Nom de plume: Rivrdog

End of the "Greatest Generation"

Much has been written about the end of the "Greatest Generation", that being those born between 1900 and 1925, those who saw, in their lifetimes, the titanic struggles of their neighbors in the Great Depression and World War Two, those who saw, in their lifetimes (if they lived through the War) the development of most of the technology that we follow-on generations take for granted. I can't hold a candle to most of the great writers who have gone before, but I'm taking my shot right here.

Yesterday, I attended the funeral of Jack Hunt. Jack was born in 1920, and died just over a week ago, 92 years young. His life explains why he was a member of the Greatest Generation, and why that generation WAS the Greatest Generation.

I know Jack as he is the step-father of the wife of one of my best friends, and I have spent some time at his house with those close friends. Jack wasn't a wealthy man, but he followed his generational guidelines and saved a healthy proportion of what he earned, and so, lived out his final years comfortably and helped out his family with great compassion.

Jack was born and raised in coastal southern Oregon, and worked for his father early on. His dad owned a chain of small sawmills and operated them well enough to be able to send Jack to college. Jack attended Oregon State University, where he studied subjects related to the family business, and when he took that business over, after a short interruption called World War Two, he instituted enough new technology in both the physical and business ends of sawmill operations to keep Hunt's mills running through thick and thin, and to endow a scholarship foundation at Oregon Sate.

The Hunt family had always been world travelers, in the grand old traditions of packing the entire family's suitcases, and getting on ships and airplanes and traveling to far corners of the globe just to see how different folks did things differently. Jack himself went back to OSU, and took an advanced degree in Geography. Now, as our good friend Phil can tell you, the discipline of Geography (literally, "the study of Earth") is broad, and essential. It touches on all the physical sciences, and touches deep into the Earth sciences, and that was Jack's interest. As the harvest of timber began to fall off, Jack did some original research on timber production vs. climactic conditions vs. soil conditions. This got the attention of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, strangely enough, which was trying to manage timber-dependent tribes' resources for better benefit of the tribes. The Bureau asked Jack to look into the Warm Springs Tribe's timber operations, and Jack did that, directing improvements which made that growing and milling operation the most efficent mid-sized operation in Oregon, and probably the entire Northwest, where timber used to be King.

Jack was a private pilot, and never lost his love of flying, something essential to timber operators and geographers. When I first met him in the 80's, he was already retired, but decided he wanted to build an airplane. He chose an advanced type of ultra-light to build, and built it in his basement (which had only a man-door for entry and exit). The kit was a monocoque frame, dope-and-fabric covered type, with a pusher engine. It was designed with a removeable one-piece wing and designed for a 25-hp Rotax engine. Jack loved the frame and wing design, the most efficient of the type. He didn't like the Rotax engine, thinking it should have been a bigger engine, so he replaced the 25-hp model with one in the upper 30-hp range, strengthening all the support structure for it as he did so. He didn't like the fact that there was no re-start capability for the engine if it stalled while airborne, thereby requiring un-planned, off-field landings. He developed the first system of an extended rope-starter arrangement which could be pulled on from the pilot's seat. Rotax has since made it pretty much a standard option. He installed an actual instrument panel with the four basic instruments: compass, airspeed indicator, turn-and-slip and rate-of-climb. In the grand tradition of Howard Hughes and the "Spruce Goose", he flew this aircraft once. He transported it to an outlying Portland airport, assembled it, and was conducting taxi tests when the aircraft took off, unplanned. He was at the bitter end of the taxi-way, so he gunned the engine and made a couple of trips around the traffic pattern to test controlability. The airplane flew OK, so he lined up to land it and brought it in over the thresh-hold, cut power, and the aircraft immediately lost controlability, and he crashed. He survived with bumps and bruises and one broken arm, but the aircraft didn't. He sold the pieces and turned in his pilot's license for good.

At the Methodist Funeral yesterday, the Pastor noted that Jack was the last WW2 veteran left in the congregation, and now gone, an era had passed for the Sunnyside Methodist Church. When I heard that, I got a terrible chill, as if I just saw my own end, and the end of everything that's right with this Nation. Yes, Jack Hunt WAS a shining example of the industry, courage and perseverance that got this Nation to it's highest point. My generation was unable to take it higher, and now it is in decline.

