Guy's Soapbox

Halloween

2011-10-31T19:17:00.001-07:00

A steady stream of monsters and princesses are ringing my doorbell tonight. One little girl came up with her sister still in mom's arms. I put some candy in her bag and then some in her sisters', and she looked at her bag, then me, and said "Yum yum".

I agreed -- after all, it's candy and it's yummy. However, clearly I was just a someone dense adult and didn't really get it, because she held her bag up and a little bit closer to me, and said in a more insistent tone, "Yum yum!"

I'm slow but I can take a hint. I gave her more candy and she walked away happy.

Rialto Bridge

2011-10-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

This shot shows the main canal taken from the Rialto bridge. The main canal is the highway through the center of Venice, and carries most of the motor traffic which goes through the city. Smaller specialized delivery barges go through the side canals to drop off and pick up goods and supplies.

Venice is a bit of a contradiction - many parts of it, such as the buildings, gondolas, and pedestrian walkways, seem unchanged from what they would have been two hundred years ago. On the other hand walking down one of the main thoroughfares feels like walking through a modern mall - all of the modern shops and brands are represented, and you can get anything from Ferrari logo wear to cell phones to Prada.

We mostly walked around the city but also used the Vaparetto to get to and from out hotel and take a tour of the city. The vaparetto is the city bus/ferry system, which stops at points along the main canal and the outside of the city, as well as a couple outlying islands.

We also met a number of Italian-speaking Filipinos, who seem to have a lock on the Venice hotel industry.

Living at the Airport

2011-10-11T01:46:00.000-07:00

Due to an unfortunate pair of connections, we have a seven-hour layover in the Rome airport. It's just long enough to be tempting to leave the airport and do something else, but not actually long enough to go somewhere. So we have some time to kill here. Thanks to a data plan purchase for the iPad, we have Internet access at the airport, but I am approaching "the end of the Internet". I've read up on all my email and current news items, and sadly forgot my barnes and noble password to buy new books with.

Joahnna and Luc both have the right idea, as they spent the last couple hours sleeping. Of course Jo is small enough to curl up in an airport chair and Luc travels with his own portable sleeping bag, so they did have a bit of an advantage on me.

Doug is supposed to land in a few minutes, and my mom arrives a couple hours later, after which we have a short flight to Palermo. Should be more driving and less walking for the next week.

Driving in Rome

2011-10-06T04:04:00.000-07:00

JR and I rented scooters last night and took a quick moto tour of Rome, which also gave me an opportunity to experience Roman traffic fifs-hand. Thanks to prior experience on a race track it wasn't too hard to get used to, but it bears little resemblance to driving in the US or Australia.

Unlike the US, there are no lanes. Every square inch of pavement is fair game. Whoever is in front has the right of way, so if you can get your nose in front of the other vehicle. There do not appear to be any speed limits other than prudence, however Rome is congested enough and there are enough pedestrians and obstacles to effectively limit speed to about 50mph. This is just a guess, I didn't look at my speedo at any point during our ride.

That said, there are rules to driving here. I'm not sure how they are enforced; certainly the Carbinieri are far too busy smoking cigarettes and looking cool in their Armani uniforms to do anything as prosaic as write tickets, but nonetheless rules are followed. Pedestrians are yielded to, although only if they walk in front of your vehicle, red lights are obeyed, and cars do not drive in the opposite direction lane (some fudging is allowed on that last one).

Traffic is heavy during commute hours but there are lots of back streets and alternate paths. You can get stuck on back streets because they are frequently only one car wide, and parking in the middle of the street (thus blocking the entire street) is fair game for delivery trucks, or anyone wishing to have a quick chat with a friend.

I gave the scooter back at the end of the night unharmed, and with no perceptual gas usage. Fun trip!

Tired out by tummy time

2011-10-02T23:55:00.000-07:00

Luc takes a quick nap after an exhausting bout of tummy time.

At Home

2011-08-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Just had a chat with Adam and helped him diagnose an electrical problem on his motorcycle. This is a new first for my phone-support checklist. While we were talking we joked about Luc having his own twitter feed. I realized it would go something like this:

08:35 -- Woke up, fed, pooped.  Took nap afterwards.

10:02 -- Woke up hungry.  Looked for boob, didn't find it.  Cried.

10:08 -- Found boob.  Yay!  Yummy lunch and nap afterwards.

10:15 -- Forgot to pee after lunch so did that.  Cried for change.

10:18 -- Been crying because of wet diaper for ever now.  Where the heck is mom?

10:20 -- Dad finally got up off the couch and changed me.  So sleepy...

11:45 -- Time to feed again!

Dallas

2011-05-15T06:58:00.001-07:00

I'm killing some time between flights at the Dallas airport. Like everything else in Texas, this airport is big - seven runways, five of them parallel.

Inside is the usual airport amenities - Starbucks located between my arrival and departure gates. Had over an hour this time so enough time to get some breakfast.

There is a kiosk at my gate with power and free Internet, provided you have a cat5 cable. Sadly my little ipad has no ports on it whatsoever so I'm left to post this from my phone.

Only one more flight to go!

Shana's House

2011-05-12T14:59:00.000-07:00

I arrived at Shana's house (minus luggage) and Mina promptly investigated my foot.

Shana's Graduation

2011-05-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

I am queued up to board the plane, having been warned multiple times that this aircraft will run out of overhead space. No worries for me, my only carry on is my ipad today.

Full day of flying to get out to Raleigh for sis's graduation from vet school. I had no reading material so I bought three books at the barnes and nobles online site while waiting to board; battery should last all day. If I'm lucky I'll be able to take a nap and it won't have to be my sole source of entertainment.

Turning 27

2011-04-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

Today I turned 27, at least if you count in hexadecimal. The numbers don't seem that big this way. I don't think I'll make it to FF unless medical science churns out some real miracles in the next few years.

This morning Joahnna took me out for a birthday breakfast at our local diner before packing me off to work. Planning on having a quiet dinner out this year, although my parents have said that they are planning something big for next year.

We went in monday for our most recent exam, and listened to baby Luc's heartbeat. She also gave us a kick-counting chart for measuring how long it takes him to kick, which we have failed to do with meticulous consistency. I'm sure we'll get to it tomorrow.

Caesar and Shana

2011-04-17T00:15:00.000-07:00

Caesar found a new best friend - sacked out on the couch watching movies with Shana.

The blue mosque

2011-04-13T08:28:00.001-07:00

Another trial for post by email, this time from my phone. This is from my recent trip to israel.

Sample post from email

2011-04-12T17:11:00.000-07:00

Trying to figure out if I can create posts from an email with pictures in them. To figure out if it works, here is a post with a picture of a train from the train museum in York.

Using git for revision control

2011-03-21T11:19:00.001-07:00

As a hardware engineer, I spent most of my career designing chips using CVS for version control. It was free, simple, and workarounds for its more obvious warts were well-understood. It left me with a few side-effects, such as a pathological fear of branching, but was otherwise OK.

A couple years ago, I decided to try "git", the revision control tool used by the Linux kernel development team, and see if it had any benefits over CVS. Two years down the road, I don't think anyone on my design team would switch back if they had a choice. Fear of branching has been abated, although likely we will carry the scars of CVS for some time, and we no longer need to muck with the respository or have detailed meetings about directory structures due to a directory rename. In short, it's a good thing.

The biggest problem we have had with git migration is that git is relatively unstructured. It does not force a central repository to be used, and allows engineers to pull directly from another engineer's repository. For a small design team, we found that this was a drawback rather than an advantage, because it broke the central-repository model we were familiar with, and created confusion about what the "master" version of the code was. We tried electing one member of the design team to be the master, but this caused problems if the team member was unavailable for some time, due to travel, etc.

So we changed to using a central repository for git. Now everyone pushes and pulls from the central repository rather than from each other, and there is no confusion about what the mainline source code tree is, or who has to resolve a merge conflict. The CVS model may not have been fair (he who commits first, wins) but it was understood, and the central git repository brings us back to that same place. By looking at public repositories such as Github, it seems that this is now recommended practice for small teams.

It turns out setting up git to work like this is not straightforwards. Just as for CVS, there are some magic commands which must be issued to get a properly-functioning central repository. The main requirement for using a central repository is that all members of the design team must be members of the same group. With that in place, the repository can be created by doing (as root):

mkdir proj_name
cd proj_name
git init –bare –shared
cd ..
chown -R nobody.group proj_name

Replace proj_name by the name of your project, and "group" by the name of the group which all engineers are part of. nobody is a predefined user on Unix, so that repository files are not owned by root.

Don't put near hard disk

2011-03-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

I just read a teardown article on the new iPad 2. Apple has integrated a bunch of magnets for its "smart cover", which made we wonder how this new version would fare in the cockpit.

The iPad has recently been certified as an EFB (for those non-pilots, this means it can replace the briefcase of printed charts you see airline pilots pulling around behind them in the airport). However, magnets are not a good thing in this environment. Already the iPad has a strong enough field to cause a compass to mis-read when it is within a foot of it; magnets could make this even worse (then again, maybe they are no worse than it is already. Someone want to loan me an iPad 2 so I can find out? :).

The Trek to Manila

2011-01-08T05:31:00.000-08:00

On Thursday we rousted the crew out of bed dark and early for the first part of our bus trip to Manila. We manage to get moving within 20 minutes of our 4AM scheduled departure time. Soon thereafter we learned a practical lesson on taking long road trips in the Philippines - fly. Our plan was originally to drive to manila and then to Bataan, but after a full day of getting pounded by a combination of patched pothole roads and our bus' extra-stiff suspension, we revised the plan to spend some extra time in Manila and skip Bataan.

We stopped halfway to Manila at Villa Escudero, where we had a nice lunch under the waterfall, and spent two nights at the Taal Vista Hotel in Tagaytay, which was a very nice hotel with a beautiful view of the Taal volcano. The volcano is recursive - it is a volcano in a vay of water with a lake in the caldera, with another volcano coming out of the lake. Yesterday we took a quick day trip to the "Castle in the Sky", a palace built on top of a mountain that was partially constructed by President Marcos.

