Monday, July 19, 2021

Megan and The Recruiter

 



Surgery went well, more to follow.  Hand aches more than it did on the other hand, so I'm going to fall back and repost this.

Originally published Monday, July 28, 2014

The Recruiter

A comment from Bill Brandt got this post story going long ago.  “…the premise was that any act of kindness you do to others - no matter how seemingly insignificant, can have profound life-changing effects.

So, There I was….* in the waning years of the presidency of the second person to be impeached and it was obvious to me that I was never going to be Chief of Staff of the Air Force in this lifetime and so retired.  Moved to the Hill Country of Texas and had been hired as a Teacher at the local High School, teaching computer classes.  I’d been doing it for a couple of years and was enjoying it.  The kids were generally well-behaved and polite.  I don’t think I was called “Sir” this often at any time in my military career. 
In any case, my first period class was webmastering and the bell rang at 0800. (8AM for my students, but I keep better track of time when it’s military time, why is that?) Anyhow, this class was one of my favorites, 20 kids, 18 of whom were female, very pretty, smart and funny. The two guys in the class were in Hog Heaven. 

The class was not a mandatory class, although it became one a few years later, so I didn’t have a state mandated curriculum.  I taught it the way I thought would be more useful to the student in later years.  The first grade period, I started them out on MS Office. For many of the kids, this was their first exposure to computers and actually using them to do research, write papers etc, so this was a valuable time. (This was a while ago, yes.) I showed them Excel and the test was building a spreadsheet that helped them decide which was better for them, taking the cash back or the lower interest rate when buying their car.  An eye or two opened on that one.  During the second six weeks we started building web sites.  The Microsoft answer at the time was Front Page and the other teacher started his kids out with that on Day One.  I started the second six weeks by having them open two programs, Internet Explorer and Notepad.  We built web pages strictly using HTML, by the time Christmas rolled around, they were building some pretty good websites and had a decent working knowledge of HTML, programming and troubleshooting.

The first class after Christmas Break, I started off the class by saying, “you guys are going to hate me, but open up Front Page”.  I then showed them how to build a page from the GUI.  A lot of grumbling was going on as I turned them loose on the next website project.  The class hasn’t been working it for more than 15 minutes when one of them puts up her hand and says “Mr Juvat, this isn’t doing what I want it to do.”  Just as the Evil Teacher wanted.  I then showed them the HTML tab in Front Page.  She clicks it and there’s her code.  I ask her to take a look at it and see if she notices anything.  She does and points out a tag that isn’t formatted correctly.  Once she was a student, NOW she is a Master! 

So, it’s almost spring break and I’ve got a student who has a bad habit.  One of my biggest peeves is being late.  I was a military brat and my father was known to drive off and leave you if you were going to make the family late for church.  No, that did not get you out of going to church, you had to walk to a later service.  That stood me in good stead when I officially joined the AF (I think Military brats tend to think of themselves as unofficial members of the Service, wish it counted towards retirement).  Acceptable Time on Target parameters for fighter pilots were plus or minus 2 seconds.  So timeliness is a BIG deal with me. 

This student, we’ll call her Megan, a senior and about to graduate, had a habit of being late.  Now, I don’t mean she was occasionally late, or even frequently late.  I mean she was late every single day.  Sometimes a matter of 30 seconds, sometimes 15 minutes, but every single day! She was never spiteful about it, always was polite and said she’d try harder…But. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY!

Well, it’s a Monday and there’d been Thunderstorms over the weekend and our network had gone out and, and, and.  Frustration is starting to mount as I’m running around trying to get kids into their computers and projects when in bops Megan with a cheery “Morning Mr. Juvat!” That was the straw for this particular morning.

“Young Lady, Do you know what you need?”

Eyes got big and wide.  “Noooo”

“You need to join the Marines!”

Tears starting to form.  “Why?”

“You need to learn some self-discipline!”

Sniffle, Sniffle. Sits down at her computer.

I’m thinking to myself, “Well Done!  Juvat, You’re going to be fired, sued, arrested and probably shot!”

I look over at Megan and she’s beboping along on her computer, talking with her friend next to her and having a great time.  I forget about the incident.

