Lee.org

I went to bCentral looking for a discussion mailing list for the PVPOA. While I was there, a popup said that a person would love to live-chat with me and solve all my problems. I took them up on the offer. I started chatting with “Micky”. After just a few exchanges, I got this feeling like I was talking to Eliza. You remember Eliza… the first electronic psychologist. Here, feel the creepiness for yourself:

Thank you for contacting Microsoft bCentral.
Below is a copy of our transcript.

Topic: I would like to have an automated announcement mailing list and a discussion mailing list. Each for about 200 people. Can bCentral do this for me and for how much?

Micky Hello Lee. I’m Micky. Welcome to bCentral live support.
Micky I’ve received your question and am glad to assist you.
Lee Hi Micky!
Micky In order to serve you effectively, I’d need further clarification about your issue. [Notice how she didn’t mention what she needed clarification on? Suspicious!]
Lee I’m looking for a mailing list manager service like Majordomo or Listserv…
Micky Okay. Please continue, Lee. [If this isn’t Eliza talking, them I’m a schnauzer with a limp.]
Lee Micky, are you a real human?
Micky Yes, I’m a real person out here. [you KNOW that was a canned response! Ha! Eliza says exactly the same thing!]
Micky What I’ve understood so far, is that you need a service that would help you manage your mailing list. [Obvious bad AI. The program constructed the sentence. It’s totally canned right up until “need”.]
Micky Am I correct in saying so? [Automated psycho-babble filler.]
Lee Yes. exactly.
Micky Thanks for the confirmation. […]
Micky Well, bCentral does provide a service – List Builder, that enables you to manage your mailing list, in order to send email newsletters to potential subscribers. [That’s almost what I asked… A human would have been more specific.]
Lee How can I find out more info about it? Is there a website?
Micky With List Builder service, you’d receive tools that can make launching an e-mail marketing campaign a snap. [Captain, all power to the main sales guns!]
Micky Sure. Here is a page that provides detailed information about this bCentral service.
Micky http://bcentral.com/products/lb/
Micky Lee, I’ve sent across the page that has details about the features as well as pricing of List Builder service.
Micky It should appear to the left of our chat window.
Lee You know, this conversation is pretty weird. You’re only getting a C- on the Turing Test. Thanks for the address.
Micky I’m sorry about not being able to promptly answer your questions. [Again, Eliz.. Micky almost understood the question. Context is a difficult mistress.]
Micky Lee, as far as the other question is concerned about managing a ‘discussion mailing list’ could you please elaborate about this, so that I could assist you appropriately? [Wow, this question gets me really excited about AI. “Micky” was able to parse my initial query and knew that I wanted two things.]

[at this point, I accidentally got bumped off the system. My fault.]

Micky YOur response will help me to assist you better.
Micky I really don’t intend to rush you through this, but, I haven’t heard back from you since quite some time.
Micky Are you there online with me?
Micky It seems that you’ve been disconnected from this chat session.
Micky You can always contact our Presales team via phone at the number for further information about this service, before signing up.
Micky The number is 1-866-bCentral (1-866-223-6872), Monday-Friday, 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Pacific time. It is a Toll Free Number.
Micky I’m sorry for not being able to assist you any further.
Micky Feel free to login again for assistance.
Micky I’m sorry that we couldn’t finish our discussion, Lee. Thanks for coming to bCentral Live Support. Please come back if you need assistance again. Have a nice day! [I wish this session had timestamps. I’d bet that this closing monologue would have had stamps like 17:34:06, 17:34:11, 17:34:16, 17:34:21…]

16980002:5502374

Since I got bumped before getting the info I needed, I jacked in again.

Thank you for contacting Microsoft bCentral.
Below is a copy of our transcript.

Topic: I would like to have an automated announcement mailing list and a discussion mailing list. Each for about 200 people. Can bCentral do this for me and for how much?

