Lee.org

It was great seeing Stevie, Kim and Benjamin! :-)

3 hrs sleep on Friday night, from 6am to 9am. I even woke up before my alarm at 9:20. I only do that for things I enjoy on a subconscious level. Otherwise, I’d sleep through even an earthquake.

This memelet has been going around the blogosphere forever (which is to say, for half a year, or so):

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

First horrified, then indignant, Cayley placed her hands firmly on her hips and declared “This is not America!”

From “Fair Play” by Steven E. Landsburg.

I hadn’t seen Jen & Michael in something like 2 years. Little Michael celebrated his first birthday party in Connecticut. I was there. It was good. :-) There were some NERO folks there too. Good fun.

I’m finally pulling my head out of my frantic Burning Man preparations. I’ll soon tell you about

• mostly flying the Trick 1000
• buying last minute parts
• making Ma’at in EL wire
• pulling a mostly-nighter for Ma’at
• taking a utility knife to Ma’at
• Seeing Rush in concert
• Seeing Stevie in Albany
• Seeing Jen et all in CT
• I might tell you about Maria Grozdeva
• Building the plane until the last minute
• packing
• becoming an international art model
• Volunteering at camp Merry Heart
• Shara’s birthday party

But I’ll start with sleep, beautiful sleep.

When I was up in Boston for a visit in July, I saw something that made me very uncomfortable. Just east of exit 73, Stafford Springs on the Mass Pike, I looked up and saw that there were what looked very much like high speed EZ-Pass readers hanging from a road structure over two of the three lanes. About 50 yards later, there appeared to be a radar gun hanging from another structure. Another 100 yards later, there was another radar-gun looking device. I wonder what that was for.

Big Brother is watching!

Why was this system only in place on the slow and middle lanes? Trucks are prohibited from the fast lane so this might be for tracking trucks. I still don’t like it one bit.

I took her out today. It’s really a blast. My favorite from today was taking off at 3/4 throttle, taking a moment to verify stability and then giving her full throttle. She pulled out at an 80 degree angle until I told her to stop… about 400 feet. I’d have her go higher but I can’t see her any further away!I lost my 10 cell NiMH :-( I was practicing hammerheads (and getting moderately good, I might add!) when the battery fell out. I foolishly watched the big yellow plane fall all the way to the ground instead of following the tiny little battery. I looked for about 30 minutes but no luck. Well, I guess I’ll be getting a new matched set of NiMHs.

Wow, Cheapbatterypacks.com can build me a 10 cell generic 1050 mah pack with Dean connectors for $20/pack. That’s like 1/2 the price of my local hobby shop, with -exactly- what I’m looking for instead of whatever happens to be in stock.

I’ll wait to put together the Trick 1000 and see how it flies with the LiPoly pack. Then I’ll probably get a double set of batteries.

I’m finally pretty good at flying the Projeti. It still scares me on take off but it’s such a beautiful thing once it’s off the ground. My fav: take off at 3/4 throttle. Gain enough speed to fly stable. Quickly verify trim. Full throttle. Climb out at 80 degree angle up to 400 ft, like a frigging spaceship!

New plane has arrived. I haven’t gotten to assembling it yet.

I was planning on replacing the defective hard drive in my Tivo with another myself but I just don’t have the time to spare. So I bought a pre-configured drive from PTV Upgrade. It works wonderfully. The new drive is whisper quiet, 160 gig (Tivo can only use 137 gig for a total of 140 hrs on Basic mode) and it installed in 10 minutes. I’m quite happy so far!

I have health insurance for the first time in about 1 1/2 years. Of course, the $2,500 deductible makes me frown though.

My aunt is asking me to help her start a new community newsletter like The Panther. That’ll be good.

I went on a date with someone from Match.com. It went really well. We’ll see…

I wonder how I’m going to get all this stuff on the plane!

(Actually, that’s 2 planes, a bike and some extra neon to round the order up to 100 feet.)

Julia is a big girl now. She goes poopy on the potty.

Listen.

I’m so proud!