Today we loaded up the bus, took a quick stop for Jaiden, Mila and Joey to ride ponies for a couple laps, then made our way into the city to get to our hotel. We switched hotels because our original choice didn't have enough rooms for our party, and ended up instead at the Lotus Garden Hotel. We are in the old part of the hotel, which has beautiful hardwood floors and staircases. An unexpected benefit is that it is located in the red light district. Apparently these would be the Lotus Flowers.

Tomorrow we are gathering up early (again? Why do I keep getting up early on my vacation?) to go to Corregidor, the site of some of the fiercest fighting of WWII.

Return to Jurassic Park

2010-12-27T16:47:00.000-08:00

Today we are headed out to the hot springs near Naga, which Joahnna and I nicknamed "Jurassic Park" because of the vibrant growth and huge cliff walls directly over the springs. We are looking forwards to it since this was one of our favorite parts of the last trip.

Last night uncle Chito treated us to dinner at his house, including his special Bicol Express (very good). I spent some time syncing up with my dad on our favorite topics - guns, cars, and politics - and he also spent some time chatting with Raoul. After dinner we came back to the hotel and watched the kids and adults practice their performances for the reunion.

Yesterday Joahnna took a family photo for auntie Irma, which turned out so well that auntie lyn and imbot both asked for photo shoots with their families, which Joahnna is doing this morning. Work is never done!

Also different for this trip, last time we took a sub notebook, but this time we left it behind in favor of the smaller iPad. So far it has worked quite well, as long as you are willing to slow down your typing rate a little bit (you have to be a little more careful on the virtual keyboard). The biggest limitation of it so far is that we cant use it to download photos from the camera, so we need to borrow someone's laptop to do that. Not a big limitation here in Naga, where we have tons of family, but could limit its usefulness if you were traveling alone.

How private enterprise saves money

2010-12-09T10:51:00.000-08:00

I was reading this article from AvWeb about the SpaceX launch and recovery of their "Dragon" capsule. Sometimes you can save a little money here and there by privitization, but sometimes you can save huge chunks (emphasis added):

It's worth noting that while nuclear-powered aircraft carriers have been dispatched to recover space capsules in the past, an inflatable boat with an outboard motor accomplished the task this time.

Moral roots of liberals and conservatives

2010-12-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

I saw an excellent talk on TED about the psychological roots of liberals and conservatives. Makes the point that despite our innate desire to group with like-minded individuals, both viewpoints bring valuable mindsets to the table and if we want to be a whole country again, we need to understand the other half.

Motivation and Reality Checks

2010-10-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

I read this article on aero-news about a "new" aircraft being developed. The concept is a "light attack" aircraft, which is basically an admission that our cold-war fighters and attack aircraft are massive overkill for the missions they are being used on. The other interesting thing is that the pilots are all on board for this idea, since most of them can clearly see that the alternative is having their job replaced by a drone.

The light attack concept is simple: instead of building a massive, jet-powered, state-of-the-art mach 3 fighter to drop bombs on camels, go use something that works a lot more like a WWII fighter. After all, they did a perfectly good job at ground attack then as long as there weren't other fighters to shoot them down, which matches fairly well with the conflicts we fight today.

And they're cheap. Prices for these should be close to parity with current drones, if not less expensive, and operating costs are low as well ($600/hr instead of $15,000/hr, per the article). I'm not sure how they managed to get the project going, but I wish them success before someone realizes they're not spending enough money and kills it.

Evolution of Presidential Eloquence

2010-10-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

The (Uncensored) Evolution of Presidential Eloquence

by Martin Horn

"My friends, circumstances render it impossible that you can flourish in the midst of a civilized community. You have but one remedy within your reach, and that is to remove to the west. And the sooner you do this, the sooner you will commence your career of improvement and prosperity." - Andrew Jackson, Addressing Native Americans while discussing his Indian Relocation Policy

"Moreover, the negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does not dwindle away in the presence of the white man...From this point of view the presence of the negro is the real problem; slavery is merely the worst possible method of solving the problem." - Teddy Roosevelt (Source: "Winning of the West" by Teddy Roosvelt)

[Spies] are all Jews. Every one's a Jew. Gelb's a Jew. Halperin's a Jew. But there are bad-Hiss was not a Jew. So that proves something. Very interesting thing. - Richard Nixon (link: http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=48623)

"I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, 2009

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

Just for giggles:

"Go f*ck yourself," -- Vice-President Dick Cheney, on the Senate Floor

Found this series of quotes posted in the comments section of the Economist, and found it sufficiently amusing that it deserved re-posting. - Guy

Homeward Bound

2010-08-19T14:28:00.000-07:00

We are just waking up and getting our final internet time in before heading to the airport for our return leg. Just a quick 14-hour plane ride and we will be back in the good old USA!

Out and About

2010-08-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

Joahnna and I spent yesterday walking around Melbourne, since she has mostly recovered from the plague. I was hungry so we stopped at the Lord of the Fries on the way to the Gallery of Victoria. I admit that I picked it just because the name was clever.

At the Gallery of Victoria we walked through their modern artists exhibition. Afterwards we stopped in their gift shop and had tea and carrot cake before heading back.

Rather than walking we decided to catch the tram on the way back. Melbourne has a number of trams criss-crossing downtown, and they also have a free city circle tram which runs around the downtown perimeter. It was a nice ride back, and also the robo-guide pointed out the sights as we circled back.

In the evening Glenn came by and took us out for dessert. We started out at Portorussells (?) where we Joahnna and I both had the spicy pudding, and afterwards walked to Max Brenner where we finished up with hot chocolate and cheesecake.

The Plague

2010-08-16T18:11:00.000-07:00

We moved from Gladdy's house to Glenn's, located in downtown Melbourne, last sunday. However apparently we took some unintended souvenirs along with us -- Joahnna and Zach came away with a cold. They both spent the day yesterday in bed, and the symptoms are starting to spread to the rest of the clan.

I spent the day walking around Melbourne along with Jazylette, JR, and Ning, and later met up with Josh and Kathy. The weather was blustery and cold so we spent a lot of the day wandering through the indoor malls in downtown.

Today Joahnna is feeling better, so we are heading out the gallery of victoria.

The Shuttle Bus

2010-08-13T00:13:00.001-07:00

This is a photo of the shuttle bus I have been tasked to drive for the next few days (driver shown for scale).

Kangaroo Hunt

2010-08-12T23:02:00.000-07:00

We've been here for a couple days so far but we didn't really feel like we were getting the full Australian experience, so this morning we told Gladdy that we wanted to go see some kangaroos. It turns out there is a park not too far from her house (Gladdy lives on the outskirts of Melbourne) with some free-range 'roos available, so we loaded up the van with Gladdy, her two children Caitlyn and Jakson, Jazylette, her two children Alton and Jaiden, Joahnna and their intrepid van driver, me.

We drove the van to the park, parked, and started looking for kangaroos. A short walk from the parking lot we started to see curious heads poking up over the crest of a hill. The kangaroos were skittish and maintained a distance of about a hundred feet, so we didn't get any good close-ups, but we did manage to get a few good shots with the zoom lens.

(If you look closely in the above photo, you can see a joey sticking its paw out of its mother's pouch)

Most of all we really felt that we're actually in another country. Of course after that we somewhat spoiled the effect by going to the local Westfield mall, grabbing lunch at (for Jaiden) Subway and picking up some groceries at Woolworth (aka Safeway).

Joahnna is cooking up her signature broccoli beef as I type. Tomorrow is Glenn's wedding, and Joahnna and I have a number of stops to pick up and drop off people throughout the day. Driving around today driving on the left was starting to feel more normal again, so I should be all ready for shuttle bus duty tomorrow.

On our way

2010-08-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

We are on our way to the airport to catch our flight to Sydney. From there it is on to Melbourne to meet up with the family. Had a photo of us in the car but guess I can't upload from iPhone. :(

Teaching teaching

2010-03-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

I read an excellent article in the New York Times about coming up with methods for teaching the next generation of teachers (or current teachers, for that matter).

The problem is, in a nutshell, that we don't know what makes good teachers good. Economists are happy with this, because they can set up an incentive structure, but as the article points out, teaching is already the 3rd largest profession in the U.S. There aren't a lot of other industries to steal talent from. That means that at some level, the only option is to make the teachers you already have better.

A great deal of the article is devoted to Lemov's Taxonomy. This is mainly the work of one man who set out to categorize the specific actions that good teachers take to maintain control of a class and teach effectively.

Perhaps this is the light at the end of the tunnel. At this point it looks like it needs some larger validation, but the promise of it is that if the taxonomy is correct and effective, you should be able to see results within a year, rather than within a generation.

Open for Business

2009-11-17T11:56:00.000-08:00

Not many posts lately, as all of my minor updates have gone through the Evil That Is Facebook. Quite possibly one of the greatest time-wasters invented since, well, the internet.

However, Joahnna's photography business is up and running, and as part of our continuing marketing campaign we have launched a website for the business. Go to www.bentonstreetphotography.com and check it out!

No More Word?

2009-08-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

Microsoft just lost a trial for an XML patent violation in Word by what appears to be a patent troll. The company, i4i, has no products, so is presumably uninterested in the usual patent cross-licensing deals that major corporations engage in.

Damages are about $200M, which is laughable for a company with as big a bank account as MSFT, but the requirement to stop selling Word within 60 days has a bit more teeth in it. Then again, it apparently only applies to Word 2003 and 2007, so maybe they won't complain too much. After all, it just forces people to upgrade to the new version.

Since Microsoft is one of the worst abusers of the patent system, hopefully this gives them some incentive to work on patent reform. Hoping for too much?

Wheels Down

2009-08-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

I touched down in San Jose on friday, after a four-hour flight from Escalante. The flight was uneventful except that I had a bunch of turbulence going from Escalante to Boulder City (where I stopped for fuel), and that I got clearance heading out of Las Vegas to cross over "Area 51" (the China Lake restricted area).

