Duct Tape - at nine tenths of the speed of sound?

I just read this (The Sun - Passengers watch Ryanair crew mend jet window with TAPE) article and it really did make me laugh out loud. The jist of it is this: An aircraft maintenance crew applied some duct-tape-esque adhesive to the windscreen of a Ryanair passenger jet, while flight crew and passengers were on board. From what I gathered, the windscreen had just been replaced, had a fresh seal on it, and the mx guys decided to add a little tape to be extra careful. Now all the pax on board seem to think it's just a little duct tape holding the windshield on, and naturally they become apprehensive. Twenty minutes past wheels up, the flight crew decided to abort the flight and rtb because the tape was making a hideous noise.

1) Mx crews have the option of deferring non-critical repairs to the next scheduled maintenance. When they do this, they typically have to apply this tape to the thing that has to be fixed. I once became aware of an "airliner" that had suffered some hanger-rash to it's vertical stabilizer. Everything in the tail empennage worked okay, so mx just slapped enough 600m.p.h. tape on it until the dent was flush with the rest of the aircraft skin, the jet was loaded up with pax, and off they went on their merry way. If you've flown commercially, you've probably flown on a plane with something with tape on it.

2) I personally have acted as pilot-in-command of an aircraft with this silvery miracle tape holding a piece of plastic on. It didn't look important, so it passed my pre-flight inspection. I didn't care if it fell off. No big deal.

3) In defense of the aircrew on that Ryanair jet, the sound that tape made was probably the worst sound they'd ever heard. I had the unfortunate pleasure of riding in a Ford Expedition with a freshly installed windshield.  It had only been on for about twenty minutes, and as such, had this bright neon-orange safety tape all around its periphery. After asking about the day-glow adornments, I took my seat and settled in for what proved to be a two-hour ride from hell. Two-hours of freeway driving between 60 and 80m.p.h. The sound that the tape made as the wind hit it can only be described as an orgy of no less than fifteen angry banshees. And some of the banshees had just received a tax audit. So yes, I probably would have said "Fuck that noise, son!" and told ATC "Look brah, we gotta turn back. Forget this flight, man. It's not happening."

My God this was a pointless blog post!

No Parking

I'm going to buy a small parking lot near an intersection. I'm going to block it off with a fence and a gate that doesn't quite reach all the way across. It will have a proximity card activated gate and those retractable tire shredders. There will be HUGE signs warning of severe tire damage and being towed and prosecuted, and a sign that says call this number for help with my number.

Once a day for a week at different times of day I'll use my card to open the gate and retract the spikes and park there for an hour or two and then leave, with the gate closing and spikes extending behind me.

Eventually, some one is going to get stranded in there and call me. I'll show up and tell them that if they can read any one of the signs to me, I'll buy them replacement tires and pay for them to be towed to a shop and put them up in a hotel for the night if need be. Once they read the sign, I'll know that they didn't get stuck in there because they're illiterate.

Then I'll laugh and drive away. Then post to YouTube.

Pictures I saw on teh interwebz:

 

Meteors

So I'll totally get around to the Angry Cyberpunk Reviews again.

But until then, a list of the meteors I've seen. I have no purpose for posting this here. It was already on my Facebook page anyway.

I wanted to make a list of the meteors I've seen because whenever anyone asks me how many I've seen I have to stop and count each event in my head. I figured this would be a great place to keep the list. This way I know I won't lose it.

Turns out I've seen twelve.

1. Early 90's, drving on I-90 Eastbound somewhere in Ashtabula County, Ohio. Probably about midnight. Meteor apeared through windsheild as a green streak, with a discernable "head",  with a length that spanned the entire feild of view (from top of windsheild to horizon). 

2. Early to mid  90's. Brunswick, Ohio, facing West. Meteor appeared as a single point of white light that was stationary (moving head-on), and then appeared to move to one side and quickly desintigrated.

