Long, Busy Weekend....

Spent most of the weekend doing Home Owner stuff, and I ache all over!
One of the things I've been doing is cleaning up the area between the edge of our driveway and the property line of the house next door. It's an area about 22" wide and 30' long that runs alongside the driveway, from our gate to the back yard and the side walk. My wife had put a bunch of "River Rocks" in there over the years after having no luck growing flowers there. Over the years it degenerated into a weed pit, and was looking pretty bad. SO, I told her I clean it up and make it look nice again.
What a job!
I'd sprayed the area with a mix of RoundUP and Weed-B-Gon a month or two ago, and let *everything* in the strip die. It looked like I'd called in an Agent Orange aerial drop, but everything was dead. SO....I started digging out the rocks and gravel. I spent the better part of a week with a "Pulaski Axe", which is an axe blade with an adze on one end. Works great for chopping up hard, compacted dirt. Then I had about six wheelbarrow loads of dirt to move out and sift. Most of the large rocks I put into 5 gallon buckets (SIX of them!), and the smaller rocks I just left with the dirt. I made a sifter out of a 2x4 frame and some hardware cloth (aka "Chicken Wire") with 1/4" holes. I wound up with about 4-1/2 wheelbarrow loads of nice sifted dirt, and the balance was smaller rock. I then spent about a week laying out the property line, making a nice clean cut (you could tell where the two front yards joined by the type of dirt), and installing new redwood boards for edging. I soaked the boards with linseed oil to preserve them, even though redwood is pretty good for rot resistance. I used fence slats for the boards, but I probably should have spent more money and bought "real" boards, as these things aren't exactly the straightest pieces of wood! Shoveled all the dirt back in and leveled it with six bags of paving sand, and tamped it down. I still haven't put all the rock back in, as I was getting pretty burned out on the job, and wanted a break.
WELL.....Saturday afternoon my little sweetie decided to get started on another project we'd been talking about for a few months. She wants to remove the carpet by the front door and refinish the hardwood floor in that area so that water and dirt don't get tracked onto the carpet during what passes for our "winter" out here. She went out and got some 60, 100, and 220 grit sandpaper for our orbital sander, some stain for the wood, a miter box (we have one, but nobody knows where it is), and some nice trim for the edge of the carpet. Sunday morning I laid out where to cut, and started removing the carpet. Getting the carpet cut straight wasn't too bad, and after about 45 minutes I had the area clear. Then I had to pull out all the staples where the pad had been tacked down, and turned the sanding over to her. After a few hours, she had most of the water stains in the wood sanded out, but we're still going to have to bleach out the rest, fill the cracks between the boards, sand it again, and then stain and seal it. She wanted to just sand the stains out, but after I told her she'd put all kinds of depressions in the flooring if she sanded down that far, she decided not to. And now she realizes it's going to be a LOT more work than just "Pull up the carpet, sand the floor, and stain it" like she thought. I've got the trim mitered and fit, and I'll drill pilot holes for the nails today, as I really don't want to tempt fate nailing solid oak trim down without predrilling some holes through it!
Oh, and she asked me how much longer it would take to finish the rock area......sigh.......

The Eve of Conflict

T.L. Davis has his take on what else we need to do now that the elections are over.
Go over here and read his post. Powerful words we ALL need to ponder!

Happy Veteran's Day!

And thank you for your service.......

The Instrucions, and Why We Don't Read Them

Sorry I can't do a copy-and-paste on this, but it's something you'll enjoy reading.
Especially the guys!
The Manual, and Why We Don't Read It.

That "Mystery Missile"? It's A Contrail **CASE CLOSED**

Got tired of "updating" the other post. Suffice to say, some of the sources I quoted were correct.
Chalk up another one for our crack (smoking!) news teams!
It's A Contrail

Contrail

ContrailScience

From the FAA:
"FAA Spokesman Ian Gregor later released this statement:
“The FAA ran radar replays of a large area west of Los Angeles based on media reports of the location of a possible missile launch around 5pm Monday. The radar replayed did not reveal any fast moving unidentified targets in that area. The FAA also did not receive reports of any unusual sightings from pilots who were flying in the area Monday afternoon. Finally the FAA did not approve any commercial space launches around the area Monday.”