I did not see any flying saucers or black helicopters. Apparently they don't fly on the weekends.

Only 281 messages waiting for me in my inbox on my return.

Snail Hike

2009-08-14T15:12:00.000-07:00

Howard and I took a 5-mile (according to the GPS) hike today, down the Escalante River and back to the trail head. The trail wanders back and forth across the river (well, stream right now -- it was rarely more than 6" deep and a few feet wide) so I spent quite a bit of time splashing through and occasionally stepping in quickmud (Howard's term). We stopped at a culvert cut out of the rock which provided a nice shady spot to have lunch and look for snails.

Howard looked for snails. I watched and read off the coordinates of each sample.

Afterwards we stopped at the Dairy Freeze for milkshakes and went home for a well-deserved shower. If the weather looks good I will head for home tomorrow.

Escalante

2009-08-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

I touched down in Escalante this morning, after spending the night in Farmington, New Mexico. I stopped there because a) it was along my route of flight and b) I was tired. I got up early this morning and landed in Escalante around 10AM, in time to miss the afternoon thunderstorms.

Howard and I walked around town and saw some of the old buildings, as well as spending some time talking with his friend Paul, who is one of two or three pilots in town. We are supposed to meet up with Paul later over at his hanger and "talk plane" for a while.

I took some nice photos of Lake Powell on the way in, as well as some canyons that look like they are Grand Canyon scale (note to self: visit Grand Canyon). As I do not have a download cable handy, I will have to wait to return home in order to download these.

I also got an update on Howard's various properties here in Escalante and how various restoration/improvement efforts are going. The Bell house should be very impressive (if difficult to navigate) when it is finished.

Tomorrow we might go flying with Paul, if the weather cooperates, and there is a big potluck dinner tomorrow night. I will fly back home saturday or sunday morning depending on how the weather looks.

Lafayette

2009-08-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

I made a short flight today, due to a line of thunderstorms working its way across Tennesee and northern Kentucky. A quick replanning in the cockpit gave me a new destination of Lafayette, Georgia.

I found a small town with a friendly FBO that tossed me the key to a creaky Ford Escort with an official Walker County seal on the side. I got me a genuine government vehicle for my ride.

I'm currently hiding out from the heat in the hotel room in the hopes it will be slightly less oppressive later when dinner time rolls around.

Tommorow's plan is to see how far I can get. Stopovers planned for Arkansas and north Texas, and if I feel good, I will push on to Utah. If not I will probably stop somewhere in north Texas.

New York Recap

2009-08-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

So, I'm trying to remember all of what we did in New York -- we had a fairly packed week there.

We started off the week at the Guggenheim, then took a walk through Central Park. The next day we arranged a helicopter tour. The tour covered the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and downtown Manhattan. Afterwards we took the ferry to Liberty Island, although we were not allowed up in the statue, since we needed a ticket that apparently one can only get off the island. Foiled, we took the ferry to Ellis Island and walked through the immigration museum, which was probably much more interesting. They had a number exhibits showing how Ellis Island grew in size, how immigrants were processed, population statistics and such.

The funny thing is, we were busy the entire week, but looking back at it, I can't remember exactly what we did from day to day, but we were busy every day from breakfast (okay, we usually managed to finish up breakfast and leave the hotel by 11pm), and it was very hot for the first few days and then around wednesday it cooled down to a reasonable temperature and I was much happier. Over the course of the week, we saw the Natural History Museum, the Metropolitan Art Museum, and Little Italy.

Oh, and we loved the pool in our hotel with the swim-up bar, and hung out with Pam, and generally had a good time. I can't say I saw all of New York, or even most of it, but we had a good time.

More time in NC

2009-08-10T05:54:00.001-07:00

We decided to spend another day in Raleigh, since we haven't come up with any attractions between here and Utah that we really want to see. Today's plan is to pick up some new charts to cover the trip back, hide from the heat (today's high: 99 degrees), plan our route, and continue sorting through and editing our backlog of photos.

And we still have a few book purchases from Strand's that we need to work through.

Arrived in North Carolina

2009-08-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

We had a great time in New York, which is why I haven't posted anything for the last week. I will have a bigger write-up later, but for now we are OK, and got to North Carolina successfully. We had to work our way through some yucky weather and headwinds to get here, and we ended up making an impromptu fuel stop just short of Raleigh.

I actually felt guilty about the fuel stop, because we just picked an airport along our line of flight and figured they had fuel there and landed. When we got there the automated fuel station was out of service, and we had to call the airport manager out to fuel our plane (he left his cell phone number taped to the window -- gotta love small town airports). When he got to the airport, he only had one leg. He then proceeded to fuel the plane for me. Normally I fuel it myself, but didn't want to say anything... So I had my plane fuelled by a one-legged man.

Shana's air mattress is quite comfortable, and her two cats are very friendly, and Joahnna is torn between playing with them and trying to keep them away to keep her allergies under control.

Oh, and Pam texted us while we were on the train north from New York, saying that a small plane hit a tour helicopter over the Hudson river. So, just to let everyone know, it wasn't us.

Helicopter Tour

2009-08-04T09:38:00.000-07:00

We flew from Vermont to the East Hampton airport on Long Island last sunday. There was a bit of low cloud cover but we landed without incident. The weather immediately struck us as it was hot and muggy.

We caught a taxi to the nearby train station and took a train from the Hamptons to New York, after which we checked in to our hotel and called up Pam to go out for dinner.

On monday we took the subway up to 86th street and took a quick tour of the Guggenheim, which was showing a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit, and then walked through central park. We then caught another subway down to the Soho, where we did some shoe shopping (Joahnna's sandals were just about worn out, so she picked up some Birkenstocks), and found Strand Books, which is a great used book store -- three stories and "18 miles" of new and used books.

We got out of strand six books and about 30 pounds later and made our way back to the hotel, where we changed into our bathing suits and spent some time in the hotel pool and swim-up bar. The only problem with the swim-up bar concept is that if people are splashing in the pool it can get in to your drink.

Later that night we met up with Pam again for dinner, then went to watch "The Ugly Truth".

This morning we levered ourselves out of bed and caught a cab to the west island heliport, where we took a 15-minute helicopter tour. We flew by the Statue of Liberty, then looped around and crossed over the south end of Manhattan island. It was our first time in a helicopter and it is a very different feeling.

Right now Joahnna is taking a nap while I catch up on my blog and read some of my new purchases, and our plan for the day is to do some laundry (we only have 5-6 days of clothes, so we need to go find a washing machine every now and then) and then take a boat to see the Statue of Liberty this afternoon.

Vermont

2009-08-01T18:02:00.001-07:00

We departed Oshkosh yesterday and flew to Vermont, after a brief stop in Ohio for fuel. The departure from Oshkosh was busy -- we formed a line of departing aircraft, and the tower cleared us on to the runway two at a time and had us line up in parallel. However, once away from the airport we settled in to a relatively uneventful flight. We spent about two hours flying from Oshkosh to our refuelling point just south of Cleveland, and then another three hours to get to Montpelier, Vermont.

At Vermont I flew my first "real" instrument approach -- meaning my first one without an instructor on board, and where actual clouds are limiting visibility instead of the training hood. I got us on the glide slope fine and we broke out of the clouds at about 4000' for a pretty moonlit landing.

Gregg and Lori had a very nice dinner ready-made for us, and we stayed the night at the nearby Morgan Inn. We woke up to a beautiful misty morning and drove back to Gregg and Lori's for a fresh French toast breakfast.

We spent today driving around the Randolph area and taking pictures, as well as meeting the neighbors and having a good time relaxing on the porch, reading, and catching up. Vermont is beautiful in the summer, but the prospect of 8-12 feet of snow in the winter and daily snow-blowing the driveway has chilled Joahnna on any idea of living here.

Tomorrow we have a short (one and a half hour) flight from here to the Long Island MacArthur airport, after which we have a couple hour train ride to get in to our hotel in Times Square.

Rained Out

2009-07-30T11:20:00.001-07:00

Today the weather has been blustery and overcast, so we decided to skip AirVenture for the day and concentrate on exploring Appleton. We found a small bookshop within walking distance, as well as the Walgreen's, where we stocked up on essential supplies. We also made a reservation to arrive at an airport about halfway up Long Island on sunday.

Love's First Kiss

2009-07-30T11:19:00.001-07:00

Our first kiss as husband and wife. :)

AirVenture Tuesday/Wednesday

2009-07-29T14:22:00.001-07:00

It took a while yesterday to get our transportation situation sorted out, so we didn't actually get to airventure until around 3PM. By that point the air show was in full swing so we found a spot to enjoy the action.

The aerobatics routines were very impressive, with the pilots repeatedly putting their aircraft in situations seeming uncontrollable, then recovering out of it with a dive towards the runway and pulling up into yet another stunt. The camera can't really capture these well, but I did manage to get some short video clips with the small camera which we will push up to Facebook.

After the individual ones came team AeroShell performing formation acrobatics, which weren't nearly as difficult but looked very cool as all four aircraft did loops and rolls together, then broke out in four different directions to come back and regroup. We got some better photos of these as they came in for a low pass.

This morning we caught the shuttle in to the show and spent the day wandering through the various exhibits, looking at the various types of planes for sale and coming out soon, and talking to parts vendors and collecting business cards. Particularly neat was the Yuneec electric prototype, said to have an endurance of 3 hours with its larger battery pack, and the Icon amphibian, which is a nice-looking aircraft that comes complete with its own travel trailer for water launching.

Tomorrow will be our last full day at the show and then friday we head further east.

Back to College

2009-07-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

After spending a day at the Hawethorne Suites, we found new accomodations at Lawrence University, located in nearby Appleton. We were completely unsuccessful in renting a car (there are apparently none to be had within 30 miles of Oshkosh), but there is a shuttle bus that runs between the university and Oshkosh, so we took that back yesterday and there and back today.

