One of the things I like to do — but don’t get a chance to do very often these days — is talk to podcasters and other media people about the projects I’ve worked on.

Earlier this month, I got a chance to do just that with Chuck Joiner, the host of the MacVoices podcast. For the first time ever, Chuck did a double interview, killing two birds with one stone as he spoke to author Scott McNulty and I about WordPress. During the Interview, we talked about our separate WordPress-related projects and how they might be used together to help someone learn the ins and outs of using WordPress.

Here’s the blurb on the MacVoices Web site:

Thinking of starting a blog with WordPress? Maria Langer, the author of Self-Hosting a WordPress Site and WordPress.Com 2.7 Essential Training on Lynda.com and Scott McNulty, the author of Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read, share some tips from their respective projects to help you make the right choices. Maria and Scott talk about deciding on using WordPress.com or selecting your own host, one-click vs. user installs, why permalink structure is one of the first things you should think about, and finding and customizing a theme for your blog and more. Backup options, favorite plug-ins and why their video and book compliment each other are discussed.

If you’d like to hear the podcast, you can download it directly from its page on the MacVoices Web site.

I was interviewed yet again by local radio station KBSZ 1250-AM. Pete’s a great interviewer and always makes his guests feel comfortable. We talked for about 40 minutes, mostly about the Internet and flying. You’ll hear my layman’s explanation of my recent experience getting seriously Dugg. Keep in mind that the station’s audience isn’t exactly computer savvy, so I do a lot of explaining and simplifying when discussing some computer topics.

This podcast starts in the middle of a commercial; the interview starts about a minute in.

February 17, 2010 Update: KBSZ went under back in 2009. The Web site was taken down and all podcasts removed. As a result, the podcast of this episode is no longer available. Sorry!

I was interviewed again by local radio station KBSZ 1250-AM. Pete’s a great interviewer and always makes his guests feel comfortable. We talked for about 40 minutes, mostly about my wickenburg-az.com Web site, which celebrates its 8-year anniversary this month. We also talked about blogging in general, search engine optimization (which I’m no expert in), and my flying business. Keep in mind that the station’s audience isn’t exactly computer savvy, so I do a lot of explaining and simplifying when discussing some computer topics.

I re-experience the magic of getting out to fly at dawn.

The alarm went off at 4:40 AM. Normally, I don’t set an alarm. I’m usually awake by 5 AM without one. In fact, that morning, I was awake at 3:30. But I fell back to sleep and was very surprised when the alarm brought me back to consciousness.

I had enough time to jump in the shower, dress, and make coffee in a to-go cup. Alex the bird and the horses would have to wait. My flight was at 6 AM and I still needed to do a preflight and pull the helicopter out to the ramp.

It was cold and dark as I drove away from the house. I’d taken the doors and windows off my Jeep about two months ago and still haven’t put them back on. The temperature was in the 50s, and I really felt it as I sped down West Wickenburg Way (the old California Highway) to the airport.

The moon was full, casting a blue-white light over the desert landscape. I love to fly in the light of a full moon. The ground is so dark out here in the desert that the moonlight really illuminates things. Sometimes, as I fly back to Wickenburg from moonlight dinner tour in the Phoenix area, I can see the helicopter’s shadow moving along 700 feet below us — a tiny gray dot darting across the washes and along the rolling hills.

I rolled up to my hangar, pointed the Jeep’s headlights at the door, and turned off the Jeep, leaving the headlights on. I fiddled with the combination padlock on the door to get it open, then turned off the headlights. I rolled the right side door open and flicked on the overhead lights. I seldom come to the hangar at night, so I use the lights rarely. They’re bright and fully illuminate the contents of my hangar: Mike’s airplane, my motorcycles, some furniture in storage, my airport “office,” and my helicopter, sitting on its ground handling equipment, always ready to roll out to the ramp.

I did a preflight, checking under panels for fluid levels, tele-temp colors, and unusual signs of wear or tear. I climbed my 10-foot ladder to examine the rotor hub. I checked the tail rotor and the oil level. One of the good things about flying the same aircraft all the time — and being the only person to fly that aircraft — is that you really get to know it. When there’s something wrong, it jumps out at you. Like the tiny crack I found in the plastic part of my clutch activator’s down-limit switch the year before. The crack was only about 1/4 inch long, but I saw it on a preflight. (That turned out to be another case of $1000 in labor to replace a $12 part.)

By then, it was 5:30 AM. Time to get out on the ramp. I hopped in the golf cart that was attached to the helicopter’s tow bar, and began backing out. It’s a tricky maneuver; I have to back straight out about 3/4 of the way to the hangar across from mine to make sure the tail rotor clears Mike’s airplane and the hangar door. Then a sharp turn toward the ramp, which swings the tail out. When the helicopter and cart are parallel to the row of hangars, I’m ready to roll.

But not yet. I had to get out of the cart, switch off the lights, and roll the door closed. I left my Jeep parked as is. It wasn’t blocking anything except my left hangar door and I’d be back before 7 AM.

The sky to the east was beginning to lighten. According to my computer, dawn in Wickenburg would be at 6:17 AM. The goal was to be in flight, flying east when the sun broke over the horizon. I could see now that there was a cloud out there, not far above the horizon. The sun would make its appearance, then slip behind that cloud. The cloud didn’t seem too dense, so I was pretty sure much of the light would penetrate, keeping the sky bright as the sun continued to climb. That was my prediction, anyway.

I rolled up to the fuel island, set the parking break on the cart, and got out to disconnect the ground handling equipment. That means unfastening the four ratchet straps on the front of the skids, moving the tow bar away, and taking the ground handling wheels off the back of the skids. (You can see a photo of what the ground handling equipment looks like on my helicopter in this article.) It’s a bothersome routine — it would be so much nicer to just land on a rolling platform like Ray and Dave do — but I have it down to a science and can do it quite quickly.

I added 15 gallons of fuel to the main tank. I was expecting three passengers — a dad and his two young sons — and could actually top off the tanks if I wanted to. But I don’t like putting on more fuel than I need (including reserves, of course). With the added fuel, we’d have enough to fly 2 hours. Our flight would take 30 minutes.

Done with all my preflight stuff, I waited. It was 5:45 AM.

The airport at Wickenburg is kind of magical at that time of the morning. The ramp, lighted by a handful of overhead lights, illuminates the few planes parked outside. Every once in a while, one of the lights goes out, leaving the space beneath it in shadows until it recovers from its temporary ills and comes back to life. The rotating beacon — now a cell tower — sweeps its white and green light over the vicinity. If you listen hard, you can hear its motor. You can also hear the sounds of life in the industrial park across the runway: distant banging and clanking one of the small manufacturing facilities, the steady beeep-beeep-beeep of a truck backing up, some voices carried on the breeze. In the past, I’ve heard the mournful mooing of a free-range cow on the ranch (soon to be a housing development) across the road or the call of a coyote.

It was the light that fascinated me that morning. The light from the fuel island cast on my helicopter combined with the light of the coming dawn behind it. I pulled out my digital camera — which I keep in my purse — and took a few photos with the flash turned off, using the fuel island equipment and camera self-timer as substitutes for a tripod and cable release. The resulting photos weren’t bad, as you can see for yourself.

As 6 AM approached, I waited over by the terminal building. Before long, a car pulled in and my passengers got out. The sons were somewhere between 8 and 12 years old. The younger one didn’t look very enthusiastic. I gave them the safety briefing as we walked out to the helicopter. The older son sat in front — an arrangement that seemed to make the younger son very happy as he climbed in back next to his dad. I showed them how to work the doors, then closed them in. A few moments, later, I had the engine going and we were talking over the headsets while the engine warmed up.

To the east, the sky had brightened considerably. The cloud hanging out there would make the sunrise interesting. Our normal cloudless skies are wonderful if you like sun — and you’d better, if you come to Arizona — but they make for boring sunrises and sunsets. Today they’d have a bit of a treat. The sun was already illuminating the bottom of the cloud, although there wasn’t much color to its light.

We took off and headed east. I climbed more than I normally would to give them the best view I could muster. It was already too bright for the lights of Phoenix to be very noticeable, which was kind of unfortunate for them. One of the things I like to do at night is launch from Wickenburg Airport, which is in a pretty dark area of the desert, and climb up to reveal the lights of Phoenix stretching from 30 to 60 miles away in a perfect example of urban sprawl light pollution. Terrible for people wanting to look at the stars, but quite beautiful from the air, especially when climbing from the darkness on the edge of nowhere.

My goal was to get as far as Lake Pleasant before sunrise. I made the goal. The lake was in sight with the brightening sky reflecting off its smooth surface when the sun peeked over the horizon.

Of course, that’s also when you could see the streaks on the Plexiglas of my cockpit bubble. That low-lying sun will show how badly I cleaned the bubble, even if I did a good job. At least there wasn’t any dust to make it worse.

I made a gentle turn to the left, leaving the sun behind us. Now we were facing Wickenburg again and could see it in the distance. We also saw Vulture Peak and the full moon as it was descending toward the horizon. The sun cast long shadows in the desert between the hills and mountains. Details of the terrain emerged: a gravel pit, some trailers parked on BLM land, a windmill and tank. I steered us toward Vulture Peak, which my companions planned to climb later in the day. We flew past the east side of the peak, then past the guest ranch where they were staying. A while later, we were touching down gently on one of the heli-spots at the airport. We’d been in the air about 30 minutes.

As I cooled down the engine, my passengers told me how much they’d enjoyed the flight. Even the little guy in the back, who wasn’t scared anymore. I escorted them all back to the terminal and we said goodbye.

It was still early — about 6:45 AM — but the airport’s nighttime magic was gone. Although I was the only one left on the ramp, it didn’t have the same deserted feeling it had had less than an hour before.

I rolled my cart over to the helicopter to put it away. At home, Alex the Bird and the horses were waiting for breakfast.

My current computer woes remind me of something I heard long ago.

A long time ago — ten or more years, which is the middle ages in terms of the computing industry — computers were being marketed primarily on the basis of processor speed. Every time Intel or Motorola would come out with a new processor chip, members of the geeky set hurried to the stories to buy a new computer or upgrade that would bring their machines up to speed. It was then that I heard this rather curious statement:

All computers wait at the same speed.

