J’attends avec int
More pink than a Strawberry Shortcake costume competition at a tranny bar…
Safeway assaulted me today. I go in to get my weekly groceries and WHAM! Pink, pink, pink, pink. Pink roses. Pink balloons. Pink banners. I mean, it was 20-feet thick as you waded your way through it at the entrance to the store. It was PINK.
Oh, that’s right, it’s VD .
No, I’m not bitter, or especially so. But with my BS meter set so high these days I was bound to find this utter explosion of forced joy very disturbing and ridiculous. What a waste of time. So this is the only day you can celebrate with the love of your life?
Seems to me a better love is one that lasts all year long and stays steady and becomes your “rock.” VD in my opinion is just an excuse to waste money and feel better about yourself for actually remembering the day.
So I’m not actually bitter on love. Jaded on what people think it “should be”, perhaps.
Happy Groundhog’s Day!!!
More snow…virtually
So I’ve been sick and at home for a few days — no fun. I’m still alive, however!
Anyways, I decided to fire-up Flight Simulator and do some mountain flying. Love winter scenery. So I took a few shots of me in my trusty Cessna 172 “N101GW” departing Lost River in the North Cascades. Also got a vid. Watch video
SNOW!
1970’s JC Penney chic
I usually don’t post misc. emails, but this one is so damn funny I just had to.
Live Seattle Air Traffic Control
Since I moved to Capitol Hill, I’m able to receive Air Traffic Control (ATC) frequencies into Seattle’s Sea-Tac airport. In fact, I live 1,420 Ft from the imaginary airspace “intersection” that marks the start of the final approach from the north to Seattle.
So I decided to sponsor a live Internet audio stream of Air Traffic Control. You can listen to it at http://www.liveatc.net/ (click the “listen to Live ATC feeds” in the sidebar and scroll-down to “SEA Final” — there are a number of SEA feeds, actually. I’m the one with 133.65 as the only frequency)
133.65 is the final approach sector for KSEA — Seattle-Tacoma International. Busiest times seem to be around noon, 4-6PM and 8-10PM.
Seattle has 2 (soon to be 3) close parallel runways oriented north-south — named runways 16/34. You can click on the chart to the right to see a bigger image of this. When landing and departing to the south 16C is used mostly for arrivals, with 16L used for departures. When the weather is really bad or foggy they switch to the Instrument Landing System (ILS) on 16L as the ILS for 16C appears to not support bad weather CAT2/3 operations anymore because of contruction of the third runway.
In the summer, and in better winter weather, Seattle usually lands the other way to the north, using runways 34C for arrivals and 34R for departures
After-hours this frequency can be combined with one or all of the feeder arrival sectors, so you’ll hear ATC, but not pilots. Also sometimes you’ll hear some bleed-over of a Seattle radio station in the background — their main broadcast antenna is only 1 mile from me, so with it’s huge power output sometimes you’ll be stuck listening to Seattle’s best smooth jazz — sorry! Could be worse…
Here are charts and info for KSEA
Here is an airspace illustration I created of major arrival and departure routes into SEA. The triangle symbols are the major intersections along the routes (Imaginary places in the air programmed into aircraft navigation databases) The hexigonal-type symbols are actual radio navigation stations on the ground. The 3-letter acronyms you see are the codes for other radio navigation stations outside of the chart
This is far from complete, but a good intro into how traffic is sent in/out of the Seattle area.
I’ve travelled 70% of the way to the moon!
Or at least that’s what this cool new website, flightmemory.com, says.
This is a website where you enter all the details of your travels and it then spits-out maps and statistics for you. I totally got into this just being lazy today. Spent hours putting in my flights and travels, all from memory.
Then you start to remember trips you forgot! Like I vividly remember flying on Delta Airlines through Cincinnati once, and Northwest via Detroit — but I can’t remember what for!
*Highly* entertaining for an aviation/travel nerd such as myself.
View my Flight memory maps and stats here!
Highlights (And I’m far from complete!):
In Miles 167,658
In Kilometer 269,821
Earth Circumnavigation 6.73 x
Distance to the Moon 0.702 x
Distance to the Sun 0.0018 x
Total Airports 53
Total Airlines 16
Total Aircraft type 28
Total Routes 106
Total Countries 8
Oh yeaahhh…travel planning time!
I’m off as a traveller again!
Super excited — I just planned two cool trips. A short trip in December to the Bay Area to see some friends I haven’t seen in ages and then a fantastic trip to Paris in March — my favorite travel month.
I planned the trip to Paris first and then thought — crap, that’s 6 months away! I need a vacation to ease all that waiting…so I planned another.
Hopefully my friend Claire, who’s going back to school on the East coast, will be able to join me as it’s her spring break.
Pssst…I’m flying first class to Paris…yes, hate me…Bahahahaha!
I have iritis!
“Iritis is a form of anterior uveitis and refers to the inflammation of the iris of the eye.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iritis
Who knew! It kind of sucks as I can’t go outside much, and after this entry I am done with computer screens for the night and have to limit my exposure for a few days — so totally weird. And they don’t know what causes it in many cases.
Hmmmpgf!