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Monday, January 02, 2006

Stolen from jo

Happy New Year! Here’s a meme!

1. What did you do in 2005 that you’d never done before?
Fly above the clouds

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Didn’t have one.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No

5. What countries did you visit?
USA, Canada

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?
All my flight ratings

7. What dates from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Chronologically, Dec. 31 will be easiest

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Uhh..probably instrument rating

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not inventing a device to travel through time.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
1x broken wrist
manyx bloody nose

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Education

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Not Yash!

13. Whose behavior made you appalled?
Yash!

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Quakecon!

16. What songs will always remind you of 2005?
none, songs dont remind me of years.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
LAN?

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Spending $

20. Did you fall in love in 2005?
Already there aww..

21. How many one-night stands?
0!

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Firefly hands down

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Apparently, though it was news to me

24. What was the best book you read?
Harry Potter 6, being it was the only book I read.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Cynic Project? I already knew about them but got the rest of their songs.

26. What did you want and get?
My instrument rating

27. What did you want and not get?
My Commercial Certificate

28. What was your favorite film of 2005?
Serenity

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Nothing and I enjoyed it, 21.

30. What’s one thing that would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Free food?

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?
meh?

32. What kept you sane?
Alison

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I hate celebrities

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Roe vs. Wade, Wal-Mart, Iraq, “Definition of marrage”, is it a voting year yet?

35. Who did you miss?
Yash, I guess….until he became an asshole

36. Who were the best new people you met?
The entire flight team

37. What do you look forward to in 2006?
Graduation

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005?
Don’t mess with rick’s computer

39. What song lyrics best sum up 2005 for you?
Songs dont sum up years except maybe 1985

Posted by eclipse on 01/02 at 11:22 AM
In Life • (0) CommentsPermalink

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

The Pro from Cupertino


The “MacBook Pro”

We can forgive the dumb name because of what it is: An apple powerbook with a dual core intel processor.  It will be able to run windows, natively and through an emulator at full speed.  It will be able to run linux, not that it matters because OS X is a better linux than linux is.  Backlit keyboards, magnetic power cord, it’s omg delicious.  I soo want a 12” version, but I may not be able to hold back.  It’s such an awesome machine.  Got two really bad parts though..  $1799 even with student discount and it won’t ship until February.  If they don’t introduce a 12” by May I won’t be able to use the student discount, maybe.  When I bought the airport card I only had to flash my KSU flashcard at them.  Maybe I can do the same again…anyways I can’t wait until I get one..

Press more for the Keynote address -

Read Full Entry

Posted by eclipse on 01/10 at 12:10 PM
In TechApple • (4) CommentsPermalink

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

It’s Time to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum

again..

The weather actually looks good tomorrow for my commercial checkride.  I’m actually feeling confident and looking forward to being finished with it.  I’m flying in the morning with my instructor to get back in the swing and at 3pm going for my ride.  Most of my nervousness before came from the crappy weather, but it’s forcasted sunny and a tropical 45 degrees.  Hopefully my next post will be a post of joy.

Posted by eclipse on 01/11 at 08:44 PM
In Flying • (0) CommentsPermalink

Thursday, January 12, 2006

A Commercial pilot!

Today was mostly a day of waiting.  I waited for my flight instructor to show up so we could fly in the morning, he was only half an hour late.  We did almost a whole practice checkride and I had some of my better landings so I was in a good mood.  I was supposed to go on the ride at 3pm, but the examiner finally got there and we were ready to go at 4.  Started the ride off with the landings.  I did a normal landing, then a soft field landing, then a short field(had to land within 100 ft), then a no-power landing(200ft).  After that I started the cross country part and headed north over streetsboro.  We broke off from that, and started the manuevers.  Steep turns followed by Minimun controllable airspeed, then power off stall, power on stall, 1 lazy eight, 3 chandelles, a steep spiral, eights-on-pylons, an engine failure at 1000 feet (very low), followed by a simulated gear failure, alternator failure, and wing fire.  After this, we headed back to the airport at 3000 feet, had the engine “failed” and did a steep spiral to land on the runway.  The last one was a very ugly landing, but I got it down.  1.5 hours after I started, he held out his hand, I had passed!  It was very nerve wracking and I was sweating a lot (he was cold) but now I am KSU’s newest commercial pilot.  Very much happiness!  I feel awesome about this because he said he was never in doubt and that I had excellent control of the airplane at all times.  He complimented my landings even though some were kinda close to the limit.  The best part about all of it is that I earned it.  Flight team felt good because we all came together as a team to win, but this is mine.  I worked hard to do well in this and I succeeded!  I wish I could write a better summary than this, but I am hyped up on adrenaline and exhausted at the same time.  Maybe tomorrow. 

Posted by eclipse on 01/12 at 07:41 PM
In Flying • (2) CommentsPermalink

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Early Estimates for QuakeCon Flight

Piper Seminole Twin Engine @ $225/hr
6 hours one way

$1350/3 people = $450
$1350/4 people = $337
----------------------------------------------

Cessna 172RG Cutlass @ $140/hr
7 hours one way

$980/3 people = $326
$980/4 people = $245

Very Rough Estimates. I planned it pretty conservatively as if we were going pretty slow, with a headwind or something. Both estimates include one fuel stop. Everyone would be able to sit up front at least once. If I get hired as a flight instructor, I might be able to take some of that cost off, though not sure and probably not. I know it's pretty steep, but a good tailwind would knock a lot of that price off. I'm not flying with only 1 other person. Will says he wants to fly but it's all about the dollars in the end...
Posted by eclipse on 01/19 at 12:34 PM
In FlyingGamingLAN Party • (8) CommentsPermalink

Sunday, January 22, 2006

KSUFlightTeam.net

Finished the flight team website and got it up and running without any help from jo! OMG!

http://www.ksuflightteam.net

Posted by eclipse on 01/22 at 05:53 PM
In Internet • (1) CommentsPermalink

Thursday, January 26, 2006

An unusual day in the air

Today started like most days out at the airport.  I got there a good 7 minutes late or so, got an airplane, froze my ass off doing the preflight and got ready to takeoff.  I’m in the CFI course at 9:00am, so I’m in the Cessna 152 2 seater airplane that we use for private pilot and the flight team competition.  These days I’m flying from the right seat so I can learn to fly it when a student screws up.  We started to take off like normal and everything seemed normal, but just as we were in the air the airspeed indicator dropped to 30 knots (which is below the stall speed) and me and my flight instructor were staring at it with jaws wide open.  There was no stall warning horn, and the airplane was totally not stalling.  Far from it actually, I had lowered the nose to get airspeed and we were cruising around at like, 100 feet.  So we’re all like “K, we gotta land I guess” so we raised the flaps, turned crosswind and then downwind.  By this time, the airspeed is reading 0, and the altimeter was about 700 feet low.  My instructor offered to land the plane, but I was all like “no, I got it”.  The airspeed moved a little bit up from 0 as I was descending for landing, but it never got to the real airspeed so I had to ignore it.  First time I ever had to land with no helpful instruments.  Since we didn’t know our airspeed, we came in for landing a little faster than usual to prevent a stall but it was a pretty uneventful landing other than that.

Later in the day, I flew the Piper Seminole twin engine for the first time.  Holy Crap what a difference two engines make!  I actually felt pushed back in my seat.  The airplane climbed to 5,000 feet before I could realize it.  It was more work but a heck of a lot more fun than the 152.  The Cutlass 172RG is good, but not as good as this.  If we fly to Dallas, we are totally taking the Seminole.  I have to get around 100 hours of multi-engine time before I can apply to an airline, so I will probably be offering rides at some times in the next two years. 

Posted by eclipse on 01/26 at 07:03 PM
In Flying • (1) CommentsPermalink

Sunday, February 05, 2006

On cleanliness

Apparently, the complexity of cleanliness had escaped my brother for some 18 years.

http://www.xanga.com/T1m_Williams/431452197/item.html

On a side note, Don’t you hate it when you highlight some text and try to cut it with Ctrl-X but the Ctrl button doesn’t work and you just replace all your text with the letter ‘x’?

