Rants and Revelations

I got an email to the mailman administrator account from somebody claiming that the previous owner of his email address must have been a pilot, and he wants to be unsubscribed from the mailing lists because “they clog up my mailbox”. I run a bunch of lists for pilots, but none of them average more than one message a month, so I wasn’t initially inclined to be kind to him.
Continue reading ‘I’ll never understand the thought processes of stupid people’ »

In a probably futile attempt to get ready for the Long Lake kayak race, today I decided to duck out of work early and do a longer paddle. I wanted something not as fraught with power boats and wakes as Irondequoit Bay, and not as shallow and draggy as Irondequoit Creek. And the solution I came up with was the Genesee River.

I started at the Genesee Waterways Center, which is a boat house for rowing crews as well as a boat launch, and headed upstream. I don’t know why, but I started pooping out really early, but by alternating paddling and resting and paddling again, I managed to do 6 miles in 1:27. In spite of the fact that I was going upstream and into the wind, it actually took me 44 minutes to go up, and 43 minutes to come back. On the way up, first a single rower passed me by and continued upstream, but on the way back the river was full of 8s, coxed 4s, dual sculls, and motor boats with coaches. It’s too bad I was so bagged, I would have liked to hold my own in the level of effort if not the speed with all those boats.

Bush cements his legacy: Bush quietly seeks to make war powers permanent, by declaring indefinite state of war

I don’t know about you, but I’m scared. And the thing I’m most scared about is if Feisty McGeezer gets elected, he’ll stack with Supreme Court with more Scalitos who will be happy to rubber stamp more outrages.

Someday we’ll look back at 2001 as the year the US stopped marching forwards towards greater and greater civil liberties, and started a permanent slide into despotism.

I’ve been here at Kodak for over 6 years as an hourly wage contractor. No benefits, no vacation, and no 401(K). And while I’ve bitched about it here many times, overall it’s been a damn good job. Good money, the respect of my peers, an active role in design, interesting technology, etc. But several months ago, they told me that they couldn’t renew my contract any more, and that they’d convert me to a full time employee. And that was all going ahead nicely when the head of our division suddenly left. No warning, no explanation, just “Heck of a job, Brownie” one day and “We can neither confirm nor deny he ever worked here” the next. Something fishy happened. But the new person came in, and of course the first thing she did was put a freeze on hiring.

So since that time, they’ve been renewing my contract one month at a time, and usually waiting until the last week of the month before confirming it. So needless to say, I’ve been “exploring my options”, spreading my resume around, registering at Monster and Dice, talking to headhunters, and going on some intervews. And now I’ve got an offer from Global Crossing. It doesn’t look hugely exciting, but it might be mildly interesting and a chance to get some experience in some technologies I’ve been interrested in, like Hibernate and EJBs. It’s contract-to-hire, which is a bummer, and it pays way less than I’m making now (which I expected) and probably a little less than what Kodak would come up with if they ever get around to making an offer. On the other hand, it’s in a new building, rather than a clapped out industrial building where the ceiling tiles are older than I am and the asbestos warning stickers confront you at every doorway.

So now it comes down to: do I take the nearly sure thing at Global Crossing, or sit here waiting while Kodak jerks me around for another week, another month, another quarter, or whatever?

In my career I’ve always played it by ear, but I’ve also made a habit of getting out when the going is good. I swore I wouldn’t do that here, because the pay is so much better than what I’d make elsewhere that it would be worth it to stick it out to the bitter end and maybe lose a month’s pay while looking for a new job. But this constant worry if they’re going to renew my contract this month is driving me batty.

Today I did the part I’ve been dreading, glassing the inside of the hull. And for all the dread and worry, it ended up being about 18 times worse than my worst fears. The glass ended up bumpy and full of bubbles. It also went majorly wrong in the ends, where the glass cloth ended up bunched up and impossible to epoxy down. Fortunately the end parts are going to be filled with epoxy, so that’s not so bad. And most of the big bubbles are going to be in parts of the boat that nobody will see, but some of them are in the cockpit where I’ll see it every time I sit down.

