If you happen to be in the Pacific NW in late Oct/early Nov and like to write on the Internet, Anwyn‘ll be hosting a Blogofogorama in a couple weeks. I hear the main topic will be Saint Peters’ historic defeat of the Islamic Fundamentalist Balrog on the bridge of Lepanto-dûm. Or something like that. [Wow. . . how un-PC of me! --ed]
I wish I could get there! Methinks my wife and newborn wouldn’t so much appreciate Dad taking off just now.
Cox & Forkum just announced they’ll be ceasing they’re regular editorial cartooning. Thanks for the laughs for the past six or so years, guys! Message From Above is hanging in my office directly over my computer. I hope you’ll continue the September Eleventh posts every year, too.
I guess this means I’ll have to actually save Day by Day as a ‘favorite’ now instead of navigating there from C&F.
I thought el chupacabra was some sort of vampire version of sasquatch. Not this.
Earlier this week, my friend Jeff forwarded me an e-mail that’s made its way around the ‘Net a few times. I believe it started in 2004. I’ll let the text speak for itself:
Subject: Reply from Lt. Col. Scott Pleus
Luke AFB is west of Phoenix and is rapidly being surrounded by civilization that complains about the noise from the base and its planes, forgetting that it was there long before they were. A certain lieutenant colonel at Luke AFB deserves a big pat on the back. Apparently, an individual who lives somewhere near Luke AFB wrote the local paper complaining about a group of F-16s that disturbed his/her day at the mall. When that individual read the response from a Luke AFB officer, it must have stung quite a bit.
The complaint: "Question of the day for Luke Air Force Base: Whom do we thank for the morning air show? Last Wednesday, at precisely 9:11 a.m., a tight formation of four F-16 jets made a low pass over Arrowhead Mall, continuing west over Bell Road at approximately 500 feet. Imagine our good fortune! Do the Tom Cruise-wannabes feel we need this wake-up call, or were they trying to impress the cashiers at Mervyn’s early bird special? Any response would be appreciated."
The response: Regarding "A wake-up call from Luke’s jets" (Letters, Thursday): On June 15, at precisely 9:12 a.m., a perfectly timed four-ship flyby of F-16s from the 63rd Fighter Squadron at Luke Air Force Base flew over the grave of Capt. Jeremy Fresques. Capt. Fresques was an Air Force officer who was previously stationed at Luke Air Force Base and was killed in Iraq on May 30, Memorial Day. At 9 a.m. on June 15, his family and friends gathered at Sunland Memorial Park in Sun City to mourn the loss of a husband, son and friend. Based on the letter writer’s recount of the flyby, and because of the jet noise, I’m sure you didn’t hear the 21-gun salute, the playing of taps, or my words to the widow and parents of Capt. Fresques as I gave them their son’s flag on behalf of the President of the United States and all those veterans and servicemen and women who understand the sacrifices they have endured. A four-ship flyby is a display of respect the Air Force pays to those who give their lives in defense of freedom. We are professional aviators and take our jobs seriously, and on June 15 what the letter-writer witnessed was four officers lining up to pay their ultimate respects. The letter writer asks, "Whom do we thank for the morning air show? "The 56th Fighter Wing will call for you, and forward your thanks to the widow and parents of Capt. Fresques, and thank them for you, for it was in their honor that my pilots flew the most honorable formation of their lives. Lt. Col. Scott Pleus Commander, 63rd Fighter Squadron, Luke AFB
Jeff was curious if I’d seen it. I explained everything I knew in a separate e-mail.
Jeff,
Not only did I recieve this back in 2005 [It may have been 2004, now that I think of it – ed], I hopped on the global and sent a short message to the effect ‘Well said, sir!’ to Lt Col “Rolls” Pleus. He sent me an even shorter reply (‘Thanks!’).
It turns out that Lt Col Pleus got so many replies that it crashed Luke AFB’s server. The comm folks had to establish a separate account for him on a different server to handle the traffic. Someone from the 63 FS told me he got well over a thousand e-mails (almost all positive). He took a month or so, but he replied to every single e-mail he got.
What wasn’t said was that he initially wrote a pretty angry response, but tore that up and threw it away, and then went for the classier construct shown. It was vetted through the 56 OG/CC (my old boss from the 22 FS, Col Strawther), 56 FW/PA, and through the Wing King, then BGen Rand (a freakin’ great guy himself–he was the 8 FW/CC over at Kunsan when I was there). Some of my favorite folks had a hand in making it all happen.
I had the privilege of going through the F-16 requal course when Lt Col Pleus was still in charge. I thanked him in person for getting back to me. He left the 63d to go to Texas to work on either 19 AF or AETC staff, I forgot which.
And now all of you know everything I know about that!
Distaint Cousin Dylan almost always comes up first when we Google the name ‘Penningroth.’ I guess I need to start writing books for publication if I want to catch up!
I wonder who the Penningroth.com folks are? They have a nice house. Christina wants to buy something like that in Bavaria someday.
And I wonder who Phil and Stephen are? There sure are a lot more Penningroths out there in the big wide world than the little enclave on the Mississippi that my kin and I grew up in! For decades there were only two entries in the phone book.
I don’t show up until page five, and then only because that one nice lady referred my blog to MilBlogging.com.
