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WEEK 44 2016

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Fourteen
Years
Ago,
This
Week
2002

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Five Years Ago,
This Week,
2011

Four Years Ago,
This Week,
2012

Three Years Ago,
This Week,
2013

Two
Years
Ago
This
Week
2014

One
Year
Ago
This
Week,
2015

Saturday 29 October 2016

Saturday - Cool still. R is hoping for dry weather so that he can put out his screaming zombies and electrified Halloween stuff....

Friday 28 October 2016

Friday - Rain. About 1/10".

More working on the app...

Book #51 was The Sinking of the Prince of Wales and & Repulse: The End of the Battleship Era, by P. Mahoney & M. Middlebrook. This was a sad book to read. On the third day of the war with Japan the two ships were sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers. The admiral in charge, tom Phillips, was somewhat dismissive of air power in general, and thought that the Japanese had no torpedo bombers nearby.

But his was the general naval attitude - and prior to this point there was no evidence to the contrary.

Winston Churchill wanted a show of force to scare off the Japanese, which was never going to happen. A bad call by Churchill.

An aircraft carrier was to accompany them, but ran aground in the West Indies and was scheduled to join them in a month.

Another older, smaller, carrier was available, but no-one thought to ask for it. Four American destroyers were on they way to Singapore, but he'd have to wait a day for them to arrive.

Everything said, Phillip's was in an almost impossible position. There were reports of a Japanese army being landed just a few hundred miles from Singapore, and if he could get in among the transports he could stop the invasion cold (and here we have a precursor of the Japanese Center Force strategy at Guadacanal, leading to the Battle Off Samar, years later).

He rolled the dice: win and the invasion is delayed or defeated, lose and he and his ships and Singapore are lost.

But he had almost no air cover available - the British planes were not really under his command and tied up with the existing army fighting and the bases closest to his target were already overrun. The commander of the air forces kept a dozen planes waiting for him to call...but he never did, keeping radio silence to the end, despite the fact that the Japanese knew where he was. The captain of the old Repulse finally called for help when he realized this, but late, far too late. Could a squadron of a dozen Brewster Buffalo's hold off dozens of attacking planes for an entire day? Doubtful, but what if...

Thursday 27 October 2016 Thursday - Rain again. Nice. Not much but anything is welcome.

Working away on the app. Some UX stuff again. Kind of a grind.

Wednesday 26 October 2016

Wednesday - Cloudy. They've been predicting rain, but other than a couple of small sprinkles there hasn't been any.

Took the cat in to get him "fixed". He's so calm, already used to the cat crate and the car...

Book #51 was Awake in the Night Land, by John C. Wright. This is an odd book, written in a fantasy world where every human alive is inside the "Last Redoubt", while monsters prowl outside. It's actually four novellas, sets thousands and hundreds of thousands of years apart. Humanity is doomed, but they fight on...

Tuesday 25 October 2016

Tuesday - Nice.

Took the cat in to the Vet. There was no chip, so I had them give him all his shots and do all they blood work. Preliminary was that he was very healthy and had no communicable diseases. Yay. So tomorrow he'll be "fixed", poor guy.

This is the seventy-second anniversary of the Battle Off Samar, possibly the most lop-sided naval battle of all time. Apart from a few history buffs I suppose no-one will remember it. If one were to write it as fiction, it would be dismissed as ludicrous.

Monday 24 October 2016

Monday - Nice weather.

Other than eating a great deal the new cat is very quiet, and just sleeps a lot. Guess he's had it rough for a while.

My cats are hiding upstairs from him, though he's quiet and in a cage...

Sunday 23 October 2016

Sunday - Cool and pleasant in the morning.

I did the usual grocery shopping in the morning, a few of the usual items.

As we were loading groceries into the Explorer at WinCo a stray cat came up and started begging food. He was a young tom, but sweet and obviously people-friendly. He rubbed against our legs and my friend gave him some fresh sliced turkey, which he devoured instantly. He was very thin and clearly hungry. With only minimal effort we lured him into the Explorer, a "ttcchhh" of the tongue and a pat on the seat.

So...my brother or I have a new cat...

Right now he's in a cage, I'll have to check Craigslist for missing cat ads, and with the veterinarian to see if he has an ID chip, and if those things turn out negative he needs a checkup, shots, fixing and so on...

Did a bit more yard work. Lot's to be done this time of year.

I didn't do much of anything in the afternoon and evening. A bit of reading.

Book #50 was Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland, by L.G. Lamplighter. This is the third in the Rachel series. While it has a whiff of Harry Potter about it, it is also fun and fast moving.

And that's 50 books, in 44 weeks. About what I usually do I guess.

Picture of the Week

Cat in a box.

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