Rants and Revelations

Here it is, a couple of days later, and now I can’t even remember why I was so upset over the mailing list thing. Thinking about it this morning, I honestly couldn’t figure out why I was so upset. Even re-reading the messages, I can’t figure it out. And yet on Wednesday, I was nearly in tears of anger and pain over this.

Weird. I guess it was just overstressed by other things, and all it took was a small annoyance to turn into a big hurtful thing.

My apologies to everybody, and my sincere thanks to all the people who sent words of encouragement and support on my blog or via email. It was very touching.

I said when I was taking some time off that I was going to do some soul searching. I did. Here are my conclusions:

• I overreacted.
• I *am* getting tired of the “doing a Paul” thing.
• I wish people wouldn’t assume I don’t get the joke just because I do more of the same sort of joke. Consider it an homage or an attempt to amplify it, instead.
• I really, really, really don’t like being out of touch with my email friends.

Until I reviewed my mail filter logs today, I had no idea that “Paris Hilton” wasn’t a hotel in France. I’m not sure I’m a better person for knowing that.

In the cold clear light of morning, even in my bleary sleep deprived state, I see things a little differently than I did yesterday. And what I see is that my previous two posts on the subject have touched off a discussion and a bunch of recrimination and self-recrimination on the lists. I didn’t intend for this to happen. I’d hoped for some quiet time to reflect on how much of this was me being over sensitive to things, and how much of it was real insensitivity on the part of the other participants. Once I had a handle on that, I could decide how to pursue it when I came back to the list - and yes, I mean when rather than if. Storming off in a huff is a childish reaction, and I hope it’s not really my style.

Sure, I’m human, I’ve got an ego - I’d hoped that one or two people would miss me, or would see my blog and maybe offer some kind words. But instead it appears that well meaning people have started discussing my absence and what to do about it. I’d like to suggest to them that they just wait to see if it needs anything done about it. I’m a bit more stressed than usual right now, and maybe I’ll decide that it’s all my problem and I’ll deal with it. Or maybe I’ll decide to state once again that as running jokes go, this one has gone far too long and I’d appreciate it if it stopped. Or maybe I’ll want more action. I don’t know. But don’t tear up the lists about it.

Vicki sent me an email saying that one of the people who feels that he piled on is taking a self-imposed exile from the list. And I feel awful about that. He’s not even the one who initially made me mad. Not that I would suggest anybody else is to blame either. I haven’t figured out exactly how I feel and where it’s coming from, so how can I say such and such a person is wrong?

I think the root cause goes back to my own ego. I gather most smart people have this experience at college where they suddenly go from being the smartest person they knew to just one of a smart crowd. I didn’t have that experience - not to boast or anything, but I really felt like I was the smartest person in my circle of friends and classmates.

Ok, digression time: I’m going to lessen that boast a bit - I was in civil engineering, which is really the underachievers branch of engineering. I chose civil because I had a love for beautiful functional structures and bridges. I had the marks to get into systems design engineering, the overachievers branch, but I didn’t even really know what it was until I was nearly finished my first year of civil, and I didn’t want to repeat a year so I decided to stick it out, even though as time went on I hated civil more and more and wished I’d gone into systems. That’s why I never worked as a real civil engineer. Systems design and civil engineering were the two smallest branches of engineering, and they both pretty much hung out with their own kind exclusively. So I never hung out with the brightest of the bright in the engineering school, which is why 20 years later I’m still convinced I’m a pretty damn smart guy.

Anyway, these mailing lists are the one place in my life where I’m definitely not the smartest person there. There I’m just a guy with some specialized knowledge of a few subjects, some strong but not very well formed opinions on some subjects, a desire to learn in others, and a total blank on others. And that’s pretty intimidating, especially when it happens 20 years later in your life than it’s supposed to happen. And for the first time in my life, I’ve got people I respect talking down to me, and it’s painful because I’m never had it happen before and I don’t know how to deal with it.

Being in that crowd is a constant learning experience, a constant humbling experience, and 99.999% of the time, a constant joy. (Now a grammar pedant will tell me it’s not constant if it’s only 99.999% of the time.) Like I said earlier in this entry, I’ll have to do a bit of soul searching before I come back, but I’ll be back.

