airplanes – Page 6 – Observations Along the Road

Clearing O’ The Links

Posted onFriday, May 27, 2011Authorcahwyguy

It’s Friday, lunchtime, before a holiday weekend. You know what that means… time to clear out the links….

Fashion Sense. A surprising number of articles on women’s fashion have caught my eye. If there is a general theme, it is on how women (so much more then men) are apparently obsessed with body image and how others perceive their bodies. The first, from the NY Times, has to deal with the start of bikini season, and how the bikini has morphed from simple beachware to a badge of fitness. It notes that, when originally introduced, the bikini wasn’t a scary garment: there was little need to prepare for waring one, and no one worried about a few extra pounds or visible hair. That changed, and now the obsession is on having the perfect bikini body. Interesting article—I recommend reading it. By the way, did you know that there are age limits for things like bikinis? According to Style magazine, 47 is the cutoff for a bikini, 61 for swimsuits altogether, and 35 for a miniskirt.
Clothes can be a significant problem for women, especially women athletes. Two stories highlight this. Dunbar High School in Washington DC has switched to skorts for girl’s track meets; the girls find less modesty concerns than with the short skirts that were required previously, or with what was visible with the short short shorts. In the other direction, the professional badminton dress code is being called sexist, because it requires female athletes at the elite level to wear skirts and show leg. Now, much as I enjoy watching these sports (OK, you caught me, I really don’t watch sports, but when I do, these are more enjoyable to watch), I don’t think that any athlete should be required to wear sports outfits that either cause them embarrasment or impact their performance.
Understanding the Law. Two articles that caught my eye, both related to understanding the laws. The first has to do with light bulbs. The NY Times has a good article on what the light bulb legislation really says. Hint: It doesn’t make incandscents unavailable, nor does it mean you need to stockpile them. The law does not ban the use or manufacture of all incandescent bulbs, nor does it mandate the use of compact fluorescent ones. It simply requires that companies make some of their incandescent bulbs work a bit better, meeting a series of rolling deadlines between 2012 and 2014. Furthermore, all sorts of exemptions are written into the law, which means that all sorts of bulbs are getting a free pass and can keep their energy-guzzling ways indefinitely, including “specialty bulbs”, as well as three-way bulbs, silver-bottomed bulbs, chandelier bulbs, refrigerator bulbs, plant lights and many, many others.
Another interesting article deals with the requirement for underinsured motorist coverage in California. Did you know that when you purchase $100K of insurance, you won’t get paid $100K? The law only requires payment of your limit less the coverage the other motorist has. This means if you have $100K in coverage and they have $50K, your coverage only need pay up to $50K additional, for a total of $100K. AB1063, currently in development and supported by consumer groups, would correct this problem… but it is opposed by the insurance industry, who appear to be winning in delaying it.
Airplanes. A few articles on airplanes. The first concerns Boeing (or is that Boing!) and their plans regarding the 737. Right now they are deciding whether to build an all-new airframe, probably based on the composite approach used for the 787, or to just reworking the existing 737 airframe, tweaking it with new energy efficient engines. They are attempting to battle the competition of the A320 (and A319) in the smaller single-aisle aircraft market. The 737 has certainly been a workhorse and money-maker for Boing!, beginning design in 1964 and having its first flight in 1967! It is currently the only single-aise aircraft in production at Boeing (the passenger version of the 707 ended production in 1978; the 717 (which is really a 3^rd generation DC-9) in 2006; the 727 in 1984; and the 757 in 2004).
The other articles all focus on an Airbus airframe, in particular, the A330 that served as Air France 447. The black boxes are starting to yield details, such as the fact the captain was absent when the descent began, that the pilots seemed confused by all the alarms, that they didn’t follow standard procedures and were having trouble with stalling and icing, and that they were never trained for this type of emergency. The information gleaned from black boxes so far has corroborated the original hypothesis that suggested that the plane plummeted to the ocean surface on its belly. In addition to the pitot tube findings, this is sure to create a bunch of lawsuits for Air France, given that it looks more and more like pilot error was involved.
Paying the Bills. The NY Times has an interesting article on how many people are using blogs to pay the bills. I’ve been doing this journal at LJ since 2004, but I’ve always wondered (a) how many folks are reading it, and (b) whether advertising would be worth the hassle of changing platforms. My blog is more general interest, so I would think advertising would be of less interest. Still, in these economic times, … So I’m curious: are you an active reader of this journal? Do you think I should explore moving to a platform where I could advertise? [LJ and FB users: don’t worry—I would still feed any RSS feeds of the site to both LJ and FB].

