Tag Archives: Phoenix

A Search…

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…but no rescue required.

I was sitting down at my desk, getting ready to start working on Chapter 6 of my Excel 2007 book (for the third time), when my phone rang. It was someone I knew from here in Wickenburg. He was wondering if I was available for a helicopter flight that day. It seemed that his son and his wife and young child had gone hiking and hadn’t come back.

Jeez!

Yes, I was available. I asked a bunch of questions, like whether the authorities were involved. He told me the police knew but hadn’t started looking yet. But he wanted to start looking right away. He thought they might be in the Granite Mountain area. That’s near Prescott, about 40 NM away.

I warned him that it could be expensive to search by helicopter. He said he didn’t care. I told him I could have the helicopter ready to fly in 30 minutes. I told him to give me a call if he wanted to go out. And we hung up.

He called back ten minutes later, just when I was warming up my Dell PC. He would meet me at the airport.

I dropped everything, threw on some jeans and practical shoes, grabbed my handheld GPS to track our search area, hopped in my Jeep, and drove off to the airport.

His mom, who I already knew, arrived at the airport as I was pulling the helicopter to the fuel island. I talked with her after I fueled up. Weather was closing in — an unusual thing here in Arizona — and the ceilings were dropping. Rain was a certainty. And to the north, where I needed to fly, the tops of the mountains were obscured by clouds. I’d checked the weather by computer before leaving home and things in Prescott looked okay for at least the next two hours. But I wanted to get up there as soon as possible.

Doug and his wife arrived a short while later. I gave them a preflight briefing, loaded them on board, and attempted to start the helicopter. For the first time ever, it took five tries to start. I’d flooded the engine while priming it.

We crossed the Weaver Mountains north of Wickenburg to the east northwest of Yarnell. We were flying right below cloud level up there. But ahead, at Granite Mountain, the sky was only partly cloudy.

We reached the mountain 20 minutes after leaving Wickenburg. It’s a one-hour drive. We circled around the west side to the north, had some trouble getting permission from Prescott tower to skirt their airspace as we flew around the mountain, and then started looking for the missing people’s truck.

Of course, there are a few things that made this a less-than-perfect search. First and foremost is that they weren’t sure that the missing people had come to Granite Mountain. They might have gone to some trail that ran from I-17 to the Verde River — which was at least 40 miles away. Second, the wind was howling up at Prescott, with gust spreads of 10 miles per hour or more. As the wind came over the arms of Granite Mountain, it bounced us around something fierce. Doug was getting airsick. My barf bags were under his seat.

We did a good amount of searching, but with thoughts of puke on my leather seats, I suggested we land at the airport and check in with other people who were monitoring the phones. I don’t think Doug was happy, but he didn’t argue. Five minutes later, we were on the ramp at Prescott airport, near the terminal and restaurant, and Doug was heading toward the buildings while I shut down.

In the restaurant, while Doug drank Sprite and his wife and I enjoyed other beverages, Doug checked in. The missing people’s truck had been found. At the Cave Creek trailhead, wherever that was. He didn’t get the coordinates. We hurried back to the helicopter, started up, and headed south.

The weather to the south wasn’t good. We hit rain right away. I joked about how the rain took the bugs off the main rotor blades. I didn’t mention that it also took the paint off.

It was a good 20-minute flight down the east side of the Bradshaw Mountains, which were completely socked in. It was really beautiful, seeing those clouds mingling with the mountains. You have to understand — clouds are not a usual feature here in Arizona. And when there are so many and they’re layered among the mountains, it’s really a sight to see.

Past Black Canyon City, I headed southeast, hoping to hook up with the road that runs from Cave Creek/Carefree to the lakes on the Verde River. That’s where Doug thought the trailhead might be. The wind was blowing, the rain was falling. And then I caught sight of a DPS (Department of Public Services) helicopter flying northbound. I tuned into the helicopter air-to-air frequency (123.025) and made a call.

“Police Helicopter north of Cave Creek, are you on one-two-three-point-two?”

“This is Ranger 42, north of Cave Creek.”

I told him who I was and who I had on board. I asked if he was searching for the missing people. He said he was and that he was heading toward the trailhead where their car had been found. He offered to give me the coordinates. I told him we’d just follow him.

Now keep in mind that I was flying a Robinson R44 helicopter. He was flying something else, something turbine with lots of rotor blades. I don’t know what it was. But I took off after him and tried like hell to keep up. We lost sight of him three times among the mountains we were crossing, but we finally caught sight of him in a low orbit around a parking area. The missing people’s truck was parked down there.

