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
October 8, 2019 · 23:40

Maybe It’s Part Of The Joke?

A Hallmark movie led me down the rabbit hole and into the Twilight Zone Time Machine, where I ended up watching an old Monkees video.

Listen to the music, particularly the drums, and watch Micky Dolenz “playing” the aforementioned drums:

Thank goodness they had the sense to usually be showing other band members when the more aggressive drum riffs were being heard. USUALLY.

I understand that his primary role was as the vocalist in the band, and according to his Wikipedia article he was taught to play the drums after the band was put together and could play passibly well by the time they went on tour. But on this song, “Fast” Eddie Hoh played the drums and Dolenz only sang.

Even in the Hallmark movies, when they have a character playing the piano or a violin, they at least do an acceptable job of faking it. This video? Well, not so much.

But on second thought – maybe it’s part of the joke?

 

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Filed under Music

October 7, 2019 · 23:18

Big Hangar, BIG Plane

At the CAF SoCal site in Camarillo (come out and visit us some time! if you’re there on Saturday, look me up, I’ll show you around – or you can go around with one of the docents who actually know what they’re talking about rather than making shut ip) we have three large hangars. They’re not small.

Then again, neither is our PBJ.

Semper Fi will fit in the maintenance hangar, but not with a ton of room to spare. When she moves in, a number of other aircraft have to move out. It’s time for a little engine work (sorry, she won’t be at those last couple of airshows this season) so the squeeze is on.

It is, however, SPECTACULAR to walk into the hangar under that tail and those huge wings! (Again, stop by…)

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Filed under CAF, Photography

October 6, 2019 · 23:44

Weight & Balance

Weight and balance are important things for all of us to keep an eye on in the universal, all-encompassing, meaning of life sort of philosophical zeitgeist sort of thing.

In a more direct, calculated, numerical viewpoint, they’re also pretty critical when flying an aircraft. Too heavy, the wings can snap off. If the center of gravity is too far forward, the plane will never climb and will nose over and dive into the ground. Too far back, and the nose will go high until you stall, at which point you can have a similarly “bad day.’

Removing a very large, heavy item from the front of an aircraft (i.e., the engine off of a Spitfire fighter) will seriously screw with your weight and balance. Good thing that no one’s flying the plane without an engine, huh?

It ’tis a thing of beauty and it will pull that high-performance fighter through the air like a bat out of hell.  2,000+ horsepower on a V-12 engine will do that.

Oh, by the way, last night I mistakenly referred to this as a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. It’s not. (But the one in the P-51 is…) While obviously a Rolls-Royce, this is a Griffon 65 engine. (Good thing no one actually reads anything that I write, eh?)

At the moment however, this one needs to be sent off for a complete tear-down and possible repairs. That will set us back well into five figures (please, let it not be six!) but we’re all about safety.

Now I’ll see if I’ve got enough balance to take my overweight butt into bed! Monday awaits…

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Filed under CAF, Flying, Photography

October 5, 2019 · 22:57

Spitfire Engine Removal

How exactly does one remove the engine from a Spitfire?

Very slowly and very carefully, apparently.

And with the use of a honkin’ big crane.

Given that a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine (if you can find one – pro tip, you can’t) will run in the neighborhood of $500,000, this makes perfect sense.

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Filed under CAF, Photography

October 4, 2019 · 23:52

Trash Bin Perspective

It caught my eye.

I don’t know why.

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Filed under Photography

October 3, 2019 · 23:11

Kubrick

I do love me some movies, both as entertainment and as art. There are certain actors I would watch read a shopping list – Jimmy Stewart, Helen Mirren, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Murray, many others. Similarly, there are directors for whom I will hand over my cash blindly to see anything they’ve done – Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, early Rob Reiner. But above all, there’s Stanley Kubrick.

Tonight I fell into watching the second half of “Full Metal Jacket” when I had had enough of the news. It was more relaxing.

Long, long tracking shots. Moving, bobbing, weaving through smoke and fire.

No. Special. Effects.

Real. Film.

Wow.

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Filed under Entertainment, Movies

October 2, 2019 · 22:53

Make Art – October 02nd

So many questions. So many questions about questions.

So little information. So little context. So few answers.

Tough enough determining facts – “truth” borders on the metaphysical.

Yet…

We have to keep asking, searching, seeking.

We must keep being lied to, being obstructed, being blinded.

As painful and frustrating as it can be, we need to remember that the alternatives are worse.

Or, so we tell ourselves. (We must!)

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Filed under Art, Photography

October 1, 2019 · 23:58

Little Victories

Sure, the entire world’s going to Hell (*waves broadly at US & UK politics and global climate change and EVERYTHING*) but you have to take joy where you can find it, a bit of satisfaction in every little victory.

In my case, the bane of my existence (well, one of them, sorta) has been a quest to reset the freaking “Maintenance Overdue” warning message on my car’s dashboard.

For the most part it’s a lovely car. A 2011 Volvo C70 convertible, a lot of fun to drive, comfortable, nice handling, a big enough engine to make it go “zoom” when needed, and always fun to drive with the top down. Not always practical to drive with the top down, but still fun.

Except for one stupid, frustrating, nagging, and expensive problem. Which still isn’t fixed after a couple of LONG stays at the dealer and way, Way, WAAAAY too much money. But it’s drive able. If I’m okay being frustrated, and nagged, and poorer for the experience.

