The Flight Deck

Come on. I double dog dare you.
Try it. Forget twenty times.
Just once. As fast as you can.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.

I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)

Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.

But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.

Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.

And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

GO AHEAD. FINISH IT. IF YOU DARE

So apparently what they told me in airman apprenticeship training was all wrong. But you guys probably already knew this.
How airplanes fly

I hate props – doubly so at night. I used to get the willies walking by an E-2 or C-2 in the hangar bay. Unfortunately this young woman looks to have found out all about it in the worst way. Losing a hand and hit in the head, the modeling career is over though, hopefully, she will be glad to have lived.

The article has text with a lot more explanation, but the video does a good job of explaining it as well. Sure, it’s a flat bed slow rolling down a runway but really the jump to a pitching deck isn’t that far for software, just a few more variables to handle.

On Friday, August 26th, I had the honor of attending a Navy Boot Camp, Pass-In-Review graduation ceremony in Great Lakes, Illinois.  If you’ve never been to one I highly recommend it.  The place just oozes  joy and patriotism.  

Graduation Ceremony, Great Lakes 

Read more »

Always liked Maple seeds spinning down from above as a kid. Never occurred to me to build a UAV based on the concept though. I’m going to embed the video – Here’s an article that gives some background and more info. as well as having the video.

Strangely, I find the music to be rather fitting.

I mentioned this in the comments section a few days ago, but thought I’d post it here for the benefit of those who haven’t heard yet.

I’m not much for tooting my own horn, but in the past 7 years or so that I’ve been following this blog, I’ve come to think of y’all as sort of a virtual circle of friends, some of whom I’ve even had the pleasure to meet. And, since many of you know the trials & tribulations I’ve gone through in the last several years (like a certain motorcycle accident), I thought it would be appropriate to share with you some recent news that has given us at Chez Harvey great joy:

This past Thursday I was interviewed by the accession board for the California Army National Guard and was unanimously approved for immediate accession as full-fledged Chaplain!

I have already been assigned to the “Blackjack” 1st Battalion, 160th Infantry Regiment up in LA, and am preparing to deploy with them sometime in 2012.

I want to thank y’all for all of your kind thoughts, prayers, and well wishes that you’ve sent my way over the past years – God is always faithful, or as I like to put it, ADONAI IS SEMPER FI!

If you’re so inclined, feel free to head over to my blog at http://www.adonaisemperfi.blogspot.com/ for more thoughts and news about what’s been going on with me. Who knows? You might even find something inspiring!

Two angles – same 2 jets. Argentinian apparently. Mind defying stupidity.