eyeing the new iphone 3G (photo via Stocks, Weather & Notes)

“Behold the ancient styles..”

“..Drop yar guns, or the Colonel-Doktor  has it!”

..and All the wasted years…

(photo via wikipedia)

This photo of central park simply is great. It’s on my work desktop, and thought i’d adorn here with it ;)

This Sunday morning was plain boring, so I decided it called a familiarization sortie from Luke AFB to prime up. I expected to go up on 28R as part of a familiar four-ship F-16 formation (of which I’ve waxed lyrical before) but then I met those two sexy and powerful F-15s lined up for takeoff. It was plain intuition to thrust the throttles to military from taxi and rotate in formation in their trail. The following is a brief photo-documentary:

It’s pure sky and thunder as we race down 28R with lungs seizing from acceleration, and then mutter ‘jeez’ as the base angles at a rushed 20-degree-plus rotation to trail the F-15 into the wild blue yonder.

To keep formation, climb is at max. reheat, and as they level, roll right over your back and level behind them. They’ve already gained good ground. The guys at McDonnell knew their business…

Once I catch up, still the power at (my) military, things look like this:

As always, it’s a bit outta place to keep up with an Eagle in a Falcon: you almost always need nearly 100% outta your P&W. The Eagle is built for speed and power and is ultimate air superiority, something beyond the politics that started out on ‘multirole versatility’ which basically in other words is being unable to buy Eagles in required numbers. USAF officers were reputed to ask “Why VWs when you’ve Cadillacs?” but that was what ultimately happened. The F-16s a fine airplane, but to me never exuded the same supremacy as the ‘15.

I looked kinda like this, all rushed up and in full burner after losing ground in an unexpected turn with the ’15s, and was hurrying to catch up. Perhaps hugging the shame to look down on my APG-68 multi-mode to locate them as well..

While doing that, I noticed some unfamiliar buildings on desert floor which I guess I’ve seen about once before, and turned to take a look. This was shot as I pulled up in quite a haste after a high-speed dive. They seem to be some curious storage buildings set up there in the middle of nowhere by the developers. Later I STRAFEd some…

Finally, I hear that unmistakable ‘bingo’ in my headset, and it’s time to turn to go home with the throttle really low. I’m starving by now, and look forward to sampling mom’s excellent chicken biriyani for lunch of which the irresistible smell is already wafting around the flightdeck.

Messenger 9 sporting Graffiti theme

Can’t believe I’m writing a testimonial for Y! Messenger, but it’s true and worth a mention. Around last Thursday I got Y! M’s 9.0.0.922 Beta version, and it just fitted in. I was stuck with the production 8.1 rubbish. It was bulky and resource intensive and crash-prone. But this is more like GT. Sleek, lurks under and works.

I started off with Y! 8.1 the days I came in, but there were problems with it and I got GAIM. It was cool but then again had file transfer probs and compatibility probs with other engineers who were all Y!. Then there was this one friend I wanted on my list who wouldn’t budge an inch from Microsoft Network, and those buddies were invisible in GAIM. I had MSNM for sometime actually but it was quickly replaced by GT. So I had to somehow endure with 8.1 for Y! and Microsoft Network, til last week. Glad the Purple Brigade engineers from Sunnyvale came up with something this qool. Ode Messenger 9!