366 Days and 1 Second . . .

. . . Of one of the best, and also one of the worst, and definitely (tied for) the longest year of my life.

I'll start with the bad. There are certainly people worse off for it than myself, and many who it didn't phase at all, but this whole "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression" has certainly affected us. Due to the housing market, we were never able to sell or rent our condo in Fort Lauderdale, and due to the baby, we were not able to keep paying for it, so it was foreclosed on in November. We're still living with Abee's parents, though we're more used to it now, and definitely thankful to have such great family members to help us out.

The other bad thing, due to what happened in the oil market, the airline industry pretty much crashed this year. Growth at my company came to a screeching halt, and then slid back some. I would have made captain this year, finally making some decent income in this industry, but I'm still a first officer. Again, I'm thankful that I do have a job, and not at square one again like I was in 2002.

However, to all you speculators who made a killing exploiting South Florida residents and oil consumers by driving the prices up, I hope you weren't able to save a dime.

So yeah, from an economic standpoint, this was a terrible year. Other than that, I have to say it was pretty great. I started off with a New Year's party with my friends Ken and Pat in San Francisco. They had a place on Treasure Island, and at midnight we could see the fireworks over the San Francisco skyline across the bay.

Another nice thing is that, when the growth stopped at my company, I ended up being stuck as a fairly senior first officer. This means that while I still don't make much money, I pretty much have my pick as far as schedules go. I managed to get off nine days in a row in July so I could go to Wisconsin with my family for the first summer in many years. In November I was able to string together vacation, ground school, and normal days off to get 18 days at home in a row. Then for the holidays I was able to string together a bunch of days off at the end of December and the beginning of January, so I basically have my own Christmas vacation this year.

And then of course there was Adelaide. Despite all the crap that happened this year (and I left a bunch of it out; didn't want to sound too whiny), having Adelaide overshadowed it all and will always make 2008 be a great year in my memory.

Then there's the "longest" part. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service has added a "leap second" to this year, due to the fact that the planet does not always keep perfect time with atomic clocks. There is an interesting Wikipedia article on it here. There have been many other leap seconds, but the only other time in my life this happened on a leap year as well was 1990, way back when "Ice Ice Baby" was the #1 song and I, being all of 11 years old, decided for sure that I was going to grow up to be a pilot. That was a pretty good year in my memory as well.

Now that I think of it, since I started this year on Pacific Time and will be ending it on Eastern Time, I am actually losing three hours of 2008, so 1990 was definitely the longest, but this was the second longest year.

Well, it looks like I'm babbling again, so I guess it's time to go.

Happy New Year!!

My Christmas Girls

Aren't they cute in their matching candy-striped pajamas?

Adelaide being cute

I don't post too much about Adelaide on here, especially with regards to pictures and such, so here's one of my favorite videos of her, taken about a week ago. She's always in the best of moods right after a bath, so Abee decided to record it one night.

Getting out of Montreal

Well it turns out I was wrong when I said "hopefully we'll have no problems getting out." As I went to bed that night in Montreal, I looked out the window and saw that the snow had already turned to rain, and figured that would melt a great deal of the snow before morning. When I woke up it was still raining, and I saw what looked a frozen water stream dripping down the outside of my window, which was not good. Instead of rain, the snow had turned to freezing rain. The temperature on the ground never got above freezing like it was supposed to.

When we got to the plane, it was coated in ice. As our captain said, "this thing is a giant Popsicle." The ground was covered in frozen slush that was very slippery to walk on, but I got some really good pictures of what I'm talking about.

As we taxied over to the deicing pad on the snow and frozen slush, it probably took about three times as much power to go about one quarter the speed that we usually taxi, and after the deicing crew had been spraying their hot glycol on our plane for over a half hour, we realized that we would not have enough fuel to get to Cleveland by the time we took off, so we returned to the gate, an hour and a half after we left.

After we refueled (and took on as much extra gas as we could carry), there ended up being a huge line for the deicing pad. We waited at the gate for about 45 minutes to be able to push back again, and then once we got out we waited about another 45 minutes in what was basically a line to get into the actual deicing line. Once we got into the real deicing line, it was probably another hour for that line and the deicing process itself.

