THE MAJOR’S LIFE BLOG

I am Chris M. Day, and I live in Homestead Florida - the fastest growing city in the entire nation as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau. I’ve lived in Homestead for the past 20 years (since December 01ST 1987). That’s exactly half of my life !  Although I’m originally from the Washington D.C. area (Prince Georges County Maryland and Fairfax County Virginia) I consider Homestead to be my hometown.

I’ve worked at the air base in Homestead for the past 20 years (aside from about 19 months immediately following Hurricane Andrew on August 24TH 1992). During those 19 months I worked at Andrews AFB Maryland (near Washington D.C.) and MacDill AFB Florida (in Tampa).

I’ve been a Computer Systems Administrator for all of my 20 years at Homestead ARB Florida, but that’s actually not my original career field when I first started working for the United States Air Force as an Active Duty Airman in 1985. I started out as a Tanker Aircraft (KC-135A) Maintenance Systems Analyst / Statistician. When I was considering joining the USAF during my Senior year in High School I really wanted to be a Meteorologist.

Although the USAF selected a different career path for me I consider myself to be very intelligent in the field of Weather. One of my lifelong hobbies continues to be the further study and analysis of weather forecasting. I’m fortunate to live in such a subtropical paradise as South Florida which can stake its claim as having some of the nicest weather in North America.

In addition to Selma Alabama (where I was born in 1967), the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of the Washington D.C. area, Central Florida, and South Florida I have also lived in the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia. I lived in the U.K. for 2 years and 1 week from November 1985 to November 1987. I was stationed at my first official USAF duty station - RAF Fairford - located in Gloucestershire. Swindon (to the south) and Cirencester (to the west) were the nearby cities. I lived in Saudi Arabia at Al Kharj Air Base (’Tent City’) for a little over over 2 months from January 1991 to March 1991 during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

During the early morning hours of May 21ST 1993 in Melbourne Florida I sat down at my state-of-the-art 486 SX desktop computer system at the time, and I ‘flipped the switch’ and turned on ‘MANx CAT BBS’. Back before the Internet and the World Wide Web became International phenomenons the dial-up bulletin board system was all the rage. My BBS was created to take advantage of this hot new form of electronic communication, and it quickly became one of the fastest-growing bulletin board systems in southern Brevard County Florida. I was known back then as ‘Captain Airwaves’, or simply ‘The Captain’. I moderated numerous message boards on my BBS on topics as diverse as Television, Radio, Music, Movies, Travel, Weather, Sports, and Politics. Those who posted on my various message boards were known as ‘MANxsters’, and we became great friends on the computer and then eventually in person. Our live get-togethers at various restaurants and bars in and around Melbourne were known as ‘hang scenes’. That’s when we would gather to eat, drink, be merry, and solve all of the problems of the world.

The name ‘MANx CAT BBS’ was inspired by my beloved childhood cat ‘Fluffy’. She was a Manx cat. Me and my brother Danny found (and named) Fluffy on December 23RD 1983 on a bitter cold and snowy morning …

(Keep checking back here as this saga unfolds in the days, weeks, and months to come.)