I have a new computer. Have for a while. Commissioned a buddy of mine to build it, and it's pretty sweet. Pentium Quad-Core, 2.4Ghz processor, good motherboard, 2 gig of RAM (I'll be expanding that to 8 when I have the money, naturally), NVidia GeForce 8600 Graphics card (which is sweet). So, with a fair amount of power available to my disposal, The first thing I did was kick some alien booty as Gordon Freeman in Half-Life 2: Episode 2. After crowbarring half of another universe into oblivion, I looked at my computer through the plexiglas door on the case and thought to myself, "What Now?"
All that processing power, all that memory, 500gb of storage space...it's really quite excessive. All I'm going to do with it is download movies and music, an honest waste of such a nice system. So I searched.
SETI@home is a simple program. Download the host program, called BOINC, and then run SETI@home and your computer will start downloading packages of numbers to be crunched, numbers SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) collected in one of their looks at the sky. They need to process MASSIVE amounts of data looking for patterns that could be indicative of an intelligent society. Basically, my computer is looking for an alien society's version of "I Love Lucy". Turns out a lot of overclockers do this too, or other programs you can run through BOINC because it maxes out their system and is a good way of assuring that they can run their processor at such an insane speed.
Wonderful. I'm looking into space, working to solve one of the oldest questions mankind has. Thing is, I'm not much for the philanthropic, more of the misanthropic really. So, how can this benefit me? I searched, and it turns out I could potentially get PAID for those CPU cycles I'm wasting. CPUShare is a project where I register, open a sell order, and eventually somebody connects to it and decides to pay me the amount I decided on when I opened the order per hour for a chunk of my computers. It took a little bit more know-how than simply downloading and installing the BOINC program, but it actually gives you an ISO file and you either burn that to CD and restart your machine with that as the OS or you can create a virtual machine using easily available and free software that will run the program. Problem is, there are more sell orders than there are buy orders, and even though my machine frankly rocks, nobody has connected to me yet.
Eventually, though, somebody will, and while I'll only be paid .02 euros per hour, it's more than nothing, and while I may not know what I'm computing, I'll be getting paid for it and they won't actually have access to my computer itself, only a portion of the CPU and RAM allotted to them.
So all you people who want to render a digital movie and may not have the coolest processor or the most memory? Try CPUShare! They need more buyers!
TRH
Monday, December 10, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
End Run
I re-evaluated my overall class schedule for my college career. I no longer intend to graduate with multiple majors, rather I will graduate as Commercial Aviation. Because of this I am no longer graduation after the spring of 2009 - Should all go well, I will graduate six weeks into the fall semester of next year. I will be done within a year, and this is my LAST WINTER IN GRAND FORKS.
Of course, this isn't easy. I have 35 credits of classes to complete between now and then. I'll be doing 16 credits plus a one-credit Billiards class next semester, including the incredible workload involved with Certified Flights Instructor, followed by 8 credits for each of the two six-week sessions of Summer.
It'll be fun, right?
TRH
Of course, this isn't easy. I have 35 credits of classes to complete between now and then. I'll be doing 16 credits plus a one-credit Billiards class next semester, including the incredible workload involved with Certified Flights Instructor, followed by 8 credits for each of the two six-week sessions of Summer.
It'll be fun, right?
TRH
Monday, October 22, 2007
Candide
The Airlines have complained at length to the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences (read: pilot factory I attend) that the finished product (my peers) are excellent at tactical skills, but severely lack Business Communication and Business Writing skills. To that end, I am sitting in ISBE 320: Business Communication and Writing. The professor is going over Negative News Letters and how we should be spinning them so as to highlight the good of the situation, using Voltaire's Candide as a talking point - best of all possible worlds.
Of course, my Misanthropy screams bloody murder as she says this, but my sense of ethics fire off as well. She's talking about not telling a hypothetical person the real reason you won't write them a letter of recommendation to Harvard Law and we vehemently disagree that she should not be so "Candide" and perhaps be a bit more candid.
It occurs to me that perhaps a lack of education is not the reason we fail at business writing.
A sense of ethics and the midwest bluntness are clearly what do us in here, which disturbs me to no small end, that the nice guy cannot succeed in business by being nice. Or maybe I'm just mad at capitalism for overwhelming me with the massive choice of video cards on the market.
TRH
Of course, my Misanthropy screams bloody murder as she says this, but my sense of ethics fire off as well. She's talking about not telling a hypothetical person the real reason you won't write them a letter of recommendation to Harvard Law and we vehemently disagree that she should not be so "Candide" and perhaps be a bit more candid.
It occurs to me that perhaps a lack of education is not the reason we fail at business writing.
A sense of ethics and the midwest bluntness are clearly what do us in here, which disturbs me to no small end, that the nice guy cannot succeed in business by being nice. Or maybe I'm just mad at capitalism for overwhelming me with the massive choice of video cards on the market.
TRH
Coriolis
Suppose that you were on a massive sphere (hint: you are) and that that sphere were rotating about a singular axis (hint: it is) and that you could in fact get aboard some strange variety of vehicular device which could move above the surface and seperate to it at a rate equal to the linear velocity of that particular patch of surface given the rotation speed (hint: you can). If you were to point in the direction that the patch of land directly underneath you is going and hold that vehicle in the same position, moving at the same speed as the patch of land underneath you, that patch of land would in fact MOVE.
Because the shortest distance between two points on a sphere is not in fact a straight line but a curve (hint: use string and a globe) you will by holding the attitude of the craft travel in that curved line. If going eastward in the northern hemisphere, you would curve towards the southwards, or more simply, you will always curve away from the pole who dominates your hemisphere. Meaning, you will approach the equator and given limitless fuel for your vehicular device, make a darn big sinusoidal wave of sorts.
Which means of course, that being as how you have moved, that land hasn't actually moved. It continued on it's circular path and your circular path took on new incredible dimensions - particularly, the third dimension!
All this has been made possible by the sick breeding of vector calculus, conic sections and geometric algebra. Woo math!
TRH
Because the shortest distance between two points on a sphere is not in fact a straight line but a curve (hint: use string and a globe) you will by holding the attitude of the craft travel in that curved line. If going eastward in the northern hemisphere, you would curve towards the southwards, or more simply, you will always curve away from the pole who dominates your hemisphere. Meaning, you will approach the equator and given limitless fuel for your vehicular device, make a darn big sinusoidal wave of sorts.
Which means of course, that being as how you have moved, that land hasn't actually moved. It continued on it's circular path and your circular path took on new incredible dimensions - particularly, the third dimension!
All this has been made possible by the sick breeding of vector calculus, conic sections and geometric algebra. Woo math!
TRH
Saturday, September 22, 2007
My Disability
I can barely walk in the wake of my recent surgery. I have improved speedwise, but I'm still bent over, as slow as an old man, and quickly tired. My sister took me to Target today and recommended I utilize one of the power-chairs.
As useful as it was, I did not enjoy the experience. I'm only in my twenties, so being in a power-chair I imagine I looked extremely out of place. I felt like everybody was looking at me. "What is he doing in a power-chair?" "Does he really need that?" "I wonder what's wrong with him?" I felt so public, and the most humiliating part was the beep-beep noise I made whenever I backed up. I had to go into the wider main aisles to be able to make a U-turn just so I didn't make that noise.
Also, I can't laugh. Laughter hurts - a lot. I keep wandering across hilarious videos on youtube and I can't appreciate them, or have a good laugh. I can't bend down to play with the family dog, or get up out of bed without serious effort. Life avoiding abdominals exertion is hell.
