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Archive for the ‘General’ Category

I Want a Rusty Axe

Thursday, September 11th, 2008

What would you like to be when you grow up? That is an important question. I used to say “Airline Pilot” or “Marine Biologist” before I knew better. After having a baby in high school it changed to “I wanna be whatever pays today” which led me down my career path and brought me to where I am. School of hard knocks for sure but I’m more weathered for it and have a stronger character. (Modesty too!)

Now that I am “grown up” and have to ask this same question of my kids I pose a new question for me.

What do you want to do, before you die?

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Tags: Bucket List
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Fire in the Disco!

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Ahh Father’s Day! A day of R&R for dad. A day of love, honor and gifts. A day to sit and enjoy beer, food that comes from fire and, oh yeah guess what I did on Father’s day? I broke the cardinal rule of bar-b-q lighting.

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Tags: Fire, Leisure
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It’s just Nature’s Way

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

I have soo many things to post about yet life is catching up with me. Father’s day came and went with a banger. I will be posting some stories about this very soon. I will try to post them above the fold then will migrate them down once they get some exposure. In a nutshell, Rica managed to attend day 1 of the Co-Pilot’s course and she was able to go flying with Simon, the head flight instructor at our club (and my designated examiner!!). I managed to get a couple of airplane rides this weekend where I was NOT captain or FO!

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Tags: Father's Day, Fire, Rainbows
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What to get your FO for her Birthday

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

Rica is turning the page on another year in a few short days and I was mulling over what to get her this time around. Since we have been together now for almost 8 years I have run the gamut of gift ideas. Everything from items that sparkle and cost a fortune to things that cost nothing in money but lots in personal time.

The common theme for when I buy her a gift is that it must be thoughtful and meaningful. This year was not going to be any different but I was having trouble coming up with the idea of what would be best that fits in with our current lifestyle. Yes I got her a puppy at xmas but I didn’t’ want to buy her anything else that poops daily. She was begging for tickets to the NKOTB show but really there was no way I could have reduced myself to that! (Besides they look so OLD now and that’s just CREEPY!)

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Karma is a Bad Word

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

$Someone can\'t park.$

In some ways, I hate that I am trying to keep this blog “G” rated! I have many expletives to put in my blog right now that express the anger I felt yesterday after finding my car looking like ths. I have not been posting for the past week as I picked up someone’s cold at work on Friday. I guess it was worth the wait because I have a good story to tell. I’d suggest you grab a coffee for this one!

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Tags: Canada's Worst Parker, No Justice
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Upgrades are my Life

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

I work in IT. Therefore it should be a simple matter of when my system requires an upgrade, I do it. Not so much with my blog however. I was floating along with WordPress 2.x for a loooong time. I kept ignoring the pleas to “upgrade today due to major security flaw” and I ignored the postings like this one that said “Upgrade or else..” but then I had a moment to reflect on why I was refusing to upgrade. It was mainly because I had some code inserted here and there that I have long forgotten about.

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Making Friends is Aviation’s Real Secret

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Rockliffe Flying Club Clubhouse in 2008.

If one asked a million pilots why they fly you would probably get a million answers that seem different but likely are all the same. We fly becasue we love to. It is far too difficult and demanding to take this up simply as a “hobby” you have to be in like Flynn.

That said I have discovered that it can be a tough crowd to “break into”. I know myself simply showing up at the field and wandering around will not seal the deal. You need to find a way into the clique. Since I am generally not the biggest social butterfly I found it hard to get closer to the core of the groups. That is when I found like minded people like those at Uncontrolled Airspace Podcast and Airspeed Online. As I listen to more and more I feel almost as if these are my long lost old friends.

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Tags: Aviation Podcast
Posted in Flying, General | 1 Comment »

Ever Been to Sea Billy?

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

y’arrrrrrrr shiver me timbers and sail ho! I’m a sea captain if there ever were a captain to sail the salty seas! I didn’t have to swab the deck but my wench and I aimed our six pounders at the test and quick like a wherry we walked the plank.

Ok I’ll stop, what is all this pirate speak you ask? Well in Ottawa this weekend they had a Boat Show which had boats of all color and sizes. While walking thru the various exhibits I was arrested by a gorgeous asian girl who said magic words, It’s free to take the exam and if you pass you simply pay and get your card right away. Hmm, free? SURE!!

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The Perils of Poor Planning

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

This Friday is a special day. It’s the day that I will be turning 32! It is also the day after my daughter turns 15. Time surely flies, whether you are having fun or not it seems that time goes by very quickly when you do a poor job of planning.

Case in point, for my birthday I was smart and booked the day off work. I need a holiday and since I had a few in the bank, it was an easy choice. Since I booked it well in advance, it was granted. Now what to do with a free day? How about flying! Rica was all into it. In fact she has asked me no fewer than 3 times a day since December to call up Air Richelieu and book a morning flight. She was so smart, she said all I want to do is go flying with you! So did I book it? Nope. It’s all based on FUD. As my regular readers are well aware the majority of my flight training has been at CYRO which is a small and comfortable place to fly. Air Richlieu however is at the opposite of the spectrum. They have Cirrus (or is it Cirrui?) on the flight line, G1000 equipped C172R’s for the taking and they have a fabulous “control tower”esque bistro in their two storey modern facility. I have gone flying once with this club and to be honest I had an awesome time but I felt so out of place. There was no romance, no linemen pushing aircraft over a rocky surface. It was all glass, steel and concrete polished to a high lustre. I felt like like a greasy crop duster pilot walking into the vip lounge at Air Canada!

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Signals from the Heavens

Monday, January 21st, 2008

Over the weekend there was no flying to be done, instead I had a project in mind of a different sort. When I bought my home back in 2004 it came with a satellite dish mounted on the roof but it was very old and did not offer the features that the newer ones do. I recently purchased a PVR receiver from Bell Canada and hooked it up to discover that I only had access to half of their channel line up. You see Bell offers programming on two different birds. Their primary satellite is known as Nimiq1 and is located at 91 degrees west. It carries many of the common channels and is the place that my dish was pointed. Bell also has another satellite, Nimiq4 located at 82 degrees west. This bird carries many specialty channels and all of the HDTV signals. If I wanted to ever enjoy my new HDTV or order the Chinese network I would need to have access to both Nimiq1 and Nimiq4.

A satellite dish also known as a parabolic antenna is designed in such a way that it collects weak signals from space and aligns them with a LNB. The trick with satellite dish “pointing” is that you need to aim this dish of metal at a certain place in space. If you get the angles all correct, you’ll obtain a signal. If you wanted to obtain signals from more than one satellite then you would need more than one dish. That is until more recently when someone in the genius department determined that you could actually get signal from more than one satellite using only one dish with multiple LNB’s. This is all achievable by something known as “skew”. If you have a dish that is pointed and tuned to one bird, it is a simple affair of angles of elevation and azimuth. When you want to see more than this you need to turn or skew the dish which will result in the ability to obtain signal from both, albeit a slightly compromised signal overall.