Friday
The day started out with us taking Cali back to the Vet as she still wasn't doing well.  We started her back on Cetrine in the afternoon and she was better on Sat, Sun and Mon (good appetite, but no poop on Sun/Mon) By Tuesday, she was back to not doing so well.  Fortunately, eventually, she did get back to feeling well.

I Spent a good part of the day dealing with insurance - homeowner, umbrella, automobile, etc.  In general, I'm not really happy with our current independent insurance agency.  I guess I just got spoiled by our agent of twenty years in North Carolina, Jerry Teague.  The existing agency just doesn't provide a good level of service.  Forget being proactive, they don't even do a good job of following up on what we ask them to do.  As an example, when our address street number changed due to 911 changes in the county, we notified the agency of the change.  Apparently, they never properly processed the notification, since the new bills still had the old address on them.  Another issue was the lack of credit for wind mitigation last year - even after we sent them the report, then called to follow up to make sure they received it and acted on it.  It was only luck that we figured it out after getting a new quote from another company (Olympus) and overhearing another agent's comment about St. John's being cheaper than Olympus.  Had that not happened, we would have ended up overpaying over $800 for our homeowners insurance.

We had dinner at Pepper's on-island.   Jeanie had fish taco's - I didn't like the sauce.  I had seafood fajitas - they were delicious, although I would have preferred more peppers and onions.  The serving was enough for four people and included a fillet of fish, shrimp, scallops and fake crab in addition to the tortillas, guacamole, source cream, cheese, lettuce and pico-de-gallo.

Saturday
I gave blood to The Blood Alliance at a Fernandina Pirates Club blood drive at Murray's Grille.  While I do appreciate the fact that The Blood Alliance is quite convenient due to their frequent blood drives close to home, I do miss the way the American Red Cross made a point of recognizing each gallon milestone.  It turned out that this was my 9th donation, yet I would not have known had I not bothered to look it up on their web site.  While collecting gallon pins was never the primary motivation for donating, it was a nice gesture on the part of the ARC.  On the other hand, the BA has a Donor Awards program that appears to be quite cool.  You get points for each donation that you can then use to select various BA logo items from an online catalog.  The primary motivation is still to help others, and the secondary motivation is that I believe there are health benefits to draining a pint every few months, but getting a little pat on the back is nice too.

Speaking of the Pirates Club, why is it that pirates are so celebrated in our culture?  Think about it... pirates were murdering thieves who raped and pillaged.  No one would think of celebrating the current crop of Somali pirates.  Why so then the pirates of yore, who in many ways were much worse than those of today?

In the afternoon, we watched a bunch of "Rescue Me" episodes.  I found them to be  funnier and not as mean as last year.  Jeanie baked banana nut bread and muffins which were yummy.  One of my coworkers with whom I had spent the better part of last year working with on my last deal called to tell me about his first flying lesson.  I was really excited to hear how excited he was, and I hope that he continues on through obtaining his certificate.  We ate the fajita leftovers for lunch.  For dinner, we had a real oven baked potato (not wrapped in foil) for dinner.  Baking the potato in an oven (as opposed to a microwave) without foil results in such a nice fluffy potato, with just the right amount of bite to the skin.

Sunday
I did the usual morning coffee thing at the airport.  I then returned home, picked up Jeanie, and headed back on-island so we could have Calzone at Tony's.  We spent the bulk of the afternoon driving around and looked at houses and neighborhoods.  On the way home, we went to Lowes to get three pyramid shaped trellises for the back yard.

Monday
We spent most of the day working in the flower bed in the back yard.  The primary focus was getting the trellises installed and pulling some of the dollar weed out of the primary bed.  The reason we installed three trellises is that we have three Carolina Jasmine bushes that we had severely cut back because they had gotten out of control.  Each jasmine will now have a trellis that it can climb on, but that will allow us to keep the bushes under control.  As an aside, the fig and grapefruit trees we planted at the end of March are doing really well.  A few weeks earlier, I had noticed that the leaves were yellowing and buds were browning.  I had thought that the problem was either poor soil, improper PH or a lack of iron, but it now appears that the problem must have been insufficient water since the only thing that has changed in the last few weeks is that it has rained every day.

In the late afternoon, we watched WALL-E which we both thought was really cute.

After dinner, I burned the new live ColdPlay CD for Jeanie.  The CD is available as a free download (zip file with MP3's) as "a thank you to our fans" at this link.  I also created the new Aviation / Flying page on Witsdom.

I've been meaning to add a page to Witsdom for aviation / flying related stuff for quite a while...

Well, I couldn't sleep last night, so I finally got a start on it.

It isn't anything to brag about, but at least it's a start.