TRH
As useful as it was, I did not enjoy the experience. I'm only in my twenties, so being in a power-chair I imagine I looked extremely out of place. I felt like everybody was looking at me. "What is he doing in a power-chair?" "Does he really need that?" "I wonder what's wrong with him?" I felt so public, and the most humiliating part was the beep-beep noise I made whenever I backed up. I had to go into the wider main aisles to be able to make a U-turn just so I didn't make that noise.
Also, I can't laugh. Laughter hurts - a lot. I keep wandering across hilarious videos on youtube and I can't appreciate them, or have a good laugh. I can't bend down to play with the family dog, or get up out of bed without serious effort. Life avoiding abdominals exertion is hell.
TRH
Thursday, September 20, 2007
My Scary Day
It is 10:43 PM. 48 hours ago I was complaining to my friend Aly about a stomachache and that I was hungry. Really hungry. Like, starving empty oh-my-god hungry. I first noticed the stomachache at about 7 or 8ish. I didn’t eat that night
Next morning I woke up with a stomachache. Funny thing was, I woke up at 5 in the morning. Aching. Rolling around pressure on my gut ache. I went to the 24-hour subway and got a foot-long. Nothing. I took a hot shower, nothing. I thought it was probably the worst gas I’d ever had, a superfart that refused to travel further down my intestines. I don’t really know why, but I decided to go to the doctor at Student Health. I usually don’t go to doctors, especially not for something as simple as a stomachache.
With an hour to go before my first class, I went to the doctor hoping for a laxative or something, maybe a good punch to the gut to get the gas loose. An hour later they drew blood to run in the lab and a half-hour after that (half-hour late for Space Studies, notably) the bloodwork came back. The doctor sat me down and explained that I had a slightly high white blood cell count, as well as some excess bacteria.
This, he said, is usually a strong indicator of appendicitis. My mind skipped a beat. Appendicitis, my little head-voice said, is an inflammation of the appendix, a useless little vestige in our anatomy that nature has rendered useless but not quite done away with. The most effective treatment is an immediate removal of the organ. This means surgery.
The doctor explained that he wanted me to go over to the main hospital for imaging and other tests. I took his photocopy of the lab results and drove the few blocks to Altru. He had already called over, I just had to show up and walk in. I was booked in, checked out, poked and prodded by first a medical doctor and then a surgical resident. The general consensus was that it was indeed appendicitis. I spoke with my mom on the phone a couple times, and my friend Cass called. She asked if I needed anything, and if she should bring me over a Teddy Bear. I smiled inside, because I knew I wanted her too but I didn’t want to ask, in case somebody else overheard. Stupid as it is, I didn’t want to come across as too pitiful.
The nurse came in and put in an IV. I hate needles, and now a plastic straw went into my hand. I hate IVs. Finally, they prepped me for surgery and took me into the room. It was just like most other surgical rooms, white and clean and sterile. They put two armboards on the surgical table and tied me down with towels. It was JUST LIKE the end of Braveheart, actually. I went under and some while later, I woke up in a hospital room. I sat around for an hour or so, groggy and feeling a horrible ache in my stomach where they had made incisions, but maybe not quite as bad as the stomachache before it. I had spoken with mom before the surgery and she wanted to know if she should come up. I went for broke and said yeah, it’d be nice if she could. It’s a five hour drive, and the surgery was less than three hours, so I had some time to kill.
My friends Cass and Eric and Dave all came in around 5ish. And visited. They joked and it hurt to laugh, but it was good to laugh with friends. The best part? Cass (who is the big sister I never had) brought exactly the Teddy Bear that I wanted, without my even saying which one.
Thanks, to all.
TRH
Saturday, September 15, 2007
The Algorithm
Viral Marketing
This is the concept of creating curiosity in people about an ad so that they talk about it to their friends, as with superbowl commercials. A lot of the "Modernist" (read: Abstract {read: Stupid}) ads are viral. XKCD recently pointed me at another, about "The Algorithm". Their suspicion was that it was for Ask.com. Seen on bilboards in New York City:
The algorithm consistently finds Jesus.
One reply to that particular blogpost noted a number of other things that "The Algorithm" Could do. "The algorithm makes me a sandwich", "The algorithm constantly finds velociraptors". A few of mine: "The algorithm fights kittens and wins most of the time", "The algorithm can find it's way out of an empty paper bag", "The algorithm does not fear Chuck Norris". What have you got?
This is the concept of creating curiosity in people about an ad so that they talk about it to their friends, as with superbowl commercials. A lot of the "Modernist" (read: Abstract {read: Stupid}) ads are viral. XKCD recently pointed me at another, about "The Algorithm". Their suspicion was that it was for Ask.com. Seen on bilboards in New York City:
The algorithm consistently finds Jesus.
The algorithm killed Jeeves.
The algorithm is banned in China.
The algorithm is from Jersey.
One reply to that particular blogpost noted a number of other things that "The Algorithm" Could do. "The algorithm makes me a sandwich", "The algorithm constantly finds velociraptors". A few of mine: "The algorithm fights kittens and wins most of the time", "The algorithm can find it's way out of an empty paper bag", "The algorithm does not fear Chuck Norris". What have you got?Terms of Endearment
Thanks greatly to a couple of recent occurrences, I’ve come up with a new term – DLO. It stands for Date-Like Occurrence. The term refers to hanging out with a person of the opposite gender (or not, depending on the user) in a situation that could be considered a date, but the term-user and partner are not per-se dating. Related Terms:
HDLO – Heavy Date-Like Object. Ends VERY well
EDLO – Expensive Date-Like Object. A concert, or similar expensive effort.
Feel free to submit more as they become relevant or upon discovery, whichever is less applicable.
We, the colonies, estates, farms and panstellar imperial regencies under the jurisdiction of Ted, do hereby state our mission in this strange place to be…
- To experiment in high-velocity solid, liquid and gel-type explosives so as to further our own collective knowledge and entertainment;
- To eradicate the threat of legal language in this nation, and anywhere else it may prevail so as to decrease confusion and put smiles back on children’s faces;
- To travel at speeds equal to or greater than C (3.0 x 10^8 meters per second) so that, while infinitely luminescent, I am also of infinite mass and can claim at that time to be (and at later times to have been) the ultimate lardass;
-
Friday, August 10, 2007
Assholes and the guys who love them(selves)
I got one of those little bluetooth earpieces that I love to hate so much. I still love to hate guys who wear them because it's confusing who they're talking to (people talking to themselves in the park used to be crazy, now they're yuppies, which is similar but different) but I'm okay with me being a hypocrite. Turns out these things are really fun to wear around. Kinda makes me feel like I'm in a scifi movie.
I also got a superthin phone with GPS, indulging myself in the technocraze. I don't have internets on my phone yet, thankfully, and it's not an iPhone nor one of those PDA phones with excel on them.
Damn...umm...that's what I've got...
TRH
I also got a superthin phone with GPS, indulging myself in the technocraze. I don't have internets on my phone yet, thankfully, and it's not an iPhone nor one of those PDA phones with excel on them.
Damn...umm...that's what I've got...
