Observations

0530 feels just like 0830 when you're jet lagged. Felt like sleeping in.

There's lots of hockey on TV here. And cars racing on a frozen lake.

I did not know that you needed an ice racing license from the Canadian government to race on lakes.

I had the friendliest cabbie last might. Canada, eh?

I seem to type in cliches when I'm sleep deprived.


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Location:Vancouver

Mmmm, curry

I guess it's not the land of barbecue anymore.




That's OK. Chicken Tikka Masala and decent beer. Go local, eh?

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I suck

Traveling, no time to make ice cream. Hopefully later during my 3 hour layover in Toronto.


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I confess

I didn't watch the game last night.  I was getting ready to leave for Vancouver, and that combined with fatigue led to an astonishing level of don't-give-a-damn.  Even for the commercials, which I've live blogged in the past.

I have to say that I'm not looking forward to a week long series of meetings when I'm starting out this tired.  Oh well, mustn't grumble.

- xvf [filename]

I must be missing something.

The woman who saved Britain frm Hitler

Image via Wikipediah

Tilly Shilling was an aeronautical engineer who fixed the Rolls Royce Merlin engine.  Unusual for her day, she studied electrical and mechanical engineering and found herself in the aviation industry in the 1930s.

The Merlin engine had a problem that it would lose power or even stall when the plane experienced negative G forces as the engine got flooded with fuel.  Shilling devised a restrictor disk - basically a washer whose center hole was just large enough to pass the fuel needed at maximum power.  The restrictor was attached to the carburettor's fuel intake.  Problem solved.

This meant that the Spitfire fighters could now shoot down Luftwaffe planes that would otherwise have escaped and winning the Battle of Britain.

Miss Shilling also raced motorcycled in the 1930s.  Quite a pioneering woman.

Pew, pew, pew!

I am so glad that we have a President that understands the American experience.

Found on Twitchy

I sure hope that his shotgun isn't semi-automatic or that the tube magazine doesn't hold more than seven rounds.  It would be too bad if New York or other Blue States had to come and arrest a sitting President.  Likely would cause some sort of unpleasantness or something.h

But if he's so good at the pew pew pew thing, go sign the petition to get him to invite someone skeet shooting.  Because he totally wouldn't lie to use that he could, you know, shoot or something.

Fritz Kreisler - "Liebesleid" (Love's Sorrow)

Image via Wikipedia

It's arguable that Fritz Kreisler was the greatest composer for violin in the 20th Century.  It seems a good bet that he's the greatest composer and performer of the violin in the 20th Century.  It's quite strange that he's almost unknown today, perhaps because he really only recorded through the 1940s, and the technology then was much more primitive than later performers had to deal with.

But in his day, he was considered to have the sweetest tone of any violinist.  He also wrote compositions, influenced by the turn of the century composers like Sir Edward Elgar, Léo Delibes, and Jules Massenet.  Austrian by birth, he served briefly in the Great War until he was wounded and then moved to America.  Returning in the 1920s, he once again moved to the New World's shores (this time for good) at the outbreak of World War II.  These shores were a haven for his gemütlich style of music.

It's very easy to listen to, particularly on a weekend morning with a good cup of coffee (also a very Austrian thing). Me, I like to add a pinch of salt, a pinch of ground cinnamon, and a pinch of sugar (as a spice) to the coffee grounds before brewing. The resulting coffee is remarkably delicious.  Gemütlich, even.



Fritz Kreisler's birthday was yesterday, so my timing is not so sweet.  May your morning be more gemütlich.

Currahee - Three miles up, three miles down

This is what it looks like in an SUV.



Currahee Mountain is in northeastern Georgia, and was the site of an Army training camp in World War II.  The camp became famous as the training camp for the 101 Airborne, a story well told in Stephen Ambrose's best selling "Band Of Brothers" (and outstanding HBO dramatization).  The troops there had to run the mountain: "three miles up, three miles down".

Today the nearby town of Toccoa has fallen on somewhat hard times.  There is still a summer camp there on (more or less) the same site as the old base.  #1 Son went there a couple times a decade or so back, living like the recruits in non-air conditioned barracks (cabins) in the Georgia summer heat.  They didn't have him run Currahee although the road is still there.  Still three miles up, three miles down.

Canis Newavicus

Kitty Wells - It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels

Image vie Wikipedia

Kitty Wells is perhaps the second major female country star (after Patsy Montana).  She was so big that she's only the eight woman to receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.  The music sounds very dated now - both musically and lyrically - but captures the manners and mores of the early 1950s when this topped the charts.

Her life also sounds dated: daughter of a railroad brakeman, married at 18, her husband died a month short of their 74th (!) anniversary.  She died last summer only a few miles from where she was born.

Her commercial success was due in no small part to identifying with (and being identified with) the role that a woman was expected to take in America at that time.  It's perhaps not surprising that her popularity waned as the attitudes about "Woman's Lib" waxed.



