aeropreneur

Trying Out Flock

2008-02-07T06:08:50Z

I've really needed a better way to keep up with my blogs, so have been looking at various ways to make it easier to post to and keep track of different sites. One program for the Mac, MarsEdit, looked pretty nice but doesn't yet support most of the blog sites I use.

Having heard good things about the social web browser Flock recently, I was planning to check it out. Today I got a pleasant surprise - it already supports most of the sites I'm using: Blogsome, Xanga, LJ, WordPress (.com or self-hosted).

So, anyway, I'm posting this from Flock 1.0.8 on the Mac, which also seems to be a pretty good browser for viewing media, as you'd expect for what's billed as a "social web browser". There's still a lot of features to check out, but so far it looks like it may be the tool I've needed.

Blogged with Flock

Eli Miracle Play

2008-02-04T21:47:55Z

OK, now's there's a name for that play I mentioned last time. They're calling it the Eli Miracle:

http://www.nfl.com/videos?videoId=09000d5d8067d05e

An impressive effort to avoid the sack and make the throw by Eli Manning, and a great jump and catch by David Tyree, holding the ball to his helmet and keeping the Pats' defender from taking it away.

Definitely a game-changing, Super Bowl-winning play.

Super Bowl XLII

2008-02-04T06:35:51Z

I enjoyed the Super Bowl tonight. The first quarter went by so quick it was already 3-0 and mostly over by the time I started watching.

My favorite ad this year was Bud Light "Language of Love". I laughed and laughed, but then I love geek/romance jokes (kind of like the movie Hitch, which I thought was hilarious the whole way through).

Mahalo's got a page of Super Bowl Budweiser ads. The clip to the Bud Light ad on YouTube is only 8 seconds, though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ozAndUShlQ

I thought the game was really good and of course had a great finish (the pass Eli Manning made on the last drive, after barely breaking away, will be a staple of future highlights, surely). Couldn't say I was sorry the Patriots lost, since I was just rooting for the underdog.

My youngest son complained in the third quarter that the game was boring (it stayed 7-3 for a long time), but it was great to see the Giants shut down the Patriots offense, which only really got into a groove a couple of times the whole game.

I remember when I was a kid going to a hockey game and loving it, even though we lost 3-0, because the other team's goalie was really amazing. It's when you can love watching good defense that you've become a real fan of the sport.

Back at LiveJournal

2008-01-18T07:27:45Z

Hmm... still haven't figured out how to use LiveJournal. I've been having a hard time keeping up with writing on my various blogs, but posting is the easy part on LiveJournal! What's hard is keeping up with everyone else.

Are folks still using LJ as much or is everyone moving to something else?

Livejournal is a World All Its Own

2007-09-07T23:57:35Z

I haven't posted in LJ in a quite a while, which isn't too surprising since I haven't really known what to do with this blog and mainly signed up for the communities and to leave comments on others' posts.

Every so often I've tried going through my friends pages, which is interesting but a huge diversion! I've only been signed up here a few months, so it's not as if I have that many, but LJ is already a huge time sink.

Not that I don't like it ... In general, I'm still struggling to find a way to organize things so I can easily post on my various blogs/sites. I think Twitter (http://twitter.com/aeroG) has kind of taken over things this summer since it's so easy to post on there when you don't have very much time.

Today I thought I'd try a new strategy; since I recently switched from Safari 2.0 to Opera 9.2, I decided to try making Safari my "dedicated" blogging browser. This was made easier by the realization that for some reason a lot of my blogging sites don't play that nicely with Opera, including AeroGo (http://www.xanga.com/AeroGo) where I spent quite a long time this week writing a post on the 787 delays!

I'll see how it goes blogging in Safari and Twittering, doing other sites like Facebook, and general surfing in Opera, which is overall much better at handling lots of tabs open at the same time (until you open a site it doesn't like). It also has the advantage of remembering what was open if it crashes (which happens when you have lots of tabs and lots of thunderstorms.

Since I'll just have my own sites mainly open in Safari, it shouldn't be any great loss if it crashes. The main thing there is to save drafts every so often, since most sites - unlike LJ - don't do that for you.

Sat 7/14/07

2007-07-15T06:43:31Z

I don't know why listening to Naked Eyes' music, which was some of the best synthesizer pop of the 80s, always puts me in a positive, pensive mood. Sometimes I wonder if I should listen to it every day!

