February 2004 | haggaret.com

Non smoking areas ‘do not work’

Posted by Kevin, on February 24th, 2004

I was sifting through the days RSS feeds and I came across this little gem from BBC News: Non smoking areas ‘do not work’ Are you kidding me?! This is what passes for news these days? Is anybody surprised by this?! Are people really as stupid as I’m always saying? A quote from the article “Today’s research that non-smoking areas do not protect the public from second-hand smoke is a significant finding.” A significant finding?! Excuse my language but, WTF??? Unbelievable! [...]

Starting to customize

Posted by Kevin, on February 24th, 2004

Spent some time last night reading about CSS. Actually, the reading was a little dry so I just started playing with the wp-layout.css file for my site. I’m starting to figure out how it all goes together and as you may notice, I’ve changed a few colours from their default settings. My plan is to add another column to the site, not sure what for yet, I really just want to play around to get a feel for how CSS works. [...]

Great Flight!

Posted by Kevin, on February 22nd, 2004

Note to self…listen more carefully to your instructor when he is talking about taking off! Second note to self, controls should ALWAYS be straight and level when you take off! Other than a somewhat ‘interesting’ takeoff, today’s flight was fantastic! Unfortunately runway 22 was closed due to massive amounts of snow covering it which meant we had to taxi all the way down to runway 32 which is the same one that the BIG planes use. Didn’t bother me though, I got to do a little more taxiing and also listen to what we’re supposed to say on the radio in situations like that. I did get to do quite a bit more radio work today and I’m getting more comfortable with it. Wont be long before I’m a pro. :) [...]

Humidifier Installed

Posted by Kevin, on February 21st, 2004

I bit the bullet and decided to install the humidifer myself. I was kind of hoping to get JK or someone over to give me a hand but nobody was available. Turns out I didn’t need any help with it, it was really a one person job. I think it took me just over two hours to complete the job, I took my time since I didn’t have much else to do. The toughest part was cutting the holes in the ducting with the tin snips. I managed to avoid cutting myself surprisingly! The only thing I screwed up was forgetting to use this washer type thing for the self piercing needle valve. I got a little bit wet due to this screw up but I got it fixed so no worries… [...]

It’s nice to be part of a community

Posted by Kevin, on February 21st, 2004

Well mother nature felt the need to dump another load of snow on us last night. I suppose I shouldn’t complain, at least I’m not in Halifax where they got > 88 cms! At any rate, as usual after a dumping of snow, I went out to shovel the driveway. (If it weren’t for Amy’s little car I wouldn’t be shovelling this year but I wont get into that now…) Well I’m not the only person in the neighbourhood who was out shovelling at the time. My next door neighbour, as well as a neighbour who lives across the street, were also out at the time. [...]

Humidity…can’t live without it

Posted by Kevin, on February 15th, 2004

Well we finally gave in and decided that we couldn’t live without a humidifier. Like so many other people, my skin dries right out in the winter and it makes life a little less comfortable. At our old place we had a portable humidifier, some cheap little Sears jobbie, that we used to use in our bedroom. We were renting our old place, otherwise I would have been tempted to install one on the furnace. Our last place was brutal in the winter, or else the last few winters have just been extremely dry. It got so bad that you couldn’t even touch the cats without giving them a nice shock. [...]

It sure is cold up there!

Posted by Kevin, on February 15th, 2004

Well another Sunday and another flying lesson. Today we worked mostly on climbs and descents. I was getting the hang of it pretty good by the end of the lesson today. Still having a bit of trouble doing a bunch of things at once. I find I get focused on one thing rather that keeping track of everything; as a result things aren’t as smooth as they should be. Brad tells me not to worry about it too much since it was only my second lesson. He tells me I’ve still got very good altitude control which is important. [...]

Who reads this stuff?

Posted by Kevin, on February 12th, 2004

Tonight I got Boris to help me set up a webshare on my server for moving relatively small bits of data from one place to another. He really felt that opening up FTP on my server was a bad idea and well, I yeilded to his superior knowledge in that area. Anyways, as is always the case, Boris got me set up quick and easy. Thanks buddy. [...]

Up and Running

Posted by Kevin, on February 10th, 2004

Well after minimal pain I seem to have got my BLOG up and running. Many thanks to Boris for his continued help on all things computer related. :) [...]

First Take off!

Posted by Kevin, on February 8th, 2004

Went for my first official flying lesson Today. I had done an ‘intro’ flight the previous Sunday. I was supposed to go on Saturday but unfortunately the weather wasn’t cooperating. Luckily my instructor, Brad, did some shuffling and fit me in for Sunday morning. Arrived at the club around 9 am and had a quick ground briefing before heading out to the plane. We went over attitudes and movements. Nothing too difficult there, pretty simple stuff. I’m glad I did the reading though, saved me some ground briefing time. :) [...]