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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Short Rant today

“Opponents of the bill say their taxes should not fund research which involves the destruction of embryos.”

Well fuck!  My tax dollars should not fund your war!

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Response to the iPhone

I was really looking forward to this macworld for two reasons: Macbook Pro (or macbook with a damn vid card) 12” and the widescreen iPod.  I’ve been holding off on buying my own iPod for a while because I thought they could get an upgrade or drop in price at macworld.  I’ve mentioned a few times how much I love the ultraportable laptops, with my previous three laptops being 12 inchers.  So this macworld was a bit disappointing for me.  I got the equivalent of a crippled mac mini for your tv and a widescreen ipod nano with a phone and internet viewer built in that won’t even be ready until june.

So what have I done about it?  Well, I wanted a high capacity ipod, so I went out and bought a 5.5G 80GB Black iPod the day of the keynote.  My reasoning was that the iPhone couldn’t hold as much as I wanted, so I might as well just buy it.  I like it a lot.  I like the lcd screen way better than my old 3rd gen, but I still like the third gen’s button placement.  I like the movie player and have some fun stuff on it like my quakecon movie, don hertzfeldt’s dvd, and anime music videos (best part of vid iPod imho).  It’ll store all my game iso files soon too when I reorganize my hard drives.  Zune can’t do that!

My phone is also in dire need of replacement, so I went ahead and bought a new PEBL off ebay.  We’ll see if it does what I want it to (namely just be a phone).  I like the quirky way it opens.  What do I think about the iPhone?  I was definately geeking out during the keynote, but now the Steve-factor has worn off and I’ve read a lot about it.  I was excited about it running OS X, but now they say it won’t run any 3rd party apps or widgets, so meh.  I also hate the cingular only, 2 year plan it comes with, although my t-mobile plan will be free again by june.  I just wish it was an unlocked phone, and if you didn’t have cingular, the extra features like visual voicemail wouldn’t work.  I could live without that.  We’ll see what I want in june.

As far as the laptop, I’m used to the 15” inch and am quite happy with it.  A 12” would be fun, but it’s not necessary and I STILL have the 12” powerbook because I like it so much and am afraid to sell it.  Right now the 12” is plugged into my TV and is performing the job of the apple tv, only it can actually play xvid and other stuff.  Hooray for vnc + tv out!

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Motorola PEBL Review

I mentioned in the last post that I bought an unlocked Motorola PEBL on ebay and I recieved it on Tuesday. I've had a few days to play around with it, and here are my thoughts:

PEBL, new phone on left, Panasonic x70, old phone on right for comparason:

Read Full Entry

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

No Kidding

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

It’s the same!

To solve everything, why don’t we just give the Sunnis the crappy part of Iraq, and the Shiites get the shitty part?

Monday, February 19, 2007

The Mean Ol’ Skies over Akron-Canton

Tonight was supposed to be a real quick flight down to KCAK for some landings so I could sign my student off to fly at night solo.  After arguing for 15 minutes over whether or not dispatch would close before I got back, We finally got in the air.  Jake, another flight instructor, was already in the air on the same lesson.  Winds were very strong tonight, from the southwest at 60 knots at 3000 feet!

So we take off relatively normal and climb to 3000 feet while listening to the automated weather, no big deal.  We make our initial call,
“Akron Approach, Cessna 9783P with information Echo”
“Cessna 9783P, Akron Approach”
“N9783P 1 mile north of Kent State, inbound for 2 touch and go landings, then depart to the north”
“9783P squawk 5304, blah blah fly towards airport blah”  <-not important

So as we’re flying to Akron, we’re hearing poor Jake and his student trying to head east after finishing their landings and they’re giving them a hard time, trying to fly them different headings and utterly confused at the notion that they would like to go somewhere other than kent state.  Finally 117KS cancels radar services and just leaves and they start giving us headings (vectors) to space us behind some learjet where the real fun begins

The learjet is about 250 feet above the ground when we hear:
“Akron Tower Learjet whatever number, are we clear to land?”
“Learjet #, Akron Tower, You are still cleared to land”
“Roger, Learjet #”
Not a big deal, they land but then this learjet starts going off on the tower dude (who I know from the voice is not a very forgiving guy, and probably less so late at night)
“Akron Tower, Learjet #, Blah blah I don’t mean to be smug or whatever, but you probably saw we did not have our landing lights on and I was about to go around and you need to give me clearance blah blah” <- Being obviously smug…
Tower: “I cleared you to land 6 miles out and you read it back and we’re trained not to talk over the radios during a very critical phase of flight and you need to pay attention and so forth”

So I’m thinking great, they’re probably going to take this out on us…..