Yesterday, I attended two funerals, one for Jack Hunt, and one for my Nation. I am still crying for both entities.

"Payola" 2

Most folks are not old enough to remember the original "payola" scandal. The word Payola came from "pay to play" + the maker of the-then most popular jukebox, "Rockola". Aside from home vinyl records (45 and 33 rpm, with still quite a few 78s left over), you listened on (non-stereo) radio, played records (only stereo if you were a rich kid), or dumped quarters into Rockolas to hear music. That was the music I grew up with. In that era, a pay-for-play system (Payola) first started with the jukeboxes (every cafe, restaurant and bar which wanted the under 25-crowd's money had to have a Rockola), then spread to the radio stations. If you were a new musical group starting out and you wanted to actually rise up the charts and sell vinyl, you paid to have your music played. The scandal around the pay-to-play system grew until Congress held hearings, and banned the practice.

Payola tried to make a comeback amongst the gangsta rappers of the '90s, but when they started shooting at each other, it got too visible and that practice stopped.

Now it's back, and in the worst knock of the late Steve Jobs' Apple, Inc, it's all about an I-phone and I-pad app. While you are watching the TeeVee, you have your smartass Apple gadget sitting nearby, with the Viggle app running. It listens to the sound from your speakers, and determines what you are watching, then keeps track of how many minutes you've watched. You are "rewarded" for installing the app and using it, at the rate of two reward "points" for each minute watched. After you have watched 62 hours of TeeVee and used the app to monitor it, you are sent a $5 Burger King certificate.

OK, I promised I won't go all health-nut on you, suffice it to say that those who would get excited about being rewarded with free fast fatfood will be indirectly deciding what the rest of us will watch, and that's a bad, culture-busting (waistline-busting and pall-bearer busting) idea. Just how many Ruben Studdards does the entertainment industry need?

An even worse idea is that the entertainment moguls would allow this system to install itself in their empires. I don't give a fig about "American Idol", because, despite the fact that the yearly winners have mostly had good voices, none of them sing the kind of music I like to hear. None of them.

This new system is Payola all over again, pure and simple, this time a bit different, putting the keys to music success in the hands of the fast fatfood generation, and that's a BAD thing.

SEAL Team Six, again

This time, they go into Somalia to raid a pirate compound and rescue two hostages.

And they did it wrong, but I don't blame the SEALs, I blame the National Command structure.

The US just blew away, not only 9 pirates, but the chance to use a little psy-war on the rest of the pirate nest that is Somalia.

We have to have targeting intell on more than just the pirate nest that we just raided.

What we should have done is raid the one nest, recover the hostages, and simultaneous with the choppers lifting the SEALs out of there, B-52s would have bombed all the nests we had targeting info on. Simultaneous to THAT, the Navy and the multi-national anti-piracy force should have taken out ever pirate dhow they were shadowing, and we know about a few of THOSE.

If we had hit the pirates hard from the air, sea and land, simultaneously, the word would have gotten out, and probably half those engaged in that outlaw way of life would have given up their jobs on the spot. In a few weeks, we gather more intell, hammer them again from three axes of attack, and my guess is that the threat would be over by March.

And here's one for Buckingham Palace: have the Royal Chamberlain march over to the Old City, have a friendly chat with those blokes running Lloyds of London, and see to it that they REQUIRE armed crews on ships in those waters, as a condition of issuing them insurance. Slow down the process of paying piracy insurance claims to the shipowners. Slow it WAAAAY down. When it becomes a non-starter for the shipping industry to tolerate piracy from Somalia (or elsewhere), piracy will end.

In the short term, pay the Russians what they ask for providing armed crews for the ships transiting those waters. The Russians know how to handle the pirates, and any dhow seeing a Russian ensign on a ship turns away.

(m)Eat your heart out!

Yep, those are T-Bones, although some of them qualify as Porterhouse, due to the size of the tenderloin side of the steak.

Yep, your blogger paid $4.99/# for them (@ Fred Meyer, the Kroger store hereabouts).

OK, I had a diet mini-meal of chicken for dinner, then worked on sealing up the steaks for the freezer, now I'm having a Turkey for dessert.

I still haven't exceeded 800 calories for the day. I've lost 11# of holiday blubber in the past two weeks (some of it due to the Norovirus I had for about 9 days).

