Thirteen years ago today, I became the luckiest guy in the world when I married Kelly Swanson Turner. Boy, what a smart decision that was!
Here’s to 58+ more years!
Geezer
There are 384 posts filed in Geezer (this is page 23 of 39).
How to simulate being a sailor
I found this on another website and thought it was funny. If you’ve ever been in the Navy you’ll recognize these.
How to Simulate Being a Sailor
- Buy a steel dumpster, paint it gray inside and out, and live in it for six months.
- Run all the pipes and wires in your house exposed on the walls.
- Repaint your entire house every month.
- Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of the bathtub and move the shower head to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while you soap down.
- Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.
- Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot onto your neighbor’s house. Ignore his complaints.
- Once a month, take all major appliances apart and then reassemble them.
- Raise the thresholds and lower the headers of your front and backdoors, so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through them.
- Disassemble and inspect your lawnmower every week.
- On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn your water heater temperature up to 200 degrees. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn the water heater off. On Saturdays and Sundays tell your family they use too much water during the week, so no bathing will be allowed.
- Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling, so you can’t turn over without getting out and then getting back in.
- Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have your spouse whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and say “Sorry, wrong rack.”
Blogging on and on
The kids and I attended a stream monitoring workshop put on by the City of Raleigh on Saturday. It was great learning how to measure the water quality of our city’s streams and we look forward to doing our part.
The workshop included field time and the group practiced in nearby Little Rock Creek. As I was wading around in the middle of the creek, a fellow participant wandered over to me.
“Are you the blogger?” he said.
“Excuse me? Am I the what?”
“The blogger, www.markturner.net?” he answered.
I laughed and introduced myself to my new friend, Sandro Gilser, blogger at The Daddy Weekly. You should check it out.
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Letters to Grandma: 31 August 1992
[Note: Read this post first for an introduction.]
This one comes almost 20 years ago to the day. By this time I’d been out of the Navy for 7 months. I was new to Raleigh, living in a cheap, roach-infested apartment in a dangerous neighborhood near campus, yet I felt promise. I had no where to go but up, right?
I smile at my constant use of the word “programmer,” as now they’re called developers. It was a time of rapid change in computers, which led to me leaving college behind for real-world experience. I was right about getting a high-paying job in computers. I still know what its like not to have a college degree, though!
Boy, if only I could get those “eye-popping” tuition rates of 1992 today. I’d just might go back to school.
10pm August 31, 1992 [age: 23]
Dear Grandma,
Sorry it’s been so long since you heard from me. I was twisted like a pretzel by all the new directions I had to go. I didn’t settle down for half a year and just now am I getting my footing again.
This is my second week here at N.C. State. I still don’t really believe I’m here. I guess by the time the tuition bills arrive I’ll be feeling right at home!
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Profile slamming
I was thinking that there isn’t much out there that describes what I believe Mitt Romney’s campaign (or one of its allies) is doing to surreptitiously set Facebook accounts to like the campaign’s page. Is it account hijacking? Hacking? Vandalism? What do you call it?
Then I recalled telephone slamming, the practice where unscrupulous telephone companies steals the customer of another telephone company by switching that customer’s long distance provider without their knowledge or consent. This happened to a company I once worked for and stunned me in its audacity.
I think that manipulating someone’s social media profile without their permission is similar in some ways to telephone slamming. Since no one else seems to have come up with a name for this practice, I will call it “profile slamming.”
Letters to Grandma: 10 Nov 1991
[Note: Read this post first for an introduction.]
I wrote this while in the Persian Gulf, where my ship spent three months doing donuts. This was my second trip to the Gulf and, as I wrote below, I had gotten used to the routine. Hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of sheer terror. Fortunately, the closest I came to combat was watching as our deployed SEAL team safely detonated a wayward Iraqi mine.
I still remember pointing the ship’s “Big Eyes” binoculars towards a passing Iranian ferry, fascinated by wonder evident on the faces of the passengers. They looked like everyday people, and I wondered why our two countries couldn’t just get along.
At the time I really was hitting my stride with the Navy. I think it’s because I was finally getting a chance to lead. Those lessons are still paying off today.
Sunday, Nov. 10, 1991 [age:22]
63 DAYS TO GO!!Grandma –
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Letters to Grandma: 27 Sep 1991
[Note: Read this post first for an introduction.]
You can tell how dated this letter is because I say the Arabic countries are actually glad we were there! I’ve also stayed at plenty of hotels for more than $180 a night, though for the small salary I was making as an enlisted sailor that was indeed steep.
It turned out that I didn’t leave the Navy at our port stop in Hawaii but rode the ship back to San Diego before flying home. I was ready to leave California and experience actual seasons again, though California eventually did find its way into my heart.
Friday, 22 Sep 91 [age:22]
Dear Grandma –
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Twenty years in NC
It was on this day twenty years ago that I moved to North Carolina for good. I’d lived here before, of course, starting in 1983 when I spent three years in Charlotte. In between 1986 and 1992, I moved to Great Falls, VA, joined the Navy, and traveled the world.
August 2, 1992 was when I came to Raleigh to attend N.C. State. I first lived on Clanton Avenue, then the Raleigh Apartments on Peace Street, then Thea Lane, before moving to the other side of Lake Johnson at the Lake Johnson Apartments on Trillium Circle. Then I got married, moved to Garner for 5 years, had a kid, moved back to Raleigh at Hobhouse Circle, had another kid, then moved to East Raleigh on Tonsler Drive. Whew!
It’s been a wonderful first 20 years. I look forward to seeing what the next 20 years will bring!
Letters to Grandma: 4 August 1991
[Note: Read this post first for an introduction.]
This was written at the start of my last deployment. It turns out I never made it anywhere near Egypt nor the Red Sea. Word on the street was that my second skipper didn’t have the friends in high places that my politically-connected first skipper did, leading to the choice ports being given to other ships.
In this letter I finally sound comfortable with the Navy. I had finally figured out how the system worked and could have probably made great strides at this point in a Navy career had I chosen that path.
During this cruise I was spending my off-time taking college courses. While I really got into it and did well, my success there didn’t translate to success at N.C. State. My classmates were much more attractive at State, I have to say.
I do still sail, of course, whenever I can. Though I sail on a lake now, I’ll never forget the feeling of freedom and adventure I get from being on the water.
August 4, 1991 4 AM HDT, 10 AM EDT [age:22]
Dear Grandma,
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Letters to Grandma: 21 January 1991
[Note: Read this post first for an introduction.]
This letter was written while my ship was in the midst of a three-month overhaul in San Diego’s NASSCO shipyards. My Desert Storm experience consists largely of me watching it on TV and supplementing that knowledge with the secret knowledge shared on the intelligence wires. I did return to the Gulf to serve in the combat zone but only after hostilities had largely ceased.
During this time my uncle Jimmy passed away suddenly from a heart attack. Many more heart attacks would come to afflict the Turner clan (though I intend to take good care of my ticker – and have so far).
C.J. was my parents’ Golden Retriever, still a puppy at the time of this writing.
My dad did end up visiting that March. We spent a few days and nights sightseeing around my ship and around San Diego. It was a weekend spent with my dad that I will never forget.
21 January 1991 (my 22nd Bday!!) [age:22, duh]
Dear Grandma,
Sorry it’s been sooo long since I’ve written – I’m just taking the bandages off my writing hand, so to speak. As you know there has been a whole lot going on since you last heard from me.
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