Greetings and Salutations!
Back home safe, a lil worse for the wear as I am 55 and NOT in my younger ‘lets bounce alllll over the place’ shape. I got in at 0100 after an interesting flight(s) home… not sure as to how grammatically correct that was/is, but hey, I’m spent.
Now, it was a night flight, so I’ll put up the two pics in a minute. What was INTERESTING as all get out was how one goes through the TSA these days.
Gone apparently are the days of taking out ALL electronic devices and separating them for a scan. Also gone was the whole ‘remove the belt and shoes’ which TBH was a stupid reaction to that retarded Shoe Bomber asshole…
The ONLY issue I had?
Whelp… it’s a bit -complicated-
Back in 1999 I had one of my first post-Army jobs at a computer call center. This place had ALL sorts of different businesses we supported… I happened to work on/for the Morgan Stanley Dean Whittier stock brokerage. It’s where I learned UNIX and how to get Sun System Terminals functional…
One of the other contracts was a team that was working on the first Facial Recognition systems… one of my bros was on that team… It’s where I learned about facial recognition and the ‘how it works’. One of the things is the number of nodal points, aka the identifiable pieces/parts on your face. There are (as I recall) 68 primary points that are used to make an initial ID of someone. Then it further drills down… Mind you this was waaay back in 1999…
Eye location, separation between the eyes… cheekbones… ear size and location… You all pretty much know the drill.
So because of this, waaaay back in the day, I started grinning
in ALL of my ‘official photos’. Case in point, my Driver’s License:
And then my DotMil ID:
Redacted (of course) with painters tape.
So….
Because of that grin, I had some ‘minor issues’ with being ID’d. The way they do it now is that instead of a person, it’s a facial recognition system that takes a picture of you and compares it to your ID.
The TSA uses 1:1 facial matching technology, also known as Credential Authentication Technology (CAT-2), to verify passenger identities at security checkpoints by comparing a photo taken by a camera at the checkpoint to the photo on their ID document. The ID gets ‘fed’ into that slot in the lower right corner… Then the camera takes a picture, and usually it just takes a second or so to get your answer, Yea or Nay.
In m case?
Yeeeeeah… Not so mucho.
Not once, not twice but three times the system failed to ID me and verify me…
It got to the point that they ran me through a couple of databases and didn’t get a ‘hit’ so to speak.
This is supposedly I couldn’t be found… that’s what I was told at least… I have NO idea as to the veracity of that, mind you… I will say that THANK GOD I had gotten there a full hour and a half before the flight as I’ve had ‘issues’ in the past as y’all are aware of, usually in the form of the dreaded “SSSS” marker on Ye Olde Boarding Pass. That stands for (from what I can tell) “Strip/Spread ’em/Smile/Sit and Wait”
So either way, according to them, it was a ‘no joy’ situation. In both cases (coming AND going) that they had to get the Senior Supervisor over to conduct an “enhanced facial screening”.
I.E. the HMFIC (Head Motherfucker In Charge) came over, looked at my ID, then looked at me, and then I was cleared to fly. Of course it helped that I was grinning like a fucking deranged lunatic the whole time to match my ‘official photo’:
And nope.
I’m a dirty bastard today. It being Monday I didn’t get a chance to shower as I was soooo wasted in general from the hustle a bustle of the weekend. It’s one thing to grab up your wallet/passport and basic bug-out bag/party bag and bounce when you’re 25…
It’s a whole new level to be doing it at 55.
NOT that I’m complaining by far.
The only major bitch was the Long Term parking screwed me to the tune of $50 more or less. THAT pissed me off. I talked about it with Sapper and IF I decide that I’m hitting the friendly skies again anytime soon, that he’ll be dropping my ass off instead of me being porked for $25+ a day in parking fees.
