The "Stage Two" portion of flight training should, in my opinion, be called "Stage Oh-you-thought-stage-1-was-difficult?" My instructor told me the second half would be easier, which I was looking forward to, especially since we decided to more than double the pace of my training. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be easier. I was in a plane for 2.9 hours (2 hours and 54 minutes) on Saturday and during that time I was smothered by a barrage of tasks that left me maybe 90 seconds of time to think. In a three hour flight.
On the bright side, I did get to fly through SeaTac's airspace last week. Like almost everything we do with the airplane these days, it was scary and I had no interest in doing it. SeaTac is what I think of as a real airport. The kind my friends fly in on. Its not just a runway with buildings. It is one of the busiest airports in the world, with an enormous complex containing numerous terminals and hangers and shops and escalators and security theatres. The air traffic controllers at SeaTac talk about twice as fast as the air traffic controllers I usually deal with (which, for reference, is like twice as fast as a teenage girl). However, once I had made our radio call and gotten permission to fly over SeaTac (after making the radio controller think I was a total idiot) we flew over the runways--while a jet was landing. We flew over a jet, a commercial jet, the kind that carries people. And I could see the tower (this should not be surprising, as they damn sure wanted to keep an eye on me). For some reason that got me super psyched for being a pilot: knowing that people I know could be flying to Seattle on some big jet, and here I could be flying over them as they landed.
Then Saturday we did a cross country flight. This involves spending more time doing paperwork than actually flying the airplane. Such paperwork includes drawing pencil lines on maps and reading twenty pages of "CIG BLW 010/VIS BLW 3SM BR. CONS CONT THRU 09Z." In theory, I can read that. You fill out this navigation log that you take with you and are supposed to write on while your flying the airplane. I did boost my confidence to land at two airports I'd never been too, but filling out that stupid nav log sucked all the joy out of flying.
Then I came home, and was to tired to go out, and needed to go to bed early so I could get up early and make up some of the work I've missed because of flying lessons, so I stayed at home and started watching tv, but apparently everyone else who likes the shows that I like was out having fun, because there was nothing on tv. I watched a little comedy central, but then a Girls Gone Wild commercial came on to remind me that I was another loser sitting at home watching tv on a saturday night. It was so depressing I actually muted the commercial and surfed through the tv guide. And then--I don't know if you know this--I learned that those stupid commercials last like five minutes. Videos of girls that you pay money for. That's not a difficult concept to grasp.
Despite how much I complain about being busy, I still have 1-2 hours of free time before going to bed. I should spend it studying flight stuff, but usually sick of it by then. I used to spend that time on craiglist and okcupid, but that only convinced me that there are no girls on the internet. For a week or two I started playing this medieval game called Evony, which I discovered because I clicked on a banner ad with a half naked girl with a provocative facial expression. The game was ok, and I was quite happy while playing it. You build these cities, and then attack people. And then my cities got attacked by someone with a lot more time on their hands, and so I quit. This means I am back to having an hour or two of free time. I think I might buy a windows computer just so I can play computer games again.
Speaking of windows, I've discovered a wonderful new "feature" of Ubuntu. I use quotes around "feature" because it is clearly a bug or design flaw that was introduced intentionally by someone who will live a long and healthy life if they never meet me. Before I describe this feature, I would just like to say that one of the things that impressed me with Linux was its ability to actually work. Like, it does what you tell it to. Tell it to take down a network interface, and the interface goes down. Send a HUP (or whatever) to the graphical system, and it reloads. Tell it to shutdown now, and the system literally shuts down now. It doesnt run around asking programs if they feel like stopping, it just gives them a chance to clean up and halts the system. Well, unless you run Ubuntu. When I tell Ubuntu to shut down, I come back to my computer 8 hours later surprised to find it still running, with a message that "Unknown Program" failed to shut down. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I take it that this means shutting down linux is becoming like shutting down windows: the operating system runs around asking all the programs if they fell like stopping, and if one doesn't, for example a poorly written Nokia 2600 driver, or the print spooler, or, I don't know, a virus that shouldn't be there anyway, then the operating system doesn't shut down. One more aspect of Windows that I absolutely hate has been ported over.
Someday...I am just going to take an entire day and fix my computer situation. Of course I also need to fix my clothing situation, and my furnitue situation, and my empty walls situation. People were making fun of my coffee table, which was still a cardboard box, so I moved the box to the side of the futon in my living room and made it into an end table. I really like boxes for that reason...with a little imagination, they can become any piece of furniture you want. So...I need to go to Ikea soon. I also need a shelf for my desk at work; I have 4 monitors at work (counting my laptop) and I'd like to up that to about 6 or 7, but there is no more room on my desk so I'm going vertical, and for that I need a monitor shelf that can hold 3 or 4 20" monitors. I can't seem to find any for some reason. I am hoping Ikea has some kind of do-it-yourself modular shelving unit that will work for me.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
The Kessel run, in 12 parsecs
A friend-of-a-friend stopped by over the weekend, spending the night here to avoid a hotel. Turns out, she's like a level 10 conversationalist. After both living alone and not having many friends for so many month, my larynx appears to have atrophied. It was exciting. We basically had like a 10 hour conversation that included Batman, Keanu Reeves, and our mutual friend Kristy. And hotdogs. And why I look down on people who wear shirts with text written "in binary" on them. And actually a lot of other things that would take too long to list. And then I got a sore throat. Apparently there is this thing called laryngitis that you get when you talk too much. Ironic...I can be a fairly quiet guy, and I have a few friends back home who I think deserve to have caught this before I did.
She visited me Saturday and I didn't get the fever until today, so my 10 minute diagnosis made while browsing webmd could be slightly innacurate. Just to be safe I took all of the "home treatment" lists for all sore throat topics and concatenated them into one big list and...long story short I now have a humidifier in my room. I have for over a year avoided buying a humidifier because I thought it would make me look like a big dork, like the character Walter in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. The air in my Philly apartment used to get so dry that my nose felt like I had stabbed it with a knife. I tried non-humidifier solutions, such just sort of wishing the air would have more moisture (ineffective), as well as boiling a large pot of water on my gas stove. The large pot of water worked great until the night I was hanging out with a girl and we heard the fire alarm go off because all the water had boiled off. I threw that pot away.
In my current apartment, I've been facing the same problem. I bought a bamboo plant from Ikea and when I brought it home the leaves turned brown, which according to the internet means that the air is so dry that water evaporates out of the leaves before it can be sucked up from the roots. I still didn't buy a humidifier though. I just moved the bamboo near the kitchen sink, figuring it was at least close to more water. I mean, the entire thing is submerged in a solution of water and rocks. It can't be that bad.
Anyway, now I'm sick, and I have one. This is probably the worst designed humidifier ever; it lacks the ability to regulate its own temperature, or stop automatically, and there is high risk of circuit overload and/or overheating and/or fire. And you have to refill the tank manually, every time you use it. Tomorrow is the day the maintnance people are entering my apartment to test the smoke detectors. Tomorrow will also be the first day I forget to turn off the humidifier, so that will be interesting.
Whatever. I'm not refilling this thing every night. I mean, I am, but this is gonna stop when I'm not sick anymore. Also, since its method of adding water to the air is evaporation, the process is adding heat to the room. My apartment is already 85 degrees (see earlier posts where I complain about the lack of air conditioning in this city) and I've basically just added a heater. And the directions say if it doesn't work (it didn't) you have to sprinkle on some salt (I did). Like a steak. We'll see how this goes. I have to admit, though, I'm in my bedroom right now (where the humidifier is running) and my throat feels a tiny bit better. Although, scientifically speaking, I have no way to be sure it is the humidifier and not the salt water I gargled or the soup or the five cups of tea or the giant dayquil tabs I nearly choked on. Seriously, I don't think I've ever taken bigger pills. I was opening the package, asking myself "do they really need to be this big?" when I heard a still small voice in the back of my head say "THATS WHAT SHE SAID!"
