I just saw a little clip of Senator Coburn on “The Beltway Boys” and that with their little discussion following it made me happy to hear that he is keeping to his campaign promises.  I certainly agree with what he’s doing, but I just love the extra little bit in that he’s actually trying to do what he said he’d do.  It’s not even an election year for him, so this would seem to be more of a genuine effort and not just positioning for a nearing campaign.  Keep up the good work, Senator Coburn!

And I mean that in both senses of the word cool.  So I was complaining about 102F in April.  Well, the high today was a whopping 44F lower (58F).  Other than being a little windy, this was more like it.  I love the variety sometimes.

And the weather saga continues.  The NOAA website shows a 2 days history for Stillwater Airport weather data.  It shows that the high today was 102F.  Considering I’ve experienced snow or at least freezes in late April, this is nuts.  The average daily temp for today is 79F.  Could be worse, though.  There was a fire at a power station in Edmond today that knocked out power and therefore A/C for a bunch of people there.  Power is supposed to be back up now, but the temps are down over 20F from the highs.

I’m starting to wonder what happened to the Spring? We went from an aweful cold (well, aweful for most people, I thought it was pleasant) to this blistering heat. I don’t know what the official high temps have been for the last few days, but I know they had to be near 100F if they didn’t pass it. Where are those 70 degree days of Spring? Hopefully we’ll get some reprieve on May 6 or I’m gonna pass out on the field.  If it is this hot now, we’re gonna be breaking records in August.  When 120F days are “the good old days” I don’t wanna be in the present.

I just heard it on the radio this morning.  President George W. Bush is going to be the keynote speaker at my graduation.  This is going to rock.  First General Tommy Franks is the speaker at Shinta’s graduation and now President Bush for mine.  I guess I have a good reason to attend the ceremony instead of ducking out.

I just heard the most stupid quote I’ve heard in quite a while.  I quote:

“12 million people can’t be law breakers.”

This was said by an illegal immigration…er…undocumented worker proponent in a mini-debate segment on Fox News in response to a statement by one of the Minutemen founders saying that these people are breaking our laws by being in the country illegally and should be dealt with.  The lack of thought in that statement is astounding.  Let me quote another statistic from the Bureau of Justice:

“In 2004, nearly 7 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at yearend 2004″

That’s just for the year 2004.  So, that’s 7 million law breakers that were in or went through the justice system in just 2004.  These 12 million immigrants have built up since the last amnesty in 1986.  Big difference in number and it goes to show that there certainly can be 12 million law breakers.

So, now I have a proposition.  The statistics I’ve read say that in 1994, 59.1 million American adults owned firearms.  We should all build unregistered machine guns.  59.1 million (surely higher now, as the BATFE states that 60.4 million firearms transfers were checked through NICS between 1994 and 2004) people can’t be lawbreakers.  That’s right not only should we go and do that, since there are so many, we should be given amnesty.  Yes, that’s right we should be given amnesty and allowed to keep the new machine gun (maybe pay for the tax stamp after the fact).  I’m sure that’ll go over real well.

I saw an aweful lot of OHP on the highway today.  The interesting thing is that I saw 2 separate incidents (about 20 miles apart) of troopers changing tires for people on the side of the road.  Pretty cool.  I hadn’t seen it before and really didn’t expect them to do it.  Way to go OHP.

I’ve read the last several issues of World Airshow News. It’s quite a good magazine, but as I’ve read I keep finding out about my heros dying. A few months ago I found out Bobby Younkin and Jimmy Franklin had died in a midair collision. Having seen both of them perform many many times (I have some photos of them doing performances in my photogallery), it was something of a shock. Then I noticed that one of the rotating top pictures I did for this blog was Jimmy Franklin’s black and silver Waco. Well, “it happens” I tell myself. It’s not like I don’t know death. At least they died doing what they love.

Reading more issues of World Airshow News I discover a lot of famous airshow pilots are no longer living (and they didn’t exactly die in their sleep). Sort of scary considering these are the best pilots in the world at what they do. Well, today I’m reading the latest issue and find out that Eric Beard died in January. I’ve seen his Russian Thunder routine several times. He was a top notch flyer and I’ve always noted how difficult many of his routines were. It’s quite sad.

Well, I started thinking about it and it turns out that another picture I use in my rotating top pictures is of him. I’m 98% sure it’s him. I haven’t seen any Sukhoi’s or Yak’s done up like his, so I’m fairly sure it’s him. Maybe I’m bad luckfor these guys.

Here’s some more info for those intersted:

Jimmy Franklin’s Wikipedia entry
Jimmy Franklin Memorial page
News article on Jimmy and Bobby’s midair
Eric Beard’s site

I managed to sell off the SP-10 today.  Took it to the big Wanenmacher show in Tulsa.  Sold it to a class 3 guy.  Hopefully that means he’ll be able to make it run better than I did.  It takes a long time to walk all the tables.  The A/C wasn’t working so it was pretty hot too.  I think this is the first time I’ve gone there and came away with more money than I started, so I guess it was a good show.

Let’s see, what all did I see?  I saw a PS-90 for $3500.  It was the only one I saw at the show, and I bet it goes home with the dealer at that price.  I only saw 2 FN Five-seveN’s (at the same booth).  Last show there were tons of them.  Cheap 7.62x39mm was non-existant.  Only cases I saw were Winchester (didn’t even bother with looking at the price).  I overheard another guy talking about them being $200 a case.  I overheard a lot of conversations where people were complaining about not finding any 7.62x39mm.  I saw no 5.45x39mm at all.  9mm was cheap and plentiful (even brass cased).  5.56x45mm was available at about $130/case.  Interesting to see the changes that happen in supply from show to show.

Pat and I went to see Ice Age: The Meltdown last night.  Good movie.  I liked it.  I think they did a good job putting this one together.  I’m not going to say it’s better than the first, but it’s not really worse either.  It didn’t give me the feeling of a sequel like many other sequels do.  It’s not as good as the Shrek to Shrek 2 combination, but it’s good.  Go see it while it’s in theaters.