Gentlemenses,

Fittop, then I’ll have a double LAPHROAIG.

Folks,

It was cold last night. We had temps in the 30's F. I slept better than when it was warmer. The chill has just about burned off with full sun all morning. At 1 PM our temp is 53°F. /12° C.

Fittop:

I wish I had a $ for every time I've been astonished by the many similarities among pilots gathering on this field. I suppose it should not seem unusual as we are all drawn here by the same game and at least an interest in aviation in common.

As we approach our next anniversary I am aware how lucky I have been to become acquainted with so many fine and like minded (no offence intended ) gentlemen. And you all have have at least pretended to be gentlemen as have I on these pages. The 24th of April is getting nearer every day. Soon that will be 17 years this forum thread has been in operation. That date is easy for me to remember as my dad, born in 1915, passed away.

So glad we gained two more pilots in the last year. Do not be alarmed, and Jens will verify this, we have lost so many in the past 17 years...

Folks,

Another gloriously sunny, lovely spring day is in store for us lucky citizens of eastern NC. Of course we will pay for the nice weather with unseasonable cold and rain very soon. Maybe even a wintry mix tomorrow. We are warned of the chance for slick roads early Sunday morning in today's wondrous weather Ouija board forecast.

It is after Easter, so how can this be? I suspect this is likely to be a Denmark weather report that somehow got substituted for our own.... but fellows, whom do we know that would do such a thing?

Ya'll:

The cloud cover is thin enough that the sun is creating shadows on the pavement. The weather yoyo is still in play here.
One morning we wake to 61 degrees F, the next night I keep waking up freezing now that the between-seasons blanket has been put on the bed. The next night it never goes below 50 and night before last I again regretted sleeping alone in the altogether. But it isn't really monsoon season, mortars are quiet, and no one is shooting so it's all really small stuff.

We will not have to wait until Sunday morning for the slick roads. The new preview with thunderstorms hits a glancing blow tonight.
I wonder if the white gas for my emergency camping stove is still good? It would be a sour mood I'd be in if I can't have hot coffee in the morning.
But again, that beats being found cold in the morning.
It's all relative.

Meanwhile, another reminder I live in a cave. I was reminded of that when trying to figure out Oldgrognard's code of LAPHROAIG.
In mind that I have not broken all the codes like AFAIK, TTYL, I had to google that one only to find that I best check six by looking over the other shoulder too.
It was really not an abbreviation!
It may be that I am the only one not to recognize the name, but I do still have a bottle of another single malt which may or may not be of the same caliber.
I acquired that one in Gatwick's Duty Free shop feeling it might be the last time I stepped in English soil.
It was.

And that was before I went through security and has such an intimate encounter with the agent I thought I was staying for dinner and would have to share said bottle.

So yes, OG, I'll be glad to open that bottle but be warned, all I'll offer with it is dinner. Don't care how pretty your car is.

Folks,

Fittop: 😛

Yum, 😊 Scotch Whiskey.... Yum.. yummmer 😜 ... single malt Scotch Whiskey....

Wait...Not so yum 🙄 ... hangover... 😣

Folks,

Fittop:

My little Chrome app confirms what is all too visible outside my window. The clouds are back. Wind gusts up to 22 MPH. Storms arriving soon according to RADAR. Temp down to 40 F. tonight low 30's F. tomorrow night. Temp now is still a warm 72° F.

Guess i'll close my bedroom window tomorrow night just in case. I especially hate shoveling snow but particularly OUT that window.

Ya'll:

Ok, had the first act here.
The radar indicated that we barely missed a loosely wound tornado here. Sirens were going off locally, etc. Guess I might have made the lady a bit nervous when I brought in the battery lanterns and suggested putting her cat in the cage. Told her that tightening up the seat belts now avoided shouting "Where's the cat?" and doing something stupid in the middle of a noisy roar. She then agreed when she saw me stuffing a bottle of booze and her tea jug in a cooler.

But it was a good exercise. Just a couple of long hits of 60mph winds, some greenish skies just Northeast, and heavy rain and hail.
When the second round hit she was happily snapping pictures of the hail coming down.
Man, the cat's ears were back looking at the hail bouncing; it scared her. I almost forgave her going into my room earlier. Verbotten territory; not that she cares.

Yesterday it was 83 degrees or so, after tomorrow we'll wake to 38 degrees or so. Maybe the fire-ants will stay in and let me douse them a la Russian style as I also kill some weeds in the yard. No Sir, not the smoking kind, the wheezy eye and red nose type.

