Life, the Universe, and Everything

While nothing is 100% guaranteed until the order forms are signed, the buzz I’m getting just from planning out the initial portion of the project makes it very likely that I’ll be going ahead with the project, the biggest question simply being one of timing.   Right now is primarily a time of preparation.   I’m in the process of finishing some big outstanding projects on my house right now.   Completing these projects will allow me to recover the space that is being used to store materials for these projects in the garage, which in turn will allow me to get the garage setup as a workshop, and so forth.

At the same time, I’m in the process of preparing some of the resources I’ll need to have available for the project.   Among these tools is a place to maintain a builders log.  I’m setting this up as a wordpress blog, and eventually plan to turn the entire blog website into a set of books.   All fun stuff.

At any rate, the majority of information about the project going forward will be located at www.mattshangar.info, so that it can all be nicely captured into one big package at the end.

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.  - Leonardo da Vinci

Its no secret that I love flying.   Of course I take it a bit further than most too, since I like getting out of them in flight too.   There’s no purer form of flight than to leave the vehicle behind!

The last year and a half I’ve spent flinging myself out of “perfectly good airplanes.”   Never mind that there is no such thing as a perfectly good airplane to begin with – its more fun to leave the airplane behind and land under my own personal fabric wing.   So far I’ve made 116 successful skydives, including one cutaway.   Its been a blast to say the least.   This past season, I participated in 4-way formation skydiving.  I learned a ton over the past year with Gravity Assassins, even with only getting around 60 jumps with the team.

As the skydiving season slows down, I’m looking towards the next season.  While skydiving goes on year round around here, wind and stormy weather slows down the jumping a bit.   This upcoming season, my plan is to start jumping video.  Especially if I find a spot jumping video for a team,  this has the great advantage of having the team pay for my jumps, freeing up funds for other activities.   Besides the financial aspect, flying video should provide a different challenge, and plenty of new stuff to learn.

The side effect of reducing the funds spent on skydiving is that funds will be available for flight training.   Its long past time to get back to flying.  Currently I have my eyes on a local flying club to get flight training and continue flying.  They have a decent variety of aircraft, and the rates are pretty amazing.  As long as I can manage to keep a nice flow of funds for flying, it shouldn’t take long to get my pilots license.

On a related note – I’ve got the ‘builder’ bug worse than ever lately.   I’ve drooled over the Velocity kit for a long time.   I’ve been thinking about it for a while, wondering if I’d be able to complete such a project and all.  Honestly, I probably would have a real tough time completing a composite aircraft project, at least at this point.  Lately I’ve been looking a slightly different direction though.   While I like the Velocity design a lot, I’m finding myself surprisingly drawn to the bit more conventional design of the Van series kit aircraft.  In particular, I’m finding the Van RV-9A quite attractive, and carrying with it some amazing performance numbers.

One of the big advantages to the RV kits is that the sheet metal construction process generally lends itself to short sessions easier than composites.  With composites, there is a lot of overhead time around any tasks – mixing epoxy, cleaning up brushes and tools used in the layups, and general setup/cleanup tasks.   Spending anything less than 2-3 hours at a time just seems like it would have far too much time being spent on the overhead, rather than on the project.  With the aluminum construction process, there are plenty of tasks that can be worked on with very little time spent in setup & cleanup.  Spending an idle 15 minutes deburring a part is certainly feasible, as is spending a few minutes setting a few rivets on an assembly.  All tasks that directly push towards a completed project, rather than getting sunk into overhead.

While I haven’t completely decided on the airplane yet, if I find my desire for it holding as strongly as it is right now, it won’t be *too* long before I’ll be buying the first subkit of the airplane.  I did find a Sheet Metal basics workshop offered through the EAA that I signed up for.   Even if I ultimately decide not to build a plane, the workshop is not too expensive and should be pretty interesting regardless.  At the very least I can get an idea if I’m even remotely up to the challenge.

Step one of building is to create myself a workshop.   That alone is going to take a bit of time from where I am right now.  Finally some stronger motivation to get pushing on some of these outstanding projects around the house though.

Soo…. ages ago now, I switched from playing Eve to playing World of Warcraft.   Now with the next expansion coming up in the next several months, talent previews are starting to show up for classes.    So far the Druid & Rogue previews are the ones I’m most interested in.   I really hope they ship with one Druid talent in tact as it is currently in the preview.   Nothing beats ‘Nom Nom Nom’ as a talent name – pure awesome there!

This quick post is primarily just so I can keep track of some planned talent spec setups for my various characters and setups to compare with some of the other guides as they start showing up as well.

Rogue Assassin Build here

Rogue Combat Build here

Discipline Priest build here

Feral Bear Build here

Common sense certainly seems to be a rare thing anymore.    Several years ago, I came up with the following:

Schlegel’s theorem on the conservation of Common Sense:

There exists in the world a constant quantity of “common sense”.  As the population of the world increases, so must the individual distribution of common sense therefore decrease.

I’ve been watching this “common sense constant” for some time now, and I think this theorem goes a long way towards explaining why people as a whole don’t seem to have any sense at all.   I certainly have yet to see anything that would lead me to suspect any inaccuracy.   Recent events certainly solidify this theorem even more.

It should also be obvious that the distribution of common sense is not even.  Some people seemingly get more than their “fair” share, while others seem to not have a bit of sense at all.

So… the next time you find yourself astounded at people’s lack of sense, just remember, they can’t help it.    It won’t make their actions any less bizarre, but at least you might have an idea why.

If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a teleprompter   installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have  laughed and said this is more proof of how he inept he is on his own and  is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?

If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan’s holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent “Austrian language,” would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income
taxes, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to “Cinco de Cuatro” in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was
the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?

If George W. Bush had mis-spelled the word “advice” would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoe as proof of what a dunce he is?

If George W.. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he’s a hypocrite?

If George W. Bush’s administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11?

If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans , would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?

If George W. Bush had created the position of 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in America, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

If George W Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can’t think of anything? Don’t worry. He’s done all this in 5 months — so you’ll have three years and seven months to come up with an answer.

– Received via email