diff --git a/content/blog/2011-12-21_python-progress-bar.rst b/content/blog/2011-12-21_python-progress-bar.rst index 7a96038..2b2e4a5 100644 --- a/content/blog/2011-12-21_python-progress-bar.rst +++ b/content/blog/2011-12-21_python-progress-bar.rst @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ Python Progress Bar :slug: python-progress-bar :status: published -I was looking for a nice progress bar today at work to show progress rather than just printing “\ **Waiting 30 seconds…**\ ” and having the script do nothing, I wanted to have a progress bar show. +I was looking for a nice progress bar today at work to show progress rather than just printing "\ **Waiting 30 seconds…**\ " and having the script do nothing, I wanted to have a progress bar show. I found a progress bar from `Corey Goldberg `__ diff --git a/content/blog/2012-01-05_custom-django-urlfield.rst b/content/blog/2012-01-05_custom-django-urlfield.rst index 3acec83..cd8258b 100644 --- a/content/blog/2012-01-05_custom-django-urlfield.rst +++ b/content/blog/2012-01-05_custom-django-urlfield.rst @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ Custom Django URLField For work I had to write a custom url model field. This model field when setting up accepts a default protocol, and a list of other protocols. -When checking the protocol, the url is split by “://”. If the split has one or two parts, then the url is validly formed. +When checking the protocol, the url is split by "://". If the split has one or two parts, then the url is validly formed. In the event of a single element split, there is no protocol specified. When there is no protocol, the url is prepended with the default protocol specified. If there is a protocol, it is checked to make sure it exists in a union of the default protocol and other protocols. If it is not, a ValidationError is raised letting the user know that the protocol is not accepted. diff --git a/content/blog/2012-01-13_you-can-un-expire-a-gpg-key.rst b/content/blog/2012-01-13_you-can-un-expire-a-gpg-key.rst index e8b2a44..72f6e1d 100644 --- a/content/blog/2012-01-13_you-can-un-expire-a-gpg-key.rst +++ b/content/blog/2012-01-13_you-can-un-expire-a-gpg-key.rst @@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ To make this not expire, (same steps to change expiration date to another time), You will then see a gpg prompt ``gpg>`` -Type “expire” in and you will be prompted for how long to change it to +Type "expire" in and you will be prompted for how long to change it to .. code:: console diff --git a/content/blog/2012-02-08_vertical_bars_in_graphite.rst b/content/blog/2012-02-08_vertical_bars_in_graphite.rst index 696fd7e..c1b0771 100644 --- a/content/blog/2012-02-08_vertical_bars_in_graphite.rst +++ b/content/blog/2012-02-08_vertical_bars_in_graphite.rst @@ -12,4 +12,4 @@ I am working with txStatsD and Graphite. I was having the hardest problem lookin .. figure:: {static}/images/2012/02/graphite-menu.png :alt: menu in graphite showing draw nonzero as infinite -This is the option that you must use when you want to mark events. For example we want to know “Server restarted”, we would use this technique, as it doesn’t make sense to aggregate “server restarted”. Using nonzero as infinite is a good way to show an event took place. +This is the option that you must use when you want to mark events. For example we want to know "Server restarted", we would use this technique, as it doesn't make sense to aggregate "server restarted". Using nonzero as infinite is a good way to show an event took place. diff --git a/content/blog/2012-02-17_hubspot.rst b/content/blog/2012-02-17_hubspot.rst index 053857c..3002157 100644 --- a/content/blog/2012-02-17_hubspot.rst +++ b/content/blog/2012-02-17_hubspot.rst @@ -7,19 +7,19 @@ Hubspot :slug: hubspot :status: published -I was invited to a Hackathon that one of our client’s client was throwing. Being that I love programming and learning, I decided I would go. +I was invited to a Hackathon that one of our client's client was throwing. Being that I love programming and learning, I decided I would go. -The event was in Cambridge, MA. I arrive early, (my friend said there would be a lot more traffic than there was at that time of day) so I got a tour of office. It’s situated in an old, what I believe to be, factory building. The coolest part of the office was that they had whiteboard paint on every wall surface, complete with markers of course. +The event was in Cambridge, MA. I arrive early, (my friend said there would be a lot more traffic than there was at that time of day) so I got a tour of office. It's situated in an old, what I believe to be, factory building. The coolest part of the office was that they had whiteboard paint on every wall surface, complete with markers of course. -The event started and people who were attending had tossed up ideas on the white board. A couple people wanted to integrate LinkedIN with HubSpot. Another person wanted to integrate Eventbrite with HubSpot, to get information to/from event goers after the event ends. I didn’t like any of those ideas and my only experience with HubSpot is their Leads API, so I stuck to what I know. +The event started and people who were attending had tossed up ideas on the white board. A couple people wanted to integrate LinkedIN with HubSpot. Another person wanted to integrate Eventbrite with HubSpot, to get information to/from event goers after the event ends. I didn't like any of those ideas and my only experience with HubSpot is their Leads API, so I stuck to what I know. -I had an idea for an app the second I walked in the door, it was like magic. My main hassle was that HubSpot’s Canvas integration REQUIRES HTTPS. Now, my web host is DreamHost and I am kind of cheap, so of course I don’t have any way to host a HTTPS site immediately. A big part of me wanted to bite the bullet and order a secure server from DreamHost, or setup another linode, but I felt that I’ve been spending a lot of money lately and that I would figure out a way. Adrian, my contact at HubSpot, of who I am working with on the PPC project(more on that later), walked by and saved me. +I had an idea for an app the second I walked in the door, it was like magic. My main hassle was that HubSpot's Canvas integration REQUIRES HTTPS. Now, my web host is DreamHost and I am kind of cheap, so of course I don't have any way to host a HTTPS site immediately. A big part of me wanted to bite the bullet and order a secure server from DreamHost, or setup another linode, but I felt that I've been spending a lot of money lately and that I would figure out a way. Adrian, my contact at HubSpot, of who I am working with on the PPC project(more on that later), walked by and saved me. -He asked if I had ever used GoogleAppEngine. Of course I hadn’t because I was under the belief that it cost money to use, but then I realized I was thinking of Amazon’s EC2. I sign up for GAE and within an hour I have a HelloWorld site setup. The slow part was installing Python2.5 so I could use the same version that GAE used and not have to fix a lot of backwards compatibility errors between 2.5->2.7. +He asked if I had ever used GoogleAppEngine. Of course I hadn't because I was under the belief that it cost money to use, but then I realized I was thinking of Amazon's EC2. I sign up for GAE and within an hour I have a HelloWorld site setup. The slow part was installing Python2.5 so I could use the same version that GAE used and not have to fix a lot of backwards compatibility errors between 2.5->2.7. After I had a site up that could do HTTPS I dove into programming for my HubSpot app. The app I am doing for work graphs leads per day combined with Google AdWords data per day. I decided to do something different. My app is still a graph, as graphs are fun and easy to understand by everyone. This app graphs a set of leads and shows how many leads happened in a given hour for the previous day. Given extra time I would have added an interface to specify the day to graph leads, but last night my time was severely limited by the fact that I had to setup my environment for GoogleAppsEngine. -Improvements I can and want to do to this app are database, faster processing, and being able to select a date. I almost wanted to break down and learn NodeJS for this, because from my understanding of the event driven nature of NodeJS would be a lot easier to load data over a longer period of time, than to just load it all at once and timeout with HubSpot’s Jakarta Commons-HttpClient. +Improvements I can and want to do to this app are database, faster processing, and being able to select a date. I almost wanted to break down and learn NodeJS for this, because from my understanding of the event driven nature of NodeJS would be a lot easier to load data over a longer period of time, than to just load it all at once and timeout with HubSpot's Jakarta Commons-HttpClient. diff --git a/content/blog/2012-03-08_some-bash-tips.rst b/content/blog/2012-03-08_some-bash-tips.rst index 662e9c5..7bf1fe7 100644 --- a/content/blog/2012-03-08_some-bash-tips.rst +++ b/content/blog/2012-03-08_some-bash-tips.rst @@ -7,10 +7,10 @@ Some BASH tips :slug: some-bash-tips :status: published -I realize I haven’t updated in a while. I haven’t had much free time recently as I’ve been working on a project for my father in C# after work hours. This is a great change from only working in Python and JavaScript recently. I’m making a program that will analyze test results from a plasma torch for a company called HyperTherm. My father built the physical machine, but the employees want