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.