My flight instructor showed me how to do a flight plan last night. Then he sent me home, not realizing just how dumb I am. Since I am supposed to make a flight plan by Friday, I figured I'd get it done tonight. Then I looked at my sectional chart to begin and realized that I didn't actually know how latitude works. I understood the general concepts, yes. Longitude goes one way, latitude goes another, etc. What I did not know, was exactly how this business of minutes and seconds went down, or why there was a "30" on the side of the chart. Apparently, and I'm not happy with whoever came up with this, someone decided that it would be fun to divide units of latitude into 60 minutes, and the minutes again into 60 seconds. Seriously, did they not have the decimal system back then? Our number system is based on the number 10. And who measures distance in "minutes" and "seconds" ??? Whats next, a calendar demarcated in parsecs ?
She visited me Saturday and I didn't get the fever until today, so my 10 minute diagnosis made while browsing webmd could be slightly innacurate. Just to be safe I took all of the "home treatment" lists for all sore throat topics and concatenated them into one big list and...long story short I now have a humidifier in my room. I have for over a year avoided buying a humidifier because I thought it would make me look like a big dork, like the character Walter in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. The air in my Philly apartment used to get so dry that my nose felt like I had stabbed it with a knife. I tried non-humidifier solutions, such just sort of wishing the air would have more moisture (ineffective), as well as boiling a large pot of water on my gas stove. The large pot of water worked great until the night I was hanging out with a girl and we heard the fire alarm go off because all the water had boiled off. I threw that pot away.
In my current apartment, I've been facing the same problem. I bought a bamboo plant from Ikea and when I brought it home the leaves turned brown, which according to the internet means that the air is so dry that water evaporates out of the leaves before it can be sucked up from the roots. I still didn't buy a humidifier though. I just moved the bamboo near the kitchen sink, figuring it was at least close to more water. I mean, the entire thing is submerged in a solution of water and rocks. It can't be that bad.
Anyway, now I'm sick, and I have one. This is probably the worst designed humidifier ever; it lacks the ability to regulate its own temperature, or stop automatically, and there is high risk of circuit overload and/or overheating and/or fire. And you have to refill the tank manually, every time you use it. Tomorrow is the day the maintnance people are entering my apartment to test the smoke detectors. Tomorrow will also be the first day I forget to turn off the humidifier, so that will be interesting.
Whatever. I'm not refilling this thing every night. I mean, I am, but this is gonna stop when I'm not sick anymore. Also, since its method of adding water to the air is evaporation, the process is adding heat to the room. My apartment is already 85 degrees (see earlier posts where I complain about the lack of air conditioning in this city) and I've basically just added a heater. And the directions say if it doesn't work (it didn't) you have to sprinkle on some salt (I did). Like a steak. We'll see how this goes. I have to admit, though, I'm in my bedroom right now (where the humidifier is running) and my throat feels a tiny bit better. Although, scientifically speaking, I have no way to be sure it is the humidifier and not the salt water I gargled or the soup or the five cups of tea or the giant dayquil tabs I nearly choked on. Seriously, I don't think I've ever taken bigger pills. I was opening the package, asking myself "do they really need to be this big?" when I heard a still small voice in the back of my head say "THATS WHAT SHE SAID!"
My flight instructor showed me how to do a flight plan last night. Then he sent me home, not realizing just how dumb I am. Since I am supposed to make a flight plan by Friday, I figured I'd get it done tonight. Then I looked at my sectional chart to begin and realized that I didn't actually know how latitude works. I understood the general concepts, yes. Longitude goes one way, latitude goes another, etc. What I did not know, was exactly how this business of minutes and seconds went down, or why there was a "30" on the side of the chart. Apparently, and I'm not happy with whoever came up with this, someone decided that it would be fun to divide units of latitude into 60 minutes, and the minutes again into 60 seconds. Seriously, did they not have the decimal system back then? Our number system is based on the number 10. And who measures distance in "minutes" and "seconds" ??? Whats next, a calendar demarcated in parsecs ?
Friday, August 14, 2009
I See What You're Doing There
I soloed last Saturday. That means my flight instructor started acting all shady, and then he got out of the airplane, and I took off by myself. Alone. I tried not to think about the fact that I was alone. In fact, I normally have to constantly tell my instructor what I'm doing (otherwise he doesn't know whether to scold me for forgetting to do something or just not doing it fast enough) and I continued this stream of updates...telling the empty chair beside me that there was no traffic on final, announcing to it my takeoff roll checklist, telling it when I was beginning my descent, etc.
Something you might find interesting about landing an airplane (besides the fact that it is ironically the most difficult maneuver) is that at the first sign of trouble the pilot adds full power, climbs back up into the sky, and flies all the way around the runway to try again. This is like if you were trying to park a car in your driveway and your neighboors dog got too close and you pulled back out and drove around the block again.
I had to do three landings, and in between I only had to do two go arounds. I also forgot that I was in a plane and not a car, literally, and tried to turn off the runway and onto a taxi way at like 20 knots, which made the plane skid across the tarmac a bit. Apparently planes were not made for cornering on the ground. Who knew?
In other news, I'm learning a lot about car insurance. Apparently the way this works is when you get into an accident, you don't just send the insurance company a receipt for the repair bill. No, some guy who is not a mechanic comes and looks at the car in your dimly lit garage, and then estimates how much the insurance company officially thinks it will cost to fix it. This estimate is based on crappy repair shops that use crappy parts but like getting business from the insurance companies. Then you take your car to a real repair shop, show them a picture of the duck boat that mauled your car, and they give you the real estimate which is larger than the insurance company's by a factor of 5.
The important part of the story is that I don't have a car for three weeks. I'm using zipcars to get to Boeing Field, which, by the way, was the reason I bought Jessica to begin with. So I wouldn't have to rent zipcars to get to the airport. But, again, I'm not in the hospital.
That reminds me though. I'd like to share an experience I've had while driving in the city of Seattle, so I spent about 20 minutes drawing this diagram:
Do you notice anything completely nonsensical about this intersection? Like maybe the force right turn where there are no one-way streets involved? Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a real intersection in Seattle. In fact, I dealt with this and two other similar intersections last night on my way back to drop off the zip car. There is no reason for this. It wasn't a big intersection, just two two-lane roads...intersecting. I was in the lucky lane that was forced to turn right when I actually needed to turn left. There was a cop there, so I turned right and drove a block out of my way and made my third u-turn for the night. Its as if the people designing the roads knew where I needed to go, and put all their unecessary limitations on that path of travel.
When I got here I was a bit starry-eyed and thought everyone here was pretty cool and smart. They're not. Nothing about this city appears to be well designed. In fact, the next time you see me remind me to bring my sectional so I can complain about the airspace here. But I digress.
I have a theory. It has little to no basis on facts, and is built on ignorance and assumptions, however, if a bunch of gay bloggers can make up ridiculous conspiracy theories about Amazon, I'm pretty confident I can say whatever I want about this city's governance. You see, we don't like cars here. We, as in the stupid hippies that "run things." Because we don't like cars, we try to do a bunch of things to make it really inconvenient to have one. For example, we design every parking garage in the city to have spaces sized for a small motorcycle, so that when a bunch of pretentious SUVs get parked there, everyone basically has to kind of open their door an inch and slide in and out of their car without choking on their own window. Then make all these bus lanes and bus-only bridges and intersections where only the busses go straight. Or we take roads like say...2nd and 3rd avenue, and make them one way (one way for cars only, not busses) but only during certain times of the day, like 6am to 9:30am and 5pm to 6:30pm, and all the roads on either size degrade into ridiculous mazes, so every unsuspecting driver who gets caught there will turn off and get caught in all kinds of ridiculous traffic during the unwanted detour.
