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Specialist

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Everything posted by Specialist

  1. It is more a case of I *NEED* the downtime, after a rougher-than-usual period, and first half of May is the earliest I can get away. I still have one more hotel reservation I have to set up. American Airlines Revenue Management insists on making me overnight in Dallas on the way back (or pay significantly more money or miles).
  2. I just set up the airfare. Burning some AA miles instead of dollars this trip. I need to get the exact details before I set up the hotel reservation.
  3. Flash, as I understand it, the penalties for mere possession of an M79 launcher in Thailand are already quite severe. That's why the scumbags are demanding that their red-handed thug friends be released on bail, so they can disappear into the boonies and not spend long periods in very unpleasant jails.
  4. Munchie, who gets to decide who the people are allowed to vote for? Who decides who can get on the ballot and who can't? What are the criteria? This is fundamental, and Mr Suthep has never addressed this question. Neither have any of his comrades, minions, or mouthpieces.
  5. The real story came out a few hours before this one. "10:39 AM: Two government supporters and a red-shirt guard were arrested by Nonthaburi police after they were found with the possession of a cache of firearms and ammunition in their car. (Emphasis added.) The weapon included a M79 grenade launcher, and M40 grenades used with the launcher, a shot gun, a pistol, and several rounds of AK 47 cartridges. All the weapon was found near the stage where the red-shirt supporters were holding out at the NACC headoffice at Sanambin Nam road." Sounds to me as though the police have the scumbags dead to rights, and the scumbags really don't like being caught red-handed.
  6. I was wondering about the licensing situation for those stations. I'm a little surprised the police colonel didn't seize the gear on the first visit.
  7. At this point, I TENTATIVELY expect to be wheels up early Friday morning, May 2, land at Swampypoom and subsequently arrive at the hotel around 1 AM Sunday 4 May. I still have to run the traps with the airline and the hotel.
  8. I *MIGHT* be coming in just after Songkran. Right now, it looks more like first of May.
  9. Flash, if any of the people who know what happened to that airplane are still alive, they are not talking.
  10. An electrical fire in the cockpit would be one thing. The problem is that Boeing and the airlines understand, in detail, just how bad that would be, and put a LOT of engineering and maintenance into making sure that (1) it doesn't happen and (2) the fire can be fought, effectively. A nosewheel fire raises an obvious question. The Boeing 777 is pressurized. The nosewheel, having to make contact with the runway in order to do its job, is OUTSIDE of the pressure hull. How does the smoke get from OUTSIDE the pressure hull to INSIDE the pressure hull? Also note that a nosewheel fire would start during or immediately after takeoff, and be detected immediately as low tire pressure and/or hot brake, BOTH of which are reported on the cockpit EICAS display. Instead, he postulates that the nosewheel fire doesn't get going until the airplane is at cruising altitude, where the air is dam' thin, instead of down close to the ground where there's lots more oxygen per cubic centimeter to support combustion. Dezinformatsiya, anyone?
  11. In a situation like this, you check EVERYTHING. I'd REALLY like to know who gave the order to sit on the military radar tracking data for days, while everyone searched the wrong piece of ocean.
  12. What is conspicuously absent from ALL of that talk about the cellphones is a statement along the lines of "Yes, we know about those cellphone reports. We have all of the phone numbers in question. We've run each one back through the wireless service providers to the cellphone electronic ID numbers, and we've queried every wireless base station in that part of the world. None of those cellphones have checked in since the airplane took off." It isn't that hard to do that. The critical thing is this: If any of those phones HAS checked in with a cellphone base station, it tells you that the phone landed safely on dry land, and it tells you, within a few square klicks, where the phone is. If the phone is safely on dry land, odds are that the phone's owner is, too, which means the AIRPLANE is as well. Meaning that running down those phone numbers, while UNLIKELY to help, MIGHT gve some very important information.
  13. There have been a couple of reports that passenger smartphones are "still active". Without more data, that could be that the networks in question haven't noticed that the phones are no longer talking to the network. Or it could be that the phones are in fact intact, in range of a cell tower, and their batteries are still up. Which has some serious implications.
  14. Recall that "Dr Strangelove" pointed out the WORST thing you can do when you have a Doomsday Retribution System is KEEP IT A SECRET FROM YOUR ENEMIES. Why would you keep your terrorist acts a secret from the people you are trying to influence through your terrorist acts?
