Now I know some people have a hard time grasping the idea of technology and all, but goddamn. I just had everyone in the group for my speech class write down their e-mail addresses. I e-mailed everyone when I got home, and already one of the addresses has been kicked back as a bad address. These are college students at a pretty technical college, and already someone can't even fucking write their own e-mail address down on paper properly.

It's 40 degrees out here in Daytona again. On top of that, there's 20 kt winds, so the wind chill is pretty nasty too. I must have looked like the Unibomber coming back from my flight this morning, as I was wearing a pair of black reinforced knee Dickie's, a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up, one of my Red Sox hats, and my Oakleys. I'm pretty sure the Sheriff that passed me took a look at me and slowed down to run my plates.

I'm eating a salad at 0230. I have issues.

That is all.

KDAB 081253Z 31004KT 1/4SM FG VV001 13/12 A3018 RMK AO2 SLP219 T01280117

What does this mean?

( This )

The phrase fucked up has nothing on what goes on in my dreams lately.

I'll expound on that at a later time.

I fought the bottle of kahlua and vodka.




And the kahlua and vodka won.

My instructor called me at 2300 last night to cancel my 0630 flight because the weather looked shitty. I was ok with it at the time, as it meant I got to sleep in. Tonight however, he put me on for a 0600 flight tomorrow. Not just a regular flight either, it's a back to back with another kid, which means I'll be stuck in the aircraft for 4 hours, and only flying for 2 of them.

This is bad because a) It fucks up my plans to go drinking and playing pool with the roommates. It's my first Friday night off in a while, and with Tucker having turned 21 last week, we were going to go have a good time. And b) I have to work from 1100-1800, which means I'll be coming home from the flight, changing, and heading straight to work for 7 hours.

I want to like this new instructor, but damn him for this.

Got a letter in my mailbox today letting me know housing contracts for next year are due soon. I guess housing lost the memos that a) I haven't lived in school housing for a good 8 months now, and b) that I'm graduating, and therefore will not be anywhere near the campus come Fall semester.

Navy:

The Naval Aviator looks over at the Catapult Officer ("Shooter") who
gives the run up engines signal by rotating his fingers above his head.

The pilot pushes the throttle forward, verifies all flight controls are
operational, checks all gauges, and gives the Cat Chief a brisk salute,
continuing the Navy tradition of asking permission to leave the ship.

The Cat Chief drops to one knee while swooping his arm forward and
pointing down the deck, granting that permission. The Navy pilot is immediately catapulted airborne.

Air Force:

The Air Force pilot looks out of the cockpit just before taxi for takeoff and the ground crew waits until the pilot's thumb is sticking straight
up.

The crew chief then confirms that he sees the thumb, salutes, and the
Air Force pilot then takes off. This time-tested tradition is the last link
in the Air Force safety net to confirm that the pilot does not have both
thumbs up his ass before getting airborne.

It's cold outside. Really cold. It's been cold outside all week. This is wrong. This is not Florida.

In fact, I think Florida has been moved. Some crazed celestial being of some sort, Take your pick, I prefer Zeus myself, that motherfucker hates Florida, what with throwing lightning bolts at us like we were a white whale to be harpooned by a crazed one legged captain named Ahab, has probably picked up Florida, and tossed it so far south it's landed somewhere near Antarctica. I know they threw it south, because I think I hit a penguin on my way to class today. If they'd thrown it north I would have run over a polar bear or something (Or would the polar bear have run over me? I've seen those things on Lost, they're HUGE!)

Intermission: Somebody is dropping some heavy shit somewhere here in the Lehman Building. There's been 2 loud crashes and room shaking from those crashes thus far. Now back to our crack-addled rant in progress.

It's too bad Zeus didn't toss Florida closer to the Arctic, at least then I'd either be near Alaska and could enslave some eskimos and force them use their magic powers to send me somewhere warmer. Like Texas.
Or if I was near the North Pole instead, I could just go steal that fat guy in the red suit's sleigh and fly wherever I wanted to go....wait for it......like Texas.

