The Pilot’s Alphabet

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Maria Langer

Words representing letters.

The other day, a new Twitter friend (@mpowerdesign) tweeted:

WTF? Whiskey-tango-foxtrot! I didn’t know there was an actual “military alphabet.” Dad never told me! http://bit.ly/biyLQT

I replied:

It’s used in aviation, too.

This was news to her, which kind of surprised me. I idiotically assumed that everyone knew that pilots used these special code words. But I’m obviously wrong. And, at this point, you might be wondering what the hell I’m talking about.

Meet the “Pilot’s Alphabet”

I’m referring to the ICAO Spelling Alphabet. Wikipedia offers a good basic description:

The ICAO spelling alphabet, also called the NATO phonetic alphabet or the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used spelling alphabet. […] The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) alphabet assigns code words to the letters of the English alphabet acrophonically (Alfa for A, Bravo for B, etc.) so that critical combinations of letters (and numbers) can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential. The paramount reason is to ensure intelligibility of voice signals over radio links.

In other words, pilots say words to represent letters so there’s no chance of being misunderstood. These words are universally used so all pilots know them. The table here lists them all, along with their all-important pronunciations. Note that not all are properly pronounced the way you might think — Quebec is a good example.

Although this is officially known as the ICAO Spelling Alphabet, it has been adopted by a number of other organizations, including NATO, the FAA, and ANSI. @mpowerdesign’s link to militaryspot.com identified it as the “Official U.S. Military Alphabet,” which is accurate only because the U.S. military adopted the ICAO Spelling Alphabet. The same goes for me referring to it as the “pilot’s alphabet.”

How It’s Used in Aviation

If you read this blog regularly, you might recall me referring to my helicopter as Zero-Mike-Lima. That’s because the last three characters of its N-number (like an aircraft license plate, painted on in big numbers and letters) are 0ML or zero, mike, and lima. When I identify myself to air traffic control, I call myself “Helicopter Six-Three-Zero-Mike-Lima.” The controller can, at his option, shorten this to the last three digits (Zero-Mike-Lima) and, if he does, the subsequent exchange between us will include just those digits. I use those digits as a sort of name for my helicopter.

In aviation, letters are also used to identify airports. So Phoenix Sky Harbor would by PHX or Papa-Hotel-XRay and Wenatchee Pangborn would be EAT or Echo-Alpha-Tango. Charted intersections and VORs also use letters and, thus, these codes. A pilot might use this extensively when filing a flight plan or receiving a departure clearance.

Towered airports use letters to identify the automated traffic advisory system (ATIS), which is generally revised and re-recorded hourly. At the beginning and end of the recording, the recording identifier will be stated — for example, “Deer Valley Tower, Information Juliet” or “Advise on initial contact you have Golf.” When a pilot makes his first call to the tower, he needs to include the ATIS identifier, so a call might sound like this:

Deer Valley Tower, Helicopter Six-Three-Zero-Mike-Lima, 10 miles north, landing west helipad with Juliet.

An airport’s ground control will also provide runway exit and taxi information to airplanes using these code words for letters. For example, they might tell an airplane to exit at “alpha-four” or use “taxiway charlie.” I don’t hear much of that because I don’t generally talk to ground control.

@mpowerdesign asked if I had to memorize it. I guess I did. It didn’t take much doing, though. The words are used so often in aviation that you kind of absorb them when you communicate. I make a special effort to keep them in my mind by using the same letters when I need to spell something out to someone — for example, “A as in alpha, B as in bravo” instead of using whatever words come to mind like most people do.

Expand Your World

At the end of our short exchange, @mpowerdesign tweeted:

Geez…you learn something new every day! See, this is why I tweet… :-)

And I think that sums up one of the reason I participate in Twitter. By following a variety of people with a variety of interests from a variety of places all over the world, you can’t help but learn new things, just by participating in Twitter conversations. It’s one way to expand your world.

