FlyingPage.com has Arrived!

Hello, World! I would like to introduce you to FlyingPage.com!

Long awaited code name 'Project Melon' is now being released to the world. I teamed up with my little brother, Tyler, and we have created a site I am rather proud of. Tyler is a whiz at the graphics, so he took on the challenge of creating the flash animation that is the homepage, and I took care of the business related/advertising/finances areas along with creating and maintenance of our databases through the HTML pages. (asp is my friend)

We have released advertisements for our page in hopes that we will bring in traffic that would, in fact, like to advertise with us. Our target audience is the online business that has some advertising money to play with and sponsor a new endeavor (at least for now). I think our adventure has potential of great success, we just have to get the name out there, and that's where I would like your help.

I am very excited about FlyingPage.com and would love for it to grow. If you know anyone that would be interested in helping us begin our business endeavor, I would be much appreciated if you could send them in the direction of the page. Also, they are more than welcome to email me at jason@flyingpage.com.

Hopefully this site will help take a little stress out of the flying lessons fund, and maybe bring in a little extra play cash as well!

Wish Tyler and myself the best! Thanks in advance to those that give us a helping hand!!!

I Think I'll be an Astronaut... or something...

So much of our lives are concentrated around our careers. How many times when you were little did someone ask you: "So what do you want to be when you grow up?" Even more interesting, how many times did the answer change?

I remember wanting to be everything from an author to a marine biologist, a teacher to a musician... a computer programmer. For those that are all 'grown up', are your current fields anything you wanted to be when you grew up? Is your current field even what you went to college for? And most importantly... are you happy? You know what, I'm not happy. I don't enjoy battling traffic to get somewhere I don't even want to go. I won't post the company I work for now in hopes that Google doesn't tag this post with my employers name... but if you dig through a very few number of posts, I am sure it will show up.

I don't enjoy walking into the overly fluorescent building in the morning. Some day we're going to find out that fluorescent lights are actually carcinogens, and we'll all be in very deep trouble. I don't enjoy going into my very nice and spacious cube, or sitting in my comfortable and ergonomically sound desk chair only to flip open a laptop and go into a coma for eight hours. I am not rugged Paul Bunion... but the majority of days I spend at work I don't even see a glimpse of natural light between the hours of 9 and 5. Sure some of that may be my fault. I could take two minutes to walk outside, take a big breath and walk back in… but I’m afraid I would taste the fresh free air and make a sprint for the road forgetting about the clutter of papers, emails, and post-it notes my desk has waiting for me.

Yes, it is Monday, and yes, it is my first day back to work after a week long vacation, and yes... I am whining.

I came back to work today and checked my emails. I had 180 new messages from one week of being gone. Who needs that? I have now worked for this company for over a year. My one-year was on 7/5/2007... I have the 'Happy Anniversary' certificate hanging in my cube to prove it. I'm tired of it. I get tired of things quick though, it is not a good thing much of the time. I'll play one video game for days, and then I'll decide I can't do it anymore and never touch it again. It drives my roommate crazy!

So here is my dilemma, on September 13th, I am going to Boston to visit my brother and his wife. That will mark the end of my second CoOp quarter... meaning that will end my required term with my current company. My original plan was to keep working part time, 20 hours a week to bring in the cash needed for my lifestyle on top of paying off my flight lessons while continuing to fly every few weeks. I now have another possible option of working at a Dell kiosk in a mall selling Dell computers, for a decent hourly wage and possible commission. I am currently making $14/hour from my current employer and would be making somewhere in the range of $8/hour at this new employer.

My commonsense tells me to suck it up and keep working with the company I am with now, much better money, and when the new CoOp quarter comes around I can find a different company that will also pay me a pretty wage. Maybe I won’t be as miserable when only here for half the time… The rest of my brain and body then screams no and tells me that I'm dying, sitting here surrounded by 6 foot barriers, white walls, white ceilings, fluorescent glows and hums.

Six foot tall cubicle walls, six feet deep in the ground... eh?

I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm impressed if you made it through my whiny post. Feel free to leave a comment if you like, but this one was really for me.

Thanks for reading!

- Jason

Politics, Religion and Sex

What are the three things that shouldn't be discussed around the dinner table? Politics, religion, and what was the other one, was it sex? I had never understood the statement until as of recent when the first two of the the trio were brought to discussion.

Sitting around the dinner table with my two brothers, mom, and dad, we discuss everything on the list with not problems. We have vibrant arguments and joke about opinions and everyone is better off in the end from it, I believe. No one was ever really offended, as much challenged by the arguments brought up to certain points. At a recent dinner beyond the nuclear family, things were slightly different.

Religion was brought up in a small group which soon turned into talk of politics and our current political policies (or lack of for some of the people in talk). Once the discussion was in heat, it was then that I realized why the topic is off limits for dinnertime talk. People that I didn't know completely all too well were standing firm in arguments that I believed to be full of something other than truthful backing, but I didn't want to argue my views to a applicable level with fear that I might offend someone in my somewhere extended family.

I love hanging with this side of my family. They are so different and unique in respect to my other side of the family that it is refreshing at times, seeing minds tick in a different manner. I am a people pleaser, and although as of late, I have begun taking strong opinions in many matters, I don't want to plain offend any person, especially family. I remain quiet and listen, taking in sides. Some people are stubborn and start mislabeling people... 'you know the problem with Muslims...?' I almost fell out of my chair. The problem with Muslims? Every single one of them? Excuse me, but do you know the problem with Americans, they waste and eat too much, sorry, I'm an American, I definitely don't eat enough and I make a definite conscious effort to not waste. Labeling is not a good thing... just don't do it.