TRH
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Unenthused
"I got no motivation,
Where is my motivation,
No time for motivation,
Smoking my inspiration"
~Green Day "Longview"
I'm bored. I'm bored, I'm exhausted, I'm lonely, I'm fucking my sleep schedule, I'm poor and I'm trapped. I'm trapped I'm trapped I made a mistake in going to college and now I can't get out. If I leave, I'll have a skill but not nearly enough experience or a completed degree. I'll be sub-standard in the industry trying to pay off almost hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, because I did what my parents did and went to college. It's what so many people do, so I did it.
I hate this place. I want to move someplace else, meet new people, see new things. I want to pack a bag of clothes, hop a cargo train in the middle of the night and see where it takes me.
My friend Cass (I don't really like her that much - she's mean to me) says I need to get laid, so I tell her to go find me somebody who'll sleep with me, and she says it's my responsibility. I don't think she understands how incredibly unmotivated I am, it's sort of like telling prisoners that they'd damn well better lock their own damn cells 'cause we're sure as hell not gonna. I really just don't give a shit.
Blech.
TRH
Where is my motivation,
No time for motivation,
Smoking my inspiration"
~Green Day "Longview"
I'm bored. I'm bored, I'm exhausted, I'm lonely, I'm fucking my sleep schedule, I'm poor and I'm trapped. I'm trapped I'm trapped I made a mistake in going to college and now I can't get out. If I leave, I'll have a skill but not nearly enough experience or a completed degree. I'll be sub-standard in the industry trying to pay off almost hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, because I did what my parents did and went to college. It's what so many people do, so I did it.
I hate this place. I want to move someplace else, meet new people, see new things. I want to pack a bag of clothes, hop a cargo train in the middle of the night and see where it takes me.
My friend Cass (I don't really like her that much - she's mean to me) says I need to get laid, so I tell her to go find me somebody who'll sleep with me, and she says it's my responsibility. I don't think she understands how incredibly unmotivated I am, it's sort of like telling prisoners that they'd damn well better lock their own damn cells 'cause we're sure as hell not gonna. I really just don't give a shit.
Blech.
TRH
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
7 Years, 2 Months
I have a running joke. Whenever I do something and somebody says it was unexpected, or that they thought I wouldn't do that or something like that, I mention that it's something that happens every 7 years and 2 months. I don't know where I got that interval, but it's nicely odd.
There's something else that happens to me though, on a much more frequent interval. It's disruptive, aggravating, and I'm fairly certain it's detrimental to my personality. I get restless.
I don't mean "Let's go for a drive in the country" restless, I mean "I'd like to move halfway across the country and acquire a new set of friends" restless. I mean "I wonder what the weather in Dublin is like this time of year" restless. I mean "I wish aliens would kidnap me, THAT would be one hell of an adventure!" restless. And then when I don't act on it I get unhappy and punchy and moody and start pushing people away.
Someday I'll probably meet some nice young lady and we'll decide in a moment of absinthe-fueled passion and fury to start a family and then we'll probably not move after that, and I'll have to get my kicks by being a weekend warrior. It might be nice, someday, tucking mountains under my belt, running with the bulls in Spain, jumping out of airplanes and such, but for now, I don't have the money to be a weekend warrior, so I don't have much of an outlet.
I want to go to Boston. That's the adventure stuck in my head now. I want to go live there for a few months and see how it, I guess. Meet some people, have fun in a famous and historic city. I want to buy a motorcycle and ride out to the east coast and just dick around there for a little while, see how it is.
But that's dumb, isn't it?
TRH
There's something else that happens to me though, on a much more frequent interval. It's disruptive, aggravating, and I'm fairly certain it's detrimental to my personality. I get restless.
I don't mean "Let's go for a drive in the country" restless, I mean "I'd like to move halfway across the country and acquire a new set of friends" restless. I mean "I wonder what the weather in Dublin is like this time of year" restless. I mean "I wish aliens would kidnap me, THAT would be one hell of an adventure!" restless. And then when I don't act on it I get unhappy and punchy and moody and start pushing people away.
Someday I'll probably meet some nice young lady and we'll decide in a moment of absinthe-fueled passion and fury to start a family and then we'll probably not move after that, and I'll have to get my kicks by being a weekend warrior. It might be nice, someday, tucking mountains under my belt, running with the bulls in Spain, jumping out of airplanes and such, but for now, I don't have the money to be a weekend warrior, so I don't have much of an outlet.
I want to go to Boston. That's the adventure stuck in my head now. I want to go live there for a few months and see how it, I guess. Meet some people, have fun in a famous and historic city. I want to buy a motorcycle and ride out to the east coast and just dick around there for a little while, see how it is.
But that's dumb, isn't it?
TRH
Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Inner Child
So, I recently posted a picture of the Lego Star Destroyer I recently purchased and subsequently built. It took me somewhere between 12-15 manhours, and that was very much mental work. I had to read pictoral instructions depicting gray plates attaching to other gray plates. The visual work alone was mind-bending. Then there was searching a pile of over 3000 parts for a single one, the mass of repetition involved in building the more decorative portions of the thing.
And when I was done? I hopped on the Lego website and searched for more large legos. Right now I've got a Y-wing coming to me, granted with fewer than half the parts of the Star Destroyer, but nevertheless large and assuredly challenging. Eventually I'd like to spend the $500 on the new version of the Millenium Falcon with over 5000 parts, the largest Lego set ever, and undoubtedly a severe test to my abilities.
Congrats, me. I'm an AFOL now - Adult Fan of Lego.
TRH
And when I was done? I hopped on the Lego website and searched for more large legos. Right now I've got a Y-wing coming to me, granted with fewer than half the parts of the Star Destroyer, but nevertheless large and assuredly challenging. Eventually I'd like to spend the $500 on the new version of the Millenium Falcon with over 5000 parts, the largest Lego set ever, and undoubtedly a severe test to my abilities.
Congrats, me. I'm an AFOL now - Adult Fan of Lego.
TRH
Friday, May 25, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
To A Girl In My Spanish Class...
Your name was Erin. I spoke with you during a ten-minute break we had the one day you were there, but then you weren't there anymore. I told you that I wrote down notes on things I had observed about people in the class? You were one. You stood out.
To put it mildly, you are one of an extremely small number of perfectly beautiful people I have ever laid eyes on in my life. You stand above the rest. And now I think you've probably dropped the class and I'll almost certainly never see you again.
Your eyes were the perfect kind of swarthy and sly, and the way you wore your hair in a bun like that made you look like you were about to throw off clothes to reveal a superhero outfit and start kicking ass and taking names kung-fu style. You were sleek and dressed so incredibly well, looking casual and stylish. To put it bluntly, you were perfect.
I hope you never see this.
TRH
To put it mildly, you are one of an extremely small number of perfectly beautiful people I have ever laid eyes on in my life. You stand above the rest. And now I think you've probably dropped the class and I'll almost certainly never see you again.
Your eyes were the perfect kind of swarthy and sly, and the way you wore your hair in a bun like that made you look like you were about to throw off clothes to reveal a superhero outfit and start kicking ass and taking names kung-fu style. You were sleek and dressed so incredibly well, looking casual and stylish. To put it bluntly, you were perfect.
I hope you never see this.
TRH
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Friday, May 11, 2007
Picture.
This comic strip defines how I feel about adulthood. I'm apprehensive about it, of course, but at the same time I think the girl here is saying the most amazing thing ever: it really is our turn, isn't it. This makes me wonder what my generation is really coming to. Are we going to be okay? Will we lead this country to success, or are we going to screw the planet and ourselves as bad as previous generations? Worse? What will happen to the Punks of the world, the people who dress in shorts that come to somewhere below the calf, wear chains and mohawks, listen to Blink 182? Not that I have anything against Blink, just the culture they represent, and mostly for the aesthetic reasons. They don't look responsible. And what will happen to the superficials? How will our beauty-focused culture handle wrinkles and aging? Will we regret our lifestyle of decadence?
