Random Thought: Unfortunate Names

Random Thought: My wife's gynecologist's last name is Biggerstaff. Seems borderline inappropriate, considering his field of practice...

Heading to Vegas, Baby!

"In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number." - Steven Wright

So I've been playing poker of some sort for ten years or so. I have spent exactly three minutes in a casino. My wife and I took a trip to Niagara Falls, and I walked into the Fallsview Casino, saw no signs for the poker room and walked out. She was with me, and has no interest whatsoever in poker, so I just left.

I play occasionally at the BestBet poker room in Jacksonville, Florida, but that isn't a casino. It's a poker warehouse. You can go in there most any weekend of the year and there'll be sixty or seventy tables of poker running, and a waitlist for most of the games. But the games there are very, very juicy.

A buddy of mine and I have made plans several times to attend a WPT or WSOP Circuit event at some South Florida or Memphis casinos, but every time we made preliminary plans, they ended up falling through.

So April marks me and my wife's fifteenth wedding anniversary. We decided we wanted to take a trip somewhere - without the kids. God bless my wife, she suggested Las Vegas.

Yeah Baby!!!

So we're planning to visit Las Vegas in April, courtesy of Uncle Sam giving me some of my own money back. We're planning to stay for five days.  As I stated before, my wife cares not one whit about poker, so it won't be the 18-hour-a-day grind that I would love, but I will be getting in a couple of hours of poker a day.

Mostly, we're going to see the sights, eat some good food, watch some good shows, visit the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon, and just enjoy some time without three ankle-biters hanging from our legs.

I'm excited for the trip - I'll be booking as soon as my refund arrives. I'm thinking we'll stay at Bally's, because it is reasonably priced and next to the Paris and across the strip from the Bellagio. The view should be perfect.

And I get to play poker. In Vegas. I can't wait.

My YouTube Channel

So in the interest of uniting my online presence, I am going to try to start posting here when I add a video to my YouTube channel (found here.)  So here's my latest video in which I patch a hole in my wife's tire.

Windows 7, UEFI, and Boot Error 0xc0000225

Back in February, the motherboard failed on my laptop and took the hard drive with it. I sent it in for repair, and when it returned I immediately set about removing that crapware Windows 8 and replacing it with Windows 7 Pro.

For the next week, I must have installed Win7 half a dozen times. It would install successfully every time. I could download and apply all the updates. But eventually it would encounter a boot error. Something like this:

Boot Manager:
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware of software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1.Insert your Windows installation disc and restart the computer.
2.Choose your language settings, and then click "Next".
3.Click "Repair your computer."

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

Status: 0xc0000255

I searched the internet. I found a lot of information about rebuilding the boot record. Nothing worked. I tried converting the whole disk to an MBR disk. No joy.

Then I hit on the solution.

I converted the disk back to a GPT disk and performed a clean operation. This completely wiped the drive of all partition information. I ran the installer again, and let the installer create the necessary boot partitions. I defined my OS and Data partitions.

It turns out that when I was massaging the partitions that were on the disk when it came back from ASUS, I deleted one of the required partitions. For whatever reason, the OS would start successfully for a while without this partition, but eventually it would fail spectacularly.

So the solution seems to be:

1. Boot to your install disk.
2. At the language selection screen, press Shift+F10 to get a terminal.
3. Enter diskpart and press Enter.
4. list disks to display a list of the disks on the system. 
5. Select the appropriate disk drive with the sel disk command. (Ex.: sel disk 0)
6. Enter convert gpt and press Enter. (I assume if you want to use MBR that it would be fine, just use the convert mbr command.)
7. Enter clean and press Enter.
8. Reboot to the install disk and install as normal. The installer's partition manager will handle creating the necessary boot partitions.

So if you have this issue, there is a fair chance that you have gunked up the required partions.

Transfer your email from Thunderbird to Outlook 2013 using GMail in 10 easy(ish) steps.

For the last 12 years or so I have been using Mozilla's Thunderbird application as my email reader. I was also using either OpenOffice or LibreOffice as my office suite. My boss finally got a subscription to the Microsoft Developer's network, meaning that we had access to multiple licenses for Office 2013, which includes Outlook 2013. Since some of the documents I must work with don't format correctly if they are opened in OpenOffice or LibreOffice, I decided to install Office 2013. Coinciding with that, I had a motherboard failure in my work laptop and was presented with a new one. I figured it was as good a time as any to convert to Outlook 2013, since I had been experiencing random freezes with Thunderbird.

