A little humor…

Since everything appears to be going to crap, and I don’t feel like jumping into those frays… My BP and all that…

MURPHY’S Other 15 Laws

  1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
  1. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
  1. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
  1. A day without sunshine is like, well, night.
  1. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
  1. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.
  1. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
  1. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something  right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it  wrong. Oh HELL yes… sigh
  1. It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end-to-end, someone from Texas would be stupid enough to try to pass them.
  1. If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.
  1. The things that come to those who wait may be the things left by those who got there first.
  1. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
  1. Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.
  1. God gave you toes as a device for finding furniture in the dark.
  1. When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Survived…

The party and Phlemfest 2016!!!  Peter has been commenting on it when he had time, HERE. And so has Lawdog, HERE.

Me?

I’ve been slaving over a hot smoker… starting at 0610 Saturday morning…

PF 1

1500 Saturday afternoon… FINALLY done…PF 2

The last slice of  brisket… It lasted all of about 15 minutes…PF 3

Remember all that food from Saturday’s picture???

We ran out… AD and his lovely lady made a food run and she kicked me out of my own kitchen and made this lasagna appear! 🙂

Which lasted about 20 minutes…PF 4

People were down to scrabbling through the desserts, munchies, etc. for food…

I can now say the house has been well and truly broken in! And not a single visit by the local constabulary…

🙂

I’m gonna go take a nap now…

Aviation Art…

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Flight Lieutenant Donald J. M. Blakeslee of 133 Eagle Squadron exits his Spitfire MkVb at the Lympne airfield after his fourth mission of 19th of August 1942. On this date, during Operation Jubilee – the joint British-Canadian amphibious assault against German forces on the French coast at Dieppe, RAF Fighter Command flew hundreds of sorties in support of the landings.

Among the RAF units active during the day were the three all American volunteer Eagle squadrons, who between them accounted for 10 enemy aircraft destroyed, 5 probable and 12 damaged, Blakeslee himself being credited with two destroyed and two probables.

I’m not sure…

There is enough food to feed everybody tomorrow… The gang isn’t all here yet, and stuff is disappearing! 🙂

Food 1

Already had to make a run to the store for more bread and sandwich meat and cheese!!!Food 2

And the party’s not even starting until tomorrow…

By the time you read this, the brisket will already be on the smoker, and I’ll probably ONLY have 7 or 8 hours to go…

Thanks to Phelgmmy for pulling us together!!!

The Code…

We were taught this during SERE school in 1973.

 Click The Code link below for the video…

The Code

Col. Carlyle Harris was a prisoner of war for 2,871 days during the Vietnam War.He is credited with introducing ‘tap code,’ a form of communication that he and his fellow brothers in arms used to relay secret messages.This is his story as told by Airman Magazine

Posted by U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on Friday, January 29, 2016

The actual code was a 5X5 square of letters. The missing letter was K, for which C was inserted.

David Pride has a page that discusses it HERE.

And our folks are still taught this today…

TBT…

From the WAY back machine…

My step-grandfather was an auto mechanic for about 50 years, starting in the early-20s… 1920s…

Chevy dealer cover Nov 1928 1

He worked for a dealer out of Chicago for about 10 years, then ended up at Studebaker, working in the factory as a ‘check’ mechanic.

Bling ad 1928

Who knew they had ‘bling’ back in the 1920s??? 🙂

And your ‘new’ car didn’t have a heater, but they’d sell you one…

losee heater ad 1

Back in those days you could actually WORK on your car… Grandpa wouldn’t touch a car newer than 1967, he said they’d gotten stupid with all the ‘crap’ on them.

Of course at that time, he was in his 90’s and still puttering with cars. He was still driving and loved his 1954 Bel Air…

It looked like this one, and was the same color. It had a 283 and a Powerglide transmission in it. His favorite saying when I’d ride with him and complain about the heat in the summer was 2-55 was good enough…

Anybody old enough to know what that means???

Continue reading

Posted in TBT

Hmmm…

One wonders why THIS hasn’t gotten any MSM coverage…

Gen. Joseph Votel, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and future commander of U.S. Central Command, sent a letter in early December to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter requesting that the executive branch stop disclosing details of special operator missions for political gain.

