Fish Fear Me

Mission Impassable

"Good morning, Dave E. Your return home finds a mess of snow and ice that must be cleared before the really cold air hits on Friday. The roughly 80 square feet of densely packed snow and ice at the end of your driveway, up to 3' feet deep, will be your greatest challenge. Your mission, should you choose to accept it(um...choose?), is to clear this snow and ice so you can get some food in the fridge and more importantly, hit the liquor store. As always, should you have a heart attack in the course of this mission, the Home Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your efforts."

Update: Mission Accomplished!

Back To Reality Day

I'll be heading back to the American Great White North in a few hours. I'm half anxious to get home and half reluctant to leave here until maybe April or so. The word so far is that things are a mess of snow and ice back in the Twin Cities. Oh well.

Not much to say about last night's Vikes game. I haven't checked the commentary yet, but to me it's pretty simple: The Vikings offense needs to play two full halves and Adrian Peterson needs to hang onto the ball. The special teams play was atrocious last night also, but it was those two things that cost them the game. Oh, and I can't forget to mention that my confidence in Brad Childress' ability to prepare a team for game day is back to its cynical preseason level. I still love my Vikings, but in the last month they have gone from intimidating to simply dangerous but manageable.

I've caught snippets of the debate over the underwear bomber incident the last few days. My take is that I was inclined to give the administration the benefit of the doubt shortly after it occurred as realistically these things are very difficult, if not impossible, to prevent entirely. Then we were treated to things like the "system worked" and President Obama calling this schmuck an "isolated extremist."

Gah! I'm in far too mellow a mood right now to get into the politics of all of that. I'll leave that for tomorrow or the next day. I will say though, that on the one hand I see hyper-partisans going way overboard in their criticism of the administration, and on the other a pretty unreal stream of nonsense coming from that same administration and an utterly laughable defense from their own hyper-partisan supporters. Me? I just want to get home.

Sunday Stuff

I hope you are having a great Christmas holiday. For me it has been really nice to spend this year's Christmas with my almost four-year-old nephew. Nothing makes a Christmas special like the wonder and excitement of a child.

We're staying at the home of my sister and her husband in Long Beach, Ca. The house was built in 1915 when Long Beach was a summer home community for the richer set who lived further inland in the LA area I guess. When they bought it a few years ago it needed some fairly major repairs to the foundation and much of the beautiful wood work had been painted over. They have spent an enormous amount of time and energy(and money) restoring the place and while they still have a ways to go to get where they want it, it seems that this Christmas marked a turning point where it went from a house to a home for them. I can't really quantify that feeling, but the good vibe is very strong.

Helicopters: I live about three blocks from a hospital and I'm used to seeing helicopters around. They aren't all that common, but every few days I'll see or hear an air ambulance. They are so common here that they are already becoming background noise to me. This Sunday morning is pretty quiet, but I'd say that roughly half the time I've gone out for a smoke during this stay a helicopter has made an appearance before I go back in. No big deal really, just something I have noticed.

Time: I guess I would adjust to being on pacific time eventually, but more than a couple times I've had to catch myself and remember that so-and-so was two or three hours ahead of me. As in, "Oh crap, it's already 1:00 a.m. there."

WHoF: My sister is definitely destined for the Wife Hall of Fame. I'll do a separate post on it with some pics, but my BIL is a former BMX pro and she has let him turn much of the back yard into a jump track that you kind of have to see to believe. 

FFL: This weekend marks the last week of the playoffs and I'm going for the third place money. I've already spotted my opponent 15 points from Friday night's game. We'll see today goes, but hopefully it will be close enough at the end of the day to make Monday's game matter. Regardless, I really want to see the Vikes come out and make a rebound statement against the Bears.

Orientation: It took me a day or two to finally get my sense of direction oriented here. I have this paradigm in my head that the west coast goes north-south and so if the house faces toward the ocean then that must be west. Well no, the coast juts inland here, so the house is facing south. As write this, part of my brain is telling me the sun to the right has risen in the east and I know this. Another part of my brain is still trying to tell me that when I look out the window in front of me I am looking east, when in fact I'm looking north. Very strange.

