Heavy Threat

Hezbollah Leader to Bush: 'Shut Up'

The President's recommended response with the USMC behind him:

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but flag burning psychos will never hurt me....neener neener neener.... "

Madonna's Hot

I am not a big awards-show fan.

A lot of people get all giddy when the Grammys or Oscars come around--I didn't even know they were happening until I was flipping through the channels last night. It's actually pretty rare these days that I even buy a new CD (digtially or otherwise) since I haven't been too turned on by the music that's come out in the past few years.

So it was just as a sidenote to have some music in the background when I clicked on the stream Yahoo put on their site of the Madonna/Gorillaz performance at the Grammys last night...

I guess her "Hung Up" (I think that's it--her latest from "Confessions on a Dance Floor") video is a bit offensive to some, since I heard about it without seeing it from people that were saying that she should "act her age." Mind you that I grew up as Madonna was becoming a star, and she's been in the scene ever since. So I was 13 when she was on her "Like a Virgin" tour. Girls at my middle school shocked nuns when they would show up with a lace glove on (I wonder what they would say now, with what I've seen teen girls wearing). Either way, I thought she was pretty hot back then.

The performance I saw was really friggin cool. Somehow they took the 3D animated images of the Gorillaz and had them onstage, and in the middle of the performance Madonna rose up out of the stage to start her part. She danced around the stage, and the 3D images, as if they were actually there with her. At first I thought that maybe it was a screen behind her, until she walks around behind them, too. Pretty amazing stuff.

I hope when I'm her age that I look like that and can still move like that. I mean, she's 47 years old and still rocks.

And she's still hot.

Man-Saw

Lowe's is having its grand opening this weekend.

In the last eleven years I've gone from nothing at all (Germany, Japan), to a half-assed hardware store (Del Rio, TX) to having a Home Depot a half hour away. Now, finally, Lowe's is opening about 20 minutes from my house.

Lowe's to me now is what Toys 'R' Us was to me as a kid. Home Depot is cool, but Lowe's just rocks. I've spent a vast amount of money in that place. One of the coolest Christmas gifts I got in recent years was a $75 gift card to my mecca...

When we bought our first house three years ago I had a power screwdriver and a hammer. Emily had more tools than I did from before we were married. As soon as we moved in she requested a shelf over the washing machine. Wth one sentence my Dad started a downhill slide that I haven't been able to stop since:

"Well, you're going to have to go get a power saw."

That was in January of 2003. By August I had roughly $3000 worth of power tools in my garage and was building Sammy's first bed from scratch. I had a late show at work that day and I was working on it until around 11 AM. When I left I hit the garage door button, but by the time I pulled away the door had popped back up, leaving it open with my mother-in-law and kids in the house.

At some point in the three hours it was left open before Emily got home, some jackass pulled up and walked off with my benchtop drill press, a brand-new router table, a 10" mitre-saw, and that power saw my Dad told me to get. I didn't realize it until Saturday when I went back out to the garage to work on Sammy's bed. Of course, our insurance didn't cover it.

It does now.

I was so pissed off that we stormed out and drove three hours to San Antonio and went directly to Lowe's. I blew $1300 on replacements, except this time I bought a 200 pound full-size drill press, and the Man-Saw which is the dominatrix of my garage. This DeWalt 12" sliding miter saw can cut through a 4x6 as if it wasn't even there. I bolted the Man-Saw to a table, sat back, and announced out my open-garage door: "Let's see you bastards come try to steal this!"

And I bought a new power-saw, too.

Cool Website

Foreign militaries aside, one of my favorite places in the world to visit was Paris, France. I was absolutely floored by the Eiffel Tower, Napoleon's tomb, the Champs, and just the general feeling of the city. I wish I was more into photography then.



Anyway--I found a great website called "Webcam Site of the Day" which highlights, obviously, different webcams throughout the day. In order to see this one refresh you'll have to do it manually--but the website I got it from does it automatically. Technology rocks.

Off-Road Solo

My recollection of El Tigre's spinning episode garnered a record-breaking hit day for me (largely due to a pick-up from Smash, once again), so I'll continue on with another experience of mine.

My last duty in pilot training was as the Assistant Director of Operations, with my primary responsibility being student training. What this translated into was that any student that displayed a less than 50% chance of being able to successfully solo was sent to me for their checkout. I would like to think it was due to my stellar instructional abilities, but I have a feeling it was more because no one else wanted the responsibility. They usually ended up passing on to the rest of the program, but occasionally a call to end the student's tenure as a pilot had to be made. It was the ones that were right on that edge that I was tagged to fly with the most.

As you could have probably guessed, Tigre was one of those students...

