Finally found a way to get the photos out of Doug's camera. Here they are.

While at lunch in the US Embassy, Moscow, I was talking to a guy who's job is basically to fix the inevitable diplomatic and logistical problems that occur during normal operations. He was mentioning how, if everything is going right, his superiors never hear from him. He only has to act when something hits the fan.

I hate calling [my boss] up, because he now associates my name with disasters. The only time he hears from me is when some calamity is in progress. They have problems dissociating the problem and the problem solvers.

'Yes, sir, if I could just direct your attention to the punch bowl... you'll see there's a turd floating in there... and I put it there.'

That's what they're thinking whenever I call them.

Some of the delegation went to the Tchaikovsky theater last night to see a jazz performance that was really quite good. The headliner was a jazz pianist whose name escapes me. The first half of the show was a trio with the piano, an electric bass, and drums. They did jazz arrangements of Tchaikovsky songs, which sounded to me like it might have really been atrocious but ended up being really great. The pianist would start playing classical tunes that I recognized and then transition into really up-beat jazz. Fortunately, there was no 1812 Overture or cannon fire.

The second half of the concert was big band, which I usually don't care for but somehow this was good. I think the principals were just so energetic and into the show that it was fun regardless. They did some Gershwin and Shirley Bassey tunes that I like. Some of the second half was improv because half of the big band was stuck in traffic, but I prefer improv so this was a bonus.

The moral of the last post is: don't take prescription sleep aids and then try to write something coherent. Wow. I'm somewhat impressed I was able to press the submit button and get over to the bed without falling on my face.

I brought my GPS out here to see if there were any urban caches in Moscow that I could grab. Turns out there are less than 30 caches in all of Russia, and only a couple in Moscow, neither of which are nearby where I am. Meanwhile, in my absence, a wealth of new caches have appeared in Los Alamos.

When I was in Moscow and Vienna in December, a couple geocaches appeared back home which I couldn't get to until I returned. Once I returned, I decided that it would be mildly humorous to try to get the FTF on every new cache in Los Alamos. The only problem was that there were hardly any new caches appearing during January and February of this year. I think the total was two, and I got them both.

Then, just before I left for this trip that I'm on now, a 4 cache series was let loose but it took me so long to solve the puzzle that I couldn't go after the caches until the day before I left for Moscow and in the meantime someone beat me to it. No FTF there. Now that I'm on the far side of the planet, new caches are arriving almost daily in Los Alamos. I'm quite sure that they'll all be found before I get back. So my quest to FTF all the nearby caches is really running into some major problems. Buh. I hope the trend of new los alamos caches appearing frequently continues, but based on my travelling over the past year, my presensece in the town leads to some kind of '

wow i took an ambien to fall asleep before i started this i post . i it making it very difficukt to read and tyep. and ym head feels very heavy. i guess i should go liedownm as this is porobably borkbork

one interesting sideefeffect of forced sleep response while trying to read is that the form page that im enterubg inti dies not look flat and some of the letters away from my point of focus seem to be lighter earthen tones, i frequentlyget the sense that some of the text has drop shaddows and that the entire mass of type is moving, though maybe that's just my desk.

I'm giuoing to hve to proofread this one klater. rapidly gettign sleeepy

In light of my camera having been lifted, I've uploaded some photos from my last Russia trip which I happened to have sitting on my hard drive. Doug has a bunch of pictures from our walk around town yesterday, but the connector for his camera is proprietary and he didn't bring the cable so I won't have access to those until we get back to the states. Enjoy the photos; they are all of a walking trip in and around the Moscow Kremlin from back in December. The weather was dark and overcast, so the photos aren't the best.

And because so many people have asked, here are some details on the great pickpocketing event of yesterday morning: The camera was in the right-hand pocket of my parka and the wallet was in the left-hand front pocket of my pants. So in essence I got totally worked. I am impressed that someone could get a wallet out of the front of my pants without me noticing. However, it seems to have appeared as I was pushing onto a really packed subway train, so there was more or less constant contact and motion with the people around me. So I guess it isn't that surprising; the situation was more-or-less tailor made for pickpockets. Still, I think they were ninjas.

I have arrived in Moscow and, after a breif foray on the subway this morning, am now sans wallet and camera. Thanks.

I'm not in any real trouble as a result of this; I got my debit card cancelled more or less immediately, and I'm working on getting the credit card cancelled (it has considerably more financial protection and is thus less of a risk). It's really just a big pain in the ass and I'm out a couple hundred bucks. Luckily, the pickpocket in question left me with my passport and my lab cellphone. They did, however, take the stick of gum I got with the receipt at breakfast. Damn them!

I am so pissed off at myself, as this was entirely preventable and I just wasn't thinking. For starters, I usually empty my wallet of anything non-essential before going on travel and just spaced it this time (likely because I started packing for the trip at 5:00am the day I left). Second, I know better than to carry valuables in external pockets onto the subway. Especially a packed subway. So I was a dumbass and have now paid the price.

