What dangles when you angle? What slides when you dive? How many ladders can they fit in one sub, and must I climb all of them? This and many other questions were answered Friday when a group of 8 bloggers were invited aboard the U.S. Navy’s nuclear submarine U.S.S. Hampton for an all-day distinguished visitor cruise.

The bloggers included Smarterware’s Gina Trapani (@ginatrapani), NBC San Diego tech correspondent and Mashable associate editor Jenn Van Grove (@jbruin), Mitch Wagner (@mitchwagner), Angie Swartz (@aaswartz), Chris Cantore (@chriscantore), Scott Kingery (@techlifeweb), Rob Marlbrough (@DowntownRob), and me, Peggy Gartin (@thepegisin). The visit was arranged by Submarine Squadron 11’s public affairs officer Lt. Denise Garcia and led by the squadron’s commander, Commodore Brett Genoble. Waiting to greet us were the boat’s commanding officer Commander Bill Houston and his crew of 134.

According to Lt. Garcia, we were the first bloggers the San Diego-based sub community has hosted, and are possibly the first for the entire submarine community as well. I wondered if it would turn into a kind of culture clash—disciplined military types faced with long-haired eggheads used to shooting off their mouths. As it turned out, we had more in common than you might think.

The Navy, it appears, is coming to recognize the value of new media, and thinks bloggers can be as effective at telling their story as traditional media. The U.S. military has been surprisingly open to blogging even within its ranks; the number of “milblogs” (or military blogs) run into the thousands, with bloggers ranking as high as admiral (as in Admiral John C. Harvey, Jr.). Milblogging.com currently tracks 2,534 milblogs in 43 countries. Commodore Genoble confessed to reading up on all our blogs before we got there. Heck, lurking and snooping like that are core blogger skills! Maybe we’re not so different from submariners.

The day began with a coffee, pastries and a briefing in Commander Houston’s wardroom, the largest private room on the boat, but honestly, the size of a walk-in closet. They told us what they’d show us and what they couldn’t show us: mainly anything classified, which means no inspecting the nuclear reactor. We would get to see weapons, go up the wing to the bridge, and be in the control room while they did some maneuvers, including 30-degree dives to depths of 500 feet.

I couldn’t possibly tell you all the things we did in a brief blog post, but here are the highlights:

My “I shoulda joined the Navy” moment
I had heard that standing on the bridge (the top of the wing, or that part of the sub that sticks up) while heading out to sea is an experience not to be missed, so when they asked, “Who wants to go up first?” my hand shot up. I was then wrapped up in a warm jacket with USS HAMPTON on the chest and strapped into a rather complicated harness. I clambered inelegantly up 3 not-so-consecutive ladders, and kept thinking I was going to put my foot on a knob or a valve and a horn would go off. Then I stuck my head out of the hatch and couldn’t quite believe what I would have to do next: wriggle up onto a maybe 4-foot-wide piece of real estate, on either side of which was a 25-foot-drop into foamy, freezing-cold ocean. I am not a wriggler. Somehow I got up there anyway, my harness was clipped to a hook on the floor, and I clung to a railing for dear life.

Once I looked out on the ocean, though, I knew it was all worth it. The day was gorgeous, with mist just burning off around Point Loma, sun shining on cormorants, pelicans and gulls skating by or hitching a ride on the back side of the sub, and even a few dolphins playing some yards to our left. A gray boat labeled NAVY SECURITY accompanied us on the right, and a white Coast Guard cutter followed behind. The power of the boat as she sliced through the water, and the greater power of the sea as it surged over the bow, was simply breathtaking. I would have stayed up there all day if they’d let me.

• See video from the bridge (courtesy of @DowntownRob)

Buster Keaton, angles and dangles
When we’d reached a point 15 miles out where the water was deep enough to dive, we all gathered in the control room for an exercise called “Angles and Dangles.” The CO explained that when you shoot a torpedo at an enemy, you reveal your sub’s position, and they’re probably going to fire back. So firing a torpedo is almost always accompanied by a steep dive so that when return fire comes, you’re not there anymore. He then showed us what that kind of dive felt like, first with a 25-degree dive, then a climb, then a 30-degree dive.

Have you ever seen that silent film of Buster Keaton fighting a wind storm? A steep climb forces you into a posture something like that. Your calf muscles scream from the strain. You grab onto anything just to stay upright. A steep dive forces just the opposite. You have to lean waaaaaaaaay back. Then your abs and thigh muscles have a fit. It’s a total body workout, and you’re standing still!