We finally got to the snowy, slushy runway, applied full takeoff power, and after the plane slid just a foot or two forward I released the brakes and we finally got out of Montreal, about 4 1/2 hours later than we were supposed to.

Enjoy the pictures.

It just keeps snowing!

I'm sitting here in my room at the Hilton by the Montreal Airport. It's been snowing ever since we got here at 9:30 this morning. Earlier it was snowing so hard that I could barely see the runway lights out my window. The temperature is rising though, and it's supposed to turn to rain before morning, so hopefully we will have no problems getting out for our 6:00 a.m. flight.

In other news, there's a team of people that have been working on a remake of one of my favorite games, Half-Life from 1998. They released a trailer, and it is posted here for you to enjoy. I can't wait until it comes out!

I love technology

It's amazing how much the world has changed over the last ten years or so. When I was in college, waaay back in the late 90s, I lived about sixty miles from my girlfriend (who is now my wife). The only way to really keep in touch was via telephone. I'm not talking about the fancy i-phones of today. These phones had a cord that attached to the base of a wall, and that was hooked up to miles of copper wire that stretched across the country. Back then we had this thing called "long distance." The sixty miles between me and my girlfriend was considered "long distance." This meant that to talk to her via the telephone, I had to pay something like 25 cents every minute to speak to her, and we often had very long conversations. My phone bill would usually be at least 100 dollars a month. We had to restrict our communication with each other, making sixty miles seem very far. Also, I had no car to visit her with, and sixty miles is a long way to ride your bicycle.

My family (who lived about 45 miles away) seemed even farther away, because there was no way I was going to waste 25 cents a minute on them, when I couldn't even afford to spend it on my girlfriend! Sure, there was email, but that involved going to a computer lab, logging into a UNIX terminal, and (usually the kicker) the person you wanted to talk to having an email address of their own.

Today, cell phones and the proliferation of the Internet have changed the definition of "long distance." My wife and I share two cell phones that we pay a combined $50 dollars a month for, and we can talk for as long as we want, no matter where we are. (You can't get plans that cheap any more, so we are going to have these Florida numbers for a while). When we lived in Fort Lauderdale, 1300 miles away from our families, we could call, email, and instant message them all the time. While we only got to see them in person two or three times a year, all these communication options made 1300 miles seem not that much farther than 45 miles did back in college.

Today I got to experience another benefit of all this technology. I'm in Chicago, probably fewer than 200 miles from my wife and daughter. Today is Monday, and I won't be home again to see them until Wednesday. Now, Adelaide is only six months old, so when her mom gives her the phone to "Say hi to Daddy," I talk to her, but on the other end I can only hear the sounds of her trying to fit the phone into her mouth.

Tonight Abee and I got on MSN Messenger, and used its webcam call feature, which is basically the same way people talk to each other between their ships on Star Trek. We've done this a few times before, but today Adelaide was able to recognize me on the computer screen. I talked to her and her face lit up, as if to say "hey, I remember you from somewhere!" Then I played peek-a-boo with her, hiding behind my hands. She laughed. My six month old baby could see and hear and play with me from 200 miles away, and I got to see her laugh. I miss her and Abee a lot when I am on trips, and what happened today really made my day. I love technology.

Not fair to either of us

Adelaide is six months old now, and has yet to fall asleep on her own. She either requires to be nursing, on a car ride, or being rocked by her daddy (me). Now that she has cut her first two teeth (and is over her very first cold), we've decided it's time to try to lay her down to sleep by herself. Most parents will tell you that this involves some crying for the first few times you try it. I thought I was prepared. I was not.

Now, one of my favorite things to do with my baby girl is rock her to sleep. And by "rock," I don't mean quietly in a rocking chair. I mean the other kind of rock. And by that, I don't mean a large stone either. When Adelaide gets sleepy, I take her into the basement and turn on some music. I usually turn on something soft like Collective Soul or Billy Joel, and I have Windows Media Player set to display colorful patterns across the screen as the music plays. Then I turn the lights down and "dance" with her, holding her in my arms, humming or singing along with the music. She usually stares at the screen, mesmerized, and after a few songs, her head is resting comfortably on my shoulder, her eyes closed.