something that they can better see the results of a passed torch unit, or a failed torch unit. This program has a bar code scanner that scans the tool used in the test and matches it up to the lot of torch parts. Another added feature is the ability to print a white label that says “UNIT PASSED” or a giant red label that says the unit failed and which of the 8 tests failed were.I had to learn how to use delegates, as my serial event listener is on a separate thread and I can’t update labels, or parts of the User Interface without them. Still working on it, hopefully will wrap it up by Saint Patrick’s day. +I realize I haven't updated in a while. I haven't had much free time recently as I've been working on a project for my father in C# after work hours. This is a great change from only working in Python and JavaScript recently. I'm making a program that will analyze test results from a plasma torch for a company called HyperTherm. My father built the physical machine, but the employees want something that they can better see the results of a passed torch unit, or a failed torch unit. This program has a bar code scanner that scans the tool used in the test and matches it up to the lot of torch parts. Another added feature is the ability to print a white label that says "UNIT PASSED" or a giant red label that says the unit failed and which of the 8 tests failed were.I had to learn how to use delegates, as my serial event listener is on a separate thread and I can't update labels, or parts of the User Interface without them. Still working on it, hopefully will wrap it up by Saint Patrick's day. -I recently found a cool command in BASH that I hadn’t previously known. ``C-o`` will execute the current line, and then bring the following line up from BASH history. If you have a set of commands you want to execute again, rather than having to press up 20 times, hit enter, press up 19 times, hit enter, and so on… You can just hit up 20 times. Press C-o as many times as you need to. +I recently found a cool command in BASH that I hadn't previously known. ``C-o`` will execute the current line, and then bring the following line up from BASH history. If you have a set of commands you want to execute again, rather than having to press up 20 times, hit enter, press up 19 times, hit enter, and so on… You can just hit up 20 times. Press C-o as many times as you need to. For example: diff --git a/content/blog/2012-05-04_ganymede_twilio.rst b/content/blog/2012-05-04_ganymede_twilio.rst index 563dcae..cd3cb79 100644 --- a/content/blog/2012-05-04_ganymede_twilio.rst +++ b/content/blog/2012-05-04_ganymede_twilio.rst @@ -9,11 +9,11 @@ Ganymede, Twilio Last night I wrote the beginnings of my first NodeJS application. Is application even the correct word? -I’ve been meaning to try out the cool API by Twilio, which is used for SMS and VoiceCalling. I decided to design a system that will be two+ endpoints. One is the main server which will listen for UDP messages. When it receives the correct UDP message, configured in the config(`konphyg `_) files, it will fire off a message to Twilio and send me a text message. +I've been meaning to try out the cool API by Twilio, which is used for SMS and VoiceCalling. I decided to design a system that will be two+ endpoints. One is the main server which will listen for UDP messages. When it receives the correct UDP message, configured in the config(`konphyg `_) files, it will fire off a message to Twilio and send me a text message. The next steps, which I should be getting to tonight, are to create the Arduino portion and the serial listener. The Arduino will have a button that will send a message over serial to another NodeJS listener. This will decide if the press was good enough, if it passes the debouncing filter, and then fire a message to the main Ganymede server. -This could be used as a little text message doorbell for when you have your music on too loud. I don’t believe I will ever sell this, as it’s just for me to get into NodeJS, but It would be fun to share with friends. +This could be used as a little text message doorbell for when you have your music on too loud. I don't believe I will ever sell this, as it's just for me to get into NodeJS, but It would be fun to share with friends. The source so far is located on my github at [DEADLINK]. diff --git a/content/blog/2012-05-07_hypertherm.rst b/content/blog/2012-05-07_hypertherm.rst index 314bb99..48815f8 100644 --- a/content/blog/2012-05-07_hypertherm.rst +++ b/content/blog/2012-05-07_hypertherm.rst @@ -6,15 +6,15 @@ Hypertherm :slug: hypertherm :status: published -For the past three months I have been upgrading and rewriting version 2 of my software for Hypertherm. I am under a contract for my father’s company. His company is developing a machine to test how well air flows (laminar flow) through a plasma cutting torch head, and how much air leaks out over a certain time (delta pressure loss). +For the past three months I have been upgrading and rewriting version 2 of my software for Hypertherm. I am under a contract for my father's company. His company is developing a machine to test how well air flows (laminar flow) through a plasma cutting torch head, and how much air leaks out over a certain time (delta pressure loss). This has been a nice adventure. I am talking to the tester over serial, reading in a hand scanner (barcodes and acts as a keyboard easy), talking to a DYMO printer and using a database. The serial communication was pretty straightforward. I started a new thread and listen for serial all the time. The tricky part with that was that because it was on another thread, I needed a delegate to talk to my UI when I did things like change the picture from blank to a big red X, or update a label. -The hand scanner wasn’t even a factor that took longer than 10 minutes, I just pop up a dialog box asking for input. +The hand scanner wasn't even a factor that took longer than 10 minutes, I just pop up a dialog box asking for input. -The DYMO printer was the hardest part. This took me a month to figure out, I kept fighting with the printer. I could figure out how to print to the left roll, the ones we setup as as the passing labels, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get it to print to the right label, using a custom label. I tried to load the labels into data and use a StreamWriter/StreamReader object to treat that as the label, but it kept printing one that had, for reasons unknown to me, been locked into the printer. I finally gave up on using the interface they provided and am writing the label to a temporary file. The file is in the user’s %appdata% directory in a sub directory that it will not be mistakenly written to, so I feel safe doing it this way. Granted, the machine is a single purpose machine, once this program is installed it will only run this program day and night. +The DYMO printer was the hardest part. This took me a month to figure out, I kept fighting with the printer. I could figure out how to print to the left roll, the ones we setup as as the passing labels, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get it to print to the right label, using a custom label. I tried to load the labels into data and use a StreamWriter/StreamReader object to treat that as the label, but it kept printing one that had, for reasons unknown to me, been locked into the printer. I finally gave up on using the interface they provided and am writing the label to a temporary file. The file is in the user's %appdata% directory in a sub directory that it will not be mistakenly written to, so I feel safe doing it this way. Granted, the machine is a single purpose machine, once this program is installed it will only run this program day and night. Once I got the printer working, I checked it in to github and realized it took me way longer than anticipated. I learned a lot about .NET development (by no means everything, or even most things, just a lot compared to what I did know before [nothing].) diff --git a/content/blog/2012-05-25_harry-delmolino.rst b/content/blog/2012-05-25_harry-delmolino.rst index a31129c..7883e3b 100644 --- a/content/blog/2012-05-25_harry-delmolino.rst +++ b/content/blog/2012-05-25_harry-delmolino.rst @@ -15,17 +15,17 @@ I think that was the last time I saw him. On this Saturday, May 19th, 2012, he was riding his bicycle in North Hampton and collided with a car, sending him flying off and smacking his head on the edge of the curb. There are some other details which I am not 100% sure about. He then was in the hospital until Tuesday May 22, 2012 at which time he passed away. -We used to talk every day, either on IRC, AIM or gTalk. His account on IRC (no_numbers_here) is still active because his VPS for http://harry.is is still paid for and online until the next billing period. Its so sad seeing his name online and not being able to send a “hey dood” or some other random greeting, then start talking about computers, python, bikes, etc. +We used to talk every day, either on IRC, AIM or gTalk. His account on IRC (no_numbers_here) is still active because his VPS for http://harry.is is still paid for and online until the next billing period. Its so sad seeing his name online and not being able to send a "hey dood" or some other random greeting, then start talking about computers, python, bikes, etc. Harry was an avid cyclist. I am reading stories that even if he had to go thirty feet, he would hop on his bike to get there. He got me interested in cycling as well. He was going to sell me a bike, but the I was talking to a friend and he gave me