4.27.2008

New York...

I decided to mix things up a little bit for our fourth anniversary with the promise to whisk Sarah away on a “secret” weekend getaway. I did a pretty good job keeping the location a secret from Sarah, although I finally slipped up a week before the big announcement. I chose New York City, somewhere neither of us had been in several years and somewhere we have never been to together.

Given the short time we had up there, I planned the hell out of this trip and I probably could have generated an hour by hour schedule if the need arose. We left work early on Friday to head up to the Big Apple. I picked out a hotel in the Financial District downtown. It was close to some touristy things I wanted to do, cheaper than Midtown, and more importantly nice and quiet when you wanted to get some sleep at night. We arrived on Friday and headed to our restaurant reservation in Midtown at Becco. It is an Italian restaurant that had two nice features: a prix-fix menu of all-you-can eat home made pastas and a full selection of wines only $25 a bottle to encourage experimentation. The food was great and after getting a free glass of wine simply by being clutzy enough to break my glass at the end of the meal , we waddled over to Rockefeller Center. We headed up to the Top of the Rock, the observation deck on the top of the 70-story 30 Rock building. It wasn’t quite as high as the Empire State Building, but I liked the observation deck better – unobstructed, 360 degree views from the very top.

On Top of the Rock - Empire State Building in Background

Saturday was the day of walking, and thus we were glad the weather was perfect. We started by walking to the Ground Zero site. There is not really much to see there yet, just some construction cranes, but it was something I wanted to see to remember what happened. Next we took the subway to Brooklyn (Saturday wasn’t all walking) and then walked back to Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge had great views and was an impressive engineering feat as well. After our walk back to Brooklyn we lunched at the first pizza place in North America: Lombardi’s in Little Italy. It was quite yummy.

Brooklyn Bridge Overlooking Downtown NYC

Our next stop was at Broadway to watch “Spamalot.” Being as uncultured as I am, it was my first trip to Broadway, although Sarah is an experienced theater goer. Spamalot, based on Monty Python and Holy Grail, did a great job of recreating some of the funniest scenes from the movie, but also was different enough to not just be a rehash. It was a lot of laughs and a really impressive production.

After an early dinner that was good but expensive, our final activity of the night (yes, I packed this trip full) was to go dancing at Swing 46. As we learned earlier in the day, the ultra convenient subway stop 50 feet from our hotel was closed on Saturday for track maintenance. So, we took a different line which put us about a mile from the club. Apparently after four years of marriage Sarah and I can still have communication breakdowns, because the message of how far away the club was never really got from me to her :) Anyway, a mile of walking later (with one us wearing high heeled shoes), and we were ready for some drinks. The club was a lot of fun; the small dance floor took a little bit of time to adjust to, but by the end of the night Sarah and I were cutting a rug.

Our last activity was to take the Staten Island Ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island on Sunday morning. We weren't that interested in seeing Staten Island, but since the Statue of Liberty tickets were already sold out, the ferry was a free way to get some great views of the Statue like below:


After that, it was back to the airport to give up the New York lifestyle and return to the Suburbs.

4.07.2008

America's New Tanker...


The recent award by the Air Force of the KC-45 Tanker to Northrop Grumman over Boeing has been controversial by all accounts. This story has stayed in the business news an amazingly long time, so I'm finally going to chime in. It hits pretty close to home, although whatever happens probably wouldn't have much affect on me. I don't actually know a lot of the details, but I wanted to put a few facts out there and highlight some of the ridiculous statements made by some members of Congress. The back-story is basically this:

  • The Air Force fleet of tankers used to refuel jets in mid-air is getting really old.
  • In 2003, the Air Force tried to give the contract to Boeing to lease the Air Force new tankers. A major scandal erupted when Darleen Duryun, the chief acquisition officer for the Air Force was investigated for inflating the price of the tankers while negotiating a position at Boeing and ended up pleading guilty. Boeing executives were fired and Druyun went to jail. the contract had to be recompeted.
  • Northrop teamed with EADS to take on Boeing for the new contract.
  • Northrop and EADS won the competition. According to initial statements by the Air Force, they won by a big margin.
  • Congress members in Washington state and Kansas (places with the largest concentration of Boeing workers) go ballistic.
  • Boeing files a protest, and the GAO is currently investigating.
Now my collection of ridiculous quotes by the Boeing supporters:

From Forbes:

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., echoing the thoughts of many congressional Democrats, sees McCain's role in a less positive light. She said the earlier tanker deal was 'on course for Boeing' before McCain started railing against it."

Wow...blaming McCain for taking away the earlier contract from Boeing. In a sense, that's true, but perhaps you could blame the ethically-challenged Boeing executives and AF officials for destroying the first deal and not the person who found them cheating.

"The person that stopped (the tanker) from going to a U.S. company was Senator McCain," said Emanuel, "and now we are going to send major high-paying jobs overseas"

I'll be first to admit, I don't really know how they come up with job creation numbers, but the latest estimates from both companies are now relatively even on the number of jobs created for both tankers. I'll agree that this would move jobs from Washington and Kansas to Alabama, but no one ever explained what jobs would move to Europe. Plus, Northrop is a U.S company!! I mention this because after all the misinformation, some of my parent's neighbors thought Northrop was based out of France...

From the Kansas Star:

"I continue to believe the Air Force's shortsighted decision is a threat to our national defense and the future of America's aerospace industry," Murray said in a statement.

I don't understand the threat to our national defense argument, as this statement and others talk about military technology going to France. The Northrop plane would be assembled in Alabama from parts made in the US and around the world, but the militarization steps (like say integrating command and control software) would be done by Northrop in the US.

Also Friday, the Kansas state Senate unanimously passed a resolution calling on Congress and President Bush to block the contract award to Northrop-EADS. "This is an aircraft that should be built in the U.S.," said state Sen. Mike Petersen, R-Wichita.

Great, too bad no modern airplane is built completely in the U.S. The Northrop offering is estimated to have 60% American made parts, which exceeded the contract requirements. The Boeing offering does have more American made parts (estimated 85%), but I'd like to see how they will fly it without a fuselage made in Japan or a tail made in Italy.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, my guess is that there won't be enough evidence of anything improper to change the decision. However, when politics get involved, it's anybody's guess what will happen.