Saturday, August 15, 2009
Owl Gore & The Global Warming Zombies Celebrate
The First "Cone Of Death" Of The "Official" 2009 Hurricane Season Is Upon Us...
Anybody but me notice it took until mid August???
Anybody but me notice it took until mid August???
Sauce For The Goose
Sauce For The Gander...
Grab yourself a cup of Coffee, Sit back, and Click on this link
and check out House Speaker Nasty Pelosi's position on "Un American Activism"
http://www.breitbart.tv/06-flashback-pelosi-tells-anti-war-protesters-im-a-fan-of-disruptors/
heh...
Grab yourself a cup of Coffee, Sit back, and Click on this link
and check out House Speaker Nasty Pelosi's position on "Un American Activism"
http://www.breitbart.tv/06-flashback-pelosi-tells-anti-war-protesters-im-a-fan-of-disruptors/
heh...
Friday, August 14, 2009
Never Waste A Disaster To Increase Government Control
Hudson River To Become Yet Another "No Fly Zone"?
Back in the late 1950's when my Dad was learning to fly in the Army you could basically get in an airplane, start the engine, and take off in any direction as far as the gas in your gas tank would take you.
By the time I started flight training in 1991 at McCullum airfield in Kennesaw, Georgia the little airport didn't have a control tower but we had to learn to talk on a "Unicom" radio system, maintain a "pattern" and "Pattern Altitude", and stay underneath the screaming fighter jets and lumbering C-130 transport planes from nearby Dobbins Air Reserve Base and the aircraft coming and going into Atlanta's Hartsfield (and now Jackson) International Airport.
The air regulations and restrictions have gotten stricter and stricter since then (ever seen a book called AIM/FAR...Airman Information Manual/Federal Air Regulations?) and before it's over I say basically no one is going to go no where...unless it's on Delta Airlines.
Today after 9/11 you can't fly without government mandate over places like Disney World and Pro and College football stadiums during games in progress and most downtown metro areas (unless you're towing an Ad Banner or are the president in Air Force One.)
Any way, as a result of the recent mid-air collision, does anyone want to bet with me that within the year the Class B airspace under 1000 foot altitude along New York's Hudson River will be changed to be off limits completely or require some kind of new government mandated "permit" to fly within (of course the "permit" is just another form of Tax?)
I say that it will...because the Government just can't restrain itself these days from passing new laws when something happens instead of enforcing the existing laws already in place.
You see, unlike drivers today blabbing and texting on cell phones and wrecking their cars in the process, as a pilot you are trained to be able to fly the airplane, talk on the radio, scan you insturment panel, and look at complex maps while in the air...but YOUR PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY IS TO TO KEEP YOUR EYEBALLS FOCUSED 99% OF THE TIME OUTSIDE THE COCKPIT.
It was your job to look for other air traffic, mantain a mental picture of the terrain around you, and even keep in mind flat smooth areas with gliding distance should you lose engine power.
During training I'd be flying along worrying about whatever subject me and my instructor were working on that day and he would just suddenly close the engine throttle and ask "you just lost your engine...what are you going to do and where you going to go?"
Then he would sit there and watch me go through all of the emergency procedures (except calling on the radio) and set the plane up for a landing in a pasture or whatever clear space I was supposed to have noticed in the past five minuets as we were flying along.
Then maybe 500 feet off the ground would he give me engine power again and make me start climbing back up as he told me how dead I would be because of whatever mistakes I had made in the exercise.
Just now I just I had to sit through watching Geraldo Rivera on FOX News ranting about how the air traffic controllers at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport were responsible for the accident this week. The CONTROLLERS...not the PILOTS
BULLCRAP...
If the private plane or helicopter had strayed out of the VFR (visual flight rules) corridor and hit an AIRLINER coming out of Newark or LaGuardia or JFK I'd blame the controller for not making a call, but...
As an aviator I suggest that the Pilots are each responsible for this event, because radios can fail and other people like flight controllers make mistakes or get distracted and in the end it's the PILOT that's responsible for maintaining separation between aircraft, not the government flight controllers.
I guarandamntee you both these pilots were talking to the other people in the cockpit and looking at the ground and pointing and waiving their arms rather than focusing on flying their aircraft like they normally would be doing over rural Kansas.
I know that crap like this I write about is over the heads of or of no interest to much of the general public, but dammit people...
if someone that knows doesn't tell you the details, the media will just leave you stranded sitting around your TV's knowing nothing.
...so know you know.
and you're Welcome.
Back in the late 1950's when my Dad was learning to fly in the Army you could basically get in an airplane, start the engine, and take off in any direction as far as the gas in your gas tank would take you.
