Here’s one story that’ll make me feel nostalgic about the good ol’ times for quite a while. The F-14 Tomcat fighter jet was retired recently from active service. Sure, compared to others right now, like the F-18 and the F-22 it’s pretty much a lame cat, but still, with its superior dogfight capabilities and a variable geometry wing that gave it the edge in supersonic combat, it’d a thing to miss from the skies.

It is being replaced due to the fact that it develops frequent mechanical problems, apart from the fact that it requires a LOT of maintainance to keep it ‘up there’, compared to more modern jets. There’s a site dedicated to the event too, here.

Another reason, and a pretty strong one for me too, is its connection with the iconic movie, Top Gun. Now, it’s no deep-n-dark secret that I like Tom Cruise, and without him the movie quite wouldn’t have been the same, but the F-14 was a star too. A perfect complement to Maverick’s maverick-ness. It really is one of the movies that never goes stale, and the antics put up by the Tomcat are surely pretty interesting, as all who would’ve seen the movie would say. This is one (Tom)cat that really set the cat amongst the pigeons during the Cold War. The lyrics of Danger Zone keeps popping up into my head all the time, and now, it’s reaching a crescendo.

The only place now left for this workhorse is Iran (where it’s pretty much mothballed), the museum to be admired by generations to come, and our minds and hearts, which it has so skillfully won over.

The DPS VK Quiz Club site has gone MAJOR in the past few days, thanks to me. The links section has been expanded to quite an impressive list encompassing blogs, and quizzing sites. Then there’s the polls section, for some fun pop questions. The FileFront server was ‘misbehaving’, so that had to be changed and the files now have their resting place on the main server itself. Member profiles have been uploaded, and a ratings and comments feature added. Hmmm. What surprises me is that during its short existence of two months, it has had its visitor counter click up pretty fast for a new site.

What irks me though is a directive by the school to take a Paypal ‘donate’ button off the site since it looked ‘too commercial’. Pah, humbugs. They’re not spending one goddamn penny, it’s MY bandwidth that gets used up. As we expand the files on offer, we will obviously feel the need for more bandwidth and storage too. Since I’m not taking maintenance charges from the members, unlike some other clubs I know, I see perfectly no reason for it to be removed. Will speak on this one.

It went pretty well, but I again ended up making silly errors that’ll ensure I end up with a score of only about 65. And the even more sadder part, that also makes me feel jealous of others is the fact that I’ve to spend more time, and ruin my holidays, studying because my math retest is on Tuesday. Can’t the school be generous enough and totally exempt people good at academics and extra-curricular activities from these things, I wonder. After all, we’re doing it for the school at their bidding.

Back to RSA then for now, or rather, I’m taking some time off actually. Will start later.

Had the computer science half-yearly today. And I’ve done pathetically, by my standards. I’ll be lucky enough if I end up getting 60. Which is really, a poor score. Ended up making too many silly errors, and spent too much time thinking over one question. Guess it’s a lesson learnt bitterly, yet again, to let some questions go and GET ON with others…