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of yet another lengthy blog post here on An Eclectic Mind. If you got this far, you must have gotten something out of what you read. And isn’t it nice to read Web content that isn’t full of annoying ads?

How about doing something to show your appreciation? I’d love it if you’d add a comment at the end of this post to share your feedback with me and others. But I’d really love it if you’d visit my Support page and chip in a few dollars to help cover the cost of hosting this blog and motivate me to keep writing new, interesting content. It’ll only take a moment and I really would appreciate it!

Hovering Over Cherry Trees before Dawn

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Maria Langer

What some people will do to make a buck.

The weather forecast last night was clear: there was a 78% change of rain starting at 11 PM. At 8:30 AM, the approaching storm was nearby. It was already raining in Mattawa, where my buddy Jim is working. It looked like the rain in our area would start within an hour.

I called my cherry drying client, who owns a 32-acre orchard 6 NM from where I’m camped. “Looks like it’s going to rain tonight,” I said.

My client was not surprised. This was our third conversation about the weather in 8 hours.

“It’s too late to dry tonight,” I told him. The sun would set in less than 30 minutes and I didn’t dry cherries in the dark. “Sunrise tomorrow is around five. I can be airborne as soon as it gets light.”

“I’ll spend the night down there,” he told me. “I’ll call you at 4:15.”

“I’ll go to bed now then,” I replied.

I hung up, feeling bad for him. He had an old, beat-up RV down in the orchard. I knew he wouldn’t be comfortable. He probably wouldn’t get much sleep. But someone had to be down there to monitor rainfall to know whether I was needed in the morning. Spending the night in an orchard is not part of my job description.

I set an alarm on my iPad for 4:30 and went to bed.

The rain started before 11. Steady but light. I had no trouble sleeping through it.

Wake Up Call

I woke to the sound of birds chirping. It was still dark, but the birds around here don’t seem to care. I grabbed my phone and touched it to bring it to life. It was 4:10 AM. I grabbed my iPad, fired it up, and took a look at the radar on WeatherBug. The storm system was mostly past, but a small blob of rainfall was headed toward the orchard. It could rain itself out before it arrived. Other similar blobs had done so, disappearing off the radar when I put it in motion.

I was studying this when my phone rang. It was my client.

“Is this my wake up call?” I asked cheerfully. I wanted him to know I was already wide awake, on the job — even if I was still in bed.

“Yeah,” he replied. He sounded tired.

“Did it stop raining down there?”

“Yes. Come on out and dry. I won’t be there; I have to get back to town.”

We hung up and I got out of bed. I’d already laid out my clothes, but had neglected to set up the coffee maker. I took care of that, letting it drip into a travel mug while I dressed and washed up. By 4:30, I was slipping out the door with coffee in hand.

Predawn Flight

It was getting light. I could clearly see thick clouds out to the west, in the direction of the orchard. I kept thinking about that little blob of rain.

The helicopter was already fueled and preflighted, so all I needed to do was take off the blade tie-downs and do a walk-around. By 4:45 AM, I was in my seat with the engine running. It took a long time to warm up. My breath quickly fogged the inside of the cockpit bubble. The outside was covered with raindrops.

I spent a bunch of time trying hard to catch a moth that was hitching its second ride in my helicopter. I failed. Again.

By 4:50 AM, I was ready to go. The cockpit bubble was barely clear enough to see through, but I knew how to clear it. I pulled the knobs that turned on the air vent and heat to full. Then I hovered out over the ag strip and took off along it, toward the well-defined horizon to the east. Within 30 seconds, the windscreen was clear, inside and out. I turned to the west and headed toward my client’s orchard.

Out in the distance, a thick blanket of clouds covered the foothills on the other side of the Columbia River. A similar but smaller blanket hovered around 200 feet over the farmland just west of the town of Quincy. Another one poked up from beyond the drop-off I’d have to descend to get to the orchard on the river. I started wondering whether there would be fog on the river itself.