By the time I started flight training in 1991 at McCullum airfield in Kennesaw, Georgia the little airport didn't have a control tower but we had to learn to talk on a "Unicom" radio system, maintain a "pattern" and "Pattern Altitude", and stay underneath the screaming fighter jets and lumbering C-130 transport planes from nearby Dobbins Air Reserve Base and the aircraft coming and going into Atlanta's Hartsfield (and now Jackson) International Airport.
The air regulations and restrictions have gotten stricter and stricter since then (ever seen a book called AIM/FAR...Airman Information Manual/Federal Air Regulations?) and before it's over I say basically no one is going to go no where...unless it's on Delta Airlines.
Today after 9/11 you can't fly without government mandate over places like Disney World and Pro and College football stadiums during games in progress and most downtown metro areas (unless you're towing an Ad Banner or are the president in Air Force One.)
Any way, as a result of the recent mid-air collision, does anyone want to bet with me that within the year the Class B airspace under 1000 foot altitude along New York's Hudson River will be changed to be off limits completely or require some kind of new government mandated "permit" to fly within (of course the "permit" is just another form of Tax?)
I say that it will...because the Government just can't restrain itself these days from passing new laws when something happens instead of enforcing the existing laws already in place.
You see, unlike drivers today blabbing and texting on cell phones and wrecking their cars in the process, as a pilot you are trained to be able to fly the airplane, talk on the radio, scan you insturment panel, and look at complex maps while in the air...but YOUR PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY IS TO TO KEEP YOUR EYEBALLS FOCUSED 99% OF THE TIME OUTSIDE THE COCKPIT.
It was your job to look for other air traffic, mantain a mental picture of the terrain around you, and even keep in mind flat smooth areas with gliding distance should you lose engine power.
During training I'd be flying along worrying about whatever subject me and my instructor were working on that day and he would just suddenly close the engine throttle and ask "you just lost your engine...what are you going to do and where you going to go?"
Then he would sit there and watch me go through all of the emergency procedures (except calling on the radio) and set the plane up for a landing in a pasture or whatever clear space I was supposed to have noticed in the past five minuets as we were flying along.
Then maybe 500 feet off the ground would he give me engine power again and make me start climbing back up as he told me how dead I would be because of whatever mistakes I had made in the exercise.
Just now I just I had to sit through watching Geraldo Rivera on FOX News ranting about how the air traffic controllers at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport were responsible for the accident this week. The CONTROLLERS...not the PILOTS
BULLCRAP...
If the private plane or helicopter had strayed out of the VFR (visual flight rules) corridor and hit an AIRLINER coming out of Newark or LaGuardia or JFK I'd blame the controller for not making a call, but...
As an aviator I suggest that the Pilots are each responsible for this event, because radios can fail and other people like flight controllers make mistakes or get distracted and in the end it's the PILOT that's responsible for maintaining separation between aircraft, not the government flight controllers.
I guarandamntee you both these pilots were talking to the other people in the cockpit and looking at the ground and pointing and waiving their arms rather than focusing on flying their aircraft like they normally would be doing over rural Kansas.
I know that crap like this I write about is over the heads of or of no interest to much of the general public, but dammit people...
if someone that knows doesn't tell you the details, the media will just leave you stranded sitting around your TV's knowing nothing.
...so know you know.
and you're Welcome.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
dISTRACTED
drAWING AND cALCULATING AND tIRED OF bITCHING & cOMPLAINING
Oh...where to start this morning...
Since my last rant (which I think was one of my better ones although a bit coarse in language), all I've been doing is thinking about thinking about some things I need to get done around the Turbo Pup Compound, doing a little drawing and design work for myself and some clients, reading depositions on the latest Forensic Engineering lawsuit, and negotiating a real estate deal which hopefully gets me out of the slumlord/investment rental property on the Georgia Coast.
As of August 20th I will only own one piece of real estate, and I'm darned glad to see that extra property go. All in all I had a terrible experience trying to buy and improve an inner city property in an area where the residents generally behave as animals and criminals and their plight will hardly improve no matter how much money and effort is poured into their community by the government and private investors.
That's not a "Racist" statement...that's just a fact speaking from first hand experience gained over five years.
I wish I could snag another good deal on an investment property but right now with things as they are I think I'm just going to make some more improvements on the Tennessee house and hold the rest of the funds in reserve for a rainy day.
Remember I'm "officially" unemployed...living from project to project like an injuneering hobo.
