January « 2008 « Chris Penningroth’s Weltanschauung

Archive for January, 2008

I’ve Got to Be Saving Money

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

I must be saving a ton of money on my heating bills.

I know this has to be the case because every time I get back to my desk after changing the baby’s diapers, the coffee cup I just poured prior to the event has become cold.

That reminded me of the one of the things I liked about living in Phoenix in summer. I could leave my coffee mug in the truck during church and when I got back to it after the service, it was still hot! This was great because I could finish drinking it while waiting for the steering wheel to cool off enough to touch it.

Posted in Homelife | No Comments »

Ridiculosity

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

I’m not really sure what’s more ridiculous: Taser parties (a lá Tupperware parties), or Amnesty International’s position on the non-lethal devices.

Because of safety concerns and potential for abuse, we do not believe Tasers should ever be used as a low or medium level force option by police officers. Nor should they be permitted for sale to the general public.

As soon as everyone gets a 24/7 armed bodyguard contingent from AI, they can then take positions like this with some credibility. AI does not have the right to declare that I don’t have the right to defend my family and myself with force I deem appropriate for the situation.

AI needs to stop picking the low-hanging fruit in the western world and concentrate fully on the serious problems in places like Darfur, Zimbabwe, Iran, and North Korea before it moves on to other slightly less serious problem areas like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and China.

*Update* From Hobbes’ The Leviathan:

And therefore there be some rights which no man can be understood by any words, or other signs, to have abandoned or transferred. . . A covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void.

Posted in Humor, Politics, What's Left, What\'s Right | No Comments »

The Life of the Attached

Friday, January 4th, 2008

Shep and I traded in our skis today for a pair of Vipers and took to the skies instead of the slopes. In what’s become standard ops for me, we were to be Red Air for an ACM ride.

Naturally, we had 2 wing-mounted fuel tanks, while the adversaries had only one centerline tank. Just to make it that much easier for them.

The most challenging part of the flight today was the ILS through the snow band. I was 400′ high before I saw the runway. I haven’t shot an actual approach that low since about March 2002. I had wanted to do a no-HUD approach off the "steam gauges," and while the flight ahead of us didn’t sound like they were having any problem, we ended up getting a report of reduced visibility, so I terminated the no-HUD practice and dialed the HUD steering symbology back from no intensity to medium intensity (the HUD wasn’t actually off, no one in their right mind actually turns it off because that’s just begging to have it stay off when you really need it; medium intensity works best because at high intensity it actually becomes difficult to see through rain or snow). To be honest, with the HUD on, it wasn’t really very challenging.

It was still a lot of fun!

Posted in F-16 Operations, USAF | No Comments »