Author Archives: Maria Langer

Anticipation

Posted on by
2

I feel like an expectant father.

Those of you who have been following these blogs closely (I’m impressed but somewhat concerned about you) know that back at the end of June 2004 — on my birthday, to be exact — I placed an order for a brand new Robinson R44 Raven II helicopter.

The great thing about ordering a helicopter from the factory is that it’ll be exactly what you want when it arrives. You get your choice of everything: exterior color (red), interior (beige leather), type of windows (bubble observation), instruments (vertical compass, artificial horizon w/slip-skid indicator, digital clock), avionics (Garmin 420 GPS, Garmin 330 Mode S Transponder), cockpit cover (yes), fire extinguisher (yes), Bose headsets (yes) — well, you get the idea. Heck, you can even pick your own N-number (N630ML). You load it up the way you want it and the helicopter sales guy does some fancy calculations to tell you that it’ll only cost a small fortune (rather than a large one). You sign on the dotted line, give them a check for $25K, and you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

You see, Robinson is the top-selling helicopter manufacturer in the world. Robinson, in fact, makes more helicopters than all the other helicopter manufacturers combined. It has a factory in Torrance, CA that was recently almost doubled in size just to handle the volume. But despite this increase in capacity, there is still a five to seven month wait for a helicopter from the moment it is ordered to the moment it is ready for delivery at the factory.

A few weeks after placing my order, I was given an estimated delivery date of mid-December. At first, I thought that was great. Then, as December got closer and I realized that some property I needed to sell probably wouldn’t sell in time, I went into panic mode. Where would the money come from? I had already arranged for a loan, but I didn’t want to borrow any more than I absolutely had to. I hate being in debt. My goal was to keep my monthly loan payments about the same as they were for the R22.

I sold the R22 in October and delivered it to its new owner on November 1. I got almost as much as I wanted for it. I took the offer because I didn’t want to be stressed out worrying about selling it. It’s a good thing I sold it when I did. The other day, I got a letter in the mail from Robinson stating that all main rotor blades of a certain series (the series installed on Three-Niner-Lima) were being recalled. The blades had to be replaced by June 30, 2005. The cost of this recall: approximately $25K. Ouch. I feel really bad for the new owner; the one reason he hesitated to buy the helicopter was because there was only five years left on the blades. Now there’s only six months. But although I’m sure he’ll be very unhappy about the situation with his new helicopter, I also think he can afford an expense like that more than I can. Heck, he paid cash for the darn thing. Didn’t even need a loan!

The bad part about selling Three-Niner-Lima is that I haven’t flown since November 1. But I cover that frustration in another blog entry.

About two weeks ago, I was given a revised delivery date of January 7. (Robinson is closed for a week for the Christmas holiday.) But last Tuesday, Tristan called to tell me he saw my helicopter flying at the factory. A few frantic calls later got me the information that there was a lot of test flying and inspecting to do and that the January 7 date was still the safe date. Lots of apologies from my helicopter sales guy. But apologies don’t fly.

Still, I had high hopes of being able to pick it up before the factory closed for the holiday. All I had to do was get the insurance and money in place.

So that’s how I spent the last five business days. Wiring money to the insurance company, giving them an insurance effective date that would satisfy the lender. Signing loan papers and FedExing them to the lender. Wiring my own money, scraped together after jumping a few financial hurdles, to the helicopter dealer. Faxing ferry qualification forms to Robinson and my helicopter dealer. Getting and receiving phone calls. Trying to understand how things would flow. Trying to coordinate, like an orchestra conductor, the actions of people all over the country — and beyond.

Today is the day. It’s Wednesday, the day before the last day the factory is open before the Christmas holiday. Today’s the day I could get the phone call that says: Your helicopter is ready. Can you come pick it up tomorrow?

I’m ready to go get it. I’ll hitch a ride down to Sky Harbor with Mike and we’ll hop on a Southwest flight to LAX. Robinson will send a helicopter to LAX to pick us up and take us to the factory. Then we’ll look things over, sign some papers, and take off. Two and a half hours later, we’ll be in Wickenburg. With luck, we’ll get home in time for dinner.