I’m hoping and praying that I’ll be able to cut down and fill some of the worst of the bubbles.

Update: It’s not Eclipse, it’s NFS. The file is there as [classname].java on the machine that has ClearCase installed, but on the one I’m running on, it’s [classname].java.loading.

Google isn’t helping me here.

I have a bunch of errors in my Eclipse project, because it’s staying it can’t find a particular class. I do an “ls”, and the .java file is there. But in Eclipse, the file appears as [classname].java.loading, and no amount of hitting F5 will convince it to rescan the directory and rediscover the file.

Help?

I probably should have read tthis post of mine from 2005 before today’s doctor’s appointment. Then I would have been ready when it happened again. Or not. I never seem to learn.

Today, I got my second appointment with the new neurologist. After spending 3 hours absorbing the magic healing rays that are evidently given off by an empty exam room and a rack full of magazines that don’t interest me, (broken up by 15 minutes answering questions from a different PA than last time, most of which were already in my file), I got to see the doctor. And he did the physical exam that I’m already too familiar with, having had it more times than I can count, involving moving my kneecap around, pressing on my legs and knees, and all that shit, only to hear the all-too-familiar word “chondromalacia”. Yup, the same diagnosis[1] that I’ve had since I was 15. And since we’re on the endless repeat cycle, I know what’s going to come next - some barely effective anti-inflammatory pills and some physiotherapy that makes the problem far worse.

I might as well forget it - I’m never going to be pain free, and even a reduction in pain or a reduction in the amount of increase in pain over time is too much to hope for. Trying a new doctor has been a complete waste of time, and used up even more of my ever dwindling bag of hope. It’s times like this I wonder how much more of this pain I can stand before I just have to end it all.

Meanwhile, I took some drug that he wanted me to try last night, and woke up feeling sleepy, mildly nauseated and headachy. The PA referred to it as a “hangover”, I assume in a medical sense just meaning a side effect that carries on the next day, but that’s exactly what it felt like, like I’d tied one on last night. And after the 3.5 hour doctor’s appointment (plug half an hour travel time each way) made me two hours late for lunch, I was really feeling sick. I was seriously considering just going home and lying down on the bed and crying for the rest of the day. But instead I grabbed some lunch, and after a few hours I can almost look at a computer screen without feeling like I’m going to barf. I still feel like crying.

[1] Wikipedia says “chondromalacia” isn’t a diagnosis, just a description of the pain. Big fucking deal - it also says the usual treatment is anti-inflammatories, physiotherapy, and “treatment of any underlying cause of the pain”. Well, since nobody has ever discovered the underlying cause of the pain, after X-Rays, MRIs, and arthroscopic surgery, that comes back to the same treatment plan that’s been tried and failed a dozen times already.

I’m using this post to track the problems and user interface deficiencies that I’m having with the AvMap EKP-IV.

• The damn CF card is busted, and they they’re currently giving me a run-around instead of sending me a new one! was busted, and the replacement came with a return envelope that wasn’t postage paid.
• There should be a single keystroke to get to the currently active flight plan, instead of having to hit “Menu”, “Menu”, “Flight Plans”.
• You should be able to name flight plans.
• Calling the button for the nearest airport “Page” is stupid.
• Hitting the “nearest” button twice should take you to the nearest airport button instead of forcing you to hit “Page”, “Menu”, “Airport”. If you need the nearest airport, you generally need it FAST.
• Why do I keep end up in the cursor mode just about every time I go to the map page, even if I haven’t touched the joystick? It should only be in a cursor mode if I move the cursor with the joystick.
• The joystick is way too sensitive.
• There should be a half-arc on the display with DTK and TRK on it like the Garmin 296 and 530W have. The only thing close is to use up a lot of screen real-estate for a HSI display.
• The way the vertical navigation works is stupid - as far as I can tell, you have to put in the top altitude, the bottom altitude and the glide slope every time you use it. In the Garmins, you just say “I want to be at 1000 AGL when I get 3 nm from the airport, and I want to descend at 500 fpm”, and it calculates where to start your descent based on your current altitude and the altitude of the airport.
• The manual wasn’t included in the box, even though the Quick Start booklet said it would be.
• The manual, which I downloaded from the web site, sucked rocks.
• The power switch evidently turns itself on if you just breathe on it. I’ve discovered the batteries dead numerous times, and it’s just sitting on my flight bag.

