August 16, 2019 · 22:05

Staring Into The Fridge

After a couple of weeks of 10+ hour days at work, this weekend at the airshow, while a lot of fun that I’m looking forward to, will also be 12+ hour days. And with the reality-show related event going into overdrive on Monday at work, it looks like just one long, long day after another for at least a couple of weeks.

So you may have days in there when the best I have the energy to post here will be a handful of pictures from the WordPress phone app just as “proof of life.”

How run down and tired am I?

Tonight I caught myself after probably a full minute or more with the door to the refrigerator hanging open as I leaned on and stared in. It was dinner time, that was fine. the problem is that I had come into the kitchen because I had just zapped some leftovers in the microwave, which is next to the refrigerator.

I could have stared in that fridge all night long – the hot food was still going to be in the microwave.

Oh.

Yeah.

See you at the airshow, probably way too damn early tomorrow.

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Filed under Airshows, Paul

August 15, 2019 · 23:17

Shedding Load

Even though I don’t have an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) certification on my pilot’s license (in other words, I haven’t been trained to fly by instruments alone in clouds and lousy weather, so it’s Visible Flight Rules and relatively clear skies only for me right now), I do enjoy subscribing to an online series by PilotWorkshops.com that gives IFR scenarios and asks you to think through how you would handle them.

The current one talks about someone flying IFR when the alternator dies and they’re on batteries, which won’t last long enough to get to where they need to go. The need to start shutting down systems and instruments (“shedding load”) in order to stretch the batteries as far as they can go, while not turning off anything that they absolutely need.

If you’ve ever seen the excellent “Apollo 13” movie from Ron Howard, you might recognize a similar issue there. The fuel cells exploded, so the CM (Command Module) was shut down while they lived off of the LM (Lunar Module) systems. But the LM doesn’t have a heat shield and can’t survive re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Only the CM could do that. But its batteries were so drained and limited that turning systems on just before re-entry would overload them and shut everything down, leaving the crew to die in an out of control re-entry. The backup crews on the ground had to find just the perfect sequence of systems to turn on that would let them function without tripping the system into overload.

I know the feeling. It seems it’s been month after month after month at work where it’s been one crisis after another, and now we have a new project coming at us like a freight train. (You can see a bit about it here.) It should be great for the organization, but we’re trying to do months worth of work in just a couple of weeks, and it’s exhausting.

Add in the fact that my work at the CAF SoCal hangar has been “exciting” all year. THEN add in the fact that this weekend is our annual airshow at Camarillo, so I’ll be putting in a lot of hours all weekend.

And on Monday, after that long (but hopefully fun!) weekend, the work event goes into overdrive, ramping up to a week where I’ll pretty much be working 12+ hour shifts every day for about seven to nine days.

So…

I’m looking to do some load shedding.

What am I doing that’s expendable, or can be delayed or put onto a back burner?

And when I’ve done that and I’m still like the Apollo 13 simulations where I’m tripping the system into overload on every try, what is there that can still be done away with? And then, what next that I was sure I absolutely can’t do without but maybe need to reconsider and be viscous about prioritizing?

It’s not a matter of cutting fat but sparing bone – it’s more like, “How much bone can we truly afford to lose? And can we actually afford to lose 10% more than that? 20%?”

Damn, that Labor Day weekend’s looking pretty nice right now! But the only way out is through.

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Filed under CAF, Homes4Families, Paul

August 14, 2019 · 23:25

Two Steps Forward, Three Back

I might be doing that wrong.

But it would explain a lot.

As discussed from time to time earlier, the lessons learned in training for and running marathons need to be remembered when not necessarily running a marathon in the literal sense, but most certainly running one in the figurative sense.

Some times you run slower than you planned, but you keep running. Some times you can’t keep running, but you keep walking. Some times it’s simply enough to stay on your feet until things improve.

It’s easy to get discouraged with so much to get done, so little obvious progress, so little rest or sleep, and so many frustrating things just waiting to spark anger.

Some days, just getting through it has to be enough.

Tomorrow’s another day. Maybe it will be better. Maybe it will just be another day to stay on your feet. Or maybe it will be a day you get knocked down and just want to stay there.

Get up.

Stay up.

Keep moving.

When you have to be, you’re stronger than you know you can be.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts

August 13, 2019 · 23:38

Joy Should Be More Than Simply The Absence Of Misery

Hardly PhD level  insight.

However, this evening I had the “joy” of fixing a toilet and while doing so I pondered the meaning of “joy.”

There is NO joy in repairing a toilet.

I’m sure there are some among us who would invoke “a sense of pride in a job well done” or some such bullshit. Perhaps. But that is not “joy.”

No, the closest I can come to feeling good at all about twenty minutes spent on repairing a toilet is that we can be truly miserable if the toilet remains broken.

So, in repairing the toilet, we avoid those hours, days, and (the way my schedule looks right now) the potential for weeks of dealing with the inconvenience and mess and misery of a broken toilet.

But – joy should be more than simply the absence of misery.

We need working toilets in our lives. And tonight, at least in Casa Willett, we have them.