June comes, the Seniors graduate and begin the next step in their life’s journey.  The summer passes, I've got a new crop of kids and we’re in the notepad hating phase when I hear a knock on the door.  I open it and Megan’s standing there.  She's ramrod straight in the Khaki Blouse and Blue trousers of a United States Marine! 

I invite her in and ask her why she stopped by.  I have no recollection of the incident.  She says “I just wanted to thank you.” Puzzled, I ask  “For what?”  She says “For talking me into joining the Marines.”  My jaw drops.  

We chat for a bit about what she was going to do in the Marines (intel) and as she stands up to leave, I say, “Megan, just one more question.  Have you been late since you joined the Corps?”


She said, “Well, I was a little slow getting off the bus at Boot Camp, but they made it very apparent that wasn't going to be acceptable!”  I laughed.

*What's the difference between a fairy tale and a war story?  A fairy tale begins "Once upon a time..." ,a war story begins "So, There I was...".

37 comments:

  1. Very good to hear about the surgery juvat and an excellent choice to re-post.

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  2. If you always fly a "four ship" "formation" to the target and then home, "plus or minus two seconds" is not remotely realistic!!!

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    1. Timing is based on first bomb on target, generally lead's but some missions are single ship.

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  3. Heart-warming story, Juvat.

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  4. Grateful the surgery went well Juvat. Continued prayers up.

    We never know the influence we can have. Only once in a while are we able to see it directly.

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    1. Thanks THBB,

      I gotta admit, her showing up to say thanks, definitely made my week. It also has been a go to memory when things haven't quite turned out as well.

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  5. Ditto TB. Lex started a group, that splintered to the winds. Those folks that took up the mantle have helped me, no end. I've found tribe members, brothers, and friends. I don't speak about it much, but at this stage of living, I didn't realize how much I needed you guys. Even if I just sit and listen, I've learned a lot and been treated well. Thanks for the encouragement and great story. Hope the healing goes perfectly.

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    1. Thanks STxAR, I agree. I'm glad folks like Sarge and OldNFO, as well as a lot of other guys on their sidebars, still publish. Rarely does a day go by without a walkthrough by me, frequently several.

      The hand is getting better. Changed bandages yesterday and the wound looks pretty good. I'm going to give it a couple more days and if it still looks good, I'm going to start massaging the area. That really helped the recovery on the other hand a lot.

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    2. I never got the chance to read Lex in the original but I keep running into people on the webs who were inspired by him. So, well, trickle-down effect or something. Which I am reaping the rewards of.

      To Lex, the once and future blogfather of so many out there!

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  6. "Once upon a time, there I was, standing on a corner, minding my own business..."

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    1. Sounds like the beginning of a good story. I wonder how it ends?

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    2. That corner story always has a character named "Sum Dood". I don't like those....

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  7. I wonder how Megan feels about lateness today?

    Happy to hear the surgery went well.
    The ache should abate …eventually.

    Sometimes I wish blooger would allow full HTM, then I remember what a novice I am.

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    1. I suspect she's a "reformed" person vis a vis timeliness now.

      Thanks, as I mentioned above, once I'm able to massage the area, things should get better.

      I still go into the pure HTML window of blogger, usually to fix something. My impression is there's an AWFUL lot of unnecessary HTML being generated. Which also means I need to tread lightly in the fix. Typically, before I go there, I copy the post's text into a notepad and save that. Then if I screw it up, I delete all the HTML, go back to the compose window and paste the text back in. Not pretty, but it works.

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    2. Yes, I've noticed that too, I go into HTML more than I used to because it keeps inserting garbage code.

      Heh, kinda like some software people I know!

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  8. My dad was cured of showing up early by the, I guess, HQ sergeant (or officer, not sure...) when he reported to whatever flying school he went to for primary jet training. Showed up early, the sergeant (or officer, not sure...) asked him what he was doing there, dad responded "Hanging around until X time to report in" and the sergeant made him hang, by hanging from the doorway, until time to report.

    After that, well, the Beans family didn't ever show up too early, and never late. Even in the days before cell phones, if it looked like any of us would miss a start-time for anything, phone attempt was made to report to the other party that whomever may be/will be arriving late (by 5, 10, 15 minutes) and does the incident requiring arrival at X time need to be rescheduled.

