Archives

Welcome to the DarkMercury.net Archives!

You're now viewing my entries in order from oldest to newest.
This is opposite of the other pages where the newest posts are at the top.

Monday, January 02, 2006

Stolen from jo

Happy New Year! Here’s a meme!

1. What did you do in 2005 that you’d never done before?
Fly above the clouds

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Didn’t have one.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No

5. What countries did you visit?
USA, Canada

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?
All my flight ratings

7. What dates from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Chronologically, Dec. 31 will be easiest

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Uhh..probably instrument rating

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not inventing a device to travel through time.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
1x broken wrist
manyx bloody nose

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Education

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Not Yash!

13. Whose behavior made you appalled?
Yash!

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Quakecon!

16. What songs will always remind you of 2005?
none, songs dont remind me of years.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
LAN?

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Spending $

20. Did you fall in love in 2005?
Already there aww..

21. How many one-night stands?
0!

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Firefly hands down

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Apparently, though it was news to me

24. What was the best book you read?
Harry Potter 6, being it was the only book I read.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Cynic Project? I already knew about them but got the rest of their songs.

26. What did you want and get?
My instrument rating

27. What did you want and not get?
My Commercial Certificate

28. What was your favorite film of 2005?
Serenity

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Nothing and I enjoyed it, 21.

30. What’s one thing that would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Free food?

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?
meh?

32. What kept you sane?
Alison

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I hate celebrities

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Roe vs. Wade, Wal-Mart, Iraq, “Definition of marrage”, is it a voting year yet?

35. Who did you miss?
Yash, I guess….until he became an asshole

36. Who were the best new people you met?
The entire flight team

37. What do you look forward to in 2006?
Graduation

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005?
Don’t mess with rick’s computer

39. What song lyrics best sum up 2005 for you?
Songs dont sum up years except maybe 1985

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

The Pro from Cupertino

The “MacBook Pro”

We can forgive the dumb name because of what it is: An apple powerbook with a dual core intel processor.  It will be able to run windows, natively and through an emulator at full speed.  It will be able to run linux, not that it matters because OS X is a better linux than linux is.  Backlit keyboards, magnetic power cord, it’s omg delicious.  I soo want a 12” version, but I may not be able to hold back.  It’s such an awesome machine.  Got two really bad parts though..  $1799 even with student discount and it won’t ship until February.  If they don’t introduce a 12” by May I won’t be able to use the student discount, maybe.  When I bought the airport card I only had to flash my KSU flashcard at them.  Maybe I can do the same again…anyways I can’t wait until I get one..

Press more for the Keynote address -

Read Full Entry

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

It’s Time to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum

again..

The weather actually looks good tomorrow for my commercial checkride.  I’m actually feeling confident and looking forward to being finished with it.  I’m flying in the morning with my instructor to get back in the swing and at 3pm going for my ride.  Most of my nervousness before came from the crappy weather, but it’s forcasted sunny and a tropical 45 degrees.  Hopefully my next post will be a post of joy.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

A Commercial pilot!

Today was mostly a day of waiting.  I waited for my flight instructor to show up so we could fly in the morning, he was only half an hour late.  We did almost a whole practice checkride and I had some of my better landings so I was in a good mood.  I was supposed to go on the ride at 3pm, but the examiner finally got there and we were ready to go at 4.  Started the ride off with the landings.  I did a normal landing, then a soft field landing, then a short field(had to land within 100 ft), then a no-power landing(200ft).  After that I started the cross country part and headed north over streetsboro.  We broke off from that, and started the manuevers.  Steep turns followed by Minimun controllable airspeed, then power off stall, power on stall, 1 lazy eight, 3 chandelles, a steep spiral, eights-on-pylons, an engine failure at 1000 feet (very low), followed by a simulated gear failure, alternator failure, and wing fire.  After this, we headed back to the airport at 3000 feet, had the engine “failed” and did a steep spiral to land on the runway.  The last one was a very ugly landing, but I got it down.  1.5 hours after I started, he held out his hand, I had passed!  It was very nerve wracking and I was sweating a lot (he was cold) but now I am KSU’s newest commercial pilot.  Very much happiness!  I feel awesome about this because he said he was never in doubt and that I had excellent control of the airplane at all times.  He complimented my landings even though some were kinda close to the limit.  The best part about all of it is that I earned it.  Flight team felt good because we all came together as a team to win, but this is mine.  I worked hard to do well in this and I succeeded!  I wish I could write a better summary than this, but I am hyped up on adrenaline and exhausted at the same time.  Maybe tomorrow. 

