1. My grandfather, my dad and me were
named Richmond P., Richmond and Richmond L. avoiding the junior,
senior, III thing, but as it's a fairly unusual name, all clearly of
the same family.
2. My grandfather joined the service
after World War I, but left well before World War II; Dad joined
after World War II, but was serving at a shore command before Vietnam
heated up; my service began just as the 1991 Persian Gulf War was
finishing up and I was long out of the service before the 2003 Iraq
War started up. We all served, but we all missed seeing any action.
3. Two aptitude tests I took, one was a
color choosing test that said I have a hard time really settling on
and committing to anything and the other was an extensive battery of
tests that concluded I'm in the top 1% when it comes to knowledge of
words, top 10% organizational ability, bottom 5% creative imagination
and bottom 10% ability to make a plan and stick to it. I've always
appreciated the value of teamwork as I have both great strengths and
great weaknesses.
4. I appreciate it when people are
humble and can admit mistakes, but got very tired of the advice
columnist Ann Landers constantly having to reverse herself and
apologize for giving bad advice. Miss Manners was much more my type
of columnist. I don't remember her ever having to reverse herself. I
just believe she took her time and gave her answers more thought and
thereby simply didn't need to go back and reverse herself.
5. I read a lot as a youth. I had a
problem with science fiction because I had no way of knowing which
authors were good and worth following. I decided to focus more on
reading history as I knew the general outline of what happened and to
whom. I could get a general outline of the actions that “would”
take place in the books. It wasn't the endings that mattered, it was
the journey and how people got from A to B.
6. In my youth, the late 60s and early
70s, we got lots and lots of popular, paperback histories of World
War II. I decided that I wasn't interested in following the stories
of generals like Patton and Eisenhower because they had it relatively
easy. They had well-supplied forces and a competent and moral
Commander-in-Chief. The German generals didn't have either of those
advantages, so I found their stories much more interesting.
7. Did ten years in the Navy, six of
them in Norfolk, VA; two of them in Gaeta, Italy (Halfway between
Rome & Naples) and two in Pensacola, FL. Good times!
8. Not many paid jobs since then, but
been doing lots with web sites and other stuff.
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