And lastly
The two pix I shot on the plane. These are from the first leg of the trip. The plane itself was an Embraer ERJ-145 which is essentially a BIG commercial version of a Lear or such. The damned thing moved with a purpose I can tell you that…
We had for whatever reason, got stuck in Bristol for 30 plus minutes on the launch threshold of the runway. According to the stewardess (a very nice lady… a welcome change from the normal ugly assed attitude ones I’ve dealt with in the past… ugly physically as well as mentally if you will) Charlotte was and had been a MAJOR shitshow with various delays and ‘stuff’ all weekend long.
Despite the 30 minute ‘hold’, once we launched, let me tell you… I have a hunch that this particular pilot was a retired DotMil fighter jock. Like “F-18 or F-15” fighter jock. We landed on time anyways. I mean I’ve flown since I was 5 years old, with my first flight being a Pan AM 747 from Boston to Hawaii (non-stop as I recall… In fact this’s one of my earliest memories as I was like 5 at the time as stated).
And since then? I’d hazard a guess that no shit, I’ve probably broken the million mile marker for flight miles since then. I mean just as a Contractor, I was doing the Iraq-to-The-States bounce multiple times a year.
Never mind when I had courier duty…
My point being I could feel that this guy had ‘opened it up’ so to speak, rather than the ‘usual’ meandering flying. Either way, I took these from my widow at the back of the plane. The first one being a shot of the moon:
It was soooo bright it flared out the cameras as you can see… or maybe not see if you will. Now to my eyes, it was clear as a bell and hence why I snapped the pic. There was also no sign of that “Blood Moon Eclipse” everyone was talking about… one of my online Gab Frens said that we were in the wrong hemisphere to get a good look… either way tho, a good shot IMO.
The next one is really cool however:
I really like this one.
I looked out the window at one point from my Kindle (on my phone… 1203 days of continual daily reading BTW) and realized that there was a great shot to be had. I had to scramble to get this shot and almost missed it.
What I did get?
WOW!!! As you can see, the cloud cover and delineation between clouds/clear sky was/is sooooo cool! To me, the fact that WE had ZERO clouds at whatever altitude we were at, and yet below us, was a cloud cover so perfect and beautiful, it looks almost like a foamy sea washing up and over the lit community below…
Some things are just too cool and beautiful…
I especially love the red reflection on the leading edge of the wing… makes a beautiful contrast.
Sort of like this weekend.
It too, was awesome and mellow.
I was (for the most part) able to get my ‘timing and headspace’ readjusted. For a few hours here and there, I actually had peace and quiet without outside interference, nor any stressors being thrown at me unnecessarily.
The company I kept and the old frens I saw were completely awesome and I look forward to them visiting here at some point. Shortly. Hopefully before the end of the year, but before the holly-daze. I mean everyone should do a ‘Florida Trip’ at one point or another amiright?
Especially my former room-dawg from the 187th and his wife whom I hadn’t seen in nigh about 20+ years… their kids are all fully grown, and I think their youngest, Wyatt is in college right now as a Junior? (I love that name… it reminds me of ‘Weird Science’ hence my mentioning it) Either way, I’m not sure…. I do know they has a whole platoon sized element of kids… she being kid-cray-cray and then acting on that urge. Besides Wyatt, they’re all grown and “oot-and aboot”
It’s a good thing that my room-dawg went “Warrant” and reclassed to Patriot Puke back in the day and retired as a CW3. From what he could tell me is he’s now a senior Civilian Contractor working on various Patriot Systems as a “technical advisor” making MAD bank. I’m really happy for them both. Especially for her as when she met him, it was through me and she and I were huuuuge FWB and after they met? It was all over for the BCE…
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride LOL!!!
Those (like this weekend) were/are some Great Times.
So that’s it for tonight…
Oops… minor interruption:
Sorry for the later-ish poast but someone really cool from this weekend (the primary) called me while doing this debrief, and tied me up (figuratively) on the phone for 3+ hours… I was typing the whole time on and off, but ‘distractions’ and whatnot as you understand… anyway, the call was awesome.
