Why I quit flying – Too much BS!

Quote Faced with overwhelming evidence, it seems even the FAA can admit it’s wrong … sort of. In September, AVweb brought you the strange tale of Arizona pilot Dale Mooneyham, who was facing the FAA’s wrath for alleged violations in the Washington Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on the same day that he was actually flying his G-model Mooney from Chandler, Ariz., to Tucson to visit his ailing parents. Thanks to his devotion to Mom and Dad, Mooneyham was able to assemble fuel receipts and tower tapes in a veritable mountain of evidence showing that he and his Mooney were indeed in Arizona on the day of the alleged ADIZ bust. As Mooneyham speculated, it was some kind of error that (virtually) placed his plane near Washington. Although he didn’t hear that from the FAA, they did send him a letter. After our story appeared, Mooneyham was contacted by AOPA officials offering to help. They got on the phone to contacts in the FAA and reported back to Mooneyham that an FAA staffer had transposed figures in the offending aircraft’s N-number while typing the violation report into the computer. Whoever is in charge of these things then looked up the wrong number on the FAA database to incorrectly identify Mooneyham’s plane as the offender. But there’s no hint of explanation, much less apology, in the terse, two-paragraph certified letter the FAA sent to Mooneyham in mid-October, only the finding that the alleged violation didn’t occur. It also seemed in this case the FAA was quick to accuse (enforce) but not so speedy to admit defeat (absolve). Mooneyham had the notice of violation within 10 days of the alleged incursion — the note absolving him took more than a month to arrive. Mooneyham’s next step is to request proof that his FAA records contain no reference to the alleged violation … and he may be taking bets on how long that will take. End AvWeb Quote

Advancing Beneficial Nanotechnology

Quote “Foresight is the leading think tank and public interest institute on nanotechnology. Founded in 1986, Foresight was the first organization to educate society about the benefits and risks of nanotechnology. At that time, nanotechnology was a little-known concept.

Today, with the basic framework of public understanding in place, we are refocusing our efforts on guiding nanotechnology research, public policy and education to address the critical challenges facing humanity.

Foresight

Falls & Winters Past

As we head into fall I am reminded of the many past winters. Some were a joy and some were not. What I remember most are the great winters I spent with my grandparents in the comfort of their large home with a coal furnace. After a cold morning outside it was a pleasure to stand on the heat grate in the floor and feel the gravity fed wave of heat that spread all over. Then came lunch and Grandmother Lyons always had a good one. I remember most the cheese that Grandpa Lyons had on the counter by the window

Brann’s tonight

Tonight it was Brann’s for dinner. Monday is the Baked Cod dinner for $6.99 and with tip it comes to $8.00. Not a bad price for a Cod dinner cooked to perfection. My brother really introduced me to the place. I have been eating here in Grand Rapids for a year and, pathetically, I eat at the same place most nights. Russ’s Resturant has been good to me but it is time to get out of the rut so I’ll spend $0.50 more for a good fish dinner at Brann’s.

Afterwards, I went to B&N to read a book and have a cappuchino dry. I really did not feel like reading tonight so I came back to the Excel to write this blog and to look at cameras. I was on the verge of buying a Samsung A7 at buy.com but for some reason decided to check out the 8MP cams. Ok, I am going to wait for the 8MP cams to come down to about $300 for the Cannon – they are at $459 now. But then again maybe I should go for the 7MP cannon that is almost at the price I will pay. We will see – it will all come down to an impluse purchase – which one?

Old age or or Crestor – all about pain?

This weekend past was a bad one. Back home on Thursday evening, I had some time to

Oliver North

I had the opportunity to meet Oliver North this evening at the Barnes & Noble in Grand Rapids. Following my usual evening venue I ate dinner at my brother’s favorite place – Brann’s Steakhouse - and then went to B&N to get some free reads and expensive coffee. I heard an announcment about Oliver North and a whole bunch of people were waiting in a line. After the first Linux book scan I got up to get another and bam there he was in person – a real live hero type in person. He looks just like his pictures only a little shorter – about my height. His new book is The Assassins and it looks good.

Ever work for a real big company?

The American and the Japanese decided to engage in a boat race. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance levels. On the big day, they felt ready. The Japanese won by a mile. The American team was discouraged by the loss. Morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found, so a consulting firm was hired to investigate the problem and recommend corrective action. The consultant

This weekend past

The weekend seemed to fly by and the fall colors just starting to come onto their own. I’ll bet the UP is either in full color or just past the prime. We went Geocaching on Saturday and Sunday. There are these pesky little caches in cemetaries everywhere that a group called ISQ keeps putting out. Basiclly, they are uninteresting nondescript caches that number in the hundreds. Really I think they violate the nature of geocaching and they should start a site called ISQ on which they feature only their sites. So much for my bandstanding – I like the trail geocaches that have thought and quality in beautiful setting.

VM2 had a encounter with the hospital last Friday and came out a winner we think. Bothered for months by fatigue, the cure was sought and after good medical advise the elective action taken. Obviously, it was not too rough or we would not have gone geocaching this weekend.

Today, Rooster the Boat Broker sent a message saying that an offer was made on the sailboat we were interested in and if we came up the owner would entertain higher offers. Needless to say we do not get in bidding contests so we said goodby and will cancel our trip North to Duluth this weekend. Too bad we would have enjoyed the run up to see her.

Someday and Today

I am in the process of building another Linux machine. This one is the Fedora 4 Core and has gone pretty easy. Only one little intsy – tensy bug reared its head to cause three re-installs. This bug would not let me script start the Samba Server at start up. I could manually start it and I wrote a script to start it and could call the script and it would start but at boot neither would start. The problem seems to be a bug in the SELinux area and by unchecking the “enforce” box everything was AOK. Now I have a file server for my W2K machines and a potential BU unit for this Apache Server. I am using this new device as a training tool as well and have a few more servers running on it. NTP is running well. I may put the charleswmoore.org site on it as well just to have a backup Apache server running.

My real Linux activity is towards the Cluster Server area. My intention is for a load sharing and mission critical focus. I would like to use 5 -10 old headless Dell Optiplex 400MHz machines running in a cluster to perform the web server & file server activities. If a machine dies I just replace it with a clone and everything just chunks away nicely. We will see how far I get.