Fall in the Air

The mornings are getting cool, it's getting dark earlier, and some of the leaves here are changing color. Here is a view in our neighborhood. It's a pretty time of year. The other night, Dianne and I went for a walk and we were crunching acorns on the sidewalk under our feet. That action brought back memories of Fall as a kid trying to squeeze in some play time in the nice weather -- before having to bundle up for outdoor fun in the winter. The acorns given up by the oak trees in the Fall were not only useful to the squirrels getting ready for winter, they were also good ammo for us in mock battles or as a diversion tool to distract the searcher during a game of tin can alley. Do kids do stuff like that anymore or is that just too crazy in the video game, cell phone, and MySpace era?

Rollergirls' SRS 3 Photos

In case you missed the Cincinnati Rollergirl action at the Florence Fundome, you can read more about it on the Roller Derby Diva's blog and on Sk8 Crime's blog. Sk8 Crime also has photos of her battle scars. I can only imagine how sore her opponents are today!

As usual, Jason Bechtel has posted some great photos from the match in his Flickr pool. His photos give a good idea of how tough the blocking was. I'm guessing he'll post another set for the other match of the day. Check out all his sets here. He has some nice non-roller derby photos too! His photo below is a nice shot of Sadistic Sadie as a jammer and Collier Mama as a pivot for the Dames with Miss Print of the Riots to the right.

Cincinnati Roller Girls SRS 3

Today was Super Roll Sunday III for the Cincinnati Rollergirls. Dianne and I went to see the matches at the Florence Fundome. The Dames of Destruction took on the Cincinnati Riots in the first match and the Bloody Sundaes skated against the Full Metal Corsets in the second match.

First Match:
The first match was a bit of a blowout. The Dames, even after losing several points after the half for an illegal formation penalty, won easily. Sadistic Sadie was zooming around the track once again. It's amazing how she can weave through the pack without losing her momentum. In the clear, she really zips around the track. There were a couple of jams where she actually lapped the Riot jammer! Besides having some good jams, she was also good at coordinating the team and blocking when she was in the pack. Collier Mama, skating for the Dames, had some great blocks once again. In general, everyone was blocking much better. However, the increased blocking and speed translated to a lot of skaters falling hard. Skinnie Minnie went down hard and hurt her leg (hamstring?).

In the second half of the first match, the coach Omega 3 skated over to the stands to get another view of the skaters. She sat down in the area near where we were sitting -- an area filled with friends of Big Dog Mama (a Dames skater). Unknowingly she sat between some Mama fans and started cheering for the Riots. One of Big Dog Mama's friends leaned over very politely and explained that about 10 people around Omega were Dames fans. I thought it was hilarious she happened to sit in that spot and make some noise for the Riots! Omega 3 asked if there were any Riots fans and I think Dianne and I were the only ones in the area.

Second Match:
This match was much more exciting since the score was closer. The Corsets had an early lead thanks to a great jam by Sk8 Crime but the Sundaes clawed their way back and were within a point with about 7 minutes to go. The blocking was tough in this match as well. Again Collier Mama was blocking like crazy. She was working hard at staying in front of and blocking the opposing jammer. However, a couple times she got going too fast in order to stay ahead and ended up skating away from the pack. Unfortunately, the refs then forced her to let the jammer pass and slow down to rejoin the pack. The worst incident of this match was when L'dia de Muerta gave Blu Bayou (the jammer) a hard block to the outside. Blu Bayou went down and skidded to a stop in front of the Sundae bench. L'dia's momentum took her off the outside of the track as well, but she tried to stop while standing. She couldn't and ended up going into the wall near the bench. L'dia sat out the rest of the match.

Near the end of the match with the Sundaes catching up, Sk8 Crime made a good play by taking out the Sundae jammer to slow her down. Sk8 Crime didn't just block the jammer, she grabbed the jammer around the waist and spun her to the ground hard! Although Sk8 Crime got sent to the penalty box for the takedown, the Sundae jammer was so far out of scoring position at that point the Corset win was assured.

Overall Impressions
We enjoyed SRS III. There was a lot of hard blocking and teamwork in both matches. I'm sure there are going to be a lot of bruised and sore Rollergirls tomorrow! The Fundome, although a bit of a drive for us, is a nice facility and the concessions were managed well. The halftime entertainment was good. Unfortunately, the crowd was probably hurt by the Bengals game that also started at 4. Although it was a beautiful day for a football game, I'll bet some of those Bengals fans wished they had gone to SRS III. They'll have one more chance to catch the action at Castle Skateland on October 29th.

Photo Sudoku

Here is a neat site that lets you create and play an image based sudoku game using photos in the Flickr pool. You can create puzzles based on tags or by user. Solve them by clicking on a picture and then clicking on the square where it belongs. Here is a puzzle created from a hamster tag. Here is a puzzle I created from my Flickr photos. This should take Michelle about a minute to solve.

E-mails from Africa

I just have to share this series of emails from Africa. I’m really lucky I received an email at work today from the Executive Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Here is a bit of the email:

OUR REF: CBN/FGN/CPN/01-5/XA/06

Date: 22nd sept 2006

RE: DIRECTIVES ON IMMEDIATE PAYMENT OF
YOUR OUTSTADING FUND WITH FGN
From the records of outstanding contractors due for payment with the Federal Government of Nigeria, your name and company was discovered as next on the list of the outstanding Contractors & Will Recipient that has not yet received their payment. I wish to inform you that your payment is being processed and will be released to you as soon as you respond to this important message. We equally discovered that some group of people posing as central bank governor is in contact with you based on this payment as a result of their selfish interest or aim as it will boil down to inability of them doing anything for you based on this circumstance because they are impostors and are working on the official payment data/information’s they cloned from the central bank official payment gazette which made them to contact you. You are hereby advice to stop any further correspondence with them for your security.

You should note that from records in our file, your outstanding contract payment will be paid to you ,Kindly re-confirm the followings details to this office=

1) Your full name.
2) Phone, fax and mobile #.
3) Company name, position and address.
4) Profession, age and marital status.
5) Expecting amount
6) Scan copy of your int'l passport or driving license for the purpose of identification.

As soon as these information’s are received, your payment will be made to you in a certified bank cheque or wired to your nominated bank account by electronic swift transfer directly from Central Bank of Nigeria.

Wow….you can fill in the expecting amount! They don’t even ask for an account number. I guess that must already be in their files. If I hadn’t received that email, I never would have realized that this email I received earlier in the day was a fake.

I hope this mail will not embarrass you since we have not had any previous communication, My name is Mr. Peter Odili,I am the governor of Rivers state in Nigeria. I got your reference from the Nigerian business and proffession promotion council and went further to have it confirmed by your country`s trade department.

I,on behalf of leading council of the Government of Rivers States of Nigeria decided to solicit your assistance as regard to the transfer of theabove stated sum of money into your bank
account.

This fund arose from the state bunkering unit since the Government of the Country does not really compensate our state irrespective of the fact that all the money Nigeria has today is gotten from Rivers State onshore/offshore dichotemy yet we are not well compensated, base on this the council of elders/paramount rulers etc after several delibration resorted that they must be partakers of their God given resources decided to steal this oil and hide them somewhere and sell them to some oil companies in our nearby african countries.