Ranger 42 told us he’d search to the west and suggested we take the east. Okay with us. So we followed a few roads in the area for about 15 minutes. Then we heard the media helicopters coming in. Channel 3 with Scott at the controls. Channel 10. Channel 15? I don’t know. All I know is that they were coming. And no matter how big the sky was, it would be a lot smaller with three more helicopters.

Doug suggested that I land in the parking area, let him off, and let his nephew, who had found the truck, on board. Then he proceeded to puke repeatedly into the barf bags I’d had the foresight to remove from under his seat before we left Prescott. In the back, his wife was fine.

We landed. Doug got out. His nephew climbed in. I gave him a safety briefing, made sure he fastened his seat belt, told him not to get sick because we were out of barf bags, and took off.

We spent the next 30 minutes searching to the northeast of the parking area. Ranger 42 and two other helicopters that had shown up had landed to coordinate the search efforts. They graciously offered to leave room down in the parking area for me, but I preferred to stay out of their way. So we followed trails and roads up and down mountains and canyons.

After searching to the east, we crossed over and went west. I watched my fuel levels. I had about 1/4 tanks when we got back to the landing zone and found one of the police helicopters spinning up. I reported in.

“Ranger 42 is departing the area,” the pilot told me. “The missing people have been found.”

The missing guy’s mom, who was sitting behind me, was thrilled. We listened to the media helicopters talking to the police helicopters. It seems they’d gotten lost the evening before just as it was getting dark and had simply pitched a tent and spent the night in it. In the morning, they’d stumbled upon someone’s home and the woman who had lived there had driven them back to the parking area. Found.

Approaching the landing zone from the north, I watched the three helicopters there take off. I lined up for landing and settled down in the space they’d just vacated. My two passengers got out. I caught sight of a restroom in the parking area and decided to make use of it. Two minutes later, the engine was shut down and the blades were stopped and I was making a beeline for the toilet.

There were cops all over the place down there. One of them had approached me as I was shutting down and I said, “Please don’t give me a ticket.” After all, I’d landed in a parking lot for a trailhead. He laughed.

Everything was okay. Happy ending. Doug decided to drive back with someone else. I think he had enough of the helicopter. But his wife stuck with me. We climbed back on board, started the engine, and took off. The media helicopters were circling above us like vultures. I just followed the canyon south, climbing up out of their way while they jockeyed for position to land and interview the found people.

I headed southwest toward Deer Valley. I needed fuel to make it back to Wickenburg. But I hit a wall of rain that was just falling too hard for me to fly through with a passenger on board. I turned around and headed east. Things were clearer over the Verde River. When I cleared the canyon, I was able to turn back to the southwest.

The media helicopters weren’t far behind me. I heard them debate whether or not I had the found people on board with me. Apparently, the vehicles in the landing zone had driven off just as the first helicopter landed there. Doug’s wife and I had a good laugh.

We landed at Deer Valley and I arranged for fuel. Once fueled up, we took off to the northwest to return to Wickenburg. It was raining most of the way and we skirted below the clouds almost all the way to Wickenburg.

I showed my passenger her house from the air before we landed.

Time logged, 2.9 hours. And yes, I was paid for my time.

On Geniuses

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Why I don’t Genius Bar hop and other comments regarding my recent hard disk problem.

One of my jobs as a blogger is to produce at least one blog entry a week. As you may have noticed if you follow this blog, it looks like I’ve been slacking off lately. Well, I just want to take a few moments to assert that looks may be deceiving.

Last week was a busy one for me. I finally got my computer back up and running after its second hard disk crash in a year. This crash was far more serious than the last and required the geniuses at the Apple Store to fix.

Now I know that lots of Mac pros laugh at the word “genius” when applied to the Apple Store’s tech support folks. And I do agree that it would be difficult to call any of them geniuses in the true sense of the word. (Think Einstein.) But if you were to compare their computer skills to the average Mac user’s, they could indeed be considered geniuses. They know a lot more about the current computer models than 95% of Mac users. Sadly, I fit into that 95% these days. I could tell you all kinds of things about fixing a Mac II cx or a PowerMac 7100/66 — and that’s because I used to teach a course about troubleshooting those computers running System 7. Nowadays, my troubleshooting capabilities are limited to what I need to know — like much of my other knowledge — and I don’t really need to know all the things the geniuses need to know to do their daily fix-it jobs.

So I’m not uncomfortable applying the word genius to many (but not all) of them. To me, some of them really are geniuses when it comes to diagnosing and fixing Mac problems.