    None of that "if you are early by 15 minutes you are on time" garbage. It was all "time to target" time. Precision arrival.

    I can't stand, to this day, dealing with groups of friends with a liquid concept of 'time' or arriving at an appointment only to have to wait 15 to 30 minutes to even an hour. Grrrrr.... Dammit, my time is valuable, too.

    And if I suspect someone is playing the 'make them wait' game (where they knowingly schedule the appointment start time way early in order to score points by making the arriver wait) then I will, if at all possible, find a new supplier of whatever that person is providing, from cars to service to doctors.

    As to code, well, my experience is even the Linux people are using too much garbage code, and don't even start with Microsoft coding. All I can say is the stuff works, but my programming teachers would have given everyone involved a solid 'F' for excessive and useless codes. Of course, the two classes I had in programming were BASIC on a PDP 11-34 (and it kinda made sense) and a Fortran class on some VAX system (which I failed, miserably, due to inability to grok the concepts (I should not have been in college, head was in wrong place)) and both were on timesharing systems that punished excessive coding.

    Now? I want to open up magic box, start pushing magic buttons and not have to worry too much about magic outcome (other than grammar and punctuation...) I am a User, not a Coder.

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    1. I hear ya' on the "My time is valuable..." Drives me nuts not to be walking in the door at the agreed time. I'm more flexible with Doctors because fortunately I'm in pretty good health. I figure if he's running late it's because somebody else has a greater need for his time than I do. Course if I find out he's out on the links with Judge Smails....

      I'm pretty fluent in BASIC, used to be in Fortran and COBOL, been refreshing myself lately on SQL and starting to learn Python.

      All that having been said, there are days when I have no clue how to do something on my iPhone. Ask my daughter to show me how. She does. Ask her again to do it one tap at a time on her phone, then wait until I make a similar tap on mine etc. She typically says her memory doesn't send the processing sequence at dinosaur speed.

      Kids!

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  9. Ah yes, 'motivation'... courtesy of the DI 'will' get a young person's attention... Personally, I think your approach was the better of the two re training the kids.

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    1. Thanks. Yes, I'm sure it does.
      Re: courses. I had a couple of teacher's in HS that used similar methods (although the courses weren't even remotely computer based, more abacus based.) And UPT we spent an awful lot of time behind the scenes before we even got to look at an airplane, so it wasn't that big of a stretch for me to use a similar instruction method. Besides, the look of satisfaction they got on the face when they figured out what was wrong was worth it.

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  10. (Don McCollor)...I am at the opposite extreme for timeliness, especially for events with very fixed times (like school buses, trains, and airplanes). Early means you sit and wait. Late means you are left behind. Pays off sometimes. At a return flight, I was at least 1.5 hours early at a small regional WY airport. A very helpful ticket agent processed everything (couldn't get the self-service to work) and noticed that my connecting flight in Denver had been canceled, next one due to arrive after the next leg had departed MSP. She put me on standby on a different flight (with two openings). I was the first called in Denver (nobody else had requested standby for a 09:00 flight at 05:30 in the morning... [btw, programming in Basic was fun (self taught), FORTRAN was the language of the Gods, but nothing matched the sheer joy of toggling in addresses and machine language instructions on a PDP-8I (yes I am dated)...

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    1. Don,
      Well...I thought I was a computer language genius....Haven't a clue about PDP-81. More research...Sigh!

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    2. Don McCollor)...The 8I I worked with controlled an x-ray diffractometer in graduate school (8 bit, 4k ferrite memory, later expanded to 8k). Programs were on paper tape fed through a ASR33 teletype. Results came back on paper tape and printout. It was back when computers had blinking lights and twelve switches on the faceplate. Machine coding was in BCD (binary coded decimal [actually octal]. Switch in address, press enter, switch in instruction, press enter. I am a chemist, not a programmer, but my proudest moment was when my advisor gave me a summer stipend to make the machine collect upper hemisphere data (crystal is normally at the bottom) along with an inch thick stack of scientific papers. One thing stood out. The difference was a minus sign for the bottom. Crossed my fingers and inserted a machine language NOP (no operation, ie skip this command to take out the minus sign) in an 8I Fortran routine. Worked!!!

