The Wood Shed

I can’t help it if you were expecting something else!  Update on the Guide here.

With a captive crowd in a packed house… ok, Senate.  Tonight’s jester host is Al Franken – live from DC it’s Saturday Night!  Can’t you see it?  It would be a classic.  Only problem is who will play Al Franken playing Al Franken?

And the Clown announces the Jester:

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a statement to “congratulate Senator-elect Al Franken, the next senator from the state of Minnesota”.

He added: “The people of Minnesota will now finally get the brilliant and hardworking new senator they elected in November and the full representation they deserve.”

Was Harry slamming the people of Minnesota? Hard to tell.

Many of you are already familiar with Steeljaw Scribe and his Flightdeck Friday series of historical reviews.  He also posts over at the USNI blog and has just kicked off a follow-on to his Coral Sea & Midway series titled The Solomon Islands Campaign.  The prelude to this new series is up both at USNI and SJS and you can follow along at either – posts will occur on a weekly basis.  (If you haven’t read the Midway series I highly recommend you do so – it’s time well spent.)

For the Solomons project, SJS has pulled together quite a team of bloggers and broken down the campaign into more manageable segments.  These smaller parts will become the weekly posts submitted by the various authors and compiled by SJS.  I’m honored to be included in this group – my assignment is The Battle of the Eastern Solomons which encompasses the timeframe of 23-25 August, 1942 and is scheduled to post mid August.

Stay tuned!

Iraq is getting back in the oil and gas contract business after having been distracted for the last few years.  The oil ministry recently held a televised auction for 20-year contracts on some of their fields.

The bidders will not be paid for anything up to the minimum production level – but they say how much they want to be paid for each barrel produced above the minimum, and also predict how much oil they will be able to produce.

From that, the auctioneers pick a winning bidder.

However, there is another twist. In a red envelope, the auctioneers have the maximum amount that the oil ministry is prepared to pay.

So far, those amounts have been significantly less than the oil companies are asking for, so the winning bidders have been asked to cut their prices.

Sounds like a crazy game to me: if you win you lose.

A big number no matter what mode of transportation you use but 1000 miles in a bark canoe?  Erik Simula set out April 22 2009 from Grand Portage State Park on a journey of many historic “trails”, some passages lost to another day and time when long distance travel by canoe was the norm.  He’s already knocked out about 700 miles and is in the home stretch – if you can possibly call facing 46 more portages (carry all your gear including the boat from one body of water to the next) a downhill run.

Arrowhead Journey

In a fresh diplomatic move, Britain is expelling two Iranian diplomats in response to Tehran’s decision to order two UK diplomats to leave Iran following allegations UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called “absolutely without foundation”.

There we go, all better now.

Says a lot about the incumbent when he declares victory and the streets erupt in violence.

Got back to work on the Guide this evening.  Check the page for the update.

I was watching CMT the other morning with a cup of coffee and my cereal hoping to catch a Carrie Underwood video when some guy named Billy Currington started singing “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.” Snappy, I thought. Then I noticed the beer was Kalik, the beaches very familiar, and the street scenes were undoubtedly New Plymouth on Green Turtle Cay, Abacos. I didn’t get my down time in the islands this year, economy of commissioned equipment sales and all so I thought I’d at least share this find. The lyrics don’t fit (Ohio?) but who cares. If you know Green Turtle and you’re trying to recognize the bar, rumor has it the bar scenes were shot across the way on Treasure. I think the chorus is my new motto.  Link to the video below.  Enjoy!

People are Crazy

I made the mistake of turning on the TV while eating breakfast this morning. Should have known better. In addition to our wonderfully entertaining locals I was greeted by:

North Korea to launch ICBM toward Hawaii. The anchor announced this news with all the excitement and concern of a routine traffic and weather report. No big deal.

PETA protests President Obama’s fly swatting. Are you kidding me? A fly has rights?

“We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals,” PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. “We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals.”

Excuse me but a fly is an insect. Bug. Pest.

What really hacks me is I’m paying monthly for the privilege of watching material like this. Our kids are screwed.

Shuttle Endeavour was due to launch early this morning but engineers couldn’t fix a liquid hydrogen leak.

Despite troubleshooting efforts, engineers were unable to achieve a decrease in the liquid hydrogen leak.

Color me crazy but if I were set to ride a rocket built by low-bid contracts I would want the leak fixed not just decreased to some acceptable level!  The engineers attempted to stem the flow of liquid hydrogen from the vent using console commands but apparently the valve wasn’t in the mood to respond to computer code and the leak persisted.

But the leak was way out of spec again, and so we were just not comfortable pressing on.

Commander, you need to go talk to the techs and tell them that any leak is out of spec! They need to keep the fire where it belongs.

From NASA and BBC.