Drones, Boston, and Archived Files

Hey, folks! Happy Tuesday!

First and foremost, I'd like to direct your attention to a new feature on today's Fly Report: Consecutive days without CCG. Many of you will remember several years ago, when chat transcripts with CCG were a fairly common sight here at TSTF. All of that content was taken down when CCG violated a promise not to look for my blog, then violated a promise not to read my blog, then totally flipped her **** when she found everything I'd posted about her. She similarly flipped out twice in '08, after which points she made no attempt to contact me for months on end. (Let it be known that I stopped seeking CCG out a long time ago, so it's not as if I'm losing any sleep over this whole turn of events.) Anyway, the last time that she contacted me and lost any semblance of acceptable adult behavior was on 21st October 2008. Just because I find it entertaining, I will continue to keep a running track of how many days it's been since I last heard from her, and will maintain this tally for no less than one year. Though some of you will think I'm crazy for doing this, look on the bright side: at least it will be updated more often than the Orkneyjar Photoblog has been!

I'm in the third quarter of my vacation, and now's crunch time to get my childhood bedroom somewhat cleaned out (it would help if my parents didn't have a tiny garbage can) and see a few more people before heading back to Van Diemen's Station. I have a few items worth mentioning.

Have you ever seen the infamous "Chocolate Rain" viral video? Have you ever watched Blame Society Productions' epic YouTube comedy, Chad Vader? What would happen if you combined the two? Watch, see, laugh, and enjoy.



Here are a few other miscellaneous items:

From the Crypto King: tactical rifle drills

Must-Miss Travel Destinations

Survey: College freshmen politically engaged (AP) (as if that's a good thing - college freshmen are almost as politically gullible as college seniors)

I started this blog on my old Hewlett Packard Pavilion desktop computer that was purchased in December of 1998. The thing is hopelessly obsolete now, but it has a lot of data that I want to remove and archive. I've spoken previously with the Crypto King about the possibility of yanking the hard drive out of the tower and using a converter kit to temporarily turn the internal hard drive into an external, at which point I could use my current machine (a Dell Inspiron notebook, in case anyone was really that curious) to archive the necessary files, wipe the unneeded ones, and run virus and spyware scans since the software on the old one is also hopelessly out of date. At that point, I could return the old hard drive to the old machine and use it for some purpose, though what purpose that would be is somewhat unclear (particularly since it's fairly difficult to get files off of the thing using its only writeable medium: 3.5" floppy diskettes. I also found something that I'd searched for for ages while I've been working on cleaning out my bedroom: an old Linksys ethernet card that I'd purchased for the HP right before my brief week of fraternity living, still in the original plastic. Assuming I could successfully install that, the Crypto King says that this could also be a feasible method of transferring those files. During February, I plan to try both methods, just for the sake of my own education. I don't ever plan to be a computer technician, but it never hurts to figure that stuff out for personal and professional development purposes. I'll probably post pictures about the whole thing.

I was unaware until a few days ago that many of the venerable and beautiful F-4 Phantom II fighter/bomber/recon aircraft is now being converted into the QF-4 Phantom Drone for various Navy and Air Force testing and training purposes. The original article I saw on Saturday is here. Interestingly enough, Danger Room carried an article yesterday about the QF-4's recently-tested ability to fire missiles. As the Danger Room writers point out:

Could this become more than a mere experiment? Well, the idea of attacking enemy air defenses with a drone seems like a life-saver. Doing it with a QF-4 drone sounds like a money-saver, too. Those HARM missiles cost over $300,000 each. If you have four of them on a QF-4, the whole package comes out to $2 million or so. That's a small fraction of a [MQ-9 Reaper attack drone]'s price tag [of about $13M per aircraft].

Could this be a new lease on combat life for some of these beautiful aircraft, which remain in the active inventories of a number of countries? If so, I believe it would be welcomed by many.

I think I've talked previously on this blog about the Boston classic More than a Feeling, but even if I didn't, it's a great song. In a recent Facebook survey of twenty-five random facts, Mrs. Mike Nelson noted that she could listen to this song on repeat forever - not a bad idea if you ask me, and it's even been covered by an air band on Scrubs. Well, do you remember the 1990's pop group No Mercy? I learned yesterday that they actually covered More than a Feeling, too! Behold!



Not bad at all.

Alright, folks, today's a big day and I need to make it a productive one. One final note: I saw Mormon Buddha and his beautiful family for the first time in nearly two years (wow) last night, and it was truly excellent. If you're reading this, dude: thanks for such an awesome evening. With that, I bid you all a good Tuesday. Be sure to check in tomorrow for my latest submission to my parallel writing endeavour.