Lee Ah, Micky. We got disconnected. Sorry!
Micky Hello Lee. I’m Micky. Welcome back to bCentral live support. [Eliza’s intersession memory really startled me the first time I saw it. It’s a nice trick.]
Micky No problem.
Micky I’ve received your question and am looking forward to assist you again. [Canned up to “to”]
Lee Go on… [I got into the Eliza act. Of course what I SHOULD have said was, “Tell me about your assist you again.”]
Micky Pertaining to your question, I’d need further clarification about what you exactly are you referring to by saying ‘discussion mailing list’. [Proof that this AI isn’t sophisticated enough yet. This should have been in Micky’s database as a virtually 100% confirmed keyword.]
Micky Is it that you wish to hold discussions amongst a group of subscribers?
Lee Yes.
Micky Thanks for the confirmation.
Micky Please give me a couple of minutes to look into this request and assist you accordingly. [Just like old Star Trek. “Working…. working….” hehe. Nice touch!]
Lee OK. I’ll be here.
Micky Thanks.
Micky Thanks, once again. Pertaining to the feature you are looking for, about managing discussion lists, bCentral does provide a service – Sharepoint team service.
Lee Oh good. Tell me more! [I should have known better. “Tell me more!” gets translated into “Switch to verbose mode,” and no AI is good enough to do a good verbose mode yet. They always sound like they’re getting wildly off-topic.]
Micky With Sharepoint team services, you’d be able to manage an Intranet website, wherein you could manage discussions. However, these discussions, wouldn’t be identical to interactive chats.
Micky These discussions would be something like this. You’d post a topic for discussing, and authenticated users would be able to post their comments about this topic.
Micky Lee, the main administrator would be able to view the domments posted by all participants for these discussions.
Micky Although, I’d like to clarify that you’d either be able to limit the maximum number of authenticated users to 20.
Micky Alternatively, you’d be able to enable ‘anonymous access settings’ and then, more than 20 users could participate in this discussion, However, you’d not be able to determine the name of these anonymous users in case ‘Anonymous access settings’ are enabled.
Micky For further information, you might want to review the page providing additional details about this bCentral service.
Lee Ok… the limitations sound a bit weird but I’m still listening…. [What I SHOULD have said was, “For the love of all life in the universe, end verbose mode! Begin terse mode!]
Lee I’m looking into the SharePoint site now.
Micky Here’s the page for you.
Micky http://bcentral.com/products/sp/
Micky It would appear to the left of our chat window.
Micky Lee, you might want to review this page in detail at a later time.
Micky For your convenience, our entire chat transcript would be emailed to you, as soon as this session ends. So, you’d be able to access all this information.
Lee I’m not looking for groupware… I don’t think bCentral is for me.
Micky Well, I’m sorry to learn that the features provided as of now, are not upto your expectations.
Micky We really appreciate the time you’ve taken to help us know the opportunities to improvise our services. [Even computers give you “Dear John” letters when they realize they can’t get anything out of you.]
Micky Lee, bCentral works to add new features and services that would benefit all business owners.
Micky Thanks for your valuable feedback!
Micky Do let me know if there is any other information pertaining to bCentral, I could provide you with.
Micky Thanks for your valuable time. Feel free to login again for assistance.
Micky Thanks for using bCentral Live Support. We are here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Have a great day! Bye Lee, take care.

16980078:5502374

Technology has run amok. I was furiously taking notes at a meeting of the PVPOA (I’m working on getting them email mailing lists) and…. the best way to describe it is that my pencil crashed. It’s a fancy mechanical pencil… a Paper Mate Titanium 0.5mm to be exact. I got it special because the tip retracts so it doesn’t poke through your pocket. The main trouble is that it pushes too much lead out each time you click it. So my point broke and I clicked it again quickly since I was in a hurry and SNAP. I tried again, clicking more carefully but still in a hurry. SNAP. Again, SNAP. ARGH!

I’m happy with my Pentel Twist-Erase 0.5mm QE515 but the point makes it so that I don’t dare put the thing in a pocket for fear of being given a graphite injection! It’s happened before and it sucked.

Here’s the Allamuchy ball field that I sometimes fly in.

I got a little carried away with Mapquest…. Here is the club field I fly at, RAMAC. The area sure is perty from the sky, ain’t it? And these shots are in winter! The field itself isn’t much to look at. The dots near the bottom of the triangle in the first photo are cars in the parking lot.

Here’s the Pocono field… sorry the images aren’t as good… blame Mapquest!

And for posterity, more shots of the WCCC field.

I just measured the static thrust of the Zagi by balancing it on my postal scale, nose down and cranking it up. It’s unbelievable. My skills have improved wildly in the last couple months, I’m able to control the plane much better than I could when I first set it up and the amount of thrust has…. get this…. decreased! I honestly, honestly thought that the motor had broken in and I was getting more thrust, aiding me in my quest for domination of the skies. But nope! A month or so ago, I was getting 12 oz. of thrust out of the motor. The Zagi website makes mention of getting 16 oz. of thrust… I’m getting only 9.5 oz of thrust. And I couldn’t be happier. That’s so strange!

“You got mud on your face you big disgrace
Somebody better put you back into your place”

I went to Great Meadows and was quite surprised to find the parking lot almost full! Thursday is a big night at Great Meadows! I was planning on staying just a little while but ended up staying from 6 to 9pm! I met a nice father & son…… I’m so bad with names… Alex and ??? I think, from Long Valley.

As night twilight was approaching, I flew the Zagi dramatically into the sunset… and lost track of it’s silhouette. She took a good dive into the dirt on the far side of the canal. Shift forward 30 minutes, when we’re all packing up. I went over to the father & son and gloated about how they were cleaning oil and gas off their planes while I didn’t have to. Yea, I just had to clean the mud off it. At that moment, I felt like a rough-and-tumble scallywag.