That’s my fantasy, anyway. Reality may differ. For example, the phone might not ring today. Or the weather tomorrow might be so bad that visibility makes it impossible to fly away from the factory. Or we might not be able to hop on a flight to LAX at all. (We do have plan B, which calls for some friends of ours to fly us to Torrance in their Mooney.)

Meanwhile, I can’t think of anything else. Work is impossible. I’m mentally pacing, rubbing my hands together, looking at a clock. Like a soon-to-be father in a waiting room. (Yes, I know fathers wait in the delivery room these days, but I don’t think Robinson would let me camp out on the ramp near the factory door.)

And it doesn’t feel at all like Christmas.

What will happen? Stay tuned to this blog and see.

Writing about Tiger

Posted on by
Comment

I begin work on my Mac OS X book revision.

I started working on my Tiger book this week.

So far, I have three of the 21 chapters done. I skipped Chapter 1, which is about installation and configuration. I always do that one last. Instead, I dove right into the Finder chapters: Finder Basics, File Management, Advanced Finder Techniques.

I added some new information to the File Management chapter about a new and undocumented feature called burnable folders. This was a challenge. Although I could figure out how to use this feature and write sufficiently about it, there wasn’t a single mention of it anywhere in online help or Apple’s Tiger Web pages.

What burns me up about this is that although I couldn’t find any official documentation about the feature, there was an article, with screen shots, on someone else’s Web site. Why does that burn me up? Because I had to sign a nondisclosure and swear up and down that I wouldn’t share anything about Tiger — especially screen shots — with anyone until the software was released. Technically, if my husband looks over my shoulder while I’m writing, I’d be in violation of this agreement. So that prevents me from giving my readers a sneak preview of the software and getting them all fired up for what’s to come. Yet someone else can publish articles on the Web, for the world to see, without getting in trouble. Does that sound fair?

Anyway, about burnable folders, to make matters worse, since I’m working with pre-release software, the feature isn’t perfected yet and is a bit buggy. Or perhaps it just set up conflicts with my screen shot software. In any case, my eMac was acting up and had to be restarted periodically. So it took me the better part of an afternoon to write two new pages and rewrite two others.

The Advanced Finder Techniques chapter was completely reworked. I pulled a lot of material out of this chapter to make a new chapter (Chapter 6) about customizing the Finder. This required complete renumbering of all figures throughout the chapter. A tedious task, but someone has to do it.

Next week, I continue writing with a brand new chapter about Apple’s new Spotlight and Smart Folders features. I hope to be able to knock that one off in two days.

If It Ain’t Broke…

Posted on by
Comment

I relearn something I’ve been telling people for years.

My production Mac, a dual processor G5, started acting up yesterday. It decided, out of the blue, that it would either restart or shut down whenever it felt like it. It seemed particularly fond of doing this right after I’d revised a page of my manuscript but before I’d saved that page to disk. At least that’s how it seemed. It got to the point that I stopped using it. I’d just let it run and start up programs, one-by-one, to see which of them would trigger the problem.

But I think I caused (and then resolved) this problem. I’d been playing with Nicecast (covered elsewhere in these blogs) and had discovered, by looking at the Console log, that some piece of software was unsuccessfully searching for a piece of hardware, in the background, while I worked. It wrote an entry to the log file once per second. That couldn’t be good. It must be using processor power. So I had to make it stop.

I began my witch hunt with a few messages to programming types like Dave Mark (author of a great C book) and the makers of Nicecast. They are obviously better with Google than I am, because they both came up with a Web page that pointed to my problem: a Canon scanner driver. It seems that when you install the driver for the LiDE scanner, two drivers are installed. One driver runs the scanner. The other driver spends all its time looking for a scanner that isn’t attached. Now what rocket scientist at Canon thought that up? So I attempted to delete the drivers, just to see if I could get the log messages to go away.

That’s where I screwed up. I somehow managed to drag a driver from its folder without disabling it. Every time I tried to drag it to the trash, I got a message saying that it couldn’t be dragged to the trash because it was open. I tried restarting my Mac. I tried renaming the file. The damn file couldn’t be deleted. In the old days of Mac computing, you’d occasionally get a folder like that. We called them “folders from hell.” This was a file from hell.