However, we don't really offer anything to replace the cars with. Apparently, packing yourself onto a gas guzzling bus with a bunch of sketchy people is morally superior to driving a gas guzzling car. But we don't want people to have trains or anything. At least, not ones that go anywhere.
There is a monorail here. It goes roughly half a mile. According to some friends in a bar, the city spent 90 million on it, and then some dick living on the west side kept collecting signatures to vote on canceling the project, and it went to vote 9 times before the monorail project got canned. We have a bunch of bridges here with way to much traffic, and the highways in general rival Phillys 76 (which I didn't think was possible), but we can't get trains in and out because for some strange reason people keep voting them down. I don't really know what they vote for around here. I kind of want to register to vote here just so I go and vote no for everything.
We do have a light rail. Based on personal obervation, light rail means "small an inefficient train." The trains go through the bus tunnels, which I guess are actually just a subway now that real trains are going through. Well, except that the busses also go through the tunnels still. And someone, somewhere, made this rule that busses and trains cannot both be in the terminal at the same time, so both the busses and trains often have to wait at the threshold of a station while the other type departs. This means that you'll be on the train and you'll here "now arriving at westlake" and the trains stops and you stand up and look out through the windows at the walls of the tunnel.
The trains themselves are shiny, way shorter than a Philly subway train, and have a pathetic capacity. Imagine if someone sat down with you, handed you a piece of paper, and told you to design a train that held as few people as possible. That's how I think these trains got designed. You would think that if you got on a train, you would see maybe rows of chairs to sit on. Seattle's light rail trains instead actaully contain a number of walls, with a few seats tucked in here or there just so no one gets confused and thinks they're in a hallway. They go slightly faster than a bus.
Also, I am clearly in the minority of people who are bothered by this. The other people who live here seem to think that Seattle is awesome. In fact, some people that I've talked to actually moved here first, and then tried to find a job. They weren't just lured here by money. As in, they came here because they somehow thought Seattle was cool before they moved here. I'm not sure what's so great...annd...I probably shouldn't share this journal with any of them. I think our difference of opinion be a result of a difference in our definitions of awesome. When I think of "awesome" I usually think of me being the only male player on an all-female volleyball team. When other people think of "awesome" they seem to think of beer that isn't quite good enough to be sold more than 25 miles away from where its made. To each his own, I guess.
Something you might find interesting about landing an airplane (besides the fact that it is ironically the most difficult maneuver) is that at the first sign of trouble the pilot adds full power, climbs back up into the sky, and flies all the way around the runway to try again. This is like if you were trying to park a car in your driveway and your neighboors dog got too close and you pulled back out and drove around the block again.
I had to do three landings, and in between I only had to do two go arounds. I also forgot that I was in a plane and not a car, literally, and tried to turn off the runway and onto a taxi way at like 20 knots, which made the plane skid across the tarmac a bit. Apparently planes were not made for cornering on the ground. Who knew?
In other news, I'm learning a lot about car insurance. Apparently the way this works is when you get into an accident, you don't just send the insurance company a receipt for the repair bill. No, some guy who is not a mechanic comes and looks at the car in your dimly lit garage, and then estimates how much the insurance company officially thinks it will cost to fix it. This estimate is based on crappy repair shops that use crappy parts but like getting business from the insurance companies. Then you take your car to a real repair shop, show them a picture of the duck boat that mauled your car, and they give you the real estimate which is larger than the insurance company's by a factor of 5.
The important part of the story is that I don't have a car for three weeks. I'm using zipcars to get to Boeing Field, which, by the way, was the reason I bought Jessica to begin with. So I wouldn't have to rent zipcars to get to the airport. But, again, I'm not in the hospital.
That reminds me though. I'd like to share an experience I've had while driving in the city of Seattle, so I spent about 20 minutes drawing this diagram:
Do you notice anything completely nonsensical about this intersection? Like maybe the force right turn where there are no one-way streets involved? Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a real intersection in Seattle. In fact, I dealt with this and two other similar intersections last night on my way back to drop off the zip car. There is no reason for this. It wasn't a big intersection, just two two-lane roads...intersecting. I was in the lucky lane that was forced to turn right when I actually needed to turn left. There was a cop there, so I turned right and drove a block out of my way and made my third u-turn for the night. Its as if the people designing the roads knew where I needed to go, and put all their unecessary limitations on that path of travel.
When I got here I was a bit starry-eyed and thought everyone here was pretty cool and smart. They're not. Nothing about this city appears to be well designed. In fact, the next time you see me remind me to bring my sectional so I can complain about the airspace here. But I digress.
I have a theory. It has little to no basis on facts, and is built on ignorance and assumptions, however, if a bunch of gay bloggers can make up ridiculous conspiracy theories about Amazon, I'm pretty confident I can say whatever I want about this city's governance. You see, we don't like cars here. We, as in the stupid hippies that "run things." Because we don't like cars, we try to do a bunch of things to make it really inconvenient to have one. For example, we design every parking garage in the city to have spaces sized for a small motorcycle, so that when a bunch of pretentious SUVs get parked there, everyone basically has to kind of open their door an inch and slide in and out of their car without choking on their own window. Then make all these bus lanes and bus-only bridges and intersections where only the busses go straight. Or we take roads like say...2nd and 3rd avenue, and make them one way (one way for cars only, not busses) but only during certain times of the day, like 6am to 9:30am and 5pm to 6:30pm, and all the roads on either size degrade into ridiculous mazes, so every unsuspecting driver who gets caught there will turn off and get caught in all kinds of ridiculous traffic during the unwanted detour.
However, we don't really offer anything to replace the cars with. Apparently, packing yourself onto a gas guzzling bus with a bunch of sketchy people is morally superior to driving a gas guzzling car. But we don't want people to have trains or anything. At least, not ones that go anywhere.
There is a monorail here. It goes roughly half a mile. According to some friends in a bar, the city spent 90 million on it, and then some dick living on the west side kept collecting signatures to vote on canceling the project, and it went to vote 9 times before the monorail project got canned. We have a bunch of bridges here with way to much traffic, and the highways in general rival Phillys 76 (which I didn't think was possible), but we can't get trains in and out because for some strange reason people keep voting them down. I don't really know what they vote for around here. I kind of want to register to vote here just so I go and vote no for everything.
We do have a light rail. Based on personal obervation, light rail means "small an inefficient train." The trains go through the bus tunnels, which I guess are actually just a subway now that real trains are going through. Well, except that the busses also go through the tunnels still. And someone, somewhere, made this rule that busses and trains cannot both be in the terminal at the same time, so both the busses and trains often have to wait at the threshold of a station while the other type departs. This means that you'll be on the train and you'll here "now arriving at westlake" and the trains stops and you stand up and look out through the windows at the walls of the tunnel.
The trains themselves are shiny, way shorter than a Philly subway train, and have a pathetic capacity. Imagine if someone sat down with you, handed you a piece of paper, and told you to design a train that held as few people as possible. That's how I think these trains got designed. You would think that if you got on a train, you would see maybe rows of chairs to sit on. Seattle's light rail trains instead actaully contain a number of walls, with a few seats tucked in here or there just so no one gets confused and thinks they're in a hallway. They go slightly faster than a bus.
Also, I am clearly in the minority of people who are bothered by this. The other people who live here seem to think that Seattle is awesome. In fact, some people that I've talked to actually moved here first, and then tried to find a job. They weren't just lured here by money. As in, they came here because they somehow thought Seattle was cool before they moved here. I'm not sure what's so great...annd...I probably shouldn't share this journal with any of them. I think our difference of opinion be a result of a difference in our definitions of awesome. When I think of "awesome" I usually think of me being the only male player on an all-female volleyball team. When other people think of "awesome" they seem to think of beer that isn't quite good enough to be sold more than 25 miles away from where its made. To each his own, I guess.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
In Seattle, the Duck Rides You
Seattle, as does Philly, has at least one tour service that uses amphibious vehicles that drive on land and also go in the water. They are called Ride-the-Duck, and one of their land routes goes right by my apartment. Now, I honestly wish I was about to tell you some funny story about them almost running me over, or a cute girl falling out of the boat, or something. But thats not what happened. No, the stupid ------- boat actually ran me over today.