Travel News Chum

Posted onMonday, May 23, 2011Authorcahwyguy

Last week I was travelling (hence the sparseness of posts), or dealing with the inevitible aftermath of travel on workload. In respect of that, here are a few lunchtime news chum items related to travel:

Merger Woes. Last week I flew on United, which is currently in the process of dealing with the merger with Continental. Two articles highlighted just how complicated such a merger is, going down to the minutae of how one slices limes or how many bowling balls can be checked.
Flyaway Home. If you’ve ever flown to LAX and needed to get out to Van Nuys, you know what a bargain the LAX Flyaway is. But some routes are not as well used as others: for example, the Westwood route averages only 7 passengers per bus. As a result, the Flyaway is running a $4.6M deficit. Of course, this news comes as the Flyaway is planning to add more new routes—Long Beach, Valencia, and eventually Santa Monica and Culver City—as part of a mandate to expand Flyaway to reduce airport traffic. Of course, I could have told them Westwood would be a failure—they tried it once before in the early 1980s and it failed.
Recycling a Hotel. USA Today has an article about a ghost hotel—specifically, a former Raddison in Delaware—that has been sitting vacant for 10 years. It seems they built it too big, and thus it was never permitted for occupancy. It has finally been purchased as in being converted to a Sheraton, and crews from Habitat for Humanity are going in to rip out fixtures, granate countertops, doors, lights, etc., to be sold in their resale shop to fund their efforts. They are finding a brand new hotel, frozen in time. Interesting read.

Friday News Chum Stew… on Thursday

Posted onThursday, January 20, 2011Authorcahwyguy

I’m taking tomorrow off/working from home for my birthday, so you get Friday’s lunchtime news chum stew today. Hopefully, it is just as tasty. This is a collection of news items where I couldn’t quite build up a good-enough linking theme that covered a significant subset for a post…

Security. A number of security related items. By now, you’ve probably read the article about how the US and Israel supposedly worked together to create Stuxnet. Is it true? I’ll let you decide. I mention it, though, because it is an example of another problem that was highlighted in a separate NY Times article: the struggles to harness the flood of data in the military. With all the different virus reports and log files, how does one separate out the serious from the negligible? It’s a serious question.
In an unrelated security discussion: There’s an interesting report out how auto thieves can easily outsmart the key fobs out there. We all thought things would be better when we went away from these easily copied keys. But going digital is no panacea: digital keys can be duplicated as well, if you have the right mechanisms. Further, when you get the digital keys, you often gain access to much more.
Technology Changes. Some items related to technology.
It appears that Verizon is silently dropping the “new every two” promotion. This is something we’ve taken advantage of, but in this day of smartphones, probably costs the company a pretty penny. It will be interesting to see what discounts will be provided the next time we’re up for renewal.

For those with iPhones/iPads and time on their hands, it appears that Playboy is coming to the iPad. How are they getting around the pron-restrictions in the Apple store? Simple. They aren’t using an app, but a specially formatted and coded web page. On the other hand, some hotels appear to be planning to drop their pay-per-view mature offerings.