Eventually, I gave up and went back to work. And that’s when the computer started acting up. The first time it shut down, I’d stepped away from my desk to retrieve something from the printer. I thought I’d somehow used the shut down command. I mean, who expects their computer to just shut down by itself? But when it started doing it while I was working, I suspected a problem. It was a windy day and I thought that maybe the wind was causing power problems. Although the computer is attached to a UPS to prevent power problems from shutting it down, I thought the UPS might be dead. They don’t live forever, you know. Of course, nothing else was shutting down and not everything in my office is attached to a UPS.

After fiddling around with the UPS for a while, I started to suspect a hardware problem. Not what I needed. The G5 is less than two years old. None of my other Macs have had serious problems, and I’ve owned at least ten of them since 1989.

Then I started thinking about that file from hell. Perhaps it was triggering something really nasty in my computer, something that would bring everything down. I became determined to get rid of it.

I tried starting the computer with the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther install disc. I used Disk Utility to repair the disk (no problems) and permissions. Of course, there’s no access to the Finder when you start from that disc, so I couldn’t just drag the nasty file to the trash. When I restarted from my hard disk, the file still couldn’t be trashed. So I opened Activity Monitor, found the file’s process, and terminated it. Then I dragged it to the trash, emptied the trash, and restarted.

The computer behaved itself after that. I’d like to think that that was the problem and that I’d solved it.

So let’s review this: I find an error message in my Console log, which I really shouldn’t be looking at in the first place. I act on what I’ve seen and cause a problem that causes spurious restarting. I lose about three hours of work time causing and then resolving the problem. And now I can’t use my scanner until I reinstall the driver(s). The moral of this story: don’t look in the Console log. Or, better yet, the golden rule of computing: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It’s Too Cool

Posted on by
1

I rediscover the cool things I can do with my Mac.

One of the reasons I got into the business of writing about computers is because I thought that the things you could do with computers were very…well, cool.

I got my start with Macs back in 1989 with a Mac II cx. My previous computer had been an Apple //c and the Mac was a huge step up for me. One of the reasons I wanted it was so that I could start a BBS. I needed a hard disk and a bit more processing power than the Apple //c offered. Back in those days, the Mac IIcx was hot. It was one of the first Macs to offer a color monitor option and it ran at whopping 16 MHz. I taught myself everything I needed to know about that machine and had a BBS up and running within a month. I also learned enough to get a per diem job as a computer applications instructor, so I quit my “day job” to pursue a writing career. I like to say that that computer changed my life. It did. If I hadn’t bought it and learned my way around it so quickly, I would never have developed the expertise to change careers.

Anyway, back in those days, shareware was a big thing. There was all kinds of shareware out there and much of it was pretty cool stuff. I distinctly remember the sound editing software I used — I believe it was called SoundEdit — which enabled me to record sounds and edit sound waves. Macs had “sound cards” built in from Day 1, so sound was always part of the Macintosh experience. Everyone had their own custom sound effects and used MacInTalk to get their Macs to read.

I did other cool stuff, too. For a while, I thought I wanted to learn how to program, but I soon realized that it wasn’t worth the bother with so much good shareware and freeware out there. But somewhere along the line, I got pressed for time just trying to make a living. The time between books got shorter and shorter and I developed new interests such as motorcycling and photography, and when we moved out west, horseback riding and flying. Although I still spent the same amount of time sitting in front of my computer, that was mostly work time. I didn’t get to play around as much as I used to. The “cool factor” of the computer seemed to fade away. It was a tool for getting a job done and that job happened to be to write about using this tool. It didn’t help that I somehow became an “expert” on productivity software like Word and Excel. I’d hopped on the Web publishing wagon early on and had a book about PageMill Web authoring software that did very well. But when Adobe killed PageMill, they also killed my book. So the path back toward a cool aspect of computing was removed and I didn’t have time to cut another one.

Things haven’t changed much. I’m sill busy writing books — I think I did six or seven last year — and still interested in other things — primarily flying. But I’ve managed to crack open a door to start writing about cool things again. An eBook I’ve got lined up should be very interesting. And it has me thinking about other topics, other cool things I can do with my computer.