3. Summer of 2004,  while observing an unusually south reaching Aurora Borialis, in Brimfield, Ohio (near Kent) I witnessed a body of some sort (i'm guessing meteor) strike (what I believe to be) the upper atmosphere, creating what resembled a "wake" in the aurora, similar to a boat's wake.

4. 2004 or 2005, driving on I-76 eastbound between Mogadore and Brimfield between three and four in the morning, I witnessed a spectacular "fireball" meteor that almost amde me wreck my car! As it descended strait down, (either vertical or vertical with some head on movement), it initially appeared as red, then quickly changed to orange, yellow, and then white. Once it turned white, it illuminated some clouds and then vanished in a flash. I thought for sure something like Deep Impact was about to happen. Looking back, it probably wasn't much bigger than a TV, and probably didn't reach the ground.

5. 6. 7. 5 Aug, 2008, Vermillion, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie, looking north, but almost strait up, I saw three typical Perseid  meteors. They appeared as white streaks in the sky, only taking up an eigth of the feild of view, and dissipating rapidly. Even though the beach was crowded, no one else bothered to look up.

8. 14 Nov 2008, around five pm, I was standing in the south lot at my apartment complex, in Tallmadge, Ohio. That particular complex underlies a strait line path between Kent State University Airport and Akron-Cantion International Airport. Trainer aircraft from KSU's fleet can often be seen flying directly overhead, and almost always, air traffic can be seen due south towards Akron-Canton. So, as I always did, I looked south. I saw two amber colored objects moving relativley slowly over what appeared to be the vacinity of the airport. Suddenly, the objects both broke apart into about a half dozen orbs of amber, yellow, and white color, and then faded out. For a moment, I thought I had witnessed an aircraft explosion. (very disheartening for an aviator, and especially for me, since there was a good chance that, were it a KSU aircraft, I would have personally known the souls on board)  I was able to recall the exact date because on the same date there was a similar sighting in Madison Township, Ohio,many miles away, and in the opposite direction. A full search and rescue effort was undertaken because so many people had called 911 claiming to have seen an aircraft aflame! http://ww.sott.net/articles/show/169040-Suspected-Ohio-plane-crash-may-have-been-meteor

9. 10. 11. 12. Mid-November, 2010, in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, facing north-northeast to east-northeast, I witnessed four in a row from between one am and two am. These were Leonids. They appeared as white streaks in the sky, only taking up an eigth of the feild of view, and dissipating rapidly. I wanted to beat my previous record of three in a row, so after the fourth one, I went back inside.

From Wikipedia: The Perseids ( /ˈpɜrsiːɨdz/) are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle.

From Wikipedia: The Leonids (/ˈliːənɪdz/ lee-ə-nidz) are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle.

As a meteor free falls through the Earth's atmosphere, it undergoes frictional stresses and heating. Eventually, the object may reach a point where the stresses are so great the object breaks apart abruptly, appearing to explode.Or, it may only partially break apart. The force from one "chunk" exploding can push the two peices away from each other. This is why meteors sometimes appear to change direction. Amyway, I used to think this limit was called The Roche Limit, but that has to do with orbital physics. 

Update

Well I stopped working at Spring Hill because of a TON of infighting, backstabbing, and the like, plus some scheduling bull crap that was unacceptable, and some more stuff I don't want to get into because I'd just be bashing people on the internet and that's not fun. I will say this, though: when I was doing the job I hired in to do, and had at least one other officer for backup, it was a fun job.

Then I got a job at Suarez guarding warehouses and searching employees for gold coins. It's boring as hell, but you can usually get homework done and 99% of my coworkers/bosses were 100% cool 87.5% of the time.

But I'm leaving that one too. My awesome wife is working and will be netting more money than I was and she suggested (adamantly) that I quit working and just focus on school and be a stay at home dad. I have less than one and a half weeks to go, and then I'll be purposefully un-employed. This will be the first time since I was sixteen that I wasn't working a full time job. It's gonna be weird.