I will note, at this point: you can have my caffeine when you pry it from my COLD DEAD HANDS! Sometimes I feel I should have a staff of actors to say some things for me. That line is so much more effective when Charleton Heston says it. But I still can't think of where I'm going to use "Soylent Green is People!" at. Any conversation involving luck naturally involves Clint Eastwood.
I wish I would invent time travel. If I ever do, I'll come back to RIGHT NOW (Grand Forks, ND, at 10:10PM Central Standard Time, in my apartment, the one that Crystal used to live in) and tell myself what it's like there. In the future.
I had an intriguing thought today, so I expressed it to a couple of my coworkers. "What if in the future they really do invent time travel, come back and visit us, but every time they have, we've just thought they were crazy and killed them or ignored them until they went away? We'd never know..." When I turned around my boss was staring at me with this grin on his face like "What the hell goes on in your head?"
I bought pants the other day. Cass (a friend and notably a female) complains often of girls clothes sizes (there should be an apostrophe somewhere in there, but I don't know where) and their complete randomness. Then usually I say something about how nice guys' sizes are and we agree and share a laugh. I'd like to take this moment to take back everything I've said about guys clothes and being easy. Shirts come in sizes that may or may not hold true across the brands, and I still don't understand the logic of shoe sizes, but the worst are honestly the pants. It could have been so easy, so incredibly easy. Waistline by inseam, right? How hard could it be?
There's fit. Damned fit. Relaxed fit, loose fit, snug fit, relaxed loose, relaxed comfortable, comfortable loose, loose snug, and carpenter can go in front of everything as well. Carpenter just means it has a little loop of denim for hammer stowage. And possibly some other stuff. And then you've still got to break the damn things in. It's awful, really. I feel like I did after I had long hair: sympathetic to one more thing about girls.
That's all I've got for now. Don't fuck up.
TRH
Saturday, May 5, 2007
I Think I'll Go To Boston...
I may or may not have a girlfriend. We've never actually met face to face, but my inbox is full of her text messages and we've spoken on the phone. So, if nothing else, I know that I'm amiable with an intelligent construct of the Internet that knows how to generate not only a text file but also an MP3 file effectively mimicking a teenage female human. If that's the case, I'm not entirely sure I'd be disappointed. I mean, that's pretty damn cool.
Our song is Boston, by Augustana, hence the title. Also, though, I've been thinking about where I want to live after college, and my mind is drawn to Boston (which is how that song became our song). And when I'm there, I want to ride their subway and say strange things that will make peoples' minds spontaneously combust.
"Every time you touch yourself sexually, a 13 year old boy discovers masturbation"
"I only hate bigots"
"It'll be easy to breed Eugenics out of the populace!"
"The goo conquers all it sees, and relentlessly punishes moderate crimes with wicked nasty tasks"
Yes. Yes, you're right. I fully intend to be the crazy homeless guy on the subway. Except I'll be going home to my decently nice apartment to shed my faux-hobo rags (Derelicte) and laugh my ass off listening to the tape recording.
Is that unhealthy?
TRH
Our song is Boston, by Augustana, hence the title. Also, though, I've been thinking about where I want to live after college, and my mind is drawn to Boston (which is how that song became our song). And when I'm there, I want to ride their subway and say strange things that will make peoples' minds spontaneously combust.
"Every time you touch yourself sexually, a 13 year old boy discovers masturbation"
"I only hate bigots"
"It'll be easy to breed Eugenics out of the populace!"
"The goo conquers all it sees, and relentlessly punishes moderate crimes with wicked nasty tasks"
Yes. Yes, you're right. I fully intend to be the crazy homeless guy on the subway. Except I'll be going home to my decently nice apartment to shed my faux-hobo rags (Derelicte) and laugh my ass off listening to the tape recording.
Is that unhealthy?
TRH
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
This Is Not An Original Work
Saw this in a newsletter here at school...
One fine hot summer's afternoon I saw a Piper Cub flying in the pattern at a quiet country airfield. The CFI was getting bothered with the student's inability to maintain altitude in the thermals and was getting impatient at sometimes having to take over the controls. Just then he saw a twin engine Cessna 5,000 feet above him and thought, "Another 1,000 hours of this and I qualify for that twin charter job! Aahh, to be a real pilot...going somewhere!"
The Cessna 402 was already late, and the boss told him this charter was for one of the company's premier clients. He'd already set MCT and the cylinders tidn't like it in the heat of this summer's day. He was at 6,000 feet and the winds were now a 20-knot headwind. Today was the sixth day straight, and he was pretty tired of fighting these engines. Maybe if he got 10,000 feet out of them the wind might die off. Geez, those cylinder temps! He looked out momentarily and saw a B737 leaving a contrail at 33,000 feet in the serene blue sky. "oh man," he thought. "My interview is next month. I hope I just don't blow it! Outta G/A, nice jet job, above the weather...no snotty passengers to wait for...aahh."
The Boeing 737 bucked and weaved in the heavy CAT at FL330 and ATC advised that lower levels were not available due to traffic. The Captain, who was only recently advised that his destination was below RVR minimums, had slowed to LRC to try and hold off a possible in-flight diversion and arrange an ETA that would hopefully ensure the fog had lifted to CATII minimums. The Company negotiations broke down yesterday and it looked as if everyone was going to take a pay cut. The F/O's will be particularly hard hit as their pay wasn't anything to speak of anyway.
Finally deciding on a speed compromise between LRC and turbulence penetration, the Captain now looked up and saw a Concorde at Mach 2+. Tapping his F/O's shoulder as the 737 took another bashing, he said "Now THAT'S what we should be on...huge pay...super fast...not too many routes...not too many legs...above the CAT! Yup, what a life!"
FL590 was not what he wanted anyways and considered FL570. Already the TAT was creeping up again and either they would have to descend or slow down. That rear fuel transfer pump was becoiming unreliable and the F/E had said moments ago that the radiation meter was not reading numbers that he'd like to see. The Concorde descended to FL570, but the radiation was still quite high even though the NOTAM indicated hunky dory below FL610. Flue Flow was up and the transfer pump was intermittent. Evening turned into night as they passed over the Atlantic. Looking up, the F/O could see a tiny white dot moving against the backdrop of a myriad of stars. "Hey Captain," he called as he pointed. "Must be the Shuttle."
The Captain looked up for a moment and agreed. Quietly he thought how a Shuttle mission, while complicated, must be the be-all and end-all in aviation. Above the crap, no radiation problems, no damn fuel transfer problems. "Aahh, must be a great way to earn a buck."
Discovery was into it's 27th orbit and perigee was out from nominated rendezvous altitude with the commsat. The robot arm was virtually U/S and a walk may become necessary. The 200 foot predicted error would necessitate a corrective burn and Discovery would need that fuel if a walk was to be required.
Houston continually asked what the Commander wanted to do, but the advice they proffered wasn't much help. The Commander had already been 12 hours on station sorting out the problem and just wanted 10 minutes to himself for a bathroom break. Just then a mission specialist, who had tilted the telescope down to the surface for a minute or two, called the Commander to the scope. "Have a look at this, Sir. Isn't this the kind of flying you said you wanted to do after you finish up with NASA?"
