This weekend and the J-10A

I have a 2004 Prius, ordered it in December 2003 and picked it up in June 2004. I do enjoy the car and the gas mileage. Well starting this last August, after I finished up my MBA program, my wife started to drive my car two days a week when she worked in downtown Los Angeles. Now, before my wife started to drive my car, the only scratches on it were some from freeway driving and the car in front throwing up a grain of sand at the car.

Well my wife has managed to scrape the right front fender on the curb and yesterday didn't see the gate at the trash bin was open and backed the car into it. The rear bumper now has some deep gashes and scratches to join the right front fender. Sigh. Oh yeah, my wife's car? She got a 2007 Rav4 earlier this year and there isn't a mark on it. Well she feels bad and the scratches are more cosmetic then anything else so guess I have to keep everything in perspective, the wife is more important then the car. And yes I told her that too, so I can't even use that as an excuse when I want to get a new toy like a Mini-14.

Tonight some friends from Pepperdine who just finished up their program in December are having a graduation party so will be seeing a lot of old classmates. This should be a lot of fun and a chance to do some networking too.

And finally, this we have to decide what we are going to do about Christmas cards this year. We didn't send any out last year and have to decide if we are going to send a letter or just email it to people.

Now for the J-10A.

This plane is a joint development fighter by China and Pakistan and is based on the F-16 and Israeli technology. It was supposed to use a Chinese engine but they still haven't worked out the bugs enough so are currently using Russian engines.

China is supposedly going to sell Iran 24 of them for $1 billion. I think this is a good time to sell Taiwan about 200 F-35A and 100 F-35C (VSTOL version) to replace their F-5 and other old planes and sell them a lot of AIM 120 missiles.

As for the J-10A, from what I've read about them in the open press, the plane is about as capable as an early F-16A, but as is also said, buying the plane is the easy part. Letting the pilots have enough air time is often the deciding factor between an effective air force and target drones for the other side to practice on.

Have a good weekend.