That’s how I stumbled upon Nicecast. Nicecast, published by a company named Rogue Amoeba, is software that enables you to broadcast from your Macintosh onto the Web and it’s very cool. To be honest, I’d seen Nicecast at MacWorld Expo last January and had thought about it as a way for the local radio station to get started in Web broadcasting. KBSZ-AM is a low budget station that isn’t particularly high tech. They have a wonderful studio with a computerized broadcasting setup, but their knowledge of computing is limited and some of their equipment is very old. In fact, Pete’s wife Jo still uses a Mac IIci (the next model after my old IIcx) to do word processing and other stuff! But Pete does surf the Web via modern PC in search of information to include on-air and to keep abreast of what’s going on in the world. Anyway, I’d seen Nicecast at Macworld and had brought back a brochure for Pete. But it didn’t seem like they’d make the hardware investment to get it all up and running. You’d have to sell a lot of ads at $2 each to get started.

A few weeks ago, I discovered a Web site that has live broadcasts from various air traffic control (ATC) locations throughout the world. It’s called LiveATC.net. You click a link for an airport and a small file is downloaded to your computer. A moment later, iTunes launches (if you’re on a Mac; I don’t know what it does on a Windows machine) and the live ATC feed plays through your speakers. You can listen to ground control at JFK directing 474s around the airport or the tower at Boston clearing AirBuses to land. Live. How cool is that?The Home page at LiveATC.net mentioned that they were looking for feeder sites. All you needed was a computer running Windows or Unix, a scanner, some relatively inexpensive software, and a connection from the scanner to the computer. Although I have a Windows PC, I don’t usually turn it on unless I’m writing about Windows software. But my Mac OS X Macintosh runs Unix “under the hood.” Perhaps I could get it to work on my Mac. Wouldn’t that be a hoot! So I e-mailed the Webmaster and told him about my setup. He responded within an hour with a friendly message that told me it could indeed work. Some more e-mail crossed between us and I had a list of possible hardware and software to get the job done. I put the hardware on my Christmas Wish List and started looking into the software.

That’s when I stumbled onto Nicecast again. And this time, I downloaded it to give it a try. I figured that if I could get it to work with my weird network setup, I could get it to work anywhere. I had to reconfigure it to use a different network port than the default 8000 (which was in use by my Web server software) and then had to reconfigure my Airport wireless station to send requests to the new port to that computer (my production machine). Then I began broadcasting directly from my iTunes playlist. About 15 minutes of setup and it works flawlessly. Not bad for $40 worth of software. I shouldn’t have any trouble at all getting it to work with the scanner.

Then I thought about recording things that I could play on my radio station. I went in search of additional software that would enable me to use my PowerBook’s built-in microphone to record voices and sounds. I wound up with two packages that seem to complement each other nicely: Audio Hijack Pro, which is a $32 product by Rogue Amoeba, and Audacity, which is a freeware product distributed by SourceForge.net. Audio Hijack is cool because it can “hijack” other programs and record their sounds. This makes it possible to record a soundtrack from a game or a video presentation, as well as from the Mac’s built-in sound sources. Although you can apply special effects, you can’t edit the sounds. That’s where Audacity comes in. Although it can’t hijack sounds from other programs, it can record from Mac sound sources and it has editing capabilities. In fact, it reminds me a lot of SoundEdit, the shareware program I used years ago on my first Mac.

I played with all this last night. I recorded my bird, Alex, saying some of his usual things

So that’s where I stand now. I have the tools to record and broadcast. But I don’t have the time to set anything up. (What else is new?) But maybe one of these days, you’ll tune into Flying M Radio and be able to hear these blog pages.

I’m Addicted

Posted on by
Comment

I realize that I’m addicted to flying.

Addiction. It’s a strong word for a nasty condition. Unfortunately, I think it applies to me.

I think I’m addicted to flying. It’s been over a month now since I’ve flown and I’m suffering from withdrawal. I look out into the clear, blue skies so common in this area, see the mountains out in the distance, and imagine flying among them, in their canyons and over their peaks. I imagine discovering new points of interest from 500 feet up. I imagine cruising around Vulture Peak, waving to the hikers I know must be climbing this time of year. I imagine flying low over empty desert roads, using them as guidelines at twice the speed a ground vehicle would drive them. I imagine dropping in to the Wayside Inn, Kofa Cafe, Wild Horse West, or that truckstop out on I-10, just for a $200 hamburger. I imagine sharing the joy of flight with Wickenburg residents and seasonal visitors, many of whom have never been aloft in a helicopter. I imagine smooth flight, graceful turns, on-the-spot landings.