But when I got to the end of the plateau, I could see that the river far below was clear. I pushed the collective down slowly and smoothly, stopping only when I had a descent rate of at least 1,000 feet per minute. I approached the orchard from slightly downriver, as I usually did, but instead of descending to orchard level over Crescent Bar, I made a descending circle over the river. I was hoping to reduce the amount of sound I might project over sleeping people.

I settled into my usual five-foot hover in my usual place beside the water tank and got to work, flying up and down the rows at about 5 knots. Below me, the big, old tree branches went wild, throwing rainwater off the cherries. I varied my pattern only to avoid flying close to the bedroom window on the other side of the house there. I figured that if people were sleeping inside, I’d rather wake them from the other side of the house instead of 20 feet from their window.

The Rain

I was about 1/4 finished with the orchard when it started to rain. I looked up at the clouds floating over me and didn’t really see the rain coming down. But I could see it hitting the river, which wasn’t as smooth and glass-like as it had been when I first arrived. And it was certainly all over my cockpit bubble.

Now my goal is to dry the orchard and it’s pretty hard to ensure that everything I’ve flown over is dry if it’s getting rained on again right after I pass over. Without my client there to tell me what he wanted me to do, I had to do what I thought was right. I had two choices: land somewhere and wait it out and then start again or keep drying and just go over the areas that got rained on after they were dried. Landing wouldn’t have been a big deal — there was a sizable empty boat trailer parking lot nearby where I don’t think anyone would have bothered me at 5:15 in the morning. Still, I had a feeling the rain wouldn’t last and didn’t want to waste time landing and shutting down if I didn’t have to.

My decision to keep drying was based on the amount of rain falling. It seemed like a heavy drizzle. The trouble is, I couldn’t really see when it stopped. Because I was only moving at 5 to 10 knots, there wasn’t enough wind to blow the water off. So it just sat there. When it started dripping off, I figured the rain had stopped. In all, it lasted about ten minutes. I didn’t think the trees I’d already dried had gotten very wet. They certainly couldn’t have gotten soaked. A quick hover over every other row should shake off whatever moisture had settled on them.

But first I needed to finish the rest of the orchard.

This particular orchard is not easy to dry. The trees are a variety of sizes and thicknesses, ranging from very small young trees to very large old ones. There are obstacles. The rows don’t always go the same way and they’re not easy to see. I’m sure I must have whined about this elsewhere, so I’ll spare you any more whining.

The point is, despite the fact that the orchard is only 32 acres, it takes me at least 1.1 hours to dry it. This year, it’s been a lot wetter so it’s taken me 1.2 hours. Today, with the redo of part of it, it took me 1.5 hours. I’m doing it as fast as I can, but I need to be thorough, too. If the grower loses his crop because I did a shitty job drying, he’ll cancel the contract and never use me again. I don’t want that to happen.

Besides, his cherries are the best. I can’t wait until he starts picking.

Return Flight

I It was nearly 6:30 AM when I finished. I took one more low pass over the treetops and headed out over the river. I made my usual spiraling climb at 1200 feet per minute. The plateau was 500 feet above the river level; I needed at least 200 feet more to clear the edge comfortably.

I went back to a viewpoint near Crescent Bar and shot this photo about an hour after I landed. It really was a beautiful day.

As I climbed, I couldn’t help but admire the big, white puffy clouds that were scattered all around me. There was one just to the south of me that seemed to grow out of the top of the Babcock Bench, climbing like stretched cotton toward the sky. The low cloud that had been just west of the town of Quincy was still there, but seemed to have grown. I leveled off at 400 feet above the farmland south of Quincy and the cloud remained below me, as if unsure whether it wanted to be fog or the cloud it really was. I looked out over my shoulder and saw the windmills of the wild horse wind farm, basking in sunlight.

I was angry with myself for not bringing a camera.

