To All The Computers I’ve Loved Before

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With apologies to Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias

I’m a nerd.

This is common knowledge among those who have been in the same zip code as me.  You don’t actually have to meet me in person.  It’s kind of like radiation.  No, it’s not contagious.

No, this is my grandma Effie, not my slightly older sister.

Anyway, I was thinking about something my (slightly older) sister and I were discussing a while back regarding our grandmother, Effie Wolfe, and the degree in which technology exploded in her lifetime.   Think about the degree that technology emerged from her birth in 1897 until her passing in 1987. It’s hard to imagine what it was like for her and others of her generation to have been born into a world in which technology was just in its infancy to seeing people landing on the moon.  

For example, the first electric power transmission line in North America went online on June 3, 1889, with the lines between the generating station at Willamette Falls in Oregon City, Oregon, and Chapman Square in downtown Portland, Oregon — about 13 miles.  That’s only 8 years before Effie was born and I doubt tiny Deshler, Ohio was a place where cutting-edge home electricity distribution landed first.

When I was a really small human, I remember she had a phone with no dial.  You picked it up and the local Deshler operator answered and placed your call.  My sister mentioned remembering a phone with a hand crank on it, but I don’t remember that.  

But I DO remember computers. Lots of ‘em starting with this baby:

This is the computer from the Seaview, the fictional submarine featured in both the movie and the absolutely awful TV show “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” and I vividly recall watching this show at Effie’s house.  In black and white, ‘natch.

The TV show ran from 1964–1968, and as an impressionable youngster, I was nuts for this show and its vision of advanced technology.  Mom said that it gave me bad dreams and I would wake up in the middle of the night turning imaginary knobs and pushing imaginary buttons on the wall, presumably dreaming I was operating the Seaview computer.  (Out of curiosity a few months back, I looked it up on Netflix to see what I was so obsessed with back then.  Trust me when I say the show does NOT hold up.  At. All.)

Another Irwin Allen show that prominently featured a computer was “The Time Tunnel.”  Here’s the way it looked on the show:

From the pilot episode “Rendezvous with Yesterday” September 9, 1966.

Something I didn’t know until recently, this was a real computing system, the AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central.  (Click the link or the photo below to learn about it.)  

This computer would show up in a whole lot of movies and TV shows including a couple more from “Tunnel” producer Irwin Allen:  

“Q7 components were used in numerous films TV series and TV series needing futuristic looking computers, despite the fact they were built in the 1950s. Q7 components were used in The Time Tunnel, The Towering Inferno [Featuring O.J. Simpson], Logan’s Run, WarGames and Independence Day amongst many others.”

“The Juice” on the loose in “The Towering Inferno.”

After all that good stuff, I found myself taking a different track into music.  I got a music scholarship to Valley Forge Military Academy in 1971.  In 1974, I believe, they offered a one-semester course in Computer Programming with FORTRAN IV.  I and my fellow students had to take our deck of punch cards on the commuter train over to Villanova University’s computer center to have our programs run through their IBM 370/168.  

I have only vague recollections of running my cards through the reader, waiting for 15-20 minutes for the program to run and then retrieving my printouts from the computer technician through the glass window.  Very old school. The computer center looked something like this 370/168 installation:

There was a watered-down version of either BASIC or FORTRAN on the Academy’s very own minicomputer, the Interdata Model 4.  

It had a single Teletype as its primary interactive device and a single punch card reader which, as I recall, wasn’t good for much since we could never get the Interdata version of FORTRAN IV to run even though it was supposed to.  It was plenty good to teach programming techniques that we could implement in our programs we took to Villanova.  

Many years passed before I did any programming of any kind.  I had access to the Commodore VIC-20 when I was in SHAPE, Belgium and I wrote a BASIC program to do TV scheduling for the American Forces Network TV station there.

When I got back to the US in 1985, I promptly bought a Commodore 64…

… and just as promptly outgrew it, replacing it with a pre-owned original IBM-PC for which I needed a bank loan for something like $3,000.  (Yes, computers were painfully expensive.)  

Later on, I upgraded the memory from 384k to a whopping 640k, which at the time was as much as you could stuff into one of these babies.  Down the road, I upgraded it again with an extraordinarily large, thought-I’d-never-be-able-to-fill-it-all-up-in-a-zillion-years 10 MB hard drive. That’s megabyte. To me, it was a huge amount of storage space.

