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My New (Old) Office

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I move back to old quarters.

I spent much of today preparing to move my office back into my house. Late in the afternoon, Mike arrived from work and we loaded a bunch of stuff into the back of his pickup. I’m now typing this from my relocated office.

For the three and a half years, my office has been in a condo I own in downtown Wickenburg. I moved it there after the last tenant broke their 1-year lease and abandoned the place. When I discovered that nice white carpet (installed by the previous owner; I’m not a complete idiot, you know) completely trashed, I decided I was sick of tenants and sick of having a three bedroom house with only two occupants and no guest rooms.

We moved our offices to the condo in August 2003 (I think). It was nice to have a dedicate workspace, a place I had to go to to work. It got even nicer when DSL became available and I could get fast Internet.

But as time went by and I got more and more involved with my helicopter work, the downtown office became an inconvenience. If I had a call for a flight, I’d have to hurry home and get changed into normal clothes before driving to the airport. That was about 30 minutes shot to hell. And I started to get lazy, to not want to go to work in the morning. That’s not a good thing when I’m facing a deadline.

I wanted an office at Wickenburg Airport, but the powers that be in Wickenburg decided my small business wasn’t worthy. I guess I told too many truths on wickenburg-az.com. Made a few people feel uncomfortable. They decided to punish me by not letting me have an office at the airport. When I got the FAA involved — after all, the town’s agreement with the FAA has an “economic non-discrimination” clause — they started “cooperating” and finally got around to putting out an RFP for the 1000 square feet of land I had my eye on. But do I really want to be a tenant of the town? I thought so at first, but after dealing with the town’s crap for the past eight months, I’m pretty sick of it all and not very interested in giving the town any of my money. Frankly, most of my business comes from Scottsdale these days anyway. I’m still trying to decide whether to bid on the space after all.

So I decided to move my office back into the second bedroom at our house, the same room that was my office when we first moved here 10 years ago. It’s a 12 x 10 space with a nice, big closet. There’s no additional cost and a nice tax deduction for a home-based office. Best of all, I can go to work at any time of the day or night without commuting a single mile.

Mike’s office, which occupied the master bedroom of the condo, has been reduced to the size of a desk and set of shelves in the upstairs “den” where the television and stereo are. Not too shabby. He tunes into Sirius radio on Dish Network while he’s working and listens to it in surround sound. The window he faces has the best view in the house.

The view from my officeMy window also has a nice view. It looks out into the garden with the mountains in the distance. I just finished setting up the Webcam for wickenburg-az.com, which shows the view. Here’s the small view. (Well, if you’re looking at this during the week of January 22, you might actually be seeing the inside of KBSZ studios; there’s a tiny Webcam problem right now.) When spring comes, I’ll start working in the garden again. I’m looking forward to it. I miss gardening, but when my office was in town, I never seemed to have time for it.

Right now, 2/3 of my L-shaped desk has been moved into my office. My Dual G5 computer and the big 20-inch Sony monitor has been hooked up. I put the Dell speakers on the computer, but I think the old Altec Lansings sound better, so I’ll put them on tomorrow. I’ll get the last piece of my desk later in the week, after I clear space in this room for it. (Still got one of the old “library” shelves in here.) That’s also when I’ll bring in the printers and the Ethernet hub.

Other stuff that cluttered my office is gone. I sold the G4 that was my Web server — it sold for $335 on eBay yesterday and I shipped it out today — and I moved the G4 eMac to KBSZ studios for audio streaming. Today, I disassembled the Dell Dimension L933r computer that was my old PC test mule in preparation for donating it to the local library. My old Strawberry iMac (a G3) is in the garage, waiting for me to restore it to factory settings and dispose of it. I gave my old clamshell iBook SE to my next door neighbor, who is home-schooling her four young kids. She now has her own “computer lab.”

That leaves me with a very reasonable 3 computers for my work: my Dual Processor G5 (now about 3 years old), my relatively new Dell Latitude D820 laptop test mule, and my reasonably new 15″ Mac Book Pro test mule. Oh yeah, and my 12″ G4 PowerBook, which I really can’t part with. No need for all the desk space I had in my downtown office. I’m even cutting myself down to two printers (rather than the 3 I had accumulated). Look for some new items on eBay soon.

Getting rid of all this old equipment feels good. Although I actually threw away — in a Dumpster! — three external SCSI hard drives and a dual bay SCSI CD-ROM reader today, most of the other equipment is finding a good home. I hate throwing stuff away, but I really hate storing it. And let’s face it: old computer equipment has very little value these days.

