Some (Very) Light Reading

The Hockey Hall of Fame will announce its 2009 selections sometime today. The general consensus of opinion is that Steve Yzerman, a guy who has long been in the B-Rank of my heroes, is a no-brainer for induction in his first year of eligibility. From Fox Sports:

The easy decisions are for three of the four openings in the players category. Steve Yzerman, Brett Hull and Brian Leetch are clearly shoo-ins and make this year's class one of the most memorable in decades. All three are first-time eligible this year and the debate among the 18 selection committee members won't be long or spirited.

The fourth opening is the one that will spark plenty of dialogue. The other first-time candidates, who are retired three years from hockey, are Luc Robitaille, Alexander Mogilny and Dave Andreychuk.

The fans agree, too:

Here’s Stevie Y’s CV, from NHL.com… where you’ll find thumbnail bios of the other leading HHOF candidates:

Steve Yzerman -- Yzerman was Hull's teammate on the 2002 Stanley Cup-winning Red Wings. Yzerman also won the Stanley Cup in 1997 and 1998.

Yzerman was the fourth overall pick of the 1983 Entry Draft and went on to play 22 seasons with the Red Wings. He was only 21 when he was named team captain in 1986-87. He retired as the longest-serving captain in North American professional-sports history.

Yzerman retired in 2006 as the sixth-leading scorer in NHL history. Yzerman had 692 goals and 1,063 assists for 1,755 points in 1,514 NHL regular-season games. He had 70 goals and 115 assists for 185 points in 196 Stanley Cup Playoff games. He received the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1998 as the most valuable
player in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, when he led all scorers with 18 assists and 24 points.

Yzerman also won the 1989 Lester B. Pearson Award and the 2000 Selke Trophy as the NHL's best defensive forward. He was awarded the 2003 Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy for perseverance.

Yzerman was named to the NHL All-Rookie team in 1984 and the NHL First All-Star Team in 2000. He played in 10 NHL All-Star Games.

Yzerman broke the 50-goal mark in five seasons, with a high of 65 goals in 1988-89. He had 62 goals in 1989-90 and 58 goals in 1992-93. He ranks eighth all-time in goals, seventh in assists and sixth in points.

Yup: no-brainer.

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In other hockey news… this pains me:

Detroit -- The news wasn't surprising but no less significant.

The fact the Red Wings parted ways with Chris Chelios on Monday was expected. But it screamed attention, nonetheless.

Chelios, 47, didn't play much last season and had become an extra defenseman. But he's a surefire Hall of Famer. And when a team parts ways with a Hall of Famer, it's news.

General manager Ken Holland met with Chelios on Monday and officially told him the Wings wouldn't be bringing him back after 10 seasons.

"It was kind of understood last summer that the 2008-09 season would be the last one for Cheli as a Red Wing," said Holland, noting the need for the Wings to bring in young players such as Jonathan Ericsson. "Cheli wants to play another season, and I believe he can still play."

Bothered by a leg problem early in the season, then put in a reduced role when he returned, Chelios played in 28 games. He didn't have a point but was plus-1 and had 18 penalty minutes.

Chelios was in six playoff games, didn't score and had an even plus-minus.

He didn't return phone calls Monday. Chelios also didn't speak to the media after the Wings cleaned out their lockers after the playoffs.

He said late in the regular season he didn't expect to be re-signed by the Wings, citing the need for players such as Ericsson to get playing time.

There will be lots of talk over the summer about Chelli’s next team, if there is one. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him playing for Chicago next season… and I suppose that would only be fitting. It’s interesting how things change: Chelios used to be my… and most other Wings’ fans, as well… favorite “guy I love to hate” back when he played for Chicago and before he came to Detroit. I’ll miss him.

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In local news… we had an organizational transfer ceremony out at Cannon Airplane Patch this past Friday. From the Clovis News-Journal:

The “game changers” officially belong to Cannon Air Force Base.

Flanked by two of the AC-130H Spectre gunships it flies and maintains, the 16th Special Operations Squadron transferred its flag Friday from Hurlburt Air Field in Florida to Cannon.

