Jeff’s Most Excellent Blog

I visited Costco in Woodinville, WA Saturday morning, right at opening.  I had my doubts about the reality of the shortages that are showing up all over the news, and needed to shop, anyway, so I thought I’d check it out for myself.  They had eight big warehouse guys escorting two pallets of rice out to the showroom floor just about the time I arrived.  Six of the eight then stayed with the rice, handing it out to customers as needed.  I don’t know if they were expecting trouble or what, but it was distinctly odd.  Both pallets were completely sold out by the time I left the store about 45 minutes later.

I talked with two of the warehouse guys independent of each other, playing dumb and asking what was going on.  Both said they were receiving normal shipments, just as they always had, but that customers were spooked and buying a lot more than normal.  Both told me they expected their next rice shipment on Tuesday.  One of them also told me (then showed me) that they were completely out of “general purpose”
flour, and only had some sort of specialized flour (bread-making?  I forget) in stock.  Both swore up and down (and I have no reason to think they were being less than honest) that there were no shortages, just a
run on things that they blamed on the media.  There was enough cooking oil to fill a swimming pool, no shortages there.

This, of course, proves nothing as far as the cause of the shortages, but whatever the reason, they are actually real.  I was surprised.  I figured it was the “black helicopter” crowd over-reacting.

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The National Sporting Goods Association has reported on 2006 sporting goods sales by category.  Bet this didn’t make your local news report.  Anybody who tells you that shooting is not important to Americans, or is only done by backwards backwoods yahoos is grossly misinformed:

1. exercise, $5.22 billion;
2. hunting and firearms, $3.71 billion;
3. golf, $3.66 billion;
4. athletic goods team sales, $2.62 billion;
5. fishing tackle, $2.22 billion;
6. camping, $1.53 billion;
7. optics, $1.01 billion;
8. snow skiing, $615.0 million;
9. billiards / indoor games, $570.9 million; and
10. tennis, $419.8 million.

Somebody go tell the Brady Bunch that as usual, they’re clueless.  It really doesn’t seem possible that they don’t know how what they’re doing.  They’re distorting the truth and spreading their propaganda through FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).  They love to prey on the uninformed, primarily through trying to manipulate people with feelings, rather than logic or facts.  The facts on what they’re doing show them to be wrong every single time on pretty much every single claim they make.  As a result, they stick with inventing phrases like the “gun show loophole”, which sounds like something that really needs fixing (after all, loopholes are a bad thing, right?), except that the so-called loophole isn’t.  Gun dealers are required to do a federal background check on gun purchasers, whereas private sellers (ie, me selling one of my guns to my next-door neighbor) are not (except for one or two states).  That’s it.  Really.  This is the “loophole” they love to go on and on about.  See the section in the wikipedia Gun Show entry for more information.  If the public were better-informed, the Brady Bunch would be looking for real jobs.

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Yay, after years of extreme suckage, the WSDOT has finally put up a nice new webcam at KAWO!  It’s good to have METARS, but even better to be able to pull up an image before I drive 45 minutes to the airport.

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I live way out in the woods northeast of Seattle.  I commute down into Kirkland, a suburb across the lake east of Seattle, four days a week.  One day a week, though, I drive to our office in the Rat Colony of Seattle.  The drivers in Seattle are aggressive and rude, but no more so than any other big city.  Where Seattle really stands out is with the other users who share the road, the pedestrians and particularly the bicyclists.

In regular life, you come up to an intersection, look at the pedestrians who want to cross the road, and try to decide what they’re going to do.  If possible, you make eye contact.  That usually works out pretty well.  Everybody involved usually does what’s reasonable.

Not so when driving in Seattle.  In Seattle, the pedestrians have attitude.  As far as they’re concerned, they go first.  Period.  They have priority in every situation.  Period.  It’s very disconcerting when people step off the curb in front of you, literally without even looking at you.  It’s even more disconcerting when they do look at you, straight in the eye, then step off in front of you anyway.

As scary as all of this is, it’s nothing compared to the bicyclists.  They bicyclists in Seattle all act as though they are some kind of invincible deities, to whom traffic laws and physics do not apply.  Their ownership of the roads is unquestionable (at least by them).  I’ve stomped on the brakes many times when a cyclist aggressively cuts me off and butts into my lane.  They will ride ride up the center of a lane, holding up a dozen cars, each of whom has to pull into the oncoming traffic lane to get around the idiot, only to have the cyclist pass all of the cars up at a stop light, get out in front again, then all the cars have to do the same thing all over again.  It takes a special kind of genius to ride a bike in the city.

The icing, though, is the four-way-stop a block from my office building.  Three times in the last three months, I’ve pulled up to the stop sign with a cyclist coming at me from the opposite side, come to a full stop, then made a left through the intersection, and had the oncoming cyclist ride straight through the stop sign, completely ignoring it.  Two of the three have actually had the gall to yell at me.  My theory is that they breathe too many exhaust fumes riding around with all the cars.  It’s just not rational.  When 200 lb. vehicles mix aggressively with 3500 lb vehicles, it’s inevitable that there will be incidents.  And when there are, the physics of who will prevail is pretty cut and dried.  I have a friend who mixed it up with a car on his bicycle just over six months ago, and is still not back at work full time.

The most irritating thing about cyclists is that they shriek and whine about the law saying they are protected as automobiles, and have every right to the road, equal to that of cars.  But then, when the law isn’t convenient, they ride right through stop lights and stop signs, or take detours on the sidewalks, as though the law did not apply to them.  They like it both ways.  As Douglas Adams said, they seem to be in a moral high ground that only cyclists inhabit.  Even in the rare case where the car is in the wrong and the cyclist is in the right, I don’t understand the mindset of a rider aggressively cutting a car off.  Sure, your heirs might sue the driver and win, but what consolation is that to you while you’re burning in hell?

KVI produced a great commercial for these guys.  Click here to listen.  And laugh.

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While I was in Denver last week, I bought a new set of photographic lights at Camera Trader.  They had been used for one day by a guy who couldn’t figure out how to use them, then returned.  They were marked down about $200 off the normal price, so I just couldn’t pass them up.  Got them all fired up at home today, and here’s one of the results.  This is the insides of a Small Wonder Labs DSW-40 40 meter QRP CW transceiver that I built a few years ago (click on the picture for the full resolution version).

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The following forty items are the things you must believe in order to think gun control is a good thing.  Good luck.

1. Banning guns works, which is why New York, DC, and Chicago cops
need guns.

2. Washington DC’s low murder rate of 80.6 per 100,000 is due to
strict gun control, and Arlington, VA’s high murder rate of 1.6 per
100,000 is due to the lack of gun control.