The most impressive part of this exercise was the clear and exact communication between captain and crew. The control room was full of people, but each was quiet and focused on their individual task. The captain would say an order, not loudly but clearly, and the person who knew that task was theirs would repeat that order back, say “Aye sir,” and get it done. I never heard anyone repeat back an order wrong or fail to get a handoff that was meant for them. In this way the captain and crew executed precise maneuvers, all while the captain was giving us a running dialogue of what we were doing and why. It made you feel that we were in really good hands.

• See video of the “Angles and Dangles” exercise (courtesy of @DowntownRob)

Hmm…what’s missing?
By now I had been all over the boat, and was even starting to recognize certain people when I saw them again. “Oh hey, there’s Fisher again. Excuse me, Spillner. Hiya Jonesy, how ya doin’?” Still, there seemed to be something missing, and it seemed connected to the wide-eyed silence I sometimes encountered as I made my way down the halls. Then it hit me…THERE ARE NO CHICKS ON THIS BOAT. Well, other than me and 3 of my blogger sisters.

I asked Commodore Genoble about it later, and sure enough, women are not yet allowed to serve aboard U.S. Navy submarines. Other ships only began allowing women in the ‘90s, a fact that also surprised me. He explained that to have both sexes aboard such a confined space would be tough, given that space is at a premium and privacy practically nonexistent. However, there is a plan to integrate some of the bigger SSBN submarines in the near future. I hope so, because otherwise sustaining my joining-the-Navy-at-43 fantasy is going to be tough.

Eating like admirals
In preparation for this visit, I asked my dad what he remembered about subs from his Navy service. Here’s what he said:

“Let me make a prediction: you will eat like admirals. When I was a young ensign in 1960 at the Naval Photographic Center, my first job was to sit in a screening room and declassify motion picture footage from the U.S.S. Triton, an SSN making a secret around-the-world cruise underwater. They only surfaced the conning tower to offload film to a helo off Spain. The job was torture. I was living in the BOQ and had not yet figured out how to get to work on time and eat breakfast first. The hours of watching the mess cooks at work were excruciating. SSN crews eat exceedingly well.”

Just as my dad predicted, lunch was a feast. Two kinds of braided bread, salad, choice of tomato soup or seafood chowder, beef stroganoff, and for dessert, cookies & cream ice cream, cherry cheesecake or fresh fruit cup. If you held up 3 fingers, you got all 3 desserts. They even made one of the breads, one of the soups and the noodles vegan because they knew one of our party was vegan. I was stuffed.

The captain explained it like this: “These guys work 18-hour days, sleep 6 hours, then do it all again—generally seeing no sunlight for days at a time, and can only tell what time it is by what meal they’re being served. The least we can do is make that meal enjoyable.” He also confirmed what I’d heard about every sub having its own ice cream maker.

Roll me into the torpedo tube, I want to take a nap
Next they showed us the delicate operation of loading a torpedo into the torpedo tube. They used a dummy “shape” for our demo, but I could just imagine how nerve-wracking it would be to load a live shell. I mean, the torpedo is 21 feet and 1 inch long, and the tube is only ¼” longer than that—not much room for error.

Later they dared me to climb in to the torpedo tube, and of course, I did. Once I was in there they started telling me how there was only a thin 1” steel louvered door between me and the whole ocean, which caused me to scramble out in as ladylike a manner as I could muster. If I’d been calmer about it, my knees wouldn’t be so black and blue today.

Home again
When we pulled back into port, I couldn’t believe we’d been gone all day, from 8AM to 4PM. I’d had so much fun, it felt like we’d just left, but our day as submariners was over. As climbed out and walked onto the dock, we passed dozens of crewmen carrying boxes of food and produce. The captain had explained this earlier: “We can stay out at sea as long as our food holds out. We can make our own air, we can make our own water, and the nuclear reactor keeps us powered indefinitely. The resource we have to replenish is food.”

If what I saw was any indication, they plan to be at sea for quite a while.

This is what the storm did on my block.

How YOU doin’?

• January 16th and 17th
• Intuit, Santa Fe Campus in Carmel Valley
• our wiki

If you’d like to help out – show up around 8:30 am to help the planners unload and setup.

Some tips for those of you for whom this is not news:

• If you’re speaking rehearse your talk. It helps!
• If you’re not done with your talk, don’t wait until the last minute!
• Bring cameras, video recorders, audio recorders, etc. – people love having their talks recorded.
• New to barcamp? Search Flickr, Yahoo or Google for “barcampsd”!
• Not sure what to talk about? Have a peek at this.

