totm aug 2023 What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 minutes ago, tater said:

Taliesin West

I should have taken her there.  There is so much I remember from my childhood in the SW - but being a passenger (and a kid) makes it hard to tie it all together. 

[tater]

Might have to make an effort to look for architecturally interesting places to stay on VRBO/airbnb. Earthships at Taos are pretty cheap, there's a nice one you can rent for <$200/night (way cheaper than the one we rented in Santa Fe, lol).

[Hyperspace Industries]

On 9/12/2022 at 11:53 AM, AlamoVampire said:

Ok so it is no secret that I am an AV geek or that I am a licensed RC pilot (pretty sure ive mentioned it at some point lol) or that I am a flight sim pilot of a pair of study level 737’s (-700 & -800 variants by PMDG). Ive thousands of hours in various flight sims across the years. I have (what flight simmer hasnt ) flown in and out of my own city hundreds if not thousands of times and buzzed my own home too just for kicks. But today? Today was something beyond expectation. Where I live I can watch departures from the airport and arrivals too. Today as an experiment to check a theory on an issue ive been having I wanted a 4 or so hour flight. I chose to fly from JFK to my city. Nothing special normally. But tonight as I got within about 120-130 miles (30-40 miles into descent) from the airport I started looking around at the area. I saw coming into view the city lights of my states capitol, a pair of cities between the capitol and my city and my states capitol city. 
The view was beautiful. MSFS2020 really is beautiful. But what I didnt know was that I was minutes away from having my mind blown. Remember when I said I can easily see aircraft arriving and departing my city? If they depart from a certain runway 90-99% of the time they overfly (or close enough) my neighborhood. Approaches are fairly similar too. The thing is, a certain STAR (Standard Terminal Arrival Route) or two will take you to 2 runways. 1 is the one, well its far end from the one that departs over me and another flies you past my neighborhood a bit to the north but still visible from my home to an intersecting runway to the first. 
So, how did my mind get blown doing something Ive done many many times before? Well tonight I was watching my aircraft fly its flight plan (autopilot with VNAV ((vertical navigation)) controlling descent with the MCP alt set and LNAV ((lateral navigation)) controlling flight path to waypoints and the approach path where approach mode and vorloc can take over is fun) and that combined with just how well done terrain textures are in MSFS2020 let me spot something Ive never noticed in prior iterations. I noticed when I was maybe 20 miles out that my approach was going to take me over my own home. In disbelief I hit a button on my MCP (mode control panel) marked ARPT which displays near by airports. And one stood out. The USAF base near my home. I jumped to 3rd person camera and my jaw dropped. I saw the area around my home and knew I was seeing it as certain roads in the area are very recognizable if you know what to look for. I was in complete shock that by pure chance I was flying an approach (to be fair I dont recall ever flying it before, as I think Im more used ((espec as a passenger)) to flying in from  the other side of the airport in sim and irl) that I can see real aircraft fly daily from all around the area near my home.

It was and likely will be forever (because its so personal to me) be the most absolutely satisfying and interesting approach I will ever fly!

045409122022

045609122022

000709132022

To quote many a pilot, explorer and other people: “I can see my house from here!”

also: we are currently in a four hour loadshedding (blackout).

I also proved the power of the internet:

Was sitting on a tractor, old rusted already scrapped buried down one as a toy in a playground, saw an engraving of ‘model a tractor’ on it, typed that in and got the maker, John Deere, along with a load of other info, in a few seconds.

We are in clarens, a town, not my home city by the way.

Edited September 17, 2022 by Hyperspace Industries

[AlamoVampire]

Ok, so I decided to watch Rambo First Blood Part 2. Nothing Ive not seen before, but on this viewing I spotted something Ive either never seen or more likely noticed. It is here and gone in a flash. At time 5 minutes 19 seconds a bit of text comes on screen. Its a bit of the credits that roll at the start of the movie. I quote:

                                                         Screenplay by                                    SYLVESTER STALLONE and JAMES CAMERON

Do you see it?  One name I expected, hes had his share of working behind the scenes in roles like this on other Rambo movies. But James Cameron?? That caught me by surprise!!! New day, new thing learned. Neat huh?

021709202022

Edited September 20, 2022 by AlamoVampire

[Admiral Fluffy]

On Friday, i went and looked at planes!

Planes are cool.

[Hyperspace Industries]

4 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

On Friday, i went and looked at planes!

Planes are cool.

Lucky duck, we have a airshow in a few days, unfortunately it’s in Centurion, and we, aint.

I’d have loved to see a grippen, or usaf tanking (wrong continent) or an Atlas Oryx ( made in SA!), but maybe once I’ll get to see the museum airshow and see an Atlas/Denel Cheetah. (Think mirage, but grey, with a digital glass cockpit, in flight refueling, infrared tracking missiles and more, aah back when state owned companies werent corrupt to the bone (alright, there were less appealing parts of that timeframe, but we have heard enough about that), by the way, as a result of ESKOM loadshedding, the power is out now and tomorrow morning.)