The room does bring a little bit of nostalgia with it, especially with the few people we see around mostly college-age. We have confirmed that we can both fit in a standard college twin bed, but only with difficulty. The room isn't air-conditioned but it hasn't been terribly hot, so that's not a huge drawback. The biggest problem with the place is that public transportation here is somewhere beweeen terrible and tragic, so without a car our movement options are limited to the shuttle bus back and forth and whatever we can walk to. Fortunately main street in Lawrence is College Ave, and is right outside our doorstep.

It's clear that the recession has hit Appleton pretty hard. We walked through the City Center mall the other day, which is a compact three-story mall nearby. The second and third stories were completely empty except for one shop, and the first floor had a few vacancies in it. There were also numerous storefronts along College Ave available for rent, including one with a sign out front that said "Thanks Bush! One more family-owned business gone!"

Mark

2009-07-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

Mark drove up from Minneapolis last Sunday to see us while we were at Gina's lake house. We went to a nearby bar (Barry's? Buster's? Something like that) and had lunch, and had a nice chat. Sara unfortunately couldn't make it due to a conflicting party. Afterwards Joahnna took a nice photo of us standing in front of the lake.

Thanks for making the drive!

Oshkosh Arrival

2009-07-27T18:30:00.000-07:00

For a short (one and a half hour) flight, we had a pretty long day today.

We started out having more trouble with fouled spark plugs. This time #3 and #5 were failing. Aborted our takeoff and chased down a mechanic at Anoka, who cleaned out the plugs, only to find that that fixed those two, but a *different* plug starting having a problem. After that he suspected that the spark plug wires were getting worn out and we were getting a weak spark, which is why the plugs keep failing on the ground. He recommended we go around once in the pattern and test the mags in flight.

We preflighted again, took off and tested the mags at pattern altitude -- all plugs firing normally. So we continued on to Oshkosh.

There were a few rain clouds moving through, so we fired up the GPS with real-time weather info and steered our course through the red dots. Arrived at Oshkosh after an interesting tight left turn to put ourselves down. Had a tough time finding a place to stay but finally found the Hawthorne suites had a room available for one night at blackmail prices.

We wandered around the airshow checking out interesting planes and looking at some of the day's airshow activities. Most impressive was the full-power takeoff by one of the Thunderbirds' F-16s, but the Sky Crane dumping water in a simulated fire suppression and a formation arrival of about 20 T-6 Texans were also pretty cool.

Around 4PM the red dots that we had been avoiding on the way here finally got to Oshkosh, and it started raining, which gradually developed into a mild thunderstorm. We hauled ourselves back to the plane to unload our luggage, manhandled the luggage (we have one huge bag that has all of both of our clothes for a month) on the bus back to the bus terminal, lugged it on to a second bus bus which took us, er, close to our hotel, and then carried it over the intervening street and lawn to get to the hotel.

The hotel turns out to have the only restaurant within 2-3 miles, which turned out to be a pretty nice place. Joahnna had crab cakes and lobster bisque, while I had a stuffed chicken breast. Afterwards we put on our bathing suits and went down and relaxed in the jacuzzi for an hour or so. I decided the blackmail was worth it.

Tomorrow we are taking ourselves and our luggage to a nearby university that is renting out some of its dorm rooms. Tonight, we will both sleep well.

Half Cup

2009-07-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Joahnna and I spent yesterday and today at my Aunt Gina's house in Anoka. They have a ten acre property on the edge of a lake, with beautiful sunrises in the morning.

Gina has spent the last day catching us up on our family history and connections on my dad's side of the family. We have found that my grandma Doris was her father's sister, which helps put things in the proper place in the tree. Gina and Will, her husband, are celebrating their 60th anniversary this year.

There are several houses here on the lake property, so the summer is apparently a rolling family gathering. They were not surprised much when we gave them a call and said we would drop in for a day or two, and they have plenty of room to put up unexpected guests. With us here at the lake this weekend are Alex, Gina's son-in-law, Jon, and Aaron.

We've had beautiful weather here, plus the best food we've eaten for the entire trip. Gina's sons Jon and Aaron have done most of the cooking, while Will has told us some stories from his time in the Philippines during WWII.

Oh, and the reason for the name of the post is that Gina never drinks a full cup of coffee -- "just a half cup" -- but has several half-cups throughout the day.

Anoka

2009-07-25T13:41:00.001-07:00

We just touched down in Anoka, MN to visit my cousin Gina and her family. The ~3 hour flight from Rapid City was under IFR today, due to low cloud cover over most of Minnesota.

Yesterday we drove out to the Dakota Badlands, which are an eerie-looking landscape of multicolored clay originally formed from volcanic ash. Joahnna got a bunch of great photos, and afterwards we drove back in to town to find... Surprise! The nearest bookstore. Borders was just across the street from Chili's, where we grabbed dinner, and then retired to our hotel for an evening of reading and Facebook uploads.

Right now we are waiting in a brand-new FBO lobby at the Anoka airport, which is appointed like a 5-star hotel, and our plane is enjoying the unexpected luxury of living in a hangar for the next couple nights, since there were no tie-downs available.

Mt. Rushmore

2009-07-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to the evening lighting ceremony at Mt. Rushmore, which was well-done. They showed a short movie which talked about the four presidents on the mountain and what they did for America, and then after they lit the mountain, they had all the military veterans in the audience come down to the stage for the lowering of the flag.

After that we briefly got lost on the way home (we left the GPS in the plane, so we were forced to fall back on navigating based on the free tourist maps they gave us at the airport), then stopped at Taco Bell for dinner, since it was about all that was open at 11pm at night.

Today we are running a couple errands and then heading out to Badlands National Park, which has some very striking scenery from what we've heard.

More Brigham/Rapid City Photos

2009-07-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

Test-driving our new oxygen system at 11,500 feet.

Mountains just east of Brigham on climb-out.

Over Utah

Our crew car in action.

Rapid City

2009-07-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

We arrived at Rapid City this afternoon, after a relatively short 3-hour flight. We flew by Mount Rushmore on the way, but we weren't really close enough to get a good shot of it.

The fuel station was a little confusing at first, since the credit card slot was 50' away from the fuel pump.

The terrain between Utah and South Dakota is very impressive, for its expansive, rugged look, and for being almost completely empty. There were more than a few times where I had to zoom the GPS out to the "100 NM" scale in order to see any airports on the screen. At one point over Wyoming I tapped Joahnna on the shoulder and said "Look over there! A building!" It's not quite that sparse, but pretty close. Structures are few and far between, and frequently have a radio tower next to them indicating some sort of outpost.

Yesterday and today were both pretty bumpy rides, with the hot air creating lots of thermals and turbulence. At one point today (while we were trying to line up for our photo of Mt. Rushmore) we hit one bump so hard that both Joahnna and I hit our heads on the ceiling liner. That was good for a bit of surprise.

We had lunch at TGI Friday's and later tonight we are driving to Mt. Rushmore for their evening lighting ceremony, which is reputed to be good. Tomorrow we will either visit the Black Hills or the Dakota Badlands.

Brigham

2009-07-22T17:18:00.000-07:00

Well, it wasn't where we planned on spending our first night, but such is the course of our great adventure.

Our takeoff was delayed by a couple hours when we found that one of the cylinders wasn't developing power. A quick check by the mechanic showed the plugs to be fouled, and since this was the second time this had happened, I figured they were all fairly dirty and in need of a good cleaning. I talked the mechanic into cleaning all of them and sure enough, most of them had a good coating of oil and would probably have become fouled soon.

We took off at around noon and flew nonstop from San Jose to Brigham. This was intended to be just a fuel-and-lunch stop, but by the time we got here it was 5:30 local time (we lost an hour going to mountain time).

There was no food at the airport in Brigham, but the shop we stopped at had a "crew car" -- this is a car that FBOs frequently have as a loaner car for pilots stopping for the night. Our crew car is an early 80's Buick Century, with oxidized blue paint and a thick coating of dust on the windshield. This is typical of the breed.

We took our crew car into town (pretty much one main street with all the shops on it), and had lunch at the Peach City Diner, a neat little drive-in. I had a strawberry milkshake made from home-made ice cream, and Joahnna had fish and chips. Apparently the fish and chips were good, despite be many miles from the ocean.

By the time we got back to the airport it was past 6pm and we were still looking at a three-hour flight to get to Rapid City, and I was rapidly fading, so we decided to stop here for the night. We found a brand-new Days Inn where we are currently enjoying the A.C. (hot day today) and reacquainting ourselves with the internet.

Time for a nap for the pilot. Will post photos as soon as we find proper connecting cables (naturally we left our current ones at home).

Air Guido

2009-04-27T10:22:00.000-07:00

I got more flying in this last weekend than I did all winter.

For starters, for staying current with my instrument rating I need to fly six approaches every six months (and do a hold). I suspect this is the bane of most instrument pilots -- if you're not making your money from flying, you're unlikely to do more than one or two approaches in actual instrument conditions in an entire year, much less one a month.

So, practically speaking, every six months you need to go up with a safety pilot or instructor and practice some approaches, which is what I did on friday. I went with Manuel, who is building time for a commercial pilot job, and I flew two approaches on friday afternoon and one saturday evening. Together with the three I did a couple weeks ago I am now current.

In addition, I did some air taxi "work" this weekend. Zach has some relatives in Fresno that he wanted to visit, so saturday morning Joahnna and I flew him out to the Fresno-Yosemite airport and dropped him off at a maintenance shop there. It's a little odd flying into a commercial airport because they don't really know what to do with you -- they generally don't have a GA parking area, you have to stop at one of the businesses on the field. They charge a ramp fee for parking, but usually if you're just picking up or dropping off passengers the employees turn a blind eye.

On sunday I flew back to pick him up while Joahnna was working a trade show at Valley Fair. After completing the run-up we were cleared for takeoff on 29 left (the shorter of the two runways), and as we taxied into position I elbowed Zach and said "Check that out" -- as we were taking off, an Air Guard F/A-18 was taking off from the parallel runway.

Don't get to see that every day.