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Early Estimates for QuakeCon Flight

Sunday, January 22, 2006

KSUFlightTeam.net

Finished the flight team website and got it up and running without any help from jo! OMG!

http://www.ksuflightteam.net

Thursday, January 26, 2006

An unusual day in the air

Today started like most days out at the airport.  I got there a good 7 minutes late or so, got an airplane, froze my ass off doing the preflight and got ready to takeoff.  I’m in the CFI course at 9:00am, so I’m in the Cessna 152 2 seater airplane that we use for private pilot and the flight team competition.  These days I’m flying from the right seat so I can learn to fly it when a student screws up.  We started to take off like normal and everything seemed normal, but just as we were in the air the airspeed indicator dropped to 30 knots (which is below the stall speed) and me and my flight instructor were staring at it with jaws wide open.  There was no stall warning horn, and the airplane was totally not stalling.  Far from it actually, I had lowered the nose to get airspeed and we were cruising around at like, 100 feet.  So we’re all like “K, we gotta land I guess” so we raised the flaps, turned crosswind and then downwind.  By this time, the airspeed is reading 0, and the altimeter was about 700 feet low.  My instructor offered to land the plane, but I was all like “no, I got it”.  The airspeed moved a little bit up from 0 as I was descending for landing, but it never got to the real airspeed so I had to ignore it.  First time I ever had to land with no helpful instruments.  Since we didn’t know our airspeed, we came in for landing a little faster than usual to prevent a stall but it was a pretty uneventful landing other than that.

Later in the day, I flew the Piper Seminole twin engine for the first time.  Holy Crap what a difference two engines make!  I actually felt pushed back in my seat.  The airplane climbed to 5,000 feet before I could realize it.  It was more work but a heck of a lot more fun than the 152.  The Cutlass 172RG is good, but not as good as this.  If we fly to Dallas, we are totally taking the Seminole.  I have to get around 100 hours of multi-engine time before I can apply to an airline, so I will probably be offering rides at some times in the next two years. 

Sunday, February 05, 2006

On cleanliness

Apparently, the complexity of cleanliness had escaped my brother for some 18 years.

http://www.xanga.com/T1m_Williams/431452197/item.html

On a side note, Don’t you hate it when you highlight some text and try to cut it with Ctrl-X but the Ctrl button doesn’t work and you just replace all your text with the letter ‘x’?

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Updated Quakecon flight info

I guessed a little high on the prices of the airplanes

Piper Seminole Twin Engine @ $210/hr
6 hours one way

$1260/3 people = $420
$1260/4 people = $315
———————————————————————

Cessna 172RG Cutlass @ $125/hr
7 hours one way

$889/3 people = $297
$889/4 people = $223

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Computer Upgrade

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Still waiting for the smaller macbook pro

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060309/ap_on_hi_te/origami_unfolded

““It ideally brings the best of what a Windows PC is and marries it to what the best of a very capable consumer electronic device is,” Mitchell said.”

WTF?  OMG I thought marriage was defined as between a man and a woman!  This is outrage!  What’s next?  Hardware marrying software?  What is this world coming to?  The government should take action to prevent this kind of thing!

