Guess we've got to start with a little music.
Uhh, juvat? Check your switches.
Dagnabbit!
School's out for Summer!
You know you've got that stuck in your mind now doncha?
So...juvat why are you writing this from your office in the IT department of the school district on Sunday. Wasn't graduation Friday night? Isn't School our for Summah! (just in case the echos inside your head were dying out).
Yes to Friday night, Yes to Summah! But evidently our internet provider at home decided to check one more time to see if a back hoe beats fiber optic cable.
Every.
Single.
Time!
In any case, yes, tomorrow is the first day of the summer vacation.
For Teachers and students.
Not for mere mortal IT guys. Especially those who just put in a PO for $1.5M in new technology for the district. New computers and laptops. Replace all the wireless access points. Replace all the projectors with better ones connecting to touch screens. Moving the website to a new site using different coding. Moving our Student Data to a different database (that's actually being handled by our Service Center, but when they finish, I get to rewrite the code that gets the data and formats it such that it can be used by us.)
Plus the normal routine we go through every summer.
Oh...The department has 6 folks total.
So we're going to be "Balls to the wall" until October. (Before anyone gets the vapors, "Balls to the wall" was a flying term from back in aviation's propeller age. The throttles had rounded knobs on the top of them so you could find them by feel. Pushing them all the way forward to the instrument panel was pushing the Balls to the wall. Now don't you feel better?)
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| Source |
I don't remember having ever heard that one.
Catchy tune, but I don't think I can dance to it. Course I can't dance to much.
Which reminds me, less than 6 weeks to the Wedding. I've got to sign up for Dance Lessons. I don't want to trip, fall and drag my daughter down with me in our dance.
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| Hope they can control the dust during the dance. Probably not. |
As I said it's going to be a busy summer.
When October rolls around, Mrs J and I will be taking a cruise with our wine maker friends. I may sleep through the whole thing.
Except for a scheduled meet up with a friend.
HAPPY U-505 DAY!
ReplyDeleteAn interesting take on "I'd rather be lucky than good." Apparently they were the epitome of "If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all."
DeleteMan, you have a lot on your plate for this summer! Hope all goes well.
ReplyDeleteAs to "balls to the wall," I had no ideer. Learn something every day!
Thanks.
DeleteHappy to help. Yep on the Learn something every day, with a little help from a friend.
Good luck on the wedding. Take it from an old hand, they are survivable. I've been through three with DNO (two of those to the same guy) Let's just say that that the first two (to the same guy) didn't take. But the third works just fine. I wish you, and your's, nothing but happiness and success on the first try.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
DeleteThey've been friends for 8 years, so I think they've got a good chance. Besides, he's a pretty good guy.
If not, you have lots of land at Casa Juvat, right?
DeleteAnd United Rent-all rents backhoes. Hmmm. Wonder if there are fronthoes?
My Tractor has a front end loader, which I sometimes use for front hoe-ing.
DeleteI was a school custodian for a year while attending college. What goes on after hours and when the kiddies aren't there is mind boggling. I was so tired after spring break that I decided the art of stripping and buffing was meant for someone else. We are getting ready to swap a few hundred WAPs at work as well. Oh joy, oh bliss, scissor lift rentals......
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the long road to October....
Ah yes, stripping and buffing....We call that "Dancing with Waxers". As in, "You can't go there, the floors wet" "When will it be dry?" "Next week". All summer long. I was told that it kept the custodians getting paid.
DeleteThen we hired a professional company. Working at night, no impact on us, finished in 2 weeks. The custodians still got paid.
Fortunately, the WAP project isn't mine. My days of climbing up and down ladders are over.