Looking for the high level single malt I offered, I did come across another bottle of Creme Cassis. Disappointed to see the cork now ancient, I had to open some white vino to check the kir quality. Well, it is no longer serious quality, but thankfully the taste is OK. Better than the two bottles of coffee cream - Bailey's Irish Cream, that's the name - that had dried up last year.
Note to self, use the good stuff when you have it. Some of the Canadian stuff is almost older than my son.

Speaking of him, hope he's making his sightseeing flights tonight since the local weather has improved. The way his boss maintains or claims he maintains his airplanes makes me want to own one of my own; like the beauty OG has in his hangar.

Hello gents...

JRT,

My address is the Outlook one. I haven't used Gmail for several years now. Please check your box for pics I have sent. As if I haven't got enough to do, I will be bringing back unfiinished projects from Derbyshire next week including the Fokker for fuselage reconstruction and model railway leftovers from 12 years ago. Things to dispose of on Ebay, too.

Folks,

Fittop:
An adventure in Texas. Tornadoes, loosely wound or not (the same for people) can be very dangerous. You did good. Looking out for wife and pets when you just want to dig a deep hole under underground and get in it is thoughtful. Your emergency Air Force training is showing.

At our house, my own wife was always cool and calm when storms threatened. For some reason if there was likely to be lightning she would suggest I get up on the roof holding a long steel rod and with one foot in a large pail of water. I never could figure that out. Nobody else was ever on their roof and I could see the tops of many houses.....

Dux:

There is a completely unsuitable e-mail reply spinning in your sea spray corroded and salt encrusted mailbox. Take care pulling that out as there is a photo of recently hatched baby birds in it. Now you can watch American birds too.

Speaking of things that fly, the Swallow looks quite AIR worthy. Which reminds me, my order for three cans of air from Amazon never arrived this week. Yes, they've actually done it with water and now finally found a way to monetize air.

I want to use a blast of pressurized air to blow out the dirt and dust in this computer, maybe from my ears too. I better ask for a refund. UPS never got it and I have not been notified it is out of stock by the seller. Amazon says it is possibly lost. Possibly?? I wonder just where the air was coming from? Maybe it was offensively odoriferous or somehow deemed incompatible with American air? Yes, the term sour grapes comes to mind.

Folks,

Nothing showing on RADAR this morning. The sky is blue, the grass is now fully green again, the trees fledged out all green as well, and yet the current temp is 43°F. / 6° C. at 12:30 PM. We'll see the 60's in the immediate days after today (52° F. the high for today) and the lows 40's F. at night.

If you like to brew up hot tea and are stirring it the wrong way, shame on you. A former butler to British royalty claims one should never stir one's tea round and round but rather back and forth to prevent forming a storm in one's teacup.

Really? Next some wanker will t ell me not to raise me pinky finger when I sip me brew up. Wot's that LeRoy me lad? You say that's frowned on too. Blimey, I said some bloody knob head would tell me tha'.

Gentlemenses,

Nice day here in Floridaland. 80F and partially clouded skies with a slight sea breeze. Perfect weather for our community car gathering. Not a club since we don’t make it that formal or organized. It’s just that every quarter we meet at the club parking lot with our cars and then take a drive somewhere for lunch. We had 56 cars today. 13 of them were corvettes. A 64 three in the 71-75 category, and the rest were newer models. Two vintage E-type Jags, a new F-type and a couple various XK8s, Xj6, XF, etc. An old MG3 needing restoration and a very nice MG 250. Two Porche 911s, a Boxster and an old 356. A reproduction 427 Cobra. A Rousch Mustang. A few other Mustangs. A few other various things like Miatas and Mazda RX7, etc. But I think I was top dog with my Maserati GranSport Spyder CambioCorsa in racing red. A few of the Corvettes were faster, but here Corvettes are so common. With the Maserati you don’t ever see yourself coming around the corner. Less than 400 in the US. Worldwide about 780. So it is a pretty rare car. Of course with such a limited run, I worry about parts availability in the future. Oh well. One of the members had relatives visiting from Ohio and the 15 year old son was drooling over the cars. He had never seen that many nice cars all gathered together. I offered to let him ride with me to lunch and he was quite happy. When we got back he was gushing about it to his dad. Glad I was able to give him that experience.

Now about the proper way to stir tea. The thing to do is use a straw. You blow into it and the bubbles will agitate it well so no spoon is required. You look so much more sophisticated not using a spoon. I always have people staring and admiring it when I do so. You can see people pointing it out and talking about it to each other. I can just imagine the comments about how clever and refined that way is. I am sure it will catch on and you will see more people doing it that way.

Gents,

I'm afraid that I have borrowed the nice weather for the time being. Clear blue skies and acceptable temperatures around 15 C / 59 F. Easter vacation is over and I'll be back at work Monday morning.

