Monday

Had a couple of teleconferences first thing, then travelled to NYC, arriving around 7:00 PM.  As I was going down the elevator in the hotel to go to dinner, I noticed that there were a number of very tall, very lovely, young women in the elevator with me.  When I got to the lobby, I learned that the International Modeling and Talent Association  (IMTA) conference was being held at the hotel I would be spending the week in.  Now, normally, any guy with a pulse would consider this "great luck," but, first of all, I wasn't going to be in the hotel very much, and second of all, never have I felt so short, so fat, or so old.

Tuesday

Early start to the day with a 7:00 AM meeting at the office.  It was drizzling somewhat, so my colleague and I decided to take a cab rather than walk the few blocks (about 9/10 of a mile) to the office.  Unfortunately, the coffee kiosk in the office building was not open prior to 7:00, so I ventured out to find us a couple of cups of coffee.  Even more unfortunately, not only were there no other establishments selling coffee near by, but the heavens opened up, and I got drenched.  The day was spent in internal meetings preparing for our client meeting on Thursday.  As are most days when I am traveling on business, this ended up being a long day.

Wednesday

Another long day strategizing, preparing presentations, etc.  Dinner ended up being a slice of pizza at around 9:00 PM.  I guess I have more will power than I give myself credit for. Not as much as I would like, but, I did resist going into either the Stage or Carnegie Deli's - even though I was right across the street - and ordering myself a hot pastrami sandwich. And that did take a BUNCH of will power. Maybe even more than had I been standing in front of Bob's Barbecue in Creedmore.

Thursday

The entire day was spent meeting with client.

The day marked three months of pescatarianism.  While most days it isn't that tough, today was especially challenging, as I actually ate dinner in the Carnegie Deli!  The pastrami sure did look and smell good, but, I was a good boy, and had a lox and bagel.  It was nice to be able to get real, salty belly lox rather than nova.

Friday

7:00 AM telephone meeting with colleagues in Paris, then a two hour kick-off call with the extended technical team.  Lunch at a diner a few blocks from the hotel, then off to LGA.  I didn't go into the office, so I didn't have an opportunity to print my boarding pass, but it worked out fine, as I was able to use the electronic boarding pass function from http://mobile.delta.com on my Blackberry.  That was my first experience doing so, and it was pretty cool.

Saturday

We spent the better part of the day looking at houses.  Part of me would really like to move into a house more equivalent to our home on Chalkwell Court, which the houses we looked at are.  Part of me is nervous about purchasing a new house right now, due to the economy and various other factors.  I guess we're still both up in the air a bit.

We both got quite tired tromping around Amelia Woods, so when we finally got back home, we both collapsed into our chairs.  Around 7:40, I remembered that I had wanted to go to Staples.  We got there just before closing to purchase new backpack - I had to do it on Saturday because they had a deal where the full price of backpack was returned in Staples Rewards.  I probably should have prepared a bit better and found a coupon, and picked up the free after rebate stuff, but, oh well.

Sunday

After having a cup of coffee, Jeanie and I gave Diego and Cali baths, and clipped their nails.

I went to coffee at the airport, but wasn't really into it.  I guess it was a combination of knowing Jeanie was getting ready to head north for a week, and one of those days when the entire group was more focused on talking about politics rather than talking about aviation.  I seem to find myself more often than not among people who's political beliefs are far right of mine - sometimes I can tolerate it better than others.  Today was not one of those days.

Saw Jeanie off, which made me happy for her, as she deserves to go on a vacation and have some fun, but made me sad for me.

Got lucky that I just happened to go out to the fridge in the garage to get a bottle of soda, as the GFI had tripped and power was off to the fridge.  I need to get an alarm to alert us if the power is off at the outlet.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening working.

