Tag: life

Bobbie, all you do is talk about M.A.i.D., don’t you have anything else to talk about?

Simple answer, nope.

Why not?

The household that I grew up in wasn’t conducive to having interests in things.

But Bobbie, lots of people grow up in neglectful households.

True, but it wasn’t just the neglect.

It was the intergenerational trauma.

My grandmother’s bout in Indian residential school obviously fried her noodle. And she passed her anger, her hatred, and her alcoholism down to my father.

My father picked up his mother’s trauma, and he exhibited her anger, her hatred, and her alcoholism. But he also picked up something more. He was so bound and determined to prove to everyone that he wasn’t 1/2 Indian that he had to pretend that he was something that he wasn’t. He had to be someone so flawless and faultless that he couldn’t possibly be 1/2 Cree. This turned him into an absolute asshole.

My father brought his mother into the PMQ on CFB Summerside to raise my brother and I after he had our mother booted out of the PMQ. When she moved back to Edmonton in the spring of 1978 to be with her husband my father got a compassionate posting to CFB Namao in 1978 so that he could get grandma and her husband to come live with us on base while he went off on every training exercise he could sign up for.

He did this even though just a few years later he would tell Alberta Social Services that he blamed his mother’s cruelty towards his children as well as her alcoholism for the problems exhibited by his children.

And then he brought his girlfriend in to live with us in the summer of 1980.

Sue was okay at the start. As my brother said to Alberta Social Services in 1981, “when Sue first moved in she promised not to hit us, but she hits us all the time now”. There were two things that Sue promised to do when she moved in. She was going to stop our father’s drinking, and she was going to stop our father from hitting us.

There was a brief period of time when Sue and Grandma lived with us simultaneously in the PMQ on CFB Griesbach. Grandma was still pissed off at my father for booting our mother out of the house. Whenever my father would bring up how much of a “bitch” my mother was for running away my grandmother would always fire back that one day us kids would learn the truth.

Sue blamed my grandmother’s drinking for my father’s drinking. And Sue was 100% certain that grandma was trying to sabotage the relationship between our father and Sue.

And I guess that my father never told Sue about his kids being sexually abused for 1-1/2 years on CFB Namao. When the school for military dependents got Captain Totzke involved, you can sure bet that neither Totzke or my father told Sue about what had happened on CFB Namao. And let’s face it. In 1980 Sue would have been around 20 years old. My father was 34 years old.

From the limited history that I have been able to piece together my father met Sue via his paternal stepsisters that lived in Oshawa and went to the same high school as Sue.

I can see my father telling Sue that I was the reason our family was involved with the military social worker, and that it was my fault that our family was involved with Alberta Social Services.

So yeah, it wasn’t just that the house in which I lived was dysfunctional. It was that I had to endure the anger of adults who were misdirecting blame in my directions.

Captain Totzke blamed my apparent homosexuality for me having sex with the babysitter for over a 1-1/2.

My father blamed me for being a pervert and for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother.

Grandma? I think grandma was just pissed off at everyone.

And Sue? Sue was pissed off because the perfect little family that my father had promised her was obviously never going to be realized.

Neglect would have been one thing.

But what I had was (Neglect + verbal abuse + sexual abuse + physical abuse + mental abuse + psychological neglect + abandonment).

That’s my life.

.That’s all I’ve ever known.

There was never any encouragement for hobbies or interests.

Which is why I have no hobbies or interests.

Surely there must be something that you like, something that sparks an interest in.

Nope.

You’re just not trying hard enough.

Nope.

You’re being melodramatic.

Nope.

What about sports?

Nope.

Photography?

Why, so everyone can tell me how much my pictures suck. It’s always so funny how taking pictures isn’t just about taking pictures. Nope, you’re supposed to criticize and chastise people for the wrong film speed and shutter speed and aperture setting. Oh, and gotta ridicule people for choosing the wrong lens for the task even though the person likes the effect created by the “wrong” lens.

Fashion?

Fuck no.

Music.

Nope.

Films?

Nope.

Theatre?

Nope.

Concerts?

Nope.

Travel?

The fuck for? I can be as depressed at home without having to spend a metric shit ton of money to go some place else and be depressed.

Electronics?

Fuck, I hate electronics. I have my self taught skills, but I get ass raped at work for not “teaching” others how to be as smart as I am. I have no degrees in electronics or building automation, but fuck do I ever get ragged on for not giving everyone else the skills it’s taken me a lifetime to accumulate.