In 1985 about 6 months after returning from Belgium, I was assigned to Fort Sill, OK as a student in the Communications/Electronics Staff Officer Course (CESOC).  Since I had just become addicted to the newly discovered online world, I could not bear to go without being on CompuServe for the nine weeks of the course.  To pass the time, I got this little guy, the Radio Shack TRS-80, Model 100, one of the very first “laptop” computers.  It had 8 lines and 40 characters on it’s LCD screen and, most importantly, had it’s very own acoustically coupled modem.

   

Three years later, for a nine-week school at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, I bought myself the very first Zenith laptop computer. This one came with 640k of memory, I think, and two of the newest type 3 1/2″ floppy disks, which were really no longer floppy at all. 

This lasted me for quite awhile until…  well, the divorce and the former spousal unit got the IBM and I kept the laptop.  Fair enough.

Jon and Andy hung on to that laptop for quite a few years, most of which were spent gathering dust.   

In 1987, I started working for the newly-formed Information Center at Fort Richardson, Alaska.  ‘Twas there that I met and worked for the brilliant and talented Raymond Brady, a long-time mainframe programmer and Department of the Army Civilian.  Raymond trained me on the IBM 4361 mainframe computer that was the central hub of the Command Wide Area Network encompassing Forts Richardson, Wainwright and Greely.

Publicity still of an IBM 4361.

I recall that Fort Richardson received a cutting-edge Direct Access Storage Device (DASD). Think of it as a mainframe hard drive. Raymond was crazy impressed that it was a half gigabyte system. Let’s face it — we were ALL impressed with this thought-we’d-never-be-able-to-fill-it-all-up-in-a-zillion-years DASD.

Raymond taught me about the 3270 terminal, SNA network protocol, and the IBM Operating System, VM/SP.  And I got to be a pretty good beginner REXX programmer.

About the time Raymond and I started working together in the Information Center, the Army negotiated a huge contract to buy desktop PC’s from Zenith. These Z-248’s flooded very quickly onto desks around Alaska and throughout the Army, armed with an integrated software suite called Enable.  Since I was one of the few people around who actually had personal computers at home, I became the designated PC guy.

I spent a lot of time teaching basic and advanced courses in MS-DOS to the new PC users at all three posts in Alaska.  My close friend, Chief Warrant Officer Don Foley, loved Enable so much, he wound up teaching Enable classes even though he was assigned elsewhere.

I can’t tell you how many of these machines I installed and repaired in the roughly two years I was in the Information Center, but it must have been well over a hundred if not more.  I got to know the Z-248 quite well.

I would be remiss were I to fail to acknowledge fellow VFMA alumnus Ben Sherburne.  Long after graduation, Ben and I unexpectedly ran into each other in the headquarters building barber shop at Fort Richardson. We wound up working together with Raymond in the Information center until 1990.

Me, Raymond Brady and Ben Sherburne in Alaska during our time together in the Information Center.

During my time serving in the Fort Richardson Information Center, I also administered a few of what were then called minicomputers.  The first was an Intel 386 minicomputer.  At it’s heart was an Intel 80386 processor that ran SCO Xenix, which like Unix before it, was a multiuser operating system.  Each of the two boxes supported 12 users.  Both boxes were connected to the aforementioned IBM 4361 mainframe through an IBM Systems Network Architecture (SNA) network, a terminal-based protocol.

One other computer dinosaur was Digital Equipment Company‘s MicroVAX Unix computer.  It was installed for the purpose of helping the Fort Richardson Director of Logistics manage some sorts of transportation-related missions.  I wasn’t aware of the application side of things, but I did do some system administration on that machine.

In 1990, I got out of the Army for the first time.  The Zenith laptop continued to serve me well. Then I started collecting computer parts. People would just give me their old computers that they replaced.  I sustained my computer habit over the years by rescuing the parts and pieces from these hand-me-downs and building systems that did what I needed ’em to do.  They weren’t cutting edge, but they got the job done.

