days, and it was made of brass to prevent corrosion (or at least heavy, iron oxide corrosion) and to prevent the balls from 'welding' to it via corrosion. As these were relatively open ships, or at least some of the guns were on some decks, when the ship was in a cold environment, so were the monkey and the cannon balls. As the plate shrunk faster in two dimensions than the balls did in three dimensions (the balls were stacked in pyramid style), eventually the plate moved the divots for the balls far enough that..... the balls would fall off the plate. That point being when: it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

The reality: no person or persons would even attempt to store round cannon balls on anything even close to a flat plate on a moving ship. While 'monkeys' were used to load the guns during battle, at least on occasion, they were never used for cannonball storage. The story is just that.... a story. Not a bad story though. It would be better if it somehow involved KiPass but then again, KiPass makes everything better.

There is some trivia in the 'thread about nothing'. Some of my favorites, such as the origin of 'mind your p's and q's' and similar. Probably somewhere around post 230, or perhaps post 9428 or maybe the two- millionth. A search should turn it up but if you look, do not get your hopes up too far.... like the brass monkey story, it does not end as cleanly as one could hope.

Brian

It is interesting to reflect on the chapters of my life.  Submarine Service being just one of them.  I identify with Homer Simpson sometimes.  Funny as hell when I think about the stuff that I had to do, or saw some other poor bastid doing, just to keep the lights on and the propeller turning.  Some of it was downright frightening.

OFF TOPIC (What topic? :0)

How about a trivia question for the group?  When you hear a sailor say "It's cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey", what does he really mean by that?