Intrepid Explorer

My career as a (peripatetic) programmer began with my childhood fascination with planes. So it's appropriate that my present wanderings should take me to the USS Intrepid, a WWII-era aircraft carrier-cum-floating aviation museum that now sits in New York harbor. I went with my father. We spent the whole afternoon there.

 
My, what a big boat you have.

The Intrepid is hours of geeky entertainment, with planes from the 40's to the present day on display, not to mention the Intrepid itself which is an engineering marvel.

 
A WWII-era Grumman E-1B Tracer. They have newer and fancier planes on display, but I like the oldies and goodies.

 
I was particularly drawn toward the command and control centers, the 40's-era cryptology tech, and the pneumatic tubes used throughout for communication. Above is a teletype machine that would bang out decrypts. A pneumatic tube would carry them to the captain's bridge with a whoosh and a thunk.

 
On the bridge, the captain would sit in his chair and read his decrypted messages (and do other captain-y things, I suppose). This captain's chair looks worse for wear, though.

As for how my love of planes became a love of computers and programming, I'll leave that for another day.