Monday, March 13, 2006

Spring Break

Since I have no plans for spring break, I was wondering if anyone wanted to do anything.  I was thinking maybe we could fly somewhere cool for a day or something.  Also, LAN Party on one of the days (or more) to be determined.  Flying wouldn’t be too expensive, especially if there are 4 of us.  Anywhere people want to go?  I just want to fly somewhere.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Multi Engine (Expanded)

My multi-engine checkride was scheduled for Thursday, March 16th.  As always, I never get to do the checkride when it’s first scheduled.  I’ve been flying a Piper Seminole (PA-44 / 180) since the start of the semester.  I had 11.1 hours in the airplane by the time I took the ride.  So anyways, Thursday comes by and I get to the airport.  Turns out the FAA had come by and took one of the Seminoles somewhere for something (I don’t even know what).  The other one was down for maintenance, so I was like “damn” and all that.  I did the oral exam, which lasted for about an hour and a half and went fine.  Scheduled the flight for Sunday at 9am.

Sunday 9am comes by and the clouds are pretty low.  One of the requirements of the checkride is to actually shut down an engine in flight, which has to be done at a high enough altitude so that if it doesn’t restart you can glide to an airport.  I needed to be able to get to 4,500ft, and the clouds didn’t let me do it.  My examiner is leaving town for the week on Tuesday, March 21 so there’s not much time.  Rescheduled flight for 7:30am Monday March 20.

7:30am March 20 comes and it’s the same thing.  Lake Effect is causing a lot of clouds pretty low.  Examiner says he can do it later in the day, like 3pm.  Waited all day for the clouds to rise.  About 4pm they finally start to break up and we decided to go.  The ride went pretty smoothly.  I was very nervous before the flight, but once I actually start flying I’m always better.  I ran through the maneuvers which were okay.  Then we failed the engine, which was cool and probably the last time I’ll see a stopped prop hanging out there for a while (hopefully).  Then we did the VOR-A approach into KSU with a simulated failed engine all the way to the landing.  After all that, we took off one more time and did a short field landing and I was done!  There’s nothing more satisfying than the moment when you realize you passed a checkride.  Glad to be done.

Now I can focus more on my Certified Flight Instructor work and it frees up about 3 hours in the middle of the day for me too.  Woots.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

All coming together

Earlier in the month, I applied for internship positions at three airlines: Continental Express, American Airlines, and Mesaba Airlines.  American Airlines has already called me back and scheduled an interview with me on Tuesday, March 28th.  They are going to fly me down to Dallas and hopefully the interview will go great.  I’m so looking forward to this!

Express is revamping their internship process, so I hope to hear from them soon.  Mesaba was kinda my backup choice, and that airline is going through financial problems (they are hooked together with Northwest who just filed for bankruptcy).  So for summer I can hope to be interning with a great airline!  It’s so exciting that everything is coming together.  I know I’ve been working really hard these past few semesters and haven’t gotten to hang out as much as I wanted to, but in the end this is really really good for me.

Friday, March 31, 2006

Continental Express Interview

Got my interview with Continental Express scheduled for April 7th.  Similar to American Airlines, they are flying me to Houston for the interview and maybe a tour.  Should be a lot of fun and I’ll be even more prepared after American Airlines.  Will keep informed.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Bootcamp for Macintosh

Sunday, April 09, 2006

CoEx Interview and run-on sentences

April 7th was a very busy day.  Got up at 6am.  Plan was to leave the house at 7, get to Hopkins Airport at 8 and the plane left at 9.  Well it took a little longer to get ready than we thought and Alison’s puppy decided to take a giant dump in the car, so we got leaving around 7:25.  So we’re hauling it up 77 and I-80 during rush hour hoping I don’t smell like it for the rest of the day and make it to CLE around 8:10.  No big deal, right? 50 min right? 

Well the airport is busier than I’ve ever seen it so I go to the self-checkin and it says my boarding time is 8:25am! Shiot!  Run to security which of course has a long line.  God bless the TSA.  So I’m running to the gate with my shoelaces still untied and I notice my ticket is gone!  Totally dropped it in the hallway!  Go running back the other way without tied shoes.  Luckilly I found my ticket (no one was kind enough to pick it up and take it to some random food place, thinking they were helpful) and got to the gate right as they started boarding.  Two other KSU students, Eric and Mark, were on the same flight.  We said hellos and boarded the 737 to Houston.