And her? As stated before she’s really nice and cool as she has a LOT of similar likes and such that I have… leastways as she was telling me…
So since she was claiming GeekGirl status, I threw an intentional ‘test question’ to establish if she was for real, or a being a wannabe poseur. Money Talks and Bullshit Walks and all that Aye? So specifically, since we were talking Sci-Fi channel and various sci-fi shows, I asked her about one of my favorite shows from ‘back in the day’ (and TBH, since I have them all on MPEG, I –still– watch them regularly) and if she had ever watched it, that show being the BBCs ‘Doctor Who’ series? And her answer was sort of a shock…
I mean how many chicks know about ‘Doctor Who’, never mind that after? when I asked her which Doctor was her favorite? And her immediate answer was “There is only ONE Doctor and that’s Tom Baker!”
Holy.
Shit.
Like I said, she’s a cool chick AND that her answer was a bit of a shocker.
Make that a Stunner actually.
Physically AND Mentally apparently
Kind of blew me away TBH…
More on that down the road (hopefully)
And like I said, sorry for the late post. I’ll try to do better in the future, provided I can stretch the time.
More Later
Big Country
Dood. Everytime I see a DW episode with Tom Baker, it reminds me of his role from GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD.
Baker was pretty cool as the Time Lord as were some of the with John Pertwee i.e. “Day of the Daleks”, “The Sea Devils”, “Carnival of Monsters”, “The Green Death”, “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” etc.
Tom Baker for the Win! BBC didn’t support the show BiTD like they do today so the Time Lord actors had to carry the show! And Tom owned that show! “Care for a Jelly Baby?”
I will guess that the reason for the fast flight out of Charlotte was it the guy’s last leg for the day and he wanted to get to his hooch. Airline crew get paid by the minute, so there’s normally no incentive to rush.
But when it’s going home time and you’re not paying for the gas, throw the coal to her and get there ASAP. The last legs of trips have the highest percentage of on time/early arrivals.
Re the facial recognition at TSA …
If you look in the photo there’s a little card to the lower left that says you can opt out of it.
The trick is to state you want to opt out before you hand them your ID, and before you step in front of the camera. Otherwise they can say they’ve “started the process” (eg TSAer shoved the license in the slot already) and can’t stop it midway.
You’re not nearly as much fun to read since all the white trash escapades went away.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sorry to disappoint! Personally I’m digging the ‘quiet’
Ron deKoenig: Seriously. He sounded almost normal.
yeah, he’s all like “What’s the deal with airlines?” and “I like TV show. Girl like Tv show!” and we’re all like “You’ve changed, man!”, lol just kidding
It’s fun to be with a “new” woman, you sound like the marrying kind of guy, because it is probably the right thing to do. I’m an optimist, so I always think this could be the one. They tend to last from 4 months to 4 years.
My retired mil neighbor was telling me about one of his wives, she was an amazing girlfriend in every way. After they got married everything changed, for the worse. He asked her why? She replied ” I wanted to be the best girlfriend, but now I am a wife.”
My advice, it’s free and worth it, don’t move them in, don’t marry them.
Yep you do indeed grin like a fucking deranged lunatic. And you never forget your first doctor. Mine was Baker. My lovely wife’s is Matt Smith. She never cared for the drama queen Tennant.
yeah, Baker was the first one I saw. later I saw some of the Pertwee ones and liked them but the rest never seemed to be interesting to me. Nothing beats Genesis of the Daleks
I’m so glad that you had a good time this weekend BCE, you deserve it after all of the stress that you have been under lately.
Regarding your new lady friend, having a lot in common is HUGE if you wanted to have a long term relationship with her or even if you wanted to spend time with her and hang out.
My ex wife, all of the other shit that happened aside had nothing in common with me outside of the bedroom (that part of the relationship was always good). It got so I was watching cooking shows with her because we didn’t have any mutual likes on shows or anything and I actually am meh on cooking shows. That lack of having similar likes along with having different backgrounds really became a huge issue long term in my first marriage.