I've been doing this since the week she came home from the hospital. It's one of the warmest and most bonding activities we have together, and she has grown to love it too. When we sit in front of the computer and I pick the songs, she gets excited, her arms waving about. Sometimes I hold her up on my lap, and we have some fun with her dancing before I take her up into my arms.

Anyway, today I almost made a huge mistake. Following our new philosophy, I saw her getting tired, so I cued up some Collective Soul on her mp3 player (it has a built-in speaker), and laid her in her crib. She protested a little at first, but I laid on the bed across the room from her, telling her it's ok and shushing her. After fifteen agonizing minutes went by, her tears were running back into her ears. Her pleading cries seemed to say "Daddy! I miss you! I'm all alone in here! I haven't seen you in four days! I need you to hold me!"

I couldn't take it any more. Why should it have to be this way? They're only little for so long, and before you know it, they're going on dates and having kids of their own (hopefully with a wedding somewhere in between). Why should I deprive myself of something I love to do with my daughter? Why should I deprive her of it as well, when I know that some day she will not need me in this way? Well forget it! I'm going to dance with my baby girl every night she needs help getting to sleep, until she decides to tell me with her own voice that she no longer wishes me too. And if that time doesn't come until she's 29, then that's just fine with me.

"I'm a White Sox fan, Ma'am"

About 30 seconds into this video of CNN interviewing revelers in Grant Park, is something that made me smile. Yes, there are indeed TWO baseball teams in Chicago!



(If you can't see the video - I had some issues with Firefox - just click on the post title above.)

Also, note the hat:

"I have not met an audiophile who hasn't been an @sshole."

First of all, I don't consider myself an audiophile. However, I admit that, like audiophiles, I am extremely picky when it comes to many things whose quality can be somehow intangibly measured, such as buffalo sauce, hi-def TV picture quality, and the degree of realism in Microsoft Flight Simulator. I came across the above quotation while reading a Maximum PC article on whether or not different MP3 bit rates have a measurable effect on the quality of the converted source material (the article was mostly inconclusive as far as I could tell). Below the article, as is the current trend these days, there was a space for "ordinary people" to leave their comments. Some of the posters had gotten into a discussion about whether or not vinyl records were of better quality than CDs. Apparently one reader became fed up with the discussion. Here is the full comment:

"I have not met an audiophile who hasn't been an @sshole.

they like all other tech cultists, (Apple devotees, and Volkswagen cultisti just to name a few) are insufferable to be around.

if you actually can hear the difference between them....good for you....you must be a miserable human to be constantly disappointed in life."

The comment made me laugh, even though it made out to insult some personality traits that I possess. Though I am by no means an Apple devotee, the VW part ironically reinforces the fact that I could be lumped into this group. Therefore, as one of these "insufferable, miserable human beings," I feel it is my duty to clear some things up for the rest of you.

My brother knows that I actually spend more time tweaking my PC and my game settings to make them "just right" than I do actually playing the games themselves. My wife and other close family members see how I get when things do not meet my expectations, and they know it when they hear me sigh. I'm sure it bothers Abee the most, since she has the most exposure to it. She probably wonders how a person could possibly live life like this, and probably stays awake at night pitying me.

So, to Abee and to all who pity and otherwise think that I (and other perfectionists) lead a miserable existence: don't worry! We actually like being this way! The mild (yet frequent) disappointment that comes each and every time our expectations are not met, is far overshadowed by the satisfaction and pride we feel when everything falls into place. In addition, you should be thankful that there are those like us out there, who keep pushing to make things better, because there is no such things as "good enough." Without us, how would you know that your home theatre receiver is in the wrong surround mode, or that the tires on your car appear to be about 2-3 psi too low, that your desktop wallpaper is incorrectly sized in proportion to your computer monitor? You wouldn't even know half of the things that you are missing, or how to make them better. We've done all the hard work for you. So, on behalf of perfectionists everywhere, you're welcome.