This has been done over and over and the leading council now decided that this funds should be transfered into a foreign account for proper use, it is base on this that I have contacted you, in orderword I am therefore seeking your assistance based on the amount stated above of US$21M
which can be speedily processed and fully be remitted into yournominated bank account.

We will offer you 10% (10 percent) of the total sum for your assistance, 85% will be ours and 5% will be set aside for expenses both parties might make in the course of this transaction.I assure you that this transaction is 100% risk-free,all documents as well as computerized records that
has to do with this fund is in our possession, shall be destroyed immediately after this transaction .We advice you to keep this transaction strictly confidential, we are top Government official and can not afford scandals, you are also adviced to act swifty because we are running out of time.

For security reasons, I gave this letter to a good friend of mine : Dr. Graham Wood, who came to Nigeria on a diplomatic mission, he is back to his base in London, I have ask him to contact you directly and as soon as he gets your reply he will notify me and I will contact you directly, Dr.
Graham Wood is also not happy over the waythe Government is treating this part of the country,I will send you my personal phone and fax numbers as soon as I hear from you,it is important that you include your own phone and fax numbers for easy communication.

I wait in anticipation of your reply.

Here I thought Peter was telling the truth when the email said his offer was 100% risk free. Sheesh! You can’t trust anyone. I hope Peter’s not waiting too long for a reply. And I’m going to get right on sending a copy of my passport to the Central Bank of Nigeria. Is anybody falling for these crazy spam email schemes to get your bank account “informations”!?! I can’t believe people waste their time sending out millions of these emails (and here I am reproducing them).

While those emails are clearly false, what do you think about the email below that I got from a poor kid who lost all his ‘families’ – except for his evil uncle who he now has to live with? What a ‘sadly’ story!! Although he has to beg for food, he’s lucky to have internet access to ask for help. I don’t recall being a business partner in precious metals, but I did see Precious Metal race at Reno. Perhaps when Cana grows up, he could pitch this heart wrenching story to a Hollywood film studio and get his money back.

Good day to you.

I hope this letter meets you well, My name is Cana David, I will be 15 yrs old on October 19, 2006. I come from southern part of Cote D'Voire. A boarding student of Maria Regina college. My father was dealing on precious metals before his death, while my mother was a gospel
musician.

I am contacting you in respect of my parent's inheritance been abandoned before their untimely death during the February's political terrorist attack in my father's compound. I was in school taking my exams when I was informed that a bomb attack was made in my parents compound on early hours of that sadly day. It was unfortunate that all my families were inside the house when such attack was made. I can neither go into details for now nor express fully my intimate feelings about this sad event. Uncontrolable tears are filled up my eyes as of this moment that I am writing.

However,since then I have taking refuge under my uncle's house who has wickedly and forcefully taken posessions of all my father's inheritance and belongings without giving me any conesnt nor care. As I am writing to you now, my uncle has sold all my father's belonging leaving nothing with me to take care of myself but he used the funds to send his family to Netherland, while I
dont have anything doing now nor even go back to school. I only feed myself with the little casual jobs and begging I do on the street.

Recently, My father's personal attorney informed me about a document containing US$4.2 million which was discovered in one of my late father's file. This is why I am contacting you now, so that you will assist me in retrieving the aforementioned inheritance before my wicked uncle get hold of it. I do not want my uncle to know about this funds as I strongly believe that
this is how God wants to answer my prayers and turn my tears into joy.

The family attorney informed me that as a child at this age,there is no way he would release the document to me, he suggested two opinions (A) To submit the document to my uncle who now represents my family or (B) To submit the document to any of my father's business partner. At this stage and from my bitter experiences with my uncle,I wouldnt want my uncle to have it.
I have already informed the attorney that you are my father's business confidential partner, and that such document will be sent to you to enable you assist me in retrieving the inheritance funds.

Therefore I will like you to contact the attorney immediately so that he will release the documents to you so that the funds will be transferred via your bank account, and after that, you will assist me in moving out from here to meet with you for the investment of the funds.
Below is the contact of the attorney:
BARRISTER SOLACE ADRINOUSOU
ADDRESS:102 RUE DU AEROPORTE
COTONOU-BENIN REPUBLIC
E-MAIL: solace_law_chambers@yahoo.com

Because of your willingness in offering this assistance, I promised to offer you some commissions, but I will seek for your opinion if you can accept to take 25% of the total funds from the funds as soon as it is wired into your bank account.

Furtherly, I will also give you power to invest the balance in any lucrative business in your
country. You will also be managing the investment until I am out from school. The dividends of the investment will be sharing equally.

If you accept this conditions, kindly write to the attorney for the release of the document to you.

For your information, my wicked uncle knows the password to this mailbox, therefore do not reply to me via this address, send your response to my personal address: canadavid@myway.com and also do update me when you contact the attorney.
God bless you so much for your kindness. until I hear from you, I still remain yours,
Cana David

The Benefit of Exercise?

I had my aviation medical exam today. The exam requires a physician certified by the FAA to identify medical issues related to flying and altitude, so I have to go to someone other than my primary care doctor. It’s a strange office and I’m glad I only have to go once every 2 years. Let me share an observation that is a small illustration of why I feel that way.

While waiting in the reception area, I was reading a homemade flyer prepared by the office. The flyer, posted on the wall, touted the benefits of exercise for prolonging life. After looking at it for a minute, I thought it was a poor motivational tool to promote exercise. In short, the meat of the poster was a table showing how various amounts of exercise per day (30 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes, etc.) increased your life span. In general, across all amounts of exercise, your lifespan increased by about 66% of the time you invested in exercise. The chart also translated that to an increase in lifespan resulting from a year or 10 years of regular exercise.

I was surprised that information was posted and positioned that way in a doctor’s office. At first glance, I took it as a demotivational tool for exercise. The data showed that the time invested in exercise isn’t giving a great lifespan return. Exercising 30 minutes per day for a year means you use about 7.6 days for exercise that could be used for reading, sleeping, watching roller derby, playing sodoku, or whatever. Doing that amount of exercise for a year only prolongs your life about 5.3 days. So from a time standpoint, I’ve wasted 2.3 days. That’s a few months over the rest of my life. Imagine all the things you could accomplish with a few extra months! And if you cut out the 30 minutes of exercise altogether, that’s about 8 months of ‘extra’ time I’d have over the rest of my life. Wow!

I thought it was odd to look at exercise benefits from a time standpoint alone. I’m really surprised there was no mention about the quality of life benefits of exercise. Although you lose a bit of time, regular exercise should make you feel better over the time you have left and improve the quality of that time by decreasing the risks for diabetes, heart disease, etc. In my mind, that’s the payoff for the time investment in exercise.

I’m just glad I passed my medical exam. Now I'm going to the gym to workout.

Marmaduke Sites

Marmaduke, that zany Great Dane, has been in the papers for over 50 years! You can check out the latest Marmaduke comic here. The Marmaduke run is pretty good since most of the comics aren't that funny. Fortunately, I ran across this site that explains the Marmaduke humor. It's a great site. Also, you can check out the Marmaduke project site that is trying to make the strip funny. Some good laughs at that site too. Apologies to all the Great Dane owners out there.

What to do on a Plane?