Thats it!

See you all Saturday!

I recently got a most startling email: the U.S. Navy would like me to come aboard one of their submarines and blog about the experience.

Lt. Denise Garcia, public affairs officer for Submarine Squadron 11 based at Naval Base Point Loma, invited me and 7 other bloggers to an all-day embark aboard one of their Los Angeles-class fast attack submarines on January 15.

“You’ll be one of the first bloggers the San Diego-based sub community has hosted (I think you may be one of the first for the entire submarine community as well). The sub community prides itself on its silent service, but there’s much to talk about too. I think you’ll find the day aboard fascinating.”

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Not too old for a wardrobe malfunction

While driving past the Star of India this foggy morning, I thought I spied a certain laxness in sail maintenance. This couldn’t be, though, as the dedicated volunteers at the Maritime Museum of San Diego take such good care of the old girl (and besides, she just came out of dry dock). I suspect this is, in fact, her “Halloween costume,” and she is playing the part of a pirate ship.

Turns out she is dressed up for some upcoming Halloween events: lantern-led tours on the evening of Friday 10/30, and on Saturday 10/31, a carnival and costume contest, followed by more lantern-led tours.

Sounds like a good place to take your little pirates. For tickets or more information, please see the Maritime Museum’s events page.

If you like getting up early, enjoy a walk in the park, and want to support a worthy cause, you’re in luck this week. The 20th Annual AIDS Walk San Diego, the largest one-day HIV/AIDS fundraiser in San Diego County, is being held this Sunday.

The 5K walk starts at 8:05 AM, and the 10K run starts at 8:00 AM. The starting point is in Balboa Park near the corner of Sixth Avenue and Quince Street. Online registration is now closed, but you can register in person starting at 6:00 AM at the registration tent at Sixth Avenue and Olive Street.

Supporting local HIV/AIDS services is especially important this year, as state budget cuts have slashed funding by $1 million in San Diego and $83 million statewide. That’s money that won’t go to testing, prevention, education efforts, treatment for those with low incomes, or counseling for those infected and affected. The money raised at this event stays here in San Diego and supports dozens of local groups and programs which might not otherwise exist.

I’ll be walking with the Qualcomm team. Show you care and make a donation today!

Dan Scott of Faith Based Community Development teaches the class

Real estate prices have been steadily rebounding over the past four months in San Diego, particularly for homes suitable for first-time homebuyers. An $8,000 federal rebate, which is set to expire soon, could be what has stimulated demand in this tier of the market. It’s sort of a good news-bad news thing – the good news is that you’ll get an $8,000 rebate if you qualify; the bad news is that the house is now $20,000 more than it was six months ago thanks to, well, the rebates.

OK, so how’s a first-time buyer—particularly someone who is technically a low-income individual or family—to get in the market?

I recently attended a workshop with 28 hopeful homebuyers up in Oceanside to learn about their options.

Led by Daniel Scott, executive director of Faith-Based Community Development Corporation and a banker for 15 years, the monthly workshops are mandatory for people who’d like to qualify for federal homebuyer assistance. Read more

You’ve no doubt by now noticed that the sites got a bit of a re-design and some things got changed around last week. We wanted to highlight two changes to make sure everyone knows what changed.

The first and biggest is COMMENTS! Registration is no longer required to post a comment on any post. Of course if you already have an account you can still login to ensure your comments are attributed to you, but those who don’t can now post a comment without any long term commitment. Also, on the right you can see some of the recent comments so you’ll always know what the active discussions are. This was the most requested thing we’ve heard from people since our last redesign and we’re excited to see where it leads.

The next change is also something that was heavily requested, and that is a change to the ADS on the sites. You’ll immediately notice fewer of them, but what might not be as obvious is those smaller square ones to the right are specific to this city only and are being sold for a flat rate for a period of time rather than a confusing CPM/traffic/network model. Depending on the city, these range from $7-$175 for a full week. If you purchase one, during that time your ad will be the only one in that spot and will show on every page. We set these up both to make it easier for smaller local businesses to get their ads on our site, and also to help us bring in ads that relate better to our local audiences. Also, keeping these sites online is expensive and every little bit helps.

There are a bunch of other things we changed but we’ll leave those to you to investigate and take advantage of. Hope you like it, and we look forward to seeing you in the comments!!