My schoolteacher wife has not acted on my suggestion that "School's Out For Summer" should be blasted over the school's loudspeakers at top volume on the last day before summer. (I'm still working up the intestinal fortitude to try the HTML thing on a comment)
ReplyDeleteI went over to Amazon to check the price before mentioning Gallery's novel, U-505, and found "Twenty Million Tons Under The Sea: The Daring Capture Of The U-505" is priced at $ 0.99 for the Kindle.
https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Million-Tons-Under-Sea-ebook/dp/B07B36X65Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1528114347&sr=1-1&keywords=u-505
His novel, "U-505" for the Kindle is priced at $ 3.82.
https://smile.amazon.com/U-505-Rear-Admiral-Daniel-Vincent-Gallery-ebook/dp/B01KUGU5S0/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1528114273&sr=1-4&keywords=u-505
(John closes his eyes, crosses his fingers, clicks his imaginary ruby slippers together and says, "I wish someone would print Gallery's Cap'n Fatso series in an affordable ebook format.")
Good post.
Since the boss recalled the Pony Express dude (see comment below), I'm going to have to be frugal at Amazon for a while. Probably give up lunch this week and buy these two.
DeleteThe Pony Express guy ISN'T coming? Dangit, guess I need to "find" my lunch money somewhere else. *puts away hat and bandanna, unloads shotgun*
DeleteI know what you mean.
DeleteI wish I could see videos on your site on my phone...
ReplyDeleteI'll bring that up with Management. He talked me into a bigger, better, faster way of embedding YouTubes when I had my switch error.
DeleteBeans, since you're the FNG and can learn from other's mistakes, if you don't see the widget for embedding Videos on the posting page, check to make sure you have the button marked Compose selected and not HTML. The boss recalled the pony express rider with my check to make up for his troubles.
Brother Bear, I was able to access all three on my Windows phone. I don't have access to the other two OS's so can't check those.
DeleteI did not, repeat not, recall the Pony Express rider. My sources tell me that the young man was waylaid by indigenous personnel in Nevada. (I know, what's he doing in Nevada when he's supposedly headed for Texas?)
DeleteAnyhoo, yes, indigenous personnel. Which is, I believe the correct method for addressing them who got here first.
(Then again, my money's on hookers and games of chance, which are sort of indigenous to Nevada.)
It's an iOS thing. I've tried all three browsers I have, both desktop and mobile versions of the site.
DeleteYes, well hookers are indigenous personnel in Nevada.
DeleteDearest Elder Brother Juvat, oh mighty exhalted one, grand poobah of Chanter Safety, et all....
DeleteYup. My first post done by me I just used the imbed feature in Compose to drop video, rather than try to use the black arts of Haitchtee-Emmell, because that way leads to Cthulhu and being a good Christian boy (altar boy even, as a sprout) I have pledged my eternal soul to the forces of good.
Or, well, I suck at any programming language, but to go all "Tron" I am a USER (of programs, that is.)
As to being waylaid in Nevada, so to get this correct, you are talking about official Hookers, not the cloud of unofficial hookers that can be found around most military towns, right?
Well, as my Dad retired from Nellis and became the Chief Civil Engineer for Summa Corporation (aka Howard Hughes holding company), I've heard officially and unofficially there are many present in Nevada.
DeleteMore balls (at the 4:05 mark)---
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoBWAE0win0
Now, if they just made an iphone with a set of brass ones...
Gonna have to watch that when I get home, so I can turn the sound on. Looks interesting.
DeleteWell, they may not make an iphone with brass ones, but they DO make a bulletproof case. Which is not made of brass.
DeleteRats! I thought I'd actually be able to get the daughter an Iphone case that would protect her phone. Not so much. But it was a fun video.
DeleteThat last picture is absolutely adorable!! So you know you are going to have to post a pic of how beautiful she looks in 6 weeks and 1 day...the 1 day is to give you a chance to begin to recover from your dance. ;)
ReplyDeleteDancing isn't really difficult...just sway in rhythm to the music, and slide your feet so you don't step of her toes.
That's what most dads do...just pick a "slow" tune for your dance.