While flying, I looked at what people were doing with their time. Quite a few were snoozing. A lot of people were reading paper - either paperback books (very popular), magazines, or newspapers. Close behind paperback books was various sudoku books. That’s the traveler’s puzzle of choice. A few people, like me, were using their laptops. Most of the laptop use wasn’t for entertainment though. Must be the Tuesday business traveler. A lot of people combined one of these activities with some music player like an iPod.

What people weren’t doing was watching the movies –OK, there were a few, but not many. Maybe it was the movie choices (X-Men and Poseidon), but it seems like that would be a potential place to cut cost and save a lot of weight in the plane. The MD-90 I was on had monitors above the seats every couple of rows.

There must be a better way to cater to these activities. Electronic books and news just hasn’t caught fire. If the equipment is good and it is easy to load content, it seems like a good solution for the readers. I’d rather have an electronic device with a variety of books, magazines, and news to reduce what I carry. It seems that would be a greener solution too. But such a device should go further and include a music player and some input device for crossword or sudoku puzzles. You could use it for an individualized movie choice. Sounds like a cross between a Sony reader, an iPod, and a Nintendo DS. Wouldn’t it be cool to fill in entertainment choices when booking your ticket that would be handed to you on a memory card when you check in? Plug it in your device and go. Might as well put my baggage claim checks and boarding pass on there too.

Let’s see, I’d like some easy sudoku, USA Today, Newsweek, the in-flight magazine and Sky Mall along with some guitar blues and classic rock.

Oh, and make sure the devices are shielded so they don’t interfere with navigation. I don’t want some goofball trying to finish his sudoku puzzle to put us below the approach path so we crash short of the runway.

Ice Cream is Verbotten

I’m no expert on explosives. However, I learned today that a child’s enzymes can convert ice cream into an explosive mixture that can take down a plane. Either that or the TSA classifies ice cream as a liquid, gel or aerosol.

A little kid was about a third of the way done with an ice cream cone purchased on the concourse and the family was going to board their flight. They were called to board. The TSA agent wouldn’t let the ice cream on the plane. Wow! Wouldn’t a kid get sick if he were eating ice cream with explosives in it? The kid was bawling when they threw out the ice cream to board. I’m glad I wasn’t on that flight!

Thanks, George. I feel much safer flying without kids with ice cream.

Lake Tahoe

Today I drove west of Reno to Truckee and then south to see Lake Tahoe. It was pretty warm in Reno, about 83. Around Lake Tahoe it was a comfortable 72 and in the mountains driving back to Reno it cooled to 63. The highest point was about 8000ft. It is a beautiful area. There are a lot of evergreen trees - a mix of fir, pine and cedar. Every time I got out of the car, there was a lovely pine scent in the air. But judging from the road signs, I think the winters would be tough. There were quite a few places where the road was marked to pull off and install tire chains, and the reflecting posts marking the edge of the road that are usually about 4ft. high are about 12ft. high on the road over the mountains from Tahoe to Reno. That, and the bear crossing signs, made me wonder. Click here to see the entire set of photos that I took around the Lake Tahoe area.

Reno Air Races -- Day 5

Click here for the Flickr set of photos I took at the last day of racing in Reno for 2006. I added short descriptions. Here are a couple pictures from the set.

The start of the T6 race.


Corsair and Mustang battle in the unlimited bronze race.


John Travolta did a flyby in his own Boeing 707.


The Big Boss Man on the tail of Ol' Yeller in the unlimited silver race.


Mike Brown won the unlimited gold race in his plane September Fury. The last lap was just over 492 mph.

Reno Air Races -- Day 4

Here are a few photos. See these and more from the day by clicking here. Most of the photos have some comment.

Saturday Dinner -- Dick Rutan

When I visited the National Air and Space Museum in July and saw the Voyager aircraft that made the first flight around the world without refueling, I never thought I’d shake the hand of one of its pilots a couple months later. The keynote speaker at the Saturday night dinner at the Checkered Flag Club was Dick Rutan.

Designed by his brother Burt specifically for a non-stop, round the world flight without refueling, Dick led and did the construction of the Voyager and was one of the pilots that tested it and flew it around the world in 1986. Read more about Dick here. He received the Collier Trophy and is an enshrinee in the National Aviation Hall of Fame. He is one of the best motivational speakers I’ve ever heard. He described the Voyager project in a broader context of dreams, goals, and an innovative, creative spirit. Dick Rutan is very patriotic and speaks his mind about the military and the future of aviation and space. His mix of humor and genuine sharing of emotions makes for a powerful, inspiring speech. This clearly is the highlight of the trip for me.

If you ever have a chance to hear Dick’s story or talk with him, don’t pass it up!

Reno Air Races -- Day 3

It was cold today in the Reno area for the National Championship Air Races. Only in the upper 50’s, it was 30 degrees cooler than Wednesday! On top of that, the wind was about 20 with gusts near 30 mph. That wind not only made it chilly for the crowd, but also difficult for the pilots. Very early in the day there was one biplane race. As the planes were returning to land after the race, it was obvious from the angle of their approach that there was a strong crosswind. The racers are experienced pilots. These pilots were working hard to land and two of them went around for a second attempt. They cancelled the rest of the biplane races for the day. Check out photos of the day here.

The speaker at the checkered flag club lunch was R.A. (Bob) Hoover. He made some introductory remarks for 2 minutes and then he asked for questions. That was nice. We heard him talk about his WWII fighter pilot days and how he was shot down. He talked about the X-1 project - how he got bumped to #2, his respect for Chuck Yeager, and his experience flying the chase plane the day they broke the sound barrier. Bob smiled when he said he knew Chuck did it when the X-1 passed him like he was standing still. He shared other memories from his test pilot and air show days for almost an hour. Afterwards he stayed for a bit and I was able to get his autograph. Read more about Bob here and here.

Despite the wind, Ken Pietsch landed his little plane on a RV going 60 mph over less than a mile of runway. Pretty good feat even on a calm day. There are a few shots of his approach and landing in today’s Flickr pool. Scroll to see the sequence.

The full US Air Force Thunderbird team gave a nice show. There are a couple photos starting here. One of their nicest maneuvers is when 4 planes fly slow in the landing configuration and then they split the formation so a 5th plane can fly between them at a high speed. See photos here and here to see the fifth plane fly through the formation.

They are having Heritage flights throughout the races that are formations of old and new warbirds. Today they had a Navy formation with planes from the Grumman F4F Wildcat to the F18. See photos here and here.

The unlimited bronze race was exciting with Precious Metal passing multiple planes, including the Big Boss Man, to win. Here is a photo just after passing. The green wings of the P-51 Precious Metal are easy to see. The announcers mentioned Ron told them the team had fixed something that he thought would give a lot more power. He was right.

Voodoo was supposed to be in the final unlimited gold race of the day. However, Voodoo just barely got off the runway when Button pulled the power and landed. I guess something didn’t look right. Hopefully they’ll be back in the silver race tomorrow. Mike Brown won the gold race easily in September Fury, a Sea Fury. He was going about 450 mph. The big battle for fifth and sixth place was between Riff Raff and the Spirit of Texas. They were neck and neck at the finish as Riff Raff went low to gain speed. It wasn’t quite enough, but he was only a few feet behind.

This sign in Rare Bear’s pit area says it all.

Rollergirls Photos

Just like he did for the first event, Jason Bechtel has posted photos from the most recent Super Roll Sunday event of the Cincinnati Rollergirls. He has some great action shots that are impressive considering the lighting. Click here for photos from the first match and here for the second.