“The arrival of Spectre is a game-changer,” said Lt. Gen. Donald C. Wurster, commander of AFSOC. “If you’re a good guy, you will win. If you are a bad guy, you will perish. It’s as simple as that.”

Prior to the transfer, crews of the 16th at Cannon were operating as a detachment unit while the official squadron was stationed at Hurlburt.

Now, it is Hurlburt with the detachment unit.

“It’s a important step for (Air Force Special Operations Command),” said Lt. Col. Sean Farrell, commander of the squadron. “As we grow our continental base and we build the capabilities of this wing to match the capabilities of our wing in Florida. “We deliver an important element to the AFSOC mission.”

That element includes close air support, armed reconnaissance, interdiction, night search and rescue, and airborne command and control.

Welcome to the High Plains of New Mexico, 16^th Special Ops! We’re glad you’re here, even though you may feel otherwise… given the radical difference between here and your old home. But, Hey! It ain’t all that bad…

Decisions, Decisions

The political war over the F-22 is heating up. From the Air Force Association’s Daily Report:

Gates Has a Big Problem: Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he has "a big problem" with the House Armed Services Committee addition of 12 F-22 Raptors to the 2010 defense budget. He told reporters at the Pentagon June 18 that the reason is "because it continues the F-22 program, which is contrary to the recommendations I made to the President." However, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), who as chairman of the committee's air and land forces panel put forth the additional Raptors, says we need them to provide "breathing room" to keep F-22 production going while debate continues on national strategy as the Pentagon works through the Quadrennial Defense Review. For Gates that debate is obviously over. In a direct slap at the professional opinion expressed recently by Air Combat Command boss Gen. John Corley that the current national military strategy requires more than 187 F-22 fighters, Gates told the reporters: "Frankly, to be blunt about it, the notion that not buying 60 more F-22s imperils the national security of the United States I find completely nonsense." With that statement, Gates not only derides Corley's judgment but also that of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, who has acknowledged the fiscal constraints that make a smaller F-22 force necessary, but who has stated publicly that the current military requirement is for 243 Raptors. Asked when he would recommend a presidential veto, Gates said, "I'm not going to go that far at this point." Abercrombie, however, meeting with reporters, openly ridiculed the notion of a veto, claiming that President Obama would be uncharacteristically foolhardy to veto a defense bill over the issue of a few airplanes. Abercrombie added that, in any event, a veto would be met in a flash with an override by huge supermajorities in each chamber. (Gates press briefing transcript)

Corley's Rationale: In making his unvarnished military assessment of the high risk he sees in halting F-22 production at 187 aircraft, Air Combat Command boss Gen. John Corley upheld his sworn duty to Congress to "provide his unbiased opinion on all matters of military importance," according to a June 19 statement from ACC. It's important to note, too, that in Corley's written response to a direct request from Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) about the F-22 risk factor, Corley noted that USAF leaders had asked for and received ACC views, but he also acknowledged that they and DOD leaders were faced with "tough choices … in balancing current warfighting needs against fiscal realities." That, in our view, shows integrity. Among the factors, ACC says Corley used in making his assessment were the need for homeland defense, combatant commanders' requirements, opposing air and ground threats, ongoing reductions in fighter force structure, and the rapidly aging fighter force—all part and parcel of the Defense Strategy Force Planning Construct. For Defense Secretary Robert Gates to dismiss Corley's assessment as "nonsense" is nonsensical.

Between Proverbial Rock and a Hard Place: Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz issued a joint statement last week, acknowledging that they had considered the views of Gen. John Corley, who leads Air Combat Command, on the F-22 risk factor (see above and here High Risk). The bottom line, as they have said before, is that other needs trumped continuing F-22 production beyond 187 aircraft when they had to work within a fixed budget. They said: "We assessed the F-22 by taking into account competing strategic priorities and complementary programs within the context of available resources. After carefully considering a full range of views and alternatives, including those expressed by General Corley, we recommended to Secretary Gates that other priority Air Force programs should not be reduced in order to fund additional F-22s beyond the program of record." That, in our view, is an honest presentation of the situation and in no way denigrates Corley's military expertise.