So now I’m sitting at home in my office at 8:25 PM, listening to iTunes music on my G5 (right now: “Wish You Were Here” on Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd). It’s later than I’d usually be working. I think I’ll be working longer hours with my office in the house. Getting more work done. Blogging more.

And doing a lot of work in my pajamas once again.

A Helicopter Repair Story

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Including a happy ending.

On Tuesday, I flew out to Robson’s Mining World in Aguila, AZ. I was scheduled to appear there on Saturday for their anniversary celebration and I wanted to make sure my usual landing zone was in good shape.

It was a windy day and I was tossed around a bit on the 8-minute flight from Wickenburg (vs. a 30-minute drive). But the winds were calmer closer to the ground. I circled Robson’s once, then set down on what I thought was a spot closer to the road. Turned out, it was the same spot I’d occupied the year before. It just looked closer to the road from the air. The quartz rocks Mike and John had laid out in a line for me were still there. The idea was to land with the helicopter’s cockpit over the line. That would keep my tail rotor away from the bushes behind us. But since the bushes looked bigger than they had the year before, I positioned the helicopter a little bit closer to the road.

I cooled down the helicopter and shut down the engine. Then I went out to assess the landing zone on foot. I discovered that the quartz line was still quite workable for me. The bushes were farther back than I’d thought on landing. (I always estimate the helicopter’s tail longer than it really is.) So the landing zone was fine. No trimming would be required. That’s good because I don’t like the idea of cutting any desert vegetation unless absolutely necessary.

I put on my jacket — it was still quite cool at 9 AM — and walked through Robson’s front gates. The place looked deserted. I headed toward the restaurant, planning on having a piece of pie for breakfast. The door was locked but as I was starting to turn away, Rosa, who works in the restaurant, hurried out from the kitchen and opened the door. I settled down at a table and she talked me into having a real breakfast of bacon and eggs. She set me up with a small pot of hot tea and went back into the kitchen to prepare my food.

I had a few awkward moments when the teapot’s lid fell into my cup and became stuck there. If I’d been with someone, we would have been laughing hard. But I was alone and laughed at myself more quietly. I had to pour all the tea back into the pot and wait for the lid in the cup to cool and contract a tiny bit before I could get it out.

Rosa brought me a plate of fresh fruit — grapefruit, pineapple, grapes, and oranges — then disappeared back into the kitchen. I busied myself by reading the history of Robson’s and some information about the equipment and vehicles on display. When she brought out my breakfast a while later, I gobbled down the two eggs over medium, three slices of bacon, and two slices of wheat toast with real butter. (Don’t you hate when restaurants use mystery spread on toast?)

The person I was hoping to see there, Rebecca, wasn’t in yet. She lives in Wickenburg and drives out five days a week to manage the place. I saw her drive in just as I was starting the engine for the helicopter at about 9:45. Since the engine was already running and the blades were already turning, I didn’t shut down. I had another stop to make.
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CDs vs. Downloads

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I couldn’t have said it better myself.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the inconvenience of downloading music from iTunes. Yes, you read that right. I said inconvenience.

Sure, it’s great to download music immediately, when I want it, and pay only 99¢ per song. But what’s not so good is the restrictions on music use:

  • I must register every computer I want to play my purchased songs on and I only get 5 of them. That covers my desktop Mac, my PowerBook, my Mac test mule (for writing Mac books and articles), my Windows test mule for writing Windows books and articles), and my husband’s laptop. About a year ago I was faced with a not-so-unique problem: the motherboard on my dual G5 went bad and needed to be replaced — before I could unregister it from iTunes. I lost one of my computer registrations and had to do battle with Apple to get it back.
  • I can’t easily back up my purchased music. I need to go through some kind of procedure that I simply haven’t had time to explore. In fact there seem to be restrictions on how I copy the music, period.
  • Apparently, there is some loss of quality if I burn purchased music to a CD and then rip that music to a computer. I haven’t played around with this enough to have the full story, but I shouldn’t have to spend the time to figure out why my music quality should change. It shouldn’t change.

Fortunately, I have an iPod (or three) so the fact that iPods are the only MP3 players that can play iTunes purchased music isn’t a problem for me. But I understand that it’s a major gripe for other people.