Reno Air Races -- Day 2

The first thing I did this morning before it got too crowded was go to the Heritage Trophy area to see the restored planes competing for the Peoples Choice award. There were a lot of beautiful planes you can see in my Flickr photos of day 2. My favorite was the restored P-40 shown here and here. They had a photo album and scrapbook describing the restoration. Considering the rusted shell they started with, they did an amazing job!

The US Air Force Thunderbirds did some fly-bys to become familiar with the area for their performances the next 3 days.

Word is that both Dago Red and Rare Bear are out of the unlimited races due to engine problems. Thought to be the top 2 competitors, this opens things up in the gold racing.

Gene Soucy and his wing walker wife Theresa Stokes gave a great performance. You can see their pictures here and here. She doesn’t just strap in and ride along. Theresa actually walks on the lower wing and climbs to the upper wing in flight. She only uses a waistband safety wire when they go upside down. Otherwise, she is just hanging on and moving around. You can see her hanging sideways here. I wonder if Dianne would do that with Tony?

Finally, in racing, I got to see my favorite bronze unlimited racer fly today. The Big Boss Man is a Grumman F7F Tigercat (more info here and here) shown here yesterday in the pit area. It is like a grandfather to my Grumman AA5B Tiger. Hearing that twin engine plane screaming past at close to 400 mph really is something. The photo above shows the Big Boss Man going past the home pylon. My best photo of the day. Mike Brown must love flying that plane around the course.

Reno Air Races -- Day 1

It was the first day of the National Championship Air Races in Reno (Stead field). You can check out some photos here. This year I am fortunate to be a first time Checkered Flag Club member. They have a great set-up with many conveniences including a great parking area, a hangar to relax and cool off, leave items, eat, and get liquids to stay hydrated in the dry desert heat. I also had a brush with greatness today as I met Paul Poberezny at the club hangar.

There was a lot of activity in the pits today with crews making repairs or final tweaks before qualifying. My favorite plane in the unlimited class, Voodoo race 5, had the cowling off all day. The crew looked awfully busy with the ‘new’ engine. They did qualify at 435 mph. That should be good enough for the gold group.

The big excitement of the day was Rare Bear’s qualifying run. Rare Bear race 77, a modified, WWII era Grumman F8 Bearcat, has won the unlimited gold class many times and has won the last two years. Today, on the second of the two qualifying laps, Ron opened her up and was going all out. Just after making the last turn on the way to the finish line at the home pylon, we all heard two loud, rapid pops from the engine. After crossing the finish, smoke started coming out and you could tell oil was getting into the exhaust. He pulled up to convert the speed into altitude and pulled back on the throttle. That gave enough of a safety margin that he was able to land on the emergency runway. The plane was smoking the whole way. He shut it down rapidly and got towed from the runway back to the pits. Here is a picture of Rare Bear I took early in the day in the pit area. Note the gold stripe on the side of the fuselage. Here is a picture of Rare Rear being towed to the pit after blowing 2 cylinders. A lot of oil on the side covering the stripe! It’s fortunate Ron landed safely and was able to qualify. However, the crew will have a lot of work to do to get back in it.

Also, I heard that one of Rare Bear’s best competitors, Dago Red, was having engine difficulties that caused them problems with qualifying. I saw them doing an extended ground run of the engine early this morning, but they didn’t fly.

I also enjoy watching the T6 class racers. They aren’t as fast as the unlimiteds – only about half the speed. However, the planes are fairly similar so the pilot’s skill has a lot to do with success. Because they are closely matched, there can be some tight races. This picture shows how crowded the start of a race can be. Even after several laps, some of the planes are very close to each other. It’s exciting to watch!

Bad News for Rare Bear

On the last lap of a time trial, heard 2 pops from Rare Bear's engine after the last turn. Lots of smoke but a safe emergency landing.

I Thought I had Everything

I packed heavy for this trip - even more than usual. The weather forecast for this weekend in Reno is cool. After sitting through snow flurries for the final race a couple years ago, I packed some cold weather items for this trip. However, tomorrow is supposed to be over 90, so I also have shorts and sandals. I also brought a wind jacket which is good since Thursday they are predicting 20-30 mph winds gusting to 40! I wonder how much racing there will be if it is that windy. In any case, I packed for everything. I have it all.

Dianne took me to the airport this morning. We were nearly there when she asked if I packed the binoculars. Crap! That's the one thing I forgot. So I stopped at REI in Reno to get a pair. Don't want to miss any action on the back side of the course.

Super Roll Sunday II

On Sunday, Dianne and I went to see the Cincinnati Rollergirls’ SRS II (Super Roll Sunday) with Carla and her parents. We had a good time.

Overall, I thought the skaters showed noticeable improvement since the first event. Individually there was a lot of improvement and collectively there was more teamwork evident during the jams. The pace of the action has picked up and the skaters seemed more steady even with an increased amount of jostling and blocking. The pack skaters were making much more of an effort to help their jammers with whips and pushes as well as screening blocks. That made it a lot of fun to watch. There were some hard falls, but it didn’t seem there were as many casualties as at the first event. However, Junk n Trunk took a bad fall and had to be carried off the floor. It looked like the track boundary was a ridge taped to the floor that threw a couple people off balance. I didn’t notice that in Loveland; it seemed like a flat tape boundary there.

The first pairing between the Full Metal Corsets and the Riots was a blow out with the Corsets winning handily. Unfortunate since I was pulling for the Riots. I’m not sure why the Riots had such a hard time since a couple of their jammers (Miss Print and Gummilove ) skated with success in the second match of the day. By the way, you can read Miss Print's take on the match here. One reason the Corsets did well was their blocking. I think it was Collier Mama that was so good at blocking she stalled a couple of the Riot jammers. Incidentally, she has a nice post here and she should be proud. One of the craziest blocks of the match was a block on Bola del Fuego (I think) that pushed her outside when she was going fast on the turn. She went out of bounds, hit the bar on the emergency exit and popped the door open!

The second match between the Bloody Sundaes and the Dames of Destruction was very good. I was cheering for the Dames (by the way, their new logo at left is a huge improvement). They were all tied up at the half. However, in the second half a great effort by Sk8 Crime in one jam and Sadistic Sadie in another put the Dames way ahead. A final jam by Miss Print was icing on the cake for the Dames. The skating in this pairing was fast overall. Both Pantera and Sadistic Sadie did an especially good job zipping around the track and weaving through the pack without losing their momentum.

The event itself seemed better organized and I really appreciated the scoreboard changes. My one wish would be to have the refs show the whiteboard with the jam results to fans as well as the teams and the score table. The sound systems aren’t great and when the emcee talks too quickly, it’s hard to understand.

It was too bad the seats weren’t packed like the first event. The first Bengal game and a Reds home game with them looking for a wildcard spot probably didn’t help. You have a couple more chances to catch the Rollergirls this fall. Don't miss it! Check out their site for ticket info.

PS Sorry for the long post. That’s what you get when I have a 3 hour layover in Salt Lake City.