The one issue with it is that since I built it on Witsdom, it's not particularly easy to update.

Oh well, as I said, at least it's there.  Here's the link: Aviation Links Page on Witsdom.

It's been a whole month, and I still haven't eaten the flesh of anything other than fish or shellfish...

In fact, I've even found myself seeking to avoid fish and shellfish.  I think in the last month, I've had more meatless days than the rest of my entire life put together.  At one point, I went an entire week without eating any flesh.

Probably my biggest temptation so far was a week ago, when someone brought some deer sausage to the Sunday coffee at the airport.  A couple of pancakes proved to be a satisfying substitute.  I also have found myself thinking about those wonderful ribs and beans I had in the Memphis airport, but, as with many things, I think that the memory might now have more appeal than were I to actually be sitting face to face with a half rack.

I can't say that this change in eating habits has resulted in any drastic mystical change in how I feel physically.  It's not like all of a sudden I have boundless energy or a new spring in my step.  It is nice however, to not have reason to think about the miserable life and horrible death that the poor cow, pig, chicken, etc. suffered on its way to my dinner plate.  It has also been nice stepping on the scale each week.  Over the last month, I have lost a total of almost eight pounds.

Before you get too worried, no, I am not on my way to becoming some foaming at the mouth radical animal rights activist.  Just because, at the moment, I am choosing to not eat meat, does not mean that I have a problem with others doing so.  Might I at some point consider switching to free range eggs and milk to further reduce the animal suffering that I contribute to?  I might, but at the moment, I can live with consuming eggs and dairy products produced in factory farm environments.  Do I think about the environmental impact of factory fishing?  Yes, but at the moment, I feel that I am at least somewhat contributing to the solution by limiting how much seafood I consume.  Last week when I was at the SAR EVAL, I was given a box lunch that consisted of a ham and cheese sandwich on a croissant.  I was fortunate that I had packed a PB&J sandwich so it wasn't an issue, but had I not had an alternative, I would have just pulled the ham off and eaten a cheese sandwich - although I probably would have thought that the sandwich had been "tainted" by its contact with the ham.

As with many things in my life, I still expect that at some point I will go back to eating meat, and this period will just become another "phase" I went through.  But, who knows?

Cali has had a rough few days, which means Jeanie and I have had a rough few days...

Monday night, Cali threw up after dinner.  She does that on occasion, so we didn't worry too much.  Yesterday, she wouldn't eat, and starting having diarrhea.  She was also listless and just didn't seem to feel well.  By the afternoon, the diarrhea looked like strawberry preserves.  At that point, thank goodness, Jeanie got worried and suggested that we take Cali to the vet.  I quickly begged off of the work teleconference I was participating in and we drove to the vet.

The vet's first concern was that Cali had Hemorrhagic GastroEnteritis (HGE).  She performed a blood test and ruled this out.  Cali's temperature was also normal.  The working theory was that either Cali was reacting to the steroid she had been prescribed the previous week when she went to the vet after coughing white foam, or she had a bacterial infection.  The vet gave Cali some subcutaneous fluids and prescribed an antibiotic and some medicine to treat the nausea/diarrhea.  She also suggested that we stop the steroid after one more dose.  Per the vet's instructions, we purchased some plain yogurt (for the probiotics) and some cottage cheese.  Cali refused everything we offered her.  Jeanie ended up staying up with her until 3:00 AM, at which point Jeanie came to bed, and I awoke and came into the office.

By yesterday mid-day, Cali had started eating some and seemed to be feeling better.  We found that one teaspoon of yogurt, one teaspoon of cottage cheese and two teaspoons of rice cooked in chicken broth made a good meal for Cali.  Right before bedtime, Jeanie noticed that Cali had broken out in a rash over most of her belly.  We gave her 1/2 an antihistamine and decided to call the vet in the morning.

So, this morning, we called the vet and reported that the rash had subsided, and that Cali was eating well and seemed to be feeling better.  The vet suggested that we stop all medications, and continue feeding her the mixture described above.  Everything seemed to be progressing well until this evening, when Cali wouldn't eat her dinner.  About an hour later, she started throwing up.  She wouldn't vomit very much, and it was clear, but she vomited a number of times.  After a couple of hours and much discussion, Jeanie and I decided to give Cali a nausea/diarrhea pill.  After a couple more hours and a couple more pukes (in my lap) Cali seemed to start responding to the medication.  She hasn't thrown up for a few hours now, but I'm still concerned.  Jeanie and Cali are asleep, so hopefully when Cali gets up tomorrow, she will have an appetite.  Either way, we will make another call to the vet, as my Internet research seems to indicate that there still might be a bacterial issue in which case I would think we need to resume the antibiotic.  I also think the vet should have suggested waiting another day before we started feeding Cali again.

