It was 31 years ago today......
That's Oppo's own @Rusty-Vandura on the left, my Best Man.
Where things went somewhat off the rails. Fifty-four-year-old me would counsel twenty-three-year-old me not to have an open bar at the reception, or to at least make sure to eat plenty of food.
The getaway car, my 1988 Fox wagon. Don't have the car, but still have the wife. Good times for sure.
From my neighborhood email group:
I got carded at a liquor store, and my Blockbuster card accidentally fell out. The cashier said never mind.
It's graduation day. My oldest is graduating from high school. He will be attending the University of North Texas in the fall, where he plans to pursue a degree in Aviation Logistics.
My wife is part of a neighborhood buy-nothing group, where people advertise the stuff they don't want and then give it free to those who want it. Today was the group's "garage sale," where people put all their stuff out in the driveway and folks can come take it for free. Sadly, we still have a lot of stuff left over.
Anyway, I was out doing some yard work when a mom came up with two boys, probably about 2nd and 4th grade. They were looking at the books when I overheard one of the boys say, "I really want a bike." Well, inside my garage I had my boys' old 24" bikes. I say old, but I bought them for Christmas a few years ago and my boys rode them maybe 10 times. They've been sitting in the garage for years unused. And they're really nice bikes, too. I had them assembled professionally, and upgraded the gear shifters to paddle shifters (or whatever you call them).
So I pulled them both out and said, "All I ever wanted was for somebody to ride these bikes. And if you'll ride them, they're yours." The mom said they had just moved to Austin from California ("Yeah, we're one of those," she said), and that they had to sell their boys' bikes when they left. So it was a win for everybody. I've got the bikes out of my garage, and they went to young boys who will ride them.
Made me happy.
Got my oldest boy moved into his dorm yesterday. Since he auditioned for and won a spot in the marching band, he got to move in a day early. We got there at 8:30 and were pretty much the first ones there. So no crowds, no line at the elevator, practically nobody else in the hall at all. The other perk to moving in early is that he got to pick which side of the room he wanted.
It doesn't seem all that odd around here, at least just not yet, since he spent so much time at work before he left (he bused tables, and saved up over $10,000 in his account). If he was at home, he spent much of his time in his room. But to his credit, he cleaned and vacuumed his room before he left. He moved out just when he started becoming responsible.....
Not really sure why this was in the Christmas section at Target.
I bought a used Canon 6D, my first full frame camera. I went out to the airport this morning to give it a test drive with my Tamron 70-200, and holy cannoli, does it get fantastic results. Where I used to have to spend time in Lightroom adjusting color, shadows, and particularly sharpness, these are pretty much right out of the camera, with only a touch of shadow adjustment and a crop/straighten. I've put a link to my first processed shots below, since Hyphen and pretty much every other way of attaching a photo dumbs it down. I'll have a bunch more some time tomorrow.
BTW, all three of the shots I've finished so far are panning shots, hand held at 1/200 while standing on the top step of a three-step step ladder, with no adjustment to the sharpness.
https://tshaff.smugmug.com/Odds-and-Ends/6D-Tests/
Hey, @f86sabre, I finally got some nice shots of one of your A220s. One of them is posted at the link above, but I'll have more later.
Maybe I should get a coffee mug for a souvenir.
Russian airliner takes off from Magadan for a flight to Novosibirsk, then spends seven minutes "gyrati[ing] wildly," possibly due to "improper deicing" or "counterfeit" deicing fluid. After an unsuccessful attempt to return to Magadan, pilots finally regain control and decide to continue to Novosibirsk FIVE HOURS AWAY only to discover that they didn't have enough fuel due to all the maneuvering and had to land at Irkutsk. There's probably not enough vodka in Russia to keep those passengers happy for five hours after that joyride. Or maybe all the vodka is in the cockpit.
Calvin's dad sounds like me in grad school. Fortunately, I got married after just one year of my master's program. And my wife rarely gets sick.
Northrop X-4 Bantam, Boeing XB-52 Stratofortress (note original tandem cockpit), Convair B-36 Peacemaker.
@facw said in This Date in Aviation History: December 7, 1941:
MacArthur
That's a guy I need to learn more about. In my hometown of Norfolk, there is a memorial to him, built inside the original civic library. I visited it a couple of times as a kid, but don't remember much about it. I'm sure they didn't have much bad to say about him.
@gmporschenut-also-a-fan-of-hondas said in Arsenal of Democracy:
Jack hammer hit a main electrical bus cable, blew him away, had burns all over the front of his body and welded the jack to the pole.
Damn.
Yeah, I could probably find another one. Hell, a few years ago I broke my favorite Winnie the Pooh Christmas coffee mug, lamented about it on Oppo, and somebody replied with an eBay link where I could buy a replacement. This place is awesome.
I couldn't find how long it took to complete a single bomber. I wonder if they even bothered to figure that out. But here's a fun fact:
Perhaps the most impressive breakthrough at Willow Run was Ford's technique for assembling the B-24's center wing section. Consolidated had built each wing with its own temporary jig to hold the structure in place. Ford created a permanent jig into which wings could be moved in and out by overhead crane. Consolidated's method required 250 man-hours; Ford's needed one.
https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/expert-sets/101765