on, so I never bought it. Which as it turns out was good as he wanted to give that to his new girlfriend. -I was planning on hanging out with him next weekend, as he was busy with something this weekend that I can’t remember. I wanted to take him target shooting, and wanted to eventually be in enough shape to go hiking with him. None of this ever came to fruition. +I was planning on hanging out with him next weekend, as he was busy with something this weekend that I can't remember. I wanted to take him target shooting, and wanted to eventually be in enough shape to go hiking with him. None of this ever came to fruition. Harry Delmolino, we may not have been as close as we could have been, but you definitely made a difference in my life for the better and I never got to thank you for this. Edit: ----- -I went to the Calling Hours today and I was only there maybe a half hour, but there were so many people there. It’s amazing that a man so young has touched so many lives of so many people, and had accomplished so much. People might say “Oh we was just a kid, he was only 18″ but if they looked at the accomplishments of this young man, they would realize how grown up he was. +I went to the Calling Hours today and I was only there maybe a half hour, but there were so many people there. It's amazing that a man so young has touched so many lives of so many people, and had accomplished so much. People might say "Oh we was just a kid, he was only 18″ but if they looked at the accomplishments of this young man, they would realize how grown up he was. I think his mother and father might eventually delete his Facebook, so I went back and took a screenshot of one of our last conversations so I can remember. Everything he said usually warranted a laugh. diff --git a/content/blog/2012-11-07_cfengine3-install-on-centos-5-7.rst b/content/blog/2012-11-07_cfengine3-install-on-centos-5-7.rst index 751ba7d..165e6a4 100644 --- a/content/blog/2012-11-07_cfengine3-install-on-centos-5-7.rst +++ b/content/blog/2012-11-07_cfengine3-install-on-centos-5-7.rst @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ CFEngine3 Install on CentOS 5.7 :slug: cfengine3-install-on-centos-5-7 :status: published -| Today I was tasked with installing CFEngine3 on CentOS-5.7 (A little outdated). When installing CFEngine-3.3.1 I kept getting an error that I couldn’t find libtokyocabinet.so.9. I had to set my prefix to /usr/ because the location that tokyocabinet was installing my libraries to was not being read by CFEngine’s make script. +| Today I was tasked with installing CFEngine3 on CentOS-5.7 (A little outdated). When installing CFEngine-3.3.1 I kept getting an error that I couldn't find libtokyocabinet.so.9. I had to set my prefix to /usr/ because the location that tokyocabinet was installing my libraries to was not being read by CFEngine's make script. | To do this (I am using tokyocabinet 1.4.47) .. code:: console diff --git a/content/blog/2013-07-02_getting-started-in-python-part-1.rst b/content/blog/2013-07-02_getting-started-in-python-part-1.rst index 05548e0..3b56943 100644 --- a/content/blog/2013-07-02_getting-started-in-python-part-1.rst +++ b/content/blog/2013-07-02_getting-started-in-python-part-1.rst @@ -7,13 +7,13 @@ Getting started in Python Part 1 :slug: getting-started-in-python-part-1 :status: published -I have a friend who is interested in becoming a Python developer. He has some Python experience with CodeAcademy, but he of course wants to take this a step further and develop on his own computer. I figure I’d give him a few pointers, and I know this has been rehashed a million times, but what the hell, why not blog on it again. -There are a few important things to learn besides the actual language itself. The first I am going to discuss is has to deal with installing packages, then followed up closely with Python’s path trickery. Finally I’m going to wrap up by discussing some software related to development, that could be used for any language, but I use daily in my work as a Python Software Engineer. Let’s get started. +I have a friend who is interested in becoming a Python developer. He has some Python experience with CodeAcademy, but he of course wants to take this a step further and develop on his own computer. I figure I'd give him a few pointers, and I know this has been rehashed a million times, but what the hell, why not blog on it again. +There are a few important things to learn besides the actual language itself. The first I am going to discuss is has to deal with installing packages, then followed up closely with Python's path trickery. Finally I'm going to wrap up by discussing some software related to development, that could be used for any language, but I use daily in my work as a Python Software Engineer. Let's get started. PIP --- -Python is a wonderful language, but how useful would it be if you had to rewrite everything by hand? Not useful at all. That’s why the lovely pip developers were born. `PIP `__ (executable pip) is a package manager written for Python. It’s very simple to use, and in my opinion is way better than easy_install. To use pip you need to know at a minimum three commands. +Python is a wonderful language, but how useful would it be if you had to rewrite everything by hand? Not useful at all. That's why the lovely pip developers were born. `PIP `__ (executable pip) is a package manager written for Python. It's very simple to use, and in my opinion is way better than easy_install. To use pip you need to know at a minimum three commands. ``pip install`` @@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ Virtualenv If you notice I mentioned a current environment in my previous ``pip freeze`` explanation, here is why. Python has a default place that it looks when you reference a package. This is generally in something like ``/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/`` or ``C:\Python27\lib``. There is a set of scripts called ``virtualenv`` that creates an environment where you run it with a complete copy of your Python executable, and a blank (unless you copy them over) site-packages directory. You can then install any packages there activate the virtual environment. When activated you use those specific versions, no matter the version of what is installed on your system. -Let’s show an example of the first time use of ``virtualenv``: +Let's show an example of the first time use of ``virtualenv``: .. code:: console @@ -42,14 +42,14 @@ Let’s show an example of the first time use of ``virtualenv``: $ source myenv/bin/activate # Activate the virtual environment (myenv)$ python -c "import MYPACKAGE; print MYPACKAGE" -Notice how it says your package is not in ``/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/`` ? That’s because you’re using ``virtualenv`` to tell your copied python to use that library instead. There are many reasons you would want to use a virtual environment. The most frequent reason is to preserve version numbers of installed packages between a production and a development environment. Another reason virtualenv is useful if you do not have the power to install packages on your system, you can create a virtual environment and install them there. +Notice how it says your package is not in ``/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/`` ? That's because you're using ``virtualenv`` to tell your copied python to use that library instead. There are many reasons you would want to use a virtual environment. The most frequent reason is to preserve version numbers of installed packages between a production and a development environment. Another reason virtualenv is useful if you do not have the power to install packages on your system, you can create a virtual environment and install them there. Virtualenvwrapper ----------------- After you create a virtual environment, you just run``source bin/activate`` and it will activate the virtual environment. This can get tedious knowing exactly where your virtual environments are all the time, so some developers wrote some awesome scripts to fix that problem. This is called``virtualenvwrapper`` and once you use it once, you will always want to use it more. What it does is that it has you create a hidden directory in your home directory, set that to an environment variable and references that directory as the basis for your virtual environments. The installation of this is pretty easy, you can``pip install virtualenvwrapper`` if you want, or download the package and compile by hand. -Once installed correctly, you can run the command ``mkvirtualenv envname`` to create a virtual environment. You can then run``workon envname`` from anywhere, and it will activate that environment. For example, you could be at``/var/www/vhosts/www.mysite.com/django/`` and run``workon envname`` and it would activate the environment from there. This isn’t a required package (none of them are really…) as I went a couple years without using``virtualenvwrapper``, but it is very useful and now I use it every day. Some tips I use with my setup of``virtualenvwrapper`` is that I use the postactivate scripts to automatically try to change into the proper project directory of my environment. This also means I usually name my``virtualenv`` after my project name for easy memory. It makes no sense to have a project called “cash_register” but the``virtualenv`` be called “fez”. This is how I change to the right project after activating my ``virtualenv``. This goes in ``$WORKON_HOME/postactivate`` +Once installed correctly, you can run the command ``mkvirtualenv envname`` to create a virtual