The statement, of course, was meant to poke fun at computer users. At least that’s how I read it. Your computer could be the fastest in the world, but if you weren’t up to speed, all that extra fast processing power would be wasted. After all, each time a computer completes an instruction — whether it’s opening a dialog box, applying a font style change to some text, or matching e-mail addresses in your address book when you type into a field in a new e-mail message form — the computer faithfully waits…for you. As long as it has to. And while computer processors are getting ever faster, computer users are simply not keeping up.

Let Me Tell You About My Mom

All this reminds me of a sort of funny story. My mother, who has been using computers for nearly as long as I have, is not what you’d call a “power user.” She pretty much knows what her computer can do for her and she can usually make it do it. But she’s not the kind of person who pushes against the boundaries of what she knows very often. And when she’s working with her computer, she spends a lot of time making the computer wait while she thinks about what’s onscreen and how she needs to proceed. That isn’t a big deal — I’d say that 95% of computer users are like her. People react to what the computer does rather than anticipate what’ll come up next and have the next task prepared in their minds when the computer is ready to accept it. And all these computers are waiting at the same speed.

Anyway, for years, my Mom used dial-up Internet services. Most of us did. But as better alternatives came around and Web sites got ever more graphic-intensive, most of us updated our Internet connection technology to take advantage of cable or DSL or some other higher bandwidth connection. (I was literally the first (and only) kid on the block to get ISDN at my home. This was back in the days before cable and DSL Internet service. It cost me a fortune — heck, they had to dig a trench to lay new telephone lines to my house — but I simply could not tolerate busy signals, dropped carriers, and slow download speeds for my work. It operated at a whopping 128 Kbps and cost me $150/month. Ouchie!) My Mom, on the other hand, didn’t upgrade. She continued to surf the Internet through AOL on a dial-up connection, right into late 2006. Worse yet, she refused to get a second phone line, so she limited her Internet access or was impossible to get on the phone.

Let me take a little side trip here to discuss why her attitude wasn’t a bad thing at all. Personally, I believe we have too much dependence on the Internet. I recently read “I Survived My Internet Vacation” by Lore Sjöberg on wired.com, which takes a comic but all-too-real look at Internet withdrawal. If you’re the kind of person who uses the Internet to check the weather, look up vocabulary words, and find obscure information throughout each day without really needing that information, you owe it to yourself to read the piece. It really hit home for me. So in the case of my Mom, the fact that her Internet use was minimal wasn’t such a bad thing. Not at least as far as I was concerned.

But it had gotten to the point with my Mom that she was spending more time waiting for her computer than her computer was waiting for her. And it had nothing to do with processor speed. It was her dial-up Internet connection that made it slow.

At first, I don’t think she understood this. I think that when she replaced her aging Macintosh with a PC about 2 years ago, she really expected everything to get faster. But the Internet got slower and slower for her, primarily because Web designers don’t design sites for dial-up connections. (Shame on them!) The Internet had become a tedious, frustrating place for her and she couldn’t understand why so many people were spending so much time using it.

In November 2006, I came for a visit. I had to look up something on the Internet and within 15 minutes, I was about to go mad. I asked her why she didn’t upgrade to a different service. Then she showed me a flyer that had come with her cable bill. We sat down with her phone bill and AOL bill and realized that she could upgrade to cable Internet service and actually save money. A little more research with her local phone company saved even more money.

So she was paying a premium to connect at 56Kbps or less.

I made a few phone calls and talked to people in the United States and India for her. I’ll be honest with you — the price difference between cable Internet and her local phone company’s Internet was minimal, but we went with the phone company because the person who answered the phone spoke English as her first language. (Subsequently, my Mom needed some tech support after I was gone and that person was in India. Sheesh.) The installation would happen the day after I left to go back to Arizona, but I was pretty confident that they would make everything work. And although it didn’t go as smoothly as we’d hoped, my Mom was soon cruising the ‘Net at normal DSL speeds.

In other words, wicked fast.

My Mom was floored by the difference. I’d told her it was much faster, but I didn’t tell her it was 100 times faster. And it’s always on — all she has to do is turn on the computer and she’s online! And she can even get phone calls while she’s on the Internet! Imagine all that!

The happy ending of this story is that my mother now spends a lot more time on the Internet. (I’m not sure how happy that is.) And of course, she’s now back to the situation where the computer is waiting for her.

Who’s Waiting for What in My Office

I reported a hard disk crash here about 9 days ago. I know it was 9 days because that’s how long I’ve been waiting for the data recovery software to churn through whatever is left of my hard disk. And although it’s still progressing, it’s slowed to a crawl. I think it’s teasing me. But I’ll get the last laugh — I’m pulling the plug today.

There comes a time when you simply can’t wait anymore. I think 9 days shows a great deal of patience on my part. I know I couldn’t have waited so long if I didn’t have other computers to work with. I did get some work done this past week. I wrote up the outline for my Mac OS X book revision for Leopard. I did a lot of e-mail, fixed up a bunch of Web sites, wrote and submitted a bid for Flying M Air to dry cherries this summer in Washington State.

But what I did not do outweighed what I did do. I didn’t work on my Excel 2007 Visual QuickStart Guide. (I need the big monitor to do layout.) I did not pay my bills. (The latest version of my Quicken data files are on the sick drive.) I didn’t update Flying M AIr’s brochure. (Original files on the sick disk, need big monitor for layout.) The list does go on and on.

Now it’s time to get back to work. So I’ll pull the plug on the current data recovery attempt, put the hard disk in the freezer for a few hours, then reinstall it and try again by accessing the sick disk via Firewire from another computer. I can try multiple software solutions to fix the problem. And if that doesn’t work, I take the long drive down to the nearest Genius and let them give the computer a check up to make sure there’s no motherboard damage (again). If the mother board is still fine, I’ll leave them the disk to play with, get a new disk to replace it, and get the hell back to work.

That’s the plan, anyway.

This episode covers my thoughts on blogging: why I blog, my personal history as a blogger, and the future of blogging as I see it. The transcript for this episode can be found on my Web site, www.marialanger.com.

And sorry about the nasal sound of my voice. I’m just getting over a cold.

Transcript:

Last month, I celebrated my third anniversary as a blogger. Well, I didn’t really celebrate anything because I really didn’t think about it then. But I realized today that it had been more than three years since my first blog entry. A little research found that entry online in my current blog: “iBlog.”

Why I Blog

I am a writer. I’ve been a writer since I was 13 or so, in the days when I worked on stories and a novel while sitting at the desk in the room I shared with my sister. I’ve probably written billions of words by now.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of writers. Well, three:

• The first is the person who writes because of that need to write. The person who, like me, started at a young age and got hooked on it. But for whatever reason, they did not pursue a career in writing.
• The second is the person who doesn’t have that need to write but writes for a living. Copywriters, business people who spend much of their time writing reports, tech writers — those might be some examples.
• The third is the person who needs to write and writes for a living.

Through hard work, an understanding of the writing business, and a good dose of luck, I’ve managed to join that third group of writers: I write because I need to write and I’m fortunate enough to get paid for it.

Writing is like an addiction for the people who need to write. They can’t go more than a day or two without writing something. And that’s where blogging comes in. It’s the perfect outlet for writing whatever you want, whether it’s a description of how you spent your weekend (Days in My Life), your view on current politics (Deep Thoughts), a narrative about your hobbies (Flying for Pleasure, Writing for Pleasure), or a discussion of your work (Flying for Hire, Writing for a Living).

And that’s why I’m a blogger. It gives me the opportunity to vent (so to speak) the words and thoughts that are in my mind.

My History as a Blogger

Back in October 2003, I got started as a blogger using a blogging client called iBlog. It was an interesting tool that was very easy to use and didn’t require a bit of HTML or programming knowledge. I’d create blog entries on my computer, using a WYSIWYG format. When I was ready to publish, the software would create all the pages and links and upload them to a Web server. They were static pages — that means they existed in plain old HTML on the server until I replaced them with new pages.

I liked the software, but as technology moved forward, I ran into its limitations. The author of the program — it’s shareware — was busy with work and couldn’t spend the time needed to rework his creation and add features. I decided that it was time to find another solution.

I played with Blogger and actually built two podcasts that used it for an engine. (I even wrote an eBook about it.) But Blogger had a lot of limitations, too. I wanted something I could get under the hood to change, something I could tweak forever, fine-tuning the appearance and functionality all the time.

The answer was WordPress. I decided to install it on a Mac OS X server in my office. It was a chore and a real learning experience. But I always get a certain feeling of satisfaction when I work my way through a tough task and succeed.

The first big challenge (after getting WordPress up and running on the server) was to import my 300+ iBlog entries to my new WordPress site. That required exporting all entries as an RSS feed, modifying the entries to be WordPress compatible, and importing them into the new blog. I did this over time, in batches. I still have about 50 entries to import, but they include photos and require a lot of work. Frankly, I’ve been too lazy to do it.

Once the content was online, I reworked the blog to merge it with my personal site and my book support site. That posed some organizational challenges: to keep my work separate from my blog but both of them in the same place. I’ve gotten complements on the site’s organization from several people, so I think I may have done a good job.

Now, with the work mostly done — other than the tweaking, which I do occasionally to fine-tune the site — I’m free to write. I never stopped, of course. The site has been building itself slowly but surely, with 5 to 20 new entries a week, depending on my schedule. These days I’ve been pretty busy, so I’m not writing as much. But I still try to get a post in each morning, as I sit drinking my coffee, listening to my parrot run through his repertoire of words, phrases, and weird sounds.

The Future of Blogging

Over the past few years, I’ve seen blogging change from its original purpose — a personal online journal — to a commercial phenomena. People are blogging for money, splashing advertisements all over their sites. Companies are starting blogs to advertise their own products and services.

Although I will be the first to admit that I talk about my books and articles and flying services on this site, those topics are not my primary focus. They’re part of my life and, like most of my life, they become blogging topics. But I just can’t bring myself to splash all those Google ads all over my sites. I’m not in this for the money. The little ads that appear at the bottom of some pages on my sites are just my attempt to raise cash to pay for this blogging habit of mine. (Please feel free to click one or two on every visit. )

But it saddens me that blogging has become so commercialized. That some bloggers are using this form of communication solely to gain wealth and fame — or try to. That some bloggers are irresponsibly spreading inaccurate information in an attempt to sway public opinion. That the media is spreading falsehoods by quoting blogs as news sources. That some blogs (like some podcasts) are simply another form of advertising to sell products and services in a world that’s already so full of advertising that it invades every part of our lives.