I landed at the ag strip and did all the things I usually do: tie down the blades, refuel, do a post-flight inspection. It was about 7 AM when I returned to the RV. I made a second cup of coffee and had the pleasure of drinking all of it. Later, I went out with my camera and tried to capture some of the beauty I’d spotted on my way back.

Why My Mind is [Always] on the Weather

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Maria Langer

I’m a walking, talking, texting weather resource.

Yesterday was a beautiful, clear day in central Washington, with the occasional little puffy cloud floating across the bright blue sky. It was warm in the sun, cool in the shade, and a gentle breeze kept any insects from becoming a nuisance.

A perfect day to visit with a friend down in Mattawa, a 40-minute drive south.

I was about halfway there when my phone rang. It was one of my cherry drying clients. I pulled over to make sure I didn’t lose the connection on the winding river-side road. After exchanging greetings, she asked, “So what’s the weather forecast?”

“Twenty percent chance of rain tonight and twenty percent tomorrow.”

We finished the conversation, both promising to keep an eye on the weather. I hung up and continued on my way.

You might be wondering why I knew, off the top of my head, the weather forecast for the next 24 hours. Simple: It’s part of my summer job.

My job depends on the weather. If it’s a nice day, I get the day to myself and can wander away from my base. The nicer the day, the farther I can wander. If it’s a rainy day, though, I have to hang around, waiting for a call to fly.

This means I need to know the upcoming weather all the time.

How I Track the Weather

I use five different resources to track the weather.

The National Weather Service at weather.gov offers a 7-day forecast with “at-a-glance” graphics and a detailed textual summary. I can also click a link to get an hourly weather graph that charts percent chance of rain, percent of sky cover, temperature, humidity, wind, etc. hour-by-hour several days into the future. This is my primary source of weather forecasting information.
When rain is in the area or on the way, I use the radar graphic at the Weather Channel to see where the rain is and which way it’s going. What I like about this particular radar graphic is that you can drag and resize the map to change the view. I can see the big picture to get an idea of how much rain is on its way and zoom in to see exactly where it’s falling. This is my primary source of current weather information when I’m in front of my computer.
When I’m out and about and have access to the Internet, I use WeatherBug on my iPad to see weather information, including a radar graphic, forecast summary, and hour-by-hour forecast. I can also use its Webcam images to help judge visibility in the event that I need to cross the Cascades to get to Seattle. (Which I don’t usually do during the season.) WeatherBug is also available for mobile phones; I really do need to get it back on my BlackBerry.
In the RV, I use my radio scanner to listen to weather summary and forecast information from the National Weather Service for my area. It’s basically local weather radio. It isn’t nearly as helpful as the other sources, but it does offer a good overview for my area and playing it tends to keep Alex the Bird quiet.
I also look out the window a lot. Knowing which direction the weather usually comes from and watching the sky out that way can give me an early heads-up. This is especially useful when I’m out running errands and don’t have access to any of my other sources.

What’s amazing about the weather forecast is that it’s only accurate for a short while. Yesterday, the chance of rain this morning was 20%. When I got back from my day out, it was 30%. This morning, it was 50%. And then it started raining. It’s been raining for at least an hour and radar shows me that we could get at least an hour more of the stuff.

Knowing this can keep me out of trouble. 20% didn’t seem like much of a chance — and it isn’t. But 50% is a pretty good chance of rain. It went from 20% to 50% in less than 12 hours. So I have to constantly be checking my sources.

Today’s Weather Story

This morning, my client’s son, who manages the orchard, called. It was 7:46 AM. “What’s the weather?” he asked.

I told him what I saw on radar: a long line of rain showers stretching all the way from southwest of Portland to us, moving our way. “It’s raining here,” I added.

His orchard is 6 miles northwest of my position. He lives another 20 miles north.

“I’m on my way to the orchard,” he told me. “I’ll call you when it stops.”

He means that he’d call me to fly when it stops.