We got there around 10:30am local time, with the interview starting at 2:00.  We talked about interview stuff untill 2, managing to find our way to the Expressjet Simulator Building.  This was different than the American interviews, they had everyone come into the same room were they answered some questions and talked about the different kinds of internships.  They wanted to talk to the KSU students first, so they called us up one by one.

I was third and once again had a whopping 10-15min interview.  I thought it was way too short!  I didn’t get to sell myself completely.  Everyone else agreed too.  There was nothing more to do at Expressjet so we went back to the airport (IAH).  Got some food and talked about how short it was.  Our plane left at 7:00pm local so we were there for like 3.5 hours.  Plane got in CLE around 10:35pm our time.  The approach was kinda cool.  CLE weather was 2.5mi visibilty and clouds overcast at 600 feet.  Broke out of the clouds right at the airport.  The stuff pilots live for.  All in all an exhausting day and I hope to hear good things from Expressjet in the next week or so.

Monday, April 10, 2006

New Seminole and my day

Today was a fun day.  I was supposed to go to the airport at 10:30 to meet Prof. Weber and do my tryout for the IFR Simulator event for flight team.  When I got there, I found out he and Mr. Palcho were supposed to take the brand new Piper Seminole, N31246 out for a spin to work on the flight training checklist.  I said half-jokingly that he could make it up to me by letting me ride backseat.  He brought it up to Tim and he said yes! Awesome!  It was a pretty quick flight out to Port Meadville (About 60nm away, just north of Y-Town) and back.  The new plane’s pretty cool, with a nice dual Garmin 430 GPS system and the fact that the engines actually start on it.  They also said that once my instructor gets checked out in it (tomorrow) I can take it to fly off the last 2.8 hours I had left over from my multi class!  Totally can’t wait, I’ll probably take it out to Rochester NY or something. 

When I got home I was playing around with google and looking up the flight team website with it.  Somehow ended up on Wikipedia and found some vandalism on the Entries for Kent State and the Kent State Shootings.  This kinda hurt deep down that someone would take a tragic event like that and smear “So-and-so is very gay” all over it.  Did my civic duty and reverted it back to before their edits.  Made me mad a little.  Otherwise I’m at work now and about to go to the airport to torture AK-47 with a tough NDB approach, hold, and localizer approach at CCR airport in California.  Then it’s E6-B tryout time at 7:30pm-9 and finally get to go home and study for a test in Flight Instructor Theory at 7:30am tomorrow.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

My iPod

Friday, June 09, 2006

CFI Checkride

woohoo just failed my CFI checkride. Got through the 5 hour oral exam with not much problem. The weather was god awful today so I was just going to do the landings and discontinue the ride so I could do the higher altitude maneuvers another day. Ended up busting on the emergency landing because I forgot to check the fuel selector. So not too pleased with myself but then again almost no one passes their first time and even on the second time you dont see a lot.

Got to go to the bank and do some stuff then spend the rest of the weekend with Alison so yay.

Monday, July 03, 2006

Happy Extraordinary Cosmic Events Day!

Today is a day of many posts, probably.  Most importantly, it’s the day that 2004 XP14 was going to wipe out a small country or worse.  Back when all those doomsday movies came out people were going crazy over this asteroid, discovered back in 2004, which actually did come close (between the Earth and the Moon).

Also, Today is the day of Earth’s Aphelion, for which my server is named.  It’s the furthest distance from the center of the Earth to the center of the Sun, in it’s elliptical orbit.  Should be a cold day, right?

Monday, July 03, 2006

The Big Quakecon Post

Friday, July 14, 2006

Flight Instructor Ride Passed!

In a very hot and exhausting day yesterday, I passed my flight instructor checkride.  The weather in the morning was super shitty.  Would have been an awesome day to fly in the clouds, but I needed to fly in the morning with my instructor before we left, and we couldn’t even get high enough to fly the traffic pattern.  The checkride was scheduled for 11:30 am, and he pushed it back to Noon but said noon was the latest we could get started.  Another guy I know named Brian Marsh was scheduled with me.  Finally it started breaking up a little and I was able to fly with Nathan in the pattern for 2 landings.  He signed my logbook and Marsh and I sped off to Medina airport at full throttle at a fairly low, yet not illegal altitude.

