See, my middle name ends with an S and my last name begins with an S... and my middle name is a pluralized name, so nobody hears the S when I say it in conjunction with my last name. So I've gotten really good at pronouncing the S, stopping for a beat, then saying my last name, without it sounding super weird or robotic.
So properly pronouncing "hot potato" while enunciating the first T doesn't seem too challenging to me.
As a veteran of the US Air Force, I can say that veteran is not exclusively a military term. You can be a veteran of any field, hobby, or activity if you’ve been there a while and are experienced.
We always get these people who might have served for a single enlistment (4-6 years), then make the rest of their life about their military service. It’s really cringey and they don’t deserve half the respect they think they’re entitled to. Your life shouldn’t be defined by a few years in a particular role.
(Hint: no one is entitled to respect. Respect is earned.)
For the record, I spent 20 years working an IT job in the military, mostly out of harm’s way. I feel weird when people try to thank me for my service. I didn’t really do anything worth thanking. Save it for people who laid down their lives in your defense. Most of us don’t actually experience that level of responsibility and hardship in our service; a lot of service members tend to have a pretty quiet career.
I don’t usually participate in these kind of events. Those closest to me know my service experiences and that’s usually good enough for me. I don’t feel right being publicly acknowledged and/or thanked by strangers. There are far more deserving people.
But my prior service does occasionally come up in social circles. I actually had a doctor ask me this morning what kind of work I did, and he was somewhat familiar with it, as his son in-law served in the Navy in a technical field like mine.
Most of the time, when I tell people I was in the Air Force, the first question people ask is, “What planes did you fly?” It blows their minds when I tell them I don’t know anything about planes; that my job was to fix computers. Not even computers on airplanes, just regular ol’ desktop computers, servers, laptops, etc. Anything that touches a computer network.
Only 5% of the Air Force are pilots. The other 95% of Airmen work in jobs either directly or indirectly supporting those pilots. We have a lot of generic job fields you might find in the civilian sector: mechanics, police, doctors, lawyers, cooks, firemen, chaplains, etc. All have a critical role to fill that ensure our ultimate flying missions are accomplished.
So yeah, there are a lot of people in the military who work a job that doesn’t put them anywhere near the front lines of war. In some careers, your job is the exact same as the civilian sector, except that you have to wear a military uniform while doing it.
I retired last summer at the crusty old age of 38 and have been dicking around with my home lab ever since. I’ve decided that computers are much more fun as a hobby than as a job.
I retired from the US Air Force, where I served as a sysadmin for 20 years. With my pension and disability pay, I’m able to live comfortably without work now. I could go back into the field and easily double or triple my income… but then I won’t have all the free time to enjoy my life like I’m doing now. So, retired life is good enough for me.
When I joined back in 2002, we were known as Communications, or Comm. The Cyber thing is actually pretty new. In the last few years, I was still calling us Comm guys. I had a new Airmen ask me why I didn’t call us Cyber guys; apparently, they finally started teaching that in our tech school. Our squadrons are still called Communications Squadrons, though.
xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech ( imgs.xkcd.com )
xkcd #2942: Fluid Speech...
So you're a veteran in your field? What war did you fight to earn that title?! ( files.catbox.moe )
Had a laugh when I saw this post, he was constantly defending himself in the comments as if the US army owns the word “veteran”
What are you guys up to these days?
I’m just curious