Some More Movies.


by Berck

Incredibles– While this was by far the best looking animation from Pixar yet (well, I didn’t see Finding Nemo), the plot wasn’t very entertaining. The characters seemed a bit shallow. Superheros have never much done it for me. I didn’t mind watching it, and Joanna liked it a lot.

Closer– A somewhat strange movie with Natalie Portman. Natalie Portman as a strip dancer. I thought it was an entertaining look at human relationships– awfully accurate in some strange hyperbolic fashion. After the credits pronounced it was adapted from a play, things made even more sense. Overall, both Joanna and I liked it.

Green Butlers– A very queer Danish movie that I tried hard not to like. It wasn’t horrible, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it. Entertaining in a very dark way. I wonder if I would have liked it better if I understood Danish. Joanna liked it.

Spartan– I hate David Mamet. I don’t know why, but I really do. This was by far the best Mamet I’ve ever seen, probably because it was written for the screen, not the stage. It was still full of that utterly moronic Mametish dialogue, which means that everything has to be repeated four times. Joanna liked it, but then she’s the one who wanted to rent it. It at least kept me watching. I give it a nice solid C.

Holy Land– A strange little movie about a Israeli Yeshiva student who falls in love with a Russian prostitute. Joanna and I both enjoyed it. While I’ve never been to Israel, it painted an intriguing and probably somewhat accurate portrayal of how strange a place it is. It’s got nudity and sex and guns.

Lemony Snicket– I hate Jim Carrey, but he seems to be in everything these days. After hearing an interview with the author on What do you Know, I had high hopes for this movie. It wasn’t entirely dissapointing, but I didn’t think it was exceptional either. It had amazing visuals, great scenery, and a charming feel to it. But I felt like it lacked soul in some way.

Primer– This movie could have been good if it weren’t bad. They tried so hard to make the dialogue fit a mood that it became almost incomprehensible. Still, it showed promise up until about the last 15 minutes when the plot self-destructs into nonsense that probably managed to fool some viewers (such as my wife) into thinking it was deep, meaningful, complex, and mind-boggling when it was actually just stupid.

Dirty Filthy Love– While far from charming, this was a funny movie about an OCD/Turret’s guy. Joanna and I both enjoyed it, but we don’t know that you would. The scenes with the OCD support group probably made it worth watching on their own.

Saved– An entertaining movie about a fundamentalist Christian high school. We both liked it.

The Last Shot– An FBI agent produces a movie to catch gangsters. It wasn’t a bad movie, but the interview with the real-life agent on This American Life was far more entertaining.

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Answers


by Berck

Joanna, after asking me the answers to the questions mentioned in the previous post said that I should post them. Because otherwise you guys might not understand how ridiculous it really is.

The mental grouping of affiliated perceptions is called A) insights.

Which of the student’s human needs offer the greatest challenge to an instructor? C) Self-fulfillment.

Individuals make more progress learning if they have a clear objective. This is one feature of the principle of B) readiness.

I think I’m about ready to take that test anyway. Unfortunately, I’ve got to have an even better memorization of it to parrot back in the oral exam. I’ve heard that the examiners do indeed want to hear everything just like it is in the book.

I’ve done 5 flights in the CFII course so far, the most recent this morning. I’ve got another one at noon. I got to fly in the clouds today, which was good practice. My instructor even had me do two no-gyro approaches in the clouds. “Are you sure about this?” I asked him. “I’m comfortable with it, if you’re okay with it.” “It’s fine with me, as long as you don’t let me kill us.”

