Specialist

There are a whole slew of effective vaccines now for the well-known childhood diseases that used to be considered routine for everyone. Measles, mumps, rubella ("German measles"), chicken pox (I lost a month of high school to chicken pox). They didn't exist in the 1950s and 1960s.

Alohameansgoodbye, flight crews vary. I have absolutely NOTHING but good things to say about JAL and Cathay Pacific crews. AA's international Business Class crews, at least on transPac hops, are generally good. (I have only very limited experience with AA for transAtlantic, and that one flight was in Business Class.) AA's coach crews, especially on transPac hops, tend to leave quite a bit to be desired, ESPECIALLY when compared to JAL or CX.

T minus 19 days or thereabouts. I land at Swampypoom very late on the 23rd.

For future reference, when your employer asks you to cancel or postpone your vacation, consider Gordon England's reply. There was just such a case at General Dynamics / Fort Worth Division, before I got there. They were about to ask a senior engineer to postpone a planned vacation, because of a crunch at work. The manager in question knew he needed support from higher up the food chain, so he went to Gordon England, Director of Avionics. He made his case, as best he could. Gordon listened, carefully, and then asked just one question. "What would you do if he was in the hospital?" That was the LAST time while Gordon England was there that anyone at GD/FW asked people to cancel or postpone vacation.

A question arises. I have a couple of friends who periodically conduct seminars in Bangkok, using hotel conference facilities. What are the applicable visa or work permit requirements for this? What are the tax implications?

I was in Business Class on a 747 for the FRA-BKK hop on THAI. The gate agent was adamant about the one-bag and weight limits. The fact that it was medical equipment was absolutely irrelevant. (This is Germany. Rules are rules.)

bust, I travel with medical equipment (CPAP, nebulizer, medications) that MUST arrive WITH me. Checked baggage doesn't always get there on schedule. (I still haven't figured out how American Airlines managed to mislay my bag on a nonstop flight, but they did. I also haven't figured out how they managed to get it there the next morning. I can only surmise that it made it onto a later flight to Dallas, and there was a very early flight from Dallas to Chicago. Meanwhile, I got to make an emergency night clothes-shopping run in Chicago.) I travel with notebook computer and digital SLR camera. The problem with theft from checked baggage in the US is WELL documented, meaning if I want to see my camera and computer again, it has to travel with me. The medical gear lives in a 22x14x9 carryon. Official size. The camera and computer live in a backpack designed for that kind of thing, that fits under the seat (unless the airplane was retrofitted with an entertainment system). JAL and CX have one-bag limits. CX also has a weight limit. However, there's an exception for medical gear. JAL has a note about my gear in my permanent passenger file. CX was coming around, checking bag weights. When I explained the situation, they IMMEDIATELY said "No problem." (They then surprised the heck out of me by upgrading me to an otherwise-empty row in Premium Economy. I walk with a cane, which may have had something to do with it.) THAI has a one-bag 10 kg carryon limit. In Frankfurt, at least, their gate agents have NO latitude to make exceptions for medical gear. I finally managed to persuade them to allow me to carry the asthma nebulizer and Epi-pen as a small purse, along with my camera/computer backpack. I think that had something to do with them realizing that Questions Might Be Asked if the pilot had to divert a full 747 into Afghanistan for a fully-preventable inflight medical emergency, because they'd refused to allow a passenger to carry his meds with him. (If I never see THAI in Frankfurt again, I'll be just fine.)

You will find out. At the moment, you will become enlightened.

Enjoy the Frankfurt Feel. You'll find out what I'm talking about.

Easy solution, Coss. Don't shower alone. Period.

Bust, there are some images that should just never be posted, because it is impossible for the unsuspecting viewer to un-see them.

I am not surprised about the Apple sales spiking up. Windows 8 is, not to put too fine an edge on it, a HUGE piece of sh*t. The 8.1 upgrade made it marginally usable, but it is still nowhere near as good as Windows 7, or XP. I have a Windows 8 notebook. I have a Windows XP desktop and a Windows XP notebook. I'm not in a rush, but they are probably both going to become Linux machines.

According to a friend's writing, a guy who DOES know what he's talking about in this arena: At last report, there were something like 35 different IQ tests. Some of them do not use language. ("Which picture is unlike the others?") All of them are strongly autocorrelated. All of them are strongly cross-correlated. The first means that they are measuring something real and intrinsic. The second means that they are, directly or indirectly, measuring the same something real and intrinsic. That's about the most that you can say today without spawning a lynch mob.

