There is a fireworks store near me in Pennsylvania that is off I-95 at maybe the first exit over the Delaware line. When you enter the building, you go into an atrium with two doors that go into two separate sub-stores divided by a wall. In the atrium, they check your driver's license. If you have a Pennsylvania license, you have to enter the store that only sells non-explosive, non-aerial fireworks (no rockets, mortars, firecrackers, Roman candles, etc). If you have a Delaware license, you can go in the other part of the store that sells the good stuff. It's illegal to possess explosive and aerial fireworks in Delaware. They also have a waiver to sign that agrees you will use the fireworks legally.
I guess in Pennsylvania it's illegal to sell the good stuff to PA residents, but not to out of state visitors.
From his house, no I don't think a consumer mortar could hit a plane. The planes weren't that low.
But the area surrounding the airport is very densely populated. Given all those people, I'm not surprised some dumb kid (or adult) lit fireworks near the airport.
Also, most fireworks are illegal in Illinois. But it's only a 30 minute drive from Chicago to Indiana.
My uncle's house is under the landing path for Midway Airport. His whole house shakes when a plane comes by. From his front yard you can easily read the numbers on the plane's body.
Parts of the fence surrounding the airport is across the street from a neighborhood. You can sit and watch planes landing not too far above your head. I'm not surprised a consumer grade firework was able to hit one of those planes.
I went to Muscatine, Iowa on a work trip once. There was a restaurant there called Button Factory. It was housed in a former button factory. Pretty old building. The bar top had an epoxy inlay with embedded buttons that were produced in the factory.
The meal was pretty good. The restaurant closed in 2012.
Tomodachi Life is so much fun. It's the first time I've seen 1990s voice synthesizer tech used in a fun way. And the item designer makes me nostalgic for Mario Paint.
I want to shoot a video and get expert feedback on the knot I invented for tying my shoes. It's fast to tie, is easy to untie, and very secure. It has never come untied on its own in all my years of using it.
It's tad unconventional looking for a shoe lace knot, but never has anyone every commented on it.
Looking at knots again, I guess it's just a slip knot.
The repo subtitle is `Project the aircraft passing overhead onto your ceiling, in real time — an X-ray through the roof.`
The demo video starts outside pointing at a cloudy sky with an airplane passing overhead. My mind, seeded with the word "x-ray", thought the outside shot was the video projection on his ceiling. I thought his rain gutters were crown molding, and when the camera man runs inside, I thought he was running outside to show the real life airplane.
The actual projection is neat, but how fun would it be to have an x-ray projection of the night sky.
I first read about tree shaping in a Readers Digest magazine in the 1990s. It featured a man who would shapes trees into chairs and other sculptures. Even since then I wanted to do it. I got started on a white cherry tree that started growing in my yard. Once it got large enough, I would braid and weave the branches every spring.
I didn't do anything as complicated as a chair. I would try to create loops by braiding two distant branches into each other and fastening with wire. Or I would take a long branch, and bend it back to the trunk, and braid it into a branch heading in the opposite direction.
The most difficult thing was not accidentally breaking the branches while braiding. Sometimes strong winds would create too much tension on the already stressed branches and cause them to break.
I did that for about 5 years before I sold that house. The tree is still there last time I checked, but I haven't gotten a close look at how it has progressed.
At my new house, I've tried it with a red maple, but haven't had much success. The branches that I've shaped end up dying.
Sharing this story makes me want to take up the hobby again. I've got some fast growing trees at my current house that I could use.
I had a similar youthful hacking experience with this game, I was also 9 at the time. The computer players would say a little trash-talk phrase before making their shot. I edited the text file that contained all the phrases and added new ones with swear words. My older brother, who was the one that installed the game on our computer, noticed the new phrases asked me if I had edited the text file. I lied that I hadn't, then re-edited the file to remove my changes.