Being before your time is a heavy burden. Colin Powell carried it better than anyone I can think of right now.
“As the presidential race went on, a cloud of racism and xenophobia settled over the contest…”
Colin Powell
Downing the Big Front Aspen
Clearing out the deadwood from last year’s early hard freeze was a summer-long project. Most everything I do around here nowadays gets done in small chunks, but I’m usually good to go for up to an hour or so with the girdle on. I was able to accomplish the lumber-jacking by cutting smaller pieces off the tops first, working my way down to the main trunks in a dozen sessions over the past few months. That way there was only an hour’s worth of work each time I started back in on it again.
I took it off about 4′ up so Michelle can use the stump for a plant stand in the spring. This was probably one of the easiest tree fellings ever attempted by anyone, and I still eff’d it up. It was already leaning the right direction, but tried to barber-chair because I didn’t get the hinge lined up straight to finish it. Moving the big stuff once it was down without any lumbar-jacking took a bit of fussing about. That’s how we used to deliver the Oxy/Acetylene tanks without a cart. You could do one in each hand if you were really skilled at it. Mr. Wallington might be less crippled than me, but the stuff he does is 100 orders of magnitude greater. Just have to adapt and find ways to get things done.
Flag-Covered Coffin Budget
Talking about trillions of dollars in Federal budgeting is a political game lacking perspective. Alot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around big numbers at all, much less what they mean. The $3.5t infrastructure package compared to the $8t DoD budget over the same period looks less large to the average Joe wondering why they can’t get an Internet connection at the hovel.
It’s Out of Control
Once again… “…designed to replace the 1990s-developed Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program, which notoriously faced a series of severe cost overruns and schedule delays, with the final satellite in that constellation only to be launched in 2022.”
We’ll see. We knew it was off the rails back in 2004 while I was working systems security at the Boulder facility when the original LEO constellation was cancelled. Even then, it was hard for a technically competent engineer to imagine how the integration effort for such a system could ever succeed at scale.
Guess we’ll try again. If there is one thing certain, this government does not learn from it’s mistakes.
I was wrong about GEO-6, assuming it would not even finish getting built. Now waiting to see if it flies.
Approval Ratings
Biden’s approval rating drops to %44. Meh. I remember some “mixed” reviews over things I was evaluated on thru the years. They usually got it right, as long as I was doing what was expected. That’s one of the problems with U.S. politics and the electorate, generally speaking: It/they don’t know what to expect. It could be almost anything with the primary concern re-election and the news, good, bad or otherwise, can be twisted to fit the desired narrative – truth be damned.
Biden did what what he said he would do, in compliance with Trump’s-pre-arranged debacle. Traits un-recognizable to the GOP: Integrity and follow-through, made the Kabul airlift an amazing success, executed under unimaginably dangerous and chaotic conditions by our fantastic military. Anyone disagreeing with that analysis can kiss my rosie red rectum.
The Kabul Airlift
…will go down in history as the greatest humanitarian airlift effort ever, eclipsing the Berlin Airlift tonnage by an order of magnitude in human cargo. We can debate the comparison in tons of coal and food vs. people. It’s apples and oranges. This one has a deadline and DoD is meeting it in spectacular fashion.
When it comes time to really move some shyt, NOBODY beats the U.S. Air Force.
The Best of US
Thanks again Lincoln Project, I needed that.
Boeing Boondoggles
I’ll take a wild-assed guess and surmise the main reason for the rear vision system failure was pretty simple and easily avoided. My hindsight is after all, 20/20. It was deemed too expensive to put the boomer in the back where they belong, opting rather for a more profitable, easy electro-digital solution. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I expect Boeing to fall flat with the Starliner in coming days/weeks as well. There must be alot of employees at the company unhappy with what they are doing, how and why they are doing it that way. The software-controlled valves in the Starliner booster system are certainly orders of magnitude more complicated than any remote vision system.
Good luck.
LATE UPDATE 15 August: Mission scrubbed.
Political Talk Banned
Michael Collins
Sorry for the late posting on this, but it seems I’m always in catch-up mode these days. The astronaut community is large, diverse and growing fast. It wasn’t that long ago there were only a dozen or so, doing some pretty incredible stuff. Michael Collins was one of those early pioneers leading the way in space travel.
“We … know how lucky Mike felt to have lived the life he did … Please join us in fondly and joyfully remembering his sharp wit, his quiet sense of purpose, and his wise perspective; gained both from looking back at Earth from the vantage point of space and gazing across the calm waters from the deck of his fishing boat.”