I can do the shuffle and slide acceptably. I'd like to be able to actually dance since she's my only daughter and we hope this is her only wedding, this will be my only chance. Besides, Mrs J told me to take lessons. My response? "Yes, Dear".
DeleteI danced with my daughter a few years back. Shuffle and slide. They played this song---
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg8Z69B6RFQ
Lessons? Yeah---would have been pretty much a waste.
Right. So I put up a link to the video that's already FULL SCREEN above. It was a bit dusty for a moment. Yeah, that was it---the dust.
DeleteYeah, that's going to be THE song! I think if fits.
DeleteI don't know if it would be a waste, even if I just learn to do the shuffle and slide in time to the music. That would be a YUGE improvement.
DeleteI remember Accept from my days at Clark. Metal was popular in my shop, and my supervisor had this CD. It was on the rotation at Monster Rock bar, which was usually not my first stop on a bar run. Unless you'd had a few drinks, the volume would make your ears bleed. They had a cage with little burrowing owls that would 'dance' up and down on the pole that crossed their cage, sidestepping as they went, from one side of the cage to the other. At the time, it seemed really cool, but less so looking back. The owls did at least get food and protection from predators (and some affection from a couple of the staff), but today I'm more ambivalent about such "pets". However, Monster Rock did have a bar girl who could dance to heavy metal and make it look Goood. Scrumptious, even. Umm, or so I'm I'm told.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I made it to the Monster Rock in any of my time at Clark. May not have been on the Squadron's usual rotation list. We had a pretty regular Saturday night schedule of which bars and for how long we'd visit. Hindsight, given the PI communist hit squads, would suggest that predictability of that schedule was probably not wise. But, the Lord protects Fools and Drunks.
DeleteSo we must have had double protection.
Yeah, know what you mean. I got there shortly after several Americans (3?) were killed near Friendship Gate and maybe Main Gate (one of them was the father of one of the officers in the 1961st Communications Group). Australians with short hair weren't exempt, either. And the night after my farewell party/bar run, 3 servicemen down from Korea for exercises were killed outside hotels and bars literally next door to where we'd been. Not close to Monster Rock at all, but still, when the Base Recall sirens sounded, we knew nothing good was going on. That'd happened only after the big magnitude 7.7 earthquake in 1990 (precursor to Pinatubo blowing its top a few months later?), the just-mentioned assassinations, and Coup Attempt VII against Corazon Aquino in December, 1989. Lord knows we must've been protected...
DeleteI'm intimately familiar with both those incidents.
DeleteLooks like yours and my Air Force Career Ven diagrams have some significant overlap.
I've used the balls phrase a hundred times, but never knew its origin...until now. Thanks for the schoolin'!
ReplyDeleteNo problemo. I got schooled on the original meaning of "the whole nine yards" by one of the secretaries in the district. Her father had been an armorer on P-51s in WWII, so I guess he would know.
DeleteNegative Ghostrider...
DeleteThe first known use of the phrase "the whole nine yards" was in 1855. This particular phrase is a mystery, multiple theories as to where it came from, bottom line is, nobody knows.
That's if Wikipedia is to be believed. (I grew up with the Scottish kilt explanation.)
Well, I like P-51s, so I'm going with that. So there!
Delete;-)
Hahaha!
DeleteYes, it WILL get dusty. Remembering that time stirs it up somewhat also. The picture is adorable, just wish we could keep 'em like that for just a bit longer.
ReplyDeletePray tell, what model aircraft did the throttle quadrant come out of? (Yeah, yeah, I know, prepositions and commas...)
Oh, I fully expect to make a fool of myself. Time travel would be good. Travel back to that time for a bit, then return to who she's become and of whom I'm extremely proud. That would be nice.
DeleteWell, my google image search term was "throttle quadrant P-51", that was the best image returned that showed the balls. However, since I've never sat in the cockpit of a P-51....
