Apathetic Reality

War in Iraq officially over.

2011-09-18T22:51:00.000-04:00

Iraq "very close" to purchasing over a dozen Lockheed F-16 fighter jets. I now expect dogs and cats to start living together.

"New" Chinese attack helicopter not so new

2011-08-29T21:00:00.003-04:00

New in that the Chinese are now making a 30 year old helicopter in-country. The Blaze is reporting it as it is a brand new heli but it is obviously a weaponized Eurocopter Dauphin (commonly seen used in the US by the Coast Guard).
The Chinese actually have a true indigenous attack heli called the Z-10
which looks a bit like a cross between an Apache and Mi-28.

Not so secret Russian plane becomes un-secret

2011-08-21T11:59:00.004-04:00

The F-22's brother from another mother will make its public debut at a Moscow airshow this week. Avweb is reporting that the Russian T-50 Pak-FA will wow the crowds, perhaps show-off the amazing 1200 foot takeoff distance, and hopefully not test its ejections seats.

UPDATE: Looks like there are still some significant bugs to work out on it.

Woman uses banner plane to make statement to wrong people.

2011-08-12T18:26:00.005-04:00

A woman upset at the S&P downgrading of the U.S. credit rating decided she wanted to send a message to the powers at be. Apparently her first choice was to fly her message over Washington D.C., but of course you can't fly anything over D.C. (unless the president is in it). So, her second choice was to fly the banner to Wall Street in NY which was also where S&P offices are located. Great for making the news, but kind of like blaming your mailman for telling you your mailbox is broken. I'm thinking the banner should have been also in Chinese.

F-104 vs. NCC 1701

2011-08-09T00:44:00.003-04:00

This has to be one of the most beautiful CGI renderings ever done. Douglas E. Graves fired up Lightwave to re-create a famous scene from the original Star Trek. The big E goes back in time to the 1960's and is chased down by a F-104 who's pilot eventually gets taken aboard. The composition, lighting, and detail are beyond words.

Rutan builds "flying car", Star Wars fans rejoice.

2011-08-08T21:03:00.003-04:00

The only thing car-like about Scaled Composites' flying car is that it has four wheels. The rest, not so much.

Grandma, Noooo!

2011-08-07T20:18:00.008-04:00

See Myrtle. See Myrtle fly her J3 Cub. See Myrtle fly her J3 Cub over the President's birthday party. See Myrtle get greeted by F-16s and have a chat with the FAA. See Myrtle pay more attention to NOTAMs in the future.

I have to agree, it is a nice looking Cub.

Chinook Down in Afghanistan

2011-08-06T17:44:00.010-04:00

Woke up to some bad news this morning in the form of hearing what apparently was a CH-47 "Chinook" shot down in Afghanistan by a RPG. It seems all crew were lost including many members of a Navy SEAL team. Chinooks have been in service since Vietnam and have a very good safety record.

I recall talking to a CH-47 pilot once and was amused when he told me that just before takeoff, you really had to stand on the wheel brakes otherwise the helicopter would try to scoot down the runway like an airplane.

Red Tails trailer will have you running with your tail between your legs.

2011-08-05T21:52:00.004-04:00

Good news is George Lucas's movie about the Tuskegee Airmen is nearly completed and has a flashy new trailer. Bad new is that George Lucas has nearly completed a movie about the Tuskegee Airman. Regardless, it sure looks purdy and more importantly, accurate. I'll admit, I almost fainted at the 2:00 min. mark. We Fight!

Lucky bastage talks of flying rare A6M3 Zero

2011-08-05T21:40:00.004-04:00

It’s from an island named after Rocky, so it has to be good! AvWeb brings us a great video of a modern Zero pilot discussing what it is like to fly a rare and amazing bird. I hate him. Some great stuff about the history and handling characteristics of the plane. I hate him. I love the radios wedged in between the machine guns. Did I mention I hate him? Enjoy.

Vote or Die - Literally

2008-09-06T22:27:00.002-04:00

I know who I'm voting for this year. The fate of the colonies is at hand.

Road Rage

2008-09-02T22:46:00.003-04:00

I never really noticed it, but many people are both impatient and rather rude when they drive.

I've been teaching my wife to drive (a short but uninteresting story)and it has been...an...interesting venture... Since she is just learning, she is very careful and takes her time on turns and changing lanes, etc. So, like a good instructor, I teach her the proper driving etiquettes of using turn signals and adhering to right-of-way of other drivers.

That said, I swear that half of the time, people ignore her signaling - even with a student driver sign in the window! People routinely will not give her space to change lanes when she signals. There was even one time when she had signaled to turn left into our house's driveway, some nimrod actually passed her on the left side! If she had been faster in her turning, the other vehicle would have had crashed into her/us. Then there was the person that beeped her horn at us for daring to make her 2 seconds late in her getting home (wife took a turn slow causing a delay in someone behind us pulling into their driveway).

I really wish I sometimes I was a plain clothes cop. There are a few people I'd pull over to have a chat with.