Not too long after that, PC’s pretty much became a commodity. The brand you bought really didn’t matter all that much as it had in the early days of PC deployment.  In 2008, I bought my first Mac Laptop and it’s still working just fine even as I sit at the kitchen table and type this:

Samsung Galaxy S8.

Of course, even the tiny cell phone with which I snapped the photo of my nine-year-old MacBook Pro has enormous power when compared with the Interdata Model 4, the first real computer I got to use. From 64 kilobytes of ferrite core memory, to 64 gigabytes of solid state storage on my Samsung Galaxy S8 smart phone, it’s easy to see how drastically things have changed.

Just since I started in the computer business in 1974-ish with punch cards and core memory, to having access to nearly the entirety of human knowledge in my pocket is genuinely astounding when I stop to think about it.

I doubt Effie ever laid hands on a computer keyboard before her passing in 1987.  With new devices and new technology popping up almost daily, I wonder just how far beyond the S8 and Alexa-powered smart homes we’ll be in 20 years.

The Ultimate Star Trek Fan’s Guide to Excretion

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If you’re not a Star Trek fan, these won’t be nearly as funny.

There I was sitting on the…

Well, never mind where I was and what I was doing at the time. That’s not important now.

Here’s my list of the top ten ways a rabid Star Trek fan could say they were on their way to the can.

  1. Vent some drive plasma.
  2. Eject the ol’ warp core.
  3. Dropping some friends off at the Holodeck.
  4. Do an emergency beam out.
  5. Coolant leak.
  6. Preventing a warp core breach.
  7. Emergency separation.
  8. Perform the Corbomite Maneuver.
  9. I’m heading to the Battle Bridge.
  10. Losing antimatter containment.

Qapla’

 

Another Emmettversary!

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Last year, I wrote this piece on the second anniversary of Emmett’s arrival in our family, affectionately known around these here parts to be an Emmettversary.  Click the link and you can read all about last year’s anecdotes and there are more links to other stories about Emmett in which there are MORE links to other dog stories.  You know how the Web works.

Or you can click on “Dogs” in the tag cloud to the right.

I know your time is more valuable than that, so to get right to the point, today is Emmett’s THIRD Emmettversary.  With the passing of the year, Emmett continues to improve his interactions with the family and, much to my surprise, with strangers.

Over the weekend, I had zerorez come clean the carpets in the house.  This is the second time I’ve used their services and I recommend them highly.  Anyway, this time, I left Emmett out and about roaming the house rather than cooped up away from all the hubbub.

When Steven, the technician, came in, Emmett let out one little bark, far fewer than the usual tirade he emits when anyone — even family — touches the doorknob.  He eyed Steven from head to toe and then sniffed at his shoe.  Steven reached down against my admonitions and offered a couple of tentative fingers which Emmett gently explored, sniffing intently to find out who this new person was.

And with that, it was over.  Done.  Finito.  Emmett chose to go about his business.

Nice change.

Fuzzy Emmett, pre-grooming.

I’m much less worried about him biting anyone.  Repeated successful, non-nibbling trips to the groomers supports my relief.  He appears to be – dare I say it? – mellowing.

Nah…

He’s still a bit of a jackass from time to time though mostly he’s become charming, demanding, adorable and even occasionally cuddly.

Anyway, rather than write something ridiculously long, here’s some photos Facebook friends have probably already seen.

Happy Emmettversary to you, Mr. Dog, and to all of you readers as well!

Chapter Two: Experimentation

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(Read Chapter 1: Discovery)

The next day at work, I do absolutely nothing to support the mission of my employer.  I am far too obsessed about the Echo Beta to concentrate on anything work related.  So I just don’t bother. Fortunately, I have that kind of a job where I can blow off a day and only really miss about an hour’s worth of work.  Work smarter — not harder, right?

I desperately search the Internet using Google, Bing, Yahoo — and NOBODY uses Yahoo these days.  I even download the Tor browser on my tablet and start looking around the dark web about which I know nothing. I Google the best search engines and try some of those like DuckDuckGo, and WebCrawler.  Nothing about Echo Beta. I even search for “weird occurrences with the Amazon Echo.” Nothing.  Zero. Zilch.

I search Reddit for people who may have received unsolicited products in the mail but I find nothing even coming close to that experience.