I was going to write a blog entry about all this, but now I don’t have to. I just read a piece that expresses my feelings and frustrations on this matter better than I could. From Alpha Geek: CDs vs. Downloads on Lifehacker:

DRM, the chief source of all this grief, is the love child of Satan and Osama bin Laden. If I could pay 99 cents for an unprotected, unrestricted, 320Kbps MP3, I’d do it in a heartbeat–and it would be all over for CDs. Instead, online music stores treat us like thieving children, locking us into one bit rate, one file format, a limited number of CD burns, and other annoying handcuffs. Apple and Microsoft impose the worst kind of restriction: Songs purchased from iTunes and Zune Marketplace can be played only on iPods and Zunes, respectively.

And later:

Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve rekindled my love affair with CDs. They let me do things, to borrow from Old Blue Eyes, my way. See you in hell, DRM.

Thanks, Rick Broida, for putting my thoughts into words. See you at the CD store.

Which Newspaper Do YOU Read?

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Another forwarded funny.

From my friend Tom (again). In searching for the original source of this material, I found part of it it quoted in an article on The Nation’s Web site back in October 2000. But even they didn’t have the source.

  1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
  2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.
  3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they ought to run the country.
  4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t understand the Washington Post.
  5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could spare the time.
  6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.
  7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country.
  8. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country, as long as they do something scandalous.
  9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it.
  10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country.

Flying to Sedona (again)

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A helicopter flight that has become routine.

As I write this, 36% of the site visitors who have taken the time to vote in my Most Interesting Topics Poll (that’s 11 people so far; I’m hoping for continued growth in that vote count) have said that Flying is the most interesting topic on this site. So I decided to devote this morning’s blog session to a flying article.

(For those of you just tuning in for the first time, among the hats I wear is a commercial helicopter pilot hat. I operate a Single Pilot Part 135 helicopter tour and charter company out of Wickenburg, AZ — Flying M Air.)

I flew yesterday. I flew three passengers from Wickenburg to Sedona and back. The passengers were originally from Russia and now live in the U.K. They’re staying at the Flying E Ranch, one of Wickenburg’s remaining three guest ranches.

I can’t get excited about this flight. It was so routine. After all, by now I must have flown from Wickenburg to Sedona and back at least 50 times.

The only thing unusual about the flight yesterday was visibility. In Arizona, it’s clear and sunny almost every day. Not only can I usually see the Weaver Mountains about 15 miles to the north, but I can usually see them clearly — that means I can distinguish rocks and canyons and other features from 15 miles away. But yesterday was different. It was hazy, as if a thin gauze had been stretched across my eyes. As I drove to the airport at about 10:00, it was apparent why: there was moisture in the air. There was condensation on my Jeep and even a little frost down where the horses were munching their morning meal. Imagine that. Moisture.

My passengers arrived early, all bundled up for the 50°F temperatures we expected in Sedona. After giving them their preflight briefing and loading them on board, I started the helicopter and waited for it to warm up. A few minutes later, we were on our way, climbing to the northeast into hazy skies.

The air was smooth, the sights were the same as usual (except for the haze) and I pointed them out faithfully to my passengers. They didn’t talk much, which is always a danger with me. I wind up talking to fill the silence, telling them more about the area than I usually do. I had three passengers on board, so I had to make sure I pointed out things on both sides of the helicopter — normally, with just two on board, I put them on the same side of the helicopter so I only have to point out things on one side.

We crossed the Weaver Mountains not far from the hidden cabins I’d discovered years before. Then we followed the Hassayampa River up toward Prescott, crossing the Bradshaws. My passengers were thrilled by the sight of snow on the north side of the moutains. I was thrilled by the fact that the haze had cleared out and it was a nice, clear day up there.

As we got close to town, I reported in to the tower at Prescott Airport. I planned to follow Route 69 a bit and then head toward the pass atop Mingus Mountain. This would have me cutting as much as one mile into Prescott’s airspace. (I normally go around it so I don’t have to talk to the tower, but our heavy weight had our airspeed a bit slower than usual and I wanted to save a few minutes of time.) We were over Prescott Valley when the tower pointed out a Baron about 400 feet above us, crossing in front of us. I descended about 500 feet — I was high because of all the mountains I’d have to cross — to stay out of his way. Then the tower cut me loose and I climbed up and over Mingus Mountain, reaching my highest elevation of the flight: about 8,000 feet.

West SedonaFrom there, I started a 1,000 fpm descent to the northwest, descending past the former ghost town of Jerome. I told my passengers about the first time I’d been there nearly 20 years ago when only a handful of people lived there. Now it was a booming tourist town, with art galleries and restaurants in the old buildings perched along its hillside. I showed them the open pit mine, then continued northwest to the red rocks. We did a red rocks tour on the way into Sedona, avoiding the flight path of the helicopter tour operators there, and landed at the airport.

