ISS over Europe

ISS over Europe

Small Airplane Crash

Example Bush Plane

Today at lunch Marc tells a story. About a month ago, a friend of his was flying a bush plane and attempted to land on an island in the Columbia River. Came in for a smooth landing on strip of sand and one of the landing gear legs broke off. The airplane turned and went into the water. The pilot got out okay, but the airplane is under water and the river current is trying to drag it away. It's not very deep there so he is able to grab hold of the tail and keep it from going anywhere. Not a tenable situation.

Fortunately, the crew of a passing tugboat saw him crash and came over to help. The tug positioned itself to block the flow of the river and gave the pilot a rope with which he was able to secure the aircraft. The tug has business elsewhere, so it leaves, but he calls a buddy tug who doesn't have any pressing business and he comes over to help out.

That evening Marc and a couple other guys took a duck boat out to the island. On the way there they were passed by a Columbia County police boat. They expected nothing but grief from the police, but surprisingly the police turned out to very helpful. Probably helped that our crew were not drunk and not behaving like assholes.

They pulled the plane out of the water and set about drying out the engine and getting ready to take off the wings. They came back the next two days with a work platform borrowed from a local marina and ferried the various parts of the airplane back to dry land.

What caused the problem? Did a wheel fall in a hole or hit a big rock? Near as we can tell, no. Apparently the landing gear leg just snapped off. A stress fracture, maybe? Very weird. 

Apex - Netflix Movie

Apex | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Ninety minutes of Charlize Theron performing death defying stunts while being chased by a cannibalistic serial killer. She climbs unclimbable vertical rock walls, kayaks down rampaging rivers and bounces off rocks. Is she trying to outdo Tom Cruise? Or maybe, like her character, she is an adrenalin junky. It's terrifying.

Apex movie shooting locations near Sydney Australia

Besides Australia, portions of the movie were shot in New Zealand and at the Troll Wall in Norway. Locations via reddit.

Charlize is 50 years old.

Verners Pattern prismatic marching compass

This British WW1 compass shows up a couple of times. Plenty of them for sale.

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6118

10 Short Videos #6118

The value of value itself

Jenny’s number.

Old ships arrive at their final port

Open a jar

Hand-Built Hoverbike!

birds hide a secret under their feathers

Hawk hovering

Tire Gets Given Life | Man News

Girl rides Harley through road cone maze

Smooth movements

Ants

Basement Bookcase - TV Box Removed

My wife noticed ants in a spare room on the second floor. What kind of ants are they? Are they carpenter ants? Are they eating my house? Call the bug man, he comes out and sprays. Now we are seeing dead ants, but we've still got ants coming in, plus we've got ants coming in the back door in the basement. 

Normally I don't mind a couple of ants, but it's never just a couple. Those two are just scouts and as soon as they find something good to eat they're going back and tell all their brothers and sisters and pretty soon you've got an army of ants in your kitchen. No thanks, let's put a stop to it now.

I got to thinking about this problem. Why are we seeing ants on the second floor? The place we are seeing them is just above the gas fireplaces and there is all kinds of space back there. The fireplace on the main floor is pretty well sealed up, but the one in the basement is surrounded by cabinets. On top of the fireplace is a big TV box and that box can be pulled out to give access to the space behind. Last time the bug man was here we didn't spray in the basement, this time I think we will. So I pulled the box out.

Basement Bookcase - TV Box Installed

I don't remember who the numb nuts was that installed the electrical outlet on the side of the box, but it sure made getting it out a bit more difficult than it needed to be. All these wires are needed to support the Frame TV we have upstairs. If someone had planned ahead, they could have put a recess in the wall upstairs to hold the driver box, but they didn't. Instead, the wires go to the TV box in the basement.

Screw Hole and Depth Gauge

My wife helped me hoist the box up and set it in the hole. Eyeball the placement and then check the mounting holes for alignment. First time the charm!

This cabinet used to hold a 300 pound 36 inch CRT television. I think we bought it around the turn of the century and it was replaced by a flat screen a few years later. I keep thinking I ought to do something with this big space, but I'm not sure what.

P. S. The chairs in the top picture were a failed attempt to support the box while we fed the wires through the holes in the back. Didn't work, chairs immediately toppled over sideways. So we used the printer table. It wasn't as high, but it worked just fine.