3. Statistics showing high murder rates justify gun control but
statistics showing increasing murder rates after gun control are “just
statistics.”

4. The Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban, both of which went into
effect in 1994, are responsible for the decrease in violent crime
rates, which have been declining since 1991.

5. We must get rid of guns because a deranged lunatic may go on a
shooting spree at any time and anyone who would own a gun out of fear
of such a lunatic is paranoid.

6. The more helpless you are the safer you are from criminals.

7. An intruder will be incapacitated by tear gas or oven spray, but if
shot with a .357 Magnum will get angry and kill you.

8. A woman raped and strangled is morally superior to a woman with a
smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.

9. When confronted by violent criminals, you should “put up no defense
— give them what they want, or run” (Handgun Control Inc. Chairman
Pete Shields, Guns Don’t Die - People Do, 1981, p. 125).

10. The New England Journal of Medicine is filled with expert advice
about guns; just like Guns and Ammo has some excellent treatises on
heart surgery.

11. One should consult an automotive engineer for safer seatbelts, a
civil engineer for a better bridge, a surgeon for spinal paralysis, a
computer programmer for Y2K problems, and Sarah Brady [or Sheena
Duncan, Adele Kirsten, Peter Storey, etc.] for firearms expertise.

12. The 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1791, refers to the National Guard,
which was created by an act of Congress in 1903.

13. The National Guard, funded by the federal government, occupying
property leased to the federal government, using weapons owned by the
federal government, punishing trespassers under federal law, is a
state militia.

14. These phrases,” right of the people peaceably to assemble,” “right
of the people to be secure in their homes,” “enumeration’s herein of
certain rights shall not be construed to disparage others retained by
the people,” and “The powers not delegated herein are reserved to the
states respectively, and to the people,” all refer to individuals, but
“the right of the people to keep and bear arms” refers to the state.

15. We don’t need guns against an oppressive government, because the
Constitution has internal safeguards, but we should ban and seize all
guns, thereby violating the 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendments to that
Constitution.

16. Rifles and handguns aren’t necessary to national defense, which is
why the army has millions of them.

17. Private citizens shouldn’t have handguns, because they serve no
military purpose, and private citizens shouldn’t have “assault
rifles,” because they are military weapons.

18. The ready availability of guns today, with waiting periods,
background checks, fingerprinting, government forms, et cetera, is
responsible for recent school shootings,compared to the lack of school
shootings in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, which resulted from the
availability of guns at hardware stores, surplus stores, gas stations,
variety stores, mail order, et cetera.

19. The NRA’s attempt to run a “don’t touch” campaign about kids
handling guns is propaganda, and the anti-gun lobby’s attempt to run a
“don’t touch” campaign is responsible social activity.

20. Guns are so complex that special training is necessary to use them
properly, and so simple to use that they make murder easy.

21. A handgun, with up to 4 controls, is far too complex for the
typical adult to learn to use, as opposed to an automobile that only
has 20.

22. Women are just as intelligent and capable as men but a woman with
a gun is “an accident waiting to happen” and gun makers’
advertisements aimed at women are “preying on their fears.”

23. Ordinary people in the presence of guns turn into slaughtering
butchers but revert to normal when the weapon is removed.

24. Guns cause violence, which is why there are so many mass killings
at gun shows.

25. A majority of the population supports gun control, just like a
majority of the population supported owning slaves.

26. A self-loading small arm can legitimately be considered to be a
“weapon of mass destruction” or an “assault weapon.”

27. Most people can’t be trusted, so we should have laws against guns,
which most people will abide by because they can be trusted.

28. The right of online pornographers to exist cannot be questioned
because it is constitutionally protected by the Bill of Rights, but
the use of handguns for self defense is not really protected by the
Bill of Rights.

29. Free speech entitles one to own newspapers, transmitters,
computers, and typewriters, but self-defense only justifies bare
hands.

30. The ACLU is good because it uncompromisingly defends certain parts
of the Constitution, and the NRA is bad, because it defends other
parts of the Constitution.

31. Charlton Heston as president of the NRA is a shill who should be
ignored, but Michael Douglas as a representative of Handgun Control,
Inc. is an ambassador for peace who is entitled to an audience at the
UN arms control summit.

32. Police operate with backup within groups, which is why they need
larger capacity pistol magazines than do “civilians” who must face
criminals alone and therefore need less ammunition.

33. We should ban “Saturday Night Specials” and other inexpensive guns
because it’s not fair that poor people have access to guns too.

34. Police officers, who qualify with their duty weapons once or twice
a year, have some special Jedi-like mastery over handguns that private
citizens can never hope to obtain.

35. Private citizens don’t need a gun for self-protection because the
police are there to protect them even though the Supreme Court says
the police are not responsible for their protection.

36. Citizens don’t need to carry a gun for personal protection but
police chiefs, who are desk-bound administrators who work in a
building filled with cops, need a gun.

37. “Assault weapons” have no purpose other than to kill large numbers
of people, which is why the police need them but “civilians” do not.

38. When Microsoft pressures its distributors to give Microsoft
preferential promotion, that’s bad; but when the Federal government
pressures cities to buy guns only from Smith & Wesson, that’s good.

39. Trigger locks do not interfere with the ability to use a gun for
defensive purposes, which is why you see police officers with one on
their duty weapon.

40. When Handgun Control, Inc., says they want to “keep guns out of
the wrong hands,” they don’t mean you. Really.

I didn’t write this, it seems to go around unattributed in e-mail from time to time.  The most recent source I found attributes the list to an essay by Michael Z. Williamson.

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I keep forgetting to post this.  I finally put a webcam back up a couple of months back.  It usually points at my back yard, though I move it every once in a while for amusement, and sometimes I turn it off completely.  When it’s on, it updates every five minutes.  See what Jeff’s back yard in rural Snohomish County, Washington looks like!  Whee!  From time to time, you may catch a coyote, deer, or rabbits on the screen.  Or even more likely, one of the kids, dogs, or goats.  Or rain.  As my old pastor once told us, it only rains twice a year in Washington; once for six months, then again for three months.

While I’m on the subject of webcams, this is the closest webcam to my house that I know of, located at Harvey Field (S43), about three or four miles north of here.  Anyway, click here for back yard webcam goodness.

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My buddy Tim (from way back in high school) and his brother have a fun new blog called Ask Us and SHUT UP.  In typical Tim form, the language is not for the kiddies, but it’s funny as heck.  Go have a look (but don’t say I didn’t warn you).

