Photo by bobthemtnbiker on flickr.
The (solar) annular eclipse was visible in Albuquerque this year right before sunset. Many people attended viewing parties on the west mesa or their homes. I managed to get out of work in time to see the eclipse at a party in Corrales. I think the eclipse was more fun when viewed with friends.
If azcentral.com is playing a April Fools joke, it’s a bad one.
Southwest Flight 812 left Sky Harbor Airport around 3:25 p.m. and landed safely at Yuma Marine Corps. Air Station at 4:07 p.m., said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Passenger Brenda Reese said the top of the Boeing 737 ripped open, leaving a gaping hole between 5 to 6 feet long.
Southwest is my preferred airplane and I will be very interested to hear the results of the investigation.
Update: An article from the Yuma Sun includes a good photo showing the hole. The article indicates that the Southwest plane landed at Yuma International airport. Perhaps the Marine Corps. Air Station and Air Port are one in the same.
Southwest is canceling flights to inspect planes, according to the Southwest website.
Southwest expects to cancel approximately 300 flights today to accommodate the inspections. Customers may experience sporadic delays of up to two hours on some flights today. Customers should check the status of their particular flight or rebook their trip on southwest.com before heading to the airport.
The 118 passengers on board Flight 812 have received a full refund along with an apology and two complimentary roundtrip passes on Southwest for future flights.
More on the cancelations from Azcentral.com.
Update 04/03/2011: A scary report from Reuters. An airline I actually like will be the airline I will avoid if they can’t keep their aircraft from falling apart.
National safety inspectors have found evidence of “widespread cracking” and fatigue on the fuselage of a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 that made an emergency landing in Arizona with a hole in the cabin, a government official said on Sunday.
“Was the aircraft well maintained and should it have been maintained better? That is exactly why we are here, to look at why this problem occurred,” National Transportation Safety Board Member Robert Sumwalt said at a press conference broadcast from Yuma, Arizona, via Internet streaming.
I just got back from a week long trip to San Diego, California. While there I thought (for among many reasons) that it would be nice to live there and not have to worry about scorpions.
I was wrong.
Ryan Rubion made a comment on one of my San Diego pictures on Flickr in which I find his picture of a captured Scorpion. In San Diego.
Compare Ryan’s photo of a captured scorpion to my own recently captured scorpion (by my cat) in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
Normally I wouldn’t write about the murder, death, kills in Albuquerque. The local media does a good enough job at that. I didn’t see the local media tell the horrific details that buggs did on a photo in his flickr stream.
Tiffany Toribio placed her hand over her 3-year-old son’s mouth as he slept on this playground bridge in the middle of the night.
She held him down until he stopped squirming.
Toribio then performed CPR on her son Tyrus who started breathing again. He was shaking, his eyes were rolled back. She then suffocated him again. She placed her hand over his face until he stopped breathing.
Only this time she didn’t revive little Ty.
She dug a hole with her hands in the sand underneath a swing set, put Ty in it and buried him.
This is turning out to be a historic year. My hometown team, the Arizona Cardinals, are going to Superbowl 43. What makes it historic is that this is this is the first NFC championship for the team. Ever.
Had they won one year earlier, they could have played in the Superbowl in Arizona.
In 1988 they moved to Arizona and played in Sun Devil Stadium. I recall going to at least one of those games. They have played poorly for a long time, it’s good to see them finally win.
Creative commons photo of a actual Arizona Cardinal bird by jhaskell on flickr.
The future is here. Sales tax increases started today and Virgin Galactic has signed a lease with Spaceport America in southern New Mexico.
Under the terms, Virgin Galactic will pay $1 million per year for the first five years for use of the terminal facilities, and, for the next 15 years, will pay a fee based on an amortization of the remaining total cost of its facilities.
In addition, it sets a tiered fee scale — with a minimum charge of $50,000 per month — that hinges upon the number of flights launched by the company each year. A third fee charges the company $30,000 each year to rent ground space for the facilities.
Creative Commons photo from generated
Thanks to the suckage which is the snow fall this year, I’ve only gone skiing once. Thankfully we have had a end of the season snow fall that brought a pretty good amount of snow. It coincided with some $25 Durango lift tickets. Off we went!
Check out my photo set on Flickr.
The “Winchester Mystery House” is the house built by the heiress of the Winchester Gun fortune. It was started in 1884 in northern california. She built the house continuously for 38 years with stair wells that go no where, windows with walls on the other side, all kids of weird stuff. Basically she did it so appease the ghosts of all the people that were killed by the gun.
I went there 3 times.
You can view the entire photo set on Flickr.
They have a great explantion of what they saw
It’s good to see an actual explanation and not instantly assuming it’s a spaceship. As much as I would like to believe, the truth is really out there. I’m almost sure it’s always man made.One might be led to believe that I actually saw a UFO that is an extra-terrestrial vehicle that was large but far away. The fact is that I saw it at a crowded sitr and in a crowded sky. The photo was taken during a hot air balloon mass ascension and a balloon flew behind this curious object after I had taken the photo. Thus I was able to determine the object was no more than a few feet in diameter. My guess (and it is only a guess) is that it was some sort of mylar balloon reflecting the sunlight and caught in the wind, even though it appeared to be stationary and rotating from my vantage point. Or who knows….Maybe they are just really small aliens attending the balloon fiesta like I was!