We tend to go on about the F-22 quite a bit here at EIP.

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Update from Saturday: We decided on a computer, Gentle Reader, and we should have a new Gateway LX 6810-01 in our hot lil hands by the end of the week. One of the more interesting things about computer shopping is reading all the customer reviews. Someone always gets a lemon and they are NOT shy about telling the world about it… it doesn’t seem to matter what brand or model computer you look at. So… we have our fingers crossed here at El Casa Móvil De Pennington in hopes our previous good luck with computers holds. That luck has been substantial, too. We’ve bought every single one of our computers over these inter-tubes, with the exception of our first two. And the only reason we didn’t buy those online is online shopping didn’t… ummm… exist at the time.

Speaking of our first computer… it was one of these. I bought my XT in early 1986, and it was the model that did NOT come with a hard drive; it had two 5.25” floppies. I bought a 10 megabyte… yes, MEGAbyte… Seagate hard drive from a mail order firm and installed it myself. The drive only cost about 300 Yankee Dollars, if I recall correctly. The XT itself was about $1500.00, if memory serves. As far as connectivity went, I had a 9600 bps outboard modem to access BBSes and the like. You cannot imagine how impressed I was when I upgraded to a 19.2 Kbps modem. Oh, the power and the glory!

We’ve come a long way, Bay-bee. But ya know what? I miss those clickety old IBM keyboards. Those things were built to last, in addition to having the best feel of any keyboard I've ever used. They were heavy enough to have made damned good weapons, too... and I'm sure someone, somewhere, beat the snot out of another person using one. I wouldn't take odds on anyone surviving a determined attack with that keyboard.

Happy Father's Day

Today is the day we celebrate the Ol' Man, Dad, Pop, or whatever name you apply to your father. He’s the guy who is our earliest impression of what it means to be a man... and the guy who is primarily responsible for molding boys into men. Here's my role model:

Dad in his Army Air Corps lieutenant's uniform, me, and Mom... around 1949.

The Wiki has an interesting article on Father's Day... including the proper spelling as opposed to common usage... which includes this lil bit:

Where Mother's Day was met with enthusiasm, Father's Day was met with laughter. The holiday was gathering attention slowly, but for the wrong reasons. It was the target of much satire, parody and derision, including jokes from the local newspaper Spokesman-Review. Many people saw it as just the first step in filling the calendar with mindless promotions like "Grandparents' Day", "Professional Secretaries' Day", etc., all the way down to "National Clean Your Desk Day."

Heh. That describes the earliest time period when a movement was on to make Father’s Day a national holiday… or during the very early part of the 20^th century. I think it’s interesting to note that all those ersatz holidays actually have a day named for the occasion now… even though they may not be officially recognized holidays.

But anyhoo: call yer Ol’ Man.

A Few Minor Irritants and One Good Thing

First things first: an apology.

I’ve had to enable word verification for comments. I was spam-bombed again last evening with another 44 character-based comments… from the same asshat that nailed me night before last, no doubt. I’m also a lil bit ticked with Site Meter in that I wasn’t able to correlate the date/time stamp on the comment e-mails with a specific visitor as recorded in SM. The reason I’m ticked is I seriously wanted to send an abuse report to the spammer’s ISP but I can’t do so without a smoking gun.

I’ll run word verification for about a month or so and then try and remove it again. Once again: apologies.

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I used to think buying a house was one of the worst experiences in modern life, what with trying to find something that meets your needs and desires, is within your budget, and in a neighborhood that’s safe, attractive, and within reasonable distance of things you need/places you have to be. Then comes the offer process, the negotiating, inspections, the closing, and frickin’ paperwork out the wazoo at each and every step. It's misery personified.