The examiner was his usual self; it’s fairly easy to talk to him but you better not relax or say anything that he’ll have you elaborate on.  Marsh flew first as the weather barely cleared up to acceptable.  His ride was fairly short.  He passed, which is good.  So up I go and we do about 7 or 8 takeoffs and landings.  Luckily, I had some fairly good landings, even my emergency (he pulls the throttle to simulate failure and you have to land).  He always likes to do it in a spot where you’ll have to make a choice and I went for the right runway.  That’s good because I should be able to do it anyways though.  After about 50 min of just traffic pattern work we finally went out for the maneuvers.  Two steep turns, min. controllable airspeed, a departure stall, a lazy eight and two chandelles.  My first chandelle was a little weak from not having done one in about 3 months, so he made me do it again.  My second one was better.  He finally said take me back to the airport so I did, expecting him to pull some sort of emergency again but he didn’t, only said to make the last landing a good one, which turned out okay.  It was so damn hot in that airplane.  Oh well it’s over and I’m a Certified Flight Instructor!  Fear in the hearts of children!

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Internship comes to an end

My internship with American Airlines is over.
The flight team regional competition is over.

What the hell am I going to do with myself? I have free time again!
It’s been so long that I don’t even know what to do with myself at this point.

Since it appears like it will take a while before my actual webserver goes back up, I am going to attempt to use this livejournal thing since most of my friends are on here anyways.

So what’s been going on with me? I know it’s been a while since I’ve had any time to hang out.

Internship ended halfway through August. Most of you know that. It was an amazing experience and has left me with way too much desire to get into my career with the airlines. So much that I am now working hard to get my flight time in so I have the expirience to get hired. This means I have about one more semester in Ohio. Once I get hired, I will be given a city as my base city and I’ll have to move there. So like Will I will be torn away eventually. So, we’ve got to LAN party like we’ve never LAN partied before! Or something.

Once I got home from $Texas, I started work as a flight instructor at Kent State. I have two classes this semester, Crew Resource Management (easy), and Computer Literacy (makes me cry so easy). Computer Literacy is a little bit of work since my teacher is a retard and asks weird questions. I also still work at Resnet. Actually, I am taking computer literacy because I needed 6 credits to work at resnet. Any time that was not taken up by flight instructing, class, and resnet went to flight team. I probably practiced an average of 4 hours per day for flight team, and coached both Computer Accuracy and Simulator events. The competition was the week before last, and we got third place in the most competitive region and won a spot to nationals. I won 4th at Navigation, 8th at power off landings, 7th at power on landings and 6th at simulator. Awesome! I will graduate before nationals, so this was my last competition. I promised to stick around and help coach cause they are my friends and I can’t abandon them.

What news has happened in the last, oh 3 months, since jo took down my site?
I got a 15.4” macbook pro, 2GHz Core duo and 2 GB of ram. It’s pretty awesome. Runs windows except for the built in speakers don’t work (headphones port works fine). Excellent frames on q3 and fs2004. Still trying to sell my 12 powerbook, will go on ebay soon.

Also, I need a place to live, so anyone looking for a place until May, tell me.

I guess that’s all for now, not bad for my re-entry to blogworld.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Kent Stater

A few weeks ago I made the front page of the Kent Stater, so it’s official. I can graduate now.

Kent Stater Link

That’s all for today

Monday, October 23, 2006

Nikki..

I am writing this later than I should have.

Yesterday, at 11:11am my friend Nikki Kukwa passed away from leukemia. She was getting better for a while, but it eventually overtook her. She was a good person, and a great member of the flight team. She was the best at the Safety interview and won the award for us twice.

One of the things I remember most is during the 2004 flight team regionals at KSU she sang the national anthem and messed it up! She stopped and I know she was embarrased, but she started again and did it perfectly. I’m not going to say it wasn’t funny, but now that you think about it, she could have run away right there.