Almost Busted in Bosnia
People familiar with me know my penchant for finding trouble almost everywhere I’ve been over the years. A 1-car accident DUI in Denver back in 1984 led to a long intermission before they tried to retire me early from the Air Force for doing my white-hat hacking job at the Peterson AFB HQ. Then there was the whole Schriever thing. Bosnia was scary on many levels, but I came real close to pushing my luck a bit too far with the bosses at Butmir one day…
Me and the Major were returning from Tuzla late one afternoon with a couple hours of daylight left, so he decided it might be a good idea to take a detour and check on the whereabouts of a car bomber he’d recently become interested in. One hour and one cup of coffee too many into the drive at this point, I turn off down into the valley on this rocky, dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and start looking for someplace to pull off and take a wizz, which I proceed to do after about 5 minutes.
“Whooooooaaa!!” the Major yells, “what the fuck are you doing Shaffer?!! I don’t remember when the last time this road was cleared, keep it moving!” By cleared, meaning cleared of landmines. BTW, the entirety of Bosnia has by this time become the world’s most densely concentrated landmine hazard. Still not sure how seeing somebody on it earlier that morning made it safe to drive on this road now. He could remember where somebody half of NATO was looking for might be, but not if the road he was driving on was safe. Major in the MIB – Military Intelligence Battalion. Assuming this fuckwit actually knew what he was doing, I was taking a piss, but not in my pants.
So I buttoned up and climbed back into the Land Rover, at which point my passenger launches into a 10-minute-long tirade, starting with “If you EVER try ANYTHING like that ever again Seargent I WILL rip the stripes off your arm right where you sit!!” …and on and on. I responded every minute or so with an appropriately firm “yes sir,” or “no sir.” It’s lucky there was nobody with us that day. If he’d had somebody to go whine to the Commander with he’d probably have gotten at least one.
Of course the Lieutenant calls me over first thing next morning and says: “Major Anderson told me what you did on the way back from Tuzla yesterday.” To which I replied, “I hope you can understand there were extenuating circumstances, but do you know if he happened to mention it to anybody else, ma’am?” She said, “No. but don’t let it happen again.” I assured her it would not, and went on to ask about that flight schedule issue. “Sounds like a job for Major Anderson,” I quipped. Almost ducked, as she spun around and stormed out the door and up the stairs. I bet that young lady makes General someday. That was one of the last times we drove trucks between the COYs while I was there.
The Definition of Badass
It’s pilots, no doubt in my mind. They have the toughest jobs, right up and down the line, whether they are responsible for hundreds of lives airborne, or innocent civilians on the ground, their fingers are on the trigger. One in particular stands out, setting the example for all to follow. Gordo was the only one in danger on that last Mercury mission, But he set the standard, even Chuck Yeager ate crow on.
The definition was given by an un-named NASA co-worker after splashdown. “He knew what he was doing and could always make things work.”
This is what I’m Talking About
“My battle with cancer really prepared me for space travel,” Arceneaux told the AP. It made me tough, and then also I think it really taught me to expect the unexpected and go along for the ride.”
Talk about inspiration. What’s it take to get YOU going? This kid’s doing better than most anybody else – with a prosthetic leg!
Maslow's Covered
Not sure why I got into the tech industry on the security front >35 years ago. I suppose being thrust into the military with a willingness to do whatever, being stationed in Germany when the Wall went down was a factor. But that’s what I did for the most part – systems, physical, personnel, crypto – sometimes simultaneously depending on how poorly resourced the unit at hand was.
Guess I’m lucky enough to have made my past profession a current hobby. That’s a nice benefit considering the now ambulatory-restricted health condition I find myself in. In fact I’m certain the desk-bound nature of my last couple jobs with Lockheed is the only reason I made it as far as I did. Those long walks across Schriever were getting increasingly tiring.
So the current project on the 5712 tech home front is migrating off a long-running Synology NAS. That is a great system with few complaints from me. It’s well-designed and easy for non-techies to use. But (BIG but) it’s proprietary, with limited functionality and high initial outlay and O&M risk. The biggest part of that “but” involves software security in today’s politically charged cyber war. In case nobody noticed, the next U.S. Civil War has been in progress on the cyber front for a few years now.
I won’t be waiting around to see if Synology eventually becomes another Solarwinds-type casualty on the cyber battleground. It’s a bit tedious setting things up manually to manage the cameras with FTP server scripts, but probably alot easier than dealing with Synology and the software community generally speaking, in the long run.
Government Money
Recent macro economic problems have highlighted just how much of it is out there. When government spending packages start being measured in the Trillions, and the biggest worry on the most people’s minds is how much bailout money they might get, it pays to review your options. Here’s how I collected quite a bit of extra Uncle Sam Green the 1st half of my Air Force career:
USAF and Space Force Jobs Qualifying for 2021 Retention Bonuses.
Chuck Yeager, 1923-2020
