My flight review

Yesterday (well, it will be 2 days ago by the time this gets published), I had my flight review.  For those who don't know, private pilots in the US are required to have a flight review with a flight instructor at least every two years in order to continue to fly (to maintain an ATP requires more frequent recurrent training).  With the thunderstorms the night before, I had difficulty sleeping (and more importantly getting up when the alarm went off), so I was afraid I was going to be late.  It turned out, the instructor's power went out overnight, so his alarm didn't go off.  I ended up actually arrive right at the time that I had scheduled the review for, but the instructor ended up being about 30 minutes late.  That was okay, though, I had blocked out 4 hours for the 1 hour of ground instruction and 1 hour of flight instruction required by the FAA.  I actually had hoped to make this both a flight review and instrument proficiency check, but we ran too late to actually accomplish the latter (I'll try to schedule some time with the instructor next month to get that done).  I did finally fly a complete GPS approach (the GPS27 @ KVTA).  It actually was extremely hazy and we encountered the base of the clouds at about 2700 feet (MSL), so I might as well have done nearly the entire flight under the hood given how little I could actually see.  While doing some of the touch and goes, I was able to see some of the flooding in the area (we got 5" of rain overnight).  We got another 2+ inches last night and the radar is looking like we'll get a good bit more tonight.

Firefox 3 has arrived

I've been a big fan of the Firefox browser since (probably before) v1.0. Yesterday, they finally officially released v3.0. I had heard that sometime last week the last release candidate started reporting itself as v3.0 (not v3.0RC3), so several hours before the start of their well documented attempt to set a new "Guinness world record" for downloads in a 24-hour period, I went and grabbed RC3 and installed it (I later compared the MD5 with the "official release" and they were identical, so I guess I beat the rush). As I had anticipated, given all the hype, when the magic hour of 10:00PDT (13:00EDT, 17:00UTC), their servers melted down. My first thought was that all the hype was monumentally stupid if they hadn't planned for a huge spike in traffic at the appointed hour. To their credit, after a few hours, they managed to get their servers stable enough that people could actually reach them consistently. The thing that I was most looking forward to was that FF3 is faster and uses fewer resources than 2.0.0.14 (which introduced a memory leak that was getting really annoying). I don't really care that much for the new features, I just wanted my old reliable FF to run faster and not cause my laptop to start swapping after an hour or so. FF3 accomplishes that, so if you're looking for a faster, smaller browser head over to getfirefox.com. Now my only question is will the linux version be able to do the MLB Gameday thing for the Reds games. For some reason, lately it hasn't worked for me on my Ubuntu laptop (I could have sworn it worked at the beginning of the season, but...).

Father's Day, family, and traveling

Happy Fathers Day!!! Today has been a beautiful day, sunny, barely a cloud to be seen, high in the mid-80s. As I stated on twitter a few hours ago, today I "celebrated" Father's Day by mowing the lawn and vacuuming the pool. Okay, to be fair, Erin did finish the yard, and Sherry wanted to learn how to use the new mower (a zero turn), but we decided we'd do that another day. I did get in the pool after I finished vacuuming. The water temp is 86°F, so it is quite pleasant. I'm home again after spending last week in PA and NJ. I got to spend a couple of days with my baby sister (okay, she just turned 40, so she probably shouldn't be called a baby anymore, but...), her husband and my nephews, and spent 3 very productive days in NJ at the annual Cyber Security conference and spending face-to-face time with some of the other members of the team. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire week. The older of my nephews is at a big invitation-only showcase for high school junior baseball players being held at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. It wraps up today, I believe. I also had the opportunity to have dinner on Tuesday evening with a few of my friends from my days with Monmouth Civic Chorus. It is hard to believe it is 16.5 years since I moved back to Ohio from NJ. I drove out because the company isn't paying for much of anything these days. I did manage to pay less than $4.00/gallon of gas, but I saw a number of stations on the way where the price was over $4. That said, our gas prices are still cheaper than most of Europe. Ah, well.

Renewed Third Class Medical

Well, I'm legal to fly again (as I noted on twitter). My medical had expired on Saturday, but I had my appointment with the AME this morning and am legal again. Alas, from now on, I must carry my glasses with me for near vision (I wear them all the time, so that isn't really a big deal). I asked the doctor what the difference was between a third class and a second class since I'm considering pursuing my commercial license in the next year or so. He told me it was all about vision. With my glasses, I actually met the standards for a second class. Of course, for the training (and checkride) I don't need the second class, only to "exercise the privileges" of the certificate.

Shane is home

Well, it has been a long year, but Shane's unit returned from its second tour in Iraq at 4:00 yesterday morning (30 May 2008). There are more pictures here and the video below.

McCain, Hagee, and Parsley

Well, the media didn't give John McCain the crap he deserved for his "Jeremiah Wright"-problem, but at least he has finally cut his ties with John Hagee and Rod Parsley.

Happy Memorial Day

I spent most of the holiday driving (yes, even at nearly $4.00/gallon), but I didn't want the day to go completely by without thanking all those who have served and especially those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms we enjoy. On a related note, Shane is back on US soil and should be home before the end of the week. My thanx to all of you that have been praying for him for the past year.

Pastor Ruth is installed

I posted this over on the Grace UCC blog, too, but I'm posting here too because my job as search committee chair is now officially concluded.


On a beautiful, if a bit chilly, Sunday afternoon, Pastor Ruth Farrell was installed today as pastor and teacher of Grace UCC. Rev. Dr. Forrest Hoppe, Association Minister, and Rev. Eric Williams, chair of the Association Department of Church and Ministry officiated over the actual installation and the moving message for the afternoon was delivered by Pastor Ruth's father, Rev. Dr. (LTC) Bruce Farrell, a chaplain with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard who recently returned from a year in Iraq. LTC Farrell (yeah, he told me not to call him that, he prefers Chaplain, but he's not writing this blog entry :)) promises that he will be back for a visit with his wife (who was unable to be with us this afternoon because she had babies to deliver this weekend as a midwife in Pennsylvania) in July or September. So, today we celebrate God's blessings as we begin what we all trust will be a long and fruitful ministry together in Lancaster, OH.

Congrats, OU-L Softball team

Even though they were missing a few players due to illness and other previous family commitments, the #2 seeded OU-L Cougars came to play on Saturday in their matchup with UC-Clermont. With the grey skies and the threat of rain hanging over them, they played a tough team from southwest Ohio. UC-Clermont took a 1-0 lead in the 3rd inning. In the 5th inning, Steph and Erin started off the inning reaching on bunt singles, then were sacrificed over to 2nd and 3rd before being stranded. By the way, Erin hustled on that (remember I said bunt) single despite the ankle, but told me later that they ankle was killing her the rest of the game (she started and played all 9 innings in right field, going 1-for-3 at the plate). UC-Clermont stretched their lead to 2-0 before OU-L came back to tie it at 2 in the bottom of the 6th on back-to-back hits by Courtney and Christine and Christine's aggressive base running. The game ended up going into extra innings with neither team really threatening in the 8th. In the bottom of the 9th, Heather led off with a double that nearly left the park in left center and the next batter, Liz, ended it with a home run to left to give the Cougars a 4-2 win and the ORCC Conference Tournament Championship (in addition to being regular season co-champs with Newark) when Newark failed to show up and forfeited the rematch.

Bill Moyers gets it

I found this link on Kent Siladi's blog. I've always admired Bill Moyers and in this clip he says a lot of what I've been thinking about this whole Jeremiah Wright/Barack Obama "controversy". Note, it is almost 6.5 minutes long and I think some of the most important parts are in the last half.