Pranks I have known

For that last couple of days, people on the LUGOR (Linux Users Group of Rochester) have been trading back and forth screen shots showing their particular setups. (Oh, and they’ve all been smart enough to put the screen shots on a web site somewhere and just emailing the URL – thanks, guys.) But that got me thinking about something that happened over 10 years ago.
Continue reading “Pranks I have known”

In other news…

I noticed that a very large proportion of the comment spam I get is all on one blog entry, number 20. So a quick 

update mt_entry set entry_allow_comments = 0 where entry_created_on
 < now() - interval '180 days' and entry_author_id = 2;

and now nobody can comment on entries that are older than 180 days. I'm just wondering if I should do the same with the other blog authors.

Bye bye birdies

One of my favourite late spring/early summer activiites is watching the Perigrine Falcons on Kodak Office raise another clutch of babies. Well, that simple pleasure is just about over, as the young eyases are just about the fledge. They’ve been hopping all over the nesting area, and down to the “playpen” (the balcony) and back up. I’m sure any moment now one after the other will start flying around, although from past experience they will hang around the nest box for a few more weeks. But we’ll see less and less of them until finally we’ll see nothing.

My (flying) life is strewn with cow pats from the devil’s own herd

Sorry, Edmund Blackadder.

Here is what I’m currently dealing with both as an officer of the Rochester Flying Club and as a member

  • Our insurance company, and indeed all insurance companies, are saying that they won’t write “whole club” insurance policies on our Lance any more. They prefer to write “named pilot” policies with only 5 or 6 pilots per policy. Another local club is carrying two policies on their Lance because of this. Since we’re paying $8000 a year for the existing policy, we’re not looking forward to this. Since they’re going to be looking to insure only high time pilots with lots of experience, and I’ve only *just* checked out in the Lance earlier this year, and I only have 15 hours in it so far, I’m definitely not looking forward to this.
  • The Lance’s engine is old, but is still showing no major problems, but we could have to replace it soon – and if we have to sell it because we can’t get the insurance, we’re stuck with eating the cost of the new engine whether it needs it or not.
  • We’ve known since its last annual that the engine on the Dakota probably won’t pass inspection next year, so we’re planning on replacing at annual, or sooner if the engine compressions drop or we start seeing metal in the oil samples.
  • The oil leak on one of our Archers was going to require reboring a cylinder stud hole and replacing the stud with a bigger one, but when our mechanic got the cylinder off he found the case was cracked, so we’ve got to rush-job get a new engine for it.
  • Fuel prices continue to climb, and therefore so do our hourly rates for the aircraft.
  • Our club’s recievables have been in a terrible mess for a year, often going several months without a bill. Well, I just got notice that after the President of the club audited the bills, they discovered that a payment that I had made for $800 got credited to my account twice, so when the next bill comes I’m going to owe that $800 plus however many months of flying I’ve done in the mean-time.
  • And while I’m legally current to fly instruments, I haven’t flown in real IFR conditions for so long that I’m feeling like the first low overcast day I should find an instructor and do some holding and approaches in the clag.