Today, July 26, 2009, marks my 10th anniversary of blogging.  I use the blogs mostly as an online journal, as my memory for events is absolutely horrible.  Thus, my blog tends to be extremely self-centered.  Every now and then, I try to provide some greater value in my postings, mostly in the form of reference/solutions to problems I've encountered - typically computer or appliance related.  I started with http://www.witsdom.com and then created http://www.blogdom.org.  I now mostly post to Blogdom, although I do occasionally make an update to Witsdom, most recently to add an aviation links page.  Unfortunately, since I have not one iota of artistic ability, my blogs/sites are not pretty.  Blogdom used to support the ability for visitors to leave comments, but for every one legitimate comment, I'd receive a thousand spam comments, so I disabled the feature.  Newer web interaction environments such as Facebook or Blogger (or even the current version of MovableType) seem to have figured out how to effectively combat comment spam, but for the time being, I'll just stick with what I have.  Upgrading to the current version of MT, or moving to another environment is just too much trouble at this point.

Monday

Got assigned to lead a new engagement in the Washington D.C. area at work.  Had my first meeting on the new engagement early evening.

Tuesday

Got pulled off of the engagement I had been assigned to on Monday and assigned to lead a different engagement in the New York City area.  Engagement had started about a week ago so worked late trying to get up to speed and catch up a little.  The due date for the proposal is only one month away - it's going to be a long, hard month.

Wednesday

Back to the grind.  Nobody on Facebook got my "coffee break's over, back on your heads!" reference - at least no one commented on it.  Still one of my favorite jokes of all time.

Thursday

Spent the day working.

Friday

Spent the day working.

Saturday

We had a lovely time...Brunch at Barbara Jean's, enjoying shrimp sausage. It is really a shrimp cake...yummy. Jeanie had their french toast which was tasty but overpriced in my opinion and the shrimp sausage.  I had two eggs over easy, cheese grits, toast and the shrimp sausage.  Next time I'll get hash browns instead of the grits even though their hash browns are chunk style rather than my preferred shredded style.  We took the ferry at Mayport, continued on A1A through the beach towns to St Augustine. As usual we started at Ann O'Malley's Tavern with a cider, did some walking & shopping which included a stop at one of Jeanie's favorite stores, St. Augustine Art Glass, where she picked up four new small glass flowers for her collection (including a wonderful new sunflower design) and a cool new glass frog for the mantle and a cute little frog bracelet, enjoyed a wonderful Spanish "linner" at Columbia Restaurant, where we shared an appetizer of black bean cakes.  The portion was four small cakes plus guacamole and sour cream.  The portion size was just right, and the cakes topped with a bit of the guacamole and sour cream were very good.  Jeanie had a cup of gazpacho which she enjoyed and I had a cup of black bean soup.  The black bean soup was topped with raw chopped onion (which I like) but was not also topped with sour cream (which I also like).  Fortunately, there was still some sour cream left from the black bean cakes, so I used that for my soup.  The soup had rice in the bottom of the cup, which I forgot when it was served, so I ate the first half without the rice, which I realized after I remembered and mixed everything up, I enjoyed more than with the rice.  For our entree, we shared an order of cannelloni langosta - cannelloni shells filled with a mixture of lobster and (?) in a delicate cream sauce.  Jeanie thoroughly enjoyed it, I thought it was okay, but by then I was full, so it didn't really matter that I wasn't blown away by it.  The reason I was probably full by the time the entree was served was that we also were each served about half a loaf of fresh warm Cuban bread along with a bowl of softened salted butter at the very beginning of our meal.  To paraphrase Jerry McQuire, they had me at the bread. After linner, we did some last minute shopping, then enjoyed a relaxed ride home.

All in all, it was kind of like being on vacation for a day, but still getting to sleep in our own bed.

Sunday

Coffee at the airport.

Went looking at a house in the Amelia Walk subdivision.  Then went and picked up some movies at Blockbuster, then put some stuff in the storage unit.  Then took the club plane for an impromptu aerial view of the Amelia Walk neighborhood and surrounding area. 

It was interesting because I had to stay under the shelf of Jacksonville International Airport's Class Charlie airspace, but high enough to be safe and to maintain FAA minimum height above a congested area - didn't leave much margin for error.  Afterwards, we went to Staples to look at backpacks.  There was a Sharper Image backpack with wheels that was interesting, but I was really looking for a side load backpack, and even though in effect, it would be free since Staples would give me Staples Rewards dollars equal to the price of the backpack, it was still quite expensive.

