Endeavour's final launch, approx. 9 am, May 16, 2011

Greetings from Florida!

 

From Vero Beach, one can see the KSC launches by along many north-south roads, it so happens. Attached are two photos (1 and 2) I took along a road that runs parallel to US 1. The third (3) was taken as I cruised along US 1, unencumbered by traffic, close to the corner of US 1 and Aviation Blvd., Vero Beach, Florida (you can make out the traffic lights hanging across the road in the photo). Look that up on a map site and you'll see able to see exactly where the pictures were taken from.

 

Excuse the quality, these were taken with a low-res cell phone camera.

 

I have to admit, as many of these launches as I've seen, I will be missing the shuttles!

 

Please share if you wish.

 

Jon Osterholm

http://ringhorne.com/

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A riff on Memorial Day

Memorial Day is intended to be a day to remember the ultimate sacrifices by our military, to remember those who accepted death while battling much larger matters than power bills, quirky cell phones or cholesterol. It did not start out as simply as you might believe.
The holiday began from a variety of local remembrances during the three years just after the American Civil War. The holiday was initially known as Decoration Day, because people decorated the graves of soldiers (with flowers, flags and other things, perhaps), as we traditionally still do today. The holiday we celebrate is rooted in a memorial of war dead from both sides of the Civil War, first held in 1868. According to the site USMemorialDay.org, the North had their day in May. The South, not wanting to recognize their lost soldiers on the same day that the Union recognized them, had separate days of remembrance. The holiday didn't begin to take the form we know today until after the ending of another massive and deadly conflict.
It was after World War I that Memorial Day became a holiday for remembering all of our fallen military men and women, not just those from the Civil War; gradually, all the states accepted the same holiday for that purpose. You might be surprised to learn, unless your ancestors were in the War Between the States, that there is still a Confederate Memorial Day remembrance, on differing days, in Southern states. Perhaps as surprising, Memorial Day did not become an official federal holiday (that is, truly national, recognized by Congress, all that) until 1971.

On Memorial Day, the sacrifice is the reason. Memorial Day is not for cheering for war and conflict. There is no holiday to celebrate conflict. It is what it is named: a memorial day. It exists to remember those who did not survive their service, in war or in other military actions.
Give gratitude, and an earnest toast, to those who have been lost trying to keep your world safe for your leisure, by, paradoxically, keeping watch, taking generally thankless risks, and handling the madness of war.
God Bless America: land of the free because of the brave.
- Jon O

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Oh no! It's 'the infamous Pan Am logo' coming back to terrorize us once more!

A writer for the Manchester, NH, paper, the Union-Leader, the largest paper in the Granite State, wrote an article informing people about a TV show under development. The series will present a fictional, 1960s version of the once-great air carrier, Pan Am.

The journalist made a word gaffe that earnest writers have nightmares about. Upon seeing it, I have to assume she guessed the word emphasized its root in a good way. Unfortunately, it emphasizes the OPPOSITE of what she intended.

Some often confused words are pretty dangerous to one's goal to make sense when writing, because their meanings are -- go figure -- opposites. The suspect article held just such a case:

Pan Am will take flight again on TV show

..."The show may help expose some of the work still being done at Pan Am Brands here in New Hampshire, where the airline's legacy continues, according to Beck.

Nostalgic items such as carry-on bags, luggage totes, T-shirts and watches all with the infamous Pan Am logo are available at the company's online store. Accessories such as cuff links, wallets, T-shirts and model airplanes are also for sale...."

I had no idea that Pan Am's logo, of all things Pan Am, was "infamous" (deserving of or causing an evil reputation; shamefully malign; detestable). While I am aware of the zodiac killer, and the terrible bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, I was unaware of any Pan Am logo muggings or other crimes.

 

A least favorite word confusion, for me, is discreet (respecting privacy or maintaining silence about something) versus discrete (apart or detached from others; separate; distinct). They don't have the same meaning. It would be more than a trip-up to use one for the other when meaning the opposite of the intended definition in that case. (That's called a discreet excuse; clever, huh?) However, rules is rules.


Note: I discovered the article via Aviation Business (link is to the story on that site, not the newspaper site). 

-- Jon


(Written Mar 4, 2011, posted in May.)

John Leahy: from Piper to the Airbus ex-seller-ator

I categorize this one under "Hmmm, I didn't know that." Piper has a connection to a prime player in the Boeing-Airbus competition that I generally pay attention to. In short, the guy who often has been taking Boeing's lunch for a decade now is an American who worked for Piper decades ago.


The man who has very much credit -- or blame -- for turning Europe's part-subsidized manufacturer, Airbus, into the international sales leader in air carriers was had been the head of marketing for Piper Aircraft, prior to 1985, when he joined EADS/Airbus as a saleman. I do not know what his record with Piper was, but it is none too shabby at Airbus. 