When Sam passed away, I swore I'd never have another dog.  I do get great joy from Diego and Cali, but I can't stand the thought of having to go through the pain of eventually losing them.  Now I'm starting to think I should have stuck to my convictions.

I spent a fair amount of time in the latter part of February creating two new sites for the CAP squadron...

One day I happed to check the old site and realized that it had vanished.   The squadron commander had asked me many months ago to create a new site, and I had looked at a number of options, but I had never gotten around to actually selecting authoring or content management software or picking a hosting company.  Obviously, the lack of any site created a sense of urgency.  Since we needed something fast and easy, I simplified my criteria.  I decided on Google Sites because it was fast, easy, had good functionality, was free, and could be managed by more than just me.  It also incorporated Google Calendar.

I ended up creating two sites - one public, one just for members.  Access for members is controlled by Gmail account IDs - another benefit as I don't have to manage the ID administration; Gmail allows the user to do that for themselves.  All I have to do is add the ID to the access list once the user sets up their ID and lets me know what it is.

The sites won't be winning any awards, but they get the basic job of offering a presence accomplished easily and inexpensively.

No, not me, not yet, at least, not acutely...

I guess, from one perspective, we are all dying, at least those of us who are beyond our teens or early twenties.  Up until then, our bodies are creating more cells than are being lost to normal cell attrition.  Maybe it's even later than teens or early twenties; I guess there is some period during which the rate of cell creation and loss are balanced.  But at some point, we start losing more than we create.  From my perspective, at that point, whenever it is, we truly start dying.  But, that's not really the point of this particular entry.

The point of this entry is to recognize that today, at 11:00 AM Eastern time, a memorial service will be held for Kevin Hoffman, a former coworker and peer.  Kevin is the first person I can think of who was basically the same age as me with whom I had a personal relationship that has passed away due to natural causes.  To be fair, Kevin lived a hard life, and from what I understand, the last few years were especially hard lived.  This no doubt hastened his passing, but, are not many of us helping to crack open the door a bit for the grim reaper - either by smoking or being overweight, or whatever?

Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the service, as it is being held in the Duke Chapel - a fitting location, as Kevin was a Duke graduate and dedicated Duke fan.  There will be a reception following the service, and I imagine it will have a "Big Chill" feel to it.  Kevin was part of DataFlow at the height of the "As The Disk Spins" period - that part of the company's history that saw a group of intelligent, motivated mostly twenty-somethings working hard, playing hard, and loving hard.  An environment that had as much drama as any soap opera.

Hopefully, this will be an isolated instance, and it will be many years before the passing of well known peers becomes a regular occurrence.  But, I do believe today marks a milestone in my life.

Last weekend was predominately aviation oriented...

Last Thursday, I received a call from the Civil Air Patrol squadron commander asking if I could make myself available to participate in the Florida Wing SAR EVAL (Search and Rescue Evaluation) the following day (Friday).  I replied that I could not on Friday, as I had to work, but I could on Saturday.  Nick called back a bit later to inform me that Wing indicated that there was a need for one aircrew from our squadron, but there was a wrinkle: we would need to be in Ormond Beach (KOMN) by 7:30 AM, and we would have to drive, as the airplane assigned to our squadron had been moved to another squadron on the other side of the state a few weeks earlier.  The idea of having to drive two and a half hours to arrive at 0730 was not super appealing, but I agreed as I knew we were needed.  After thinking about the situation for a bit, it occurred to me that Nick and I are both members of the flying club, so I checked ScheduleMaster and saw that the club plane was available all day and suggested to Nick that we fly the club plane down and back.

I awoke on Saturday at 4:00 AM so that I had enough time to shower and get a weather briefing before heading to the airport.  I arrived at the airport at 0530 so I could have the pre-flight completed by 0600.  Nick and Frank arrived about 0545, and we were wheels up by 0615.  We decided that I would fly the leg down to KOMN.  Nick flew right seat so that I could show him how to use the GPS and autopilot, and so he could play with the GPS some.  The flight down took a little over an hour due to headwinds which allowed us to arrive at the mission staging area right on time at 0730.  We got checked in and participated in the general briefing for the day.  Around 1000, Nick was directed to go to mission base to receive a mission briefing.  When Nick returned, we learned that we had been tasked with an ELT mission.  We decided that Nick would act as mission pilot, Frank would act as mission scanner (back seat) and I would act as mission observer (right seat).  The mission went really well.  Long story short, we were able to acquire the target fairly quickly, pinpoint the location and then direct the UDF team's vehicle right to the target.  While we were waiting for the UDF team to arrive, we also served as radio relay for a couple of other teams that were operating out of radio range of mission base.  Total time in the air for us was around three hours.  After going through the debrief, we enjoyed box lunches provided by CAP and then sat around for a couple more hours before being released to return home.  Because Nick had flown the mission, I was elected to fly the return trip home.  Since Frank had been in the back seat both for the flight down, and for the mission, Frank flew right seat on the way home.  Both Frank and Nick were career airline pilots and have thousands of flying hours.  I must admit, I could get spoiled having a professional pilot in the right seat when I fly somewhere.  Between the little tips they offered, and the fact that every time I went to search for the next frequency to tune the radio to, they had already entered it into the standby frequency, it made flying in and out of a class D airport under class C airspace much easier.

