Rants and Revelations

On Monday my boss issued a directive saying that contractors can’t bill more than 40 hours in a week without prior authorization. So today I was walking out at 2:30, finished for the week, and I met him coming in from his long lunch. Bye Mike.

I’m flying to Oshawa. I phoned for a 18:45 arrival, only to find that Oshawa doesn’t have customs after 16:30. Which is a bit weird because most of the time, “customs” is just a phone call to 1-888-CANPASS. So instead I’m flying to St. Catherines to clear customs, then hopping over the lake from there. But because it’s a short flight and customs requires two hours notice, I’m waiting around at Rochester airport until 18:00. Thank goodness for open wireless nodes. This one is called FLGCAP.

I got two emails today with questions about my CoPilot Waypoint Generators from this guy. I answered one as best as I could, and tried to get him to clarify what he meant in the other. Except both messages bounced. So I looked at his original mail messages. His “From:” address is foo@sbcglobal.com, but he has a “Reply-To:” of foo@earthlink.net. I know a bunch of earthlink people went to sbcglobal a while back - I guess one got sold to the other or something. So he set up a Reply-To that he didn’t need back when he was on earthlink, and then didn’t change it when he changed over. And now he probably wonders why nobody ever replies to his messages.

I was watching the Ken Burns series on the Civil War (thanks to Netflix), and several times I caught myself wondering about the background music. About three times I had to remind myself that wasn’t “God Save the Queen” they were playing. What’s the name of the American song that uses that tune? “America Tis of Thee” or something? The more puzzling one is that a tune that I identified as Billy Bragg’s song “There Is Power In a Union”, which is about labour unions and hardly appropriate to a show about the Civil War. But I got to wondering - the chorus begins “The union forever”, and I wondered if it was originally a song about the Union in a “Union versus Rebels” rather than in a “union versus management” sense. That would make more sense. A little googling showed that I was right, it was “The Battle Cry of Freedom”, and the iTunes Music Store has several versions of it.

I was interested to see what WordPress did when I attempted to post a comment through a spam proxy - I didn’t know if the option under “Options->Discussion” to block posts from open proxys would catch it silently, or if it would be caught by and presented under the menu on “Options->SpamKarma”.

I did a “grep poker /var/log/httpd/access| tail -1″ and grabbed the IP. A quick telnet showed that it was running an open http proxy server on port 80. So I set that as my proxy server, fired up Safari and attempted to comment on my last entry. SpamKarma got it and presented a warning to the comment poster that it was doing so, which meant that I could go to “Manage->Comments” and review it and delete it.

Ok, so it’s nice to know that when the spammers finally figure out where to spam my blog comments, SpamKarma will be on the case. It’s interesting to see that it’s not silently deleting spam now, which means that the spammers still have not figured out how to attempt to blog spam me. That’s just a little weird.

As I wrote over a month ago, in Rants and Revelations » Hit me, spammers, I haven’t had any comment spam from random comment spammers since switching from MovableType to WordPress. So far it falsely accused a couple of legitimate comments as being spam for various reasons, and I’ve had to remove comments from my ex-wife, but I haven’t seen anything that you could count as spam.

I’ve looked at my web server, and I don’t see any hits on wp-comments-post that I couldn’t account for. Still seeing lots of hits on the non-functional MovableType comment cgi, though.

Either the comment spammers haven’t figured out WordPress 1.5 yet, or the option that says “Blacklist comments from open and insecure proxies” is silently preventing the comment spammers from even getting to wp-comments-post.

Now if only the referrer spammers would stop hitting every link in my site in spite of the fact that there is no where anyone can see my referrers so they aren’t getting any benefit from chewing up my bandwidth.

We just had a mandatory all-employees (including contractors) meeting. Distilled down to the bare essentials, it comes down to:
“We’re reducing the R&D budget by 30%. We’re going to try and do that by shifting some costs into other budgets, cutting a few projects, pushing back some schedules.

Oh, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll cut staff. We’ll let you know when.

Have a nice day.”