Meanwhile I'm still sitting here amazed at the stupidity and insanity I see around me in the world...public and private and political, and as a result I remain dedicated to redoubling my efforts to solidify my family's positions financially on a cash flow and long term investment basis before the government idiots and our society's bands of "looters" (per Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged") end up standing on my doorstep wanting even more of the value of my personal efforts in the form of new and increased taxes.
Tomorrow I might even emerge from my office and bedroom and actually get some more work done on the never ending front porch refinishing project because phase two of the rear deck project is on the horizon in the next 30 days.
I'm thinking of building a simple "outdoor kitchen" on this next pile of deck lumber as I more than double the size of the deck surface area...including built in seating, counter space, a little refrigerator, a sink, and a built in gas grill to augment my Webber Kettle Charcoal grill.
I say Charcoal rules, but Gas has it's advantages when you need to use a burner to steam crab or keep a bunch of food hot and don't want to heat and stink the house up in the summertime.
And if things keep pissing me off and people keep bothering me I may just end up mounting a surplus machine gun turret adjacent to the new rooftop cruise missile launch platform and radar installation I'm designing...
Don't be surprised...remember someone (I think it was Ben Franklin) said...an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...
Oh...where to start this morning...
Since my last rant (which I think was one of my better ones although a bit coarse in language), all I've been doing is thinking about thinking about some things I need to get done around the Turbo Pup Compound, doing a little drawing and design work for myself and some clients, reading depositions on the latest Forensic Engineering lawsuit, and negotiating a real estate deal which hopefully gets me out of the slumlord/investment rental property on the Georgia Coast.
As of August 20th I will only own one piece of real estate, and I'm darned glad to see that extra property go. All in all I had a terrible experience trying to buy and improve an inner city property in an area where the residents generally behave as animals and criminals and their plight will hardly improve no matter how much money and effort is poured into their community by the government and private investors.
That's not a "Racist" statement...that's just a fact speaking from first hand experience gained over five years.
I wish I could snag another good deal on an investment property but right now with things as they are I think I'm just going to make some more improvements on the Tennessee house and hold the rest of the funds in reserve for a rainy day.
Remember I'm "officially" unemployed...living from project to project like an injuneering hobo.
Meanwhile I'm still sitting here amazed at the stupidity and insanity I see around me in the world...public and private and political, and as a result I remain dedicated to redoubling my efforts to solidify my family's positions financially on a cash flow and long term investment basis before the government idiots and our society's bands of "looters" (per Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged") end up standing on my doorstep wanting even more of the value of my personal efforts in the form of new and increased taxes.
Tomorrow I might even emerge from my office and bedroom and actually get some more work done on the never ending front porch refinishing project because phase two of the rear deck project is on the horizon in the next 30 days.
I'm thinking of building a simple "outdoor kitchen" on this next pile of deck lumber as I more than double the size of the deck surface area...including built in seating, counter space, a little refrigerator, a sink, and a built in gas grill to augment my Webber Kettle Charcoal grill.
I say Charcoal rules, but Gas has it's advantages when you need to use a burner to steam crab or keep a bunch of food hot and don't want to heat and stink the house up in the summertime.
And if things keep pissing me off and people keep bothering me I may just end up mounting a surplus machine gun turret adjacent to the new rooftop cruise missile launch platform and radar installation I'm designing...
Don't be surprised...remember someone (I think it was Ben Franklin) said...an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...
Monday, August 10, 2009
Five Years Of Blogging
I just realized that today I celebrate my fifth anniversary as a Blogger.
Sometimes it seems longer than that, but most of the time it doesn't seem like that long ago that I pounded out the first words on my keyboard intended for public consumption.
After all, the words were already overflowing out of my brain any way, and so it made sense when my friend Tripp suggested I capture them and put them up on the Internet for everyone to enjoy...or not.
So it's with very little pomp and circumstance that I present not the first, but the second piece I wrote titled "Washing Your Underwear In Public" and first published on August 11th, 2004 while visiting Chicago with Pat:
Spending ten continuous days living out of suitcases in a hotel room brings me back to a reality that I have spent very little time with since college—the Public Laundry.
That’s what the sign on the door says here at the Holiday Inn Hotel and Suites in Elgin, IL.
Laundromat, Wash-O-Matic, Rinse-and-Wring, call it what you may, each and every visit provides a wealth of entertainment opportunities and interesting insights into human nature, and invariably brings you into contact with persons and situations with which you could otherwise do without.
Of course I have had, through the years, intermittent opportunities to further develop and maintain my college developed skills in the public cleansing of my most personal clothing items. The issue of boxers or briefs become quite evident unless you properly sort, handle, and maintain control of your clothing items before and during your visit to the local “Palace of Clean Clothing” (POCC for short.)