Oh, and speaking of changes. Remember I’ve been writing about my new Toshiba laptop? I found a page with a review of my first Toshiba laptop, a T1600. It was a wonderful machine, with an 80C286 processor, MS-DOS 3.3, a 20MB disk, a 16-greyscale display, and 1MB of RAM. Selling price? $4,999.00. The times, they are a changin’.
Fast Food Changes. A number of fast food changes to report. El Pollo Loco is dropping steak from their menu. Wendy’s (that little minx) is considering breaking it off with Arbys—you could never trust that woman. Lastly, Yum! brands (parent to KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell) is selling A&W and Long John Silvers.
Gift Cards. Stores are becoming increasingly dependant on gift cards to shore up profits. However, as that dependence grows, the secondary gift card economy is growing as well (that is, the market where you can exchange gift cards). The LA Times had a nice article on this secondary market, noting which exchanges to trust and which to avoid. Note that you’ll rarely get the face value on an exchanged card. There was also a good article on this subject in the Washington Post. Still, if you’ve got plastic sitting in your drawer doing nothing…
One Ups. A number of interesting one-ups, where I couldn’t connect multiple things with a theme:
They are expanding Lindbergh Field in San Diego, CA. As I seem to recall, this is one of the most dangerous airports to fly into because of the approach.

There’s a reason we’re losing the fight with bedbugs. They are evolving too fast and becoming pesticide resistant.

Trying to figure out where to keep that toilet tissue (what a euphamism!). Here’s are ten ways to hide it, stylishly.

An interesting article on a new housing problem: Fireplace Guilt. Yup, we no longer love our fireplaces. Not only are they not cool, they aren’t ecological.

Lastly, although ellipticcurve might not like it, today is National Cheese Lovers Day. I think I’ll celebrate this one.

The Plane Truth

Posted onTuesday, December 7, 2010Authorcahwyguy

One of the things that fascinates me is history. I love historical things—especially recent historical things—and find efforts that preserve those items an interesting read. I also have an interest in transportation: this leads, of course, to an interest in adaptive reuse of airframes (as well as an interest in how old airports are reused, but I digress). Today’s news brought an interesting article related to reuse of airframes; that led me to look up two other stories on the subject.

The trigger article was one in the LA Times about the first 747 being recycled into a restaurant in S. Korea that subsequently failed. That first 747 now sits rusting, unsed, above a noodle shop. Sad, and in many ways sadder than the airplanes mothballed in the various boneyards, for those might stil be used. These frames want to see life and use.

This reminded me of an article about a house in Malibu that was constructed from the frame of a 747. Wings and the tail formed the roof; other parts of the frame made other portions of the structure. Of course, the house is visible from the air, and the home is registered with the FAA so that it isn’t mistaken for a downed aircraft. There’s an article on the transformation here.

Lastly, here’s an article about adaptive reuse of transportion in general: converting trains, planes and subways cars into living and working spaces. Some of the pictures here are quite interesting… and remind me of dinner last night. To explain: my friend, gyesika, has done adaptive reuse: she has adapted an old Air Force GMC truck into a moving art project with chalkboard sides. The last picture in the linked article, about the couple that converted their van into a studio apartment, triggered the memory of her truck. Perhaps, if she reads this, she’ll share the story of the truck.

Learning to Say I’m Sorry

Posted onWednesday, August 25, 2010Authorcahwyguy

Here’s an interesting job: Professional Apologist.

No, they don’t work for a politician. They work for airlines, and apologize to passengers for anything that goes wrong during a flight. Of course, they don’t stop the problem from happening, but that’s not their job. Instead, their job is to find out the situations in which something went wrong — a mechanical delay, bad weather, a medical emergency or a berserk passenger — then apologize to all passengers on that flight, within 24 hours of their bad experience, if possible.

I wonder what the professional qualifications are…

Thurs Chum: Engage Brain Before Using Computer, Stories about Office Supplies, and Strange Airports

Posted onThursday, February 18, 2010Authorcahwyguy

Yesterday, I thought there wasn’t a unifying theme to the news chum, but there was. But I promise there is no such unification theory for today’s lunchtime news chum:

From the “Be careful what you say or do” Department: The Washington Post is reporting how more than 75,000 computer systems at nearly 2,500 companies in the United States and around the world have been hacked in what appears to be one of the largest and most sophisticated attacks by cyber criminals. The author of the article uses it to rail against the traditional security approaches of intrusion-detection systems and anti-virus software—in other words, technological solution. To that end, he is right: we keep forgetting about education. That is brought home when the article notes how the attacks occurred: “The hackers lured unsuspecting employees at targeted firms to download infected software from sites controlled by the hackers, or baited them into opening e-mails containing the infected attachment”. In other words: social engineering attacks that should never have been successful. Ah, but these are businesses you say. A related article hits closer to home: a computer science student in the Netherlands, with his friends, have set up a website provocatively called PleaseRobMe.com, a mashup of users’ content from Twitter, the San Francisco microblogging service, and FourSquare, a site in which users share their location. Their goal: reformat all that status information you publically post to Twitter or Facebook to make it easy to see when you are not home, and thus could be the target of a robbery. As always, think before you write or do something on your computer.
From the “The Pen Is Mightier…” Department: Two articles in Los Angeles local news are interesting because of their relationship to pens. The LAMG newspapers have an article about the overspending for office supplies within Los Angeles County: $40.50 Mini-Jeweleria brown resin fountain pens… $131.54 for floor mats… $5 rulers, $202.46 for printing calculators”. The new LA County CEO plans to rein in such costs. Perhaps one way to do it would be to talk to the people at L.A. Shares. This program, written up in today’s LA Times, is a non-profit donation center. Corporations that are remodeling, changing logos, downsizing, etc. donate their excess products to this group, which redistributes them to needy non-profits before the items enter the waste stream. In the years since the program started in 1991 with the notion to recycle wood from set construction, it has recycled an estimated $180 million in goods. The larger items are often used. Everything else is new but destined for the trash — promotional items, packages with outdated logos, remaindered stock, excess office supplies from divisions that have been shut down, etc..
From the “Come Fly With Me” Department: Lastly, an item that fauxklore and some of the other seasoned travellers reading me would love, and would perhaps take as a challenge: Popular Mechanics lists the 18 Strangest Airports in the World. Many of these are due to landing strip challenges or construction challenges. Quite an interesting read.

Miscellaneous News Chum: Pop-Up Stores, Credit Cards, TV Themes, and LAX

Posted onTuesday, October 20, 2009Authorcahwyguy

I’ve been home sick today with a cold, but I’ve still got some chum for you to chew on:

From the “Selling It” Department: We’ve all grown up with the model of the brick and mortar store that is always there. But that’s changing, and the LA Times has two interesting articles on the change. The first article related to those kiosks you see at a mall, and how they provide a low-cost entry for new retailers to try an idea. But even big retailers are going into the short-term-store business: the second article related to pop-up stores. These are stores that rent a space for a few weeks or months, and then they are gone. They started with the Halloween and Christmas stores grabbing empty storefronts, and now retailers like Toys R Us and Sees are doing them.
From the “Paying for Doing Good” Deparatment: Some of us carry credit card balances. Some of us don’t. I’m in the latter camp: I pay in full every month, and do sufficient transactions that, so far, I’ve had nary a fee. According to USA Today, that may change for some: some banks are adding fees for those that pay in full each month. They are doing this now because the government is taking away their ability to gouge in other areas. I’m sorry, but if a credit card company did it to me, I’ll take my business elsewhere.
From the “They’re Creepy and they’re Spooky” Department: In addition to honest bankers and retailers that stay around, one thing we have lost is our great TV themes. Few shows have great original themes these days. The LA TImes brings the obit of a famous TV theme writer: Vic Mizzy, who wrote the themes for “Green Acres” and “The Addams Family”.
From the “When 24 is old” Department: LAX is planning a major remodel. No, they aren’t refreshing some of the terminals that really need it, such as Terminal 2, 3, or 6. They are planning to demolish the Tom Bradley terminal (TBIT) and replace it with a new larger terminal with a mid-field concourse. All this so they can accomodate the Airbus 380 and 787. Now, I’ve never flown out of TBIT, but some of their other terminals are in even worse shape (I particuarly hate Terminals 7 and 8 with a passion — no power outlets!). But then I have a history of not being enthused by what LAWA does — I had friends living in the areas they depopulated!