“No-gyro” means that the two vacuum-driven gyroscopic instruments are covered up. This is to simulate a failure of the engine-driven vacuum pump, something that is bound to happen eventually. Particularly in training operations, because the vacuums pumps are generally not replaced preemptively as they are in passenger carrying operations. In a multi-engine airplane, it’s no big deal because there’s two engines and two vaccum pumps. They’re not likely to fail at the same time. In most aircraft, the attitude indicator (sometimes called the artificial horizon) as well as the heading indicator are driven off the vacuum pump. The attitude indicator works off of a dual-gimble mounted gyroscope that gvies you a constant reference to straight and level flight when you can’t see outside. If it’s working, it’s the instrument that’s most looked at in the clouds. The heading indicator is a gyroscope that only displays heading. You might think, “But you have a compass, so what’s the big deal? Why do you need this thing anyway?” The magnetic compass is a postively wretched and near-worthless instrument unless it’s a perfectly calm day and you’re flying straight and level. If it’s at all turbulent, the compass swings this way and that. If you’re turning toward north, the compass lags the airplane by as much as 30 degrees, and if you’re turning toward south, it leads the airplane by almost 30 degrees. For no-gyro instrument training, a fair amount of time is spent on what are called “compass turns”– turning the aircraft to a specified heading using the compass alone. For everything but large turns, it’s actually much easier and more acurate to fly timed turns. A standard rate turn equates to 3 degrees per second. You figure this out with the third gyroscopic instrument on the plane– a rate of turn indicator. It’s electrically powered so that if the vacuum pump dies, you’ll still have ONE gyroscopic instrument. (Conversely, if the electrical system dies, you’ve still got the other two. Airplanes are all about redundancy.) Unfortunately, it provides no pitch information and only indirect bank information. Flying an instrument approach this way is pretty difficult– and is the most difficult task required for either the instrument or flight instructor-instrument ratings.

I flew two no-gyro localizer approaches today. Even more tricky because I had about 40 knot tail wind, because the localizer approach is for runway 3 and the wind was out of the southwest.

We’re supposed to do NDB approaches this afternoon. I’ve never actually done one in an airplane. They’re miserable. NDB stands for non-directional beacon. Which means the only navigational information you’ve got is an arrow that points in the direction of a beacon. And not very consistently at that, because the beacons are relatively low-powered and low-frequency. Almost anything will make them inaccurate. Thunderstorms, shore lines, mountains, clouds, night, temperature inversions…

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Fundamentals of Instructing


by Berck

I’d like to take this opportunity to say that the FAA doesn’t seem to know anything about flight instruction, if their notion of the “fundamentals of flight instruction,” is any indication.

The sheer irony here is just too much to explain. Here I am, learning about learning. The four characteristics of learning is that it’s “Purposeful, Active Process, Result of Experience and Multifaceted.” I have to have slews of this sort of thing memorized. The six principles of learning are Readiness, Exercise, Effect, Primacy, Intensity and Recency. The four levels of learning are Rote, Understanding, Application, Correlation. I am, I fear, making no effort to understand this hogwash on a level higher than rote so that I can pass this test. Some sample questions from this test.

The mental grouping of affiliated perceptions is called
A) insights.
B) association.
C) conceptualization.

Which of the student’s human needs offer the greatest challenge to an instructor?
A) Egoistic.
B) Social.
C) Self-fulfillment.

Individuals make more progress learning if they have a clear objective. This is one feature of the principle of
A) willingness.
B) readiness.
C) primacy.

You get the idea. If there are actually concepts being tested here, I’m missing out.

So, I’ve actually got two written exams left. The one on this stuff (Fundamentals of Instructing) and a Flight Instructor exam on flying things.

I just finished the ground school for my Instrument Instructor rating. I’m still working on my Multi-Engine rating, but the Duchess has been down for its 100-hour inspection, and I haven’t flown it since Wednesday. I did my first flight for the Instrument Instructor rating this morning, and I’ve got another this afternoon. This afternoon will be my first flight in the right seat. I hear this is a truly discombobulating experience.

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Flat Stanley


by Jonah

Flat Stanley came to visti us last weekend. Flat Stanley is a classic children’s book (Mardel carries it) that Berck’s cousin Brian was reading in his third grade class, which sent Flat Stanley to visit 50 States. Here’s the report we sent back with Stanley. (Pictures are in Photographs.)