I became frustrated and had to leave the discussion. I am guessing no one even knew that I was paying attention to the words being thrown back and forth, but I was, and I had to leave before I blew steam. When I get upset over something, I don't make good arguments. I don't speak well to public. I am a person who has to calmly collect my thoughts before going into an argument, so whenever I get all heated up and start arguing, I make terrible arguments and let the opposition win... not a good thing.

Honestly I am not sure where this post is taking me. Mostly I am just venting about the realization why people beyond a strongly knit group should not discuss politics, religion, or sex when you are in a forced friendly environment. Tensions rise. I hope I am not giving the wrong impression. I love discussing differences of opinions with others, even extended family sure, but not at a gathering. I'm not sure the proper scenario... but I'll let you know if I ever figure that out. It is more of one of those things that you must be comfortable and respect the person you are discussing with and you know at the time.

That's all for now... blarged: Jason

Flying without me flying... weird

Today was the first day of flying that I haven't been in the cockpit
in such a long time! I had completely forgotten how fast these big
jets move compared to my little Beechcraft Skipper. Right now we are
cruising at a mild 32,000 feet somewhere over desert and mountains.
We've been flying for just over two hors of our three and a half hour
scheduled time.

The flight from Dayton to Detroit was rather uneventful, lasting only
30 minutes and all. I met this really interesting character next to
me though. He didn't say anything to me until we were already landed
in Detroit, but when we did start talking it was a bit of fun.

I never caught his name, but I do know that he was originally from
Indonesia and eventually found himself with a family in Dayton. He
has a son who got a bachelors and maters degree from University of
Cincinnati and now "invents" things for a company out in Seattle. He
also has a daughter who does aministrative work for Sinclair Community
College up in Dayton. He also has a daughter who has a mental
dissability, which he is very frustrated about.

This guy was flying out to Seattle to visit his son and his three
month old Grandson. He was extremely proud of his son as he kept
saying "my son invents things!"

He was a rather bright cookie himself, knowing three languages. In
his quiet and broken english he told me about meeting his wife in
Holland and how they just came back from visiting there. He was
reading a book that was written in deutch that the author (who he made
sure to point out her picture on the back of the book) had personally
given him while in Holland. It was written about a countries fight
for freedom... Which of course got us soon talking about politics...
Yeah... It was pretty funny.

Detroit is a huge hub for NWA so they have two extremely long
terminals. I had a five hour layover before my current flight so I
decided to walk.

I have found a new intense interest in going for walks. It is just a
nice and relaxing thing to do.

They have a beautifil tunnel under the runways with soothing music and
a light show that I walked through three times while there.

I first decided to check and see if I could hitch a ride on an earlier
flight, so I left security and went to the ticket counter only to get
a negative. After a moment spent outside, I went back theough
security. There was a really short line to go through the metal
detectors on the far end so I went down there. Apparently its where
they randomly select people for the 'special' security test. I had
read about it but had never actually seen one. You stand in a box
thing and little puffs of air blow on you. I think they then sample
the air for materials that could be linked to explosives... I was
safe.

While cruising the terminal, I saw a really nice looking girl sit down
with a book. I figured why not practice my female communication
skills, so I went over while she was on the phone. She was talking
about being stuck at airports and so when she hung up I commented. We
then sat there for the next 45 minutes and pretty much told each other
our abridged life stories. It was great fun.

Her name is Kari and she just graduated from college in Rochester, NY
with a degree in something counseling related. She is going to San
Antonio in the fall to start getting her masters in marriage/family
counseling... She was a blast to talk to. There are of coure many
details I am leaving out, but not only am I typing all this on my
phone, I just really don't think you'd care... Hah

After a while she went back to her book and I continued my rounds of
the never ending terminals. Not too much exciting, just watching
people and such. I did start making a list of funny/strange things I
heard people say while just being around. I'll post all of them after
the trip so I can include my trip back.

About six, I made my way back to see if Kari was still around and if
she wanted to grab a bite to eat before we each went our separate
ways. She was happy to see me again, I think, but she had the bad
news that her flight was in Jeopardy of not happening... Again for the
third day. I felt bad for her. She had also just eaten some wings...
So no more dinner for her. She was travelling home to Syracuse from
San Antonio for a friends wedding this upcoming week and just really
wanted to get home.

We said our good-byes and I went to get some pizza before taking the
super cool tram to my gate which was (literally) at least a mile away.
So here I am now. Not too far out of Vegas and feeling pretty
cofident with my people skills today... Hah... Its the little things
right?

Well this probably won't be posted until I can find some free internet
connection, but I'll timestamp it back to 10 pm on Sat July 21st.

Thanks for reading!

Scooby Doo, I Need You!

There's a mystery in my cube... how exciting!

Every morning I walk into my cube and do the same thing. I pull my chair out from where it is pushed in under my desk; grab my computer bag from its hiding spot getting my laptop out. Before sitting down I set my laptop onto it's docking station, hit the power button, and hit the power button on my second monitor. Only then do I put the laptop bag back, and sit down in my ergonomically sound 'slidy' chair. And here's the mystery... the next thing I do every day is reach down and lift my armrests back to the height that I like them.

Why are they down? haha....

It isn't like its the most difficult task in the world to lift my armrests back up to normal, but why do I have to?