The Commander peered through the telescope and cried, "Oooh, yeah! Now THAT'S flying! Man, that's what it's all about! Geez, I'd give my left leg just to be doing THAT down there!"
What the Discovery Commander was looking at was a yellow Cub in a pattern at a quiet country airfield on a nice bright sunny afternoon.
TRH
One fine hot summer's afternoon I saw a Piper Cub flying in the pattern at a quiet country airfield. The CFI was getting bothered with the student's inability to maintain altitude in the thermals and was getting impatient at sometimes having to take over the controls. Just then he saw a twin engine Cessna 5,000 feet above him and thought, "Another 1,000 hours of this and I qualify for that twin charter job! Aahh, to be a real pilot...going somewhere!"
The Cessna 402 was already late, and the boss told him this charter was for one of the company's premier clients. He'd already set MCT and the cylinders tidn't like it in the heat of this summer's day. He was at 6,000 feet and the winds were now a 20-knot headwind. Today was the sixth day straight, and he was pretty tired of fighting these engines. Maybe if he got 10,000 feet out of them the wind might die off. Geez, those cylinder temps! He looked out momentarily and saw a B737 leaving a contrail at 33,000 feet in the serene blue sky. "oh man," he thought. "My interview is next month. I hope I just don't blow it! Outta G/A, nice jet job, above the weather...no snotty passengers to wait for...aahh."
The Boeing 737 bucked and weaved in the heavy CAT at FL330 and ATC advised that lower levels were not available due to traffic. The Captain, who was only recently advised that his destination was below RVR minimums, had slowed to LRC to try and hold off a possible in-flight diversion and arrange an ETA that would hopefully ensure the fog had lifted to CATII minimums. The Company negotiations broke down yesterday and it looked as if everyone was going to take a pay cut. The F/O's will be particularly hard hit as their pay wasn't anything to speak of anyway.
Finally deciding on a speed compromise between LRC and turbulence penetration, the Captain now looked up and saw a Concorde at Mach 2+. Tapping his F/O's shoulder as the 737 took another bashing, he said "Now THAT'S what we should be on...huge pay...super fast...not too many routes...not too many legs...above the CAT! Yup, what a life!"
FL590 was not what he wanted anyways and considered FL570. Already the TAT was creeping up again and either they would have to descend or slow down. That rear fuel transfer pump was becoiming unreliable and the F/E had said moments ago that the radiation meter was not reading numbers that he'd like to see. The Concorde descended to FL570, but the radiation was still quite high even though the NOTAM indicated hunky dory below FL610. Flue Flow was up and the transfer pump was intermittent. Evening turned into night as they passed over the Atlantic. Looking up, the F/O could see a tiny white dot moving against the backdrop of a myriad of stars. "Hey Captain," he called as he pointed. "Must be the Shuttle."
The Captain looked up for a moment and agreed. Quietly he thought how a Shuttle mission, while complicated, must be the be-all and end-all in aviation. Above the crap, no radiation problems, no damn fuel transfer problems. "Aahh, must be a great way to earn a buck."
Discovery was into it's 27th orbit and perigee was out from nominated rendezvous altitude with the commsat. The robot arm was virtually U/S and a walk may become necessary. The 200 foot predicted error would necessitate a corrective burn and Discovery would need that fuel if a walk was to be required.
Houston continually asked what the Commander wanted to do, but the advice they proffered wasn't much help. The Commander had already been 12 hours on station sorting out the problem and just wanted 10 minutes to himself for a bathroom break. Just then a mission specialist, who had tilted the telescope down to the surface for a minute or two, called the Commander to the scope. "Have a look at this, Sir. Isn't this the kind of flying you said you wanted to do after you finish up with NASA?"
The Commander peered through the telescope and cried, "Oooh, yeah! Now THAT'S flying! Man, that's what it's all about! Geez, I'd give my left leg just to be doing THAT down there!"
What the Discovery Commander was looking at was a yellow Cub in a pattern at a quiet country airfield on a nice bright sunny afternoon.
TRH
Monday, April 23, 2007
I Don't Want To Grow Up, I'm A Toys-R-Us Kid...
I'm turning 21 on Saturday. It's big for me, because suddenly I'm allowed to buy alcohol. Outside of getting better insurance rates and being allowed to rent a car using a means other than credit-card or massive deposit at 25, I can't think of any big things the government has yet to allow me to do based on age.
Well, excepting 23, when I am allowed by the FAA to get an Air Transport Pilot Certificate, but that doesn't apply to most folks, so it doesn't count.
Nevertheless, I particularly don't want to grow up. People are confused by this, but that's really because I don't tell them the whole truth. I guess the closest I've come is to saying that I don't want to be a grown-up as defined by my parents because I feel so different from them, but really it's because I'm afraid I'll be like my father.
Yep. Simple as that. Don't wanna be my dad, cause he's a dick. He was abusive both physically and emotionally to me and my siblings, and he's not somebody I particularly need in my life. He tries to call me every once in a while. I let it roll to voicemail, listen to him asking me to call him on the message and then delete it. I glean a bit of joy knowing that his children don't talk to him. I hope he feels ashamed of himself.
Meanwhile, I find myself getting angry and doing things disturbingly similar to how he did them, handling my problems with violence and blaming others for stuff. Later I realize what I do isn't okay, but it's just how I know how to handle problems, and I'm worried that one of these days I might seriously hurt somebody. At least it won't be too bad, it's not like I work out or anything, but I imagine a fist to the face doesn't feel to good for either involved.
TRH
Well, excepting 23, when I am allowed by the FAA to get an Air Transport Pilot Certificate, but that doesn't apply to most folks, so it doesn't count.
Nevertheless, I particularly don't want to grow up. People are confused by this, but that's really because I don't tell them the whole truth. I guess the closest I've come is to saying that I don't want to be a grown-up as defined by my parents because I feel so different from them, but really it's because I'm afraid I'll be like my father.
Yep. Simple as that. Don't wanna be my dad, cause he's a dick. He was abusive both physically and emotionally to me and my siblings, and he's not somebody I particularly need in my life. He tries to call me every once in a while. I let it roll to voicemail, listen to him asking me to call him on the message and then delete it. I glean a bit of joy knowing that his children don't talk to him. I hope he feels ashamed of himself.
Meanwhile, I find myself getting angry and doing things disturbingly similar to how he did them, handling my problems with violence and blaming others for stuff. Later I realize what I do isn't okay, but it's just how I know how to handle problems, and I'm worried that one of these days I might seriously hurt somebody. At least it won't be too bad, it's not like I work out or anything, but I imagine a fist to the face doesn't feel to good for either involved.
TRH
Thursday, April 12, 2007
I Want To Conquer The World
I've been flying a lot recently. A tiny little tailwheel acro plane for UND, and a retractable-gear airplane for the same. Out at Crookston, where I rent out of, I've flown their Cessna 150 a couple times. It's sort of like a hang-glider with an engine attached and a windshield.
Meanwhile, I'm planning a trip to the cities with a couple friends to go to a concert the weekend before finals, and we're planning on flying down there in the Crookston Warrior. At current state, I'm the only one checked out on that plane, although Cass, a friend going with, might be checked out by then. Or at least, she'd better be, she owes me a flight.
It keeps me quite upbeat, that level of busy. It's stressful, but I find I'm most content when I'm at my optimal stress level. I like my downtime, but I also like doing logistics, scheduling things, thinking about travel times, making stuff work out, organizing and such.
