Digital Meanderings
Meanderings of a coder

As a business traveler I spent a lot of time on airplanes. Last year alone I took over 100 different flights. All the time I was sitting in the plane, I was curious about the goings on in the cockpit. I would imagine flying the plane myself, breaking free from gravity and rising above the clouds.

Last Saturday I took the first step to becoming a pilot - I took what is called a Discovery Flight at the Ascent Pilot Training Center in Sioux Falls, SD. It was an awe inspiring experience.

Meeting the Instructor
My flight was scheduled for 1:30pm and I arrived a little early. In fact I arrived earlier than the instructor. A few minutes later my instructor, Jeff, arrived. He explained to me the basics of how everything works, gave me a headset and we walked out to the tarmac.

On the Tarmac
If you’ve ever taken a commercial flight you’ve probably seen the maintenance people, or the pilot, walking around the plane. He’s looking for any visual indication of problems with the plane - dents, hanging pieces, holes, etc. They also check the fuel to ensure that there is no water in it. The same is true with pilots of smaller aircraft.

After Jeff and I neared the plane, a Cessna C-172 S, we did a walk-around. He was looking for any visual damage, checking to make sure all of the flaps, etc moved properly and he also checked the fuel.

Then we climbed into the cockpit and he showed me the controls - the autopilot, the Garmin G1000 cockpit system. The airplane even had an XM radio!

Next he showed me how to operate the foot pedals and then we taxied down the tarmac towards the runway. After we got on the runway he let me control the plane for a little while. It was a very weird experience considering driving the plane on the ground is all done with your feet. Unfortunately I did pretty bad at driving the plane.

A few minutes later Jeff took control of the plane, called into the radio tower and then taxied down the runway. A few minutes after that we were airborne.

Airborne
After we were safely a few hundred feet in the air, I was allowed to take controls and take the plane to 1400ft. Then we started flying around and I was shown the autopilot.

The autopilot is exactly like you think it is, set your heading, set your altitude and hit go. The autopilot then fly’s the plane for you. Jeff then told me to change the heading West, South, East and then had me take control again and fly North.

As I was turning I asked how hard the plane could be turned. Jeff grabbed the control and turned the plane almost on its side then he said “This is about how far.” At least I think that’s what he said, I was to busy grabbing my spleen off the floor.

Floating in Mid-Air
After a few more minutes of getting used to the controls, we turned to head back to the airport. As we were flying he mentioned that he didn’t want to scare me too much on my first flight. It turns out I was being baited, and, of course, I took the bait. “No, please do,” I responded to his comment. To which he pulled back the yolk and we started a steep climb. He was going to stall the plane. As he was explaining this to me, the plane stalled, the nose fell and I became weightless. I wish I could say that I relaxed enough that I could thoroughly enjoy the experience of complete weightlessness but I wasn’t. In fact, I believe my exact words were “Waaoooooohhhhhhh Shhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!” To which Jeff laughed maniacally. (He didn’t really laugh maniacally, it just makes the story sound better.)

Back to base
After descending to a safe altitude, we circled Sioux Falls and then came in for a landing.

Landing in a small aircraft is very different than landing in a larger jet. Besides the size, normally you’re sitting on the sides of the plane so you don’t see the ground coming. In the cockpit you can see the ground coming, you can see how uneven the plane is coming in.

Redux
My first flight was an amazing experience that I will never forget. I recommend that you check it out if you have a chance. It is definitely worth the money! Spend the time, search for flight schools in your area.

This year Scranton, PA initiated a smoking ban in bars and restaurants. The first restaurant fined for not following the ban was fined and took the issue to the state court. The state court tossed Scranton’s rule. Is this a harbinger of similar legal battles in other cities that have banned smoking?

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Although I don’t have many regulars readers, I’d like to change that. I’ll never be a Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, Amber MacArthur or any other of the other web populars. But I would like to write things that interest people, that cause them to think.

In its short history my blog has been a plethora of things. Serious articles, tales from my life, links from Digg, paid stories, etc. This has contributed to its post count but it has also increased its noise. I still want to share the things that I find on the internet but don’t care enough to write about. And I will continue to share them on Geekkink.com my Tumblog.

My current blog, zechariahs.org, will contain the interesting things that I find, read about, or hear and that I care to write more about. If I wish to just link to things, or share a pretty picture, that kind of stuff can now be found on my tumblog, Geekkink.com.

I hope this change makes my blog more interesting and a more substantive source of information.

It seems that Leafyhost is still proving to be a bad hosting choice. I just received and email from Jon H, a current Leafyhost subscriber. It turns out that they are still up to their old tricks. Below you will find the contents of his email. I’ve also added this email as a comment to the original post.

I have been a customer with LeafyHost since June of 2004 (back when they were Aetheri) and at this point I’m very fed up with them. I had great patience with them when they had their hard drive failure last year because they had been a very good host for my site. I use my domain largely for e-mail and hosting images, so downtime wasn’t really an issue for me. Also, Christopher and I had been posting on the same forum (not Ars) for something like six years and he hooked me up with a free hosting package after my prior host ( vectorstar.net) had massive downtime issues because they refused to replace a failing network card (absurd, I know). They had been prompt in handling what few support issues I brought to their attention and all was well. Things have changed for the worse since the drive failure. At this point LeafyHost is on yet another server because “our current colocation provider has been having problems with their upstream bandwidth providers, and combined with the issues with securing more power in the past that they’ve had, they are moving out of the data center where we are currently located.” This was handled with few hiccups with the exception of my site being a 404 even after all the dust had settled, but as far as I can tell that wasn’t their fault. The issue had resolved itself by the time I fired off an e-mail to them.

The problem I have with them at this point is that I have two support tickets that have been open for several months. No updated information for the tickets has been supplied in about as long as the tickets have been open. The first ticket is a real minor issue that I just brought to their attention since it was affecting all users (DSPAM died). I was told on 2/22/07 that “It looks like we have a fix, but we need to test it out through our dev server first. Once that looks to be stable, I’ll move it over to Uffish and update this ticket.” Nothing since. It’s a minor issue since Thunderbird has done a superb job of filtering out most of the junk mail I receive, but I am frustrated with the lack of *any* information since February.

The second ticket is a much more severe issue for me: I can receive mail, but am unable to send mail. The last piece of information I received on this issue was when Sam told me he was passing the issue over to Chris and that he would look into it. I haven’t heard a thing from either Chris or Sam on the issue since that day. I have sent several e-mails to them over the last two months asking if any progress has been made on the issue and have not had a single reply to any of them. No “Hey, we’re still looking into it,” or a “We’re working on fixing it now,” or even a “Fuck off.” Nothing. Complete and total silence. After the migration to their third server the whole ticket system is down. You go to the page and get a page saying that they need to install the Zend optimizer on the server before the page can be displayed.

This is complete and utter bullshit. A web hosting company should respond to a user’s requests for information pertaining to the quality of services being provided. They should respond in a prompt manner with as much information as is available at the time. Before the site went down with the migration a few other users had been complaining in the LeafyHost forum about the lack of communication from Chris and Sam, or if they got a reply it was slow in coming. At this point I have to wonder if Chris and Sam even care about their hosting service at all. Have they decided that since things appear to be spiraling down the toilet they might as well piss off their customers? Have they decided that no news is good news? Are they playing NetHack all day?

These guys need to start taking their business much more seriously if they hope to make it through 2007.