On Saturday April 28, there will be an all day symposium at the Museum of Flight on Great War aviation. Hell yes.

Ars Technica on Sealand and Havenco.

(Joi Ito was an investor? Damn!)

March 24 marked the first ten year anniversary of this here blog.

Reading Charlie Stross’ The Fuller Memorandum, one of his amusing Laundry books, and fairly zipping through. Seems kinda like it may be time to return to Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, as is my habit every so often.

hunh, just realized I stalled out on Stross’ Iron Sunrise a couple months ago. Plus I do have a pile of comics I have been putting off. Gene will have to wait, although having just completed a history of the collapse of the Byzantine West maybe now is a good time after all.

Is it ever not a good time for Wolfe?

On March 19, Sandy McDonnell, former CEO of McDonnell-Douglass, died at his home in Missouri. On March 22, the New York Times published an obit.

On March 23, at around 4 in the afternoon, I saw an F-101 flying east, along with what I estimate were three other planes (I saw three, but the first one was likely one of a flight of two – it heard two planes and the next set of military jets were paired up, so it is a reasonable assumption).

McDonnell’s first big project at his family company was to lead the F-101 design process. He also headed the development of the F-4 Phantom II.
Various obits indicate that his memorial service is to be on March 28 in St. Louis.

I now rather wonder if the plane I saw in formation with the F-101 was an F-4.

i think maybe i can stick that snow shovel in the shed finally. first (well, second) day on the porch in 2012.

I worked upstairs instead of my NOC today, watching a pirate feed of the NPB – MLB Mariners – Giants game that was held at 3:00 am Seattle time in Tokyo. I looks like some of the refeeders in Japan that offer reflectors of their NPB stuff are beginning to timeshift so we gaijin can sleep every now and then.

I *think* the Ms v As season openers should be available as archived out of market games during daylight hours via MLB.tv, but it is not at all clear. I know that the local Mariners cable affiliate will be covering the games live and then replaying it at a more convenient time locally; it’s not clear if they will be able to apply special embargo rules to the game or not.

I guess it doesn’t really matter that much, since it seems unlikely I will summon up the gumption to try to watch the games live.

I did actually think about staying up until 3 (er, 6) to watch the M’s game. There is some symmetry in the notion that I would get up absurdly early on my birthday to watch a spectacle involving sports stadiums, as that is what I did twelve years ago.

On that date, the Kingdome was imploded, very early in the morning. so we had my birthday party starting at 4am, if i recall correctly. Maybe it was starting at 3.

a fine kickoff to the grilling season this afternoon in the company of Danelope and Viv.

I spent the day doing more-or-less heavy yardwork, repairing overwintered gopher mounds and mixing soil and the like. I accomplished all of my primary goals, including reseeding the potato beds and getting a jump on hosework.

Unsurprisingly, there are hose deficiencies i must yet address, but in general, with one weekend of tidying, I am ahead of where I was last year at the same time.

After Dan left I was pleased to find a relay stream of the Oakland A’s at the Hanshin Tigers in the Tokyo Dome and settled in to watch that. The Tigers dismantled the A’s, 12-5 (or was it 6?).

The Mariners play the Yomiuri Giants in about three hours at the same venue, at 3:00 am our time. I think I will skip it but have yet to decide. I suppose I will set an alarm.

As of right now I am a lot less sore than I think I should be. Hopefully tomorrow I will creak and snap like old timber. If I do not, I would take that as mild cause for worry.

hanshin tigers defeat seattle mariners 5-1

Lark realllly wants to help.

walking the dog today, a sourceless growling in the sky made me think I had missed a military flight, and lo, a minute later two more military jets came over, low and loud, headed west.

They were Navy or Air Force grey, but I was puzzled by something. the jets were small, not transports. They had the paper-airplane profile and loud growl of contemporary fighters.

however, at least one of the planes had a high tailplane configuration, something which does not appear in the current US lineup of one and two seater jets. So I have no idea what I watched fly by this afternoon.

UPDATE: the plane with the high tailplane was certainly an F-101. There are two on record at Evergreen and McChord aviation museums. I have not yet heard of one kept in flying trim, but there are many in various aviation museums.

the planes were headed west by southwest, heading west along the line of 115th street and angling down south a bit once they got over Lake Washington. they were at about 700 feet.