I like to imagine that maybe trolls take over the office at nights, scrambling around doing their best to break the copy machine and erase appointments off dry-erase wall calendars. The head troll probably sits at my desk doing the paper work of rearranging as many papers found in people's desks as possible. Being a troll, he isn't as vertically gifted as I am, so he lowers the armrests to suit his person. That's understandable, if I were to work at a trolls desk, I would probably have to lift the armrests up a little bit.

Or...

Maybe it’s the janitors... I should start taking notice to see if there is any correlation between when my trashcan gets emptied and when my armrests are down. The janitors probably have a few select desks that they always change one thing every night. And its something that the associate at the desk will have to change back... like my armrests. Maybe in other cubes they turn a desk calendar around so its facing the cube wall, or turn the phone receiver so the ear piece is resting on the bottom of its base and the mouth of the phone at the top, or changing little things with the chairs! Maybe they are doing an experiment to see if the people they 'mess' with end up going crazy, quit Kroger, run off and join the circus, or start leaving little post-it notes in desperate attempt to figure out who’s playing with their mind!... It might happen to me someday, I'll have to adjust the arms of my chair and I'll just snap. Most likely I'll strip off all my clothes and run around willy-nilly yelping to everyone that "I SHOP AT WALMART AND I AM NOT ASHAMED!". You never know...

Or...

Maybe there is something wrong with my chair and when I push it into the desk it makes the arms fall down... ... ... ... nah!

It's a mystery I tell you. I've thought about talking to some of my coworkers about it... but I fear they might think I'm crazy... or am I already???

I'll just keep adjusting my armrests and keep to myself... I like the incessant rocking... it helps me think... I'm a code monkey; give me a program to write... ooo ooo aah aah!

I’ll be all right… I hope…

PS... I leave for vacation Saturday morning... so I may not be writing much for the next week, if anything at all. Be prepared for an exciting new release on August 1st though! You want to know where we're going on vacation: Ohio --> Las Vegas, NV --> Los Angeles, CA --> Bullhead City, AZ --> Las Vegas, NV --> Ohio. It will be in the upper 70's in LA and upper 90's in AZ/NV... so excited!

Later!

fortune -o (heh)

Do you know what my favorite program of all time is? It is this little program called fortune that runs in the Unix shell. I have it set up so that whenever I open a new shell here at work I am greeted with a message from the fortune. Today, I half asleep, rolled into my cube at about 8:20am. I turn on my computer and start going through the morning chores of warehouse inventory balance-on-hand comparisons. I wrote a shell script that consolidate one hours worth of work into two seconds, so I open up the shell... and am greeted by the fortune:

In the middle of a wide field is a pot of gold. 100 feet to the north stands a smart manager. 100 feet to the south stands a dumb manager. 100 feet to the east is the Easter Bunny, and 100 feet to the west is Santa Claus.

Q: Who gets to the pot of gold first?
A: The dumb manager. All the rest are myths.

Hah... I love it! No offense taken towards my manager though. She is very smart and does a very fine job handling the complexities and headaches of the WIN system.

You want some more examples of fortune? well here ya go...

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
-- Blaise Pascal

A computer salesman visits a company president for the purpose of selling the president one of the latest talking computers.
Salesman: "This machine knows everything. I can ask it any question and it'll give the correct answer. Computer, what is the speed of light?"
Computer: "186,282 miles per second."
Salesman: "Who was the first president of the United States?"
Computer: "George Washington."
President: "I'm still not convinced. Let me ask a question. Where is my father?"
Computer: "Your father is fishing in Georgia."
President: "Hah!! The computer is wrong. My father died over twenty years ago!"
Computer: "Your mother's husband died 22 years ago. Your father just landed a twelve pound bass."

Your lover will never wish to leave you

Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

They are all fun little stories/expressions/fortunes. Most of them are quite geeky... seeing as how most people using a unix based platform tend to be on the geeky side. But I thought I would just share my love for Fortune.

For those interested in learning a little more about fortune check out the Wikipedia Entry

Later!

My Name is Jason, and I'm a Computerholic...

Yesterday I was talking online after work, and all of a sudden I just got this urge to throw my computer against a wall. Was it broken? no. Was I angry? no. I just really didn't want to stare at the screen any longer... so I went over to a friends place and we went for a walk through a local park... it was good.

So.... I realize I've been definitely slacking off on the blog, but I have to tell you by the time I get home from work where I've been staring at a screen all day long, and then working on a few computer related projects at the house... I really don't want to look at a computer any longer.

... which brings me to the topic of today's post (if you haven’t assumed already) ... computer time!

All right, so let's be honest, how many hours a day do you spend in front of the computer? For me at least the number is rather disgusting. In the morning after getting a shower and such I check my email and maybe see if there are any headline news stories worth reading before going to work. So at most I spend 15 minutes on the computer before leaving for work.

+0.25 hours

Now I'm at work, this is simple; I'm on the computer all day at work. I might have an hour or two of meetings, so for arguments sake let's say I have one hour of meetings five days of the week. That taken into consideration with working about eight hours a day, I will give a conservative estimate and say I'm on the computer for seven hours each day at work.

+7.00 hours

Time to head home from work... I hop on the highway and in a quick 30 minutes I'm back at the house, upstairs, putting on more comfortable clothes and doing what? Hitting up pandora.com for all my music needs, checking emails, and chatting with people online. This probably takes about 30 minutes on average.

+0.50 hours

From here on is a little sketchy, it all depends on the day. Everything before changing clothes after work is pretty set in stone, but depending on evening activities I might not be on the computer at all, or I might be on all night. Let's just take for example a 'normal' evening, where I do hang out with people but I still have some time to myself.