For instance, there was that time when I ran away from home, after separating from my ex-wife, and I was forced to give her the old Kenmore washer and worse, the old Kenmore dryer I had recently, lovingly, totally rebuilt for a cost of a hundred thirty six dollars and fifty-five cents (or something like that.) The personal cost of a weekend of cursing and scraped knuckles was extra. I later learned that she promptly discarded both the washer and dryer in favor of brand new equipment once the divorce was final—she just didn’t want me to have them. She tried the same thing with the 30-year-old Snapper self-propelled mower I had also rebuilt, but you know how it is with a man and his lawnmower. I think that lawn mower cost me about five thousand dollars in the final settlement, but it was worth every damn penny.
Any way, back to the local POCC. I rode the elevator down to the second floor about one o’clock this afternoon, carrying our white clothes and my four-dollar mini-box of detergent, purchased from Rashee, the friendly Indian proprietor of the lobby gift shop. Somehow, I avoided buying a genuine imitation Rolex watch or a cigarette lighter that looks like a pistol (against FAA regulations, you know)--but I was awfully tempted.
Upon arrival in the POCC, I found one of the two washers filled with someone’s unwashed blue jeans and one of the two dryers in mid cycle. Undaunted, my heart full of hope, I launched the load of white clothes with $1.00 worth of quarters, $1.50 worth of detergent, and planned my return 20 minutes later with the colored clothes. Wrong you stupid, white, redneck man.
Upon my return twenty minutes later I found BOTH dryers in operation and the load of blue jeans mysteriously in mid-wash cycle. This was war. What (or whom) was in that second dryer? I again left the POCC briefly, planning to catch the one dryer at the end of its cycle and then load MY own second load into MY washer. Again, wrong, you paleface redneck. Another ten minutes and another three floor round trip on the elevator found me and a four foot tall middle eastern woman glancing furtively at each other as she partially unloaded both dryers and fumbled with clothing of all sizes from 6x to Jolly Green Giant. Was this woman running a laundry service out of the Holiday Inn POCC? Could be…
Another elevator trip up three floors, another ten minutes writing this story, and back to the POCC where I found both washers empty, one dryer available, and the little woman with the red dot on her forehead nowhere to be seen. I sprang into action, untieing the sleeves of my dress shirts from the knot they invariably form in the rinse cycle and gleefully launching another $2.50 worth of quarters and detergent into action. An additional dollar bought me the services of the available dryer. I was turning the corner, in the home stretch now, ladies and gentlemen.
Three floors down, and three floors back, and my heart is still singing the pleasures of clean, although slightly damp and wrinkled clothing. The aforementioned mysterious load of blue jeans was doing nicely in the dryer also.
Got to run, now…I have a dollar date with a lovely, appliance-white-colored clothes dryer. She’s mine, Mine, MINE I said, ALL MINE, get away, dammit… I THINK I NEED A DRINK.
Yawn...
I'm Just Too Tired of Being Too Tired...
The way I see it today, most of the people out there that aren't STUPID are CRAZY...
and they're allowed to VOTE...
(and if you're a regular reader of this blog don't go getting all angry and insulted because most likely I'm not talking about YOU...but still...)
a disproportionate number of them (the aforementioned STUPID or CRAZY people) seem to be working in media and/or call themselves "journalists."
and that just bugs the CRAP out of me almost to the point of tears these days.
I'm coming up on the ripe old age of 50 early next month, and if they give me about ten more years of putting up with this crap I'm concerned that I'm likely to go to jail for the rest of what's left of my life for beating some Ivy league "journalist" to death with my walking stick.
Or as I gain more weight (6'3" tall, 250 pounds now) maybe I'll just knock them over yelling at them and sit on their chest until they quit breathing.
Then at least I'll get credit for coining the term murder by "Assfixication."
Dammit...
The way I see it today, most of the people out there that aren't STUPID are CRAZY...
and they're allowed to VOTE...
(and if you're a regular reader of this blog don't go getting all angry and insulted because most likely I'm not talking about YOU...but still...)
a disproportionate number of them (the aforementioned STUPID or CRAZY people) seem to be working in media and/or call themselves "journalists."
and that just bugs the CRAP out of me almost to the point of tears these days.
I'm coming up on the ripe old age of 50 early next month, and if they give me about ten more years of putting up with this crap I'm concerned that I'm likely to go to jail for the rest of what's left of my life for beating some Ivy league "journalist" to death with my walking stick.
Or as I gain more weight (6'3" tall, 250 pounds now) maybe I'll just knock them over yelling at them and sit on their chest until they quit breathing.
Then at least I'll get credit for coining the term murder by "Assfixication."
Dammit...