I don’t know what the future of blogging will bring. But I do know the future of my blogging activities: the same as the past.

I blog because I like to blog. I need to blog. And whether my words are appreciated or scorned, I’ll just keep blogging.

This episode marks my return to Maria Speaks after a two-month break. It covers my change in podcasting technique, a new video podcast I just created for Flying M Air, and the podcasts I subscribe to.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Episode 31 of Maria Speaks: Podcast Stuff.

I just spent the past three hours redoing the Maria Speaks podcast. I used to publish it with Blogger and FeedBurner. Now, since my personal Web site is blog-based using WordPress, I cut Blogger out of the picture. It took me three hours to create or modify blog entries to embed my thirty existing podcast entries on this site. Well, twenty-nine. One of them covered an eBook I no longer distribute, so it didn’t link to it.

I developed this new method of podcasting — new to me, I should say — to reduce the amount of work required to publish a podcast and keep all podcast information together. I used to use a WordPress plugin called podPress, but I removed all references to it and disabled it today. Keep it simple — that’s what I decided. And the technique I worked out is relatively simple, utilizing an existing WordPress blog and FeedBurner. I wrote about it in an article to be published soon by Informit.com. When it comes out, I’ll link to it on the Aritcles page of my Web site and create a podcast based on its content.

For some reason, my “Maria Speaks” podcast has more subscribers than ever. That makes me wonder, since I haven’t released a podcast episode since September, and that episode was a bit more commercial than I like. This time last year, I was releasing one or two episodes per week. I ran out of steam last December and have been releasing them far less frequently. Still, my subscriber numbers have been climbing steadily. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it did convince me to release more content. The way I see it, when all these new subscribers start getting the new content, they’ll either like it and stick around or not like it and leave.

In the meantime, I started a new video podcast in October for my helicopter charter company, Flying M Air. I have literally thousands of photographs taken throughout the southwest, in places I fly to. I also have photos taken by my husband and by professional photographer and Bigfoot Hunter, Richard Noll.

Rick accompanied me on a test run of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. The deal we struck was that in return for all all-expense paid trip, he’d let me share copyright on all the video and still images he took. While he has the ability to sell these images as stock photos or use them in other projects, I have the ability to use them in marketing material to help sell the excursions and in articles I plan to write for publication about the trip. It was a win-win deal. Richard took lots of pictures from the air, which is something I simply can’t do while I’m flying. He also took video images with something a few clicks better than the little Canon digital video cameras I have. I’m still going through the over 1,000 still images and 3 to 4 hours of video he left on my MacBook Pro’s hard disk before departing back to the Seattle area.

I decided to turn my library of photos into video brochures for Flying M Air’s tours, charters, and excursions. The result is “Come Fly With Us!” (subscribe), which currently has three episodes. Another episode will be released Monday. (That’s one of the good things about my new podcast publishing technique; I can schedule a publication date and time. This makes it possible to record several podcast episodes at once and release them periodically over time.)

Part of the learning experience for creating this new podcast was finding legal music to play while the images were showing. I wasted a lot of time looking. Some sites promoting “royalty-free” music for podcasts required that you buy the songs to use them. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the songs were sold at iTunes prices or even a few bucks, but they were asking for $25 or $39 dollars per song. I use each song on just one video podcast episode and plan to release new titles once a week until I run out of material. That music was simply over my budget.

The much hyped GarageBand.com promised royalty-free, free downloads music. But the vast majority of artists didn’t allow free downloads of their songs. And since I was looking for relatively mellow instrumentals — you know, mood music — I had trouble finding what I wanted there in the first place.

I finally wound up on MagnaTune.com. I heard about it during an interview with the site’s founder, John Buckman, that Miraz had referred me to. MagnaTune predates iTunes by about two weeks. Although it has a limited number of artists on board, it offers very reasonable licensing of its music for podcast use. I’ve been getting tunes for my “Come Fly with Us!” podcasts from MagnaTunes since then and giving credit to the artists at the end of each video. I hope they sell some music.

Speaking of music, if you’ve been listening to Maria Speaks for a while now, you may have noticed that I changed the “theme song” for this podcast. The reason: I had a one-year licensing agreement with FreePlay Music for the old tune, Floater. Last year, when I bought that license, it cost $25/year, which I thought was reasonable. When I went to renew, the price had gone up to $100/year. I guess they decided to cash in when podcasting took off. That’s above my budget for a free podcast that doesn’t even earn any advertising revenue, so I decided to find a new tune. The new tune is is a segment from a nameless bit that I got off a public domain music CD I acquired back in 1996. I spent about an hour yesterday going through the one thousand plus songs on that CD set to pick this one. I’m not sure how much I really like it, but I do need something for my opening and closing credits.

The main topic of this podcast episode was supposed to be a quick discussion of some of the podcasts I listen to regularly. So let me dive into that for a few minutes.

I want to start off by telling you what I don’t listen to. I don’t like podcasts that mix discussion and “Garage Band” music. For example, I used to listen to a podcast about words hosted by two guys who seemed to guess more about word origins than actually research them. They’d pick few words or phrases and do a 40-minute podcast about them. The way they’d stretch out that podcast is by inserting a few Garage Band songs into it. Trouble was, their taste in music was nothing like mine, so I found myself having to fast forward through the music filler to get to the discussion meat. Fast forwarding is not always easy when you’re listening on an iPod and driving in traffic. When I realized that the content I was interested in wasn’t that good to begin with, I dropped the podcast. Ditto for the writing podcast some woman was doing. I wasn’t listening to hear music. I was listening to hear content. If the content was music related, the music would make sense. But it wasn’t and it didn’t.

In general, I don’t listen to music podcasts at all. Finding new music is low on my priority list. So if you you think you might find some tips for new and exciting music podcasts here, you will be disappointed.

What I do like listening to is podcasts that can enlighten me, teach me new things, or make me laugh with intelligent humor. I listen to podcasts primarily when I’m driving or flying, although I do have a i-Fusion speaker thing that makes it easy to listen when I’m working in the kitchen, making dinner or tidying up. So if I can be trapped in a place doing a relatively mindless thing and listen to something that’ll expand my horizons or make me laugh, I’m pretty happy.

That said, here’s a brief summary of some of the podcasts I listen to. You can find links to these podcasts on the transcript for this podcast. Go to www.marialanger.com and click the Podcast link in the navigation bar to find it.

First on the list are a handful National Public Radio (or NPR) podcasts. There are 355 of these podcasts and I’ve tried at least 20 of them. I listen to five of them regularly.

• NPR: Story of the Day is a daily selection of a story from NPR’s programming. These stories are wide-ranging in topics: business, war, travel, entertainment — you name it.
• NPR: Business Story of the Day is a daily selection of a business story from NPR’s programming. Stories cover anything business related, from Silicon Valley news bits to global oil production information and lots of stuff in between. It keeps me informed about the business world.
• NPR: Satire from the Unger Report is a weekly podcast of satire by Brian Unger. It’ll make you laugh — and think.
• NPR: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! is a weekly radio quiz show about the news. It has a panel of three celebrities (no, not the kind in People magazine) and call-in contestants. The questions and answers lean toward the comical, so the show is extremely entertaining.
• NPR: Sunday Puzzle is a weekly podcast of word games with an NPR host, Will Shortz (of the New York Times), and a telephone contestant.

I’ve tried other NPR podcasts, but eventually lost interest in them. And as I prepared this list, I noticed a bunch of new ones to try out. So I might report on some additional podcasts from NPR in the future.

I also listen to American Public Media (APM) Future Tense. It’s a great podcast with short episodes about technology topics.

I listen to three PBS podcasts:

• American Experience is a podcast with short episodes about historical topics. Recent episodes included the Gold Rush and New York.
• NOVA is a podcast of brief stories from the NOVA science television show.
• NOW is a podcast of rather lengthy stories form the NOW news television show. Sometimes the stories interest me and I listen to them. Other times, the stories don’t interest me and I just delete them.

I also watch a NOVA video podcast, which I find excellent. It combines science information with video and still images in a 2 to 3 minute podcast. I like some episodes so much that I save them as movies on my iPod so I can show them to others.

Speaking of video podcasts, I also subscribe to a number of others:

• GARY-PAUL TV is a video podcast of weird stuff published by Gary-Paul Prince of Peachpit Press. My favorite episode, which I’ve saved as a movie for future viewing, is “Drinking and Driving Texas Style.”
• Comedy Central: Stand-Up is a video podcast of stand up comedy segments. I only like about half of these, but the ones I like arae really good, so I keep checking in.
• National Geographic Video Shorts are short video segments from National Geographic television shows.

I also used to enjoy a video podcast called CockpitCast, which showed video out the front window of various commuter jets as they landed at airports in western U.S. cities, but there hasn’t been a new release in a long time, so I don’t know if the pilots are still doing it.

Another aviation podcast I enjoy is Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase. Betty is a flight attendant who loves to travel. She brings along her tape recorded and gets stories from other flight attendants, pilots, and people at the places she flies to. The stories are great but the audio quality is pretty bad sometimes. Still, I think it’s worth a listen. My favorite story? The one where a passenger who died of natural causes during a flight was not declared dead until after the flight was more than halfway to its destination.

For tech news and info, I’ve been trying two Wired magazine podcasts:

• Wired Magazine is a podcast of short pieces from Wired magazine columns.
• Wired News is a podcast of short news stories from Wired magazine.

I also subscribe to Slate magazine’s Daily podcast, which includes interviews about Slate’s online pieces as well as audio versions of some of Slate’s online pieces. It gives me a chance to “read” Slate without having to visit the site. Of course, I only get a small portion of the thoughtful gems available online. I used to subscribe to Slate’s Explainer podcast, but have given it up because the topics weren’t all that interesting to me. You might like them, though, so check them and out see for yourself.

I subscribe to the WordPress podcast because of my interest in WordPress software. I admit that I’ve downloaded all episodes and have listened to just three of them. I think the podcast is good, but I have to be in the right frame of mind to listen to them.

The same goes for the Podcasting Underground podcast. Good, informative stuff, but I have to be in the mood to listen to information about podcasting.

For politics, I listen to a pair of real left-wingers. Sorry, but I am not a conservative at all, neo or otherwise.