Posted by eclipse on 02/05 at 11:15 AM
In Funny • (1) CommentsPermalink

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Updated Quakecon flight info

I guessed a little high on the prices of the airplanes

Piper Seminole Twin Engine @ $210/hr
6 hours one way

$1260/3 people = $420
$1260/4 people = $315
———————————————————————

Cessna 172RG Cutlass @ $125/hr
7 hours one way

$889/3 people = $297
$889/4 people = $223

Posted by eclipse on 02/23 at 07:11 PM
In FlyingGamingLAN Party • (0) CommentsPermalink

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Computer Upgrade

Upgraded my desktop to:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.21GHz
MSI Neo4/SLI motherboard (Thx Tim)
MSI Geforce NX6800GT-T2D256E PCI Express Video Card

Games run pretty sweet. Lost some stuff though due to not enough power slots
(Geforce takes two!)

Also it doesn't detect 512mb of my ram

Posted by eclipse on 02/23 at 07:17 PM
In TechPC • (0) CommentsPermalink

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Still waiting for the smaller macbook pro

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060309/ap_on_hi_te/origami_unfolded

““It ideally brings the best of what a Windows PC is and marries it to what the best of a very capable consumer electronic device is,” Mitchell said.”

WTF?  OMG I thought marriage was defined as between a man and a woman!  This is outrage!  What’s next?  Hardware marrying software?  What is this world coming to?  The government should take action to prevent this kind of thing!

Posted by eclipse on 03/09 at 03:32 PM
In TechPC • (0) CommentsPermalink

Monday, March 13, 2006

Spring Break

Since I have no plans for spring break, I was wondering if anyone wanted to do anything.  I was thinking maybe we could fly somewhere cool for a day or something.  Also, LAN Party on one of the days (or more) to be determined.  Flying wouldn’t be too expensive, especially if there are 4 of us.  Anywhere people want to go?  I just want to fly somewhere.

Posted by eclipse on 03/13 at 06:37 AM
In Flying • (3) CommentsPermalink

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Multi Engine (Expanded)

My multi-engine checkride was scheduled for Thursday, March 16th.  As always, I never get to do the checkride when it’s first scheduled.  I’ve been flying a Piper Seminole (PA-44 / 180) since the start of the semester.  I had 11.1 hours in the airplane by the time I took the ride.  So anyways, Thursday comes by and I get to the airport.  Turns out the FAA had come by and took one of the Seminoles somewhere for something (I don’t even know what).  The other one was down for maintenance, so I was like “damn” and all that.  I did the oral exam, which lasted for about an hour and a half and went fine.  Scheduled the flight for Sunday at 9am.

Sunday 9am comes by and the clouds are pretty low.  One of the requirements of the checkride is to actually shut down an engine in flight, which has to be done at a high enough altitude so that if it doesn’t restart you can glide to an airport.  I needed to be able to get to 4,500ft, and the clouds didn’t let me do it.  My examiner is leaving town for the week on Tuesday, March 21 so there’s not much time.  Rescheduled flight for 7:30am Monday March 20.

7:30am March 20 comes and it’s the same thing.  Lake Effect is causing a lot of clouds pretty low.  Examiner says he can do it later in the day, like 3pm.  Waited all day for the clouds to rise.  About 4pm they finally start to break up and we decided to go.  The ride went pretty smoothly.  I was very nervous before the flight, but once I actually start flying I’m always better.  I ran through the maneuvers which were okay.  Then we failed the engine, which was cool and probably the last time I’ll see a stopped prop hanging out there for a while (hopefully).  Then we did the VOR-A approach into KSU with a simulated failed engine all the way to the landing.  After all that, we took off one more time and did a short field landing and I was done!  There’s nothing more satisfying than the moment when you realize you passed a checkride.  Glad to be done.

Now I can focus more on my Certified Flight Instructor work and it frees up about 3 hours in the middle of the day for me too.  Woots.

Posted by eclipse on 03/16 at 06:43 AM
In Flying • (0) CommentsPermalink

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

All coming together

Earlier in the month, I applied for internship positions at three airlines: Continental Express, American Airlines, and Mesaba Airlines.  American Airlines has already called me back and scheduled an interview with me on Tuesday, March 28th.  They are going to fly me down to Dallas and hopefully the interview will go great.  I’m so looking forward to this!

Express is revamping their internship process, so I hope to hear from them soon.  Mesaba was kinda my backup choice, and that airline is going through financial problems (they are hooked together with Northwest who just filed for bankruptcy).  So for summer I can hope to be interning with a great airline!  It’s so exciting that everything is coming together.  I know I’ve been working really hard these past few semesters and haven’t gotten to hang out as much as I wanted to, but in the end this is really really good for me.

Posted by eclipse on 03/21 at 08:36 AM
In LifeKSU • (1) CommentsPermalink

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Interview with American Airlines

Yesterday was a very busy day for me, as I had my interview for an internship with American Airlines.  I had to wake up at bloody 4 in the morning and get to the airport at 6:00am.  Took an American Eagle flight to Dallas.  It’s so much faster than driving, I’ll tell you from experience!  Some of the other applicants got to take a real American flight in first class, but I thought riding in the RJ was cool enough.  It was a Canadair RJ, not the Embrear that I learn about at school though.. :(  Anyways, got to Dallas managed to get to the AA training building which is huge and had the interview right away.  It went pretty well I thought, not perfect but good.  Very Short.  Came all that way for a 15 minute interview.  Then got a tour of the building where they showed us the simulators and the rest of the building, answered questions, etc.  Then back to Cleveland by 4pm!  It was a lot of fun, and although I am still waiting for the Expressjet interview, I look forward to a great time this summer!

Posted by eclipse on 03/29 at 06:02 PM
In American Airlines • (0) CommentsPermalink
Content / opinions belong to me and are not representative of American Airlines, American Eagle, or the AMR Corp.

Friday, March 31, 2006

Continental Express Interview


Got my interview with Continental Express scheduled for April 7th.  Similar to American Airlines, they are flying me to Houston for the interview and maybe a tour.  Should be a lot of fun and I’ll be even more prepared after American Airlines.  Will keep informed.

Posted by eclipse on 03/31 at 12:06 AM
In KSU • (0) CommentsPermalink

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Bootcamp for Macintosh

Apple today released a program called "Bootcamp" (?) which allows you to install Windows XP SP2 onto your intel mac. There was already another way to do this, but Apple has now made the process much easier. On top of that, Bootcamp also installs windows drivers for the following devices:

- Intel Chip Set Software (6.2.1)
- ATI Graphics (8.24.0.0)
- Intel Integrated Graphics (6.14.10.4512)
- Marvel Yukon Ethernet (8.49.2.3)
- SigmaTel Audio (1.0.4889.0 nd375 cp1)
- SigmaTel Audio proto_A2 (1.0.4889.0 nd375 cp1)
- Atheros 802.11 wireless (AirPort) (4.2.2.4)
- Broadcom Wireless (4.10.40.0)
- Apple Bluetooth module (1.0.0.1)
- Apple Keyboard Eject Key (1.0.0.1)
- Apple Keyboard Brightness (for computers with built-in displays) (1.0.0.1)
- Startup Disk Control Panel for Windows XP (1.0.0.1)

Holy crap! Apple themselves released a full set of drivers for windows including video card drivers and even the keyboard brightness! I actually called this a while ago and all I got was the "It'll never happen." What does this mean for Apple? Well now that Windows XP works fully on mac hardware, their computers become the only ones that can natively run OS X, WinXP, and linux. It's a geek dream come true, right? And let's not forget how awesome their computers are. If only the macbook pro had two mouse buttons! They should have anticipated this! The holy grail would be here! I'm still waiting for a smaller macbook pro because the current one, although thin, is still gigantic.
Posted by eclipse on 04/05 at 08:44 AM
In TechApple • (0) CommentsPermalink

Sunday, April 09, 2006

CoEx Interview and run-on sentences

April 7th was a very busy day.  Got up at 6am.  Plan was to leave the house at 7, get to Hopkins Airport at 8 and the plane left at 9.  Well it took a little longer to get ready than we thought and Alison’s puppy decided to take a giant dump in the car, so we got leaving around 7:25.  So we’re hauling it up 77 and I-80 during rush hour hoping I don’t smell like it for the rest of the day and make it to CLE around 8:10.  No big deal, right? 50 min right? 

