Monday, June 29, 2009

Billy Mays

First there was Ed,
Then Farah,
Then MJ

But wait, there's more...

Didn't do Field Day

Missed Field Day for the 3rd year in a row.

Sheet rocking on Friday ran LATE - but we got started late, so I didn't get the 1st coat of tape up. Ended up doing that on Saturday AM, then had to spend the rest of the early afternoon running to Home Depot, and the local appliance place(AC in the den died last summer - time to replace it)

Sunday I went "Upstate" - aka the Kingston Area (West Hurley and Lamontville). The Ashokan was going over the spillway and the woods were WET. Nice party for Jane's graduation, and it was GOOD to see everyone. The last time I saw most of them was just over a year ago at Dad's Funeral. I normally get up there 4-5 times a year, but the last couple of years have been crazy. I hope to get up there (and to PA to visit with John and Lyn) a LOT more now that things have calmed down a bit in my life

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Field Day 2009

I was really really hoping to make it to Field Day this year, but last Friday I received an invite to a friend's Daughter's High School Graduation. This is one I will NOT miss. I hope to get to play some on Saturday, after putting a 2nd coat of taping compound on the spare bedroom ceiling at Mom and Dad's place

Look for KG2V as either a 1D or 1E (depends on how I feel) from NLI section (probably 1D)

Dix Hills Soccer Tournament - A wet time

So, on Saturday, I took Hugh out to the Tournement. His club had 2 teams playing, and Hugh got to play with the more advanced players, despite not normally playing with them. (They were short handed, ended up playing with only 2 subs)

They won 1, lost 2, but played well

Sunday, Mary took him out, and they tied 1 (against the other club team) and lost the other game

Saturday, the Coach was happy, despite the record, as the kids played well, and tried. I gather that on Sunday, this was NOT the case

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Dr Seuss for the internet age

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=4440353&cpp=1

Breakup Songs

Today I was listening to Matt Pinfield on WRXP, when Leslie said "Everyone has a breakup song"

WRONG

I married my childhood sweetheart, and we're still together

There is only ONE bad thing I can think of with marrying your childhood sweetheart - it's that they remember all the stupid things you used to do when you were a teenager

Mary, Thanks for puuting up with me for all these years

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Air France 447

First, may the victims rest in peace

What worries me (and HAS to be worrying Airbus) - Have you looked at the photos of the wreckage? A nice ripped off vertical stabilizer floating on the water. Now where have we seen that before?

Oh yeah - American Flight 587 which crashed in the Rockaways when the vertical stabilizer ripped off an Airbus A300

Normally, when you look at plane crashes, you'll see that the "tail feathers" (Vertical and Horizontal Stabs, rudder, elevator etc) stay together, as that section of the airplane is fairly "beefy"

Another thing that worries me - from what I gather, Airbus and Boeing have VERY different ways of looking at "fly by wire" - I gather that with Airbus, the software will do what it wants, no matter what you want, with Boeing, you can override the software

Why is this relevant? Having actually read the AA-587 crash report, they blame the crash on the pilot making excessive rudder inputs, and ripping the VS off the plane, when he got stuck in turbulence. I don't buy it. We have a few pilots here - if you were stuck in an emergency/rough turbulence - you going to be doing much with the rudder? Ailerons make you turn, the rudder makes it pretty. I still believe that the VS was already parting ways with the A300 and the pilot was trying to compensate - that the turbulence of the previous flight was causing the plane to come apart

Now we have an A320, in turbulence, over the Atlantic that comes apart.. I'll bet that Airbus hopes they never find those black boxes

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Dix Hills Soccer Tournament this weekend

This weekend is the 2009 Ken Graff Jr. Memorial Father's Day Tournament. My son HUgh will be playing with the U-8s from Jigs Soccer. Should be fun.

Bencher BY-1 Paddle Mod

I had some ham radio fun this weekend. For a while, I've been thinking of modifying my old Bencher BY-1 paddles to use a 1/8" mini-jack instead of a cable. Makes things a bit easier to swap in and out. I'll modify my Kent paddles next.

Take a look

Monday, June 15, 2009

Wow, didn't realize it's been this long

Sorry about the gap, but I've been twittering, and facebooking

The good news - last time I went to the MD, I got my A1C down to 6.0, not half bad, but recently (last 10 days or so), my blood glucose has been high - can't figure it out

The last week - 10 days, the gym has been lagging due to work and not feeling great.

I'll have some ham radio posts SOON - have done some interesting things in the shop, some Ham releated and some shooting sports related