Word about singing the National Anthem

I don't care who the Hell you are, what your level of fame as a singer is, there are some RULES about singing the National Anthem in public.

The Rules:

• The song has music which goes with it. Learn the music, which means learning the beat and the meter of the stanzas you are going to sing. Sing the music according to it's original beat and meter.
• The song is a hymn of praise to our Nation. Never forget that. The song is never about YOU, it is ALWAYS about the Nation. Respect the Nation by singing it properly and well, and YOU will be respected. This is the consequence of not singing it well. Do not have the production crew broadcast your image from weird angles, such as waist-level, focusing on your mouth as you hit high notes and hold them too long. Remember, the song is not about YOU.
• If you don't know how to sing the song, You Tube is full of fine singers, Madeline Edwards comes to mind, who have sung it properly. You Tube is also full of fine bands/orchestras who have played it properly, the USMC Band comes to mind.

Do it right or don't do it. It's not supposed to be a show-stopper, it's supposed to be a sincere gesture of respect for our Nation and it's values. If you don't feel that respect, on a daily basis, this old Veteran suggests you just keep silent. If you DO feel that respect on a daily basis, and have a decent voice, PRACTICE the National Anthem, many times, before you sing it in public. It is a technically-difficult piece to sing, and if you try to "wing" it, you will mess it up.

In and out

I haven't blogged much of late, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge, so to speak. Lots especially around here where we've had 6"+ of rain in the past 4 days or so, with melted snow to add to the total. The High Cascades show 14"+ in spots, mostly rain below 4000 feet of late...The below photo shows the Doppler Storm Total. It's an estimate, but in my experience, it works well, probably accurate to within 10-15% of measured. Close enough for Government work. The whites on the cropped image are 14"+ of precipitation.

If you're really into this, here's the interpretation key:

 

Here's a shot of Willamette Falls at Oregon City, the falls that was the head of heavy navigation until the Willamette Falls Locks were built before the Civil War. There is usually a 50-foot falls and cataract where the water is flowing across almost level now. No white-water kayaker would even think about trying the Falls normally, but yesterday, you could have take a canoe over the submerged cataract with only medium experience under your belt. Photo by Samsung Galaxy S-2, cropped and edited in MS Paint.

Yep, THAT'S a La Nina! We've got more of this downpour coming in the next few days, and the Bible said it was to be a fire, not flood, that ended it all next time...

Politics: The GOP, the Get Organized Please party, has had three different candy-dates win the three different primaries so far. Two out of three have been conservative candidates, and yet we're still  getting this sweet smoke of "Romney's inevitable" blown up our butts by the RNC and pushed along by the MSM who REALLY want to see a contest of libtards, Romnoid versus Obamanoid.

The GOP is fixing to LOSE the election, and when they do, they will have deserved it. No one deserves to win any contest which they have farged up so badly, so many times in.

Typepad email blogging

The "secret" email addy

From my Android phone on T-Mobile. The first nationwide 4G network.

Samsung Galaxy S-2 - first impressions

Just finished about 5 hours with the new smartass phone. It has more "do" in it than all the rest of the computers in my house put together.

Where is Google with their computer OS, by the way?

Lot of bloatware on this phone, and you can't dump it, so it reduces the memory by about a gig and a half. No worries, the phone will take up to a 32-gig Micro SD card, and you can move all the real big storage items to the card, and leave the 16-gig of memory to operate as RAM, which it will. Whatever you don't want to leave on the phone, it can access from the Google-Fog (not a "cloud", they still call their servers, servers)

Some things aren't really intuitive, so when I'm loading contacts today, I farged one up, and couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to erase it and start over OR edit it. Turns out you have to go to the "menu" hard Key on the phone and hit that while in the Contact to be Deleted. That makes NO sense, and it wasn't in the "quick start" guide, either.

My bad luck. I go to open my Internet account (I have the account, I just can't access it from the phone or desktop), and the page to register is hosed. Support finally admits that it will be down for DAYS while it is being re-done. That just SUCKS. Of course, you have to go through your "my account" page to access synching...I probably WILL wind up entering all 400 or so of those contacts by hand, unless "Cell-Bright" is working at the phone store and someone is there who knows how to run it. "Cell-Bright" apparently will synch any exportable data from any phone to any phone. Sounds like majik to me. Verizon quit offering that service several years ago.