I was at the light at the corner of my apartment building, either stopped or stopping because it was red. I don't quite remember which, because my memory of that time period is overshadowed by the feeling of being hit from behind. By a boat. It actually hit me once--a nice love tap that woke me up and destroyed the park bench spoiler and pre-shattered the rear window. After riding a motorcycle for a few years, I've started to talk up my ability to see things coming and get out of the way in time. I did not see this coming. I don't even know where it came from. I mean, I knew there was one on the street. I think I passed it halfway down the block. I was stopped too close behind another car, so even if I could see the boat coming I still wouldn't have been able to get off the road in time. But I digress. There's more.
After the initial impact, during which I became both annoyed and incredulous that someone driving a big boat would rear end me...there was a second impact. I don't know what he was doing. Maybe he hit the gas. But the hull of the boat was actually making headway over my shrinking vehicle, and I became genuinely alarmed. Then the light turned green and I punched the throttle to get out of there, but it didn't really matter as the guy had found the brake pedal by that time anyway. If he hadn't, Jessica (my car) would probably be in a lot worse shape.
The guy, and some kind of captain/shift manager/wing commander-like guy who showed up a few minutes later, both apologized repeatedly without admiting fault. I was terse. I elected not to scream "WHAT THE !@#$ WERE YOU DOING?" which turned out to be a good choice, as there was a boatload of tourists snapping pictures of me and my crushed baby. I'm pretty sure it was their fault. I took a picture of the car in front of the duck ride in case anything goes even more wrong, though.
Thankfully the damage was all body damage, as far as I can tell. The engine, which is probably most of the cost, and the drivetrain and axles are all fine. Unthankfully, all of the damage was to my car. The boat appeared to have a thick, solid, unscratched metal surface.
I didn't call the police because I could still drive it, and I didn't want to sit around waiting for them to show up because I was actually on-call for work, which meant I needed to answer pages within 15 minutes or answer to my boss. So I just drove it in the gate of my building and spent half an hour cleaning glass shards off of and around Jessica. It is actually not terribly damaged. The tastefully ostentatious spoiler is sitting in the back seat, and the back window is now located in shards in a carboard box. Her trunk has gashes from the boats hull, but after cleaning it up it doesnt look too bad.
I'm just glad I'm not in the E.R. right now. Although, that would give me another shot at getting a cute nurses number. I've had nurse friends tell me that happens to them all the time in the E.R. in a tone of voice that suggested they found it annoying. I don't really care anymore. Girls who don't want to be hit on can just go live on another planet.
In other news, I just tried to print something from my web browser on my computer running Ubuntu Linux. I've actually recently upgraded Ubuntu, and it gave me a new version of the Firefox web browser. Apparently people who use this new and exciting version almost never need to change the margins when they print. I spent 20 minutes alternatively messing around with Firefox and searching the internet until I discovered the secret mouse-based incantations necessary to print with such nonstandard heathen margins that aren't a quarter inch. It actually brought back memories of using windows. Remember when you wanted to change some simple setting in windows, and to do it you had to use the mouse and open this graphical program, and then go into another window, maybe a tab, then use some non-intuitive interface to enter a value and probably restart the computer? I think my Ubuntu desktop is going to be like that soon.
Hmm...I just realized we have some kind of new light rail sytem in Seattle, and I might have to use it tomorrow to get to work. This could be interesting, as it sounds like they've tried to make paying your fare as complicated as possible.
I was at the light at the corner of my apartment building, either stopped or stopping because it was red. I don't quite remember which, because my memory of that time period is overshadowed by the feeling of being hit from behind. By a boat. It actually hit me once--a nice love tap that woke me up and destroyed the park bench spoiler and pre-shattered the rear window. After riding a motorcycle for a few years, I've started to talk up my ability to see things coming and get out of the way in time. I did not see this coming. I don't even know where it came from. I mean, I knew there was one on the street. I think I passed it halfway down the block. I was stopped too close behind another car, so even if I could see the boat coming I still wouldn't have been able to get off the road in time. But I digress. There's more.
After the initial impact, during which I became both annoyed and incredulous that someone driving a big boat would rear end me...there was a second impact. I don't know what he was doing. Maybe he hit the gas. But the hull of the boat was actually making headway over my shrinking vehicle, and I became genuinely alarmed. Then the light turned green and I punched the throttle to get out of there, but it didn't really matter as the guy had found the brake pedal by that time anyway. If he hadn't, Jessica (my car) would probably be in a lot worse shape.
The guy, and some kind of captain/shift manager/wing commander-like guy who showed up a few minutes later, both apologized repeatedly without admiting fault. I was terse. I elected not to scream "WHAT THE !@#$ WERE YOU DOING?" which turned out to be a good choice, as there was a boatload of tourists snapping pictures of me and my crushed baby. I'm pretty sure it was their fault. I took a picture of the car in front of the duck ride in case anything goes even more wrong, though.
Thankfully the damage was all body damage, as far as I can tell. The engine, which is probably most of the cost, and the drivetrain and axles are all fine. Unthankfully, all of the damage was to my car. The boat appeared to have a thick, solid, unscratched metal surface.
I didn't call the police because I could still drive it, and I didn't want to sit around waiting for them to show up because I was actually on-call for work, which meant I needed to answer pages within 15 minutes or answer to my boss. So I just drove it in the gate of my building and spent half an hour cleaning glass shards off of and around Jessica. It is actually not terribly damaged. The tastefully ostentatious spoiler is sitting in the back seat, and the back window is now located in shards in a carboard box. Her trunk has gashes from the boats hull, but after cleaning it up it doesnt look too bad.
I'm just glad I'm not in the E.R. right now. Although, that would give me another shot at getting a cute nurses number. I've had nurse friends tell me that happens to them all the time in the E.R. in a tone of voice that suggested they found it annoying. I don't really care anymore. Girls who don't want to be hit on can just go live on another planet.
In other news, I just tried to print something from my web browser on my computer running Ubuntu Linux. I've actually recently upgraded Ubuntu, and it gave me a new version of the Firefox web browser. Apparently people who use this new and exciting version almost never need to change the margins when they print. I spent 20 minutes alternatively messing around with Firefox and searching the internet until I discovered the secret mouse-based incantations necessary to print with such nonstandard heathen margins that aren't a quarter inch. It actually brought back memories of using windows. Remember when you wanted to change some simple setting in windows, and to do it you had to use the mouse and open this graphical program, and then go into another window, maybe a tab, then use some non-intuitive interface to enter a value and probably restart the computer? I think my Ubuntu desktop is going to be like that soon.
Hmm...I just realized we have some kind of new light rail sytem in Seattle, and I might have to use it tomorrow to get to work. This could be interesting, as it sounds like they've tried to make paying your fare as complicated as possible.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
I think we can handle one little girl....
I have a talent. A way with words, if you will. Have you ever been at a table and heard me talk, after which it was evident that I did not think beforehand? Yeah, I've been there too. Last week I gave my team at work good reason to think I'm racist, and I also made Heather think I forgot her name. I actually plan my day, sometimes, to increase the probability that I'm checking my mail or walking in or out when she is most likely to be sitting in the office alone and bored. It almost never works but I do try. Yet, she thinks I haven't even remembered her damn name, which is ironic because I've blabbed about her to the entire internet on multiple occasions. I really have a talent for this sort of thing. I am going to just catch her one day and ask her point blank if she wants to go out. Then she'll most likely say no, but I've made a deal with myself to stop thinking about her after that. This is going to take a while, because as I just mentioned, I'm not good at running into her when she's alone, and asking her out in front of some other tentants or her co-workers (one of which is probably a new boyfriend) is a recipe for an intensity of awkwardness that I am not prepared to deal with. After that it's the cute redhead at starbucks. She's...leaving at the end of the summer to, uh, to go to college. Yeah she'll probably say no too.
