Flight Log 2009-10-17

Well, I will reach 200 hours total time before the year is out, after today I am at 199.5 (143.4 PIC time) and I need to fly again in Dec to remain current to rent at KVTA.  I went for another $100 hamburger today.  Flew over to Urbana Grimes (I74) for scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and black raspberry pie.  The banana cream pie actually looked better, but I didn't see it until after I had the black raspberry.  Then, on the way back I did a touch-and-go at Madison County (KUYF) to add 2 new airports.  I was supposed to have landed at I74 on my first night cross-country with Bruce back in 2002, but the lights weren't working, so we circled the black hole and then flew back.  I was originally supposed to fly to Charleston, WV today to visit a fried I haven't seen in 24 years, but the weather looked pretty bad that direction, so we changed those plans a couple days ago.  At takeoff there were reports of ice between 6000 and 8000 feet, so I wouldn't have wanted to fly much (any) actual today.  Ceilings were about 4000 feet at KVTA, but scattered at 4000 feet at I74.  The overcast pretty much ended at KOSU.  Winds were out of the north (360°) at 6 knots, gusting 15, altimeter 30.17, temp 7°C.

The Founding Fathers and meandering thoughts on healthcare and economic meltdowns

First off, a note.  I probably should not have begun this after taking an Ambien this evening.  I desperately need a good night's sleep tonight, but that means this post will probably wander all over the place.  Perhaps, I'll find out if anyone besides me even reads any of my rantings.  Oh, well.  Onward.  Now, don't get me wrong.  The folks who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the US did something amazing.  I think those documents hold up very well more than 230 years later.  A friend pointed me at a post the other day that mentioned (correctly) that the right to free speech isn't granted by the 1st amendment, it is protected by it.  I'll agree to a point (but then my next post will include a pointer to a post about rights and John Calvin who would argue there are no rights), but then that very same post seemed to have problems with the fact that some of us believe that there are other rights that deserve protection.  So, let me get right to the point of this post.  While they were courageous and perhaps ahead of their time, the men who founded this country were not perfect, they were not saints, and they were not gods.  They made mistakes.  Remember, to them "all men are created equal" meant all white males who owned land were created equal.  Women?  Nope.  Farmhands?  Nope.  People of color?  Are you insane?  Remember, two of our first three Presidents owned slaves and one of them had children by at least one of his slaves (and I still think he was a pretty amazing guy).  They were right to make it difficult to change the Constitution.  It isn't something that should be done lightly, but the document isn't sacred though some would have you believe it is.  It took a civil war before men of color were "officially" treated as men and another 100+ years after that before practice even started to match the words on paper (and, in many ways, I think we're still not there).  Women haven't even had the right to vote for 90 years yet, let alone equal treatment under the law.  Is there a "right to privacy" (whatever that means)?  Does it even make sense to say something like that in 1776?  The founders had no conception of a world of electronic surveillance and warrantless eavesdropping.  They couldn't have been expected to protect a right that was probably obvious to them against a future they couldn't foresee.  That's in part why the 9th amendment reserves those rights not specifically enumerated "to the people."  In fact, here are the exact words of the 9th amendment.  "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."  Now, there is no question that after seeing the abuses of the government in England, the founders intended the federal government to be fairly weak.  Over the years, the general consensus has drifted a little from that original mindset (though there are clearly those out there who want a weak federal government), but many of us believe that there are certain functions best served by government.  Going back 100 years, there have been efforts to include healthcare as one of those rights that ought to be protected.  Heck, Richard Nixon who sat on some of McCarthy's hearings, so could hardly be called soft on communism proposed extending Medicare to every citizen in 1974.  Unfortunately, for those of us who are concerned about possibly losing our health insurance (or our homes after a loss of health insurance), the Democrats in Congress thought they could get an even better deal in 1976 when surely a Democrat would be elected President.  They didn't seize what was probably the best opportunity presented to date.  They were arrogant.  