Dave Kean

In July I made a list of my favorite movies at that time. Lists are fun and because they are subjective seem to create a lot of discussion and email.

Last time I published a movie list I had a lot of time to enjoy them. While I still occasionally take afternoon naps, it’s really only out of habit rather than need. So I don’t have nearly the time to spare now, but have seen all these films over the last few months just to make sure. Lets be clear I’m a long way from being fully up to speed and while not every day is better than the one before it, the trend is certainly in the correct direction.

So with a tip of the hat to the dreadful film (Bad Teacher) that started my whole movie list thing I present my favorite 10 sporting films.

Slapshot – this would find a place on both my best sports movies and best comedies lists. Who can forget the Hanson brothers, Killer Carlson and of course the appearance of the legend himself, Ogie Ogilthorpe? The best part, they are all based on real people that played in minor league hockey.

Le Mans – If this film does not get your blood pumping there is an issue. It’s not about the dialogue, the story or even Steve McQueen. It’s about the glorious eye-candy (Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512s). The whole movie is summed up in one of McQueen lines “When you’re racing, it… it’s life. Anything that happens before or after… is just waiting.”

Raging Bull – Rewatched this one recently and liked it far more second time round. The boxing scenes are brutal, the self-destruction of Jake LaMotta even more so. De Niro is (of course) brilliant as the unsympathetic boxer and Scorsese filming of the boxing from the ring earned him all sorts of deserved accolades (and an Oscar). Read more…

It’s been a big week at work, the first 787 was delivered. There are a lot of milestones between the launch of a program and delivery, some artificial (“roll-out”) and some very important (certification) . Delivery may be about the most important, it shows not only can we build an aircraft that meets all the regulatory requirements, but we built one that meets the customer’s requirement.

And we are in business because of the customer.

I’ve been on and off this program a number of times. It started seven years ago talking about AGUs, DCUs, ACPs, AMUs and a whole alphabet soup of acronyms. A couple of years later I was pulled back to work some avionics issues and my most recent stint has been working as a manufacturing engineer. It’a all been challenging, it’s all been difficult, but it’s also been a rewarding experience, working with some great people.

It’s nice to sit back and look at what’s been achieved since we sat in a room talking architecture. There is so much more to do, but for a few hours it was fun to sit back and think about the thousands of people all over the world working together every day to do incredible things.

There are lots of pictures around the web of the ceremony Monday, it is a great looking airplane. Randy Tinseths Blog gives a good idea of what it was like to be there.

On the back of my business cards it says “What Others Dream. We Do.” Monday showed what we meant by that.

The title is taken from the Green Day song “Holiday”, it’s relevant, so go with it.

Last week I was talking to a friend of mine. Mike had had just come back from two weeks touring Northern Italy. He spent a delightful two weeks away from everything driving around Tuscany. He took a relaxing few days in Florence, a few more in Siena, a side trip to Pisa and so much good food, wine and so on, and so on…

Envious… Moi? Perhaps a little.

In England time off is called a “holiday”. Wikipedia says holiday comes from and Old English word that meant special religious days away from toil. In England today it means a day or days of rest or relaxation.

In the US it’s called a Vacation, which means something totally different. It comes from the Latin and means “empty time”. The root is “vacare”, which means “to be empty”. Hmmmm…

Seriously, I love Wikipedia. One thing, please note that Green Day , Weezer, Jet and Madonna (to mention a few) sang songs about Holidays, and not vacations.

It’s well documented that the US has fewer holidays than any other; a quick Google search will show all sorts of facts. Typically they show that France and Italy (35 to 40 days a year) come close to the top of the table, while a long way down is the US (12 or 13 days a year).

It gets even scarier, I work with people who don’t take the full amount every year and have actually lost holiday days because they never took them. I don’t get it.

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