Travel: I'm not sure yet what kind of impact the underwear bomber will have on our flight home. Almost certainly there will be longer security lines at LAX. At least it will be a direct flight on the way back. On the way out here we spent about eight hours either on planes or in smoke free airports because of delays. That was longer than I had figured I would have to go without a smoke, but I was able to put it out of my mind and it didn't really bug me that much. Someone in our party who shall remain nameless didn't fare so well. This leg of the journey will hopefully go smoother for her.

Merry Christmas

A Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone. Stay safe, especially everyone back home and dealing with the blizzard.

It's pretty strange not to be in "real" winter while celebrating Christmas, but I'm finding it quite enjoyable anyway. Sis and her husband are great hosts. Today's major task was helping to supervise in the construction of a gingerbread house. I think mom would rather have made the components herself, but this was a good year to buy a kit instead. My nephew Liam didn't seem to care one way or another.

Below, Liam is in the red shirt and the boys on his right are two of his friends, brothers who live next door. His Aunt Nancy and Grandma are on his left.

The finished product:

Don't mind the sword on the right. That's a whole other story.

Merry Christmas wherever you are. 

Greetings From Long Beach

I'm not rubbing it in to the folks back home where they have 6" of an expected 16-20" of snow so far. Hey, it'll be there when I get back too. But this was the view yesterday a block south from where I'm staying(looking somewhat southeast):

Timing

We got out of Dodge just in time, I think:

The countdown to the first flakes of a much-anticipated heavy and steady dumping of snow in and around the Twin Cities area has transportation officials getting all of their snowplows and contingency ducks in a row Wednesday as holiday travelers are poised to get rolling and flying.

Depending on exactly where you are and the variables offered by the science-based art of meteorology, estimated snow totals over the next several days range from upper single digits to 20 inches or more, when all is said and fallen by Christmas Day.

Not that we didn't have a little excitement of our own. We had to change planes in Las Vegas where there was 50 mile per hour cross winds last night and it was probably the scariest landing ever for me. Judging from the reaction of other passengers it was the same for them.

We were near the back of the 757 and you could tell that the pilot was having a tough time keeping it lined up on the runway for the approach. There was a lot of weaving going on and when the wheels did finally touch it seemed an awful lot of runway had passed beneath us. The worst was the swerving after the hard landing though. I've never been in a jet where the back of the plane moved so much from side to side as we went down the runway. For a second I thought they were going to lose control and we would go off the runway.

Scary.

Anyway, we made it and the temps are in the sixties and the sun is shining. I think I'll take a walk.

Overheard in Long Beach

(Last week)

Sister: I hope the weather next week is nice for my family.

Friend: Um, they're coming from Minneapolis, right?

Sister: Yeah.

Friend:

Sister: What?

Friend: Any weather we have is going to be nice.

Sister: Haha...I suppose.

It's true.

Good Idea, But...

It will be interesting to see how this works out in practice:

The federal government will impose stiff penalties starting this spring on airlines that keep passengers waiting too long on the tarmac without feeding them or letting them off the plane — a remedy that will relieve many travelers but mean longer delays for a few.

Under the rule, airlines that do not provide food and water after two hours or a chance to disembark after three hours will face penalties of $27,500 a passenger, the secretary of transportation announced on Monday.

There's a huge exception built into the regs:

...with exceptions allowed only for safety or security or if air traffic control advises the pilot in command that returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations.

Hmmm, that's a pretty big exception. I predict at least a few incidents where passengers demand to leave and the pilot invokes that exception. What will happen when the passengers refuse to accept that? A few arrests, I guess, and then a lot of screaming for tighter regulations.

From what I gather, when these types of situations develop it is usually a lack of gate space that is the problem. Planes board and pull out onto the tarmac even if they may not be able to take off right away because there is an inbound plane scheduled to arrive at that gate and its passengers need to deplane. If the first plane needs to return because it is approaching the three hour limit it may find no gates available. This ripples across the airport network as planes are held up because there are no gates available at their destination.

