Author Archives: momdude

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About momdude

Space cadet | Family dude | Photographer | Music lover | Traveler | Science fiction fan | Hugo Award nominee | Writer | 5x NASA Social participant | KC Chiefs fan | LA Kings fan | Senior Director of Finance & Administration for ALS Network | Member & former staff Finance Officer at the Commemorative Air Force SoCal Wing | Hard core left-wing liberal | Looking for whatever other shenanigans I can get into
December 5, 2020 · 19:49

Red Leaf Saturday With Berries

Fall has started to arrive in SoCal.

It might not be the Black River Valley or Franconia Notch, but we do get some color.

Not sure what these are, but there are a bunch of them in the parking lot at my office.

Even better, with COVID the lot and the building were almost empty, so I didn’t have to deal with anyone wondering why some lunatic was wandering around the parking lot taking pictures of leaves.

Yeah, like that’s EVER stopped me!

It was odd being in the office for a couple hours (computer problems, had to get it back online) but at least I had something spectacular to look at when I came out!

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

December 4, 2020 · 23:59

The Scenic Tour Of LA Airspace

We live under the flight path for Burbank Airport, about fifteen miles out on the straight-in approach to Runway 8. In normal times, that means a few dozen 737’s a day coming from west to east at about 5,000′. Especially as a pilot, I know what’s normal.

Tonight I went out to look at the Christmas lights and get some air and there was a Southwest 737 going overhead from north to south. That’s odd. It could be that the winds had shifted and they were landing on Runway 33, but the winds weren’t blowing. Odd.

So I pulled out my phone, called up the FlightRadar24 app, and checked to see who it was above me. Southwest Airlines flight 605, from Phoenix to Burbank.

You can see where Burbank airport is (the pin just below and to the left of the “210” interstate icon, where the dashed black line going from the aircraft ends) and that green line shows the plane’s flight path.

This is not normal.

I called up the ATC Live app (Air Traffic Control) and started listening to the conversations between the plane and the Burbank tower. They were asking “how much fuel and how many souls onboard,” which is critical information in an emergency situation. It was obvious pretty quickly that they were having trouble with the flaps on the plane, couldn’t get them fully deployed, and weren’t going to be able to land at Burbank. With no flaps they would be landing fast and it would take a long time to slow down, so they needed a long runway. They headed off to LAX.

I followed the conversations through LAX Approach ATC and then LAX Tower. They cleared out some other traffic going into LAX, took a couple of opportunities to circle around a bit to buy time to slow down, and finally got down safely at LAX. There were some conversations about whether or not they might need to stay on the runway for an inspection (I’m sure their tires and brakes were really hot trying to slow down from a very fast landing) and whether or not they might have shed any debris (like from a broken flap or a burst tire) onto the runway, which would interfere with any planes landing behind them, but in the end it all turned out pretty well, all things considered.

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Filed under Flying

December 3, 2020 · 23:59

Maybe Tomorrow

The Chinese have landed a robot probe on the moon. It’s scooped up samples and then taken off to lunar orbit, heading back to Earth in a little bit. It will be the first time since the mid 1970’s that samples have been brought back from the moon.

The Japanese had their own asteroid sample pick up a couple years ago and on Saturday the vehicle with the sample will be coming back to land in Australia.

Meanwhile, yesterday the Arecibo radio telescope collapsed in Puerto Rico.

We could use a win. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, SpaceX is going to try to take a 30-story rocket that looks like something out of an Isaac Asimov novel and send it 50,000 feet up into the sky, then try to land it like they do their Falcon 9 rockets.

It’s insane. It will be cool. Let’s do it!

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Filed under Astronomy, Space

December 2, 2020 · 22:49

No Context For You – December 02nd

The less you know, the better.

As Crash told Nuke, “Don’t think. It can only hurt the ballclub.”

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Filed under Photography

December 1, 2020 · 23:44

December At Last

It’s one thing to have your head know that it’s December, but in a year like 2020, which for a significant portion of the populace has been the worst year of our lives, it’s another thing to have your gut know.

Yes, I know that other societies have gone through truly horrific years that are worse than this – 1939 through 1945 come to mind, as do 1914 through 1918, and I’m sure that the early 1860’s were no picnic. You get the drift. And individuals no doubt have years which are much worse with deaths of family members, natural disasters, disease, all of the above, and so on. But for my generation and the several that follow, as a whole, as an international, global society, 2020 has arguably been the worst of our lifetimes.