As far as negative experiences go, buying a house is closely followed by buying a car, but for different reasons… most of which revolve around car dealers and salespeople, who are the slimiest people one will ever meet in an ostensibly legal endeavor. I think drug dealers are more honest and respectable than car salesmen. (Minor digression: let’s not consider divorce lawyers, who are in a category unto themselves and have a special place reserved in Hell. Except for mine, of course. He was OK. That said, I remain amazed more of those bastards aren’t shot dead in the street on any given day.)

But we’re talking about negative experiences… or we started out that way. I’m thinking of adding “buying a computer” to my short list. I’ve had my first two experiences… ever… with the dreaded “blue screen of death” phenomenon this past week, followed up with the curt but scary “Windows needs to examine your hard drive for errors. Run check disk now.” message (or words to that effect) upon the subsequent start-up. It doesn’t help matters that I’m nearly a year beyond the usual, customary, and reasonable three-year refresh period, and that fact contributes greatly to my angst. Along with the heretofore unknown Blue Screen events.

So… we began our day looking at various desktops in what we consider to be our current price range. And…

Too much frickin’ choice.

I suppose that’s a good thing… and really, it is. But I have “issues.” I don’t like what I’ve heard about Vista, but there aren’t any real alternatives for a technically-challenged individual… read as: don’t say a frickin’ thing about Linux. I don’t wanna hear it. And Macs are out of my price range, so don’t come at me with the wonderfulness of Mr. Jobs Magical-And-Oh-So-AWESOME products. I don’t like white or cream-colored computers, either. Nope… I want a garden variety PC that’s as close to plug and play as possible and costs less… preferably much less… than a thousand dollars. There appears to be at least 1,463 boxes in that category and we have begun the arduous task of sifting through the alternatives.

The good news? My current box… which is within a whisker of four years old… has an older Pentium processor (duh), a 180 gig hard drive and a gig of RAM. Contemporary boxes have much faster quad-core processors (Intel only, please), four times the RAM, and six times the hard drive for a couple o’ C-Notes less than I paid for my current El Cheapo Gateway… AND they carry brand-name nameplates, too. I (heart) progress!

But I hate making choices.

We’ll keep you informed.

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Just an observation: I think we’re going through the wettest Spring I’ve experienced here on The High Plains of New Mexico, but that’s only going back six years. It pretty much rained all night and well into this morning… and the skies remain overcast and leaden gray as we speak. Our forecast is for scattered showers all day and moderate temps, something I most definitely can live with. This would be our third consecutive day of rain, an event unknown to me since I’ve been in these parts.

Maybe The Goreacle was right about climate change. If so, this is the kind of change I really can believe in. And like. As opposed to… well, you know.

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I don’t get today’s Ramirez:

Please enlighten me if you have any idea what he’s on about, Gentle Reader. Never mind... I didn't see the caption below the drawing. It doesn't pay to post before you're fully caffeinated. I'll learn this lesson... someday.

Retro

A friend sends along a link that can be a most serious time waster if you let it. It might only be so if you’re “of a certain age.” Or have an eye for the strange and unusual… like these LP covers from 1955 and 1967:

Heh. I’m sure all good Trekkies have the latter… but as for me? I’d be more into Gracious Living… without the apron. But ya know what? I never saw Mom and Dad looking like that, nor did we have such a kitchen. I must have led a deprived life.

So… you are directed to Bills’ Retro World, where there’s more than album covers. There’s TV, movies, and sports, too. And cars! You just know those people above (who were living graciously) had one of these:

And there are more… mostly ad copy from the '50s… but there are some '60s images as well. My parents owned a few of those cars and I owned at least one myself.

Dang. I must be old.

Back to the record covers for further proof:

I remember this one all too well. It was the first record I ever bought with my own money, and I bought my copy in 1957 at the ripe ol' age of 12. This particular gem was released in 1956 but sales were still going strong a year later. Or maybe it's because my Dad was stationed in Ankara, Turkey and we were a year behind the times. Whatevah. "Blue Suede Shoes" was a revelation to my 12-year old mind and probably was what set me off on a life of depravity and dissipation.

But that's another story altogether.

Right Now...