His big turn to solo was up. Plagued by a horrible case of airsickness, he had fallen way behind early on in the program and was the last student in the class to solo. Most of the instructors, though they thought his attitude was amazing, did not expect him to go up alone. We were scheduled for the first go of the day--just a flight around the pattern to decide once and for all if I was going to get out.

Almost immediately it wasn't going well. Normally on these flights I would turn my interphone off, so there was no sound whatsoever in the cockpit except what the student was saying and hearing, with the intent b eing that this was a safety check, not an instructional sortie, per se. Within ten minutes of flight I was back on the mike telling him what to do. After 30 minutes, I had just about had enough.

The weather has to be at certain minimums in order for Air Force students to go solo. When we took off it was right on the edge--by the mid-point of the sortie it was rapidly deteriorating due to increased winds. If the weather fell too far, I wouldn't be able to get out and Tigre would have another shot that afternoon. As if in answer to a prayer, the radio call went out changing the airfield status to "Dual," eliminating any chances of the solo sortie happening that morning. Had the weather not changed, I would have had to fail him.

"You just got a break," I announced, taking the aircraft and ending the sortie. He knew as well as I did that it hadn't gone well.

That afternoon we tried again. The winds had calmed and the sky was a deep blue clear. The sun was shining on Tigre's hands, as well, as he deftly flew around the pattern without any assistance from me. After performing his requisite landings, I took the jet and looked at him.

"You ready?" I think it kind of caught him by surprise--he didn't think I was going to let him go.

After taxiing back into parking, he left one engine running as I jumped out. I gave him some last words of advice and some guidance.

"Three landings and call it a day," I shouted to him over the engines. His helmet bobbed up and down in understanding. Student's nametags had only their names on them, while qualified pilots had their perspective rating wings displayed above theirs. I reached over and ripped his velcro nametag off, slapping my own senior pilot wings in its place. "Bring those back," I shouted, and jumped out.

Over by the squadron there was a picnic table on the flight line that was a common gathering place for students watching their buddies solo. Since Tigre was the last, almost the whole class was out there. Not many instructors took part in the tradition. I'm not sure why. I went to every student's that I soloed. Listening over a handheld radio, I watched as the tweet, now so completely far out of my control, zip around the pattern. He was doing a good job at his radio calls and it seemed to be going well.

"Pogo 50, gear down," crackled over the radio two times over the course of the next 15 minutes. Pogo was the callsign students adopted on the initial solos. It still cracks me up. I waited for the last one: "Pogo 50, gear down, full stop." Good boy, I thought. Calling it quits like I asked.

The runway at Del Rio sloped up and over a slight hill at its mid-point. From our vantage position we could only see halfway without jumping up on the picnic table and craning our necks. After Tigre touched down I watched as he rolled out over the hill. I switched the radio off and got ready to pat myself on the back for another solo under my belt.

Then a firetruck went by.

Not too out of the ordinary. No lights or anything, and emergencies happened here all the time.

A tug-truck lumbered past. I started to get uncomfortable.

One of Tigre's classmates was on top of the table with binoculars watching the rollout. I looked up at her uneasily.

"Sir, there's an aircraft off the runway down there." I closed my eyes and turned the radio back on.

"Laughlin inside runway is currently closed due to aircraft departing the prepared surface. All aircraft are restricted to low approaches only until further notice." I sprinted inside.

As it turns out, he was ok. The safety board decided that there was a fault in the braking mechanism in the plane, even though I saw no problems with it when I checked them myself only 20 minutes earlier. Good on him.

Air Force policy is that if there's ever a mishap the first thing they do is take some blood. When he got to the hospital they drew some blood and looked at his nametag for the information. Fortunately it was clean, since it was my name that went on the vial they took from his arm.

That night we were discussing the incident in the formal briefing that we had at the end of every day. This class, in particular, had shown a lack of discipline and work ethic in the first months of pilot training. I took this opportunity to go off on them as this was a possible contributed to Tigre getting into the bind in the first place. In all of my flying experience I had never had a feeling of dread as I did when I saw firetrucks chasing down a student that I had just cleared solo. With tears filling my eyes I swore to them that I would never have that feeling again as an instructor in basic pilot training. It was the only time I ever cracked while I was there.

It never happened again.

