The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

30 March 2005

From the Department of Minor Milestones

In the Armed Forces, you learn a lot of word salad, but one three-letter combination you remember is ETS: Expiration, Term of Service.

Mine was thirty years ago today, at which time I was transferred to the Reserve, from which I was discharged in 1978.

And on this date in 1975, I was taking the long way home from a duty station in the Middle East. After years of "hurry up and wait," taking things nice and slow was actually difficult, at least at first.

Posted at 7:51 AM to General Disinterest


Minors shouldn't be passing milestones without proper medical attention. There oughta be a law.

Posted by: McGehee at 8:15 AM on 30 March 2005

At least he's not talking about his shoe size.

He must be feeling nostalgic and sentimental.

Posted by: buddy hackett at 10:12 AM on 30 March 2005

And there's always the question of "What if?" Suppose I'd stayed for another seventeen years, or twenty-seven. How would things be different? It may be irrational to speculate about these matters, but it's also perfectly natural.

Posted by: CGHill at 10:22 AM on 30 March 2005

I posted something that said if you'd stayed
another 27 years you'd probably be convincing someone that you needed to write for Stars and Stripes, which actually wouldn't be a whole lot
different than what you're doing now, other than
the fact that you wouldn't have to be putting up
with hearing from me.

Anyway, it didn't show up I guess because the people
from Stanford, MIT and CalTech who all want us to be beta testing the internet for them have some software out there that isn't very reliable.

That is all.

Posted by: buddy hackett at 1:20 PM on 30 March 2005

ETS is Army/Air Force usage.

In Club Nav, we use "EAOS". End of Active Obligated Service.

Same thing, different name. Pretty much sums up a lot about the Navy.

Posted by: timekeeper at 1:59 PM on 31 March 2005