At least, according to Wally Amos, as in Famous Amos cookies.

W - Whatever you believe creates your reality.  Believe that life is a positive experience and it will be.

A - Attitude is the magic word.  Your greatest asset is your attitude.  Be positive regardless.

T - Together everyone achieves more.  There are no limits to what we can accomplish together.  I am more than I am but less than we are.

E - Enthusiasm is the wellspring of life.  There is no limit to what can be accomplished with enough enthusiasm.

R - Respect yourself, as well as others.  When you begin to respect yourself, your whole word changes.

M - Make commitments, not excuses.  There is overwhelming power in the words "Yes I will!"

E - Everyday can be a fun day.  Fun is the lubricant that keeps life moving forward.  Laugh a lot.

L - Love is the answer.  Whatever the question, Love is the answer.  It's the greatest force in the Universe.

O - One day at a time.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  All of life happens in increments of one.

N - Never give up or become a victim.  You are guaranteed to lose if you give up.  Winston Churchill was right, "Never, never, never give up."  It works if you work it.

From the July 2009 The Costco Connection.

Scoff you might at the reference to The Costco Connection, but I have been pleasantly surprised at the number of interesting and relevant articles that are contained in it.

This past weekend, I received my Blackberry HS-655+ Bluetooth Wireless Headset that I purchased from 1 Sale A Day for a total of $4.95 including shipping (after rebate)...

It appears to be a Blackberry branded version of the Plantronics Discovery 655 Bluetooth wireless headset.

So far, I am quite pleased with it.  It is light weight and very comfortable.  I choose to also install the ear hook, just to be safe, but I am not sure it is absolutely required, although I find no discomfort in using it.  One complaint I have heard in general about Bluetooth headsets, and which I experienced the last time I purchased one, is a lack of sufficient volume.  I find I have to turn the volume up all the way both on the Blackberry and on the headset, but when I do this, I find the volume is adequate - at least as long as I am not in a very noisy environment.  Charge time is very reasonable at 3 hours, and use and standby times appear to be reasonable - at least on paper.  I haven't tried pairing it with my laptop yet, but the pairing with the Blackberry was quick and painless.

It has an Interesting charging pod.  The version I received included the charging pod with a mini-USB female jack, A/C adapter with male mini-USB jack, ear loop and three ear pieces of varying sizes. I found the smallest of the three to be most comfortable. It appears that I can also purchase a cigarette lighter adapter for the charging pod or even an adapter that allows me to charge the headset using a AA battery.  For the time being, I'll just stick with what I have, since I believe I could also use the Blackberry USB cable to charge the headset from my laptop.

The user  manual that came in the box was less than stellar, but I was able to find a vastly superior Plantronics version of the manual here.

The charging pod has a pocket clip, so I guess I could just use that on my pocket or belt to carry the headset, but it doesn't securely hold the ear piece, and I am afraid I would lose the ear piece, so I think I will carry it in a small ziplock bag in my pocket.  The down side of this is that it will be harder to get to quickly, and I won't be able to use the cool feature that automatically answers the call when you remove the headset from the pod, but the up side will be that I will be less likely to lose the earpiece and potentially even the entire headset.

Monday

I met the Fernandina Beach squadron commander at the airport at 0630 for a transport mission.  I flew us to Craig (KCRG) and dropped him off so he could fly the Craig squadron's aircraft down to Daytona for service.  I followed him down to Daytona, and then flew the both of us back to Fernandina Beach and was still in the home office working by 1300.

Tuesday

Worked.

Wednesday

Worked.