It’s hard not to be able to do all that. But my old helicopter has been gone since November 1 and other than a few minutes of stick time in Jim Wurth’s Hughes 500c, I’ve been grounded, waiting for my new helicopter to be built, tested, and ready for delivery.

I never really thought of this feeling as withdrawal from an addition. That wasn’t until I started surfing the Web. I found an article on VerticalReference.com titled “How to Get Out of Aviation.” And there it was, in big, bold letters, the phrase I’d never considered: “Helicopters are an addiction!” What followed was a tongue-in-cheek 12-step program to quit flying helicopters. Cute. As if I wanted to quit.

Yesterday, I was chatting with Gus, who took over my contract at Wickenburg Airport. I told him about my frustrations in not being able to fly. He used the A word, too. He said he hadn’t flown in 12 years. He’s been offered rides many times, but he always turns them down. He’s worried that he’ll get hooked again. And he says the habit is just too expensive. Can’t argue about that. But there’s a lot of bang for the buck.

My sister smokes and has been smoking for over twenty years. We all want her to quit, but she won’t. She says she likes smoking. Well, I like flying. And at least this addiction isn’t slowly killing me, poisoning my lungs with smoke and tar.

Yesterday, while I was working hard on a revision to my Mac OS X book, I got a phone call from Tristan. Tristan is a buddy of mine based in Santa Clara, CA who owns an R44 Raven helicopter. I leased his helicopter last winter/spring while he was in graduate school and it did great things for my tour business, convincing me to upgrade. Anyway, Tristan starts off the conversation by saying, “I’m at the Robinson factory taking the safety course and there’s a beautiful red Raven II with the N-number 630ML doing hovering autos outside on the ramp.” My helicopter! It’s finished! It’s flying!

It appears that it emerged from the factory on Monday and is going through its FAA airworthiness certification. After that, according to Justin at Hillsboro Aviation, it’ll be partially disassembled and inspected again. Then 5 to 10 hours of test flying will be done. Oddly enough, safety course students sometimes fly helicopters ready for delivery. (If the timing is just right, Tristan might actually fly my helicopter before I do!) Finally, the helicopter will be taken back inside, where it will be detailed and prepared for delivery. I’ll get a phone call and hop on a plane to LAX, where a Robinson test pilot will pick me up — perhaps in my own helicopter! — and take me to the factory to receive my ship.

When will all this happen? Well, there’s a SLIGHT chance that it will happen next week, right before Christmas. What a present THAT will make! But it’s more likely that it’ll have to wait until after the Christmas holiday, when Robinson is closed for the week. That means January 3 or 4. In the meantime, I’m draining all my bank accounts and going back into debt to fund the purchase and pay the first installment on an extremely costly commercial insurance policy.

Until then, I’m looking for a fix. Mike offered to take me flying in his Grumman Tiger, but I’m not very interested. Cruising along at 120 knots 5000 feet above the ground is not very interesting to me. I’d rather fly at 90 knots and 500 feet. Jim said he’s going flying this week and promised to call me. I promised to pay for fuel. And Chris said I can come flying with him in his recently acquired 1946 Piper Cub. He says he seldom flies faster than 60 knots or 400 feet up. Just the kind of flying I like to do. The trick is to be at the airport when Chris gets there. And although Chris doesn’t work all winter long, I do.

Today I’ll go back to my office and continue working on the book that will pay for my addiction. I was recently told by someone in the know that my Mac OS X book is the #2 bestselling Macintosh book. (Number one would be better, but I’d need to hire a hit man to achieve that and all my money is tied up in aviation right now.) I’ll finish Chapter 3 and probably Chapter 4. My editor will be very pleased. But while I’m working, I’ll be listening to my aviation radio, hearing the helicopters from Universal and Silver State fly into Wickenburg for cross-country flights and pattern work.

And I’ll be looking forward to the time when I can get a good fix.