Meetings.io – like webex, including conference calling and file and screen sharing.

Qama - a calculator that doesn’t give an answer until you provide a “reasonable” guess.

Udacity – a free computer science program.

Urbanchickens - dedicated to raising chickens in “non-traditional” environments (like cities).

I arrive at the airport a little before 1400 for my flight on Sunday. Adrian, my instructor, is an intensely friendly man. He’s originally from Zimbabwe, though has spent enough time in Kentucky that now his family think he has an accent

NexGen has a Piper Warrior – a four-place, low-wing, single engine airplane they use for lessons.

Things I did not know about operating an aircraft – you steer while you’re on on the ground with your feet.

Adrian opened the door and told me to get in first. That was not what I expected – that put me in the pilot’s seat. After doing a quick preflight, he started the engine, and we started taxiing… more accurately, while he radioed the tower for clearance, he had me taxi us out onto the runway.

So that was pretty cool .. but it got better: when we got to the runway, and the tower had cleared us, I got to take off =D

Adrian ran the throttle, and he took care of the trim tabs and explained to me what I had to do, but otherwise he let me fly for the about 30 minutes we were up – the only time he took over was for our landing. We toured around Lexington at ~2500 feet (buzzing up to nearly 3000 as I tried to maintain our heading, steer, look around, and keep us flying level-ish.

I got to see our house from 2500 feet, and a variety of other parts of Lexington that I think may help when it comes to driving, too.

Now for the bad news: I’m hooked. And the total time and outlay that getting my license will entail will be at least 40 hours of flying time (including different type of solo time), along with several hours of ground school. And all of that combined with needing to take a written test so the FAA will eventually be willing to give me a check ride so I can get my license.

Sigh.

That’ll run ~$6650 … if I go as quickly as I can. Taking too much time between lessons will help to reduce retention, so I’m probably more realistically looking at about $10k to complete my license.

I’m accepting donations, though

Terms and phrases we all hear and pretty much pass over in our day-to-day lives. Right up until we want to move to a new/better job or performance reviews roll around.

But what do they mean, and how can you advance your career (presuming, of course, that you want to)?

This is by no means an exhaustive list – indeed, I’d appreciate any other ideas / feedback / improvements y’all may suggest

For a software developer:

• be the documentation KING of your code – if it’s not right, make it right
• own every bug in your code – even when it’s not “yours”
• be The Guy™ who learns a new component of the code/product (at least conversationally) every few weeks
• write at least one tutorial a month on the internal wiki/kb about something you found or did with the code
• write at least one tutorial or similar a month externally (maybe a personal blog) in a general fashion about something you learned or did

For a systems consultant:

• be the documentation KING of every project you work on – make ABSOLUTELY sure the next guy can do more after you leave
• own every issue you find, even when it’s really somebody else’s problem (no throwing it over the fence)
• the The Guy™ who learns something new about the environment or product every couple weeks
• write at least one tutorial a month and/or give an overview talk of something you learned/did
• write about what you’ve done (changing names to protect the innocent) on a blog or elsewhere
• teach as many people as are willing to learn what you know (in your company / on your team / etc)

Focus – decide where you want to be, and plot a course to get there.

Finally, NEVER make yourself “irreplaceable” – the instant you make yourself irreplaceable, you also make yourself unpromotable: after all, if you’re the Only Guy™ who can do your job, why would your boss/manager/supervisor even think of moving you into a new role?

^{As a side note – if you’re ever working at a customer site, don’t take calls from anyone other than the customer while you’re at your desk/cube/workspace: even if it’s project related, take it in a different room}

In the intervening months I’ve read 1434 by Gavin Menzies (follow-on to 1421) and The Lost City of Z by David Grann. I’m currently reading Netherland by Joseph O’Neill and Radical by David Platt.

I also bought a Kobo ereader at one of the Border’s stores in Louisville, and my wife and I have started reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain together.

I’m sure there have been others, too – but I’ll be posting reviews of them over the coming weeks.