If you get the chance to do something extraordinary today, maybe something you wouldn’t normally do, please do it for her and remember that you can always start again.

Thanks

Friday, October 27, 2006

myspace hat

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Flight Instruction First Thoughts

I think that to be a teacher, one of your inherent motivations should be the desire to teach. To search for the means and methods to instill new knowledge onto your students. I know everyone’s heard the start of this rant before. But here’s the twist. I am complaining about myself. I call myself a teacher in the strictest sense because I interact one on one with my students to teach them how to fly. I spent a few thousand for the knowledge and skill needed to become a flight instructor. But now that I am one, I find that any desire I had to teach people to fly has been eaten by the demoralizing bureaucracy and endless paperwork of a government institution. Disastrous Ohio weather also has its part to play. My students don’t make any progress. They are pretty lazy, especially when I remember the effort I put in to flying when I was in their place. They don’t study, they don’t make an effort to fly when they can, and it comes down on me as the instructor when they do not do well. It’s my reputation that they are risking as well as their own, and for that I have to find extra ways to supplement their learning. This equals more work for me, which as a general rule I am opposed to. Through all the pain and suffering I find myself asking where is the desire and devotion as a teacher that I am supposed to have? I think it disappeared when I went to Dallas and felt closer to my career then I do now. I feel that flight instruction is a step backwards although I was not even flying in Dallas. It’s something that I do only to return to that which impressed me so. I hope that in the days to come I will find something that will return the joy of flight instruction to me. Or maybe it’s just been a bad couple of days.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Website back?

I’ve been working hard to get this site back up and it’s close to being done.

For some reason, it’s showing some variable warning all over the damn place even though everything is actually working fine.  I’ll see if I can get rid of it.  I copied all of my livejournal entries over to this site cause I like this more.  Also succeeded in taking over the friends pages in livejournal :D

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Maze Video

need sound to appreciate it…

Friday, December 01, 2006

I love Penny Arcade

this is exactly what I think once you guys start talking about wow.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Senioritis

I graduate in two weeks!  It’s a weird thought but I don’t know.  Not that weird.  Every week for the last 4 and a half years (except some summers) I’ve gone to work at resnet and that’ll be gone.  I just turned in the last paper I’ll have to write today.  I haven’t been exactly in the mood to do much of any schoolwork, so this 3 page paper was really hard work for me.  I got it done though.

It’s so strange to think I won’t be in school, not be a student.  I miss it already.  I am going to miss flight team and some of my classes, and resnet.  But then again, not that much will change.  I’ll still be out at the airport and see my friends and I’ll still coach with the flight team.  But..it’s not the same…

Monday, December 04, 2006

Website Fixed

I fixed the PHP errors I was having.  Actually I didn’t, but I hid them from view.  I have yet to see anything not work, so I don’t know why it was throwing errors around.  Just had to put an ini_set(‘display_errors’, 0); tag in every .php file.  Search and comments are back up.  Tell me if you see anymore errors kthx.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Macworld 07 Rumors

12 Inch MBP Rumor

It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of the 12” powerbook by apple.  I was waiting for so long for them to announce a new intel one before I finally broke down and bought the 15” macbookpro.  I like the 15” (I just realized I never did a review of it, probly cause my site was down thx jo) but could I return to the 12 inch form after living the good life of my current awesome laptop?  Probably.  Let’s take a look at what I want:

Proc: Intel, semi fast…..nothing demands a super awesome processor anymore.
Ram: Upgradable to 2gb would be nice
Screen: Widescreen or not, >1024x768 would be nice
Vid Card: Capable of gaming in Windows.  This is the only reason i picked mbp over mb
Hdd: My 80gb in the mbp is getting tight, would like more
CD: want one in there, thats why i got rid of the Dell L400
Design: I like the aluminum design over the mb, but at least offer it in black if not
Tablet: rumored that this could be a tablet.  Depends on reviews..

