Marketing is a huge part of any business.  You want your business or product to stand out, and nobody ever claims they are 2nd to anyone else.  When you see certain marketing buzz words, here is what they really mean.

NEW – Different color from previous design.

ALL NEW – Parts are not interchangeable with previous design.

EXCLUSIVE – Imported product.

UNMATCHED – Almost as good as the competition.

FOOLPROOF OPERATION – No provision for adjustments.

ADVANCED DESIGN – The advertising agency doesn’t understand it.

IT’S HERE AT LAST – Rush job. Nobody knew it was coming.

FIELD TESTED – Manufacturer lacks test equipment.

HIGH ACCURACY – Unit on which all parts fit.

FUTURISTIC – No other reason why it looks the way it does.

REDESIGNED – Previous flaws fixed – we hope.

DIRECT SALES ONLY – Factory had a big argument with distributor.

YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT – We finally got one to work.

BREAKTHROUGH – We finally figured out a use for it.

MAINTENANCE FREE – Impossible to fix.

MEETS ALL STANDARDS – Ours, not yours.

SOLID-STATE – Heavy as hell.

HIGH RELIABILITY – We made it work long enough to ship it.

NON-REFUNDABLE – We couldn’t make it work long enough to ship it.

We have squirrels all over the place, and I mean everywhere.  They are actually a lot of fun to watch.  This one lives around the office.  He posed here for me.

Say Cheese

 Another squirrel that lives around here got into a spat with this one.  I never knew that squirrels could make such a horrible squeaky sound, but the two of screeching at each other was quite the strain on the ears!

Saw this ad on a billboard close to the office and just cracked up.  You would swear Jack has a dirty mind, but he is sure trying to look innocent!

What, me?

Had the first really good thunderstorm of the year tonight.  Just a sprinkle of rain, but lots and lots of lightning.  The cloud that was hanging over downtown was producing more than 2 lightning flashes per second for a long time.  Mostly in the clouds, but there were some good visible bolts. 

I grabbed the camera and tripod and quickly discovered that capturing a lightning shot was not very easy.  They don’t last long at all and by the time you see it and think “Oh, there’s lightning” and push the button, it’s done.  But, I did manage to get a couple.  Click on them to embiggen.

Clouds to the Southwest

Southeast, part of a ground shot

Flash in the clouds

Nice shot, but behind the tree

I moved across the street and waited.  Keeping in mind that the clouds were lit up multiple times per second, I managed to get these that are pretty cool.

Ground shot

Curling under the cloud

Now in case you are wondering, I used the Nikon D1 with the 17-35 mm lens.  The last 2 pictures are 1/10 second, f 2.8 at ISO 800.  I also ran all of these through Lightroom because in low light and high ISO speeds, the camera tends to be a little grainy.  I am able to remove the majority of the grainy look and still maintain the rest of the picture quality.

A-10 Thunderbolt

Yeah, it’s another aircraft post.  This one is the A-10 Thunderbolt.  It’s nickname is the Warthog.  I like Warthog better than Thunderbolt.  This is one of the few aircraft that was designed around a gun.  This gun, in fact. 

Gatling Gun

 Lest you think this gun doesn’t look all that big, here it is sitting next to a VW bug.

Not a small gun

A gun that size must shoot an incredibly large bullet, right?  Yes indeed!  This bad boy fires 30mm armor piercing shells.  Lots of them too, around 4200 per minute.  That’s 70 per second!  For comparison’s sake, here’s what a variety of “popular” rounds look like.  Compare your .308 Winchester to one the Warthog uses…it’s the one on the right.

Shell comparison

The whole point of this gun and plane combination is to kill tanks and other armored vehicles.  These planes do that with ease, and can take a horrific amount of damage and still fly.  We have a bunch of these that are always flying around Boise. 

Warthog Air

Personally, I like to think they designed the aircraft and thought they were done…then someone said “Oops, we forgot the engines!…No place else but right here!”  Not really, they are where they are for a reason, but it’s still fun to think and laugh about.

From the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, one of the recurring characters that Johnny would do was Carnac the Magnificent.  Ed McMahon would hand over sealed envelopes that had questions in them.  Carnac would reveal the answer, then open the envelope and read the question.  Here’s a few.

Answer:  Ben Gay

Question:  Why didn’t Mrs. Franklin have any kids?

Answer:  Three Dog Night

Question:  What’s a bad night for a tree?

Answer:  Sitting Bull

Question:  Describe talk shows.

Answer:  Sis Boom Bah

Question:  Describe the sound made when a sheep explodes.

Answer:  Blood sugar

Question:  What should a vampire cut down on when he’s on a diet?

And finally, this skit illustrates something we should do to every last person running for public office.

Shamelessly stolen from Denny.

Those who know me know that I love aircraft, particularly old aircraft.  Big piston radial engines turning big propellers…there just is no substitute for that sound.

There are not a lot of the old airplanes around any more, particularly ones that were built for war.  One of my favorites is the B-17 Flying Fortress. 

Liberty Belle Flying

Four 1200 horsepower engines, 104 foot wingspan, about 75 feet long, these planes could only carry 8,000 pounds of bombload for a short mission.  Cut that in half for longer ones. 

On June 13, the B-17 Liberty Belle caught fire shortly after takeoff and the pilot made a forced landing in a field.  All 7 people on board were uninjured, but fire destroyed the plane.

Liberty Belle Crash

This video is not the Liberty Belle, but captures the B-17 (as well as a B-25 Mitchell) in awesome footage over beautiful landscape. 

First of all, the phone has a camera in it, for still pictures and video.  Second, there is light that can be turned on for video use (as well as a flash for the camera, and a plain old flashlight). 

My youngest child was on the bed chucking a small toy off the end for the little dog to fetch.  (There is a cedar chest at the end of the bed, so that’s how the dog is able to get back up.)  I turned on the video camera, used the light…and the cute little doggie’s eyes turned demonic!

These places always have a special on office chairs.  In fact here’s one that I saw the other night.

Mid-Back Chair

But…if you want something more…

Darn Good Mid-Back Chair

You can have a Darn Good one!

We went out for supper tonight.  While we were waiting for the food to arrive, I took out 2 of each color of these little packets and put them on the table.  Then I told my 11 year old that we were going to play the memory game.  She had to pick out each pair.

Pick the pairs

But she figured it out, picked out the 5 pairs and beat me.  Kid has a better memory than her dad!