Midweek Open Thread

| December 26, 2018

Photo by Craig Lovelidge, taken in Zoomarine, Albufeira, Portugal.

Happy Hump Day TAH! Time for your own topics.

Hoping that you guys enjoyed your celebrations yesterday. Roasted turkey and ham yesterday, no need to worry about what to prepare for today. Spray leftovers with water, microwave, and presto, just like it came from the oven.

Looks like we had some fun on one of the threads yesterday as well, hoping the recipient of our wisdom takes our advice to heart.

Category: Open thread

57 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Veritas Omnia Vincit

First on the MOT

11B-Mailclerk

Is that a “bon MOT” ?

Tallywhagger

Slow on the draw, once again!

Tallywhagger

Ah shucks, getting in second today was probably the highpoint of the day! 🙂

2/17 Air Cav

“…hoping the recipient of our wisdom takes our advice to heart.” No, Lars is still here. Or maybe you meant the other asshole, Trahan. He’s heading to the Big House or the morgue, barring a miracle.

NHSparky

Well, there have been a couple of folks here who have in a roundabout way given Lars advice, to the effect of go play in traffic.

Ex-PH2

Well, I’m here, despite the remains of a cold that has bugged me since before Christmas and made my life a living hell, just like all of you do.

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and got to see the Moon last night (if your sky was clear). Should occult Venus in about a week. If so, I will try to get pics.

Ex-PH2

I am a strong believer in the benefits of high pulp OJ. However, in this instance, this “bug” started working on me the day after I got my flu shot and continued grinding away at me until I had all the symptoms of a standard cold, except that you don’t get nauseated by a cold virus.

You get that from a flu virus and I think this “bug” was just that, hiding its real identity in the standard symptoms of a cold until it pissed me off and I got out the garlic. Works every time.

JAGC

As an “exempt” or “essential” government worker, I went to work today with no paycheck in sight. Next week I’ll be on furlough status so I can perform military duty. I really felt for my agency’s police officers who stood out in the cold this morning while not getting paid.

AW1Ed

I’m with you. A rather lively discussion on the subject was had here yesterday. Bottom line? Don’t expect a lot of sympathy here, govvie.

Actually, that’s pretty much true of every subject posted, anyway.

I went in to work and the place was a ghost cube farm. Is this due to the holidays, or furlough? Don’t know, no word from Higher.

So I’ll go in tomorrow and do what I can, as usual.

Good luck, JAGC. Wish I had something uplifting and happy to jot down here, but the last time this happened, our “leadership” rambled on about how Spam got him through rough times.

Now that’s inspirational right there.
/sarc

2/17 Air Cav

Ye Olde Sympathy Shoppe is closed due to lack of inventory. The last ounce of sympathy went out the door during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. In fact, he got it all.

AW1Ed

Cav, how could you be so careless? You left the last bit of ‘sympathy’ right there in the dictionary between ‘shit’ and ‘syphilis.’

Front leaning rest, dude. Knock ’em out ’till I get tired. Begin.

*grin*

2/17 Air Cav

Hey. I got away with one–once. It was BCT. Ot was piring. We had our ponchos on and were in the field doing something or other. We all got put in that position and a few of us got wise, slipped our helmet liners off and put them under our chests. Memory fails here, but I do believe a few guys got kicked in the chest area, but, this time, I wasn’t one of them.

2/17 Air Cav

Ot was piring. Translation: It was pouring. Freakin I Robot is acting up again.

AW1Ed

It’s all good- in Helo Rescue Swimmer School they’d just have us flip over for about 6 million flutter kicks. With fins, of course.

Good times.

Ret_25X

meh…furloughs, layoffs, plant closings are all part of the game no matter who you work for.

Veritas Omnia Vincit

With these public sector furloughs do these folks never see a payday for the time off?

In previous positions working for others companies had “furloughs” in lieu of layoffs and the folks affected by furloughs never got paid a dime for the days they were directed to stay home.

In other companies I’ve seen people in what is optimistically called work/share which simply means they are laid off one or two days a week and collect some measure of unemployment on those days and regular pay on the days they work.

Between state, local, and federal governments 22 million Americans work for the government. In contrast 2 million work for the largest private employer Wal Mart, a service sector employer that creates nothing.

In fact these days the top 25 largest private employers have only 4 or 5 manufacturers on the list.

I think we are seeing a dynamic shift in how Americans work in the private sector that may ultimately be equivalent to the shift that took place from and agrarian economy to an industrial economy. The idea of 40 year careers at a single employer in the private sector is mostly dead, from what I read moving forward the average job length will be 4 years. But the government will still offer 35-40 year opportunities and remain out of sync with how private employment works.

It will be interesting to see how we manage that reality, how we fund government as more Americans get paid less to work in service sector jobs instead of manufacturing, and their incomes continue to drop as a result. Furloughs may be the least of government financial concerns moving forward.

2/17 Air Cav

No one misses a dime. Some are inconvenienced by when they get paid for officially doing nothing. Others have to work and get paid on time. I wonder whether the do-somethings and get paid resent the do-nothings and get paid.