But anyways, I took my entire bath, completely, before the bath even filled (so as to not have the lights go out while I was in the bath, trust me, that ain’t fun.)

How to work efficiently:

Step 1: Watch a movie about aircraft carriers/planes/military.

Step 2: Work.

Edited September 20, 2022 by Hyperspace Industries

[Ben J. Kerman]

I recently sort of made a friend at school who's dad is an engineer for Pratt & Whitney. 

[Hyperspace Industries]

22 minutes ago, Ben J. Kerman said:

I recently sort of made a friend at school who's dad is an engineer for Pratt & Whitney. 

that ought to be interesting conversation.  

[Singhnaut]

3 hours ago, Ben J. Kerman said:

I recently sort of made a friend at school who's dad is an engineer for Pratt & Whitney. 

ooh

I found out that 90% of the kids that aren't crazy at my school play KSP (actually, I was not expecting this)

Oh yeah, and I sort of flew a T-6 Texan. I flew it four 10 minutes out of the whole flight. As you know, it's a trainer so I can fly it from the back as well.

7 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

On Friday, i went and looked at planes!

Planes are cool.

Which ones? I saw A-10s, Ospreys, blue angels, f-35s, f-22s, red bull planes, fat albert, and a c-17 at the Chicago Air and Water Show this summer. (P.S: Blue Angels ARE EPIC!!!!!!!!!!)

3 hours ago, Ben J. Kerman said:

I recently sort of made a friend at school who's dad is an engineer for Pratt & Whitney. 

Ben. I just had an idea. KSP2 is going to have colony building and cranes. Ask them if Kiebherr could be the lead supplier for the VAB and colony building construction segment.

[Ultimate Steve]

I prepared for the first exam of the semester for like 15 hours and still only got a 70%. That is one of the 3 or 4 grades in the class (class is graded on exams only) and it only gets harder from here. And I was going to try to turn my GPA around this semester...

[CatastrophicFailure]

49 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I prepared for the first exam of the semester for like 15 hours and still only got a 70%. That is one of the 3 or 4 grades in the class (class is graded on exams only) and it only gets harder from here. And I was going to try to turn my GPA around this semester...

I am an old fart and yet not a single day goes by that I am not exuberant that I never have to go through that stuff ever again. 

Hang in there. 

[razark]

1 hour ago, Ultimate Steve said:

...class is graded on exams only...

College would have been so much easier if all classes were like that.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

9 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

class is graded on exams only

Good luck with Law School - each class (except 'Writing') is graded entirely by one end of the semester test. 

(Of course, there is the ultimate Final Exam waiting for everyone: The Bar covers all 3 years in a test that takes two days!) 

[adsii1970]

13 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I prepared for the first exam of the semester for like 15 hours and still only got a 70%. That is one of the 3 or 4 grades in the class (class is graded on exams only) and it only gets harder from here. And I was going to try to turn my GPA around this semester...

Best attitude to have. Don't forget to use any free resources the school offers - tutoring, study halls, etc.

11 hours ago, razark said:

College would have been so much easier if all classes were like that.

About 3/4ths of my students would fail. That's why I have a major project paper worth 1/3 of their grade. It does help those poor wretched souls who attempt to take my undergraduate course without studying. Oh, and to make it worse for them, I require Turabian-style citations, complete with end notes, and if there's more than five errors on any given page, I quit grading. If it is on the first page, it's an automatic failure on the paper. If it's on the second page, it's an automatic D. If it's on the third page, it's a C. Rarely do I make it past the third page of a student who does not care and simply slaps something together.

As I often have to remind my students, "you're not in high school anymore."

12 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

I am an old fart and yet not a single day goes by that I am not exuberant that I never have to go through that stuff ever again. 

Hang in there. 

Ah, but what memories you have! And you're right. There are some rites of passage we go through but once. Thank God we pass them by and never revisit them.

[TheSaint]

The only reason I passed Geometry in 9th grade was because the year before some...enterprising young person had stolen the answer key for the geometry textbook that our school used. So our teacher knew that the answers to all the book questions were floating around out there somewhere. So she changed the weighting of the assignments in the class so that the homework was virtually worthless and your grade was almost entirely based on the weekly quizzes and semester finals. Which worked out great for me, King of the Slackers. If my homework got done at all it was because I had 15 free minutes at the end of Civics the period before. So I got 0's on most of the homework assignments, A's on almost all of the tests, and wound up passing the class with a C.