And now it’s almost over. There’s hope for 2021 with vaccines on the horizon, as well as a shift in the political winds. That’s not to say that something even MORE horrific might not do a jump scare on us all still, but in real life the odds seem to be against it.

So we’re in that last month. We’re locked down. We’re wearing masks on the rare occasions we do go out for groceries or essential tasks. We’re decorating for the holidays and doing Zoom meetings instead of huge holiday dinners and parties. We’re sacrificing and we can see, if not the actual finish line, at least the bell lap coming in just four to seven weeks.

(By the way, if you’re NOT wearing masks and NOT quarantining and NOT staying home from parties, then please eat shit and die, fuck off, then keep fucking off, then fuck off until you come to a gate with a sign saying, “You can’t fuck off past here” – climb over that gate, dream the impossible dream, and just keep fucking off forever until the heat death of the universe.)

[Yeah, I know, I should come out and just say what I REALLY feel and not hold back…]

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah…

Assuming you’re sane and intelligent and not a sociopath (which is a good assumption since you’re reading my site), then you will understand why I was so struck today in a staff Zoom meeting (or was it Teams? or Slack? or Skype? or Ring Central?) when it hit my gut that we are finally in December. It’s symbolic. It’s a marker, a signpost, a solid, tangible bit of evidence that proves that 2020 is almost over. And 2021 is hope…

Stay safe. December’s going to be okay in some ways, incredibly rough in others. But we’ll make it through.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul

November 30, 2020 · 23:23

2020 Christmas Lights – Round Two

A number of factors are slowing things down more noticeably this year when it comes to putting up the Christmas lights.

First, I find that I’m feeling old. Maybe it’s just the effects of almost nine months of COVID lockdown that’s limited my physical movements, and the Thanksgiving week diet that’s put a half dozen pounds back on, but it might also be related to the percentage of grey vs black hair on my head.

Secondly, it’s just me. Way back when of course it was always a family affair with all three kids helping, and even in the past few years the Youngest Daughter usually came by for a day and helped since she still lives in LA. Naturally, again due to COVID, she’s not stopping by this year.

Third, it’s infrastructure! We’re renting instead of owning, and over the course of almost thirty years we had a lot of little hooks and nails and power cords and a routine that made even a much bigger display go up quickly. I can’t do that in a rented house, so I’ve created temporary attachment points for lights using nylon twist ties. That worked well for two years, but I’m finding that many of those nylon ties are breaking when I try to use them this year, so I have to take the time to put up new ones.

Finally, my decorations are getting older and more fragile even faster than my body is. I won’t put up strings of lights that have sections burnt out, and I’m finding a fair amount of the ones I put up last year that are failing this year. I don’t really want to go off to the hardware store to get new ones (COVID!!) so sorting through the bins of old lights and cobbling together new sets that all work is time consuming.

Oh, well. I guess it keeps me off the streets at night.

I did manage to get all of the timers set, went through the big bulbs along the roof line and replaced a few that had burnt out, and got several strings of lights out into the bushes and plants along the front of the house. I didn’t get to the big, bright strings that normally go over the garage (the big dark area on the left in the picture), mainly because I can’t find them yet. Maybe this next weekend.

In the meantime, it’s getting there, not terrible, just not finished yet. But I did get the full moon rising over the house last night, so that was pretty sweet.

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Photography

November 29, 2020 · 23:35

Put A Ring On It – Full Moon Edition

It’s a full moon tonight, and in and hour and a half or so there will be a penumbral lunar eclipse. Despite the big name, it’s not something that’s even likely to be visible to the naked eye. In short, the Earth’s shadow has a dark, inner part (umbra) and a much, much fainter outer part (penumbra) and the Moon will be going through a portion of that thin outer part. If I didn’t tell you it was happening, you wouldn’t know it by looking or noticing anything different.

Now, when the Moon goes through the inner, umbral part of the Earth’s shadow, it can be spectacular and the Moon can appear to get dark, turn red, or orange, or even dark brown and almost disappear for up to an hour or more. (See my pictures from the 2014 lunar eclipse here, and the 2015 lunar eclipse here.)