It's really too bad that their very talented keyboardist, Rob Fisher, died back in 1999.

--

Also, I added some links to my profile page.

I Can't Stand Lazy People

2007-07-13T00:17:10Z

It's funny how often, at least in my experience, the same idea will come up several times in a short period. This gives me the chance to look at it from different perspectives and maybe learn something new.

Recently I was reading some blogs and I ran across one I thought looked interesting. I'm an information hog, so I skimmed through the first page of his blog quickly and moved on to the next page or two. The guy had discussed several topics of interest and I was really starting to think about adding him as a friend, until I ran across a post that went something like this (maybe a bit exaggerated):

"I'm lazy. I don't like to work, to exert myself, etc. I'd love to just be able to lounge around and not do much. Maybe that's why I find the prospect of getting a job in academia appealing."

As my kids say, "BONK!" I learned a long time ago to stay away from lazy people. Who knows, maybe this guy is thinking he's being cool by writing something like that, that people will be impressed that he's laid back, doesn't take himself too seriously, etc., but for me it's a complete turn-off.

My wife is the same way. She was discussing some folks she'd worked with, recounting various shortcomings, some fairly serious, but all in a calm voice, until one guy's name came up and she blurts out "Oh, I can't stand him - he's lazy", as if that was the cardinal sin!

Just this afternoon this idea came up in a different way. I was talking with our oldest daughter who's back after six weeks in LA. She was remarking how the people she met were all very active. I told her that's one of the things I've been trying to convey to her and our other kids, that they should find stuff to do and not just sit around watching TV, playing endless computer games, or whatever.

There are active people here in Houston, too, but I think they're fairly invisible, so it's hard to impress on our kids growing up in the suburbs (a bizarre culture, in my mind...) how it's "normal" to be that way, and especially how MANY opportunities there are to do stuff by their teen years.

She also remarked how people are more encouraging and positive in California, which seems to be the case. I've always been fascinated by the Silicon Valley culture, for example, and how someone could blow $1 million on a failed startup, and people would still think they were great, or at least OK, for trying. I think that attitude's had a lot to do with why it's one of the wealthiest places in the world.

Folks most places, on the other hand, seem to get slightly puzzled whenever someone does something, as if the default state is "Don't do anything"! As I've told our kids many times, it's the ones who actually try that get criticized, because until you do something, there's usually not much to find fault with.

I can't help but wonder if misplaced/excessive criticism at an early age can engender laziness. Maybe kids grow up afraid to be less than perfect and end up criticized.

As an entrepreneur, I've become amazed over the years at how risk-averse most adults really are. They'd rather not do anything than try and risk looking bad.

I guess you could say the inability to truly appreciate upside opportunity (as opposed to just downside risk) is one of the leading indicators of laziness!

Fri 7/6/07

2007-07-07T05:12:42Z

OK, I've been posting/commenting on LJ on and off this evening, so I guess I ought to write something here. The last few weeks have been very busy ... and very wet. I wish the folks in Alabama could have some of our rain! At least we hopefully won't have too hot a summer because of it.

When I've got too much other stuff going on, I don't feel that much like writing; it's just too hard to concentrate. I've been meaning to write something on AeroGo for a couple of weeks now, but that takes 2-4 hours to really put together.

I finally realized some years back that the hardest thing for me in writing is to write something short, so I've wondered if writing a book wouldn't be so bad (despite what Churchill said). Hopefully I'll get to find out soon.

Hmm... maybe I should stop now!

Sun 6/17/07

2007-06-18T04:46:51Z

I haven't written here the past week, but have been writing on several of my other sites and commenting ... and Twittering, which seems to actually have a useful purpose not so obvious to many.

Anyway, I've been thinking about a lot of stuff, maybe I'll write some of it here soon. I've also been checking out some software I've wanted to try for a long time, such as OmniOutliner and DevonThink (both for Mac OS X).

Learning new stuff is fun, I just wish I had more time for it!

Sat 6/9/07 The Used-to-Fly Club

2007-06-10T03:24:34Z

Well, I thought I'd write something before I have to go pick up a couple of my kids.

Today I went with the younger children to the airport open house. It went pretty well this time, very few withdrawal symptoms. You see, I'm part of a very large club, the Used-to-Fly Club. There's probably half a million or more Americans in this club; I've been meeting them all my life.

Indeed, we're all in various stages of pilot withdrawal. Years ago I used to meet lesser cases, from the time when a lot of folks apparently just got as far as soloing and didn't do much after that. They didn't seem to miss it much.

Others of us had/have more of a passion for flying, so it's been harder to let it go. It's been quite a few years since my private pilot's license was current, but I'd still have pretty mixed feelings going to the airport.

I'd console myself thinking about how I've met a number of fairly well-off folks who finally concluded they just couldn't afford an airplane. I remember one from back in the 70s, when flying was much cheaper. He was a lawyer with all sorts of toys, but told me he'd sold his Beech because it was just too expensive.

A few years ago, some folks we know had bought a plane back when the NASDAQ was sky-high, but several years ago he had to sell it, and I told my wife that I really doubt his wife had any idea what he was going through. Recently, though, he was joking about how all his friends with planes were broke, so maybe he's doing better now.

I don't know if I've really ever gotten over it, but at least I've understood what kind of trade-off I was making. To start your own company and have a bunch of kids (and then raise them) all at the same time was enough to have to put some other things on the back burner.

That was OK with me because I've always figured the time would come when I could start flying again and (finally) finish my instrument rating, among other things, but it was annoying at times to visit the airport (and other aero places) for events like this and get treated like a neophyte.

This wasn't really a problem with true aero folks, but rather with the folks who'd get all pumped up (and then puffed up) over being around some expensive aircraft. They'd assume I didn't know a thing, while it'd just take a moment for someone knowledgeable to realize I was asking an intelligent question or making a good comment.

As in any field, there's just a certain language that everyone speaks, just like with medical folks or lawyers.

Real aero folks are usually fairly humble and often actually friendly. They're doing it because they love it, not because it's a snobby, exclusive, luxury sort of thing. I hope that flying can somehow again become affordable enough for average folks to do it, whether through certificated planes, the EAA, or whatever, and not just degenerate into some sort of status symbol.

Well, all the folks at the open house today were quite friendly, so that was encouraging. If you really like flying, then you can get serious about the airplanes but still have a lot of fun at the same time.

Tue 6/5/07

2007-06-06T05:43:29Z

Today was spent trying to dig myself out from under a backlog of stuff. Things are always piling up on my desk, but after two weeks of only going at about half-speed, it's worse than usual. I didn't get through nearly all of it, but it looks like I've got a decent chance of having most of the day available tomorrow, so hopefully orderliness will prevail before long.

The last few years there's just been more and more and more stuff to handle and keep track of, and all my systems are really in need of an overhaul. I'm just not as efficient as I need to be, but it's hard to find time to work on organization and stuff when you're just trying to keep up.

I spent a fair amount of time poking around LJ today, actually, in between working on stuff. It's a good way to keep going. I like to jump from one thing to another to another, typically three or four different things going at the same time is about right for me. Of course, when there are a lot of interruptions it's hard to keep things bounded, but there haven't been too many the last couple of days, so it's nice when I'm able to work that way, just keep chugging away in my office until I finally want a break. Today that came about 5:30, I finally went and got some lunch with my 2nd daughter. I like to take a late lunch (my dad was the same way) but 5:30 is pretty late, even for me.

I still haven't got a profile picture for my MySpace page. After thinking about it for a while, I decided I wanted something really dull or non-snazzy, since I'm somewhat contrarian and everyone else on there is trying to look so dazzling and sexy. Eventually I thought I should get a picture of a turtle, since I always liked them and they kind of match my personality.

I looked some but didn't find a picture I liked. Though turtles are a fighter jock symbol, I don't guess they've got sole rights on it, so maybe I'll find a picture I like before long. In any case, I found a really funny video of a turtle vs. a cat. As you can see, persistence is a strength of turtles!

Though we had both turtles and cats when I was a kid (among other things, actually we had a lot of pets for well inside the city), it's ironic that this turtle reminds me of one cat we had, who was my favorite because it was smart enough to figure out that big dogs were generally stupid and could be pushed around. The bigger they were, the more that cat went after them.

http://www.livevideo.com/video/858010D119684E7F9636B35CBD1555C0/attack-of-the-killer-tortoise.aspx

Tonight I also had a talk with son #2, about blogging/social networking sites. Like most teenage guys, he's really not got much to write but wants to network (or whatever you call it). He's got two sites on Xanga but as much as I like the improvements Xanga has made, there just doesn't seem to be that much traffic on it.

