(18 November 1999, Living Room. 59th and El Cajon Blvd. San Diego.)
Talked briefly with LCDR Hallman today about all things Pandora and making an extension to the existing system to export RS-170 down ARQ-44. The odd thing about this is according to Leon and Larry the Avionics Technical Representatives of His Highness Igor "Helicopters Are the Future, Comrade" Sikorsky: "We've already done that." Well then, excuse the fuck out of me for asking but where the hell is it? If someone has already sent standard video down D/L then why hasn't this been put into practice as a viable extension of the mission systems yet? Operating under the guise of a 'Special Projects' Petty Officer I am beginning to wonder what it is I am supposed to be doing for Hallman anyway. No one listens to the ideas that he, Chief D and I have come up with so where is this all going? Keep fighting with the wing over funding from their R&D bozo? I met the man and I was not impressed with what was supposed to be a "significant amount of forward thinking." He seemed to me just another technocrat with a mandate to spend money on things that have little lights flashing onwards and offwards in a hypnotizing pattern during program briefs. Yes he did sponsor Pandora in her early work but faltered later on when it came time to slap the cards down and kick some ass to get the thing an operational deployment. Fucking frustrating when you've worked your can off for some number of months and then you get the circular file at the last minute. The Navy and the damn development/acquisition processes are essentially fucked up and there is literally nothing to be done about this problem.

The whole thing about Briareos (Appleseed) is that he can take a large number of complex data sources and then integrate them into useful pictures of what is going on around him. The point of trying to do this to the aircraft is that you take an ailing system not capable of altogether too much and then give it what it needs to be competitive again. Okay, so how then? What does LAMPS need? Real-time or NRT (near real-time) NVD (night vision device) video downlink for starters given that practically everything we do at night is on goggles these days, being able to send video from an observers POV from any number of stupid little night vision devices would of obvious usefulness.

Expanded EM spectrum scanning, we need something like Pandora only an order of magnitude more powerful than that system. Something capable of (edited due to security concerns) traffic. Maybe couple the output in NRT to a 2D overlay with bearing information for OTPI, (or an interface into the OTPI receiver,) including signal strength. Make the airplane brew a decent cup of coffee while we're at the mod process here. Resurrect/integrate ISAR/TESAR, do it right this time so AIRPAC doesn't come down and poop all over the finished product. Export NVD video to monocles on the pilot/ATO helmets as with what they're doing in Pavehawks and Apaches these days. Integrate PDA's into kneeboards for easier briefs. EL stripping behind box faceplates instead of conventional incandescent illumination; change the CSCG CI, ATO/SO keyset bulbs to high-intensity NVD/NVG compatible LED's so we stop spending six hundred dollars a pop to fix one of these things.

Okay, so perhaps I love the airplanes too much. I can see far too many things that could be done to them, simple little things that would make it better and cheaper. I look at that machine (my kids,) and I can see the potential of the tool, what it could be versus what it is right now. Every panel removed is something of a disappointment in that it is all so mediocre, put together fucking stupid and entirely too expensive. Probably just a rant and not to be taken seriously, hell the AIRPAC Science Advisor thinks I'm on drugs based on a fraction of the above so I probably ought to let go.

Managed to find out today that Olds thinks I am some sort of racist or prejudiced bastard. Personally I could really fucking care what the man thinks of me except that it's such a low brow and stupid thing to call someone, or accuse someone of being for that matter. So why allow it to bother me at all then: because I am tired of dealing with crap like this from people who should know better. For Christ's sake the man is 40 years old and he can think of nothing more creative than that? Due to the fact that he doesn't like me, doesn't care for the way I work, the fact that I think out of his little box then he has to wander around in the shadows spitting epithets at me? Honestly I wish he would say something about it to me vice slinking around in the background making inane and unfounded accusations. The man does not have a clue about who I am, where I'm from, what kind of a background I came from, yet he feels motivated to make some sort of value based judgment.

This all started when I asked him a simple question today and managed to receive a nice tirade about "usin' big goddamn words in the shop 'cause nobody gets what the fuck ya talkin' about." Gee, thanks asshole. Don't prove the point that I was making about you being an idiot yourself now. Where is Darwin when you need him? How did this fuck survive his first encounter with an electric stapler? Why isn't he a freak blender accident statistic by now? Jay laughed at all of this (thinks it's damn hilarious,) and points out the fact that maybe I shouldn't be so quick to point out to the stupid that they are stupid. I do not understand how it is that Jay and I can work together so well, Jay and Olds are friends and I have been unable to get one civil word out of the man for the last two weeks. People need instruction manuals included with them.

Ziggy is off in Utah at the moment getting married to May, truck has been empty on the way to work in the mornings for the last week. I genuinely hope they're happy. Even if May is a pyrotechnician (asked Ziggy if he was a leery of that at all, strangely enough no,) I wish the two of them the best of luck for the future.

I shall bitch slap you with a fish and force Phase Maintenance down your throat.

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