• Real Time with Bill Maher is an hour-long podcast of Maher’s HBO television series. He does an interview and then discusses one or more current political topics with a panel of three that usually includes one celebrity entertainer and one political figure. His panels always include someone sitting on the right, so both sides are represented. While I don’t agree with everything I hear, I like to hear the various viewpoints on current political topics. New Rules is a much shorter podcast that includes just the New Rules he lists at the end of his show.
• MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a collection of Olbermann segments from his MSNBC Countdown television show. Olbermann is a Bush basher — do doubt about it — and it amazes me that he says some of the things he says. It’s a real example of the First Amendment in action — if Olbermann said these kinds of things just once in a place like North Korea or Iran or Iraq under Saddam Hussein, he would have been shot dead for treason. But in our country, we’re allowed to voice all kinds of opinions. Olbermann’s aren’t the kind that’ll ever get on Fox News. My favorite bit? The count of times our president said “Stay the course” after Tony Snow told the press he’d only said it eight times. Classic reporting.

I also started listening to Penn Jillette’s weekday radio show on FreeFM, PennRadio. Penn Jillette is the big, fast-talking guy from the magic duo of Penn and Teller. An atheist (his Nevada license plate is the word “ATHEIST”) and libertarian, he definitely has some non-standard views of politics. But he also covers non-political topics. I don’t enjoy all of Penn’s podcast episodes — I probably delete about half of them without listening to more than a few minutes — but I like enough of them to keep my subscription. One of my favorite episodes was his interview of Phyllis Diller (who I didn’t even know was still alive). Ms. Diller had some fascinating stories to tell and I was especially touched by Penn’s patience when her memory failed her more than once during the interview.

And finally, one of the first podcasts I ever subscribed to, podictionary. This daily podcast, with 2 to 5 minute episodes, discusses the origin of a word or phrase. A weekly digest version is also available. Many, many thanks to Charles Hodgson for his dedication to the subject of word history.

Now you know what I’m listening to. What are you listening to? Share your comments and suggestions with me and other listeners by posting your comments on the transcript for this episode. Go to www.marialanger.com, click the Podcasts link in the navigation bar, and scroll down until you find the “Episode 31: Podcast Stuff” entry. Or just use the Search box to search for the number 31. Then use the Comments link at the bottom of the entry to read other people’s comments and add your own.

And as always, thanks for listening. More later.

Join me and a bunch of other Mac geeks for a dude ranch mini-vacation.

Transcript:

A few months ago, I started thinking about how cool it would be to have a computer conference here in Wickenburg, at my favorite guest ranch: Rancho de los Caballeros. Los Caballeros is not only the nicest dude ranch in this Dude Ranch Capital of Arizona, but it has the most interesting activities and the absolute best restaurant.

The idea was to invite a bunch of authors and let each of them do three or four sessions over a five-day period. The sessions would be in the morning and there would be all kinds of activities in the afternoon, like horseback riding, golf, shopping trips into town, Jeep tours, and, of course, helicopter rides. The people who came would have a lot of fun, learn a lot, and have a great opportunity to network with other Mac users. For some people, it could even be considered a business trip. Best of all, I could introduce people to Wickenburg, the little town I live in and often blog about.

The event would be called Mac Cowboys because of the western dude ranch theme.

Now in case you don’t know, I’m a busy person. It took me nearly forever to talk to the ranch people and crunch the numbers to see what the trip would cost. It looked feasible, so I set a date in early December, before the busy Christmas holidays. Then I got a list of possible author/speakers from one of my editors at Peachpit and invited them to attend.

I guess everyone is just as busy as I am. None of them could attend. I hope that it’s nothing I should be taking personally.

So rather than give up the whole thing, I decided to restructure the event. I shortened it from five days to four. I cut the speakers from five to one. I cut the sessions from 12 to just two and made them more discussion based, giving all the participants a chance to share what they knew and ask everyone questions. I arranged the activities so all participants could go together, giving everyone an opportunity to network like crazy outside the meeting rooms. Then, with greatly reduced costs, I recalculated the per-person cost. The numbers I came up with were certainly within reason for a 4-day, all inclusive weekend at a luxury dude ranch.

Now I’m taking it public, offering it to the readers of my blog, podcast listeners, and the folks who buy Mac books from Peachpit Press.

Please understand that this isn’t a typical computer conference.

For a moment, think of the last computer conference you attended. You know, the one in the big conference hall with thousands of attendees shuffling around a show floor with shopping bags. The one with overcrowded dark classrooms with bad sound systems and speakers telling you more about whatever it is they’re trying to sell than something you really want to learn about. The one where you paid to get into the conference hall, you paid to sit through seminars, you paid to stay in a hotel, and you paid to eat disappointing meals. The one with uncomfortable free shuttles or long walks from your hotel to the conference hall. The one where your only entertainment were demos on the show floor or sad vendor parties with bad food and expensive alcohol.

Now wipe those ugly thoughts right from your mind.

Mac Cowboys is a mini-vacation first: a four-day, three-night stay with luxury accommodations at a ranch that can only accommodate about a hundred and fifty people at once. You get yourself to Phoenix Sky Harbor airport or Wickenburg and just about everything else is paid for — ground transportation to and from the ranch, hotel room, three meals a day, horseback riding, golf, Jeep tour, helicopter tour, swimming, tennis, nature hikes — all kinds of activities. There’s even free wi-fi access in certain hotspots throughout the ranch. All you pay for is alcoholic beverages and extras like skeet shooting or golf cart or club rental.

I’ve set aside three short hours a day on the two middle days for official business stuff: a pair of conference sessions where you can learn more about using your Mac. One session covers Mac OS X topics. The other covers Web publishing topics. And there will be plenty of informal sessions among participants to pick brains and get burning questions answered.

And if you’re wondering what December is like in Wickenburg, AZ, imagine 60° to 70° F sunny days — often without a cloud in the sky. Weather won’t keep you inside during the day. Sure, at night it gets cold, but it also gets dark. And you have to rest sometime.

Sound good? I think so — and I do this stuff all the time.

This first Mac Cowboys event, which is scheduled for December 7th through 10th, 2006, is a test of my idea. If it works out on this small scale, it should work out on a larger scale with more speakers and more guests. If it ever outgrows Los Cab or I feel like trying someplace new, I can take it on the road to another ranch. I’d like to do it once or twice a year, just to keep life interesting.

So consider this your formal invitation. Come on out to Wickenburg and be a Mac Cowboy for a few days.

Want more information? Check out the Mac Cowboys Web site at maccowboys.com.

This is my first attempt to create a podcast with GarageBand. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

It’€™s a ‘€œcommercial’€ for Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. Short, with lots of pictures. A decent example of how a podcast can be created with Garageband on a Mac.

This is my first attempt to create a podcast with GarageBand. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

It’s a “commercial” for Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. Short, with lots of pictures. A decent example of how a podcast can be created with Garageband on a Mac.

A transcript can be found on the Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure page of Flying M Air’s Web site.

Use the Comments link here to enter your comments about this podcast.

I’ll probably whip up a how-to article that explains how I did this. Apple’s documentation is pretty crummy. (I guess that’s why I can make a living writing books about Apple software.)

In this episode I discuss a few stats software programs for Webmasters and bloggers. Then I tell you a little bit about some of the stats on one of my sites and why the stat is important. This podcast should be interesting to anyone interested in monitoring site statistics or improving a blog or site based on access information.

First of all, I want to welcome you all back to Maria Speaks. I said I’d try to publish podcasts more frequently and I’ve failed miserably. I suspect that it’s because I can’t always think of topics that are podcast-worthy. So, in an effort to release podcasts more frequently, I’ll throw the concept of podcast worthiness out the window and do short podcasts about the things I think my readers and site visitors will find interesting.. Since most of my podcasts are less than 10 minutes long, they’re really not a burden to download. If you happen to download one on a topic you don’t think is worthy of your time, just delete it.

Of course, you can always suggest podcast topics for me. It’s easy. Just go to MariaLanger.com and use the Contact button at the top of any page to shoot me an e-mail message with your suggestion. I can’t make promises, but having something specific to talk about can sure get me started.

Now on to today’s topic: Site Stats.

I’m one of those people who love statistics. There’s something about numbers that I really like and when I get numbers that communicate real information — especially useful information — I’m in seventh heaven.

I’ve been running at least one Web site since 1995 or thereabouts. Before that, starting back in 1989, I ran a BBS — that’s short for bulletin board system. If you’re too old to remember those, imagine an online system with file downloads and discussion forums. Mine ran on a Mac SE/30 with a pair of 28.8 kbps modems.

Since 1989, I’ve been monitoring access of my BBS or Web sites. Sometimes I did it with software I purchased just for the purpose. Sometimes I did it with solutions I cooked up myself. For example, I had a kick butt FileMaker Pro database that would crunch the stats from my old WebSTAR sites and turn them into reports. The only trouble is, the darn scripts sometimes took hours to run. There was just too much data.

With my current blog-based sites, I have a variety of tools for monitoring access and checking site stats. It’s not because I need multiple tools. It’s because I just can’t decide on which ones I like best.

The four I’m playing with now include SiteMeter, W3Counter, Performancing Metrics, and WP-ShortStat.

• SiteMeter, which is a free Web-based solution, puts a counter on the Web page. You can see it in action on our WordPress book companion Web site, wpvqs.com. But SiteMeter is more than just an ugly counter. Click it to display statistics about site visitors, page views, referrers, and more. There are even more statistics for an administrator than what is available for visitors to see. A subscription version with more features is also available.
• w3Counter is another free Web-based solution that puts a counter on the Web page and keeps track of all kinds of statistics on its own site. And a subscription version with more features is also available. It was recommended to me by a blog reader who read my article about SiteMeter. He suggested it as an alternative and I tried it out. I liked it better, so I replaced the counter on my personal site, MariaLanger.com, with a w3Counter counter.
• Performancing Metrics is another free Web-based solution. It’s associated with the Performancing.com site, which has a lot of tips and ideas for bloggers. I figured I’d give it a try. Unfortunately, it does not seem to work well with WordPress. I’ve tried two different versions of the JavaScript code that must be inserted in my template file and even tried a WordPress-specific plugin. The stats I get are pretty meaningless. So I’m putting that on hold for a while. Perhaps I’ll get it to work right in the future. But if you’re looking for a solution and you don’t use WordPress, it’s definitely worth trying out.
• WP-ShortStat is a WordPress plugin that keeps track of site access information and displays statistics right within a WordPress administration panel. It’s a nice little software package and I currently use it on my helicopter tour and charter Web site, FlyingMAir.com. If you’re a WordPress user and want to try this out, be sure to check out a tip I wrote on our WordPress book companion Web site where I explain how to get it to work right if it won’t work right out-of-the-box (so to speak).

