Steve and Rob are slave drivers and, I have to admit, I like it that way. With two of them, a whole airplane in front of us, and only a couple of days of my time to spend at Bede Corp., they have kept me more than busy. Yesterday was for big stuff, assembling the […]
Bede BD-4C Construction: Day 1
I spent the day at Bede Corp, helping construct the wings of my Bede BD-4C. For a complete newbie like me, it was quite the experience and I sure learned a lot. For instance, assembling the wings is pretty straightforward if you have done it before and have all of the jigs, clamps, and tools readily at hand. […]
An Open Letter to Netflix: Don’t Separate Netflix.com and Qwikster.com
Reed, Thank you for the explanation. I have been a Netflix subscriber since June 2002 and I did feel offended by the large price jump in my plan (2 Blu-Ray discs + streaming) I believe that you are making a mistake in dis-integrating the Qwikster.com and Netflix.com sites. My family receives great value from the […]
Hot Starting a Fuel Injected Lycoming Engine (IO-360)
The fuel injected IO-360 Lycoming engine in my Piper Arrow has always been difficult to start when it is hot but I finally found a technique that works quickly and reliably.
Bede BD-4 vs. Piper Arrow
I was curious about how the Bede BD-4 stacks up against the 1968 Piper Arrow, size-wise, so I made a 3-view of the BD-4 from the overview drawings and copied the 3-view from the Arrow’s manual. This post has two large images so click through to my web site. The pictures won’t show up on […]
Coming Soon: My Bede BD-4C Kit
If you know me at all, or have read even a bit of my blog, then you know that I fly a Piper Arrow and am pretty darned happy with it. The Arrow is a great travelling machine for Candy and me. It is fast enough to make cross country flights reasonable to large parts […]
Another Boundary
I just realized that I created another boundary in my life and have been happily living with it for quite awhile, maybe a year or more. I like boundaries; they keep me sane and productive. For instance, I have two email addresses and I never use my personal address for business or my business address […]
Missouri Teachers Challenge Facebook Ban
Good news: The Missouri State Teachers Association (MSTA) filed a law suit on Friday challenging Missouri Senate Bill 54, also known as the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act. The MSTA has asked the court to block implementation of the law pending a review of its constitutionality. In addition to the problems that I cited in […]
Do You Ctrl-F?
Do you get an F, er, do you get a Ctrl-F? To be more precise, do you know how to use Ctrl-F to find a word on a web page or within a document? It seems that the vast majority of people do not. According to Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, 90 percent […]
Bad Policy: Forbidding Social Network Contact Between Teachers and Students
Missouri is in the process of implementing a particularly bad law, forbidding contact on social networks between teachers and students. Formally, this is Missouri Senate Bill 54, the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act. The aim is laudable: protect vulnerable kids from predacious educators. Unfortunately, the law as written, and as being implemented by the school districts, […]
AirVenture 2011
If you like things that fly, get thee to Oshkosh, Wisconsin for AirVenture. Here are some of the photos that I took this year. (Click through to the photo album for larger images or if you cannot see the slideshow here.)
When the Weather Cooperates
When last I wrote about weather, I had cancelled my flight to Oshkosh, Wisconsin because of thunderstorms between home and my destination. I speculated that there was a small chance that the storms would move east, allowing me to fly later in the day. As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. In this […]
How Pilots Look at Weather
People often look at me funny because I either choose to fly or choose to cancel a flight when the opposite course seems right. It happens because pilots look at weather a little bit differently, but that can be hard to explain when I do not have a computer handy. This morning offers a perfect […]
Are Psycho-Active Drugs Ineffective and Dangerous?
There seems to be mounting evidence that psycho-active drugs are no more effective than placebos; that they may cause real harm; and that the belief that many mental illnesses are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain has never been proven but has been forwarded by the drug manufacturers. I was most persuaded by Irving […]
W3TC + CloudFlare = Speed!
I just deployed the W3TC WordPress plugin. That, in addition to CloudFlare, made a huge improvement in page load time on this blog.
Thoughts on Google+
Ideas have been bubbling for awhile but are finally congealing (what an attractive metaphor!) into what will become an article or two on Google+. Over the past several years, Google has developed a strong set of tools for individuals to use. Some of these tools have facilitated collaboration or sharing. With Plus, Google is making […]
Join Me on Google+
Come join me on Google+, the new social-network-plus-a-whole-lot-more that Google launched at the beginning of July. If you are a Facebook or Twitter user, you may well find that you like Google+ better in some ways. The user interface is delightful. You can easily share posts and photos with just the people who you want […]
Wet Bird!
If you have never been around pet birds, you may not know that many of them love showers. Robin Hood, our Red Lored Amazon parrot, vociferously “reminds” me to take him along when I go for my morning shower by squawking, “Wet bird!” He does not really care whether he gets his shower first or […]
“Secret” Trick for Estimating Social Security Retirement Benefits
If you are a working adult in the US, you have received an annual letter from the Social Security Administration for the last decade or so which estimates your retirement earnings. The “Social Security Statement” clearly and concisely presents your earnings history and explains what monies you, and your family, will be eligible for based […]
Last Shuttle Launch
Robert Scoble got a beautiful photo of Atlantis’ final launch, STS-135 I am very proud of what we have done and sad to reach the end of this era.
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