(Emphasis in the story clippings are mine. Link to the whole article is at bottom.)


Special Report: The man who sold the sky

(from Reuters / By Tim Hepher / Editing by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith)


... John Leahy, 60, is one of the most prolific salesmen in industrial history -- a relentless chaser who with irreverent wit and the discipline of a politician has amassed a backlog of plane orders worth half a trillion dollars. More than anyone, the American is responsible for lifting Europe's Airbus to the number one slot in global sales.



... For the past four years, Leahy and other current and former executives have been under investigation over insider trading allegations concerning delays to the A380, a process which could drag on for years. Leahy and his colleagues all deny any illegal behavior.

Under Leahy, Airbus has outsold Boeing in eight of the last 10 years, and in 2010 bagged 52 percent of the global market. The 40-year-old company last month sold its 10,000th plane -- almost 9,000 of them on Leahy's watch.


... Leahy studied communications and philosophy at the Jesuit-founded Fordham University in New York and took up flying while studying for an MBA at Syracuse University. A private man for someone bathed in industry attention, Leahy relaxes when telling stories about seat-of-the-pants landings in small aircraft.
Pushing his seat back he mimics how the engine note rises if you nod off at the controls and how he would "catch" -- he gestures a sudden move to grab hold of a control column -- the freight plane he used to fly, before the captain woke up and filled the cockpit with insults.


After university and a stint in real estate he became head of marketing at Pennsylvania-based Piper Aircraft before joining the U.S. arm of Airbus as a salesman. It was 1985 and the European company's global market share was about 13 percent. Can Airbus do what it does without Leahy? The answer may be changing as Airbus matures into the leading jetliner producer ahead of Boeing, but many say deals still rely on his charisma, arm-twisting and sometimes grouchy style of negotiation. 


"He has extraordinary imagination," says EADS's Gallois, who has made sales trips with Leahy. "He is like a pianist who touches the keys with extraordinary agility."



Entire Reuters article: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/08/us-airbus-leahy-idUSTRE7171ME20110208?pageNumber=1

- Jon O.
(Note: I drafted this post earlier, posted it in May 2011.)

A first work, reworked again | Arena theater takes John Grisham's 1st novel to stage

A Washington DC theater brings first Grisham novel to the stage

(AP, via seattlepi.com)  -- A novel that once drew a pile of rejection letters from major publishers and was slow to sell when it was finally printed will have another life onstage.

"A Time to Kill," John Grisham's first novel, went on to sell more than 15 million copies after the success of his second book, "The Firm." [A Time to Kill] was made into a movie in 1996. 

More ...

---

Grisham, not a lazy man, has admitted to having been a lazy lawyer: he would sit in the courtroom and work on novel drafts on legal pads during sessions.

As most successes who hit it big early in a particular career, some see Grisham as an overnight success. But you'll find that most "overnight successes" take a long time to achieve that success. If the work is there, then the work may take on a power of its own, much out of the control of the artist. Such is the case with Grisham's first novel.

I recall from the 1990s that, early on, while he was working on his writing, he was a regular reader of Writer's Digest, a magazine that provides craft, industry and motivational information for active writers of many kinds.

- Jon O.

Wandered into work and met a snake today

As I was walking into work this morning, in the turnstile at the security entrance, I saw a thick, generally black, young snake (about 18-24 inches long). That surprised me, as it was actually by the turnstiles as I made it into the short breezeway into the Piper Aircraft campus.

It may have been the harmless and endangered Eastern Indigo Snake (link). However, its body was very thick, as I mentioned, and the tail seemed far more abrupt than photos of the Indigo suggest. So, I am not fully convinced yet. Since it was thick-bodied, and that makes me think of rattlers and cottonmouths (though I felt sure it was not one of those two species) I tended toward caution with it. I didn't want to be an idiot and pick it up to move it to some shrubs.

The company guard stepped out as I got his attention. After pointing it out I asked him if he had something to move it with. I didn't want the creature to wander onto the campus, after all -- not really a good place for a snake, all concrete and tar, really. Also, I was pretty sure some folks might have a much bigger issue with confronting a snake than I did. The guard gave me a broom to brush him out of the gateway. It made its way into the shrubs out front, the rule that they are more frightened of us than we need to be of them proving true yet again.

A coworker sent me this link, below, to look up Florida snake varieties (which I used to find the Indigo page link above). He found the site handy when building his house in Sebastian, he said. He came across many different types of snakes. I found images of the Indigo, and while it could be one, that would depend on what variations in body shape there are for the different age groups of the species.

Online Guide to Florida Snakes

If I figure out, or someone tells me, exactly what it was, I'll be following up on it.

- Jon O