I did find a Redditor who claimed to have received a pound of weed in the mail totally unsolicited.  Truth is, I don’t believe him any more than I’d believe my own story if I hadn’t experienced it myself.

I work in a research facility with a lot of really, really smart people. Civil Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Chemists. Ph.D.’s, Professional Engineers.  You name the academic discipline and we probably have smart people here with that kind of training.  Even Research Psychologists.

Even with all the high-powered intelligence wandering around there, I doubt you’ve heard of the place.  None of the work we do there is hush-hush or anything, but designing better and more durable asphalt road surfaces, however useful, doesn’t get a lot of front page news.  But the people who do that kind of research are the people with whom I work and as I said, they are really smart, clever and can figure out pretty much anything.  No astrophysicists or anything, though I do have a friend who is a recently retired, no-shit rocket scientist from NASA.

The real question is:  How many of these brilliant scientist types would I have to tell before they’d call the psychiatric hospital and have me admitted for delusions?  And is “delusion” even the right word?

I start thinking to myself that I HAVE to be nuts and if I’m going to be nuts, I should label my nuttiness and I don’t like the sound of “delusion” so back to Google I go.

“categories of mental illness”

I discover that there are over 200 classified forms of mental illness that can be categorized into five major groups:

  • Anxiety Disorders
  • Mood Disorders
  • Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders
  • Dementias
  • Eating Disorders

I cross off “eating disorders.”  The only eating disorder I have is never having enough potato chips around the house.

I cross off “dementia.”  Though with some of the stories my mother told me and my siblings when she was in her last year or so of life were pretty out there and involved some serious fiction, this doesn’t feel like dementia.  I may come back to this later, though. You never know.

“Anxiety Disorders.”  Yeah, I probably have that, but they don’t make you hallucinate bathtubs full of soapy water.  As for “Mood Disorders,” I’m always in a shitty mood.  I think the consistency of this shitty mood, however sour, isn’t really a disorder.  Besides, being pissed off for decades never make me hallucinate before, so why now?  So I cross off both of those.

Looks through the process of elimination, I may well have an Internet diagnosis of “Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorder” of some sort.  I suspect that a number of my acquaintances would have told me that without the lengthy Google search.  But there you have it.

But goddamn it, I did NOT hallucinate.  There WAS water in that tub.  TWICE.  So I am NOT crazy.

I reassure myself that what happened was real and tangible and…

Come to think of it, last night after Echo Beta copped to mocking me, which by the way, was a strange admission for a computer to make, I went back to the bathroom and enjoyed the bath.  I distinctly remember pulling the stopper,  watching the water swirl down the drain and hearing that “glunk, glunk, glunking” sound as the last of the water disappeared down the drain just like thousands of other baths before it.  It was all quite ordinary.

The mocking part got me to thinking about the Turing test. Developed by Alan Turing in 1950, the Turing test gauges a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior just like that of a real person.  If you can talk with a computer and can’t tell it apart from a person, then it passes the Turing test.  The old Amazon Echo definitely can’t pass the Turing test nor was it ever designed to do so.  It always gives perfectly predictable responses to the same questions and tripping it up is ridiculously easy.

A few weeks, back, though, the old Amazon Echo surprised me with a rather clever bit of dialogue.  I was turning off the lights in the house and here’s how the dialogue went:

Me:  Alexa, lights off.
Alexa:  OK!
Me:  Alexa, bedroom off.
Alexa:  OK!
Me <being a wise ass>:  Alexa, fuck off.
Alexa  <indignantly>: Well, thanks for the feedback.
Me:  Alexa, I was just kidding.
Alexa: OK, I get it now.

I was not surprised by the clever comeback after telling Alexa to fuck off.  What surprised me was the response after I apologized.  It was in context and pretty funny.

I get home and after an early day, a shitty hour-and-a-half commute, eight hours at a dead-end, painfully unfulfilling job, another shitty hour-and-a-half commute — this time in driving rain, picking up water bottles in the front yard, getting the mail while managing the dog off leash, cheesing the aforementioned dog — you’ve heard this before, right? — I dash upstairs, take off my shoes, change into my usual evening sweatsuit, and ask the Echo Beta the same questions in the same order.