Oh, I met this awesome girl in Nordstrom on Saturday. She helped me get a shirt tailored, and told me I should buy Hugo Boss shirts because they are slimer and would actually fit me. I was giving her one of my email addresses for the whole picking-up-the-tailored-shirt notification, which contains the string 'theroadninja,' and we got into a conversation about motorycles where she mentioned that her Dad is going to teach her to ride. I told her to get a Ninja 250 because they make awesome starter bikes, although I forgot to tell her that it sucks to learn to clutch on one of those. Then I told her to email me when she learns how to ride, and we'll ride together. I neglected to mention that I currently don't own a motorcycle. I'm in between bikes, as it were. I thought it would be more slick than getting her number. I don't really think--wait let me check--nope, she hasn't emailed. I will be receiving a lot of marketing e-crap from Nordstrom though. Dammit.
That Miley Cyrus song has been banished from my head, though not before I started rewriting the lyrics. You're Gonna Go Far, Kid has taken its place. I'm not sure what it is about, but I enjoy rocking out to it in my headphones at work.
Speaking of work, I've had a miserable task this past week and have gotten myself addicted to notalwaysright.com. It is a feed of ridiculous and dumb things that customers say to retail people and call center handlers. Actually, one of them is from a game store in Exton that I used to visit. I'll post the link if I find it. I don't know if I'm just lonely, or if my circle of friends here is missing that one super rude person that keeps things interesting, but I love reading that site. Sometimes I sit there and dream about what I would say to the rude customer. If I work retail again, I will probably get fired within a day.
Seattle is experiencing a heat wave. That means my air-conditionless 6th floor apartment is about as hot as a rainforest and my desk located under the vents in the air conditioned office feels like I'm working in a refrigerator. Its actually 12:20 AM and 90 degrees in my apartment. I'm not exaggerating: the thermometer says 90. It was 89 an hour ago. I think my computer is adding to the heat. Opening up the windows hasn't helped. Suffice to say, if you ever hear a person from Seattle tell you they don't need air conditioning, know that it is kind of like hearing a vegetarian tell you that they don't need to eat a lightly salted, medium-rare new york strip at an upscale restaurant. It's technically true, yes, but it reminds me of the architect guy in the Matrix sequels saying "There are levels of existence we are prepared to accept."
I beat Lego Star Wars (Original Trilogy) tonight. My list of games that are multiplayer that also girls seem to like now includes:
Lego Batman
Lego Indiana Jones
Lego Star Wars
Mario Kart
*Mario 3
Rock Band.
*technically one player, but...never mind.
I have not yet purchased rock band, on account of how all my money is going towards flight lessons becuase I can't keep a budget. I've actually had to stop eating lunch out, too. You should see me try to pack my lunch. Oh crap--the pasta I didn't finish is still in my backpack. I'm going to end this while I'm ahead (relatively speaking).
Oh, I met this awesome girl in Nordstrom on Saturday. She helped me get a shirt tailored, and told me I should buy Hugo Boss shirts because they are slimer and would actually fit me. I was giving her one of my email addresses for the whole picking-up-the-tailored-shirt notification, which contains the string 'theroadninja,' and we got into a conversation about motorycles where she mentioned that her Dad is going to teach her to ride. I told her to get a Ninja 250 because they make awesome starter bikes, although I forgot to tell her that it sucks to learn to clutch on one of those. Then I told her to email me when she learns how to ride, and we'll ride together. I neglected to mention that I currently don't own a motorcycle. I'm in between bikes, as it were. I thought it would be more slick than getting her number. I don't really think--wait let me check--nope, she hasn't emailed. I will be receiving a lot of marketing e-crap from Nordstrom though. Dammit.
That Miley Cyrus song has been banished from my head, though not before I started rewriting the lyrics. You're Gonna Go Far, Kid has taken its place. I'm not sure what it is about, but I enjoy rocking out to it in my headphones at work.
Speaking of work, I've had a miserable task this past week and have gotten myself addicted to notalwaysright.com. It is a feed of ridiculous and dumb things that customers say to retail people and call center handlers. Actually, one of them is from a game store in Exton that I used to visit. I'll post the link if I find it. I don't know if I'm just lonely, or if my circle of friends here is missing that one super rude person that keeps things interesting, but I love reading that site. Sometimes I sit there and dream about what I would say to the rude customer. If I work retail again, I will probably get fired within a day.
Seattle is experiencing a heat wave. That means my air-conditionless 6th floor apartment is about as hot as a rainforest and my desk located under the vents in the air conditioned office feels like I'm working in a refrigerator. Its actually 12:20 AM and 90 degrees in my apartment. I'm not exaggerating: the thermometer says 90. It was 89 an hour ago. I think my computer is adding to the heat. Opening up the windows hasn't helped. Suffice to say, if you ever hear a person from Seattle tell you they don't need air conditioning, know that it is kind of like hearing a vegetarian tell you that they don't need to eat a lightly salted, medium-rare new york strip at an upscale restaurant. It's technically true, yes, but it reminds me of the architect guy in the Matrix sequels saying "There are levels of existence we are prepared to accept."
I beat Lego Star Wars (Original Trilogy) tonight. My list of games that are multiplayer that also girls seem to like now includes:
Lego Batman
Lego Indiana Jones
Lego Star Wars
Mario Kart
*Mario 3
Rock Band.
*technically one player, but...never mind.
I have not yet purchased rock band, on account of how all my money is going towards flight lessons becuase I can't keep a budget. I've actually had to stop eating lunch out, too. You should see me try to pack my lunch. Oh crap--the pasta I didn't finish is still in my backpack. I'm going to end this while I'm ahead (relatively speaking).
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Hail to the King, Baby
My sister is visiting. Also some girl just stood me up this weekend. I'm beginning to think Seattle is a great place to live if you already have a girlfriend. Also I read on the internet that Amazon is doing evil things with their Kindles. According to the internet someone thought remotely deleting 1984 off everyone's kindle would be a good idea.
Yesterday we hiked Mt Rainier. Apparently I suck at applying sunscreen, because I My face, neck, and little strips on my forearms are totally burnt. Also, it hurts to walk. Apparently when you are not in shape, and you try to hike to the top of a mountain all day, it destroys your muscles. Who knew? Anyway, it was pretty awesome. This time we took ski poles and I remembered extra socks. Much more snow had melted since I had been there last, and you have no idea how much easier it is to walk on a boring macadam path than it is to trudge uphill through snow. Oh, I also remembered boots. Boots help. We saw a mountain goat. It was a lot smaller than I imagine, which I guess is why they can climb so high.
It was kind of depressing though. Parking was difficult. I mean, Mt Rainier is a mountain. You can't really get more impressive, or vast, or awesome. Not without also being deadly. When I go flying in my tiny little Cessna, it sometimes give me a bit of a god-complex because at 3000 feet above the ground all of the little people and buildings--everything mankind does--looks tiny and unimpressive. What does look impressive, still, are the mountains. They can be like walls. In fact, if the clouds are, say, overcast at six thousand feet, and I'm flying just East of Kent, then I find myself boxed in on three sides by mountains, with a ceiling of clouds above me. Only mountains can do that. Mountains are impressive.
Except, of course, when you drive to the visitor's center at Mt Rainier. First, there is a scenic, awesome and super windy road, which motorcycles and Subaru STI's are made for, and on which you will be stuck behind someone that doesn't know how to drive and chooses to drive their vehicle at roughly 1/5 of the speed you could go. I am actually not exaggerating; I did the math and it was 1/5th. I had a lot of time, on a ccount of how damn slow they were going.