I wouldn't have minded one bit being present at your car gathering Oldgrognard, that is a selection of very nice cars and I'm just a tiny bit jealous.

Folks,

Gray day, cold day. Looks like a trend. We're promised we'll be back in the 80's F. by Friday.

OG:

What a great idea. Most folks only use that trick to keep a head on their beer. Brilliant indeed. Next time I have a tall glass of beer and chase it with tea I'll try that idea. Meanwhile, I'll get Dux to use his contacts with all the royal houses of Europe to pass that tip along. They'll likely use solid gold straws but the result will be the same.

MG:

You deserve some good weather.

I hope your return to work this morning was every bit as wonderful and rewarding as you expected it would be. Wait, that didn't sound right. I'll try again . I hope that your return to work this morning was far better than you could ever have hoped it could be. Yes, that's more like it....

Ya'll,

Ahah! Oldgrognard is one of those guys, eh? One that makes or fulfills 15 year-olds' dreams of nice cars and "someday I will..." Thank you!

While TDY, I had made friends with a talented guy who took care and babied the FLIR system we flew around with. Can't even remember if I ever gave him a ride in that Mohawk.
It turned out that he lived close to me and our families then visited a lot. He had a TR-6 and my son fell in love with it.
My son ended up getting his own TR-6 and I still remember him and I wrestling a transmission and clutch in place.
You should know I did not get a car until I was 22 and knew little about cars or repairs; just enough to get me out of road jams.
I didn't get a driver license until i was 19. Just didn't need one in the city.
That car made for some father/son bonding and some gray hairs from worry when he stayed out late.
Those were the before cell phone days.
British cars at the time were known useful for tinkering fanatics rather than reliability.

It also brought late-teen memories of my best friend's TR-3 when I couldn't even afford a scooter.
I can still feel the cool wind the night he led and I followed down the West side Drive in NYC in an Austin Healey I had driven back from Colorado for another friend.

Thanks for the memories.

Folks,

The sun just came out. That's good. I installed that big M$ update with nary a problem this morning, that IS good! I landed here and found a post from Fittop waiting. That is always good. 52°F. at noon here and the storms seem to be passing well to our south on the RADAR. Excellent.

You may not get the update today, some will and some won't. It will begin general delivery today. HP decided to update my BIOS at the same time. Maybe it was part of the big M$ update. I dunno. Back in the fall, I was unaware of the big fall update and it surprised me. It encountered a problem with One Drive and that worried me. I don't even use one drive. I had shut down the computer to go to bed and it updated.

I want some control. So this morning I checked for updates and the spring creators update was available so I dood it. Glad I got that past me. Of course there might still be problems. I had to turn my firewall back on. It ain't all that fast. Do they really think my computer might catch fire?

Fittop:

I always wished for an MG TD myself. Got an red OPel GT instead. My first new car. I had three cars previously. Well one of them was only a car in that it had an engine, two doors something that used to be seats, a steering wheel and 4 tires. That was my first ca* a '53 Chevy at age 16. My next two cars were Fords. A beautiful red Fairlane and then my '66 Mustang. I had a lot of fun in that Mustang. I wore it out in some places.

When I traded it in apparently the driver's side window would fall out if you rolled it down. Fortunately, it was pouring rain the day when I traded it in. Now, it is not a great idea to trade cars on a rainy day as it is difficult to judge the finish on a used car. I benefited from that and because I was buying a new car, the finish was perfect.

Two days after the trade, I was called by an irate used car salesman asking if I knew about the driver's side window's reluctance to remain attached to the rest of the car? Apparently a prospective buyer found that item for him. It was an easy fix for the dealership.

I have told many times of the fun a pal and I had in his British racing green Austin Healey 2000. She was indeed temperamental. Those SU carbs were always needing attention. The Stebro exhaust system I helped install truly sounded grand.

When we ran in Gymkhanas I'd have the clipboard, stopwatches, time tables, maps and notices and he mostly did the driving. I got to drive the car only now and then. Leonard still has that car and drives it in parades to this day. He bought that car in the early 60's. Amazing.

Folks,

Warmer, sunnier but still highs a bit less than springtime in the south. Friday and weekend should put us into the 80's F.

Guess what? My Spring Creators Update did not install after all. That's good news it turns out. Apparently, in another supreme effort to reassure us of Microsoft's continuing reliability and dependability, not to mention software expertise, there is a major bug in it.

Download to our computers will resume perhaps as soon as no one knows when to expect it is coming. You know how M$ loves to surprise us. A lot was however indeed downloaded to my computer and installed yesterday. This has been referred to as "fixes". It appears I got the new cellophane look that was reportedly coming in the spring update.