Today I took a close look at the stats for the past month on MariaLanger.com. I did it primarily to get a better picture of what was popular on the site, but as I took notes about what I saw, I realized that the information might be interesting to podcast listeners, especially those folks interested in starting or improving their own sites or blogs.

Before I get started, I need to define some terms.

• A visitor is someone who comes to your site and browses around for a while. He might view one page or a dozen, but he’s doing it all during one session. Unique visitors is a subset of visitors. A visitor might come to your site five times in a specific day; if so, he’s counted as five visitors but just one unique visitor. A new visitor is a visitor who has never been to the site before. And a returning visitor is a visitor who has come back for more.
• A hit or page hit is a page loaded for a visitor to view. In the old days — and probably still with some software — hits could include not just html or php content, but media within that content. So if an html page included five images, loading the page could count as six hits. That’s a really meaningless number. The stats software I use counts page hits only, which is far more meaningful.

My site, MariaLanger.com only gets 100 to 200 visitors and a few hundred page hits a day. Could be better, could be worse. I’m not complaining. What I wanted to know was what these visitors were looking at, when they were visiting, and who sent them. That’s where my statistics software helped out.

For example, looking at visitor timing, I could see that I get more visitors at the beginning or end of the week than midweek. During that period, I also get more hits per visitor.

Looking at visitors and hits on a day-to-day perspective, I see that the vast majority of my visits and hits occur right around 4 PM local time. (Arizona is always 7 hours behind GMT; in the summer, we’re in the same time zone as California; in the winter, we’re the same as Colorado.) I can also see that I get more visitors between 9 AM and 4 PM than after 4 PM. Those visitors are looking at more pages, too. Could they be surfing my way during working hours? Sure looks that way to me.

The most visitors I had during the past month was on July 6. Oddly enough, the most page hits I had for the past month was on July 5. So more visitors viewed fewer pages on July 6. That seems odd to me.

The most popular pages on my site are, in order:

• Home Page – 20% of the views
• Books Page – 3% of the views
• Excel Visual QuickProject Guide Book Support Page – 3% of the views
• Excel Visual QuickStart Guide Book Support Page – 2% of the views
• Mac OS X Visual QuickStart Guide Book Support Page – 2% of the views

This tells me that people come to my site to learn more about my books, specifically the books I’ve written about Excel and Mac OS X. To better serve those visitors so they come back for more, I should write more articles about those topics.

Next, I looked at information about the computers my site’s visitors were using to access the site. That’s where I got a few surprises.

First of all, a full 75% of my site’s visitors access the site using Windows XP while only 12% access using Mac OS X. Now you might think that’s a high percentage of Mac OS X users, but when you consider the fact that most of my work is about Mac OS X, the high percentage of users seems reasonable. What seems odd to me is that so many visitors access using Windows PCs. I do write books about Windows software — as a matter of fact, I’ve written several about Word and Excel — but I’ve never considered myself a Windows author. So the 75% figure seems outrageously high to me. It also suggests that I should write fewer articles on my site about Mac OS-specific topics and more about cross-platform or Windows-specific topics. That’ll take some doing, since I really prefer writing about Macs.

On the browser front, 60% of my site’s visitors use Microsoft Internet Explorer, with most of those using Explorer 6. 23% use Firefox, which is my preferred browser. A bunch of other browsers were listed, of course, as well as a PlayStation 2, which I didn’t even know could access the Web. (I’m willing to bet my site looked pretty crappy on that device.) This is important information, too. I recently discovered that Explorer for Windows is more likely to choke on XHTML and CSS errors than any other browser. In fact, with an error on one of my sites, none of the pages on that site rendered correctly in Explorer. That means that 60% of the site’s visitors weren’t getting the intended user experience. I’ve since fixed the problem, of course, but now I’ll be extra careful to prevent similar problems in the future.

I also noted that 90% of site visitors had monitor resolution set to 1024 x 768 pixels or larger. That’s good news. It means that very, very few people need to use the horizontal scroll bars to see page content. (Horizontal scrolling is a big no-no.) But it also means that I could redesign the site to make each fixed-width page a bit wider to take advantage of the screen real estate my site’s visitors have at their disposal. Wider pages mean larger images, which could make a better visitor experience.

Another important stat is referrers — that’s how you can find out where your site’s visitors come from. On my site, more than 60% of visitors come from search engines. 25% come from direct visits or bookmarks — in other words, the visitor either typed a URL in the address bar of their browser or used a bookmark to visit me.

Of the search engine referrals, 89% came from Google, 5% came from Yahoo!, and 3% came from MSN. Google is obviously widely used and I’m fortunate through some sort of dumb luck, I suppose, to rank highly in Google search results.

The top search phrases are the most fun. Obviously, my stats software listed dozens of them. Here are the top 5 for the past month; you can use them in Google to find the pages they refer to yourself:

• drying cherries – 41 searches
• maria langer – 31 searches
• howard mesa ranch – 16 searches
• bookmark synchronizer se – 13 searches
• bisquick quiche – 9 searches

Although my cherry drying article is one of the top 20 articles on my site, it’s odd to me that none of the search phrases — other than my own name, of course — refer to any of the top 5 visited pages. Whodathunk I’d get nine page hits for people searching for Biquick recipes?

Reading through the list of search phrases also provides valuable insight as to how users construct searches. For example, a recent search phrase that brought a visitor to my site was “number of vehicles enter and depart at Lukeville border.” The searcher was treated to an article about my recent helicopter flight along the border with an ASU photojournalist.

This is just an example of the kinds of stats some of the stats solutions can provide. If you think these things through, you can use them to improve your site and make it more interesting to visitors. Hopefully, that’ll generate more visits and page hits, especially if you have something valuable to share.

Do you use stats software? How do you use it? Visit the transcript for this podcast at MariaLanger.com and use the comments link to share your thoughts. I’ll read the comments I get in a future podcast.

That’s all for now. Thanks for listening. Keep checking in. I’ll be podcasting again soon.

site, statistics, metrics, Web, development, traffic

This short podcast is a reading from a recent article I wrote on my book support site for Microsoft Word users. It explains the difference between smart and straight quotes and tells you how to work with them in Microsoft Word. You can read the transcript of this podcast and see the accompanying screenshots at www.marialanger.com

Transcripts:

Curly or “smart” quotes are single and double quote marks that curve in toward what they surround. This blog, if viewed in the intended font, displays all quotes as smart quotes. Smart quotes are also often referred to as “typographers” quotes because they’re common in printed work like books, magazine articles, and other documents.

You may not realize it, but a smart quote character is actually a different character than its corresponding straight quote. Think about it: it has to be. After all, it looks different, doesn’t it? That means it has to be a different character.

These characters are easy to type on a Macintosh. For example, to get the “ character, type Option-[. to get the ’ character, type Shift-Option-]. (Although there must be some way to type these in on a Windows computer, I don’t know how to do it; perhaps a reader can use the Comments link to share the keystrokes?)

In Word, you can also use the Special Characters pane of the Symbols dialog. Choose Insert > Symbol to display the dialog and click the Special Characters tab or button. Scroll down to find the character you want (they’re listed at the bottom of the list) and double-click the one you want to insert it. This is a rather cumbersome way to get the job done, but it does work.

Fortunately, Word offers a better, automated way. You can set an option in the AutoFormat as you Type pane of the AutoCorrect dialog that will automatically convert every straight quote you type to the corresponding smart quote. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click the AutoFormat as You Type tab or button in the dialog that appears. Then turn on the “Straight quotes” with “Smart quotes” check box. (As you can see, that’s the only feature I have enabled in this pane on my copy of Word; I don’t like Word messing with the formatting of what I type, as I discuss in “Three Ways Word Can Drive You Crazy[er] and What You Can Do About Them.”) Click OK to save your setting.

From that point on, every time you type a single or double quote, Word will convert it to a smart quote. If your computer isn’t very fast, you might actually be able to see the conversion happen. And, if you use Word’s Undo feature, you can undo the conversion to revert the character back to the regular quote you typed.

I should mention here that this feature is enabled by default, so if you never changed this setting and you want smart quotes, you don’t have to do a thing to get them.

Now suppose you have a document that was typed without smart quotes. Perhaps a passage of text copied from a Web site or a document someone wrote with a plain old text editor. You want to dress up the document for printing and smart quotes are important to you. Do you have to retype all those quotes to “educate” them? Heck no! Just use Find and Replace.

First double check to make sure that the “Straight quotes” to “Smart quotes” feature is enabled as discussed above. Then choose Edit > Replace to display the Find and Replace window. Type the same plain old double quote character in the Find What and Replace With boxes. Then click Replace All. Word will replace the dumb double quotes with the correct smart quotes and tell you how many it replaced. Click OK to dismiss the confirmation dialog. Then type the same plain old single quote character in the Find What and Replace with boxes and click Replace All. Word replaces all the dumb single quotes with smart single quotes. Click OK to dismiss the confirmation dialog and close the Find and Replace window.

If you do this a lot, you might consider writing a macro that does the job for you. But that’s beyond the scope of this article.

What if you have a document with smart quotes and you need to turn them into straight quotes? Easy enough. Follow the same process, but before you use the Find and Replace window, check to make sure that the “Straight quotes” to “Smart quotes” option is turned off. Find and Replace should dumb up the quotes.

Now that you know the tricks, there’s no reason why your Word documents shouldn’t have the smartest quotes around.

Microsoft, Word, smart quotes

A discussion of Howard Mesa and flying for hire, including cherry drying in Washington state.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Episode 26 of Maria Speaks: Summer Plans.

Summer is here in Wickenburg and thermometer readings prove it. For the past three days, the thermometer on my back patio, which is positioned in the shade, has reached 110 degrees farenheit or more. While the metric equivalent of 42 or so sounds cooler, I don’t think it would feel any cooler. It’s downright hot here.

