One more sleazebag off the streets, too bad it’s taken TEN years for this to happen…
Guilty on 45 of 48 counts, projected sentence of over 400 years!
Article HERE.
Guilty on 45 of 48 counts, projected sentence of over 400 years!
Article HERE.
Back from yet another trip, only ‘fun’ part of this one was watching the bus drivers hand flying a 777ER through and around the thunderstorms building into the DC area this afternoon! 🙂 They had the bird rockin and rollin off airways, cleared to maneuver as required!
It’s not often you see the pilots come out of the cockpit grinning… Just sayin…
And for all those pet lovers out there…
And one more just for S&Gs…
And my body clock is totally hosed, so I’m going to slee zzzZZZZ…
Interesting little advertising video…
And yes, there is ALWAYS somebody that will push the button…
And yes, there is ALWAYS somebody that will push the button…
It’s not just people in the USA that are that gullible…
Sigh… 🙂
The desk, built from timbers of the HMS Resolute and a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes is considered a national treasure and an icon of the presidency…
The White House belongs to the people of America. It’s treasures should NOT be used by ANYONE for a foot rest! This photo and others (just do a web search) are ongoing proof that this man has NO class whatsoever, and shows an innate disrespect for OUR White House.
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SO, HERE’S A MESSAGE FROM THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA:
Mr. Obama, you’re not in a hut in Kenya or Indonesia,
or in Chicago public housing.
You’re in the White House,
property of the people of the United States.
With all due respect, get your @#%*+#% feet off our furniture..!
Typhoon (now Tropical Storm) number 05W went by last night, the eye missed us by about 75 miles, winds were ‘only’ 25-30, gusting 40. BUT, there was a wind leak in the window of my room, so it WHISTLED like a banshee for about 4 hours… sigh… and I was still wide awake at 0400 local…
No significant damage, but leaves and a few small limbs down. Off to work now (and try to stay awake).
No significant damage, but leaves and a few small limbs down. Off to work now (and try to stay awake).
The other book I read on the way over was Walter Borneman’s new book about the Navy Admirals in WWII called
The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King- The Five-Star Adminals Who Won the War at Sea
The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King- The Five-Star Adminals Who Won the War at Sea
This book is an excellent comparison of the four Admirals, their backgrounds, foibles, interactions, and leadership ‘styles’…
The four were VERY different in their career paths, with one notable exception, they were ALL Naval Academy graduates. They are also the only four Admirals to ever hold the five star rank in the Navy; and they were all significantly different in the way they led…
It’s well worth the read, and brings in some of the ‘other’ folks like Marshall, MacArthur, FDR, Truman, Churchill, Spruance, McCain, Mischner, and Vandegrift among others.
This is NOT a PR book, but a (to me at least) fair recitation without all the hype and hoopla that surrounded these folks. Leahy is far and away the least known, but in reality he was the most powerful of the four not only as FDR’s right hand man, but also as the first Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff; he was a died in the wool battleship type, but finally acknowledged that carriers were important too. King, egotistical blunt and very self-serving; becoming a ‘pilot’ (but never flew without a co-pilot after flight training), just to further his own career; but did a good job as the CNO during the war. Nimitz, who ran his first ship aground, went on to become a submarine expert and Commander of the Pacific Fleet. Halsey, infamous for running his ships into not one but TWO Typhoons, went through pilot training at age 50. He was a true combat leader, and his crews would and did follow him to hell and back. Raymond Spruance, who should have been the 5th five star, always the ‘quiet’ man, who alternated with Halsey in the 3rd/5th fleet dance…
There are also almost 75 pages of appendices, and lots of rabbit holes to go down if you so desire… 🙂
The X-37B finally landed yesterday at Vandenberg AFB early yesterday morning after 469 days on orbit. The interesting part was, it was ONLY supposed to be up there about 270 days.
Now the ‘interesting’ part is, nobody knows what it is really doing…LOL
But it is a pretty damn neat program, and kinda like a mini-space shuttle, it has a multiply programmable payload bay (about the size of a pickup truck bed); and who knows what they’re carrying. This is one of the few successful test bed programs that is really working!