On Sunday, I did the usual coffee thing at the airport, then attended the flying club meeting, then helped wash the club plane.  For this wash, we used UltraLuster Waterless Wash.  The product was brought to us by one of the club members.  Even though it is sold through network marketing, something which I am very skeptical of, the product really was quite amazing.  It did a great job of removing the grime and bugs without a lot of scrubbing, and provided a smooth glossy finish without any buffing.  The process was as simple as pouring some product into the supplied refillable sprayer, spraying it on a small section, using a terry cloth to wipe off the dirt, waiting a few moments until a haze appeared, then using a microfiber cloth to wipe off the haze.

So, I've continued playing with the free GPS / Mapping applications I have loaded on my new Blackberry 8830.

I currently have five installed:

• The native Blackberry mapping application
• Google Mobile Maps
• Nav4All
• amAze GPS
• Windows Live Search. You can download it here: http://wls.live.com

So far, my favorite overall application is Nav4All, although I just installed a new version of amAze GPS (v4.5) that seems to be a major improvement over the previous version.  The things I like about Nav4All are: it is generally fairly easy to use, it has good voice prompts, and it is reasonably reliable.  It does have a few negatives including a bug in v9 that truncates the last bit of each voice prompt, occasional difficulty in recognizing a street address when entering a destination and less detail in the moving map and directions list view than I would prefer.

Google Mobile Maps is great for it's level of detail in maps and directions and its ability to assess its location by triangulating cell phone towers if it can't "see" the GPS satellites.  Its one big negative is the lack of voice prompts.

A relative newcomer, gokivo looks really interesting, but it appears it only runs on a Blackberry Bold only on AT&T.  If you have a Bold and are on AT&T, you can get it from Blackberry Appworld which you will have to install from http://www.blackberry.com/appworld/download

Stinsonddog has a great overview (although a bit dated) of not free GPS applications for the BlackBerry at http://home.comcast.net/~tamsterra/OP/Blackberry_GPS.htm

Brent Meganowen has a greate overview of free and pay GPS applications at http://brentmeganowen.tripod.com/blackberry.htm

After all these years, I still can't resist the occasional urge to tweak the basic setup every now and then...

The latest tweaks were to move the tools section in the right hand column towards the top of the page.  This was done primarily to facilitate access to the search function.

The other tweak was to reinstate the display of the category(ies) for each post.  I hadn't realized that they were no longer displaying until I happened to look at an old post and I somehow noticed that the category showed on the old post, but that it didn't show on new posts.

As best I can tell, the change occurred when I removed comments.  The fix was fairly easy: I just had to move the display category code snippet around on the Individual Entry Archive and entrybody templates.

For the last two and a half weeks, Jeanie and I have been living the pescetarian lifestyle...

It all started on Thursday, April 23.  That was the night that Jeanie and I were both hammered by some sort of intestinal malady.  We didn't ever exhibit any respiratory symptoms, so we don't think it was the swine flu, but we both ran high fevers and had symptoms for days, so we don't think it was food poisoning.   Without getting too graphic, let's just say that it was good that we have two bathrooms in our house, and that we have reasonably sized plastic garbage cans that can be held (and used) while seated.  After the first day or so, we were able to tolerate crackers or toast.  For the first few days, for me at least, my diet was limited to toast and cream of wheat cereal.  The thought of eating any sort of meat was distasteful.  We have often talked about the morality of eating meat - both from the perspective of the individual animal and of the inefficiency as it relates to the food chain.  We have also discussed the health impact of eating meat.  Jamie has been a pescetarian for years.  So, Jeanie and I decided to give it a try.