Lunch at Sky Galley

Saturday, after getting a haircut, I picked up Dianne and we took a short flight down to Lunken Field for lunch at the Sky Galley restaurant. It was a beautiful sunny day with very little wind and just a few puffy clouds. Because of the light wind, it was a bit hazy. That's the price you pay for a smooth flight. On the way down, we caught up and passed over a high wing, taildragger that was towing a banner along I-275. It was picturesque to see the plane and banner appear to hang in the sky as we passed overhead.

For being such a nice day, Lunken airport wasn't very busy and we breezed right in. A trip to the Sky Galley is nice in that you can taxi right up to the place in the old terminal building (find out more about Lunken airport history here). It isn't a fancy place, but the food is good and you have a great view of the field to watch the planes come and go. You also have the option of sitting on the patio.

It's the first time I've had a passenger since having the new audio control/stereo intercom system installed in the plane. The new unit is a huge improvement over the old intercom. It has two music inputs (one for the pilot and one for passengers) so you can connect an iPod, CD player, satellite radio, etc. into the intercom. The pilot's music fades and disappears when the intercom or radio are active. Pretty sweet.

We had a great view of the downtown Cincinnati skyline when departing Lunken. We flew straight back to Blue Ash. With the afternoon heating, it started to get a little bumpy and I didn't want Dianne to lose her nice lunch. By the way, there is a nice synopsis of Blue Ash airport history here.

Beta Version of Writely

Writely is a new, web based word processing app being developed by the folks at Google. It's a beta version right now. Let me say it again, I know it's beta. I've used Writely for my last dozen or so posts. Here are my impressions.

The reason Writely is of interest to me is that I like to take notes on potential blog posts, let them simmer, and edit them before posting. You're probably thinking how can that be. I also use a few different computers. Having documents available on the web lets me work on them at work and at home without having to carry them around on a USB drive. Another interesting Writely feature is the ability to take a document and publish it directly to your blog. You set up the login one time and then it posts without having to log in and publish.

I've only scratched the surface, but there are some quirks with the beta version. First, when adding hyperlinks, Writely adds a space after the highlighted text (if there is punctuation after the highlighted item it's 100% and other times occasionally). That's annoying. Second, if you paste formatted text into Writely, it's not always to possible to reformat it (e.g. to un-bold text). That's annoying. Third, if you copy from Writely into a Blogger post you're creating manually, you don't always get what you copied and it's hard to reformat the text. I found that very difficult when using a bulleted list. Fourth, the connection to blog publishing isn't solid right now. I thought going from Writely to Blogger, both under the Google umbrella, would be seamless. Unfortunately, that's not the case. The Writely blog post preview looks good, but when I publish to my blog the title is missing. So if you use this, you still have to log in to Blogger and edit the post to add a title. And heaven forbid you try to edit a post in Writely and republish. For one post in particular, I had so many problems with the edit/reposting that I ended up logging in to Blogger to delete the post to fix my blog. That status didn't get updated in Writely, so you couldn't republish again. Argh! Back to the manual posting procedure.

Bottom line, the concept is intriguing and the possiblities useful. However, the beta version is far from ready for primetime. It's good for working on text, but don't count on all the formatting and publishing options. I'd be curious to hear how the collaboration feature has worked -- leave a comment if you've tried it.

Various Gadgets

Here is an eclectic collection of gadgets I've run across in the last week. Maybe this will give you some ideas for your own Christmas list.

Stuck in traffic? Time to buy a new BMW.

Can't afford that? An alternative is the latest nuvi from Garmin -- the nuvi 660. Pretty nice features including hands free cellphone use, navigation, traffic receiver, FM transmitter, etc.

Did your Tamagotchi end up in the toilet? Get an ant farm -- see the picture at left.

Bored while on the go? Get a Sony LocationFree box and watch live TV or DVR'd items on your computer or PSP.

Need a new monitor? Here is a neat LCD monitor/tablet for your PC or Mac. Wouldn't that be a great addition to a Mac mini?

Get Tickets Now for SRS II

Thanks to the Foo Logs for pointing me to this site to generate the pseudo ticket.

Geeky Web Comic

Thanks to Boing Boing, I found this site, xkcd, with some of the most geeky comics I've read in a long time. Some of them are really funny. I like the stick figure drawings -- something I can easily relate to.

All the Unix users out there will love this comic.
The chemists in the crowd will appreciate this Snapple comic.
The gun owners will like this one on laser scopes.
James Bond fans and physicists will like this one.
Scientists and especially astrophysics types will like this comic.
Quite a few Firefox users come here. You'll appreciate this comic.
I liked substitute teacher days since you knew things would be easy that day. Not like this substitute math teacher.
And sudoku players will like this comic.
And here is a fractal view of the Blogosphere -- I like the comments(0):

Rocky

I'll admit I enjoyed the first Rocky movie...although I was 15 at the time. The hype, the music (who didn't like Maynard Ferguson's Gonna Fly Now?), the story, it all came together. After all, it did win best picture in 1977 (and best director and film editing) and was nominated for many more oscars. I even hung in there through Rocky III in 1982. Of course the big reason was it also starred Mr. T and Hulk Hogan! But when Mickey died, that was the end for me. Rocky used the emotion from Mickey's death to overcome Clubber Lang in the second fight.

I never would have thought we'd see Rocky V in 1990. Now, 16 years later with a 60 year old Stallone, we get Rocky VI! Check out the official Rocky Balboa blog for the upcoming movie. I see that Adrian dies and Rocky hits bottom while training for his "last" fight. I guess Stallone figures we forgot the plot of Rocky III.

I also saw in IMDB that Rambo IV is coming out next year. Wow! He's probably pitching Judge Dredd II to movie execs right now.

Dunbar's Number

Dianne and I have both mentioned our use of the MyBlogLog site recently. The site has some nice tracking tools, but also a social networking aspect. You have the option of enrolling in communities that are associated with a particular blog. There isn't any commitment per se associated with enrollment. It does serve a few purposes: it conveys interest to the blog writer (it's nice to know people are reading); it allows networking by giving the option to establish a fan/friend/admirer relationship with the blog writer; helps you find other MyBlogLog members with similar interests in the blogs you're reading regularly; and the site organizes your communities so it's easy to surf blogs of interest (perhaps not as efficient as a news aggregator).

It's the networking piece that is intriguing -- especially after reading this entry about the monkeysphere on the How to Split an Atom (HTSAA) blog. I wasn't aware of that term or the concept of Dunbar's number. There is a good Wikipedia article about Dunbar's number. There is a funny read about the Monkeysphere here. In short, Dunbar's theory is that there are a limited number of relationships that humans can maintain at one time. A rough estimate of the group size is 150. It seems like a reasonable idea and something that would have work/office implications. The interesting idea brought out in the HTSAA blog entry is how does the Dunbar idea apply to the blogosphere or social networking sites. When you're at a social networking site, how many 'relationships' can you maintain? Or how many can you maintain on top of your other family, friends, and coworker relationships? What implications does that have for social networking sites? All very interesting questions.

I haven't jumped on the Myspace bandwagon. I guess I'm not in the right demographic for Myspace. Most of the sites I've seen there have a 'friends' list and on many blogs the number of friends well exceeds Dunbar's number. Are these folks able to maintain relationships with all these MySpace friends? I somehow doubt it. However, perhaps blog communications are a different level of 'social grooming' that lets people support a larger monkeysphere.

Personally, my ability to maintain a social network is pretty small. I don't know if I could even keep up with 150 people. If Dunbar's concept is true, my neocortex must the size of a pea.