Let's say after changing clothes I'm having good conversation with someone online and I keep talking to them. I get home from work sometime between 5:30 and 6:00, so I probably talk to this person, or persons until 7:30, when I'm ready for dinner. Let's say this lasted one hour and 45 minutes.

+1.75 hours

We eat dinner in the kitchen away from all screens having nice conversation and talking about what we're doing for the evening. People are usually over for dinner, so I won't get back on the computer until they leave... about 11:00pm. After they leave I'll hop on the computer, check emails, play a card game or two, chat with other people with no faces until I'm too sleepy to stay up anymore... which is probably around 12:30am

+1.50 hours

Lather, rinse, and repeat, eh?

Let's add this up... as long as the windows calculator hasn't started to fail me now... I'm getting a total of...
11 HOURS

can you say Holy Cow! That is a disgusting number of hours... almost half of one day (including sleep) is spent staring at a little glowing screen. This doesn't even include time that I'm watching TV or playing Nintendo... I should seriously look into making this number go down.

Real quick... that's just 5 days of the workweek, my weekend computer usage is much less.
Saturday: I'll be on for maybe and hour or two in the morning and probably at night, but not too often during the day. So I'm going to estimate 4.5 hours of computer time on a Saturday.
Sunday: Even less, maybe an hour in the morning after church, and probably about 2 hours before bed maybe? so let's go with 3 hours on a Sunday.

That makes a total of 7.5 hours for the weekend, plus the 5*11=55 for the weekdays, we're at a total of 62.5 hours per week. Nasty.

Let's multiply that by 50 for a year (because of vacations and such) and we're getting 62.5*50=
3125 HOURS

I know... 7.5*50=1875 hours of that is at work, which is the majority, but that is still a lot of hours on a computer. What would we ever do without them.... crazy

How many hours do you spend on your computer a day? I know... it’s depressing...

Flight Lesson 17 - Is this plane airworthy???

Arriving at Lunken as the sun was dipping past the horizon, it was a strange feeling... Usually I'm leaving the airport at this time, not just getting here. Tonight, we start night flight with a nighttime cross-country... and I don't think anything more could have decided otherwise for us.

During preflight we were checking lights and noticed that the landing light was out of commission. Kind of against regs to fly without the landing light... but, we'll survive. We still have our strobes and nav lights. Taxiing to 21L my eyes become fully adjusted to the unusual lighting.

Take off was normal, just a little dark, especially with no landing light. We got into our climb, turned crosswind, turned downwind and departed on our heading of 086 for KUNI over in Athens (the Ohio University Airport)

Soon after we were up in the air ATC calls asking about our transponder. We were showing up as a target with no altitude... after smacking it around a little bit we got the OK from ATC. In the meantime our right strobe light stopped working as well. Occasionally it would give a little blink, but not enough to be comforting. The left strobe light then gave out as well... good thing for Nav lights, eh? The strobe on the left wing did come on about 3 minutes later though.

We're chuggin' through the skies above Clermont Country, reviewing normal night flight procedures along with nighttime navigation. I was a little uneasy (especially with things not working) but most was fine. Not long after departure, Gary asks me, so do you think we should turn around? He's always asking me these loaded questions, and I can never tell what he's going for. I answered with that if I was by myself I'd be turned around and back on the ground as quick as I could... but since he was up, I had full confidence that we could handle ourselves. He shrugged an OK and we continued.

After getting about 45 miles to the east of Lunken, near Hillsboro, the lights on the instruments started a methodic dimming process along with the amps meter. This was going on when we had the alternator on... and the alternator off... no good. I think it had something to do with only having one strobe light on, and the capacitors were discharging unevenly. I also then noticed, with rising tension... that the plane was only feeding fuel through its left wing tank...

... well crap

So we're 45 miles out, with 1/4 of one tank of fuel, no landing light and half of our strobe lights, a transponder that is on the fritz... and its bloody dark outside!

**Note: In all this craziness, I do have to make note that I have never seen so many stars in Cincinnati as what I saw up away from the lights. It was amazing, absolutely gorgeous. I had to keep my mind on flying the plane and not on staring at all the pretty stars :-)

Gary makes the executive decision and I pull a 180 heading directly west, back towards Lunken. I'm nervously watching our fuel and making calculations to see if we have enough to get back... 29 gallons full, and burning 6 per hour. 1/4 of 29 is about 7.25 gallons, plus a 10 knot direct headwind... we should be fine to get back, we had only been flying for about 25 minutes. See my error (that I just now realized)... we had 1/4 fuel on one wing, not total. The right wing fuel wasn't even feeding. 1/4 of 15 gallons is just under 4 gallons, 2/3's hour, 40 minutes? Scary eh? These calculations, however, do not match what I saw from the cockpit. You can never really tell how much fuel you have from those gauges, but we were just under 1/4 tank when we were landed.

On the way back to Lunken, we kept going over nighttime navigation and what to be looking for. I noticed how many more planes you see flying at night. Gary chuckled and said its funny because there's like five-times as many flying during the day, and we don't see them!

Lunken was about 3 miles in front of us and we were descending from just under 2000. Gary asks, can we make it with power off? NO WAY my mind said... "No, I don't think we can..." Gary thought for a second and reached over and pulled the throttle all the way back. This guy is a freakin' loony! is all that went through my mind. We're coasting / dropping over darkness... which knowing the Lunken area can only mean that trees were soon to be our passengers. I was doing my best to keep 70 knots and aim straight for the threshold of the runway, but we just kept dropping. We were going down at about 700 feet per minute and at a level that appeared to me to be just skimming the tops of trees... when Gary said... guess you're right, and pushed the throttle to max. I breathed a sigh of relief and we continued...

