I almost joined the navy out of high school in the 90's to be nuclear submarine engineer. I would've been stationed in San Diego as well. I ended up not enlisting. But 10 years later, I ended up in San Diego after all. Only this time doing software development instead of nuclear engineering. Much better I'm sure than the steel tube. I'm sorry your experience here sucked so much.
RE: Lessons learned from getting kicked out of the U.S. military