Imagine my shock to find that Microsoft had made it all but impossible to import mail from any other mail program -- even Outlook Express. (That right there, I say that right there, is what we call sarcasm, son.)

I did find some commercial applications that claimed to be able to facilitate the conversion, but I just couldn't bring myself to pay $50 for something I'm going to use for less than an hour, ever. So I did what all good geeks do - I saved that $50 by spending $500 worth of my time looking for a free solution.

I didn't find one.

Not to be deterred, I did some thinking. And I came up with a way to move my email over, for free. I would just use GMail.

Here's how it goes:

Step 1: Get a throwaway GMail address.

Step 2: Make sure that your new GMail account has IMAP enabled. Go here and follow the prompts.

Step 3: Configure your GMail account in Thunderbird. You can find those instructions Here. There is also a good discussion of the relationship between Thunderbird folders and GMail Labels.

Step 4: For each folder of archived mail you have in your main Thunderbird account, create an identical folder in the GMail account in Thunderbird.

Step 5: Open each main Thunderbird folder and copy all emails to the corresponding folder in the GMail account. Since the GMail account is set up to use IMAP, when you copy those emails in they get mirrored up to your GMail account. It even preserves the original send date. Be sure the synchronization is complete before proceeding to Step 6.

Step 6: Configure your GMail account in Outlook 2013 and do a send/receive to download all of your email from GMail.

Step 7: Configure your main email account in Outlook 2013 and create your folders.

Step 8: Copy over the messages from your GMail account folders to your main email folders in Outlook. 

Step 9: If you wish, you may remove your GMail account from Outlook and delete everything from your GMail account.

Step 10: Pour yourself a beer, buddy. You're done. For free.

Random Thought: Walgreens

Random Thought: Walgreens Refill Prescription by Scan in their Android application is awesome. Just ordered a refill without having to speak to a human being. My inner hermit is blissfully happy.

Bill Whittle - Afterburner: It's a Miracle!

I love Bill Whittle.  He makes so much sense, and takes the liberals to task with a calm rationality that just makes me smile.

Live at the Bike

"What I hear, I forget.
What I see, I remember.
What I do, I understand."

- Confucius

For the last two months, I've been religiously watching the broadcasts from Live at the Bike online. While there is some good entertainment value there if you're a poker aficionado, I think it's pretty good as a learning tool for playing in live cash games.  At least, that's how I'm treating it in light of my upcoming two-day poker bender.

The broadcast is hosted by some combination of Bart Hanson, Dave Tuchman, Nichoel Jurgens and Owais Ahmed. It is a three hour broadcast, twice a week, of a live cash game from the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles. Since it is target at hardcore poker fans, the commentary is much more advanced than you'll see on the World Poker Tour or the ESPN broadcasts of the WSOP.

I pay the $10 per month membership in order to have access to the archives, simply because I can't always watch the episodes live as they air (they're free when they're live). For instance, I don't work at the hotel on Friday nights, so tonight I'm watching the Friday episode.  I'll watch the Tuesday night episode starting about an hour after it begins, and later I'll go back and watch that first hour.

Watching a cash game with the hole cards exposed is very enlightening, and the strategy that is discussed will, I believe, be very helpful on my next trip to the poker room. I'm considering the $50 three-month subscription that will also include Bart Hanson's Crush Live Poker videos. Maybe if I do well at the tables at the beginning of September, I'll treat myself.

I just wanted to put in a plug for LatB, since I think it should be required watching if you take cash games even semi-seriously. It's amazing how much you can learn just by watching. You can pick up on the feel of a live game. I think it will help me with reading situations, and with my hand-reading when in a hand. Hand-reading has always been a weakness that I've needed to work on, but when you can't spend quality time at the tables it's hard to work on that kind of thing. Getting to watch this game is a big help to me.

I just hope that I can apply the things that I'm learning. I also have to remember to adjust them slightly, because I'm not going to be playing $5/$5 (at first) but $2/$2. The quality of player in Florida is going to be, on average, less than those in L.A. Those L.A. players have been at this for years, while the Florida players have only been able to play real poker for a little over two years, ever since the $100 buy-in cap was lifted.

