Pug’s Place

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. I just haven’t had much about which I want to post.

Today two things happened: I landed at Casa Grande airport for the first time and I had to turn on my car’s air conditioner for the first time in 2008.

Casa Grande is a city of about 35,000 located roughly halfway between Phoenix and Tuscon. It has a busy municipal airport, owing to its proximity to a radionavigation beacon and that it has instrument approaches, allowing pilots holding or seeking an instrument rating to perform practice “precision” landings. It’s also just a short 12 nautical miles away from Phoenix Regional Airport, the airport at which I made my first solo flight and a large portion of my landings. The proximity of Casa Grande Airport to my ’stomping grounds’ south of Phoenix should have made it one of my most common destinations while airborne, but for various reasons until today I had never touched my wheels to the asphalt there. It wasn’t for lack of trying, rather it seemed for a while that higher forces were at work to keep me away: a sudden dust storm, a skydiver mis-jumping and the frantic call to clear the airspace around the airport, etc. However, I tried again today, and despite the heavy instrument student traffic I did do several landings and a leisurely taxi-back across the airport, allowing me time to enjoy the view.

Since February I’ve been regularly driving with all of my windows down and my sunroof open. It’s just that pretty. Today, however, it was a little too warm for that to be comfortable, at least while wearing long pants. So I flipped on my A/C in the Pugmobile. That’s all there is to that story.

So after repeated snubs by the media, I’m happy to see Ron Paul beating McCain for 2nd place in the Nevada GOP caucus today. As of now he’s holding 2nd by a few hundred votes, but not all precincts are reporting yet, so this may change. At any rate, he’s a long way from 4th or 5th place. (Update, midnight: Paul did place 2nd)

So, I’m somewhat annoyed to see to what lengths Fox News goes to avoid showing Ron Paul. Check this out, snapped this evening:

Notice in the bottom right corner that at the time this was shown Paul was in 3rd place. Now look at the three photographs.

These people disgust me. Incidentally, this sort of thing is why I never watch Fox News.

…But it’s all in the best interests of the American people because Glenn Beck on Fox News says Ron Paul supporters are a “domestic threat.”

Update, 11:30 pm: I just noticed that the New York Times doesn’t even show Dr. Paul as a candidate. Even in their online coverage. How can people roll their eyes when I say the media’s snubbing him?

I took about two hours this morning and got back into flying — I hadn’t flown since the second week of December. I felt the need to not only taste some sky but to also practice some of the basics again: stalls, slow flight, specialty landings and so forth. So I took N60616 around Maricopa doing maneuvers, then did some short field and slips-to-land sort of landings.

Anyway, a middle-aged sort of gentleman helped me push my plane back into its parking space and, after talking with him a few minutes, I learned that he was a student pilot (around 17 hours) and starting to contemplate the scary idea of soloing sometime soon. After tying my plane down I walked back over to where he was preflighting his aircraft for a lesson and gave him my contact information, telling him that if he ever wanted to talk with or ask some questions of another new pilot to give me a ring.

We’ll see if he does. And we’ll see if I completely forget about this exchange by the time he calls/emails.

Among the things I’m thinking of doing sometime is incorporating: creating a business entity to do software development consulting. Obviously I’ll need a name for this corporation, one which has an available domain name. I’m thinking I’ll just have to break out my Latin dictionary and see what I come up with, but do you guys have any ideas?

And no, I’m not thinking much of “PugCorp”, nor the GoDaddy.com-suggested alternative, “NoPugForYou”. (Really, how did they come up with that from an idea search for “Pug”???)

Hehe… If I do this, I’ll get to be a CEO of a one-person company!

I donated some money to Ron Paul on November 5th, as I said I would. Tonight I did it again. This time, however, I got a screenshot of my name appearing on the donation ticker.

Why now? Well, November 30th also has some loose association with a movement to educate educate Mr. Giuliani about foreign policy, so that seemed like fun.

Just thought I’d share.

This week I moved to Tempe, AZ. I’m now entirely “moved in” and quite cozy.

This was largely due to the cats. As I blogged previously, I haven’t enjoyed living with 3 cats, two of which regularly fight. Now I don’t have to; I have my own little space, complete with photographs and Liz-art on the walls. You can see some pictures of my new place on Flickr.

It’s been too long since I last flew; I’m thinking my next trip will be to Prescott, Az to see what’s up there. That should be next weekend.

Saturday night we had a pumpkin-carving party. Barry, Jo, John and Amy G and we three all carved various masterpieces. In the above picture, left-to-right the pumpkins are:

• Quasimodo, by Chris
• Happy Pumpkin, by Amy
• The Great Evil, by Barry
• Tux, by me
• Canada, by Joanne
• Happy Cat, by Amy G.
• Monster, by John G.

(Lots more pictures are online here)

Barry and I independently made our pumpkins. I, Tux. He, the “scariest pumpkin possible in a house of Linux users.” I must say we were all very entertained by the resulting duo! I’m rather impressed with myself, being able to carve Tux’s likeness so passably. And of course, all honor to Larry Ewing for creating Tux.

Prior to the pumpkin-carving much dinner was had, including Chris’ should-be-famous chili and tasty salsas.

In other news, I’ve decided to move into my own apartment in the next couple of weeks. I’ve found a place in Tempe considerably closer to work (and without cats). More about this later.

I’ve been meaning to donate to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign and haven’t gotten around to it. Lo and behold I find that a fair number of people have decided to donate on November 5th. Of course the day one donates doesn’t make much difference in the Ron Paul campaign, but it seems like as good a day as any and it gives me a specific day to do my donating, so I won’t put it off as I’ve been doing.

So… remember, remember the Fifth of November.

P.S.: Graphs are impressive.

Give us an R! Arrr!

Give us an R! Arrrrr!

Give us another R! Arrrrrrr!

What does that spell? ARRRRRRRRRR!

Enjoy the day, mateys!