And here's a flight path that matches quite closely in time and position.

AFAIC, it's a contrail!

This guy did some analysis, including pix from the same flight 24 hours later, and he nails it.

And FINALLY, a report by James Oberg as posted on the IEEE Spectrum website.
If Oberg says it's a contrail, IT'S A CONTRAIL.
Period.

"Mystery Missile" Launch Off California Coast?

Had this forwarded to me by a friend. I'm usually on top of these things, at least if they're scheduled. Even the "Secret" launches from Vandenberg have things like NOTAMS published, and the PIO office will give a window during which launch activities can be expected.
This is just bizarre, though!
Mystery Missile Launch Seen off Calif. Coast





****UPDATE****

Turns out there was a NOTAM after all....

NOTAM for LA.
KZLA LOS ANGELES A2832/10 - THE FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS ARE REQUIRED DUE TO NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER WEAPONS DIVISION ACTIVATION OF W537. IN THE INTEREST OF SAFETY, ALL NON-PARTICIPATING PILOTS ARE ADVISED TO AVOID W537. IFR TRAFFIC UNDER ATC JURISDICTION SHOULD ANTICIPATE CLEARANCE AROUND W537 AND CAE 1176. CAE 1155 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1316 & CAE 1318 WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. CAE 1177 WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR OCEANIC TRANSITION. W537 ACTIVE, CAE 1176 CLOSED. SURFACE - FL390, 09 NOV 20:00 2010 UNTIL 10 NOV 01:00 2010. CREATED: 08 NOV 20:52 201

The "Naval Air Warfare Center" folks are my old buddies at Point Mugu/China Lake.

Now I'm wondering just how long it will be before the tin-foil-hat-crowd claim the NOTAM was faked, and this was a "Chemtrail" rocket, alien visitation, North Korean/Iranian/Rogue Russian missile, or something else....


***UPDATE 2***

I just realized the NOTAM is for tonight.
Curiouser and curiouser.....


The Market Ticker brings up some good points....

Here's some links I've dug up discussing what it might be.
L.A. Times

Wired

Fox

Space.com

(Groan) Slashdot

NasaSpaceflight.com

Some of the guys at Nasaspaceflight.com seem to think it's either an optical illusion of an airliner contrail (it's happened before), or a solid-fuel rocket launched from San Nicolas Island. San Nicolas has quite a history of being a launch site for sounding rockets and other 'non-airbreathers'.
These guys know their stuff. If one of them says "contrail", I'd be tempted to start looking in that direction.

And another view from the IEEE, also very good, and also pointed to a contrail.

Demplosion

Just remember, our work is just now starting. We have 'a breather', but we also can't slack off.
Enjoy the video!

Tail Fins and Chrome!

What could be more **American** on Election Day than to reminisce about the glory days of the American automobilr industry?
Enjoy!

Get Out There And VOTE!

And keep an eye open for possible voter intimidation and fraud.

Radio Contest This Weekend

So my posting will be lighter than usual.
So far, I've worked China, the Philippines, Australia, New Zeland, South Africa, The Galapagos Islands, Finland, Norway, a whole bunch of Russians, and a handful of countries I've barely heard of.
This contest, the CQ Magazine World-Wide DX Contest, is about the biggest one of the year, so all these little countries show up, and we all try to contact each other.
It's about 8PM now, and the propagation on the higher bands has faded, so I'll call it a night, and watch a movie with the YF.

**UPDATE**
Finished with only 94 contacts, and 16,380 points. Really wanted to break 100 contacts, but family and life have a way of intruding!

Barbara "Call Me SENATOR" Boxer... Time To Get Her OUT!

Got this from a friend in an email and thought I'd share it. Kinda gets right to the heart of the elitism, doesn't it?
REMEMBER....We're at "T-7 (days)" and counting!
THROW THE BUMS OUT!!!!

Call Me Senator from RightChange on Vimeo.