FLAT STANLEY

State visited: Oklahoma
Date of visit: May 21, 2005
Person visited: Berck and Joanna
Stanley’s Adventure:

Stanley visited us here in Norman, Oklahoma. Norman was named after Abner E. Norman, who had been hired by the U.S. government to survey the Indian Territory (which later became Oklahoma). Norman is the third largest city in Oklahoma, and it is just south of Oklahoma City, the state capital. Norman is home of Oklahoma University.
The permanent population of Norman is about 96,000 people, but it grows during the school year by the 30,000 enrollment of OU.
OU has one of the most successful college football teams (they lost last year’s Rose Bowl after being only one of three undefeated teams in the country). College football is like a religion here. Under the American flag, businesses fly the OU flag instead of the state flag. People all over town have red and white rock gardens in their front yards spelling out “OU;” at Christmas time, there are lots of roofs with “OU” laid out in strings of red lights on rooftops. The team is called “The Sooners,” but no one knows what a Sooner is, so instead of putting pictures of OU’s mascot (a covered wagon) on their cars, people put on upside-down Texas Longhorn insignia (they are OU’s biggest rival team). (By the way, a Sooner is someone who settled in the Indian Territory before the U.S. government officially opened it to settlement.)
We are living here in Norman because it is also the home of the cheapest and fastest flight school in the world. Berck is studying to become a pilot. Oklahoma is one of the best places to learn to fly because this state is so flat with few trees or mountains to crash into. The weather is usually very clear (though it is usually also very windy). When the weather isn’t nice, we tend to have very severe thunderstorms with lots of tornadoes and hail.
Because it’s so windy here, one of our favorite things to do is fly our stunt kite in a park near our home. We took Stanley kite flying during his visit. He wanted to ride on the kite to get a better view, and since he’s so flat, he flew with the kite quite well.

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense, Wanderings | 1 Comment

State Troopers out in force


by Jonah

We’re trying to figure out what to do for my three-day weekend. Berck announced last night that we were going somewhere, and I had to figure out where. I was exhausted last night, so I told him we’d go to Colorado…where, specifically, I’d figure out when I got home from work.

I was so exhausted because I’d just worked an eleven-plus hour day starting at 6 that morning. See, when Barry told us all to go home on Wednesday because of the fire, he instructed us to plan on everyone coming in at 7 a.m. and pulling orders like crazy. But we were to call his voicemail beforehand to make sure the warehouse was actually open. So I called at 10, right before I would have headed to bed if I had to be at work at 7. The voicemail told everyone to come in at SIX. Six?? So I went straight to bed after setting my alarm for 5 a.m. Berck took forever coming to bed even though he said he would be right there, and then I couldn’t fall asleep until long after midnight.

As it was, half the people didn’t show up till 7… they’d called right before the time they were leaving for work to make sure to come in, but by then it was too late to get the message. The voicemail also told the college kids to come in at 10:30 or as early as they could. But Barry had told all of them the day before to take Thursday off and call to find out what time to come in Friday.

Even so, we got several store orders pulled in record time. The couple of college kids who called early enough to know they could come in on Thursday stocked all day. I finally went home at quarter-to-six. I was tired.

I got more sleep last night, heading to bed before it was even dark yet. Worked from 6 to 4:45. Got home and hit the Internet right away to tell Berck where we were going.

“San Isabel National Forest,” I announced. “The Spanish Peaks. It’s the nearest interesting part of Colorado.”

That was when Berck said he didn’t want to go anywhere. He was too tired.

I’m thinking a weekend staying off the roads, relaxing and watching movies, maybe using our new grill that Berck’s mom bought us, would be really nice.

Actual Fact: About 70 percent of the earth’s fresh water is made up of glacial ice. And if you had to replace it all, you’d need 60 years of the entire globe’s rainfall, and then you’d have to figure out a way to freeze it all.

Posted in Wanderings, Warehouse Blues | 2 Comments