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 Ok, this one wasn’t really a lesson.  Due to our trip to New Mexico and our upcoming trip to Denver, I was going to have to go five or six weeks without flying.  Julia talked me into going just for the fun of it, even though the only lesson I have left is a review (before my test).  It was actually pretty fun.  I cleared it with my instructor, then flew down to my house and circled around a few times while the kids ran outside and waved at me.  Did a little bit of sight-seeing around the area, then went back and landed.  Looking forward to finishing up my license so I can go do this any time I want to!  Got a quick picture of my house from the air with the camera on my phone.

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We all went to New Mexico for the weekend for a family wedding.  Got to spend about three or four hours in Alamogordo where I grew up.  Mom still lives in the same house we moved into in about 1977.  Didn’t get to see any friends while I was in town, but I got to take the kids out wandering in the desert where I used to play as a kid.  We found rabbits and lizards, but no snakes or horned toads.  Forgot just how pretty the blue New Mexico skies and sunsets are.  Also forgot about the annoying wind at certain times of the year.  Got to eat fantastic Mexican food at La Posta in Las Cruces while I was there, too.  You can find good food called Mexican Food in Washington, but it isn’t actually Mexican.  It’s sort of an American/Mexican/Tex-Mex blend.  It’s tasty (well, some of it is), but it’s about as authentic as Taco Bell.  Also got to see a bunch of family I haven’t seen in many years.  My cousin Craig has the coolest job ever.  Karla has like seventeen kids now (last time I saw her, she had one).  And Commie Kelly has a brand-new baby.

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I’m not sure there’s any rational person alive who thinks gun buy-backs do the least bit to reduce the number of “bad” guns on the street.  It seems to basically be a trade-in program payed for by the taxpayer.  How much you want to bet that half the buy-back money goes to buy new guns?  I’ve always wondered if I could set up a booth outside the police station and get first dibs on the guns going in for the buy-back program.  I suspect most of the guns people bring in are crap (I’ve got a couple I’d love to unload for a $250 buy-back - it’s more than I could legitimately sell them for), but there are bound to be some gems among the rot that I’d pay more than $250 for.  I suspect the cops wouldn’t find my little enterprise amusing, however.  Part of becoming a cop seems to be having your sense of humor surgically removed.

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I attended a seminar by the AOPA Air Safety Foundation last night at the Museum of Flight on the Top Five Mistakes Pilots Make (that get them killed).  The presenter was a guy named Pat Shaub.  Very worthwhile couple of hours.  Pat was a great presenter, and gave me quite a bit to think about.  The most important thing I walked away from the siminar with was a decision to get a little bit of actual IFR time with my instructor, even though I don’t technically need that training for my Sport Pilot license.  With the almost permanent cloud cover nine months out of the year here in the Pacific Northwest, the danger of getting caught on top with no way down except through the clouds is very real.  While I’ve pretty much mastered instrument flying on X-Plane, I do realize that flying in actual instrument conditions (where your inner ear is saying something different than what your eyes are seeing) isn’t the same as sitting in front of a computer screen playing a game.  At the same time, though, I think the simulator has been valuable in learning to scan the instruments quickly and well, as well as learning about the lag between moving the stick and the reaction of the aircraft and the instruments.  Guess we’ll see when the time comes.

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So what is it about teaching that attracts so many flakes? Both I and my kids have had some wonderful teachers over the years. My high school calculus teacher, Mr. Dooley, will forever stand out in my mind as an exceptional teacher. As will my high school German teacher, and my high school Physics teacher. All of them were passionate about their work, taking joy in the understanding of their students, and going far above and beyond what was required of them to inspire their students to learn. I also had a junior high teacher who came back from lunch each day so drunk he could barely remain vertical, and a high school chemistry teacher who was there because it was a place where she could dominate people who were “less” than her and were unable to fight back (though we certainly found creative ways to do so over time). A lot of them were there because it’s a job where they got two months of vacation every year. While some of the most dedicated and passionate people I have ever known have been teachers, pretty much all of the biggest flakes I’ve ever met have been, as well. Think about it. Think of the flakiest, most useless, most hippie 60s throwback people you’ve ever met, and I’ll bet you 90% of those people were teachers. Why is that?

Any profession has a spectrum of quality. Those who are there because they love it, and those who are there because they kind of just ended up there and it pays the bills. I went to New Mexico State University and was in the College of Engineering (EE, specifically). It was widely accepted that if you couldn’t hack engineering, you changed majors to business. If you couldn’t hack it in business, you switched to education.

My two older kids both have exceptionally good teachers this year. It hasn’t always been so, but they’ve been pretty lucky so far. Why am I ranting about teachers this morning? Because I ran across this. Go ahead, read it. It’ll shock you. These people are tasked with shaping the minds and thoughts of our children. Their futures. And when shaping children, you’re shaping the leaders of tomorrow, and therefore shaping all of our futures. Worst of all, it’s happening right here in Washington. I’m not sure if I should be sad or scared. But I certainly feel for thse children being subject to the twisting of their little minds by these people. They’re having the seeds of socialism planted firmly in their heads from the earliest age possible, and being taught that this is right, and other ideas are wrong. They’re not being taught that these are two competing (but possibly valid) ways of solving problems. They’re being taught that one is right and one is wrong. I can understand this approach if you send your kids to a religion-oriented school, but if there is one lesson we can take from the history of the world, it’s that Socialism, in all it’s forms, fails. Every single time. You can’t tax yourselves into prosperity. The world is not fair. There will always be “haves” and “have nots”, and no amount of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is going to change that. This is wonderfully illustrated by Kurt Vonnegut in his story Harrison Bergeron. Also in the Bible by Jesus, in John 12:8, “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”

While we’re fortunate not to have the teachers mentioned in the article above in the public school system, there are certainly plenty of them there. The best defense we have as parents against this type of thing is a school voucher system. Let parents send kids to the school that is most closely aligned with their own beliefs. Teacher of all beliefs will be valued (likely even these in the article), and those with no teaching ability will find themselves out of work. Capitalism isn’t 100% flawless, but it’s the best system ever devised by man for finding separating the wheat from the chaff. Let market forces determine the value of teachers and schools. It’s harsh if you’re one of the teacher not up to the task of teaching, but then again, it’s probably not much of a surprise to them. As the Left is so fond of saying, “it’s for the children”.

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I did my short solo cross-country today. Technically, I only had to visit one other airport, but it had to be at least 25nm away from where I started, so given the airspace mess of Western Washington, it ended up easier to visit two other airport again to get the required 25 mile leg. I went KAWO KBVS S43 KAWO.