It's like a haunted house for your PC

DOOM 3 is a game that came out about four years ago. It's a modernized retelling of the original DOOM that came out in 1994. I bought the game in early '05 from a friend who finished it shortly after it came out, and it has been sitting in my collection, along with many other games, ever since. Since I finished Half-Life 2: Episode 2 the other week, I decided that Halloween was the perfect time to finally play Doom 3. I'm maybe 25% through the game after a week, and I have to say I guessed right. Doom 3 is a very dark, scary, spooky game. The game still looks great even by today's standards, and the use of sparse lighting, tight confines, and sinister, grotesque monsters make it a lot of fun to play in the dark. I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to it, but there's that whole "real life" thing that kept getting in the way. That and my Freelancer addiction that lasted a couple years.

Positive Rate to Jeremy, Requesting Reality Check

So it's been nagging at me for quite a while now that it has been nearly a year since I promised "Part 3" of my "Really Long Update." I intended to talk all about my trip to D.C. with my dad and brother (which was awesome). I knew that would take a while to write, and I didn't want to skip ahead (though I kind of did with that post about the O'Hare flight). So, just like my logbook, which I haven't updated past February 2007, the amount of content that I would have to chronicle on this site kept building up, until it became such a daunting task that I never had time to even think about where to start.

So I finally decided tonight where I'm going to start, and I'm going to start with right now. Right now I'm in a hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the second day of a four-day trip. I'm hoping to play a little Doom 3 (in the spirit of Halloween) before I go to bed, but we'll see what happens.

There, that was easy. Now my blog is up to date. Though there are a few big things I should probably fill you in on (if you're still out there, anyone). First and foremost, I believe I mentioned something about Abee and I having a baby in the spring. I'm happy to announce that Adelaide Elizabeth Louden was born on May 6, 2008, and is already rapidly approaching her six-month "birthday." I suppose I should see if I can dig up a picture somewhere. Let me see if I can log into my home computer from here. . . yup. Ok, here is one of the most recent pictures I have, of the three of us before we went to this year's Purdue homecoming game (Adelaide stayed with my parents, but we dressed her for the occasion anyway). Don't ask me how the game went. You don't want to know, and I don't want to remember it.


Other than that, not a whole lot has changed. I'm still a First Officer at Chautauqua Airlines. I was hoping to upgrade to Captain by the end of this year, but then oil hit something like $1500 a barrel and the whole industry came to a screeching halt. There's always next year, or the year after. We never sold our condo, mostly because the banks were unwilling to work with us to get a short sale (that's where you sell it for less than you owe, and the bank eats the difference). Because of the baby, Abee quit her job (which was and is the plan all along) so the condo is now under foreclosure. At this point, we're happy to be rid of it any way we can. Because of all this, we're still staying with Abee's parents, which is going well. We have all of our stuff there now, and some of it is being used as a makeshift living room and office in the basement, the rest still in boxes. It's nice to have my desk and chair back, and I got a new computer. Our couch and home theater (minus a decent TV) and some walls and carpet that Abee's parents had put in make the area a comfortable area for us to hang out and play with Adelaide.

That should suffice for a decent update for now, certainly better than waiting till I have time to go into everything at once. I'm hoping now, with this off my shoulders, that I'll be able to just write short little bits of things that are going on or have happened in the past year. I wouldn't bet money on it just yet, but the odds are pretty good. Until next time . . . .

The long way to O'Hare

Here's the route we took into O'Hare tonight. I think they had all traffic coming in over Madison, regardless of origin. If I had a camera, I would have taken a picture of all the planes on our TCAS towards the end of the flight, and all the other planes in the air before we went below the clouds. The weather in the picture is about an hour old as of now. The northerly curve over Lake Michigan is a diversion we took around where the storms were at the time. Even with that, there was a lot of St. Elmo's fire on the captain's windshield (looks like glowing static electricity trails) and it would occasionally connect with itself across the windshield and make a bright flash. In contrast, below our route is the route that the flight took yesterday, in much better weather (note: the links may not work after a few days).

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/CHQ5941/history/20080409/0301Z/KCLE/KORD

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/CHQ5941/history/20080408/0053Z/KCLE/KORD