It was a lovely day to be out at Camarillo Airport, learning my new duties with the Southern California Wing of the Commemorative Air Force. While there I looked at the new kid on the block tarmac, a Grumman Albatross.
It’s not one of our aircraft and I don’t have the entire story, but it appears the owner needed a place to park it. We had a big slab of ramp with many WWII “cousin” aircraft buzzing about, so a deal got made.
She is pretty!
Filed under CAF, Flying, Photography
Never been there. Got really, really close a few years ago when I was visiting my son at Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Mississippi. I was delivering his truck to him to use while he was there. I had made good time driving out from LA and was actually going to drive past Biloxi to spend the night before he got in somewhere across the state line, just to be able to check Alabama off of my personal list. But once past the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge on I-10 an idiot light lit up on the dashboard and I decided to not push it. (It turned out to be no big thing, but I didn’t know that.) So, so Alabama. Yet.
Haven’t ever been there, can’t wait to get there repeatedly in the future. I love hiking and camping and fishing and kayaking and wildlife watching and bird watching and whale watching and vivid landscapes and mountains and taking pictures of it all. I’m guessing that our first trip there will be a cruise. It might be one of the big ships for the first trip, but I’ve also heard great things about cruises on much smaller cruise ships, holding only a couple dozen passengers. Then we have to go back to take a railroad trip through the Rockies. Then we have to go back to see Juneau and Anchorage and Sitka and Ketchican and Kodiak. Then we have to go camping in Denali, of course! And we have to be there in the winter to see the Northern Lights! It’s a big state, I’ve got a lot of big things to see. Soon, I hope. Stand by, there might be pictures to share.
I’ve obviously been to Arizona many, many times. Pictures from the Grand Canyon were posted here (ten sets!), along with pictures from Sedona and Route 89A.
I think that I first went to Arizona in about 1976 or 1977. I had moved to California a couple of years before, was in college at UC Irvine, and I had bought my first telescope. In order to get clear, dark skies, I took off toward the desert one summer week.
Young + Stupid = Trouble. I was driving an old, old Toyota Corona, which was fine around LA to get to school and work and back. But heading out into the Arizona desert in a fifteen year old commutermobile in July without getting the air conditioning and/or hoses and/or radiator checked… Anyone want to take a guess about how far I got before I was spraying rusty water all over the highway? Anyone?
Actually, the funniest memory of that disaster was the moment when the hose blew. I was just passing a big Greyhound bus when the windshield was covered in brown spray. My first thought was that the bus had vented its restroom onto my car. Um, no, that was the car’s lifeblood leaking away.
Overheating like crazy I managed to limp a few more miles before I found an abandoned garage in “Nowhere, AZ”. It really was. But there was a phone there, so a long, long (expensive) tow later I was having my sorry butt dragged into Prescott. Of course, in the mid-70s there weren’t a lot of places that could service or have parts for a Toyota, so I then got to spend three days there waiting.
That didn’t dissuade me. Since then there have been many other trips. The next summer I was back with my telescope (and a car that had been recently serviced) for my first trip to the Grand Canyon. In 1979 I went to my first Worldcon in Phoenix. When I was trying to get into a graduate program for astronomy, I went to Tucson to interview for their program. For several years my first wife lived in Lake Havasu, so the kids and I visited there at least a couple of times a year. We’ve gone there twice now for spring training with my beloved Angels. I’ve been to the Petrified Forest National Park, Meteor Crater, and Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.
I don’t think I’ll ever settle down in Arizona (it’s a bit hot and a bit right-wing for my tastes), but it’s a great place to visit and given the right circumstances (i.e., getting a job offer there), I wouldn’t object to living there for a while.
We all love our pets, but face it, all of our assumptions about what’s going on in those noggins is as anthropomorphic as hell. And “assumptions” is the correct word, because even on the “easy ones”, we could be wrong.
For example, when the cat crawls into your lap, starts purring, and starts nudging and nuzzling your hand, our assumption is that the can wants to be scratched, stroked, and petted. But how do we know that the real goal isn’t really to get between us and our keyboards?
When it’s 6:00 and the dog is running around your feet and whining, we assume that she wants to remind us that it’s dinner time. Sure, when we feed them (because they’ve trained us to do that when they act like that) that’s great, they’ll take it (dogs never, ever turn down food), but what if they really are trying to get us to open that cupboard where the food’s kept just to check and see what’s in there?
