Since the club took delivery of our newer planes, I’ve been very happy to utilize all of their capabilities – namely the autopilot and approach-approved GPS receivers.  It’s a key thing to know how to use – especially when you are IFR without another pilot in the plane – which is most of the time.  Unfortunately, it can also have the undesirable effect of letting your hand-flying skills get rusty.  Fixed that today.

Decided Pam and I would head to Camarillo for the tri-tip (she had breakfast – not a bad choice either it turns out) in the lightly-equipped 2257E/  To say it was marginal VFR on the way out was putting it mildly.  I considered turning back a few times, only to just catch site opf clear air in time.  Never dangerous of course, but I probably should have gone IFR.  After eating Pam suggested that we go IFR so I could get the practice.  Yes – she is COOL.

So we did.  In the clouds from Fillmore all the way through the Newhall pass on the ILS into Van Nuys, and in moderately bumpy clouds to boot.  There IS no GPS, or autopilot, or much of anything else in this plane – so it was all me.  Flew it great, if I do say so myself.  Needles in the donut all the way until we broke out, under complete control all the time.  I feel sorry for pilots who ONLY learn with the current equipment – they certainly can’t be as accomplished as those who learned it the old way.

I’m a fairly manly guy.  I take care of the manly things around the house.  I open jars.  I replace lightbulbs.  I fix things.  I kill bugs.  If necessary, I could get a snake out of the house.  But I cannot STAND rats.  They are vermin in the truest sense of the word.  So when I realized we had at least one in the house, I was NOT happy.  Apparently, what he likes to do is hang out in the attic during the day, then at night crawl through a hole in the water heater closet and hang out on top of the warm water heater – and apprently poop constantly, judging from the amount in that closet.

So Pam called an exterminator to come out and handle things.  I met the guy at the house, and when i went to show him the closet in question, there was not one, but TWO rats in there.  This was a serious deal.  Multi-rats.  Kill them immediately, I said – and then went to work out.

I came hom expecting a bill for their services and a note saying “All rats eliminated – zero chance on any getting in ever again.  Have a nice day.”  Instead I saw nothing.  Pam then told me that they had not, in fact, killed the rats, but instead FED them.  They block off the hole into the water heater closet, and then put food in the attic for them.  This bothers me on a great many levels.  First of all, I’m not a big fan of training them that MY HOUSE is the RAT BUFFET.  Word gets around (not sure how exactly, but it does), and soon other rats will be showing up for the early bird special.  Second, they are now TRAPPED (like, well, you know) in MY HOUSE!  I’m sure there is an element of genius to this plan, but I’m not quite seeing it yet.

More as the story develops.

Setting up the new office (including some rack servers), I have come to truly appreciate not just how EASY a Windows server installation is, but truly how mature and stable Windows is compared to Linux.

Wanting to install the same setup as our offshore partner, we installed Fedora 6, the Sun JVM, Apache, and Tomcat on our app server.  We had already installed Windows server 2003 on two other machines – one for a doc server, and one for a SQL server.  These installs went flawlessly, all patches were easily applied, and the servers are humming along, doing the jobs they were selected to do.  Notice I didn’t say “the jobs they were DESIGNED to do”.  Windows servers can easily fulfill a number of different roles easily.  If only it were that easy with Linux.

The install itself was painfully slow, the patches took FOREVER, and then the VIDEO didn’t even work right.  I had to monkey with it for hours before it actually was even usable.  Once I got to installing the Sun JVM, I had to actually call in an expert – my buddy Josh.  He made reasonably short work of installing everything, but even he couldn’t get it all working exactly right (to be fair, he had limited time to stay – onoy about four hours).

Now I understand that Apache is a great platform – and that Java on a Linux box works just fine – that is why we selected it to use as our platform for thousands of clients.  But come ON.  I’m a pretty knowledgeable guy when it comes to things computing.  If I can’t install the server software, how in the WORLD would anyone ever consider using it for a vanilla user on the desktop.  And now with Vista coming out, it would appear that Microsoft is safe forever on the desktop.

You heard it here first.  Or second.  OK.  Millions of people have said it.  Whatever.