We landed at Lunken just a few minutes after 11, and the tower closes at 11, so we just missed them taking care of us. A little bit of traffic was in the area, but we had no problems getting in and off the runway. I kept wanting to flare well too early during the landing. The combination of not being able to see the runway due to being nighttime and along with no landing lights was keeping the darkness below me a little scary.

We did survive though. We hung around the office until 12:15ish talking about the flight and all the different aspects of night flight. I think I'm really going to enjoy flying at night as long as the plane is in working condition... I'll have to reschedule the cross country, this time with 3729D instead of 37147... hah... crazy planes...

Have a great weekend!!!!

Back to past ideas...

Not much time today to sit and write a halfway decent post (at least in my mind)

Team Pawlak is now on the prowl... you remember me mentioning Project Melon??? Well its back. Tyler and I are hard at work trying to bring this idea to life. I have a few other ideas that I've been working on behind the scenes as well. I don't even care if we really making any profit of the website... I'm just hoping for a little bit of traffic to boost a little bit of self-confidence for each of us.

No details yet.... soon though.... very soon!

Fun C++ Problem

Hey all...

I ran across this fun C++ problem in a forum and thought it worth sharing. It was quite embarrasing trying to figure out the answer. My mind hasn't had to think like that in such a long time.

Here's the problem:

eh... ok, so I can't paste the code here or else it messes up the browser... click the link below to get the source file... sorry :-(

Click here to download the source file straight to your box.

Best of luck! Hopefully you do better than I did!

If you get it, let me know! don't post the answer though, let's give some time for those (like me) who may not get it all too fast.

To Fly, or to be Invisible...

Have you heard the recent commercials on the radio where the two guys are debating over whether it would be cooler to have the super power to fly, or the super power to be invisible? I think the commercial is for some cell phone... or something... apparently their marketing campaign failed with me...

So here's my thought process...

If you know me at all you would immediately say... well of course Jason would rather fly! And my initial thoughts are the same... I think the super power of flight would be amazingly cool! But also being me, I have to think too much and analyze the pros and cons of both super powers.

Positives of Flying...
- You can get places quicker
- You can visit place you wouldn't normally be able to visit
- You could give people rides by just letting them hang onto your shoestrings
- IT IS SUPER COOL

Positives of Invisibility...
- You can go places your not supposed to be
- You can be sneaky
- You can be alone when you want to be alone
- You can walk in late to work without your boss realizing it... ;-)
- IT IS SUPER COOL

OK... so maybe making the lists of Pros was not the best method to analyze the issue at hand. Well how about some examples of a day with each power.

Things I would do in my day of flying...
- Go to the Ocean
- Fly around the world (a few times)
- Find some whales and dolphins
- Sit in the air for a while on a street corner and watch people's expressions when they see me
- Call NPR and have them do a story on me

Things I would do in my day of invisibility...
- Walk through the house with people around to see what they're talking about
- Go to the police station / government buildings and go in all the rooms I'm not supposed to be in
- Keep tapping Sean on the shoulder without him knowing I'm there
- Drive my car really fast and get pulled over for speeding just to see the officers expression when he gets to the car
- Not call NPR so no one would know!

So I guess the differences are in that if I had the ability to fly, it would be like being on vacation all the time. If I had the ability to be invisible, I would be a sneak.

From a third party perspective, I would assume you read those lists and think that I should probably choose flying... but the potential of knowing so much forbidden information is quite attractive!

If I were invisible, I would of course have to watch out for foreign governments and them capturing me and using me for their evil deeds. They wouldn't care about a flying person as much as someone who is invisible I think. Now you're thinking well couldn't you just turn invisible and escape? Well you have to give those foreign governments a little credit, they would probably already know the names and address of all family (and maybe those that read this blog too!... watch out...).

So here's my conclusion I think...

If I had the ability forever.... I would choose to fly
If I had the ability for just a week.... I would choose to be invisible

Fair enough? if not... too bad :-D

So how about you? Which ability would you rather have??? or would you rather have something beyond these two?

Do you see what I see?

No... it is not time to start singing Christmas carols yet...

Have you ever really thought about what you see as color? Is it possible that we all don't see colors the same, but we've never seen it any other way... so we see that as normal?

To both you and me... a tree that has hot pink leaves and a blue trunk would look rather silly. But how do we know the color that my eyes see as hot pink isn't your normal leafy green? Maybe if you and I switched bodies for a day we would be so blown away by the different perspective on the world. You might think my normal looking tree is amazingly... messed up!

Has anyone ever received a successful eye transplant, do you know? But as we all know, our brains don't register exactly what our eyes see. Our eyes see everything upside down. It isn't until our brain receives the images from our eyes that it turns the images right side up, for what we are used to. Maybe somewhere in the mess of electrical blurps and beeps, we see slightly different colors... who knows!?!

Is it possible that the only people, who know the true look of things, are folks that are colorblind?

Speaking of eyes... have you ever wondered what it would look like if we were like those reptiles that had each of their eyes on opposite sides of their heads? I look at my guinea pigs sometimes and wonder if they can see me when I'm standing right in front of them...

Hold your hand flat, straight up and down and put the side with your thumb onto your nose so it splits your vision... is this how my pigs see? Or what about those animals that can move their eyes independently of one another... how cool would that be!

Kinda gives me a headache just thinking about it...


That's all for today... tomorrow's topic... The benefits / drawbacks / thoughts on whether I would rather have the super power of flying or invisibility! (exciting eh?)