Well the airport is busier than I’ve ever seen it so I go to the self-checkin and it says my boarding time is 8:25am! Shiot!  Run to security which of course has a long line.  God bless the TSA.  So I’m running to the gate with my shoelaces still untied and I notice my ticket is gone!  Totally dropped it in the hallway!  Go running back the other way without tied shoes.  Luckilly I found my ticket (no one was kind enough to pick it up and take it to some random food place, thinking they were helpful) and got to the gate right as they started boarding.  Two other KSU students, Eric and Mark, were on the same flight.  We said hellos and boarded the 737 to Houston.

We got there around 10:30am local time, with the interview starting at 2:00.  We talked about interview stuff untill 2, managing to find our way to the Expressjet Simulator Building.  This was different than the American interviews, they had everyone come into the same room were they answered some questions and talked about the different kinds of internships.  They wanted to talk to the KSU students first, so they called us up one by one.

I was third and once again had a whopping 10-15min interview.  I thought it was way too short!  I didn’t get to sell myself completely.  Everyone else agreed too.  There was nothing more to do at Expressjet so we went back to the airport (IAH).  Got some food and talked about how short it was.  Our plane left at 7:00pm local so we were there for like 3.5 hours.  Plane got in CLE around 10:35pm our time.  The approach was kinda cool.  CLE weather was 2.5mi visibilty and clouds overcast at 600 feet.  Broke out of the clouds right at the airport.  The stuff pilots live for.  All in all an exhausting day and I hope to hear good things from Expressjet in the next week or so.

Posted by eclipse on 04/09 at 12:02 PM
In LifeKSU • (1) CommentsPermalink

Monday, April 10, 2006

New Seminole and my day

Today was a fun day.  I was supposed to go to the airport at 10:30 to meet Prof. Weber and do my tryout for the IFR Simulator event for flight team.  When I got there, I found out he and Mr. Palcho were supposed to take the brand new Piper Seminole, N31246 out for a spin to work on the flight training checklist.  I said half-jokingly that he could make it up to me by letting me ride backseat.  He brought it up to Tim and he said yes! Awesome!  It was a pretty quick flight out to Port Meadville (About 60nm away, just north of Y-Town) and back.  The new plane’s pretty cool, with a nice dual Garmin 430 GPS system and the fact that the engines actually start on it.  They also said that once my instructor gets checked out in it (tomorrow) I can take it to fly off the last 2.8 hours I had left over from my multi class!  Totally can’t wait, I’ll probably take it out to Rochester NY or something. 

When I got home I was playing around with google and looking up the flight team website with it.  Somehow ended up on Wikipedia and found some vandalism on the Entries for Kent State and the Kent State Shootings.  This kinda hurt deep down that someone would take a tragic event like that and smear “So-and-so is very gay” all over it.  Did my civic duty and reverted it back to before their edits.  Made me mad a little.  Otherwise I’m at work now and about to go to the airport to torture AK-47 with a tough NDB approach, hold, and localizer approach at CCR airport in California.  Then it’s E6-B tryout time at 7:30pm-9 and finally get to go home and study for a test in Flight Instructor Theory at 7:30am tomorrow.

Posted by eclipse on 04/10 at 02:03 PM
In FlyingKSU • (0) CommentsPermalink

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

American Airlines Internship awarded

These past few weeks have been pretty hard on me.  A person’s ego can be a pretty fragile thing sometimes, and I think I am very prone to this kind of situation.  On Monday I got an email from Continental Express that said something along the lines of “At this time all of our internship positions have been filled.”  meaning that I didn’t get the spot.  I was pretty confident about it, and it came as a pretty big blow.  I really cannot stand that thought of doing my best and failing.  It goes against all that I stand for.  I still cling to that old belief you heard a long time ago that you can do anything you put your mind to.  So I was feeling pretty down.  My ego, when damaged by aviation, takes a huge toll on my flying and my studies.  So whenever something goes wrong that makes me feel like a shitty pilot, I become a shitty pilot until I feel better (which takes a long time because I am acting shitty and then feeling even more shitty).

Today American Airlines called me and asked me if I wanted the internship position I interviewed for.  Heck yeah!  I was so worried that it had been such a long time without hearing anything that I figured I didn’t get AA as well!  I am so ecstatic right now!  I have to find a place in Dallas now, from May 17th to August 17th.  Everything I’ve been doing really has paid off!

I still have my Review Board for KSU coming up which will be a horrible time, and my CFI crosscheck and checkride with the FAA.  And after that is flight team week in Columbus.  Once that stuff is over I will be able to relax, enjoy my internship, get hired by KSU as a flight instructor, only 6 credit hours in the fall and graduation.

If only I can survive until then!

Posted by eclipse on 04/19 at 03:45 PM
In American AirlinesKSU • (0) CommentsPermalink
Content / opinions belong to me and are not representative of American Airlines, American Eagle, or the AMR Corp.

Thursday, April 27, 2006

My iPod

Posted by eclipse on 04/27 at 04:07 AM
In TechApple • (1) CommentsPermalink

Monday, May 22, 2006

AA Internship Day 1

Day one of the internship with American Airlines! I’m not really counting orientation because it was so damn boring and not interesting. Sat around and talked about alcohol policies and things like that. So anyways, it seems like almost everyone from the office is out this week. Don’t know why. I work with another intern from Embry-Riddle Prescott named Jake. Every time I tell people I’m from Kent State they are so amazed. I hope they will remember me and the school. There’s many people here from ER and Purdue and UND and the like. I’m glad that my decision to go to KSU still got me here. I’ve got to do well to reflect well on KSU. The more people know and respect KSU, the better it is for me and future grads. So a guy named Wayne from the program development office gave us a hell of a tour, and I mean that to say it was long and not so very interesting. We met like 50 people and I can hardly remember any of them. Hopefully I will have it by the end of the summer. I’m not good with names. I got to do a few things with Macromedia Authorware. Probably going to Whataburger after work.

Posted by eclipse on 05/22 at 07:39 PM
In American Airlines • (0) CommentsPermalink
Content / opinions belong to me and are not representative of American Airlines, American Eagle, or the AMR Corp.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Authorware Hero

Today was a pretty good day all around. Jake and I got the rest of the Authorware presentation and after that we were pretty much turned loose to work with it. It’s kinda like powerpoint and VB put together, actually leaning towards VB. Since I have pretty good experience with VB, it came to me pretty easily and I had finished with the “how-to” book by the end of the day. This really impressed Wayne and I think Jake felt dumb. I tried to play it off like “oh I had a class in high school” to try and make him feel better but I can’t help it that I am good at programming. I want them to think of me as a pilot and not an IT guy, I guess. I could never live at my cubicle forever. If I ever couldn’t fly for medical reasons or something, I think this would be an awesome job though.

After work I tried to go to Fry’s, which I actually found today (day 3 of trying). Got to the one in Irving. Also found the Chipotle by accident! Anyways I was looking around and saw the Macbook for the first time. Being off the internet for two weeks has slowed down my tech news. Well I didn’t like it enough so I’ll wait for the 13” powerbook. When I tried to buy two power splitters and a flight yoke I was informed that they don’t take out of state checks. I got mad and left. Then I went to Wal-Mart in a bad mood. I hate going to Wal-Mart in a good mood so I was especially bitter today. Bought a desk for my computer and some other misc. crap. Oh! I also changed my T-Mobile plan to 600min and free nights/weekends. So now I’m in for another year, but hopefully not getting raped each day for talking to Alison. By the time I got home it was dark.

Posted by eclipse on 05/23 at 07:40 PM
In American Airlines • (0) CommentsPermalink
Content / opinions belong to me and are not representative of American Airlines, American Eagle, or the AMR Corp.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Another day at the ol’ office

I feel it is my obligation to myself to keep a journal during my internship with American Airlines this summer, 2006. I don’t need to keep an extremely detailed entry each day, but I don’t want any of my experiences to become lost in the vacuum of my mind. Today was a pretty boring day. My mentor, Rich, was in today and we talked a little, but he didn’t give me anything to do. I spent the whole time playing with the presentation template in Authorware, and converted my project from yesterday into the AA style. It worked except for the text input. I also spent some time in the CBT room looking at the training that is already set up. I got to go watch a presentation on how ATC centers work together during thunderstorms to route traffic. They were shooting a video for training and needed bodies in the room. That’s what interns are made for! Everyone in the program development office is really nice and it’s been pretty quiet so I’m enjoying it. I’m even lucky enough to have a window in my cubicle. I don’t like the cubicle so much since people can sneak up on me. Now I know why people have mirrors around their computers.

I beat Quake 4 today. Ending sucked. I didn’t even cheat! Not that it was a bad ending to the game, I just felt I was entitled to more. I suffered through a hell of a lot in the game and I wanted a cool ending. None of this “We have new orders” crap like it was all for nothing. Oh well.

Posted by eclipse on 05/24 at 07:40 PM
In American AirlinesGaming • (0) CommentsPermalink
Content / opinions belong to me and are not representative of American Airlines, American Eagle, or the AMR Corp.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Texas is far away

Today started off with me wondering where my birth certificate was. I misplaced it when packing my stuff to bring to Dallas, so earlier in the week I was freaking out over the phone while my mom looked through all of my stuff and eventually found it. I’m supposed to have it by Friday, May 26. She mailed it certified mail to me on Friday and now almost 7 days later I didn’t have it. The tracking said it was sent back to her in Ohio. Oh boy useless now! So I went and talked to Lisa. She gave me an address to have it shipped directly to her and said have it by Thursday. Lucky! Without it I can’t use the full-motion flight simulators later in the internship. Alison was also worried because I accidentally dropped my phone on the floor at AA and left it there overnight, so I didn’t call her. She was worried that I had died. It wasn’t that long! But I understand she’s lonely being so far away from me. Spent the rest of the day updating the scripts for the international CBT ground schools. Not as fun as working with authorware and was pretty boring. At least time went by faster because I was working. I’m trying to reheat the Mexican food from went we went to the West End and I’m hoping it doesn’t kill me. X-Men comes out tomorrow and I don’t know if I’ll see it right away. I love the X-Men movies. I hope to god it doesn’t suck.

Posted by eclipse on 05/25 at 07:41 PM
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Friday, May 26, 2006

Intern days

Today was pretty cool. The morning was taken up mostly by a quarterly flight operations meeting that Jake and I got to go to. It was kind of like my classes that describe how the airline industry works, except not only faaar more interesting, but way more funny. There are a lot of good people here at AA. Man, they really hate Southwest! Mostly because of the fight over Dallas Love Field. SW has basically all the gates and I guess there was a law passed called the “Wright Amendment” that disrupted their monopoly and allowed a small number of American Eagle flights to get in. Of course, SW is throwing a hissy fit and there’s propaganda all over Dallas on both sides. Most of Dallas is owned by AA (It’s pretty obvious) but SW has a lot of space over by Love Field. Love Field is kind of like Chicago Midway in that it was the original airport, but they needed a bigger one so they built DFW similar to O’Hare. Some talks are even going about closing Love Field for noise and $, which AA is like “ok”. AA says that with SW having a monopoly at Love, and AA having one at DFW, it’s raising prices to get to Dallas and hurting the industry. AA isn’t looking too bad these days. They would have made a profit this year if it wasn’t for fuel costs (war). They still have the most airplanes and the most passengers in the world, and their MD-80’s alone would make them the 5th largest airline in the world. Wow! If the MD-80 didn’t suck so much that’d be more awesome. The rest of the day I sat around and waited to go home. No jumpseating this weekend. Should be next weekend.

Later in the day other interns and I went to see X-Men 3. It was okay in the crappy sort of way. It had a different director and instead of having character development and plot twists it had lots of cgi and things blowing up. A cliche end to an awesome and promising series. I guess the ending made it open for another sequel. We didn’t know to stick around past the credits. I hate it when they do that.

Posted by eclipse on 05/26 at 07:42 PM
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Saturday, May 27, 2006

Downtown Dallas Weekend

Uhh today is Saturday so I guess I don’t have to work. I slept in and was later invited to go to the sixth floor museum is Dallas which is where Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK. It was really sad. I don’t really remember what happened after that, I’m sure we went out to dinner afterwards because we always do. I’m writing this way after the fact.

Posted by eclipse on 05/27 at 07:42 PM
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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Stuck in Dallas

Today wasn’t a great day. I turned in my jumpseat request before noon as I was supposed to. Heard rumors about not being able to go. All the interns were supposed to go see Lisa in the afternoon. She gave us our jumpseat authorization paperwork but said only 2 of the background checks were finished. Mine is not one, so I’m stuck at DFW this weekend. Not only do I not get to fly before my CFI checkride, but I can’t visit Alison this weekend either. As I got home, she called right away. It’s not like I could hide the bad news, she’d find out eventually so I told her I couldn’t make it there this weekend. It does suck that I haven’t gotten to see her much in the last month.

Posted by eclipse on 05/31 at 07:43 PM
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Thursday, June 01, 2006

They didn’t even notice we were gone

Today was boring. I probably spent it doing CBT scripts like always. That’s what I always do. Rachel called Jake and invited us to the airport. We thought she was going to give us a tour of the huge (and I mean huge) AA hangers at DFW were she works. No, we went to the damn terminal, went through damn security which took forever and went to freakin Bennigan’s. It took like 2.5 hours and sucked. Did get to see some cool things like an Embrear 170. It’s a new regional jet that looks like a mini 737. When you see it, you’re like “wtf! It’s so small” but I’d give anything to fly it. The rest of the day involved a lot of being bored. I probably had some project but I can’t remember. I’ve been pretty bad in keeping up with this log. Everyone probably thinks I don’t do a lot at work during the week, and yeah. you’d be right.

Posted by eclipse on 06/01 at 07:44 PM
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Friday, June 02, 2006

They are on to me now

Today I had to come to work even though I should be jumpseating. Apparently I’m in the wrong field of work. I should be the one looking up people’s backgrounds. You get to sit around all day and do nothing and get paid. It’s been 3 weeks and they’ve only finished 3 people. Anyways I spent the morning in the audio-visual room watching the Program Development guys narrate a script for the CBT. It’s nothing terribly special; they just read a script as one huge wav file. Right afterwards I separated the huge file into files so they can be used in authorware. Very exciting and it took about 30 min. Afterwards I played around with the airport familiarization for a little and waited for time to move a little closer to my death. Chipotle for lunch! Best part of the day. After lunch I had to listen to the Overwater emergency training and make a script out of it while Jake got to edit the Far East lesson. I want to edit the lessons because scripting is boring and I’m better at Authorware anyways. Spent the rest of the day looking up how to decrypt WEP keys until all of a sudden all my searches were blocked. I know they monitor the internet usage for keywords but I figured it was all for porn. So I cleared my history and erased it from the hdd and headed home! I guess the 12” powerbook isn’t good at WEP decryption because the airport extreme card sucks and there’s no pc card slot for a better one. I’ll figure something out or end up paying after my CFI ride (1 week ahhh)!.

Posted by eclipse on 06/02 at 07:44 PM
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Monday, June 05, 2006

Solo work today

Today was a pretty meh day. Jake’s at the International Ground School until Wednesday, so I was the only intern in the office. I actually had stuff to do today. I had to update several of the CBT lessons and the powerpoint for the classroom lectures. It was pretty boring without Jake there to talk to. The guys there are nice but they are a little over the top sometimes so it’s nice to have someone like me around. I took a really short lunch and pretty much worked on the computer the whole time. I wish I could put my pictures on the internet, but the AA internet runs on a proxy so I don’t get any ports except http. So I can’t upload them anywhere. I’m planning on getting internet after my CFI ride if I can’t get on an insecure access point before then. I ran out of stuff to look at online so I had to ask for work. While I was standing in line for lunch some sly pilots looked over and saw my AA badge with “INTERN” written clearly on it. “There’s still time for a career change” they said to me. I just kinda gave them the “wha?” response while they talked about how much of a hassle it is to fly internationally and have your pay cut by 25% or something. “At least you get to fly for a living” was all I had the nerve to say. What I really wanted to say was that paycut or no, I’d be more than willing take that job from them in a heartbeat. Pilots can be some of the biggest complainers in the galaxy. Give a pilot an airplane and he’ll want one with more power. Give him a jet and he’ll complain about not having a full glass cockpit. Give him one and he’ll want auto-throttles. Give him auto-throttles and he’ll bitch that it doesn’t have a HUD and all the cool new airplanes have HUDs. Is it my destiny to be forever disappointed with my career too? I complain about a great many things, but I’ve always felt privileged just to be able to come this far. CFI checkride in 4 days.

Posted by eclipse on 06/05 at 07:45 PM
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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Freedom!

My background check cleared so I’m now free to move about the country.
Whoops! that’s Southwest

Planning on being in CLE Thursday for a flight before my CFI ride. If anyone wants to go out to eat, comment. I spend all day sitting around online watching if webcomics or my friends update their sites so do me a favor and entertain me raspberry Also, Once I get home I will make a picture blog post here and maybe get my actual site online again.

Posted by eclipse on 06/06 at 07:45 PM
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Wednesday, June 07, 2006

2CLE4CFI

Today involved deleting slides in powerpoint and scanning charts to put into powerpoints. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I was out of stuff to do in about an hour. Today’s highlights included setting a new background picture on my powerhouse of a computer. I noticed it was a Pentium ][ 333 and not a Pentium Uno like previously thought. Regardless of the fact that I have the slowest computer in the office (not by much) I am still blessed with a Stealth 32mb video card that allows me to run at 1600x1200 on my 21” monitor. So it’s not all bad. I used the blue default background of OS X 10.4 as my background in stark contrast to the American Airlines backgrounds everyone else has. Airplane backgrounds are cool and all, but most of theirs look like some crappy greeting card in which they used mspaint to put the airplane in the background. So my computer not only looks the sleekest (in my opinion), but probably runs the fastest. It’s Windows 98 so of course it freezes around noon every day with no explanation. I can live with my yash-age computer, and it’s actually fine for most of the work I do (Office 97), the only thing I don’t really like is that the internet works through a proxy (how old-fashioned) and I’m only allowed port 80, so no ftp’ing pictures to you guys and no streaming audio or ssh or anything. All I have for entertainment is web so I read wikipedia a lot. The highlight of today was the flight back to Cleveland, which was supposed to be my first jumpseat experience. Turns out the CRJ has one of the air conditioning packs MEL’d (broken) so apparently it’d be too hot in the cockpit. I was lucky enough to get a seat in the back where I’m actually writing this post. It is a given that whichever seat I choose the person in front of me has to lean back all the way so I have no room for my laptop. It’s pretty uncomfortable. Also, there is the screaming kid that for absolutely no reason at all refuses to wear the seatbelt during taxi and takeoff. It’s a federal law that people on board wear the seltbelt during taxi, takeoff and landing, so I think a few days in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison is in order. I’m gonna go play some crappy KDE games until the flight is over.

Posted by eclipse on 06/07 at 07:46 PM
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Friday, June 09, 2006

CFI Checkride

woohoo just failed my CFI checkride. Got through the 5 hour oral exam with not much problem. The weather was god awful today so I was just going to do the landings and discontinue the ride so I could do the higher altitude maneuvers another day. Ended up busting on the emergency landing because I forgot to check the fuel selector. So not too pleased with myself but then again almost no one passes their first time and even on the second time you dont see a lot.

Got to go to the bank and do some stuff then spend the rest of the weekend with Alison so yay.

Posted by eclipse on 06/09 at 07:47 PM
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Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Important Lesson Learned

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. It puzzles me how fast days go by even though the majority of it is spent by me sitting around bored out of my mind. After my CFI ride on Friday, I went to Kennywood with Alison. It was fun although the lines there were killer and every ride we stood in line for broke right before we got on. Had to jumpseat back Sunday morning to go to the international ground school. Jake liked IGS so I was kinda looking forward to it. I work on International ground school stuff all day every day at work so most of it is stuff I’ve seen before. The instructor also liked to pick on me because I am an intern and because “I still remember all those fed. aviation regulations” so it was a make fun of the intern and also quiz him a lot kinda week. Bleah. As I get back to my normal job Rich and Pat hand me a huge stack of paper which is a whole new lesson for me to create from scratch. Ugh. Thursday night and I jumpseat back to CLE, hoping to fly and move my dad’s website to jo’s server. The airplane was about an hour late and full of the hot and suck. I didn’t get to fly and jo was at work so it was all for waste. Friday I went from CLE to ORD (O’Hare) and then to PIT to see Alison again. We didn’t do a whole lot this weekend, but we did go to see Cars, which is an awesome movie and I highly recommend it. We drove to CLE Sunday morning for father’s day. I went to the akron fulton airshow with my dad and it was cool, I enjoyed it. I wasn’t able to make my plane from CLE to Ohare (eventually from ohare to dallas later) but there was a direct flight to dallas at the next gate so I walked over and got on that one. It was cool seeing the thunderstorms and navigating around them. That’s something we don’t get to do at KSU. So now it’s the normal week and I’m back to my huge project. Jake was walking around begging for work so I let him type some of the script for me and he made a whole bunch of typos that I didn’t catch and I got to take the blame for it. Oh well. I wish I was in a better mood right now but I’m not so this is all you get today.

Posted by eclipse on 06/20 at 07:47 PM
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Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Pictures!



Me in the jumpseat




The Flight Academy where I work




Random view from the jumpseat




Waiting behind a 757 at Ohare




One of the new Embraer 170s

Posted by eclipse on 06/21 at 07:48 PM
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Monday, July 03, 2006

Happy Extraordinary Cosmic Events Day!

Today is a day of many posts, probably.  Most importantly, it’s the day that 2004 XP14 was going to wipe out a small country or worse.  Back when all those doomsday movies came out people were going crazy over this asteroid, discovered back in 2004, which actually did come close (between the Earth and the Moon).

Also, Today is the day of Earth’s Aphelion, for which my server is named.  It’s the furthest distance from the center of the Earth to the center of the Sun, in it’s elliptical orbit.  Should be a cold day, right?

Posted by eclipse on 07/03 at 09:01 AM
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Monday, July 03, 2006

The Big Quakecon Post

With only 30 days until the big event and even fewer than that to start planning for it, I've taken the liberty of setting up a schedule for Quakecon planning. It is open to suggestion, and is currently based around my work schedule. It involves everyone leaving CLE around 10am on August 1st, and returning around 8am August 8. I used Google Calendar to plan it because my calendar feature is broken (more like, not installed on Jo's server atm) and it looked cool. I can give other people with gmail accounts access to change stuff and add to it.

DGS Quakecon Google Calendar: Click Here
Map to my place: Camden Oasis Apt 1402
Things to consider: Eclipse's Rules

I know Dan and Tim are going, as well as Tim(bro), Schultz, March, and maybe another. I suggest you guys all travel together. Even if you take separate cars, it's a big country and you guys can watch out for each other. I wish my forum was still operational, so you could organize it there, but this will have to do. Sound off in the comments for suggestions, and I will try to be on AIM and log any event changes here. Bookmark this entry!

Official Quakecon FAQ: Here
Quakecon Forums: Here
Posted by eclipse on 07/03 at 09:18 AM
In GamingLAN Party • (4) CommentsPermalink

Monday, July 10, 2006

Long time no post

I know it’s been a while since I posted about what’s going on in my world down here in Texas.  From June 25-July 2 Alison came down here because she had two weeks off from school.  It was awesome having her here because I get homesick sometimes.  We went to the CR Smith Museum, mini golfing, saw superman, and went to Six Flags Over Texas.  Maybe not in that order.  My CFI checkride was supposed to be on June 30, but because I didnt want to leave her, and a luncheon with American Eagle I cancelled it.  It is now rescheduled to July 13 (soon!). 

Work at American has been kinda slow lately.  I got another project which I finished today; to create a new cbt lesson for the atlantic division.  It’s nice to have work but it’s also annoying at the same time.  I don’t think I can be satisfied with a normal job.  It’s the same at Resnet.  I hate having computers in the office so I work hard to get them all done so that there will be free time, and once they are done I’m sitting around bored wishing for work.

In other news, I went back home real quick to fly and see Alison and some other smaller reasons.  Went to PittsBurgh with Alison and had a fun weekend until Sunday.  We were driving out to Ikea and the airport when there was something weird happening on the highway, so we braked and ended up in a four car pile-up.  It was not fun.  Both of us are hurting from whiplash.  I used to think it was something people made up for money, but it hurts like hell and is very inconvienent.  I hope it’s better by my checkride this Thursday.  Poor Alison’s car was banged up and we’re talking to insurance, who will hopefully not cheat us.  That would be the final kick to the crotch right now.  I hope it will be okay…

Posted by eclipse on 07/10 at 06:40 PM
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Friday, July 14, 2006

Flight Instructor Ride Passed!