My plan is to start out at $2/$2, just to get back into the swing of things. I plan to do this because I haven't played since the beginning of April, when I logged a $563 win in just 7 hours. If I can do well at the $2/$2 table and double my stack, I'm going to take $300 to the $5/$5 table and give that a shot. I think I can handle the $5/$5 players, I've just been too risk averse in the past to try it. I have sat at a $5/$5 table for an hour or so once, and didn't play any hands because I was card dead. I did notice, however, that the players didn't seem to be better than the $2/$2 players to any great degree, just that they were deeper stacked and tended to be a bit more aggressive. To that end, I think if I tighten up a bit to start, and wait for some decent hands, I can put myself in a position to profit nicely.

We'll see how that turns out.

On Guns and Self-Defense

If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.

--Dalai Lama XIV

Yesterday afternoon I became aware of the mass shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Six innocent people were killed, four were wounded, and the gunman was killed by a police officer who is also among the wounded. This follows closely on the heels of the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado several weeks ago. My prayers and sympathies go out to those involved in both incidents, as well as their families. I can't, however, help but feel a personal sadness due to what I know is going to follow.

There is no doubt that sometime today we will again hear the cries of the leftists in support of more stringent gun control. Even in light of all evidence that suggests that less guns do not result in less crime, that call will be made. In fact, a preponderance of evidence seems to suggest that less guns actually equals more crime.

Take a look at two of the cities in the US that have the strictest gun control: Chicago and Washington, D.C.. These cities are among the top cities in the country in regards to violent crime. Compare those cities to cities that have less restrictions on guns and how people carry them. Those cities have considerably less violent crime.

And it makes sense. If you were a criminal, would you be more likely to attack an unknown person in a city where you knew that he or she would not be armed, or in a city where there was a great probability that they may be able to fight back with equal or greater force?

Let me point out something else:

• April 20, 1999: Columbine High School, 13 killed and 21 wounded
• April 6, 2007: Virginia Tech, 32 killed and 17 wounded
• November 5, 2009: Fort Hood, 13 killed and 29 wounded
• January 8, 2011: Tuscon, Arizona Political Rally, 6 dead and 8 wounded
• July 20, 2012: Aurora, Colorado Theater, 12 killed and 58 wounded
• August 5, 2012: Wisconsin Sikh Temple, 6 killed and 4 wounded

What did all of those events have in common? They all happened in "gun-free zones". They all happened in areas where law abiding individuals were legally prohibited from having personal firearms. They all happened in areas where the victims were left defenseless by the very laws that were ostensibly designed to protect them.

Contrast that with the conclusion from this article by Davi Barker (Google Cache copy here):

• The average number of people killed in mass shootings when stopped by police is 14.3
• The average number of people killed in a mass shooting when stopped by a civilian is 2.3.

That's pretty compelling.

Now we'll get to my personal situation. I work a night shift at a hotel. We deal in cash. We're always open. Regardless of the policies of my place of employment, I carry a firearm at work. I have a Georgia Weapons Carry license, so if you see me in public, and we're not in one of the few prohibited locations, you can be darn sure that I am carrying a firearm. I carry a firearm for the protection of myself and those around me. I refuse to be a victim. If I'm ever in a situation where I have to defend myself or others, I can, and I will.

Most of the politicians have it wrong. Outlawing guns only makes for a safer working environment for criminals. They do break the law for a living, after all. If the politicians were truly worried about protecting the citizenry, they would be finding ways to make it easier for the law-abiding among us to provide for our own protection. Maybe you've heard the saying, "When seconds count, the police are minutes away". I can not rely on the police to respond in a timely manner in a life-or-death situation. I choose to be responsible for my own security, as well as that of my family.

I pray for the victims of the recent shootings. I pray that they will find peace. I pray that this kind of thing will never happen again. But until the world becomes perfect, I'll keep providing for my own security. I encourage you to look into providing for yours as well.

A Poker Update

I believe in poker the way I believe in the American Dream. Poker is good for you. It enriches the soul, sharpens the intellect, heals the spirit, and - when played well, nourishes the wallet.

--Lou Krieger

Over the last few years I have started taking poker more seriously, at least from an academic point of view.  I study it with a focus that I wish I had been able to manage when I was in college.  I rarely get to put this study into practice, however.