So I’m sitting here, dressed in my flight suit and ready to go. The rain is still pattering against the roof and windows of my RV. The radar shows some heavier rain inbound from the Ellensburg area. And more rain beyond it that, if we’re lucky, will pass to the south of us. (That’ll make my buddy Jim happy. He’s down in Mattawa, doing the same thing I am. In fact, we spend far too much time texting each other about the weather.)

Waiting to Fly The helicopter is a quarter mile away and already fueled and preflighted. All I have to do is pull off the blade covers. I can be airborne within 10 minutes of my client’s call. The orchard is a 4-minute flight from here. So I’d much rather sit in my nice warm RV, watching the weather on radar, than sitting out in my truck by the helicopter, blind without most of my weather sources.

But I guess this explains why my mind is always on the weather — at least this time of year.

Greetings from Washington’s Cherry Country

Posted on June 5, 2010 by Maria Langer

Comment

Cherry drying season is off to a busy start.

Cherries, at the source.

I’m in central Washington state for my third season as a cherry drying pilot. The short explanation of that is that cherry growers often rely on helicopter pilots to hover over cherry trees after a rain to shake/blow water off so the cherries don’t split or rot.

I’m based in Quincy, WA, living in my RV with my helicopter parked across the street at an ag strip. I arrived two weeks earlier than I had to. I didn’t know I was that early — I try to arrive about 5 days early. But my first contract was supposed to start early. It was only after I arrived that the start date was finalized to a much later date. It was supposed to start today.

Rain, Rain, Rain

Meanwhile, it’s been raining like crazy here. In the two weeks I’ve been in Washington, I’ve seen more rain that the past two seasons combined. My buddy, Jim, started a contract down in the Mattawa area about 10 days ago and has already flown more than 10 hours.

How important are helicopter pilots to the success of the crop? Well, this story should give you an idea:

Jim originally had two orchards under contract and was drying both when called to do so. One day, there was a light rain and only one grower called. He dried that orchard, then called the other grower to see if he needed his dried, too. He told Jim that the cherries didn’t seem that wet, that he thought he could dry them himself with the blower equipment he had on hand. Three days later, he cancelled the contract because he’d lost 60% of his crop to water damage after that light rain. He wasn’t even going to bother picking the rest.

The loss of so many cherries in this season’s crop makes the remaining cherries even more valuable. Last season, the problem was that there were too many cherries and the growers weren’t getting a good price. Some of them would have had a loss on their crop, so they didn’t even bother to pick.

But this year, with all the rain we’ve been having, cherries are going to be difficult to protect. Any grower who doesn’t have cherry drying hover service lined up for his orchards will likely lose his crop.

Expect to pay more for cherries this year, folks.

My First Dry

As for me, that first contract started a day early. It rained overnight from Thursday to Friday and was still raining when I got up in the morning. At about 9 AM, my grower called and said he’d likely have me start a day earlier. He launched me at 10 AM, right after the rain had stopped.

The clouds were still low when I made the 6-mile trip to his 32-acre orchard block on the Columbia River. I ducked beneath them and made the steep descent to the river. Remembering the pattern I’d flown the year before, I circled the orchard, descending. I settled into a hover five feet over the tops of the trees in the southeast corner of the block, being careful to avoid the water tower beside the trees there. And then I got to work.

My client’s orchard is the big patch of dark trees in this photo.

This particular orchard is one of the most difficult I’ll have to dry this year. There are trees at various ages and sizes. Some rows go east/west while others go north/south. There’s a gully deep in the west side with trees going right down into it and a house tucked into the south side. And a processing shed in the middle.

The grower arrived about 10 minutes after I’d started. I think he took some video of me flying around. And there were onlookers along the road from the nearby trailer park and condos.

It took me 1.2 hours to get there, hover over all the trees, and get back. The grower waved and stepped into his truck as I left the last tree and started my climb out.

