Christopher Armstrong
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Born
in Houston, Texas, The United States
June 09
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August 2018
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Christopher’s Recent Updates
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Christopher
rated a book it was ok
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Revised review January 2026: 2.5. I’m going to venture out and leave a more thorough review on this book, where I had been hesitant before. “Unrestricted Warfare” is the modern Chinese military theory, which is still used today. The authors outline th ...more |
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"I love the metaphor of the sakura for understanding the cycle and process in dream manifestation. 🌸🌸“Nurturing a wish is like encouraging a tree to blossom.” ♥️ The questions in “the blossom” and “your wish” exercises are very helpful and refreshing."
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Christopher
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Christopher
rated a book really liked it
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Review update Jan 2026: Updating my rating to a solid 4 stars. How often do you get to read the mind of a brilliant founder of such a massively successful company such as The North Face? I’ve enjoyed many of Hap’s interviews and podcasts, especially r ...more |
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Christopher
made a comment on
Mary’s challenge
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Good luck! 📚🍀🏁
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Christopher
made a comment on
Jim Pownall’s status
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I’d suggest adding Lee Kuan Yew’s memoir From Third World To First to that list—if you’re really looking to test your stamina. It’s a massive, phenome
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Jim Pownall
added a status update: I'm going for a year of reading long-ish books. Aiming for novels of a minimum of 500 pages. I love long novels and feel I'll perhaps improve my stamina if I am for longer works. However, I am willing to break that rule every now and then if something grabs me. Setting my target as 30. Maybe 26 long books and then 4 or 5 shorter ones.
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Christopher
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“Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was an authentic American genius. He was the kind of enthusiastic visionary that bulled his way past vast odds to achieve great successes, in much the same way as Edison, Ford, and other immortal tinkerers of the past. When Kelly rolled up his sleeves, he became unstoppable, and the nay-sayers and doubters were simply ignored or bowled over. He declared his intention, then pushed through while his subordinates followed in his wake. He was so powerful that simply by going along on his plans and schemes, the rest of us helped to produce miracles too. Honest to God, there will never be another like him.”
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
“My years inside the Skunk Works, for example, convinced me of the tremendous value of building prototypes. I am a true believer. The beauty of a prototype is that it can be evaluated and its uses clarified before costly investments for large numbers are made.”
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
“We became the most successful advanced projects company in the world by hiring talented people, paying them top dollar, and motivating them into believing that they could produce a Mach 3 airplane like the Blackbird a generation or two ahead of anybody else.”
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
“Overnight, however, he apparently had second thoughts, or did some textbook reading on his own, and at the next meeting he turned to me as the first order of business. “On the black paint,” he said, “you were right about the advantages and I was wrong.” He handed me a quarter. It was a rare win. So Kelly approved my idea of painting the airplane black, and by the time our first prototype rolled out the airplane became known as the Blackbird. Our supplier, Titanium Metals Corporation, had only limited reserves of the precious alloy, so the CIA conducted a worldwide search and, using third parties and dummy companies, managed to unobtrusively purchase the base metal from one of the world’s leading exporters—the Soviet Union. The Russians never had an inkling of how they were actually contributing to the creation of the airplane being rushed into construction to spy on their homeland.”
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
“When Congress approved the decision to retire the SR-71, the Smithsonian Institution requested that a Blackbird be delivered for eventual display in the Air and Space Museum in Washington and that we set a new transcontinental speed record delivering it from California to Dulles. I had the honor of piloting that final flight on March 6, 1990, for its final 2,300-mile flight between L.A. and D.C. I took off with my backseat navigator, Lt. Col. Joe Vida, at 4:30 in the morning from Palmdale, just outside L.A., and despite the early hour, a huge crowd cheered us off. We hit a tanker over the Pacific then turned and dashed east, accelerating to 2.6 Mach and about sixty thousand feet. Below stretched hundreds of miles of California coastline in the early morning light. In the east and above, the hint of a red sunrise and the bright twinkling lights from Venus, Mars, and Saturn. A moment later we were directly over central California, with the Blackbird’s continual sonic boom serving as an early wake-up call to the millions sleeping below on this special day. I pushed out to Mach 3.3.”
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
― Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
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