Our RV Adventures

Today was another lunch/errand/coffee day, with lunch at our newly-reopened Monterey’s Little Mexico once again. And luckily the crowd has tapered off since they opened a couple of weeks ago, so we didn’t have a wait this time like the last several times.

Then it was on up to the Harbor Freight for a couple of small storage bins, before doing WalMart/HEB stops. And of course finishing up with Cold Blended Sugar-Free Pumpkin Spice Lattes with Almond Milk and Sugar-Free Whipped Cream.

Delicious as always.

Apparently there’s a bobcat running around a golf course in the League City area.

A pretty good sized one, and out in the daytime too.

The Next UFO Sighting?

I recently came across an article about a leaked photo of a stealthy-looking aircraft test shape on a trailer driving near Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works facility in California at the company’s secretive Helendale radar-cross section (RCS) measurement facility.

The Skunk Works is responsible for a number of aircraft designs, beginning with the P-38 Lightning in 1939 and the P-80 Shooting Star in 1943. Skunk Works engineers subsequently developed the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, F-117 Nighthawk, F-22 Raptor, and F-35 Lightning II.

And for some reason, Jeff Babione, the head of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works advanced projects division declined to comment.

And this story about the testform and the Radar Cross-Section test area, brings back a memory of when in 1981-82 I was part of the team helping to set up the Space Shuttle Backup Landing Site located at Northrup Strip on the White Sands Missile Range.

To get there we usually rode a Air Force bus out from Holloman AFB. Along the way we passed the location of the famed Rocket Sled track where John Stapp became the ‘Fastest Man On Earth” traveling at over 600 mph in December 1954.

And then, out in the middle of the desert, was this facility about 200 yards off the road. It consisted of a large one-story building with a really big radar dish out in front. But rather than pointing up in the sky, it was pointing out horizontally, toward a tall white pylon about 300 yards away.

Though it was often empty, a number of times there would be this weird shape sitting on top of the pylon, with all sorts of flat sides and angles sticking out.

And we probably wouldn’t have thought anything about it, until the AP guy with us on the bus told us to not look over there as we went by. Of course that just made us more curious, so we looked when ever we got a chance.

But it wasn’t until around 1988 when the Air Force released the first somewhat blurry photo of the rumored first stealth aircraft, the F117 Stealth Fighter.

Turns out this facility was the RCS (Radar Cross-Section) test area, researching the different configurations of the F117 to find the most stealthy one.

You never know what you’ll see.
 

Thought For The Day:

“You cannot step in the same river twice, for the river has changed, and you have changed.” – Heraclitus ~ 600 BC

The Minnesota Department of Health says:

Seek medical attention right away if you have any of the following symptoms after receiving COVID-19 vaccine:

Chest pain
Shortness of breath
Feelings of having a fast-beating, fluttering, or pounding heart

Seek medical attention right away if you have any of the following symptoms after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine:

Weakness or tingling sensations, especially in the legs or arms, that’s worsening and spreading to other parts of the body
Hard time walking
Hard time with moving your face, including speaking, chewing, or swallowing
Double vision or not being able to move eyes
Difficulty with bladder control or bowel function

For three weeks after receiving the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, be on the lookout for these symptoms:

Shortness of breath
Chest pain
Leg swelling
Abdominal/stomach pain that doesn’t go away
Severe headaches or headaches that won’t go away
Blurred vision
Easy bruising or tiny blood spots under the skin beyond the site of the injection

If you have any of these symptoms after getting the vaccine, you should seek medical attention right away. Tell the health care provider that you recently received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

I’ve noted that our local WalMart has chairs setting around the pharmacy area, and signs asking you to sit for at least 30 minutes, to an hour after getting your WuFlu jab.

Pfizermectin?

On Monday, Pfizer announced that it’s launching an accelerated Phase 2/3 trial for a COVID prophylactic pill designed to ward off COVID in those may have come in contact with the disease.

Lo and behold, Pfizer’s new drug – which some have jokingly dubbed “Pfizermectin,” is described by the pharmaceutical giant as a “potent protease inhibitor.”

And else do we know that is an anti-parasitical, potent protease inhibitor?

Can you say ‘Ivermection’?  I knew you could.

Word on the street is that since Ivermectin is no longer on patent, Pfizer is reformulating it enough to effectively have a entirely new drug. An entirely new ‘patentable’ drug.

And apparently Pfizer is the only drug company jumping on the ‘horse paste’ wagon.

And under the heading, ‘Is there anything it can’t do?’

According to research published this week in the journal The Lancet Infectious Disease, an NPR article talks about a study that points to a potential new tool to fight malaria: the medication ivermectin. Studies conducted in the 2000s, including one in 2010, show that malaria-carrying mosquitoes die after feeding on individuals who have ingested the drug.

In their study, the researchers demonstrate that three high doses of ivermectin make human blood deadly to mosquitoes for at least 28 days after the start of treatment. This high dose of ivermectin was also well-tolerated with few side effects.

“The most exciting result was the fact that even one month after [the subjects took] ivermectin, their blood was still killing mosquitoes,” Smit says. “That’s much longer than we thought.”

Wrapping up, a couple of days ago I needed to replace the battery in our coffee whisker. So taking the back off, I inserted the new battery according to the diagram.

And pushing the button, it didn’t work. But the new battery checked good on my tester. But as I stared at it I realized that the new battery was opposite of how the old one was installed when I took it out. So reversing the new battery, it now worked.

The diagram is backwards, and since the battery came installed in the handle, you would never know, especially since one end doesn’t have the spring to tell you it’s the negative pole.

So, am I just being paranoid that this was deliberate, to make you think it had died so you buy a new one?

Or is it just me?
 

Thought For The Day:

I’m a vegetarian. All my meat is plant-based.

It’s what my food eats.