Newton, gravity and beer

Many years ago I spent some time serving in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy where I was employed as an engineer on nuclear submarines. All ex-servicemen have tales to tell about their experiences, some of them funny, some of them serious, some of them down right scandalous, and I am no different. So for your entertainment I hereby present one of my many Salty Sea Stories.


Towards the end of my apprenticeship I was sent to the submarine school at HMS Dolphin in Hampshire to learn all that I needed to know about submarine life, in particular how to avoid doing anything that might sink the bugger (and how to get out if I did).

As a trainee of only 19 summers I had other duties to fulfil, including taking my turn at 'guarding' an old diesel submarine that was used as part museum and part training facility. It was my unfortunate lot that I was assigned to this particular duty over the New Year period of 1978/79 and, along with a few equally pissed off colleagues, was sent into the bowels of this near antique submarine to baby sit it for a few days.

Needless to say we were not happy at being excluded from the New Year festivities and as a result found it necessary to make our own entertainment. Now I know what you thinking, all matelots together and all that, but you would be wrong. Instead we decided to experiment with the capabilities of our temporary home to see what might still be functional after nearly 40 years of hard naval usage.

Obviously a fairly steady supply of beer and spirits helped enormously in bringing out the more inquisitive and playful sides of our characters and it wasn't long before some one suggested seeing how high into the air we could fire a variety of innocent items using a thing called the after SSE.

What’s that? I here you ask. Well, the after SSE was so called first because it is at the after (arse) end of the boat and secondly because SSE stands for Submerged Signal Ejector which is nothing more than a gun barrel turned end on and welded into the submarine with a water tight door at either end. In fact there were two of these devices on the boat but the one up front only worked when submerged because it was powered by water. By contrast the one at the after end of the boat was powered by compressed air at 400 pounds to the square inch. In proper use these devices are used to launch a variety of signal rockets, grenades and smoke canisters but with a barrel diameter of over 4 inches you can get all sorts of things inside.

We started off with some fairly innocuous items, a can of Brasso to about a hundred feet (OK but small) a sleeping colleagues shoes to about 40 feet high (pretty rubbish but really, really funny when you are drunk). Probably the most impressive was the full Christmas pudding which when it exited the submarine at around 150mph exploded into a thousand sticky pieces most of which blew downwind and landed on the shiny warship on the other side of the jetty (watching their crew cleaning it off the following day was also very funny because they couldn’t work out what it was or where it had come from).

All of this was, to our drunken minds, enormously entertaining and as those of us on the upper deck, around 20 or so bodies by now, grew more raucous and demanding of fun, the guys down below where struggling to find ever more assorted ammunition to launch heavenwards.

To this day, and certainly not at the time, no one who was there has ever admitted to having the idea that led to what happened next; or indeed has ever admitted to being either the loader or the trigger man.

The upper water tight door on the SSE slowly opened in readiness for the next sky shot. A quiet fell upon the assembled souls as we waited for the count down to start and in the sudden silence, the quiet before the storm, a sound could be heard. A piteous, high pitched, mournful wail such as might be heard as a soul is stolen down into the eternal pit of hell.

As realisation struck, one of the guys shouted NOOOOO as he ran towards the hatch to try and stop the launch. But too late.

With the by now familiar deep, breathy, PHUT!!, the SSE fired, and from the barrel an object emerged that emitted an unearthly and blood curdling scream as it accelerated high into the night.

As it reached the top of its arc it changed shape. Legs and tail deployed and it became recognisable as ……a cat.

The poor moggy’s vain attempt to make like a parachute availed it nothing other than to ensure its legs were roughly beneath it as it started its plunge to earth. We watched, mouths agape, as gravity exerted its inevitable hold and the feline started earthwards.

A strong light suddenly dazzled us. The noise had attracted the attention of the Ministry of Defence Harbour Police in their speed boat and with searchlight on, they had come to investigate. It was as they nosed slowly towards us that several things happened in very quick succession.