Anyway, you can just drive, on roads, all the way up to 5400 feet above mean sea level. There is a lodge with restrooms and greasy food and stay-off-the-meadow signs. And no parking. Its a mountain, and there is no parking. The biggest natural...object, save for all the glaciers which will probably melt (I'll get to them in a bit), and there's no parking. This, my friends, is what depresses me: there are so many people here we can fill up a mountain. Granted, there should be more parking spaces. But its a mountain. Lack of parking is something you experience in a city, or at a movie theatre, or at the DMV. Not at a mountain. It felt like I had arrived at a cheap carnival.
Another interesting fact about Mt Rainier is the...difficulty level. I am told that to get to the summit, you have to climb up to some camp somewhere, spend the night to acclimate, and then make your bid for the summit. And it requires tents and ropes and ice picks and ice boots and probably radios and shovels and all that. And we'd have to train for it. At least, that's what Luke keeps saying. I'm sure he's right, but when I'm at the mountain, the more I hike the more I think I could just kind of waltz up to the summit. I think it is deceptive because the slope starts off easy and then increases, getting harder and harder until you have to like fight for a 100 feet, instead of just strolling along.
Anyway, we climbed to somewhere between 7200 and 7300. I know this, because we passed a sign saying we were at 7200, and we never made it to some place called "Camp Muir," which the sign at the bottom said was 7300. We were probably pretty close, but I elected to turn around. We were above the tree line, and past the scary sign saying the weather is going to change and you're going to die in a cloud. We were actually at the height of the clouds. It was pretty cool. Also there was no grass. Just snow and rocks, which, by the way, are easier to hike over than snow.
Then we went back down the mountain, and I tried to work on my ability so ski on nothing but my two feet. A lot of people were wrapping trash bags around their waists (or doing something smart like wearing snowpants) and just sliding down the slopes on their ass. I was in jeans, though, but the sliding did look fun. As we neared the bottom I began to understand why an out of shape person can't actually just stroll up the mountain and get to the top. I began to understand this fact because my legs started to hurt. Hours later, it hurt to walk. I normally take the stairs at my apartment, but I've been taking the elevator ever since. My legs still hurt, actually.
My sister was on East Coast time, so she went to bed and I tried to catch up with some friends in Freemont watching Army of Darkness. Interestingly enough: that movie, my email address, and the fact that I waited ten years for a video game called Duke Forever that was never made, are all linked. Back to the story. I get to the theatre, but the one person whose cell number I had wasn't answering....ok this actually isn't that interesting. I was going to write about how it was incredibly painful to walk, especially downhill for some reason, and then how I ended up walking back and forth through Freemont twice trying to find some bar my friends were going to. Unfortunately, this is one of those stories where I just end up looking like a dumbass. My legs do hurt, though.
Anyway, today we went to the Locks. The locks are pretty cool, and exciting to watch. The actual water raising/lowering is quite slow and boring, but watching all of these boats pack in and tie themselves to the sides or each other is fun. And then they get up or down to the next water level, the lock clears out fast. I kind of want to own a boat, just so I can go through the locks. It would be a good place for a date. Actually, a lot of things I've been doing lately would be good dates. The only thing missing was, you know, a girl. More on that in a sec.
After the locks my little sister rode along on my flight lesson, and didn't throw up. So I guess I'm not that bad of a pilot. Still a bit anxious about the soloing thing. As in, I am not looking forward to it at all. I understand, though, that the whole point of the license is to be able to fly by yourself, so I'm going along with it.
Last night at the bar one of my friends mentioned that there are a lot more guys than girls in Seattle. I had been denying this fact to myself, and didn't really want to believe it, but everyone else at the table was in agreement. Mathmatically speaking, there has to be somewhere on this Earth where the opposite is true. I mean, if Women outnumber men on the planet, and men outnumber women in Seattle, there must be at least one place on Earth where women outnumber men. I don't really care that much. I'm just annoyed that some girl stood me up this weekend. I was supposed to see Harry Potter with some girl I met on the internet. Dorky, I know, but I actually want to see this one, because I hear Snape becomes a bad guy, and I'm curious as to how true that is, and whether or not that fact will ruin the series for me. The thing I liked about Snape was that he was a dark character, but he was still a good guy. He had depth. If he turns into a bad guy, then every shady-looking character in that series is a bad guy, and (to me) the series becomes little more than a cheap childrens tale. Maybe it will be fun to watch anyway. I dont know. Suffice to say I wanted to see it, and I really wanted to see it on a date with a girl, because there is really no other way that you can watch a Harry Potter movie. Now, it seems that I won't be seeing that movie, and I basically just wasted all that time chatting up that girl, and I have no idea what random thing I said that pissed her off.
My car continues to be awesome. It's name is definitely Jessica now, and this time I'm the one who named it. That reminds me: Katie, the ninja 250 I sold to a guy at work, has a new life as a gift to some girl. I told the guy who rebuilt it that its name was Katie, and he said he'd pass that on.
When my flight training is done I plan to save up for another bike. I also am going to find someone to make me a ski harness, so I can strap skiis onto my back, ride to Mt Rainier, park in the motorcycle parking area, and then hike the mountain, and then ski down and rode home on my sportbike.
Speaking of "when my flight training is done," I have a huge list of "when my flight training is done." I'm basically putting my life on hold until someone signs a piece of paper saying I'm allowed to fly a Cessna with some passengers. The reason--and I can't believe I'm admitting this publicly--that I'm even doing this is because of a girl. It was one of those times where I fell in love with some girl and she didn't feel the same way and I decided I needed to make my life more interesting. You know, that live-life-to-the-fullest, sieze-the-day, do-anything-but-sitting-at-home thing. I didn't realize at the time just how much time and money it costs to get a flying license. I am beginning to think that "carpe diem" is a load of crap, and the next time I hear someone talking about living life to the fullest, I'm going to inform them that it is too expensive.
In other news, I have a Miley Cyrus song stuck in my head. Normally this wouldn't be a problem. I tend to like artists that most people hate or look down on, like Nickelback, Avril Lavigne and Taylor Swift. However, my good buddy Mark pointed out to me a particularly dumb lyric in the particular Miley Cyrus song that is stuck in my head. Why is this a problem? This is a problem because my method of getting songs out of my head--unstuck, if you will--is to listen to them over and over and over and over again. Which is what I'm doing right now, actually. But thanks to Mark, every time I hear that stupid, stupid line it causes psychological pain. Ironically, hearing Mark complain about this song is also the reason it is stuck in my head in the first place. I'm not sure what to do. This damn song is so catchy. Why couldn't they write better lyrics? I don't even know who Miley Cyrus is. I just know that people on the internet like to make fun of her.
Yeah. That's right. I'm up at 12:40 on a Sunday night in my PJs writing in my blog and listening to Miley Cyrus on youtube. You know what? You're reading it.
Yesterday we hiked Mt Rainier. Apparently I suck at applying sunscreen, because I My face, neck, and little strips on my forearms are totally burnt. Also, it hurts to walk. Apparently when you are not in shape, and you try to hike to the top of a mountain all day, it destroys your muscles. Who knew? Anyway, it was pretty awesome. This time we took ski poles and I remembered extra socks. Much more snow had melted since I had been there last, and you have no idea how much easier it is to walk on a boring macadam path than it is to trudge uphill through snow. Oh, I also remembered boots. Boots help. We saw a mountain goat. It was a lot smaller than I imagine, which I guess is why they can climb so high.
It was kind of depressing though. Parking was difficult. I mean, Mt Rainier is a mountain. You can't really get more impressive, or vast, or awesome. Not without also being deadly. When I go flying in my tiny little Cessna, it sometimes give me a bit of a god-complex because at 3000 feet above the ground all of the little people and buildings--everything mankind does--looks tiny and unimpressive. What does look impressive, still, are the mountains. They can be like walls. In fact, if the clouds are, say, overcast at six thousand feet, and I'm flying just East of Kent, then I find myself boxed in on three sides by mountains, with a ceiling of clouds above me. Only mountains can do that. Mountains are impressive.