If it wasn't already obvious, I think ultimately, "single payer" is the way to fix healthcare as most other industrialized countries have already concluded, but even the watered down "public option" now seems to not be included in what will come to the Senate floor for debate next week.  By the way, in the comments to a blog post that I'll link to in my next post, it was pointed out that the current healthcare debate is really mostly/entirely about the middle class and the poor.  The rich will always be able to afford whatever healthcare they want, why isn't anyone really talking about that?  There are folks who are all up in arms about the size (in $$) of the debt that would be incurred by the proposals to jumpstart the economy and take care of health care, but Nobel Laureate economists point out that it isn't actual dollar amounts that matter.  What matters is what is it as a percentage of GDP (by the way, did you know that the stimulus implemented by the Chinese government was 25% of GDP? the equivalent by the US government would have been in the vicinity of $2 trillion).  And there, we're actually in relatively moderate territory.  Yes, by the time all the stimulus and bailouts and getting health care right are done, the deficit could be around 50% of GDP.  That sounds large until you consider that it was 120% of GDP at the end of World War II.  Many industrialized nations (primarily in Europe) have successfully exited periods where there debt loads were in the 80-90% range.  To get out of the economic melt down that started almost exactly 12 months, the federal government became the spender of last resort.  Individuals were frightened so they started burying money under the mattress metaphorically (paying down credit card bills and getting by with less).  Well, if the consumers aren't buying, if demand dries up, then the supply side of the equation has to slow down.  You can't build and build and build if there is no one there to buy.  So, you cut back production, you lay off some workers, which frightens the consumers even more so they start hoarding.  When the demand side of the equation goes to zero, the spender of last resort has to come in to prevent entire industries and segments of society from going back to trying to farm their front yards.  The only entity with the ability to do that (in part, because they are allowed to have unbalanced budgets -- a federal balanced budget amendment would have caused the events of this past year to devolve into a second great depression --) is the federal government which must come in and spend stimulus money (that it doesn't have) to buy some of the goods just sitting around rotting and put people to work (some in almost "make work" jobs), but get them working and earning an income again.  It is what FDR seemed to have understood and Keynes articulated that led to the early programs of the New Deal.  Alas, just as things were starting to pick up steam but had not yet reached self-sustainability, the other party started whining about the debt and FDR gave in and started to cut back.  Many of us who have studied it believe the Great Depression could have ended in 1936 or 1937 at the latest, had FDR not given in and started cutting back for fear of the size of the deficits.  The result, the improvement slowed and drifted, not quite breaking out of the depression, not really falling further back in.  Conveniently (in economic terms if not in terms of world peace), World War II came along less than 3 years later and again we have the government push to build things beyond all proportion and to keep that up from 1941 - 1945 (or 1946).  At which point, it was possible to slow down a bit, but we now had so many skilled workers who had brought home a decent wage and they wanted to have a little fun with that.  And so, with the economic growth that came out of WWII (including new markets to sell to after we rebuilt them) that incredible 120% of GDP debt that we had in 1945 quickly shrunk as the economy grew and diversified and through the '60s, '70s, and '80s even with oil shocks and "stagflation" the debt as a percentage of GDP got small.  Ah, well, I really need sleep now.  Sorry for rambling.  Good night.

Current again

Well, I am finally IFR current again.  I went up Wednesday with Harold and got an IPC (Instrument Proficiency Check) done.  I was a little rusty (as I knew I would be), but I was pretty pleased at my performance.  Yes, there is still more rust to be knocked off, but I am confident that I would be fine in IMC up (down) to my personal minimums.  We first flew over to KZZV, flew the full ILS 22 (including the hold), then on the miss came around and did the full VOR 22 (including procedure turn), then the GPS 27 back into KVTA (circle to land on runway 9).  Now one of these cloudy October days with ceilings 100-200 feet above MDA, I'll have to go out and get some more time in actual IMC.  I am also now 2.5 hours from hitting 200 hours total time, at this rate that may still happen this calendar year.