A short time after my previous entry, I realized that I can’t keep reading those mailing lists and restraining myself from posting, so I unsubscribed. First time in over 6 years that I haven’t been on some of those lists. Since these lists produce a couple of hundred emails a day, this is a huge decrease in volume for me.

All evening I kept picking up my computer to check my email as I am wont to do, only to find there was none. This is just too weird.

So now it’s 3:30 in the morning. I’ve been sleeping fitfully all night, and finally gave up and came out to the living room to read some mail and news, and of course there hardly is any email. I’m sure that at least some of the problem I’m having sleeping is due to anxiety over not being connected to these people any more.

I’d say it’s like the anxiety you’d get from being disconnected from or fighting with your family, but I’ve never been that close to my family, so what do I know?

I’m on a group of mailing lists. Over the years I’ve gotten a reputation for answering rhetorical questions. That’s partly true - most of the lists live on my system, so I see them before anybody else, so if I know the answer I will answer, without minutely analysing the post to see if it’s a rhetorical question. I think it’s better to err on the side of being helpful - most people would rather see thier question answered, rather than not answered because people couldn’t figure out if it was rhetorical or not. So sue me.

I also have a habit, when somebody makes a ironic statement, of trying to amplify the irony by playing off what they’re saying. Sometimes I do it right, sometimes it falls flat.

Unfortunately because of the first reputation, unlike when other people do it and it doesn’t work right, people just assume I’m totally fucking stupid, and pile all over me. And I’m god damned sick and tired of it. So I’m taking a break. I’m not going to say anything on any of those mailing lists for as long as I can. Maybe if I don’t give them any ammunition, they’ll stop piling on me. Already in the last hour I’ve had to stop myself twice where I was going to reply to a message.

The saddest thing is that these people are the people I consider my best friends in the world. Maybe I need some new friends.

USATODAY.com - Cops: Glen Campbell violent by the time he got to Phoenix jail

I propose “By the time he gets to Phoenix, he’ll be reeling”.

FOXNews.com - Business - Dell to Stop Using Indian Call Center for Corporate Customers

Dell has finally realized that outsourcing isn’t such a great money saver if the lousy service drives away your customers. I’ve emailed for customer support from three different companies recently, and in each case I got back a response that indicated that the person responding didn’t read or understand the question, and merely copied whatever chunks of the FAQ used the same nouns that I did, and in all cases it was signed with an Indian name.

I’m not saying that non-Indians are incapable of bad customer support, quite the contrary, but my experience with non-Indians has only been mostly bad, compared to totally bad experience with Indians.

Legislators Protest Beer Logos on Museum Exhibit (washingtonpost.com)

Oh oh, what about the Spirit of St. Louis? Doesn’t “spirit” mean hard liquor? Oh, and then there’s Vin Fiz. That’s blatant commercialization!

I always wondered how George Bush planned to totally eliminate democracy in this country. Now we know.

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

Today was supposed to be my third flight in the Lance. It takes 10 hours to check out in the Lance, and I’ve done about 3 so far. We’ve done all the basic air work, pattern landings. All we really needed to work on today were instrument approaches. I’ve got to get used to doing ILS approaches at 120 knots. Everything happens a lot faster, but if you can do an ILS at 120 knots the controllers love you because you fit in better with the stream of airliners than if you’re poodling along at 90 knots. I was hoping that after we’d done some ILS approaches at 120, I could then try some non-precision approaches and see how they work at a higher speed than I’m used to as well.

Alas, such was not to be. Lenny went and got the plane back from Peidmont-Hawthorne, who had done the work on the alternator after last weekend’s problems with it. Since they’re on the field, he’d just taxied it over. I did a thorough pre-flight, and after I stared it up I checked and the alterator was indicating that it was producing power. Taxied out to the run-up area, and was running the runup checklist when I noticed the alterator was no longer producing power. Looked over at the multi-function display and see that the battery power is just clicking down from 12 volts to 11.9 volts. Once again, do all the same stuff we’d tried in the air last weekend - checking all the circuit breakers, shutting off the alterator switch, the master switch, radios, everything else, and then turning them on again. No such luck. We reluctantly called ground control and told them that we were done for the day, and heading back to the tie downs.