Back on March 15th, I ordered a Linksys WRT54G router. I know, I once vowed never to by Linksys products again, but that was before they were bought by Cisco, and before they came out with a router that was actually a small and very cheap Linux computer. There wasn’t much wrong with my old router except every now and then people coming to my web site would instead get the login screen for the router’s web interface (which would correct itself on a refresh). But this one, because it’s Linux and GPL, has many third party patches available to do all sorts of fun things.

Unfortunately, I ordered the router from a company called “BestBargainPC”, which also does business as “US-Depot.com”. They charged my card immediately, and their order status page said “Product will ship within 24 hours”. Unfortunately, it was still saying “…will ship within 24 hours” 15 days later. I attempted to email them, and didn’t get a response for a couple of days. So I attempted to phone them, and they never answered the phone even during their advertised business hours. That’s when I called up MBNA.

I have an MBNA credit card that I use for most of my on-line purchases, for reasons I talked about in What is the matter with this credit card? I’m glad that I’m still using it for on-line purchases, because they’re great. I phoned them up, and they said they’d take care of it, and now, about a week later, I get a letter saying that they’ve reversed the charge and any accumulated interest and late fees.

The router, which I ordered from Amazon the same day I called MBNA about the other company, arrived yesterday and I installed it already. Amazon charged me about a dollar more than the other place did.

I also went to Reseller Ratings to put in my feedback for bestbargainpc, and found that somebody else had the same experience during the month of March, after mostly favourable reviews before then.

kayaking/DSCN1853I went kayaking for the first time this year. Actually, except for the day of the sale, this is my first time kayaking in my own Skerray RMX. And it’s a great boat. In the narrow twisting sections and while trying to photograph the numerous kayaking/DSCN1856geese and kayaking/DSCN1874swans, I could put the skeg up and make it maneuverable, and when I went out on the lake to visit kayaking/DSCN1879Mike’s plane, I could put the skeg down part way and get a lot more stability.

kayaking/DSCN1861I probably went a little too far. My elbows are complaining a bit. I’m going to take some more ibuprohen and ice them down a bit. But man, it felt good. I went up to the weir, which was running pretty strong and I got splashed quite a bit when I side-ferryed into the tounge of the water coming through from the eddy beside, and suddenly I had to paddle like crazy just to stand still.

kayaking/DSCN1871There was almost nobody on the creek today. I saw two people setting off just as I was arriving, and they returned just ahead of me too. There were two people milling around looking for somebody who worked there, and I saw them later on the water so they did manage to find somebody to rent them kayaks. But otherwise it was just me, a few turtles, geese, swans, redwinged blackbirds, and one great blue heron. It was glorious.

This post has everything - beautiful scenery, rare birds, flying, beautiful air hostesses, …
Someone Else’s Life: SEVEN DAYS in the SOUTH ATLANTIC

I was off Monday, and yesterday I forgot to bring my PDA into work, so today I went to the pimp’s web site to enter my hours. Normally I don’t even look at the login screen, and just click through to the page where you have a box for each day of the week to enter how many hours I’ve worked. But when I got there, there were boxes for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but nothing for Thursday through Sunday. “Hmmm”, I thought, not coming to the realization that I’m sure most of you have already come to, “must be a technical glitch on their end”. So I called the pimp, and they said “Oh, you have to change the Time Period drop down box from ‘Week Ending April 10′ to ‘Week Ending April 4′”. “D’OH!”

Ok, slap me upside the head for being an idiot, but when I normally enter my timesheet on Mondays, the correct “Week Ending” is already selected.

Well, I got home. It wasn’t easy.

I called for a weather briefing, and the Canadian side of the border was forecasting only nil-light clear ice, while the US side between Watertown and Syracuse was still calling for light to moderate mixed icing in clouds and precipitation between freezing level and 18,000 feet. I also found out that the clouds to the west and north of Ottawa were in several layers, while those to the south were still solid from about 1500 feet up to above the highest altitude I could reach. I hemmed and hawed, and decided to try the northern route, going from Ottawa to Campbellford (spelling approximate - designator YCF) to Toronto to the little maze of Victor Airways that get you from Toronto to Rochester. It looked like it was going to be pure VFR after about YCF.