A little bit of respect

I've been more than a little dismayed at the venom directed at President Obama over his planned address to school children on Tuesday.  Whether you agree with everything he stands for or not, it seems pretty strange to me that there is so much objection to the President of the United States telling kids to work hard and stay in school.  I mean from everything I've seen, it looks like the script could have just as easily been written by Laura Bush (and I doubt if anyone at Fox News would have been upset with her telling kids to stay in school).  Anyway, as I was preparing to write this, I read Bob Cornwall's post that says much of what I wanted to say and says it better, so go read it there, especially this sentence, "Even if we don't like the holder of the office, we need to respect the office or we will find ourselves in deep trouble."  Oh, and here's another one that makes the point pretty well.  I think that is one of the things that has been bothering me the most.  Disagree on policy, okay, but even when I haven't particularly cared for the person, I've tried to respect the office.  These nutjobs praying for the death of the President of the United States have gotten way out of line and I'm dismayed that more conservatives have allowed that to go unchallenged.  Okay, end of political rant for the day.  I hope anyone out there reading this is having a great Labor Day weekend.

Shalom,
Jim

Charitable Flying

One of the things I've wanted to ever since I got my license (probably actually before) was to do something meaningful with it.  Ever since I first heard about Angel Flight it has been something I've wanted to do.  I don't own my own plane, but I really like the idea of flying folks who need to go a distance for medical reasons or to help fly supplies after a natural disaster.  (Okay, if I'm the winner of tomorrow evening's $207M MegaMillions drawing, one of things I'm going to do after paying off the credit cards, the house, and the kids school loans, is buy myself a plane, probably a Diamond DA40XLS, but I digress).  The interesting thing about the various charitable flying organizations is that they all have different requirements of the pilots.  To fly for Angel Flight Central (that covers most of the upper midwest), you have to have 500 hours including 250 hours of pilot-in-command (PIC) time or a commercial license, instrument rating desired, but not required.  For Angel Flight East (AFE), which includes OH, you need 300 hours total time and an instrument rating (although you can fly as co-pilot without an instrument rating).  For Volunteer Pilots (VPA), you need 200 hours PIC time for VFR ops or 250 hours PIC time and an instrument rating to fly IFR for them.  All of them have some requirement for time in type of aircraft to be used for the operation.  As you can see from the little block to the right, I don't currently qualify to fly for any of them.  I have 196.1 hours total, 139.3 hours PIC.  So, I'm a minimum of 60.7 hours from being able to do this, but it is something that I feel is important and I want to take advantage of the opportunity I have been given by giving something back.  Unfortunately, 60 hours is an awful long time given the rate that I've been racking them up the last few years.  I got lots of hours in right after I got my license, but for the last few years, I've had to cut back mostly because of $$$$$.  With 2 kids in college, it is kind of difficult to justify spending the money to fly, but I will get there.  As soon as I get to that magic 200 hours PIC, the application is going in to Volunteer Pilots.  I may also look into volunteering in some capacity other than actually flying with either (or both) of AFE or VPA.  This is something I feel like I'm supposed to be doing, I just have to figure out how to do it.  By the way, any pilots out there know this, but any non-pilots reading this may not, did you know that you can fly people for money with fewer hours than you can fly people for a charitable contribution?  You can get a commercial license with 250 hours, but you must have (since the new regulations went into effect last year) 500 hours to make a flight in which the passenger donates money to a charity in return for the flight.  Strange, but true.

Flight Log 2009-08-17

I went flying today.  I wasn't able to visit the friend I was hoping to see this month, so I just stayed in the practice area.  I talked to my favorite CFII and I'll probably try to get an IPC in next week.  So, for today, I went over Buckeye Lake and practiced some slow flight and power on stalls.  The first take off was a simulated soft field, I realized I hadn't done one of those in quite a while (a year, maybe 2, I need to start working it back into my list of things to accomplish when I fly).  Then, as I said, slow flight and power on stalls.  It was very, very hazy for being "clear", visibility was 8 miles.  Well, it was a decent 0.7 hrs and there should be another 1.5 or so next week.

