The Real Sentinel News 200406

The Sentinel All the news that's fit to print and some that's not.
Baby Boom? This reporter has to wonder about this stay at home order. Young couples home alone all day and night could lead to romance every day all day long. This is April, could we be looking at a lot of babies being born for Christmas? Remember the NYC blackout that sparked a baby boom 9 months later? It could happen again. Of course the opposite could happen, to much togetherness in some situations could lead to breakups in rocky relationships. The fact is we just do not know what will happen in the coming months. The hope is that this stay at home thing will flatten the upward curve in the continuing Covid-19 virus and perhaps put an end to the curse that is upon us at the moment. In actuality it could recede during the summer and then come roaring back with the cold weather of winter. I am reminded of the old song "Kay Sera Sera" the tag was as follows, "what ever will be will be, the future's not ours to see."	ROKU Our west coast bureau chief recently sent us a ROKU Express device. We had not had one before, so there was a slight learning curve, but once past that we are learning to use the device and it is a really great product. The more we use it the more we appreciate it. The ROKU channel has many different channels to watch and you can search on ROKU to find just about anything a person could want to watch. Joyce loves music and concerts and they seem to be available for most artists. Some older ones are free and if you never saw a ZZ Top concert, an old one is a new one to you. There are also brand new concerts but top artists will cost you a few dollars to watch, but $4 or so is a lot better than $400 to be there in person, jammed in with a thousand people. That is just this reporter's feeling, some people enjoy being jammed in to a crowd and feeling the atmosphere and spending big bucks to do so.	The U.S. Navy This navy was established in 1775, along with the marine corps and the army. All have served this nation well, far better than the country serves its armed forces, but that is another story. This post is about the navy, my navy. The navy has changed radically over its 265 years. The early years were different from the World War-2 navy where Joyce's father served. My time in the navy was before, during and after the Vietnam war and it changed while I was serving and is much different today. WW-2 navy had very little electronics for radar, primitive sonar for sub detection and sub-par radios. Joyce's father had to tie up a hammock to sleep in when he was off watch. Ship to ship communication was done via signal men who stood high on ships weather decks to send flag signals during the prelude to battles and flags were used in battle to signal other ships to attack or withdraw from combat. During my time we had much more electronics to contend with for all communication to other ships, aircraft and navigation equipment to bring planes home to the ship. In my early days we had radar, but we had to plot courses and speeds on a Plan Position Indicator console, which was slow and difficult to track more than 6 or 8 contacts at a time. At the end of my time we had computerized consoles that allowed an operator to mark, designate a contact and the computer tracked it for them. Those consoles could track hundreds of contacts at one time. In my time early on there were a lot of WW-2 chiefs still in the navy and they made ships run smoothly. Once they all retired things started to slide downhill. Today's navy is nearly all computer controlled, from the engines deep in the bowels of the ship to the steering on the bridge. The operators all over the ship for every capacity stand their watches, but the computers do most of the work. That sounds good, but the recent collisions at sea in 2017 and 2918 were caused by lack of attention by watch standers along with lack of proper training and also fatigue from many long days and hours at sea with no free time to unwind ashore. Is this navy still the best in the world, hell yes it is!