Sunday, August 25, 2013

Tab Clearing; Ranting Edition

AG Holder may choose Leslie Caldwell to head the DoJ's criminal division. Caldwell has a track record of aggressively going after financial crimes.

Caldwell may do great, but my instinct is to throw the Bullshit Flag on this one. She, or someone like her, should have been on the job years ago. But no, Obama and Holder putzed around for over five years. Even Chimpy moved faster on such things, a lot faster. By the time the DoJ gets around to bringing charges, statutes of limitations may have run out.

Which, for all we know, might have been what Obama, Holder, and the outgoing head of the criminal division had in mind from the start.

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It's now illegal to feed homeless people in Raleigh, NC. Apparently, the City Council equates homeless people with stray dogs. It's probably also illegal for them to sleep under bridges.

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Drivers, if you'll look on the left side of the steering column of your cars and huge-ass SUVs, you'll see a little lever sticking out. That lever is called a "turn signal". If you intend to make a turn to the left, or change lanes to the left, push the lever down. If you are going to the right, lift it up.

It is the sign of a rude and inconsiderate asswipe of a driver to bang out a turn and lot use the turn signal to warn other vehicles, especially those traveling in the other direction, that one is going to turn.

And when you are done with a lane change, it's polite to move the turn signal lever to the center. That way, other drivers aren't wondering when you will turn and speculating on how somebody as oblivious as you ever got a license to drive.

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Say you are flying into an uncontrolled field. You listen in on Unicom and everyone else is announcing that they're on a right downwind or a right base for runway 32. It is a real sign of incompetent airmanship to enter the traffic pattern on a left downwind. Maybe you should have looked at the frigging sectional chart, where it says "RP32" and has for many years.

Airports don't adopt right-hand traffic patterns. They do it generally because they are trying to keep peace with their neighbors. At that particular field, a right pattern for 32 has airplanes flying over fields, which a left-hand pattern has them flying over the town.

Everybody else could either read the chart and see that a right-hand pattern was in use, or at lest listen in on the radio and deduce that, but no, not one clueless clown yesterday. And because Bozo the Pilto just barged in wherever he felt like, the flow of traffic was nicely disrupted. (And it didn't help matters any that Bozo didn't try to clear the runway at a busy airport with any dispatch, no, he just had to roll down sedately to the next intersection.)

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Can we have a law that holds that anyone who rolls down a residential street with the bass of their sound system turned up to "liquefy" can be fired upon by the residents?

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Say there is a charity that accepts donations for a thrift shop. That doesn't mean that they accept garbage. You've got clothes that are filthy and probably not useable for shop rags? You've got books that are wet? You have wooden furniture that's been sitting outside and is now all warped and swollen? You have mugs or dishes that are chipped and cracked? Frying pans with a heavy layer of burned-in grease?

Throw that shit out. Or, if your local laws permit, pile it in your back yard and burn it. Please be somewhat thoughtful and don't use charities as your personal dumpsters.

5 comments:

  1. How can NC's 1% feel successful if the bottom few percent isn't actually and really dying?

    Ignoring Unicom and the existing traffic is something I don't think I would have done, but I should share the embarrassing story of My Last Flight...

    My day job and weekend weather kept me from flying regularly, and I started to get stale. I realized it when "entering the pattern" at Harriman and West, North Adams, Massachusetts. I had been there before, and remembered the mountainside of Mt. Graylock being quite prominent in the view out the right side of the aircraft.

    I took a quick look at the chart to calculate pattern altitude. Field elevation plus 800, I thought. And my first mistake was picking the wrong number off the chart. I don't even know what number I picked, but I was hundreds of feet higher than I should have been.

    My second mistake was in not recognizing how badly I was off.

    See, the mountain is sloped. And I was able to put it the right distance off my right wing. With the field in view out the left side.

    My third mistake was in continuing the approach after it became obvious my base and final had to be rather dramatic.

    I landed just fine, after slipping down hundreds of feet and blasting into the pattern from above. As far as I could tell, I was alone in the pattern anyway, and the radio was silent.

    But I got some looks from the guys hanging out there.

    I decided to not fly again until I knew I had enough time and money to keep it up. And so it went away forever.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ..... and another thing about that little lever - - It ain't a "right-of-way" guarantor. You can't just put the signal on, then turn across two lanes of traffic.
    Look at the gas gauge. Is it above "E" ?? Then go straight ahead and work out getting back to where you wanted to turn, safely.

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  3. A turn signal ? In CT?

    My 5 years in CT, using a turn signal on the freeway guaranteed some prick would move in for the block.

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  4. Shoot, you might be able to claim self defense when shooting at Mr. Sooper Bass. "I thought he was shooting at me."

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  5. Dave, local rules obviously apply. Turn signals are effectively forbidden on highways in eastern MA for the same reason.

    Bearsence, also, the "low fuel" light needs to be lit.

    Nangleator, I've been in that airport once. It's not one that I'd want to do at night or in LIFR conditions.

    ReplyDelete

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