I think the worst part is that I hadn't dumped the photos off my camera, so I lost all of my shots from Nina's presentation in New York and the associated Explorer's Club shenaniganry. Also lost were all of the step-by-step photos on how to disassemble the dash trim panels in my Tacoma and install a fog lamp indicator LED. I'm sure this and all the camel/llama/penguin shots will confuse and disorient the theif.

Doug is going to provide me with a loan to get me through the rest of the trip, so this unfortunate occurrance really has little bearing on the remainder of my time here (we took care of all the souvenier shopping yesterday afternoon anyway). So, in summary... I'm alive and well. I'm just annoyed. I think the hotel hot tub is looking mighty appealing right about now.

Hopefully I can get some of Doug's pictures to upload.

I'll be leaving for Albuquerque in an hour. Brent is in town for a conference and I'm going to spend the evening hanging out with him down there. In the morning I catch the first of my flights, ABQ->ATL. From Atlanta, it's nine hours to Moscow and I arrive late Sunday morning local time. I can just smell the frequent flier miles.

Speaking of which... my flight to NYC last weekend was my first chance to wave my "Silver Medallion" perks card around at the airport and it got me exactly squat. They still put me in the back row of the plane, next to the toilet, in a seat that wouldn't recline. I didn't even get to board early. I think Delta is the only carrier who has a perks plan but doesn't let their card carriers board along with the first-class folks. Grumble grumble...

Anyway, whatever. If I get my way I'll be doing so much travelling that soon they'll just make me the honorary president of Delta Airlines (or maybe Aeroflot) and I can rule with an iron fist. The first change I'll make is that silver medallion carriers board first, and can have any seat they want. And their luggage can weigh 100kg and it won't matter. Yeah.

I should have access to the internet while in Russia (the Marriott Grand has wireless everywhere); last trip I had to bring an old wireless-free junker laptop because this one arrived the day after I left. So unlike last time, expect updates and what-not. Who knows... maybe I'll spend some of my jet lag insomnia uploading the pictures from the last trip to Russia. :)

I'm not sure, but I think this is Titan being "eclipsed" by the rings and another small moon, possibly Mimas. Thanks to Barb for pointing this out; image courtesy of JPL.

I spent last weekend in New York City with Nina. We were there to attend the Explorer's Club annual banquet. Nina gave a talk at the Explorer's Club frathouse about her Mars research that was very well received. I ate ostritch (good) and rattlesnake (yuck) but didn't go near the tarantulas, maggots, or crickets. Live animals present included an American Kestrel, penguins, a llama, a camel, some sort of puma, and a huge owl. Famous people I met include: Valentina Tereshkova, Dan Goldin, Luc Jacquet, and Ed Viesturs. Buzz Aldrin drew a doodle on a napkin which sold for over $6000 at the live auction. The banquet was a very surreal experience. It would have been a lot more fun if I hadn't lost a filling at dinner and then had balloons rain down around me at the end.

Nina had to spend a lot of time preparing for her talk, but we did manage to get out and visit some old friends of mine who now live in the city. The trip was too breif, but I had a good time.

Just an appraisal of what I'm up to:

I'll be in NYC this weekend, eating spiders and petting tigers. Back to NM for the following week, then I'm off to Moscow for a week starting on the 25th. I was going to go mountaineering this past weekend but terrible weather combined with an injured wrist (thx, handball) nixed that.

The dash trim panels for the Tacoma are all stacked in the back of the truck, pending modifications. In the meantime, the interior of the truck looks like something out of Road Warrior.

I'm considering building a collapsable medium wave edge-wound tuned loop antenna for some DXing and/or contesting. This might qualify me for a new strata of nerdiness, though not yet at the level of my roommate, who has a ham operator license plate.

Speaking of which, should I get vanity plates for the taco? Submit your proposals here. NM plates allow 7 alphanumeric characters + spaces, and you can put a little "zia dot" in the place of one if you want (not sure if they allow multiple dots). Parker already has 3[zia]14159, so that one is out. Dan, I'm counting on your rapier wit here.

Ideas already submitted:

MOUSER [yawn; the true vanity plate]
NOTGREG [my group leader has a more-or-less identical truck w/ cap]

So the US Navy is retiring the F-14 Tomcat, arguably the sexiest aircraft of the Cold War era [cue Kenny Loggins]. This, of course, also entails the retirement of the Phoenix long-range AAM, which is decidedly my favorite missile of all time [everyone should have a favorite missile. What's yours?]. In truth, the Phoenix was retired in 2004 but I didn't know that until today, when I read about the last two Tomcat squadrons standing down from active service.