environment. You can then run``workon envname`` from anywhere, and it will activate that environment. For example, you could be at``/var/www/vhosts/www.mysite.com/django/`` and run``workon envname`` and it would activate the environment from there. This isn't a required package (none of them are really…) as I went a couple years without using``virtualenvwrapper``, but it is very useful and now I use it every day. Some tips I use with my setup of``virtualenvwrapper`` is that I use the postactivate scripts to automatically try to change into the proper project directory of my environment. This also means I usually name my``virtualenv`` after my project name for easy memory. It makes no sense to have a project called "cash_register" but the``virtualenv`` be called "fez". This is how I change to the right project after activating my ``virtualenv``. This goes in ``$WORKON_HOME/postactivate`` .. code:: bash diff --git a/content/blog/2013-08-06_help-i-have-too-many-django-manytomany-queries-fixed.rst b/content/blog/2013-08-06_help-i-have-too-many-django-manytomany-queries-fixed.rst index e4d3611..bb2c9bf 100644 --- a/content/blog/2013-08-06_help-i-have-too-many-django-manytomany-queries-fixed.rst +++ b/content/blog/2013-08-06_help-i-have-too-many-django-manytomany-queries-fixed.rst @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ Help, I have too many Django ManyToMany Queries [FIXED] My boss tasked me with getting the load time of 90 seconds(HOLY CARP!) on one page down. First thing I did was install the Django Debug Toolbar to see what was really happening. -There are currently 2,000 users in the database, the way our model is setup is that a UserProfile can have other UserProfiles attached to it in one of three M2M relations, which in the Django Admin would cause 2,000 queries PER M2M field. This is very expensive as obviously you don’t want 10,000 queries that each take 0.3ms to take place. +There are currently 2,000 users in the database, the way our model is setup is that a UserProfile can have other UserProfiles attached to it in one of three M2M relations, which in the Django Admin would cause 2,000 queries PER M2M field. This is very expensive as obviously you don't want 10,000 queries that each take 0.3ms to take place. The solution, after a day and a half of research is to override the **formfield_for_manytomany** method in the Admin class for our UserProfile object. @@ -26,6 +26,6 @@ Our solution is to prefetch for any M2M that are related to the current Model. This goes inside our admin class **UserProfileInline(admin.StackedInline)**. Simple clean and easy to drop into another ModelAdmin with minimal changes. -Other things I pondered was to set all our M2M’s as raw_id_fields, then using Select2 or Chosen, query our UserProfiles when the related users were being selected. This would take a lot of load off the initial page load, but is more of a bandaid rather than a real fix. +Other things I pondered was to set all our M2M's as raw_id_fields, then using Select2 or Chosen, query our UserProfiles when the related users were being selected. This would take a lot of load off the initial page load, but is more of a bandaid rather than a real fix. -I tried to override the Admin class’s **def queryset(self, request):** but this was not affecting anything. +I tried to override the Admin class's **def queryset(self, request):** but this was not affecting anything. diff --git a/content/blog/2013-11-13_how-to-not-trigger-a-post_save-in-django-but-still-modify-data.rst b/content/blog/2013-11-13_how-to-not-trigger-a-post_save-in-django-but-still-modify-data.rst index 08fcbae..543aadc 100644 --- a/content/blog/2013-11-13_how-to-not-trigger-a-post_save-in-django-but-still-modify-data.rst +++ b/content/blog/2013-11-13_how-to-not-trigger-a-post_save-in-django-but-still-modify-data.rst @@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ How to not trigger a post_save in Django, but still modify data. Recently I have been diving into using signals with Django, which of course are pretty neat. -I am working on a website for work which in the most basicexplanation, is a task management site. Recently I have added in the ability to subscribe to tasks and get emails, I did this by connecting to the post_save signal. I only email out when a task is changed, not created (of course, no one would be subscribed to it). This worked flawlessly and “emails” out to anyone who is subscribed. I say that in quotes, because I haven’t actually hooked it up to a real SMTP server, and only use +I am working on a website for work which in the most basicexplanation, is a task management site. Recently I have added in the ability to subscribe to tasks and get emails, I did this by connecting to the post_save signal. I only email out when a task is changed, not created (of course, no one would be subscribed to it). This worked flawlessly and "emails" out to anyone who is subscribed. I say that in quotes, because I haven't actually hooked it up to a real SMTP server, and only use .. code:: shell @@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ I am working on a website for work which in the most basicexplanation, is a task which will output any emails to stdout. But I digress… A problem arose when I was working on ordering tasks. -I store an integer in the “ordering” column, which any authenticated user can drag the row to a new location and that will reorder the task. I did this after I setup the emailing signal, so I didn’t think about an email being sent out for EVERY task being changed. +I store an integer in the "ordering" column, which any authenticated user can drag the row to a new location and that will reorder the task. I did this after I setup the emailing signal, so I didn't think about an email being sent out for EVERY task being changed. I tried a lot of different things, and was debating some that would be a bit messy. Among those ideas were trying to store the past values in another table, but that would get expensive fast. The reason I tried this was because I wanted to see if the ordering was the only thing that changed, and if that was the case, not send an email. I eventually found a thread on StackOverflow that says to use update on the queryset to not trigger the signal. diff --git a/content/blog/2014-06-21_readline.rst b/content/blog/2014-06-21_readline.rst index 178e4a0..d9277ab 100644 --- a/content/blog/2014-06-21_readline.rst +++ b/content/blog/2014-06-21_readline.rst @@ -7,9 +7,9 @@ Readline :slug: readline :status: published -A lot of times when I stop at someone’s computer and help them in the terminal, I use a Readline command and people say “How the heck did you do that?” +A lot of times when I stop at someone's computer and help them in the terminal, I use a Readline command and people say "How the heck did you do that?" -Let me first backup and explain what Readline is. From the GNU Readline Documentation – “The GNU Readline library provides a set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command lines as they are typed in.” By default, Readline is set up in Emacs mode, no you don’t have to have an extra four fingers to use Readline, most of the commands are simple. +Let me first backup and explain what Readline is. From the GNU Readline Documentation - "The GNU Readline library provides a set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command lines as they are typed in." By default, Readline is set up in Emacs mode, no you don't have to have an extra four fingers to use Readline, most of the commands are simple. Here are a couple of the commands I use daily: @@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ Miscellaneous - The inverse of ``C-r`` is ``C-s``, they function the same. - To open your ``$EDITOR`` to edit the current shell command you wish to write, press ``C-x C-e`` -Finally, don’t forget about ``C-c``. While not specifically Readline, it’s very useful because it sends the SIGINT signal to the program, which if just on the command line, will not execute the line you have type, and give you a new line with nothing on it. A nice clean start. +Finally, don't forget about ``C-c``. While not specifically Readline, it's very useful because it sends the SIGINT signal to the program, which if just on the command line, will not execute the line you have type, and give you a new line with nothing on it. A nice clean start. To find out a lot more, read the documentation at `the Readline Commands Docs `__ I even learned some things while writing this up, apparently pressing ``C-x $`` will list off all the possible usernames. Good to know, and good to always keep learning. diff --git a/content/blog/2014-10-01_first_day_java_college.rst b/content/blog/2014-10-01_first_day_java_college.rst index 5e368e0..fbe8fcf 100644 --- a/content/blog/2014-10-01_first_day_java_college.rst +++ b/content/blog/2014-10-01_first_day_java_college.rst @@ -7,14 +7,14 @@ First day back in Java since college :slug: java :status: published -Recently I decided I wanted to learn Java again. I last programmed in Java when I was in College and that was the main language they taught in. I wouldn’t say I was a great Java developer, although I completed every Java course well enough to get an A or better. +Recently I decided I wanted to learn Java again. I last programmed in Java when I was in College and that was the main language they taught in. I wouldn't say I was a great Java developer, although I completed every Java course well enough to get an A or better. -I want to relearn Java because for the past four years I have primarily focused on Python. While