Flight Lesson 16 - A Long Cross Country

I showed up to Lunken today with my flight plan prepared only to find out that there were slight changes in plans.... well, major changes in plans.... complete changes in plans.

Not only were we changing locations of our cross country, but we were going to be flying a four-seater Piper Cherokee with a passenger in back. I was very excited to fly the slightly bigger plane.

The Cherokee felt much heavier than the Skippers, probably because it is, and in addition we had an extra passenger in the back.

We took off from Lunken at exactly 16:00 and went out east towards KUNI where Ohio University is in Athens. We landed, with a touch and go at 17:00 and then turned north to go to Newark, which is just east of Columbus. That leg took about a half hour.

The reason for the passenger was that he had heard about a building that was shaped like a hand basket. And he thought it would be very neat to see it from the air. Well we found that basket, and it was that... a giant building with handles, very funny. I took a few pictures with Gary's phone, so hopefully he'll send those my way and I can post them. We landed and stopped for fuel at Newark. The uncontrolled airport was very quiet and laid back. They had cookies, which of course I sampled a few of :-)

Taking off from Newark, we headed back towards Cincinnati on the longest leg of our flight. Nothing of too much excitement happened. I did fly over a hot air balloon, as well as seeing a jet airliner fly above us (probably heading into Columbus). But total flight time for the cross country was 3.4 hours..... took quite the hit on the wallet.

I really enjoyed learning about and flying the Cherokee, it was exciting to try something new. Next on the flying agenda is night flight this week, followed by a night cross country. We're going to do the Lunken -> Athens -> Portsmouth -> Lunken for the night cross country. Then after that I'm going to repeat the cross country, just solo. I think I've broken the 20 hour threshold, so that is pretty exciting for me.

After my lesson I went over to the bar at Wings with Dave, Sharon, and Gary to have a beer and chat. It was a good time. These folks have been in Cincinnati a very long time and know a lot of the history. It is very enjoyable listening to them.

That's all for now, hope your weekend is going well!

Later!

What if the Butterfly turned around?...

We all know about the 'Butterfly Effect'... one small event creates the future... a butterfly flaps its wings over the plains of Kansas causing Tsunamis on the other side of the world? Makes sense, no?

I'm wondering how the world would be different today if the butterfly had turned around and headed towards Ohio instead of crossing Kansas. I know people always say... well you shouldn't live in the 'What Ifs', you should live in the 'What Nows'... but that isn't nearly as fun sometimes

Let's pick a few key moments in history.

1.) Let's say that Hitler's Mom got a cold and lost her baby... little baby Adolf
2.) Let's say that Bill Gates one day while being young was running on the deck of a pool, slipped, broke his back and is now in a wheel chair
3.) Let's say that back in middle school I decided to take Art instead of Band

First off... I think it might be a fact (but possibly not) that Hilter's mother was considering an abortion... but for some reason or another didn't have one (would it have been OK after seeing what happened if she did have an abortion??? talk about your ethical dilemma)

So Momma Hitler lost the baby by getting sick... or fell... or got the abortion... to put it straight, no one ever met/heard of/feared Adolf Hitler. How would the world be different? Would World War II have occurred? Would there have been a different war, to even out the balance. At this point in history are we suppose to have two 'World Wars' and it just so happened that one of them was rooted in a certain German mindset? What about all the movies about the Holocaust, millions upon millions of dollars have poured into Hollywood due to the tragic set of events that took place over half a century ago. Would the world be a nicer place? Would people have a different view of people that are Jewish? Think about all the bright minds that were lost in the Holocaust, would we now have a cure for cancer? Would we be able to stop global warming?

On the opposite perspective, what if one of the people killed during the Second World War were, if not destined to die in the war, destined to be the worlds most feared terrorist. With a smarter than should be mind that might have been lost, the entire North American continent could be under a claustrophobic cloud of nuclear fumes right now. Is the world in balance because Adolf Hitler walked his own path? In our historical perspective, Hitler was a terrible person who did unspeakably terrible things. It is hard to imagine the world being a worse off place if Hitler did not come to power.... but what if?

So Bill Gates slipped... he's in a wheel chair now. He is still the same person he is at this current day. His mind is still bright, his heart still large. Would the world have treated him differently if he were in a wheel chair? Would Apple have given him impassable benefits so he wouldn't have left? Would Microsoft exist? How would the world be different? Linux might be the platform of choice... more people may have learned to help develop open source software. Does your cell phone run windows? Would someone else have taken Bill Gates concept and run with it... making the same present day, just without the powerful name of Bill Gates? Or would our society have viewed Bill Gates no differently than if he wasn't in a wheel chair, and today would be the same as today is now? Would computers have never hit the market as strong as they are now... and some other 'better' technology found? Maybe our society would be much more advanced if Microsoft hadn't dominated, or maybe some country other than the United States would have taken off in the computer world.... where has the United States economy taken its roots in?

What if I had been an artist instead of a musician (not that musicians aren't artists...) Would I have gone to Indiana University before coming back home to the University of Cincinnati? Would I have met the people I did in high school band? Would I be a world famous computer programmer now since music took up all my time in high school? Would I have found my place elsewhere? I have very different life experiences for my young age... what if I found my calling in the art studio instead of the auditorium stage?

What do you think? Are there key points in history that have left their mark to such a degree that our world would be a completely different place? What if Adam and Eve hadn't taken the apple... would someone else have? What if no one ever thought about building a building that reached all the way to heaven… the Tower of Babel never existed? Would the world be one happy family, united under one language, one economy, and one society? What if Lincoln decided not to attend the theatre on the night that he was shot? What if the Titanic didn't sink? What if you slept in 15 more minutes today? How would your life be different?

