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Friday OOT…Clubhouse Renovations.

by coldwarrior ( 302 Comments › )
Filed under OOT, Open thread, Uncategorized at July 8th, 2011 - 11:00 pm

Since we found out that Bunk was ~~under-worked and overpaid~~, was overworked and underpaid, the owners decided to spruce his workplace up. The OOT Clubhouse at the Blogmocracy Gun Golf and Country Club was overdue for some attention. Since we cant actually pay Bunk, per se…we can make his digs nicer so that he can have a ‘more appealing and satisfying work experience’ here on the OOT (I got that last bit out of an old HR manual I found under Dorian’s special beer stash in the back room).

Over the last few days, crews of highly trained craftsmen have worked during the non-OOT hours to make the Clubhouse a much more classy joint. You’ll never recognize the place.

So without taking up any more of your time, allow me to show you around.

Prebanned offered to take an aerial pic for us. Yinz is here:

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So, lets get on the ground and see what has been done to the place. The pavilion can be used for overflow guests on the OOT or for an outside party. What is not shown here is the bbq and smoker that can accommodate a whole pig.

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Now, lets walk into the OOT Clubhouse at the Blogmocracy Gun Golf and Country Club for a drink.

We got Bunk a few Wide Screen HD TV’s. You’ll notice that we fixed and painted the holes in the drywall from the last blowup on the OOT. We also replaced the booze. The trapdoor is now lockable from the bar side, not the boiler-room side. The chef has informed me that he has put on staff for the OOT on weekend nights. He plans on serving tapas and snacks after midnight.

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We blew out the back wall and put in more seating. And yes, those are antique leather couches back in the lounge area, try not to destroy these, please. We put in 2 neumann microphones and a few marshall amps with a mixing board in in case anyone wants to jam or recite poetry or just get up on the soap box. Don’t ask what truck these fell off of.

Yesterday during sound check we had to kick out some weird dude in orange overalls who was muttering ‘Don’t you know who i AM?’ while he was trying to plug his computer keyboard into one of the amps. ..was he a guest of someone?

There is also an HD big screen back there with high speed cable internet so members and guests can check out what up at DoD in real time and play the latest videos form the OOT. Only the finest for the OOT Clubhouse at the Blogmocracy Gun Golf and Country Club!

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For the Gentlemen, we put in bigger lockers as you requested, these are temporary as the cedar lined hardwood lockers are still at the cabinet makers. The gun safe is around the corner to the left. Pass cards will be issued as soon as the locksmith and the HVAC guy finish with the climate controlled walk in safe. The entrance to the all-weather skeet range is now beside the weapons safe. We also retained a gunsmith to attend to your shooting needs. And as always, see the staff pro for club fitting and repair.

The Lady Captain and the rest of her team were in the Ladies Locker Room, so I couldn’t get a pic of the new couches and the hot tub/sauna in their locker room. Lars reminded me today to tell the Ladies that he is available for massage therapy after the OOT and in the evenings and by appointment.

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Oh, and the Rep from the Betty Ford Clinic stopped by and gave us some golf and bar towels. Feel free to take a few, just ask whomever is behind the bar for a couple. In exchange, the rep asks for some references and such if anyone gets too over the top. This is a pic of one, i got it a little dirty as it rained pretty hard during my round this morning. (Coincidentally, Betty Ford died today at 93 after this thread was completed. She was a force for good, may she rest in peace.)

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All that is left to do is create a crest for the Blogmocracy Gun Golf and Country Club to hang over the fireplace and we will be finished. Any takers?

Regards,

Coldwarrior,

President BGGCC,

Chair, Awards Committee

Men’s Golf Team Captain

Tags: Blogmocracy, Open Thead, Overnight Open Thread
Posted in OOT, Open thread, Uncategorized | 302 Comments »

What is Dorian Up To Now??? Pt 2

by coldwarrior ( 61 Comments › )
Filed under Cars & Trucks, Open thread at June 25th, 2011 - 9:36 pm

Well, see Part 1

The ’63 Comet ‘Official Blogmocarcy’ Drag Car build continues!

Build Notes from Dorian:

“Well the factory stock rear-end is now out, the gas tank is out and the trunk has been cut out. The material for the tube chassy A frame for the rear-end has been cut and measured. Next we will weld up the rear-end A-frame and tie the rear-end A-frame to the rest of the tube chassy, add ladder bars and shock tower mounts.

Then it was time to take my seven year old nephew around the track in my little toy for a few hours.”

Tags: 1963 comet, Doriangrey, drag racing, Open Thead
Posted in Cars & Trucks, Open thread | 61 Comments »

Saturday Lecture Series: Stormy Saturn

by coldwarrior ( 38 Comments › )
Filed under Academia, Astronomy, Open thread, saturday lecture series, Science at May 21st, 2011 - 8:00 am

This from our friends at NASA. This event on Saturn is visible through backyard telescopes, so good hunting!

May 19, 2011: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and a European Southern Observatory ground-based telescope are tracking the growth of a giant early-spring storm in Saturn’s northern hemisphere so powerful that it stretches around the entire planet. The rare storm has been wreaking havoc for months and shooting plumes of gas high into the planet’s atmosphere.
Super Storm on Saturn (storm, 200px)
This false-color infrared image shows clouds of large ammonia ice particles dredged up by the powerful storm. Credit: Cassini. [more]

“Nothing on Earth comes close to this powerful storm,” says Leigh Fletcher, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and lead author of a study that appeared in this week’s edition of Science Magazine. “A storm like this is rare. This is only the sixth one to be recorded since 1876, and the last was way back in 1990.”

Cassini’s radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected the large disturbance in December 2010, and amateur astronomers have been watching it ever since through backyard telescopes. As it rapidly expanded, the storm’s core developed into a giant, powerful thunderstorm, producing a 3,000-mile-wide (5,000-kilometer-wide) dark vortex possibly similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

This is the first major storm on Saturn observed by an orbiting spacecraft and studied at thermal infrared wavelengths. Infrared observations are key because heat tells researchers a great deal about conditions inside the storm, including temperatures, winds, and atmospheric composition. Temperature data were provided by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) on Cerro Paranal in Chile and Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS), operated by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

“Our new observations show that the storm had a major effect on the atmosphere, transporting energy and material over great distances — creating meandering jet streams and forming giant vortices — and disrupting Saturn’s seasonal [weather patterns],” said Glenn Orton, a paper co-author, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The violence of the storm — the strongest disturbances ever detected in Saturn’s stratosphere — took researchers by surprise. What started as an ordinary disturbance deep in Saturn’s atmosphere punched through the planet’s serene cloud cover to roil the high layer known as the stratosphere.

“On Earth, the lower stratosphere is where commercial airplanes generally fly to avoid storms which can cause turbulence,” says Brigette Hesman, a scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park who works on the CIRS team at Goddard and is the second author on the paper. “If you were flying in an airplane on Saturn, this storm would reach so high up, it would probably be impossible to avoid it.”

A separate analysis using Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, led by Kevin Baines of JPL, confirmed the storm is very violent, dredging up deep material in volumes several times larger than previous storms. Other Cassini scientists are studying the evolving storm and, they say, a more extensive picture will emerge soon.

Stay tuned to Science@NASA for updates.

Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Tags: Open Thead, saturday lecture series, saturn. storms
Posted in Academia, Astronomy, Open thread, saturday lecture series, Science | 38 Comments »