The other thing I just found out is that the wi-fi radio is a TWO-WAY radio, will broadcast wi-fi as well as receive it. Have to pay a premium on my broadband bill of $15/mo, so I'm wondering how often I'd use that capability.

Fairly steep learning curve with this one, but there's no limit to what it will do, and it's actually FUN surfing with it, as opposed to the giant PITA it was with the LG eNV-3 I just retired.

Whatta toy! Whatta tool! Almost as much fun as a new gun!

 

Snow and thaw

It should always snow this way.

It snowed only wet flurries through the day yesterday, then set in to pile up in earnest about 8 pm. by 3 am there was about 5" or so, but by 3:30, a warm wet wind had turned the snow to rain, and it is rapidly melting as of 5:30, and will likely be gone by noon.

Didn't get to see the pretty landscape by daylight, but it was very bright out last night anyway, with all the city lights. I could have used a scope-sighted rifle on any serious enemies or game last night, but there were none. There weren't even any of the usual nuisance ATVers, who proliferate around this 'burb when it snows.

In fact, it was nice and quiet until the rain and thaw started, then a cacophony of drips from everywhere hitting places on the roof and siding which don't normally get dripped on kep me from going back to sleep.

I issued a snow report to the far-flung Rivr clan, and now blog about it. Nothing to do now but watch the rivers rise...

R.I.P.

Privacy is dead. Requiscat in pacem.

The simple phone book, which became a "Reverse directory", which initially was restricted in it's distribution, but then became an Internet Reverse Directory, has finally morphed into "White Pages Neighbors"

You put in an address, and that address is featured/centered in a satellite photo, with all the neighboring homes numbered and a listing by those numbers given with their addresses, phone numbers and names of resident living within. Combine that with the National Sex Offender Registry search, and you can find out if your neighbors are kiddly-diddlers or rapists. Toss in a few bucks to an outfit like this (I've never used them) and you can check out any of the names your White Pages search finds.

Privacy is dead.

Tommy Tactical meets SASS*

...and the resulting offspring is the butt-ugliest rifle ever built.

Honestly, some guy must have had a two-liter Singha Beer** hangover when he designed this rifle.

It's also highly impractical, since the off-hand has to grab the forend which is festooned with sharp, hand-abrading accessory rails. The kick of the 30-30 is not all that mild, either, so the hand WILL get abraded. I'm also not sure about the drop-at-heel of that adjustable stock. It looks a little severe to me.

*SASS = The Single Action Shooting Society

** Singha Beer hangover. The Thai beer was produced by a fast method, back in the 'Nam days, and it had a little formaldehyde left in it which would produce a three-ring hangover after just a liter or two of that bilge-cleaner. The key feature of a Singha hangover was a splitting headache, a 2-Darvon headache...

H/T to Uncle, again.

This is impeachable

The Solyndra scandal has grown into a multi-faceted monster. The eye-popping stat that 80% of the DOE's 20.5 Billion dollars in "green energy" loans went to Obama supporters is pure graft, and so easily demonstrable graft that the greenest prosecutor in a hick town DA's office would be able to get a conviction with all that evidence.

Mr. Speaker, open the Articles of Impeachment, and open them now. This crook must now be allowed to have another term to continue his corruption. If he is impeached immediately, the Democratic Party will still have time to pick another candidate.

H/T to Uncle.

Smartphone bleg - DECIDED!

I need to move up to a smartphone for business purposes. I need productivity software (apps) on it, and it especially needs to be able to do all the money-transfer apps such as scanning/swiping credit cards, scanning-entering checks, etc. I have a Chase business account, and my business banker says Chase's electronic banking system will support everything that's out there in the way of apps and accessory equipment.

It needs to be able to handle .PDFs, as well as Word docs, with apps available to write on or modify such documents, then send them to my printer. Spreadsheets, not so much.

I-Phone or Droid, I don't care, but Wi-Fi capability along with 4G is a must, and I would prefer being able to move stuff around on a memory card (which I understand I-phone won't do, and now some of the Droids even lack memory card slots).

Long battery life is a plus, but not a deal-breaker, as long as it will go for 6-8 hours, since I'm religious about having a charged phone and will remember to charge it.

I don't give a rip about music, that's not an entering argument. I do like slide-out keyboards for fast text entry (I have old and less-agile thumbs, so a keyboard is almost a requirement). Camera and video is a plus, but I won't use it much.