It was fun going back to Harvey again after not landing there for eight months or so. Man, that runway is narrow. Had about a five knot crosswind, and ended up much closer to the left edge than I had intended. I got a little slow on short final into Harvey and had to blip the throttle up just a tad to give myself a better margin over the fence. No real danger, it just annoyed me because I’m usually very very meticulous about my speed on final.

Beautiful day, though, not a cloud in the sky. Today was my last normal lesson. I’ve now completed everything necessary to take my flight test and my oral test. I have a three-hour review with my instructor, then it’s time to face the examiner. Hmm, I should study…

On a very sad note, while I was flying yesterday, another plane took off from Arlington and crashed after losing power. Turns out the people at my FBO knew the two women on board.  The King5 satellite news truck was hanging out in the parking lot next to my FBO at the airport all afternoon. They were apparently looking for people to interview, and probably getting some background shots of planes taking off and landing.

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Today was my long solo cross-country. Went out to Orcas Island again. Wow, was it amazing. Lots of clouds. I’ve been waiting six weeks for a break in the weather, and today was finally close enough to call it good. Just like last time, I went KAWO KBVS KORS KAWO. I was pretty pressed for time (had to get the plane back by 1pm for the next student), so I didn’t get to hang around Orcas like I had hoped.

I just can’t get over how cold these little Rotax 912-powered beasties run. Here’s a picture of the panel (yeah, I know you can’t read the guages):

Per the OAT (outside air temperature guage), it’s in the low 30s outside:

Now have a look at the cylinder temperature and the oil temperature:

Now keep in mind that this is after something over an hour of hard working. I didn’t just fire the thing up. Also, the oil pressure sure runs low. It’s in the green, but only by a hair:

I need to ask my instructor about this. Or better yet, the mechanic. My FBO has a really cool mechanic who is willing to let me hang around, hand him tools, and ask questions while he works. I’ve already learned a lot from him just by listening while he works.

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It’s one thing to read in the news that they’re gone, it’s quite another to see their facility at KAWO (Arlington, WA) sitting forlorn and empty.  Even if the ownership was somewhat…  um… “ethically challenged”, it’s a shame to see them gone.  Today was the first day I have flown at Arlington without the dozens of little Robinson R-22s buzzing around everywhere I look.  Sad.

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Long story, but due to some scheduling conflicts, Abby got to come to the office with me for about two hours this morning.  She loved the free food.

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The other day, I was writing about feeling alienated in my own workplace. Well, I ran across this story today in Wired. Seems I was right. The following is the amount of money donated by my cow-orkers to the presidential campaigns of the current candidates:

Hillary Clinton: $46,610
Barack Obama: $97,771
Ron Paul: $41,342
John McCain: $1,550
Mike Huckabee: $400
Mitt Romney: $0
Nice, huh? Told ya.

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The web is awesome, but some companies still have a long way to go to make buying their products online a pleasant experience.  My irritation started with shopping for truck canopies a couple of years ago.  Yep, there were dozens of manufacturers and hundreds of models available.  You could get every possible detail you’d ever want about every single aspect of their design, construction, and use, except one little thing.  The price.  Try as I might, no matter how deeply I dug, I couldn’t even find the MSRP, much less an actual price.  From any manufacturer.  Not even one.  I gave up shopping for a canopy online, and in the years since, the situation might have changed, but it still hasn’t for many companies.

Tri-M Systems, for example, makes some wicked cool PC-104 and embedded system hardware.  But there’s not a price to be found on their site.  You can “Request a quote” all day long, but that makes the process of coming up with a price-conscious hardware solution so painful that it’s much easier to just go elsewhere.  I thought I could solve this by requesting a printed catalog.  I ordered one from the web site, and a few weeks later (and several times per year since), I got catalogs in the mail chock full of wonderfully cool gadgets that would solve all sorts of interesting problems, all completely without prices.

Back in the early 90s, I was considering using QNX for an internal project at work.  FreeBSD would work, but QNX looked like a better fit, given the limited hardware.  I e-mailed QNX for product info, and when I received the pricing, I suddenly understood why they kept it so secret.  It was on the order of $10,000 for a full-blown development suite with licenses, etc. for QNX.  For a system that was about 90% equivalent to the completely free FreeBSD distro.  In that case, I think it was simple embarrassment that led them to their secrecy.  They wanted a chance for the salesperson to convince you that you couldn’t live without the product before they sprung the price on you.

Being a radio nut as well as someone who likes to go remote places, I enjoy portable HF radio operations.  By far the two neatest radios in this category are the Q-Mac HF90 and the Vertex VX-1210.   Q-Mac is happy to give you a price via e-mail (which I’ve done), but they offer about ten different variations on their setups, plus numerous accessories, and you can’t simply ask for a price list to compare all of the options and accessories to decide how you’d like to spend your money.  Vertex Standard is even worse.  They’ve divided up their dealers into regions, and only dealers in your region are allowed to give you a price and sell you anything.  And all dealers are not the same.  Some are much more responsive than others, and many don’t even seem to have a web presence.  You can’t simply go to the dealer with the best price (or the most helpful, or with the most information), you have to use the dealer in your region, regardless of helpfulness or quality.

Why?  Ok, in the pre-web days when you sent out printed catalogs once a year and prices fluctuated a lot, I could see at least a little point in having to call for a price.  The dealer who sent out his catalogs two weeks later than the other guys might advertise a price 10% lower (due to, let’s say, fluctuations in the Yen vs. the Dollar), but on the web, prices can be updated instantly.  90% of the pricing information I’ve gathered on the HF90 and the VX-1210 is anecdotal.  People buy them, then post what they bought and what they paid to various ham mailing lists.  I’m considering creating about ten fake hotmail accounts, then mailing Q-Mac for prices on all the various options (one variation per fake e-mail account), then posting the info as a public service.  I don’t know about the public at large, but on the ham radio mailing lists, this pricing BS causes endless irritation.  Maybe the federal government decides what features it wants, then buys what fits that need regardless of the price, but normal people don’t work that way.  Everything is a trade-off.  Sure, you want the best, but most of us can’t afford it.  We have to weigh the various choices and come up with a compromise that meets enough of our needs to get the job done, but stay within our budgets.  These companies actively work to limit the amount of information available to make wise decisions.  It pisses me of.

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A really smart buddy of mine just wrote a spiffy Matrix Inversion Calculator.  Just in case you need any matrixes inverted for an upcoming social event or something.

