From the Firearms Policy Coalition. A cute animation of the misstatements by certain politicians and broadcasters. LOL
I just had to embed this. Enjoy!
Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour
I would have posted about Veterans Day earlier but – you know – the thing. Let’s Go Brandon.
Seriously, Damsel and I grocery shop on Thursdays and that sort of thing has to take precedence.
We do honor to our Vets today for their service to the country and her citizens. We cannot thank them enough for their sacrifices. We also thank their friends, families and loved ones for supporting them as they go off to wherever and whatever. We support and pray for the bereaved when their service person does not return
I can say that I am proud that I am a veteran of the US NAVAL RESERVE and did my three years of active duty in Millington, TN at the Naval Aviation Electronics School and after school served as an Aviation Electronics Tech at the US Naval Missile Center at Point Mugu, CA. I was a line troubleshooter, shop repair tech and (the best part) an aircrew member flying on those rickety old air assets we had in support of the USNMC’s mission. This was all it the same time the conflict was escalating in Vietnam. Fortunately, I mustered out of active duty prior to being shipped over to that mess.
All in all, My Naval service was more of an adventure than a chore. But, I accept that many of the missions over the Pacific Missile Range were a bit risky, given the age of the equipment (P2V Neptune Patrol Aircraft, H34 Helicopters with Wright Cyclone Radial Engines, R4D a.k.a. DC-4 Transports, etc.). Hours of boredom punctuated with moments of sheer terror.
The last thing I will say about Veterans is that I, both brothers, our Dad and one Grandfather and Damsel’s Dad were all Navy men. According to my Ancestry Family Tree, our lineage shows many Veterans having fought in wars, e.g. WW1, The Spanish American War, Indian Wars, The Civil War (both sides) and the Revolutionary War.
Between Veterans Day and Memorial Day, we celebrate and honor those that served in the past, those presently serving and those who will serve in the future.
WordPress and PHP Upgrade Complete
Today, we upgraded both WordPress on the blogsite and the Version of PHP on the server side. It turned out to be a several-step process with two intermediate WP upgrades in addition to the final WP update. We should be good for a while now that everything is copasetic with the Server configuration.
Image – An Arizona Cardinal is easily spotted hiding among the thinning leaves of our backyard mesquite tree. Click on the image to enlarge.
As you can see, the WP stock default theme is being used in lieu of our custom theme from before the change. This will be the theme until I can find a replacement theme that I can customize to resemble the previous theme. This may take some time since most of the WP themes I have been looking at are unsuitable for our familiar two column arrangement.
Thanks for your patience while we go about getting things customized. I still have our Food Blog site to upgrade, so I better get to that.
A Classic 1955 Packard Clipper
Damsel took this photo of this classic 1955 Packard Clipper a little over a week ago. Neither of us remember seeing this car at any of the car shows or rallies that we have attended recently. The car appears to have the original paint job and when you click on the image to enlarge you may see some pitting on the hood (or maybe dead insects, I can’t tell). Besides that, the car looked very nice as the owners drove by along Wickenburg Way near the Maverik Gas station. You may notice our inflated local gas prices in the background which have gone up another $0.20 or so per gallon in the last week. Let’s Go Brandon!
Website Upgrade News
As I stated before, we have started the migration to the upgraded PHP and WordPress packages on our personal family site, VernaBob.com. The site is now running the new stuff and, as I feared, our old custom theme we used has some deprecated code and is incompatible with the new platform. As a result, I am using a stock WordPress theme and it will be that way until I can find the time to customize it. Some of the convenient features I used for posting are no longer available and I have to do a lot of the repetitive functions by hand rather than clicking a button.
So, I will be upgrading this website in the next few days and you can expect to see some major differences in the way the blog appears. I would appreciate any feedback you may have as to what you’re seeing and if anything is “broke.” I will try and get a “Stars and Stripes” theme going over the next few weeks, as time permits. Meanwhile, we will be functional with the new PHP and WordPress packages. This will be the last post under the old PHP and WordPress.