Cameron Kingsley

Does anyone know what happened to Claymore?

Ex-PH2

No, he disappeared a while back.

2/17 Air Cav

He went his way after Jonn passed.

AW1Ed

You’re a better man than I, thebesig. I couldn’t stand to read through the *cough* material Claymore provided, much less research and post it.

Sorry to see him, and a lot of others, gone.

SFC D
26Limabeans

Do the ballistic plates come with it?

Lurker Curt

Okay, that’s just friggin cool!!!

2/17 Air Cav

That is too cool. I want one.

AW1Ed

On the wish list for next year, unless I just get one for spring grillin’ and smokin’ season!

Combat Historian

Just announced: POTUS and FLOTUS now in Iraq visiting the troops…

2/17 Air Cav

That’s POTUS and HOTUS.

2/17 Air Cav

I should be clearer: HOT-US.

AW1Ed

Too funny- Trump and HOTUS were en-route to Iraq while some brain dead journalists were slamming him for not visiting the troops.
Oops.
First time a First Lady has accompanied her POTUS to visit the troops there, too. How’s that taste, proggies?

ex-OS2

Terrain. Terrain. Pull up, Pull up. Terrain….

Splat.

NHSparky

What’s the last thing that went through his mind?

His asshole.

A Proud Infidel®™️

Yeah, I heard he kinda went to pieces when that happened!

Sapper3307

Still under investigation according to NTSB.

Aysel

really? how long has it been? how long does an investigation usually take? and is it only because he shouldn’t have been able to get to his plane in the first place?

NHSparky

18-24 months isn’t unusual.

2/17 Air Cav

We’re talking about a gov’t agency. It takes a year to write PILOT and another year to write ERROR.

AW1Ed

You do us govvies a disservice, Cav. It wasn’t pilot error, nor was it an aircraft malfunction. We all know the real cause- we’re just waiting on the:

“Environmental Impact Statement on Potential Wetlands Contamination by Avgas and/or Other Aviation Related Fluids, and any Possible Detrimental Effects on the Protected Species of Three Toed Geko’s Limited Home Range.”

Once those EPA guys get their hooks into an investigation its all but over. We expect the report sometime in the near decade.

OWB

Don’t know how long these days, but 4 years in a complicated multiple death situation was not unheard of in the past. This one isn’t very complicated, but they still would want every “t” crossed and “i” dotted.

Tallywhagger

The sad loss of a perfectly decent aircraft at the hands of an incompetent “pilot”.

Eight to ten hours of dual instruction and he might have finally caught up with flying the plane. As it were, he was way behind the plane and a passenger instead of being the pilot.

I remember giving a BFR to a guy with a Mooney who could only land at one airport and even then he was futzing around with the throttle on final and had no idea when the wheels would touch down! It took about four hours to teach him how to land his own plane but we had to go to different airports to get him focused.

Friend

Giggling. ..

Green Thumb

The False Commander “Phony” Phil Monkress works balls as he avoids questions concerning his fake Native American, fake Law Enforcement Officer and false Navy SEAL claims.

All the while lining his pockets and All-Points Logistics’ with taxpayer-funded assistance based upon these false and easily verifiable claims.

AW1Ed

Better.

Tallywhagger

Got a new winter project for Christmas, a 1986 Corvette. Gonna do some paint and interior work over the winter, the usual stuff, and ride around this summer with the top off for the 40 or 50 days of summer!

It was fun driving it around today. Haven’t played Corvette since the 70s.

This is what happens when you get way past the midlife crisis, you look for new adventure, run out of ideas and start recycling through stuff that used to work.

Haha, maybe I can find some other pre-geezers and we can jam on some serious music, like Smoke On The Water or Wipe Out.

AW1Ed

Put this in your eight track.

Tallywhagger

He is still out there, playing well, singing well and pretty fit for a guy in his 70s. I think he lives in Tennessee.

Love me some Mitch Ryder and Detroit Wheels!

SSG D

Anybody happen to see where potus tweeted a video of deployed navy seals from team 5 with no blurring of faces?

JimV

Chowing down at Lackland AFB on Christmas day. They welcome military retirees on major holidays.

https://flic.kr/s/aHskL7UQKz

2/17 Air Cav

Ever heard of a man named Alan Magee? He was a ball-turret gunner on a B17 during WW II. On 23 January 1943, his bomber was over France along with 84 other B-17s on a mission to hit a German U-boat base. Magee’s aircraft never made it. “Snap-Crackle-Pop” was destroyed in flight by anti-aircraft fire. Magee bailed out at about 22,000 feet, but there was a problem: he had no parachute. He hit terminal velocity well before he, unconscious, struck the roof of the St Nazaire railway station. When the Germans got to him, they found him alive, with relatively little damage. He had numerous cuts in him from the glass roof and some broken bones but, otherwise, he was good. The Germans cared for him as a POW and decades later, in 1995, he and his wife returned to that railway station not for himself but for a memorial to the seven men on “Snap=Crackle-Pop” who didn’t make it. 22,000 feet. No chute.