Nothing so dramatic tonight. BUT…

I took a peek just now, and there’s a very high, thin layer of clouds over SoCal. That means the moonlight is passing through a very fine layer of ice crystals, which makes a 22° arc all the way around the moon, sometimes known as a moon ring or winter halo.

It’s not a subtle effect and the sight is spectacular, but it doesn’t make for a nice crisp picture, especially with the full moon being so, So, SO much brighter than the ring. But the iPhone does a pretty good job of capturing it.

And with that, the four-day holiday weekend ends. Monday lurks, but at least we have an amazing, beautiful sight in the sky above us. And in twenty-four days we have the Christmas and New Year’s break with just a couple days of work over a ten day period. And in fifty-one days…

Hang in there!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography

November 28, 2020 · 23:19

Wild Turkeys

We just had THAT holiday and most of us had some sort of turkey – and most of us are STILL eating turkey.

Turkeys’ range is known to cover most of North America east of the Rockies, but west of the Great Plains the range is spottier. The map actually doesn’t show them much of anywhere down in Southern California – but I have evidence that they’re here, at least in the San Diego / Mount Palomar area as of 2007.

The Mount Palomar Observatory with the world famous 200″ telescope is extremely cool to visit. I recommend it if you visit the Southern California / San Diego area.

The problem with getting down the mountain is that our brakes started overheating, and when they heat up they don’t brake. This is bad.

There are pull-outs and rest stops for just this sort of thing, so we stopped for a few minutes to let the brakes cool. It’s a heavily wooded area and after a couple minutes, on the other side of the road, I noticed movement in the bushes.

Naturally, I grabbed my camera, crossed the road, and hoped it wasn’t bears or something hungry and fanged. It wasn’t, it was a flock of wild turkeys.

They were off in the bushes, moving in and out of sunshine, so it was tough getting a good photo. There were seven or eight total, and the coloration on them was astonishing. Their feathers were iridescent when the sun caught them.

So believe it or not, there are wild turkeys in the Southern California mountains. I have proof, and now so do you!

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Filed under Astronomy, Critters, Photography, Travel

November 27, 2020 · 22:53

2020 Christmas Lights – Round One

As much as I had thought about starting Christmas lights a week or even several weeks early this year (because 2020 = SUCKS while Christmas lights = anti-SUCKS, in case that wasn’t obvious), the intentions might have been good but the work load and that whole “only 24 hours in the day and that’s the LAW!” thing sort of ruled that out. But now it’s after Thanksgiving, the normal time for starting to put up lights, in no small part because there’s a four-day weekend, so off we go!

I got up about half of what’s normal for this house over the last two years, but it’s the harder half with almost all of the roof lights and ladder work done. The lights that still need to go up go into those bushes and ground cover and that’s pretty straightforward and quick. (I hope!)

Plus there’s a 13 day-old moon rising, one day away from full!

Still need the lights over the garage door, but let’s hope it’s quick tomorrow and Sunday. Remember, if you aren’t blowing circuit breakers, you can still put up more lights!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Christmas Lights, Photography

November 26, 2020 · 22:33

Thanksgiving 2020

What an odd holiday this year.

On the one hand, I have so much to be personally thankful for – family whom I love, our health (so far, and let’s keep it that way), a job with a great team where I find challenges and rewards and wonderful folks to work with, and overall a great many things capable of bringing me joy.

On the other hand – well, read the headlines. We seem to have dodged the worst of the political nightmare if we can make it another 57 days without an outright catastrophe, but it will take decades to repair the damage that the last four years have inflicted. And the COVID numbers continue to skyrocket with another 57 days before we can get an actual adult in charge. And, well, everything else.

This year we did not meet up with our kids or in-laws as we have every year in the past. There was not a huge bird or a full table or a house full of laughter and jokes and football and parades. There was just a lovely dinner for two.

We set up Zoom meetings with the Long Suffering Wife’s family back east and then with our kids and in-laws out on the Left Coast. We relaxed and picked up the mess as the wind was howling (35 mph at times with gusts pushing 50) but overall it was a relaxing day, with a long weekend ahead to put up lights and start the Christmas celebrations.

I hope you and your family had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving. And if you’re not in the US, then he, it’s Friday!! Celebrate along with us.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Photography