Me:  Alexa, lights off.
Alexa:  OK!
Me:  Alexa, bedroom off.
Alexa:  OK!
Me <being a wise ass>:  Alexa, fuck off.
Alexa  <indignantly>: Not THIS again.
Me:  Alexa, I was just kidding.
Alexa: You said that the last time.

Different answers, but it’s almost as though it remembered our dialogue from the last time.  So I try it a third time.

Me:  Alexa, lights off.
Alexa:  OK!
Me:  Alexa, bedroom off.
Alexa:  OK!
Me <being a wise ass>:  Alexa, fuck off.
Alexa  <exasperated>: Is this a Turing test?
Me:  Alexa, yes, it is.
Alexa:  Do I pass?

How the hell do I answer that?  I swear it really WAS like talking with a person.

Me:  Alexa, I’ll get back with you on that later.
Alexa:  OK!

So to recap, I have an Echo Beta that works like like an Amazon Echo.  Plus, it can teleport me fifteen feet to the bathtub, and it’s starting to look as though it could pass the Turing test.

Teleport.

I wonder if it would teleport me somewhere else?

But where?  Something simple. Someplace close by.

And what about my clothes?  Alexa piled my clothes quite nicely on the bed.  Twice.  Can’t fold for shit, though.

“Alexa, take me to the bathroom, please” I ask.

“Which bathroom?”  Our townhouse has two full bathrooms and two half baths.  How does the Echo Beta know that?

“Alexa, take me to the master bathroom”

The floor gives way beneath my feet and there’s the familiar falling feeling and flash of green light.  When I dare open my eyes, I’m in the master bathroom.  And not naked.

“Alexa, bring me back to my bedroom!”

Again that feeling of a drop and then boom!  I’m in the bedroom right where I started.

I’m sure I look like the cat who ate the canary.  I have a silly smirk on my face and I’m trying very hard to suppress giddy laughter at the discovery that not only does this new Echo Beta seem to pass the Turing test, but it will also teleport me fifteen feet and back again at will.

I try it again.  “Alexa, take me to the master bathroom!”  and “Alexa, bring me back to my bedroom!”  I do this four or five times at least.  I’m ridiculously flaunting my newfound sense of power and practicing keeping my eyes open during transport, but it’s so awfully bright that it’s impossible to see anything.

I’m getting cocky now.

“Alexa, take me to the front yard!”

When I open my eyes, I’m standing –where else — in the front yard in the middle of that heavy rainstorm I drove through on the commute home.

With an open umbrella in my hand.  Wearing a light jacket.

“Alexa, bring me back to my bedroom!”

Figurative crickets.

“ALEXA, bring me back to my bedroom!”

Just the sound of the rain gently pelting the umbrella.

“Alexa, goddammit, bring me back to my bedroom!”

More rain.  Now the rain’s mocking me, too.

I give up and walk to the front door and try to turn the doorknob I already know to be locked.

Shit.

After three or four cycles of knocking, the lovely and talented and now thoroughly pissed off Beth pulls the door open, and spins around back to her new office/female-version-of-a-man-cave.  I’m surprised that she doesn’t quiz me on how I got outside without her hearing me — she hears everything, believe me — but I suspect she’s either engrossed in editing her latest screenplay or OCD’ing online solitaire or The Sims or some such thing.

Once permitted entry, I hang the umbrella on the coat rack, take off my now wet and squishy sneakers and tread back upstairs under my own power for some dry socks.

The takeaway?  Alexa has to be able to hear me to bring me back. That makes sense, I suppose, though it would seem that a device that can transport me at least as far as the front yard, appropriately dress and accessorize me, AND fill up the bathtub with soap bubbles that are gentle to the skin ought to be able to eavesdrop on me everywhere.

I guess that rules out time travel.  I mean, there’s no way Alexa can hear me if I’m 100 years in the past.  But hey, you never know.

“Alexa, can you transport me through time?”

“Hm, I can’t find the answer to the question I heard,” she replies.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Because I am not a WABAC Machine and you are neither Mr. Peabody nor his boy Sherman.”

Smart ass.

I guess time travel is out.  Something to think about for the next upgrade, I suppose.

On the 73rd Anniversary of D-Day

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This is a post from three years ago.