We also need some joy in our lives. The more, the better! That, unfortunately, might be a bit more rare and elusive.

I hope you’re being more successful in that pursuit.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Deep Thoughts

August 12, 2019 · 22:30

Better Than A Poke In The Eye With A Sharp Stick

Getting out of work at 20:15 sort of sucks. Knowing it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better sucks even more.

Having this sort of view off of the parking lot deck doesn’t really make up for it, but as the title says…

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography

August 11, 2019 · 23:26

Water Drops On Porch Plants

The front porch and the nice bench there hadn’t been hosed down and cleaned off in a while, so I took care of that this afternoon. (I also startled a reasonably large lizard who was minding his own business behind a planter, but he wisely decided to scurry off into the bushes rather than stick around for conversations about lizard life.)

In the process, water got sprayed onto the bushes just in front of the porch, turning them into a zillion little prisms just as the sun set.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Photography

August 10, 2019 · 22:28

Hellcat In The Sun

An F-6 Hellcat.

Getting all cleaned up for next weekend, the Wings Over Camarillo airshow.

If you’re in the LA/SoCal area, maybe come and see us. I’ll probably be running around somewhere in the CAF SoCal hangars, down at the west end of the ramp. Stop by and say hello.

This plane, along with our F8 Bearcat, PBJ, P-51, Spitfire, Zero, PT-19s and SNJs and F-24 will all be flying, along with dozens if not hundreds of other aircraft.

On Saturday, the Camarillo animal shelter (on the airport, just down the block from our hangars) will also be holding a “Clear the Shelter” event.

For more information, see wingsovercamarillo.com.

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Filed under Airshows, CAF, Flying, Photography

August 9, 2019 · 23:37

The Rabbit Hole

Being really tired at the end of a long, exhausting week can leave one…vulnerable.

The rabbit hole of the internet and Google searches and Wikipedia and IMDB and all of it can be strong on someone in a vulnerable position.

Which can lead to learning…things.

Start with an innocent Hallmark movie with Danica McKellar, who is cute and smart and has a most interesting and diverse background outside of acting, so I sort of adore her.

Which led to the Oracle of Bacon to see her Bacon Number.

Which led to learning that she also has an Erdös-Bacon number, so of course I had to go see what an Erdös number was.

Which led to me realizing just how freaking rare it is to have an Erdös-Bacon number!

Which led me to find out that she has an Erdös-Bacon-Sabbath number (ESB) of 10.

Which led me even further down the rabbit hole to find out what an ESB is.

Really? REALLY??!!

Albert Einstein has an ESB of only 8, while Danica McKellar has a 10?

So what’s Brian May‘s ESB? A man I consider to be a god walking among us!

Finally, a question that appears to have no simple answer in a Google search or two.

But it’s obvious that his “S” number is 1, since it’s easy to find references to a recent collaboration with Black Sabbath.

And Oracle of Bacon says his “B” number is 3. (Via Joe Walsh and John Candy, “The Strat Pack,” “The Blues Brothers,” and “Planes, Trains, Automobiles,” obviously!)

So can we track down an “E” number for Brian May? Apparently it’s a 7.

So Brian May, lead guitarist for Queen, astrophysicist, demigod, has an ESB of 11.

While Danica McKellar has an ESB of 10. I wonder if she knows?

And if Danica’s ESB is 10 but her Erdös-Bacon number is 6 (E=4, B=2), then what is the “S” that’s a 4?

Apparently even THAT isn’t a questions that can stump Google tonight.

 

 

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Silly Shit

August 8, 2019 · 23:39

No Context For You – August 08th

It’s a fuzzy picture of a thing.

It’s not a snake. I hate snakes.

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Filed under Photography

August 7, 2019 · 23:56

Another Straw

One thing about last night’s ISS photos is that the field of view is a bit narrower than normal. I was using the generic 18-55mm zoom lens that came with the Canon Rebel XT when I got it in 2005, but I wasn’t using it pulled back to the 18mm setting to get the widest field of view. It was set zoomed in just a bit, at 24mm.

That’s not a preference – that’s a workaround to a lens that’s suddenly getting glitchy. I first noticed it about three weeks ago when we were up in Ventura and the camera kept jamming. I realized that it would only jam when the lens was set to the widest zoom. When zoomed in all the way, it was fine. I played with it a bit and found that there was a point where it would work if zoomed out more. So I’ve been using the lens in that somewhat limited way ever since.

Yesterday I was troubleshooting. I have multiple camera bodies, so it’s easy to tell if it’s the lens or the camera that was going bad.

Same lens, different camera bodies, same problem when used the same way. Seems that it’s the lens.

One more pain in the ass annoyance to deal with.

It’s not much compared to what you see in the evening news. (Assuming you can still stomach the evening news.) It’s a little bit of “first world problems.” (Okay, it’s a whole huge chunk, not a little bit.) If this should be the worst thing that happens this week (it already isn’t, not by a big stretch) I should be grateful. And worst case, the lens dies and has to be replaced, well, I got almost 14 years of heavy use out of it, literally tens of thousands of pictures.

And yet…

Another straw that this camel could live without.

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Filed under Paul, Photography