Thursday

I worked in the morning.  Mid-afternoon, I went on my first real CAP SAR (REDCAP) mission - a report of a missing aircraft.  I got the call at 2:00 PM, we were wheels up just after 3:00, and back at base just after 5:00.  I served as Mission Observer.  We had been given coordinates of the last known position of the missing aircraft, so we flew directly to that location.  After arriving at the location, we began a point search (expanding square).  We found the wreckage on the third leg of the expanding square.  As was reported in the local media later that day, unfortunately, there were no survivors.  If we hadn't known we were looking for a crashed airplane, I never would have recognized it as such.  Even knowing that's what we were looking for, it didn't look anything like an airplane.  It was sad to know that an aviator had perished, but there was some comfort in knowing that we might have in some small way helped in at least providing confirmation to the family, as not knowing is sometimes worse than knowing.  It was also gratifying to see that the time we spend training can result in performing an actual mission effectively.

Tweaked Witsdom.

Friday

I took the day off from work, and Jeanie and I spent the bulk of the day cleaning out the garage to create a walk way so the fridge could be delivered on Saturday, and moving a shelving unit that was packed with food from one location in the garage to another so that there would be room for the refrigerator near an electrical outlet and near the door from the laundry room into the garage.

Saturday

I flew the aircraft currently assigned to our CAP squadron down to Craig (KCRG) so that the Craig squadron (which is still without their aircraft (see Monday) could do some Mission Scanner and Mission Observer training.  The weather was a little marginal at KFHB, so I had to wait a bit to launch, and even with that, ended up flying through some rain and ended up arriving about 30 minutes behind schedule.  I ended up spending the first part of the day providing Mission Observer ground training to two senior members, and then flew two training missions as Mission Pilot (my first two) so that another senior member could get his two Mission Scanner missions and earn his Mission Scanner qualification.  I didn't end up getting home until around 1700.  All together this week, I logged 4.6 hours of flying and 6.6 hours of total time in a small aircraft.

While I was away, Sears had delivered our refrigerator for the garage, and Jeanie had spent much of the day transferring items from the kitchen fridge to the garage fridge.

Also while I was away, I realized I have allowed my priorities in life to get disordered and have generally allowed things around and involving me to get out of balance.  I am renewing my resolve and focus to rectify that.

Sunday

I did the normal Sunday morning coffee thing at the airport, then attended the monthly flying club meeting.  Jeanie and I drove to Jacksonville and took my mother out to lunch at Maggiano's.  We spent about three hours with my mother, plus another hour each way in travel.  Lunch was yummy and we had a pleasant visit with my mother.

I spent a couple of hours in the evening deal with various Blackberry issues as noted in this post.

Jeanie spent the time I was working on the Blackberry feeding her new Facebook addiction.

I spent a good part of the evening fighting with my Blackberry.  For some unknown reason, it decided to switch the synchronization setting for my address book back to wireless.  This caused it to no longer synch properly with my Outlook address book on the home PC.  Long story short, it appears there is a bug in the synchronization software that occasionally creates an extra address book database.  Right now I have four on the Blackberry, and there appears to be no easy way to delete them.  So, I simply cleared out the entries for all of the address book databases, and then reconfigured the synch settings to perform a one-way transfer from the PC to the Blackberry, performed the synch, then changed the synch config back to bi-directional.  I still have empty extra databases, but it doesn't appear to hurt anything.

To clear the entries in the databases without having to delete each entry manually, I first ensured that all of the databases were set to NOT synch wirelessly by going into the address book application, then selecting Menu, then selecting options, then highlighting each database and pressing the trackball and ensuring the Wireless Synchronization setting was set to either Not Available or No.  I then started the Blackberry Desktop Manager on the PC, selected Backup and Restore, selected Advanced, highlighted Address Book in the right hand Device databases window, then clicked on the Clear button.

As an aside, a while ago, I had an issue where I when I went into the Address Book on the Blackberry, every entry showed twice.  It turns out the cause of this behavior was that there were in fact two separate address book databases (see above) and the address book application was configured to Show All Databases.  The quick work-around was to go into Menu, and select "Select Address Book..." then only select one of the databases to display.  The longer term solution was to clear one of the databases using the procedure above.