Computers? Again, fuck no. Computers are a tool that I use. They are not a toy, or a source of pride, or enjoyment for me. It drives me fucking bonkers that people who should run circles around me with their degrees or diplomas can’t even do the basics. I used to ask new applicants if they had computer skills with Word, or Excel, or Open Office, or if they’ve ever used a PDF editing program like Adobe Acrobat or Nitro PDF to put together a PDF from single pages, or to create a fillable PDF file. Yep, sure, of course! Without exception it turns out that they can’t but their computer module they took as part of their diploma program or certificate program taught them how to create a blank Excel sheet and to give it a cute name.

Why don’t you get involved in community activities.

Massive fuck no! Society has done a very good job of telling me to fuck off and to leave them alone, so I’m happy to leave society the fuck alone.

Am I a good judge of character?

Daily writing prompt
Are you a good judge of character?
View all responses

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

I am the absolute worst at judging characters.

I always seem to surround myself with people that either get their kicks from my mental health issues, want to use me as their door mat, or who exhibit absolute glee while sticking the knives in my back.

I try so hard to not me like my father and I try to see the good in people.

But, because of my dysfunctional life I end up trusting all the wrong people.

I think that this is one of the reasons that I like to be left alone.

My father traded my mental health and wellbeing for his career in the Canadian Armed Forces when he agreed to what he agreed to back in 1980.

My mother, sure my father abused the Defence Establishment Trespass regulations like lots of other fathers did back in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s and had her chucked out of the military supplied housing. But she could have tried. And she didn’t.

So, I thought that trying to not be like my father would be the safe way to live my life. Sadly, what I’ve learnt is that assholes like my father are the ones that end up winning.

But, not being like my father in a world where liars, thieves, and crooks get ahead meant that I was just setting myself up to get royally fucked by the porcelain people who have never had to endure a single scratch on their delicate skin.

And the fact that I actually set myself up for this due to my piss poor ability to judge the character of a person means that I have no one to blame but myself.

Two little resistors, so much headache.

Every now and again something pops up that brings Richard back with full force.

I will be so very happy when I am finally freed of Richard.

I started getting into BACnet at the hospital back around 2019 when the outside contract management was replaced with in house management.

Our plant was so far in the dark ages. Pneumatics still make up the vast majority of our controls.

One of the first thing that I started doing when I became the Chief engineer was to start nibbling away at a lot of the inadequacies of our ancient automation systems. And this is where BACnet came in.

I’ve never used BACnet prior to this position. Networking I’ve done. I’ve worked with RS-485 networks before. I’ve got decent knowledge of controls. I’ve also learnt that proprietary licenced controllers are no longer the only way to accomplish automation.

One of the reasons that I’ve taken a shine to ABB drives over the last few years is that they can run by themselves without the need for expensive proprietary controllers that can only be programmed with expensive proprietary software developer kits, proprietary interfaces, and exorbitant licencing fees.

I’ve also installed various other devices that further expand the monitoring capabilities of the system.

But, there was always one piece of equipment that I could never get to work reliably.

With RS-485 networks, the network is supposed to be laid out in one continuous daisy chain. The network is not supposed to have stars or stubs.

Daisy Chain is good.

Stars, rings, backbone with stubs, backbone with stars are bad.

That’s where repeater hubs come in to play.

Or at least so I thought.

Some of the equipment would work fine on a hub, some equipment would work at super slow baud rates, and some equipment absolutely refused to operate at all.

I could never figure out what was going wrong. I thought that my dream of expanding BACnet all over the hospital was a dying dream.

Recently I happened across some documents from Texas Instruments talking about recommended design of circuits using their RS-485 transceiver chips used in communication equipment.

Up to this point in time I had always used MSA Fieldserver BACnet routers as the interface for the network loops. On the router are switches for each port.
Bias (+)
Bias (-)
Term

I had always set the positive and negative bias on, and of course the terminator resistor was turned on. I would also set the terminator resistor at the end of the loop to be on as well.

Well, being the complete idiot that I am, I never noticed that the hubs that I was using, and I’ve tried three different brands, had termination resistors, but they had no bias resistors.

I should have clued into the fact that the outputs of these hubs are galvanically isolated.