Cloudless Arizona Skies
The skies are a little cloudy today, although over the weekend and a couple of days before that, there were no visible clouds over Arizona and much of the Southwest. I captured the GOES East image above last Thursday and cropped/resized it for this post.
Observing the cloud free image reveals some interesting things that can be seen from the satellite. You may have to click on the image to enlarge it to be able to see what I’m going to mention below.
First, in the upper left corner of the image, snow on the Sierra Nevada mountains is visible next to the Owens Valley in California. To the South, you can see the Salton Sea located in Riverside and Imperial Counties. Southeast of the Salton Sea across the Arizona/Mexico border in Sonora is a darker area which is Pinacate Peaks volcanic area just north of the Gulf of California, the north shores of which is at the bottom of the image.
Now, going north along the CA/AZ border (the Colorado River), you eventually come to Lake Mohave on the NV/AZ border. Then, continue up to Lake Mead where the river turns to the east along the border. Lake Mead shows as a couple of blue blobs but it is actually one body of water partially obscured by the overlaid graphic representing the border.
The dark area about one third of the way across Arizona’s north border is the Kaibab National Forest which extends southward to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon which can be seen between Kaibab Plateau and the forests of the South Rim below the Canyon.
The dark areas extending south and east below the Grand Canyon are the forested areas of Arizona. The north boundaries of these forests form a semi circular feature which is the Mogollon Rim (say “muggy-yon”). This forms the boundary between the forests and colorful high desert areas of Arizona. We can personally tell you that the scenery up on the Rim is extremely nice.
Moving over into New Mexico, we have a couple of notable features. The white spot in lower central NM is White Sands National Park. Also visible is the Rio Grande River which can be seen flowing from the west Texas town of El Paso up through Albuquerque and although not seen in this image, into southern Colorado.
I like it when the clouds part and I can see all these features and more.
ISP Software Upgrade Progress: I have started migrating our personal family blog to the new software. Progress is impeded by daily life events – dogs – family – home chores – blogging – and the like. I should have a report about the Cap’n Bob site soon.
A Classic 1957 Chevy Step Side Pickup
Damsel snapped this photo of a classic ’57 Chev step side that we spotted in the Post Office parking lot yesterday. This nice old truck has seen a lot of TLC since it was very bright and shiny, almost like new. It was parked next to another 1960’s vintage Chevy pickup. I don’t recall seeing either of these at the Classic Fly-In and Car Show we attended a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps they were just passing through. The 60’s truck had Oregon plates so maybe the owners are snowbirds or something. Click on the image to enlarge.
CB&D Announcement
In other matters, we need to upgrade our WordPress to a later version in order to be compatible with the newer PHP software on our ISP. Pursuant to that, you might tune in and see a stock format template rather than our custom Stars and Stripes template, so be prepared for that until we can regroup and get the template compatible with the new WordPress we’re going to install.
2021 Wickenburg Fly-In and Car Show
The Damsel and I deliberately got up at the crack of dawn this morning to attend the 26th Annual Fly-In and Classic Car Show held at our local airport. This should have been the 27th Annual show except that last year’s event was canceled due to the pandemic DEM Panic.
The show was well attended by quantities of classic cars and fly-in aircraft plus the folks driving in. There have been bigger shows in the past, but this one was pretty good. Nobody was wearing the face diapers mandated by some not-so-free places so it seemed like the past shows we have attended.
The images above are (1) a 1975 Bellanca Citabria and (2) a 1958 Chevrolet Apache Pickup Truck. These were two of many aircraft and cars on display and my favorites of the show, although it was hard to pick just these two since there were so many cool displays. The Citabria, formerly manufactured by Champion Aircraft Corp., is among my favorites since I learned to do aerobatics and got my flight instructor rating in a Champ Citabria (airbatic spelled backwards). The Chevy just looked clean and had a cool paint job. Click on either image to enlarge.