I’m not 100% sure, but I think the only thing that got turned on between the time when I noted that the alternator was working and I noticed that it wasn’t was that Lenny turned the altitude hold to “TEST” and then off. Other than that, everything had been on. I think. Maybe the avionics master had been off when I checked the alternator reading the first time. It sounds almost like something short circuited and killed the alternator, but if so, I would have expected a circuit breaker to pop. One other piece of evidence - the landing light was dead when I did my pre-flight. It hadn’t been dead when I’d done my pre-flight last week. I wonder if it was a cause or an effect of whatever was wrong with the electrics.

Anyway, it was a waste of a beautiful day. It seems like everybody was flying and I couldn’t. I’m bummed.

In Rants and Revelations: Art in spammer subject lines I saw something that looked like art in what I thought were random words generated by spammers. Well, JoAnne just pointed out to me that the words actually come from The Master and the Margarita by Bulgakov.

Amazing. I assume that means the spammers just grabbed some text file they found on-line and used it to generate phrases, and not that they are secretly highly literate and fans of english translations of obscure russian authors.

I called the FAA today to see about my medical.

For those of you not following along, all pilots need to be medically certified before they can fly airplanes. (There are different rules for gliders, balloons and ultralights). My special issuance medical expired around the end of August, and I sent in the paperwork (doctor’s report, blood tests, etc) to get a normal class III medical at that time. At that time, the Aircraft Owners and Pilot’s Association (AOPA) web site warned about huge backlogs (12-14 weeks) due to the war in Iraq.

I’ve been hoping to get my medical back soon, because I’ve got some travelling to do next month, and I’d like to do it by plane. I called them, and the people who work the phones there at Oklahoma City are extremely nice. They told me that the doctors who went to Iraq are all back now, and the backlog isn’t all that bad now. They’re supposed to be back to their normal 90 day maximum turn-around. The second person I talked to said not to worry, it should show up soon.

Man, I hope so. I haven’t logged an instrument approach in a while, and I need to knock the rust off.

I was grepping my spam collection to see all the spam I’d gotten from the spammer who evidently has problems with his substitution script and leaves “%RND_UC_CHAR[2-8]” in the subject lines of all his spams. And I was struck by a curious poetic quality of the random words on the rest of the subject lines. Here’s what I have collected:

grep RND_UC_CHAR Mail/yes.spam
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], moment only because
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], anyone his passport
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the master held
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], poured water into
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], of haze before
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], under a black
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], lengthening the shadows
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], each other only
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], felt cold under
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], he quite simply
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], he quite simply
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], dont know about
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], having got nowhere
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], is there beer?’
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], seeing someone come
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], face was half
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], that he would
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], apollonovichs young relation
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], but he gave
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], made one more
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], made one more
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and yet each
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], a thunderclap right
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the interpreter deftly
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], i’ve been sent
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], put his head
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], as luck would
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], ivan nikolaevichs apprehensions
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the bell started
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and here some
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], turning the barmans
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], good god!’ riukhin
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], good god!’ riukhin
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], he asked: yeshua
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], here it comes
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], at the same
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and once more
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], woland is simply
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], balls always assemble
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], a finnish knife
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], possible to make
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], investigation was going
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], many hanging about
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], who is this
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], here styopa turned
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the same tone
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], crowds of guests
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], brilliant numbers will
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], finally the century
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and here’s something
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], he had looked
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], what had happened
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], wearing only black
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], beyond the housing
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], had already been
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], to the hairy
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], the investigation appeared
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], military chlamys with
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], anyone his passport
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and the first
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], and the most
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], fifthstorey window three
Subject: Re: %RND_UC_CHAR[2-8], glass; street sweepers

Not as good as “The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed”, but it’s getting there.

Vicki keeps bugging me for what I want for Christmas. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
Continue reading ‘My Christmas List’ »

Clear to Land, but Dodging East River Flotsam

(Note: NY Times link, requires free registration. Nothing to prevent you lying through you teeth when you register, though)

Flying seaplanes on New York’s East River. Maybe not the call of the wild, but probably not so likely to end up as wolf shit, either. Not that there’s anything wrong with ending up as wolf shit, as a matter of fact it used to be an ambition of mine.