Wickenburg lies in the northern part of the Sonoran desert. That’s the desert with the big saguaro cacti and other low-water vegetation. We’re at about 2400 feet elevation here, which is at least a thousand feet higher than Phoenix, so we’re cooler than Phoenix. Well, cooler in temperature, anyway. You might be able to imagine how hot Phoenix is. Or you can just check the Weather Channel’s Web site for the shocking details.

For the past two summers, I’ve bailed out of Wickenburg for the summer months. In 2004, I got a job as a pilot at the Grand Canyon, flying helicopter tours on a seven on/seven off schedule. I lived in a trailer at our property on Howard Mesa during my on days. Howard Mesa is a 40-minute drive from Grand Canyon Airport at Tusayan. I was five miles from pavement, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by peace and quiet and not much else. Unfortunately, I had a 13-hour work day, including commuting time. Near the end of the season, in September, I was leaving for work before sunrise and returning after sunset. Didn’t get much of a chance to enjoy the place.

Last year, in 2005, I spent the entire month of July at Howard Mesa with Alex the Bird, Jack the Dog, and our two horses. The property is fenced in, so the horses just wander around. I was living in the trailer again, but working on a project. We’d installed a 12 x 24 foot shed there and needed to get things inside it organized. In the future, we’ll use it to store materials for when we build a house up there. Now, it stores other stuff.

Don’t get the idea that our place at Howard Mesa is some kind of luxury accommodation. It isn’t. It’s off the grid, so we don’t have electricity. The trailer has a solar panel on the roof that tends to keep the battery charged. There’s a thousand-watt generator up there just in case the batteries die down. There’s no television, telephone, microwave, or dishwasher. Water comes from two tanks that hold a total of about 2100 gallons; when water levels get low, we pay someone to fill them back up. We did install a septic system, so there are no worries when it comes to using a toilet. Thank heaven.

The shed now has solar panels and will soon be wired for lighting. There’s a fridge and stove in there and a big propane tank out back that keeps them running. There’s other camping gear there, as well. It’s very basic, covering the bare necessities. That’s fine with me. Sometimes it’s good to get down to basics, just so you realize how luxurious your regular home — no matter how small or sparsely furnished — really is.

This year I was trying to get completely out of Arizona for the summer. I applied for two different jobs in Alaska and was told I could have either one — if I started in April. I couldn’t start that early. I was working on a Visual QuickStart Guide for Peachpit Press and those require that I spend long hours in front of a computer with a big screen, laying out every page of the book manually. Although I originally expected to be finished by early May, some medical problems slowed me down. I’m okay now, but the book is just being finished. It’s early June, so the way I see it, I lost a whole month.

I also got called about a job drying cherry trees in Washington State. I wrote about it in my blog. Here’s how it works. The cherry trees start getting fruit in June. It also rains in June. The raindrops settle on the fruit. If the fruit isn’t dried, it splits. No one wants to buy split cherries, so the farmer loses his crop. Evidently, a number of people sell what they call insurance to the farmers. If the farmers buy in, when it rains, a helicopter magically appears over their fields to dry the cherries. The helicopter does this with downwash from its main rotor blades. It hovers about 4 feet over the tree tops and moves along the rows at about 4 miles an hour. A helicopter like mine can dry 40 acres of cherry trees in an hour.

The work is dangerous, primarily because of the wires that are all over and around the fields. Every year, a couple of pilots get their tail rotors tangled up in wires and wind up down in the trees, wrapped up in a mangled helicopter. But I’m always willing to try something different. The way I see it, I did okay at the Grand Canyon and I did fine racing with boats at Lake Havasu earlier this year. I’m a careful pilot and should be able to do a decent job in the cherry orchards.

Of course, there are only a certain number of spots open to pilots and aircraft. I had three things going against me: First, I’d never done it before, so I was an unknown. Second, I didn’t have a fuel truck driver to deliver fuel to me out in the fields. (One of the guys offered to let me share his truck, though, so that wasn’t a big hurdle.) Third, I was based in Arizona and would have to make an 8-hour flight to Washington State just to settle into my base there. The folks who do the hiring didn’t want to pay for that 16-hour round trip ferry flight and I couldn’t blame them. But I had to charge a bit more than some of the local pilots to cover my travel costs and the outrageous cost of special insurance I’d have to get just for the job.

So they never said yes. But they never said no. When questioned, they kept saying maybe. Time passed. The season start day approached. I assumed they weren’t interested — they never said yes. One of my contacts — the guy who brought me into the running — got an assignment that started on June 5. That’s yesterday. He put me in touch with someone else. That guy told me I had an 85% chance of getting work if I came up there. I read between the lines. He was suggesting that I fly up there and just settle into a hotel and wait. Without a contract.

Now let me explain how payment for this kind of job works. Pilots get a contract that’s usually for about 30 days. The contract includes a per diem amount for standby time. That amount covers the cost of your hotel room, food, ground transporation, and, in my case, insurance (at a whopping $150 a day). The contract also includes a per hour fee for actual flight time. So the more you fly, the more you make, but if you don’t fly, at least you have your basic costs covered.

This guy was suggesting — without actually suggesting it — that I fly up there and go on standby without per diem compensation. So not only would I have to eat the ferry cost, but I’d have to eat my hotel cost, too. Unless I flew. I was told that I could charge more per hour if I didn’t have a contract, but I’d obviously be the last pilot called if I was also the most expensive.

When I pretended, in our phone conversation, not to pick up on this, he went on to tell me that they might still need me. They’d know for sure by Monday (yesterday) and would call then. They’d need me to be there by the end of the week.

This kind of bugged me. I was finishing up my Visual QuickStart Guide and needed the rest of the week to get it done right. These guys expected me to drop everything, hop in my helicopter, and fly up. When they called. If they called.

Well, I didn’t get a phone call from cherry-land yesterday.

Now I do need to admit that this whole wait-and-see situation was starting to get on my nerves. It was okay back in April when I was first introduced. With enough notice, I could shape my summer around the job. True, I did have a book to work on in June, but I figured that I could work on it in my hotel during my standby time. I’d just have to get a PC laptop — which I was due to buy anyway — and find an Internet connection somewhere. I could figure it out. But as time slipped by and I was still waiting, I started to get antsy. Since I didn’t know if this job would work out, I couldn’t really make any plans for something else. I half-heartedly applied for a job at the Grand Canyon again, but didn’t follow up. I didn’t want to go to the Canyon. I wanted to go to Washington. I wanted to try something new, have more free time, and fly my own helicopter. I wanted to open a new door.

So yesterday, when the phone didn’t ring, I was both disappointed and relieved.

Now I can make a real summer plan. And, at this point, it appears that it will involve Howard Mesa again.

I figured I’d go up there with Alex, Jack, and the horses again. But I’d also get involved with the Town of Williams. I’d get a business license there and join the Chamber of Commerce. Then I’d build a relationship with some of the local businesses and offer day trips by helicopter to Sedona and the Grand Canyon. If I got two or three flights a week, it would keep Zero Mike Lima flying and me out of trouble.

Best of all, it’s cool at Howard Mesa — generally 20 degrees cooler than in Wickenburg.

Which is a good thing, because there’s no air conditioning there, either.

A discussion of the WordPress blogging platform.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Maria Speaks episode 25: WordPress.

First of all, I have to apologize for not keeping up with the podcasts as promised. Although I have plenty to write about in my blogs, I don’t seem able to get it together for a podcast. I know there are podcast subscribers out there waiting for new content, but none of them have provided any feedback about what they’d like to hear. So I’m just kind of floundering around without guidance, waiting for someone to give me an idea.

To make matters worse, I had a bit of surgery early in May and have been recovering more slowly than I expected. I’m okay — I’m just a little slow — and you can take that any way you like because it probably applies. It’s very frustrating for me. I can’t wait until everything’s healed and I can really get on with my life.

Today I decided to do a podcast about WordPress. Those of you who read my blog know that I use WordPress now to create and maintain not just my blog but my personal Web site and my book support Web site. You also might know that I’m co-authoring a book with Miraz Jordan about using WordPress. The book, which is for Peachpit Press, is called WordPress 2 Visual QuickStart Guide and it should be in stores by June.

WordPress is, on the surface, a blogging platform. With PHP, MySQL, XHTML, and CSS under the hood, it offers an easy-to-use, Web-based interface for adding posts, managing categories, handling comment moderation, and performing other blog-related tasks. A novice user can use WordPress without knowing a thing about what’s under the hood. But a user with some knowledge of HTML and CSS could go nuts customizing the blog’s appearance. Add a little knowledge of PHP and plugins available to WordPress server installations and the sky’s the limit on blog customization.

But WordPress is more than just a blogging tool. It’s a complete content management system. That means you can use it to build an entire Web site, with static pages and navigation. This is what I’ve done with the two sites I recreated with WordPress: marialanger.com (where you can find the transcript for this podcast) and wickenburg-az.com. WordPress is a perfect tool for maintaining a Web site that needs fresh content added regularly because its blog format automatically displays new content on the home page and archives old content so it’s always available. No need to code HTML and manually revise pages. WordPress does it all for you.

When I first started using WordPress last year, I got very excited about it very quickly. Finally, a Web publishing tool that gave me the power to create my own custom solution without knowing XML. (I never did bother to learn XML or JavaScript, both of which are popular programming languages for Web publishing.) I realized that I could customize my sites little by little, tweaking them to meet my needs. It was a dream come true — a Web publishing project that I could work on forever without it ever looking only partially completed.

Best of all, WordPress is open source software built with open source software. That means its free for most uses.

WordPress comes in two versions: WordPress.com and a WordPress server installation. Let me take a moment to explain the differences between the two.

WordPress.com is a Web site built and maintained by the WordPress development team. Users can create a free WordPress.com account and immediately start blogging. There’s no need for a server or a domain name or any knowledge of any programming languages. WordPress.com bloggers have some control over the appearance and navigation options of their blogs, so they can personalize them to some extent. A WordPress.com account is a great, free way for novice bloggers — or bloggers on a budget — to get their words out.

A WordPress server installation requires the blogger to either install WordPress on his own server or on an ISP’s server. This requires a bit of technical know-how, as well as certain versions of MySQL, PHP, and an Apache-compatible Web server to be installed on the server. It isn’t difficult to do — after all, I managed to do it on a spare Macintosh G4 running Mac OS X Tiger server. But you can also set it up on an ISP’s server if the server meets the minimum system requirements. I was able to set it up, for example, on a GoDaddy.com hosting account. A WordPress server installation is a costlier and more complex way to use WordPress, but it does give you complete control over the way your WordPress-based Web site looks and works. Only through a server installation can you fully customize theme files and install WordPress plugins.

