An Eclectic Mind

Old one apparently gone to the dogs.

About two weeks ago, I realized that I couldn’t find my everyday watch.

I had four watches:

• A Swatch that I bought years ago when I didn’t mind plastic watchbands. I don’t wear it anymore.
• A Minnie Mouse watch that I bought in Disney World a few years back. I like it a lot, but with my failing vision, I can’t read it.
• A Bulova dress watch with a tiny rectangle face, four lines instead of 12 numbers, a tiny diamond at the 12 position, and a gold-tone band. This is my dress watch and I only wear it if I dress up and need to know the time. Which is so seldom, I pretty much never wear it.
• An Eddie Bauer watch. (No snide comments, please!) I got it on sale for $40 at an Eddie Bauer store. It was waterproof to 10 meters and came with three denim watch bands. Which was a good thing because it became my everyday watch and I wore out all the bands.

It was the Eddie Bauer watch that I’d lost. I wasn’t terribly upset. Although it was my everyday watch, I didn’t have much of an attachment to it. It’s not like it was a collector’s item or a keepsake. It was a cheap, functional watch.

How I Figured I’d Lost It

I figured I’d taken it off one day and left it on the kitchen table or on my desk. If you saw my kitchen table or desk, you’d recognize the black hole-like tendencies. I’m the queen of clutter and there’s a lot of junk just sitting around, waiting to be dealt with.

But when I cleared off the kitchen table and my desk, the watch wasn’t there.

So then I figured I’d left it on my night table and that it had fallen into the little waste paperbasket beside it and had been taken out with the trash. That’s how I probably lost my Pulsar dress watch years ago (although I do suspect my cleaning lady back then; she may have cashed in on my carelessness).

In any case, the watch was apparently gone for good. Minnie Mouse wasn’t going to cut it unless I added a magnifying lens over the watch crystal.

It was time for a new watch.

Zulu Time

I’m a pilot and thought it might be nice to have a watch that also told Zulu Time. Zulu Time is the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and it doesn’t adjust for daylight savings time. In Arizona, it’s always 7 hours after current time (because we don’t have daylight savings time either). So if it’s 9 AM in Arizona, it’s 4 PM GMT or 1600 hours Zulu.

And yes, I can do the math in my head. But I figured, why not get a watch that just tells me Zulu time.

I did some research. Women’s watches, in general, are pretty useless. Faces too small, often too ornate. So I concentrated on men’s watches. But I have a pretty small wrist and they’d likely look ridiculous on me.

Long story short, I found the Torgeon T15 ladies watch. It has a big face, but not as big as the men’s version. It has numbers and hands that are big enough to see and read. It also has the date and a nice precision second hand. But what makes it a pilot’s watch is the red Zulu Time hand. It travels at half-speed around the dial, pointing to an inner scale of numbers from 1 to 24. When set properly, it points to the hour of zulu time.

Notice I said “when set properly”? That’s because I couldn’t set it. I tried five times. For a while the damn hand decided it was going to hide behind the hour hand and ride it around the dial.

But Mike, my husband, collects watches and knows a lot about them. The other day, he set it for me. So now I’m good until July 1, when I need to change the date. I’ll probably just keep it a day off until I see him again.

Postscript on that Eddie Bauer Watch

About two days after I got the new watch, I dipped into the big dog cookie box in the cabinet to pull out a bedtime treat for Jack the Dog. Mike buys certain things at Costco, so they come in really big boxes. The dog cookies are in a big box.

I stuck my hand in and felt something that definitely wasn’t a dog cookie. Could it be? I pulled my hand out, grasping my old Eddie Bauer watch. The band had broken.

Now you might think that this is odd. After all, there’s really only one way that watch could have gotten into the box: I’d reached in for a cookie weeks before and had pulled out a cookie while leaving the watch, which had been on my wrist, behind. How, you might ask, could I possibly not notice my watch falling off?

I wish I had an answer for you.

Maybe my subconscious mind had just decided it was time for a new watch.

Days in My Life time

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And that can safe your life.

After guesstimating for a while that I had about 2,000 hours of flight time, I finally got around to adding up all those columns of numbers in my log book. Although I make entries pretty regularly, the chore of adding them up is only done a few times a year. I’m prepping for a Part 135 check ride this week and figured it was about time. I discovered that I passed the 2,000 hour mark back in October — about ten years to the day after my first flight lesson.