Winds in the News

2009-04-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

Later found out that high winds caused problems all over the bay area. When I got home I found out that the winds had knocked off several of the plastic drain pipes from the gutters. It also knocked over a big rig on the freeway and caused numerous power outages. San Francisco airport reported gusts up to 41mph

This article reports many of the problems.

Windy Day Flying

2009-04-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I flew up to Lincoln to visit an old friend. We had set up the trip the day before, and the forecast for the time was a nice day with partial clouds. Sure enough, when I got up yesterday it was a bright sunny day with a few scattered clouds. Unfortunately there was also a minor matter of wind.

For flying, we rely greatly on current weather observations at airports, called METARs. When I took off, the weather reports looked like this:

KRHV 141747Z 29015G25KT 10SM SCT040 12/02 A2995
KLHM 141910Z 29020G24KT 10SM SCT070 BKN080 OVC090 13/M03 A2981

For those unfamiliar with decoding these little gems, KRHV was the airport I was flying from and KLHM my destination. The second part is the date and time of the observation, and the third part is the wind. For this one it means that my winds taking off were from a 290 heading, and observed as 15 knots with gusts of up to 25 knots. The runway heading at RHV is 310, so this was about 20 degrees off runway heading.

Takeoff went fairly smoothly, I pulled the plane up into the air once the wheels felt light and immediately turned into the wind. Once off the ground we climbed FAST. We dodged a couple clouds at 4000' on our way up to cruise altitude (that would be the SCT040), and then settled in for a short, bumpy flight to the Lincoln airport.

The winds at Lincoln look pretty similar to RHV -- from 290, 20 knots with gusts to 24. However, the Lincoln runway heading is 330, which makes these winds a full 40 degrees off runway heading. For a 20 knot wind, that gives an effective crosswind of 13 knots.

On my first approach to the airport I did not set up well for the landing. I neglected to take the crosswind into account when turning from base to final, and so instead of turning out lined up with the runway, I did a big skidding turn that blew me past the runway and then to fight my way back into alignment. The approach stayed ugly all the way down to the runway, at which point I scratched the landing and went around to try again.

The second approach went much better. I turned earlier towards the runway, got myself lined up much better, and then transitioned into a good crosswind landing (right rudder, left bank) prior to touchdown. I also think the winds were lighter on the second approach.

Had a good lunch and chat with my friend, then headed back to the airport. For the return trip, I was looking at:

KLHM 142230Z AUTO 03016KT 10SM BKN100 13/M01 A2980

While the winds were lower, they were now perpendicular to the runway instead of at an angle, which didn't make my life any easier (effective crosswind 14 knots). I had to wait for a helicopter and a water bomber that were using the bad winds as good training to make a hole, then again made an uneventful takeoff.

The weather when I finally got back to Reid-Hillview was:

KRHV 142247Z 28017G25KT 10SM SCT040 15/01 A2993

Life hasn't gotten any better back here. I get myself lined up correctly the first time this time, end up touching down near the runway threshold and I am off the runway by taxiway Bravo without even braking hard (Alpha is at the beginning of the runway).

I have mixed feelings about this flight. On one hand, it was good training for dealing with high-wind conditions, and all my (completed) takeoffs and landings went well. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I should have been up in the air in the first place. The takeoff and landing at LHM were both close to the maximum crosswind for my plane (16 knots, I believe). My motivation to fly was about equal parts get-there-itis (I had cancelled on my friend twice before due to weather) and a desire to push the envelope out some on weather I was comfortable flying in.

Replacing the Paperback

2009-02-10T13:43:00.000-08:00

I just read this article talking about how the Amazon Kindle could be even better. He has a telling comment on the economics of the Kindle -- how many books you need to buy to make a Kindle pay off.

As an early adopter of the Sony eReader, I can say that the Kindle has a long way to go, because it hasn't really resolved the fundamental problem the eReader faces, which is that it isn't better than a book.

It's different than a book, and has some advantages and disadvantages, but different is not going to make people change their ways. It's not cheaper than buying paperback books, it's not the right format for replacing hardback books, it's fragile (when was the last time you broke a book?), it can run out of power. Against that you have the convenience of being able to order books wherever you are and reducing the storage requirement of books.

And there are business-model differences, too -- once you've read a book on your Kindle, it isn't worth much, but a physical book can be loaned to a friend, resold, or traded in. So, intrinsically, an electronic copy of a book is simply worth less than a physical copy, but typically they cost more than a standard paperback.

I think there are markets for an electronic book, but it's not really a consumer market right now. A larger-format (8x11") e-book oriented towards college students would be a much better device -- if students can buy their textbooks for $25 instead of $50, the device would pay off in a couple quarters, not to mention getting rid of 50+ lbs of books they have to tote around. But I don't see your day-to-day paperbacks getting replaced by e-books until they get a lot more cost competitive.

The End of the Fighter Era

2009-01-19T11:50:00.000-08:00

A well-written argument by Lewis Page at The Register on why so many people hate the F-35. It's not that it's a great fighter, it's that it's good enough to put a lot of the competition out of business, and that it's good at doing the unglamorous things that modern militaries actually do -- mainly beating up the forces of small nations equipped with second-rate surplus Russian designs, rather than going head-to-head with large numbers of state-of-the-art aircraft.

But to be honest, to an outsider it looks as though this sector could really stand to shrink quite a lot. The militaries of the West, it appears, continue to plough far too much of their straitened funds into exotic combat jets designed for unlikely wars, and not nearly enough into bread-and-butter infantry, surveillance platforms, helicopters, transport planes and so on.

The F-35 has some of the industry worried not because it's a waste of money, but exactly the opposite -- they fear that it could become the Model T Ford of combat aircraft (available in any color you like, as long as it's grey) and wipe out the competing manufacturers.

I still believe even the F-35 is far more expensive than what we need today. A second production run of A-10s would do a lot more good for today's military actions than any new fighter on the market.

Walking While Brown

2009-01-19T10:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Zach had an encounter with the Santa Clara Police Department. While walking around looking for a nearby park, he stopped and asked an older woman for directions. A few minutes later an SCPD police cruiser rolls up on him and he is stopped and questioned for a while and then released.

A few details may make this a bit more clear:

It was broad daylight -- around 4PM
The woman was white
We live in a predominantly white neighborhood
Zach is half-Pakistani, but looks Hispanic to most observers

Joahnna called the police and complained about this, and in the ensuing discussion, it turned out the woman Zach asked for directions thought that he looked "suspicious" and called the police.

Joahnna and I are at a loss as to what to tell Zach if he wishes to avoid being periodically stopped and checked. It seems as if the bar for "suspicious" is suspiciously low.

Can't Wait for the Weekend

2009-01-08T06:14:00.000-08:00

I'm in Israel this week for a business trip, and that means that for me the week ends today (Thursday). Tomorrow evening I fly back to the U.S.

It has been an odd time to travel to Israel. The airstrikes in Gaza had been going on for a week or so by the time I left, and the ground war started as I was flying over. A number of people asked if it was safe, and I said that I believed so, since the action was confined to the Gaza strip.

In many ways the feeling here reminds me of 2003, just after the war in Iraq started. People were concerned about it, but simply went on with their daily lives. The feeling I get here is similar, but the discontinuity is more pronounced -- it's very odd to get in your car and drive to work, realizing that people are fighting and dieing not two hours drive away.

I Told You So

2008-12-11T13:24:00.000-08:00

It would be nice to read articles like these that validate things I have said before, if it weren't for the fact that the validation takes the form of drought and water shortages.

"The demand for water has gone up," Christy says. "The demand has skyrocketed in places like California and New Mexico because they've tried to grow crops in deserts."

Unclear what we will do about it. The farm lobby is very powerful in California, but they can't create water from thin air.

“Given that agriculture accounts for about 80% of Delta water consumption, no economic, environmental, or policy assessment can be complete without a serious examination of agricultural water withdrawals from the Delta,” said Heather Cooley, senior research associate at the Pacific Institute (original article)

Maybe rice and alfalfa aren't such great crops for California after all?

Where My Tax Money Goes

2008-12-08T16:54:00.001-08:00

I often have discussions (or perhaps gripe sessions would be a better term) with Jon and others about where all my tax money goes. With sales and income taxes that are both among the highest in the nation, and property tax to boot, it feels like we're getting dinged at every turn.

So, after a little coffee-time debate at work, I decided to harness the power of the internet and find out. What I found were these links.

First, a study of the California total tax burden versus that of other states concludes that while we pay more than the national average in taxes, it's not a lot more (11.5% versus 11% average for the nation). This article on wikipedia argues that prop 13 has had a disruptive effect on the state economy by making it more advantageous to hold on to your property than to sell it, thus chilling the housing market in many areas.

As for where the money goes, the Governor's budget office has a nice income/expense graph. This shows that, for all their complaints, schools get about 41% of the state budget, with the next biggest item being health services at 25%. Bond funding isn't shown on this graph, elsewhere I found a figure of $4.4B, which would put it at around 3% of the budget. Corrections is also a big chunk of the budget at 7.3%.

However, all of this may be moot if the legislature can't break the deadlock and come to some agreement on the state budget for next year; otherwise the budget for everything will be zero.

Goodbye Performance Review?

2008-12-01T15:01:00.000-08:00

Article by a professor and management consultant that performance reviews are counterproductive. Given the way they are run at most companies I've been in, I'd have to agree -- the good managers I had either glossed over the performance review process or ignored it entirely.

Around the Bend

2008-11-15T21:16:00.001-08:00

Joahnna and I flew up to Bend, Oregon over the weekend to visit her Aunt Vicki and Uncle Jim. The weather was exceptionally nice for this time of year -- clear skies and calm winds all the way up and back.

We flew up saturday morning, arriving at 2PM after a three-hour flight. They gave us a tour of the area, including a nice upscale mall in Bend, and a quick drive out to Mount Batchelor. On sunday we drove out to a nearby ranch, owned by a friend of Jim's, who breeds Clydesdales for competition. They are apparently very friendly and docile horses, which is good to remind yourself of when you're next to one, because they are huge.