Now my current wife, we met while I was waiting for my pizza to be ready. We started chatting and before we knew it hours went by. We have a ton in common and I always say that if she was a guy, she’d be one of my best buddies. We get along great and have been together for almost 10 years now all happy.
This lady, hang out with and see what happens. Have fun and who knows and in the mean time you will have a good time and that will keep your mind off the less pleasant crap you are having to deal with these days.
You can, and should, opt out of the photo session at Thugs Standing Around. Don’t make it easy for them to data collect on you. That goes for the rest of you commenters as well.
No pitcha of the hot PlaneBabe. What, you don’t like us anymore, or you holding out on us?
Dr Baker is indeed the Timelord. He even moonlighted as Captain Redbeard Rum on Blackadder, even if his walking was impaired.
Your having no discernable neck would make hanging you a most frustrating endeavour. Saves the heartbreak and bankruptcy of designing and building a gallows, I guess. Ditto the guillotine. Beaning you with a tank cannon was a fail, though it did confirm German experimental data on Krummlauf devices do indeed scale up….they suck just as bad at 120mm as they did at 7.92. You have refused to self-immolate with the flammenwerfer, and none of the po-po want to start trading shots with someone that cc’s a M2HB.
So, please show us the next Enfield, and one of those fish you claimed to be hunting, and the PlaneBabe.
O.M.G. Comment of the year! My sides hurt!!!
Thank your lucky stars she didn’t name Jodie Whittaker or Ncuti Gatwa.
“She fo da streets!” if that’d been the answer!
That Doctor Who (whatever the fuck that is) guy looks like a faggot proctologist. Like a fat kid at a cake shop.
never heard of him either, stopped watching anything back in -’05 ish
when i retired. i did order walking dead DVD’s for a few seasons from netflix. had to drive into town and get them at the po box.
All the good shows got cancelled too early.
Space: Above & Beyond
Jericho
Firefly
Fuck, I miss Jericho.
I have both seasons on DVD and even found and downloaded the alternate ending had it come back for a third season.
We got fucked on that one.
Glad to see that the universe is treating you well BCE.
Also, it’s great to witness you having a normal-ish life without all of the DrAmA caused by “her”.
Enjoy it dude, you ain’t dead, you’re moving around and have miles to put down yet.
No telling whats around the corner for any of us, live it.
Tom Baker was and always will be the only Doctor, as far as I’m concerned.
There is only one Doctor and he is Tom Baker.
Shooter
That massive picture grin is a pure dick move. I love it. Imagine being the official inspecting your ID and thinking what in the world is wrong with this guy. That facial recognition thing is interesting.
Often I will change my gait especially in places with heavy surveillance. I’ve gotten pretty good at walking a lot with my foot almost at a 90degree angle.
Whenever I fly I always opt out of the scanner. I always ask for the pat down. It slows everything down. If everyone opted for the pat down they would not be able to accommodate everyone. It would bring the airport to a standstill.
A lot of times I send my brother texts about bombs or anthrax or stupid stuff like that. They randomly pick me out of the crowd for hand swabs. They swab my hand and then they have this machine at the TSA checkpoint that checks for explosives.
Meanwhile Israel is bombing everyone and I have to pay for that.
i haven’t flown commercial since 2010… too cheesy for moi.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/sudden-deaths-incapacitations-soar-among-covid-jabbed-airline-pilots-report/
I know here when renewing a driver’s license, one is instructed not to smile for the picture, because it fucks up facial recognition. Been that way for years.
I never took to Doctor Who. I did enjoy Red Dwarf for a while back in the late 90’s until the local PBS station put it on at such a shitty time that I wasn’t up to see it, and kept forgetting to record it.
As far as chicks who are into Dr. Who, the only ones I ever ran into were really weird or “nerdy” girls during the early David Tenant era. I presume their interest was captured mostly because they thought he was hot. I recall hearing a group of roller derby girls (still in “uniform”) when I was out having a late dinner at Denny’s one night years ago. They were all carrying on about how much they loved Dr. Who. Given the typical weirdness of roller derby girls, that’s kind of the image I’ve associated with female fans of the show ever since.