It's expensive, but I'm hoping to get extra hours at work or possibly a second job so as to augment my income and fly a lot. Speaking of money...
I've been looking at internships. Thing is, they interrupt my schedule. I know that I want to be here this summer and fall, but perhaps spring, when I would be taking my CFI-Instrument? It takes a lot for me to give up a semester like that, but it might be a very good thing in the long run. I hear a lot of people saying that aviation internships aren't so much an internship as they are an extended interview. I'd have to be on my best behavior, but if I could get a job offer out of it...well, that's worth a semester to me.
Which is important, because I'll make my initial graduation by end of next year. I'll have another year after that, but that one seems like an option for me, almost a fallback. Something to do and to keep my student loans at bay while I look for a job.
Weird, but I'm actually getting out there.
TRH
Meanwhile, I'm planning a trip to the cities with a couple friends to go to a concert the weekend before finals, and we're planning on flying down there in the Crookston Warrior. At current state, I'm the only one checked out on that plane, although Cass, a friend going with, might be checked out by then. Or at least, she'd better be, she owes me a flight.
It keeps me quite upbeat, that level of busy. It's stressful, but I find I'm most content when I'm at my optimal stress level. I like my downtime, but I also like doing logistics, scheduling things, thinking about travel times, making stuff work out, organizing and such.
It's expensive, but I'm hoping to get extra hours at work or possibly a second job so as to augment my income and fly a lot. Speaking of money...
I've been looking at internships. Thing is, they interrupt my schedule. I know that I want to be here this summer and fall, but perhaps spring, when I would be taking my CFI-Instrument? It takes a lot for me to give up a semester like that, but it might be a very good thing in the long run. I hear a lot of people saying that aviation internships aren't so much an internship as they are an extended interview. I'd have to be on my best behavior, but if I could get a job offer out of it...well, that's worth a semester to me.
Which is important, because I'll make my initial graduation by end of next year. I'll have another year after that, but that one seems like an option for me, almost a fallback. Something to do and to keep my student loans at bay while I look for a job.
Weird, but I'm actually getting out there.
TRH
Monday, April 2, 2007
Greed
Yes, I'm greedy. I yearn to make ends meet, but at the same time I live alone in a two-bed apartment that costs, once utilities are included, about $600 per month. Naturally, I could halve many of my costs by recruiting a roommate to put in the other room, but my landlord wouldn't like that at all and frankly neither would I. I've lived with roommates in the past, and indeed one of them is now my best friend, but I honestly love having my own place. Freedom to decorate as I please; I can watch TV whenever I want; I can put my music on as I please; I don't have to worry about somebody else moving my stuff.
The last place I was in one of my roommates was a bit of an asshole and a neat-freak. They had an island in the kitchen and my god did I love that island. I'd come home and toss my stuff on it, throw my coat over a chair back and head to my room. When I came out of my room, oftentimes I'd find my stuff moved to the wall next to my room and the island clear of anything. He didn't move my stuff because he needed the space, and he didn't ask me if he could, and he didn't ever talk to me about not putting my stuff on the counter. One day when I had been living there for a couple months he decided that it was OK for him to move my stuff. He's pretty damn lucky I'm an easygoing guy.
The point is that right now on my couch (I'm in class at school right now) there's a clipboard, a pair of sunglasses and a sweatshirt. Nobody's going to move that stuff because it's my place! And when I'm watching TV, nobody's going to come in and ask me about what I'm watching! Because it's my place! And I'm willing to pay extra for that. So sue me if it's a bit expensive and there are poor starving children in Africa, or any other organization that could use my time and money. Frankly, that takes too much work.
TRH
The last place I was in one of my roommates was a bit of an asshole and a neat-freak. They had an island in the kitchen and my god did I love that island. I'd come home and toss my stuff on it, throw my coat over a chair back and head to my room. When I came out of my room, oftentimes I'd find my stuff moved to the wall next to my room and the island clear of anything. He didn't move my stuff because he needed the space, and he didn't ask me if he could, and he didn't ever talk to me about not putting my stuff on the counter. One day when I had been living there for a couple months he decided that it was OK for him to move my stuff. He's pretty damn lucky I'm an easygoing guy.
The point is that right now on my couch (I'm in class at school right now) there's a clipboard, a pair of sunglasses and a sweatshirt. Nobody's going to move that stuff because it's my place! And when I'm watching TV, nobody's going to come in and ask me about what I'm watching! Because it's my place! And I'm willing to pay extra for that. So sue me if it's a bit expensive and there are poor starving children in Africa, or any other organization that could use my time and money. Frankly, that takes too much work.
TRH
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Over Your Head
Look out the nearest window at the sky. It might be blue, or gray, or dark or bright or full of stars or maybe it's a plethora of colors in sunrise or sunset. Nevertheless, there's a lot going on up there that most people don't think much about, but affects us all. Namely, airplanes.
Lots of airplanes move around all day and night, all across the sky, going about their errands from one place to another. Of course, like all things technical, it's a LOT more complicated than that. There are literally dozens of people involved in even a single flight of a commercial airliner, even if it's just a few hundred miles. Going international, or transcontinental, there may be over 100 people involved, from all walks of life. It's all best illustrated by following a single flight across the country.
The airplane pulls up at the gate, shuts down and offloads passengers and cargo. The aircraft will be changing crews at this stop, so the crew disembarks. Meanwhile, the new captain is receiving his weather briefing and flight plan from a dispatcher. The passengers are checking in with the front desk, checking their bags and receiving seat assignments. They are herded through security checkpoints and their baggage is sorted to arrive at the proper aircraft for loading. Already an entire staff has been involved in even just loading the aircraft. Ground crews at the aircraft load the baggage as well as cargo and mail and fuel the aircraft, communicating and coordinating with the captain and crew, who are already at the aircraft.
The captain is responsible for performing a preflight walk-around (although this unappealing task is generally delegated to a copilot or flight engineer) and once back in the cockpit he or she turns on the radio and communicates with Clearance Delivery to confirm their instrument flight plan. Once they have that clearance, they request a pushback from the ground crew and contact Ground Control and request clearance to taxi. Generally, they start their engines during the pushback. Once they have been pushed to a proper distance from the gate, they begin taxiing towards the runway assigned to them by Clearance Delivery. Quite a bit has happened, considering the passengers only just sat down a few minutes ago and the plane has yet to leave the ground.
Once enroute to the runway, the crew has a lot of work to do. They have already completed multiple checklists by now, and have input their flight plan into the navigation computer or GPS receiver. Now they are completing the before takeoff checklist and running last-minute systems checks, aligning navigational equipment and checking the engines. They get to the runway and contact Tower Control, receiving clearance to take off. They pull onto the runway and increase the engines to takeoff power, accelerating down the runway and taking flight. Very shortly, the tower controller tells the crew to contact a departure controller.
The Tower Controller controls traffic within a few miles and a few thousand vertical feet of the airport. Around many larger airports (the size of Chicago, LA, Minneapolis, Kennedy Int'l) there will be an "Upside-Down Wedding Cake" structure of airspace, basically concentric stratified circles over the airport, going up to 10,000' and out to about 30 miles, although this varies per airport with regards to particular needs and navigational routes nearby.