Which in turn means that I’m not taking it back to the dealer for routine maintenance. I would rather have my eyeballs eaten out by rabid fire ants than go back to the dealer.

But I’m not stupid about maintenance. It needs to be done, and it has been. Just not by the dealer.

Then, even though the vehicle had been at the dealer not too long ago during the last desperate attempt to get the stupid, frustrating, nagging, and expensive problem resolved and had had all of its regular maintenance done then, this warning shows up every time I start the vehicle.

More stupid. More frustrating. More nagging. I’ll be damned if it’s going to be more expensive.

The internet can answer almost any questions, right? So I searched. And found three or four varying sets of instructions for resetting the warning. It’s got to be some combination or sequence of “push this, do that, hold this button for five seconds, turn the key, wiggle your ears, pat your head, rub your tummy” and it resets the electronics. Right?

Right?

Wrong.

None of it worked. I’ve tried every day or two for weeks.

So I got online with Volvo. They won’t tell me the reset sequence is. Bastards!!! All I got from them was, “take it back to the dealer, they’ll do it for you.” (I may have to send them a box of rabid fire ants.)

I finally buckled and called the dealer and asked for guidance. They said to bring it in. I politely (i.e., without mentioning the rabid fire ants) said that couldn’t happen and asked again nicely if they could put a mechanic on the phone or could email the instructions. Nope, they can’t do that.

BASTARDS!!!

Today, again, I tried to reset the code when I left the office. Maybe I had seen something in one of the online sources that had a hint of something to do that was a tiny bit different (“hold the button until just the third or fourth flash of the “i” icon”), but whatever I did…

IT WORKED!!!

So go ahead, world! Fall apart! Oceans rise! Continents sink! Comets smash into the planet!

I’ll die happy because tomorrow morning when I go to work, all I’ll see on my dashboard is the time and temp and how many miles until empty.

Little victories!

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Filed under Paul

September 30, 2019 · 23:44

I’m Getting Gas Over Gas

What the hell happened??!!

(Images from GasBuddy.com)

Things were okay all summer, at least by LA standards. Yeah, I know that gas is almost a buck a gallon cheaper in most of the country, and in some places more than that, but for LA, hovering steadily at about $3.67/gallon is okay. That’s the average for the area – I was usually finding it for about a dime less in the West San Fernando Valley.

Then it started to creep up.

Then it exploded last week!

There’s a couple of places near work where the cheap stuff, unleaded regular, self serve, is $4.25/gallon. We’re not talking about Beverly Hills here, or some “oasis” station in a “gas desert.” We’re talking about a place on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills with another station across the street and two more within a mile in either direction!

Geeze!!

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Filed under Los Angeles

September 29, 2019 · 23:27

The Curse Of Being A News Junkie

I’ve always been more than just a little bit of a news junkie, even long, LONG before the Internet and FaceBook and Twitter made a 24/7/365 fire hose of information available at our fingertips.

When I was a kid it was mostly about the space program (we were going to go to the moon!) and baseball.

The first time I remember getting truly immersed in the news in general was high school. Somewhere along the line we had a class or a program where we could get the New York Times delivered to school every day for some ridiculous price, like $1 per week, and it was part of what we were studying for some social studies class. As a result, I was reading it five days a week and also had a core group of friends and classmates who were also reading it. There was a lot going on in the early 1970’s – Vietnam, Watergate, the moon landings, Nixon in China…

Then I went to Annapolis and that training served me in good stead. As part of the program there to train midshipmen to be able to react and think under pressure there were daily requirements to have memorized by breakfast a whole slew of things from the morning newspaper. Lots of it was sports related (you had better know the score of the game for the favorite sports teams of your company’s upper classmen!) but you also had better be on top of the major news stories of the day.

Going through Plebe Summer will make you a news junkie at a subatomic level!

In the intervening years after Annapolis there was college and marriage and kids and all of that adult stuff to deal with so for a while the obsession with the daily news faded just a bit into the background. It never disappeared, but it migrated down the priority list to somewhere lower in life’s daily Top Ten.

Then came the Internet. And FaceBook. And Twitter.

Along with all of the current bullshit that is US and world politics, which simultaneously leave me wanting to never, EVER hear about it again while also keeping VERY close tabs on every detail I can because I want to know what existential danger is coming at us next.

There are those out there who ignore all of that. I’ve met people who barely know who the President is or what the fuss is about – and they don’t care.

Ignorance = bliss, or so I’ve been told.

Perhaps, and there are most certainly days when I’m a bit jealous of that worldview. But, to quote the punchline from an old Hudson & Landry comedy routine, “I couldn’t live like that!”

So when the alarm goes off at 07:00, the morning news comes on. Social media and emails get answered, and the headlines and a few key Twitter accounts get monitored periodically through the day. When I have an hour or so, it’s often dipping a toe into that firehose of information.

Is that healthy? Maybe – maybe not. But I can’t cut it off cold turkey and not look at all, any more than I could go driving while wearing a blindfold.

But if the news cycle could get just a bit less insane, if we could take the batshit crazy down a couple of notches, well, that would be great.

I’m thinking that about 90% of the population could get behind that request.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts