I am borrowing this convenient bullet-point style from lizzbeth1.

1. It has been nearly four weeks since I last went soaring. This weekend, one of the tow planes is back in service but no instructor is scheduled for either saturday or sunday.

2. Some types of computer books (I had some ranging from 4 to 12 years old) sure get worthless quickly. Half Price Books is cool for happily accepting a box of books to recycle.

3. I picked up a radio controlled plane last week. It's fun! I haven't even crashed into anything yet, either. There is a nice park near my house that offers lots of open space.

4. Near the corner of my garage door, there is a wasp nest (wasps are good, so I leave them alone). Recently a spider has decided to build a web directly in front of the wasp nest. I wonder about the sanity of that spider.

5. I have turned off greylisting on my mail server. I think this time it's permanent. I decided that the disadvantage of greylisting (delayed mail delivery, occasional loss of legitimate mail) outweighed the disadvantage of not having it (more spam). I can control the spam volume problem in other ways.

6. I did some cursory analysis of my incoming spam. Of the email that fails SPF filtering (all of which is guaranteed to be forged email), 15% is from greg@hewgill.com; 31% is from various other @hewgill.com addresses; 18% is from email addresses associated in some way with VNC (my email address is in the VNC whats-new file); and the remaining 36% are from other domains.

7. Some international calling cards are a huge scam. I got one that offers a low rate of 1.9 cents per minute to Greece. $10 should get you nearly 9 hours of talk time, right? Well, there's a $1.99 per-call connection charge (that's 104 minutes), plus a $0.59 biweekly fee for just having the card (that's another 31 minutes). I'll be lucky if I get a couple of hours out of it.

8. Mono is really cool. I was able to get SOAP client stuff running in C# on Linux with no problems at all. It just works.

9. I'm trying to renew my ability in French. It has been 17 years since I last took a French course, yet I can still struggle along. I got a French review book and some readers with collections of short stories. I think I should get a dictionary too. Meanwhile, I want to continue learning Spanish, I want to continue taking informal classes in Japanese, and I am continuing to practice Esperanto.

10. nucleartacos last wednesday were very hot. Hottest tacos so far, we figure. Wow.

On saturday a bunch of people celebrated Pam's birthday on a party boat on Lake Austin. The trip was on again, off again because of threatening weather, but ultimately we decided to brave the rain anyway. I was glad we did, because I got a bunch of cool pictures of Lake Austin and the 360 Pennybacker bridge in the fog and rain. The weather was much more interesting than what you'd normally expect in june (sunny and hot).

Because of the rain, soaring was cancelled all weekend so I didn't get to fly. If this rain keeps up it might be too wet next weekend too, which would be disappointing. But I'm getting ready to take my written knowledge test in preparation for my private pilot license, hopefully I will complete that this week.

My parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary yesterday. If I had planned things better I might have been able to be there, but the cost of a plane ticket was out of range. My brother has just returned from his round-the-world trip and is staying with my parents for just a few days before he leaves for an internship in Prince Rupert.

Friday night was movie night at paradox0220's place. Thanks to paradox for the movie (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), which was surreal and entertaining, and the pizza (Austin's Pizza), which I thought was pretty good. Also thanks to texaspatsfan for the beer and Niru for the dessert. It was fun, we should do that more often.

I haven't flown for six weeks and I was really hoping to at least be able to get some stick time this weekend. The forecast looked reasonable but not great, certainly not real soaring weather but I was optimistic.

Saturday, being the first saturday of the month, was demo day so I wouldn't be able to fly anyway. The weather was bright and sunny but I was a slacker and stayed inside most of the day. I was slow getting started, and ended up dropping by the office that afternoon to see what cowquat was up to (and to catch up on stuff I didn't get done earlier in the week). Later a bunch of us had a great sushi dinner at Ichiban (it was only my second time to try sushi, I had some salmon and salmon roe).

Sunday I got up early enough to go flying, made lunch, checked the recorded field report (marginal conditions, should be okay I thought), headed up to the field, and nobody was there. Usually when soaring is cancelled the field report is updated to say so, but not today. So I continued on for a nice drive through the hill country, taking 210 to 963 to Burnet, then 281 through Marble Falls, then 71 to 620 to Mansfield Dam where I ate my lunch. I hadn't brought my GPS (I had left it in the other car), so I couldn't look for any geocaches on the way, and found later that I had driven right by several.

I came back home and warmed up with some hot chocolate by the fireplace.

Determined to log some more geocaches, I picked three close to my house and set out to find them. They were all pretty easy (Round Rock Robber's Grave, Bigger Than Life Cache, and The Round Rock). I learned that in the bed of Brushy Creek, there are hundred-year-old ruts carved into the stone by passing wagons! (The picture links to a couple of photos.)