I had one other issue with the Blackberry, which was that when I tried to perform a backup of the databases, in the middle of the backup, I received an "Unknown Error."  By selecting the Advanced Option, then highlighting all of the databases (highlight the first one, scroll down to the bottom, press shift and click the last database) I was able to see exactly where the backup died.  I was then able to deselect the database immediately following (by holding down the control key and clicking on that database), and rerun the selective backup and get a successful backup of all of the databases other than the corrupt one.  Just as an aside, the database in question is "Location Based Services" which has no records, but can't be deleted because it is grayed out in the databases list.  I think the only way to totally resolve this issue (and the duplicate address book databases at the moment) is to wipe the unit and reload it, but that's more hassle than I am willing to deal with at the moment.

As I was standing in the shower a few days ago (sorry for that mental image), I finally realized the aspect that I believe makes Facebook so compelling, especially compared to blogs...

That one aspect is the fact that the updates on Facebook from others come to the reader with no extra effort required of the reader.  With blogs, the reader has to make the concerted effort to go to each blog that they wish to check.  And, they have no easy way of knowing whether a particular blog has any updates or not, so much of their effort of checking each blog for updates is for naught.  With Facebook, the only effort you need to make is to log in - one time, one place.  Then, you are presented with any updates from anyone you are interested in.  And, not only are these updates spoon fed to you, but you are given a quick and easy way to interact with the poster and their friends via the comment function.  This in turn generates more updates which are again offered to you without any extra effort on your part, creating a self reinforcing cycle.

Granted, blogs do still have advantages... no practical limitation on the length of your posts and  full creative control over format and structure, just to name two.

On the other hand, Facebook makes it quite easy to find people with whom you have an interest in being kept up-to-date, allows you to easily make comments that can then be seen by others in-network, makes it easy to post photographs, makes it easy to connect names to faces in those photographs, provides interesting applications, and so much more.  I guess that's why I am now splitting my time between updating here, and on my Facebook page.

You do have to hand it to those crafty Facebook folks.

Once upon a time, when you hovered over a link in the top navigator on Witsdom, the link would show with a yellow background...

Somewhere along the line, I lost this functionality.

Now I realize that I am probably the only person who ever visits Witsdom anymore, and no one else would know or care, but it started bugging me.

So, I fixed it.

I don't know how it used to work, but the way it works now is to use the onmouseover and onmouseout constructs as in the following example:

<A href="/main.shtml" style="text-decoration:none; color:#000000" onmouseover="window.status='Main'; this.style.backgroundColor='yellow';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='Welcome to David\'s Home Page'; this.style.backgroundColor='#689EC5';return true;">Main</A>

There was probably a more elegant approach, but this accomplished what I wanted with a minimum of effort.

The example above is also supposed to display a message in the status bar at the bottom of the page when one hovers, but this functionality isn't working, and I'm not going to worry about fixing it.

The AOPA has just released a really cool application for the Blackberry...

The application is their airport directory.

There are two things that make it especially cool.  The first is that it is free for AOPA members.  The second is that it is the first Blackberry application that I have seen that allows the database for the application to be stored on the SD card, rather than being required to reside in system memory.

The application is also available for Windows Mobile devices, iPhone and iPod Touch devices and can be downloaded from here.

Monday

Took Jeanie to the doctor to get her nasal splints removed.  Amazing how large they were.  After removal, she was immediately more comfortable.  She's still a bit stuffy, but progressing.  Was doing well enough that she decided to sleep in the bed, but that turned out to be a bit premature, as she awoke even more stuffy and swollen around the eyes.  She decided she'll go back to sleeping in the recliner for the rest of the week.

Right before bed, I noticed that the Linux server that hosts Blogdom, Witsdom and Dealdom was shut down.  No idea why it shut itself down.  Looks like the power just died, which is strange, since it is connected to a UPS.  I guess maybe the UPS needs to be replaced.  Based on the reboot, it did not perform a graceful shutdown, as all the file systems had to be checked.  Fortunately, the system was able to self-recover.  While I was on the system, I did a bit of poking around and discovered that the root mail file had grown to 1.2GB!  It was so large that I couldn't process it normally, so I had to just delete it.