I track my hits on AeroGo fairly closely, and I'm getting better at pulling in traffic from outside, but there's not much coming from Xanga itself. On the other hand, Xanga looks MUCH more visually appealing to me than LJ. I guess I'd say that's the major detraction of LiveJournal in my view. They need to hire a good designer to come in and pretty it up, and add some nice photoblog features.

Xanga has nice photoblog features (beyond just the photoblog itself), but so far I've only seen them on their programmers' pages; I haven't figured out how you can implement them, and I've asked. LJ's software does seem quite solid, however, so they deserve a lot of credit for that. As far as I can tell, there's a lot more people going to LJ now than Xanga, so I told him he should probably look at putting his next site on LJ, or else FaceBook.

Another LJ advantage is that the groups/communities functionality is much more fully implemented here than with Xanga's blogrings, a powerful feature that has mostly languished. I get only a few hits, probably less than one percent of the total, from blogrings every week, even though AeroGo is on 18 of them now.

Sun 6/3/07

2007-06-04T04:30:18Z

Last night I was trying to get to sleep, but my last memory was trying to stay awake long enough to call our daughter in LA. Ended up falling asleep, though. Never seem to be able to get to quite everything in a day!

I had to get up early for church this morning, felt OK at first, but by the time we got home was feeling pretty bad. So I guess this cold, whatever it is, is a sleep-it-off kind of cold. There are flus like that, where all you can do is sleep for a day or two, and then you're mostly over it, but colds are usually different.

I guess that's why it's been so hard to shake this thing. Getting a long night's sleep is tough around here. Even if I don't have something I have to get up for first thing, usually one of the kids does. I usually handle this by taking short naps, but it hasn't worked with this cold, so I guess I better get to bed soon, since I'll probably be the one taking my son to drivers' ed in the morning.

At least I got a nice dinner tonight. Susan just wanted to stay home and take it easy, so I went out with my bag of books and read at the restaurant for a couple of hours. I love doing that, it really recharges my batteries. I sure wish I'd learned to do that in college, but didn't really figure that out till my late 30s.

I noticed Apple is starting to advertise the iPhone (well, maybe they've been doing it and I just don't watch enough TV to know). It will sure be interesting to see how that goes. It'll be a really big deal, like the original Mac, I guess, if it works as advertised. Still can't help wonder if Apple will shoot themselves in the foot on the business end, however.

It will be interesting to see what they do with the iPod line once the iPhone is out. I still haven't bought one, but they're slowly reeling me in. I've only recently really gotten around to loading my music onto iTunes, though a lot of stuff is on vinyl and I sure wish I could get that into my Mac, especially Mobo I & II, which I can't find anywhere, even though I requested it on iTunes.

Sat 6/2/07

2007-06-02T17:54:25Z

Well, it was midnight last night, and I just didn't want to stay up any longer to write something here. Normally that's not so late for me, since after the kids go to bed (well, the younger ones), it's a lot quieter and sometimes a good time to get something done, but I've been battling a cold for two weeks that just doesn't want to completely go away. I stayed up late a few days ago and it came roaring back, so I didn't want that to happen again.

This morning started off with some news that made me laugh. Venezuela's RCTV, banned by dictator Hugo Chavez (I mean, isn't time we just start calling him that, what else has he got to take over?), has simply moved to YouTube.

I love how new technologies are great equalizers. Someone also wrote an article, "7 Ways to Stick it to the RIAA". I didn't read it, just saw the link, but that made me laugh, too. I'm not the kind of person who'd go blatantly ripping off someone's music, but I feel no pity for those music and entertainment bigwigs who are middlemen who've strong-armed artists and writers for decades, and now they're becoming irrelevant, vulnerable to getting whacked by the "long tail" of the internet!

Actually, a lot of folks my age have already paid for songs two or three times anyway. I know there's at least one album (Aja) where we've paid 4 times over for most of the songs, twice on vinyl and twice on CD.

Th 5/31/07

2007-06-01T05:21:24Z

I couldn't think of a good title for a "journal" entry, so I thought I'd try the date. I guess I'm experimenting with the title, too.