When the dog’s scratching at the door, dancing, whining, and crossing his legs, we assume that they want to go out and pee. But what if they’ve really got a “Dancing With The Dogs” practice scheduled and they don’t want to be late?
And those are the “easy ones”!
What does it mean when the dog has had dinner, has had “dessert”, has had treats, has been out in the front yard (twice), has been out in the back yard (three times), has fresh water (two bowls at different ends of the house, heaven forbid she should have to walk that far if she’s parched), has dry food, and still is up in your face every five minutes whining? We have no clue.
We’ve tried to get her to “use her words”, but that’s not going all that well. I’m sure it’s our fault, not hers.
In “Up” they had that great device by a mad scientist (see, someone’s working on these things!) which allowed the dogs to communicate with humans. (“Squirrel!”) Why can’t we have one of those in real life? (“Only available in this TV offer, but wait, there’s more! Order now and we’ll send you a second Petalk Helmet for your other dog, you just pay additional shipping and handling.”)
What would happen if such devices existed? Would you need different models for dogs and cats? It seems obvious to me that you would, but I’m not the mad scientist here. (I’m just a little angry.)
Better yet, what kind of output would you get if you put a cat-to-human communication helmet on a dog, or vice versa? That’s a show I would pay to see! Extra points to whoever invents the dog-to-cat communication helmet. Or dog-to-squirrel. Wait, that’s probably why they had “Universal Translators” in Star Trek.
But in the bigger picture, if we have so many problems with the details in communicating with creatures that share 90% of our DNA and have evolved along side us for hundreds of millions of years, how will we ever communicate with an alien species if they land their UFO’s on the White House lawn?
Maybe they’ll already have invented human-to-alien communication helmets for them to use with us. Will they wear the helmet, in order to utilize their far superior intellectual (or telepathic) abilities? Or will they make us wear the helmet so that they can avoid undue strain on their necks? (I’m assuming, of course, that alien UFO’s don’t come with chiropractors in their crews.)
Will they naturally gravitate to football players to communicate with because they’re already wearing helmets? If they’re looking at old television footage due to the limitations imposed by the speed of light, will they think that Terry Bradshaw or Joe Montana is our leader? (Are we doomed?)
Or will they show up and have communication helmets for only the dogs or the cats? If they have aliens-to-dogs helmets, the cats will be even more pissed off than humans will be. (If you have a cat, you’ll understand.) Humans will probably get nice chewy treats for taking care of the dogs. If they have aliens-to-cats helmets, well, it’s obvious that we’re all pretty much screwed.
Unless we take the alien-to-cat communication helmets and put them on a dog! That should mess up those alien brains, sort of like what Jeff Goldblum did in “Independence Day”.
Y’all think that over and let me know your thoughts (via comments, not author-to-reader communication helmet).
I’ve got to go take the dog outside. For the tenth freakin’ time tonight.
Filed under Cats, Dogs, Farce, Science Fiction
I think the title says it all! For decades we’ve had one movie, comic book, and television show after another featuring all kinds of cool crap invented by mad scientists or evil super-villains, yet none of this stuff has shown up in real life where it could really be useful on a daily basis.
If mad scientists had as many spinoff products as NASA does, we would have our flying cars today like we were supposed to!
I was thinking about this on a long drive home today. (I also had Supertramp’s “Child Of Vision” blasting at full volume, especially that great piano piece that takes up the last 3:50 of the song, but that’s neither here nor there. I just wanted to mention it.) Specifically, I was thinking about it while following yet another $100K sports car in the fast lane, going 55 MPH in a 65 MPH zone with no traffic.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could push a button on your dashboard to have giant arms pop out of both sides of the car, extending out in front of you, with big prongs like on a fork lift? Then you could sidle up behind the slow poke, slip the prongs under his car, and the system would lift his car up over you and place him gently behind you where he belongs. The mechanism collapses back into your car — problem solved!
Garbage trucks have mechanisms like this for picking up the big bins and flipping them up over the top of the truck to dump the trash. All we would need would be to work on some minor upgrades and modifications to the system. Am I right? Huh??
How about a better way to deal with telemarketers? Is there anything worse than your third call of the day from some idiot who wants to sell you home improvement services or magical credit repair consulting? So why isn’t there some useful product from “Acme” to deal properly with these calls? Would Wile E. Coyote have put up with this? No, he wouldn’t! So let’s get him to work on the project. Maybe something along the lines of a tracing & tracking system that identifies the exact location of the telemarketer, then launches an 800 ton rock onto their head using a giant rubber band. What could go wrong?
