This weekend my second student (read: victim) passed his private pilot exam with the FAA. After 3 hours of oral interview and 1.5 hours of flying with the examiner Mike Souter is now an official pilot! Congratulations Mike!

After a long and somewhat challenging week I have to say that I'm very ready for the weekend to be here.  On saturday I'm going with one of my students for his private pilot practical test with the FAA. Good luck Mike!

Other than that I'm looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend that will likely involve alcohol, lots of TV watching, farting, and whatever else my lovely wife asks (demands) me to do. :) Since she is so close to having my demon spawn I certainly know better than to question what she wants. :)

What makes someone decide to put a certain bumper sticker on their car?

I know for many its political or some other reason where they think others give a rats ass about their opinions or the fact that their kid is some sort of prodigy but I came across one yesterday on the way to the airport that baffled me.

"Put the lid down - The US Park Service would like to remind you to close the toilet seats on outhouses"

What the F@#$ would make someone want to put this on their car? What kind of shitty statement is this guy trying to make anyway? Did he have a bad experience?

What's next? Bumper stickers for "Dont fart in the elevator" or "Please wipe front to back"?

Anyway I thought it was odd.

So I've been listening to this new radio show on 100.7 called the "Mens Room". http://1007thebuzz.com/showdj.asp?DJID=25774 

Every day they ask "the question" and Friday's question was: "What makes someone a slimeball?" I've got lots of thoughts here but I was hoping my friends could chime in too.

Things I think make you a slimeball:

- Whomever the asswipe is that took this nasty broad to the race..slimeball

- Guys who rock the mullet...slimeballs

- Guys who rock the greased back hairdo with the double breasted suit...slimeballs.

This weekend Kristy and I rented an RV and, in true Clark W. Griswold style, went on a vacation to Cannon Beach in Oregon. (Pictures to be posted later).

Before the trip one of my friends told me that when he rented an RV once he found that there were really only three things you had to deal with: Water, gas or shit. It seems that at every turn one of those three needed attention. 

Throughout the trip I was always worried about one of them and my biggest concern was the poop factor so I told Kristy "no heavy loads!" and I kept making her go somewhere else to take care of her "business". Emptying it was bad enough but emptying it with additional "solid waste" really wasn't my idea of a good time.

All in all though we had a good time and the RV posted an astonishing 10 MPG (highway). Kristy, Salem and I had a great time on the beach but our stay was limited to the length of time Kristy's very pregnant bladder could go without adding to the RV's pee pee tank.

Today is Kristy's birthday. Everyone should drop her an email (kristy_cloutier@hotmail.com) and wish her a happy birthday.

I've known Kristy for 6 years now and I have to say that she gets better with age but I'll let her tell you what that age is :)

Happy Birthday sweetheart!

Today I've spent the entire day doing post mortems on the latest release we just went through.  For the most part I believe that these are big meetings where everyone is just on the verge of "going nuclear". 

When someone does take the nuclear option its really not pretty. They typically start off with a statement like "well I tell you what; if <insert name> had done their job with <x> then we wouldn’t be in this boat at all." These statements usually aren't completely accurate but they usually reflect what people are thinking but just area afraid to say and, like a good joke, they usually have some basis in fact.  Much like the real nuclear option they are usually followed by massive retaliation and all is lost (including the ability to ever work with that person again).

So today I spent a good 5 hours sitting in these meetings where everyone was trying to be nice and make general statements about "what went well", "not so well", and "what needs to change" but the fact is that we all made mistakes otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting there in the first place.

The good news I guess is that the doctrine of "mutually assured destruction" prevailed and no one was hurt.  The bad news is that this isn’t the first or the last of these that I will go to.  The definition of learning is “a change in behavior as a result of experience”.

We need to learn from our mistakes and have this change in behavior if we are to ever get any better and maybe then we could have a pre-mortem?

When I teach in the airplane I like to think that I teach my students good safety habits. One thing I'm particularly hard on is making sure you dont hit anything with the airplane...ever. Generally if you follow this principle in all phases of flight you're in pretty good shape.

When it comes to taxiing one of the biggest "DHA" moments comes when you go to put the plane away. In this case, the biggest urge is to taxi real close to where you want to park (either the hangar or parking spot) and then turn the plane in such a manner that you dont have to maneuver it all over the place by hand to get it where you want to park. This is really tempting when you consider that the planes weigh about the same as the family sedan and you can imagine how hard it would be to push and pull that around by the front bumper (which is essentially what you have to to).  Whenever I see one of my students do this I tend to give them hell.

Well last night I didn't listen to my own advice and I became a DHA statistic. While taxiing I got too close to the fence and as I was turning I though "boy the wing looks a little close!" As I started to try and stop the airplane it was already too late and the wing tip touched the fence. You can imagine what happens when a 2 inch plastic wing tip light collides with a fence under 2k pounds of pressure. Needless to say it explodes...

So now, several hundred dollars in light repair later, its fixed but I feel very stupid. The good news is that I now have a very real example to give people about how  the "dont hit anything lifestyle"  really is the way to go.   I still feel stupid though...

It must be tough being married to someone who has the sense of humor of an eight year old and things all fart jokes are funny! Over the past two weekends Kristy and I have been taking a baby class called "labor and delivery".

One of the excercises that they have you do is to help you "relax" (while a football is coming out of you - how relaxing...). In this excercise they have you close your eyes...listen to your breathing...listen to the room (soothing music)...listen to what else you can hear in the room..

At this point I begin to practically convulse. My wife is elbowing me but thats just not helping because I'm envisioning what would happen if, well, things "let go" in this nice quiet room.

As if thats not bad enough later in the class the instructor is talking about "signs of labor". Among the many things you are supposed to look for are:

Bloody show...

Mucus plug...

Again, I start laughing and this time I say out loud, "hey I think i saw them at the showbox last weekend and they rocked!" The class laughed but the instructor just gave me the 'ole stink eye. I dont think she was amused.

Oh well.