So we’re finished with our last landing, expecting to get a vector northbound, and nothing, so I have my student ask for one and the controller gets all pissy and makes us fly further south!
“9783P, fly runway heading (190 or almost directly south) and you need to tell us on downwind before your last landing when you expect to depart the pattern”

And my student wants to go off on this controller, and I’m telling him not to because it won’t help and would just make us look bad.  We told them 2 landings then depart northbound on our first call but they said we did it wrong, despite 4 years always doing it the same way!  But oh well!  So we finally get a vector northwest (310) and we fly for a while and we don’t hear anybody which isn’t so unusual this late at night but we’re out of Akron airspace and almost getting into Cleveland so we’re trying to call Akron to get free of their control just like Jake but nothing is happening.  Finally I switch to radio #2 and we call and they’re all like “we’ve been trying to call you for 10 minutes where were you?” so we explain we just switched the radios and the first one wasn’t working, and sorry can we just go back to KSU.  And then I hear “Is there an Instructor on board?” And my heart sinks down about 2 feet… “Yes..”  Have him call this number…blah blah blah” so I copy it and I’m freaking out cause this only happens in bad situations and I was worried about us having a stuck microphone and they were hearing all the things we were saying.  We called Kent Operations on the “bad” radio and it worked so I don’t know what was happening..  Solar Flares or something.

So we landed and I’m all pissed cause I don’t know what’s going to happen with ATC.  But I called and they only wanted to know what happened (which I sorta knew I didn’t do anything wrong but you never know).  They said we drifted too close to the arrival end of the runway and interfered with a jet.  They blamed it on the airplane’s gyro drift (where the heading instrument gets off over time), but I bet the wind was just stronger than they thought which blew us closer and they were unable to tell us about it for unknown reason.  They probably had to give me a phone number just to look like they were punishing me for not knowing how to fly even though it was some mechanical quirk.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

SIGN UP FOR QUAKECON

I forgot about it too, but I just signed up and there’s still room.

But do it now

Thursday, March 22, 2007

long time no post

I was really really bad and I bought a 23” Apple Cinema Display.  It is gigantic.  And really expensive.  I don’t know what I think yet.  It is very pretty.  But $......yeah….

Friday, April 13, 2007

New Entry!

I haven’t had a whole lot of time and/or interest in this website for a long time.  Lots of things have happened and there’s a lot on the horizon.  Lately I haven’t been feeling too well.  I have been pretty lonely and it’s going to get worse when Alison moves to Texas in a few weeks.  The only people I really talk to face-to-face on a daily basis are my students at the airport.  They are nice and fun and all but they really aren’t my friends per se.

I have lots of stuff coming up in the near future.  Helping Alison move to Texas, Flight Team Nationals (I get to see some of my internship friends again!), and leaving for a monthlong trip to Russia/Finland.  All in the first half of May.

I got my instrument instructor rating on Tuesday and the review board prep for KSU is intense.  I’m studying all the time and damn tired of it.  My liking of flight instruction varies week to week.  I am feeling a little overworked right now and not really liking it.  One of my students is almost done so hopefully that will cut down on my workload a little.

I kept the 23” Apple Cinema Display.  It is big and looks very pretty with my laptop and silver desktop.  It works well but has some quirks.  The power button works when it feels like it, since it’s trying to work with OS X to put the computer to sleep.  I won’t bring it to any LAN as it’s too expensive to risk theft or damage.  I also think it’s too big for my brother’s desk but hopefully I won’t be using it too much longer.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Amen

Monday, May 28, 2007

In Finland

Well I’ve been away in Russia for the last two weeks.  It’s been….interesting.  Now I’m in Finland with some way extended family until the 13th of june.  Ouch!  Well at least I have internet a little now that I am off of that boat.  So I went over to the dark side.  I got a facebook.  Now I’ve been a pretty big advocate of hating the social network sites and liking the personal blog sites.  (especially making your own, but I can accept livejournal)  Well facebook isn’t really intruding on the blogging world I have discovered, so I made one and trying to find everyone on it.  If I don’t find you, then you find me.  More later maybe.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Best Quote Ever

Government officials… two of them… they’re having the penis hotpot

Thursday, July 05, 2007

My Powerbook for sale :(

I’ve been bad at sitting down and writing on this site.  But this is a tragic time… My 12” Powerbook, my first mac, is up for sale on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=230149861707

I told myself as I got my macbook pro that I could offset the price of it if I sold my powerbook.  After all, the macbook pro could do anything the powerbook could do and better right?  And then as I bought my 23” Cinema display I told myself again that it was a damn expensive screen, but it wasnt so bad if I just sold my powerbook.  And now I’m finally doing it.