The reasons I like the Phoenix are largely aesthetic and stem mostly from my rocketry habit; it was one of my first model rocket kits and the first I ever flew with a D motor. But aside from the hobby connection, it is just an appealing rocket.

The Phoenix does have a rather interesting history, as well as some impressive capabilities. It can fly at Mach 5 (that's a mile per second) and has a range of over 100 miles. Each F-14 can carry 6 Phoenix missiles, and can fire them all nearly simultaneously with each tracking an independant target.

The F-14 aircraft was designed specifically to carry the Phoenix, and its role was to defend a carrier fleet while at sea, destroying approaching aircraft before they could fire their own weapons. The Cold War, being as it was so... cold, involved precisely zero Phoenix combat firings by the US. In fact, the total number of Phoenix missiles fired at hostile targets by the United States was:

2

Both were fired during the first Gulf War, and both missed. Not such an impressive track record. Bear in mind that we produced a few thousand of these things at a price tag of $475k each. To be fair to the Phoenix, its real purpoise was as a cold war deterrent. It's success along these lines is tougher to quantify, but there was never a Soviet airstrike against a US carrier group...

Because the Tomcat and the Phoenix were seen as a tremendous tactical advantage over the Soviets, the US was very stringent with who it would sell the technology to. Unlike the F-16, which we sold to practically all of our allies, the F-14 we kept to ourselves. You could make the argument that the F-14 was designed as a carrier fleet defender, and there weren't any other significant navies to whom we could sell one (barring, of course, the Soviet Navy). However, we did make one exception to our no-sharing rule—and it was to a desert country with practically no navy at all. For some reason which completely escapes me, in 1974 we decided to sell 80 F-14's and 714 Phoenix missiles to...

Iran

Now at the time, Iran was casually engaging the Soviet Union's MiG-25 reconnaissance aircraft in small skirmishes near the Caspian Sea. Our decision to sell our technology to Iran was a nice way for us to shaft the Soviets without actually getting our hands dirty. Unfortunately for us (and much to the chagrin of the US intelligence community, I imagine), the Iranian Revolution occurred shortly after the sale. Overnight, Iran went from being our buddy to being our enemy, and we had just sent them some of our most coveted military technology. We managed to hold back 1 of the 80 aircraft, and 430 of the missiles, but still... it wasn't long before the Soviet Union had obtained at least one Phoenix and one Tomcat from Iran. Their MiG-31 fighters and AA-9 missiles bear a striking resemblence.

Anyway, the sale of the F-14 and AIM-54 to Iran ended up being a huge mistake, but it did result in the only real combat use of the Phoenix—against Iraq as part of the drawn-out Iran-Iraq war. Whereas the US Navy has used the misssile twice, both times unsuccessfully, the Iranian Air Force has fired the Phoenix in combat approximately 80 times with an estimated success rate of 80%.

When Iran became our enemy in the mid 1970's, it was quickly embargoed which means that they had no official source for spare F-14 parts. There is some question as to how many of these aircraft are still operational. A significant fraction must have been cannibalized for parts by now.

Still, it makes one wonder if we might be facing our own hardware if we end up in some sort of armed conflict with the new, even creepier, Iran.

Put the Ranger up for sale on the Lemon Lot last week and this morning sold it. The guy who bought it test drove it for all of half a mile, never exercised the 4WD (or the most of the other features of the truck, for that matter), and asked me zero questions about the truck's performance, maintenance history, or idiosyncracies. He paid me my asking price in cash approximately 10 minutes after getting in the truck for the first time.

Speaking of the asking price... I asked for the bluebook value, which it turns out is only $100 less than what I bought the truck for back in 2003. I purchased the Ranger from my bank as part of an estate sale and they had mis-identified the options on the truck (their receipt refers to it as a regular cab with the lowest trim package and no options, whereas the truck was actually the extended cab with a higher trim package and a bunch of options, e.g. the camper shell). At the time, this accounted for about $1500 difference in the blue book price and the bank low-balled the price big-time. The 35,000 miles I put on the truck in the past 2.75 years have now decreased the value of the truck to right around what I paid for it. Not bad.

Of course I did dump a bunch of money into repairs, maintenance, and upgrades of the vehicle... but still, I feel sort of like I had equity in the truck.

And the giant wad of cash was good for some laughs. Plus, it more than paid for the new camper shell I put on the Tacoma yesterday. I spent some time today familiarizing myself with the electrical system in the new truck. Hacked the fuse box to allow me to turn on the fog lamps whenever I want, instead of the stock restriction that the low-beams must be on and the car running for the fog lamps to work.

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In non-truck-related news... after selling the truck, I spent the rest of the morning down at Hodson's Hole hauling rock. Four of us this time, which made for a much more efficient bucket brigade than when Rod and I tried to do everything ourselves. We cleared a lot of rock. The cave was inhaling heavily today. I managed to break the head off the rock hammer, which I think means that I'm enormous.