Putting on the dog for Pope Francis at the White House. The marching unit, the only marching unit, was Redcoat, fifes, drums, tri cornered hats and all.
God Save the Queen.
Long Live the Anglosphere.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Joint, the new magic word
At least in the armed services. We have a Joint Strike Fighter, a joint combat pistol, joint this, joint that, all in the name of interservice cooperation.
Now the TV is calling the traditional and long standing Andrews Air Force Base by the new name of Joint Base Andrews. That's a new one on me. Wonder when that started. And who started it.
Anyhow they put on a pretty good show for the Pope's arrival. Obama and family and Biden were on the ramp to greet the pope. There are few visitors so important that the president goes out to the airfield to greet them. Anyhow, the Pope should have gotten the impression that the Americans are glad to see him.
Now the TV is calling the traditional and long standing Andrews Air Force Base by the new name of Joint Base Andrews. That's a new one on me. Wonder when that started. And who started it.
Anyhow they put on a pretty good show for the Pope's arrival. Obama and family and Biden were on the ramp to greet the pope. There are few visitors so important that the president goes out to the airfield to greet them. Anyhow, the Pope should have gotten the impression that the Americans are glad to see him.
Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) Again
Aviation Week had another piece on this aircraft, so the topic is still alive. Didn't say anything about the aircraft, or the mission, just some talk about where it is in the procurement process. Interesting if you are a company guy thinking of bidding on part of it, but not much for us plane watchers.
Poor Ben Carson
The newsies have been talking up Ben's comment on Muslims. Carson was asked if he would support a Muslim for US president. Carson said "no" which I agree with. He went on to say that Islam places the Koran, the Hadiths, and Sharia law above just about anything, especially above secular things like the US Constitution. Which is quite true. Personally I would not vote for a Muslim candidate, and I fully agree with Carson's position. American presidents support and defend the Constitution, Federal statues and the Common Law, and place this duty far above any Islamic obligations.
Monday, September 21, 2015
Downsizing, from boats to Buicks
I finally traded my trusty 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis, the last of the traditional Detroit boats, six passenger four door V8 sedan. The body rot had broken thru the fenders, my friendly local mechanic told me he might not be able to give it an inspection sticker next year due to serious rust underneath, and it had 110K miles.
I found a low mileage 2003 Buick Le Sabre. It's not too bad. It's smaller than the boats, it's just a four passenger car with the old Chevy V6 for power. It's the top of the line as far as bling and interior trim goes. The engine isn't anything like as strong as the 4.6 liter V8 in the Merc, even pulling a smaller lighter car. It has a tachometer, I really need that for those fast power shifts drag racing off the stop lights. Right. It has an amazingly tall front axle gear, the engine is only doing 1000 RPM at 50 miles an hour. At least the transmission lets the engine wind up to the red line if you put your foot into it. Passing power is OK, but nothing like the Merc.
Fuel economy is decent, I got 30 mpg on a trip down to Lebanon and back. That's better, the Merc only did 22 mpg.
The dashboard is confusing. I had to dig into the owner's manual to figure out how to turn the headlights off, and work the radio. The damn manual is 300 pages long, the index sucks, and it's missing things like factory recommended tire pressure. It's full of platitudes about seat belt usage and DUI. Most of the buttons on the dash have two or three difference meanings, tap once ,double tap, press and hold and they all do different things. You wouldn't believe what you have to do just to set bass and treble on the radio. There is a single little hard to read digital display that can show oil pressure, battery voltage, fuel economy, tire pressure, coolant temperature, and the phase of the moon, after you press all the right buttons. For all this digital fanciness, it lacks an outside temp thermometer, a winter driving necessity.
Styling is undistinguished, standard industry all rounded over look.
I found a low mileage 2003 Buick Le Sabre. It's not too bad. It's smaller than the boats, it's just a four passenger car with the old Chevy V6 for power. It's the top of the line as far as bling and interior trim goes. The engine isn't anything like as strong as the 4.6 liter V8 in the Merc, even pulling a smaller lighter car. It has a tachometer, I really need that for those fast power shifts drag racing off the stop lights. Right. It has an amazingly tall front axle gear, the engine is only doing 1000 RPM at 50 miles an hour. At least the transmission lets the engine wind up to the red line if you put your foot into it. Passing power is OK, but nothing like the Merc.
Fuel economy is decent, I got 30 mpg on a trip down to Lebanon and back. That's better, the Merc only did 22 mpg.
The dashboard is confusing. I had to dig into the owner's manual to figure out how to turn the headlights off, and work the radio. The damn manual is 300 pages long, the index sucks, and it's missing things like factory recommended tire pressure. It's full of platitudes about seat belt usage and DUI. Most of the buttons on the dash have two or three difference meanings, tap once ,double tap, press and hold and they all do different things. You wouldn't believe what you have to do just to set bass and treble on the radio. There is a single little hard to read digital display that can show oil pressure, battery voltage, fuel economy, tire pressure, coolant temperature, and the phase of the moon, after you press all the right buttons. For all this digital fanciness, it lacks an outside temp thermometer, a winter driving necessity.
Styling is undistinguished, standard industry all rounded over look.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Can "The Cloud" keep anything secret?
I'm not fully up to speed on how "The Cloud" works internally, but wanna bet it can be hacked? And since it's on line 24/7, the hackers can keep hitting it until they get in. Whereas I can unplug my computer from the internet, and nobody can get at it short of breaking and entering. If I was really serious, I'd burn the stuff to DVD and hide the DVD's in the house. And disable Windows auto run so a single thumb drive insertion doesn't put a root kit on my system.
Anti Virus Programs, major time suckers
Used to be anti virus just scanned the hard drive looking for virii files living there on and zapping them. Now they have real time scanners, permanantly resident, running, and soaking up CPU time to the point that Trusty Desktop gets annoyingly sluggish. I got into the control panels of MalwareBytes and tried to turn off the real time scanner. Nothing much happened. So I used Windows Task Manager to kill the "mbam.exe" process and the machine got more lively. I ought to uninstall the damn thing and be done with it but maybe, next time I power up the mbam.exe time sucker won't be active. If it is, bye-bye malwarebytes.
Did the same thing with Spybot Search and Destroy. The real time scanner did shut down and seems to stay down.
Did the same thing with Spybot Search and Destroy. The real time scanner did shut down and seems to stay down.
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