Working out

When I said yesteray, I planned on posting more, I didn't really mean I'd do it daily, but I wanted to get this written down.  I mentioned a couple of months ago, I've lost a fair amount of weight in the last year.  I've sort of stagnated here the last 3+ months.  First of all, we got a new scale because Sherry said she thought the old one was reading too light.  She weighed herself here and then at the Dr's office and the difference was more than could be accounted for by additional clothing.  So, I bought a new one and sure enough the old one was reading about 3-4 lbs lighter than the new one.  So, when I hit that 195, it was probably actually a 198 (I've actually hit 196.8 on the new scale, so I've been even lower than what the old reading of 195 would have meant) and the 232 when I started (this time) was likely more like 235.  Anyway, since early May I've been sitting at 200±2 lbs.  There isn't really a problem with that, I actually am feeling pretty good at this weight, I'm wearing jeans that are 4" smaller in the waist than I was a year ago (and I'm noticing that they are actually a little on the loose side).  Also, hopefully tomorrow the jeweler will call and I'll get my wedding ring back (it is being resized smaller).  Several times this summer, I've nearly lost it in the pool and when I nearly lost it in the shower last week, that was the final straw, I took it to the jeweler 5 days ago.  Now, I lost the first 15-20 lbs strictly by watching what I ate, cutting the caloric intake to 1500-1800 calories a day, but then I plateaued for a while.  In Jan-Feb, I started adding in some resistance/weight training (starting with the resistance bands 3 times per week and later switching to the actual free weights occasionally for some variation) and more weight came off, another 15-20 bringing me to a total of about 35 where I am now.  For the last two months, however, I've gotten out of the workout habit.  It started around the time of SANSFIRE (maybe just before) and with all of my travels in July, it kept on.  I worked out once while I was at my parent's place and was very, very sore the day I had lunch with the college friend (I hope she didn't notice I was moving like an 80-year-old).  Then not again until Monday.  I finally put the old DVD in and went at it.  Obviously, I had to lighten the weight (or reduce reps) from where I was when I was doing it regularly and I was a little sore yesterday and this morning, but I hit it again today and I expect I'll feel better tomorrow.  Perhaps a little more will come off if I get back in the routine.

To continue where I left off...

I still haven't made the flight to visit my friend, if all goes well, that should happen next week.  In the last week or so, however, I have gotten some good news, that I'd like to share.  I mentioned in the last post that there had been some bad news.  I was informed that my aunt had breast cancer.  About the same time, one of my wife's coworkers got bad news about possible cancer in her abdomen.  Finally, the father of a good friend discovered he required 5 heart bypasses.  Well, the good news is that after the lumpectomies, the tests suggest that my aunt's cancer was caught early enough and appears not to have spread.  Followup radiation should be brief and no chemo required.  My wife's coworker had surgery last week and they removed 17 lbs (yes, you read that right, 17 lbs) worth of tumor from her ovaries.  Now, she isn't a large girl by any stretch of the imagination, so I'm stunned at the size, but they don't believe the cancer has spread to any other organs (though they are still waiting for some test results).  Finally, my friend's father seems to have come through the quintuple bypass well, so it has been good news all the way around.  I am going to endeavor from here on to post something here at least once or twice a week.  I have a number of thoughts that I need to develop into a more complete form, but we shall see.

Home for a while

Well, my car has travelled 5,118 miles in the last 30 days.  It has been a busy month and I have one more little visit (though I intend to fly that one rather than drive) to make sometime this month, but otherwise I think I'll be a homebody for a while.  The week after the holiday, I visited my youngest sister for a couple of days and got to see my nephew play some baseball, then went on to NJ to get in some face-time with the boss and team.  While there, I also got to visit with some good friends from back when I lived out that way.  Then it was back to my sister's for another day and on home.  After a week at home, it was down to NC to spend time with Mom and Dad and celebrate Dad's 75th birthday.  While there, I set up wireless networking so I can use the laptop down there.  I also was able to have lunch with a very dear friend from college that I hadn't seen in over 25 years.  Then I came home, but my car went on another road trip with Matt.  He went to Memphis to visit a friend from basic training (I think) then to visit with George (his old boss, the one who took him to Japan a few years back).  After he brought my car back, I traveled back over to my sister's for my nephew's belated graduation party.  Lots of miles on the car, but lots of good visits with friends and family.  There has also been some bad news in the extended family, but I don't really want to talk about that right now.  It looks like the weather probably won't allow the flying I was hoping to do.  I really need to find some time to get instrument current again.

My SANSFIRE 2009 talk

My talk at SANSFIRE last month on my automated malware analysis environment is available in several forms on the web.  The slides with audio are available here, just the audio here, here, or here and just the slides, here and here.