Fuzzilicious Thinking: Carroll Lex LeFon: The Goodbye (and it was good)

I wasn't able to make it to Lex's fairwell but Beth did an excellent job of telling it, thank you.

Fuzzilicious Thinking: Carroll Lex LeFon: The Goodbye (and it was good): i

How to do a mass text list or mailing list on an Android Phone

I just came back from a trip to Key West and I set up a mass text list for the 68 enlisted people that were out there with me.  I haven’t heard of anyone else doing it and it worked pretty good so I'm going to share it here.  I used this method to send out the phone numbers of our daily duty drivers, pass info on and since I was the Det LPO, I needed everyone's phone number in case there was a problem or someone wasn't where they were supposed to be.  This saved hours of time and we were able to change plans on a moments notice, almost like we had modern communication equipment! 

This works if you have an Android Phone (maybe Blackberry too, not sure about iPhones since I don't own one).  If you have an Android phone, you also have a Gmail account, I’ll put it together is steps.

This method is if you plan on putting the phone numbers in by hand (which I did)

11,         Go to Gmail.

22.       Click on the Gmail button on the top left hand of the screen.

33.       It will bring down a pull down menu, click “Contacts”

44.       If the contact isn’t a contact yet, you need to add them as a contact by clicking “New Contact”.

55.       After they are added, open up their contact card, click on the little crowd of people under the search bar that says “groups” when you put the curser over it and click “Create new” and call it what you will.

66.       Add names like that by opening up the contact you want on that list, clicking on the group icon, and clicking on the group.

77.       To send out mass txt’s by that method, open Messaging on your phone

88.       Click New Message, then Group and scroll down to the group you want

99.       Click on the names of the people you want to send messages to after you’re done, click Add.

110.   Type a message and send it

111.   MAKE SURE YOU HAVE AN UNLIMITED TEXTING PLAN OR YOU WILL REGRET IT!

112.   If you need to send something to all of the same people, just type anther message to them on the same string, you don’t have to click on the individual names again.

There is another method which theoretically should work that I’m going to try next time if I have all of the numbers on an excel file, I’ll export a group into an Outlook CSV, open that file and change all of the information to the numbers on the excel and Import it back into Gmail.

Remembering Captain Carroll “Neptunus Lex” LeFon USN (Ret.) 1960-2012

Back in 2004, when I started this thing called Doc in the Box, there were only a few Navy bloggers, Scott of Lt. Smash, Cdr Salamander, Chapomatic and Kevin of Primary Main Objective.  Lex was the guy who had lived all of the Top Gun stories, he was the aviator’s aviator and even better, told those stories on his blog Neptunus Lex.  Later, when I finally met him in person and found out that he was a Navy Captain and probably the most senior military blogger (side not to civilians, a Navy Captain is an O-6, squadrons are commanded by O-5’s mostly and on any given large base, there might be 3 to 6 Captains.  One in charge of the base, one for each carrier air group, maybe one at a hospital.  I’m currently attached to the largest squadron in the Navy and my CO is a Commander or an O-5, pretty big deal) and he was at my house for a blogger get together and I was definitely the kid at the adult table.  Unlike most of us cyber nerds, he was bigger than that large online persona that he assumed.  Over the years, I had met up with him at milblog conferences, dinners and once at a change of command which I didn’t recognize him at first in a suit.  Without fail, he always had a crowd of people around him and he was telling a story.  That guy burned with inner charisma and people hushed to hear what he had to say.  I admit, I had a bit of hero worship. 

But one on one, he was just a good guy with whom I’ve broke bread, he’s eaten my curry and bar-b-q chicken and we’ve turned up a cold one or three.  He was that way to everyone and if you search his name across the blogosphere, there are hundreds of people who are saying the same thing.  Lex was a giant among us and a true warrior poet.

I found out last night that he was involved in crash at NAS Fallon working as a contractor flying an Israeli F-21 Kfir by way of an underground Facebook message string of everybody who has ever been involved in military blogging, it blew up my phone.  I’ve never seen anything or imagined anything like it, seeing how many people this guy touched in his 51 years.  I say it with a heavy heart, you are missed, fair winds and following seas brother.  Through us, your friends and readers, you will not be forgotten and your memory will live on.


Story on the Navy Times