At first, I couldn’t start the plane. The very helpful guy at Esso Avitat brought out this humungous pre-heater that is made for jet aircraft but he says they mostly use it for getting the trucks going in very cold weather. 10 or 15 minutes of that, and the engine kicked over in one blade. What a difference a little warmth can make.

I took off, and immediately I was having even more of the electrical problems I’d reported on the way out. The autopilot’s indicator lights (that say “HDG”, “NAV”, etc) were all flashing like crazy. As well, that pinging that was coming through the intercom was a full fledged squeal, so I turned off the intercom. One of the radio flip-flops wouldn’t retune - it was set to 132.20 (Montreal Center) and I was attempting to turn the other Montreal Center frequency at 132.05, but it only flicked between 132.20 and 132.15 and wouldn’t budge. But I moved the outer knob to 131, and then I could tune the inner ring to .05, and then move the outer knob to 132. Weird. Toronto Center was having a lot of problems with my transponder, too, asking me to recycle once, then ident, then report various distances from them. As I got closer that cleared up, no idea if it was something wrong with the transponder or just that I was closer to their antenna. The alternator was nearly pegged, and I recycled it once, and it seemed to help some of the problems, but the autopilot never worked at all, and the squeal in the intercom went down to a ping but never went away.

When I entered the clouds on the way up, I went to a fast cruise climb speed, 100 knots or more, because clear ice can build up on the underside of the wing unseen if you have a high angle of attack. By the time I reached my cruise altitude, 8000, I was in a layer where the clouds were widely scattered at my altitude, so I was in and out of them, but I couldn’t see below or above so I was on the guages the whole time. I really really need more practice flying on the guages without an autopilot. On the way up to my altitude I picked up a thin layer of clear ice, about 2-4 mm in depth I’d guess, on the temperature probe, and what looked more a very thin layer of impacted snow on the wings. I couldn’t detect any difference in flying qualities, and I was still making better than 130 knots over the ground so it wasn’t slowing me down any. Because I was in and out of and then totally above the clouds, I wasn’t picking up any more.

By the time I got to YCF, it was severe clear. I’ve never seen the drumlins in that part of the world from the air before. It was quite startling how clear they were. Toronto Center asked me to descend to 4000 feet, which got me below the freezing level and the ice went pretty quickly. They were quite accomodating about my desire not to cross the middle of the lake direct from YCF to Rochester, and bring me in almost to the edge of the Toronto Class C airspace and letting me climb back up to 7000 feet before sending me over. Not only is the lake narrower there than back at Rochester, I believe the rescue helicopter is based at Toronto City Center so any rescue would reach me quicker there. The funny thing about them getting me what I wanted was that I was heading due West with Buffalo directly to my left (South), and he gave me a climbing right turn to 090 (due East), which I thought was kind of weird. But before I completed the turn or got to 7000 feet he had me continue the turn to 190 (just past South), and then I saw a commuter plane go by straight in front of me at about 5000 feet, descending to land at Toronto. So it was just a clever way of making sure I was higher than the commuter plane before I turned to cross his path.

It was a mixture of frustration and fun, and I’m glad to be home.

I’m sitting in the Ottawa Flying Club’s cafe, waiting for the updated weather forecast that comes out in half an hour. They’ve got a wireless access point, although I had to have them reboot the server to get it working. For some stupid reason, they block outgoing SSH connections, which means I have to use Squirrel Mail to read my home email. That kind of sucks.

Mostly I’m wasting time by going through old blog entries and correcting all the internal links that broke when I moved from MovableType to Wordpress. I also added a butt-load of new categories. The old categories, “Rant”, “Revelation”, “Route” were alliterative, and indicative of the mood of the post, but not much help if you were looking for posts about flying, or geek stuff, or photography, or whatever. Wordpress makes it WAY easier to put articles in multiple categories, so the old categories are retained as well.

Do you realize that, as a camper and mountain climber and kayaker, that the recently deceased pope is probably the only pope in centuries who really did shit in the woods?

Sorry.