The Departure Controller vectors the aircraft out of the "Wedding Cake", which is called a Class Bravo Airspace. Once out of the Bravo structure, the Departure controller hands the aircraft off to a Center Controller. Centers are similar to arrival and departure controllers, except they primarily control aircraft in the cruise phase of their flight. A single Center will cover multiple states, and is split into numerous sectors. Each sector is controlled by a single Air Traffic Controller, and they hand the plane off from person to person vectoring it through to it's destination. Across the continent, our flight might contact dozens of sectors. This phase is honestly quite boring, as the aircraft already has a navigation plan and most communication is in regards to altitude changes and handing off from one sector to another.
Once the aircraft gets close to it's destination, within about 70 to 100 miles, the controllers start giving clearances to descend to lower altitudes. Eventually, the aircraft will arrive at the borders of the airspace for it's destination. If this is a very large city, there will be a class bravo. In a medium sized airport, such as Milwaukee, Fargo or Reno, there is probably only a tower. However, there will also be a seperate Departure and Arrival Control, although depending on traffic amounts they may be the same person and frequency. Nevertheless, the aircraft will talk to somebody new. This person will clear the aircraft for an instrument approach, which is a special route designed to line the aircraft up to the runway using only radio navigation, so that planes can land in low clouds and visibility. All airline flights are on instrument flight plans for a variety of reasons, so the use these even in visual conditions.
The aircraft flies the approach and, when close enough to the airport, is handed off to a tower controller who clears the aircraft to land. Once the aircraft lands it taxies clear of the runway and contacts a ground controller, who directs the aircraft to a parking spot or boarding gate, at which point the crew shuts the aircraft down, the passengers deplane and the ground crew set to work unloading the cargo compartment and reloading it with new cargo and baggage and refueling it to repeat the entire process over again.
Those are the people directly responsible with getting the aircraft from point A to point B: flight crew, ground crew at each gate, dispatchers, dozens of air traffic controllers, check-in clerks and baggage sorters, so on and so forth. Beyond that, there are hundreds more people responsible for behind-the-scenes work. Managers, lawyers, FAA and NTSB personnel, aircraft technicians and mechanics, controller supervisors, and the hundreds of people who maintain the radio navigation beacons that help aircraft get across the country and world. Ultimately, the aerospace industry is vast, employing thousands of people and serving upwards of a million pilots and billions of passengers per year.
Something to think about next time you see an airplane above you.
TRH
Lots of airplanes move around all day and night, all across the sky, going about their errands from one place to another. Of course, like all things technical, it's a LOT more complicated than that. There are literally dozens of people involved in even a single flight of a commercial airliner, even if it's just a few hundred miles. Going international, or transcontinental, there may be over 100 people involved, from all walks of life. It's all best illustrated by following a single flight across the country.
The airplane pulls up at the gate, shuts down and offloads passengers and cargo. The aircraft will be changing crews at this stop, so the crew disembarks. Meanwhile, the new captain is receiving his weather briefing and flight plan from a dispatcher. The passengers are checking in with the front desk, checking their bags and receiving seat assignments. They are herded through security checkpoints and their baggage is sorted to arrive at the proper aircraft for loading. Already an entire staff has been involved in even just loading the aircraft. Ground crews at the aircraft load the baggage as well as cargo and mail and fuel the aircraft, communicating and coordinating with the captain and crew, who are already at the aircraft.
The captain is responsible for performing a preflight walk-around (although this unappealing task is generally delegated to a copilot or flight engineer) and once back in the cockpit he or she turns on the radio and communicates with Clearance Delivery to confirm their instrument flight plan. Once they have that clearance, they request a pushback from the ground crew and contact Ground Control and request clearance to taxi. Generally, they start their engines during the pushback. Once they have been pushed to a proper distance from the gate, they begin taxiing towards the runway assigned to them by Clearance Delivery. Quite a bit has happened, considering the passengers only just sat down a few minutes ago and the plane has yet to leave the ground.
Once enroute to the runway, the crew has a lot of work to do. They have already completed multiple checklists by now, and have input their flight plan into the navigation computer or GPS receiver. Now they are completing the before takeoff checklist and running last-minute systems checks, aligning navigational equipment and checking the engines. They get to the runway and contact Tower Control, receiving clearance to take off. They pull onto the runway and increase the engines to takeoff power, accelerating down the runway and taking flight. Very shortly, the tower controller tells the crew to contact a departure controller.
The Tower Controller controls traffic within a few miles and a few thousand vertical feet of the airport. Around many larger airports (the size of Chicago, LA, Minneapolis, Kennedy Int'l) there will be an "Upside-Down Wedding Cake" structure of airspace, basically concentric stratified circles over the airport, going up to 10,000' and out to about 30 miles, although this varies per airport with regards to particular needs and navigational routes nearby.
The Departure Controller vectors the aircraft out of the "Wedding Cake", which is called a Class Bravo Airspace. Once out of the Bravo structure, the Departure controller hands the aircraft off to a Center Controller. Centers are similar to arrival and departure controllers, except they primarily control aircraft in the cruise phase of their flight. A single Center will cover multiple states, and is split into numerous sectors. Each sector is controlled by a single Air Traffic Controller, and they hand the plane off from person to person vectoring it through to it's destination. Across the continent, our flight might contact dozens of sectors. This phase is honestly quite boring, as the aircraft already has a navigation plan and most communication is in regards to altitude changes and handing off from one sector to another.
Once the aircraft gets close to it's destination, within about 70 to 100 miles, the controllers start giving clearances to descend to lower altitudes. Eventually, the aircraft will arrive at the borders of the airspace for it's destination. If this is a very large city, there will be a class bravo. In a medium sized airport, such as Milwaukee, Fargo or Reno, there is probably only a tower. However, there will also be a seperate Departure and Arrival Control, although depending on traffic amounts they may be the same person and frequency. Nevertheless, the aircraft will talk to somebody new. This person will clear the aircraft for an instrument approach, which is a special route designed to line the aircraft up to the runway using only radio navigation, so that planes can land in low clouds and visibility. All airline flights are on instrument flight plans for a variety of reasons, so the use these even in visual conditions.
The aircraft flies the approach and, when close enough to the airport, is handed off to a tower controller who clears the aircraft to land. Once the aircraft lands it taxies clear of the runway and contacts a ground controller, who directs the aircraft to a parking spot or boarding gate, at which point the crew shuts the aircraft down, the passengers deplane and the ground crew set to work unloading the cargo compartment and reloading it with new cargo and baggage and refueling it to repeat the entire process over again.
Those are the people directly responsible with getting the aircraft from point A to point B: flight crew, ground crew at each gate, dispatchers, dozens of air traffic controllers, check-in clerks and baggage sorters, so on and so forth. Beyond that, there are hundreds more people responsible for behind-the-scenes work. Managers, lawyers, FAA and NTSB personnel, aircraft technicians and mechanics, controller supervisors, and the hundreds of people who maintain the radio navigation beacons that help aircraft get across the country and world. Ultimately, the aerospace industry is vast, employing thousands of people and serving upwards of a million pilots and billions of passengers per year.
Something to think about next time you see an airplane above you.
TRH
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
An Open Letter to Myself, 11 Years Ago
Dear Young Ted,
You should know by now that you are moving. I have some advice to you. First of all, you will want to go to the public school and your parents will want you to go to the private school. You're right, but you're not going to win. It isn't going to be easy to fit in at the private school, but you're going to have to try. Learn the rules to football, for one. Also, keep in mind that SoCal public school kids are radically different from religious private school midwest kids.
