I’m 6 years away from getting Social Security… Which means I’ll get to it about the time to see some billionaire buy another boat with what was left in the Social Security fund.

I wish my wife would be up for this, but I’m damn close to selling everything and buying a boat then fucking off to the south Pacific until I die. The problem is she gets motion sickness from standing still. She’d never be able to live on a boat.

Plane crashes.

Not in a morbid sense, but rather I like reading the NTSB reports about how the holes in the Swiss Cheese model line up. There are several Youtube channels that give detailed breakdowns on accidents that I like to watch as well.

Why?

It started when I was 19 when I saw the aftermath of United 232. My parents and I were driving through Sioux City IA about 4 hours after the crash. Fortunately, the highway was far enough away that only the larger parts of the plane could be seen. Bodies were not visible or had already been removed. That was 37 years ago and I still remember it like it was still happening.

I launched into learning everything I could about what happened to that airplane.

I had done the same thing with other accidents as well. Like many my age, I watch the Challenger accident live and Chernobyl happened that same year as well.

Add to that, in the 90’s I started skydiving. My home DZ flew two Beech 18’s. In one aircraft I experienced engine problems twice that elicited a bail out of all the jumpers. On both occasions the plane landed safely and put back into service after the engine was repaired, or replaced. The other Beech 18 I actually experienced a crash. It was fuel starvation on climb out and the pilot, who was the Drop Zone Owner, was flying. He put the plane down in a corn field off the end of the runway. All the jumpers except one got into the other Beech and jumped.

That just fed my curiosity. And yes, I still jumped after all of those occurrences. The crash actually happened first. I just tell it chronologically backward as it was the most serious of the incidents.

I also think that my studying of aviation accidents made me a better and safer skydiver. I was always thinking in terms in how things were lining up to allow bad things to happen. Not that I didn’t have close calls, I even wrote about one of them in a previous post, but I never experienced any major injuries in my 4500 jumps.

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Maybe not exactly a guilty pleasure, as the band actually OK overall… But

“Instamatic” by Vertical Horizon

Neil Peart was the guest drummer and it’s very apparent he makes a massive impact on Vertical Horizon. The entire band becomes way more precise and the song just hits differently and harder than any of their other work.

Polgara and Belgarath are both several thousands of years old, so I really didn’t read them as smug or arrogant, rather jaded and cynical. Beldin was jaded and cynical personified.

I’m in my mid-50’s and honestly can identify with them at times, although I do my best not to act it.

Garion’s treatment is probably evidence of the Eddings’ proclivities toward children. They were both convicted of child abuse and spent time in prison for it about 10 years before “The Belgariad” was written. Their adopted children were also permanently taken away. Like many others I had no idea of that until after David’s death in 2009.

I reread it about 8 years ago and I’ve had both my boys read it as well. It certainly did hit a lot differently. For one, if I was Garion I would have sent Ce’Nedra permanently packing in short order destiny be damned. I still loved Prince Kheldar (Silk) though.

There have been so many authors and celebrities whose work I have enjoyed over the years just to come out and be scummy trash that I’m at the point I just want to enjoy the art and not know who is behind it. That feels a lot like being a ostrich with its head buried in the sand, but I’m not really sure what the alternative really is.

LOTR… Of course, since this is really the start of the genre as it exists today. So when you read it and think that it’s full of tropes… Continue thinking a little bit and realize that LOTR CREATED those tropes.

The Belgariad by David Eddings. I’ll come out and say it, David Eddings was a horrible person, but this series is worth reading. He’s dead now so you won’t be supporting him if you get these books. The followup series “The Mallorean” is not a must read, it’s basically a retread of “The Belgariad”. As are his later series “The Tamuli” etc…

The Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson. A lot of people will recommend Mistborn, or the Stormlight Archive, but both of those series are just parts of a greater arc called “The Cosmere”. I would recommend starting with Elantris or Warbreaker, both of which are standalone books, but are in the Cosmere. Then go to Mistborn series 1, then tackle Stormlight Archive. Be warned, each book in SA is longer than LOTR in its entirety. But it’s well worth the read.

A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay: One of my wife’s favorite books. Not a series, but worth the read.

Memory, Sorry and Thorn by Tad Williams: Excellent series that doesn’t get the recognition it deserves.

Destiny’s Crucible by Olan Thorensen: I liked this one a lot and continue to follow it, although it’s starting to get a little long.

The Riyria Revelations and Chronicles by Michael J Sullivan: Both of these series are great and worth the read.

Life is too short to eat bad chocolate.

VLC

Firefox

WINISD (more of a love hate relationship)

Ehh, it’s not that bad normally. I went on and did another ~2500 jumps in the subsequent years.

This was probably the worse situation I was put in, in my entire skydiving career. The fact of the matter the only real safety device in skydiving sits between the jumper’s ears. Most accidents occur due to a bad attitude, or ignorance of how to safely do things.

8 way skydive. Two friends were getting married and they wanted to do a wedding jump for their ceremony.

Not a big deal, but the two getting married were very inexperienced jumpers with less than 100 jumps each. The rest of us were all highly experienced with hundreds if not thousands of jumps. At the time I was sitting a bit over 2000 jumps and was active on both 4-way and 8-way competition teams. (Not my videos, but fair representations of what I was doing at the time).

