The weekend weather is shaping up to be beautiful. Expect light blogging from me, as I plan to be outside as much as possible. Maybe I’ll even get some bike riding in, who knows?

I did a Google search to find out who pilfered the USS Elliot pages I pilfered from the official USS Elliot website (now defunct). That led me to the website of my old shipmate, OS2 David Bullock.

Glad to see Dave is into Linux. He’s also got some great pictures from the December Decommisioning ceremony. (And yes, I already pilfered them to put on my usselliot.org site.)

Dave and I were two of the resident computer geeks onboard the Elliot, tasked with fixing the occasional malfunctioning 80286 computer. Ah, good times.
Continue reading →

Some coworkers brought up my recent posts on the World Trade Center attacks. A few more interesting links include Flight 175: Too Hot To Handle and Operation 911: No Suicide Pilots.

The first link has one of the most detailed dissections of the second plane, including some evidence that the plane that hit the tower was not the United Airlines N612UA plane, a Boeing 767-200, but in fact the larger 767-300. Shown are some fuselage measurements which appear to back that claim up. If this is so, it may be more proof the planes were switched.

On the second page of that link, a very important point it brought up:
Modern planes are complicated creatures that incorporate a whole slew of sophisticated technology. First among them, flight computers that instantly override any accidental brusque manoeuvres; you don’t want your business-class customers slopping their Dom Perignon over their immaculate suits, just because the pilot sneezes at the wrong moment.

The banking manoeuvre we see here, just as flight 175 is about to slam into the South Tower, would have been overridden by the onboard flight computer. So somebody must have previously overridden the flight computers themselves.

In other words, you’ll never see a commercial aircraft make that kind of bank. The “fly by wire” flight computers would forbid it. So how did it happen?

The second link also shows how a remotely-controlled plane could have done the deed. It also has an interesting theory about the origin of the “Operation Northwoods” documents, featured in James Bamford’s book Body of Secrets. The author suggests that the Operation Northwoods documents are counterfeit, which makes sense to me now but did not then. She states that since convicted FBI spy Robert Hanssen was friends with Bamford, and that this was no coincidence in the “discovery” of the Northwoods document.

Thinking back on it, I can see how the Northwoods document is counterfeit. Outside of its outrageous subject, it does contain phrases strange to American speech. What is also strange is the talk of a small plane being replaced by a drone.

The technology of 1961 to create a drone would likely have required a vehicle much bigger than a small plane could hold. Also, unlike today, radar screens used by air traffic controllers were of the analog variety: they showed exactly what was in the air. Modern ATC radar is digitized, meaning blips can be selectively filtered out. This is done routinely for some military flights, I was told by an ATC watch supervisor on a tour of the local control tower a few years back.

So, in 1961, you couldn’t filter out planes from the radar, but now you can. You couldn’t fly drones as easily, now you can.

What if Hanssen (or someone else) tipped off Bamford to the planned WTC attacks through the planting of the Operation Northwoods document?

Follow the links. Make up your own mind.

I got my Sipura yesterday and spent the evening configuring it and my Asterisk server. I was in a high-fiving mood once I heard it ring. Woot!

One cool thing I experimented with was the ability to set the outgoing CallerID to anything I want. In essence, you can fake a call from anywhere. I assume it works for *69, too, meaning those prank calls just became much more fun.

On Metafilter today, I found a company that haqs found an interesting use for this, um “flexible” CallerID stuff. Dial-A-Cheater fakes a call from your suspected home-wrecker, allowing you to see how your significant-other reacts.

Why am I just now finding out about Metafilter? Where have I been? It’s a waste of time dream come true.

This is, of course, where I found out about National High Five Day.

While everyone guessed whether he would stay or go, N.C. State star Julius Hodge played a prank during his news conference yesterday. He came out wearing a New York Knicks jacket next to a somber Herb Sendek. When some reporters scrambled to report the breaking news that Hodge was leaving, he said “Gotcha!”

Good for Hodge to stay. And for the right reasons: he wants to graduate.

In other news, Philip Rivers is going to the NFL draft.

By the way, both of these athletes have been known to give high fives.
Continue reading →

Today is the one-year anniversary of my being freed from a lousy job, albeit I didn’t see it that way at the time. Never again will I take a job for the money with the hope that the job satisfaction will come later. That’s a backwards-ass way of doing things.

I’m a bit wiser now.

Since a good number of web hits I get is for my page on the Raleigh Municipal Airport, I thought I’d link to this story in Monday’s News and Observer about the woman who ministers to the homeless people living there.

Its strange that the day I went there to take pictures in March 2000, I didn’t see a soul. Then again, I chose not to venture into the deeper woods. I wonder if I happened to visit the old airport right after a police raid. Also interesting is the reason they prefer the woods: the fire hydrants left on the old site provide an easy source for drinking water.

I feel for those people who have to call the woods home. Plenty of them just need some addiction treatment and they could make lives for themselves. Then again, many may not want to give up their freedom, or to have responsibility. It’s sad how people can fall through the cracks, forgotten by society.