Missed goals

 You know, I was pretty exited to have written on here every day for a year straight, but life just ends up happening. I got hit head on by another driver which broke my foot, opened up my knee, and shattered the cup of my pelvis that holds my leg in place, as well as cracking both sides of my jaw, which saw me in the hospital for over two weeks, and I'll be in a rehab facility for another 6 or so weeks. 

So, that's why things have been quiet around here for some time, and unfortunately, it may continue to be so for a while as I learn to walk again and otherwise recover. As things become less painful and I'm able to focus a little better, I'll start writing things on here again. 

Sunday Slither

Velvet Revolver - Slither

An underappreciated band

hat tip to Razorfist for letting me know about these guys. Could have sworn I posted them here before, but I couldn't find it anywhere, so here ya go:

Liege Lord - Broken Wasteland - Master Control (1988)

Forgotten Films: The Blob (1988)

A movie that I thought was great as a kid that I recently went back and watched is the remake of the classic 50s movie The Blob. Now I don't enjoy most horror, but the kind that is of the cosmic variety I can't get enough of and this is one of the best examples.

Compared to the original, there's not much changed from the basic concept (which always was paper thin) but a lot of the details are a bit different and overall, I think the human element of the story is a lot better in the '88 film, as it focuses more on the monster. It certainly takes itself just a bit more seriously while still having more intentional humor throughout. But the real fun comes from the absolutely amazing practical and special effects throughout that are gloriously 80s and far more gory than the original but most of the affects still look great.

It just seems that when people bring up all those lists and talk of gloriously great 80s effects movies, this one hardly ever seems to get mentioned, and that's just a darn shame because this movie is nothing less than great.Trailer included below:

More songs from films I like

BURNING SENSATIONS - Pablo Picasso

A brief history of the F-16 at Hill AFB, Utah

Beautiful pic of the F-105s flying with F-16s for the 466th Fighter Squadron's transition.

After the service of the F-105 had ended at Hill AFB, the immediate replacement was the F-16 Fighting Falcon, or as the pilots and crews call it, the Viper. Despite the fact the F-16 had significantly less range and payload capability than the F-105 it replaced, it did offer significantly enhanced capabilities in almost every other area, such as a more advanced and sophisticated radar, far greater bombing and gunnery accuracy, BVR A2A capability, greater payload diversity, smart weapons arsenal, and is far more maneuverable.

However, they first F-16 arrived at Hill long before the type was operated there, as there was a scheduled stop there after flying out of Edwards AFB for one of the test flights in 1977.  Ogden Air Logistics Center (ALC) was also already designated as the primary maintenance center for the type in 1974 during the development of the aircraft. 

The 388th Tactical Fighter Wing received its first F-16As for operational use in late 1979 and it was the first squadron in the US Air Force to become operational with the new jet, replacing the unit's old and venerable F-4E Phantom IIs that were used in Vietnam.

The 388th's celebratory paint scheme for the 5 millionth F-16 flight hour.

The unit gained quick prominence with the type by winning the RAF bombing competition in 1981, and also winning the worldwide USAF Gunsmoke gunnery competition twice, once in 1987 and again in 1993.  In May of 1989, the very first F-16C Block 40 was issued to the unit and they also had the distinction of celebrating the F-16's 5 millionth flight hour among all the variants in December of 1996. 

The 388th Fighter Wing flew four thousand sorties during both Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, with no losses. After the war the wing continued to deploy elements of its combat squadrons to support postwar treaty enforcement in Operation Southern Watch. 

During the Global War on Terror, the wing began deploying F-16s to Bagram AB, Afghanistan in 2009 to support ground forces in Operation Enduring Freedom. They continued to support operations in that country as part of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel until 2016. 

An F-16 from the 466th flying over the Great Salt Lake

Along with the 388th, in 1983, the Reserve 466th Fighter Squadron called the “Diamondbacks”, it was the first Air Force Reserve unit to operate the F-16 and has had a VERY storied history operating the Viper since. 

Within the first two years of operating the type, the squadron immediately earned top honors at the Air Force’s Gunsmoke gunnery meet. In 1994, the unit deployed to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, in support of Operation Northern Watch in Iraq. 

As for the history of combat deployments, they went on to support Operation Southern Watch at Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait and while there, the unit became the first F-16s to deploy precision guided munitions in combat in 1998. Later on in 1999, while again deployed in support of Operation Northern Watch, the Diamondbacks also earned the distinction of being the first F-16 unit to employ the Litening II targeting pod in combat.

While deployed to Iraq to enforce the no-fly zone over Iraq in support of Operation Southern Watch, they were also tasked with flying classified combat missions into Afghanistan immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Afterward, they were the first F-16 unit deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom and are credited with destroying multiple important Al Qaeda assets, and provided close-air support missions to ground troops. 

