Walt Stoneburner – Page 16

Rules for Pilots

This weekend, my sister and niece came to visit for the weekend. That meant going to a lot of playgrounds, getting wet in fountains, building things with blocks, and the big treat: going out for steak dinner. I invited my friend Marcus to join us.

During the ride home, I asked Marcus and my sister if either of them had heard any more news about the FAA being accused of hiding controllers’ mistakes by blaming them on pilots. Neither of them had heard anything about it, so I quickly conveyed the details and described by the Washington Post.

Figuring my niece was half-paying attention, I decided to drift the conversation more toward the way of life-lessons. “You know, it’s okay to make mistakes. You just have to take responsibility for them, and offer to help fix them. You’re more likely to be forgiven, than if you hide it — cause that will get you into more trouble.”

My sister chimed in about that being true, helping to reinforce the proper behavior at home.

Marcus added to that, “The people that fly the airplanes should simply follow the golden rule: do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” I nodded, and he continued, “Don’t lie… Don’t steal…” His inflection indicated he was starting to struggle for some more values to list.

My niece picked up on that, interrupting with “Don’t commit adultery!”

The car went silent. Absolutely silent.

Marcus looked at me, I looked at him, my sister went brilliant red. Did she even know what that word meant?

“I’m not exactly sure how that applies to pilots, but we can run with that,” Marcus recovered quite gracefully.

Unfortunately, I didn’t help. The next words out of my mouth were “Giggity-giggity.” The kid was right.

I was pwned by an 8 year old.

Yes, it’s true. I was pwned by an 8 year old.

I went to visit my niece this weekend; we were out in the court to try her new Estes Hydrogen Fuel Rocket.

This thing is amazing as it is educational. It splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then electronically ignites the gases in an enclosed space, sending a rocket soaring into the air 200 feet or more. No special igniters. No solid fuel cells. In other words: safe, reusable, fun.

Well, right in the middle of the launch sequence, she looks at me and asks, “is that your phone ringing?”

I was pretty sure I had my phone on vibrate, but I pulled it out to double check. “Nope…”

Before I could continue, she said, “It must be mine,” and she pulled out a cell phone from her back pocket, nods that it was her, opens it, and excuses herself to take the call, stepping back toward her driveway.

Meanwhile, the rocket was still bubbling and the launch pad was spewing out verbal facts about Hydrogen.

But I wasn’t paying attention. I was trying to figure out if she had her mom’s cell, but she didn’t. It certainly wasn’t a toy. And at that point, I’m pondering between the wisdom of giving a child a cell phone to call home or be reached, versus the certain insanity that would result come billing cycle if a child didn’t understand cell plans.

She comes back, closing the cell phone and putting it in her pocket, “it was my friend; she was letting me know she’s has a sleep over. Where are we at in the launch?”

I had to pause, we weren’t at the launch phase yet, “Uh, maybe another minute.” I was still thrown off guard that she was that entrusted.

Then I got to thinking, why don’t I have her number? Or why doesn’t she have mine, for that matter.

“What’s you number?” I asked.

“Huh?” She shrugged. “I dunno.”

Ah! Perhaps that what the parents did. They got some special plan where she can receive inbound calls or something. Now I was determined to figure out what it was.

“Do you have my number in your phone?”

She thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”

“You want it?”

“Sure!”

I pull out my cell phone, retrieve my number and show it to her.

“I don’t know how to add it to my address book.”

Fine, what I was really after was her number. I’d get her to call me, caller ID would save the number, and I’d save it.

“Can I get you to call me.”

“Ok.”

She looks at my number, types it in, and holds the phone up to her ear.

My phone’s dead and lifeless.

“Ring ring.” She says, waiting.

I’m still waiting for the call to connect.

“Ring ring.” She’s looking impatient.

Still nothing.

Before I can deduce that perhaps she misdialed the number, she starts giggling. “Why aren’t you answering?”

“My phone isn’t ringing.”

“Yes it is, I’m saying ‘Ring ring’.”

Then it hits me, her parents gave her a dead cell phone to play with. And at this point she realizes I thought she was serious the whole time and bursts into laughter at my foolishness.

“I thought you said you had a cell phone!” I exclaimed, trying to dig myself of out the trap with a logical justification.

“I do,” she said, “my parents gave it to me.” And with that, I realized I’d been set up from the beginning.

She hit the fire button, and the rocket shot upwards with a loud bang, startling me. I had been paying more attention to the phones than the rocket. Clever kid.

New iPhones? Speculation at the Apple Store.

At the Apple store, I was given an interesting tidbit about an “event” that happened, and passed by rather silently.

Total speculation follows.

This weekend, I was at the Apple Store, and managed to get into a rather in depth conversation with someone, who, well, really knew their stuff. More so than other store employees I’ve chatted with, and some of them were pretty good.

I was passed the observation that an interesting “event” had occurred rather silently.

They ran out of iPhones.

This person explained to me that Apple does a really good job of keeping them stocked, since they were a major supplier for the area. However, they were clean out.

The only times that ever happened, was when Apple was about to change inventory on them. Killing the 4GB model was one. Going to the 16GB was the other.

A 32GB or 64GB iPhone seems likely, as iPhone customers want as much memory as an iTouch allows.

This would be a good time to add additional gestures, which, incidentally would help out with the lack of cut’n’paste.

But the real feature I’m looking for? The ability to push my contacts to other people with an iPhone. We’ve got the same device, the same applications, the same data, and bluetooth, there’s no technical reason I can’t give someone my ‘electronic business card’.

This is why I love Coastal Flats

Coastal Flats has a great sense of humor.

Coastal Flats has an enjoyable sense of humor.

I walked up to the hostess desk, and they recognized me immediately. Jokingly, I was asked, “What name shall we put you under as, Walt?”