So imagine my surprise when I got to Back-to-School night for my 10th grade year, and there on my class list is Honors Algebra II/Trig. I thought there was a mixup, or a typo or something. I go to see the teacher (who happened to be the same teacher I had for Geometry) and she says, "No mistake at all. I put you in the Honors class because that is the level at which you should be learning. The question is whether or not you will step up and do the work." I wound up loving math because of that woman. Took Pre-Calc and two years of Calculus with her. God bless her. Saw her at my last two reunions, and God-willing I look forward to seeing her at my next.

[CatastrophicFailure]

26 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

So imagine my surprise when I got to Back-to-School night for my 10th grade year, and there on my class list is Honors Algebra II/Trig. I thought there was a mixup, or a typo or something. I go to see the teacher (who happened to be the same teacher I had for Geometry) and she says, "No mistake at all. I put you in the Honors class because that is the level at which you should be learning. The question is whether or not you will step up and do the work." I wound up loving math because of that woman. Took Pre-Calc and two years of Calculus with her. God bless her. Saw her at my last two reunions, and God-willing I look forward to seeing her at my next.

… and won. 
 

32 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Ah, but what memories you have! And you're right. There are some rites of passage we go through but once. Thank God we pass them by and never revisit them.

Heh, “school” and I never really jived, too structured. Anything math was all out war, English/composition was zero-effort A’s. 

[Hyperspace Industries]

2 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Heh, “school” and I never really jived, too structured. Anything math was all out war, English/composition was zero-effort A’s. 

Exactly opposite to me, math, unless it's algebra, is quite easy (now, and I should note that SA doesn't have a good education system, our teachers set up their own tests because the department expects a test of thirty marks, mostly comprehension (or in that case deciphering their spelling mistakes) to last 2 hours) but art, and language, not so much, though recently my Afrikaans mark has improved into the higher 70's, my English actually dropped to the middle, though we did switch through 4 teachers.

I also today got my "yearly junkmail", aka: apparently I am as 'one of the best academic achievers in my school' invited (again) to a zero expenses paid (~R72000) October vacation to, this time, UK and USA, in the far flung future year of 2023, though we ain't no gazillionaires and I ain't no genius, plus I only recently started getting over my fear of flying, so uh, I'll stay here and go get driving lessons from my cousin in Bethulie.  My parents don't have manual cars, so we use my grandparents' old golf, and since I sure don't have a license, we drive on the abandoned school rugby field.

[Singhnaut]

16 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I prepared for the first exam of the semester for like 15 hours and still only got a 70%. That is one of the 3 or 4 grades in the class (class is graded on exams only) and it only gets harder from here. And I was going to try to turn my GPA around this semester...

Oh, that sucks. Sorry about that.

[Delay]

I walked a good 10 km today.

Which, unfortunately, is 10 km more than on most days. I really should get outside more often...

[Singhnaut]

21 hours ago, Delay said:

I walked a good 10 km today.

Which, unfortunately, is 10 km more than on most days. I really should get outside more often...

Congrats!

Today I suffered the arrival of the cold winter wind in Illinois

[Hyperspace Industries]

14 hours ago, Singhnaut said:

Congrats!

Today I suffered the arrival of the cold winter wind in Illinois

Boy, that can’t be fun.
Meanwhile, in SA: temps are finally starting to heat up above 30*C, and I spent the beter part of an hour procrastinating lunch by looking at loadshedding and eskom jokes.

Example:

Rain today with a 40% chance of electricity in places.

Eskom is aware the power is on and they are working on the problem.

The ‘e’ in south africa stands for electricity.

[AlamoVampire]

I was taking a ride a few hours ago (2330) and was on a dark back road. Down the road ahead of me a set of headlights appeared. About 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile away. The driver as they approached were driving with their high beams on. My car has adaptive brights that auto drop from high to low when behind or approaching a car. Well this SUV coming at me didnt have them. So, I grab my light control and bring my brights up (my car had gone to low beam) to tell the driver hey youre blinding me. 10 seconds later they turn off high beams. 3-4 seconds go by and I can finally see its an SUV, whats more I see the shape of the lights and realize its a Ford Explorer. Another second passes and I see 2 things that make my heart stop. A roof mounted light bar and the unmistakable markings of a POLICE DEPARTMENT!! Yup I high beamed a COP to get him to stop blinding me. I thought I was done for. I readied myself for getting pulled over. Then? The cop just kept going! I had high beamed a cop cuz he was blinding me and he just let it go (after turning our high beams off the both of us ofc). So that happened. What an adrenaline dump!

021309252022

[kerbiloid]

Was this thing really a cop? 

https://newsinstact.com/dash-cam-records-a-bright-flash2-11681/

A doppelganger? A shapeshifter? A werecop? Who knows...

Edited September 25, 2022 by kerbiloid

[AlamoVampire]

Illuminati Confirmed

and fun fact thats part of the songs actual name hehe

051009252022

[Delay]

@AlamoVampire Try reading that story out loud with a straight face while having the theme on!