New Altitude Record for a Glider

A new altitude record for a glider was set a couple days ago by Steve Fossett and Einar Enevoldsen. Flying over the Andes mountains in Argentina, the pair made it to an altitude of 50,671 feet in an unpressurized glider called Perlan. They were towed to 13,000 feet and it took about 4 1/2 hours to find currents to achieve the new altitude record. That's above the altitudes for typical commercial airline traffic. I liked Steve's comment, "I couldn’t understand the Chilean controller describing us in Spanish to the airline pilot - but I understood the answer by the pilot: 'Wow'."

They have made several attempts at different locations around the world. You can find out more details and see photos at the Perlan Project web site.

Importance of Quality From Start to Finish

I was looking around the FDA site today for some information and ran across some items regarding product recalls due to quality issues (as opposed to safety and efficacy issues you’d see in the clinic). I found the CDER Report to the Nation 2005 – Improving Public Health Through Drugs that had some surprising information.

It takes a lot to make the drug chemical entity, get it into a formulation (tablet, capsule, liquid, etc.), and package it to get to the consumer. There are lots of scientists and engineers involved in getting raw materials, manufacturing a drug and then the formulation, testing along the way, and packaging. It takes a lot of effort to convince the FDA a process is in control and functioning properly to make the desired product. That’s expensive! It’s hard work to get a quality product out the door that is safe, stable, and working as advertised. With all the high powered science required, it’s not surprising that something unexpected might go wrong and as a result a product will have to be recalled.

What was surprising is that 3 of the top 10 reasons products were recalled in 2005 involved rather silly mistakes and not failures in what I would consider the science associated with manufacturing. They were:

• Label error on declared strength
• Promotional literature with unbranded claims
• Correctly labeled product in incorrect carton or package

These mix-ups in labeling, packaging, or including the wrong literature must have cost a huge amount of money – even though the product itself was made correctly and of good quality. They didn’t give a percentage associated with these reasons in the recall section, but another chart in the report cited labeling issues in 14% of findings. Correcting these simple mistakes would have a big impact on the manufacturing cost for a product.

Word of the Day

My new vocabulary phrase of the day is ‘Google bombing’ and the word for the day is spamdexing.

I was poking around some random blogs and saw a post about doing a Google search for ‘failure’ or ‘miserable failure’. They had a screen shot of the results. Although I understood the top hit shown on the search results, I was nevertheless surprised. Given my skeptical nature, I didn’t believe it so I went to Google to try it for myself. Try it at Google or click here to see the results. Pretty hilarious and it makes perfect sense given his approval ratings over the last few months.

Google has now added an explanation up front that led me to the Wikipedia entry for Google bombing. In short, it’s a way to raise the ranking of a search result as a joke or for “political intentions.” In real life or in cyberspace, someone is always looking at ways to exploit a system.

How Medicines Work

I never was big on biology. It's interesting, but the physical sciences seemed to make more sense to me. Because I hadn't studied a lot of biology, I wasn't aware of how little we understand about how our body works. So when I started working at a pharmaceutical company over 17 years ago, I was very surprised at how little folks knew about how drugs actually worked on the body. A company puts together a package to show a drug is safe (the do no harm part of the Hippocratic oath ) and efficacious to satisfy regulatory agencies. But knowing a drug is safe and effective doesn't mean you understand the mechanism of action. OK, I'm naive...but I was just astounded.

I was reminded of this again today when I read this article. Think of the hundreds of years it took to figure out menthol provides some sort of pain relief through a 'cooling' effect. I wonder how many people died because they applied something poisonous for pain relief before stumbling on menthol. Think of the millions of people that have used menthol preparations over the years for symptomatic pain relief. Many OTC analgesics today (like Bengay and Icy Hot for example) have menthol as one of their medicinal ingredients. However, only recently has the receptor that responds to menthol to produce an analgesic effect been identified! Hopefully that understanding will give some insights that will help folks come up with improved therapies for pain relief.

I'm still astounded how little we understand about medicines!

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
-- Albert Einstein

Google, Ask, and Blogger Search Results

Dianne had a nice post about blog tracking and the use of MyBlogLog. I get less traffic than she does, but it's still interesting to see where people are coming from. A couple reminded me of posts made long ago that brought back some memories. I was actually surprised to see that people doing a search would actually click on a search result that takes them here. Obviously not very discriminating with their searching. Here are recent searches (Google, Ask, and Blogger) that led people here.

• hogey carmichael biography who was

Took them here. Probably didn't stay long with my Hogey comments. I did see Lauren Bacall on the Oscars and she looked really good.

• cincinnati rollergirls
• blu bayou cincinnati and "blu bayou" cincinnati
• blu bayou roller derby
• sadistic sadie
• 739.27 t213e

A lot of traffic associated with the Rollergirls. The last one took them here. I wonder if they were looking for The Librarian or actually looking for the book.

• tracking blog traffic

• creative cubicles

Took them here.

• clocks that display time floating in air

Took them here.

• wrist fracture physical therapy

Took them here or maybe here. They probably would have found Dianne's post funny. By the way, my shoulder continues to improve and my range of motion, although not the same as the right side, is fairly close. I feel for anyone dealing with a frozen shoulder.

• wedding lion dance august 20, 2006

Took them here.

• earl world

Someone was actually searching for this blog?

And just today I had a hit on this search:

• where in Hawaii can you find a fountain pen by earl?
  

It took them here because of this post that has the phrase "...see if you can find us..." and this post that mentions "...a fountain of feet...". They must have thought Google failed them on that search.

Flickr Badge

I stumbled across The Foo Logs today while poking around at MyBlogLog. The Foo Logs blog has a nice mix of entries on technology, the Internet, news, etc. While scrolling down the blog, I noticed a neat Flickr pane in the sidebar that shows his recent photos. The Foo was kind enough to respond to a message I sent asking how he set it up. As a result, I've added a Flickr badge to my sidebar -- you have to scroll down a bit to see it. It's a Flash piece that shows random photos from my Flickr pool. You can click on any photo in the sidebar to see a larger version. Pretty neat. Thanks to The Foo!

Murals With a 3D Appearance

There has been a lot of buzz about this mural on a building in Columbus, OH. Although it's a flat wall, the 3D effect of depth incorporated into the mural is done so well that it made me wonder if it was real or if it was done using Photoshop. (I guess that skeptical nature is part of the low trust block in my personal DNA.)

Thanks to Carla for sharing a co-worker's email, I found out the artist who made the mural is Eric Grohe. He has a very nice website that has a gallery of his work. There is a nice before and after comparison of the building shown at the left. Personally, I like the murals that he did for the Miller Brewing Company that you can see here. This mural is my favorite. I wonder how many people have walked into the wall thinking they were going down a hallway.

Sunday Afternoon ... Somewhere

I stumbled across this photo on Flickr. It was setup by some folks in Beloit, WI. This must have taken quite a bit of planning and work. Here is a newspaper article describing the effort.



Here is a picture of the Seurat painting.

Just Sit Right Back and You'll Hear a Tale...

Here's your chance to be like Alan Hale and become the Skipper of the Minnow. Check out the for sale ad that claims this is the boat used in the making of Gilligan's Island. You can find some additional Gilligan's Island info here. Thanks to Boing Boing for calling this to our attention.