So basically it comes down to how well does it game, and what does it look like?  Unfortunately it has to beat my current mpb to justify the effort of selling it, which is a difficult feat.  I sure like the ultra portability though.  I take it everywhere.  :D

Now onto other rumors.  iPhone.  If you’ve seen my phone lately you know I need a new one.  I want to see what the iPhone will look like.  It’s supposed to be an mp3 player and phone in one and supposed to work with every provider.  I am holding off until macworld to make my decision, and it’s all based on design.  If I don’t like it I will probably get a motorala PEBL.  I know the PEBL gets bad reviews due to storage space and bad camera, but my current phone is the same and I don’t really care.  I like the PEBL design and I just want it for a phone.

Widescreen iPod.  I need a new iPod since my 3rd gen’s screen stopped working.  If both the iPhone and the widescreen video ipod are released and both look cool I don’t know what I’ll do.  I’m betting only one will be released or I’ll only like one.  I want an 80gb at the moment but I can wait until macworld to see if a new one comes out.

With my luck, things will be announced and not ready until August or something.  Until then, It’ll be a long 5 weeks!

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Science!

(17:32:04) BobCortex: i get the whole gyst of the dumb argument
(17:32:17) BobCortex: figured i'd ask someone who flys the things
(17:32:37) Eclipse: if the engines are going, the plane will leave the treadmill
(17:33:08) BobCortex: even if the treadmill can keep it from actually moving foward?
(17:33:12) Eclipse: its like pulling a wagon, the wheels dont do the pulling
(17:33:21) BobCortex: right
(17:33:25) Eclipse: the wheels just let you move
(17:33:34) BobCortex: plane with breaks on and full power wont move or take off
(17:33:41) Eclipse: a treadmill would change the speed of the wheels, but not the body of the plane
(17:33:50) Eclipse: right
(17:34:29) BobCortex: its some weird physics question
(17:34:48) BobCortex: plane + treadmill that can keep up with the plane. prefect world physics
(17:35:09) BobCortex: people come up with all sorts of junk
(17:35:15) BobCortex: like wheels dont do jack
(17:35:22) BobCortex: planes can take off on water
(17:36:08) BobCortex: but i always kinds thought the engines kinda moved air over the wings
(17:36:15) BobCortex: at least with props
(17:36:42) Eclipse: the engines pull the airplane forward, wheter its a prop or a jet (a jet is a prop with a cone around it)
(17:37:03) Eclipse: the moving airplane causes lift under the wings
(17:37:03) BobCortex: but i guess if the plane is not moving. the wings arn't moving. thusly lift is not being generated
(17:37:13) BobCortex: therefore sits still?
(17:37:21) Eclipse: correct
(17:37:31) BobCortex: if eclipse says its so i can sleep easier!
(17:37:45) BobCortex: it was fun reading people bicker about it
(17:38:09) Eclipse: heh
(17:38:26) BobCortex: fun stuff like "piolts" saying they wouldn't even really notice a diffrence on takeoff
(17:38:52) Eclipse: they wouldnt, the airplane would still accelerate like normal
(17:38:59) Eclipse: the wheels would be spinning faster or slower only
(17:39:10) BobCortex: but take off would never happen
(17:39:13) BobCortex: no climax!
(17:39:26) Eclipse: the wheels do not pull the airplane!
(17:39:37) Eclipse: the engines pull it forward and therefore judge acceleration
(17:39:59) Eclipse: a treadmill would only change how fast the wheels spin
(17:40:30) Eclipse: like a car spinning out on ice, the car still moves forward at the same velocity (due to inertia) and the wheels spin really fast
(17:40:53) Eclipse: the airplane is similar except the engine cause the motion instead of inertia
(17:41:05) Eclipse: and the treadmill would only change how fast the wheels spin
(17:41:26) Eclipse: once the airplane accelerates enough, lift will form under the wings and takeoff would happen
(17:41:42) BobCortex: but its not really moving
(17:42:01) Eclipse: yes it IS
