J.P.

Safety.

This is my second attempt at writing this blog post due to an error with the WordPress app on iOS, which basically said “there’s an error!” and then wiped out the entry. It’s basically what happened back in the 1990s when that young girl did the Apple ad talking about the virtues of a Mac vs PC, although the iPad played the part of the PC. I hope this version is just as good.

There was an airplane crash in the Town of Westmoreland last night. The crash site is about 10 miles from the house and rather close to the airport that I call home base. I learned of the crash through messages from friends and family contacting me to make sure I was safe; we then started talking amongst our pilots group. The names of the victims have not been released at this time. Reports indicate that one person walked away from the crash with minor injuries but that two others were badly burned. They were airlifted to Syracuse (about 45 miles away).

When an airplane crash happens there are some who are quick to call into question the safety of General Aviation. Comments of “it’s too risky”, “they shouldn’t be allowed to do that”, “they’re going to hurt me or my house” come from armchair critics.

Like life in general, flying an airplane involves being safety conscious and managing the risks associated with the activity. Nothing in life is risk free. There’s some degree of risk associated with anything that we do.

As a private pilot was thoroughly trained on emergency procedures for various scenarios. During my training I had to demonstrate that I could handle an “engine out” and that I could rapidly get the airplane on the ground in the event of a fire. I had to demonstrate these things as part of the checkride where I earned my pilots’ license. During my checkride I had to demonstrate three emergency scenarios: an “engine out”, how to spiral down in case of fire or other time crucial emergency and what I would do if I lost the engine during take-off.

When I’m flying an airplane, it may look like I’m smiling and just looking around, but in reality I have always picked out an emergency landing spot, I’m constantly scanning the sky and I am constantly scanning the instruments monitoring the health of the airplane. You might be looking at the pretty fields below us, and I am too, but I know which field would be best if the airplane needed to get on the ground right away. As a pilot I try to stay three minutes and six miles ahead of the airplane. What’s going to happen in the future? Am I prepared for it?

Life doesn’t happen without risk. A couple of commenters on the television stations’ Facebook page expressed concerns about aircraft flying too low or perhaps we need to re-evaluate smaller airplanes flying in the area. Here’s a couple of hints, you can’t get up there in the air without flying low first and you can’t fly a big airplane until you’ve learned how to fly a small airplane.

I am hoping for a speedy recovery for those involved with last night’s crash. I’ll be interested to read the NTSB report to find out what happened without speculation or hysteria.

19 April 2016 by Fly. 0

20.

Twenty years ago today Earl and I had our first official date. Much of our time together was spent driving through the mountains of Vermont in my little cherry-red 1994 Hyundai Excel. During that ride I knew that I was sitting next to someone that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, no further questions needed. We shared secrets, we got to know each other a little bit and about halfway through the ride, Earl felt comfortable enough to put his hand on my knee for the very first time. I can still remember the happy tingles that shot up through my body like it happened only yesterday.

We are both a couple of decades older, the Hyundai Excel is long gone and we still enjoy trips through Vermont from time to time. The most important outcome of that day, 20 years ago, is that I began the journey with the man that I knew was my soul mate. No questions asked, no hesitation necessary.

It was just meant to be.

13 April 2016 by Ponderings and Musings 1

Open Data.

As a software developer and as an old-timer when it comes to personal computing in general (I’ve been online since 1985), I’m a big proponent of open data accessibility. This comes as a surprise to some of my fellow geeks because I’ve been an Apple user for the past decade or so and Apple is notorious for their “walled garden” approach to a user’s data. Obviously I’ve made some compromises along the way.

A few years ago Google Drive and its “office” products, Docs, Sheets and Slides started making a splash in the productivity world. Accessible from just about any web browser, these applications gave users the ability to create and edit their office documentation on just about any computer that had an Internet connection and a web browser. Aside from the data mining plumbing behind the software, I found this to be a fantastic approach as user’s could use the computer of their choice using the software of their choice (within reasonable bounds). As users moved away from Microsoft Office to the simpler and less expensive Google Drive, Microsoft responded with Office 365, a subscription service which includes web access through any reasonably modern web browser. To gain traction with their iOffice suite, Apple had a big announcement of their online offerings of Pages, Numbers, Keynote etc.

Amongst the data I store in the cloud, I have a spreadsheet that tracks every commercial flight I take. Every time I sit down on a Delta flight or whatever, I add a row to this ongoing speadsheet. I track the date, time, flight number, aircraft type, seat number, flight attendants first names and random notes about the flight. The only purpose for doing this is to track how many flights I have taken, what kind of airplanes I’ve flown on and to just jot down some memories. I have typically tracked this information in Apple’s Numbers app, either on my iPhone or my iPad. I used iCloud to sync the data between devices.