In the following years, as the Global War on Terror continued, the 466th became the first unit to fly F-16 in combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Again, in 2005, the Diamondbacks deployed to Iraq to fly close-air support missions out of Balad airbase for allied ground forces.

In 2007, the 466th Fighter Squadron began flying and maintaining a shared fleet of F-16s alongside the 388th Fighter Wing in what was called "Total Force Integration". Finally in September 2015, the 419th began it's transition to the new F-35A which eventually completely replaced the F-16s in the unit by September of 2017. 

Despite the F-16 no longer being based with any unit at Hill AFB, it is still the primary logistical and maintenance hub for the type on the western half of the US, so F-16s can still be seen on occasion going in and out of Hill. Recently, the Air Force has also determined the F-35 is both too expensive and maintenance heavy to fully replace the F-16, and so they type will be upgraded for the foreseeable future until a 1:1 replacement can be designed.

Pics and sources:
https://www.hill.af.mil/About-Us/Organizations/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/388th_Fighter_Wing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/466th_Fighter_Squadron
https://www.419fw.afrc.af.mil/About-Us/History/

Vito's Bountiful

Pic was swiped from the USA Restaurants site.

Right off of the Main street in Bountiful and 100 South is Vito's. They label themselves the Philly King of Bountiful and they are right. There aren't a whole lot of places you can get a solid Philly sandwich in the state, and this is certainly one of them. Among a huge variety of Philly sandwiches they also offer great meatball subs, Rubens, and Italian sausage subs.  

The place is rightfully jam packed during the lunch hour, so I would recommend going during any other time of the day to save you some time. Also, last I checked, they don't take cards and are a cash-only establishment, as it is nearly a one man operation. That being said, they also don't have any official site I know of , so you'll have to google the place for a menu if you want to know before you go. 

Again, Utah is the nerdiest state

Believe it or not, the Disney company was not always seen as the truly evil empire it currently is, and they actually put out good stuff every now and again. One of those great gems they put out was the 2009 movie Up. Spawning many memes and being a generally great movie overall has given it great longevity and fondness in the eyes of most. 

Enter now the address of 13222 Herriman Rose Blvd in Herriman, Utah is a a near perfect exterior and interior replica of the protagonists house from that movie. Created by the Bangerter Homes company specifically as a way to promote themselves and create a tourist destination, the company received permission from Disney to create it and painstakingly researched every known detail with Disney in order to create it. 

It is now privately owned and the owners do have a website detailing it's history and some FAQs about visiting here: http://www.therealuphouse.com/ Also, Disney itself loves the promotion given by the house and made a short film about the family living there that you can see on youtube:

The only shame about the place is that it's stuck in the general area of Provo which is basically the leaky butthole of Utah, with the highest concentration of jerks in the state. 

The internet Archive

The logo of the organization

Located in an old Christian Scientist church in San Francisco’s Richmond district, lies one of the most indispensable and yet often overlooked and underappreciated projects/resources of the modern age: The non-profit Internet Archive. Strangely enough, the location itself was chosen for the project as the building resembles the logo for the organization. 

A picture of the building taken from their site.

Perhaps most famously, they are the ones who operate and curate the famous Wayback Machine that seeks to catalog and archive all websites on the internet, including defunct ones. Starting in 1996, it is offered as a free service to all for finding old sites that no longer exist, seeing how changes were made to sites over time, or (my favorite use) to see how blowhards and politicians have walked back or reversed their claims or statements over time. This in itself is a monumental project, but it isn't the only thing that they do there. 

They consider themselves an open library to all and also offer a project in which they are digitizing books, have an archive of TV news broadcasts, audio recordings of live concerts, as well as archiving free software, and projects to digitize a variety of other physical media among many other projects. It's near impossible to detail it all here, but you can go directly to their site to find out more: https://archive.org/about/

As an added bit of interesting trivia about the location is that the church's chapel is still intact and has more than 120 ceramic sculptures of the Internet Archive’s current and former employees situated among the pews that were created by a local artist. Another interesting tidbit is the fact that the massive amount of data servers needed for the project are so vast, that they serve as the building's heat source! Pretty neat eh?

Watching from the sidelines is interesting:

As I have stated before, I didn't think the Ukrainian conflict to be particularly interesting or noteworthy when it started, but the longer it goes on, the more fascinating I find it to be. So far, I think there are some interesting lessons we have learned in Ukraine outside of the combat:

1. The Russian logistics system is a joke and cannot cope with the pace of operations or losses.

2. They are a joke because Russian corruption is rampant and is also a joke on an international level.

3. Ukrainian resolve and nationalism is no freaking joke and with good reason, as the aggression/instigation is purely one-sided.