My new friend Anwyn passed along this tag that asks us to list eight of our habits (and then ‘tag’ eight other bloggers, which I’m not going to be able to do because I’ve only got three other friends in the blogosphere). I will honor the request to post eight of my habits.
1) People come first. I know I have to put God first, but I personally tend to drop everything else when someone needs to talk. I’m not quite as good at dropping everything else to do much other than listen. I consider this habit a mixed blessing because I’m not really prone to action like many other more effective people are, but lucky for me a lot of times people aren’t looking for action, they’re looking for a shoulder. I like to think this is the way God wants me to be. I figure Jesus spent a lot of time listening, how else would he have known people as well as he did? Oh! Maybe it was inherent omniscience, being God and all. Hopefully my dear Lord understands I don’t have that advantage.
2) The J-O-B runs a close second. Everyone by now has heard the axiom that "No one says on their deathbed they wished they’d spent more time at work." That’s definitely not true in my business. What I don’t know absolutely can kill me, and I’d hate to be going down in flames wishing I’d spent a couple extra minutes looking up exactly how to avoid whatever missile had just hit me. Sometimes I wonder if I’m spending enough time at work.
3) I follow the news pretty closely. This kind of goes with the J-O-B. I can watch world events unfold and have a pretty good idea why I’m getting a phone call in the middle of the night. Surprisingly, this isn’t true of everyone in the military. That said, I stop listening after the first sentence (or reading after the first paragraph). I’ve found that journalists may get the basic fact correct (someone is shooting at me!) but then get the analysis completely wrong (the cease fire is broken! when there was no cease fire).
4) I think I know what I’m doing when it comes to investing. I’ve only recently (within the last four years) begun to invest in things that actually go up. Watching Taser Int’l go up over a dollar per share a day back in early 2004 was a lot of fun! Selling it while it was crashing but still making a small profit was almost as fun. I’ve been so busy for the past three years I basically pulled out of the market and had been mostly in cash, but when people were standing in line waiting to buy an iPhone, that was just too obvious a signal to buy my most recent addition. It’s done pretty well.
5) I still love to play video games on my computer. I refuse to elaborate further. It’s too embarrassing.
6) Speaking of games, I would rather participate in them than watch them. This should hardly be surprising. As Toby Keith would say "I ain’t as good as I once was." This doesn’t change the fact I’d rather get out on the field. Perhaps in another 10 years I’ll be happy to watch. My son will not quite be in high school yet, so it’s probably an appropriate timeline.
7) If an opportunity comes along, I’ll bite. Once the opportunity is locked in, then I’ll probably procrastinate in getting to it. Sometimes I even do this at work (Hey, I just had to go fly instead of programming that Excel spreadsheet, don’t you know!). In principle it drives me up the wall when I do this, but on the other hand I don’t lose opportunities due to indecision. And if one waits until the last minute, it’ll only take a minute to finish, right?! (Other dearly held corollaries are: "There’s never time to do it right, there’s always time to do it over;" and "If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done!")
8) When I’m not on the computer, I’m probably reading. Unfortunately, my net information input is a lot higher than my net output. I was hoping the Blog would rectify this, but alas, I’m still a sponge rarely squeezed.
There you have it! Eight habits, no waiting!
What’s a blog without a reference to Chuck Norris?
This is kind of funny: Chuck Norris for President [hat tip to Uncle Dan].
Everyone is familiar with those e-mails that seem to make the rounds all over the Internet. I received one of them from two different people asking me to verify whether or not it was true, and I thought I’d post the e-mail and my response here on my Blog for future reference.
This is a photo of the Global Hawk UAV that returned from the war zone recently under its own power. (Iraq to Edwards AFB in CA) – Not transported via C5 or C17….. Notice the mission paintings on the fuselage. It’s actually over 250 missions…. (and I would suppose 25 air medals). That’s a long way for a remotely-piloted aircraft. Think of the technology (and the required quality of the data link to fly it remotely). Not only that but the pilot controlled it from a nice warm control panel at Edwards AFB. Really long legs- can stay up for almost 2 days at altitudes above 60k.
The Global Hawk was controlled via satellite; it flew missions during OT&E that went from Edwards AFB to upper Alaska and back non-stop. Basically, they come into the fight at a high mach # in mil thrust, fire their AMRAAMS, and no one ever sees them or paints with radar. There is practically no radio chatter because all the guys in the flight are tied together electronically, and can see who is targeting who, and they have AWACS direct input and 360 situational awareness from that and other sensors. The aggressors had a morale problem before it was all over. It is to air superiority what the jet engine was to aviation.
It can taxi, take off, fly a mission, return, land and taxi on it’s own. No blackouts, no fatigue, no relief tubes, no ejection seats, and best of all, no dead pilots, no POWs.? Pretty cool!
My response is below:
I need to thank someone I don’t even know! Kathi S. referred my Blog to Milblogging.com (here). Thanks, Ms S.! I appreciate you taking time to check in here. I think Milblogging.com is a great tool for folks to find out a little bit about what goes on out in the trenches, and back on the home-front (even when the home-front is 7,000 miles from your home of record!).
I browsed through a couple other blogs, unfortunately I had no real time to scan any of them in detail. It looked like most would make for good reading.