When we lived in Atlanta I would periodically play in some home games, and when we go to visit my in-laws in Florida I'll play sometimes at the poker rooms in Jacksonville.  I've come away from these stabs at playing on the positive side more than I've come away negative, and I truly feel that if I had the time to devote to playing more often I would just get better and more profitable.

Getting time to play is hard, though.  When we are in Florida it means that I have time off from both of my jobs, and my wife wants me to spend that time with the family.  That's understandable, and I can't blame her. I want to spend my spare time with them as well.  I feel this calling to play, though, that I am unable to explain to her in such a way that she will excuse my absence with any degree of regularity.

That's why I'm so happy that she has agreed to give me two days around Labor Day to go do my thing.  The BestBet Jacksonville Poker Room is having their WPT Summer Series, and I'll be playing on September 2nd and 3rd.  I'm planning to play cash games on the 2nd, and possibly play a satellite to the main event the next weekend.  I will then be playing the $340 PLO8 tourney on Monday the 3rd.

A word about the new room in Jacksonville: It's freakin' huge.  And nice.  They took an old Garden Ridge store and converted it into a poker palace.  They have over 70 tables, with room for another 50 or so if they need them.  They hosted the spring WPT televised event in April of 2012, and without exception all the pros that I follow on Twitter talked about how nice the place was. And the games are really, really good.

I had a week vacation planned to go play at the spring series, but had to cancel it for personal reasons.  I really want to take a week and just play poker. I want to see if I can adequately supplement my income with my play. It would be so nice to be able to just go somewhere and play poker for a week and then be home with my family for the rest of the month, instead of having to go into work four nights a week and sleep during the day like I currently do.

Hopefully, I'll be able to put together this week trip for either the fall series in November or the big spring series next year.

Getting back into the swing of things

The best part about procrastination is that you are never bored, because you have all kinds of things that you should be doing.

--Anonymous

So much has been going on in my life over the last few years that posting to a blog has seemed to be such a minor thing that I just haven't done it.  I'm hoping that moving my personal blog as well as our family blog to Blogger will encourage me to post more often.

Frankly, I need somewhere that I can vent other than Facebook before I piss off most of my friends.  I have a vicious Libertarian streak, and some of the things that have been going on in this country lately have me spinning around on my eyebrows.  At least if I post my rants here my friends, who care about nothing more than who will win American Idol or who the Bachelorette will pick in that fake-ass show that fools women into thinking it's about love, will be somewhat insulated from hearing the result of my early transition into Grumpy-Old-Man-Hood.

I'll continue to post about politics, aviation and poker.  I'll most likely keep the family stuff on the family blog, if for nothing else than to separate the loves of my life from my extreme anger at political issues.

Stay tuned...

Peter Principle Surpassed

Peter Principle

(PEET-uhr PRIN-suh-pal)

noun

The theory that an employee within an organization will advance to his or her level of incompetence and remain there.

I can never fault someone for not knowing something. There are innumerable topics about which I know absolutely nothing. In today's world, it is impossible to know everything about your own field, especially when that field is as broad and wide-ranging as technology. There is, however, a basic level of competence that I think anyone involved in technology should possess.

Today, I witnessed a person who had blown the Peter Principle out of the water.
For reasons which will quickly become clear, I don't want to go into much detail at all about the particular clients I work with. Suffice it to say that these companies are some of the largest in the world in their respective industries, and these industries are regulated to such a degree that something as simple as changing your password requires a half an hour on the telephone with their operations managers. The testing requirements for simple applications fill binders that would make the American Tax Code look like a garage sale flier.

For the most part, the people that I deal with in these companies are some of the brightest people I've ever dealt with. Due to the nature of our work, I don't deal with everyday system operators. I deal with IT Managers and CTO-level personnel. That is why it is so jarring to encounter someone who seems to have absolutely no technical expertise at all.

I don't want to rant about the specific employee that I had to deal with today, but suffice it to say he obviously knows very little about technology. He wanted me to test a particular piece of software for him, but having much more important and pressing matters to attend to, I chose instead to simply provide him the five-word command that he could use to test the application himself. All he had to do was copy the command from my email, paste it into his emulator screen, and press Enter.

That proved to be too complicated for him to handle.

