Who is Carlin anyway?

Who's Carlin?

Born and raised in Alberta, Canada, on a grain farm, moved with my Dad to Wenatchee, WA when I was 16. Joined the US Navy right out of high school, was trained as an aircraft mechanic (AMS2, airframes 2nd class, E5 for those who know!). Navy stations... San Diego for boot camp, Memphis (Millington) for Airframes school, Lemoore, CA, for advanced airframes, China Lake, CA first duty station at VX-5. NAS North Island (San Diego) for Helo training at HC-3 for HH-46 training, then to HC-5 in Guam. While in Guam I was deployed several times West Pacific, including Desert Shield / Desert Storm. Then to VF-124 at NAS Miramar to work on F-14 Tomcats. 9 years total service, medals, awards, tattoos, and one broken tooth. Not a bad deal!

One story from Desert Storm that I think is worth mentioning here, as I think it may have been the seed idea for the documentary. Most people would remember the Any Service Member program started by Ann Landers, where anyone could address a letter or package to "Any Service Member" and it would eventually be read by the troops in the war. The ship I was on handled a lot of cargo, and a large part of the cargo was mail. There were pallets full of
this Any Service Member mail. So much, in fact, that the ships we were delivering to couldn't handle the volume, and asked us to stop delivering it. In the end, there was some that was dumped overboard, unopened, just because we didn't have room for it. Seeing this, I started grabbing a few handfuls of letters any time I could, and would read them when I wasn't
working. Keep in mind we were working between 12 and 18 hours a day then. I had my first computer with me on the ship, it was a 8088 clone, had a 12" green monochrome screen, and a 30 MB hard drive. I started writing a database program in Basic, and soon had 100 names and address in the file. I'd write personal letters back to the 100 people when I had time, and also
made up a generic 20 questions answered letter that I sent to everyone. We had free postage then, as it was a war zone, so I'd just write Free where the stamp would be, and drop them in the out going mail box. A few weeks later, I had 50 write me back. Oops! Now I don't have any time at all, but some how I started sending semi regular letters out, and had most of those 50 who would write me back regularly. It was a fun project, I've actually met 5 or so of the writers since then, and I even was recognized by my chain of command for taking time to write the letters. I've still got the letters, and will someday combine them with a dairy I kept, also on the computer, into a book. So, why is that relevant? I'm kind of thinking of the documentary as a way to pay back all those who wrote to me when I needed the support.

Since the Navy, I worked as a computer tech at a ComputerLand store, eventually being trained as a MCSE. This is handy, as I can now do all the computer work needed to keep my edit systems working. I also have my own website running on my server, which is a Compaq rack server (1850R)... running Apache on NT 4.0.

I've been self employed the last 5 years now, and have just recently done over 50 weddings total.

My goal or plan for the documentary project, mission plan, if you will... To get to the New Orleans area, get as many survivors of the storm to talk to me on camera, and get the stories. That will be cut down into a documentary, which will then be distributed to network TV hopefully, or direct to DVD. I can see it being released as a 1 hour special, or maybe even several hours, mini series or disk box set, etc. Proceeds will be donated to the relief effort. I'm staying vague on the details beyond actually shooting the video, as I have not had time yet to really do research into the distribution. Anyone with leads or ideas of how to distribute, please email me. I may not have time to respond right away, so be patient!

My current timeline is to leave Washington state by 25 September, 2005, and return home by first week of December. Beyond that, where the story leads me!