To be galvanically isolated, the outputs can’t be tied high to a common power supply nor can the outputs be tied low to a common ground. And this is why they couldn’t have biasing resistors.

This means that while the network was terminated, the 0 and 1 levels were not being defined properly and they’d go all over the place due to common mode voltage.

Some equipment like my ABB drives could handle the floating loop, but other equipment obviously expected the loop to not only be terminated, but to be biased. Equiment like the ABB drives can actually supply the bias voltages for the loop. Most of my other equipment can’t supply the bias voltages.

So, with the knowledge of my lack of knowledge in hand, and with Richard laughing widely in my brain, I soldered up a pair of 4.7k resistors with some hookup wire and some heat-shrink.

The resistors that were missing were the RFS1 and RFS2 which form the bias for the network. The two RT resistors are the termination resistors.

With this diagram as a reference, RFS1 = 4700 ohms, RT = 120 ohms, and RFS2 = 4700 ohms.

As soon as I connected RFS1 from the DC power rail to terminal (A) the LED on the port actually illuminated and started flickering on and off indicating data transmission. And once RFS2 was connected from (B) to ground the intensity of the LED changed the flashing was more defined. A check of my laptop showed that all communication errors on this node went away and all of the devices were back on line.

Why did some equipment work while others didn’t?

Simple.

The ABB, Yaskawa, and Schneider variable speed drives that I have in use at the hospital all have the capability to inject bias on to the loop.

Other equipment that I have such as the flow meters and the actuators typically don’t have the ability to inject bias into the network, and so the network common mode voltages will go all over the place. If the network is allowed to float all over the place the transceivers get confused.

But Bobbie, people make mistakes all the time, you caught this one.

No, the one problem that I face is that I have no paperwork, therefore when I make a mistake it’s because I’m an outright moron. When people with degrees and certificates create massive mistakes, fuhgeddaboudit, don’t worry about it.

It’s actually quite funny, but in a sad and tragic way.

Trades, certificate programs, diploma programs, they’re all made for people without scars. You got scars? Piss off and get outta here.

Well Bobbie, it’s your own damn fault, you should have taken a real trade when you were younger, don’t bitch at us.

Back in my day, to get into the trades you needed either the support of your family or the support of social services.

That wasn’t going to happen.

Being a military dependent is odd in the sense that because you’ve moved amongst the provinces, you’re the other province’s issue.

When I found myself unemployed during Alberta’s recession in 1991, Alberta was willing to give me a bus ticket back to Ontario.

When I first moved to Vancouver in 1992, BC Social Services was more than willing to give me a bus ticket back to Alberta.

When I moved out to Toronto in 1993, Ontario wanted to buy me a bus ticket back to Nova Scotia. Sure, I was born in Nova Scotia. Ain’t got any family out there. My father just happened to the stationed at Canadian Forces Base Shearwater when I popped out.

Your father’s employed with the Canadian Armed Forces, you don’t qualify for this aid program.

You’re a military brat, surely the Canadian Forces is the place for you.

This training program only covers you if you meet these criteria points.

You have no collateral.

You’re gonna need somebody to co-sign a loan for you.

Can’t you get a job where your employer will let you take paid time off whenever you need too?

Find your mother, she’ll fund you.

Tell your father you’re sorry for fucking with his military career when you got abused by Captain McRae and maybe he’ll give you some money.

Why don’t you shack up with someone and let them pay your bills.

What about finding a program that takes your knowledge into account?

Those programs typically existed back in the ’70s and ’80s, but they don’t exist any longer. Basically you’d have to interrupt your entire life and take a full-on trade program that may or may not give you any credit for your adult experience.

I am so looking forward to this…….

As I’ve said before, I will be so devastated if the Government of Canada falls through on implementing Medical Assistance in Dying for reasons of Mental Health.

Privacy

Sometimes you gotta wonder what drives companies like Apple to shape their “privacy” policies like they do.

Sometime around July 31st, 2024 my brother Scott fell and died in his apartment.

Looks like he had been participating in a “Ketamine Infusion Therapy” program and became addicted to Ketamine. According to Scott’s landlord Scott had graduated from snorting Ketamine to injecting Ketamine.

His death wasn’t noticed until he started leaking through the floor into the suite below.

The VPD contacted me on August 12th, 2024 on behalf of the Edmonton Police Service to inform me of the death. They gave me the contact information for the EPS officer investigating the matter.