I feel bad about selling it for some reason.  I always knew that someday I was going to have to do it.  I bought it way back on Oct 15, 03 when I lived in Allyn Hall with Rick.  I remember the day Rick came into work at Resnet talking about the new 3rd gen iPods.  I thought he was crazy talking about an apple product.  But he thought it was cool and I spent the rest of the day looking at the iPod on the apple site.  Finally I bought one on eBay.  I got it and hated using musicmatch jukebox to load mp3s on it.  Absolutely hated it.  But very soon after iTunes for windows came out and life was good.  It worked well.  Really well.  And I started thinking maybe apple wasn’t so bad anymore.  So I started playing with the iMac at Resnet.  I have always been a fan of ultra portable laptops, having a Winbook Fx, Dell Latitude LS400, and a Dell Latitude L400.  The only problems with them of course were no dvd-roms.  This is where apple had the big advantage.  Will had one and I loved playing with it at the animation show and other times.  So I ended up buying the little 12” powerbook.  It wasn’t top of the line even when I bought it, but it was pretty good.  I had basic knowledge of how to get around OS X and I could even install apps, but it was a pretty big dive into the unknown.  I love to play with things and the powerbook gave me a hell of a lot of unknown features to explore.  I love the BSD core and installing fink and even got KDE to run at the same time as OS X.  (X on X).  It was small and I took it everywhere.  Absolutely everywhere.

I guess the reason I hesitate to sell it is because it reminds me so much of my sophomore year and the rest of college.  It is very much an icon of my college life which I now have to let go.  It’s the same feeling I got when I watched the flight team compete without me.  And it’s the same feeling I get every day now that I hardly see anyone anymore.  I suppose it’s time to move on.

I’ll be moving to Dallas before December and don’t get me wrong, nothing makes me happier than moving back in with Alison and starting my airline career, but it’s always sad to leave a very comfortable and enjoyable part of your life.  My 12” Powerbook is very symbolic of that time.

As I get ready to move to Dallas I will be selling and giving away a lot of stuff.  Stay tuned.

oh, and

300th Post!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Instrument Instructing

Yesterday had me pretty bummed at work after dealing with a pissy student at 7:30am and arguing for 2 hours with another.  Today the weather and visibilty were pretty low so my C3 student and I took the Cessna 172SP with the G1000 Glass Cockpit system up for some practice approaches.  Today totally made up for yesterday!  I just love flying in the clouds, the whole man over nature aspect.  We were flying to Alliance and broke out under the clouds right on top of the airport!!  It could not have been any more perfect of an approach!  I don’t have any pictures cause we were pretty busy up there.  I love those garmin systems.  The SP flights are my favorite.  Tonight I am supposed to fly in the Seminole to finish my time for my Multi-Engine-Instructor Rating.  I should be able to go, instrument or visual.  I want to get my multi engine time up and get out to Dallas as soon as possible.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Save Runway

The maintenance people at the Ksu airport have taken it upon themselves to decide that the airport cat, Runway, is a “health hazard” and that he should be put to sleep (and of course I mean put to death) or at the very least taken by someone for adoption never to return.  Completely ignoring the fact that Runway has co-existed with humans without being a danger for 10 years, how can they just decide to up and do whatever they want with a cat that belongs to everybody?  I should also mention that these maintenance guys have been here for less than a year.  More like months.  It just pisses me off that they think they can just do whatever they want like this.  I have to make a stand.  I wrote a petition to put on the wall for people to sign to save Runway.  I hope everyone else thinks like I do and that they don’t think I am too much of a loser for doing it.  But in the end I don’t care.  You have to fight for what you believe in, even the little stuff.  And they have to listen to the students, right?  That’s where the money comes from.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Japanese Pranks

oh my god I havent laughed so hard in a long time.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Quakecon 07

Didn’t really make any posts about Quakecon this year but I went.  I find that every quakecon is pretty different for me.  I think it’s all about the company.  In 05 it was out first year and everyone was really excited to do it.  It was a huge year for qcon with about 3000 people in the BYOC.  Quakecon 06 was the opposite.  It was announced at the last minute and so none of my friends could go.  Of course, I was already in Dallas so taking the time to go was not hard at all.  I talked to Schultz some but mostly I was lonely. 