Flight time is one of the few real gauges of experience that pilots have. While many passengers ask me how long I’ve been flying, very few ever ask the real question: how many hours have you flown? I know plenty of pilots who have been flying far longer than I have, but don’t have as many hours logged. Who is more experienced? I think hours is a better indication than years.

The more you fly, the more you really experience as a pilot. Let’s face it: shit happens. But it won’t happen to you if you’re not out there in a situation where it can happen. How can you learn how to deal with the kinds of weird things that happen to pilots if you’re not flying enough for them to happen?

You might wonder what kinds of things I’m talking about. Here are a few of them:

• Weather is probably the most obvious — and most insidious, as anyone who has analyzed what happened to Colgan Flight 3407 near Buffalo the other day. Weather can be wind, rain, snow, hail, ice, turbulence, fog, clouds, and thunderstorms, among other conditions. The more weather a pilot has experienced, the more comfortable and knowledgeable he about flying in that weather. I’m not saying a pilot should take unnecessary risks. I’m just saying that no one can be a good, experienced pilot if he is a “fair weather” pilot who only flies in perfect conditions.
• Aircraft capabilities can only be truly known through experience. Sure, an aircraft’s Pilot Operating Handbook (POH) will give you performance data and explain emergency procedures. And yes, you should know the contents of that book to fly the aircraft safely and legally. (This falls under FAR Part 91.103, which begins: “Each pilot in command shall, before beginning a flight, become familiar with all available information concerning that flight.”) But it’s only though experience that you can learn how an aircraft will handle in any given situation. CG a little skewed? What will that do to the controls? Landing heavy on a 95°F day at an airport at 5,000 elevation? With no wind? A crosswind? How will the aircraft perform? The more aircraft you fly and the more time you spend in each one will help you understand the different capabilities of what’s out there. It’ll also teach you “tricks” (for lack of a better word) that can help you cope in difficult situations.
• Radio communication is another thing that smoothes out with real experience. New pilots who have 95% of their flight time in the pattern at their home airport know every controller and nearly every request they’re likely to get. But put those pilots in the busy airspace of another airport 100 miles away and they’re often completely at a loss for words. It’s even worse when that airspace is around an airport without a tower, where local general aviation (GA) pilots are getting in some Sunday flying. But the more a pilot flies and the more airspace he visits and interacts with, the better he will become as a radio jockey, communicating with Air Traffic Control (ATC) and other pilots. At some point in the experience curve, the pilot will stop reciting requests and responses by rote and begin actually communicating in a language he’s more comfortable with.

These are just a few things a pilot learns with experience. If you’re a pilot, you can probably think of others. Please share them in the comments for this post.

My point is this: don’t whine and complain when a job you want to do requires 1,000 hours of experience to get your foot in the door. The folks hiring you know the simple equation: flight time = experience. And you can never have too much experience when you’re a pilot.

Flying aviation, careers, time

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Important data…and a special offer.

I’m a geek and know it. Each year, for the past few years, I’ve gone through a convoluted exercise on my Mac to extract, process, and import the exact sunrise and sunset times for Wickenburg, AZ (where I live) into iCal as individual daily events. That data is then synched across all of my Macs (via MobileMe) and on my Treo (via the Missing Sync). As a result, if you ask me what time the sun rises or sets in Wickenburg any day in the current year, I can tell you — usually within about a minute — no matter where I am.

Why I Bother

Why do I have this information? Well there are two reasons.

For one, I’m a pilot and I often need to plan for flights in the future. For example, suppose a client wants me to take him from Wickenburg to Sedona for a day trip on a specific date in March. While I’m allowed to fly at night, there are three mountain ranges between Wickenburg and Sedona that get very dark at night. My personal rule, established for safety, is to leave Sedona no later than 30 minutes before sunset. That gives us plenty of time to cross all three mountain ranges before it gets dark. So, with a glance at iCal or my Treo, I can find out exactly what time sunset is on the day in question and tell him when we have to leave Sedona.

As a pilot who often flies photographers around places like Lake Powell, this becomes really handy. The best light for photography is early in the morning and late in the afternoon. This isn’t a theory at Lake Powell — it’s a fact. Knowing what time of day sunrise and sunset happen helps me to plan flights in that area.

Of course, the sunrise/sunset times at Page, AZ aren’t the same as in Wickenburg, but they’re close enough to get approximate timing for preliminary flight planning; I usually check the exact times before finalizing.

I’m also a photographer myself. So it’s important to me to know what times are best for photography.