... well, OK... ten minutes ago. The view from under the awning during Happy Hour, just concluded. You'll have to twist the second pic in your mind's eye, coz I'm too lazy to (mess) with the eccentricities of Blogger and my photo editing program to fix what should NOT have to be fixed to begin with. Suffice to say the photo appears in its natural landscape format in my photo editing program, but refuses to display appropriately in Blogger. (note: fixed at a later date because I upgraded my image management program and the upgrade WORKS!)

All that said... that's one of those exquisite Acid Deep Dish cigars... nearing the end of its natural life... in the company of a New Belgium Sunshine Wheat. It was the most unusual of occasions: a passing thunderstorm without accompanying gale-force winds. So we sat our Old Ass under the awning and leisurely finished our beer while drinking in the sights, sounds and smells of rain on The High Plains of New Mexico. I'll have to admit, Gentle Reader, that yes... it does get better than this. But not lately.

Postscript, 1700 hrs.: Dinner is served... garlic shrimp linguine and a big-ass salad. I told you it gets better, didn't I? ;-)

PPS, 1805 hrs: Dessert. German chocolate cake with a bit of Häagen-Dazs butter pecan on the side. No coffee though. What a Philistine, eh? (Am I scraping the bottom of the blogging barrel... or what?)

The Early Bus... Now Departing

We're on the Early Bus again today. I’m not quite sure what’s up with my sleeping habits of late but we’re not all that worried. What woke me up this morning was a brief but somewhat noisy thundershower that rolled through P-Ville just before 0530. Rain on an RV’s roof creates quite a racket, ya know, enough to wake even the heaviest of sleepers… and maybe the dead… and that would be me, Gentle Reader. So we rolled out, fired off the coffee pot and took a peek out the window to see there were some great cloud formations and the beginnings of what looked like a brilliant sunrise.

It was.

I took 68 pictures, most of which are throw-aways as I’m still having focusing issues with the SLR. This is beginning to piss me off.

For Ann and others who may be interested… All shots were taken with the 50 mm lens in shutter priority mode, f/1.4, at ISO 100. Image 17: 1/250 sec., Image 31: 1/160 sec., Image 34: 1/320 sec.

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Customer service is NOT dead. Witness the following, which is pretty much self-explanatory (addresses redacted):

From: Buck Pennington
To: Tim Blythe
Date: Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 3:13 PM
Subject: Order

Hello Tim,

Today must be a busy day for all y'all. I placed a call to you about an hour ago and left my callback number and haven't heard from you yet. I've tried to contact you a couple of times in the interim and got an "all reps are busy" message.

Anyhoo. I want to place an order for a box of Acid Deep Dish 5.0x58 @ $XXX. Please use the regular credit card (Master Card ending in 8473) and the usual method of shipping... i.e., second-day air.... to my Portales, NM address.

The last time I ordered the representative screwed my order up and sent me a box of Def Seas which I kept rather than return, mainly coz I have yet to meet the Acid I didn't like. That said... I really WOULD prefer the Deep Dish this time around.

Thanks,
Norman (aka Buck) Pennington

Tim’s reply:

From: Tim Blythe
To: Buck Pennington
Date: Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 8:29 AM
Subject: RE: Order

You got it, Buck. Sorry for being so hard to get a hold of. I'll get this shipped out so you have it tomorrow!!

Thank you and enjoy!

Tim Blythe
Cigar.com
(800) 357-9800

OK… I kinda-sorta figured Tim was using a little bit of poetic (i.e., marketing) license when he said “so you have it tomorrow.” He wasn’t. My cigars arrived yesterday afternoon, shipped out from Cigar.com via next-day air AND including a three-cigar Acid sampler thrown in, gratis. It really is a pleasure doing bid’niz with Cigar.com, and most especially Tim.

Yes. This IS a testimonial.

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As noted in yesterday’s post, we were anticipating our 100,000^th visitor here at EIP. And so it came to pass at 1934 hrs last evening:

A googler… looking for the ever-popular MC-12W.

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I'm thinking it's a good day to cruise out to the base. We need to do a beer and commissary run, anyway.