4. For supposedly being the world's second largest military power, Russia is also having a really hard time with combating the world's 22nd largest military, and are now on pace to be losing a majority of the ground they took.

5. Win or lose, it will be interesting to see how quickly the US/western nations either abandon or turn on Ukraine when THIER corruption comes to light or the forefront of the news. 

As a small bit of evidence to prove Russian incompetence, I present a video from the Funker530 channel on youtube:

Russians Are Wearing Fake Ballistic Helmets Into Battle

Kill 'em all (thanks to Metallica for the title)

I have generally been keeping away from most domestic politics and news on here lately, but I was utterly flabbergasted by the last week's speech by our former Vice President. He openly called Trump and his followers as a "clear and present danger to the United States" which is unprecedented, as that is president speak for open war. 

In not so many words, he has said that there is no place for political violence in America ever, but has openly condoned such act before by the groups on his side before and in this same speech is calling for it happen to those who support or have supported Trump, which is nothing less than state sponsored terrorism itself. He says a peaceful transition of power and the discussion of opposing ideas needs to be be encouraged, unless you are a Trump supporter, then you are is in his words, "unacceptable".

In the end gives some meaningless platitudes about unity and peace, but it rings pretty hollow after calling half of America domestic terrorists and calling for violence against them. I can't help but also feel like this was meant to be intentionally provoking to the other side, I'm just shocked that he was willing to be so inflammatory to such an unprecedented and insane degree, even with his feckless mental condition.

So, as an american who voted the wrong way, can read English so can confirm there was election meddling, I'm armed, I voted for Trump, and will gladly vote for Trump again, and I guess because of Biden I am now the domestic terrorist/extremist he is warning about, so to his speech I say:

Movie songs Sunday

Lost Picasso (I Don't Want To Be)

A brief history of the Republic F-105 Thunderchief in Utah

A very rare desert fox camo scheme used on only one Thud based at Hill AFB.

The Republic F-105 Thunderchief was an amazing machine and marks a huge turning point in aircraft technology in the US Air Force. It was a part of the Century Series of aircraft programs that were meant to rapidly increase the aeronautical technology capabilities in the military. Created specifically as a supersonic nuclear strike aircraft to penetrate Soviet air defenses in a potential world war 3 that never happened, in reality, the "Thud" (as it was known by pilots), gained fame an infamy in the Vietnam War with conventional bombing and Wild Weasel missions. It was the primary aircraft used for strike mission in the conflict, it shot down over 27 MiGs in the war, flew over 20,000 sorties, was the first aircraft in the USAF to have a dedicated Wild Weasel variant, but also had the dubious distinction of having 382 examples shot down in Vietnam, almost half of all the 833 examples built. 

Another Thunderchief sitting on the flight line at Hill.

However, I'm not here to give a detailed account of the plane, but rather a history of it at Hill AFB, Utah. Before I can do that, a little history on the group based there. Activated in 1956 as a unit of the regular Air Force, the group and its three squadrons trained in C-123 assault airlift operations and eventually operated other aircraft such as the T-33, F-80, F-84, C-119, C-124, and C-46 aircraft.

1972, the Air Force Reserve modernization program renamed the the unit at the base to the 508th Fighter Group, and it is at that time that they were given the F-105, after much of it's involvement in Vietnam was already over. Being that the unit was now a part of the reserves, it was really towards the twilight of the Thud's career and they operated the B, D and F variants of the F-105 until the aircraft was ultimately retired.

The Hill AFB taxiway right before the 24 ship formation event. taken from the 419th Fighter Wing's Twitter account. 

In June of 1983, the unit at Hill was the last remaining U.S. Air Force unit flying the Republic F-105 Thunderchief and the unit flew a diamond of diamonds 24-ship formation as a celebratory farewell to the “Thud” being withdrawn from service after 25 years of being in USAF inventory. For the 419th, it was to be replaced by the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon. Today, on the inside of Hill, AFB itself, they still have a standing gate guard of an F-105D, as well as having both an F-105D and a two seat F-105F Wild Weasel variant that are displayed in the Hill AFB museum. 

The famous diamond of diamonds formation flown for the retirement ceremony.

However, that's not all of Utah's history with the F-105. As mentioned earlier, the Thunderchief was used as a cover for the crash of an A-12 spyplane crash in 1963, which I wrote about earlier. However there are a couple of different actual F-105 crashes that did occur in Utah in the 60s.