Wednesday

Conducted my first Business Controls Assessment for an engagement I am involved with at work.  Covering for a coworker who is on vacation, and turns out to have been good training for me given that the DEM and TSM roles are being combined.

Thursday

Worked during the day, then went refrigerator shopping.

Friday

Friday was a REALLY expensive day... we bought two new refrigerators: a bottom freezer french door 25.5 cu. ft. Samsung with through-the-door water and ice (model number RF267ABRS) for the kitchen (last year's model deeply discounted and then 20% off) from Lowes, and a 17 cu. ft. top freezer for the garage from the Sears scratch and dent outlet in Jacksonville on St Johns Bluff Road.  Hopefully, our dying Amana will hold out two more days until Lowes delivers the Samsung on Monday.

The salesman at our local Lowes was a really good salesman.  The model we had finally decided on got sold Thursday, and they had no more of that model in stock.  The replacement model cost $400 more and I wasn't willing to spend that much more, so I was about to walk out.  He sensed this, and started calling around until he found one at another store.  The problem was that they wouldn't deliver it until late in the week, and Jeanie was scared that our fridge would die before that, so we were about to walk out.  He sensed this, and negotiated with the other store and his store manager for them to drive to Jacksonville on Sunday to pick it up so they could deliver it on Monday.

Around 5:00 we headed off to the Falcon's Nest at the Amelia Island Plantation to attend a "meet and greet" for the pilots who will be flying in the airshow on the 4th.  Keoki was there, as was Mark from the flying club, and a couple other people I had met at the airport.  It is a really cool restaurant with lots of aviation related paraphernalia.

Saturday

I helped with the Amelia Island Plantation  32nd(?) annual 4th of July airshow.  I served as the starter, which was a really simple job given that there were only 5 acts total, and they were all seasoned airshow professionals.  The role of the starter is basically to ensure that the acts leave early enough to be ready to enter the aerobatic box just as the previous act is exiting, but not so early that they have to spend a lot of time loitering in the area waiting.  The other key role is to serve as a communication relay between the airboss at the show and the performers waiting at the airport.  Acts: Alex Land flying a CJ6, Carl Pascarell flying a Pitts S2, Bob Murphy flying an O-2, Greg Koontz flying a Decathalon and a skydiver who displayed a 5000 square foot U.S. Flag.  I arrived at the airport a little before 1:00 PM for the organizational / informational meeting.  The first show started at 2:00 PM, and afterwards, I helped "smoke" one of the planes, then scooted out to the Plantation to spend a little time on the beach with Jeanie.  The AIP invited all of the folks associated with the airshow to their annual friends and family cookout dinner at 5:00.  Jeanie and I feasted on coleslaw, cold shrimp salad, bean salad with olives, three color tomato salad with olives, broiled fish, corn on the cob, mac and cheese, and we shared slices of three different pies for dessert.  Then it was back to the airport for me and back to the beach for Jeanie for the evening show.  I got to leave the airport early because the performers all decided to take off one right after the other (rather than waiting) which allowed me to see Greg Koontz.  The pluses of helping were that I got to meet all of the pilots and got to talk with them, and Jeanie and I got to go to the Falcon's nest on Friday and to the AIP barbeque on Saturday.  The down side was that other than the last two acts of the evening show, I didn't get to actually see any of the air show.  Even though times are tight, the Fireworks, both at the Plantation, and along the beach as far as we could see in both directions, were spectacular.

Sunday

As usual, I went to the coffee at the airport.  It was a pleasant crowd, so I lingered a bit longer than usual.  Turns out that Lowes decided to deliver the new fridge on Sunday, rather than waiting until Monday.  So, I headed home and helped Jeanie unload the stuff from the old fridge and freezer and put in coolers.  I had to leave before they finished installing to go fly a Sundown Patrol for the CAP, so I felt guilty because Jeanie ended up putting all the food into the new fridge/freezer by herself.

The new fridge appears to be quite nice.  There are lots of nice features, and I think we are going to be quite happy with it.