I spent the next two hours running this command while he fiddled with settings. I finally got fed up to the point that I just told him to let me take care of everything and I would call him. An hour later, I had un-done all of his settings shenanigans and had the software working.

What I would like to discuss is not whether I should have helped him. We are contracted to that company to provide support for these situations, so it was well within his right to expect that I would help him.

The problem lies in the wisdom of having such a person on your staff. Here is someone who was incapable of copying five words of text, pasting them into another screen and pressing Enter. Here is someone who told me that he had configured this particular piece of software exactly the same as similar package from the same company. The two packages use identical settings files and identical settings screens. When I looked at the settings, not only did he not have half the settings populated, several of the ones he had managed to populate were populated incorrectly!

What is this person costing you? Let's just say that he makes $60,000 per year. That's $30 per hour. Let's also consider the distinct possibility that he spent a good hour trying to get this software set up prior to calling me. Add that hour to the two hours he was on the phone with me, and you're looking at $90 worth of his time that was spent accomplishing a task that should have taken five minutes.

Now let's consider the cost of having me fix his problem. We charge $150 per hour. I spent three hours handholding and reconfiguring. That's another $450 on top of the $90 that they paid this employee. The total cost of what should have been a five-minute configuration? $540.

This is a clear case of an employee that is costing them money. And the baffling part is that he has risen to such a high level amongst others who so completely outshine him in ability that it is almost sad. It baffles me that they have kept this employee on for the last fifteen years, and he hasn't learned how to cut and paste. It is beyond my comprehension that this person has been able to keep a very technical position in spite of his complete lack of technical ability.

The point is that you have to look at your organization and make sure that you have people who aren't costing you money. If you have hired someone for a technical position, they should be able to demonstrate a certain level of technical skill. As the position becomes more and more critical, the greater the level of expertise this person needs to show. Why some companies keep people like this where they are is a mystery to me.

They must know of this employee's limitations. It is impossible for him to have been there for fifteen years without getting labeled as the moron. I just wonder what justification they have for paying what is very likely a considerable salary to someone who is contributing very little except hassle to their goals.

But who knows -- maybe the guy just makes really good cookies for the office every Friday.

Nokia N810

Back during the fall, my truck was broken into, and my Sansa MP3 player was stolen. I have been wanting a new MP3 player ever since. Another thing I have been really wanting is a portable GPS system. I have also been pretty enamored with the iPod Touch, even though I am the farthest thing from an Apple fanboy you'll find. The reason I like the iPod Touch is that you can access the internet with it.

I think I may have found a device that will allow me to keep eschewing Apple products and get all the functionality that I am looking for. The Nokia N810 is an internet tablet, but rather than being the size of a laptop, it is approximately the size of an iPod Touch, a little thicker, maybe a little larger in the other dimensions, but it'll easily fit in your shirt pocket.

It has a web browser, audio player capability, and the ability to act as a GPS. The downside is that it costs $475. I can get a 15% discount, but that's still in the $400 neighborhood. That's more than I can afford right now, so I guess I'll have to keep admiring it from afar. It really does look like a nice device, though. Maybe I'll be able to afford one soon.

Minor Brain Dump

I don't really have anything specific to say today, but I feel like writing something. I'm still waiting to hear something from GSU about the job. I just hope I haven't been passed over for consideration. It sucks not knowing anything.

I'm getting back into the swing of things with my night job. I had a rough time with it over the summer. I was doing three nights a week at one location, and they closed abruptly in the spring. I only had one other show, and that one went away during the summer. I spent about three months just picking up a cover here and there, and doing the occasional corporate event. I finally started picking up some more shows, and now I have four per week. I'm looking for a Wednesday night Trivia show, and that'll give me five nights a week. I hate being away from my family at night, but frankly I need the money. It replaces what Leila would earn as a preschool teacher, and this way she gets to stay home with Camille. Camille is such a happy little girl that I wouldn't have it any other way.

I wish that I earned more at my day job in order to not have to do the night thing, but I doubt that'll happen. Once we get our finances under control, it will be better, but with hospital bills (I had my gall bladder out last April) and other emergency expenses, we're stretched to the limit right now. I have no choice but to work nights.

The good news is that I plan to file our taxes this week, and there should be about a $5k refund. That will help immensely.

I guess that's all. I have the urge to write more, but I truly have nothing to say.