Being able to do mobile Skype is a plus, almost a must.

I would prefer NOT to have to do all my business for apps with I-tunes, that's my biggest knock on all things Apple, you have to deal with Apple and Apple alone or you can't get it or use it on their equipment.

Price is not really an object, nor is data bundling. I'll pay the price of being able to do business in a 21st-Century style.

In the Rivrdog household, we have planz on both Verizon and T-Mobile, and T-Mobile has a deal going now so that if I get an Android phone, I can get a second smart-phone, the Nokia 710 Windows 7.5 phone, for fifty bucks. The gudwife wants an entry level smartass phone, and I'm told that the Windows device fills that need nicely. I could use more capability than the Nokia has, so I'm thinking of that Nokia for her and an Android for me, but which Android?

My previous smartphone experience ended with a windows 6.1 phone, and I was fine with it, but those days are past. I've suffered along with a dumb-phone for 2 1/2 years now and still would, if not for the pace of business.

Let the advising begin.

BTW, if Apple is so big a deal, how come no one bundles an I-Phone with an I-Pad for productivity?

******************************************************************************

Decided! I went down to the T-Mobile place and opened a Business Account, and tomorrow, with the advice of Drang, will have the Samsung Galaxy S-2. It's actually a more capable computer than the Windoze 7.0 Desktop I'm posting on....plus, for a $50 migration fee (which I thought they should have waived because I am opening a business account), I'm putting the gudwife into a Nokia 710 Windoze 7.5 phone. Less capable than the uber-machine I'm getting, but she liked it and the price was right (almost a giveaway). I might go for the full meal deal and get a 4G card for the laptop, or maybe even replace that netbook/laptop with a Galaxy Tablet...I guess this means that I will have to stop bashing Google at every opportunity as has been my practice, since I've just selected their OS for running at least my phone, and maybe a computer as well...

The Ruling Elites

...of both sides have been taking the US taxpayer to the cleaners on this airfare business for years. They all act surprised that we now claim to give a rip.

Sauce for the goose, etc.

The only solution is found in the refrain of the song "Tobacco Road":

"Bring dynamite,

Bring a crane,

Blow it up,

start all over again."

I wonder what would happen if I called for voters to stay home next Election Day, and go to their local rifle/pistol ranges instead. If every shooting range reported maximum usage all day long on Election Day, when most of them would usually have few shooters, it would send a message to Wahingtoon that could not possibly be mistaken for anything but that it's time for the elites to pack their carpetbags and go find other rocks to hide behind.

If, for some reason, the message didn't get through, we could repeat the action on Inauguration Day.

WillBoat update

As I announced last month, some 6 weeks ago, my new boater's access advocacy company has made some great organizational strides.

I have a fine Executive Director on board. He's an experienced hand, having run several conservative political campaigns, and knows the ins and outs of fund-raising. He found me a fine conservative corporate attorney, and yesterday we had our first sit-down. The barrister has corrected a few errors in my incorporations filing. None of them were fatal, but his fine-tuning has now made it possible for me to add a charitable foundation to the mix. Most corporate donors will want to have a tax break, and now they will.

This next week, we get to work on ordering the staff identity apparel, all to be adorned with WillBoat's logo:

So, with the graphic designs in the can, the web work begins this next week as well. Of course, there will be a link when it's up. After that, some exposition materials to get us ready for our big public debut at the NW Sportsmen's Expo, Feb 8-12, here in Portland.

All the while, the corporate attorney is at work preparing to serve the City of Portland with a demand for my company to have Intervenor status in the City's ongoing atempts to grab control of the very public Willamette River which flows through Portland. WillBoat vs. The City of Portland will be the first skirmish for us. The harder the City fights us, the more publicity we get, the more donations will come in, and the stronger we will get.

The sad fact is that sportsmen stood around here, and elsewhere in the USA, while the environmental movement got THEIR advocacy going first and locked us out of our own public forests. Now that the public woods are effectively closed to us, the greens have their eyes on closing off or restricting  motor-driven boating from some rivers and lakes, and they've already succeeded somewhat in doing THAT.

I started WillBoat to stand in that breach, and end this onslaught on freedom of boater's access before it gets any farther.

Wish me luck. It's a big job, but no one else is doing it, and it MUST be done.