This got me thinking about my time as the Submarine Liaison Officer on the Carrier Group SEVEN staff during the John C. Stennis Battle Group "Millennium Deployment" in 2000. Other than spending 9 of the first 11 months of my post-DH "shore tour" at sea, I found that a Battle (now "Strike") Group job is one of the easier gigs for a submarine officer. Once I got qualified to stand TFCC Watch Officer, my underway routine usually consisted of being in the Tactical Flag Command Center during our attached submarine's scheduled PD trips, reading and writing messages for a couple of hours, and standing 4-6 hours of easy watch a day. Compared to what I was doing during my previous tour as Eng of Connecticut, I was operating at about 15% of capacity. This left me with a lot of free time. I read a lot, and got really good at Minesweeper; I could clear the large 100 mine fields in just over 100 seconds. (Side note: It seems to me that the new optical mice don't give you the quick response that the old trackball ones did for things like Minesweeper.) For those who enjoy Minesweeper, here's a funny video.
What's your favorite underway time waster?
