There is some junk in the system. Some of it was junk when entered, other parts have achieved that status through age. We are not apologizing about that. Socotra House readers are familiar that characteristic of our production. Our archives recently have become a curious jumble of hidden masses of digits. They have transitioned through several iterations of desk, phone and laptop computing devices. Lately, due to circumstance, most were limited to the laptop.
We have only recently become aware that they are also jumbled in all sorts of other places, both here and abroad.

We tried a scan on the hard drive this morning to identify redundant material for elimination. We hope to save time loading things up for the first go in the morning. On the summary screen after running through 187,526 files, we were only moderately surprised by the appearance of 17 copies of an old Powerpoint version of an even older trip report. That journey went all sorts of places, including Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Burma and both Koreas. We should have just deleted the extra dupes and saved the disc space. Instead we looked at one version to see what sort of memories were contained in it.

We jumbled one of the versions onto one screen to help recall some of the moments of the Navy’s Overseas Family Residency Program (OFRP). In that scheme, capital ships like Ma Midway were assigned to home ports in Japan to save on response times from ports in the Continental United States (CONUS) and Hawaii.

It was an adventure for all who participated, but it surfaced this morning in the necessary scan. We have had some continuing tech support issues on the production front. There was a pile of notes that Legal had signed out on Good Friday. They contained recommendations on how to handle old and new issues for the Daily audience. The messaging, we were told, shares the events (and some of the emotion) of the time they were drawn.

Back then, Iranian “Students” had occupied American diplomatic facilities in Tehran, a surprising event considering we had done push-ups under the humid Pensacola sun with Iranian students- a different sort who had been sent by the former Shah- who were taught to fly the F-14 jet fighter. So, action by one of the student groups led to the failed rescue attempt at Rescue One. And the other one is still flying F-14s. Against us.

So, that was four decades ago but sort of the same story we have this morning.

This Easter there is tension on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This morning was word of an attack on tourists in Tel Aviv, with one European visitor slain.

So, that is today. Tomorrow is Easter. We await the long-rumored Ukrainian counter-offensive in a continuing kinetic struggle against the Russian invaders. This morning, the NY Times ran stories about a leak of a hundred classified documents about variations on the coming plan. They appear sensitive, but we don’t know whether they are “real” or “misinformation” from either side.

Rocket had reviewed the rest of the traffic, and there are several issues Legal told us to stay away from. Some could be related to experience in previous service. Or, they could be construed as such in extended litigation ruinous in cost to private participants. To avoid cost to the company, we all got outsourced as “independent contractors.” The government costs are also shared by all of us- and you- so it is an ultimate in labor sharing.

We are pleased at the progress, you know?

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com