it is a great language, I feel I need a change from what I’m focusing on now with primarily web based programming. +I want to relearn Java because for the past four years I have primarily focused on Python. While it is a great language, I feel I need a change from what I'm focusing on now with primarily web based programming. -I decided to refresh myself with Java and read a “Java for Python developers” guide, which was a great refresher. After that I sat around wondering what to program, inspiration wasn’t coming quickly. I settled on a SSH Configuration Manager, which is something I’ve wanted for a while now. +I decided to refresh myself with Java and read a "Java for Python developers" guide, which was a great refresher. After that I sat around wondering what to program, inspiration wasn't coming quickly. I settled on a SSH Configuration Manager, which is something I've wanted for a while now. -This Configuration Manager will read in your ~/.ssh/config files, and show you what hosts you have in a GUI interface. The great part of it will be that you can also create new ssh configurations, without having to remember every little detail. There will be a lot of help tooltips, and pre-fills as well. I have a pretty basic idea of what I want it to look like. Ideally a list on the far left with +/- buttons to add a new Host, and to the right of that will be another hierarchy list of all the key groups you can change, with the most common (that I or people I talk to) being in a “General” or “Common” list. To the right of that will be the actual keys and values you change. I think I would like to be able to “favorite” keys that you use frequently. This way when you create a new host entry, you can quickly fill out your usual configurations be it only adding an IdentityFile and User. Another feature I thought of would be copying/templating, for example being able to create a new “work based server” configuration by just copying one you already have. +This Configuration Manager will read in your ~/.ssh/config files, and show you what hosts you have in a GUI interface. The great part of it will be that you can also create new ssh configurations, without having to remember every little detail. There will be a lot of help tooltips, and pre-fills as well. I have a pretty basic idea of what I want it to look like. Ideally a list on the far left with +/- buttons to add a new Host, and to the right of that will be another hierarchy list of all the key groups you can change, with the most common (that I or people I talk to) being in a "General" or "Common" list. To the right of that will be the actual keys and values you change. I think I would like to be able to "favorite" keys that you use frequently. This way when you create a new host entry, you can quickly fill out your usual configurations be it only adding an IdentityFile and User. Another feature I thought of would be copying/templating, for example being able to create a new "work based server" configuration by just copying one you already have. -Some of the options will be a bit tricky, a couple of them are along the lines of allowing “yes”, “no”, “ask”, or an integer, and I haven’t figured out exactly how I want to manage that yet. +Some of the options will be a bit tricky, a couple of them are along the lines of allowing "yes", "no", "ask", or an integer, and I haven't figured out exactly how I want to manage that yet. -Currently I have a model that only has getters/setters and toString support, there’s a lot of them so it’s already a 1050 line file last I checked. Next time I work on this project I want to start with data validation and learning how to write tests in Java. I think learning good BDD or TDD habits while learning a “new” language would definitely benefit me. \ No newline at end of file +Currently I have a model that only has getters/setters and toString support, there's a lot of them so it's already a 1050 line file last I checked. Next time I work on this project I want to start with data validation and learning how to write tests in Java. I think learning good BDD or TDD habits while learning a "new" language would definitely benefit me. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/content/blog/2015-01-09_ssh-agent-on-boot.rst b/content/blog/2015-01-09_ssh-agent-on-boot.rst index 53f1555..bce5b59 100644 --- a/content/blog/2015-01-09_ssh-agent-on-boot.rst +++ b/content/blog/2015-01-09_ssh-agent-on-boot.rst @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -SSH Agent on “boot” +SSH Agent on "boot" ################### :date: 2015-01-09 04:03 :author: tyrel @@ -20,6 +20,6 @@ I had a friend complain that he had to keep adding his ssh key to his ssh-agent echo "Added key internal to keychain." fi -This will check every time your bash or zsh rc file is sourced for your key in the currently added keys, and if it’s not, it will add it. +This will check every time your bash or zsh rc file is sourced for your key in the currently added keys, and if it's not, it will add it. This has the benefit of not requiring you to put in your password every time you connect to a remote machine if you password your ssh keys (which you should). diff --git a/content/blog/2015-01-13_python-debugger.rst b/content/blog/2015-01-13_python-debugger.rst index ca24ca7..644e956 100644 --- a/content/blog/2015-01-13_python-debugger.rst +++ b/content/blog/2015-01-13_python-debugger.rst @@ -7,4 +7,4 @@ Python Debugger :slug: python-debugger :status: published -When I worked at Propel Marketing, my dev team used to have presentations on things they loved. I love the Python debugger. It’s very useful and I believe a proper understanding of how to use a debugger, will make you a better programmer. Here is a presentation on the debugger I made for my team. https://prezi.com/cdc4uyn4ghih/python-debugger/ +When I worked at Propel Marketing, my dev team used to have presentations on things they loved. I love the Python debugger. It's very useful and I believe a proper understanding of how to use a debugger, will make you a better programmer. Here is a presentation on the debugger I made for my team. https://prezi.com/cdc4uyn4ghih/python-debugger/ diff --git a/content/blog/2015-01-28_too-many-open-files.rst b/content/blog/2015-01-28_too-many-open-files.rst index fa8c1c0..3db0eb3 100644 --- a/content/blog/2015-01-28_too-many-open-files.rst +++ b/content/blog/2015-01-28_too-many-open-files.rst @@ -7,14 +7,14 @@ Too many open files :slug: too-many-open-files :status: published -When I worked at Propel Marketing, we used to outsource static websites to a third party vendor, and then host them on our server. It was our job as developers to pull down the finished website zip file from the vendor, check it to make sure they used the proper domain name, (they didn’t a lot of the time,) and make sure it actually looks nice. If these few criteria were met, we could launch the site. +When I worked at Propel Marketing, we used to outsource static websites to a third party vendor, and then host them on our server. It was our job as developers to pull down the finished website zip file from the vendor, check it to make sure they used the proper domain name, (they didn't a lot of the time,) and make sure it actually looks nice. If these few criteria were met, we could launch the site. Part of this process was SCPing the directory to our sites server. The sites server was where we had Apache running with every custom static site as a vhost. We would put the website in ``/var/www/vhosts/domain.name.here/`` and then create the proper files in sites-available and sites-enabled (more on this in another entry). After that the next step was to run a checkconfig and restart Apache. -Here’s where it all went wrong one day. If I can recall correctly, my boss was on vacation so he had me doing a bit of extra work and launching a few more sites than I usually do. Not only that, but we also had a deadline of the end of the month which was either the next day, or the day after. I figure I’ll just setup all mine for two days, and then have some extra time the next day for other things to work on. So I started launching my sites. After each one, I would add the domain it was supposed to be at into my ``/etc/hosts`` file and make sure it worked. +Here's where it all went wrong one day. If I can recall correctly, my boss was on vacation so he had me doing a bit of extra work and launching a few more sites than I usually do. Not only that, but we also had a deadline of the end of the month which was either the next day, or the day after. I figure I'll just setup all mine for two days, and then have some extra time the next day for other things to work on. So I started launching my sites. After each one, I would add the domain it was supposed to be at into my ``/etc/hosts`` file and make sure it worked. -I was probably half way done with my sites, and suddenly I ran into one that didn’t work. I checked another one to see if maybe it was just my network being stupid and not liking my hosts file, but no, that wasn’t the problem. Suddenly, EVERY SITE stopped working on this server. Panicking, I delete the symlink in sites-enabled and restart Apache. Everything works again. I then proceed to put that site aside, maybe something in the php files breaks the server, who knows, but I have other sites I can launch. +I was probably half way done with my sites, and suddenly I ran into one that didn't work. I checked another one to see if maybe it was just my network being stupid and not liking my hosts file, but no, that wasn't the problem. Suddenly, EVERY SITE stopped working on this server. Panicking, I delete the symlink in sites-enabled and restart Apache. Everything works again. I then proceed to put that site aside, maybe something in the php files breaks the server, who knows, but I have other sites I can launch. -I setup the next site and the same thing happens again, no sites work. Okay, now it’s time to freak out and call our sysadmin. He didn’t answer his phone, so I call my boss JB. I tell him the problem and he says he will reach out to the sysadmin and see what the problem is, all the while I’m telling JB “It’s not broken broken, it just doesn’t work, it’s not my fault” etc etc. A couple hours later, our sysadmin emails us back and says he was able to fix the problem. +I setup the next site and the same thing happens again, no sites work. Okay, now it's time to freak out and call our sysadmin. He didn't answer his phone, so I call my boss JB. I tell him the problem and he says he will reach out to the sysadmin and see what the problem is, all the while I'm telling JB "It's not broken broken, it just doesn't work, it's not my fault" etc etc. A couple hours later, our sysadmin emails us back and says he was able to fix the problem. -It turns out, there’s a hard limit to the number of files your system can have open per user, and this was set to 1000 for the www-data user. The site I launched was coincidentally the 500th site on that server, each of them having an access.log and an error.log. These two files apparently constantly open on each site for apache to log to. He was able to change www-data’s ulimit to a lot higher, (I don’t recall now what it was) and that gave a lot more leeway in how many sites the sites server could host. +It turns out, there's a hard limit to the number of files your system can have open per user, and this was set to 1000 for the www-data user. The site I launched was coincidentally the 500th site on that server, each of them having an access.log and an error.log. These two files apparently constantly open on each site for apache to log to. He was able to change www-data's ulimit to a lot higher, (I don't recall now what it was) and that gave a lot more leeway in how many sites the sites server could host. diff --git a/content/blog/2021-05-26_first-flight-as-a-ppl.rst b/content/blog/2021-05-26_first-flight-as-a-ppl.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f73bbd8 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2021-05-26_first-flight-as-a-ppl.rst @@ -0,0 +1,12 @@ +May 26, 2021 - First flight as a PPL +#################################### +:author: tyrel +:category: flying +:tags: flying +:status: published + +On April 26th, I took my first flight as a Private Pilot. I was flying with a CFI for a checkout to rent planes from the Wings of Carolina club, so the flight was nothing really to talk much about. It was really hot, and my first flight in almost 5 months, so I was definitely rusty. + +Mostly using this flight as a stepping stone to try out the GPX viewer§. I flew a PA28-161 - Warrior II - N8080A for One hour. Flew from KTTA, up north west a bit, did a few steep turns, then back to KTTA. + +§ - Not ported over, no JS on this blog. diff --git a/content/blog/2021-05-27-second_flight_as_a_ppl.rst b/content/blog/2021-05-27-second_flight_as_a_ppl.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7ad234b --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2021-05-27-second_flight_as_a_ppl.rst @@ -0,0 +1,37 @@ +May 27, 2021 - Second flight as a PPL +##################################### +:author: tyrel +:category: flying +:tags: flying +:status: published + +I was able to sneak in a cooler morning flight in N8080A. I took my motorcycle to the airport, but forgot my yoke mount so I was iPad-less. We had to wait for a long while to get fuel because the services truck was filling the HU-16 that had arrived a few days beforehand. There was also a C-27 taking off, super cute, Feels like a baby C-130! + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/05/20210527_hu16.jpg + :alt: Grumman HU-16 Albatross + + Grumman HU-16 Albatross + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/05/20210527_c27.jpg + :alt: Alenia C-27J Spartan + + Alenia C-27J Spartan + +We went up, took a few minutes to do another 45° bank turn. I did that a little better, less shaky. Then he had me practice some emergency descents. I didn't do as well at those as I should. I need faster ADM skills. That will come with time, one of my big weaknesses is emergency things, so it's one thing I'm excited to start practicing. + +After the emergency procedures, he had me practice rudder control. Putting in enough rudder while turning to hold on target before the turn and rolling out while pointing at a target - but rolling out. I'm much better at rolling out than rolling in, so I'm excited to have a new procedure to practice. One of the things I like a lot about this CFI giving me the checkout to borrow planes, is that he's young. He doesn't have these really old ways of thinking about things and I appreciate that. + +After the higher altitude stuff, he wanted to see some short-field landings. The first time in the pattern we had to extend our downwind A LOT, there were three people on long finals, so our downwind was funky and long. I'm still getting used to this plane and the runway so by the time we were about to touch down, the other plane in front of us was still on the runway (albeit turning onto taxiway A3 a mile down the runway) so he said go around, as technically the other plane was still on the runway and things could go wrong even with that far separation. + +Did a go around and the next two short fields were okay. We got off at Taxiway A2 I think, and then took taxiway A back to the ramp. When we got to the intersection with A and A1 there was another plane getting ready to cross the threshold, but it was a Cessna 172… high wing! They didn't notice that there was a taildragger apparently norad coming on a 45° final, not straight in and almost rolled into the runway. Luckily the CFI I was with shouted STOP on the CTAF and they stopped, seconds before an incursion! EEEEK! + +Wrapped up, and planned our third checkout ride, it'll be down to KFAY, a controlled field. Should be on June 2nd and then I'll be cleared to rent the planes and feel like a full member of the Wings of Carolina! + +Unfortunately no GPX file, but I have a screenshot. + + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/05/20210527_track.png + :alt: GPX Track across the Raleigh Durham area west of Jordan Lake + + GPX Track across the Raleigh Durham area west of Jordan Lake + diff --git a/content/blog/2021-06-07_woc-final-checkout-ride.rst b/content/blog/2021-06-07_woc-final-checkout-ride.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..23adfac --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2021-06-07_woc-final-checkout-ride.rst @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +WOC Final Checkout Ride +####################### +:author: tyrel +:category: flying +:tags: flying +:status: published + +I can finally rent planes through Wings of Carolina! Flew today and the CFI passed me. + +I was a bit nervous about the North Carolina weather so I text the instructor to see if we could leave an hour early for the controlled airspace portion of the checkout. He said let's shoot for 3:30, we took off at 4 because he gave me a bit of ground instruction on the systems in N8116J. (Also we couldn't figure out the radio, so had to push a few buttons to get comms working. It seems when 16J was in the shop, they had undone all the COM1 COM2 selection buttons, which caught us off guard.) + +We took off, then flew south to Fayetteville (KFAY), Luke showed me the auto pilot, how to climb, descend, turn to a heading, so we enabled that on the flight to KFAY. 20 miles north, called approach, I fumbled my radio A LOT. I definitely need more controlled airspace practice. ATC Talks FAST. It's hard to fly the plane and copy things down, I think I need to start using a pen and paper, not Foreflight for ATC remarks, it'll be much easier. I put a FieldNotes book in my flight bag the other day, time to use it! After a few more fumbles (I copied back the altimeter, not the altitude, talk about stress!) I was cleared to land. Squawked 0210 and landed on runway 22 almost straight in, I took a right handed base, it was weird! There were no commercial flights so they were at a lull of traffic which is why I just got the RWY22 CLEAR TO LAND. Unfortunately (or Fortunately..) LIVE ATC and KFAY approach are down so I have no recording of my fumbles. Would have been nice to hear them again so I could learn. + +We landed, taxied back to runway 22, and then said we were taking off VFR. Squawked 0212 now and departed, stayed runway heading until they said turn right heading 320 staying at or below 2500. Then a bit later they said fly flight plan heading I turned 355 and then we finally got out of their airspace. There's two airports there, KFAY and Simmons Army Airfield (KFBG), so their airspace looks like a cell dividing, two round circles and of course we bisected it the long way. + +Out of their airspace Luke said "I have the controls", then banked hard 60 degrees right, and pointed down. He said "If you're ever VFR and inadvertently hit IMC weather, and get into an unusual attitude, hit this button [LVL] and presto, the wings will level." which of course they did. Auto pilot is still wild to me, I never flew with it in N43337, so it's going to take a lot to get used to, but I'm sure I'll start loving it. + +We then called 10mi on the 45 for RWY22, did a touch and go, (I came in a little higher than I wanted I still need to learn the sight pictures for this airport, but oof it's FLAT still.) took off did the pattern once more and did a full stop. + +On this flight, I learned the GPS a little bit more, the touch screen menu will make selecting comms so much easier, glad they have these consistently in all their planes. I also learned AutoPilot, I need to find a flight sim model with this auto pilot (I did get a Logitech/Saitek Multi Panel with AutoPilot on it this weekend, so good timing!) that I can learn how the IAS, ALT, VS, HDG buttons work better. HDG and ALT I get, those just hold heading and alt, but airspeed and vertical speed climbs are still magical! + +Luke then signed me off, so I'm clear to rent any of the PA-28-161 that they have at Wings of Carolina. I told him I want to learn how to fly the Mooney M20J soon, I'm excited to get my complex endorsement. diff --git a/content/blog/2021-06-14_first-flight-with-lauren.rst b/content/blog/2021-06-14_first-flight-with-lauren.