Kudos M$ for preventing another M$ self-inflicted foul-up from ruining my day. Was that too harsh? After all Windows 10 didn't cost me anything. Wait, maybe it did. Maybe it was added to the cost of the laptop. Updating it will likely cost me $ when I have to do that in 18 months or so when M$ says they will stop supporting my version. We shall see.

Will Facebook be unrecognizable by then? Will Zuckerberg resign or retire, and build a castle like Bill? Then study philanthropy full time at the new Warren Buffet School For Impossitrillionaire Venture Capital Economics? With the current state of the world, in 18 months we may be doing our social networking outside caves using smoke signals.

Ya'll,

Awww, geez. Can't blame JRT. He did warn us about the 1709 update...
Was about to turn off the desktop since I didn't go to sleep when I noticed, "Update and shut down" update.
Now I don't know if it will be OK or not when I try to play later tonight....with the computer game guys, behave.

But I am hoping it will be just corrections etc. and not the mess that made JRT unhappy.
There's a free cell game I had found, the version that Windows 7 had before the ridiculous W 10 version. I could get that installed, enjoy it and updates would remove it, and repeat. You can no longer download it since the authors got greedy and complicated things, so I had kept a copy.
Not sure if it's removed again I would be able to salvage it.

Similar to their "We have decided the older games you bought will not be allowed on our software...that you also bought the right to use."
Hey, if it isn't broke....
Yes, I kept the Windows 98 pc so I could play a harmless but challenging Missile Defense and Mig Alley.

Reading the Facebook rockus I have decided I am jumping off that train. Not that I was much into it anyway.
My son had set me up to keep up with a sailing club information and it had minimal personal stuff; that is, until I found out they had tracked my phone calls. There is no way that is right.
So the Zuckermann has made a sucker out of me.
Shame on you Zuckerberg!

Folks,

Fittop:

I think delivery of the Spring Creators update is on hold until they kill that bug. Of course one has to wonder if thousands of man hours on that thing were unable to spot the bug and it got to the very day of delivery before the warning claxon sounded, what other evil gremlin( s)might have been missed? Imagine a world where every machine using MS Windows was updated and suddenly failed. Ugleeeee! Keep us informed if you have any problems running your game tonight.

I watched none of yesterday's coverage of Zukerberg's testimony before the Senate. I did watch about an hour of today's event. Yup. Mark made ZUKERS of everyone on Facebook for years. He may have to swallow some oversight but I doubt one dime of the ill gotten gains will every be shared with those trusting souls who's data were misused. Losing dollars and lots of them would speed the process of and encourage progress in restoring security like nothing else. The guy seemed far too young to be a Bazillionaire. Now Warren Buffet, he's the elderly poster boy for insane wealth and he is attempting to share it. Go Warren.

I closed out my Facebook account within weeks of opening it a decade ago. A concern for privacy then proved correct today. Testimony today indicated browsing data was recorded even after you closed Facebook and data for many people that never even had an account with Facebook was somehow collected. "We need to develop more AI tools. so we don't have to wait for someone to flag something inappropriate." said Mr. Zuckerberg over and over. Or words to that affect. You think so?

When you fill out a questionnaire o Facebook you gave someone a lot of data about you. You NEVER should did dat you know people.

I have a Twitter account and never tweet. Your choices say a lot about you. What photos you look at, what YouTube videos you watch. What forums you visit and what you post. If we and our data are not individually interesting then we are collectively. Take care. We need a safe Facebook. Some places in the world have no other way for their oppressed people to communicate and be informed. We are in danger too of becoming more like countries whose people are tightly controlled as we try hard to protect ourselves from them we can become more like them.

OK, pay no attention to this guy hiding behind my curtain. The only time I really know what I'm talking about is when I say "I don't know."

Remember what Pogo said in the funnies. "I have seen the enemy, and he is US."

Ya'll,

JRT, the update has installed, and so far no problems. Haven't checked yet if my settings have changed.

Agree with the info given, some of mine could be more accurate, but in that case, I do not feel guilty. It has no effect on what I looked at or posted.
It really was not their beeswax.

Gents,

Wind is up but dry and sunny and temps around 10 C. Next week however, a prequel to summer is expected.

Luckily I have no Windows 10 or Spring Update issues. The mere reason being that I cling to trusty old 7.

I believe that M. Zuckerberg will be ousted as CEO of Farcebook in the near future. His public display of possesing not a clue whatsoever to basic IT security or VPNs was truly shocking and embarrassing, and I can't see the shareholders accepting him continuing at the helm of their investments.