(17:42:08) Eclipse: you're thinking of a car
(17:42:13) Eclipse: thats not how airplanes taxi
(17:42:19) BobCortex: ok
(17:42:23) BobCortex: you keep changing your mind
(17:42:29) Eclipse: no im not
(17:42:34) BobCortex: i know the wheels on a plane dont actually move it
(17:42:46) BobCortex: they roll freely and have brakes
(17:43:34) BobCortex: sure the plane would accelerate on the treadmill. but it wouldn't really be moving in physical space
(17:43:46) BobCortex: is the conculsion from earlier
(17:44:28) BobCortex: heh
(17:44:32) Eclipse: wrong
(17:44:49) Eclipse: the airplane only needs air to move
(17:44:58) Eclipse: otherwise it would be a real shitty airplane
(17:45:18) BobCortex: ugh hurting my head
(17:45:18) Eclipse: so the treadmill will not affect the acceleration
(17:45:39) Eclipse: unless the treadmill is in a perfect vacuum, the airplane will move in space
(17:45:53) Eclipse: because it uses the air to accel and not the motion of the wheels
(17:45:55) BobCortex: but the treadmill is preventing it from actually moving foward to get lift
(17:46:08) Eclipse: no, the treadmill only moves the wheels
(17:46:40) Eclipse: if there were no wheels, and the plane's belly was sitting on the treadmill then maybe
(17:46:52) Eclipse: but the wheels spin freely
(17:47:28) BobCortex: plane acceleration -----> <------ treadmill
(17:47:59) BobCortex: if its moving the plane backwards as its trying to move foward. its not really going anywhere
(17:48:36) Eclipse: thats what i am trying to say, it doesnt move the airplane
(17:48:47) BobCortex: right its spinning the wheels
(17:48:54) BobCortex: and the wheels are connected to the plane
(17:49:05) Eclipse: i think that's where you are not getting it
(17:49:22) Eclipse: are the brakes on?
(17:49:24) BobCortex: no
(17:49:38) Eclipse: then why would moving the wheel move the airplane?
(17:50:06) BobCortex: but the engines are pulling it foward
(17:50:28) Eclipse: if you attach a rope to a wagon and put the wagon on the treadmill, will the treadmill pull you?
(17:51:00) Eclipse: now what happens if you pull the wagon?
(17:51:07) Eclipse: the wagon comes towards you
(17:51:18) Eclipse: the wheels are what prevents the treadmill from having any effect!
(17:51:32) BobCortex: trickery
(17:51:33) Eclipse: now the airplanes engines provide that same force as you pulling the rope
(17:51:59) Eclipse: because the airplane can accelerate independantly of the treadmill
(17:52:11) Eclipse: thats not true for a car
(17:52:25) Eclipse: cars need the friction between the wheel and the ground to move
(17:52:27) BobCortex: i thought the treadmill would act to keep it in place. as in someone running on one. like a propelled treadmill. not one of thoes free running ones
(17:52:27) Eclipse: airplanes do not
(17:52:45) Eclipse: the person would need the friction
(17:52:56) Eclipse: airplanes do not need friction under the wheels to move
(17:54:11) BobCortex: so glad i never took physics
(17:54:22) Eclipse: do you get it though?
(17:55:16) Eclipse: i have to go soon
(17:56:11) BobCortex: so the engines pull the aircraft. regardless of what the wheels are doing. beacuse the wheels do absoluty nothing except keep the plane from falling over.
(17:56:19) BobCortex: someone needs to build a giant ass treadmill
(17:56:32) Eclipse: thats right
(17:56:48) BobCortex: no matter how fast the mill goes it wont affect the plane
(17:56:54) Eclipse: right
(17:56:58) BobCortex: just makes the hwels spin faster
(17:57:01) Eclipse: right
(17:57:13) Eclipse: or slower, if the treadmill is going the other way
(17:57:41) BobCortex: crazy airplanes
(17:58:12) Eclipse: they have to rely on the air or they will be useless after leaving the ground
(17:58:20) Eclipse: like a car in the air can't do anything
(17:58:43) BobCortex: so the plane will justhop off the treadmill and carry on its way
(17:58:48) Eclipse: yup
(17:59:00) BobCortex: sorcery!
(17:59:09) Eclipse: physics!

The answer: The airplane will take off and the pilots will not notice any difference

Read Full Entry