Love,
The folks at MBHQ

You’re probably familiar with other bars and restaurants run by Sam Chammas: Live Wire, Whistle Stop, the Turf Club (where “grill your own steak” was invented), and Riviera Supper Club (where it was perfected). So expectations for his latest venture, the long-awaited Station Tavern & Burgers, have  been high. We got a preview recently during the Station’s two-week soft opening, and it did not disappoint.

The Station really does resemble a train station – the back wall opens up to a long, diagonal outdoor space strewn with picnic tables and colored lights overhead that look like signal lamps. The place is exceptionally kid-friendly – the outside portion has soft, playground-grade pebbles underfoot and a wooden “trolley car” to play on. The vibe is reclaimed vintage, with rich panels of horizontal finished wood and what looks like a salvaged hand-painted cigar billboard serving as a back door. Menu graphics feature an old trolley map of South Park.

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The next SD Tweetup on August 8th was already shaping up to be a doozy: the site is the Del Mar Racetrack, the entertainment is swing band Big Time Operator, and attendees will get private seating, private betting booths and tech swag galore. TechZulu is providing live streaming and will debut their show TechPunch with host Amanda Coolong there. Though the SD Tweetup had never charged for admission before, $35 seemed like a steal for such a great day at the races.

Would you believe it’s now free?

  Read more

Everyone and their mother is getting on Twitter. In droves. People are writing code which creates thousands of fake users which follow them, and serve only to artificially inflate their follower count. In this gigantic, ever-growing ocean of Twitter who are examples of folks who are NOT DOING IT WRONG? I have a couple shoutouts to give – because these organizations are doing GOOD and not just sponging up popularity. These are places to do business with – because they behave honorably.

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The line for invitations

UPDATE 7/25 – My photos from the exhibition: http://tinyurl.com/nrn55z

Okay, so it’s not so secret if I’m publishing it. But if you’d like to attend what promises to be the best Comic-Con party this year, pay attention to the following tweet from @importantdate:

Tea Party will be held at 338 7th ave, between J & K st. Invitations are required, and may be picked up at the same location, from 8-10 am

This will likely be a party for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp! So hurry on down there!

*UPDATE* (9AM)

I’m back from getting my invitation, and here’s what I found out. The “Tea Party” is actually an instance of the Alice in Wonderland Touring Exhibition, in which invitees get to see the “artistry and inspiration behind one of 2010’s most anticipated releases.”

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In the summer of 1984, I had just turned 18. I remember July 18th very well. I’d been spending the day with my friend Stacy by her pool in Bonita, recovering from a party we’d been to the night before. The party had been way out in the sticks in Bonsall and the drive home had been late and long.

At that party I had carefully avoided Tasha, a friend with whom I’d had a falling out. I remembered hearing that she’d left the party early because she had to work at her job the next day.

The sun finally getting to us, Stacy and I headed inside for a cold drink. Stacy’s mom was glued to the television. “Girls, you’re not going to believe what’s happening at the McDonald’s in San Ysidro.”

My heart went cold as I looked at Stacy and said, “That’s where Tasha works.”

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See more earthquake details at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/

I’m usually not awake at 7:35 AM on a Saturday, but today was an exception. While propped up reading a collection of humorous horror stories (”Blood Lite”) with Husband 1.0 snoozing beside me, I suddenly felt like our house had been lightly tapped by a semi. It lasted no more than two seconds.

“Did you feel that?” I said.

“Was that an earthquake?” my now-awake husband said.

My iPhone was in hand in a flash, I pulled up Tweetie, and there was the crowdsourced evidence: tweet after tweet that said “earthquake.”

Turns out our tiny temblor was a 4.0 centered out in the ocean just off the Channel Islands, about 23 miles west of San Diego, and 19 miles west-southwest of La Jolla. Details from the USGS are here.

From my informal Twitter survey, it was felt in downtown, Golden Hill, La Jolla, El Cajon and parts of Carmel Valley. Folks who reported they didn’t feel it were in Cardiff, Carlsbad and easterly parts of Del Mar.

I’m off to get some breakfast now, but here’s a topic for discussion: how come the news events we rely on Twitter to verify are always big, bad and widely felt?

Los Amigos Invisibles are a fantastic band from Venezuela. They play a mélange of funk and disco flavored with Latin rhythms and put on one of the very best live shows I have seen. They’ll be at the House of Blues on Thursday August 6th.

If you miss their show, you might want to pick up one of their albums; their latest is titled Commercial.