In a very hot and exhausting day yesterday, I passed my flight instructor checkride.  The weather in the morning was super shitty.  Would have been an awesome day to fly in the clouds, but I needed to fly in the morning with my instructor before we left, and we couldn’t even get high enough to fly the traffic pattern.  The checkride was scheduled for 11:30 am, and he pushed it back to Noon but said noon was the latest we could get started.  Another guy I know named Brian Marsh was scheduled with me.  Finally it started breaking up a little and I was able to fly with Nathan in the pattern for 2 landings.  He signed my logbook and Marsh and I sped off to Medina airport at full throttle at a fairly low, yet not illegal altitude.

The examiner was his usual self; it’s fairly easy to talk to him but you better not relax or say anything that he’ll have you elaborate on.  Marsh flew first as the weather barely cleared up to acceptable.  His ride was fairly short.  He passed, which is good.  So up I go and we do about 7 or 8 takeoffs and landings.  Luckily, I had some fairly good landings, even my emergency (he pulls the throttle to simulate failure and you have to land).  He always likes to do it in a spot where you’ll have to make a choice and I went for the right runway.  That’s good because I should be able to do it anyways though.  After about 50 min of just traffic pattern work we finally went out for the maneuvers.  Two steep turns, min. controllable airspeed, a departure stall, a lazy eight and two chandelles.  My first chandelle was a little weak from not having done one in about 3 months, so he made me do it again.  My second one was better.  He finally said take me back to the airport so I did, expecting him to pull some sort of emergency again but he didn’t, only said to make the last landing a good one, which turned out okay.  It was so damn hot in that airplane.  Oh well it’s over and I’m a Certified Flight Instructor!  Fear in the hearts of children!

Posted by eclipse on 07/14 at 01:32 PM
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Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Seattle Trip

too lazy to type just yet, so have some pictures...










And for the truely adventurous...

Flying the MD-80 under the Golden Gate Bridge

Posted by eclipse on 07/26 at 04:11 PM
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Sunday, October 01, 2006

Internship comes to an end

My internship with American Airlines is over.
The flight team regional competition is over.

What the hell am I going to do with myself? I have free time again!
It’s been so long that I don’t even know what to do with myself at this point.

Since it appears like it will take a while before my actual webserver goes back up, I am going to attempt to use this livejournal thing since most of my friends are on here anyways.

So what’s been going on with me? I know it’s been a while since I’ve had any time to hang out.

Internship ended halfway through August. Most of you know that. It was an amazing experience and has left me with way too much desire to get into my career with the airlines. So much that I am now working hard to get my flight time in so I have the expirience to get hired. This means I have about one more semester in Ohio. Once I get hired, I will be given a city as my base city and I’ll have to move there. So like Will I will be torn away eventually. So, we’ve got to LAN party like we’ve never LAN partied before! Or something.

Once I got home from $Texas, I started work as a flight instructor at Kent State. I have two classes this semester, Crew Resource Management (easy), and Computer Literacy (makes me cry so easy). Computer Literacy is a little bit of work since my teacher is a retard and asks weird questions. I also still work at Resnet. Actually, I am taking computer literacy because I needed 6 credits to work at resnet. Any time that was not taken up by flight instructing, class, and resnet went to flight team. I probably practiced an average of 4 hours per day for flight team, and coached both Computer Accuracy and Simulator events. The competition was the week before last, and we got third place in the most competitive region and won a spot to nationals. I won 4th at Navigation, 8th at power off landings, 7th at power on landings and 6th at simulator. Awesome! I will graduate before nationals, so this was my last competition. I promised to stick around and help coach cause they are my friends and I can’t abandon them.

What news has happened in the last, oh 3 months, since jo took down my site?
I got a 15.4” macbook pro, 2GHz Core duo and 2 GB of ram. It’s pretty awesome. Runs windows except for the built in speakers don’t work (headphones port works fine). Excellent frames on q3 and fs2004. Still trying to sell my 12 powerbook, will go on ebay soon.

Also, I need a place to live, so anyone looking for a place until May, tell me.

I guess that’s all for now, not bad for my re-entry to blogworld.

Posted by eclipse on 10/01 at 09:31 PM
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Sunday, October 22, 2006

Kent Stater

A few weeks ago I made the front page of the Kent Stater, so it’s official. I can graduate now.

Kent Stater Link

That’s all for today

Posted by eclipse on 10/22 at 09:36 PM
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Monday, October 23, 2006

Nikki..

I am writing this later than I should have.

Yesterday, at 11:11am my friend Nikki Kukwa passed away from leukemia. She was getting better for a while, but it eventually overtook her. She was a good person, and a great member of the flight team. She was the best at the Safety interview and won the award for us twice.

One of the things I remember most is during the 2004 flight team regionals at KSU she sang the national anthem and messed it up! She stopped and I know she was embarrased, but she started again and did it perfectly. I’m not going to say it wasn’t funny, but now that you think about it, she could have run away right there.

If you get the chance to do something extraordinary today, maybe something you wouldn’t normally do, please do it for her and remember that you can always start again.

Thanks

Posted by eclipse on 10/23 at 09:37 PM
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Friday, October 27, 2006

myspace hat

[9:48] Eclipse: http://www.cafepress.com/myspacesucks.54446906
[9:49] SwiftWulfBotW: haha wtf
[9:49] Eclipse: four hundred fucking dollars?
[9:49] SwiftWulfBotW: lol
[9:49] SwiftWulfBotW: that makes no sense
[9:50] Eclipse: its a god damn white hat with black text
[9:50] Eclipse: i can get a hat and a sharpie
[9:50] SwiftWulfBotW: rofl
Posted by eclipse on 10/27 at 09:38 PM
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Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Flight Instruction First Thoughts

I think that to be a teacher, one of your inherent motivations should be the desire to teach. To search for the means and methods to instill new knowledge onto your students. I know everyone’s heard the start of this rant before. But here’s the twist. I am complaining about myself. I call myself a teacher in the strictest sense because I interact one on one with my students to teach them how to fly. I spent a few thousand for the knowledge and skill needed to become a flight instructor. But now that I am one, I find that any desire I had to teach people to fly has been eaten by the demoralizing bureaucracy and endless paperwork of a government institution. Disastrous Ohio weather also has its part to play. My students don’t make any progress. They are pretty lazy, especially when I remember the effort I put in to flying when I was in their place. They don’t study, they don’t make an effort to fly when they can, and it comes down on me as the instructor when they do not do well. It’s my reputation that they are risking as well as their own, and for that I have to find extra ways to supplement their learning. This equals more work for me, which as a general rule I am opposed to. Through all the pain and suffering I find myself asking where is the desire and devotion as a teacher that I am supposed to have? I think it disappeared when I went to Dallas and felt closer to my career then I do now. I feel that flight instruction is a step backwards although I was not even flying in Dallas. It’s something that I do only to return to that which impressed me so. I hope that in the days to come I will find something that will return the joy of flight instruction to me. Or maybe it’s just been a bad couple of days.

Posted by eclipse on 11/01 at 10:39 PM
In FlyingLifeRants • (1) CommentsPermalink

Monday, November 27, 2006

Website back?

I’ve been working hard to get this site back up and it’s close to being done.

For some reason, it’s showing some variable warning all over the damn place even though everything is actually working fine.  I’ll see if I can get rid of it.  I copied all of my livejournal entries over to this site cause I like this more.  Also succeeded in taking over the friends pages in livejournal :D

Posted by eclipse on 11/27 at 10:41 PM
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Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Maze Video

need sound to appreciate it…

Posted by eclipse on 11/29 at 10:46 PM
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Friday, December 01, 2006

I love Penny Arcade


this is exactly what I think once you guys start talking about wow.

Posted by eclipse on 12/01 at 01:47 PM
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Friday, December 01, 2006

Senioritis

I graduate in two weeks!  It’s a weird thought but I don’t know.  Not that weird.  Every week for the last 4 and a half years (except some summers) I’ve gone to work at resnet and that’ll be gone.  I just turned in the last paper I’ll have to write today.  I haven’t been exactly in the mood to do much of any schoolwork, so this 3 page paper was really hard work for me.  I got it done though.

It’s so strange to think I won’t be in school, not be a student.  I miss it already.  I am going to miss flight team and some of my classes, and resnet.  But then again, not that much will change.  I’ll still be out at the airport and see my friends and I’ll still coach with the flight team.  But..it’s not the same…

Posted by eclipse on 12/01 at 01:49 PM
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Monday, December 04, 2006

Website Fixed

I fixed the PHP errors I was having.  Actually I didn’t, but I hid them from view.  I have yet to see anything not work, so I don’t know why it was throwing errors around.  Just had to put an ini_set(‘display_errors’, 0); tag in every .php file.  Search and comments are back up.  Tell me if you see anymore errors kthx.