Borgman Blog

I like Jim Borgman's editorial cartoons. Even though we don't subscribe to a local paper, I'd occasionally look at his creations. Today I stumbled across Jim Borgman's blog. I found it pretty interesting. Besides showing the cartoons, he will sometimes show sketches that led to the final cartoon and give some background. I thought this cartoon about the TSA's recent antics was pretty funny.

TSA....vigilant, effective, efficient. Yeah, right! I guess that's why a utility knife was found on the seat of a plane going from Philadelphia to Connecticut.

P.S. -- This is my 200th post to the blog!

Our Commander in Chief

This has been all over the Internets

Personal DNA

I went to the PersonalDNA site and took their personality test. It's a little on the long side. I'm a 'Concerned Analyst'. Here are my results in a color map -- hover over the blocks to see the traits associated with each color.

Concerned Analyst

Benefits of Blog Tracking

I don't get much traffic here...not many folks reading my musings. Nevertheless, when I was visiting Patrick Mayfield's blog and reading one of his posts about tracking blog traffic, I was intrigued at what was available. I signed up for Technorati and also MyBlogLog just for smiles. As expected, I'm not getting a lot of traffic.

What is interesting is that MyBlogLog gives you a pro account for 3 days that reverts to a free account later. The pro account gives instant updates on where people come from when going into your site and what they click on while there. When I looked at my stats this evening, I noticed I had someone coming to my blog from Sk8Crime's blog (one of the Rollergirls I mentioned in an earlier post). I thought that was strange until I went to her blog this evening and saw this post that links to my site. It's a good post--pretty clever choice of music! She has a good livejournal site.

We already bought our tickets for SRS II, so I guess I'll have to go incognito. My name is Earl.

SRS II Coming Up

Tickets are on sale now for Super Roll Sunday II. Check out the Cincinnati Rollergirls website for information.

Jason Bechtel, the official photographer for the Rollergirls, has some great pictures of the debut match posted on Flickr. He has a good eye and, given the relatively poor lighting in the rink, very good equipment and technique. Clearly a professional. He has two groups -- the first match here and the second match here. It was Blu Bayou's birthday that day, and we actually show up in the photo Jason took when they brought her out to mention her birthday. Do the 'Where's Waldo' thing and see if you can find us in the crowd.

P.S. You can find out where Waldo is by looking at Dianne's post.

Subway Maps

Subway maps aren't a big need in Cincinnati. There isn't a lot of activity in the Cincinnati subway. When Dianne and I were in Washington recently, we used their subway a lot. I was forever having to look at the subway map to remember which direction we needed to go. I ran across this site that has subway maps for iPods. That would have been handy. Neat idea.

Also along the subway theme is this site that show the London subway map with anagrams for each station. Put the cursor over the anagram and the real name shows up. Kind of cute. Not sure how long it will be there though as the last time it was posted, the British authorities made him take it down.

Good News for Actonel

Good news for P&G/s-a this week with the approval of Actonel for male osteoporosis. This is one of the last clinical studies I worked on before transferring to my new position just over two years ago. It's good to see the work finally paying off.

Viral Videos

I ran across this viral video site, WorldTV, the other day. Each week they chart the top video from the four leading internet video sites. Some of these are really funny. If you want to be a lemming, check it out if you have a couple minutes to waste.

Super Roll Sunday - 1

It was Super Roll Sunday today – the first match for the Cincinnati Rollergirls. I’m sure you’ll be able to find out more on their website soon and see some better photos of the action there. Going in, I was pulling for The Riots (because of Lauren’s Roller Derby Diva blog and the Ithaca connection) and the Full Metal Corsets (just because I liked the team name and some of the member names). But alas, both of my teams lost by huge margins. Now that I've got a first look at some of the characters, I might have to rethink my favorites.

The first match was between the Bloody Sundays and The Riots. This was a blowout with the Sundays winning easily. The Sundays were good, but it seemed like the Riots beat themselves by running into each other and having their jammers lose momentum. My take was that Gummilove was their strongest jammer and Bola del Fuego seemed to do well. Miss Print had one good jam but also another where she got held up in the pack and didn’t score. Dianne commented that there wasn’t enough whipping or helping along of the jammers. It was hard to get a good picture, but here is an artistic view of one of the Sundays/Riots jams.

Watching the warm-ups, especially for the second match between the Full Metal Corsets and the Dames of Destruction, it was readily apparent which team had the best skaters. In that match, Sadistic Sadie of the Dames was far and away the best jammer. She really maneuvered through the pack well and she used her teammates to help her advance and score (sometimes by pushing them to the ground in order to stay in bounds and keep moving ahead). The Corsets took a beating with three players going down hard on separate occasions that stopped the match. That was no fun to see. Two of the girls (The Librarian and I believe Collier Mamma) seemed to be hurt bad and they sat out the rest of the match. The Corsets had some tough cookies on the team that were fitting into the bad girl mold, but not the best skaters. Among the bad girls was Sk8 Crime whose attitude or persona I didn’t care for. After some tough jostling with Sadie in the next to last jam, I was happy to see Sadie pull Sk8 Crime down from behind using her belt and then go at it. It was worth the penalty to put Sk8 Crime in her place.

All in all, I thought it was a good event. It seemed like the Rollergirls were having fun and many were playing to the crowd. The flat track style is different and takes more planning to work through the pack and stay in bounds. Most everyone was giving it their all and the blocking was tough. It also takes a lot of work from a lot of volunteers to put on something like this. I hope they can make a go of it! However, you could tell the league is young and they need to work out some kinks like scoring (having team names rather than home/visitors), timekeeping, concessions to handle the crowd, announcing, etc. Nevertheless, I’d go again and encourage anyone with a roller derby interest to check it out. Who knows, maybe I can talk Dianne into SRS II coming up in a few weeks.

Dr. Z.

OK….I’ll admit it. I don’t get the whole Dr. Z ad campaign. I find the commercials get old very fast and the likeness of Dr. Z on the AskDrZ website is creepy. The blinking eyes and the wiggle of the mustache is worse than the annoying Paper Clip or Einstein characters of the Microsoft Office Assistants.

The only thing I want to ask Dr. Z is was this the best ad campaign your agency could come up with? Wow!

Super Roll Sunday

It's coming up fast...Super Roll Sunday...the premier bout of the Cincinnati Roller Girls. You can get tickets now online or at a few locations around town. Dianne and I will see you there this weekend. You can read more about the group at the Roller Girls website or get one insider's view on the Roller Derby Diva's blog on the Cincinnati.com site.

I don't know anything about the people involved, but I have to say I thought the player number for "The Librarian" on the team "The Full Metal Corsets" was kind of funny. Her number is 739.27 T213E which is the call number for a book written by Elizabeth Taylor called Elizabeth Taylor: my love affair with jewelry. I guess The Librarian is a Liz Taylor fan. I wonder if she has a magical horse with wings that will help her move through the pack as a jammer. We'll see on Sunday.