Job Hunting - The Wait

I like my current job. I like the people I work with. They are quite literally the smartest people I have ever known. And the companies that we work with are the cream of the crop. But I find myself chasing another job.

I have applied to Georgia Southern University for the position of Assistant Director of Information Systems. I sent my application right after New Year's Day, and came to find out three weeks later that they never received it. I sent it again, via fax, and have been waiting ever since. Several circumstances have conspired to make the application process a very slow one. For starters, I have heard through the grapevine that the entire IS department at GSU is new. So perhaps they aren't as certain about what to do or who they want as an established department would be. Also, they are using a committee to screen the applications, and as everyone who has ever been a part of a committee know, they move at a snail's pace.

So if I'm happy with my current job, and the application process for the new job is so slow, why am I chasing it? Several reasons. One is that I am from Bulloch County, where GSU is located, and I simply want to go home. I miss my home, I miss my parents, I miss my family, and I miss living where I feel like I belong. I'm a country boy, and the city just isn't for me.

Another reason stems from the fact that my in-laws moved from the area to Florida back in October. When they were here, we could go see them on the weekend, and it felt like I had family close. Now I have no family within 200 miles.

Finally, I think it would be a good career move. I really don't want to be a programmer for the rest of my life. I want to move into management, and that's probably not going to happen in my current job. If I can switch jobs into a management position, even if there isn't a pay increase, it would be a good career move.

I have some good references: The Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at GSU, the Acting Chair of the Information Systems Department of the College of Business Administration at GSU, and one of the employees of the Engineering Department. I have plenty of management experience, but no title that would suggest that. I hope that I get the opportunity to interview, because I think my interview would be what would convince them that I am the right person for the job.

I just have to wait. And as Tom Petty sang, "The waiting is the hardest part".

Super Tuesday Results

Super Tuesday has come and gone in Georgia, and the surprise winner on the Republican side was Mike Huckabee. This came as a pleasant surprise to me, since he is the candidate that I placed my vote for. I supported Huckabee due to his support of one single issue: The Fair Tax. I firmly believe that the Fair Tax will cause the US to become the world's greatest tax haven, and that the citizens of the US will have to work extremely hard to not have a good job. It will give more purchasing power to the people, and lift the economy to heights that have never been dreamed of.

I do not think that Huckabee can overcome the lead that McCain has built up, but his strong showing at the very least helps to bring the issue of the FairTax more into the public eye, and the more the public sees of the FairTax, the better the chance that it'll get passed.

What a Birthday!

Saturday was my 30th birthday, and what a birthday it was! My wonderful wife, who was celebrating her 29th birthday on Saturday as well, booked me some time with aerobatic pilot Elgin Wells in his Super Decathalon. The Super Decathalon is one of the planes that I've always wanted a ride in, and what a ride I got!

Elgin picked me up at the Flying Machine restaurant at the Lawrenceville airport. There were three sets of straps holding me in -- one for the parachute (!!!), one set of straps holding me to the seat, and a final set with a rachet tightening device holding me to the airframe. It took almost 15 minutes to get me strapped in.

We took off and proceeded to the practice area. Elgin talked, and I flew! It was great. I haven't been at the controls of an airplane in five years, and it felt so good to just fly around. When we got to the practice area, Elgin talked me through the aerobatic manuevers. We started with a barrel roll, which is crazy easy. We went on to do a loop, a half cuban eight, four point rolls, half cuban eight with a roll, hammerhead turns, and a half cuban eight with a point roll.

I had Elgin demonstrate a snap roll, and that's what finally got me. I didn't get sick -- not even close -- but I felt a small knot develop in the pit of my stomach. I knew that I wasn't going to hurl, but I also knew that if we kept on, I was going to feel worse. I had been having such a good time that I didn't want to take a chance on ruining it by feeling bad. We headed back to the airport.

I can't thank Leila enough for such an amazing birthday present. I'll post some screenshots from the DVD of my flight that is coming. This was so much fun, I may have to do it again!

F-14 Retirement

Aero-News.net is reporting that the last F-14 combat mission has returned to the carrier USS Teddy Roosevelt (CVN 71). The last combat mission was on February 8, 2006.