Most days now, I start my computer routine by checking my Twitter updates. Actually, I try to NOT start on the computer, because a lot of times I really get bogged down until my desk is at least somewhat cleared off, so it's usually better if I start with that for a half hour or so.

One thing nice about Twitter is that it's really deflected the whole email inbox bugaboo. The inbox is still there, but it's not nearly the distraction it used to be. I've found that a good way to attack the email is to read/trash a couple every time the Twitter page increments. That way dealing with email is kind of a non-event, instead of this monster that - kind of like MS Word - sucks up all your system resources even for a lot of nothing.

Another site I've discovered that has a lot of interesting links is Reddit. It's also great for getting attention for your blog stories. AeroGo had a record day yesterday, after I posted a new article ("How Missiles Are Changing the Rules"), to considerable degree due to dozens of hits coming off Reddit. I've also started submitting posts to Digg, but Reddit is generating much more traffic for AeroGo so far.

One story I found via Reddit really got me upset. Yep, you probably guessed it. It's neo-con (as in "con", I guess) Norman Podhoretz' full-page piece in the WSJ (maybe they're trying to see what it'd be like to lower their standards, in case they end up selling out to Rupert Murdoch): "The Case for Bombing Iran: I Hope and Pray that President Bush Will Do It".

His argument kind of reminds me of the old Stewart & Stevenson ads they used to run in the late 70s ("If you don't have an oil well, get one!"), which kind of glossed over the obvious ridiculousness of the proposition. Podhoretz seems to be arguing, if we don't have a world war, then start one! He apparently views world wars as normative, nowadays, with WWI, WWII, quickly followed by the long Cold War, which he designates WWIII. So now we need to have WWIV (no, not the KC-135), or at least concede that "what Sept 11, 2001, did was to plunge us headlong into nothing less than another world war."

All I think we can say for certain so far is that 9/11 plunged us headlong into another fit of massive deficit spending!

Maybe I'll Try an Experiment ...

2007-06-01T04:52:31Z

After being on a handful of sites the past couple of years, lately I've been joining a lot of different networking sites. I even got a Blogger login so I could comment on my cousin's site, though not a blog there.

I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to do with all these. Most of these sites I'm mainly just interested in promoting my other blogs such as AeroGo or else just general networking. I don't feel like bothering with listing them all tonight but maybe I will later. I guess the most popular site I've added is Facebook, since they're getting a lot of great press over the f8 upgrade, but so far it doesn't seem to me like a very attractive blogging site; maybe I'm just not familiar enough with it.

After half a year or so I still find myself with no inspiration to write on my MySpace site, which I got mainly just because everyone else has one (though there is some interesting stuff, kind of like at a garage sale where you've got to wade through a lot of junk to find it).

On the other hand, LiveJournal clearly appears to be one of the best-designed blogging sites, so I'm thinking I really ought to do something with it, I guess. LJ, while not all that visually appealing, seems to have the best mix of capable blogging and social networking features.

There are several topics I still want to start blogs on, besides those I've already got underway. I've been toying with the idea of writing about entrepreneurship on my personal blog, but that's on MS Live Spaces and I'm having a lot of trouble with that (I use a Mac). I also want to start a blog about what it's like to do research, but I'm pretty sure I want that on my hosted site (http://www.flightdev.com), which is still a work in progress.

Tonight, however, I was wondering if maybe I should try using LiveJournal actually as a journal. I don't know how that might work out or if I'll like the results or if anyone would find that interesting anyway, but I'm thinking I might try it as an experiment for a week or so.

I'm curious if it might actually help me to clarify my thoughts, maintain progress on certain projects, or whatever. I also wonder if I'll find myself writing a lot of stuff that I'll cringe over reading the next day!

Twitter

2007-05-02T19:56:00Z

Does anybody do Twitter? I've been trying it out (my screen name is aeroG).

I wrote about my early impressions here:

http://allthings.blogsome.com/2007/05/01/trying-out-twitter/ .

aeropreneur @ 2007-04-14T00:59:00

2007-04-14T06:04:42Z

Hi folks, I finally joined LiveJournal. Mostly I write on Xanga and Blogsome; maybe I'll write here sometimes, too.

I'll try to join some groups before too long.