Captain Tightpants has a post up with a link that is worth the read…
It’s talking to veterans that are conflicted about what is going on right now in Iraq…
Go HERE and read…
If I haven’t said it before, having a membership in an airline club is worth it’s weight in gold…
In this day and age of packed flights, delays, etc. That club membership CAN pay off multiple times over…
In the SYD lounge yesterday morning however, we almost had a riot…
Cherry and white chocolate muffins…
These damn things were like crack! People were standing there waiting, and you literally got one to a customer…
I was talking to my favorite moat dragon Anne and she said in her typical understated way, “Oh yes daarling, those are a mite tasty don’t you know.”
And then she got a big grin and said they were done by a little shop outside the field…
And there IS a reason for the seatbelt signs on airplanes as one young (and half drunk) lady found out yesterday coming back from SYD. She dislocated her shoulder when she got ‘bounced’ and ended up landing on it and popping it out. Three plus hours with only an aspirin and a sling didn’t feel too good and she was taken off in a wheelchair at LAX by paramedics, so maybe she’ll learn…
And the food was actually edible coming back. Guess United is listening to the bitching! 🙂 (unlike Qantas, which served ‘chicken’ on the flight from PER, but there was nothing in there ‘I’ recognized as actually being FROM a chicken)…
And one quick story as a follow-up from the P-8 demo and the climb attitude in the previous post…
At NAS Moffett, we had U-2s there that belonged to Ames Research. It was a competition between the pilots to see who could get to the highest altitude by the end of the runway…
Now two points of background, Moffett had 8000 runways, and the U-2s were always cleared unrestricted climb at roughly 85 degrees nose high…
If I remember correctly the ‘record’ was 20,000 by the end of the runway, thanks to a nice little headwind of about 25 kts… Personally I always wanted to drive the IROC Camaro convertible and chase the U-2 down the runway on landing to catch the wingtip… 🙂
Pretty good (and short) video of the P-8 from Farnborough Airshow…
Biggest ‘real’ selling point to the aircrew???
A working toilet… 😉
Screw all the rest of the stuff… THAT is what counts!
h/t JP
Grumble… Anybody that thinks travel is fun is @#$*& nuts!!!
PER to SYD today, shoehorned into the back (and I DO mean back) of the bus… Row 54 middle. The two guys either side of me were BIG! We had to alternate who leaned forward and who leaned back… sigh… Thankfully it was only a 4 hour flight…
So get to SYD, take the bus to the hotel, and there is ONE! ONE! frikkin clerk working check-in, and about 20 of us in line…
And this ‘broad’ (being polite here), was haranguing the clerk over the parking fees for her car.
After a good fifteen minutes of this crap, I mentioned to the guy behind me we should take up a collection and just pay the damn parking for her, so ‘maybe’ we could get checked in before it was time to check out…
He mumbled something to the effect of hell yeah, and dug a bill out. I threw $10A in the pot, he hit the rest of the line up, and there were enough donations to pay her @#*&^ parking fee.
So he takes it up to the counter, slaps it down in front of her and says, “Here ya go you cheap b***h. Your F’ing parking is paid, now shut the F up, and get out of our way. WE would like to check in!”
And we all applauded…
And she threw a hissy fit about the way he’d ‘talked’ to her, and demanded the manager! And she wasn’t moving!
Until she looked around and saw now 25-30 pissed off folks starting to move toward her.
I think at that point she decided that maybe she just should take her key and go away. And she did…
Finally got checked in, got to the room, TV doesn’t work… Figures…
Go back down stairs to the clerk, he apologises, but no other rooms. Oh well I needed sleep anyway… At least they have free internet in the lobby (it didn’t work in the room either)…
Sigh…
There really ARE people that have more money than sense…
Solid Teak four poster bed with two solid teak night stands…
$4500 US!!! And it’s not even a queen size!!!
Apparently you CAN get a queen or king made, but they are in the $6000-8000 range…
Oh yeah, you also have to buy your own mattress… That’s just the frame and nightstands, nothing else!