The F-14 has always been one of my favorite military aircraft, and not just because it was the real star of "Top Gun". The swing wing technology has always fascinated me, and the amount of sheer, raw power that the F14 packed is enough to amaze everyone. I had the good fortune to witness an F-14 airshow performance in Augusta several years ago. It also did a "Heritage Flight", flying in formation with a P-51 Mustang. I'll never forget that flyby. The P-51 was running almost flat-out, and the huge wings of the F-14 were straight out to the sides, fighting to stay in the air at that low an airspeed. It was a great show.

I will definitely miss the F-14.

Initial Thoughts on Flight Training

So I have made the decision to get my pilot's license. (Actually, I made that decision years ago. It just hasn't been financially feasible. I'm looking at maybe next year.) The first thing I have to decide is where I'm going to have my training.

The first option is Gwinnett County/Briscoe Field (KLZU) which is south of me off of Highway 316. It has a control tower, and is a busy airport. It only has one runway, measuring 6000 x 100, so it has plenty of runway. I want to train with a tower, but I worry about how busy this airport is. I don't want to have to fight for a place in the pattern with corporate jets, fast twins, etc. There are several flight schools there, including Atlanta Pilot Training, Advanced Aviation Diamond Flight Center, The Flight School of Gwinnett County and Atlanta Flight Training. I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones I found on the web.

The next option is the Lee Gilmer Memorial Airport in Gainesville (KGVL), which is northeast of me. While it has two intersecting runways, it only has one flight school that I can find, the Lanier Flight Center. The runways are configured as follows: Runway 4/22 is 5500 x 100, and Runway 11/29 is 4001 x 100. GVL is also an uncontrolled field.

The last option is the Winder-Barrow County Airport (KWDR). KWDR is farther from me than either KLZU or KGVL, and it also has no control tower. It has two intersecting runways. Runway 13/31 is 5500 x 100, and runway 5/23 is 3610 x 100. There is one flight school, The Flight School of Barrow County.
There is one final option, and it will get me my license in the fastest possible time. I can get my license in two weeks by going out to Arizona and taking lessons at West Mesa Aviation. The tradeoff is that it will cost approximately twice as much, almost $10k. While I'd like to get my license in two weeks, I think I'll skip this option. It's just too expensive. I may try some kind of accelerated training when I go for my IFR rating.

Experimental Aircraft: Vision

The frontrunner for the experimental aircraft that I want to build is at this moment the American Affordable Aircraft Vision. A picture of the first customer-built Vision is below.

There are several reasons that the Vision is at the top of my list right now. One reason is that it is a composite design. I have a love affair with the slick, sleek lines of composite aircraft. They are much more aerodynamic than similar metal aircraft. The use of composites allows for easier construction of compound curves, with no rivets or seams in the surface of the aircraft. This equates to higher speeds on the same horsepower.

Another reason is that the Vision is a completely plans-built design. This may seem like a liability until you realize that modifications are much easier to make to a plans-built design than to a pre-formed kit. I'm a big guy, and I've got a family. The Vision plans detail the construction of a two-seat, 42" wide cockpit aircraft. Most builders are building the cockpit at a width of 44", some 46". Try that with a pre-punched kit. Another benefit to the plans-built concept is that I can turn that two-place aircraft into a four-place. There are several builders already in the process of doing just that, and the person in the lead is Scott VanderVeen. He is working with the designer of the Vision to convert the standard plans to build a four-place. These plans will be available once the plane flies. Scott has modeled the aircraft in X-Plane, and a screenshot of the result is below.

The 4-place Vision will probably be close in performance and size to the Lancair ES. It will probably be about 20 knots slower than the ES, but will also land at a slower speed. Scott's aircraft will have side stick controls, which is something I would do anyway. The original plans detail a center stick, such as that in the Velocity aircraft.

Because I want to do modifications to the aircraft, the plans-built route is probably the best right now. Other considerations come into mind, and the top consideration is cost. The plans-built composite design airframe will be generally cheaper than a comparable pre-punched metal kit. The airframe for a four-place Vision should come in at around $20k or so. That's my estimate, not Scott's or AAF's. The RV-10 kit is $39k. So for the cost of the RV-10 kit, I could have an airframe and very nice panel. With a marginal panel, I could have airframe, engine and panel -- a flying airplane.

There's also the issue of noise. Riveting a metal aircraft is noisy, and I live in a subdivision with four houses very close to me. Composite construction is mostly a quiet process. You have to listen really hard to hear epoxy drying!