More to Come

There’s a 20% chance of rain tonight and a 30% chance of rain tomorrow morning. So I’d say I have a 30% chance of flying again tomorrow.

While I hate to see the growers spending a lot of money to protect their crop, I have to admit that it’ll be a nice change for me to have a profitable year.

Who’s Filtering Your E-Mail?

Posted on June 5, 2010 by Maria Langer

And why?

The other day I sent an e-mail message to one of my editors. Within seconds, the message was bounced back to me with this notice at the top:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at smtpauth22.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net.
I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.
<[redacted e-mail address]>:
[redacted IP address] does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [64.202.165.44] blocked using dnsbl.ahbl.org; GoDaddy – Continued hosting of FreeSpeechStore hate website on 72.167.250.55, ignoring abuse
Giving up on [redacted IP address].

My first thought was WTF?

I tried again and got the same result. Then I started researching. I discovered that www.ahbl.org is the domain name for the Abusive Hosts Blocking List (AHBL), an organization that apparently maintains a list of IP address it deems as abusive. The owner or manager of the site had decided that he/she didn’t like GoDaddy.com because it hosts the conservative “hate speech” site FreeSpeechStore. (And no, I won’t link to that drivel.) My editor’s ISP was evidently using AHBL to filter incoming mail.

I e-mailed AHBL the following message using my MobileMe e-mail address (since I assumed my e-mail account hosted at GoDaddy.com would be blocked):

Unfortunately, I host a non-abusive site and my main e-mail (not this one) is at GoDaddy.com. Your site is preventing my e-mail from reaching some destinations because of some link between GoDaddy.com and freespeechstore.com.
Do you really think this is fair to me and others in the same situation?

The response I got was surprising. Someone named Brielle Bruns wrote:

Unfortunately, your provider has stated to us that they will not enforce their Terms Of Service or Acceptable Use Policy. They are turning a blind eye to abuse and harassment, which is something we can no longer ignore.
To give you an idea of why we are taking this issue as seriously as we are, one of Mr Scoville contacted the local police department, fire department, child welfare, schools, etc of one of his victims, and claimed that he and his wife were molesting their children and others from the school.
Put yourself in the victim’s shoes, and then ask yourself weather or not you’d do whatever it took to prevent anyone else from being victimized by Mr Scoville.

I repeat: WTF? My response explained exactly how I felt about the situation:

I really don’t see why I need to be dragged into this.
I agree wholeheartedly that if what you say is true, this Scoville character is an asshole and a menace to society. But let’s look at this objectively on two fronts:
– One of the founding principles of this country is free speech. If Scoville wants to create a website full of hate speech, it is his right to do so. You’re attempting to censor him by acting as a third party filtering service. Seriously: what gives you the right?
– To punish him and (assumedly) GoDaddy.com, you’re punishing ME, an innocent bystander to this whole thing. Your failure to allow my message to be received by my editor directly interferes with my ability to submit work and invoices for that work. You are cutting into my ability to make a living. WTF?
I don’t care WHY you are taking this seriously. It’s none of your business — or mine. Let the police handle it — that’s what our tax dollars pay them to do.
I’ve issued a complaint to my editor and asked him to contact his ISP or system administrator — whoever is using your services. I’ll forward this message to him as well. You are stepping beyond your legal rights in this. I’m hoping my editor complains and your service is no longer utilized by his company or ISP.

The response I got back picked apart my e-mail message paragraph by paragraph, attempting to justify the site’s action against GoDaddy just because it hosts some wacko’s Web site. Honestly I didn’t even bother reading it. It was clear that Bruns was just as wacko as the person he/she was trying to harm — by harming people like me. Clearly, I was wasting my time communicating with this person.