Except, of course, when you drive to the visitor's center at Mt Rainier. First, there is a scenic, awesome and super windy road, which motorcycles and Subaru STI's are made for, and on which you will be stuck behind someone that doesn't know how to drive and chooses to drive their vehicle at roughly 1/5 of the speed you could go. I am actually not exaggerating; I did the math and it was 1/5th. I had a lot of time, on a ccount of how damn slow they were going.
Anyway, you can just drive, on roads, all the way up to 5400 feet above mean sea level. There is a lodge with restrooms and greasy food and stay-off-the-meadow signs. And no parking. Its a mountain, and there is no parking. The biggest natural...object, save for all the glaciers which will probably melt (I'll get to them in a bit), and there's no parking. This, my friends, is what depresses me: there are so many people here we can fill up a mountain. Granted, there should be more parking spaces. But its a mountain. Lack of parking is something you experience in a city, or at a movie theatre, or at the DMV. Not at a mountain. It felt like I had arrived at a cheap carnival.
Another interesting fact about Mt Rainier is the...difficulty level. I am told that to get to the summit, you have to climb up to some camp somewhere, spend the night to acclimate, and then make your bid for the summit. And it requires tents and ropes and ice picks and ice boots and probably radios and shovels and all that. And we'd have to train for it. At least, that's what Luke keeps saying. I'm sure he's right, but when I'm at the mountain, the more I hike the more I think I could just kind of waltz up to the summit. I think it is deceptive because the slope starts off easy and then increases, getting harder and harder until you have to like fight for a 100 feet, instead of just strolling along.
Anyway, we climbed to somewhere between 7200 and 7300. I know this, because we passed a sign saying we were at 7200, and we never made it to some place called "Camp Muir," which the sign at the bottom said was 7300. We were probably pretty close, but I elected to turn around. We were above the tree line, and past the scary sign saying the weather is going to change and you're going to die in a cloud. We were actually at the height of the clouds. It was pretty cool. Also there was no grass. Just snow and rocks, which, by the way, are easier to hike over than snow.
Then we went back down the mountain, and I tried to work on my ability so ski on nothing but my two feet. A lot of people were wrapping trash bags around their waists (or doing something smart like wearing snowpants) and just sliding down the slopes on their ass. I was in jeans, though, but the sliding did look fun. As we neared the bottom I began to understand why an out of shape person can't actually just stroll up the mountain and get to the top. I began to understand this fact because my legs started to hurt. Hours later, it hurt to walk. I normally take the stairs at my apartment, but I've been taking the elevator ever since. My legs still hurt, actually.
My sister was on East Coast time, so she went to bed and I tried to catch up with some friends in Freemont watching Army of Darkness. Interestingly enough: that movie, my email address, and the fact that I waited ten years for a video game called Duke Forever that was never made, are all linked. Back to the story. I get to the theatre, but the one person whose cell number I had wasn't answering....ok this actually isn't that interesting. I was going to write about how it was incredibly painful to walk, especially downhill for some reason, and then how I ended up walking back and forth through Freemont twice trying to find some bar my friends were going to. Unfortunately, this is one of those stories where I just end up looking like a dumbass. My legs do hurt, though.
Anyway, today we went to the Locks. The locks are pretty cool, and exciting to watch. The actual water raising/lowering is quite slow and boring, but watching all of these boats pack in and tie themselves to the sides or each other is fun. And then they get up or down to the next water level, the lock clears out fast. I kind of want to own a boat, just so I can go through the locks. It would be a good place for a date. Actually, a lot of things I've been doing lately would be good dates. The only thing missing was, you know, a girl. More on that in a sec.
After the locks my little sister rode along on my flight lesson, and didn't throw up. So I guess I'm not that bad of a pilot. Still a bit anxious about the soloing thing. As in, I am not looking forward to it at all. I understand, though, that the whole point of the license is to be able to fly by yourself, so I'm going along with it.
Last night at the bar one of my friends mentioned that there are a lot more guys than girls in Seattle. I had been denying this fact to myself, and didn't really want to believe it, but everyone else at the table was in agreement. Mathmatically speaking, there has to be somewhere on this Earth where the opposite is true. I mean, if Women outnumber men on the planet, and men outnumber women in Seattle, there must be at least one place on Earth where women outnumber men. I don't really care that much. I'm just annoyed that some girl stood me up this weekend. I was supposed to see Harry Potter with some girl I met on the internet. Dorky, I know, but I actually want to see this one, because I hear Snape becomes a bad guy, and I'm curious as to how true that is, and whether or not that fact will ruin the series for me. The thing I liked about Snape was that he was a dark character, but he was still a good guy. He had depth. If he turns into a bad guy, then every shady-looking character in that series is a bad guy, and (to me) the series becomes little more than a cheap childrens tale. Maybe it will be fun to watch anyway. I dont know. Suffice to say I wanted to see it, and I really wanted to see it on a date with a girl, because there is really no other way that you can watch a Harry Potter movie. Now, it seems that I won't be seeing that movie, and I basically just wasted all that time chatting up that girl, and I have no idea what random thing I said that pissed her off.
My car continues to be awesome. It's name is definitely Jessica now, and this time I'm the one who named it. That reminds me: Katie, the ninja 250 I sold to a guy at work, has a new life as a gift to some girl. I told the guy who rebuilt it that its name was Katie, and he said he'd pass that on.
When my flight training is done I plan to save up for another bike. I also am going to find someone to make me a ski harness, so I can strap skiis onto my back, ride to Mt Rainier, park in the motorcycle parking area, and then hike the mountain, and then ski down and rode home on my sportbike.
Speaking of "when my flight training is done," I have a huge list of "when my flight training is done." I'm basically putting my life on hold until someone signs a piece of paper saying I'm allowed to fly a Cessna with some passengers. The reason--and I can't believe I'm admitting this publicly--that I'm even doing this is because of a girl. It was one of those times where I fell in love with some girl and she didn't feel the same way and I decided I needed to make my life more interesting. You know, that live-life-to-the-fullest, sieze-the-day, do-anything-but-sitting-at-home thing. I didn't realize at the time just how much time and money it costs to get a flying license. I am beginning to think that "carpe diem" is a load of crap, and the next time I hear someone talking about living life to the fullest, I'm going to inform them that it is too expensive.
In other news, I have a Miley Cyrus song stuck in my head. Normally this wouldn't be a problem. I tend to like artists that most people hate or look down on, like Nickelback, Avril Lavigne and Taylor Swift. However, my good buddy Mark pointed out to me a particularly dumb lyric in the particular Miley Cyrus song that is stuck in my head. Why is this a problem? This is a problem because my method of getting songs out of my head--unstuck, if you will--is to listen to them over and over and over and over again. Which is what I'm doing right now, actually. But thanks to Mark, every time I hear that stupid, stupid line it causes psychological pain. Ironically, hearing Mark complain about this song is also the reason it is stuck in my head in the first place. I'm not sure what to do. This damn song is so catchy. Why couldn't they write better lyrics? I don't even know who Miley Cyrus is. I just know that people on the internet like to make fun of her.
Yeah. That's right. I'm up at 12:40 on a Sunday night in my PJs writing in my blog and listening to Miley Cyrus on youtube. You know what? You're reading it.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Free: Free as in Free speech? Or Free Beer? Or Free kick in the balls?
Some noteworthy things have happened in my life. Like when Heather broke the door while she was trying to hold it shut so I couldn't get in. I still can't tell if she's interested. And like Luke and I hiking Mt. Rainier in snow, wearing t-shirts, and sliding down the slope in our sneakers. It was like an odd combination of ice skating and being in the ministry of Silly Walks.