Its like those choose your own adventure stories... except in life I can't keep all my fingers stuck in pages so that I can go back and see the other path.

Lots of question marks in this post, makes for interesting conversation. Happy Thursday! I'm ready for the weekend!

My Political Compass

After taking a grueling quiz with questions asking some (eh) relevant questions... I found out the same answers I've been told by most political standpoint quizzes... let me show.

This is a two-dimensional representation of political views (economical and social)


This is a representation of well known political leader past and present and where they stand on the two-dimensional plot




Here is where I stand... there were no surprises. I'm thinking being like Gandhi is a good thing.... :-)


Happy Fourth of July!

Flight Lesson 15 - a very gorgeous day

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. I had such a fun time flying!

If you normally follow my flight lessons, you have probably noticed an absence in blogs. Yesterday I went up for the first time in about two weeks. Between iffy weather last week and being sick, I just never got the chance to fly.

There was a little bit of wind whipping around on the ground so I expected to be tossed around a little bit up in the air, but it was surprisingly smooth. And was it ever clear! On my way back west to Lunken after practicing maneuvers I got one of the most beautiful sights of downtown Cincinnati ever!

I flew Skipper 37147 yesterday, which unfortunately has no window vents... but it has two radios, which I really love. After flying I gave my credit card to Sharon and she remarked, "wow, this card is warm..." I kinda felt like saying... "well... duhhh" :-) She's lots of fun.

Up in the air, I just flew around mostly practicing steep turns. Nice smooth motions with attention to attitude are my needs. When leveling off after the steep turn you have much more vertical lift, so I kept popping up 50ish feet, until I finally got it right by pushing in the throttle more than you would think you'd need.

I flew over to East Fork Lake and watched a few boats going around. There were also a very large number of boats on the Ohio River. When coming back to Lunken to do touch and go's I did my landings on 3L, which is not fun. Since Sunken Lunken... is indeed sunken, there is no easy way to approach without buzzing the tops of houses. I survived though :-)

All in all an uneventful day of flying, nevertheless so much fun. I love going up and just cruising around. I decided to be a little more demanding with the plane and go into turns quicker, or ascend/descend quicker. It was fun... like a jet pilot... just at 80 knots... hah.

Fireworks tonight up in Mason!

Later!

Email Etiquette... It's the law (well not really)

Some people need to just plain learn how to use email.

Now if anywhere in this post I offend you by criticizing your current email usage... well, I can't say I'll be sorry. At this day in age though, certain things just need to be known about writing emails.

We all know the little things like make your font readable and colors viewable... we all know that WRITING IN CAPS IS THE SAME THING AS YELLING... SO DON'T DO IT! But let's delve into a few other less noted details.

My biggest pet peeve while holding conversation back and forth, whether related to a technical issue at work, or the weekend plans, is this... Reply with history... PLEEEEEASE. I'm sorry world... I didn't put my life on hold, waiting... on the edge of my seat, sitting on my hands, just watching for the screen to flicker and increment my inbox by one. Sometimes I can't remember what I wrote to you... especially if its over a weekend and Monday morning when I arrive in the office I have a message in my inbox that simply states...

Yes... that sounds great, can we have that done by lunchtime Monday?

I can confidently say I will have no idea what you're talking about. I do my best to not think about work at all during the weekend... and that's not a struggle, believe me. Reply with history folks... it is for the good of all humanity.

Next…

Have you seen that commercial about the unlimited texting or something... the Mom is talking to her daughter and the daughter is talking back in all those acronyms? I get a headache just watching that commercial and attempting to understand what's going on. Listed below is the official list of acceptable non-English words

- brb [be right back]
- lol [laugh out loud]
- haha [computer laughter]
- np [no problem]
- btw [by the way]

Let's have none of the silly crazy acronyms like...

- CD9: Code 9 Parental Units Nearby????
- IMNERHO: In My Never Ending Remotely Humble Opinion????
- JK: just kidding... I hate this one with a passion...

Yes I know I'm bordering on talking about instant messenger conversations and not just email... but sorry, this is my post :-P

(And yes, I approve of all smiley faces as long as they are easy to understand what they are representing)

Sometimes with acronyms I have no clue what they are... or like the first and second ones on the don't list… are pretty ridiculous. When my friends and I were little we just had a code word or something we'd say when someone was walking near the phone when we were talking about something we didn't want anyone else to hear. I think we said some type of fruit... Looking back, my parents probably thought I was pretty strange. They'd walk into a room and hear this much of my phone conversation:

Yeah, and did you hear about... (pause) ...grapefruit?

Now a note about email signatures:
I love them! The sillier the better. A guy at work here has one that is a gif animation of a fly fisher. I get a report from him once a month, and I enjoy seeing his signature every time. Let's just not get too carried away folks. A signature is a place to provide personality along with your contact info... but I don't want any spastic flashing colors, or animations of people/stick figures getting shot/stabbed/run over/committing suicide or any other something that someone walking by my cube would stop to take a second glance at.

And finally I will talk about the three fields that are such a mystery to so many... To: Cc: Bcc:

Let's knock them off one at a time shall we?

To:
The people that the email is addressed to should have their addresses placed in the To field. If the email is an FYI for someone, their address does not belong in the To field.

In both examples, President Bush is the recipient we are concerned with.
Example 1 (good usage): I'm writing an email to President Bush telling him that I approve of his immigration reform
Example 2 (bad usage): I'm writing to members of congress to remind them that the status quo sucks and even if the entirety of Bush's plan isn't perfect, its better than what we have now.