I contacted the EPS officer and she gave me some of the details. She asked me to contact the Alberta Coroner to make arrangements for the disposal of Scott’s body.

The Alberta coroner told me that I’d have to wait until the official cause of death was determined and then someone had to collect his body from the coroner’s office and have it buried or cremated.

I asked the coroner if they had tried to contact anyone else.

Nope. They couldn’t find anyone else.

I contacted the EPS officer and asked her if they tried to contact his former wife or any of his girlfriends or even our stepmother in Morinville, AB.

The stepmother was unreachable and the phone numbers I had for Richard were not in use anymore.

I had no contact information for the former wife or any of his girlfriends, and the police couldn’t find anything else.

I was therefore the only legal next of kin.

And the police had no indication of any other information.

So, I made arrangements with the Alberta coroner and a crematorium to have my brother’s body transferred there and I would pick the ashes up.

I made the trip up to Edmonton and went to his apartment to try to locate any documents or records.

It wasn’t safe to walk around in there as the floor had been removed from the apartment as his bodily fluids had spilt all over the place and ruined the flooring.

Even though most of the flooring had been removed, the stench of his death and decomposition was still overwhelming in the suite. I couldn’t spend more than 10 minutes in the space before becoming overwhelmed with the urge to vomit.

Apparently his cats had been shitting and pissing all over the apartment. They had found one of the cats, but the last cat was hiding out in the joist space under the floor and was continuing to shit and piss all over the place. The cats had been drinking the water out of the toilet and had emptied the toilet out to the point that sewer gas was coming into the apartment.

From what I’ve been able to piece together, Scott received an inheritance from Richard when Richard died. Scott had used his inheritance to buy this “condo”. I say “condo” as this seems to be a scam going on in Edmonton where old apartment buildings are turned into condos and the apartment suites are sold off as condo units.

Scott’s ketamine habit had increased to the point that he sold off his condo for cash and was renting it back from the person that he had sold it to. This probably explains his urgency to settle the class action lawsuit with the Canadian Forces and why he kept getting agitated when I’d inform him that the DND and the CAF were doing everything in their power to delay the initiation of settlement negotiations until after I underwent M.A.i.D..

Scott had texted me around July 29th, 2024 asking about the settlement. So I think he was at the end of his rope. His depression and his anxiety were obviously keeping him from regular employment, his Amazon business wasn’t doing good. So, I can’t help but wonder if he took the final jab of Ketamine to escape the impending collapse of his world due to all of his creditors looking for money.

I did manage to grab his iPhone, his Apple watch, and his Macbook.

Now, you’d think that it would be a simple matter to call up Apple and either get access to my brother’s accounts to at least find contact information for his friends and girlfriends and ex-wife.

Fuck no.

Why would a certificate of death and a certificate of cremation mean anything to Apple? It’s like these silly fucking companies just throw all common sense out the fucking door. It’s the easiest way for them to insulate themselves from having to give a fuck in the slightest.

I know that when Richard died, Sue gave Scott all of our childhood pictures that Richard had. Scott told me after we started talking again that he just threw the pictures in the garbage. But Scott doesn’t do shit like that. He would have scanned the pictures for himself. Just the way he was.

But again, does a certificate of cremation with my name and address listed on an official document matter?

Nope.

“We need you to go to court and become appointed as his executor”……

Fuck that.

I paid $2,500 for the cremation of a brother that I was estranged from due to our father’s shitty parenting skills.

And now Tim Cook and Apple want me to dish out $7k to $10k to be appointed his “executor”?

So far I have been contacted by just about every credit card and service provider in Canada looking for payment of his extensive debts.

The running total of his debts is over $60k.

Not being the executor means that I’m not responsible for these debts at all.

Which is great because I don’t think he had any assets. And the headache of being appointed his executor just isn’t worth the hassle of paying for a private investigator to try to track down all of his relations to see if they had a will or access to his assets.

“BuT boBbIe, If YoU dOn’T wAnT tO bE hIs ExEcUtOr WhY sHoUlD yOu HaVe AcCeSs To HiS aCcOuNt”…..

Well, the Edmonton Police Service, the Alberta Coroner, and the Alberta Government have declared that I am his sole next of kin. Why the fuck do I need a court order declaring the exact same thing?