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We’ve had a lousy winter up until now.  Cold, cloudy, and rainy, but no real snow.  We finally got some, and we’re supposed to have a bunch more on the way this evening.  Schools were closed and everything.  Woo woo.

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We went to the Boat Show. My boss bought us tickets (he rocks). Yeah, I know, the picture above is a plane, not a boat. But it’s a float plane, and I took it from the deck of a boat on Lake Union. We also went to the indoor part of the boat show, and parked just down the row from this spiffy vehicle:

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Fred Thompson, the only conservative running for President in 2008, has withdrawn his candidacy today.  It’s a sad day, as the remaining choices on the Republican side aren’t all that great (though at least they’re better than the liberal side).  Now vying for the Republican nomination, we have a pro-war Liberal (Giuliani), the anti-war (and slightly nutcase) sort-of-Conservative (Ron Paul), the unelectable social Conservative (Mike Huckabee), the schizophrenic sometimes Liberal sometimes Conservative (John McCain), and last, but not least, the Conservative-except-for-immigration-open-borders-and-guns (Mitt Romney).  Yay.  Once again, it’s come down to choosing the lesser evil.  Only it’s not even clear which one of these clowns is the lesser evil.  Can we have Ronald Reagan back, please?  I’m scared to think he might have been the last Conservative president this country ever has.

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My wife bought me a 56-foot Rohn HBX tower for my birthday.  Woot!  Antenna time!  This is going to be a real project…

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 Ever had fifteen tons of gravel delivered to your house?  That’s approximately one metric buttload of rocks.  Guess it’s time to work on the potholes in the dirt road…

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Seven weeks after the accident, we finally got our Tahoe back.  I was impressed with the quality of the work.  At the time of the accident, were weren’t even sure if they would total it or not, and now it’s back to looking like brand new.

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Ok, now that was fun. Flew KAWO to KBVS to KORS and back to KAWO. It was absolutely gorgeous. Flew over Whidbey Island NAS as a US Navy DC-9 was taking off beneath us.

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Lesson 16 was mostly review. It’s been a while since I’ve flown (November and December are busy months), and I needed to brush up on some things.

Lesson 17 was fun. We did short-field take-offs and landings, plus some more review. That little Sportstar will really get up and go in a hurry, even with two on board. Tomorrow is my dual cross-country. Much fun.

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We finally got a Cabelas in Washington.  They hung a Supercub inside, except it’s not a Supercub, it’s a Cub with tundra tires trying to pass as a Supercub.  No flaps, no skylight, and exposed cylinder heads, so definitely not a PA-18.  They did, however, put the pilot in the front seat, which you can do in a Supercub, but not a Cub.  If they’d move the pilot to the back seat, it would be a pretty cool display.  They had some fun toys inside.  These are two of my favorites, the gas-powered blender and the electric-powered beer cooler:

The best part of all was that I got 23.8 miles per gallon driving down there (a new personal record).  Not bad for 6.6 Liters of turbocharged V-8.

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Got an MRI today for my wrist/hand, which was a new and interesting experience.  A month after the car accident in Canada, it still hurts almost constantly.  It was easy enough, but wow, what a loud machine.  The technician gave me headphones and a list of CDs and asked me what music I wanted to listen to.  I told her that I’d prefer not to have any music, and she replied that I should because the machine was very very loud.  I asked her how listening to music cranked up loud enough to drown out the machine was any better for my ears than just listening to the machine itself, and she got this weird look on her face like this had never occurred to her before.  Drowning out one noise with another doesn’t make things any quieter.  At any rate, I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get to look at the pictures of the inside of my hand when we were done.

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That’s a picture of one of the major intersections in Woodinville under three feet of water.  Made an unholy mess of traffic, and several roads (including at least two highways) washed away.  A quick (less than 60 minutes) trip to get the kids at school ended up taking over eight hours.  Fortunately, a friend picked the kids up at school so they weren’t stuck there all night.  Abby and I finally gave up on getting home and stopped for dinner.

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We took a week off for a family vacation in Ucluelet, BC. Stayed at the Black Rock Beach House. Wow, what a pretty place. BC is an
interesting cross between Washington and Alaska (which makes a certain amount of sense since it sits directly between the two). It’s as
pretty as Alaska, but with a somewhat higher population density.

We did a bit of hiking and a lot of hanging out. The beach was about fifty feet from the back door of the house, so the kids spent a lot of
time down at the water.

The highlight of the trip was undoubtedly the last day. We were driving down to the south end of Ucluelet to hike around at the
lighthouse. I had just headed up a pretty good hill that climbed up and to the left, when a car came over the top of the hill from the
other direction about double the speed limit. There was ice on my side of the hill, so the driver immediately slammed on the brakes,
locked up all four tires, and slid into our lane and hit us head-on. We (and the Mounties) figure we were doing about 20mph and she was
doing about 40mph. That doesn’t sound like much until you realize it’s the same thing as hitting a parked car while travelling 60mph.
Fortunately, we were in a Tahoe, and she was in a Hyundai. I’ll leave it to you to guess who won that battle of mass. Final score was two
sprained wrists (me and my older daughter) and some back and neck pain (my wife). The other two kids had no injuries. We felt pretty lucky about the whole thing. Oh, and of course the other driver was from California. No surprises there.

Thanks to the wonderful hospitality and kindness of the volunteer firefighters, the volunteer paramedics, the staff at the Tofino
Hospital, the manager of the local car rental place, and the people who rented the house to us, we finally ended up all patched up and in
a rental big enough to get five of us plus a week worth of luggage back home to Washington. Can’t say enough nice things about the
people who helped us. Can’t say enough bad things about California drivers.

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I got an iPhone. Cool! Work bought it for me. Day one impressions are that it’s wicked slick. More later.

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Julia and I went down to Palm Springs for a few days away from work and the kids. It was a trip she earned with her company, so they best part was that someone else paid the hotel and airfare. We stayed at one of the thousands of very nice golf-oriented resorts. This would have been a good thing, except neither of us have any interest in golf. Fortunately, we were only a few miles from much more
interesting things, so we did a lot of walking and rented a car for some exploring.

There are a ton of things to see in the area. We’re not much for shopping, but we walked down to the main shopping area of town one
afternoon just to see what there was to see. Lots of really fancy expensive places that sell things that we neither want nor need, but
we stopped at a few neat stores. One of them specialized in paintings of cats and mice playing. I’m not much into art, but it was kind of
neat. There’s a great little map shop right on the main road with more maps, charts, and map-related books than I’ve seen in a long
time. We also stopped at what seemed to be the only gun store in town, and had an interesting conversation with the owner about what
all the irritating new laws are doing to the industry in California. Many companies, like Barratt, have simply chosen to refuse to do
business with the State of California in any capacity, including law enforcement. I think that’s a fantastic idea.