Cc:
The Cc field, which is an acronym for Carbon copy, is just that, it’s a carbon copy. You know how when you go to the store and they give you a carbon copy of a receipt that you had to sign? Well this is the same thing. The email is meant for someone else (the store needs your signature on the receipt) but you are getting a copy to just for your records... Cc is an FYI field.
Use the previous examples for To:, just switch them around, bad -> good and good -> bad... got it?

Bcc:
Blind carbon copy is what we're looking at now. This is probably the least used field. When you put an address in the Bcc field, it means that they don't need to know whom all the email is going to. They will just see that the email was sent to them, but won't be able to see any other addresses in the email header.
Example: I am sending out a mass email to all the members of my website forum. I don't want their personal email addresses out in the open... so I address the email myself… To: jason@blarged.com and then I Bcc: everyone else

Got it?

Email is a great tool and great way to stay in contact with people you don't see all too often. Let's make sure we use it correctly though.

If you just skipped down to the bottom of the post and haven't read anything else... just read this.
REPLY WITH HISTORY

Do you have any other Email Laws you'd like to post?

Time for something new… let’s break the routine!

While thinking about what I should write about today in my blog... I was coming up with blanks. I felt like writing, but I it seemed as though someone had stolen all my idea bubbles. Today was just an average Monday, nothing too exciting, just my normal routine...

That got me to thinking (scary ain't it?). So many people have their routines... their morning routines of getting up, shower, brushing, dressing, eating... and its all in a very specific order... taken to a science to perfect and heighten efficiency for that individual.

Let me tell you my morning routine:
7:00 - First alarm goes off - I smack it and fall back asleep
7:05 - Second alarm goes off - I groan, smack it and hopefully don't fall back asleep
7:15 - Roll out of bed, rub my eyes so my contacts will start working again
7:16 - I arrive in the bathroom and use the restroom.
7:17 - I turn on the shower to let it warm and start go to the sink to brush my teeth.
7:19 - I trim my beard (except right now my bear is MIA)
7:20 - Hop in the shower and soap, starting at the neck then down to my toes. I then wash my face, then wash my hair
7:30 - Hop out of the shower, dry off and shave.
7:34 - Say good morning to the pigs (Arthur and Charles) and give them a treat
7:35 - Get dressed
7:40 - Head downstairs and pack a lunch (and of course I pack my lunch in the same manner every day... but who cares about that)
7:45 - Walk out the door and get in the car to drive to work.

It's pretty much the same thing every day... a little variable on the minutes, but generally the same routine... every... single... day.

With the question of routines being good or bad for you I decided to turn to my good friend Google for a little query. Just searching the query ‘routines good’ I found more links to healthy choice websites plastered with exercise schedules that I thought even I at 6’2” and 150 lbs needed to lose a little waist. I then decided it’d only to be fair to query ‘routines bad’. I mostly found sites that had to do with bad habits which aren't really the routines that I am considering.

In the morning, is it good that I have a routine that I practice every day? Is it too mind numbing? Am I holding back my creativity and imagination by having routines?

My first thought was that routines could be very good when it comes to exercise and personal goals. When a person is in a routine, they are able to accomplish tasks (which sometimes the task is something they don't really want to do... like crunches) without even thinking about it. You still get the physical reward from doing your crunches without having to convince your mind you need to do them... its already routine.

But in the same manner... what is your mind doing while you are in a routine?... here's probably what my mind consists of in the morning during my morning routine...

"...i'm tired..."
"...i don't want to go to work..."
"...man that bed looks comfortable..."
"...OUCH that water is hot..."
"...should I wear blue or green today..."
"...that girl was really cute yesterday..."
"...wow, i'm really tired..."

Exciting eh? At the point when most gears are turning upstairs I’m in the middle of deciding whether blue or green is the best color for the day. This cannot be a good thing.

While I was at Indiana University, I had a friend who wanted to try something new every week... we had a blast. Coming back from one break he showed up with a unicycle. We tried learning to ride it in the dorm hallways and kept falling into people’s doors. They'd poke their heads outside to see who 'knocked' and see us... shake their heads and go back to whatever was so important in their rooms. It was a good time... until the Janitor found us and gave us quite the tongue-lashing. Another week we decided to learn how to play squash instead of the normal racquetball. That was great! I had a welt on my back for what seemed like weeks from that ball hitting me (that ball has no bounce, so you have to smack it quite a bit to get any movement off the walls).

I could discuss my opinions and thoughts more, but I'm already pretty far into a not so short post... so I'll sum it up in the conclusion...

I think routines can be good things. As Google showed, exercise routines can be good, healthy eating routines can be good so your body knows when to do what it needs to do. Routines can be bad though if we get stuck in them. My friend Josh showed me that it is not only important, but also amazingly fun to get out of the routine of things and try new things. This is why flying has been so much fun for me I believe. It's different.

I have a challenge for you. Make a list of five things... and over the next five weeks, do one of them a week. They can be as simple as trying that new restaurant you've been eyeing on the drive to work, or something more complex as finding a unicycle and learning to ride (which I never did succeed...). I am going to do just that myself. I will make a list of at least five things and try and complete them one week at a time. I might do this as a joint effort with my roommate, and make it a fun group thing where we try something out of our routine every week.

My job is OK for where I am right now in my life (in the internship world) but this place bores me to death... I just can't let myself get stuck in the routine of working here. As of July 5th, I will have been working here for one full year.

Thanks for stopping by, best of luck with the new and exciting!