P. P. S. Bug man tells me we have more ants than usual on account of we didn't have a hard freeze this winter.

Flat Tire Addendum

A Young People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
4.1 rating on Goodread

While I was waiting for the flat to be fixed I notice a couple of books in the office. Don't often see books in auto repair joints, or maybe I just never noticed. Anyway, I'm always looking for something new to read, hoping I will find something that will grab me. So I take a couple of pics. It's quicker and easier than writing it down and the camera doesn't forget.

The Perfect Girl: A Novel by Gilly Macmillan
3.7 rating on Goodreads

Don't know that I will read either one of these.

Cheap Amazon Tire Pressure Gauge

When we got back to the house we checked the pressure in all the tires including the emergency spare. That spare needs to be inflated to 60 PSI and it was only about half that. Start pumping it up, stop and check the pressure and the gauge only goes to 50 PSI. What is this? When did we start cheaping out on tire pressure gauges? I used to have a couple of decent gauges but they got old and quit working, so I bought a new one off of Amazon. It was only $8 for a pair of them. Guess I got what I deserved.

Guns

World War II German 8.8 cm Flak 18/36/37 anti-aircraft and anti-tank gun

Italian Army personnel recovery operation using Agusta A129 Mangusta attack helicopter

Nose Gun

Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk

10th Cav trooper with Apache Scouts, 1885

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6117

10 Short Videos #6117

Rollerblade wheels on office chair

Ducklings leap of faith

Wrong spot? for splitting firewood

Machining a locking nut for threaded rod

Cute Girl Making A Amazing Lac Bangles With Unique Techniques

Airshow in NAS Corpus Christi, Texas. F-18 and stunt plane

Masterpiece of Engineering- BALLPOINT PEN in Electron Microscope

Inside the AC-130J Ghostrider

Bush plane touching the surface of glass smooth water

Air Tractor landing uphill

Update next day fixed broken link.

Aerometal

Lockheed C-121 Constellation

Found out Matt is working for Aerometal in Aurora, Oregon. A very niche business 'specializing in Continuing Airworthiness in Aging Aircraft.'

Blasting

Bachman Turner Overdrive - You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet 1974 Video Sound HQ
NEA ZIXNH

It's a nice day today, so I've got the windows down in my car, cruising up Highway 217 and this tune comes on the radio. Actually, YouTube Music via my smartphone and then through a headphone cable to the radio. So this tune comes on and it's a banger, so I wanna hear it loud. But I've got the windows down. Ever notice that nobody ever drives with the windows down anymore? Anyway, back to the radio. Can the radio handle it? And more importantly, can the speakers? I've dealt with dead speakers before (for example) and I don't want that. Unfortunately the only way to find out if they can take it is to turn up the volume, so I did. All the way to 35. Normally I'll have it around 15 or so when I am driving around in town, 25 MPH or less. On the highway with the windows up I'll turn it up to 20 to 25. This 35 business is uncharted territory, but the radio and the speakers handled it just fine. I think full volume on this radio is 40 or 50. Never tried it.

I think somebody spent a couple of bucks on the sound system before I got the car. The radio is a Kenwood with a detachable faceplate. It has one big knob that, besides turning like a volume control, it also acts like joystick to do I dunno what. I kind of learned a couple of things, but then I started using my smartphone and forgot all about the front panel controls. Now I use the buttons on the steering wheel. On the right side of the wheel I have buttons for the cruise control, which I use the heck out of. The stereo controls are on the left side of wheel. They allow me to changed the volume and channel and also mode. It has five or six modes (USD, CD, Radio, Blank/Inactive?, and Auxiliary, which is the one I use with my smartphone). So I no longer even have to touch the front panel.

Culture

Midwest Chick has a fine post up:

Contemplations on the importance of culture

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6116

10 Short Videos #6116

Air cooled engines in cars

The blade runners of London

Comedian Joe Dombrowski - Not that word

Girl making hot car sounds

Stallion - Ultimate 3D Printed Fixed Wing UAV

Blue Origin Lands FLOWN Orbital Booster For The First Time!

an unfortunate naming mistake - Copper Nano Tubes

This Bird Is Basically a Dinosaur - Shoebill

Custom Nozzle for Multi-Color 3D Prints!