How I Do It — Briefly

I get the exact time information from a program called Time Palette. I bought this try-before-you-buy program years ago. It had the information I needed, but no export capabilities. So I asked the software author to add them. He did. (Try asking Microsoft, Adobe, or Apple for a specific new feature you need in one of their programs and see how long it takes for you to get it.)

The hoops I jump through to export the monthly data and import it into iCal aren’t worth discussing here. It’s technical and boring. But each year, I improve my solution to make it a little quicker and easier for me.

Special, Limited-Time Offer

I realize that there are probably a lot of other pilots and photographers out there who could benefit from this information for their localities.

So I’m making this limited-time offer: I am willing to create iCal-compatible ICS calendar files for 2009 local sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset data for anyone who asks from now until January 2009 month-end. All I need from you is the name of your city/state/country and your exact time zone name. I figure that if enough people ask, it’ll motivate me to completely automate the entire process so it’s even easier for me next year.

You can use the comment form for this post to request your custom ICS files:

1. Enter your name (first name only is okay) in the form’s name field. Don’t put the name of your company or blog or anything else.
2. Enter your real e-mail address in the e-mail field. This keeps it private so only I can see it. And no, I don’t harvest this information for other use or sale. But I will use it to send your files, so if you put in fake information, you won’t get the files.
3. Enter your Web site or blog in the Web site field if desired. You don’t have to do this, but why not?
4. In the big comment field of the form, enter the following information (1) your city/state/country, (2) the closest large city/state/country with an airport (in case your city isn’t in the Time Palette database), (3) the exact name of your time zone, (4) whether or not your city observes daylight savings time, (5) a brief summary of why you want this information, (6) the name of the ICS-compatible software you plan to use the file with, and (7) any other comments you might want to share.

Please don’t leave out any of this information. If you leave out something really important — like the location or time zone — I either won’t be able to generate the information for you or it will be wrong.

One request per person, please. Full calendar years only — no special date requests.

I will create and send out these files as I find time. I’ll probably do them in batches. Don’t nag me. Don’t complain when you don’t get yours right away. I occasionally do work for a living.

I admit that I’m more likely to be motivated to create and send out a batch of files with a donation to my coffee fund. (Hint, Hint)

Don’t use the Contact form for this blog or my e-mail address, if you happen to have it, to make a request or ask questions about how I do this. I will delete your message and will probably ignore any other request you make through proper channels. My long-standing rule has not fallen: I do not provide support via e-mail.

And if you want this information for your locality, ask for it now. I’ll stop considering requests on January 31, 2009.

Disclaimer: I do not guarantee the accuracy of this information. It should not be relied upon without independent verification for any mission-critical operations. I will not take any responsibility for any use of this information. Use it at your own risk.

Download a Previously Created File

As I create these files, I’ll put them here for download by others who live in the same city. (I won’t create files for people who don’t have the courtesy to provide an accurate e-mail address, so don’t even try it; I’ll check first.)

The following files are already available for download; help yourself if you live in one of these cities:

2009:

• Page, AZ: ICS | PDF
• Wickenburg, AZ: ICS | PDF
• Portland, ME: ICS | PDF
• New York, NY: ICS | PDF
• Vancouver, WA: ICS | PDF

Flying photography, sky, time

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Why I’ve been neglecting this blog.

I don’t have much time to write this — and that’s the reason I haven’t been writing more regularly. I like to compose at least 5 blog posts a week, yet this is only my third in just over a week. The last post — a video — doesn’t really count, since I didn’t write anything.

So why the neglect? As I mentioned above: time.

Every once in a while, life throws a perfect storm at us. You know what I mean — it’s a period of time when everything seems to go crazy at once.

In my case, it was the following, which have all occurred since July 29:

• Completion of the annual revision of one of my books (ongoing throughout this period).
• Reposition my helicopter from Quincy, WA to Seattle, WA.
• Reposition my camper from Quincy, WA to Page, AZ.
• Brief 3-day catchup period at home in Wickenburg, AZ.
• Distribute the animals among multiple boarding facilities.
• Trip to Seattle, WA.
• Reposition helicopter from Seattle, WA to Page, AZ.
• Set up housekeeping in my camper in Page, AZ.
• Entertain an overnight guest in a very tiny camper.
• Deal with FAA, airport manager, and local tour operators in Page regarding tour, photo flight, and charter work in Page, AZ (ongoing).
• Provide moral support for my sister, who has been laid off from her banking job.
• Three photo flights from Page to Monument Valley.
• Start of new book with August deadline.
• Three trips to medical facilities in an attempt to diagnose some severe back pain.