What about the people who deliberately and repeatedly enter the narrow and cramped parking lot through the clearly marked “EXIT ONLY — DO NOT ENTER” lane, tying up traffic all the way around the block? Would Ming the Merciless put up with this? Would Kim Jong-Un sit idly by with this sort of atrocity taking place? I dare say not! But I say that, instead of simply punishing these scofflaws, let’s do it while rewarding the good citizens of our community that are fighting for truth, justice, and a good $5 burrito! So let’s figure out how to get a Reduce-O-Ray built which would zap the good guys and take away five pounds of ugly fat and teleport it into the butt of the agents of anarchy coming in through the exits!
As an additional bonus, if you see someone all of a sudden getting one of those bedonk-a-donk butts in just a few days, you can avoid letting them drive to that business meeting. We all win!
I’ll expect first draft schematics on my desk by the first of February.
Filed under Farce, Freakin' Idiots!
Oh, yeah, this…
One of my fears is that when I finally do take a day off and not post anything here (it’s going to happen, I don’t plan on posting daily for the rest of my life) it won’t be because I made a decision to do so, or because I’m travelling to Europe or Asia and can’t post anything, or because I’m in a coma or just have the flu. (Note that this “fear” isn’t like my fear of rattlesnakes or anything – perspective is everything.)
No, it will happen because I will get caught up doing a dozen other things before finally falling into bed, exhausted, only to wake up at 3:33 AM with the realization of what happened and that whole Wilhelm Scream thing scaring the crap out of The Long-Suffering Wife.
Today was nearly that day. I’ve been writing all night on another project…
(Remember “Project A”?)
…and while that’s going much better than the last bit there, it’s on a deadline and I got caught up and was also watching the Kings’ game and then there’s this whole thing that’s going on which you’ll probably hear way too much about later and…
Hi, there. I have ever told you how much I love air shows? Guess how many pictures I can take in a day at a good air show?
Here’s a picture. We’ll talk later.
US Air Force Thunderbirds at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, 2008
Filed under Flying, LA Kings, Photography, Writing
First of all, I was playing webmaster and social media guru (you, in the front row, stop laughing!) today. Starting today if I did it right (which means “starting tomorrow” according to the guy in the front row) notices should be appearing on my Google+ and LinkedIn pages every time an article gets posted here, just like notices have been posting to my Twitter and Facebook pages for many months. So, hello to anyone reading “We Love The Stars Too Fondly” for the first time after seeing it mentioned on Google+ or LinkedIn! Spread the word! Browse! Comment!
It was a good day today for SpaceX! They got the first launch of 2014 off on the first try, successfully delivering the Thaicom 6 communications satellite into a perfect orbit. Congratulations to everyone there for a job well done!
It’s always great to see a successful launch, but for the past few years it’s been even better due to the use of small video cameras. NASA-TV will carry coverage of NASA-related launches (and you know how much I love NASA-TV), but for non-NASA launches like SpaceX’s commercial jobs, many of them are shown live online. SpaceX is doing a fantastic job of showing their launches on LiveStream, and today’s was no exception.
Look at the view you start to get at about T+0:00:48. You’re looking straight down the body of the rocket with the engines firing below you and the Earth dropping away. Talk about “seeing the Earth in your rear-view mirror!” But it got even better. Watch what happens at T+0:02:58. As the first stage shuts down, the video feed switches to a camera inside the engine compartment of the second stage. We see the stage separation, the first stage falling away, and the second stage engine lighting off and starting to glow red hot. That’s just freakin’ amazing!
With luck it will be a busy year for launches, both from SpaceX and Orbital on the commercial side, and Boeing and Lockheed Martin (the United Launch Alliance) on the government side. Let’s see Falcons, Atlases, Antares, and Deltas all heading off-planet safely and successfully all year! (Ditto for the Soyuz, Protons, Arianes, Long Marches, PSLVs, H-2As, Zenits, and Vegas all launching around the world. By the way, just what is the plural of “Soyuz”?)
The next launch scheduled is in less than forty-eight hours, with Orbital set to launch an Antares rocket carrying a Cygnus cargo ship to the International Space Station. Check NASA-TV early Wednesday afternoon for that launch. If you happen to be on the US East Coast and it’s clear, you might be able to see the launch yourself.