If Scott thinks that I wrongfully had him cremated he can call the police and make a complaint.

Instead we get companies like Apple that try to absolve themselves of any responsibility by hiding behind almost insurmountable barriers.

You would think that if anyone wanted any proof of my legal relationship to my brother that it would be the Edmonton Police Service, the Alberta Coroner’s Service, or even the crematorium.

Nope, everyone was fine with me claiming my brother’s body and having my brother’s body cremated, but Apple wants to be the paragon of legal “i” dotting and “t” crossing.

If it wasn’t for Microsoft being even more dysfunctional and dystopian than Apple I would never have switched to Apple back in 2021.

And yes, this is the problem when basically two tech companies and their lawyers lock everything down.

Why does Apple do this?

Dead people don’t need privacy.

Can you imagine what would happen if the police could convince the next of kin of a cartel member or an arms smuggler to allow law enforcement to have access to their next of kin’s equipment?

Just imagine what would happen if one of Jeffrey Epstein’s multiple clients died and their estranged next-of-kin had access to their Apple account and their hardware?

Even if Apple wasn’t worried about retribution, they would surely be worried about the sale of their equipment to people wishing to hide things from prying eyes, and instead of having a policy that takes individual circumstance into account, it’s just better to have a blanket policy no matter how tone deaf the policy actually is.

What the fuck more does Apple want?

What the fuck can a court do that these documents can’t?

What do I do at work

At work I generally work so far out of my qualifications that it’s not funny.

And I think this is one of those issues that cause so much conflict between myself and my subordinates.

Power engineers are employed at hospitals like the one as I work at as provincial regulations require power engineers to be on shift to supervise and operate the power plant.

Power engineers are not trade qualified millwrights or industrial mechanics. You can have power engineers that have more qualification, such as a 4th class with a millwright’s ticket, or a 3rd class with an electrical ticket.

We take rounds and readings, make sure that chemical readings are done and that chemical levels are maintained properly. We supervise the boilers, the chillers, the heat recovery systems to ensure that the systems are running as efficiently as possible while maintaining the proper temperatures, air flows, and pressure differentials for the infection control.

I came into this position offering more skills than what is typical of a 4th class power engineer. But this is how I’ve always been. It’s always something that I’ve had to do in order to offset my horrific personality.

After all, when you don’t have any safety nets to fall back upon, you learn how to make yourself valuable.

This is one of the reasons it was always so easy for me to find employment in the bowling industry. Since the ’80s computers and electronics have found their way into bowling centres. Most centres didn’t have anyone that was familiar with electronics and so they would bleed with the electronic repairs. I come along, I can do the mechanical work with ease, but I can also do the electronic repairs in-house, which brings the expenses down substantially, considering that I’m getting paid the same amount as the mechanic with no skills in electrical, electronics. This makes me valuable even though I wasn’t making that much. Better to be poor and employed than poor and unemployed.

I have skills in electronics, networking, DDC, pneumatic controls, etc.

Working with machinery like the fan motor above is something that I can do.

Once I moved into the Chief Engineer’s position there was a sort of resentment directed towards me by the others in my section because there was no one doing the heavy duty work anymore.

Work that I had been doing since I started at the hospital fell to the wayside. Somehow I was not only unqualified to do the work, but now I was being lazy for not doing the work.

One thing that I’ve had to learn over the last few years is that mechanical aptitudes cannot be taught. A person either has a mechanical aptitude, or they don’t. And it’s no use banging your head into the cinderblock wall trying to instil a mechanical aptitude where there is none. It’s like trying to teach someone who has absolutely no interest in music how to read music and keep time. They may be able top memorize the scales, but it will never click for them.

I rebuilt the Phase 2 Domestic Water Booster Station back around 2012. The fun part was that none of the gate valves would hold. So I had to arrange to get ball valves threaded on pretty well as soon as as I pulled the regulators out. We finally managed to get the booster station replaced around 2019

Again, this was a project that I did by myself. This isn’t something that power engineers do.

I ran a copper compressed air line from the Phase 2 Level 4 mechanical room all the way down stairwell 13 and into the Burrard Building by myself. I had a company come in and radio graph the stairwell to guide me so that I’d miss the rebar and the buried conduits. Cored all of the holes by myself and soldered the entire length of pipe myself.

Back to work

I’ve been off work since September 10th.