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bb9576f --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2021-06-14_first-flight-with-lauren.rst @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ +First Flight With Lauren +######################## +:author: tyrel +:category: flying +:tags: flying +:status: published + +Today was my first flight with my wife, Lauren. She is my first real passenger ("technically your DPE is, blah blah"). I didn't know what to expect, I knew she had been up in planes before - she's gone skydiving, something I will probably never do. I'd rather be the person to fly the "JUMPERS AWAY OVER X" than be a jumper. I don't want to make this entire blog about Lauren, although we all know I could. So I will try to keep it 50% airplane talk! + +We scheduled a 12pm flight, with an estimate of me probably taking off at 12:30 (took off at 12:40 for pattern and 12:49 to KDAN), Cross country from KTTA to KDAN and back to KTTA. I wanted to fly at 4500'msl there, and 5500'msl back, following the East is Odd +500 and West is Even +500, because it was a 358°ish flight there and a 178°ish back (that's from airport center to airport center, but I did some cloud avoidance, a few times (like, the whole time) so I was pretty off course, but ForeFlight will get me there. I brought my Stratux because I remembered that N8116J didn't like bluetooth and ADSB so my iPad wouldn't connect to the plane. I also bought a new GPYes unit that I wanted to try out, and it worked great, no more magnetic GPS sticking to random magnetic things, everything is self contained in my Stratux! + +Wind was good for RWY21, so I had to taxi via Taxiway Alfa to get there, still not a fan of how Wings of Carolina has us do a runup off the taxiway, something I need to get used to at a busier airport than KEEN. Well, we took off and I did a loop of the pattern - I wanted to gauge Lauren's stomach, and my flying abilities to make sure she was okay to fly. The Pressure Density was 2,800'-2,900, which for a 255'msl runway, oooof. After the second takeoff we flew out to the traffic pattern then departed to the north! We climbed up to 3000, the cloud layer was about 3800 so I chose to stay under it, vs fly over the top and chance not having an opening. It was pretty bumpy - there's a convective SIGMET over like the whole east coast - so I knew it was going to be a little bumpy. Lauren was taking pictures the whole time (she took 47! I'll share some) and got some fun ones of me. In my pictures I look like I'm super concentration face, but she got a couple of me smiling. + +Nearing KDAN I realized that the CTAF was Actually a CTAF (Common Traffic Advisory Frequency) and that KDAN had a tiny little tower. I called 15 to the south (because I heard a lot of traffic) and the nice person on the frequency came in and said something like 16J there's two planes on the taxiway, one in the pattern and one just departing, which now I understand why people come on our Unicom back at KEEN and keep saying "KEEN Unicom please advise". Well we got closer I said I was flying over midfield to make a tear drop into the downwind. I did as such, flew over at 2500', did the tear drop, down to 1500' and landed. We then taxied to the FBO and shut down [my outside camera picked THREE seconds after I shut down to die, perfect timing]. The nice ramp assistant gave us a ride to the FBO in the golf cart so we could pee. + +Gatorade passed through our system completely we headed out to the plane. We got some weird looks from the people chilling in the FBO (Enterprise people, and like a grandfather? idk) for wearing masks. Yes we're both vaccinated, but I sure as hell don't know if the random people I run into are, gotta keep you safe! + +We took a few pictures, and then went and started up the plane. When I was doing my run up, I didn't have the mixture full rich, was still leaned for ground ops, so when I did the mag drop I heard a backfire, was like OH SHIT and realized I was leaned. Put in full mixture, and did the mag drops again, ~150rpm loss and we were good to go. Lesson learned here is even if there are shortcuts for when the engine is hot, and you just land for 10 minutes, probably good to go through the full checklist even just skimming it. + +We took down taxiway Alfa again and got to RWY02. Side note, KEEN has 02-20 and 14-32, this airport KDAN has 02-20 and 13-31 so when I came upon it, I was like "holycrap I feel like I'm home". Anyway - when we got to the end of the taxiway there were two entrances only like 100ft apart to the runway, it was weird. We had to wait like 10 minutes to take off, because there were 4 planes doing touch and goes and they were perfectly spaced to give me like NO time to take off. I know how long of a runway I need to be safe, but with a 2900' Density Altitude, I know I needed a longer ground roll, so finding time to slip in to where I knew I could take off was annoying. Finally one of the guys on downwind said "Plane waiting at 02, I'm extending my downwind a little bit to give you some time to take off, so I rolled out, thanked him and took off to the north a bit. I extended my upwind and gave the pattern a large buffer, then took off to the south. + +Lauren seemed to be getting tired by like 75% of the trip back so maybe next time I'll take the plane for four hours, and then we can take a full hour between legs, instead of 15 minutes. I did three hours, because I planned for a longer break between - we even bought zucchini bread I made last night! - but I threw in that extra pattern lap before we left the airport, so that added like 15 minutes, and I couldn't find the flight book so that took some extra time. + +When we were on the way back to Raleigh Exec, we saw another plane like 500' below us so I flew above them and circled past them then tried to come in behind them but I have no idea where they went when I flew over them, my ADSB decided to not pick them up, so I did a larger right turn so I knew I'd avoid them. It was weird and I'll have to check FlightRadar24 playback to see - but it's not up now for some reason. After that steep turn I entered the downwind and landed. We landed with 2 minutes to spare, but it took a few minutes to shut down, and tie down. Glad someone wasn't right after us (if someone was I would not have gone as far of course). Covered the plane, paid the $260 for 2.3 hours of flying, put the book away and headed home. + +The return trip took about exactly the same length. We left KTTA at 12:49, landed at KDAN at 1:36 (49min). Then with waiting for takeoff, we left KDAN at 2:07 and landed at 2:57(50min). On the flight back, it was a bit bumpier, the clouds were still scattered at about 3800 but some were darker than others so I flew around them. I wonder if when I finally fly IFR if I'll fly a lot straighter, instead of just "oops avoid that cloud!" that remains to be seen. + + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/06/14_tyrel-passenger-seat.jpg + :alt: Tyrel sitting in passenger seat, waiting for Lauren to get into plane. + + Tyrel sitting in passenger seat, waiting for Lauren to get into plane. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/06/14_powerlines.jpg + :alt: Power line swath through the trees, with a nuclear power plant in the disance. + + Power line swath through the trees, with a nuclear power plant in the disance. + + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/06/14_tyrel-looking-left.jpg + :alt: Tyrel looking to the left, watching for traffic + + Tyrel looking to the left, watching for traffic + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/06/14_danville-VA.jpg + :alt: Danville, Virginia airport, from above. + + Danville, Virginia airport, from above. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/06/14-clouds.jpg + :alt: Clouds and the right wing of a Piper Warrior airplane + + Clouds and the right wing of a Piper Warrior airplane + + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/06/14_tyrel-pulling.jpg + :alt: Tyrel pulling the plane forward, to get it lined up to push back for parking. + + Tyrel pulling the plane forward, to get it lined up to push back for parking. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/06/14_TTA.gif + :alt: TTA Airpot Diagram + + Airport Diagram of TTA + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/06/14_DAN.gif + :alt: DAN Airport Diagram + + Airport Diagram of DAN diff --git a/content/blog/2021-07-10_first-flight-with-dad.rst b/content/blog/2021-07-10_first-flight-with-dad.