I bought a computer fan at Staples to cool off my batteries. I also got a 3″ PVC pipe to set the battery in while cooling but… jeez the 8″ piece of pipe is the heaviest object in my case. I’ll go look for a smaller, thinner walled pipe. I suppose I shouldn’t have gotten a pipe rated for 270 psi, eh? But that’s all they had in 3″ pipe… Eh. I’ll figure out something.

Oh and the fan has cool purple LEDs on it. When my dad came home from dinner and saw the contraption charging in the garage, he called me Doctor Frankenstein. hehe.

Yesterday I went out with Doyle and Julia to the little Allamuchy baseball field. I got to see Zagi Flap for the first time. It freaked me out! I got it up to about 250 feet and dove at about 80 degrees at full throttle. Only 1/2 way down it started flapping like a crazed swallow, like 5 times per second! I thought the battery pack was going to pop right out in mid-air! Well, it didn’t but I was so freaked that when I brought it in for a landing to see if it was ok, I scraped it against a fence, tearing the starboard elevon off for the third time. I gotta get coroplast elevons.

Soaring with Eagles

Yesterday morning after class I was flying at WCCC. I saw some eagles (hawks?) catching a thermal at 300 feet so I went up to meet them :-) I found their thermal at 200 and rode it to about 350 with them. Very cool! I got pretty close to them… riding the thermal maybe 50 feet vertical below them. I thought they’d be completely freaked out by the plane but they didn’t give up their thermal for at least a minute. I’d like to think they were done with the thermal but yea, I probably scared them off.

Dynamic Soaring

Today I went out to the Allamuchy field… it was a really windy day. Though the field is small and flat (it’s just 3 little league baseball fields) I tried dynamic soaring. What a hoot! All I had to do was loop carefully and I’d get some speed fer free!

I’d come in 3′ off the ground, shoot up 20′, fly inverted for 40′ and come back down near the ground. Since the wind is moving faster at altitude, I come out of the maneuver faster than when I go in! I’ve still got to work a lot at my vertical turns. This time around, I could rarely do more than one loop before pulling out of it to stabilize myself. And I was using a lot of throttle to keep me going. If I was -really- good, I’d be able to do this with no throttle at all!

Did you happen to see the most beautiful girl in the world?
Link is to a short (.9 meg) QuickTime movie of Julia.

I had a GREAT time watching combat in the Poconos on Sunday. And then Julian introduced me to family. They gave us dinner, we played MS Flight Simulator, talked about much, and had a great all-around time! To borrow a phase, Woot!

Julian and I went to Stick 40 Combat in the Poconos. A very nice day! I flew in front of a large audience for the first time. I got over my nerves quick enough… but then I had time for 5 or 6 flights. Near the end, I crashed kinda hard in the corn field. I went out, brushed it off and gave it a toss. I heard an astonished comment behind me and smiled.On Sunday, I had crashed pulling out of my first good inverted flight.. Yesterday I was able to do some inverted flight without a dramatic ending. Here, let me get more technical about my recent improvements:

• The Sullivan Gold-n-Cable #507 .032″ cable that I used for the cable system is a little too thin. I finally got it to work well, but it was a pain. The look is nice but… eh.
• My purpose for the cables was to improve handling by moving the control horn to the middle of the elevon. Unhappily, the plane does NOT fly any better with cables. It’s still flittery in high wind and smooth in low/no wind.
• The smoother covering job helps a little with speed… just a little. Or maybe that’s me thinking that a pretty plane flies faster.
• The balsa elevons have broken 4 times in 3 places. I’ve repaired them with CA but I’d like to get 2mm coroplast.
• I think the motor has a little more thrust now… it’s broken in. I had previously measured a static thrust of 12 oz. I’ll try that test again soon.
• My batteries are breaking in well. Today I did C/5 charges after draining them and put 1800 mah into the 1700 mah battery and 1300 mah into the 1100 mah battery. However, the 1100 mah battery was very warm when it peaked… there might be a growing cell instability issue there. I’ll keep an eye on it.
• My piloting skills are improving dramatically! I don’t -feel- any different but somehow I can now easily do 2 or 3 rolls at a time when just a few months ago I could barely do 1 roll. I can do multiple inside loops with ease, zoop all around comfortably, and am confident with many low altitude maneuvers. Just ask Julian about that last one. I buzzed him when he was trying to take a photo. I came so close that he dropped to the ground! Hehe! Not to worry… I pulled out in time, and a collision with a foam wing is pretty benign. (as long as it’s not the space shuttle you’re hitting :-( )

Photos from last weekend:

Julian and his plane are to the right. Notice the tractor in the background. Which do you think would win in a collision, the plane or tractor? Julian and I know! (he hit the tractor’s wheel with his wing on an approach to a dirt landing strip. The plane sustained relatively minor damage. If the plane had been 2 feet to the right, it would have been scrap)

I don’t remember if I’ve said this in the journal but Julian is a terrific pilot!

Sorry I don’t have any good action shots of either plane. It’s hard taking shots of a little plane zipping around, especially when my camera doesn’t actually take the picture for 1/2 a second after you push the button!