Howdy!

I thought I'd tell you a bit about myself since I am new to the team and the forum.

I grew up in the country and my family moved to the small town where I went to school when I was about 13.

My high school graduating class had about 21 people in it if I remember correctly.

I graduated on a Friday night and left the next Tuesday for the ARMY. So my summer vacation was three days long.

I had always wanted to drive a semi and I figured there was no better way to see the world than through a windshield so I became what the ARMY calls a Motor Transport Operator. That's ARMY speak for truck driver.

I did my basic training and AIT at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. This base is also jokingly referred to as Ft. Lost-in-the-Woods, Misery. We call it Lost-in-the-woods, Misery because it is in the middle of absolutely nowhere, or at least used to be. And it can get miserable there. I started my basic training around the beginning of June 1986 and finished with my AIT around the end of September the same year. It was HOT and HUMID when I started and both got worse the farther we went.

After that, I did my next 2 years in West Germany. Yep, the wall was still up at that time. I went to all four borders of West Germany while I was there. I was assigned to a mechanized infantry battalion. I took a group of infantry soldiers to the East German border to pull guard duty for a few days. Myself and another driver took a group of soldiers across the border on the west edge into Belgium so our soldiers could train together with the Belgium soldiers for a few days. After we transitioned to Bradleys, I hauled the ammo so one of our crews could do anti-aircraft training with a sister company over whatever sea it was to the north of West Germany. And when my mom came over to visit before I came home, we went to the south, down to Austria.

Then I finished out my 4 year enlistment at Ft Campbell, KY. I hated every minute of that except for the fact that I could drive home in less than 2 hours.

I hurt my back shortly after I got to Germany and it never did get any better no matter what I did. I was called in for Desert Storm and when I saw the orthopedic specialist, I got discharged because I was unable to do my job. I wasn't smart then and didn't fight for a medical discharge or anything, I was just happy to get out of the way so they could concentrate on everybody that was staying in. That was a mistake.

So then I had to fight for years to get my VA disability. The VA ended up calling the majority of my family liars as well as some of my best friends. My case ended up going to Washington DC to the Board of Veterans Appeals. It sat there for around a year before they ever looked at it. When they did look at it, they determined that I was indeed disabled and that my time in the ARMY had caused it. So they sent it back to Chicago for a rating and I was granted 100% Service Connected Disability.

I have two Associates degrees, one in Pre-Engineering and one in Computer Science. I have programmed in Fortran, CoBOL, Pascal and a few others I can't remember now.

I have been crunching for SETI since June of 2003 and have added, switched and quit various projects since then. I always go by the user-name HighTech67 tho.

I always run all PrimeGrid challenges and have found a total of 29 prime numbers (if you count Initial finder and Doublechecker together), none of them very large though nor have any of them been recent.

I also currently run Asteroids@home, Mindmodeling@Beta, Constellation, Cosmolog@Home, Enigma@Home, WCG, yoyo@home, WUProp@Home, and climateprediction.net.

At this time, I have two HP desktops crunching. My computer has an i7-2600s @ 2.8 GHz with 8GB ram and an EVGA NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti SC+ 3GB. My wife's computer has an AMD Athlon II X4 620 @ 2.6 GHz also with 8 GB ram and an EVGA GTX 650 Ti SSC. I also have an Acer laptop with an i5-4200U @ 1.6GHZ again with 8 GB. The laptop runs Winbloze 8.1, the two HPs run Winbloze 7 Home Premium. All operating systems are 64-bit.

If you want to know anything else about me, feel free to ask.

HighTech67

Hi and Welcome.

Grab a chair, a beverage of your choice and stick around

We are glad to have you on board. Thanks for joining and if you have any questions at all, just let us know.

Welcome on board !

Glad you are here HiTech, you chose well in a Team and "Howdy" to you too!

Welcome to the Horde HiTech. In addition to cold beverages, popcorn and tamales are regularly consumed here. These folks are some of the most helpful in the DC community. Thanks for enlisting

Welcome, HiTech! That was certainly an interesting way to go about becoming a truck driver! Spent time behind the wheel of any 6x6s? Or anything else particularly interesting? Even here in Silicon Valley I see Army transport convoys on a fairly regular basis. This has always surprised me since Fort Ord closed a long time ago; so not quite sure where the heck they're going from/to.

Welcome to the team!

Welcome to the [H]orde! Nice to have you with us!

Welcome to the madness, HighTech67! Glad you decided to join us here at [H]orde Central.

Ax

Welcome to a fellow veteran! Glad to have you on the team!

I spent 4 yrs on Active Duty in the Marines and went to Desert Shield/Storm and Somalia. I got out for 4 months when my enlistment ended and then went into the Army on Active Duty for 6 more years. I went to Korea and Bosnia during that time, plus spent lots of time in various Middle East countries. They finally retired me for Medical Disability in 1999 and now I spend my days managing a team of engineers at a large US wireless carrier (think of the Death Star), where I am responsible for the performance of all cell sites in a 7 state area in the Midwest.

fastgeek: I had several members of my family that had served in the military and personally felt it my duty to do the same. And like i said, I had always wanted to drive a semi. I loved driving. I put 50,000 miles on my car from the time I got my license until I joined the ARMY and my dad sold it. That doesn't count all the other vehicles I drove.

In Germany I drive a 5-ton which is a 6X6 if you engage the front axle. I liked the truck most of the time but I did haul the heaviest load ever for our company. The truck would haul 10 tons on improved roads and IIRC that load was about 8 tons. The truck had a 5 speed auto transmission and didn't have the gearing for some of those hills with only 5 gears to pick from.

The semis I drove down at Ft Campbell had 16 speed air assisted manual shift transmissions and could haul two deuce and a halfs with no problem. Except mine developed a pinhole in the fuel pump diaphragm and had no power bobtail. After that was replaced, I blew the engine. I guess it was getting to much fuel. They replaced the engine, then I blew the transmission. While it was in the shop for that I left. I went back down to talk to some friends a few months later and they told me that it eventually blew first the front rear axle, then the rear. So, because of a pinhole in the fuel pump diaphragm, the truck ended up with a completely rebuilt drivetrain. I thought it was hilarious.

There is no telling where those convoys are coming from or going to. While I was at Campbell, we hauled a bunch of stuff, including many deuce and a halfs, out to CA somewhere but I can't remember where right now. I wanna think that's the trip my fuel pump went wacky on.

Welcome!