First - the cat approached the last few feet of its return to earth, or in this case, the roof of the cabin on the police boat, at something close to terminal velocity and with a dull, heavy thud hit the roof of the boat very, very, hard.

Then – the helmsman perhaps thought he was under attack and dived onto the floor of the boat, which immediately veered left and crashed hard into the side of the submarine where the force of the impact made one, of the two, policemen in the boat fall over the side and into the water.

The cat - sprang up and launched itself, all teeth and claws, at the throat of the one remaining policeman who grasped it around its neck, ripped it from his bleeding face and hurled it over board.

Those of us on deck fell about laughing like you wouldn’t believe.

Over the following few minutes’ things started to calm down. The wet police man climbed back on board his boat, the savaged policeman was dabbing at the scratches on his face with a hanky, the helmsman got the boat back under control and brought it to a stop. And the cat?

Well the cat was last seen dementedly paddling for the far side of the harbour and as gods my witness it was going so fast it left a wake.


Footnote:

As Newton explained ‘To every action there is an equal and opposite re-action’. In our case the Navy used its own version of this principle, so for our one evening of entertainment we received 14 days of punishment. We all spent the next 2 weeks running here, there and everywhere around the base doing all of the shitiest jobs imaginable.

Was it worth it?..........................you bet it was.

That was different

I ran UK heroic tonight - again. The Drake-Mounted Crossbow didn't drop - again.

The pug looked good at the beginning. Arms Warrior, Holy Priest, Blood DK, Lock and me. We ran in, buffed up and made a start. First mobs down no problem. Into the dragon pens and wipe. Rez. Wipe. Rez. Finally get through.

More mobs OK, then wipe. Sod me three wipes before the first boss. I couldn't believe it. The Death Nigget suggested we let him tank at which point I think our Arms Warrior must have got embarrassed cuz he left the group - I ain't never seen that before.

We all had to go repair before the first boss - I ain't never seen that before.

Fortunately we found a spare Ret Pally and with the DK tanking thereafter, cleared it easy.

hey oh! apart from an 8g repair bill nothing was injured but our pride.

That Damned Elusive.....

Well it was my 15th run through Utgarde Keep on heroic last night and guess what?

The Drake-Mounted Crossbow failed to drop yet again. We had a real good pug, I was the only hunter in the group, I achieved my personal best dps to date of 1783, I passed on just about every thing else (rolled greed on a helm). So the question is what the hell do I need to do?

It seems the Warcraft gods just don't want me to have that bow. Well I'll be damned if I admit defeat and go for the Nesingwary 4000, I am a Night Elf not a Dwarf. I shall just stock up on more Saronite Razorheads and have another go.

Stiff upper lip and all that.

Spreadsheet heaven - Armory hell

I have been playing WoW for 15 months now and in recent times, during my perambulations around the many excellent WoW blogs out there, I keep bumping into references to this Hunter Spreadsheet thing.

Well this week I have tracked the little rascal down and started to play around with it. Let me tell you this is a very impressive piece of work. I know a bit about spreadsheets, heaven knows I work for a company where 'death by spreadsheet' is recognised as an occupational health issue, and this one is cracker.

The only serious problem I have had using it, is actually to do with the WoW Europe Armory. For some reason it takes a dogs age for ingame changes to my character or pet to feed through into the armory. Since the last time the armory page was updated I have acquired my first, second and third epic items, re-specced, tamed a new pet and got some more achievements, none of which show up. This is a bitch because the lovely import function in the spreadsheet drags across my 'old' gear which I then have to manually edit.

Apart from that small irritation though, it all works brilliantly. How brilliantly? I hear you all ask - well after using it for a week I have raised my performance in 5 mans from borderline possible in heroics to more than ready to start Naxx 10 mans. My DPS has gone up from around 950 to 1500 plus. And in fact last night in UK heroic I finished second on the meters to a better specced SV hunter and was only 200 dps behind him.

