The Price of Hubris With The Wilsons

English picked up both the concept of hubris and the term for that particular brand of cockiness from the ancient Greeks, who considered hubris a dangerous character flaw capable of provoking the wrath of the gods. In classical Greek tragedy, hubris was often a fatal shortcoming that brought about the fall of the tragic hero. Typically, overconfidence led the hero to attempt to overstep the boundaries of human limitations and assume a godlike status, and the gods inevitably humbled the offender with a sharp reminder of their mortality.

I don’t know if I fit the classical Greek definition of Hubris, but a couple of times I did get spanked pretty good, if not by Zeus, some power. Maybe it was God knowing I had a comeuppance.

Or maybe it was just old-fashioned karma.

Miscellaneous Ramblings – 01/06/22

If there is an informal poll for “Worst Commerical Airport – Passenger Category” – my vote would go to SFO – San Francisco. Even getting there, between the weather and the traffic, can be a challenge. I can remember years ago, picking up my parents, that the wind and rain was so strong that I would unintentionally change lanes driving over the Bay Bridge. And on that bridge, it’s a long way down.

And because traffic can really bite you, sometimes I’ll leave an hour earlier than what I think I really need.

Once you get there – turning off from the Bayshore Freeway – that’s US 101 – you are funneled into several “Y” intersections with little time to react.

I think that they built this facility over the years in sort of an “ad hoc” manner and any “master plan” to handle the traffic went by the wayside.

At least that’s my opinion.

Craig’s Most Excellent Birthday

…and a bit of recent Napa County history

From time to time, I have come across some tales that I have felt should be put to paper (or at least digital binary bits), so others can hear of it.

Our car club has a monthly drive that has been popular for some years. The host will plan a route somewhere in No CA and people are advised of it via email. They can show up Sunday mornings or not, no reservations required.

The drive for August was a drive through the back roads of Napa County, culminating at a Napa County institution in St Helena, Gotts Roadside. To call Gott’s a “hamburger stand” does it an injustice, although gourmet hamburgers is the main faire. How many hamburger stands offer a complete wine list?

After all, this is the Napa Valley.

Lex Gets Mail

Posted by lex, on October 28, 2008

Sadly, it is not universally approbatory:

i take issue for your biased reporting and statements favoring mccain and trashing obama.  i am a retired usn pilot, two deployments to nam, and know what mccain’s squadron mates say about him…  they dispise him for his PI and nasty temperture.  obama is the clear choice for me.  how come the nam pow are not taking his side???  in closing, since when did nfo’s start taking credit for traps while riding in the aircraft… 

I am dashed. Utterly.

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Nanny state

Posted by lex, on July 10, 2008

Teenage kids push away from Grand Theft Auto games and create a Wiffle ball diamond on what had been, well: Poison ivy.**

After three weeks of clearing brush and poison ivy, scrounging up plywood and green paint, digging holes and pouring concrete, Vincent, Justin and about a dozen friends did manage to build it — a tree-shaded Wiffle ball version of Fenway Park complete with a 12-foot-tall green monster in center field, American flag by the left-field foul pole and colorful signs for Taco Bell Frutista Freezes.

Greenwich neighbors react in dismay, no doubt believing that anything not compulsory ought to be forbidden. Lawyers are summoned.

You only think your job is a pain in the a**

Posted by lex, on February 13, 2008

Pull this out when you think you’re having a bad day at work. It’s a letter from a deep sea diver to his sister that apparently got airplay on the radio in Louisiana:

“Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it’s not so bad after all.

Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wet suit.

Good news, bad news

Posted by lex, on February 15, 2020

The good news is that my thesis topic has been approved!

The bad news is that I’m now on the hook for a 100-page thesis.

That guy? Who turned me on to this 24-month program eighteen months ago?

Dead.

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Which would have been useful before I went to flight school…

Posted by lex, on February 10, 2007

As usual, the BBC carries some unwelcome but – in retrospect – unsurprising news today:

High-flying men are not as attractive to women looking for love as those with an average job, scientists say.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the University of Central Lancashire research found the 186 female students asked preferred good-looking men. But within that group, those without top careers were deemed most suitable, the Personality and Individual Differences journal reported. The team said women seemed to feel high-flyers would not be good fathers.

And they wonder why we can’t understand them. I could have been a SWO!!!

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Lex’s wish list

Posted by lex, on November 26, 2006

Other blogger’s put wish lists up. Things from Amazon, DVDs and the like. Widgets. Gewgaws.

Me?

I want the same thing I wanted when I was a little boy: I want a jet.

In fact, I want an A-4 Skyhawk. And you, gentle reader, can buy one for me. For around $149k from EBay,* unless you want to go through the high drama of the actual auction. Which, you know: Be my guest, if that’s the way you’d prefer to handle it.

Oh, and the seller says that I’ll need around ~$750k to make her airworthy. Maybe you can all pitch in on that.

He also says that he “has a line” on a TA-4J cockpit that can be used to “convert a single.” Which is just enough to queer me on the whole enterprise, because that makes it clear that he has no idea what he’s talking about. You don’t just slap a -J cockpit into -C and call it a day. Wouldn’t fit *. *sigh*

So. DVD?

** 09-14-20 Links gone; no replacements found – Ed.

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No prom dates

Posted by lex, on November 22, 2006

Not for nothing, but reading this article about the Mars Global Surveyor, I couldn’t help but think a kid growing up with a name like the one below pretty much had to go and work at NASA:

“While we have not exhausted everything that we could do, we believe the prospect of recovery of MGS is not looking very good at all,” said Fuk Li, Mars exploration programme manager at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

I’m not the kind of guy to throw stones when it comes to naming children – in my part of the country when I was being christened the locals eschewed such conventions as “first names,” preferring to cobble together familials in random and sometimes unfortunate sequence – but “Fuk Li”? How do you introduce a guy like that at the staff meeting and keep a straight face?

Gosh.

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