No matter how you set up your WordPress blog, it’s easy to create blog entries and static pages. Just use a Web-based form with just about any Web browser — I prefer Firefox — to compose and edit content. The blog’s administrative interface gives you access to all the tools you need to set up categories, moderate comments, add links and blogrolls, and manage user accounts. WordPress.com server installations support multiple blogger accounts for a blog, making it great for a site that’s built and maintained by multiple people. Content appears online immediately, as soon as it’s published.

It’s also easy for blog readers to enter comments about your entries — if you allow commenting. This creates a dialog between you, the blogger, and your readers. (A two-edged sword sometimes!) Both types of WordPress installations have comment spam prevention tools, so you don’t have to worry much about comment spam.

There are millions of blogs out there, millions of bloggers sharing their thoughts with readers. If you’ve always wanted to be one, why wait? Visit WordPress.com to get started.

But if you’re like me and are just looking for that perfect Web publishing tool to make your sites easy to build, customize, and manage, a WordPress server installation may be just what you need.

This short podcast brings listeners up to date on what I’ve been up to since my podcast suddenly stopped in November, along with a repeat of my pledge to keep coming up with new podcasts weekly.

Transcript:

I promised a new podcast every week and I’m trying hard to deliver. This week, I’ll bring everyone up to date on the things I’ve been up to. Of course, there are always more details in my blog at www.marialanger.com.

I promise I’ll try not to bore you.

Work in Progress

About a month ago, I started working on a new book for Peachpit Press called WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide. I’m working with a co-author on the project, Miraz Jordan. Miraz lives in New Zealand, where it’s always tomorrow. I’m recording this on a Sunday evening and, at this very moment, Miraz is probably hard at work on a Monday afternoon. I think it’s kind of unfair that she gets an extra day on the deadline. Or is that one less day? Too much sangria this afternoon to think it out properly.

WordPress, for those of you who don’t know, is my current blogging platform of choice. I started using it late last year and quickly fell in love with it. Since then, I’ve sucked down all the information I could about it and I think it’s safe to say that I experiment with it daily. I love its flexibility most of all — the ability to build all kinds of features into a blog-based Web site and to have it look just about any way you like. But I felt I needed a seasoned expert to help me write the book, so that’s why I asked Miraz to join me. She’s been using the software for years and has over a thousand entries in her blog at mactips.info. Check it out.

My other current writing project is actually a DVD training video for macProVideo.com. It’s about Microsoft Word for Macintosh and, if I can figure out how to narrate while I’m performing tasks without sounding like an idiot, I might get it done sometime soon. I know that writing a script for each segment isn’t the way. I quickly discovered that I can’t read a script and perform tasks at the same time.

Computer Woes

If you follow my blog, you know that I had a series of computer problems this past winter.

First, my main production Mac’s hard disk got scrambled and required professional help to bring back from the near-dead. I backed everything up, reformatted that drive, and reinstalled everything.

Reformatting my main hard drive is a maintenance task I used to do every time I upgraded to a new version of the system software. Mac OS X’s time-consuming installations and hidden preference files made it a bit of a chore, though, so I stopped.

Reformatting and rebuilding a hard disk is like a massive spring cleaning. Imagine taking all the furniture out of your home, stripping out the carpet and tile, sandblasting the walls and floor, and putting brand new versions of everything you had back in. The benefit is that when you’re done, everything is right where you put it, all in one piece and easy to find. You also throw out a lot of junk you didn’t really need.

Moving is like that, too. You throw away stuff when you pack, you move the boxes you packed, and then you throw more stuff away when you arrive in your new place. Sometimes I think you should unpack at your old home just so you can throw away the second time without moving it first.

The second computer problem was way more serious. My Web server’s hard disk crashed. (There must have been something in the electricity this past winter.) The drive was a complete goner. And, of course, the DVD drive in that computer was already toasted. So I had both replaced and rebuilt the Web server from scratch using whatever backups I had.

Of course, I didn’t have everything backed up. This was my third hard disk crash since 1989 and you think that by now I’d learn. I didn’t. My two WordPress blogs (marialanger.com and wickenburg-az.com) had their databases backed up — thank heaven! — but the theme files, plugins, and other stuff that makes up a WordPress blog had not been backed up. Neither were a bunch of the image files. Because the themes were so heavily customized (due to all that experimentation I bragged about earlier), it took a lot of rebuilding to get it back to what I wanted to see. wickenburg-az.com is still not 100% back — it’s missing lots of pictures.

It’s kind of weird because I was never really happy with my first version of marialanger.com, but I’d put so much work into it that I wasn’t willing to change it. Then all that work got wiped away, as if my computer sensed my dissatisfaction and wanted to prod me into fixing it. So when I rebuilt, I made it more to my liking. I’m much more pleased with the current site. But I really wish my computer hadn’t taken so much with it.

Miraz and I will be covering backup strategies for WordPress blogs in detail in our book — or on its companion Web site. I don’t want any of my readers to go through what I went through. What a waste of time!

Flying

I’ve also been flying. A lot.

March was my busiest month ever at Flying M Air and I actually earned enough money to pay the helicopter loan for the next two months. I did charters to Sedona and the Grand Canyon, photo shoots at proving grounds and golf courses, real estate tours, and a charter to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. (Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, there’s an airbus on short final for runway 7 left. Do you have him in sight? Sure. I’d have to be blind not to see him.) All that and the usual round of 25 minute and 50 minute tours.

March was also a record breaking month in a bad way. In one week, two different passengers broke my record of no pukers in my helicopter. One of them puked in my lunch bag. (Watch the leather seats and the carpet! Move the microphone away from your mouth!) They were both kids, so I can still tell people that I’ve never had an adult puke in the helicopter. And I have a new policy: no flights over 1 hour long with kids on board.

Yesterday, I flew more than 90 people at an airport event in Buckeye, AZ. So I have June’s loan payment taken care of, too. Looks like I’ll be able to keep the helicopter a few more months.

I even flew today — two flights totaling an hour and a half. Where are these people coming from? And where the hell were they in January and February? And will they stay long enough to take me through the long, hot summer?

Listener Feedback

I got one bit of listener feedback recently from Justin. Or maybe it was Jason. I’m sorry. I accidently deleted your e-mail. Justin or Jason got a new iPod Nano and wants some iPod tips. I want some, too. I’ll have to look some up, put together a podcast, and record it for us. Until then, I recommend doing a Google search for something like iPod tips. I did it and found a bunch of sites. Unfortunately, I’m not prepared to comment on their quality.

If you have feedback about this podcast or my podcasts in general, send them to me at mariaspeaks@mac.com. I’ll try not to delete it before I commit your name to medium-term memory. I do take requests for topics. As Justin or Jason has learned, I don’t always get right to the request topic, but I eventually get there. This just hasn’t been the best week for thinking about new things. Too much old stuff to think about.

Thanks for listening. More next week.

It’s been quite a while — about three months, in fact, since I did my last podcast. This morning, I got an e-mail message from a listener named Anne-Marie of Seneca Design and Training, reminding me that I was neglecting my podcasting duties. So I’m going to try to get back into the swing of things and deliver a new podcast at least once a week. But I do need your help. If you want to hear more podcasts, do what Anne-Marie did: e-mail me. Use the Contact Me page on my Web site, www.marialanger.com. Tell me what kind of content you want to listen to and I’ll see what I can do to deliver.

If you’re new to Maria Speaks and don’t know much about me, you might want to visit my Web site at www.marialanger.com. It’s been recently redone — again — and that’s a long story — and it combines my book support site with my blog. You can get a better idea of what I do and write about so you can come up with special requests. This past week, I wrote about the Dan Brown plagiarism case, how spelling checkers are making me lazy, and my AmazonConnect author blog.

Today, I’m going to fill you in on my rather unorthodox and interesting weekend with an audio blog entry.

Transcript:

Another entry from The Truth is Stranger than Fiction files.

I spent most of Friday and Saturday watching and listening to men shoot machine guns out in the desert.

Let me go back to the beginning.

Months ago, my friend Ryan, who I met at Wickenburg airport a few years back, told me he wanted to get me involved in an annual “shoot” out in Wickieup.

Wickieup, for those of you who don’t have an Arizona atlas handy, is a small town on the Big Sandy Wash (or River, depending on who you speak to), about 75 northwest of Wickenburg on route 93. Basically, if you’re driving from Wickenburg to Las Vegas (or back) and you didn’t buy gas or corn nuts or use the toilet in Wickenburg (or Kingman), you stop at Wickieup. It’s a ranching community, too, with lots of nice people and even its own 4H Club.

Ryan took care of all the arrangements. Our mutual friend, Ed (more Ryan’s friend than mine), was planning to fly up in his Sikorsky S-55 turbine conversion, a monster of a helicopter that I’d first seen down at Falcon Field (where he’s based) at an airshow we’d both been part of at Falcon Field two years ago. Ed is getting up there in years (he’s past 70 now) and although he still flies, he lost his commercial insurance and gave up his part 135 certificate. He’s a really experienced pilot and the only one I know to have his helicopter hit by a train. But that’s another story.

The plan was for Ed to fly up to Wickenburg for fuel on his way to Wickieup. Ryan and another guy would be on board. They’d pick up my EZ-Up (a shade thing) and other big gear and take it up for me. Then we’d fly up to the shoot in loose formation, making a bit of an “entrance” when we arrived.

On Friday, I had my gear packed. A stuff sack full of camping gear that included a tent, sleeping bag, air matress, and pump and the EZ-Up. I had a change of clothes and some other gear packed into my helicopter, which I’d filled with fuel and parked on one of the heli-spots.

Around 11 AM, I saw Ed’s helicopter coming. It was impossible not to. The damn thing is about 20 feet tall and big enough to hold a Jeep. But when it landed, I saw that it didn’t have a jeep inside it. Instead, it had all the gear its three passengers needed for their overnight stay. And as you can see by the photo, guys don’t know how to pack light. (Yes, that is a full-sized futon and a bar-be-que grill.) I told the folks at the airport that the helicopter was my cargo ship.

