August 16, 2018 · 23:35

Wings Over Camarillo This Weekend

So last night I got sort of unexpectedly dark and pissy about missing Worldcon this year (AGAIN!!!) and while I feel fully justified in being pissed off about that, the reason we’re missing it is not without a bit of upside.

I’ve written and shown lots of pictures about previous years‘ Wings Over Camarillo airshow – it’s a nice, mid-sized show with lots of neat stuff to see, including all of the CAF SoCal planes we can get into the air. (For those of you who might just be joining me here, in addition to my day job I’m in my fifth (?) year as the Finance Officer of the CAF SoCal Wing.)

So if you’re in the greater Southern California area this weekend and you’re looking for something to do, swing on by! Aside from all of the other things there are to do at the show, when you swing by the CAF hangers (we’re at the far western end of the part of the ramp that’s open to visitors, four huge hangers and all the warbirds you can eat) and say hello. Ask just about anyone in a CAF shirt where I am and they can track me down. I’ll be running around like a lunatic all weekend doing Finance Officer shit, but there’s always time to say hello, both for old friends who might come out to the show and for new friends who I just haven’t met yet.

Oh, yeah, there might be pictures this weekend. Plane pictures.

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Filed under CAF, Flying

August 15, 2018 · 23:38

No Worldcon For Us – Again

My calendar reminds me that right about now is when I was supposed to be finishing a long drive from LA to San Jose and checking into our hotel for this year’s World Science Fiction Convention (aka “Worldcon”).

That’s not happening. I’m not thrilled.

About six or seven weeks ago we cancelled our reservations and told friends that we weren’t going to be there. The Wings Over Camarillo airshow is this weekend and as the Finance Officer for the Wing it’s sort of critical that I be there. Last year I wasn’t (it was the total solar eclipse!) and for that I made the trip. And then had to work twice as hard for quite a while to get caught up. It was worth it (TOTAL FREAKIN’ SOLAR ECLIPSE!!) but as much as I love going to Worldcon, I have to do the responsible, “adulting” thing this year. There will be another one next year.

But as I saw the posts of friends from all over the country and even all over the world heading to San Jose, I got to thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve been to Worldcon. Then I got really depressed.

Nine years.

The last time we went was 2009 in Montreal. Which was great, because we had gotten to Denver in 2008. And the family got to LA in 2006. (I didn’t since I was doing my MBA program at Pepperdine and had class that entire weekend.) And we all went to Toronto in 2003 and San Jose in 2002! And from 1978 (my first con of any kind) in Phoenix through 1984 in Los Angeles I went for seven years in a row!

But since Montreal I’ve missed Melbourne, Reno, Chicago, San Antonio, London, Spokane, Kansas City, and Helsinki. Fine, London when I was unemployed for a while might have been a reasonable, responsible call. And Kansas City was fairly soon after I started my current job and I probably didn’t have any vacation time accrued yet. But what’s up with that Reno, Chicago, and San Antonio stretch? What was the excuse then?

I’m sure it was something along the lines of, “There will be another one next year.”

So next year it’s Dublin. And in 2020 it will be New Zealand. (Okay, the 2020 site selection voting is going on this weekend, but no one else has a bid, so…) And likely to be (only one current bid) Washington DC in 2021 , Chicago in 2022, and Minneapolis in 2073.

Too early to start planning my excuse/reason for missing it next year?

I’ll watch the Hugo awards and masquerade online… Wait, it just hit me. No, I won’t. They’ll be on at times when I’m tied up with my job at the air show.

Y’all have fun in San Jose. Say hello to fandom for me. I’ll be over here being adult, boring, mundane, and contemplating the similarities between a rut and a grave.

(Wow, THAT escalated quickly!)

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Filed under CAF, Fandom, Paul

August 14, 2018 · 23:49

Thinning Patience

A half hour last night, another half hour tonight…

We have a problem with our cable signal and of course we can’t get anyone on the phone other than people who want us to reboot our cable box, make sure that our wires are all tightly connected, and check to see if we’ve got the TV set to the correct input source.

Anyone want to tell me horror stories about DirectTV or AT&T or Dish or whatever other options or out there so that I’ll realize just how good I’ve really got it?

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Filed under Castle Willett, Freakin' Idiots!

August 13, 2018 · 23:53

New Mycelium Attack Plan – Early & Often!!

Okay, gather ’round! Here’s the new plan for taking over Paul’s lawn! Instead of four or five big mushrooms pushing up on Wednesday just to get cut down on Thursday, let’s have a bunch of small ones pop up on Monday!!!

It could work!

(David Attenborough narrator voice: “It will not work.”)

But in that little gap between the sidewalk and the grass was this guy, who freaked out of his pinhead-sized brain and started scurrying around like a lunatic until he went straight off the sidewalk and into the gutter, where he continued to scurry until he suddenly froze.

Smaller than my little finger, maybe he thought if he closed his eyes and he held really, REALLY still and he couldn’t see me, then I couldn’t see him.

I do love my little lizard pals!

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Filed under Castle Willett, Critters, Photography

August 12, 2018 · 23:36

Forty-One Hour Old Moon

I don’t know that I’ve kept strict records, but this has got to be about the earliest I’ve ever seen the new moon. One day, sixteen hours, fifty-nine minutes as of the middle of this series of photos – forty-one hours, give or take.