I’ll also be the first to say that the capabilities of an Apple Store genius staff on any given day for any given store is hit or miss. It all depends on each staffer’s experience, knowledge, and interest in the topics he or she needs to know. I was at the Genius Bar in the Chandler, AZ store on Monday and the geniuses that day were pretty good. One of them was a super genius, the one who helped me was definitely above average, and the guy working the iPod slot was about average. (Let’s face it: it doesn’t take much skill to fix an iPod problem. Every iPod should come with a cheat sheet printed on back that explains how to reset it; that will resolve 95% of an iPod’s problems. The iPod guy probably resets a lot of iPods in a day. I’ve gotten so good at it that I can reset mine with one hand while flying my helicopter. Darn vibrations lock it up more often than I’d like to admit.)

I’ve had repeatedly bad luck at the Biltmore Apple Store in Phoenix, which is at least 30 miles closer to my house. The two times I tried to get assistance there, the lead Genius didn’t seem interested in looking deeply into my problem and didn’t seem to care whether it was resolved or not. On my fried motherboard problem, it seemed that she spent more time telling me how much it would cost to fix the problem than diagnosing what the problem was. This, coupled with her obvious lack of sympathy, made me doubt her diagnosis, so I had to go to another store (Chandler) to get a second opinion. I got a bad taste in my mouth (so to speak) from the experience. And that’s why I don’t go to the Biltmore store anymore.

Oddly enough, sympathy for my problem seems to be important to me. My main work computer or “production” machine (currently a Dual G5) is like a partner to me. It holds onto the projects I’m working on, it has the tools I need to get the job done as smoothly as possible. When it works right, we’re a team getting the job done. When it starts acting up, I get concerned. It’s not just a machine on the fritz. It’s a work partner feeling ill. What’s the problem? Can I fix it before it becomes critical? Is its motherboard about to go (again)? Or its hard disk? Will I lose data? Will I need to take it to the hospital (fix-it place) to get it working right again? How long will we be apart? And, of course, the selfish questions, like how long will I be unable to work?

The geniuses at the Chandler store are always sympathetic to my problem. They understand that my computer isn’t just a machine I use for e-mail and to surf the Web. They understand that its hard disk contains lots of important information — including books in progress — and the tools I need to get my work done. They understand that without my production computer, there’s very little real work I can do. And even though they don’t necessarily push any harder to complete a job for me than they do for anyone else, they make it seem as if my problem is one of the most important ones they’ll tackle that day. And they soothe me with reasonable reassurances that make it easier to face the 90-mile drive home and wait for their call.

This time around, the problem was a toasted hard disk. Personally, I believe it has something to do with my Firewire ports — it occurred while my iSight was plugged in and I was attempting to suck something off a portable Firewire hard drive. (My motherboard problem also manifested itself when working with multiple Firewire devices, including an iSight, so I’m very wary of using it these days.) They replaced the hard disk — which IS something I could have done myself if I really wanted to — and managed to get about 50% of the data off my old hard disk before it ceased to function at all. This cost me dearly, but the way I see it, I was paying for my own stupidity. If I’d had my entire Home folder backed up, recovery wouldn’t have been necessary at all and I could have saved the $150.

What hurts even more is that I’d written an article for Informit.com about backing up with Fetch before I had the problem and neglected to utilize my own instructions to protect myself.

The computer was done the next day and my husband, Mike, picked it up on his way home. It isn’t exactly on his way — he works about 15 miles north of there — but it was a lot more convenient for him than for me to make the 180-mile round trip drive. On Wednesday morning, I set about restoring the whole computer to it’s normal setup. I didn’t like the way the Apple folks had set up the machine — for some reason I was really bugged about my home folder being called maria (note the lowercase) rather than its usual mlanger (which I’ve used on all my computers for years). (Is that anal or what?) So I pulled off the recovered data, reformatted the hard disk, and spent the next two days installing software and updates. The updates were particularly painful now that I’m on the super-slow wireless Internet connection I whined about elsewhere in this blog. The 139 MB Mac OS X 10.4.8 combined updater took quite a while to suck off the Internet before I could install it.

Fortunately, I managed to pull e-mail messages, endo settings and contents, ecto contents, and some other stuff off my PowerBook. My iCal and Address book data was already set up to synchronize with .Mac, so getting all that data moved over was very easy. The only thing of real value that I lost was Chapter 6 of my Excel 2007 for Windows book, which I’d been working on for the second time. (The first revision went bad and I started from scratch. So today I look forward to starting my Chapter 6 revision for the third time. I knew it would be the book’s Chapter from Hell, but I couldn’t imagine how hellish it would be.)