Haven’t really done too much but give in to my depression and just slept a lot.

That’s one of the interesting things about depression is the complete lack of motivation that it bestows upon a person.

Dreamland is such a preferable place to be.

In the times that I was awake I was able to finally work on cleaning up my hard drives. It’s amazing all of the shit that I’ve accumulated over the last 14 years.

Fuck me. It’s been fourteen years that I’ve been dealing with the shit from Canadian Forces Base Namao. Where the hell does the time go?

I’ve got just over 397 GB of data that I’ve accumulated since then. I’ve still got some work to do on this, but I can’t see this number getting too far below 200 GB.

The core folder is 166 GB.

The core folder holds all of my communications with the Canadian Armed Forces over the CFB Namao matter, all of my court related material for the CFB Namao matter, and other research related to the Criminal Code of Canada, the various National Defence Acts over the years, the various bills, acts, and Administrative orders from over the years.

The folder holding all of my ATI and FOI requests is close to 20 GB on its own.

I don’t know what awaits me tomorrow. Probably an email box full of 3 weeks worth of people wanting their problems to become my problems and for me to solve their problems.

I’ve been out of the loop for the new hospital for quite a while. Ever since management discovered from a news story that ran that I fully intend to apply for Medical Assistance in Dying in 2027. I don’t know who exactly on the management team knows, but I haven’t caught any grief because of this. Management no longer asks me to go to the new site. And this is okay with me. It takes a massive amount of stress off of my plate.

In the process of cleaning up my hard drives I’ve come across a ton of pictures that I’ve taken over the years of projects and work that I’ve done.

I’m thinking of putting together a couple of pages of photos of the work that I’ve done over the years seeing as how any records of this work will disappear when I die and the hospital is torn down.

This is me using a gantry to move a 430 kg 3ph 600 volt 75 KW motor in to SF-51C.

It was so laughable watching the guys try to move this motor into the fan plenum using an engine hoist and 6 guys hanging off the back of the engine hoist like counterweight. I don’t know how they thought they were going to get this fan in without taking the door off the plenum.

Took me 30 minutes to pull the door and frame off the plenum. Took another hour to assemble the gantry. And then took 5 minutes and no risk of bodily injury or bodily damage to get the motor safely into the plenum.

But Bobbie, it’s not our fault that you’ve had special training!

I don’t have any special training.

I was never instructed in how to do this.

This is one of the many special projects that I’d take on.

The phase 1 fans have been in and running pretty well non-stop since 1982. The phase 2 fans have been running non-stop since 1989. After many years of service they all needed new bearings.

The instructions for the gantry are pretty clear. The safety instructions for the engine hoist clearly state that it is not to be used unless the outriggers are locked down. How to assemble the gantry is pretty obvious. How to use a come along chain puller. Taking the 5/16″ self tapping machine screws out of the door frame is fairly simple to figure out.

I used to catch hell from the guys for doing this work as this isn’t “power engineer’s work”.

And to be true, this is more Millwright’s work.

But we don’t have Millwrights, and the shit needed to get done.

And truth be told, I didn’t mind doing this work as I could work alone. Nobody wanted to help, and that’s fine, I’d just rather get the work done. I find that people love to chit-chat too much, and I’ve never been one for small talk.

Daily Prompt 2058

Daily writing prompt
What’s your favorite word?
View all responses

Fuck.

Fuck is my favourite word.

Growing up in a dysfunctional family living on various Canadian Armed Forces Bases across Canada I learnt the arts of the profanities at a young age.

And of course the word “fuck” was one of the first words that I used with any type of proficiency.

It didn’t take long for me to work up to “fuck off”, “fuck you”, “get fucked”.

I could even sing along with Gary Lee & the Showdown’s “The Rodeo Song” when a couple of the boys from the Canadian Airborne Regiment were playing the song one evening at the base auto club when my father was working on his car.

Fuck was an empowering word, I wished that I had used “fuck you”and “fuck off” on Canadian Forces Base Namao more frequently. Maybe the babysitter and Captain McRae would have found me too unappealing.

When I’d get into fist fights with the other brats on base I always found that my punches were able to land just a little harder with the profanities. And conversely when I got the shit kicked out of me by my father or the other brats on base the profanities would ease the pain away.