I saw it first through binoculars – it was so faint in the still illuminated sunset sky that it was another ten minutes before I could see it with the naked eye.

As light as the sky was and as dim as the moon was, there was very little contrast between them.

In a minute though, Venus popped out, still fairly high in the sky. (Remember Venus?) I ran to get the other camera, since they were still fairly far apart.

Venus in the upper left, the moon just above the tree tops at the lower right. (Click to enlarge.)

Contrast got a touch better as it got darker, but the moon was still very close to the sun, which meant it was setting soon after the sun, before it could get very dark.

Tomorrow night it will be higher, closer to Venus, still up when it’s darker. And we start the cycle over again.

Go check it out!

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Filed under Astronomy, Photography, Space

August 11, 2018 · 23:17

Bearcat Closeups

When you get up close and personal with an F8-F Bearcat, it’s all nut, bolts, wires, metal, grease, and rivets – designed to tear through the sky like a bat out of Hell! It’s a beautiful thing.

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Filed under CAF, Flying, Photography

August 10, 2018 · 23:59

West & East

When it’s getting golden in the west…

…the trees light up in the east.

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Filed under Uncategorized

August 9, 2018 · 23:50

Smoke & Humidity

The Holy Fire may be 50+ miles away, but it kicked up today and we’re downwind. In addition, today was the hottest day of the week so far (the rental car I was driving said it was 110° at 14:15). Best of all, it was humid.

The humidity’s actually good, since it makes the brush somewhat harder to burn as the plants, grasses, brush, and trees absorb water. It also fills the skies with some nice popcorn clouds. Put it all together when I finally got out of the office, and it was spectacular.

I can’t rule out the possibility that I was staring into the wormhole as a starship emerged – but I’m pretty sure the odds favor it just being the sun, smoke to make it orangeish, and a bunch of puffy clouds running interference.

You’re right, this isn’t the new view from the new house. It’s the old view from the office parking garage roof.

I wish I could claim credit for getting the exposure just perfect here due to an amazing amount of skill! Nope, just got lucky. (No filters!)

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Filed under Photography, Weather

August 8, 2018 · 22:49

Smoky Sunset

As you might have heard, California is burning. On the other hand, California’s a pretty big place, so there’s nothing burning particularly close to us, at least not right at this second.

The closest fire here is the Holy Fire, down on the Orange County / Riverside County border, fifty or sixty miles away. But we still got a bunch of that smoke drifting over tonight and I was hoping it might at least make for a spectacular sunset.

Meh.

I’m not saying that the view from the heat soaked front porch wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t a 10/10 sort of day, let alone “an eleven.”

I do love me some sunset silhouettes, though!

You can see the bands of smoke that had drifted to the west from the Holy Fire.

As the sun set you could see (click on the picture to blow it up to full size) little bright spots in the palm tree fronds as certain fronds caught the sunlight just right and reflected it in my direction.

Admittedly, a much better sunset than some of the completely cloudless, boring ones we’ve been having, but not an award winner.

There were some nice ripples in the cloud layer showing up as the sun got further over the horizon.

And that little dot out there just to the left of center (click to enlarge) is a 747 on its way into LAX from Singapore –> Hong Kong –> Anchorage. We see them out there like beads on a string, coming in from over the pole, down the coast until they’re off Malibu, then turning downwind over West LA, turning base over Dodger Stadium and Downtown LA, and then turning final into LAX.

This particular one was Singapore Airlines Flight #7972, at about 13,000 feet when I caught it, slowing down to 342 knots. How do I know?

There’s an app for that.

(Image from Flight Aware)

As I said, like beads on a string, another big jet off of Santa Monica about five minutes ahead of it, another just coming into Ventura County north of Santa Paula and Fillmore about five minutes behind it.

I hope the people on the starboard side of those flights had a nice view of the sunset!

 

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Filed under Flying, Photography, Weather

August 7, 2018 · 22:02

Dividing But Not Conquering

While they might be thinking in their mycelium-ic (mycelic? myceliumish? myceliumbic? I’m making this shit up, obviously) brains that instead of growing in clusters, they’ll take over the yard by dividing and conquering, the simple fact is that the gardeners have all of the power tools.

Spreading out isn’t going to help – Thursday is coming.

Whether due to the spread out nature (these might be slightly different genetically from those that grew in clusters? or are they all the same since the mycelium underlying the yard is one huge organism?) or the heat (it was 107°F here today – again), these guys are more split and oddly-shaped than the last ones.

That does however leave them open to getting pictures taken of their gills and other structures, which were pretty well hidden in the earlier blooms.

It also has led to the somewhat inevitable by some of the neighbors that there’s one weird-ass dude living here.

One of the neighbors that I haven’t actually spoken to yet came out while I was taking these pictures tonight. I heard her Corgi barking at me first – I got up and tried to be friendly and say something, but she wasn’t having anything of it. As soon as the dog did its business, the two of them were headed back inside as fast as those little Corgi legs could waddle.

I’m sure it wasn’t the weird guy on the lawn taking pictures of mushrooms that had them hustling. I’m sure it was the heat.

Yeah, that’s it.

It was the heat.

Thursday is coming.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Photography