It’s this last thing that’s really gummed up the works. I did something to my back while I was home and the pain became unbearable after the commercial flight to Seattle the next day. I was in an urgent care clinic there where I got prescriptions for drugs I couldn’t take because I had to fly. The pain has varied from annoying but bearable to absolutely crippling every day since then, with one day so bad I was in the hospital emergency room. It hurt to sit and since I need to sit to write, I couldn’t work on the new book — let alone write blog entries.

Miraz hit the nail on the head in her Twitter comment to me, when she said, “Pain is so time consuming and draining.” Wow. I’d never really thought of it like that — probably because I’ve never been in such severe pain for so long.

So now I’m behind in just about everything, racing against the clock to finish a book that’s due tomorrow. (It ain’t gonna happen.) The pain is under control — yesterday was the first day that it was tolerable throughout the day — and physical therapy starts on Monday.

Please bear with me. I do have lots to write about. When I get this book off my plate and catch up on my FAA stuff, I’ll be back with some interesting (I hope) new content here.

BLog Technicalities, Days in My Life, Travels with Maria Arizona, careers, charter, driving, helicopters, time, travel, Washington

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One of those days when you wish there was a “do-over” button.

Yesterday wasn’t an especially good day as far as productivity is concerned.

Shooting Trouble

I started the day with a computer problem. Simply said, I was locked out of all my blogs. It was impossible for me to download entries into ecto (which is how I first discovered the problem) and impossible to make any changes to my blogs.

The error message I got said my IP address was blacklisted.

I spent the next 3 hours troubleshooting the problem, with calls and e-mails to my Internet connection ISP, my Web host ISP, the maker of ecto, and one of the blacklist maintenance company. The cause of the problem turned out to be a change in the server used by one of my plugins, Bad Behavior. When I upgraded all my blogs to Bad Behavior 2.0.11, the problem went away. I wrote about it in Maria’s Guides, since I suspect there were many Bad Behavior users in the same situation yesterday morning.

But that was 3 hours wasted.

Costco Visit

Next, I was scheduled to attend a 2-hour seminar given by SCORE’s Phoenix Chapter. The seminar was in the Phoenix area, so I had to make a 40-mile drive to get there. I jumped in the shower, washed up, got dressed, and even put some makeup on. Then Ihopped in my little Honda and took off down Grand Avenue, stopping only long enough to pick up some “breakfast” at Filibertos — a pollo asado buritto. It was 10:30 AM.

I needed to hit Costco, near Bell Road and the Loop 101. I’m putting together care packages for U.S. troops deployed in the Gulf area and have 8 more packages to put together to meet my self-imposed quota of 10. Since the kinds of things these men and women were looking for were snacks and toiletries best bought in bulk, I figured Costco would be a good place to shop and perhaps save a few bucks.

When I got to Costco, I realized that I not only didn’t have my Costco membership card, but I also didn’t have my driver’s license for ID. I didn’t want to drive back the next day, so I tried to get some kind of temporary pass so I could shop. I was able to do so, but with the line I had to wait on at the membership desk and the amount of time they took to look up my husband’s business account, I was soon out of time for shopping. I needed to get to the seminar.

Girlfriends Helping Girlfriends

The SCORE event was held at the very nice Glendale Aquatic and Recreation Center. I guess having a facility like this is one of the perks of living in a place where more than 50% of the population is under the age of 65. It was a big meeting facility attached to an indoor pool. I assume that there were other facilities in there for recreation, but I didn’t wander around. I checked in and went right inside.

For some reason, I thought my seat at one of the two dozen round tables was in the back corner of the room. It turned out to be in the front corner. I soon got into a conversation with another female business owner, Marcy, who sells electrical components for commercial construction.

I should mention here that the topic of this free seminar was “Women Helping Women.” Four “successful” business women would each give a 10-minute presentation. Afterward, they’d sit together on a panel where one of the women acted as a moderator to ask them questions. We were supposed to be able to ask them questions, too, but that never happened.

I won’t go into detail on the speakers. I will say that the first one, a “self-made woman,” was primarily a motivational speaker with a big booming voice and a “you can do it” attitude and message. I agree with that entirely, although she was a little too self-promotional for my taste. The next few simply couldn’t compete, with their relatively tiny voices, flat stories, and failed attempts at humor. They should have ended with the big woman. It would have done more to keep us awake than the Hershey’s kisses they put in front of us. (My sugar buzz hit just after the last speaker.)