We planned a jump which would put the newlyweds at the base where they would not need to do a whole lot. Unfortunately the bride had the bright idea that she wanted to come in and dock on the formation, which she did not have the skill set for. I coached her on several jumps having her dock on me. She was terrible, but she did manage to dock on me the last two coach jumps. Part of my coaching was what to do if she goes low and finds herself under the formation and unable to get back up. People falling together fall slower than an individual.

Fast forward and we have a practice jump about a month before the wedding. The groom goes out with another experienced jumper in the base, the bride next then the rest of us diving out.

Well, the bride misses the formation, much like I figured she would. Except she doesn’t follow her training and she just sits there under the formation. She was about 500 feet under the formation when she starts waving off, which is the signal she’s about to deploy her main parachute. The formation breaks and tracks for their lives, which we literally were.

She deploys and it turned out that I was closest to her. I passed less than 20 feet away doing 120mph where she was slowing to less than 10mph. She later said I sounded like a jet airplane passing by. Had we hit, it would have been fatal.

I grounded her and gave her a good chewing out. We spent the next weekend doing more coaching and I told her if she wanted to do the jump she had to be in the base.

The wedding day came, but unfortunately the weather the day sucked and we didn’t get to do the jump that day. We did it about a month later where the jump went pretty well and safely.

Sex?

No such thing.

Parachute not opening?

Any.

I was on a ski trip in Banf Canada and on this particular day we were skiing at Lake Louise. My group consisted of three siblings, two brothers and their sister. Then me and one other guy. At this point I should note that their father of the siblings was a zone manager for Chrysler at the time.

The sister decided to spend the day in Banff so wasn’t skiing. The two brothers were very advanced skiers and wanted to spend the day in the back bowls. Which was way above my skill level as well as the other guy. So he and I spent the day skiing together.

At lunch time we decided to eat at the chalet up on the mountain which was only accessible by ski. It was crowded and by chance sat across from two older men and we started chatting. It came out that they owned automobile dealerships. My friend mentioned that the father of the people we were here with was a zone manager for Chrysler. The two men looked at each other and one asked; “You’re here with -name of siblings dad- kids?” We hadn’t mentioned their names at all and the man went down the list of all the siblings names (they came from a very large family that has 6 kids). The guys knew ALL of them by name.

So here we were 3000 miles from home at a ski chalet only accessible by skiing to it. And sat across from two men that not only knew the siblings father, but worked with him and knew their names too.

They took us out to a very nice restaurant in Banff later that week. It still remains one of the greatest occasion of happenstance I have ever experienced in my life.

Jeans and any clothes with graphics printed on them I will turn inside out. Jeans, because they typically have rivets that can grab other clothes in the wash. The back of those rivets are smooth and won’t pick as much. Clothes with graphics because it will wear the graphics less.

Otherwise it is irrelevant if the clothes are inside out or not.

I have to admit that it is something that concerns me.

My process includes going back over the grates with a wet cloth.

This was one I was looking at when I decided upon the one I got. The main reason why I went with it was due to it using a metal surface.

Is yours usable when the grill is hot?

NEVER use grill cleaners that use steel bristles. EVER.

It’s been long known that these bristles come loose and pose a danger. I’m rather shocked that they are still being sold, but here we are.

THIS is the grill brush I use. It’s very effective and much safer to use.

According to the NTSB report the truck that was hit did not have a ADS-B installed. My question is why in the world is such system not mandatory for all vehicles present on such a busy airfield? Seems like an ADS-B transceiver would be a rounding error in the cost of the airport’s day to day costs.

When the investment money stops flowing, that will be when you see AI disappear.

My company is in the middle of rolling out Microsoft Copilot or what ever it’s called. Here is the thing, CoPilot comes with Office and the company just spent a ton of cash on next year’s Office licenses. MS sold the people writing the checks that Copilot comes with Office and a project was created to specifically roll it out.

Fast forward another year, there will be polls of the employees how useful Copilot was in the past year… The employees will give their feedback. Then next year’s negotiations of Office licenses will include a discount for “removing” Copilot. As it’s not needed or even useful.

Then AI will disappear from our daily lives.

I’m guessing in a year, but honestly I think it might take up to 5 years as the money flowing into AI right now is insane and enough to keep it propped up for quite some time. I just hope it’s no more than another year.

I have an Anker Solix 2kwh unit backing up my sump pumps. I’m looking to expand it.

In the next 5 years my plan is to add solar to my home with at least 10kwh of battery storage, or more if I can afford it.

It’s not the dish that impresses, but the preparation.

One year, my family and I were at my middle brother’s house for a summer time visit. He had a party and grilled chicken. My brother never really learned how to cook and it showed. People barely touched it and there was a ton of it left over.

Fast forward another year and he wants to do the same thing. I offer to cook so he can attend to other more important party affairs. The only thing I did differently was I started with fresh good quality chicken and not mass frozen bagged stuff from Tyson. I also brought my instant read thermometer. Otherwise it was just salt and pepper on the chicken, although I used a ton more than he did.

Same number of people, same amount of chicken… There were NO left overs. I also made my cubed potatoes, those were gone too.

It was all technique. I used virtually the same ingredients he had the year prior.