All credit to the fine folks responsible for this excellent piece of work, first Cheeky now Shandara, and all the other contributors who have made it what it is. Check it out here: Shandara's Spreadsheet and enjoy.

Submariners Do It Deeper - Part 1

Between 1975 and 1985 I served in the Royal Navy as a marine engineering technician or as the Navy has it a Marine Engineering Artificer, or Tiffy for short. Like every other ex-serviceman or woman I have stories about my time in the 'Andrew' and although my stories are totally unique they are at the same time exactly the same as many other peoples and I hope will have little resonance.

So here goes, a little glimpse into my life in a blue suit........

During the first year of my Apprenticeship, and this was a proper apprenticeship before the rise of the 1 day a week for 18 months Modern Apprenticeships that we have now, all of the baby Tiffs were marched into a lecture theatre to listen to a sage and erudite Warfare Officer tell us all about the life expectancy of modern warships should World War 3 break out.

I forget the exact numbers now but it went something like this :-

Major Warship - 10 mins of combat time

Minor Warship - 15 mins of cambat time

Submarines - 36 hours of combat time

Now I am many things but I am not stupid and a quick glance at the numbers convinced me that Submarines was where it was at. I became even more convinced when I found out that submariners recived an additional financial incentive in the form of Special Service Pay - about £4.50 per day at the time. Three years later as I neared the end of the classroom phase of my apprenticeship, I remembered this lecture and so at the appropriate moment in went my papers to volunteer for service in submarines.

I like to tell myself that the Royal Navy recognises talent when it sees it but it's more likely they were desperate. In either case I was accepted and off I went to start my submarine training at HMS Dolphin in Portsmouth.

My time at Dolphin was a blast. It finally felt as though I had joined the mans Navy and at last was working towards something a bit more productive than the Maths, Science and Engineering syllabus of the previous three and half years. There were many new things to learn during basic submarine training but virtually all of it revolved a single theme - safety. Submarines are by nature a very hazardous environment in which to work and live and it was therefore really important that we small boys were properley prepared before being let loose on 3500 tons of Her Majestys finest nuclear submarine, jam packed with all manner of buttons to press, switches to switch and valves to open or close which if pressed, switched, opened or closed at the wrong time or in the wrong sequence could have all sorts of unpleasant consequences.

The most unpleasant of all possible unpleasant consequences, is the one that finds Her Majestys finest nuclear submarine lying incapacitated at the bottom of the ocean having experienced a thing called sinking.

But the ever practical Royal Navy had thought of this and so we young, innocent, oh so gullable baby submariners were heartened when told that the final bit of our course would be spent learning how to escape from a submarine at depth. To facilitate this training the Navy had built a really lovely swimming pool filled with warm water lovingly known as The Tank. As swimming pools go this one was something else, about 30 feet in diameter and over a 100 feet deep. The idea being that we could practice escaping from the submarine and ascending to the surface and safety.

I always had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it was good to be prepared for the worst. On the other hand, what were the chances of a submarine sinking in a hundred feet of warm water.

The First Post

So then, here I am sat in front of my keyboard, fingers poised and mind blank, waiting for inspiration to strike. BAM!! There it goes.

This is the first time in my life that I have ever attempted any kind of diary or blog and to be honest it is quite an intimidating prospect. Is this going to be a passing interest for me, one of those "I think I'll start going to the gym" sort of things, or will it be something that carries forward and sticks - like WoW.

And there we have it - the point of the blog.

Well what is the point? It certainly isn't to try and become another Big Red Kitty (bless his little dwarven heart) or a Hunters Lodge (all hail Brigwyn) no sirree. I am not, and probably never will be, in their sort of class.

What I want to try and do is come at this thing from a slightly different perspective, indeed from the perspective of a real life with WoW in it, as experienced by a more mature (NOT old) player.

So lets see how it goes, take the shot in the dark, leap into the unknown, to boldly go........Oh thats enough of that!