You will be hearing quite a bit about a fancy new high school sometime around eighth grade. Ignore it all, Public School is a lot better. No, you will not get beat up every day of the week, and no, you will not be forced to take drugs. In retrospect, that's kind of dumb that you thought that.
When you get a job, I suggest you first save your money for a car and after that work your butt off for more money. Go down to the airport and learn to fly. Or something else. Just, take up an activity to get out of the house. Something you like, not Boy Scouts. That one's gonna be a failure. Seriously, get a hobby.
Oh, and do your homework. Every day. I know it sucks, but learning stuff is cool, right? Just sit down and do it. Good grades will keep everybody happy.
Oh, and in about 9 years your world is going to turn to shit. Just trust me on this one. It's all going to be bad, but just remember this one thing for me: this is the worst thing that's going to happen to you. Which means after this, it's all downhill. Easy going from there. You get through that (and you will, I know), and you can get through anything.
Two last words of advice - Brush your teeth and wash your face. Do that, and you can conquer the world.
TRH
You should know by now that you are moving. I have some advice to you. First of all, you will want to go to the public school and your parents will want you to go to the private school. You're right, but you're not going to win. It isn't going to be easy to fit in at the private school, but you're going to have to try. Learn the rules to football, for one. Also, keep in mind that SoCal public school kids are radically different from religious private school midwest kids.
You will be hearing quite a bit about a fancy new high school sometime around eighth grade. Ignore it all, Public School is a lot better. No, you will not get beat up every day of the week, and no, you will not be forced to take drugs. In retrospect, that's kind of dumb that you thought that.
When you get a job, I suggest you first save your money for a car and after that work your butt off for more money. Go down to the airport and learn to fly. Or something else. Just, take up an activity to get out of the house. Something you like, not Boy Scouts. That one's gonna be a failure. Seriously, get a hobby.
Oh, and do your homework. Every day. I know it sucks, but learning stuff is cool, right? Just sit down and do it. Good grades will keep everybody happy.
Oh, and in about 9 years your world is going to turn to shit. Just trust me on this one. It's all going to be bad, but just remember this one thing for me: this is the worst thing that's going to happen to you. Which means after this, it's all downhill. Easy going from there. You get through that (and you will, I know), and you can get through anything.
Two last words of advice - Brush your teeth and wash your face. Do that, and you can conquer the world.
TRH
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Priorities
I've got to get my grades up.
Just heard today in class an interesting theory regarding airline hiring (read my sidebar: I'm a pilot). They furloughed a bunch of people after 9/11, which means they temporarily fired them. They tell them to go on an unpaid long term vacation, and they might get called back up. Now they're calling up a lot of those people and asking them to come back.
To illustrate what's going on, take one of my professors from last year. She was a pilot for a major airline company (you've heard of them, trust me) and was furloughed. She came to UND and became a professor, teaching a groundschool. She had two kids. She started a life around this town. Then they called her recently and she said that no, she wouldn't go back. She's comfortable here and the airline lifestyle, where she would be gone for days on end, lots of travel, exhaustive, that's not conducive to where she is right now. And this is happening with a lot of pilots who were furloughed after 9/11.
So everybody is looking for pilots and not finding them. This filters down as larger companies hire from smaller companies, and eventually the smallest companies look at people like me, who are in flight school and only a year or so from being done. A regional airline recently told UND that they would hire UND-trained pilots at a minimum of 300 hours in an airplane logged. This is a very low number, about half to a third of what UND pilots generally need to get hired, and about a third to a fourth of what pilots outside UND need to get hired. There's further talk about Headhunting us too. Actually looking at the grades of Juniors and Seniors, talking to their flight instructors and pre-hiring them in anticipation of their graduation. Possibly even paying the remainder of their costs.
All this means that I have a serious motivation to get my grades out of the gutter, and fast. And that I've got prospects. If I knew today that I could leave the day of my graduation for someplace better (I've had Boston on the mind lately, and I don't know why), I'd literally set a countdown clock to my diploma. I'd drop my second major. I'd take 20 credits a semester. I'd do everything I could to expedite that and go work for that airline, and when I got there, I'd be their best employee yet, because they took me off this damned tundra wasteland. I want very much to be a productive and contributing member of any society other than North Dakota.
TRH
Just heard today in class an interesting theory regarding airline hiring (read my sidebar: I'm a pilot). They furloughed a bunch of people after 9/11, which means they temporarily fired them. They tell them to go on an unpaid long term vacation, and they might get called back up. Now they're calling up a lot of those people and asking them to come back.
To illustrate what's going on, take one of my professors from last year. She was a pilot for a major airline company (you've heard of them, trust me) and was furloughed. She came to UND and became a professor, teaching a groundschool. She had two kids. She started a life around this town. Then they called her recently and she said that no, she wouldn't go back. She's comfortable here and the airline lifestyle, where she would be gone for days on end, lots of travel, exhaustive, that's not conducive to where she is right now. And this is happening with a lot of pilots who were furloughed after 9/11.
So everybody is looking for pilots and not finding them. This filters down as larger companies hire from smaller companies, and eventually the smallest companies look at people like me, who are in flight school and only a year or so from being done. A regional airline recently told UND that they would hire UND-trained pilots at a minimum of 300 hours in an airplane logged. This is a very low number, about half to a third of what UND pilots generally need to get hired, and about a third to a fourth of what pilots outside UND need to get hired. There's further talk about Headhunting us too. Actually looking at the grades of Juniors and Seniors, talking to their flight instructors and pre-hiring them in anticipation of their graduation. Possibly even paying the remainder of their costs.
All this means that I have a serious motivation to get my grades out of the gutter, and fast. And that I've got prospects. If I knew today that I could leave the day of my graduation for someplace better (I've had Boston on the mind lately, and I don't know why), I'd literally set a countdown clock to my diploma. I'd drop my second major. I'd take 20 credits a semester. I'd do everything I could to expedite that and go work for that airline, and when I got there, I'd be their best employee yet, because they took me off this damned tundra wasteland. I want very much to be a productive and contributing member of any society other than North Dakota.
TRH
Thursday, March 8, 2007
A Fresh Vantage Point
My mother sent me my photo album some while ago. I showed it to a few friends, and my new girlfriend. It contains, amongst other photos, numerous pre-surgery infant pictures - showing me with a cleft lip. I've always expected kind of a mixed reaction if I were to show those to other people, some kind of "cute, but what's with your lip?"
All everybody has seen thus far is a cute baby boy. They don't see the lip.
It's not like it's not there. It's big. But they all see a baby with big blue eyes, puffy cheeks, tiny little fists, all that. My girlfriend even said it's shaped like a heart, and thought it looked cute.
I've always seen it as a deformity. I was shocked when she said that. I couldn't react; I didn't know how. I was seeing MYSELF in an entirely new light. This thing that I had always thought I overcame and struggled through was suddenly...so different. Not something to overcome anymore.
I don't really know how to deal with feeling okay about myself.
TRH
All everybody has seen thus far is a cute baby boy. They don't see the lip.
It's not like it's not there. It's big. But they all see a baby with big blue eyes, puffy cheeks, tiny little fists, all that. My girlfriend even said it's shaped like a heart, and thought it looked cute.
I've always seen it as a deformity. I was shocked when she said that. I couldn't react; I didn't know how. I was seeing MYSELF in an entirely new light. This thing that I had always thought I overcame and struggled through was suddenly...so different. Not something to overcome anymore.
I don't really know how to deal with feeling okay about myself.
TRH
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