I attempted to make up a name that would require horrific use of Unicode, if not make it look like a terrorist convention was occurring.

I got a smile as they handed me the pager.

But as I passed by their computer, I noticed they planned to turn the joke at my expense. Here’s how I was paged…. and, boy, did the staffer who seated us look confused.

Battlestar Galactica and the writers strike

My speculation on what turns the new ending of Battlestar Galatica will take.

It’s been in the news that the ending to Battlestar Galactica has been rewritten.

Supposedly, it’s darker. Depressing. And, you might need a security blanket to get through it.

Here’s my speculation on what happens:

Adama finds Earth.
The Cylons find Earth.
The colonies are wiped out.
But, the Cylons finally figured out how to reproduce.
We, the viewers, are actually Cylons.
And to atone for their sins, the Cyclons made themselves forget they are Cylons.
The only remaining evidence is a population that is monotheistic, with legends of a polytheistic society.

Perspective from a razor’s edge

100 Quantity Razors The $899 price is right.

But it’s the price for a 100 units, not one.

Now, think about that.

A box of 100 leg razors. That’s 10 across by 10 down.

It will set you back nearly a thousand dollars at the check out counter.

A thousand dollars.

For 100 razors.

Think of something that costs a grand, a box of razors next to it.

Me, I’m thinking a fully loaded Mac Mini.

Firefox Slow Page Load – Solved

Firefox 3 slow? 20 second page load times? Figured out why. And how to fix it.

A co-worker showed me an interesting problem with Firefox today. He loaded a page from our application (running on localhost) and the page content loaded instantly, but the page load itself didn’t end until a time out 20 seconds later. Literally.

Everything we saw a measured from the browser or from the sending application showed that the content was sent in milliseconds, and the page load was just sitting there doing nothing. We were even using the latest Firefox beta.

SQLite Functions

I was trying to figure out how to display an integer as a date and time in SQLite3. And it’s documented, and documented very, very well. Problem is, so is the code base, so when I looked for time conversion functions for SQLite, even browsing the Wiki, I kept getting the developer pages, not the SQL core functions. But, I found them. And now I’m documenting where so I can get to them at a later date.

Seems silly, but I’ve been using SQLite and was having the darnedest time try to convert an integer into a time. Problem was, I knew the functions for Sqlite3 had to be out there, but all I kept getting from search engines and exploring the developer Wiki were the C/C++ API functions, not the ones needed for SQL. I guess the way the pages are indexed, the source pages score higher than the user manual pages.

Anyhow, located the SQL functions and wanted to document their location for myself so I could locate them again later.

Seems they are called Core Functions.

They hide under the language expression page, which is under the SQL language page.

I was thrilled to find that the SQLite C Interface allowed the creation of your own functions. Brilliant!

Turns out, that the date and time functions were hiding in a different part on the Wiki.

The magic I wanted, given a time stored in an integer, was:
SELECT datetime(timevalue, 'unixepoch', 'localtime');

Did I Dial The Wrong Number?

The phone rings, and the caller asks me… “Did I dial the wrong number?” I gave the only reply I thought was appropriate.

Moments ago the phone just rang, and the caller ID showed some fairly foreign sounding name.

Me: “Hello?”
Them: “Hello?”

Me: “Yes. Hello?”
Them: “Uh, did I just dial the wrong number?”

Me: “I don’t know, that would depend if you were trying to reach me or not.”
Them: (long pause)

Them: “I think I dialed the wrong number.”
Me: “Well, thank you for calling, as I was kinda bored any how.”

Them: “Oh….” (And then she just sat there on the line saying nothing and then decided to hang up.)

Too bad, she seemed quite nice.

Never Visit the DMV Again!

I looked down at my license, jumped in the air, and clicked my heels. Why?
I WILL NEVER HAVE TO VISIT THE DMV EVER AGAIN!!!

When it comes to describing the DMV, Dane Cook’s description perhaps does the most justice.

That said, I went in to renew my license today. It was my third try.

The first time I went to the DMV in Sterling, and it had a line of people wrapped around the building, despite the website saying it was a 21 minute wait. So I threw in the towel.

Yesterday, I took off work to go visit, only to discover that they were closed on President’s day. Something about the empty parking lot should have clued me in.

Today, I went to the one in Leesburg, VA, and was quite surprised to find the parking lot was pretty sparse.

It seems the advice of the day is wait until the day after a federal holiday, then go to the DMV. Your co-workers will be putting in face-time immediately after a holiday, and that’s enough to thin things out in the morning.

As I got there, there was a lady in a leopard coat trying to pull her huge SUV out of a parking space, but was having problems turning the steering wheel one handed while she talked on the cell phone. This just cements what’s wrong with drivers these days.

As I entered the building, a kid walked out cursing he hated the place.

But my experience was much different. I have to give the DMV credit where credit is due, and don’t think saying that doesn’t leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

I was second in line at the Information center, and with two windows open was seen immediately. I got my number, and no sooner than it was literally in my hand, several windows down immediately called it. The information person walked me to the correct window.

All I said was “I’m here to renew my license and possibly get a vision test,” and instantly I had a form in front of me, highlighted fields, was handed a pen, and I filled in out in 30 seconds. The vision test was immediate and consisted of reading 12 characters and detecting blinking LEDs. Done. Passed. Finished.

I handed over a crisp $20 bill, got a receipt, and was told I’d have my picture taken in a moment. I barely had time to take my coat off. The picture was digital, and therefore quick. The license was printed and handed to me, and I was out before I knew it.

I then looked down at my license, jumped in the air, and clicked my heels. Why?

I WILL NEVER HAVE TO VISIT THE DMV EVER AGAIN!!!

The renewal date for my license is 2013. And we all know the world ends on Dec 21st, 2012.