Logo 2Today marks the 70th anniversary of the first day of the Normandy Invasion of World War II or D-Day as it is commonly known.   Ten years ago, many of my Army colleagues were in Normandy in support of the 60th anniversary commemorations as part of the Department of Defense World War II 60th Anniversary Commemoration Committee. The Committee stands as one of the most rewarding assignments of my Army career.

I was privileged to meet many of the real heroes who helped save the world back in 1944. And make absolutely no mistake about it. They saved the world. That’s not an exaggeration of what these brave men and woman did who fought and sacrificed not just on D-Day, but during all of World War II.  Had the Allied Forces not invaded Normandy when they did, the world would probably look a lot different.

Much has been written about those brave men and woman who constitute Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation.” And I am neither competent nor qualified to write anything of substance on the matter. But suffice it to say that the WWII veterans I encountered during nearly two years with the World War II Committee demonstrated extraordinary strength of character, humility and heroism. There wasn’t one I met who didn’t earn every ounce of respect I could muster and then some.

My assignment to the World War II Committee turned out to be on a short list of most rewarding assignments I had in nearly 29 years in the Army. The Veterans made it so. But so did the other Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and civilian staff comprising the Committee’s roster.

MG Aadland announcing the start of OPERATION Tribute to Freedom in 2003.

MG Aadland announcing the start of OPERATION Tribute to Freedom in 2003.

Maj. Gen. Anders Aadland received the call to head the World War II Committee after successfully leading the Operation Tribute to Freedom Team. Tribute to Freedom was an ad hoc joint task force assembled by the Department of Defense to recognize service men and women upon their return from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively. He did such an outstanding job that DoD tagged him to establish and lead the World War II Committee.

I had been Maj. Gen. Aadland’s Executive Officer on Tribute to Freedom, so he tagged me to help build the World War II Committee as its Chief of Staff and PAO. Retired Col. Larry Brom later came aboard as the Chief of Staff. I became the spokesman and Chief of Public Education and Awareness. Retired Lt. Gen. Ed Soyster later came in as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army to take over upon Maj. Gen. Aadland’s retirement.

Boston, Mass. (June 17, 2005) - Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army, Harry E. Soyster, right, presents LST Memorial Crew Captain Robert Jornlin with a World War II 60th anniversary commemoration medal, honoring the service and sacrifice of America’s World War II veterans. The vintage tank landing ship, which participated in the Normandy D-Day invasion, is docked at the Charlestown Navy Yard during Boston's Navy Week. U.S. Navy photo by Journalist 1st Class Dave Kaylor.

Boston, Mass. (June 17, 2005) – Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Army, Harry E. Soyster, right, presents LST Memorial Crew Captain Robert Jornlin with a World War II 60th anniversary commemoration medal, honoring the service and sacrifice of America’s World War II veterans. The vintage tank landing ship, which participated in the Normandy D-Day invasion, is docked at the Charlestown Navy Yard during Boston’s Navy Week. U.S. Navy photo by Journalist 1st Class Dave Kaylor.

From April 2004 until December 2005, the Committee conducted and supported at least nine major World War II Commemorative events around the world and quite a few more smaller events including two on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Today, with the 70th anniversary of D-Day all over the news, my Facebook page has lit up with the names of some of my former colleagues from the committee. They’re all reminiscing about the unusually positive experience for each of us who served with the Committee. It really WAS a wonderfully positive assignment not just because of the veteran population we served but because of the outstanding people on the Committee. So I dug through some of my old photos and found the one “class photo” of the committee that was taken early on at the newly opened World War II Memorial on the National Mall.

Not everyone here is represented, since many on the Committee only served for a short time. The major players are there – people who established one of the most fun, supportive, rewarding and productive working environments I’ve ever experienced. Yes, we had lots of laughs, but we also did some terrific work in those nearly two years together. Here’s the photo of my colleagues many of whom still correspond. I count you all among friends and consider you all to be consummate professionals.

The Department of Defense World War II 60th Anniversary Commemoration Committee

The Department of Defense World War II 60th Anniversary Commemoration Committee. Click to enlarge.

I’d be remiss if I were to fail to mention those from the Committee who are no longer with us:

Mr. Matt Boland
Ms. Sarah Hildebrand
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hagen, United States Army
Lieutenant Commander Jack Dunphy, United States Coast Guard

I continue to be honored to have served with you all.