Tag Archives: media

A Helicopter Repair Story

Posted on by
Comment

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.
Continue reading →

Duck and Cover

Posted on by
Comment

Perhaps this is why we are the way we are today.

From “Vintage ToonCast: Duck and Cover“:

An entire generation of American school children were shown this post-WWII Civil Defense film based on limited information from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Download this ToonCast.

Watching this video today reminded me why America is different now than it was in the 1950s and early 1960s. We don’t have to live in fear.

CDs vs. Downloads

Posted on by
2

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.