After visiting the horses, we had a quick lunch at the local brew-pub. I didn't get to sample the brew, naturally, but Joahnna had a sampler, and afterwards we launched off into the wild orange yonder. We took off at around 3pm but the sun was already beginning to set behind the clouds.

On the way hope we took a slight detour and flew over Crater Lake, which was quite pretty. We got some nice reflections off the water and I flew a few s-turns so Joahnna could get some good photos.

After that we watched the sun set as we neared Redding, and wrapped up another hour of flight for a nighttime touchdown.

Postcard Shot

2008-11-05T23:05:00.000-08:00

Joahnna and I flew to Santa Barbara on tuesday to celebrate my grandfather's 93rd birthday. We had some low clouds coming out of San Jose, and Joahnna shot the photo above as we were flying south in the morning.

Flying Prius

2008-10-27T11:34:00.000-07:00

Well, it won't be made by Toyota. In fact it may not be made by anyone, but a company called Falx is working on a hybrid tilt-wing design with a gasoline generator powering two electric motors.

It's a pretty cool looking aircraft, but browsing through the website shows that they're still at the early-concept stage (as in, "We have cool ideas, give us money and they might turn in to a product"). Maybe they could build it out of Buckypaper.

How To Run an Election

2008-10-14T17:10:00.000-07:00

It seems funny that the U.S. should look to another country about how to run an election, but Brazil seems to have a pretty good handle on how to do a trusted election on electronic voting machines.

The article details how the hardware is provided by a private company (Diebold), but the software is written by the government election office, and is then reviewed and digitally signed by members of both political parties.

This is, in my opinion, the right way to run an election -- the process of how the election is run is completely under the control of the government and monitored by the affected parties. Colluding to fix an election would require the involvement of three parties, one of whom would presumably be harmed by the result.

Santa Barbara Approach

2008-10-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

Joahnna and I flew down to Santa Barbara on sunday to visit my grandparents. We had a quick trip down courtesy of a strong tailwind that set my current speed record for the Comanche (178 knots over the ground). We had an interesting landing as the tower worked us in between a bunch of Air Tractors spraying mulch on the hillside.

Spent the afternoon chatting with my grandparents and Uncle Gregg, who was in the area, then headed back to the airport for the flight home. Joahnna slept all the way back, which was a bit longer since we were now fighting the winds that helped us down, and doing 125-130 knots most of the way.

Touched down at sunset, in what were forecast to be gusty winds but were calm for the moment I landed in. We did hear an ominous call from the tower as we were taxiing in, though -- it seems that one of the planes that landed just behind us crossed over an invisible line in the air, and was told to "taxi to transient and call air traffic control about a possible airspace deviation".

That'd be the equivalent of seeing the flashing blue lights behind you.

Bailout or Subsidized Stupidity?

2008-09-29T16:07:00.000-07:00

The proposed bailout didn't sit really well with me when I first heard about it, since it felt like rewarding people for making bad decisions, and it didn't help the people that are really feeling the pain -- i.e. the people getting kicked out of their houses.

This is not to say that I think people should get rewarded for buying a house they couldn't afford, but if you're trying to prop up the economy by dumping government money into it, I'd much rather it went to people whose worst mistake is not being able to do math than people who intentionally engaged in high-risk investment and then covered it up with an impenetrable paper trail.

But what do I know -- my expertise is in getting chips to work, not finance. A lot of commentators are blasting congress for not immediately giving Paulson the $700 billion blank check he was looking for, but recently economists are singing a different tune.

Politico summarizes the reaction of a number of economists, and a wide spread of economists signed this letter.

Luigi Zingales summarizes how I feel (with better credentials):

For somebody like me who believes strongly in the free market system, the most serious risk of the current situation is that the interest of few financiers will undermine the fundamental workings of the capitalist system. The time has come to save capitalism from the capitalists.

His full paper is here.

Engaged!

2008-09-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I flew to to the Mariposa Airport along with Joahnna and Zach as part of a Tradewinds fly-in to Yosemite. Dave, one of the pilots, organized the whole outing, including figuring out the logistics of how to get from the Mariposa airport to Yosemite.

This ended up being a cab ride from the airport, with three trips to get all 11 of us to the Mariposa visitor's center where the YARTS bus stops.

The bus ride in took around two hours, and we ended up in Yosemite around noon. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and I pushed for the waterfalls hike. Once on the hike we split up into two groups, with the three of us as well as John S. and his girlfriend Cathy outpacing the rest of the group.

On the way up the stairs to get to the Vernal fall, the group started flagging a bit. John and Cathy turned back and I egged on Joahnna and Zach to keep going for the top. The steps to the fall are reasonably steep, so it's a pretty good workout to get there.

Once at the top I gave Zach a quick briefing on what I had in mind, then posed for a "photo" with Joahnna. Before the photo was taken, I said "just wait a second, I have a question for you" and pulled the ring out of my pack. I gave my proposal on bended knee and, fortunately, it was accepted.

Joahnna bubbled for a bit while I grinned, and passers-by congratulated us. We talked to one couple that said that they had proposed at this spot ten years ago, which we thought was a good sign.

After that we started back down, since time was short and we weren't sure if we would be able to make the bus ride back. We pushed down at an aggressive pace and managed to make the 3:30 bus with a minute to spare.

Joahnna napped for part of the bus ride back and spent the rest of the ride playing "I Spy" with Joshua, the grandson of one of the other pilots. We received another round of congratulations from the pilots in the Tradewinds group. Back in Mariposa, we woke up Zach, everyone piled out and we caught the first taxi shuttle back to the airport.

I took the opportunity to gas up the plane with the cheapest avgas I have seen recently ($5.07) while the taxi shuttled in the other two groups, and then we posed for a quick group photo before taking off into the evening sun. We landed just as sun set, at 7pm.

Afterwards we invited Joahnna's family over to our house for drinks and chatted a bit before heading to bed. After a full day of flying and hiking (plus a couple of gin and tonics) we slept very, very well.

Defconomy

2008-09-25T14:20:00.000-07:00

This link is an article about 5 steps (modeled on the "DEFCON" system used by U.S. strategic command) from situation-normal to Great Depression-style economic meltdown.

The steps and descriptions come courtesy of Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics. The interesting thing about this article is that it was originally published in february, and at the time of writing we were at Defconomy 5. Now we're somewhere around 3 or 2, and it's played out almost exactly as described.

Emergency Preparedness

2008-08-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

I spent some time over the weekend preparing a survival pack for my car and updating the one in Joahnna's. Partially this was just an excuse to go poking around in Steven's Creek Army Surplus, which always has lots of odd and entertaining military gear to look at mixed in with their outdoor stuff. But it's also that it seems rather short-sighted to live in one of the most geologically active regions of the world and not take at least some minimal preparations.

What I was aiming for is a version of the 72-hour urban survival kit, the idea being it just has to get you through the time from the earthquake hits to when FEMA gets their act together. Note that, after seeing the Hurricane Katrina performance, this may end up being more than 72 hours. Towards that end I bought a 5-gallon jug of water for the garage. We normally have a bunch of bottled water around the house, but Murphy's law says that the quake will hit just as we're about to go to Costco for more.

What ended up in my pack was:

6 16oz bottles of water

Folding knife

Beef jerkey (although I later read on the site that trail mix would be better)

Plastic canteen survival kit (has a few useful items, including poncho, survival blanket, whistle and matches)

Water purification tablets

Hydrogen peroxide

Trauma bandages (2" to 6" thick gauze pads)

Hand-crank flashlight

Duct tape

By my quick estimate, this cost me about $65, although some items are hard to tell (the trauma bandages I split across 3 different kits). The most expensive item was the canteen survival kit, at $15. A used backpack to store it all in was also included, which was about $12.

Hopefully I'll never need it, but since California has a 99% chance of having a major quake in the next 30 years, it will probably come in handy at some point.

Unusual Names

2008-07-24T10:11:00.001-07:00

I've always felt that unusual names add a bit of flavor to one's personality. Partially it's personal bias, since "Guy" is at least a moderately unusual name in the U.S. (although I'd fit right in in France or the U.K.). But there is such a thing as taking it too far.

And the parents in New Zealand who named their child "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii" arguably have gone that far, and then some. A judge sensibly allowed the child to change her name to something more reasonable.

Also entertaining from the article were some of the other names that people have attached to their offspring -- my favorite is "Number 16 Bus Shelter."

Instrument Pilot

2008-07-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

After almost a year of instrument flying lessons, I finally took my instrument practical test (and passed, more importantly). The instrument rating means that I can now fly into regions of low visibility, fly through clouds, and land at airports that are overcast. It also means that I have at least a basic knowledge of the many pages of regulations specifying under what conditions I cannot do those things.

The picture (courtesy of FlightAware) shows the exact path my aircraft took over the course of my check-ride. My clearance was KRHV RV SJC V-334 SUNOL V-195 ECA KSCK. We flew from Reid-Hillview to Stockton, did a GPS approach at Stockton, followed by a failed-instrument approach to Tracy. I missed my initial call to turn and join the course on that one, so the controller took me through a 270 turn to come back and join the course. I go straight west until joining the 220 radial off of ECA, then fly towards the Tracy airport until we hit the missed approach point.

Normally at that point I would fly north along the SAC-157 radial, but when I tried to dial in the SAC VOR, I got nothing, so the examiner told my to use the GPS to fly to the TRACY intersection and hold. You can see my holding pattern as the part that looks like a scribble in the middle of the trace. After holding for a bit and getting my act together, we flew the ILS into Livermore (hard to see, since the track is very close to my outbound track).

After going missed at Livermore, the ride was basically over, so I flew us back to Reid-Hillview while chatting with the examiner. After pulling off a nice no-bump landing, the examiner signed my temporary certificate and asked, "So when are you going for your commercial?"