They talked about networking and helping your “girlfriends.” This is an attitude I just can’t tolerate — pointedly making a distinction between men and women in the workplace and going out of your way to help one gender over the other. I’m of the school that says if you can’t make it in a field, get out and make room for someone else. (This could be a result of working in the highly competitive New York job market, where I had my first career.) I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman. If you can do it, do it. If you can’t, don’t expect help just because you pee sitting down. In fact, I think the attitude of women insinuating that they’re different and need help is part of what keeps them from achieving what they could achieve. They’re holding themselves back with gender-related excuses.

Which may make you wonder what I was doing there. Frankly, as the third speaker started on her “help your girlfriends” spiel, I was wondering that myself.

Time crawled. By the time they were finished, I was ready to go. While the other women “networked,” I bolted.

Back to Costco

This was probably the only productive part of my day. I spent nearly an hour in Costco, gathering up snacks, toiletries, and a few personal clothing items to send the troops. I also bought a case of my current favorite wine, a king-sized bottle of Ketel One, some Pine Sol, flannel sheets for our camper, and two pairs of men’s lounge pants, for me to wear to work in my home office.

I won’t say how much I spent. I will say that I spent too much.

These things filled my car’s trunk. I had to put the case of wine on the front passenger seat.

The Wasted Meeting

By then, it was 4 PM and I still had one stop to make: at the helicopter flight school where I’m planning to get my instrument rating. I called to make sure they were still open and expecting me. They were and they were. I told my contact I’d be there within 30 minutes and hit the road.

I made it in 20 minutes. I went into an office filled almost to overflowing with men in tan flight suits. I found the one I was looking for and he brought me into the new Chief Pilot’s office.

I saw “new” because the organization had undergone a major shakeup less than two weeks before. The man I’d negotiated pricing, etc. with was gone. His replacement was a small, young man who was evidently enjoying his position of power. He produced the rate document that had been drawn up by his predecessor for me. He said that with the other guy gone, I’d have to meet with his boss to verify the rates. His boss worked at Mesa, where I get my helicopter maintained. He’d sent me to Glendale for training, since it was closer to where I lived. But he was in Las Vegas right now, so we couldn’t call him. We’d have the meeting on the next day.

He didn’t seem to give a shit that I’d driven down from Wickenburg — a distance of about 50 miles — for the meeting and that I might have to drive down again for another meeting the next day. I held my temper. It wasn’t easy. I don’t like having my time wasted, especially at the end of a long, frustrating day with a long drive ahead of me.

They wouldn’t even put me in the system or get me on the schedule. The meeting was a complete waste of time.

And I know what’s coming. They’re going to try to go back on the rates we tentatively agreed upon. I suspect that they’ll raise them by about $20 to $50 per hour. Since I need 30 hours, this will make my instrument rating even more costly than the $8K I’d budgeted for it.

I’m already thinking about looking for another flight school. The only problem is, all the flight schools in Arizona — including this one — use the “program” approach: pay one price and get all your ratings and the pseudo promise of a job. I was lucky to find this place so “close” to home. That means I might need to go out of state — which would be more costly — at my busiest flying time of the year if I want the rating by spring. So I’m in a pickle.

But what bothered me most is attending a meeting for no reason other than to tell me that I’d have to attend another meeting. Hell, isn’t that what a telephone is for? Why the hell do people think I wear that damn thing on my belt?

The Drive Home

It took an hour to get home from there. I went west on Glendale Road, then drove around Luke Air Force Base. I got to see some F-16s landing right over my head. (I had the top down.) Then I took route 303 back up to Grand Avenue.

Along the way, I took a phone call from a guy in Montana. A friend of his had flown with me on a tour and told him I might be a good contact for information about R-44 helicopters. I answered his questions. He wants the helicopter to commute back and forth to work, which is about 60 air miles each way. I told him to think of me if he needed a ferry pilot to bring the aircraft from the factory to Montana. That’s a flight I’d love to make.

The drive was nearly traffic-free once I got on Route 303. Between podcasts on my iPod and the telephone conversation, I was kept entertained. So it really wasn’t so bad. I suppose I should get used to it if I’m going to get flight training at Glendale.

It was nearly dark when I got home at about 6 PM. Mike was already home, feeding the horses. As I made dinner, I kept thinking about how much precious time had been wasted that day.

Days in My Life driving, education, helicopters, shopping, time, women

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