Later in the year, if all stays on schedule, SpaceX will be firing off their first Falcon Heavy. SpaceX originally started launching their Falcon 9 rockets, so named because they use 9 engines. The Falcon Heavy will use 27 of those engines and its capabilities will rival that of NASA’s Saturn V (which hasn’t flown in forty years) and the Russian’s Proton heavy-lift vehicle. That launch will go out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, about a three hour drive north of here. I might just have to do whatever’s needed to get up there to see that one.
On the “down” side, it was a short Christmas light season with Thanksgiving coming unusually late. Today was the start of a couple days’ work to get our decorations down and stored away. That corner of the living room looks naked with the tree gone, and poor Joey no longer has a prime place to lurk and fantasize about glorious ambushes. On the other hand, we can now see the book cases in that corner, and we’ll try moving the stationary bike there. The bike will either get us motivated to exercise while we’re watching television, or will be a great place to hang laundry on while folding it.
We all know what the Vegas line on that bet is.
Filed under Cats, Christmas Lights, Space
Because fricassee is a funny sounding word and it accurately describes my brain tonight.
I know that there are plenty of people who think all sports are useless, and I know that there are plenty of people who might be reading this who think “football” should be played with the feet only and a round ball. There are plenty of times that I wonder about my own devotion to my favorite sports teams. But it’s an “addition” that I’m stuck with.
All that having been said, my beloved Kansas City Chiefs, after a 2-14 year last year, today were in the NFL playoffs and looking for their first playoff win in twenty years. Just after halftime they had a 38-10 lead. They then proceeded to collapse (helped by several key injuries during the game, but still…) and lose 45-44.
It was quite the emotional roller coaster. My brain is fried.
Then some mildly odd stuff started happening late this evening on the job search front. With my brain already a little off balance, it’s left me a bit fried. Or fricasseed. It’s late. I’m tired. Add it all up and I keep thinking that there might be a black-and-white Rod Serling just out of sight around the corner, cigarette dangling, ready to do an opening monologue about how the universe is messing with me today.
So have some flower pictures, we haven’t done that in a while. Maybe tomorrow will be less Rod Serling-like.
Filed under Flowers, Job Hunt, KC Chiefs, Photography
We’ve had the Volvo in the shop for a couple of days (nothing serious) and this always causes a debate in the Willett household.
Through circumstances beyond our control, the Volvo service department appears to be in abject terror of our car being there. This is because (not our fault!) they’re apparently required by their management to send us a customer satisfaction survey. The Long-Suffering Wife’s email address is the one in their system, so she gets it, fills it out, and returns it.
Now, let me state that as far as I can remember, the service we’ve gotten from them has always been great. I don’t know that we’ve ever been really unhappy, or even a bit peeved, with their service when the car’s in there.
But we have a serious “apples & oranges” problem.
On these customer satisfaction surveys (online or otherwise) they use a Likert scale. You may not know the term, but you know what I’m talking about. “What was your experience regarding the politeness of our staff, on a scale of one to five, five being best?” (Sometimes it’s “Strongly Disagree / Disagree / Neutral / Agree / Strongly Agree”, but it’s the same thing.)
The Long-Suffering Wife uses Likert scales at work and she has problems getting accurate data. A major problem with Likert scales is that there are several possible sources of bias. Since she has problems dealing with this bias, she tries very hard to give an accurate, unbiased response when asked to fill one out herself. Therefore, when we get satisfactory to good service, she’ll give them 3’s and 4’s. (“Apples”)
At the other end, Volvo’s management apparently (like many, many, many companies) demand that every customer get service that returns nothing but 5’s. This is ludicrous and makes the data they’re getting useless, which in my opinion makes them really useless and lousy managers, but as I said, we see this a lot. The reality is that some customers get truly outstanding service and some get truly horrendous service and most probably get decent or reasonable service. (Can you say, “Bell Curve?” Sure, I knew you could!) Defining your company’s expectations as “nothing but 5’s or we’re a failure!” is stupid. But that’s their management, not their service people. (“Oranges”)
In short, the Long-Suffering Wife gives them honest answers to the questions being asked, even though the expectations on the other end are skewed.
Then the customer service staff get yelled at and (apparently) lose bonuses because they didn’t get all 5’s. Despite the fact that it’s stupid and meaningless to expect all 5’s. Then when we bring our car in they absolutely beg us to give them all 5’s and they bust their butts to do anything for us. And The Long-Suffering Wife sees it as average or above-average service (which it is, it’s not like they’re picking the car up at home and dropping off a loaner, which they’re not supposed to to begin with…) and the cycle starts all over.