Almost There

2008-07-18T16:18:00.000-07:00

So I tried -- for the second time -- to have my instrument flight test today, but I was stymied by an uncooperative aircraft. Last night I tried to start the plane and it wouldn't turn over (dead battery), so I pulled the battery, bought a battery charger at AutoZone, and hooked it up to the charger overnight. This morning I went out to the airfield early to reinstall the battery and prep the aircraft. After filling up the tires with air, I got in the plane and tried to start it. The battery was nice and healthy, but the engine wouldn't go.

It would catch and turn a few times and then stop, which I couldn't figure out. Eventually I tapped one of the mechanics on the shoulder and had him try; he couldn't get it started, either.

So I called up the inspector and cancelled the test, and pulled (literally) the plane over to the hanger of another mechanic. I gave him the keys and headed into work, and just about the time I got to the office, the mechanic gave me a call. Apparently he looked at the magnetos, which were fine, tried starting the plane and it started right up.

Go figure.

Will try again next week.

The Return Leg

2008-07-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

I'm just finishing up my last day in Israel and getting ready for my return flight. I had a fun weekend poking around Tel Aviv with my co-worker Lior (more on that later), and now am looking forwards to my outbound interrogation at the airport and red-eye back to Newark. Managed to nap a bit on the way outbound, hopefully I can repeat the trick on the way back. I've found that even a couple hours of sleep puts me in much better shape once I hit the ground.

Due to the plummeting dollar, the exchange rate here is not so good, and I may be deprived of reading material for the simple reason that I can't afford to buy any more books. I picked up one book for the flight -- a history of the battle of Stalingrad -- for around 80 NIS, which works out to about $25 USD for a book that's marked as $7.99. I've heard of reading being an addiction but this is just silly.

Haifa

2008-07-08T03:06:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Tel Aviv monday evening (local time), and took a taxi from Tel Aviv to Haifa, where I am staying for my trip. The hotel is on a hill overlooking the sea, which gives a nice view from some of the rooms. My room is on the side of the hotel, so I get a little slice of sea mixed with the hillside.

Haifa seems to be mostly built on the local hills. According to my local informants, this is because it is very humid at sea level, and the climate on the hills is cooler and generally much more pleasant, so most of the hotels and nicer houses are on the hill. It's still relatively humid at the hotel, though.

I walked around briefly last night to stretch my legs and try and tire myself out for bed, but haven't really looked around the city. Tonight I may go for a lengthier excursion, including finding somewhere to eat other than the hotel restaurant, whose prices are murderous at the current exchange rate. The 130 NIS for dinner may be a normal hotel price, but it turns into $40 for a buffet dinner. I suspect I will have a fight with the reimbursement department when I get back.

Same problem, different continent

2008-07-01T11:28:00.001-07:00

According to El Reg, my favorite sarcastic news site, the British are having some of the same problems we are in convincing their Generals to fight the war they are fighting right now, as opposed to some theoretical war in the future that requires lots of fancy toys.

I could almost take my post from a couple weeks ago and replace "F-22" with "Eurofighter Typhoon" and be done with it. They say misery loves company, but for some reason it doesn't make me feel any better to know that another country is blowing their taxpayer dollars on less-than-useful kit, too.

Odd Times

2008-06-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Today has certainly started out on a bizarre note. For starters, you can tell the economy is getting bad when strippers feel the need to drum up business. After all, this is not normally an industry segment that advertises much (outside Vegas), as there is, shall we say, a built-in demand for their services.

Which is why I was surprised (and amused) this morning as I turned on to Lawrence Expressway, and saw two young, relatively attractive women holding up pink signs that said "Kit Kat Club -- $15 Lunch Buffet".

Afterwords I got in to work and began my early-morning work-avoidance routine (reading the news). While doing this I saw this CNN article about the D.C. handgun ban being struck down. There were a variety of supporting and opposing opinions filed by various groups. Coming in on the side of gun owners was not only the NRA, but a group called the Pink Pistols -- a group which promotes gun ownership for "gay, lesbian, bi, trans, or polyamorous persons".

I wonder what the rest of the day has cooked up for me. It's not even 10AM yet.

Not Lacking in Chutzpah

2008-06-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, Blackwater has really outdone themselves on this one.

The widows of three U.S. soldiers filed suit against Presidential Airways after Blackwater Flight 61 crashed in 2004 while carrying the men over Afghanistan. The National Transportation Safety Board blamed the crash on procedural problems at Presidential.

But the News & Observer says lawyers for the military contractor argued in a recent court filing that the case should be decided based on the laws of Afghanistan.

After securing agreements in Iraq that their employees there should not be subject to Iraqi law for their actions, it wants this case tried under Sharia law because the plane owned and operated by a U.S. company operating for the U.S. government carrying U.S. soldiers happened to crash into Afghani soil.

When trying to be despicable, they really pull out all the stops, don't they?

Cool or Cold Fusion?

2008-06-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

A researcher in Florida claims he is on the path to having a workable flying saucer. It works by ionizing the air around the saucer, causing air currents that provide lift. The best part is that it's all solid state, with no moving parts.

Initially I laughed it off, although apparently this is the culmination of years of government-backed research into this area of fluid dynamics. Now I'm at "I'll-believe-it-when-it-flies".

Sexy, but...

2008-06-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

Just read a couple news articles on the launch of the new ICON amphibious aircraft. It's a good-looking plane, with nice lines and clearly a lot of auto-type industrial design having gone in to it. I just wonder if they remembered the "plane" part.

Once you get past the sexy looks, the proposed specs don't look so attractive. First, all the numbers are estimated, so should be taken with a grain of salt. Compared against the closest competitor, the Czech Aircraft Mermaid, it's about the same speed (120 mph vs. 118), both of which are slow relative to other light-sport aircraft, which can cruise at 135-140mph. That seems to be the price of the amphib.

At $140k, it's fairly pricey relative to competitors at $85-110k, and 420 lbs of load makes it effectively a one-seater, since you can't carry 2 180lb adults and reasonable fuel. The Mermaid has a load of 505 lbs, and non-amphibs are usually good for 600lbs.

The dash is a triumph of design for non-pilots. To the uninitiated, I suppose it looks futuristic but comforting in a sports-car way. To a pilot/owner, it looks like a bunch of useless plastic taking up perfectly good panel space that will have to be ripped out at the first avionics upgrade. Speaking of which, if I'm going to pay top dollar for an aircraft, it should come with top-of-the-line avionics, and not gussied-up steam gauges. Important items such as an audio panel, transponder and 2nd comm radio are absent and have no obvious home. I can only hope that the interior is a mock-up and that sanity will prevail once they start rolling down the production line.

In short, I won't be lining up to buy one, but then again I already have a plane. The styling and the automatic swing wings are attractive, and I have always liked the amphib's ability to use any water area as a runway. But ultimately the ICON seems overpriced for what you're getting.

Pretty, But Pretty Useless

2008-06-10T09:30:00.001-07:00

It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of the current administration, but it seems like defense secretary Gates has got his priorities straight. He is seeking to curtail production of advanced fighter aircraft like the F-22 and focus on the needs of immediate conflicts, which run more to UAVs and transport aircraft.

Gates has often singled out the cutting-edge Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor as a prime example of what he deemed misplaced military priorities. "The reality is we are fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not performed a single mission in either theater," Gates told a Senate committee in February.

Gates sacked current air force head General Mosely and his suggested replacement will be the first head of the air force in 25 years who is not a former fighter pilot.

Like most large institutions, the Air Force fights for its own aggrandizement rather than looking to the good of the whole, and is actively trying to increase the amount of ~~pork~~funding going its way. But the reality on the ground is that the Air Force is increasing irrelevant for modern conflicts -- airpower over the battlefield is most likely to come from a carrier, or from ground-support aircraft like the A-10 or attack helicopters (which the Air Force hate). Strategic bombing is passe for modern low-intensity conflicts, our nuke inventory is being gradually reduced, and cyberwarfare is much-hyped but of improbable use on an actual battlefield. So the Air Force needs to find a new mission or risk being downsized into a military version of UPS.

Would that be a bad thing? Perhaps not.

Engineer Humor

2008-06-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

I was reading through the IEEE specification for Ethernet (thrilling stuff), when I noticed the following bit definition:

45.2.1.12.2 STFU (1.30.14)
When this bit is set to a one, the PMA/PMD sends a message to the link partner instructing it to be silent for
the silence time (see 45.2.1.12.3).

To translate that into english, there is a bit called "STFU" which informs the other end of the link to cease transmission ("stop talking"). For those not up-to-speed on their instant messaging/texting shorthand, "STFU" is short for "Shut The F*** Up".

I'm sure someone had a laugh when they snuck this one into the spec.

Muddy Water

2008-06-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

I generally don't expect to stumble across political controversy when I'm reading my morning aviation news, but this morning read that Blackwater is apparently expanding the scope of its operations by purchasing Brazilian figher aircraft.

This implies that Blackwater is branching out from the basic security work it did previously and planning on being a full-fledged army, including air support. They already manufacture their own APCs.

Most disturbing is the almost complete lack of oversight of a group whose actions represent and reflect upon the American people. Blackwater contractors are not accountable under military law (as they are civilians), are exempt from Iraqi law (by executive order of Paul Bremer), and may not even be accountable under U.S. civilian law (proper jurisdiction, evidence may not meet U.S. evidence requirements). Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?

Moving to Canada

2008-05-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

From the I-can't-believe-these-people-also-live-in-my-country column, a coalition of right-wing commentators and columnists forced Dunkin' Donuts to pull an online ad because it ~~supports Islamic Terrorism~~ features Rachel Ray wearing a scarf.

The ~~idiots~~ defenders of our freedom claim that Rachel is a terrorist apologist because she showed up in the commercial looking like this:For reference, a keffiyeh looks like this:

Note that the keffiyeh comes in a variety of colors and patterns; the key element seems to be that it is worn on one's head (I will confirm this after tracking down one of our local Lebanese).