One approach is to have more equipment and buses available to deplane passengers in parking areas instead of the gate. But how much equipment should airlines or airports keep on hand that may be used only a handful of times per year? I don't know if that is practical or not.

The fines are so stiff that I'm sure the airlines will pay attention. I'm guessing that it will mean more cancellations as the airlines decline to gamble that a two hour delay won't turn into three. They may also schedule fewer flights so there is more of a cushion in gate availability. I think they will try to keep the schedules tight for now, but they will be quicker to outright cancel flights to and from that airport.

I think the longest I've ever had to sit on a plane that was waiting on the tarmac is about an hour. I can't imagine being stuck for six or seven hours. I would probably be more than a little edgy about that. The airlines put themselves in this position with some high profile screw-ups that left the DOT little choice but to act. Now that they have, we'll see how much more tweaking needs to be done. In a system as intertwined and complicated as the US air travel system it's probably going to take some time to see how the trade-offs are going to work out.

A dozen cop cars with lights flashing and sirens blaring just cruised down the highway I can see from my office window. Murder? Mayhem? Disaster? Nope. I saw the same thing a year ago. All of the local PDs are heading to the Golden Valley PD to assemble for their dramatic entrance at the KARE-11 TV studio to drop off what they have collected for Toys for Tots on the 5:00 PM local news. Today's the last day.

One year ago I happened to be on that highway a few minutes after the cops had gone by. I got stuck at a light near the Golden Valley PD because the light wouldn't change. I'm pretty sure that at least one of the cops had their traffic signal preemption device still on even though they were just sitting there. The light stayed stuck for a good ten minutes and I was trapped with no way out. Nobody in the front dared to run the light.

Submitted without comment except to say I really hope they don't t-bone somebody one day while they are running their toys around.

(This the first time I have used Typepad's quick compose.)

Update: For anything more than a sentence it doesn't work that well. I had to go into the normal compose screen to get rid of the extra blank lines between paragraphs. The quick compose screen doesn't show more than a few text lines very well. For a line or two it's fine, I guess. Nothing more than that though.

The Ugly, The Ugly, And The Ugly

The Vikings loss last night to Carolina was ugly. It was made all the uglier because the poor performance on offense probably cost me a trip to the FFL Super Bowl. And the ugly truth is that the Vikings have been outcoached and outplayed in two of their last three games, both times by teams they should have been able to beat.

Can I say ugly a few more times? I believe I can.

The Strib is running an instant poll today that asks, "Did the loss to Carolina shake your confidence?" Roughly 68% of the 6800 respondents have clicked on "Yes, the Vikings aren't as good as I thought" as I write this. That's how bad last night's game was and how deeply it has shaken the Vikings faithful to the core.

So what's happened to the team that has been mentioned in the same breath as the Saints? While player performance is clearly down, I think the real problem is that the rest of the NFL has figured out Minnesota's offense. They have figured out how to limit the threat from Adrian Peterson and still put pressure on Brett Favre and in both the Arizona and Carolina losses the Vikings have been unable to adjust. I don't know if that's Favre or the coaching decisions, but I suspect the latter.

The Vikings went a pathetic 1-10 on 3rd down conversions last night and managed only 10 first downs total. The end result of that was a Vikings defense that got worn down and a lopsided 37:58 time of possession for Carolina. Childress and the Vikings have the talent to go far this year, but only if they can counter-adjust to what defenses are doing to them right now.

My FFL team was part of the collateral damage to last night's fiasco. After spotting my opponent 15 points from Peyton Manning on Thursday(thanks for nothing Jacksonville), I battled back over the weekend until I only needed 9 points from Favre and Longwell last night, plus whatever Sidney Rice managed to get for my opponent. Easily a doable thing, I thought, based on what has happened most of this year. I got 1 point, so I guess not. So it goes in the world of FFL and it's not that big of a deal. It's just the ugly gravy on top of what the Vikes dished up for their fans last night.