It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels (Songwriter: J. D. "Jay" Miller)

As I sit here tonight the jukebox playin'
The tune about the wild side of life
As I listen to the words you are sayin'
It brings memories when I was a trusting wife

It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong

It's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that's ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame

It wasn't God who made Honky Tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong

Happy Groundhog Day

I hope you have a great day.



Again.

Boy, it's cold

Even here in the heart of Dixie, it may get down to 20° tonight.  Baby, it's cold outside.



Rod and Dolly. 

About the Jeep

Seems a caliper was locking, which is why the brakes got destroyed.  Seems fixed.  Doesn't seem like they fixed the magic smoke problem - still smells like magic smoke. Bah.

And I didn't want those two field grade M1 Garands. Bah again.

Some people aren't happy unless other people have less

Oh good grief:

DENVER -- JetBlue Airways Corp. says a flight from New York to San Diego was diverted to Denver because of an unruly passenger.

...

Passengers tell KMGH-TV (http://tinyurl.com/avfy7bx ) the woman was seated in the premium section when another passenger was moved to the same row because his TV monitor didn't work. Passengers say the woman became angry that the man was moved to her premium section without paying extra and she got into an argument with the flight crew. A federal air marshal intervened and the flight was diverted

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/01/3211808/new-york-to-san-diego-jetblue.html#storylink=cpy

She lost nothing when that other fellow was upgraded, nothing except for exclusivity.  What a waste of a soul.

Randoms

Because I suck (and I've been busy).

Wolfgang has been eating 20 lb of puppy food a week.  He's rather suddenly scaled back to 20 lb every week and a half.  I don't know whether that's because he's 9 months old and his metabolism is starting to slow down or because he's eating Ivan the Terrier's food (I haven't been tracking that).

Squirrel Report is cutting into my blogging time, at least on Thursday nights.  Just saying'.  I blame Alan, Breda, Jay, and Weer'd.  Not my fault at all, no sir.

The Jeep "only" needs $700 in repairs.  Anyone know why I need to replace the brakes every 20,000 miles?

Got to go to Vancouver next week.  It's like Seattle, only with friendly hippies.

The Missus was out last night with her girlfriends.  They all drank wine and painted on canvas.  It's like Seattle, only with less rain (and the hippies are friendly.  And cute).

Needs more cowbell ukelele

Bohemian Rhapsody does, I mean.



It's a virtuoso performance from someone who's incredibly talented on the ukelele, which despite the standing ovation is perhaps a bit like being a dancing bear.  And so to Instinct's place here he has the Muppet Show version of this same song.  There's even a (muppet) bear.  But he doesn't dance.  Sad.  But awesome.  30 Million views on Youtube awesome.

New business opportunities for Apple?

Interesting idea about what Apple's core competence is, and what they might do next:

What’s the next act for Apple? Let me start by listing off a partial list of somewhat expensive products that are painful to use, contain at least some electronics, and that would be relatively easy to improve:

• big-screen televisions and Blu-Ray players (whenever I want to use one the device decides that it is time for it to download and upgrade its software)
• cable television (flipping up and down through a list of 1000 channels?!?! How is it that an interface developed for a TV with a rotary knob to select among 10 possible channels was ported to the 1000-channel case?)
• compact digital cameras (a million buttons and menu items, almost none of them relevant to a photographer’s objectives in making a picture)
• Windows 8
• Android tablets other than Amazon’s (I have the Google Nexus 7 and it simply cannot hold a charge so it is essentially limited to being plugged in full time; ridiculously poor power management compared to the iPad)
• automobiles (start with the fact that the speedometer is front an center rather than a moving map; why would I care about my speed if I’m in heavy traffic (which I always am, since I drive in the U.S.) and/or if I am traveling at a legal speed (which the car knows from its navigation system database))
• houses (even a toilet knows when you’re standing in front of it; how come all of the stuff in a recently built house isn’t smart enough to detect the “nobody is home” case and turn down the heat?)

Apple’s superior profitability seems to stem from the spectacular stupidity of other companies and sometimes industries.

What Apple was good at was forcing the existing channel (e.g. AT&T with the iPhone) to make the changes needed to enable their insanely great game changing technology (said tongue in cheek but only partially tongue in cheek; they really forced some changes at AT&T).  Some of the ideas here would require a similar change in the channel - i.e. cable TV delivery would have to be different or the idea above just wouldn't work.

Interesting thought, though.

Geek humor

Huh.  I hadn't known that "EMACS" stands for that.

Heh.

Definitions. Trust. Page 13.

So is what's buried on page 13 of Senator Feinstein's bill as sweeping as some people think it might be?  To ban all semi-automatic firearms?

Me, I don't know.  However, there's no reason at all for gun owners to give the benefit of the doubt to Senator Feinstein.  Or to Federal Prosecutors.