We stopped at the local British car dealership, just to see what they had. Not that we were buying, but hey, we were on vacation, why not? Julia found her favorite car, a Bentley Continental. Oooh, pretty. I found my favorite, as well. An Aston Martin Vanquish S. The only one I’ve ever seen in the country. It was already sold ($225k), so no chance of driving home in it.

We also visited the Living Desert Zoo and the Joshua Tree National Park. Much fun.

The most fun (for me, at least) was the Palm Springs Air Museum. It was the day before Veterans Day, and the place was packed to the roof with vets. There were a bunch of them volunteering, and if you were interested, one of them would hang out with you for the duration of your visit, and tell you anything you wanted to know about every plane in the place. I ended up with a WWII Navy pilot who had flown Douglas dive-bombers against the Japanese. He knew every detail about every single plane in the Navy half of the museum, and had flown most of them himself at least once. I spent a couple of hours listening to his stories. These guys were amazing people. It would be hard to pick a favorite, but getting to watch them run their Catalina PBY (the “Aluminum Falcon”) up to full power was pretty impressive. Climbing through the B-17 from tip to tail was an experience I won’t soon forget. Neat place, worth a visit.

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I read stuff like this all the time, for the same reason I subscribe to lots of Leftist and anti-gun mailing lists - know your enemy.  A common theme from the Left (particularly the extreme Left) is that the evil Neocons have brainwashed America, and the only reasons Americans could possibly support Issue X (in this case, war with Iran) is that they’ve been duped by the duplicitous and evil Right.  The more you read, the more you realize that this group of people genuinely believes that no normal or “enlightened” person could possibly have any type of conservative views without having been tricked into them.  I’ve had some conversations with some of these people (actually, the company I work for is stocked to the roof with them), and it’s both a fascinating and disturbing experience.  They have an enormous shared mythology of politics in America, complete with their own vocabulary.  Listening to a group of them talk is very much like listening to my eleven-year-old and his friends discussing the amazingly intricate details (all of which they have meticulously and carefully memorized) of Pokemon.  The make-believe world has literally come alive for them, and they discuss the characters on their playing cards as though they lived and breathed.  One kids will discuss what Picachu might do in this or that situation, and the other kids will jump in and argue until they all agree on what might happen if Pokemon X battles Pokemon Y.  It’s much the same with the Lefties.  One of them will answer a random question with “Haliburton”, and they’ll all nod sagely.  The disconnect from reality is shockingly similar, but somehow much less disturbing in the eleven-year-olds.  Am I immune to this?  Above it?  No, but unlike so many of these people, I do try to see both sides.  I watch both Fox and CNN.  I read both pro- and anti-gun literature.  I read the Drudge Report and the Daily Kos.  I listen to conservative and liberal talk radio (though that’s one place the Left has totally failed to invade, despite repeated attempts and suitcases full of money).  I even read the Seattle Times every once in a while (so I can read yesterday’s news with a wildly liberal slant).  I do try to get balanced news, and base my decisions on that.  Besides Fox News, though, it’s hard to get a non-liberal slant on television.  The Left owns the media, lock stock and barrel.

I used to wonder how it was that we, as Americans, could all grow up in the same country and come to such vastly differing views on things.  After all, we’re all exposed to the same newspapers, magazines, and television.  But I’ve got a theory.  When I was a kid, there was some truth in that.  There was the local newspaper, plus ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS.  That was it.  These days, I have something like 200 channels on my satellite dish, three local newspapers, plus the web.  People today have the option of tailoring their news sources to fit their beliefs, further reinforcing their beliefs, in a vicious cycle.  Couple that with the fact that Conservatives and Christians are deserting the core cities in droves; leaving for the suburbs and beyond, and you further reinforce the problem of never running into an opposing viewpoint that might make you think.  All of your news sources, plus everyone you know does nothing but solidify your viewpoints, because everyone you know and everything you read is self-selected to tell you what you already know.  As a Christian Conservative who lives in a very rural area, yet works in an urban one (almost all of my co-workers live in the city of Seattle, and an astonishing percentage of them are foreigners to boot), I’m an alien in my own workplace.  It gets to you after a while.  You start to lose faith in people.  If I don’t leave Washington every once in a while, I almost start to believe that people really are like this everywhere, and that we’re doomed as a nation.  But the occasional trip away from the influence of the big city helps restore my hope.  After spending about four years here without really traveling anywhere (except the Bay Area, which is even worse), I made a trip to Kansas City to see my in-laws.  What a profound shock.  I had forgotten people could be nice.  I had forgotten how, as a kid, everyone on the road used to wave hello as they drove by.  I had forgotten what it was like to be wished a “good morning” by a complete stranger, for no reason at all.

The sad part is that it’s only getting worse.  The cities are heading down hill at an ever-accelerating rate.  The Left is moving in and the Right is moving out.  Media is becoming more and more specialized, so people hear less and less of what they don’t want to hear.  It’s becoming more and more an Us vs. Them mindset every year, with no end in sight.  Look at the last few elections, there are still people running around whining about how Bush didn’t really win.  Can you imagine what this election will look like?  Americans are more divided than we’ve ever been in history.  No matter who wins, at least 50% of the country is going to be shocked, scared, and amazed that we could do something so idiotic.  And I don’t know about the people on the Left, but speaking as a member of the Right, there isn’t anybody running (who has a chance in hell of winning) who strikes me as being even the least bit conservative.  Rudy might be conservative my New York standards, but not anybody else’s.  Same with Romney.  As much as I admire Rudy’s leadership abilities, he’s anti-gun, pro-gay rights, pro-abortion, and ran his city as a safe haven for illegal aliens.  Romney isn’t much better, except he’s not pro-gay-rights or pro-abortion.  McCain blows with the wind.  Sure, he’s done some conservative things, but they’re balanced out with just as many liberal things.  I agree with a lot of what Ron Paul says, but not enough, and not on a few very key issues.  Fred is the only one I have any faith in, but he’s not doing so hot in the polls.  “Republican” no longer means “Conservative”.  “Republican” now means George Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Rudy Giuliani.  I actually laughed out loud the other day when I heard Rudy referred to as “ultra Right-Wing”.  How times have changed.  Most of the Conservatives I know (not Republicans, but Conservatives) consider Bush, Rudy, and Arnold to be slightly to moderately Liberal.  No wonder the two sides can’t even communicate any more.