Those events, however important and interesting, are not the subject of this post. Ubuntu is pissing me off, and I don't have anyone to complain to about this sort of thing because no one cares:
It all started when...well lets say it started when I became fascinated with the Google Web Toolkit. You can get it in the form of an Eclipse plugin that lets you just write a Java class, which the Google stuff turns into an ajaxy web page with no further intervention. I can get a web app running without even touching a web server. The downside, for me, is that the only way to run your app outside of a test environment is probably to upload it to the Google App Engine, which I'm not sure I'll want to do.
Anyway, this Eclipse plugin requires you to have Eclipse 3.3 or later. That's pretty reasonable. I think 3.3 is pretty dated--in fact I think it was dated when I was still in college. I think it was dated when Abraham Lincoln was president. Anyway, the version that I had on my Ubuntu system was 3.2--so I upgraded. Not Eclipse, Ubuntu. The new version of Eclipse was not available for my version of Ubuntu, so I upgraded said operating system.
That, my dear reader, is when the trouble began. You see I've upgraded Ubuntu before. Last time I upgraded Ubuntu, it was because I had Eclipse 3.2 and I thought I needed a later version to make JUnit work. I did a full upgrade of Ubuntu, which promptly uninstalled my favorite mp3 player, and broke Wine and VMWare. The later two I never successfully fixed; its been a while since I've played a computer game released after 1998. Also, I still had Eclipse 3.2 after the upgrade. And JUnit didn't work.
I subsequently did get JUnit working, but apparently I never got Eclipse upgraded, because this past weekend I tried to install the Google Web Toolkit plugin and discovered once again that I have an ancient version of Eclipse. This time, I did two full "upgrades" of Ubuntu, watching my system become less and less useful as I jumped to Ubuntu 8.10 and then 9.4. Each time I checked Eclipse, and it was at 3.2. It is still at 3.2. There are no more versions of Ubuntu left to destroy my system with. I still have Eclipse 3.2. I began checking the internet for the reason. Admittedly I should have done this from the beginning, but the idea that I could go through three major revisions of an operating system without getting an update to a popular development environment that is now so outdated that nothing works with it, well that was unthinkable. The entire reason I am using this stupid, ugly and annoying distribution is because I didn't want to ever deal with outdated package versions or library/package hell again. I wanted to use what everybody else is using, and let them do all the work. Annnnd....I was wrong.
Now, my "status bar" -- a relic from the windows operating system that I hate -- is full of even more icons that I don't want. The power button in the corner of the screen no longer lets you power off the computer. It still looks like a power button--still has that power button icon--but if you want to turn the computer off, you have to click on your username at the top, and then select "Shut Down..." in the menu, which does not have any icon at all next to it. So, the power symbol means log off now, in Ubuntu world. This reminds me of something--it is kind of like that operating system where you click on "start" to turn it off. Windows. Great. They also changed the volume control: they took something that was clean and simple and made it take up more screen space with unecessary buttons. Also, now when people sign on and off of AIM an enormous rectangle appears in the corner constantly, announcing that another of a hundred people I don't talk to anymore is now online. I'm actually afraid to use my computer, because I don't want to know what else broke--I mean, got "upgraded." Maybe the new Ubuntu standard for terminal input is Sign Language. In Japanese. Maybe all of the system documentation has been translated to 100% Esperanto, in some GNU documentation standard that only Emacs can read. Maybe my Java runtime has been replaced with the "Free" version that doesnt work. I mean, I don't know. Actually, I kind of do have kind of a clue. I'm pretty sure half of my video codecs are gone, so the next time I go to watch a movie I'm in for a real treat. Honestly? If Windows was Linux, I would totally use it.
The upgrade left me with the following options:
1) switch operating systems
2) stop using the computer for a while
3) install Eclipse outside of package management, creating a time bomb that will erupt and screw up my setup if the Ubuntu people get around to upgrading Eclipse before my hardware decays
4) write about this in my blog.
As you can see, I've made my choice.
Those events, however important and interesting, are not the subject of this post. Ubuntu is pissing me off, and I don't have anyone to complain to about this sort of thing because no one cares:
It all started when...well lets say it started when I became fascinated with the Google Web Toolkit. You can get it in the form of an Eclipse plugin that lets you just write a Java class, which the Google stuff turns into an ajaxy web page with no further intervention. I can get a web app running without even touching a web server. The downside, for me, is that the only way to run your app outside of a test environment is probably to upload it to the Google App Engine, which I'm not sure I'll want to do.
Anyway, this Eclipse plugin requires you to have Eclipse 3.3 or later. That's pretty reasonable. I think 3.3 is pretty dated--in fact I think it was dated when I was still in college. I think it was dated when Abraham Lincoln was president. Anyway, the version that I had on my Ubuntu system was 3.2--so I upgraded. Not Eclipse, Ubuntu. The new version of Eclipse was not available for my version of Ubuntu, so I upgraded said operating system.
That, my dear reader, is when the trouble began. You see I've upgraded Ubuntu before. Last time I upgraded Ubuntu, it was because I had Eclipse 3.2 and I thought I needed a later version to make JUnit work. I did a full upgrade of Ubuntu, which promptly uninstalled my favorite mp3 player, and broke Wine and VMWare. The later two I never successfully fixed; its been a while since I've played a computer game released after 1998. Also, I still had Eclipse 3.2 after the upgrade. And JUnit didn't work.
I subsequently did get JUnit working, but apparently I never got Eclipse upgraded, because this past weekend I tried to install the Google Web Toolkit plugin and discovered once again that I have an ancient version of Eclipse. This time, I did two full "upgrades" of Ubuntu, watching my system become less and less useful as I jumped to Ubuntu 8.10 and then 9.4. Each time I checked Eclipse, and it was at 3.2. It is still at 3.2. There are no more versions of Ubuntu left to destroy my system with. I still have Eclipse 3.2. I began checking the internet for the reason. Admittedly I should have done this from the beginning, but the idea that I could go through three major revisions of an operating system without getting an update to a popular development environment that is now so outdated that nothing works with it, well that was unthinkable. The entire reason I am using this stupid, ugly and annoying distribution is because I didn't want to ever deal with outdated package versions or library/package hell again. I wanted to use what everybody else is using, and let them do all the work. Annnnd....I was wrong.
Now, my "status bar" -- a relic from the windows operating system that I hate -- is full of even more icons that I don't want. The power button in the corner of the screen no longer lets you power off the computer. It still looks like a power button--still has that power button icon--but if you want to turn the computer off, you have to click on your username at the top, and then select "Shut Down..." in the menu, which does not have any icon at all next to it. So, the power symbol means log off now, in Ubuntu world. This reminds me of something--it is kind of like that operating system where you click on "start" to turn it off. Windows. Great. They also changed the volume control: they took something that was clean and simple and made it take up more screen space with unecessary buttons. Also, now when people sign on and off of AIM an enormous rectangle appears in the corner constantly, announcing that another of a hundred people I don't talk to anymore is now online. I'm actually afraid to use my computer, because I don't want to know what else broke--I mean, got "upgraded." Maybe the new Ubuntu standard for terminal input is Sign Language. In Japanese. Maybe all of the system documentation has been translated to 100% Esperanto, in some GNU documentation standard that only Emacs can read. Maybe my Java runtime has been replaced with the "Free" version that doesnt work. I mean, I don't know. Actually, I kind of do have kind of a clue. I'm pretty sure half of my video codecs are gone, so the next time I go to watch a movie I'm in for a real treat. Honestly? If Windows was Linux, I would totally use it.
The upgrade left me with the following options:
1) switch operating systems
2) stop using the computer for a while
3) install Eclipse outside of package management, creating a time bomb that will erupt and screw up my setup if the Ubuntu people get around to upgrading Eclipse before my hardware decays
4) write about this in my blog.
As you can see, I've made my choice.
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