Operation Iraqi Children

Happened upon a great website today from lovemytanker's blog My Life as a Military Spouse called Operation Iraqi Children. Much like Soldier's Angels, the website aims to give people an easy way to support children in war-torn Iraq. While I am normally wary about celebrity-sponsored charity efforts, this project by Gary Sinise and Laura Hillbrand has provided school supplies, clothing and shoes to a large number of children in need. Recently they have expressed a need for items other than school-related due to the cold winter (blankets, etc.). The items are shipped overseas to our troops on the ground and are subsequently handed out to the children and families that need them. From the site:

"Many American troops have taken it upon themselves to reconstruct schools and gather learning tools for the children of Iraq. Their efforts have been met with immense gratitude from the local Iraqis and their children. Operation Iraqi Children is a grassroots program that aims to provide concerned Americans with the means to reach out to the Iraqi people and help support our troops' attempts to assist them. "

What a great movement. Stop by when you can.

Spinning

After the thrashing I took from the post on the State of the Union address, I figured I would stray a bit from politics and the war for a little bit.

I mentioned earlier that one of the things a pilot fears most is loss of control of his airplane.

I haven't felt that much. Only one time is immediately coming to mind.

My last assignment was as a T-37B instructor at Laughlin AFB, Texas. Over the course of three years I flew over 1300 hours in roughly 1100 sorties with students and and instructors alike. When I left I was one of three "Assistant Director of Operations" (third in command of a squadron) and a Flight Evaluator, which means that I gave checkrides to not only new students, but also to experienced instructors to maintain their own currency. It was by far and wide the best tour, and best job, I've had in my life. There are experiences that I had while there that I will never forget, and lessons about flying and life that I will carry with me any time I get behind the controls of an aircraft.

I had hundreds of students that I instructed over the course of my time in Del Rio, TX. Most of them just kind of blurred together and I recognize by face alone, a bunch I remember names, but a select few I remember even minute details, like what made them nervous or what their specific strengths and deficiencies were. One day one of these students got me in a bind...

The T-37 does one thing that, supposedly, no other basic flight training course does--it spins. The purpose of the manuever is to increase confidence in the student and to teach them to be able to recover from an uncontrolled situation if they were to ever get into one while solo. Essentially what you do is take the aircraft up to a high altitude (18,000-21,00 feet), stall it, and then jam in a bunch of rudder to start an autorotation. If you've never done one before, it's a pretty harrowing experience. If you've done a few hundred, like I had at the time, it's a blast. The plane violently shakes, flips over a couple of times, and then wraps up into a tight spiral where the only thing you see from the cokcpit is the earth spinning around like you're on a wrapped up tire swing.

The recovery procedure is relatively complex, but, when done correctly, extremely reliable in getting you out of the tight spot. The only recorded mishaps (crashes) that occurred when spinning were from actual damage to the aircraft (which caused the spin to occur in the first place) or (important point here) an improperly executed recovery procedure.

So...said student, we'll call him "El Tigre" (those who flew with him know who I'm talking about) was one of the best kids I taught as far as motivation and personality go. His hands--well, left a little to be desired. He was one of those students that barely had the skills required to graduate, but as they say "if the minimum wasn't good enough, it wouldn't be the minimum." El Tigre generated a couple of stories with me that I plan on putting on here. Suffice it to say that he eventually graduated, and was loved a great deal by the instructors. Sometimes this can be a bad thing, but I'm 100% confident that with Tigre we made the right call.

So there I was...Tigre was nervous, as most students are when spinning, and wrapped us up at 18000 feet. The airspace was cut into "blocks" of five to seven thousand foot sections to keep people separated. Our block this day went from 15,000 feet to 22,000 feet, with the block below us from 7,000 to 12,000 feet. So, essentially, we were completely safe above 15,000, mostly safe below 15,000, and unsafe below 12,000 due to the traffic below us. The ejection altitude for a spin in a tweet was 10,000 feet.

So Tigre wraps up and slowly starts to go through his procedures. He was having trouble, so I let him go further than I should have to try and figure it out. Passing 17,500 feet, I took the aircraft from him since the spin was getting faster, and I needed to save the day. I started the procedure at around 17,000--since it takes about 1,500 feet to accomplish, that was late.

Irritated with myslef for getting us in this position, I sped through the moves. One of the steps was to apply rudder opposite the spin to slow it down and get ready to pop out. Caught up with watching the altimeter rapidly spin downward, I looked out and saw the world spinning to the right. I stomped on the right rudder.

Suddenly the earth spun faster. A lot faster. I watched as the altimeter spun below 15,000 feet.

Realizing my mistake I released everything and the spinning slowed down. Passing 14,000 feet I took a deep breath and started over, slower this time. I remember crystal clearly verbally going through the motions as I applied them, this time stomping (really really hard) on the left rudder. The altimeter was passing 12,500 feet.