God help us all, no matter who becomes president.

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I got my LORAN receiver in the mail today.  I’ve been wanting to play with LORAN for years, but had never had the opportunity.  It’s a bit “old school”, but still in widespread use, and has some advantages over GPS, even today.  I was poking around E-Bay about two weeks ago, and thought I’d look to see how much a receiver cost.  Found one with nine minutes left in the auction, and bid $1.25 on it.  Hey, it’s “as-is”, but for $1.25, why not?  So today it arrived in a completely crushed cardboard box marked “Fragile”.  Everyone in the post office laughed when the mail guy handed it over.  I figured for $1.25, I wasn’t going to worry about sending it back if it was damaged.  Besides, it’s an aircraft receiver, so probably pretty tough.  I’ve got it out and disassembled on my desk right now.  It shows obvious signs of previous repairs, but overall is in pretty good shape.  As soon as I work out which pins on the 25-pin connector are power and ground, I’ll fire the thing up and see if it works.  If nothing else, the antenna that came with it is probably worth something.

I’ve been playing with ham radio the past two weeks, as well.  I’ve got two Yaesu radios with ARTS, and I’ve been leaving one turned on at home while I go to work, and bringing the other with me in the truck.  ARTS is a proprietary Yaesu protocol (well, I think it’s proprietary) where two ARTS radios send each other an “I’m still here” code every sixty seconds or so, and tell you whether or not they’ve heard the other radio in the last sixty seconds.  The theory is that if you turn this on while hiking or something, you’ll always know if the other person is reachable, even if you haven’t talked in a while.  Anyway, the radios are only 5 watts each, so I wasn’t expecting great range, but I wanted to see how far it would work.  Both radios are equipped with nothing more than crappy rubber duckie antennas, nothing special.  I live in a heavily-wooded and hilly area, so I wasn’t expecting a lot.  I started out on 2 meters, and drove to work with the radios on that was for about a while.  Oddly enough, the point at which I lost the signal varied dramatically from day to day.  Some days, I could get three miles.  Other days, seven.  I changed antennas on the home radio every few days to see what helped/hurt, and discovered that the MFJ dual-band “long/thin” whips worked by far the best (I think it’s a model 1715, but I’d have to check to be sure).  Anyway, I wasn’t too disappointed at the five miles or so the radios worked through houses, woods, small hills, etc.  When I lived in Colorado, I used to be able to work a repeater 110 miles south of me on 5 watts with a handheld.  Of course, it was over 10,000 feet higher than me, so that helped.  Five miles “real world” isn’t bad.  Just for fun, I thought I’d try the same thing on 70cm.  Figured it wouldn’t work as well, but why not find out for sure?  Amazingly enough, my range went up to a consistent 15 miles.  Just like that.  Same radios, same antennas, but two to three times the range.  My current theory is that it’s some sort of interference that’s much stronger on 2m than 70cm, but I haven’t taken the time to try to test/prove that theory yet.  I plan to take the HT up with me in the plane one of these days to see what kind of range I can get from 2500 feet higher, but I haven’t done that yet, either.  Actually, I did take the radio with me last week on my flight, but forgot to turn it on.  Flying keeps you really really busy, and distractions are bad, anyway.  One of these days…

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Today was short/soft-field take-offs and landings, but after some discussion with my instructor, we decided to swap this lesson and the next. It was basically a repeat of Lesson 14 (ground-reference maneuvers) with some power-on and power-off stalls thrown in for good measure. I did really poorly on my ground-reference maneuvers. I gues sit was just one of those “off” days, but for whatever reason, I just couldn’t get them right. The wind was very strong and variable, and it had been a long day (plus a two-hour drive to the airport), and it just didn’t work for me. It was fun, though; it’s always fun, even when it doesn’t go well. There was a huge storm off to the south of me, and my instructor gave me a quick refresher on what to do if I suddenly found myself inside of a cloud or unable to return to the airport due to weather. He also reminded me of the Whidbey Island frequency - they’ve got radar and can always lend a hand if you get lost or into trouble.  I’m not too worried about getting lost.  I’ve got two GPS receivers on-board, plus two charts, plus it’s pretty hard to get lost following a coastline, but it never hurts to have a backup plan.  The only really exciting part of the flight was that it got dark much much faster than I expected it to.  Whether that was because the sun went behind the fast-moving storm or because that’s just how quickly it usually happens, I’m not quite sure yet, but by the time I noticed how quickly the light was fading, I got was starting to get a bit concerned.  I was still within the letter of the law when I landed, but that being said, I’m going to be a lot more careful in the future when flying at dusk.  The good news is that I made a beautiful landing, one I was really proud of.

KML file is here.

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Somebody gassed up the plane after his flight today, and left one of the gas caps down at the pump.  It then got locked inside the office when the owner went home for the evening.  A buddy of mine here at work suggested duct tape, but somehow I don’t think that would look good on the NTSB crash report.  Ah well, it’s raining, anyway, and the canopy on the Sportstar leaks pretty bad around the back.  Everything in the cargo area behind the seats ends up wet.  Soggy charts are no fun.

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The first solo was fun, but more than a little intimidating.  The second solo was just plain fun.  Off I went to practice S-Turns and Turns Around a Point all by myself.  Left the pattern alone for the first time.  Had to watch out for Whidbey’s airspace all by myself.  I expect they don’t appreciate it if you stray inside, and our practice area is just on the East side of it.  While I don’t have complete freedom to do whatever I like at this point, I do have some discretion, and it’s kind of fun to decide exactly where and how I’m going to try something.  On my way up to the practice area, I flew over a house with a great big fire in the back yard.  It was then that I realized that I could make that my first spot for turns around a point, for no reason better than “I feel like it”.

I felt like I did pretty well.  I felt pretty confident in my abilities, at least within the boundaries I’d been given, and only made one real mistake.  Did about five touch-and-goes to tie it all up.  On my first, I failed to give it quite enough right rudder, and headed for the grass off to the left.  I had very few choices (no possible way to stop, too fast to turn), so I gritted my teeth and stuck with it and popped it off just before the grass.  Kept it low in ground effect for a bit more speed, then corrected my heading and climbed out normally.  I learned from that experience.  I was lucky not to clip a light, and the feeling of heading off in an unintended direction was one I’d just as soon not repeat.  I think I’m going to have “More Right Rudder” tatooed on the back of my right hand (where I can see it on the throttle as I take off and land).  Of course, with my luck, I’ll end up owning a pusher, and have to learn left rudder, instead.

