Lots and lots of busy work keeping me from generating any new, blood-curdling or world-view changing content this morning, gomen.

In lieu, and for all of you that are new, I offer the opportunity for you to review:

A career decision. (Originally posted in the old blog in May, 2004. Which was quite a good month for me actually. Post-wise.) Excerpt:

The optimum narrative myth in tales told by fighter pilots occupies a fairly homogenous niche: First off, he’s always the hero of the tale, with the naval variant catapulting off into the ocean skies on a routine training hop. Then, when hostilities suddenly arise, he vanquishes numerically superior adversaries in a pitched battle where the outcome is very much in doubt and the world trembles in the balance. And afterwards, after an OK 3-wire arrested landing, he gets the girl.

Getting the girl was always problematical, in my early days at sea. Combat warships were not yet gender integrated. Come to think about it, it’d still be problematical today, but for different reasons. See here for examples why.

Anyway, these kinds of stories are what makes fighter guys smile in their sleep.

There are a thousand stories like this one, all taking place in the training environment since no one comes up to play, anymore. Sigh.

But this is not one of them - this is a story of a career decision.

And, Biter, if you’re out there? Yeah - that was you I almost shot down.

Sorry.