Tuesday evening I watched the best light show ever: a miles-high, miles-wide thunderhead flashing nearly constantly for over 30 minutes.

It was a little east of where I was staying in Fishers, but man was it pretty!

For the record, God’s fireworks are cooler than any 4th of July party

This week I was reminded of the service, and have started looking into ways I can contribute to their open repository of educational materials.

I’d written two articles published there when I was at Sigma XI, and while one of them now looks somewhat quaint and dated, I think there are some other areas that I could contribute to that would be helpful.

CNX is free and open to anyone to use, add-to, modify, and reference – so have fun

The last couple times we’ve gone, we’ve been to the Williamsburg Auction Center, near where my wife grew up. The building is clean (no smoking indoors, or near the doors), the organizers are professional and fun, and there is food available for purchase (^{_{“Supper will be available at Judy’s AUCTION HOUSE RESTAURANT Serving 4:30 p.m. to end of auction. Menu includes Judy’s homestyle Southern Recipies and Delicious Desserts!”}}).

So far we’ve found some interesting old books, and a few other odds and ends. If you can find one near you, I’d encourage you to go – for the entertainment value, if nothing more

The only other history I have read in the past 5 years I can recall reading so fast was Gideon’s Spies.

Gavin makes a compelling presentation, interpretation, application, and conclusion of a host of evidence that seems to indicate that the title is what really happened ~600 years ago, and that it was due to a freak storm and fire in The Forbidden City that the records of the great expedition were destroyed by the emperor’s counterparts in society, the mandarins.

Mr Menzies spent his career as a submariner in the British Navy – a fact which comes up several times during the book, and helps to explain many of the connections he was able to draw when reviewing the historical maps, journals, reports, etc.

1421 is a veritable cornucopia of names and places – European and Chinese explorers, exotic locales (many of which are referenced by the names the various countries used for them), foreign potentates, trade routes, etc. It might behoove one to keep notes when reading this book – or at the very least get used to flipping back and forth to keep track of everyone’s names

When I bought 1421, I also bought Mr Menzies’ second book, “1434 – The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance”. I can’t wait to read that one to see where his research has led.

• Quality of writing: 5/5
• Quality of content: at least 4/5
• Entertainment value: 4/5
• Plausibility: 5/5
• Historicity: likely 5/5
• Overall: 4.5/5

Mr Stoll started his professional life in astronomy, but, due to budget cuts at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, he moved into systems administration.

Interspersed through the book are both political commentaries (he was after all at Berkeley), and helpful hints for even non-techies. For example, the chocolate chip cookie recipe or the helpful note that you should NEVER use a microwave to dry-out your wet sneakers. Ever. It is just Bad News™.

The title, “The Cuckoo’s Egg”, is a  reference to how the cuckoo bird goes about raising her young: she doesn’t hatch her own eggs, but rather lays them in other birds’ nests, and lets them do all the work for her. (Sounds like another bird of Dr Seuss fame, but that will have to wait for another day.)

From start to finish, Cliff’s tale of spotting an accounting error (apparently in the Bad Old Days™, departments were billed based on how much computer time they used – a singularly silly approach to computing looked-at from the mindset of a person living and working in 2011), to tracking this phantom user who utilized exploits in common applications, to finding out that he not only wasn’t at Berkeley, he wasn’t from the west coast, nor, ultimately, even from this country, is a grand tour of  both computing history and old-fashioned detective work.

Along with Without Remorse, The Cuckoo’s Egg is a novel I have reread a couple times. It has also been on my standard list of books all techies should read for more than a decade. Even though the story happened a quarter century ago, it is still a thrilling read (ok, so the bit about dial-up access seems outlandishly dated, but that’s OK, too).

• Quality of writing: 4/5
• Entertainment value: 5/5
• Historicity: 5/5
• Overall: 4/5

I’ve tried-out a couple times in the past – once in person at Southpoint Mall in Durham NC and once online. Tonight I did again – so here’s hoping I did well enough