I'm a little unsure as to the logic chain followed here, but I'm guessing that it goes something like:

Terrorists wear keffiyehs
A keffiyeh is a square piece of cloth
A scarf is a square piece of cloth
Therefore, anyone wearing a scarf is a terrorist

Budget Flying

2008-05-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

I found an article discussing a new Light Sport aircraft, the X-Air. This has a list price of $47k, which makes it cheaper than your average new BMW. At this price it even includes a panel-mount radio and good engine instruments, although they don't include a transponder (required if you're going to fly anywhere near a major airport).

Obviously there are some trade-offs in making an aircraft this inexpensive, and the main one they have taken is that it is fabric-covered, and thus not as durable in the long run as an aluminum or composite aircraft. However, it has folding wings and it can fit in a trailer, so you could park it at your house instead of at the airport.

The main thing counting against it is that it's slow, with a cruise speed of only 90mph. But if you're not in a tearing hurry to get somewhere, this seems like it could be a fun aircraft.

Historical Gas Prices

2008-05-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that gas is more expensive than it used to be, but this chart shows the price of gasoline indexed to inflation. At the time the chart was made, the inflation-adjusted price had not broken the all-time high in 1918, although it also puts the average gas price at $3.08/gallon (price as I drove by the gas station this morning: $4.09 for regular).

Wikipedia also has a good article on the 1973 oil crisis (the last time gas prices were this high). A major factor at the time was that price controls were put into effect, causing the rationing and shortages. The article also mentions early on that:

Since oil demand falls little with price rises, prices had to rise dramatically to reduce demand to the new lower level of supply.

Back to the ER

2008-05-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

Apparently I was over-due for a trip to the ER, since it's been a few years since I last paid them a visit. So fate arranged for that to happen yesterday at our work offsite.

I was playing volleyball with a few of my co-workers, but I haven't played in quite a while, and I was never really a hardcore player to begin with, so the right reflexes just aren't there. So when a fast ball starting coming straight at my upper chest, I couldn't decide whether to bump it or set it, so I kind of did a last-minute set. BAM! Instant dislocation.

With my right pinkie now in a new and interesting zig-zag shape, I quickly decided that immediate medical attention was a Good Idea. I drove myself to Kaiser, checked in, and waited about ten minutes before they called me. I was a bit surprised at how fast they moved me in -- after all, they let me sit for hours with a dislocated shoulder -- but I wasn't about to complain.

The nurse filled in the paperwork while taking my vitals, and the doctor dropped in a couple minutes later. She tested around a little bit, then looked at me and said "Do you mind if I try and straighten it?" I said sure, give it a shot. She gave one smooth pull, and there was my finger, pointing the same way it was this morning. She looked back at me and said "You just saved yourself three shots."

After that, they sent me to x-ray to see if I had chipped the bone while moving things around, then sent me on my way. I was in and out in less than an hour. I have to say I was pretty impressed.

From The Other Side

2008-05-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

Interesting article from Der Spiegel about militants making Quassam rockets in the Gaza strip. From the article:

"The other guys are over in Egypt, shopping," he says, adding that the militants are just ordinary people who want to experience the open border with the neighboring country. Will they be looking for ingredients for building the Qassams? "Hardly," the oldest of the group laughs. "They are buying potato chips. We have enough raw materials to last for a few years."

On Engineers

2008-05-02T11:20:00.000-07:00

Joahnna sent me this link about an Engineer's Mind and how it works, which was pretty funny. I also dug around and found a couple other links. This one covers engineers and why they are not usually involved in politics, at least in the U.S., whereas this one responds to some research that purports to show that engineers and terrorists have the same mind-set. The comments on the last article seem to be more insightful than the original research.

Band-Aids for Bullet Holes

2008-05-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

When I first heard about Clinton's proposal for a gas-tax holiday, I thought "It's a gimmick. Gas is $4/gal, what good is knocking off ten cents going to do?" I had a lot of respect for Obama standing up and calling shenanigans. These types of proposals are the kind of election-year pandering that bloat the budget and have the tax-code looking like swiss cheese.

After I read this Huffington Post article about supporters of the gas-tax holiday (among economists, it's batting zero), I started to wonder who actually came up with this idea.

Which of the two is more offensive to you: A candidate that's dumb enough to think this will help the economy, or a candidate that thinks we're dumb enough to think this will help the economy?

What Ever Happened to Turkey Fuel?

2008-04-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

A few years back, I wrote about a promising technology called Thermal Depolymerization, or TDP. It was supposed to create various types of crude oil from bioproducts, such as leftover turkey parts.

And then we never heard anything about the technology ever again.

Today I read this article about a plant opening up in Gilroy to produce jet fuel from municipal waste (another thing TDP was promising to do), and that made me wonder, "what happened to our old friend TDP?"

Apparently, it didn't work so well.

CWT still exists as a company today. Like cellulosic ethanol, TDP is a technology that actually works. But the technology was hyped beyond reason. People did not apply enough skepticism before embracing the promise of the technology. It was really going to be "the next big thing."

Hope that Solena Group does a better job with its bio-jet fuel.

China Understands Capitalism

2008-04-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

A coworker pointed out this article, that the flags being used to protest the occupation of Tibet were made in China. Anyone think they don't understand capitalism?

Along the same vein of "people who don't understand economics", a good commentary on U.S. immigration. Unfortunately the ones who don't understand economics are the public. From the article:

A quick rule of thumb: If it fits on a bumper sticker, it's not a workable policy.

Bienvenidos a Mexico!

2008-04-17T09:34:00.000-07:00

Although it's convenient and relatively close, stories like this one have severely damped my desire to vacation in Mexico any time soon, at least in my own plane. My next trip to Mexico will probably be on a commercial airliner, assuming all the airlines haven't gone out of business by then.

Beware the Ides of April

2008-04-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

Interesting (and humerous) article on taxes by Glenn Beck at CNN. My favorite part:

However, I'm a little unsure which approach is better. Democrats burst through the front door of our convenience store with a gun and tell us to empty the contents of our cash register into their little bag with the dollar signs on it.
Republicans walk through the store and smile at us while shoplifting furiously when we turn our backs. When we catch them on surveillance cameras, they just claim they learned their lesson and won't do it next time. Either way I'm being ripped off, and both parties seem to have the attitude that we should be lucky they graced the store with their presence.

(And in case you're not aware where the reference in the title is from, you can read the Wikipedia article)

One-Way Trip

2008-04-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

On sunday, the weather seemed nice and we had some free time, so Joahnna and I decided to fly to Paso Robles and have lunch. After a nice lunch at Matthew's we went back out to the plane and tried to start it up.

Since it was fairly hot, and my plane is a dark color, it had some problems starting up -- vapor lock in the fuel lines is fairly standard, and when it happens the engine needs some coaxing to start. While I was trying various combinations of full-throttle / closed-mixure and whatnot, the engine partially caught and then kicked back (briefly ran in the wrong direction).

And after that, trying to crank the engine only resulted in an ugly grinding noise.

I went out to try and hand-crank the propeller to a different position, hoping this was some sort of transient fault, but when I moved the prop, I saw that the starter gear and the main gear were now just brushing over each other rather than meshing cleanly, so this needed some attention from a real mechanic. Unfortunately, real mechanics don't work on sunday.

So, with some help from the kind people at the Paso Robles Jet Center, we rented a car one-way back to San Jose, and left the keys for the mechanic at the attached shop. He gave me a call today and informed me that I had broken the starter housing, and I needed a new starter.

The new starter is on order, but for the time being my plane is grounded.

This Has Been A Test Of...

2008-04-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, I have a moment of surprise and shock when not only does someone in our government have a bright idea, but they actually implement it. The FCC has started work on a cell-phone version of the emergency alert system.

I remember listening to the old emergency alert broadcasts on the radio, which were a great idea at the time, but now almost no one I know listens to the radio, except for a few that might tune in during the morning commute instead of listening to their CD or iPod. But pretty much everybody has a cell phone these days, and they're always on.

Of course, this now means that every now and then, we'll get a text message that says, "This has been a test of the emergency SMS system. This is only a test. If this had been a real emergency, you would be reading text that is of actual value to you."

Aborted Flight

2008-04-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

On saturday, Joahnna and I had a world-record shortest flight. The plane never even left its parking spot. The air pressure in the main wheels was a bit low, so I hooked up a portable compressor to pump them up a bit. When I removed the compressor fitting, I heard a loud hissing noise, which got louder as I moved the filler tube to try and figure out what was going on. About thirty seconds later, the tire was completely flat.

I didn't have the right equipment to change the tire, and I'm not really supposed to do maintenance in the tie-down spot I'm in, so I decided to skip flying for the weekend and have mechanics fix the wheel on monday. Or whenever they get around to it.

Second First Solo

2008-04-01T21:27:00.001-07:00

I finished my check-out for the Comanche last weekend, so I'm cleared to fly without having to cart along that pesky instructor. The weather looked pretty nice today, so I skipped out of work a tad early, grabbed Joahnna, and took a quick flight down to Hollister.

Once we got there we found a fairly hefty crosswind coming across the runway, so I elected not to complete the landing, and headed back to Reid-Hillview. We didn't really go anywhere, but I fulfilled my primary criteria for my first flight in the new airplane -- it was uneventful.

We Want Scum

2008-04-01T09:16:00.000-07:00

A green thumb in Texas has figured out a more efficient way to produce algae. While ordinarily known as "pond scum" and not something you would want to produce in bulk, algae turns out to be one of the most efficient ways to produce biomatter for ethanol/biodiesel production. And not just a little better -- they're claiming about 2000 times more output per acre of the next-best crop (soybeans).

Electronic Privacy

2008-03-25T10:05:00.000-07:00

Although it showed up in the very techno-centric "Register", I think this article is a must-read for anyone concerned with privacy rights in general. The author is the former head of the federal computer crime unit, and makes a very basic point on how computers are different than the rest of the luggage we port around with us.

For most things, when we travel, we take the bare minimum with us -- the items we need to enjoy our trip and take care of ourselves. But in our computers we carry around information about our entire lives -- contact lists, email history, personal and legal documents, etc. The idea that the government has unlimited powers of inspection on electronic devices is akin to saying that every time you board an airplane, the government gets a free search warrant for your house.