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.
Filed under CAF, Photography
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.
Filed under Entertainment, Movies
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!)
Filed under Art, Photography
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!
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!!
Filed under Los Angeles
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.
Filed under Deep Thoughts
Yeah, that was way, WAAAAAAY too close, dude or dudette!
Yeah, I was turning right and had slowed down and was signalling, but there was no way any sane person would have gunned it through the intersection like that. It’s a good thing that neither of us had an extra coat of paint on our cars or we would have been swapping it.
And the way you then fishtailed your way back over into the left lane and gunned your mom-mobile SUV like NCC-1701 going to Warp Six – impressive.
So as I pulled up next to you on your right at that stop sign that you graciously deigned to honor, I was ready to use my “driving finger” to “signal” that I thought you were “number one,” if you know what I mean.
Who the hell drives like that?
But I didn’t, because it turned out you were just a kid, probably really early in your driving learning curve…
…and you Mom in the passenger seat was saying things to you at such a volume that my flipping you off and screaming would have just been pale and pathetic in comparison.
Good luck, Mom. I’ve been there.
Today was my turn to be a little bit more experienced, a little bit faster, a little bit smarter.
Tomorrow you’re on your own.
Filed under Distracted Driving, Los Angeles
Rod something?
Jeff Bark? Buck? Bork? Is he that Swedish Chef guy?
I hear that Maggie may – or she may not. We’ll see where the night leads.
Filed under Los Angeles, Music, Photography
A picture from a month ago at the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” build in Palmdale. The name on the equipment caught my eye.
Indeed, that’s a dingo that’s quite capable of “aighting your baaaybeee!”
It was hilarious at the time, but then again, I don’t think I had slept more than a dozen hours in the previous five or six days combined…
Filed under Homes4Families, Photography
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