In 2013 I had gone up to see Scott over the summer. We stopped for coffee at a coffee shop on the east side of Edmonton. We were sitting there for about 10 minutes when this elderly gent came over and asked Scott and I to stop with the swearing as he’d never heard two people swear so much.

Swearing was baked into our vocabulary.

Sure, the Canadian Armed Forces will bend over backwards to portray the military communities on base to be right out of Mayberry. But back in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s the PMQs were full of angry alcoholics, some with untreated CPTSD / PTSD. Fuck, CFB Shearwater had a “Battered Wives Club”……

The whole fucking community was full of testosterone, alcohol, anger, and untreated mental illness. So yeah, kids from the junior ranks and non-commissioned side of the base were usually rough ‘n’ tumble.

Yet another day yet another spin around the axis.

What do I do for fun?

Nothing really. I slept most of yesterday day and today.

Why don’t you volunteer and get out and meet people?

Not my thing. It’s not that I don’t care. I just don’t have the energy or the desire. Besides, I really like to be left alone. No matter what I do or what I try I find that out of a crowd of ten people there will always be one or two that are never happy with me and will plunge their daggers into my back just for kicks.

Why don’t you hang out with people from work?

I don’t do the “hanging out” thing. Single and solitary is the way that I like it. Less anxiety, less chance of disappointment.

Why don’t you get into music?

Never really listened to music until I was in my 20’s. Living under my father’s roof as a kid taught me that music was something that degenerate people wasted their time on.

Surely you have a favourite TV show or movie that you like?

Nope. Didn’t spend much time in the house as a kid so I didn’t spend much time in front of the boob-tube.

Surely you like activities?

As my social service records from the early ’80s state, “There doesn’t seem to be a single activity these people do as a family”.

GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE HOUSE!

GET THE FUCK OUTSIDE NOW!

SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU’RE MAKING TOO MUCH FUCKING NOISE!

Our stepmother didn’t want us in the house. I guess that she bought Richard’s lies and his fanciful stories lock – stock & barrel.

Richard didn’t want us in the house. Due to his untreated PTSD, his alcoholism, and the dysfunctional household that he was raised in he had absolutely no parenting skills or coping skills. And besides, we reminded him of our mother. And as he told one of his airforce buddies, he only kept us so that he could control the costs.

So no, we weren’t sent outside to play for exercise.

We were sent outside so that they could pretend that we didn’t exist.

To me, life is just one meaningless day after another.

Why do I blog?

Daily writing prompt
Why do you blog?
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I started blogging back around August of 2011 just after I received my social service paperwork from the Alberta government.

I quickly realized that I had no one to talk to about the events that I had lived through on Canadian Forces Base Namao, Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, and Canadian Forces Base Downsview.

And talk I wanted to.

To go from someone who had been reviled by his own family for causing the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao and for having fucked with his father’s military career to now being one of at least 25 children that got chucked under the fucking bus by the Canadian Armed Forces due to chain of command decisions made by grown adults in May to June of 1980.

I had begun counselling sessions in May of 2011 with a counsellor from the EFAP program at work, I could tell that he wasn’t able to comprehend any of what I was telling him. Sure, the counselling went on for a few years. It was nice having someone to talk to even if he had nothing to offer in the slightest.

I thought that these blogs would get me more answers and more details about what had happened on CFB Namao. But this hasn’t worked out. Yes, I have been contacted by other brats who were abused on the base at the time. But much like I had been prior to my crash course in the damaged military justice system, most people who had grown up on military bases as children had no idea of just how fucked up things were on the bases back then.

There are generally two types of base brat. The ones that came from somewhat functional families and who undoubtedly participated in the shunning of kids from dysfunctional families that would occur on base. And those that came from dysfunctional families like mine that are unaware that their own serving parent sacrificed the wellbeing of their children to appease the chain of command.

The members of the former group will not under any circumstance admit that there were dysfunctional families on base as that means that they would have to admit to the fact that they often participated in the shunning and harassment of the children of these families.

And you had better fucking believe me when I say that a military community is not very tolerant of non-conformity. The military is built around 100% conformity.

The members of the latter group will not admit that their family was dysfunctional as they subconsciously know what happened, but they don’t want to have their suspicions confirmed.

I quickly came to realize that the general public has no idea of what happened on the bases in Canada, and the general public just doesn’t seem to care.