Looking Ahead to Reno

Only 36 days until the start of the National Championship Air Races and Air Show at Reno. My favorite group of racers is the unlimited class. There are 32 entries registered in the unlimited class this year. That’s a good sized field. More important are the planes that are registered. Rare Bear, an F8F Bearcat, will be back to try for a third straight win. However, unlike last year when Rare Bear’s primary competitor was absent due to financial constraints, Dago Red will be back. Dago Red, a P-51 Mustang, won several years in a row prior to Rare Bear’s current streak. Finally, I’m happy that my favorite team will be there. Voodoo, race number 5, is also a P-51 Mustang. You can just barely see the nose of Voodoo behind me in my profile picture. Always in the hunt, Voodoo had engine problems last year that caused the team to drop out. They are now testing a new engine that hopefully will help them move up the ranks in the gold, or top, tier of the unlimited racers. The Voodoo website also mentioned they stripped the wings and smoothed out imperfections in the airfoil that might help their speed a bit.

The highlight of the air show portion of the event this year is the Air Force Thunderbirds.

If you haven’t been to Reno for an air race, you’ll have the chance next year in Hollywood style. Next year is the scheduled debut for the movie “Thunder Over Reno”. There is a nice website for the film. Looking at the cast, I doubt it will be an Academy award winner. Nevertheless, it might be a good film to see on the big screen.

Fly low, go fast, and turn left.

Polo Grill

On our way back from the Jeffersonville outlet mall, Dianne and I stopped at the Polo Grill for dinner. We had a gift card from Raymond Walters College for the restaurant. I had a cup of tomato bisque that had a garlic crustini with goat cheese and salsa. It was a nice dinner, but it was freezing in the restaurant. Fortunately Dianne had brought along a long-sleeved shirt.

This is a test of a picture blog entry from the phone. Thanks to Dianne for teaching me about the mobile blogging capability. It's practical now that we have a qwerty keyboard on our phones.

Hello world....from my phone.

Hello world....from my phone.

Sunday in D.C.

This morning we got up and had breakfast at the M Street Bar & Grill. It’s located just across the street from the CBS building. While eating, Dianne noticed several camera crews setting up at the CBS building entrance. We didn’t recognize the gentleman who came out the door, but he stopped and answered questions for the reporters. I checked the Face the Nation web site and found out the guy was Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. That’s our brush with greatness during the trip.

We started out the day at the National Archives. Unlike the movie ‘National Treasure’ where Nicholas Cage just waltzes into the rotunda area to see the Declaration of Independence, we had to go through a rigorous screening where all gum was purged. It was crowded in the document area and dimly lit to protect the documents. Although you could take pictures without a flash, the Constitution and the Declaration were so faded they were difficult to read in person. I could barely see John Hancock’s signature on the Declaration. All in all, I wasn’t too wowed by the experience. The principles the founding fathers put in the documents seem way more important than the faded documents themselves. Interestingly, just outside the rotunda there was one of the four copies of the Magna Carta that was approximately 700 years old and yet was much easier to read. Here is a shot of the National Archives building from across the street in the sculpture garden. Note the person in the red hat.

After visiting the Archives we went to the National Gallery of Art. It is a large museum and there is a lot to see. I enjoyed the Impressionist art (or the lumpy stuff as Dianne likes to say) and the Netherland/German realism art. These schools represent two extremes of realistic, almost photographic representations of still lifes or people and a blurry, overall impression of a subject conveyed as much through color and lighting as in shape. Dianne enjoyed the more contemporary American paintings (Sargent, Homer, etc.) as well as paintings by the Masters like Rembrandt and Durer. Dianne also wanted to check out the special exhibit on Venetian drawings, but they were more watercolor and gouache type media than strictly pen and ink or pencil drawings.

After seeing the indoor art, we went across the street to the sculpture garden. There were a lot of nice flowers and landscaping, a few large sculptures, and a large pond & fountain. People were sitting on the edge of the pond with their feet dangling in the water to cool off. Dianne called it the fountain of feet (see the picture above). One of my favorite sculptures in the garden was that of a large typewriter eraser. Another, which really didn’t photograph well in two dimensions, was a representation of a house which from a long way off followed perfect lines of perspective. However, up close, you noticed the different walls of the house and the roof tilted opposite of the way they would meet at the actual corner of the house. It was like they were inverted from their normal perspective – almost like the house was turned inside out. I thought it was a very clever play on perspective. I also got a picture of Dianne near a sculpture made from concrete cubes showing her counting the blocks like one of the exercises in the Big Brain Academy game. Some of the sculptures were strange – or I guess I wasn’t able to appreciate them. For example, this sculpture was just a metal plate with rounded corners. Go figure!

You can see a collection of photos from the National Gallery and the Sculpture Garden by clicking here for the Flickr group.

After the sculpture garden, we walked to the International Spy Museum. There isn’t any photography allowed in the museum. It covered the basics of becoming a spy and the techniques and gadgets they use as well as many blurbs about spies throughout history. Personally, I liked the gadgets like .22 caliber cigarettes, spy cameras, bugs, etc. It’s a nice museum, but a lot of reading so I’m not sure how well it would be received by kids.

Dianne’s feeling a bit better, but still not eating too much. Surprisingly, she actually asked me to slow down while walking and she didn’t wander away much today.

Saturday in DC

Got up this morning and had breakfast with Dianne – well, I had breakfast while she picked at some fruit. We went back to the room and she fell asleep almost instantly. After an hour or so, she said she still wasn’t feeling well and suggested I should go to the National Air and Space museum on my own. It’s sad she wasn’t feeling well, but I don’t think she was thrilled about going there anyway. I grabbed the Metro just south of Washington Circle and went through the museum. It was fun to see many historic planes and space vehicles. In the main area there is the Spirit of St. Louis, the X-1 Glamorous Glennis, the X-15, and SpaceShip One that recently won the X-prize. Across from these planes on the second floor were other notable planes like the Lockheed Vega (the B model that was similar to the Winnie Mae flown by Wiley Post) used by Amelia Erhardt to fly solo across the Atlantic (~5 years after Lindbergh) and the Lockheed Sirius floatplane used by Charles and Anne Lindbergh to chart great circle routes from the West coast of the US to the far East. Some of the early planes like the Wright Flyer and the Vin Fiz (made the first transcontinental flight) were interesting. Pictures of the Vin Fiz are here and here. I wonder what Vin Fiz tasted like? The story of Cal Rogers and his journey across the US in that plane to win the prize put up by William Randolph Hearst is pretty interesting. I can’t imagine seeing the US that way. The Ole Miss was perched high above the viewing floor. Imagine riding in a plane continuously for about a month! They even had a platform built just behind the radial engine so they could work on it while in flight! It’s amazing what folks did to promote aviation. In that same era were air racing items like the Hughes Racer that set speed records and the Bendix Trophy.

One thing nice about the NASM is not only can you walk around the planes at their level, but you can also view the planes from raised platforms that go around the periphery of many of the rooms. That gives you an interesting view that you don’t get at other museums like the US Air Force Museum in Dayton. An example is this picture of an ME-109 – a German WWII era fighter. You can see other pictures from my visit to the NASM by clicking here for the Flickr group.

It was very hot in DC today (upper 80’s) and very humid. I walked over to the reflecting pool in front of Capitol Hill and felt like jumping in the water to cool off. On the way home, I stopped at a 7-11 store to get some liquids and meds for Dianne. She looked pretty pale, complained about being cold, and felt pretty hot. She’s not having a great vacation so far. Hopefully she’ll get back on feet tomorrow. I think I’ll be eating dinner by myself again tonight.