Pennington didn't understand why the Air Force was sending him, an active duty officer, to a Guard base in
Was this a career killer?
"At first there was a lot of concern because I hadn't heard of this before," Pennington said.
Pennington's assignment came through a new Air Force idea called "active association."
The 169th Fighter Wing at McEntire is the Guard's first fighter unit to go through the program. The plan is to assign regular Air Force officers and enlisted airmen to National Guard units.
Buck is the commander of the maintenance detachment (jet maintenance, as in F-16s) at McEntire JNGB. The “J” is for Joint, replacing the usual A, for “Air National Guard Base.” One needs a program to keep up with the acronyms these days. Come to think on it, nothing’s changed in that regard.
Photoshopping celebs so they look like real people…here. Is this some new sort of art form? I had some fleeting and oh-so-slight flashes of name recognition as I browsed the photos, but my reaction to 75% of the names was “Who?” I guess I just don’t read or watch the right stuff. You may or may not find this interesting, Gentle Reader.
h/t: Clicked…a blog aggregator worth a look in its own right. Forget you saw “MSNBC” in the url. Two more cool things I picked up there: The World Drinking Map [legal age to drink] and Police Cars from Around the World. My fave cop car is from Texas, but I wouldn’t mind owning this one. Paint jobs are relatively cheap. The reader comments have lots of links to other cop cars, some more interesting than others. You can kill some serious time here if you happen to be a gear head.
Good Lord. I felt a twinge that could only be described as “homesickness” when I looked at this photo. And this one, too. Send help. Quickly. (Say what you will about its politics and its residents, there is no other city in the US of A with a more breathtakingly beautiful geographical setting. None.)
There are many, many large format photos to be browsed on this site. Another serious time waster site you can spend quality time on…especially if you’re a photographer, or like to think you’re one (in my case).
Speaking of photography… “Our photo contest attracted thousands of photographers from 86 nations. And the winners are...” Go see all 50 finalist’s photos; there’s wonderful work there. Last years winners are linked, too. The photo on the right is from the “
I’ve been meaning to blog about this since perusing the photos in the June Smithsonian in the quick-oil-change store’s waiting room last week. And perusing the photos in the entry immediately above triggered that dormant “you should.” Blogging life is like that…
What people with more money than sense do for fun…
Ohhh-kaaay…
Futurists rarely get it right, the classic example being “Where’s my flying car?” for those of us who grew up in the ‘50s on a steady diet of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. But the guys at DEC were right-frickin’-on.
This video was produced in 1994, Gentle Reader, and virtually (no pun…) everything in the vid has come to pass. One just has to ask, though…if DEC was so visionary, why aren’t they around today? There was a point in time when I thought everyone in the whole frickin’ world was gonna do it on a PDP-11 or some flavor of VAX machine…and lots did. Now? Swallowed up by HP, by way of Compaq.
This is good stuff. The web site appears to be done completely as a Flash app, and that’s too bad. Coz I wanted to cut ‘n’ paste some of the copy on the site to use here as a teaser. At any rate, I picked up a bag of Hershey’s Cacao Reserve truffles (the 65% cacao variety) while out shopping yesterday, and they are excellent. Mouth watering. The filling in the truffles is creamy and complex, and the chocolate surrounding the center is rich, just slightly bitter, and dark, dark, dark. The finest kind… While the stuff ain’t quite up there with Godiva or any number of Belgian chocolates, it’s pretty danged good.
Today’s Pic: Since SN1 has today’s lead item, I thought it would be appropriate to show him in his work environment. Here he is along with SN3 in a Cannon AFB hangar, with an F-16 as a backdrop.
As always, click the pic for the larger version.
July 2004.
Lots of links today! If I had a blender like that, I could make some killer daiquiris.
ReplyDeleteI remember when emailing was a new thing. I thought it was amazing and the best thing. Although I miss getting personal letters in the mail, getting emails or comments is just pretty good too. Amazing how far we have come. This morning I chatted with Toby in KZ and added Bo to the conversation - and chatting is really "old hat" now.
Cool to see SN1 making the news. I've heard good things about the "active association" concept. The USAF has definitely been ahead of the rest of DoD when it comes to integrating the Reserve and Guard forces with the Active force. It's to the point where there are Guardsmen "embedded" at Langley flying the F-22 with the 27th FS.
ReplyDeleteCool website about the police cars...that picture of the drug dealer Mustang reminded me of one the local Sheriff's Dept here got. A Chevy Silverado 2500 with a leather interior and flat screen TV and DVD player in the back. They use it to haul their dive boat.
That's pretty cool about your son in the paper!!
ReplyDeleteWe just got back from vacation yesterday. We went to San Antonio and Corpus Christi. While in CC, we went to the USS Lexington air craft carrier that is there for you to tour. Have you been there in all your travels? We thought it was pretty darn cool. I didn't get to see as much as I had wanted to (so many of those steep stairways! Not easy when carrying a 20 month old and having a horrible sunburn that he was clutching his fingernails into), but did check out the hanger deck, flight deck and the bridge. Was very neat.
Jennye, I hav always wanted to tour the Lexington!
ReplyDeleteLou sez: Lots of links today!
ReplyDeleteThat's because of the major suckage of Sunday nite TeeVee, which immediately called to mind the ol' cliché about "85 channels and nothing on..." It was SO bad I turned the damned thing off and amused myself on the 'net, which ain't all that hard to do. Most of yesterday's post was created Sunday night.
Lou, II: I remember when emailing was a new thing.
I, too, remember when e-mail was new. My very first e-mail account was mainframe based (you had to open a "terminal session" on your PC to access the mainframe and your mail) and folks who actually HAD e-mail were few and far between back around '85 or '86...usually managers. I know I had to go through several levels of approval to get my e-mail account...it was a mini-status symbol. That was in industry; I never had e-mail while in the USAF. It didn't exist.
Mike and Jenny: Yeah, I was impressed when Buck sent that link, too.
Jenny: Never been on the Lex...and although I've been BY Corpus Christi on my way to and from Brownsville, I've never actually taken the off-ramp. Gotta put the Lex on my "to-do" list!
Did all that Texas rain dampen your vacation, Jenny? I'm tending to think not, since you indicated you had a bad sunburn...
It did rain nearly every day. In fact, the only day it didn't rain was the day we went on the Lex (got some plane pron for ya there). At Sea World, it rained after we saw all the shows and were fixing to get on the rides (therefore rode no rides, as it rained for 2 hours before we gave up and went back to the KOA). Hubby had to hook up the camper in the rain both in SA and at the beach. Never seen so much rain! LOL! But it did stop long enough to play in the waves (rough as they were) and get a burn.
ReplyDeleteJenny said: Hubby had to hook up the camper in the rain both in SA and at the beach.
ReplyDeleteBeen there! Got a few (wet) tee shirts, too! All in all, it ain't much fun...and the very act of plugging in the electrics during a rain storm always made me nervous as a cat.
Too bad about the rain, Jenny. But it sounds like all y'all made the best of it!