“I am concerned with increased public exposure of SOF activities and operations, and I assess that it is time to get our forces back into the shadows,” Votel wrote, reports Foreign Policy. Votel added that discussing operations makes it more difficult for commandos to conduct those missions, and he “requested the department support him with an approach to avoid public discussion of SOF activities,” the official said, paraphrasing the brief memo.

Despite the fact that publicizing special operations mission details and tactics can get operators killed and risks mission failure, the Obama White House has been quick to release details of SOF activities. The most famous example is the raid to kill Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Then Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, severely criticized the White House for releasing details about the raid.

Gates, in his memoir, blasts the administration for discussing “techniques, tactics, and procedures the SEALs had used” in the raid that killed bin Laden — despite promises not to divulge details of the operation. The White House and CIA “just couldn’t wait to brag and to claim credit,” Gates wrote in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”

Recently, the White House announced that approximately 200 special operators were being deployed to the Syrian theater to fight the Islamic State. Secretary of Defense Carter stated to Congress, this “puts everyone on notice. You don’t know at night who is going to be coming into the window.”

Congressional leaders heavily criticized the Obama administration for leaking classified material to Hollywood for the production of the film, Zero Dark Thirty, which detailed the Bin Laden raid. The White House said they would ‘look into’ these allegations but no public conclusions regarding this matter were made. Former CIA Director Leon Panetta was accused of publicly released classified information about the raid during a private awards ceremony.

Couldn’t agree more… The administration AND DOD need to stop putting this crap out there. And people need to stop writing books about what they did. They are giving away the keys to the castle, so to speak…

h/t JP

Sunsets…

It’s actually enjoyable to see the sunsets from other than inside the car on the way home from work…

FullSizeRender (1)

Lousy phone camera pic, but taken from the driveway while I was fighting the leaves in the garage… sigh

Today is the New Hampshire caucus, so the news should be ‘interesting’ tonight. I’m expecting nothing but spin from the various news orgs and the wanna-be’s…

I think I’ll go to bed early… 🙂

Husar’s Laws…

The last update from 2015…

I’m not the type of person you should put on speaker phone.

I can’t wait until I’m old enough to pretend I can’t hear.

Common sense is a flower that doesn’t grow in everyone’s garden.

Ever look back and think of some of the people you dated or wanted to date in High School and then see them on Facebook and think “Whew! I dodged a bullet on THAT ONE!”

A man without a woman is a bachelor. A woman without a man is a genius.

I believe everything happens for a reason. Usually the reason is somebody screwed up.

If you need a shoulder to cry on, pull off to the side of the road.

That’s it for the updates, but I thought I’d throw these old saws in just for the fun of it…

SKILL SAW:
A portable cutting tool used to make boards too short.

BELT SANDER:
An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.

WIRE WHEEL:
Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, ‘Oh sh*t’.

DRILL PRESS:
A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, denting the freshly-painted project which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to it.

Channel Locks:
Used to round off bolt heads. Sometimes used in the creation of blood-blisters.

HACKSAW:
One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle… It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VISE-GRIPS:
Generally used after pliers to completely round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH:
Used almost entirely for igniting various flammable objects in your shop and creating a fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub out of which you want to remove a bearing race.

TABLE SAW:
A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity. Very effective for digit removal !!

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK:
Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new brake shoes, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

BAND SAW:

A large stationary power saw primarily used to cut large pieces into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the trash after you cut on the inside of the line instead of the outside edge.

ENGINE HOIST:
A tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of all the crap you forgot to disconnect.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER:
Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids or for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing oil on your shirt; but are primarily designed to strip out Phillips screw heads.

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER:
A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws and butchering your palms.

PRY BAR:
A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50 cent part.

PVC PIPE CUTTER:
A tool used to make plastic pipe too short.

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent to the object we are trying to hit.

UTILITY KNIFE:
Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door. Works particularly well on contents such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts.  especially useful for slicing work clothes, but only while in use.
And lastly ……..

SOB TOOL:
Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the shop while yelling ‘SON OF A B*TCH!’ at the top of your lungs. This is also, most often, the next tool that you will need.

 

Aviation Art…

JP forwarded me a collection done by Yago F. de Bobadilla, and I’m going to put one up each Sunday for a while…

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There will be a little detail with each picture, but these are all classic aviation paintings mostly from the WWII era. I hope y’all enjoy them, I know I do!