Ok, I won’t know for sure until the afternoon forecasts come out (usually around 1pm), but it looks like I might have badly misjudged the weather. Not only are the ceilings lower than I thought they’d be, they’re also colder, meaning I might not have the above freezing escape route I thought I did. I’m not sure about that, though. It also appears that the low pressure system is moving much slower than I thought, and I might not have that plan B backstop of VFR weather until Monday evening or Tuesday. Oh well, if I have to wait, I have to wait. Right now it’s just a game of wait for the afternoon forecast and see if things look better. Right now they’re predicting a ceiling just above minimums for Rochester (OVC004 - overcast at 400 feet), and relatively better at Syracuse (OVC020 - overcast at 2,000 feet). Also, Syracuse is predicting rain but Rochester is predicting mixed rain and snow. Also I’ll have to see if I can get a tops report - it would be better if I could fly above or between clouds.

On the plus side, Alyssa and I went out to take some pictures yesterday. The results can be found at my Gallery site. I think we got a few good ones.

kroc_to_cyow/DSCN1816
I flew to Ottawa today. A not particularly great day, but it beats the hell out of driving. The weather was pretty good up until the border, where the clouds starting filling in below me. Not a problem - that’s why I have an instrument rating after all. There had been an AIRMET for occassional moderate turbulence below 8,000 feet, and things were smooth at 9,000 feet. But soon after crossing the border Montreal Center wanted me down at 8,000 feet, and sure enough it was pretty bumpy down there. The clouds were solid with tops around 6,500 feet, and it was windy, so I think I was getting some sort of mechanical turbulance from the clouds. After a while bumping around at 8,000, they had me descent to 6,000 feet, which was in solid cloud. It was a little below freezing, but I was getting liquid water on the windshield, not ice. 10 or 15 minutes of that, and Ottawa terminal sent me down to 4,000 feet, which was below the clouds. I did the visual approach for runway 25. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to log an approach, but relieved I didn’t have to fly the approach for runway 25, which is a localizer back course (LOC BC) and I’ve never flown a back course in my life.
kroc_to_cyow/DSCN1822
Along the way, I had some annoying little problems. First of all was the autopilot. I was planning to hand-fly the whole way just for the practice, but I snapped the autopilot on quickly while I set up the approach on my radios. It was fine for a while when suddenly the yoke started wobbling back and forth, and then it started turning off course. I moved the heading bug around, and it turned the other direction but went past the heading bug and headed off in the other direction. So I tried NAV mode, and it was worse - even though I was almost exactly centered on the selected radial, but it immediately started turning. I brought it back on course, engaged the NAV mode, and it turned in the other direction. So I guess the autopilot can be trusted for quick radio setups and the like, but not for anything extended. Another problem occured near the end of the flight, when I started getting a very loud sonar-like pinging though my headset. I couldn’t find any radio or navaid making that noise. Turning the intercom off got rid of it, though. The DG seemed to precess a lot as well.

The hardest part of making these weekend trips is trying to be reasonably sure I can get home afterwards. I love the national prog charts on the AOPA web site which go out 120 hours, but they’re available to AOPA members only so I won’t link them here. Almost as good are the ones on the Aviation Weather Center, but they only go out for 48 hours. So around Wednesday, I start looking at the AOPA site to see what my chances are. At first, it looked like the Sunday flight home was going to be VFR. Then it looked like it would be a bit rainy, with the VFR weather on Monday. Now it looks like Sunday and Monday morning are both going to be crappy, with clearing on Monday afternoon. Sunday shows a lot of snow showers along my route. But the temperature forecast is saying surface temperatures in the 40s. That makes me think that I can try in the clouds, and if I get icing, I can descend down to 3,000 feet which is a safe altitude here and the temperature will be above freezing.

Since getting my instrument rating, I haven’t flown much in winter, and so I have no experience judging whether clouds are going to give me icing problems or not. I’m hoping that by skirting around the periphery of icing problems, with a clear out to above freezing temperatures below, I can start to get some experience in that direction. Or maybe I’ll just get lucky and find an altitude between layers and not get any ice.