I understand the service staff’s frustration. I understand that they’re working in a broken system. I understand and agree with the Long-Suffering Wife’s objection to giving inaccurate answers.
I also understand that it’s not my float!
I’m a pragmatist. While it looks like they’ve got a broken system, it’s not my system. While I think they’re getting useless results, they’re not my results. I think we’re getting perfectly good service and I don’t think the staff should be penalized for doing a “bad job” when they’re not. Since it’s no skin off of my nose, when the staff explains the situation and begs me to give them 5’s and I’m perfectly happy with the service received, fine, I’ll give them 5’s.
So now it’s a philosophical debate in the household. Should we give honest answers to the questions asked, or should we answer the real question and help out the perfectly competent staff?
The bigger question (which I don’t have an answer to, but would love to hear your feedback) is what to do when and if it IS my float at some point. If senior management needs accurate data, but managers and staff in the field are changing the rules and introducing bias into the results, how do you get rid of the bias?
Our solution to the Volvo customer satisfaction survey issue? The Long-Suffering Wife will now send me the link to the online survey and I’ll fill it out for us. That way we both get to hold our moral high ground and the Volvo service staff get their bonuses (based on useless data).
Filed under Not My Float, Ronnie
Now that we’re in 2014, I notice that there’s a marked uptick in the number of people pronouncing it as “Twenty Fourteen” instead of “Two Thousand Fourteen”.
At last, our long, national nightmare may be approaching an end!
Let’s review:
When did Columbus sail the ocean blue? “Fourteen Ninety-Two” (not “One Thousand Four Hundred Ninety-Two”, right?)
When was the Declaration of Independence signed? “Seventeen Seventy-Six” (not “One Thousand Seven Hundred Seventy-Six”, right?)
When did Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address? “Eighteen Sixty-Three” (not “One Thousand Eight Hundred Sixty-Three”, right?)
When did we land on the moon? “Nineteen Sixty-Nine” (not “One Thousand Nine Hundred Sixty-Nine”, right?
So, why do so many people continue to refer to last year as “Two Thousand Thirteen” and this new year as “Two Thousand Fourteen”?
I understand that when “Nineteen Ninety-Nine” rolled over to “the new millennium” (which didn’t really happen until 01-Jan-2001, but that’s a whole different anal and pedantic rant!) that it was more reasonable to use “Two Thousand” than something like “Twenty Aught Aught”. (Although I sort of had a fondness for “Twenty Double-Naught” — it had sort of a steampunk penache to it.)
For the next nine years, I was okay with “Two Thousand One” through “Two Thousand Nine”. There were those who argued for “Twenty Oh One” through “Twenty Oh Nine”, or “Twenty Aught One” and so on. While they were technically correct, they were definitely in the minority. I found that I could go either way on this one. I think I started these nine years doing more of the “Twenty Oh One” and finished it doing mostly “Two Thousand Nine”. It was a subtle transition, and I heard more and more people doing the same.
Besides, everyone had already spent the previous twenty-two years referring to that bizarre (and wonderful) Kubrick film as “Two Thousand One”.
But when we got to 01-Jan-2010, why did so many people continue to go with “Two Thousand Ten”? At that point, “Twenty Ten” just sounded so, so much better and more natural. Besides, everyone had already spent the previous twenty-six years referring to that non-Kubrick film as “Twenty-Ten“. (I’ll confess, I really liked “2010: The Year We Made Contact”, but I might be in the minority on that one.)
For four years now I’ve wondered why more people aren’t switching to the more conventional pronunciation. (I won’t argue “correct” vs “incorrect”. People talk the way they talk and the dictionary makers have to follow them, not lead them. Writing on the other hand…) Slowly I’ve seen more people on television and more folks in real life using it, but I’ve really been amazed at how slow the transition has been.
Finally in the last week or so of “2013 Year In Review” shows and “What To Look Forward To In 2014” shows, plus all of the parades and holiday football games and so on, I think that I’ve started to hear almost a 50/50 split. I haven’t been keeping a scorecard, but I have a sense that the tide may have turned.
And then of course, there was a Chevy Truck ad that I saw on television yesterday that uses both in the same ad. Bravo, Chevy, bravo!
Filed under Paul
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We Love The Stars Too Fondly 