The first week was easy, as neither of us was still feeling too great, and I was not traveling.  I was concerned about the second week, after I had started to regain my appetite, and was back on the road.  Long story short, I found it pretty easy to avoid eating any mammals or fowl, even though I was eating all of my meals at restaurants.  Jeanie often goes meatless for days when I am away, so it was simple for her.  For many of the days, I ate no flesh, and on those days when I did, it was usually only one meal.   Saying it that way: "eating flesh" is a little nauseating, isn't it?

Surprisingly to me, I have not sorely missed eating meat.  What I have found is that if all I eat for a meal is cooked American style vegetables, I do not feel satisfied.  However, if they are prepared in an Asian or Mexican style, especially if they are spicy, I am quite happy.  During the past two weeks, I have also tried to limit the amount of cookies, cakes and candy that I consume.  Not surprisingly, between eating very little the first few days that I was sick, and eating as I have described above since then, I have lost six pounds in the last two weeks.

I know for sure that I could not go pure vegan; at a minimum I'd have to continue to eat eggs and dairy.  I'll probably also continue to eat some seafood.  At some point, I'll probably tire of the whole experiment and go back to eating meat.  But, for the time being, I'm somewhat tickled to be following this new eating lifestyle.

I purchased a new headset on eBay from a vendor named Mafia Buys that works both with the cordless handset at home and with my Blackberry...

I got a Plantronics MX505 based on the recommendation of a co-worker.  The advantages are that it was moderately priced ($20 shipped), that it has enough volume that I can hear well even in a car, that it has a voice tube so the person on the other end can hear me well, that it has a mute and volume control on the cord, and that it is moderately comfortable.

On the disadvantages side, because of the voice tube, it is not convenient to carry it around all the time, the cord (as are all cords) is a hassle and gets in the way, it isn't totally comfortable for hours at a time, and it doesn't have a button anywhere to initiate or end a call.

I got checked out in another aircraft this week...

I hadn't expected to actually get checked out, I just thought I'd go up for an orientation with an instructor, but apparently, the practice I'd been doing in the 182 yielded additional benefit.  Speaks to one of those sayings from the old DataFlow days: "the definition of luck is when preparedness meets opportunity."

When we were told a number of months ago that our CAP squadron was going to become part of a group of units that would be included in a rotation of multiple aircraft including a C172, a C182 round dial, a C182 glass, and a Cessna 206, I made the time to complete the CAP aircraft questionnaire for the 206 in addition to the C182 round dial.  I also printed out a CAP Form 5 to have whenever I was ready for my abbreviated Form 5 for the 206.  I didn't end up flying the 206 when it was here a couple of months ago, but I did put the forms in my binder.  Here's are some links ( photo1 photo2 ) to photographs of the plane I flew.

I hadn't planned to fly the 206 when it was here last week, but one of the CAP instructor / check pilots encouraged me to do so.  So, I scheduled some time with one of the other instructor pilots, unaware that he had recently been promoted to check pilot.

Well, long story short, preparedness met opportunity, and I am now qualified to fly four CAP aircraft: C172P, C172S, C182 and U206.

In case you're wondering why it is a U206 instead of a C206, the designation is used to differentiate that this particular aircraft has the cargo door configuration rather than the more typical passenger configuration.  The aircraft is still set up for carrying passengers (co-pilot plus three in the back) it just has a big pair of cargo doors on the passenger side so that the aircraft could be easily reconfigured to haul cargo.

In terms of differences between the 206 and the 182, the 206 has a 500 pound greater gross weight (3600 pounds), two extra seats, and a higher horsepower engine (300HP).  I found that I had to be more aware of the rudder than in the 172 or 182 - not only on takeoff, but any time I changed power settings or pitch.  The pitch attitude needed to maintain best glide airspeed with full flaps and power off is steeper than the 182.  After takeoff, not only must the power be reduced to bring the manifold pressure into the green, but the prop must be brought back to bring the RPM into the green.  Because of the high RPM of the propeller at low pitch, the blade tips actually go supersonic, so the airplane is quite noisy at takeoff.  But, what was most surprising to me was that after about half an hour of flying the 206, I forgot that I was flying a 206 - it just became flying another airplane - and that was a WAY cool feeling.

The highlight of my day was learning and performing a 360° overhead approach (also referred to as a "low break").  In this maneuver, you start by passing over the runway threshold, on runway heading, level at pattern altitude.  This maneuver is often used by military aircraft, and varies a bit depending on the aircraft you are flying.  In the case of the 206, as soon as you cross the numbers, you then cut power and begin a moderately steep left hand descending turn.  If you execute the maneuver correctly, you end up rolling out back onto runway heading with just enough altitude left to drop flaps and then flare.  I didn't quite get it on my first attempt, but I got it on the second try and it was WAY COOL!  Here's a link to a YouTube video showing the maneuver performed in a Cirrus.