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  11. And, of course, a sea story starts off "This ain't no shit...."
    Tennessee Budd

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    1. TANS...learned that from (very)OldNFO. But important information nonetheless.

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  12. Hey Juvat;

    "If you are early, you are on time, if you are on time.....You are LATE" You know how many times I heard that growing up, and Yes I was an Army brat....and tardiness was a big pet peeve. Needless to say, even today....I ain't late. Excellent Story...although you would have made an excellent Chief of Staff.

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    1. Twas not to be, Mr G. and, frankly, I am glad. A middle age of kissing you know what's would have been miserable. Things have worked out well and I am blessed by the the things that really matter in life. Wonderful Wife, Great Kids, Good Friends (both physical and virtual) and decent health. What more is there?

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  13. Glad to hear the surgery went well. I'm out here in Sandy Eggo catching the ocean breeze on the helo deck and shooting the breeze down in Combat. Life is good.

    I was late to the programming game, learned a bunch of different languages on a bunch of different machines. Now I test that stuff, if there is a way to break it, I'll find it.

    I heard the "if you're early you're on time, if you're on time you're late" BS a lot from various shoe clerks in the Air Force. On time is on time, everything else is nonsense.

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    1. Yeah, I was taught that early is fairly dangerous as that is when the pre-strike suppression was going on. Late is bad because the good guys might be on the ground. So...plus or minus 2 seconds seemed reasonable to me. Little is gained by early, much is lost by late.

      So...It is written, so...It shall be. Yul Brynner

      Enjoy your time away! Gonna see LUSH?

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    2. Yes, she and her daughters plan to come down and hang out with me for a cuppla days.

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  14. Good news about the surgery, now don't forget about the tumeric!

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  15. What a great story about 'Megan'! She will be aces in her service, she just needed some indoc about the vitality of being on time and an introduction to accountability. Good job with the other youngers, too, Juvat.

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  16. I was slammed yesterday and to day, hence the late post - sorry!
    Glad the hand is better - hope it's even better now that a day or two has passed.
    Great story about Megan - and a terrific reminder about how our conduct can influence others whether we know it or not - even if we never talk to them, but they see us do something or hear something we say to someone else... or write something in a blog :-)
    As to computers, my 'career' in that started when I was in college, using Fortran on punch cards, where you submitted the card deck to the computer center, they ran it (on what was a CDC - Control Data Corp) mainframe, then of course had to correct programming or data cards and re-run ad nauseum until it finally worked. Then at my first job I started using BASIC (self taught like Don M above) on PDP-11 minicomputers to acquire data from lab instruments and then process/analyze the results. Got another job where I used a computer to take data from an X-Ray analysis instrument, process the results, then use those results to make changes in the raw material feeds to the production line - when we had some timing issues, I re-wrote some of the data acquisition code into Assembly Language to speed it up, which worked amazingly enough. Had a couple more programming and support jobs before moving to the dark side of sales and marketing. I sometimes think I would have been happier at times if I had stayed on the technical side... but it all worked out, I guess...
    And I will again echo our friend STxAR about this community - it is very nice to hang out with folks of a similar mindset!

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  17. Don McCollor)...Thanks for the mention Tom. Later on, I still preen myself on another one (privately). A client provided about 1 MB data files of x,y,z coordinates and variables from a proprietary CAD package (not provided). Youngsters forget that that there is never enough memory, that the screen is memory, and that the screen resolution is finite. Simple in BASIC. Do a coordinate transformation (easy). The nightmare of graphics is figuring out what is in front. Then sort between two data files from smallest to largest z with a bubble search (yes, I know there are faster ways, but it is simple). Then start (in BASIC) poking values for each data point starting from the back (smallest z). A nearer pixel overwrites what is behind it. The result is an isometric view (rather than perspective, but pretty close). Then do a screen grab of the image. When it worked, I turned it over to one of our tame code monkeys. Took him longer to understand what I was doing than to actually code it in C++ (spit)...

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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