No snark or "get off my lawn" stuff with today's NYFAF... just me feelin' like I should break out with a couple o' choruses of Dylan's "The Times they Are A Changin'." From today's AFA Daily Report:
Hello, Air Forces Cyber: Twenty-fourth Air Force, USAF's cyber operations arm at Lackland AFB, Tex., on Wednesday added "Air Forces Cyber" to its title. The organization is now: 24th Air Force (Air Forces Cyber). The addition is meant to reflect better the numbered air force's USAF mission and its role as the Air Force element supporting US Cyber Command at Fort, Meade, Md. (CYBERCOM is the lead organization for protecting the Defense Department's networks.) The change also conforms to the Air Force's naming practice that aligns its NAFs with the combatant commands that they support. Col. Mark Ware, 24th AF's director of cyberspace plans and operations, said the name change "will not impact the 24th Air Force's mission." According to Ware, Wednesday's move came five years to the day that the Air Force added "cyberspace," for the first time, to its mission statement. (Lackland report by TSgt. Scott McNabb)
And this...
Officers Graduate Cyberspace Course: The undergraduate cyberspace training course at Keesler AFB, Miss., on Wednesday graduated its first class of 15 officers. The students completed six months of rigorous training with the 333rd Training Squadron, learning the fundamentals of operations in the cyber domain. The course is part of the Air Force's vision for a "fully developed Air Force cyberspace operations workforce," according to Keesler's release. "You might not fully appreciate the magnitude of your military service in this mission area right now, but I promise you that if you maintain your commitment and stay in the armed forces, when you look back on your life one day, you [will] realize how unbelievable it was to have had this historic opportunity to be part of such a special, pioneering group," said Maj. Gen. Michael Basla, Air Force Space Command vice commander, at the dinner honoring the graduates. (See also Back to Cyberspace)
I'm sure you won't be surprised, Gentle Reader, when I mention I served back in the 75 baud teletype era, when our computers were massive mainframes housed in blockhouses and driven by big-ass tape drives or stacks of punch cards. Cyberspace was unknown and the word "cyber" was something you found in a Heinlein novel, not in your vernacular or on your desk. All that said, I have the Air Force to thank for my brief 16-year IT career.
Like nearly everything else in my life, my first encounter with computers happened strictly by accident. I was selected to be my office's point man for the roll-out of Air Force Communications Command/Engineering-Installation Division's very first desk top computers. This happened sometime in 1984, when the AF put spiffy new 5.25" dual-floppy Zenith Z-100 machines on everyone's desk at the EID. Looking back, those were clunky lil machines with a laughable office automation software package that featured the Peachtext word processor and other nearly worthless applications (by today's standards). But, Hey! That was a start and that start got my foot in the IT world's door. A year or so after that project was over I found myself up in Dee-troit, working for Electronic Data Systems in the beginning of what was to be an exciting and very rewarding career in IT. Thanks, USAF!
Thanks for the history Buck. I have read about that mainframe more than once (Clancy and Dan Brown) but it's interesting to hear about it from 'the horse's mouth' so to speak.
ReplyDeleteWow I recall the computers we had to work with in maintenance. It was nothing more then a glorified Atari word processor and we printed our workorders on a 16 pen dot matrix printer. Of, course when we moved up to the 24 pen dot matrix we were flying high!
ReplyDeleteMy kids are now in their early 20s. As far as they are concerned, TVs always came with remotes, all food was microwavable, and all PCs had Windows or something similar. Trying to explain 300 baud dial-up or getting off one's butt to change the TV channel, well, that's like a foreign language to them.
ReplyDeleteAt the rate things are changing, when this graduating class is ready to retire, 4-core PCs and 1080p TV will look like caveman toys.
Deb: There's more AF 'puter history here, plus one of my all-time fave personal war stories.
ReplyDeleteDale: You had maintenance COMPUTERS? We filled out AFTO form 210s by hand and sent 'em off in batches to be card punched for analysis! But that was progress, which beat the old stone tablets we had when I first came in...
Inno: I hear ya. My father's version of the teevee remote was "Bucky! Channel 12!" I used that method, too... when I could.
Keesler's just right down the road from here.
ReplyDeleteThe quantum leaps in technology make me dizzy. I remember when my Daddy got his first Commodore and made it say hi to me on the screen. He was so proud of his programming! DOS. Man.
Imagine the wonder those young folk will experience! I'm not so sure my imagination's that expansive.
Keesler's just right down the road from here.
ReplyDeleteYup... and I used to do that "90 on 90" nearly every weekend, back in the day. The first SERIOUS love of my life was an expat New England girl who came down for Mardi Gras sometime around 1962 and never left. Those are some hellaciously GREAT memories and I smile every time I think of 'em.
But... your point is well-taken about the pace of change, Moogie. It's just AMAZING.
Yep, Zenith Z-100. Green screen, integral keyboard, dual 5.25. One was bought for the entire engineering department of USS California in 1984. I got off midwatch one night and turned it on in the dark 0400 or so. Saw a symbol-- a shoe. WTF? Oh! Put in the disk marked "boot." Tried again. And here we are. Today, all my interfaces at work are GUI and the kids don't know no DOS.
ReplyDeleteBy the time I left CGN-36 in '86, several in our division had our own 'puters. One guy had a color printer-- took an hour to print a picture of a monkey's face. Another guy was playing a first-person story game with instructions like "You're behind a desk, in an oval office. Your popularity is high. What do you do?"
Thanks, USN!
Bob: The Navy bought those Zee-things on the same contract the AF used, if memory serves. And I doubt if I could remember any DOS commands... if my life depended on it.
ReplyDeleteOh, I remember the Z-100s. It was a serious honor to be allowed to sit in front of the thing. Precious, precious they were.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, no one had any worries about me jockeying the WSR-86 weather radar. That vacuum-tube driven beast was old, expensive to maintain, and required quite a lot of "art" to interpret the displays. I was pretty good with it. I once spotted a tornado developing about 15 minutes before it hit the ground.
If it weren't for Apple, Microsoft would still be forcing us to remember DOS commands.
That vacuum-tube driven beast...
ReplyDeleteHeh. I know ALL about vacuum tube electronics, as most all the radars I worked on were 50s-vintage sets, with 60s era TCTOs to keep 'em current. It took years for the calluses on my thumb and forefingers to go away, but I could pull tubes with the best of 'em.