Category: Rant

This is one reason I hate using eBay

My dad gave me his old camera because mine crapped out. The lens he gave me with it didn’t include filters, and the filters on my old lenses don’t fit. So I thought I’d get the bare minimum, a 1A Skylight filter and a polarizer, from eBay. There was a guy selling a whole bunch of camera stuff, and he said in his actions that if you used the “Buy It Now” feature you didn’t have to the shipping, and if you bought two or more, you could take 50 cents off of each item as a “bulk discount”. He was an eBay power seller or whatever they call it, and he took PayPal so it should have been dead easy.

So I did the “Buy it now” on the two filters I wanted. The eBay checkout procedure would allow me to remove the shipping cost myself, but not the bulk discount. So I emailed the guy and asked him to update the price so I could send him the money. No answer. So the next day I just calculated how much the total should be and Paypal-ed him the money. But he still hasn’t answer any of my emails, nor has he acknowledged me in any way whatsoever. It’s been 4 days so far.

At what point do I say to myself that the money I paypal-ed to him is lost, he’s a fucking rip-off artist, and buy another couple of filters?

Oh, and just to make my life complete, his site advertises that he’s got “autofeedback”, so if you leave him a negative feedback on eBay he’ll automatically leave you a negative feedback.

Well, I guess I can say goodbye to that float plane rating…

New TSA Rule

Short summary – any non-citizen wanting any sort of flight training has to get TSA approval, and as well as the cost and hassle of getting the photos and fingerprints and stuff, there will be a several hundred dollar fee. Oh, and knowing the federal government, probably a 6 month wait for approval.

The forest behind the trees

In spite of the fact that the Bush camp has turned the whole debate around to be about one set of probably-forged papers, one shouldn’t forget that the basic facts are not in dispute. And those facts are that Bush received a sweetheart deal because of his wealth and status, and then didn’t fullfil his committments, and then has had his proxies and surrogates lie and dissemble about this. Why does he get a by on his obvious lack of integrity and faithfulness to his comiittments from the majority of the press?

Air Force Times

Some highlights:

“I heard George Bush get up and say, `I served in the 187th Air National Guard in Montgomery, Alabama,'” retired Lt. Col. Robert Mintz said on camera. “Really? That was my unit. And I don’t remember seeing you there…”

“Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country.” – That’s from Colin Powell’s 1995 book “My American Journey”.

This morning’s fun discovery

If you discover a bunch of old files in /var/mailman/qfiles/shunt, do NOT run unshunt. It doesn’t get rid of them, it delivers them to the mailing lists that they’d originally been rejected by since they came from non-members and are spam.

I just sent 18 peices of spam to the members of the Upstate Aviation Mailing list. And they’re all helpfully tagged ‘[UpstateAv]’ in the subject line so people know where they came from.

One bullet dodged, how many to go?

WEINER WITHHOLDS “OUTRAGEOUS” ANTI-GENERAL AVIATION BILL IN HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE

This bill would have essentially outlawed general avaition. For one thing, it would have required the Department of Homeland Security to security screen general aviation flights – I could see them rushing out to put screening stations in all 18,000 general aviation airports in the country. And what about private airfields? And for what? To make sure my friends and family don’t threaten me with a box cutter when I’m taking them flying?

Another provision would have forbidden me from flying within 1500 feet of any structure or building. I don’t see any exemption for airport buildings. I wonder where I was supposed to land?

Oh, and it would have required all aircraft to remain in contact with the FAA (presumably by radio), regardless of altitude or location. Remember that 18,000 airport figure? Guess how many have control towers. About 600. Somehow I don’t see the FAA rushing out and building 17,400 control towers.