Now Quakecon 07 was a good year again.  Being that it was announced in February, I really thought people would be able to go and it would be awesome, but only Will was awesome.  We picked him up on the way and it was good to see him again.  Also Alison is in Dallas now!  So I get to see her again.  It was hard only seeing her on weekends and it’s even harder going months between visits now.  So I split up my time seeing her and going to the con.  So I spent less time at quakecon this year but enjoyed the whole trip a lot more.  Alison thought that she was stealing my qcon time and was sad but that wasn’t true.  I know I could have spent more time at the anatole, but I wanted to see her too.  I’m not sad that I spent my qcon time with alison, but maybe I am sad that I didn’t have enough time go to quakecon and see her as much as I wanted to.  Although, I don’t ever really want to leave when I see her so maybe that’s impossible. 

Anyways, back to the con.  It was more like 05 in terms of size but not quite as big.  Quake 4 was the big game last year which I wasn’t in to.  So this year is Quakewars!  I sure do love that Valley map.  3 days of playing the same damn map over and over again…  So I ran around like a noob for a day before really getting into it.  It seems exactly like Battlefield 2.  Wolf:ET was great because there were a few classes but you could have a really good time with few players.  Quakewars is different….there’s a hell of a lot of different player options and about 1 billion different ways to kill each other.  It’s a lot more like Battlefield 2 - it you’re not in a vehicle you’re pretty much sniped or artillery’ed.  And the strogg overpower the humans in every class, so you’ll pretty much only have fun if you’re strogg.  I got to play some instagib and I didn’t win this year!  I’m slacking…

We went to Logans Roadhouse to finish off the trip and it was really good.  Just like I remembered!  I had a great time down there this year.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Apple update and new iMacs

The new iMacs look pretty cool. I'm not a fan of the glossy screen but I guess the one on Alison's macbook isn't bad. I would never get an iMac because you can hardly upgrade it, but it is interesting to see the new design as it will probably resonate into the other products. I was disappointed that they didn't release an ultraportable mbp, but I will keep using my current mbp and wishing. A lot of people thought the 6G ipods would come out today too, but looking at it more objectively, they will most likely wait until the "buy a mac and get free ipod" deal is over in sept.

I am thinking of selling all my computer parts and buying a mac pro for gaming. I would like the mac desktop plus my computer isn't great for gaming as it is. Instead of shelling out the moneys for new mobo, ram, vid card, processor, etc... The mac pro isn't that much more and would last for longer. Course, I'd wait for Leopard and the hardware refresh.. It's still just an idea at this point.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

To MEI and beyond!

I passed the checkride to become a multi-engine flight instructor today. It was a little bit difficult. I was asked to teach the fuel system on the Piper Seminole. I wasn't totally prepared for that but I came up with a decent lesson pretty much on the fly. We then did our flight. We needed to get up pretty high to about 5500 feet. The clouds were sitting at 5000 and pretty heavy so we were climbing in and out of them until we got to a good straightaway. It was very hot in the airplane... Thats what I remember the most. Anyways, I should be able to get quite a bit of multi engine time and get on with my flying career at American Eagle soon!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Hardware Giveaway Round 1

Copy and paste what you want into a reply. First come first serve.....It all gets thrown away if no one wants it.

MEMORY: (Most Questionably good)
(2) 256 PC2100 desktop ram
(1) 128mb pc2100 laptop memory stick
(1) 256mb pc2100 laptop ram
(1) 512mb pc3200 ddr ram (known good)
(1) 512mb ddr2-667 laptop ram (known good)
(1) 64mb of pc100 desktop ram
(1) 32mb of pc100 desktop ram

PROCESSORS:
(1) Intel Celeron Socket-Type 800MHz
(1) AMD Am486 (for old times sake)

DRIVES:
(1) 3.5" Internal Zip100 Drive w/3 discs
(2) 3.5" Internal Floppy Drives
(1) 5.5" Internal DVD Rom (8x?)
(1) USB External Floppy Drive
(2) Hot-Swappable IDE Cages

PCI / AGP / ISA CARDS:
(1) PCI ATI Rage IIC Video Card
(1) PCI ATI TV Tuner (only the composite-in works)
(1) PCI Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Sound Card
(1) PCI Maxtor PATA133 Controller
(1) PCI PATA Controller (speed unknown)
(1) PCI 56k Modem
(1) AGP Voodoo 3 (16MB?)
(1) AGP 8x Radeon 9700pro (needs new fan)
(1) ISA Sound Card

NETWORKING:
(1) PCI Gigabit NIC
(6) PCI 10/100 NICs (a few might just be 10)
(2) ISA NICs
(2) USB NICs
(2) PCMCIA NICs (1 w/Driver floppy)