By Friday, the computer was 90% back to its old self and I was working on it regularly instead of my laptop. So I was out of commission for two full weeks. I blame myself for that, too, letting the disk recovery software run as long as I did before finally bringing it to the geniuses.

Blogger's Block

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Sometimes there just isn’t anything you feel like blogging about.

Those of you who follow this blog or its individual categories may have noticed a dip in new entries earlier this week. I normally try to get at least one new entry out per day. But early this week, that was difficult to do. In fact, I went three consecutive days without posting anything at all.

Why? I think I was suffering from blogger’s block.

Is there such a thing? Well, apparently there is. I just Googled the phrase and got a list of blog entries that reference it. More on that in a moment.

First, I want to talk about why it’s important to blog regularly. Simply said, your regular readers expect it. When they visit your site each day (or every two or three days, perhaps), they expect to see new content. Disappoint a visitor a few times and he might not come back. If your goal is to attract and keep visitors, it’s vital that you give them something new and interesting to read each time they visit.

The problem with that — other than the problem of being interesting in the first place — is coming up with fresh topics that you want to write about. And that’s where I was earlier this week. Bummed out by my sick computer, not happy about surfing the Web for ideas on my little laptop, busy completing my office move, occupied with Web server modifications and setting up new gigs for Flying M Air. Without input from the Web or time to think of topics, I was short on inspiration and unable (or perhaps unwilling?) to write anything new.

This is something I need to cope with. Fortunately, Darren at ProBlogger has written a series of articles on the subject of blogger’s block that has lots ideas for defeating it: “Battling Bloggers Block.” As usual, Darren has a bunch of really good tips. I recommend checking them out if you find yourself short on ideas for your blog.

Telephone Support for the Price of a Book?

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Not likely.

I was driving down to the Phoenix area yesterday — my first time driving down there in months. It was a beautiful day, sunny with temperatures in the 70s. I was driving my little Honda with the top down and my iPod, connected to the stereo, blasting some classic rock. I had a 30-mile drive ahead of me on Route 60 (Grand Avenue) to get to the nearest PetSmart (or is it PetCo?), where I planned to buy some tropical fish for my aquarium. Route 60 isn’t the most pleasant road to drive on, but it’s nothing to complain about in the stretch I was driving.

I was having a good time.

My cell phone rang. The only reason I heard it is because it’s on vibrate mode and my ears were not necessary. I hit the mute button on the stereo and answered the phone.

The woman on the other end was difficult to hear at 65 mph in a convertible, so I pulled over. After all, she could be a customer for Flying M Air and I needed to hear what she wanted and to give her my full attention.

The words started coming through: QuickBooks. Book. Non-profit. How do I print checks?

It took all my patience not to explode. Apparently, this woman thought that since I’d written a book about Quicken for Windows and another book about QuickBooks for Macintosh, I could help her figure out how to print checks from the non-profit version of QuickBooks for Windows, which I had never even used, let alone written about. I don’t know where she got my phone number — it’s no longer on this site because of calls like hers — and I don’t know where she got the idea that the author of a book about a software product would be her free, technical support hotline.

I set her straight, hung up, and got back on the road. I was fuming for a short while, but the music and wind and great weather soon soothed me.

Here’s what people don’t seem to understand:

  • A book’s content is determined, in part, by the book’s project editor and page count. So an author cannot include coverage of every single nuance of a software program. The least used features are left out to make sure there’s room for the most used features.
  • An author cannot write a book about a topic unless the publisher feels that there’s enough of a market for the book to sell. That’s probably why this person could not find a book covering the not-for-profit version of QuickBooks for Windows. It’s also why I did not update my QuickBooks for Macintosh book to cover QuickBooks 2007 or my Quicken for Macintosh book for any version after 2003 (I think).
  • An author receives, on average, less than $1 per book sold. I don’t know where anyone can get one-on-one, completely personalized technical support by telephone for $1. (Even the folks in India use a script.) My point: buying one of my books does not entitle the reader to interrupt my day by telephone to ask questions about the book’s content or topics not covered in the book at all.
  • An author certainly cannot be expected to provide support for another author’s book. True story: I once got a question in my old FAQ system from someone who told me he’d bought a book by [insert author name here] and was having trouble understanding it. Could I help him? He wasn’t joking. Neither was I when I told him to contact the author of that book, not me.

This might seem like a hard line to take, but I don’t think so. I do a lot to support my work and provide content above and beyond what’s between a book’s covers. The Book Support categories you see listed near the top of the navigation bar are just an example — each one provides additional articles somehow related to a specific book. My Q & A system is also set up to receive questions that I can answer in a place where all readers can benefit from them.

That should be enough.

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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