I’ll probably think of others.

To answer Gordon’s question in the comments below, what I like about the EKP-IV:

• It has a really great screen. It’s big, it’s bright, and it’s very clear
• Even better, it’s in “portrait” mode. My original GPS, a Garmin 195, was in portrait mode, and I never understood why they went to landscape mode for later models. I don’t know about everybody else, but I want to see where I am and where I’m going, not where I am and 30 miles to each side. And the AnywhereMap Travel Companion and the new Bendix King AV8OR are landscape mode too. I don’t get it.
• It’s about the same price as a 296, much cheaper than a 396, 496 or even a 495. I don’t need XM WX yet, but if I do, I like the idea that it will someday be an optional extra on this unit, rather than having to make the decision at purchase time like the Garmins.
• It was strongly recommended by a friend who had one, sold it to buy a 496 for the weather, but then wished he’d kept the EKP-IV.
• It doesn’t have a road mode. That way I won’t be tempted to leave it on the dashboard of my car. Let the next car thief steal a Nuvi or other car type GPS and leave my aviation GPS alone!
• I looked longingly at the AnywhereMap new iPaq Travel Companion, and while it had some amazing features, it was incredibly slow. This one looked like it had some of the features, without the horrible slowness.

Update: Did I sound a little annoyed with AvMap when I posted this? Well, I suppose I was. But I think I’ve finally managed to convince the support person that I’ve done everything I can, so they’re finally going to send me a new CF card. So I’m a lot less annoyed. I still wish there was a way to get them to listen to my ideas about the user interface, though. It doesn’t seem right to open a support ticket for that, but there isn’t anything else I can see on their web page for other feedback.

I made three major purchases at Oshkosh.

1. iCom A14 handheld radio
2. Clarity Aloft headset
3. AvMap EKP-IV GPS

It’s been a mixed bag.

The iCom worked out of the box, I was able to use it on the trip home, and now I’ve had a chance to go through the manual it looks like it will do everything I need and then some (I didn’t know about the automatic marine weather mode, for instance). It’s slightly annoying that the free headset adaptor is a mail-in thing, and I have to make copies of the sales receipt and registration card.

The Clarity Aloft didn’t work, and I didn’t discover that until I fired up the engine for the flight home. I wrote to them as soon as I got home and they were very apologetic. They shipped a replacement immediately, and it arrived today. I took it out to the airport to make sure it worked fine, and it did. They didn’t send a pre-paid return shipping slip, so I’m going to have to pay to return the broken one and get reimbursed. I’m going to keep the extra eartips from the first one as a compensation for my troubles.

The EKP IV did work, after a fashion. There are a few items of the user interface that absolutely drive me bonkers, and a few that are minor annoyances. After I got home, I thought I’d grab the latest firmware to see if some of the worst bugs have been fixed. That involves putting the CF card in a card reader on my computer and copying some files over. Seems simple enough. The manual suggests very strongly that you keep a copy of the files on your computer, so I did. But after updating the CF card and putting it back into the unit, though, the unit says “DEVICE not PRESENT”. (Yes, that’s the capitalization.) I tried restoring the backup files, but it didn’t help. I tried copying the files to a different CF card, and the unit boots with it, but can’t access the aviation database - that’s not entirely unexpected, because the aviation database is somehow keyed to the CF card. The problem is that I just can’t seem to convince the AvMap people that the CF card is toast and I need a new one. I’ve exchanged a number of emails with somebody in Italy where I set out my very strong evidence that it’s not what I’m doing, or the version of the firmware I’m using, and they send back instructions that basically assume that I’m doing something wrong or using the wrong version of the firmware. If they don’t ship me a new CF card in the next 24 hours, I’m going to go to my credit card company and get them to cancel payment on this. And then I’m going to buy a reconditioned Garmin 296 or a 496.