That would buy me a couple of ‘nice’ guns or a lot of ammo… But that’s just me.
The hotel does have some rather interesting artwork and antiques, including Mussolini’s mirror…
It is apparently an original Biedermeirer, rosewood and inlayed. The quality of the inlays is excellent! 
If one didn’t look closely, you’d think it’s just a painted design. It’s not… It’s real wood inlayed.
Apparently the original builder of the hotel here was quite the collector back in England after the war, and somehow got this antique…
One wonders how it made the tourtuous trip from Mussolini and Italy to Western Australia…
And a few others…
Original artwork hanging in the halls..
Antique vases (pronounced how ever you want)… 
A 19th century Chinese silk tapestry…
And the one I REALLY wish worked at 0400 in the morning… an antique Brasilia Espresso machine…
Yep, I was bored and wondering the halls… sigh…
South Dakotan sculptor John Lopez creates life-sized scrap metal sculptures with a uniquely Western American twist. In his hands, old discarded farm equipment is recycled into sculptures of iconic creatures from the American West like a bison, a horse plowing a field, or a Texas Longhorn.
Lopez already had a career as a bronze sculptor, but after creating a family grave for his deceased aunt using scrap metal, he began creating recycled metal sculptures out of found or donated pieces of metal as well.
“My favorite part about these pieces is the texture,” explains Lopez. “I just start grabbin’ stuff from the pile and welding it, in and if you weld enough of the same thing on over and over it creates this really cool texture that I’ve never seen in these kinds of pieces before. And I think that’s what draws people in.”
The rest of the collection can be seen HERE…
The ‘big’ picture is pretty amazing and so are the little details! Creative doesn’t begin to describe this man’s work!
Some days are just NOT fun…
And this Monday was one of them…
Little sleep, long meetings and WAY too much coffee…
Instant coffee at that… Note to self, BRING GOOD COFFEE next time…
Just trying to hang on a stay awake long enough to try to go to sleep in the ‘right’ timezone…
Trust me there is not a damn thing to do at 0300 in Perth… And they only gave me six of the little instant coffee packets…
Hope your Monday is better than mine…
Snuck out yesterday and had lunch with Julie and her family. We met at a nice little local winery and had some nice little lunch ‘plates’ that we shared among the table.
I passed along greetings from the usual suspects, and she ‘promised’ to get a post up…
As usual, real life is interfering with the online stuff, but they are all progressing. The girls are getting BIG! 🙂
They are bright, smart and smart alecs… Nothing like taking after mom and dad…LOL The oldest is doing well in her new school and the younger is now also looking at a ‘magnet’ school, although they don’t call them that down here.
Julie reminded me that ‘we’ are upside down for them, being almost 12 hours out of sync, so she doesn’t have as much time to jump on in the morning as she had in the past. But she does check the usual suspects blogs and comments occasionally.
It was way too short a time, but thanks to Julie and the family for making time to see me and thank you for lunch!!! And it’s no fair when you KNOW the owners and they won’t take my money… Next one’s on me!
This one HAD to have come from California…
When you go read the first petition, just think about what it would do for those of us who believe in training our children…
It would make us felons!!!
Consider signing this one instead:
h/t to Brian for this one!
Civilians kicked in an tremendous amount of money in the form of War Bonds to support WWII, there were at least seven bond drives, and the one I could find info on, the 2nd bond drive, raised $13,000,000,000 dollars. They best estimates are the total cost of WWII in dollars was in the neighborhood of $340 billion dollars.
There were paintings, movies, rallies, and pictures like this used routinely…
People DID make huge sacrifices not just in dollars, but in food, material things (like gasoline, oil, and tires) and everyday items to benefit the war material production. As seen in this picture, women were quickly integrated into the workforce, filling just about every job. From factory to final assembly and everything in between…
This poster was used by multiple agencies…
It was done by James M. Flagg, and was originally a US Army recruiting poster, but was repurposed for the 7th War Bond drive.
And no, it’s not PC…