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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 -
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
Piper Seminole Twin Engine @ $225/hr6 hours one way
$1350/3 people = $450
$1350/4 people = $337
----------------------------------------------
Cessna 172RG Cutlass @ $140/hr
7 hours one way
$980/3 people = $326
$980/4 people = $245
Very Rough Estimates. I planned it pretty conservatively as if we were going pretty slow, with a headwind or something. Both estimates include one fuel stop. Everyone would be able to sit up front at least once. If I get hired as a flight instructor, I might be able to take some of that cost off, though not sure and probably not. I know it's pretty steep, but a good tailwind would knock a lot of that price off. I'm not flying with only 1 other person. Will says he wants to fly but it's all about the dollars in the end...
Sunday, January 22, 2006
KSUFlightTeam.net
Finished the flight team website and got it up and running without any help from jo! OMG!
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
Upgraded my desktop to:AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.21GHz
MSI Neo4/SLI motherboard (Thx Tim)
MSI Geforce NX6800GT-T2D256E PCI Express Video Card
Games run pretty sweet. Lost some stuff though due to not enough power slots
(Geforce takes two!)
Also it doesn't detect 512mb of my ram
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
Apple today released a program called "Bootcamp" (?) which allows you to install Windows XP SP2 onto your intel mac. There was already another way to do this, but Apple has now made the process much easier. On top of that, Bootcamp also installs windows drivers for the following devices:- Intel Chip Set Software (6.2.1)
- ATI Graphics (8.24.0.0)
- Intel Integrated Graphics (6.14.10.4512)
- Marvel Yukon Ethernet (8.49.2.3)
- SigmaTel Audio (1.0.4889.0 nd375 cp1)
- SigmaTel Audio proto_A2 (1.0.4889.0 nd375 cp1)
- Atheros 802.11 wireless (AirPort) (4.2.2.4)
- Broadcom Wireless (4.10.40.0)
- Apple Bluetooth module (1.0.0.1)
- Apple Keyboard Eject Key (1.0.0.1)
- Apple Keyboard Brightness (for computers with built-in displays) (1.0.0.1)
- Startup Disk Control Panel for Windows XP (1.0.0.1)
Holy crap! Apple themselves released a full set of drivers for windows including video card drivers and even the keyboard brightness! I actually called this a while ago and all I got was the "It'll never happen." What does this mean for Apple? Well now that Windows XP works fully on mac hardware, their computers become the only ones that can natively run OS X, WinXP, and linux. It's a geek dream come true, right? And let's not forget how awesome their computers are. If only the macbook pro had two mouse buttons! They should have anticipated this! The holy grail would be here! I'm still waiting for a smaller macbook pro because the current one, although thin, is still gigantic.
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.