KEYBOARD / VIDEO / MICE:
(4) PS/2 Scroll Mice
(1) Wacom USB Tablet w/Pen and Mouse
(6) PS/2 Keyboards (1 backlit) all wired
(2) Unpowered 4-Computer VGA/PS2 KVM Switch
(2) VGA Monitor Male-Male Cable (KVM)
(6) PS/2 Male-Male (KVM)
(2) KVM Cables (ps2 keyboard video and ps2 mouse in one cable)

CABLING / ADAPTERS / ETC:
Legacy:
(1) 9 pin to 25 pin Serial port adapter
(2) Serial to PS/2 port (i think)
(1) AT to PS/2 port
(3) ATA 66 IDE Cables

Audio/Visual:
(2) Headphone port to RCA Mono
(1) RCA to headphone adapter

USB or Firewire:
(1) USB to PS/2 port (for a usb mouse)
(3) USB A/B Cable
(1) USB to Mini USB Cable
(2) USB Extension Cables
(1) USB laptop LED keyboard light (clips to laptop screen)
(1) Firewire Cable

iPod Stuff:
(2) Firewire iPod Charging Cable
(1) 3G iPod Dock
(1) 3G iPod Firewire Charger
(1) Remote control for 3G iPod
(1) Griffin iTrip for 3G iPod

Random Cables:
(1) VGA Splitter (Mirror Monitors)
(1) VGA Monitor Male-Female (Extension Cable)
(1) PS/2 Male-Female (Extension Cable)
(5) Phone Cables
(1) Phone splitter

MISC:
A lot of cheap thumbscrews
(1) Arctic Silver 3
(1) 20mA Blue LED
(1) 20mA White LED
(1) 16mb SD Card
(1) 16mb CompactFlash Card
(1) Case Fan (think it has blue LEDs)
(1) Biohazard Case Fan Cover
(1) Serial TI-GraphLink
(1) Plantronics Headphone/Sound card thing

Friday, September 07, 2007

Mean Kitty Song

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Battlestar Galactica Party 11/25/07

UPDATE

Lan party will be Noon 11/25/07 THATS SUNDAY now due to many more people being able to go on sunday. Now obviously the battlestar galactica theme won't really play a part of the LAN since we won't be watching it. So here's the deal: if you want to come over to watch razor / play the game / download episodes from me you can at 8:00pm saturday and even sleep over if you want.

--------------

Battlestar Galactica Razor premieres on Nov. 24th at 9 p.m. That's the saturday after thanksgiving. I propose getting together around 5 or so (maybe earlier if you want a bigger LAN Party which I am all for). Recently I picked up the BSG game that just came out by Sierra. It is by no means a masterpiece of the gaming world, but I think that the multiplayer could be fun for a few hours. We can totally play anything else too. I'll also have all the BSG episodes on a server so if you want them the 24th is your best bet.

The BSG game is kinda similar to Asteroids in that you have your little viper or whatever and you zoom around with your inertia and can change directions and shoot. Unlimited guns and missles. The game is rendered in 3d, but you can only move around in 2d which kinda sucks. It is pretty fun to play with a usb gamepad which I recommend, but it can use a joystick or keyboard. Kind of a pointless game but I think the instant action is fun so the multiplayer should be fun and it's easy to get the hang of quickly so being a noob is fine. Multiplayer has deathmatch and team deathmatch and a domination mode. It's also been a while since we played trackmania nations and generic FPS's. Even if you are not a fan of BSG it would be fun to get together, since it will be the last lan I'll be at for a long time. I'll be shipping out of Ohio mid december probably.

I'll be pestering a lot of you on IM but leave a comment if I don't and you're interested.

Monday, December 10, 2007

FREE STUFF

As I begin packing up for Dallas, I'm finding things that aren't trash but I don't want to take them. Comment to claim things. Pics if requested. First come first serve.

2x Mac Classics, with one keyboard/mouse setup
Simple Gray Desk Lamp
100 GB 5400RPM PATA Hard Drive
Kensington Bluetooth USB key
TV Stand
Laptop Bag
Lots of Computer Parts

I'll be adding more throughout the week.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Merry Christmas

“In aviation news, the FAA now sends an inspector to the North Pole to check out Santa Claus’s sleigh before allowing him to fly on Christmas eve.

The inspector arrives and checks the reindeer and they look good, he checks the harness and it looks okay, he checks the sleigh and it is also okay. Then he says, “Santa, lets take it up for a check ride and if everything looks good I’ll sign you off.”

Santa hitches the reindeer up and taxis onto the runway and just as he’s starting his takeoff roll he looks over and notices the inspector has a pump shotgun on his lap loading 12 gauge slugs. “Hey! Whats the shotgun for!?” Santa yells.

The inspector says, “Well, Santa, I’m really not supposed to tell you this before hand, but you’re going to have an engine failure on takeoff.”