Only slightly less serious than getting involved in a land war in Asia

Transcribing 20 hours of meetings from an Australian business meeting. That's what I've been doing for the last 4 days...utter nightmare. Could NOT understand their accents. Making it worse were the bad audio levels and the fact that a lot of the people preesnt insisted on talking over each other from all around the room except in front of the microphone... I will never transcribe ANYTHING every again. Anyway, so sorry to be MIA from my blogs.

Iceberg: Colt derringer and more

pg 191

There is a .25 caliber Colt derringer
The term derringer is a genericized misspelling of the last name of Henry Deringer, a famous 19th-century maker of small pocket pistols. Many copies of the original Philadelphia Deringer pistol were made by other gun makers worldwide, and the name was often misspelled; this misspelling soon became an alternate generic term for any pocket pistol, along with the generic phrase palm pistol Deringer's competitors invented and used in their advertising. The original Deringer pistol was a single-shot muzzleloading pistol; with the advent of cartridge firearms, pistols began to be produced in the modern form still known as a derringer.
Pocket pistols may be considered modern-day versions of derringers.

Dirk Pitt was born in the Hoag Hospital in in Newport Beach, California
Hoag is a not-for-profit regional health care delivery network in Orange County, California, that treats nearly 30,000 inpatients and 350,000 outpatients annually. Hoag consists of two acute-care hospitals, seven health centers and four urgent care centers. Hoag Hospital Newport Beach, which has served Orange County since 1952, and Hoag Hospital Irvine, which opened in 2010, are Magnet® designated hospitals by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Hoag offers a blend of health care services that include five institutes providing specialized services in the following areas: cancer, heart and vascular, neurosciences, women’s health and orthopedics through Hoag’s affiliate Hoag Orthopedic Institute. Hoag has been named one of the Best Regional Hospitals in the U.S. News & World Report Metro Edition

you were already sketching up a storm while Admiral Sandecker played Izaak Walton
Izaak Walton (9 August 1593 – 15 December 1683) was an English writer. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies that have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives.

Iceberg: Keflavik and more

Pitt then quickly showered and changed clothes and took a taxi to the airport at Keflavik.

Keflavík meaning Driftwood Bay) is a town in the Reykjanes region in southwest Iceland. In 2009 its population was of 8,169.
In 1995 it merged with Njarðvík and Hafnir to form a municipality called Reykjanesbær with a population of 13,971 (January 2011).

The  Vikings had laned in Iceland, flourished,  and then disappeared.

The Vikings always did well in Iceland...it was from Greenland that they disappeared...

"Do you have a date with the farmer's daughter?"

The farmer's daughter is a term for a stock character and stereotype in fiction for the daughter of a farmer, who is often portrayed as a desirable and naive young woman. She is described as being an "open-air type" and "public-spirited", who will tend to marry a hero and settle down.
The character also forms the basis for a series of jokes, known as farmer's daughter jokes, which tend to be sexual in nature and focus on acts of promiscuity. The plot usually involves the seduction of the daughter by another stock character, the traveling salesman.

Iceberg: The best plans of mice nd men and more

pg 175

Pitt sat down on a bench over a life preserver locker and lit a cigarette.  "The best plans of mice and men."

"To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785"^[1] is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1785, and was included in the Kilmarnock volume. According to legend, Burns wrote the poem after finding a nest full of mice during the winter.

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murdering pattle.
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An' fellow mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't.
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.
That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld.
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Perhaps most famous as the title of the play Of Mice and Men.

"Whoever was watching would have needed the Mount Palomar Telescope to tell Tidi was masquerading in your clothes."

Palomar Observatory is a privately owned astronomical observatory located in San Diego County, California (USA), 145 kilometers (90 mi) southeast of Los Angeles, California, in the Palomar Mountain Range. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) located in Pasadena, California. Research time is granted to Caltech and its research partners, which includes the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Cornell University.
The observatory operates several telescopes, including the famous 200-inch Hale Telescope (5.1 m) and the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope (1.2 m). In addition, other instruments and projects have been hosted at the observatory, such as the Palomar Testbed Interferometer and the historic 18-inch Schmidt telescope (0.46 m), Palomar Observatory's first telescope, dating from 1936.

Iceberg: "I cannot tell a lie" and more

pg 166

"I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little axe."

Mason Locke Weems (October 11, 1759 – May 23, 1825), generally known as Parson Weems, was an American book agent and author. He is best known as the source of some of the apocryphal stories about George Washington. The famous tale of the cherry tree ("I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet") is included in The Life of Washington (1800), Weems' most famous work. This nineteenth-century bestseller depicted Washington's virtues and provided an entertaining and morally instructive tale for the youth of the young nation.

"Stand or run, the chances are we get deep-sixed anyway."

