The Vitro years, Part 3.

I started work one day after we moved into the apartment and went to the main headquarters, which no longer exists (it’s a Home Depot hardware store now). I had a lot of paperwork to fill out and sign and had to make choices on insurance that I had no idea were right or wrong. I winged it, but it worked out ok. My mantra is, when in doubt pick answer “D”.

After lunch I was taken to my office and I got to meet the rest of the coworkers. They were:
Gabby (white, about 60 years old, thin wiry and feisty grump)
Tony (black, married, about my age, 24 years old, very smooth operator)
Matt (white, about 35 years old, computer nerd)
Darryl (white, married trash, 30-ish, loud hippy from Seattle)
Dan (white, shy like me, quirky, nerd too)
Bob (white, married, about 30, player, I never knew what his actual job was, something to do with cabling)
Marla (white, about 30, should have hooked up with Matt, but I don’t think they ever did)
Jerry R. (white, near retirement, always smiling schmoozing boss)

There were other people, but this was pretty much the “gang” that I spent most of my time with in and out of work.

I went to work learning the ropes, and it was interesting to see the process to produce the end product I used to have to work with when I was in the Navy. Mostly document changes that when I wa on the Sub, I would have to open up and swap out pages in the many volumes of technical manuals we maintained. There was a team of technicians (mostly ex-Navy) who would come on board to make the hardware updates and they would leave us the documentation updates.

Now I was actually researching and creating these hardware and software updates, which was pretty cool. In short, we were updating the one big switch between the weapons system and the actual weapons. It would get very complicated sometimes because many of the weapons shared some common signals through the switchboard back to the Fire Control System. So you had to be very careful that a change to one type of weapon, didn’t impact the function of another.

The last thing you wanted to do was have to incorporate a new switch or relay into the system, but it happened all the time. Once that happened, you would have a lot of new people involved, because of the cost of adding hardware, vice a simple wiring modification. Everyone had to agree that it was actually required.

The hardware modifications were initially manufactured in house and tested (what's called a Proof-In) on a test submarine. Usually a boat that was getting ready to go on a training run. This required a fair amount of travel to the places Submarines were kept. I will get into all that travel and it's impact on my marriage a bit later.