On the 23rd of May 1963 (nearly the same time as the A-12 crash), aircraft serial number 59-1773 crashed near Kanab, Utah resulting in the destruction of the plane beyond repair. 

A second crash occurred the next year on May 14th, 1964 when serial number 60-0412 crashed near Wendover after flying out of Nellis, likely going to the UTTR bombing range that also resulted in the total loss of the aircraft. 

In both instances, the cause was listed as in-flight fires that caused the loss of control of the aircraft. Thankfully, in both instances it is said the pilot ejected safely and there were no casualties. 

Transition time! A retiring F-105 flying formation with the new F-16 near Hill AFB.

Sources and pics from:

https://www.419fw.afrc.af.mil/News/Article/2382042/in-history-wings-epic-24-ship-flyover/
https://twitter.com/419fw
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/type/f105

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/151583

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/151557

http://www.livingwarbirds.com/republic-f-105-thunderchief.php

The retardation of Rockstar Games: RDR2

For shame such a cool game is getting killed

I realize this is old news at this point, but I'm shocked that I didn't mention it here before. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a massive success with gamers and is a huger success in terms of sales for Rockstar Games, but a while back they said that they will no longer be supporting the online component for the game within a few months. 

This does nothing but prove two points, one: Rockstar Games are again proving that they are incompetent morons; and two: is that the reasons for them doing this just help to illustrate that the gaming industry is blatantly wrong for not giving players the ability to host their own online servers. 

Yes, I know that the reason why is that Rockstar wants to push micro-transaction with their dumbass shark cards and gold in the case of RDR2, but they are shutting it down as players freaking hate the paid services and are cheating as an alternative to paying to win. As a result, there is a rash of cheaters on Rockstar's servers that they are unable to control in any meaningful way, who are doing nothing but griefing other players, making the whole experience awful. 

If they had just given players the ability to host and regulate their own servers, this would not be a problem that Rockstar would even have to manage or spend money on at all. Yes, it would increase your development costs and time, as well as cut into your micro-profits, but would see a far larger return on investments, as that would allow for people to more freely mod the game, increasing long term sales and popularity, as the community would self police their own servers. 

But hey what do I know? Heaven forbid you actually let people play a game online that they paid for, instead of freaking pulling one of the highest grossing games from being able to be played at all. I honestly hope this ends up in multiple lawsuits against them and it proves very costly to them.

Forgotten Films: Radioactive Dreams

So, unlike most posts I make about forgotten films, this one is a bit more justifiably so. I can't really say it's a great movie at all, but it is one that I like nonetheless. Because of that I don't really universally recommend it to everyone, but I will recommend it to those who are sufficiently nerdy. 

A movie that typifies not being the sum of it's parts, but the parts are really cool. Like the poster here, absolutely awesome. 

Radioactive Dreams is a movie about a couple of kids that are stashed away by their fathers in a remote bunker/fallout shelter when a nuclear World War 3 breaks out. Starring They have enough food and water to last them 15 years, and they develop a near unhealthy obsession with becoming PIs like in the old pulps they read. They then find a way to break out of the bunker, and the movie is mostly about them encountering the crazy new world around them while attempting to become legit PIs as they get tangled up in a mystery revolving around missing launch keys for an un-launched nuke. 

The movie has a very unique visual style, with both 80s punk vibes and also has a heavy influence form old detective pulps from the 30s and 40s, to the point that the two main characters last names are Phillip and Marlowe (hint, hint nudge, nudge, wink wink). The soundtrack is so delightfully over the top 80s, that it almost feels at times that the movie was really a vehicle for the soundtrack than anything. 

What most people who watch it may know is that it was one of the many movies that really inspired the Fallout series of games. Although Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog were the bigger influences on the setting, this movie I think is the one that really inspired the more absurdist and dark humor that is in the games. It's also likely that it was also the source of the juxtaposition of 30s and 40s culture with the post apocalyptic setting. 

Despite these neat facts, the movie is pretty disjointed in tone, you just can't really jive some of the slapstick elements with some of the really dark crap happening in the story. That stuff seems to really work in the Fallout games, as they do it far more gracefully with less slapstick and more dark humor, but for the film, it's pretty jarring. It also suffers from having some pretty unsatisfying story threads, all while being a little too focused on the music at times. 

It seems I'm not alone it this appraisal, as the film wasn't given a wide release in the US, was never even released on DVD, and you can't even find a trailer for it online in the English language! But on the bright side, the film is so forgotten, I found multiple copies of the full movie that you can watch on youtube for free that I will link below.

Still, if you want something really out of the ordinary for a post apocalyptic film, and don't mind something a little disjointed, or if you're just a massive fallout fan, or love 80s pop music, go give it a shot.