I tried to access the spreadsheet from my Linux laptop. Apparently, the latest version of Firefox or Google Chrome running on Ubuntu Linux is not good enough for Apple’s standards.

Screenshot from 2016-04-12 07:04:52

I am not comfortable storing my data in a cloud that requires a certain application, a specific combination of hardware and software or a helping of voodoo to get my data back out. I believe that data stored in “the Cloud” should be able to be pulled off the Cloud using whatever hardware and software has the means to accomplish such a task. I don’t believe that users should be locked into the offerings from a specific hardware manufacturer or software development company. While this control from a company allows them to provide a specific experience for the end user, it also takes away too much control from the user and places it in the hands of the company.

This makes me very uncomfortable.

So I moved my commercial flights spreadsheet out of Apple’s Numbers and stored it in my Dropbox in Excel format. I can now access it from any computer and use a wide selection of tools to get my data. And for a sanity check, I confirmed that I am able to use Microsoft’s Office online products successfully from my Linux computer. In the past Microsoft has immensely disliked Linux, though that is changing.

Set your data free. Don’t keep it in a cage that you can visit under specific circumstances. The computing world is about freedom. Embrace that freedom.

12 April 2016 by Geek 0

Temptation.

I have been wanting to try these “Grilled Hot Dogs” from Burger King since their announcement. I gave into the temptation this afternoon.

As a fast food connoisseur I must admit that I am quite impressed. I recommend them!

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11 April 2016 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Home.

Earl and I moved into our current home in November 2003. Since then, I have watched many airplanes fly over on their approach to nearby Griffiss International Airport, which is the old Griffiss Air Force Base. The base was decommissioned in the mid 1990s. It also had one of the longest runways in the United States. Griffiss (official code is KRME) is where I learned to fly and is the airport where the club airplanes live. I know the airport well.

Watching airplanes fly over the house has always been a passion of mine, ever since childhood. I’ve seen Air Force One flyover, I’ve watched fellow pilots fly our Piper Cherokees over on their approach to runway 33 and everyone once in a while I’ll see a Boeing 747 headed in to the maintenance facility based at the airport.

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One of the biggest thrills for me as a pilot was the first time that I flew on the approach to runway 33 and was able to look down and see our home. Nowadays, if the conditions permit, if Earl is home I’ll send him a text that says “beep beep” and he knows to come outside and watch me flyover. I’ll flash the landing light at him or rock my wings to let him know that I can see him. It’s such fun.

Today I flew with fellow pilot Seamus as his safety pilot. Seamus was wearing Foggles, a view limiting device that simulates flying in the clouds. As safety pilot it’s my job to make sure that we are clear of traffic and other obstacles and that the flight is proceeding along safely. It was great flight; Seamus is a very capable pilot and one that I feel completely comfortable with. As he followed his instruments to runway 33, I looked down and was able to snap a photo of the house from the air.

It was such an awesome feeling.

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Our home is in the lower third of the photo, sitting behind the others along the road.

10 April 2016 by Fly. 0

Retail Automation.

Occasionally I will have some sort of dream that hearkens back to the 1970s and 1980s when I was absolutely fascinated by the computerized systems appearing in the retail environments. Last night I dreamed about such a system in a grocery store. Musing about the dream this evening, I ran across this video online describing how cutting-edge technology would soon enable a cashier to pull funds from your bank account and automatically transfer it to the store’s account. My, how far we’ve come in 40 years.

This video is quite short but I found it to be very fascinating. How I loved the days of “legacy computing”. In case you’re wondering, the cash registers in questions are NCR 255s. Quite expensive at the time, I can vividly remember these at a local IGA Market near my grandmother’s house. When I worked at Hills in 1990, I briefly used these before they were removed and new IBM cash registers were put in their place.

8 April 2016 by Geek 0

LED.

We live in a gadget laden world. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, thermostats, televisions, toasters, dishwashers, the list of devices with displays and status indicators goes on and on.

By the way, who’s idea was it to put countdown timers on a toaster? Are we really in that much of a hurry that we need to know how many seconds are left before our toasted English muffin pops out of the toaster? Ridiculous.

I digress.

A good share of our personal electronics need to be charged on a nightly basis. Like many others, I’m sure, I charge my iPhone and my Apple Watch on my nightstand. The iPad joins in the fun as well. Since most bedrooms come with two plugs in the general vicinity of a nightstand, some sort of power strip or other multi-plug adapter is required for the task. This is especially true when traveling.

I recently purchased a USB charging adapter that can charge four devices at once. It is a compact unit that uses a single plug. It works great; the varying amperages available are perfect for the myriad of devices I have scattered on the nightstand. The problem is the status light on the unit. It is quite bright.