In reference to " balls-to-the-wall" consider the handful in a B-52 (8 engines) or how about the B-36 with "6 turnin' and 4 burninin' ".
ReplyDeleteNow lets get to "tits-up", another old aviation term meaning things are messed up. Juvat, is that in your lextionary? I will reply with my known definition later.
Or, as some crews would have it: "two turning, two burning, two smoking, two choking, and two more unaccounted for."
DeleteWell, since this is a Family friendly site and barring an overruling from the overbearing Management, we'll use this one, Bill.
Delete"This is a 20th century phrase, probably of military origin. There's certainly no mention of it in print prior to WWII. It has been suggested that the term derives from the behaviour of aeroplanes' altitude indicators, which turn upside down when faulty and display an inverted 'W' resembling a pair of breasts." Source
That is 90% of the explanation. The other part is that some of the old artificial horizons had "UP" and "DOWN" imprinted on the appropriate portion of the display. The little teats on the bar representing the airplane were there as an indicator of where the wheels were (fixed landing gear) or would be (retractable landing gear) i.e. the bottom side of the airplane. I remember some pictures form training manuals when I was in UPT (Undergraduate Pilot Training).
DeleteMy favorite BTTW anecdote:
ReplyDelete"BALLS TO THE WALL" IS A TERM THAT PILOTS USE THAT HAS ORIGINS FROM THE EARLIER DAYS OF FLIGHT, WHEN THE THROTTLE, PROP CONTROL, AND MIXTURE HAD KNOBS THAT MADE IT EASIER FOR THE PILOT TO GRIP ...FULL FORWARD TO THE INSTRUMENT PANEL ..."BALLS TO THE WALL."
St Louis Approach control ...
St. Louis Approach to United:
"United 123 best forward speed to the outer marker, you're number one."
United 123 (male voice):
"Roger, balls to the wall."
St. Louis Approach to American:
"American 4321, you're number two behind a United 737, follow him, cleared visual, best forward speed."
American 4321 (female voice):
"Well I can't do balls to the wall, but I can do wide open."
-Radio silence-
Unidentified Pilot (male voice): "Is American hiring?"
Unless you were flying a French aircraft of the era, in which throttle controls were backwards compared to the rest of the world. Of course...
DeleteCap'n Steve,
DeleteYes, well.... ;-)
Ze Frawnch! Got's to love 'em!
DeleteEveryone can go home now, Captain Steve wins the Internet today, no further contestants need apply.
DeleteBRILLIANT!
So it is written....So it shall be!
DeleteVERY BRILLIANT! :)
DeleteThat just made my morning!
- Victor
Sarge, you need a UP/DOWN voting system like Disqus has. Captain Steve deserves some recognition.
ReplyDeleteWell....Disqus should have a "Sarge Decrees" system like we have!
DeleteI will look into that Flugelman.
DeletePay no attention to the balding chap in the flight suit, he is understandably bitter at not being able to fling modern jets through the vaults of the Heavens anymore and chooses to berate this aging, humble, downtrodden Master Sergeant.
It's my burden and I bear it gladly.
;)
You forgot balding, as in aging, balding downtrodden Master Sergeant.
DeleteBut hey boss, love ya dude!
Hey juvat, you forgot humble; OAFS is also humble.
DeletePaul
Juvat - thanks I did forget balding. I didn't bring it up because, ya know, humble.
Delete(Paul, stop "helping.")
;)
The comments, they just keep getting gooder and gooder.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post.
Paul L. Quandt
Captain Steve definitely gets the win award today!! Lol.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have earned not to be drinking any drinks when reading here...the easiest way to avoid screen spattering.
DeleteAh yes, the 'joys' of summer in the school system... Too much to do, not enough time, money, or people to actually DO all the work, but they blythely expect it all to work perfectly the first day of school, when the administrators show up with their summer tans, and stories of trips and fun things... sigh
ReplyDeleteObviously, you've been there, done that. Nothing's changed.
Delete