Smeg! Also, the Cat was cool.
Shooter
Ha. I took to using “smeg” and variations thereof (smeg off, smeg head, smegged up) for a while many years ago. Eventually I returned to using my favorite tried and true profanities out of habit. And yeah, the Cat was the definition of cool.
I found the episode where the stumbled into the JFK assassination to be quite well done.
“Gazpacho Soup!”
yeah we had Red Dwarf on PBS also back in the day, still watch that from time to time with the local drinking buddy!
Yeah, PBS was where I saw it. PBS wasn’t a complete cesspool back then. It was on at like 2am my time so I missed a lot of episodes. Damn that eating habit that forced me to work. Oh, and “spin on” was a favorite Lister phrase, I still use that sometimes nowadays when someone is being a slowass. And used to use smeg like BRD did. Was a really entertaining comedy show.
Shooter
I knew about Red Dwarf and have all the Firefly episodes including the 2 hour opener and Serenity. Did not know about Jericho, need to obtain that one. Read up on it, sounds really interesting. The part in season 2 about the Republic of Texas’s planes turning the ASA’s into fireballs and confetti warmed my heart.
I think these American leftist studio asswipes cancel shows like this on purpose because they know conservative gun type people watch them. Just to piss us off. Then they whine about low ratings when they “know” we aren’t members of Neilson’s etc. Fucking commies. Then they won’t sell the rights to anyone else. Impaling is too good for them.
Shooter
Clouds can do some outrageous things. Your cloud shot reminds me of a flight I had going into Chicago in 2016. I snapped a picture of a solid sheet of cloud below AND above the plane. Groovy…
I remember PBS Saturday night in Chicago area. Monty Python at 10 and Dr. Who at 11. Good times. Sounds like you had a great weekend. Every time I flew international to get to a boat I would get the SSSS on my ticket. This after 2 background checks for Merchant Mariner Document and Transport Worker ID Card. Not to mention a passport and Cayman Island Mariners docs. No traffic tickets ever or any other contact with police. Probably because I read sites like this one. Hanging out with a bunch of suspicious types like those here I guess.
Cool pix from the plane. The delay in Bristol is a regular occurrence, so often that it is included in the flight schedule. The reason is because ATC has to fit you into the arrival flow. Retired 145 driver here, flew that flight many times over the last 39 years.
Oh, and a follow-up question, how the hell did you fit in a 145??
It was/is uncomfortable as fuck if I don’t ‘arrange things’
Part of the trick in the seat is I get a single window seat (no one next to me) and then I use that little arm-release button under the supposedly ‘locked’ arm and lift it out of the way, and then lift the loose one and THEN I have -just enough- room to sit comfortably. That gives me an additional 3 inches up against the bulkhead.
I also sit at the furthest-to-the-rear seat so I can stretch my legs out into the isle while sitting at an angle… it’s not too uncomfortable after that
Either way tho I practically had to crawl down the isle as the interior is so low… that damned plane is made for stinking puny humans.
You can make it much more comfortable with one simple trick.
Just involves diet and exercise. There is literally nothing about your life that would be harder if you dropped a lot of weight, and everything-EVERYTHING-would be better.
Couldn’t stand to ride in the back myself. I always rode the jumpseat in the flight deck if I could.
Charlie Kirk was straight up wacked on a Utah college campus this morning at one of his debate me meets. One rifle shot, upper thoracic region, DRT.
amazing the amount of blood that poured out of his neck..
if it was real, idk anymore..
The idiots on the left just martyred Charlie, and gave the younger generation that looks up to him a reason to strike back in kind. Us old farts who know some history see this clearly, for this path is not new….. yet most will still be surprised at the response that is likely coming. I’m afraid this is all predicable and likely.
It’s time.
Has anyone found an uncut video of that girl stabbed on the Blue Line light rail?