WHIFS from other forums

[Old Wombat]

The hint is in his nom de guerre.

'Twas before my return to modelling & the World of WhIf but apparently our mate Kit built a model of a long-winged Meteor he called the PR.19 along with comprehensive backstory which had sufficient modellers &, I believe, some genuine researchers (& publications??) convinced that it was real enough for it to BE real ... for a short time.

Kit & others in the know can clarify as needed.

[TheChronicOne]

That will suffice, thank you! 

[PR19_Kit]

Ask the CIA, they phoned me to get more details of the PR19 once, and I had to tell them the awful truth. 

[TheChronicOne]

Ask the CIA, they phoned me to get more details of the PR19 once, and I had to tell them the awful truth. 

That's nuts!! I love it!

[AeroplaneDriver]

That is the greatest Whif story EVER! 

[Rick Lowe]

That is the greatest Whif story EVER!

And, like the best stories, it's true! 
All Hail! the Meteor-Whiffer Extraordinaire!! ::NotWorthy::

[Scotaidh]

I doubt it would be the first or last time!


Here's another one I think about: The differing ways in which we keep dates. America is backwards to most others I do believe.  Today is 1/08/2019. Elsewhere it's 08/01/2019. Think about, say, 300 years from now. Historians have a document, with a date, but lacking any other information they might not be able to determine whether "01/08/2019" is in January or August. Something like a receipt... if it doesn't have "snow tires" or something on it, there would be no good way to tell. Going to wreak some fair havoc in the future I suspect.

So uhhh... yeah.... the future's spoiled anyway so WHIF on!!! 

O Chronic One, I write my dates "9 Jan 2019" precisely because of that disconnect.  I did get used to only putting the last two digits of the year, although I always thought that practice sloppy - the so-called "millennium bug" proved me right on that.    When I was in the Navy the way I wrote my dates drove my superiors nuts - pointing out that my way lessened confusion did nothing to comfort them. 
Now, my work is arguably even more important and accuracy correspondingly more crucial - and I'm still driving my supervisors nuts.  So far they've gone along with me because I'm demonstrably correct - they just don't like it.   

Because everything nowadays must be written in block capitals, I write them the way the Navy taught to lessen the chances of confusion - zeros are oblique-stroked to differentiate from "O"s; 7s are crossed so they're not 1s; 1s are just a vertical stroke - they don't have the hook at the top nor the foot; and so on.

[zenrat]

I used to oblique stroke my zeros but had to stop doing so (and lost the habit) when marking levels on the ground for earthmoving.
A zero with a stroke through it means the level is correct and needs neither to be cut nor filled.  You don't use a slashed zero to mark twenty (say) so if the two gets accidentally removed it is obvious something is missing rather than being on level.
In my current job I do a lot of writing out parcel tracking numbers but these avoid the risk of confusing zeros and O's by never using O (or I for that matter).
I still cross my sevens and my Z's.

[NARSES2]

My concern in so far as altering the perception of history goes concerns the burial of pets 

On my family's farm/small holding they have a small area where dogs and favourite horses/ponies have been buried after they have passed on. Now we always bury them with their favourite blankets/bowls/toys etc and I have a vision of an archaeological dig discovering these graves in a millennium or so and coming to the conclusion that the local inhabitants worshipped their animals.....oh, but I suppose we do in a small way 

Ask the CIA, they phoned me to get more details of the PR19 once, and I had to tell them the awful truth. 

I assume they got your No from the local directory or was it a little more "darker" than that ? 

[PR19_Kit]

Ask the CIA, they phoned me to get more details of the PR19 once, and I had to tell them the awful truth. 

I assume they got your No from the local directory or was it a little more "darker" than that ? 

I wondered that myself at the time, but I'm in the local phone book and I suppose they have EVERY phone book in the whole world on file at Langley.

And they may have got clues via my employers, who were an American company, and I'd done a job at the US Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground for them prior to that, so maybe I was already 'on their books'.

[scooter]

Ask the CIA, they phoned me to get more details of the PR19 once, and I had to tell them the awful truth. 

I assume they got your No from the local directory or was it a little more "darker" than that ? 

I wondered that myself at the time, but I'm in the local phone book and I suppose they have EVERY phone book in the whole world on file at Langley.

And they may have got clues via my employers, who were an American company, and I'd done a job at the US Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground for them prior to that, so maybe I was already 'on their books'.

I'd lean more in that direction, assuming you'd already had a cursory background investigation.  But I'm sure Aberdeen was still an open base then, like most Army installations were until after 9/11

[Old Wombat]

It's the CIA, they'd never do something as common-sense as look in the phone book, they'd have to do the whole super-spy rigmarole just 'coz they could ... & 'coz it'd keep the expenditure up, so they could claim more when it was budget appropriations' time.

[Rheged]

It's the CIA, they'd never do something as common-sense as look in the phone book, they'd have to do the whole super-spy rigmarole just 'coz they could ... & 'coz it'd keep the expenditure up, so they could claim more when it was budget appropriations' time.

Who is a cynical Old Wombat then!..........but I agree with your reasoning.

[zenrat]

CIA?  The Chepstow & Ingst Advertiser - the local paper?

[PR19_Kit]

CIA?  The Chepstow & Ingst Advertiser - the local paper?