I went to register my AvMap EKP-IV GPS. While doing so, I noticed that the firmware I have is a couple of version numbers older than the current downloadable one. Upgrading is supposed to be a simple matter of popping out the CF card, putting it into the computer, and copying over the two files you download, and then putting the CF card back in the GPS. Well, I did that, but then the GPS started saying “Device not found”. So I copied back the original files, which I’d copied onto my laptop as suggested in the documentation. And I got the same damn message. So now I’m basically boned.

The instructions were all about “Hilight the two files and drag them”, but I used “cp -R”. I wonder if there is a permissions problem? I knew I should have made a tar file instead of just a copy.

This morning I was sitting there enjoying my breakfast and the early morning quiet when a woman who was parked a few planes down (so she arrived the same time as me) came over to chew me out for nearly hitting her when I turned final on Saturday. I told her that while I don’t remember it exactly, I’m pretty sure my base had been called by the tower, so I really don’t know how that could have happened. Although in retrospect, I could have been focusing too hard on the Mooney I was told to follow, and not enough on looking around.

Now I’m all nervous about just how bad a job I did arriving here, and I’m even more sure that I shouldn’t do the VFR arrival without a second pair of eyes on board.

BTW: Wifi sucks here. It sometimes works at the shower stalls, but it cuts in and out when it does, and the wifi here at the bus shelter is more reliable but there isn’t any power here.

Yesterday I found some power but no wifi. Today I found wifi but no power. So I was able to finally get the log file that my boss emailed me yesterday. I had been trying to find a way to read it on my cell phone, but for some stupid reason every “text reader” I managed to find for the Palm either required you to convert the text file to something else on your PC, or the program itself was only available as a zip file, and I have no way of unzipping files on the Palm. Why can’t they just make the bare .PRC file available?

Once I got the log file, it only took me a minute to find the fix, so I’ve emailed me off. Yesterday I started writing a long narrative of my Oshkosh so far, and I was going to put it all up when I got home, but now I have wifi I guess I could cut and paste that into blog posts.

I made it to Oshkosh. And I flew the Ripon-Fisk VFR arrival. Man, I have never been so close to so many aircraft in the air before in my life. As I was coming up to Ripon, a Bonanza passed about 20 feet off my left wing and crossed about 20 feet in front of me. I don’t know if he saw me or not. Then since we were over Ripon already, I just turned up the tracks, but I think I cut off a Mooney who was also coming up the tracks. I was told to follow another Mooney up to Runway 27.

The instructions say to turn up the road just north of the field as a downwind leg, but the Mooney went about a mile wider than that, and an RV snuck in between us. I’m not sure where he came from, but I think he might have gone around from his previous approach. They also extended the downwind way out over the lake. Tower told me to turn to base immediately, and that put me way too close to the Mooney (I lost sight of the RV again), and then he told the Mooney to go around, and I thought he said for me to go around, but then he expressed surprise when I did, so I guess that was my other mistake.

But we got slotted into the downwind again and landed safely, although I don’t think he ever cleared me to land.

It was a very strange experience, and I’m really glad I did it. But next time I’m going to make sure I get an IFR reservation.

The guy who wanted a ride from Muskegon to Oshkosh has changed his mind. Probably. He’s still looking for a ride home on Tuesday, possibly by bus, but unless he calls me sometime tonight or tomorrow while I’m on-route to Muskegon, I’m going to be alone.

Time to study that NOTAM one more time, I guess.