So I wrote to the editor I’d been trying to contact, this time using my MobileMe account. I’d already updated him about what was going on. Now I decided to make a formal request:

I respectfully request that you ask your ISP or system administrator to stop using the services of Abusive Hosts Blocking Service. They are preventing me from communicating with you on my primary e-mail address, dragging us into some sort of war they have with GoDaddy.com, and simply do not care how much they inconvenience innocent bystanders.
The fact that your ISP or System Administrator utilizes a service that would do such a thing is unthinkable to me.

When I didn’t get a response, I followed it up with this:

Seriously…you need to do something about this. Whoever authorized use of this blocking organization is preventing me — and possibly your advertisers! — from contacting you. THIS IS DEFINITELY A PROBLEM ON YOUR END. Tell your ISP or System Administrator to shut that service off.
The woman who runs it is on some kind of holy crusade and she’s been very rude to me in our e-mail exchanges. I’ve lost an hour of my day troubleshooting this issue, only to be frustrated by her holier-than-thou attitude.

The day ended. The editor is back east, so I didn’t really expect immediate action. In the morning, however, I had the result I wanted. My editor wrote:

Thanks for letting me know what you’ve learned. I’ll be discussing it with my boss today and we’ll figure out what the next step will be.

I later was CCed on an e-mail message from my editor’s boss to the company’s ISP:

Below is a dialogue between one of our writers and someone named Brielle Bruns from an outfit called “The Summit Open Source Development Group” which seems to be at the root of our problem receiving some business critical e-mails from Godaddy based addresses.
In addition to blocking e-mails from our writer, I have had one of my attorneys e-mails blocked and missed an important deadline as a result. I have no idea how many e-mails have been blocked from our subscribers or [redacted] customers but I have to believe the number is sizable.
As far as any of my businesses are concerned, please IMMEDIATELY STOP using what ever “service” is being provided Brille Burns’ outfit. What ever dispute she or her group has with this Scottville guy, it nothing to do with us and her organization is negatively impacting our business and customers.
Please take care of this immediately.

I replied with a thank you message to my editor and his boss. The block was soon lifted and I could again begin using my regular e-mail address to communicate with my editor.

One of the subsequent messages flying back and forth between the parties included this comment:

PS: We just found this: from 2.5 years ago ref: “Brian J. Bruns convicted felon and owner of www.ahbl.org Abusive Hosts Blocking List AHBL” http://criminal-brian-j-bruns.blogspot.com/

The link is to a Blogger blog that purports to share documents about this person’s felony conviction and sexual deviations. (I still can’t believe the kind crap out there on the Web.) It looks pretty real, but I’m a skeptic on these things and wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that it was Brin’s nemesis, Scoville, slinging dirt. Seriously: some people need to get a life.

When the hubbub had died down, I e-mailed the ISP representative. I had his e-mail address from the message initially to him that I was CCed on. I told him I was interested in blogging about this and asked a few questions. He replied that he’d have to ask his boss about some of the answers, but he did state the following:

I can tell you, though, in regards #3, we were using the service entirely for spam prevention. We use a number of different services for spam prevention, and had no knowledge of their political agenda. As soon as we found out what was going on with this service, which was, coincidentally, shortly before [redacted] e-mailed us, we stopped using this service. I am very sorry for the problems this caused, and we would never knowingly use a service that had a political agenda like this.

Which begs the questions:

What “service” is your ISP using to combat spam?
How many important, legitimate e-mail messages have you missed because of a situation like this?
What gives organizations the right to classify an IP address as abusive or harmful, regardless of who else might be using it via shared hosting or e-mail?

If you or your ISP is using AHBL, stop now. The company obviously has a political agenda that does not consider the negative aspects of its actions. Why would anyone use a company like this to filter e-mail? Wouldn’t you rather get a little spam than miss out on important communications from friends, family, and business associates? I would!

As for me, I’d already begun moving my Web sites and e-mail addresses away from GoDaddy.com — but for other, service-related reasons. They still have not provided a satisfactory explanation to me about what’s going on with the “hate site.” This just confirms that my switch to a new ISP was long overdue.