The media that once existed in Canada no longer exists. It’s all downsized, consolidated, and owned by the Americans. And timing is everything. The last 25 years have been extremely unstable in the geo political sphere, so the story of how the National Defence Act allowed matters like Captain Father Angus McRae to be buried often becomes sidelined due to current events.

So, I type away on my blog in the vain hope that something will come of this all the while knowing that this blog will only really appeal to a very small minority of people.

Why don’t you talk about what you do for a living?

I get asked this question a lot.

I have to be very careful what I say and who I say things to.

Due to my major depression and my severe anxiety I don’t “hang out” with the crew. And a lot of the crew at work interpret this as an “air of superiority”.

Just as I’ve never brought up my issues at work, I don’t really have any interest in who went fishing, or who went on vacation, or who bought a new car. Small talk doesn’t do anything for me.

And there are those that view that as being hostile.

It’s not hostility, it’s just that those things were never on my radar in my personal life.

I’m in the position that I’m in because I want to see that things are done. In the recent past I’ve worked under chief engineers who wanted to do the absolute least as this was the easiest course of action. And of course they would just turn around and blame the assistant shift engineers and the shift engineers when things went absolutely sideways.

Yes, I realize that with my skills I should be elsewhere making the big bucks and advancing my career. But if you know anything about my past you’ll know how hard it was for me to get to where I am.

And I don’t mean that I am limited by my lack of technical skills or my technical knowledge.

Dealing with major depression and severe anxiety that was diagnosed in my childhood, but for which I was not allowed to receive treatment due to the environment that I grew up in meant that my life has been a non-stop constant fight with the factions inside my brain.

The Canadian Armed Forces along with Captain Terry Totzke and my father, master corporal Richard Gill, were hellbent on keeping the matter of child sexual predator Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenaged altar boy co-conspirator out of the public eye. For that alone I was not allowed to receive treatment for the sexual abuse I endured on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980. I guess that the logic and reasoning behind those decisions was that if I went into the civilian child care system or was even admitted to a psychiatric hospital to receive the care that I needed, the truth about Canadian Forces Base Namao would hit the local media and then the national media.

What happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao from the summer of 1978 until the spring of 1980 was a massive public relations nightmare for the Canadian Forces.
So much so that the military at the time wasn’t going to risk ANYONE discovering what happened on that base.

This meant that I was sent on a crash course towards failure and that I would never achieve the potential that I could have.

All my life has been a non-stop battle with the voice of Captain Totzke in my head telling me that I was going to grow up to be just like the babysitter because I had “allowed” myself and my brother to be abused by McRae’s altar boy.

All my life has been a non-stop battle with the voice of my father in my head yelling and screaming at me for having “fucked with his military career” and that I was to blame for the way my brother turned out.

And as I’ve alluded to in other posts, what drives me around the bend is when trades, contractors, vendors, co-workers, or even managers tut-tut me for “wasting my life” and “taking the easy path” and “just not working hard like the rest of us”.

Another fun aspect is when people with certificates, degrees, diplomas, or licences get upset with me for intentionally withholding information from them just to make them look bad.

For all of my lack of formal training and formal education I get verbal tongue lashings and hostilities when I don’t provide answer at the snap of a finger.

I know what I know, if I don’t know the answer, I can’t give it to you no matter how angry you get. You have the degree, or the diploma, or the certificate, or the licence. You should be telling me how to do this. If you want me to tell you, you’re gonna have to give me a little bit while I go R.T.F.M. to get you the answer that you’re craving.

I primarily do what I do at work to prove to myself that I am capable of doing what I’ve been told that I’m not smart enough or qualified enough to do.

There are so many things that I have improved, or upgraded, or implemented that I dare not take credit for because I don’t have a degree, or a certificate, or a licence, or a diploma. But they do give me a sense of satisfaction none the less.

I have people with the degrees, with the certificates, with the licences, and even with the diplomas coming to me for advice, or for instructions on how to do things, or program things, or set things up.

But Bobbie, you enjoy all of this technical stuff!

Do I?

Are you sure that I really enjoy this?

Or maybe this field is something that my ability to read, and to reason, allowed me to function well in.

I’ve never really known what I’ve wanted to do with my life.

I can’t imagine that if I had been given the chance to have my major depression and severe anxiety treated, and that I had been allowed to finish school, to go to college, or go to university, that I would be doing this for a living.

And this is why I don’t really address work or the day to day stuff on my blog.