I'm going to go nuts in this classroom I think. Even with the power of the internet at my fingertips, this class is going to slowly drive me insane. The recently graduated from high school net nerds are unable to shut their faces and have to try and show off that they learned something on the internet between their sessions of cheating at Counter-Strike and chatting with "hot babes" all while keeping the time to train to become cage fighters one day.

Fini

It's 0330 and surprise, I've got a touch of insomnia.


And no, I will not take any Nyquil :P

Sooooooo. Got up late today as a result of being drunk until 0400. Got up around noonish, had some breakfast, and sat around for a bit. Around 3 or so Tucker wanted to know if I wanted to go play some pool. I agreed, and on the way out the door we decided to stop over at Best Buy first so he can pick up ESPN Football 2K5. I wanted to pick up Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, so I was happy to go. We stopped quick at the front office so I could pick up my Twisp & Catsby Print that USPS delivered. Stopped by Best Buy, picked up the aforementioned games, and headed to Brown's Billiards. Got there around 1600 and played for an hour, Michelle called Tucker and he invited her down. We all alternated games for the next hour or so, then decided to head out. Michelle asked if we were hungry, which we were, so we agreed to go get some dinner. We decided to head to the little Chinese Buffett around the corner from the apartment and get MSG'd, it's not the best Chinese in the world, but it's tasty, cheap, and is in mass quantities, so it's a good deal. We ate and compared horror stories from our experiences with the bullshit that can be the Riddle Flight Department for an hour or so, then headed home. Gillian called, and I talked to her for a bit, played Minish Cap for a a couple hours. Hurray for Gillian and hurray for new portable Zelda adventures too.

It's too bad my 3 day weekend from school and work is almost over. I rather enjoyed so much free time to myself for once. Even during winter break I was working most of the time with only a day off at a time, so this was a welcome change.



And that's enough rambling.

Mom is a super-genius. That's why I call her about things. Ideas have been gathered, plans will be in motion tomorrow morning. Fuck it all, I'm graduating May 7 for sure.

Shit.

Essentially Riddle allows students to take 18 credits over the summer (9 credits per summer semester, 2 semester, 18 credits total) I was planning on taking 15 this summer, which would allow me to walk for graduation this spring and be done with Riddle. Turns out however that in order to qualify for graduation you can only take a max of 12 credits over the summer. I have approximately 30 credits left to take right now, so I either have to take 18 credits this semester and 12 this summer, or postpone graduation till the Fall.

Time to confer with people.

Cingular is already on my bad side, and I don't even have service with them yet. I've had an AT&T; wireless phone for years, and I finally decided to get a new phone and make the switch to Cingular since they bought AT&T.; It took me over 2 hours of phone time to even get my phone ordered because they had some crazy ass issue with my home area code being for Washington State and my billing address is for here in Florida. After they finally pulled their heads out of their asses, they got my phone ordered. Now I've just checked my bank account, and they've gone and charged me for the phone twice. I call to get the charge reversed, and they're telling me I can't get that done until I activate the phone, because it's a Cingular charge and until I activate my new phone, it's an AT&T; account, and evidently, I can't even call and talk to the Cingular reps about this, because Cingular can't mess with my account until the new phone is activated and the account switches to them instead of AT&T.;

Cingular must die.

Instrument rated bitches!

Had my end of course flight this morning. Aside from not having a GPS Certified for Instrument Approaches, the flight rocked. I did almost everything right, and the couple times I made a mistake, I caught it, corrected myself, talked about it, and the check pilot was cool with it all. I passed everything save what I couldn't do (Because of the non-certed GPS), which is a vectored GPS approach, that needs to be partial panel, some timed mag turns while partial panel, and a circle to land. That's going to be 30 minutes in the air, tops. I figure I'll take off, get vectors to the GPS16 here at DAB, kill my gyros (Directional Gyro and Attitude Indicator) fly the approach, circle to land on 7L, and be done with it.

I fucking rule.

Not on the flight schedule tomorrow, so methinks it's a good night to try and get fucked up. Plenty of beer in the fridge and liquor in the cabinet to do so. Yarr!

I'm sitting in my room, listening to a handheld radio for aircraft frequencies, waiting to hear N408ER call inbound for Daytona so that I know when my roommate will be getting home so that we can go do something? Yes, I'm that bored.