Posted by eclipse on 12/04 at 04:36 PM
In Internet • (1) CommentsPermalink

Monday, December 04, 2006

Macworld 07 Rumors

12 Inch MBP Rumor

It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of the 12” powerbook by apple.  I was waiting for so long for them to announce a new intel one before I finally broke down and bought the 15” macbookpro.  I like the 15” (I just realized I never did a review of it, probly cause my site was down thx jo) but could I return to the 12 inch form after living the good life of my current awesome laptop?  Probably.  Let’s take a look at what I want:

Proc: Intel, semi fast…..nothing demands a super awesome processor anymore.
Ram: Upgradable to 2gb would be nice
Screen: Widescreen or not, >1024x768 would be nice
Vid Card: Capable of gaming in Windows.  This is the only reason i picked mbp over mb
Hdd: My 80gb in the mbp is getting tight, would like more
CD: want one in there, thats why i got rid of the Dell L400
Design: I like the aluminum design over the mb, but at least offer it in black if not
Tablet: rumored that this could be a tablet.  Depends on reviews..

So basically it comes down to how well does it game, and what does it look like?  Unfortunately it has to beat my current mpb to justify the effort of selling it, which is a difficult feat.  I sure like the ultra portability though.  I take it everywhere.  :D

Now onto other rumors.  iPhone.  If you’ve seen my phone lately you know I need a new one.  I want to see what the iPhone will look like.  It’s supposed to be an mp3 player and phone in one and supposed to work with every provider.  I am holding off until macworld to make my decision, and it’s all based on design.  If I don’t like it I will probably get a motorala PEBL.  I know the PEBL gets bad reviews due to storage space and bad camera, but my current phone is the same and I don’t really care.  I like the PEBL design and I just want it for a phone.

Widescreen iPod.  I need a new iPod since my 3rd gen’s screen stopped working.  If both the iPhone and the widescreen video ipod are released and both look cool I don’t know what I’ll do.  I’m betting only one will be released or I’ll only like one.  I want an 80gb at the moment but I can wait until macworld to see if a new one comes out.

With my luck, things will be announced and not ready until August or something.  Until then, It’ll be a long 5 weeks!

Posted by eclipse on 12/04 at 04:38 PM
In TechApple • (5) CommentsPermalink

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Science!

Forum question posed: Would an airplane on a gigantic treadmill be able to takeoff?

(17:32:04) BobCortex: i get the whole gyst of the dumb argument
(17:32:17) BobCortex: figured i'd ask someone who flys the things
(17:32:37) Eclipse: if the engines are going, the plane will leave the treadmill
(17:33:08) BobCortex: even if the treadmill can keep it from actually moving foward?
(17:33:12) Eclipse: its like pulling a wagon, the wheels dont do the pulling
(17:33:21) BobCortex: right
(17:33:25) Eclipse: the wheels just let you move
(17:33:34) BobCortex: plane with breaks on and full power wont move or take off
(17:33:41) Eclipse: a treadmill would change the speed of the wheels, but not the body of the plane
(17:33:50) Eclipse: right
(17:34:29) BobCortex: its some weird physics question
(17:34:48) BobCortex: plane + treadmill that can keep up with the plane. prefect world physics
(17:35:09) BobCortex: people come up with all sorts of junk
(17:35:15) BobCortex: like wheels dont do jack
(17:35:22) BobCortex: planes can take off on water
(17:36:08) BobCortex: but i always kinds thought the engines kinda moved air over the wings
(17:36:15) BobCortex: at least with props
(17:36:42) Eclipse: the engines pull the airplane forward, wheter its a prop or a jet (a jet is a prop with a cone around it)
(17:37:03) Eclipse: the moving airplane causes lift under the wings
(17:37:03) BobCortex: but i guess if the plane is not moving. the wings arn't moving. thusly lift is not being generated
(17:37:13) BobCortex: therefore sits still?
(17:37:21) Eclipse: correct
(17:37:31) BobCortex: if eclipse says its so i can sleep easier!
(17:37:45) BobCortex: it was fun reading people bicker about it
(17:38:09) Eclipse: heh
(17:38:26) BobCortex: fun stuff like "piolts" saying they wouldn't even really notice a diffrence on takeoff
(17:38:52) Eclipse: they wouldnt, the airplane would still accelerate like normal
(17:38:59) Eclipse: the wheels would be spinning faster or slower only
(17:39:10) BobCortex: but take off would never happen
(17:39:13) BobCortex: no climax!
(17:39:26) Eclipse: the wheels do not pull the airplane!
(17:39:37) Eclipse: the engines pull it forward and therefore judge acceleration
(17:39:59) Eclipse: a treadmill would only change how fast the wheels spin
(17:40:30) Eclipse: like a car spinning out on ice, the car still moves forward at the same velocity (due to inertia) and the wheels spin really fast
(17:40:53) Eclipse: the airplane is similar except the engine cause the motion instead of inertia
(17:41:05) Eclipse: and the treadmill would only change how fast the wheels spin
(17:41:26) Eclipse: once the airplane accelerates enough, lift will form under the wings and takeoff would happen
(17:41:42) BobCortex: but its not really moving
(17:42:01) Eclipse: yes it IS
(17:42:08) Eclipse: you're thinking of a car
(17:42:13) Eclipse: thats not how airplanes taxi
(17:42:19) BobCortex: ok
(17:42:23) BobCortex: you keep changing your mind
(17:42:29) Eclipse: no im not
(17:42:34) BobCortex: i know the wheels on a plane dont actually move it
(17:42:46) BobCortex: they roll freely and have brakes
(17:43:34) BobCortex: sure the plane would accelerate on the treadmill. but it wouldn't really be moving in physical space
(17:43:46) BobCortex: is the conculsion from earlier
(17:44:28) BobCortex: heh
(17:44:32) Eclipse: wrong
(17:44:49) Eclipse: the airplane only needs air to move
(17:44:58) Eclipse: otherwise it would be a real shitty airplane
(17:45:18) BobCortex: ugh hurting my head
(17:45:18) Eclipse: so the treadmill will not affect the acceleration
(17:45:39) Eclipse: unless the treadmill is in a perfect vacuum, the airplane will move in space
(17:45:53) Eclipse: because it uses the air to accel and not the motion of the wheels
(17:45:55) BobCortex: but the treadmill is preventing it from actually moving foward to get lift
(17:46:08) Eclipse: no, the treadmill only moves the wheels
(17:46:40) Eclipse: if there were no wheels, and the plane's belly was sitting on the treadmill then maybe
(17:46:52) Eclipse: but the wheels spin freely
(17:47:28) BobCortex: plane acceleration -----> <------ treadmill
(17:47:59) BobCortex: if its moving the plane backwards as its trying to move foward. its not really going anywhere
(17:48:36) Eclipse: thats what i am trying to say, it doesnt move the airplane
(17:48:47) BobCortex: right its spinning the wheels
(17:48:54) BobCortex: and the wheels are connected to the plane
(17:49:05) Eclipse: i think that's where you are not getting it
(17:49:22) Eclipse: are the brakes on?
(17:49:24) BobCortex: no
(17:49:38) Eclipse: then why would moving the wheel move the airplane?
(17:50:06) BobCortex: but the engines are pulling it foward
(17:50:28) Eclipse: if you attach a rope to a wagon and put the wagon on the treadmill, will the treadmill pull you?
(17:51:00) Eclipse: now what happens if you pull the wagon?
(17:51:07) Eclipse: the wagon comes towards you
(17:51:18) Eclipse: the wheels are what prevents the treadmill from having any effect!
(17:51:32) BobCortex: trickery
(17:51:33) Eclipse: now the airplanes engines provide that same force as you pulling the rope
(17:51:59) Eclipse: because the airplane can accelerate independantly of the treadmill
(17:52:11) Eclipse: thats not true for a car
(17:52:25) Eclipse: cars need the friction between the wheel and the ground to move
(17:52:27) BobCortex: i thought the treadmill would act to keep it in place. as in someone running on one. like a propelled treadmill. not one of thoes free running ones
(17:52:27) Eclipse: airplanes do not
(17:52:45) Eclipse: the person would need the friction
(17:52:56) Eclipse: airplanes do not need friction under the wheels to move
(17:54:11) BobCortex: so glad i never took physics
(17:54:22) Eclipse: do you get it though?
(17:55:16) Eclipse: i have to go soon
(17:56:11) BobCortex: so the engines pull the aircraft. regardless of what the wheels are doing. beacuse the wheels do absoluty nothing except keep the plane from falling over.
(17:56:19) BobCortex: someone needs to build a giant ass treadmill
(17:56:32) Eclipse: thats right
(17:56:48) BobCortex: no matter how fast the mill goes it wont affect the plane
(17:56:54) Eclipse: right
(17:56:58) BobCortex: just makes the hwels spin faster
(17:57:01) Eclipse: right
(17:57:13) Eclipse: or slower, if the treadmill is going the other way
(17:57:41) BobCortex: crazy airplanes
(17:58:12) Eclipse: they have to rely on the air or they will be useless after leaving the ground
(17:58:20) Eclipse: like a car in the air can't do anything
(17:58:43) BobCortex: so the plane will justhop off the treadmill and carry on its way
(17:58:48) Eclipse: yup
(17:59:00) BobCortex: sorcery!
(17:59:09) Eclipse: physics!