Now the ‘interesting’ part is, nobody knows what it is really doing…LOL
But it is a pretty damn neat program, and kinda like a mini-space shuttle, it has a multiply programmable payload bay (about the size of a pickup truck bed); and who knows what they’re carrying. This is one of the few successful test bed programs that is really working!
Meh… Something tells me we’re gonna get a little bit wet in the next couple of days…
Batten down the hatches, secure all loose equipment about the decks, rig the lifelines and prepare for heavy weather!
Or if you’re an airdale, launch em…
Not one, but TWO @$^&* typhoons have Tokyo boresighted… and they are only about 48 hours apart. One is estimated to CPA by only 11nm.
Batten down the hatches, secure all loose equipment about the decks, rig the lifelines and prepare for heavy weather!
Or if you’re an airdale, launch em…
Not one, but TWO @$^&* typhoons have Tokyo boresighted… and they are only about 48 hours apart. One is estimated to CPA by only 11nm.
So now the question is, what happens to the meetings? If they are cancelled, try to move the flight up (knowing everybody and their brothers are doing the same thing), or ride it out (maybe spend an extra day or two here)…
Sigh…
But I DO know somebody who has a bottle or two of Scotch handy…
This is not a book I’d recommend for most folks; most of you probably never have even heard of AF586, but since I knew people involved, and ‘lived’ in this environment for many years, here’s a review of the book.
Andy Jampoler, the author, is a former P-3 pilot and squadron commander. He’d also been there, done that, and paid for the t-shirt. This was released on the 25th anniversary of the crash (26 Oct 1978).
AF586 was on a PARPRO mission off Russia when things went “South” as we say…
I read this yesterday on the flight out, and in irony of ironies, we flew almost directly over the crash location enroute to NRT. Even more ironic, three of the four pilots yesterday were former P-3 pilots… I flew with Hawk and Pinger in the 70s, and Frito in the 80s in different squadrons. I was up when Hawk and Frito came out of the cockpit, and we ended up standing in the galley talking. When Hawk mentioned where we were, I immediately said 586 and we ‘relived’ our incident (prop fail to feather, prop overspeed) in 1975 off Vietnam, but the difference was we completed the fails to feather checklist, which was NOT done on AF586.
Frito had heard the ‘story’ but never read the book, so I handed it off to him. I don’t think the FAs were very comfortable with us talking about plane crashes for some reason… Pinger came out later, and he also came back and mentioned it to me.
Anyway, the book looks at the situation that developed, the subsequent ditching, the problems with the survival suits, the rafts, and the problems with weather that impacted the ad hoc rescue attempts by a variety of folks, ending up with the survivors being picked up by a Soviet fishing trawler. Jampoler went back through the records, the AIC, and interviewed various people on all sides to put together a comprehensive look at the whole picture…
LCDR Grigsy and the FE in the seat never reset the oil tank circuit breakers for unknown reasons, and ironically, they were two of the five that did not survive, so no one actually knows ‘why’ they did what they did. This directly contributed to the engine fires, and led to having to ditch the airplane in the North Pacific 140+ miles short of Shemya.
The rescue and subsequent mis-communications as to whom had done what probably contributed to the loss of the three AWs who died due to exposure (among other things). IF someone had actually gone and found the Soviet fishing trawler earlier, they would have probably survived.
Jampoler also digs into the politics of the Navy and P-3 community at the time, and makes some valid points about who was and was not supportive of various folks.
This was a really bad period in the P-3 community, with multiple crashes over a couple of years, and the highest losses of life during the entire history of the aircraft. This crash was the ONLY one where anyone survived…
In a small way, I had an impact going forward, as I designed a revision to the way the life rafts were secured in the P-3 and after two years got the mod put in every P-3 in the Fleet. When VP-47 ditched in Oman, HERE, they got all the rafts out without a problem.
It’s worth reading if you want to understand what folks go through when their lives are on the line, and get a look into the reality of what goes on when things go South… And it IS a tribute to those who climbed on that airplane, built by the lowest bidder, and went out and did the missions day after day in all kinds of environments…
Yep…