Accumulated frustration is high enough that I've declared vacation time around Thanksgiving. I'm scheduled to land at Swampy on Sunday 23 Nov, shortly before midnight, and fly out Sunday Pearl Harbor Day. I just put the airline and hotel reservations in place.

Yes, he's still writing, and this week's column went up more or less on schedule.

Flash, in the well-known words of someone-or-other, "Well, DUHHH!"

I would be guessing that the explosives weren't hidden all that well. What I want to know is how the BLEEP the cop in question walked out of the station with the boom-boom stuff, and NOBODY AT THE COP SHOP NOTICED HE DIDN'T BRING IT BACK!!! FOR THREE FRACKING WEEKS!!!

"2001" was all models (miniatures), cel animation, and full-size sets. There was an article in "Popular Science" about the filming, and what they had to do. They actually built the main wheel for "Discovery" (the Jupiter ship), and stood it vertically, like a Ferris wheel, rotating it as the astronauts walked, so that the astronauts were always at the bottom, where gravity was in the correct direction. It is very difficult to do CGI that looks "real", as opposed to ultra-real. Compare the shots of the starship in the opening scenes of "Avatar" with the shots of "Discovery" in 2001 (or in the trailer, above). (Or dig out photos from Av Leak, of the International Space Station, imaged from the Shuttle.)

Not even close, Flash. My father was at Boeing, on Dyna-Soar, when SecDef Robert Strange McNamara cancelled the program. Boeing laid off a BUNCH of guys, a few days/weeks before Christmas, in 1963. I don't remember if this was before or after Dallas, but I can absolutely tell you that Nixon had NOTHING to do with Dyna-Soar, or its cancellation. Nixon lost the 1960 election, and was nowhere near Washington in 1963.

Link here The Aussie Federal Police wanted to do a live training exercise at the airport. So, they took a briefcase, loaded it full of plastic explosive, and left it at baggage claim, for the bomb-sniffing dog to find. Except the dog didn't find it. So it got turned in to lost-and-found. And it got given to a customer. Who took it home. Who opened it three WEEKS later. Who found the boom-boom stuff. Who took it to the local police. Who had to evacuate the police station (presumably, to change their drawers). So, for THREE WEEKS, the AFP had no freaking idea where their training bomb went. They say there's an investigation under way. Right. SURE there is.

That is *BEAUTIFUL* CGI. And no, that kind of technology was not even remotely available in 1969. The cheapest home PC you can buy new today is *FAR* more powerful than the world's most powerful supercomputer from 1969. I was there. My father was doing refresher work in 1970, during a period of unemployment, taking (among other things) beginning computer programming in FORTRAN. At that time, UT Austin had a Control Data 6600, which was the undisputed biggest, baddest supercomputer on the planet. I got started in programming on that machine, in summer of 1970, when I tagged along to one of his classes. I remember when ray-tracing computer graphics STARTED, in the early 1980s. It was "supercomputers only". I remember "Tron" and "The Last Starfighter". I remember when I first started playing with POV-Ray, some time after I bought a 486/33, then found my old 6600 reference manual, and realized that my desktop PC was more powerful than the UT Austin 6600 that got me started. And I remember how POV-Ray beat that 486/33 to death. Fast forward to Fall of 2003, when *I'm* doing refresher work at UT Austin, during a period of unemployment. I'm repeating the graphics class, which I'd first taken in the mid-1970s, and the last programming assignment is ray-tracing. And I'm doing it on a PC. And I'm pleasantly amazed at how SIMPLE the code was, and at the same time quite aware of how hard I was beating the CPU to death with it... Dad passed away a few years ago. I don't remember whether I ever showed him the graphics homework results. I don't think I did. I do remember Mom mentioning quietly one night, after Dad had gone to bed, that he was INCREDIBLY proud of me, for going back to school during the extended unemployment period.

Usual procedure in the US in that circumstance is to repeat the test, to make sure it wasn't a false positive, a brief spike, or a lab screw-up.

Cue that wonderful song from a certain musical, that starred Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds: "Oooooh, I love to dance a little sidestep!"

I'm still waiting to see what happens, but I'm TENTATIVELY planning on being in town right around US Thanksgiving (last full week in November, first week in December).

Well, there goes his retirement party...