With a heavy shudder, the world stopped rotating and I jammed the throttles forward as I reefed back on the stick to gain altitude. The lowest we got, I think, was 11,500 feet. Tigre said not a word as the nose pitched up and the altimeter reversed. Passing back into our altitude block I turned my head to look at him. His face was white through his helmet visor.

"Woo hoo! That was fun, wasn't it!" I shouted through the intercom.

After gaining our breath I climbed as high as I could and let him try it again. He did much better this time.

I still think spinning is fun.

Fun With Flickr

Oh this is going to open a whole new world of doing stuff with my camera...

Tasteless Washington Post Editorial Cartoon

Received an editorial cartoon in an email from a friend of mine that works in the Pentagon (sorry, man). I've heard Fox and quite a few others bash the Washington Post for the things they publish, but I've honestly never read the paper itself at all. Unfortunately, they officially moved themselves into my "wacko" (sorry, James) column of things that I refuse to read...

This is heartless and done in an attempt at humor. I'm all for tasteless jokes, but this has gone too far. The saving grace, and the reason I'm posting about it, is that the Joint Chiefs of Staff responded immediately to the cartoon with a jointly signed letter to the defeatist rag newspaper. Incidentally, I've never set eyes on anything that the entire CJCS has signed together--which I thought was pretty awesome. Only the letter and first two signatures are on there--just take my word for it that the other four signatures were on the other page and chalk it up to my lack of prowess in image posting.

Due to the image being poor--here's a copy of what it says:

To the editors of the Washington Post:

We were extremely disappointed to see the editorial cartoon by Tom Toles on page B6 in the January 29th edition. Using the likeness of a servicemember who has lost his arms and legs in war as the central theme of a cartoon is beyond tasteless. Editorial cartoons are often designed to exaggerate issues--and your paper is obviously free to address any topic, including the state of readiness of today's Armed Forces. However, we believe you and Mr. Toles have done a disservice to your readers and your paper's reputation by using such a callous depiction of those who have volunteered to defend this nation and, as a result, have suffered traumatic and life-threatening wounds.

Those who visit with wounded veterans in hospitals have found lives profoundly changed by pain and loss. They have also found brave men and women with a sense of purpose and selfless commitment that causes truly battle-hardened warriors to pause. Where do we get such men and women? From the cities, and farmlands of this great Nation--they serve to be a part of something bigger than themselves. While you or some of your readers may not agree with the war or its conduct, we believe you owe the men and women and their families who so selflessly serve their country the decency to not make light of their tremendous physical sacrifices.

As the Joint Chiefs, it is rare that we all put our hand to one letter, but we cannot let this reprehensible cartoon go unanswered.

Sincerely,

Gen Peter Pace, Chairman JCS
Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani, Vice Chairman JCS
General Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps
General Peter Schoomaker, US Army Chief of Staff
Admiral Michael Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations
General Michael Mosely, US Air Force Chief of Staff

State of the Lack of Union

As much as it pains me to say this, I have taken a new interest in politics since I started blogging.

I mean, they just give you so much material.

If you've been reading for a little while, you'll recall that politicians as a whole, and the state of our political system as a whole, make my stomach turn. The State of the Union address last night, and the comments surrounding it, re-emphasized that for me.

I am simply baffled by the split-party system. It amazes me to watch the miraculous coincidence that occurs when there were just two views in that chamber, either virtually half the room complely supported or did not support what the President was saying. There are exceptions (John McCain, Joe Lieberman) to the rule, but I think this is why so much money is wasted and so little gets accomplished in so much time on the Hill. We need to get someone in charge that honestly does not care about his own party and only for what he believes is right. John McCain, from what I've seen, seems to be the kind of person who does that.

Mind you, I'm not an expert in politics. I hardly followed it at all until the last election...

A great moment last night that was (unfortunately) not caught on the cameras was some psycho Cindy Sheehan being arrested for wearing an anti-war t-shirt into the chamber. C'mon, girlfriend. I've never protested anything actively, but I would imagine that the smart thing for her to have done would have been to behave and just go to the speech. She would have been caught on camera probably a million times. Everyone knows what she stands for--she would have effectively protested the war with her silence if she wasn't acting like a complete idiot.

I liked a lot of what the Pres said last night. Some of it seemed a bit unrealistic, but I missed a bit since I was competing with the monkies climbing all over me while I tried to watch. I did get a good listen to the military stuff, the most important line to me being:

"As we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels -- but those decisions will be made by our military commanders, not by politicians in Washington, D.C."

The next couple of years are going to dramatically alter the political spectrum of this country. Although I don't think it will change (safety in numbers), the first step for our government to take to move forward is to drop the partisan politcs, and to vote for conscience and what is right, rather than for money and job security.