The answer: The airplane will take off and the pilots will not notice any difference

Read Full Entry

Posted by eclipse on 12/06 at 09:06 PM
In Rants • (1) CommentsPermalink

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Geminids and Felines

Late last night my mom and I decided to go watch the Geminid meteor shower since it was clear, dark, and semi-warm for this time of year.  We always used to watch the Perseids before school started in August, but with weather and internships and lots of other stuff, we haven’t done it in years.  The geminids aren’t as numerous as the Perseids, but they are slower, bigger, and burn up nice and slow so they are easier to see.  We went to Tinkers Creek on Old Mill road to escape the city light and though there were some clouds, it was an okay show.  We saw two really good ones and a bunch others before it got too cold.  It’s been a long time since I got to see some good meteors.

Also there was a stray kitten that came up to us and was even sitting on my lap before we got up to leave.  It’s fur was pretty rough and there weren’t any houses around so I dont think it belongs to anyone.  We felt bad to leave it alone in the winter so we brought it home and it’s in the garage.  I’ll take it to a shelter today.  Pretty nice cat for a stray.  It should get a nice home.

Posted by eclipse on 12/13 at 11:37 PM
In Life • (1) CommentsPermalink

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Graduation!

Posted by eclipse on 12/16 at 03:11 PM
In LifeKSU • (0) CommentsPermalink

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Merry Christmas

I will be in California until the 28th.  Call cell if you really miss me that bad.  Otherwise see you then!

Merry Christmas!

Posted by eclipse on 12/20 at 05:12 PM
In Life • (2) CommentsPermalink

Thursday, December 28, 2006

A Plus for Plus/Minus

The plus minus system is designed to be a more accurate way to assess your abilities.  If you got an A-, it’s because you did A- work.  It is designed to separate the students abilities more accurately so not everyone graduates with honors. 

A lot of students respond with “Why isn’t there an A+, if there is an A-?  I will answer the question with another question.  Why should there be?  By getting the A-, you are only proving that you did not even do A quality work.  Therefore, the +/- system rewards you by helping your gpa when you should have gotten a B.

Now take a look at some college where every student gets an A in every class simply for breathing.  It looks like their college is so good at teaching, when in reality it just means that’s it’s ridiculously easy.

So when you go to get your next job in the near future, do you want your employer to say “Oh you went to kent state where everyone gets A’s just for breathing, maybe I should hire this Akron U. guy”, or do you want him/her to say “Oh wow, an honors student from KSU, he must work really hard”?

Posted by eclipse on 12/28 at 12:00 AM
In KSU • (0) CommentsPermalink

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Christmas in Review

Despite sounding like a christmas special, this is how my christmas went:

Spent the vacation in Sonora, CA which is about an hour and a half east of San Francisco.  Very quiet little town with lots of cows and little cell phone coverage.  Most of my mom’s side of the family were there, my grandma and my aunt and cousin Kendra, and us. 

Installed windows on tim’s macbook pro finally and played some trackmania nations.  He finally understands why Rick and I bought the mbps for games as he has now installed CS and stuff on it.  Windows XP has no good way to set up an Ad Hoc wireless network.  In fact, I don’t think there is even a way to do it.  We got it to work by setting up a network in OS X, connecting the windows computer to it, and then restarting the OS X machine into windows.  The network stayed and we could play.  Manual IPs.  Oh well.

I wasn’t very happy for the most part of the week.  I had told my mom that I wanted a Battlestar Galactica Season DVD set for christmas and she replied with “well you’re getting a trip to CA, cant afford anything else!”.  I’m not a scrooge or anything and I understand that being with family is more important than material gifts, but she didnt even seem to care about anything I wanted.  Especially when I went all out showing her how cool iTunes is and why iPods are so cool and successful, getting her 7 beatles albums, a 30 gig iPod, and a TV cable (all split 50/50 with Tim except beatles songs thx ben).  I felt like the scale of caring was a little one-sided.  Combine that with my general not caring too much about christmas, being away from Alison, and my mom’s getting crazy stressed over holiday travel (which went so smoothly it was no prob even with the Denver thing) I wasn’t in a good mood.

So christmas morning comes along and I’m all happy to be with family and my mom loved the iPod and everything which made me feel really good.  She ended up giving me one of those visa prepaid credit card things for $100 which is about twice the cost of a BSG season, which I would have been more happy with probably.  All in all I liked being with my family and seeing them happy and I may have been stubborn and immature in what she said, but I can’t really help how it made me feel.  I am in no means perfect.  I also got some shirts and moneys which will go to a brand new iPod and phone after macworld.

Posted by eclipse on 12/28 at 12:09 AM
In LifeGaming • (0) CommentsPermalink

Sunday, December 31, 2006

QUAAAAAAAKECOOOOOOOOON!!!

It's beginning to look a lot like:
QUAKECON 2007!
That's right! It may be winter outside, but it's time to start planning that summer vacation to the ultimate multiplayer gaming event and party QuakeCon 2007. We're locked and loaded for August 2-5, 2007 at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, TX, and we've got more gaming, events, exhibits and fun planned than ever before.

This year's BYOC Area will consume the entire Trinity Hall 1, with over 70,000 square feet of floor space, 2,700 player spots & over 1,000 more seats than 2006. We've also increased the exhibit area 5X to 25,000 square feet, enough to accommodate up to 50 exhibitors demonstrating their latest games and computer hardware. Of course, it wouldn't be QuakeCon without our high-stakes pro gaming tournaments; and attendees can also look forward to the return and expansion of our enormously popular and one-of-a-kind "Quick Draw" tournaments, which pit randomly selected attendees against each other in high-pressure battles for serious cash. And in keeping with QuakeCon tradition, every day will be packed full of contests, conferences, announcements, and entertainment.

BYOC Registration:
Registration for the BYOC Area will kick off at 9:00pm EST on March 2, 2007 at www.quakecon.org, and if you've been under a rock for the last 12 years, the event continues to be FREE thanks to the support of the incredible volunteer QuakeCon Staff, id Software, and our yearly sponsors and exhibitors.

QuakeCon Room Reservations:
The Hilton Anatole is now taking room reservations for QuakeCon 2007 through their custom QuakeCon reservation link or through their toll-free reservations number, 1-800-HILTONS. To receive our specially negotiated room rate of $131 (single, double, triple, or quad occupancy), and our special daily self-park rate of $5 (regularly $15 per day), you must request the group rate for "QuakeCon 2007" or book through the link above when making your reservation. The Hotel requires a $50 non-refundable deposit on group reservations, which will be credited to your final room bill upon check-out.

Sponsorship:
Companies interested in receiving information on our totally new sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities should email sponsors@quakecon.org. We've restructured the participation options to be more inclusive and affordable than ever before, so don't miss out.

More QuakeCon 2007 information, including airline and other travel discounts, will be available in early 2007 so stay tuned to www.quakecon.org. Now, mark your calendar, book your room, request the time off, and do whatever else it takes to join us & we're already looking forward to it.
Posted by eclipse on 12/31 at 11:36 AM
In GamingLAN Party • (2) CommentsPermalink
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