Repetitious redundancy

October 27, 2005

The holiday week is taking its toll. Since this is Friday for Nevadans in state employ it didn't dawn on me until this evening that the news about the CIA leak probe expected Friday would actually come tomorrow. While searching the day's stories on the topic I came across this sentence on CNN.com, "..when Bush's approval ratings already are at a low ebb."

How does a low ebb compare to a high ebb? Since ebbs are declines or times when things go down what is a low decline? Is it like a peak summit? Or, perhaps, does it mean that it's not a major ebb but just a small ebb? (Though there is a factual problem with this argument since the president's approval ratings haven't been lower.) I'm sure I'll make many similar mistakes before my time here is done, but it is always a sad commentary to see major news organizations make such mistakes that anybody who reads at a 7th grade level would catch.

A busy week

October 26, 2005

It's been a busy week leading up to the Nevada Day holiday Friday. The marking of the 2005 Nevada Day reminds me that 19 years ago I was writing an essay for the What Nevada Means to Me essay contest in Junior High. All the more appropriate that I saw an eighth-grade math test in my RSS feed tonight.

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Calculus would have probably been more difficult if the results were different.

Too Much of a Good Thing

October 24, 2005

As you all know, I have complaining recently about not getting enough flight time. Ive had missions cancelled for weather and other reasons while everyone around me flew. Well, karma caught up with me yesterday. Here is what happened.

I checked the flight schedule on Saturday night and saw that I was not scheduled to fly at all on Sunday. I knew that I would be transitioning to a night schedule soon so I decided to stay up late. I was doing crunches in the Gym when the commander walked in. "Do you want to fly a mission tomorrow" he asked, adding that the show time would be 0425. "Of course" I replied. His next order was to go to bed immediately so that I could get some rest prior to the flight.

I woke up after about 4 hours of rest and got ready to fly. After a diet pepsi and two double caffiene power gel packets I felt pretty good. I pre-flighted the aircraft as the sun was rising and we took-off as a flight of three aircraft just at sunrise. The mission was essentially personnell transport or, in Army lingo, battlefield circulation. We flew some big wigs in the iraqi government and some high ranking military officials to various bases around the country. A lot of the flying was in the Northwest region of the country. That area, formerly known as Kurdistan, is mountainous and quite pretty.

We had several unexpected mission changes during the day causes us to fly back and forth more times than we had anticipated. The mission that started at sunrise ended several hours after dark. It was a good thing our Pilots in Command had the foresight to bring the night vision goggles. In the end, we logged 10 hours of flight time each. This is an impressive feat. In fact, it is possible that no other crews will beat this record the entire time that we are deployed.

Recoup

October 23, 2005

This afternoon is a catch-up afternoon. I'm recuperating from the New York trip. After a couple of hours of Manhattan traffic I arrived at the airport a few minutes before the cut-off for the flight. Thinking I'd be really smart I picked up a sandwich to-go for an on-board dinner. What I hadn't taken fully into account is the notorious traffic at JFK Airport. Days ago I had wondered to a couple of friends that the return flight was scheduled to be 40-minutes longer than the Las Vegas to New York flight. Spending over an hour and a half in line waiting for our takeoff to arrive I realized why the additional time was necessary.

The trip, however, was great. The main reason for the trip was a technical conference put on by the Law School Admissions Council. It was great. I wish it had happened some time ago (though the main purpose was to talk about a new product that would not have been discussed). Hopefully there will be more to come and more discussion with the technical needs of all the member schools.

Now it's home to work on catching up projects and getting documentation written.

Redemption

October 21, 2005

This evening brought redemption of a sort. A couple of months ago a seemingly benign envelope arrived from Netflix. Inside was one of the worst movies of all time. Sure, I'd heard it was bad. I thought "How bad can a movie be," and little did I know. The movie version of The Phantom of the Opera is amongst the worst ever. The lip-synching cast can neither sing nor act and the staging is embarrassingly bad.

Tonight however I saw The Phantom of the Opera as it was meant to be done. On The Great White Way history's second-longest running musical is a magical experience. Mind you one of, if not the worst, seat in the house sets one back a hefty $150. However, the performance is amazing. Howard McGillin as The Phantom is amazing as are the other leads Sandra Joseph as Christine Daae makes her Broadway debut with Tim Martin Gleason playing Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, a role he previously played on the touring production.

The first show I've seen on Broadway I had high expectations for the cast. However the staging of this production is beyond belief. On a standard proscenium stage the production does what the movie wasn't able to do and stages a believable complex story in an elegant and beautiful way and all without the benefit of "takes" and the chance to edit away the "mistakes".

First Mission

October 21, 2005

I havnt had much luck flying missions recently. Prior to today I was scheduled to fly two missions and they were both cancelled due to weather. The irony is that the only weather days we've had have been days that I was scheduled to fly. All of the other days have been nearly perfect flying conditions. I finally flew today, albeit briefly. I flew about one hour. We flew a staff person to a nearby base and then returned. That was it. Still, at least I got a little bit of flight time. If everything I hear is true I will eventually be complaining about having TOO MUCH flight time. That is yet to be seen.

I have been working the day shift but will be transitioning to nights over the next few days. Goggle flying is certainly more challenging. Plus there is the added challenge of getting my body adjusted to a new schedule. These challenges will be worthwhile, howver, if I actually get some more stick time. Other than flying, I dont have much productive to do here. I am working out a lot and generally killing time between trips to the chow hall. I am also surfing the web, reading, and chatting with friends online. I've received a lot of books and a couple of letters but would always appreciate more mail. Magazines and healthy snacks are the thing that come to mind.

Travel day

October 20, 2005

Today is a travel day. West to east so the time zones are not in my favor. I'm amazed there are still airports that don't get free wireless access. At McCarran (LAS) airport we have free wireless and it is the greatest tool for being able to get work done while awaiting a flight. I wonder if anybody has done a study. Certainly I know I spend more money at the airport because I don't mind getting here even earlier to have a good long time to work in the "Terminal B Office".

Speaking of work I've been looking a lot lately at helpdesk solutions. I thought SalesForce's SupportForce might be the way to go. Very impressive when I logged in and looked at it. Nearly 30-days ago I contacted the person I was told to contact with their sales team and haven't heard a peep back. So it won't be SalesForce. StackWorks IRM looks promising. There is active development and seems to be a solid product. The next version, however, will be a complete rewrite from PHP to Python and a move from MySQL to PostgreSQL. Perhaps I'll get into it enough to fork an alternate version 2 that stays with the architecture we need.

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