This Forgotten Flying Machine Predicted the Future! - RC model of Rotarcycle helicopter

Word of the Day

Orwell's crimestop - In George Orwell’s 1984, crimestop is a Newspeak term defined as the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It is a form of protective stupidity or self-censorship, allowing citizens to avoid thoughtcrime (thoughtcontrol) by automatically halting independent, critical, or rebellious thoughts before they fully form.

Ran into this word, crimestop, in an excellent post on Yard Sale of the Mind about Darwin, survival, tribe membership and politics.

Not Funny

Zhangjiakou Power Station

Zhangjiakou Power Station located in Hebei Province, China

Coal fired power plant 90 miles northwest of Bejing.

Chernobyl

Chernobyl nuclear power station

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

More Money

S&P 500 PE Ratio - 90 Year Historical Chart
Note that the vertical scale is logarithmic

Tam commented on my last money post to tell me I was all wet about Price to Earnings (P/E) Ratios, so I checked. Up until 1990, the P/E Ratio pretty much stayed below 20. Since then it has been noticeably higher. 

The giant peak (over 120) occurred in June 2009, when company earnings collapsed to near zero in the wake of the Great Recession when all those big banks went bust.

Current P/E ratio is about 30, which is also the length of a typical home mortgage in years. I vaguely remember when I was a kid that mortgages were about 20 years and loan payments were about 1% of the purchase price of a house. When I finally got around to buying my first house back in the 80's, 30 year mortgages were the norm and payments were about one half of one percent of the purchase price.

Anyway, I attribute the rise in P/E ratios as a result of some people (oil barons, drug cartel kingpins and arms merchants) making more money than they know what to do with, so they put it in the stock market.

Funnies

10 Short Videos #6115

10 Short Videos #6115

DIZZY X2 skateboard trick

Girl gymnast moves supporting herself on her hands

Sniper shooting at you

Harley Davidson Sportster S 

Whale

High speed CNC bit goes rogue

The Fake Sheep Herd (120+ Dummies) That Hid 50 Troops

The delicious geometry of Moroccan zellige tiles

How an invention changed the world - Caveman Long Meme

Best hidden talents

Octopus

Octopus

Flat Tire

 

J.R. Oregon Tires & Auto Care

Daughter got a flat tire this morning while she was driving up West Burnside road on the way out of Portland. Hit something hard, probably a pothole. She tried to fix it herself but immediately ran into a problem when she couldn't loosen the wingnut that was securing the jack in the trunk. So I got called to assist. She was right, the wing nut was tight. I couldn't loosen it until I applied some Channellock pliers. I know who the guilty culprit is. He tightens everything super tight. Now we need to get to the lug nuts. The YouTube video she has pulled up has mag wheels while she has steel wheels and hub caps. So the lug nuts are behind the hubcap. Lugnuts revealed, she tries to loosen one. No go. She stands on the end of the wrench. Bounces. Still no go. I stand on the wrench and bounce and my heftier weight (double hers) does the trick. That was the toughest one. Thanks, Costco. She was able to break loose the rest of them.

Got the tire changed and looked around for someplace to get it fixed (it's Sunday) and find J.R. Oregon Tires & Auto Care in Beaverton. It took him maybe 15 minutes to fix the tire and only charged $20. I call it a deal.

Now I'm on Google Maps looking for Streetview images of this place. The one at the top is the first and it doesn't really give a good view of the place.

Union 76

So I move to the corner, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but the old Union 76 gas station that used to be there. I dunno how long ago.

J.R. Oregon Tires & Auto Care

Switch to 3d view and we get a good, if distorted, overview of the whole place. What isn't shown is the pile of several hundred tires on the far side of the main building.

This is in a small commercial district in fairly unscale neighborhood. The commercial district has been on the skids for while. Half of it has been fenced off and looks like it is going to be demolished. The only remainging businesses there are Harbor Freight and DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles).

I think the last time I changed a flat was on our old Windstar van, and that must have been 20 years ago.

Technocracy

Technate of America

Technocracy was a political movement in the USA in the 1930s that aimed to put technologists in control. Technology is not yet in total control, but it certainly has us fenced in with roads, powerlines, train tracks and prison walls. Bombthrower got me started.

Technocracy Rally, Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, California

Technocracy Inc. has a website, but the above picture is almost the entire content.