Post Race!

[Shaggy Hiker]

My sister-in-law actually did that. It looked terrible...

I make up a hair-style and it actually exists??? I must be psychic....or just plain sick....or they are.

[dday9]

We use to pick at her cause she died the shaved part black and white. So I called her pepe le pew... She did not get the reference.

[Gruff]

Ah! Le Skunk Le Pew!

[dday9]

post

[FunkyDexter]

Race!

[Shaggy Hiker]

Good times.

I went to a class on drones last night. Fortunately, the speakers didn't drone. I also got to smash a drone into the wall of a hall and broke a strut. It's a bit difficult getting the hang of those things.

[Gruff]

That'll teach you to be strutting around.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Well, at least the presenters didn't drone about drones. Overall, though, it could have been drone out more. I would have liked to have another crack at that drone, but they probable felt I had cracked it enough already.

[Gruff]

Guess you earned your props. Don't get too wound up about it though.

[SJWhiteley]

I shoot drones.

And since when did radio controlled models become 'drones'? Is an RC Plane considered a drone? They have been around for donkeys.

Is it because if you call it a radio controlled toy it seems pretty ridiculous that a government agency would want to license the use of said toy. But if you call it a 'drone' then that's a whole new ball game because drones are killers carrying cruise missiles and other assorted knives and deadly spoons.

[Gruff]

As I understand it 'Drone' is a slang buzz word. The proper term for military models is UAV.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Actually, the hobby world is trying to move away from the term drone because of the military associations with the word.

In any case, these things do need to be regulated. One of the stories I heard last night was that somebody decided they wanted to see clouds from above, so they flew their drone up above the clouds and looked down on them for a time. They then brought the drone back down through the clouds, whereupon they discovered what the jet stream was: They no longer had any idea where their drone was because it had been blown a long ways off. It eventually ran out of battery life and crashed. Meanwhile, it was largely out of control in the area where jets fly. Bird strikes are bad enough, how about sucking a nearly explosive battery and a bunch of other odds and ends into an engine?

Irresponsible use has yet to kill anybody, that I am aware of (Homer will eventually show up and post a link about somebody using a UAV to drop poop on a car, but it still wasn't deadly, yet). That will change.

One thing I was interested in was the use of Lithium-polymer batteries, which are somewhat more flamable than lithium ion batteries when damaged. Considering that the use I'd be interested in would be in a fire-prone area at a fire-prone time (that is, it's in the west pretty nearly ANY time, these days), I found the possibility of fire kind of intriguing. The likelihood isn't high, it's just that a rare event become somewhat amplified when the consequences get high.

[Gruff]

Unmanned Balloon Bombing WWII

[FunkyDexter]

Irresponsible use has yet to kill anybody, that I am aware of (Homer will eventually show up and post a link about somebody using a UAV to drop poop on a car, but it still wasn't deadly, yet). That will change.

Yeah, a freind of mine is very much into his remote controlled planes and that community are horrified by the "rise of the drones". The plane community has a culture of responsible use where your the clubs train and mentor members etc. but drones have no such culture. It's an accident waiting to happen.

Part of the problem is that they're pretty easy to fly so anyone can pick one up and have go with no supervision or mentorship. A remote controlled plane is difficult so people join clubs in order to learn how to fly them and, as a result, they get taught how to fly them responsibly at the same time.

[Shaggy Hiker]

In my very brief experience...I'd have to disagree with your statement that they are easy to fly.

The thing about planes is that they are not all that maneuverable. You need a pretty big, open, space to fly one. Meanwhile, I was flying (if you could call it that) a drone in the halls of a school. You can fly one in the confines of your own home. I think it might be that versatility along with low cost and video, which makes drones so popular. They might not be as popular if you couldn't use them as a stable platform for video, and they also might not be as popular if there wasn't loads of tiny video capability out there. You can get a headset that allows you to see what the drone is seeing. That might be possible on a plane (if you can mount the camera such that it isn't looking through the prop), but it wasn't possible anywhere until within the last decade, or so. Even so, a plane can't hover over you immortilizing your actions as you do something stupid. Drones are even sold with that in mind.

There are plenty of groups trying to form a responsible culture, it's just that the cost and technology are causing the field to get away from them. They also have unfortunate names, such as flight club, and you know that the first rule of flight club is that you don't talk about flight club. That makes it hard to advertise.

[dday9]

Dutch artist turns his dead pet into a helicopter

[dday9]

At least it was not a catastrophe.

[homer13j]

(Homer will eventually show up and post a link about somebody using a UAV to drop poop on a car, but it still wasn't deadly, yet).

Sorry, the only stories I can find are people using them to drop drugs into prisons.

[dday9]

Sorry, the only stories I can find are people using them to drop drugs into prisons.

Unfortunately that does not surprise me.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Heck, I already knew about that.

[homer13j]

Not drone related, but how about this:

Woman accused of taking clothes off, trashing Subway in custody

[dday9]

I guess she didn't have it her way.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I guess she didn't have it her way.

That would be a Burger King.

[dday9]

Why did Wendy get pregnant? Because Burger King didn't wrap his wopper.

[FunkyDexter]

At least it was not a catastrophe

I bet you're feline pretty good about that gag.

[Gruff]

I bet you're feline pretty good about that gag.

That gave me paws. Also new meaning to: "You can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone."

Wonder if it always lands on its feet?

[Shaggy Hiker]

At least it was not a catastrophe.

We have a cats-ass trophy at work. You get it for screwing up in the most entertaining fashion. The trophy is the back end of a bobcat mounted on a plaque. At one point, it had a ribbon tied around its nards.

[dday9]

I often say, "Only in Louisiana" but in this case I think I can say... Only in Idaho.

[dday9]

It turns out that I know a lot of words in a language I didn't know existed, patois.

[dday9]

My customer from Trinidad, more specifically San Fernando, was speaking a little bit of it.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I guess I didn't think that was a language so much as a way of speaking.

[dday9]

Found this gem.

[dday9]

Why would he point his gun at his face?

[Shaggy Hiker]

Floppy disks had a way of doing that to you.

[Gruff]

The gal that ordered new floppies for us was so frumpy we started calling them froppies.

[Shaggy Hiker]

She made you floppy?

[Gruff]

floppies could only be inserted one way. Carefully and right side up.

[dday9]

[Shaggy Hiker]

I never saw Toy Story. I didn't realize that's what it was about.

[dday9]

I would ask "did you have a childhood" but I forget how much older most of the members are to me.