Friday Night flight over NYC at dawn. Learning as I go. its amazing how much the authentic flight manual really makes a difference. Flap positions, take off speeds , engine settings...couldnt even takeoff without that information now flying all over the world. 

TRUMP TACO's an easy explanation.

 

Over the last week or so the term #TrumpTaco or #Taco has come across my timelife and on TV. What follows is my explanation of exactly what a Taco is. 

        Media defines it as Trump Always Chickens Out....TACO. He threatens countries with tariffs but when it comes to enforcement...he delays or cancels. The definition does make logical sense. We know he is perceived as a bully and when confronted. Crumbles.

My explanation goes on a slightly different path. Here it is. On Monday Trump makes headlines threatening Whitemanistan with 75% tariffs on widgets. As we have seen the markets are incredibly sensitive to his comments like this. The news media reports it and the the stock market slumps. On Tuesday Trump and his "buddies(Flunkies and congressmen) buy on the dip...depending on the depth of the dip it could extend to wed or even into Thursday.  Untold millions of dollars. On Friday, Trump announces a "deal" with Whitemanistan for a much smaller tariff or cancel the tariff all together. Funny thing is the media in Whitemanistan report of no such deal or even negotiations. (That's the problem he has with Canada. The media is so close we can hear for ourselves about what happened and since we have no basis to disbelieve them and no basis to believe ANYTHING trump says) The market soars and they dump their shares for a large profit. The new tax cuts for the wealthy guarantee they get to keep their profits. 

We are being played. Art of the Steal. 

Fun times on the FinComm.

 Fun times,

   Town meeting approaches and we as a town are facing a dilemma. Recently our Select Board (who were well within their rights) hired a new town administrator with a substantial increase in pay over the previous administrator and mayors of several surrounding much larger towns. Se ethe articles in https://dartmouth.theweektoday.com/  for background information. The following are my thoughts and do not express the thoughts of the Finance Committee or its members in any way. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have resigned my position as a result of the situation and another that is brewing) 

 The Finance committee spent months over the winter and spring meeting with and reviewing the budgets of the different town depts. We asked questions of the the dept heads about capital needs and present budgets conditions and we felt as a group a 3% raise for employees was do-able given out town budget and financial constraints. we spent meetings discussing the effects of people getting 4% while their employees get 3. After the meetings ,discussions and arguing (good naturedly) we agreed on a preliminary budget  to submit to the Select Board. we received back a budget with an abnormal increase in one line item. Town Administrator. The budget has been increased to 225,000 over the 200,000 we had agreed on.

       Dartmouth is encumbered by a process called Proposition 2 1/2 . Google for more information. 

With the town manager getting a 25,000 raise or more (depending on who you talk to) how do you tell the other employees in town who do an excellent job that they might get 25 HUNDRED dollars if they are fortunate. 

Another fact that draws into question the contract is the fact the mayors of surrounding towns which have a much larger population have substantially LOWER salaries. New Bedford for example pays its mayor 167,000 (almost 60,000 dollars less.) and Fall River 118,000 and its Town Administrator 145,000. New Bedford's annual budget is roughly 6 times Dartmouth's budget . Shouldn't those figures be turned around?

about time for an upgrade.

          It finally happened. the yoke and quadrant system ( flight simulation hardware) finally went on sale. I use fs9 (flight sim 2004) to fly all over the world without ever leaving my office. I flew a bunch of planes (737, little Cessna's etc...) and finally chose a Boeing B-50 . the RB-50F to be exact seen below flying over the lush green fields of Ireland. This plane had a long and varied history in the USAAF starting out as a replacement to the B-29 with larger engines , a larger tail and many advancements. It was in fact a stop -gap between world war 2 and the age of Jets. several were used in a variety of roles. Weather detection, photography and even refueling tankers for the jets that replaced them. Ive added several items that were not available to the pilots of that era. Flight computer navigation, a Heads up display, ground proximity warning system, GPS, modern autopilot and landing system. Every time I fly I learn something new about this plane. 

          Im not a "gamer" with an expensive setup and the newest "cutting edge " hardware. I downloaded the game for the folks at Internet Archive for free. Bought a 34 dollar joystick. (best 34 dollar joystick you can imagine ( the Logitech pro something) on Amazon. scoured Flightsim.com and Simviation for planes and gauges, scenery, tips and tricks , went on Youtube to see great videos on how to optimize the experience through tweaking the program parameters and suggesting add-ons to improve the experience. The landscape of Ireland below was such an add-on. Its amazing. 

         The reason I went the "economy route " was simple. a lot of people spend a lot of money building a great flight setup to discover after a while it gets kind of boring. I'm trying to get the best experience without spending a fortune and so far I have. I went as far as purchasing the electronic versions of the flight manuals for the B-50 and many of its various versions from a website that specializes in out of date manuals in New Zealand. downloaded all six 500+ page manuals and voila. Reading material for the next six months on my wife's original 12 year old iPad. courtesy of iCloud. (first time I ever used it). right ..why by new when used will do! I don't believe in built in obsolescence. I have an old iPhone 7 my kids used years ago on my motorcycle for a compass and weather. works great. 

Olaf. 

 Well, its been awhile. I decided to start updating and adding fun little things featuring my relatively new love of aviation. Odd how someone who gets so motion sick would love flying but. Whatever.

I've added a few new webcams for far and exotic places . Greenland , Las Vegas and St Martin where I believe they land right over your head on the beach. 

In the last few months I finished my Masters in cybersecurity and resigned from my towns finance committee in protest over 2 events that occured recently in my town. I'll be posting about them later.

Ive joined Bluesky as Olaf Olaffsun and quit X.