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Now, keep in mind that I am sitting in complete darkness snapping that photo and my iPhone is able to capture the light reflected against the wall without an issue.

I would love to see who is conducting these research and development meetings where they are discussing how to illuminate a bedroom with a small, pin-sized LED lightbulb. I am convinced that this LED is also used for taxiway lighting at O’Hare or Kennedy because honestly, the entire hotel room is illuminated by this thing.

I have a similar charger setup at home except the light is red. After one night of that bright merriment I covered the LED status light with electrical tape. The unit will get the same treatment as soon as I’m back home.

Are these bright LEDs suppose to be a reminder? An subliminal advertisement of some sort?

Perhaps people are getting crankier in today’s society because they can’t sleep due to all the needless light.

7 April 2016 by Why. 1

When Love Takes Over.

I startled myself awake this morning when I started singing in my sleep. I sang out loud and that woke me up. This isn’t the first time that I have done this. For my performance I was standing in the middle of the hotel room, facing the window (which thankfully had closed curtains) and I just started singing my heart out. I can vividly remember the dream; I was singing to a karaoke CD in a T station in Boston. The track in question was “When Love Takes Over” by French DJ David Guetta and vocalist Kelly Rowland. I wrote a month ago that this track was one of my favorite songs. Apparently I still had it on the brain. In my dream, Kelly stopped by to tell me that I was doing a great job covering her vocals. Acting out my dreams in a hotel room is not completely outside of normalcy for me; I’ve been known to engage in nocturnal activity once in a while. Luckily I don’t jump out of windows or anything.

This song has been in my head since my dream, so I decided to look up live performances of it on YouTube. While I have always appreciated Kelly’s vocals on this track, I was a delighted to hear that she is just as good live as she is on Memorex. She reminds me very much of a young Donna Summer, and that’s not a compliment that I share without careful consideration. Donna Summer always gave a flawless live performance and my quick search of Kelly’s live performances of “When Love Takes Over” are flawless as well.

Enjoy this live performance from 2009.

6 April 2016 by DJ 0

Interruption.

I’ve been trying to get to my website to write this blog entry for the past 90 minutes. The site wasn’t loading, then it was, then it wasn’t again. I called the customer service line of my web hosting company, MacHighway, and waited as first in line for a technical support technician for 10 minutes. I had a chat with the specialist, who escalated to tier 2 as she couldn’t find an issue. She did, however, admit that she couldn’t get my site to load.

I have been with MacHighway for many years. They recently moved to a new data center and things have been a little wonky. I had to do some hacking magic to keep the blog running once they implemented new security procedures; the process has not been painless. Because of my longevity with the company I will maintain a relationship with them, but I don’t feel as warm and fuzzy as I used to about the stability of my web space.
With so many personal blogs closing up shop these days I strive to keep things running because, well, I don’t really know why. I’m an exhibitionist? I like talking about life? I like sharing with the world behind the safety of an LED screen? (My introverted ways don’t lend themselves to small talk and the like). I enjoy writing and I feel stifled when the web site is a little off kilter.
Who knew such a thing could be so important?

6 April 2016 by Flickr Geek 1

Environmental Ambience.

The mall management companies in our neck of the woods have spent the past several years removing the water features and other nature related scenery from our shopping malls. The majority of this ambience has been replaced with IKEA like furniture and carpeting all arranged at a jaunty angle.

They’re missing the boat.

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While in Greenville, S.C. for work I stay at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Greenville. Like many other Hyatt hotels, there’s quite a bit in the way of waterfalls, multi-level landings, glass walls, plants, trees and other environmentally suggestive bric-a-brac around the place.

I find the effect to be quite pleasant.

One of the hardest things about living in Upstate New York (other than the urban decay, taxes, fleeing industrial ventures and stifling government) is the weather. The malls of the 1970s and 1980s had an atmosphere that made you want to be inside because it reminded you of that pleasant outdoor feeling. Fountains. Trees. Mulch. You can’t find that in the middle of December in the Lake Ontario Snowbelt but you certainly could find it at Penn Can Mall. Today? Carpeting and furniture.

Big whoop.

We often talk about the fact that Americans sit on their ass and do nothing recreational anymore. Walking around the mall isn’t the same as running the Boston Marathon but at least it’s movement. Give people a reason to move. Revive the pleasant atmosphere of a waterfall. Let Midge and Marge sit next to a statue with water shooting out of its naval as they sip their Starbucks and play Canasta.

Why can’t we have pleasant indoor scenery anymore? Life was never meant to be sterile with carpeting set at a jaunty angle.

4 April 2016 by Ponderings and Musings 0

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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