Uneventful.

Of course, I’d been so concerned with getting my credit card terminal to work at the airport that I’d forgotten to bring a book or my laptop so I’d have something to do while my passengers went on their Jeep tour. Duh. After the Jeep picked them up, I walked over to Sedona’s restaurant for lunch. (I don’t think I can recommend the Chicken Alfredo with Broccoli; too thick and starchy, although the chicken was cooked nicely.) Then back to the terminal to wait.

I wound up renting a car from the car rental guy there. $20 for up to 3 hours (I think). I didn’t even have it two hours. I drove down off Airport Mesa and hit the New Frontiers grocery store at the bottom of the hill. It has a magnificent selection of cheese and a very knowledgeable cheese guy behind the counter. I tasted some cheeses and wound up buying them all. I also bough brussels sprouts on the stalk — something that’s simply not available in Wickenburg.Then into “uptown” Sedona to visit a bookstore (the Worm) which seemed to have fewer books than I remember. And coffee at the coffee shop across the street. Then back to the airport so I’d be there when my passengers returned.

I talked to everyone who worked at the airport. The car rental guy, the AZ Adventures helicopter tour guys, the FBO guys, and the Maverick helicopter tour guy. That kept me busy even after my passengers returned from the Jeep tour and went to have lunch at the airport restaurant. By 3:30 PM, they were back and it was time to go.

The return trip was almost as routine. The haze had moved in a bit and we were flying right into the sun. My hat was under my seat, so I had to shade my eyes with my hand once in a while. Instead of heading straight for the southern end of Mingus Mountain, we headed southeast to Oak Creek Village. My front seat passenger had his camera out and the red rocks were being illuminated by that gently filtered afternoon sun. The views out that side of the helicopter were great. I flew just past Oak Creek VIllage before turning to the southwest, back into the sun. The mountains rose as dark shapes silhouetted against the hazy light.

I didn’t have as much to say on the way back. Part of that was my intercom system, which was creating static again. (I have to fix that! It’s driving me nuts!) So I had the squelch set so it was less likely to make noise. My passengers weren’t talking anyway. They were just looking; the daughter, who was probably close to 18 years old, had her iPod on under her headset and probably wouldn’t have heard what we were saying anyway.

The farther south we flew, the worse the haze got. It was definitely brownish in color toward the Phoenix area — smog trapped in an inversion. At one point, we could clearly see a dark line in the sky that marked the inversion layer. Very unusual.

I flew them over Crown King, a tiny town in the Bradshaw Mountains. The main reason I go that way on the way back is that you can normally see Wickenburg Airport from the Crown King area — a distance of about 23 nautical miles. But not yesterday. The haze was so complete that if I didn’t have my GPS set to Wickenburg (or at least a heading in mind) I would have strayed off course. I simply couldn’t see that far away. Even Lake Pleasant was difficult to see from the air, although I did point it out for my passengers as we flew about 10 miles north of its northern edge.

We were over the Monte Cristo mine on Constellation Road when I was still trying to figure out exactly where we were. When I saw the mine shaft and buildings, I thought I’d stumbled upon a mine I’d never seen before. Then I recognized it and was surprised that we were so close to town. Less than 10 miles to the airport, according to my GPS. I could just about make out reflections downtown and the scars of the earth around the airport.

I flew over town and then headed out to Flying E to show them the ranch where they were staying from the air. (That’s something I do for people staying in our local hotels and guest ranches.) Then we landed by the fuel pumps at the airport. I cooled down and shut down.

Routine.

After a while, flying the same route over and over does become routine or — dare I say it? — boring. Sedona is a place of incredible beauty and the best way to appreciate its beauty is to see it from the air. Yet when you’ve seen it as many times as I have, the impact of all that beauty fades. That’s one of the things I talked to the FBO guys in Sedona about. They both agreed that when they’d first come to Sedona, they were amazed at its beauty. Now, living with it all around them every day, it simply isn’t a big deal.

I felt like that when I flew at the Grand Canyon, too. Don’t get me wrong — it never got so boring that I’d prefer to fly elsewhere. I just wished I had the freedom to alter my flight path for a slightly different view or a new way of seeing things.

And here in Wickenburg. The upstairs front windows of my home look out over the Weaver Mountains in the distance. When I first moved into the house, I thought it was a view I’d never grow tired of. But I did. Kind of. I’m not sure why.

I’d be interested in hearing from other pilots who fly in beautiful places and have somehow lost sight of that beauty because of routine. Use the Comments link.