After Ed fueled, we both started up and he took off. Ryan rode with me and we quickly caught up with the bigger ship. Although larger and turbine-powered, the S-55 is slow. Its cruise speed is about 80 and I’m not sure, but I think that’s 80 MPH, not knots. It was hard to form up with him without passing him. Ryan wanted me to fly circles around him, but I thought that would be rude, so I didn’t.

Glenn, Ed’s passenger up in the cockpit (you have to climb about 12 feet to get up there) was getting some stick time, and we could really tell. The ship didn’t hold altitude very well and seemed a bit “wiggly.” But Glenn is a fixed-wing guy, so you really can’t fault him. It takes a gentle touch to fly a helicopter, even one as big as Ed’s. Ryan got this nice air-to-air photo of them in flight; that’s Harquahala Mountain in the background.

Flying that slow was a bit boring, so I took Ryan on a side trip to see Waters-Sunset Mine. That’s a place I advertise tours for, but haven’t gotten any takers yet. When we finished zipping out there, I scanned the sky for the dot that would be Ed’s S-55. I found it and zipped on over to get back into formation. I don’t even think they missed us, despite the fact that we were gone for about 10-15 minutes.

We finally caught sight of Wickieup and, a while later, the shoot site. The owner of the site owns a whole section of land — that’s a square mile, for those of you who don’t know western real estate lingo — on the west side of the Aquarius Mountains. The area there is full of ridgelines with deep washes between them. The place is set up so shooters are on one ridge and shoot across to the side of another ridge. Below is wash; above is higher ridge. It’s standard desert landscape at about 2900 feet elevation: cacti, mesquite, palo verde, etc. The whole place is surrounded by BLM land, so there’s no complaining neighbors to worry about.

As we came in, another helicopter landed. It was a MD 520N that turned out to be a rich guy’s toy. More on that later.

We parked on the west side of the ridge where the shooters were lined up, already hard at work using up their ammo. The problem with the field was that although it was at least 20 acres, there weren’t many level spots out on the west end. North and south sides were high with a slope between them. Erosion had added a few 12 to 18-inch deep ruts in the middle. Ed landed on the south side, right along the edge. I tried to land near the 520N on the north side, but couldn’t find a place I thought was level. (Understand that I am completely paranoid about dynamic rollover.) I wound up on the south side behind Ed, with one of my skids hanging about a foot over the edge of a cliff. (Yes, my tailcone is hanging out into space in the photo.) Although I shut down there, I didn’t waste any time moving it. I kept imagining the darn thing falling backwards and tumbling over the cliff and trying to explain to my insurance company why I’d parked there. Ryan and I found a level-ish spot on the north side and moved it. I made Ryan sit beside me for extra weight on the front end. He’s a big boy and I figured he’d help prevent us from toppling over backward.

Here’s where it gets weird.

Just about all the guys at the shoot were shooting machine guns. What kind of machine guns? Damned if I know. All kinds of machine guns. They were mostly under shade structures (like my EZ-Up), shooting across the wash at “reactive targets” set up on the other side. A reactive target is one that blows up when you hit it. (Heck, I wish I could make this stuff up.) You can actually see smoke from a reactive target in the photo below.

Every once in a while, an extremely skilled R/C aircraft pilot would take a delta wing airplane, made out of styrofoam, and launch it into the firing zone. The guys with the machine guns would try to shoot it out of the sky. It was actually pretty funny to watch because although there were at least 20 guys at a time firing all kind of machine guns at the darn thing, it took a very long time — 5 minutes or more — for someone to hit it. Sometimes no one hit it and the pilot would bring it back in for more fuel.

I was set up for rides and, after scarfing down a terribly spicy thing I wasn’t allowed to call a hot dog, I flew a few passengers. It was $35 per person with a 2 person minimum for an 8-10 minute ride. I flew two really nice guys who were so nice that one of them, Kent, paid for the three kids from the 4H food booth to go for a flight. (Kent later e-mailed me this photo of me getting the kids settled in on board.) They ranged in ages from about 6 to 10 (maybe; I don’t know kid’s ages) and the youngest one’s eyeballs looked about to pop out when I took off. But I took them down to Wickieup so they could see their school and house from the air. They got a real kick out of seeing cows and horses in the wash.

The rich guy started giving rides. For free. It’s hard to compete with that. I went with Ed and a guy named Mike to Kingman to get fuel and take care of some other business. I was POed about the free rides, but there was nothing I could do about it. I gave Ed some stick time — I had the duals with me and installed them — and he couldn’t get over the fact that the three of us could cruise with full fuel at 110 knots at only 22 inches of manifold pressure.

You gotta understand that Ed is flying a helicopter built in 1954. That’s more than 50 years ago. His helicopter is older than I am. I should hope that a 2005 helicopter has a bit better performance with lower operating costs.

When we returned, I took a few more people for flights, but never enough to keep me flying nonstop. That was okay, because I didn’t have a ground crew, so I had to do all the money work and safety briefings.

The shooting stopped at 5 PM for dinner.

I did my last flight around sunset and spent a few minutes putting up my tent and setting up the mattress. Ed came by and kept me company. Then we walked back to the rented “toy hauler” Roger Senior (one of Glenn’s friends) had rented, where Ryan and Glenn were making dinner. They made an excellent meal of grilled sea scallops wrapped in bacon and marinated New York Strip steaks. Sheesh. It was good eating. We were just about finished with dinner when the night shooting began.

Here’s where it gets really weird.

Because it had rained less than a week ago and there was some moisture out in the desert, the shooters were allowed to use tracer rounds. So now the guys had bullets that basically glowed in the dark. The targets had been replenished — wouldn’t want to run out of dynamite, would we? — and were all marked with glow sticks. And these guys were shooting away at them in the dark, with visible bullets that left streaks of red or green. It was like a really big budget war movie scene. Lots of gunfire punctuated, now and then, with an explosion.

And when the R/C aircraft pilot let out one of his planes — complete with glow sticks so you could see it fly — the guys went absolutely bonkers. They still had trouble hitting the darn thing, even with all that firepower and the bullet streaks to guide them.

My only regret is that I didn’t even try to get pictures. If they’d come out, they would have been outrageous. This was a scene too sureal to describe.

Glenn had brought something very impressive that I wish I could tell you more about. All I remember is him saying that it’s the fastest firing machine gun available except for a “mini gun” (whatever that is). It was originally mounted on an aircraft during some war and relied on the slipstream to keep it cool. At the shoot, they could only shoot about 100 shots at a time before it got too hot.

Every time these guys fired off a bunch of shots that glowed away into the dark night, they’d turn around and look at spectators with a grin that resembled that on a cat that ate the cream off the milk. (Am I dating myself with that one? It really is what they looked like.)

Of course, I got a chance to shoot a machine gun, too. Glenn and Ryan insisted that I take my turn sitting on the plastic bucket before this thing’s tipod mount. I had to put my feet against it to stop the recoil. Ryan held the bullet “in feed” and Glenn held its “out feed” — I’m making these phrases up — I don’t know what it’s called — while I used my thumbs to push the trigger. It was cool. I admit it. But not cool enough to spend $30K on my own gun.

Later, Roger Junior shot the same gun and got the barrel to glow red.

There was a guy sitting in the space next to us shooting a 50 mm thing. Every time he shot, Ryan would say, “Buck-fifty, buck-fifty, buck-fifty, buck-fifty,” because that’s what every round on that gun cost. It made a huge noise that must have impressed everyone.

Ed took his turn at the gun. He and I had the same basic impression — these guys were nuts! But they were having a good time and no one was getting hurt. And it was kind of cool — even the small fires that started out in the desert.

And every once in a while, there would be an explosion or a flare lighting the whole scene with an eerie red light.

It was nearly 9:00 PM when Ed claimed he was tired and wanted to hit the sack. He was sleeping on a futon in his helicopter. (Yes, there is enough room in that thing.) Ryan still needed to pitch his tent. I needed to find my helicopter in the dark to retrieve a flashlight from it. So we left the guns behind and headed out to the west end. We all took care of business.

At 9:00 PM sharp, an airhorn sounded and all fire stopped. By that time, I was in my tent, wishing I would have gotten a little more air in my air mattress. I fully expected the shooters to have a little post-shooting party, but by 10 PM, the place was quiet.

I got a decent night sleep — it was my first night in a tent in about three years — but wished I’d brought along my long johns.

I emerged from the tent at 5 AM. It was still dark, but I needed the outhouse. I looked out over the range and saw the glow sticks on the three airplanes they’d shot down the night before.

Later, I followed Ryan to the rented camper where he promised to make coffee. The sun came up. I went back to my tent and took a picture I hope to use for a “heli-camping” brochure. My tent looks really small in the photo.

Ryan made sausage, potato, and eggs in a dutch oven. Half our group didn’t eat eggs. (What’s that about?) So just Ryan, Ed, and I ate the eggs.

The shooting started up. I took a few passengers up. Mike arrived with his truck. He was pretty impressed with the firepower and agreed with me (and Ed) that it was weird. Ed, Glenn, and Ryan flew away in the S-55. The rich guy was already gone — he’d left after breakfast. We did a few rides sporatically throughout the afternoon.

I made a fuel run with a passenger and took 45 minutes to find a quart of AeroShell W100 oil in Kingman (the airport manager is going to get a letter about that).

Back at the range, a good sized fire broke out and shooting was stopped. (Never fear, the fire burned out quickly; and even if it didn’t, the organizers had a great fire crew.) I finally got the non-stop flow of passengers I needed to turn a profit. I’m still not sure if I got enough — Mike went to a hockey game with a bunch of the money so I don’t know the final take. I do know that as of 3 PM, I was down a few hundred dollars because of the ferry time, fuel trips, and 2-passenger loads — some of the guys were so big I couldn’t take more than two at a time.

My conclusions about all of this:

• Guys are even stranger than I thought.
• Machine guns make a lot of noise. Even more noise than a helicopter.
• Dynamite sounds like a helicopter backfiring when heard through Bose headsets. Pilots doing a mag check should not do it when there’s the possibility of them hearing explosions during the test. (I did one mag check three times.)
• It’s important to limit the number of 40 minute fuel runs I make when doing rides. (Duh.)
• Never — and I do mean never — leave Wickenburg airport without at least a quart of W100Plus on board.
• When sleeping in a tent, fill the air mattress all the way and bring long johns.

Will I do this again? Hell yes!