  15. Actually, with a little effort, you can treat the period and hyphen keys ALMOST like an iambic paddle... Hm. That's HORRIBLE thought: Use an Arduino to do paddle-to-text. Many years ago, while in ICU, intubated, no ability to talk. Friends almost had to go get a straight key and code practice oscillator, before we could track down a pad and a pen. When they finally let me out of ICU, I had a stack of many pages of "conversation", in my handwriting, almost all of it perfectly lucid, most of it I have NO memory WHATSOEVER of writing.
  16. Ditto on meeting good friends. I do wonder where Hugh Hoy went. He and I are plank-holders in the Bangkok chapter of one of the most exclusive clubs on the planet. "DVT/PE Survivors League": There are no meetings, there is no newsletter, there are no T-shirts, and we've already paid our dues.
  17. Taking inflation into account, that 280 to 300 is about the same as 130 to 150 ten to twelve years ago. I don't think that's the issue. What I saw happening, over a period of about a year, a few years ago, was some VERY unpleasant treatment of those guys you talk about, to the point that they said "Posting on Thai360 isn't sanuk anymore, and life is too short to do things that aren't sanuk." Take a look at the responses to some of the last Trip Reports.
  18. Election Day is scheduled for about 2 weeks from now. Depending on the quantity and quality of the brown matter that impacts the rotary air impeller between now and then, and afterwards, I *MIGHT* be back in town ca. late March-early April, or late April-early May. I have to schedule around work, and I am not even remotely crazy enough to be in town during Songkran.
  19. Right. The reason the Global Warming crew quote short-term numbers, and NEVER go back more than 800 years, is that Greenland's glacier formed 800 years ago. Prior to that, the Viking settlements included dairy farms. It is HARD to graze cattle on an ice sheet... We have beaucoup written historical records from that period. The people of that time SAW the glaciers forming, SAW them creeping South, and they pulled up stakes and went home when the glacier got far enough South. But Al Gore and his buddies want you to believe that Greenland has always been covered in glacier. What's a little thing like basic American history between friends, right?
  20. I can't help but think that Tucker Max would take that last one as a personal challenge...
  21. Oh yeah. I *NEED* the change of scenery on this trip. BAD.
  22. T minus 35 days and counting. I go to the airport hotel five weeks from tonight, for a Dawn Patrol flight out Wednesday 6 Nov, landing Swampy Thursday night, staying for two weeks. I will be in a seminar 11-15 Nov.
  23. I can't prove it, but I suspect that I was working at Texas Instruments when that story happened. We went through some ugly layoffs while I was there. (On second thought, it might have been before my time: I think I recall hearing the story from a coworker.) There was also the insider joke: "What color is a temp worker's badge? Gold." At that time, TI used badge color to indicate longevity. Gold indicated 20+ years with the company, as I recall. I realized things were seriously wrong at TI when I encountered a former coworker, a control systems Ph.D., at a local job search networking group. I'd been gone from the company for two years, and then had gotten caught in the Nortel meltdown. (TI has never recovered.)
  24. Sometimes you get surprised in a good way. Some years back, I was staying at Nana Hotel. I pulled a girl from Hollywood Rock. It turned out that she'd had too much to drink, and passed out on me. We slept late the next day, finally got up and organized around noon. Last saw her leaving, in broad daylight. The night before, in Nana Plaza and indoor light, with makeup, she'd looked OK. The next morning, outdoors, in broad daylight/bright sun, with no makeup, she was flat-out drop-dead gorgeous, classically beautiful. She was one of those girls who should NOT wear makeup.
  25. Some years back, I lived in Dallas for several years. Scarborough Faire, a local Renaissance fair, was held every year. There was a glassblowing shop, doing goblets, wine glasses, plates, and the like and I got to know the glassblowers, to the point that they remembered me and called me by name, even though we only saw each other a couple of times a year. (The fact that they were my go-to guys for wedding presents probably didn't hurt any.) One day, someone said something about "recycling", and he pointed out that basic glass was nothing but sand and energy, and the best way to "recycle" glass bottles was to wash them and reuse them, as that was a LOT easier and cheaper than crushing them, melting them down, and making new bottles out of them.
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