Oh, that explains it.

2008-08-18T15:15:00.001-04:00

I’d been wondering for a while why my warlock didn’t feel as uber as it should have.
I couldn’t figure out why this could be. I’d grinded my way to the top of all the PvP gear that I wanted. I’d gotten all the high-dollar enchants, constructed the very best engineering trinkets and armor that I could get my hands on.
Sure, there was better stuff in the top tier of the heroic super-instances, but I never thought it that essential to get. I used to be able to hold my own in battlegrounds, but it seemed like I was slipping a bit lately.
After I found out that I couldn’t live without the new Olympic ‘spirit of summer’ pet, I ventured back into the world of level 70 battlegrounds…
Two observations: It’s much more fun to play with a twinked out level 29 rogue, and second – my lock just wasn’t as powerful as I remembered him to be.
It wasn’t until last night that I figured out why. Apparently, in the last patch, a whole new level of PvP gear had been released. Some of it was just marginally better than what I had, but some of it was much, much better. And this new stuff was apparently the new baseline standard for all serious PvP’ers out there.
As I started calculating the amount of honor I’d need to spend to get my mitts on the first piece of armor that I wanted, I quickly realized that this was going to take a while. Again.
This wasn’t the first time I’ve been faced with the horrible honor grind, and I suppose it won’t be the last… But now that I’ve seen how much good gear is out there for the taking… How can I resist??
Some of the stuff would make it much easier to venture into the pre-BC instances once again, and it seems that you really need to keep up with the rest of the world if you want to survive in the battle grounds for very long… so how can anyone resist?
But then, how long into the Litch King will it be before it all gets replaced by green items? Again…

Here we grind again…

Inverse Life Interest Postulate

2008-07-01T11:24:00.002-04:00

I have noticed something.

I used to have all sorts of interesting things happening that I always thought were worth writing down. I would tell these stories to friends and coworkers and they seemed to be entertaining. This being the case, I always thought having a blog to publish these stories to the world would be something of an interesting experiment.
Would anyone else in distant corners of the world think these anecdotes were worth reading? My guess would be "likely not", but the idea always fascinated me.

Since then, two things have happened. These two things are not related, but I think one has had an effect on the other.
1. I very recently got married.
2. Even more recently, I got a blog.

After #1 occurred, I just don't seem to have any little interesting stories to put on #2.

I just can't make "putting together Ikea furniture" into a very interesting story. There's not a lot to put on a blog to describe "watching a movie on the couch with my wife."

I'm not saying life has become boring, but it just doesn't seem to be all that blog-worthy anymore. Perhaps after getting settled in with married life, things will once again be filled with transcription-worthy events.

I just hope my wife doesn't find this someday and get the wrong idea...

What whas I saying?

2008-06-17T18:23:00.004-04:00

I read somewhere that the brain only has 7 active registers; you can only have 7 active subjects in your mind at any given time.
Therefore, if you are thinking about something, and then you purposely think about 7 new distinct subjects, the first one will suddenly pop out of your head without you even realizing it.
I've tried it before, and it seems to actually work. Only problem is that when you're done, you still have that sense of 'what was I doing this for again?', and you can sometimes figure it out and go back to the one you're trying to forget. Sometimes you get so wrapped up in subjects 5-7, that you forget the original one, and forget what you're doing entirely.

Now I can't remember where I was going with this.

GYRO adds: I guess I need a hardware update. Whenever I try to think about more than two distinct subjects, I get the natural equivalent of a stack overflow error.

Airplanes and Women

2008-06-14T10:07:00.006-04:00

I’ve been reading this book on famed aviator Howard Hughes (Howard Hughes: The Untold Story). I’m little more than half-way through it, but holy cow was this guy a character. Despite a picture of him on the cover sitting in one of his airplanes, the book is a little light on his aviation exploits. However, his personal story seems to be well researched with extensive interviews of people that knew, dated, and worked for him. And there were a lot, especially when it came to dating.

It is astonishing how many then (and now) famous movie stars he dated, pursued, and usually bedded over a 20 year period starting in the late 20’s. Should the word ‘manslut’ ever become an official word in the English language, a picture of Howard Hughes should be shown prominently in the dictionary next to the definition. As one quote in the book put it, “Howard would [hump] a tree.”

Then there was his OCD, coupled with ADD, and then mixed with strange eccentricities. To say he was a character is a severe understatement. That said, when he wasn’t trying to date multiple women at the same time (invariably to disastrous results), he did some pretty amazing things in the field of aviation. The movie about him that came out a few years ago just touched the surface of this fascinating persona. Hughes proves that money can't buy happiness, but you sure can have a lot of fun with it.

Food Fight

2008-06-11T20:58:00.004-04:00

A brilliant video depicting American-involved wars of the 20th century:

UPDATE: for the gastronomically challenged, here is a cheat sheet.

Who are you and what do you want?

2008-06-11T20:39:00.001-04:00

This is a test and only a test. Had this been an actual blog post, you would have been directed to your closest emergency website.