Next up is short field/soft field take-offs and landings.  Which is sort of what I just did, except before today, I’d only every done it in X-Plane and my radio-controlled plane.  Fortunately, the technique is the same.

KML file is here.

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Flew today for the first time in two weeks.  Up until now, I’ve been flying two or three times a week.  I’ve always followed the checklists religiously, but pretty much had them memorized.  I certainly saw the value, but never really realized how valuable they were.  Until today.  After two weeks of no flying, I walked into the hanger, looked at the plane, and realized I would be scared to death to try flying without my checklists.  Sure, it’s easy to remember something you do every two or three days, but if you only fly once or twice a month, wow, you forget amazing amounts of important stuff.

It was windy like crazy today.  The surface winds were pretty reasonable, maybe five knots or so.  But up at 3000 feet, the wind was blowing a good honest 30 knots.  It was a nice wind, though, with few gusts.  Made for some interesting flying.  We tried flying directly into the wind as slow as possible, and managed to get the plane down to 15 knots of ground speed on the GPS.  Was hoping for zero, but not quite enough wind for that.  The flight was mostly a review of everything I’ve learned to sign me off for more solo flight.  I felt like I did reasonably well, though had a brush up on a few things.  By the time we landed, the wind had picked up considerably down at ground level, though I was extremely lucky in that it was coming almost directly down the main runway.  We did several landings, but my second was the most flawless landing I’ve ever done.  I just looked over at my instructor and said “Wow!”.  If only I could replicate that one every time…

My next lesson will be another solo.  The weather is getting worse, and it’s starting to get dark pretty early, so weekday (after work) flying is probably going to get less common.  We flew in the rain today (and discovered that the Sportstar leaks like crazy), but managed to stay clear of the clouds.  That’s going to get harder as the weeks go on.

KML file of the flight is here.

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Looks like another spammer has targeted one of my domains.  There’s apparently zillions of e-mails being sent out with return addresses set to non-existent users at gritch.org.  While neither me nor any of my machines have anything to do with the sending of any of this mail, it still affects me.  First, every single bounced e-mail message comes back to my mail server, even though it wasn’t sent by me in the first place, since the return address is set to one that I own.  The load on my mail server is currently 11.75 (somewhere around 0.05 is normal).  This amounts to a couple of thousand messages per hour that I have to sift through and delete.  There’s probably smoke coming out of the back of my mail router.  Second, idiots who don’t know how to read their mail headers love to write the most hateful messages you’ve ever read to me, trying to blame me for the spam that someone else sent.  I don’t take them personally, since these people really don’t know any better, but it’s truly amazing how nasty and hateful people get about spam.  I’d personally support some sort of a bounty system where you get so many dollars for each spammer scalp you turn in.

Flying lessons have been on hold for a week or two.  I had to make an emergency trip down to Long Beach for a few days over the weekend, and had to cancel a couple of lessons.  Oddly enough, I rather liked the Long Beach airport.  I hate airlines and commercial air travel, but KLGB is a neat little airport.  They’ve managed to preserve a bit of a “small town” feel, and some of the airport buildings looks like they date back to the 20s or 30s.  One of the guys at work used to keep his plane there, and had good things to say about the place.

This week, I’m on-call at work, which makes scheduling lessons a bit tough (not enough time either before or after my on-call shift to get to Arlington, fly, and get back home).  I hate to take this long of a break in lessons, but it looks like I have little choice.

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I finally soloed. Went up with my instructor for six trips around the patch first. He was happy with four trips, but I asked him to do two more, just to make sure I was feeling 100%. Then I went up and did three alone. Wow, what a cool thing! It’s an interesting feeling when you push the throttle up to full power and realize that 1) whether you live or die in the next ten minutes is entirely up to you, and 2) there is no turning back. My first landing was all anyone could ever ask for. I managed to get everything right. The second landing was not as pretty. I was landing on 29 (the wind was 290@12), but some of the traffic was still on 34 (it’s a lot longer). Had to dodge around a 172, but he was nice about it. It horked up all my sense of timing, and I floated it much longer than I would have liked. Third time around, I was following a Bonanza who wanted to take the scenic route around the pattern. To stay far enough behind him, I had to extend my downwind way the heck out, then bring it in. The third landing was as good as the first, though.

KML file is here.

My wife and kids were all there to watch, and we went out for pizza to celebrate afterwards. A day I won’t forget.

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In theory, today was my last lesson before solo. I flew with a different instructor today, as mine is taking the week off. It’s fun to fly with someone different, as they have a different perspective, different techniques, and new tips and tricks to show you. Today was supposed to be all review, but I actually learned at least as much as I do in a normal lesson, due to the ideas and suggestions of my different instructor. It’s fun to get better at something. My S-turns were horrendous and my turns around a point were passable, but not pretty. Today, I learned to do both fairly well. I flubbed a few things, like forgetting the pre-taxi checklist entirely, but remembered before I actually got all the way out onto the taxiway. I also didn’t exactly shine at the “oops, your engine just died” exercise. The cool thing was, after talking about what I did wrong, my instructor flew the plane back to where we started, then showed me what he would have done different. My way would have worked, but in this case it had more to do with luck than my superb piloting skills. His way was much better, and I’m going to incorporate what he taught me into my way of thinking about emergency landings. Did three landings, all of them passable. Got pretty squirrely after landing on one of them, I was back to chasing the plane back and forth across the runway. I’m sure the old-timers hanging around got a good chuckle.

KML file of the trip is here (or it will be as soon as I finish downloading/converting it).

The joy of a great lesson was pretty much squashed a couple of hours later. Franzi, our 13-year-old German Shepherd, died a little before 4:15pm this afternoon. We knew it was just a matter of days before she went, but that didn’t make it any easier when it finally happened. We were with her when she went, though. It’s been a rough afternoon here today, but at least she’s no longer in pain. Our two-year-old doesn’t understand where “Danzi” went, and the other dogs are wandering around kind of lost. So are we.

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The news was posted here today.  Let the celebrations begin!

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First day of 4th/5th grade for the older two. Much fun.

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I just drove up to KPAE and filled out all the paperwork and got my student pilot license.  Woot!  Now I can legally solo as soon as my instructor and I agree it’s time.

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Julia and I got up about 2am this morning to see the eclipse.  We didn’t watch the whole thing, but I got a few cool pictures.  Took these from my bedroom balcony with a Nikon D1x, ISO 640, 750mm, f8, 1/800.

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Yesterday was Abby’s second birthday.  She got more neat toys than we know what to do with.  Her friend CJ came over to help her celebrate and eat cake.

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