While wandering around the Brushy Creek bed, I stopped to talk to a nice Mexican-American woman named Yolanda. She was there with her daughter and granddaughter collecting bamboo that would be used in a traditional dance. The bamboo is cut into sections about three feet long, then bound together in groups of about five in such a way that when it is thrown by a dancer who holds on to one end, the contraption extends to its full length. It would also have ribbons tied along its length. She said she hadn't made any of these props for 15 years, but came back to the same place as she found the bamboo last time.

We talked for a while about how much the city has grown, and how Austin has crept northward to almost merge with Round Rock. She said when she was growing up in Round Rock, there was never a thought that Austin would reach all the way up here. She also remarked about how the water in Brushy Creek used to be clear, so that you could easily see the bottom, but now it is muddy and has foamy bubbles indicating some kind of pollution. Such is the price of progress, I guess.

I just logged my three geocache finds and nearly doubled the number of caches I've found. Even though I found my first cache over two years ago, I'm still new at this!

So on Friday evening I was hanging out with goulo and we talked about the value of letter-writing (on paper with an envelope and stamp) to relatives who aren't online and aren't caught up with the incredibly fast pace of modern communication. For example, my grandmother. I could phone her or email my parents and have them pass on the message, but she loves to send and receive letters and I just recently received one from her. Russ and I agreed that both of us would try to write a letter this weekend - he to his dad and me to my grandmother.

However, I totally forgot about the letter until Sunday at midnight when I read this. Russ wins, I'm the bigger slacker.

Anyway, I thought back and realized I was hardly home all weekend. This is what happens when the weather is great and I can go flying! Saturday morning started with blue sky then an overcast layer then it settled down into lovely cumulus clouds with base at about 6200 feet. I only got one flight in because the instructor had to leave early.

Saturday night I went to dopplertx's housewarming party which was lots of fun, but made for a late night.

Sunday was great flying weather again, but it was a "blue day" (clear skies) and there were no telltale clouds to help find where the thermals are. You have to look for other signs like birds, light or dark areas on the ground, and especially other gliders (there were four of us circling in one thermal at one point). Three good flights that day, which made up for not being able to fly for the prior three weeks. I'm still ready for solo anytime soon! :)

Sunday evening on the way home from the field, I stopped at BB's for dinner and drinks with decibel45, ivo_janssen, and bovineone. Then I went over to decibel45's place to meet and play with his new kittens, and equiraptor came over to play with the kittens too. If there were a way to harness kitten power, the world's energy problems would be solved.

Then I got home late again, and realized I hadn't written that letter. I was dead tired, so it wasn't going to happen. Perhaps this evening.

Saturday was demo day at the glider club (first saturday of the month). There is no instruction on demo days, so I went just to hang out and help out. And brought a bunch of friends (decibel45, dopplertx, moonwick, ivo_janssen, and BSE). It was a full day, there were three gliders and two tow planes in use all day for demo flights.

Anyway, the first coincidence was that we saw openmynd at Parmer and 1431 on his bike en route to Colorado and points beyond. For some reason I didn't have the presence of mind to get a picture, and didn't notice which way he went after we stopped for gas.

I went flying on sunday and got a short but very good lesson in. It was a bit late in the day when I got to go up, so we didn't find any lift, but the tow and landing both felt really good. The coincidence was that Peter (the instructor yesterday who I hadn't met before) is also Canadian.

Two pilots took the Grob up yesterday (the plane on the ground in dopplertx's great picture) and landed it smoothly a ways down the field. They towed it back with a truck, and when they went to release the tow rope the retractable landing gear collapsed. We had to lift the plane and get a dolly under the nose to roll it back into its hanger. Although the plane is sleek, it's pretty heavy at 800 pounds. Apparently it will take major repairs to fix the landing gear. Not really a coincidence, but fortuitous that the gear did not collapse on landing or on the next takeoff. The Grob did many demo flights the day before.

Coincidentally, it's monday, I'm back at work, and I'm writing on lj. Time to start making myself useful.

I finally thought of a good picture for lj. This one is from bovineone's hair dye fun gallery.

Flying has been going very well. I should have a couple more simulated emergencies (such as a rope break on tow), then I will be ready to solo. I would have liked to fly today, but tropical depression Grace came through and messed up the weather.

A bunch of us went to dopplertx's place this afternoon and helped brew a batch of beer. I think this one will be a northwest style pale ale. Brewing seems like a fairly inexact process, nothing like say doing titrations in chemistry lab. Basically you boil some water, add various ingredients at the right times over the course of an hour or so, cool it down a bit, strain it, add yeast, put it in a big jug in the dark, and wait two weeks. Chemistry is fun.