Inside View from Ireland: 090109

WHILE GROWING UP, we celebrated birthdays in our family of seven by cutting nine slices in the cake. The birthday boy (I had four brothers) would get three slices. The lesser sons would get one slice each. As I slip through another year, I won't cut myself nine slices of cake because I'm suffering through the after-effects of a stomach bug and I'm simply not hungry. But I'm thinking about life in general because a visit to my GP made me realise that if I sliced my life into nine-year segments, I have no more than three slices left. I started rewinding in nine-year increments, remembering things like the time I walked around five stone lighter (see image at right) and how my introduction to high tech is relatively recent. By the way, I'm publishing this little blog post a day after my birthday because I don't want to be overwhelmed with greetings. They came fast and furious on Facebook yesterday, making all attempts at working my real e-mail rather futile. There's more about me, in nine-year increments, below the fold. I'm writing these thoughts because my blog has an element of a diary that appeals to some readers. Plus, there's a suggestion of technology in each of the nine segments.

In 2000, I decided that since the Millennium Bug didn't do anything dramatic, I'd toss my watch. I used to have a complex chronometer, essential when flying direct reckoning routes with a light aircraft but since I had throttled back, I didn't see the need to carry around a big timepiece anymore. I often wonder what time it is, and know that if I had to really know, my pocket would vibrate with an alarm that my Nokia E90 had set in its calendar. So I'm about to hit a decade with nothing on my wrist. I suspect the next wristlet will be something the hospital puts on me.

In 1991, I no longer worked underground in a bunker designed to take a nuclear blast. I had bigger problems in my life back then, compounded by compromises of an ARPANET e-mail account that would sear me emotionally and professionally. It's a story that could interweave Treadstone into counter-intelligence along with special operations.

In 1983, I met near the purple water fountain with other analysts, planning the next military contingency. I had a job involving shopping carts containing extensive print-outs of "what-if" results that would affect the long-range airlift of American military forces. Every printer I used was covered in TEMPEST shielding. We had a standing joke about the most-recent location of a white van that patrolled the perimeter of the South Parking lot of the Pentagon.

In 1974, I watched the crest-fallen face of a son of a Watergate plumber--a guy who attended the USAF Academy with me. His dad was caught in the act of wiretapping the Democratic National Committee's office on 17 June 1972. By 1974, his dad's conviction was assured and Jim's turmoil was constant.

In 1965, I lived in a house that could not get an FM radio signal. That meant television reception was going to be weak as well, so we didn't have a television. But we had a good collection of hard-cover books and an extensive library of 33 1/3 RPM stories that my younger brothers scratched into submission. It would be another four years before we had seat belts in our family cars because we always drove second-hand specials. Our '65 drive was a stonking Ford Country Squire Station Wagon with real wood on the side, a Thunderbird engine, and a racing differential. It easily belted around at 90 mph, but my mother thought the speedometer was broken. "There's no way I drive that fast," she would say when I'd point out how the needle was approach three digits on the dashboard.

Things have changed a lot in these nine-year slices of my life. Although I cannot claim to be the oldest person in the Irish blogging community, I'll be drawing my pension long before most of my daily readers. So I'll take the birthday in stride, and work on finding more of my early Bernie photos.