Love Action

[tracker7]

Woke up this morning to the news that General Chuck Yeager had died. Yeager was, well, a hero of mine. A product of West Virginia, he was a shining example of the right person at the right time. Shortly after he joined the Army Air Corps, to fill the need for pilots, the Corps created a program to get sergeants into cockpits, and Yeager sure qualified. His mechanical aptitude helped him as both a combat and test pilot, and he became the first pilot to crack the sound barrier.

Most people learned about Yeager thanks to Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff and its film adaptation. I think some of my dissatisfaction with Disney+'s series is its near-exclusive focus on the Mercury 7. Those are compelling stories, but there's time to be more inclusive. And the series just doesn't capture much in the way of a sense of wonder or hope.

The UK started COVID-19 vaccinations today. Emergency approvals all around, and this isn't going to be a magic bullet by any means. Pfizer's vaccine will start distribution here soon, rolling out in stages. The plan is for vaccines to be nationally available by late spring or early summer, and while that seems a long while away, 2020 has lasted approximately 49 months, so June 2021 will be here tomorrow.

The Mandalorian hit hard last week, bringing back Ming-Na Wen's character from the first season, and taking a dive into movie and EU lore. A lot of action and story packed into that 35 minutes.

I'm dropping the D+ subscription at the end of this billing cycle. I'm subscribed to four services, including the free year of AppleTV, and that's just too many. Netflix and Prime have the libraries I really want, and I'm patient for what's not there yet.

The Clone Wars product for Armada started hitting last week. Sat in on a Separatists-Rebels match a few days ago - the new play options are great, but what struck me was the incredible improvement in the models. The Sep cruiser had really great details and paint, but the tiny squadrons were just terrific. I'm not interested in buying into either faction, but playing against them is going to be a blast.

Comments

[atolnon]

Aw. I knew it was gonna happen sooner or later, but still. I actually first learned about him from "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" when I was just a kid. It was one of those old school flight sims where everything was sort of overly complicated, but it started out with a low-quality recording of his voice. I learned about him breaking the sound barrier from, like, a history text file in that game I think. Well, it sounds like he had a really good run, though.