A nautical expression indicating a water depth of 6 fathoms (36 feet) as measured by a sounding line; "deep six" acquired its idiomatic definition from the fact that something thrown overboard at or greater than this depth would be difficult if not impossible to recover. Marks on a sounding line were traditionally placed at 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 13, 15, 17, and 20 fathoms. The "leadsman" called out the depth as he read it off the line. If the depth was at a mark he would call "by the mark" followed by the number, if the depth was between two marks, he would call "by the deep" followed by the estimated number. Six fathoms would therefore be reported as "by the deep six."

Iceland's seemingly eternal sun greeted them in dazzling brilliance.

In the winter the shortest days only have 4 hours of sunlight. In the summer the sun doesn't set at all.

Iceland is a Nordic European island country situated at the confluence of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The country has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km² (40,000 sq mi), which makes it the most sparsely populated country in Europe. The capital and largest city is Reykjavík,with the surrounding areas in the southwestern region of the country being home to two-thirds of the country's population. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active. The interior consists mainly of a plateau characterised by sand and lava fields, mountains and glaciers, while many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a temperate climate despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle.

The climate of Iceland's coast is subpolar oceanic. The warm North Atlantic Current ensures generally higher annual temperatures than in most places of similar latitude in the world. Regions in the world with similar climate include the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Peninsula, and Tierra del Fuego, although these regions are closer to the equator. Despite its proximity to the Arctic, the island's coasts remain ice-free through the winter. Ice incursions are rare, the last having occurred on the north coast in 1969.



There are some variations in the climate between different parts of the island. Generally speaking, the south coast is warmer, wetter and windier than the north. The Central Highlands are the coldest part of the country. Low-lying inland areas in the north are the most arid. Snowfall in winter is more common in the north than the south.

The highest air temperature recorded was 30.5 °C (86.9 °F) on 22 June 1939 at Teigarhorn on the southeastern coast. The lowest was −38 °C (−36.4 °F) on 22 January 1918 at Grímsstaðir and Möðrudalur in the northeastern hinterland. The temperature records for Reykjavík are 26.2 °C (79.2 °F) on 30 July 2008, and −24.5 °C (−12.1 °F) on 21 January 1918.

Been a long time!

Sorry, folks

Things have just gotten away from me the last week and a half...posting should be back on schedule starting this weekend.

Iceberg: high RPMs and more

pg 162

Through the blanket of mist it came as a steady drone: the sound of an engine running at very high RPMs.

Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, r/min, or r·min⁻¹) is a measure of the frequency of a rotation. It annotates the number of full rotations completed in one minute around a fixed axis. It is used as a measure of rotational speed of a mechanical component.
Standards organizations generally recommend the symbol r/min, which is more consistent with the general use of unit symbols. This is not enforced as an international standard. In French for example, tr/mn (tours par minute) is commonly used, and the German equivalent reads U/min (Umdrehungen pro Minute).

"A hydrofoil. Is that it?"

A hydrofoil is a foil which operates in water. They are similar in appearance and purpose to airfoils.
Hydrofoils can be artificial, such as the rudder or keel on a boat, the diving planes on a submarine, a surfboard fin, or occur naturally, as with fish fins, the flippers of aquatic mammals, the wings of swimming seabirds, or other creatures like the sand dollar.
The term "hydrofoil" is commonly used for the wing-like structure mounted on struts below the hull of a variety of boats (see illustration), which lifts the boat out of the water during forward motion, in order to reduce hull drag; as such, the term "hydrofoil" is often used to refer to boats using hydrofoil technology. Most of this article is about this type of hydrofoil.
As a hydrofoil-equipped watercraft increases in speed, the hydrofoil elements below the hull(s) develop enough lift to raise the hull up and out of the water. This results in a great reduction in hull drag, and a further corresponding increase in speed.
A wider adoption of the technical innovations of hydrofoils is prevented by the increased complexity of building and maintaining them. Hydrofoils are generally prohibitively more expensive than conventional watercraft. However, the design is simple enough that there are many human-powered hydrofoil designs. Amateur experimentation and development of the concept is popular.
A boat equipped with hydrofoils is also called a hydroplane (boat)

 "If I don't, we're going to have bigger trouble than River City."

The phrase comes from a song in Meredith Wilson's The Music Man titled "Trouble" and also referred to as "Ya Got Trouble" or "Trouble in River City."

It is sung by the character Harold Hill (a con-man/traveling salesman pretending to be a music professor). Through the lyrics of the song, Hill persuades the parents of River City that the new billiard table in town is a threat to the moral fiber of the River City youth, verbally illustrating a catastrophic decline of conservative, turn of the century values. All this, of course, is setting the stage for his alternative, wholesome pastime - a boy's band - for which he will sell uniforms and musical instruments.