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..419c3df --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2021-07-10_first-flight-with-dad.rst @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +First Flight With My Dad +######################## +:author: tyrel +:category: flying +:tags: flying +:status: published + +I actually did a flight on July 7th, but It was only one lap around the pattern. It was 95°F here, and I knew I wouldn't be in the right mind to continue my flight as I got to the traffic pattern after take off, so I just called crosswind, and headed back to land, a whopping 0.3 hour flight time! So that's what just one melting traffic pattern loop looks like! + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/07/10_loop.png + :alt: GPS track around the TTA Airport, just one pattern loop + + GPS track around the TTA Airport, just one pattern loop + +Anyway! My father was excited to fly with me, we took N2114F up. We intended to go from KTTA-SDZ-KRCZ, but it was still hot, so we decided to just do SDZ and back. + +We take off, and do one lap around the pattern - I want this to be my standard when I bring new people up, it gives them a way out to say "GET ME OFF PLEASE". After that one pattern lap we headed towards SDZ. It was a really smooth flight, we flew at 4500 feet to the VOR, then tried to get to 7500 feet on the way back (We had time, I wanted to climb) but it was just SO HOT that we ended up just staying at 5500feet, the climb was taking forever! + +When we were 10mi from the airport, it started getting super busy (BBQ day at the airport!), so we decided to waste some time in the practice area and I did a steep turn for him to waste more time. After that the traffic died down so we headed back to KTTA. I did a touch and go, a regular landing, and then being that there was no other traffic, practiced an emergency engine out procedure (what I failed on my checkride) and that went smoothly. + +So nothing super special about this trip, besides it was my first time flying my father. + + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/07/10_tyrel-in-passenger-seat.jpg + :alt: Me in the passenger seat climbing in and getting ready to go. + + Me in the passenger seat climbing in and getting ready to go. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/07/10_tyrel-and-tony.jpg + :alt: Me and Dad sitting in airplane, somewhere above North Carolina + + Me and Dad sitting in airplane, somewhere above North Carolina + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/07/10_tyrel-pointing-out-window.jpg + :alt: Me pointing out the tiny window on the airplane. + + Me pointing out the tiny window on the airplane. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/07/10_propeller-and-dashboard.jpg + :alt: Part of the dashboard, and CO detector, plus a blurry propeller in the background + + Part of the dashboard, and CO detector, plus a blurry propeller in the background + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/07/10_right-side-haze.jpg + :alt: Looking out the right window, the sky is hazy, part of a wing can be seen + + Looking out the right window, the sky is hazy, part of a wing can be seen + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/07/10_tony-and-tyrel.jpg + :alt: Inside the cockpit, profile view of me, and part of my father's head. + + Inside the cockpit, profile view of me, and part of my father's head. diff --git a/content/blog/2021-07-25_mooney-m20j-checkout-sort-of.rst b/content/blog/2021-07-25_mooney-m20j-checkout-sort-of.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..19b5815 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2021-07-25_mooney-m20j-checkout-sort-of.rst @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +Mooney M20J checkout... Sort of +############################### +:author: tyrel +:category: flying +:tags: flying +:status: published + +Tuesday night I emailed my instructor saying "Hey the Mooney is available Sunday afternoon, could we start getting me ready for a checkout", and he said "sure, book it", so I did. Then last night I started reading through the POH. There's a lot of neat differences. Cowl flaps, retractable landing gear, constant speed prop. I definitely wanted to start getting my complex rating. I read through that POH, and look up a lot of videos on how to work the prop. I'm used to just throttle and mixture in the Warriors, but this has throttle, manifold pressure, and mixture levers. I learned the cool parts about how the oil pressure, and springs set the propeller angle. + +So I get to the airport at about 1pm, and we start talking about what I know. I explained how the undercarriage stuff works, under 132kias for lowering, and under 107kias for raising, and learned from Luke that there's two different speeds because of gravity and fighting gravity. We spend the first hour talking about why you need different manifold pressures. Then we head out to the plane and do a very comprehensive pre-check. I learned that the M20J doesn't have a trim tab, the whole tail raises and lowers on a pivot, NEAT! The flaps are suuuper wide and the ailerons are kind of thin. The landing gear was an interesting inspection because of how the poles and hinges open/close the gear. + +After the pre-flight we get flying. Things are pretty similar on the ground, as the propeller lever is pushed all the way forward, and the throttle is the main control. Luke points out that the propeller is rounded, so there's an RPM range that you shouldn't idle in, (1550-1950ish), vs the squarer prop that the other Mooney had. + +We take off, and one thing I check different is if I have available runway left, and when I don't, I can raise the landing gear at that point. It was pretty cloudy, so we had to climb up to 5500′, and eventually we hit 7000′ to jump over some clouds. First time really being above clouds this much, for the first hour we were over them. For the climb out he told me to set the plane to "twenty-five squared" - 2500rpm and 25in/hg. And every so often I would need to add more manifold pressure because of the atmosphere lapse rate while climbing. + +We got up to 6000′ ish, initially and then did some straight and level flying, super smooth above the clouds today. Then we did some 30 degree turns, did a few of those okay. When we did 45 degree turns, my first left one was kind of bad - lost a lot of altitude. One to the right was okay, and then the third one to the left I kept my altitude right. + +After turns we did slow flight, and it's pretty much the same controls. The power off stalls I was I guess putting in unconscious left aileron, because we kept starting to spin a little to the left, next time I fly I definitely need to practice that more. + +Well we ended up going pretty far east, at one point we were like 15 miles southeast of RDU, felt uncomfortable not talking to anyone there, but I guess it was out of the normal flight path for the jets so we were fine.We ended up needing to head back to the airport for 4pm, so I put the plane in a 750fpm descent while heading back, at one point I was able to punch through the clouds at around 2500′, and we joined the traffic pattern on the 45 for downwind on 21. I landed VERY well he said. He said that people transitioning from Warriors to Mooneys land hard because the M20J is a lot lower of a plane than the PA28, so they flare early and land hard. I didn't flare early both times we landed so he said we could just end for the day. I always love when instructors say I do well with landings! + +We then get back to the airport to do some payments and find out "Oh, Tyrel needs 250 hours without an instrument rating, to fly the M20J, or 150 with an instrument rating." So Oops, I guess it'll be a while before I can rent this, and get an actual check out. diff --git a/content/blog/2021-08-04_cessna-152-checkout.rst b/content/blog/2021-08-04_cessna-152-checkout.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad97f2d --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2021-08-04_cessna-152-checkout.rst @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +Cessna 152 Checkout +################### +:author: tyrel +:category: flying +:tags: flying +:status: published + +Today I got checked out in a Cessna 152. It was really my first time (besides spin training) flying high wing planes and I was a little nervous. We had a pretty standard pre-flight check, took a lot longer than just a "I'm out here to go on a flight", again because Luke was explaining things to me. There's a lot of differences like with the warrior, all the flaps are on hinges, but in the Cessna, there's one pulley hinge and some rollers you need to check, not just actuation hinges. Pointed out how the landing gear is different, there's plastic fairings that we need to repair quite frequently, and there are no dampeners. + +After the pre-flight we took off, Vr is pretty low, at 50 so the plane just wanted to float almost immediately in my opinion. It was also a cooler day outside than my most recent few flights, so that helped too. We took off, headed north to the practice area. I get up to 3000' msl and we level off, trim for cruise flight and lean the engine. This plane also has a vernier mixture control, so it's nice to be able to dial in the mixture, even if there's no on screen display of the gallons per hour like the M20J. There were some clouds at 4000' I think, but they were tiny, and we figured we didn't need to go above them, so we stuck at the 3000' level. + +This is where Luke says to just take the plane and do tiny things with it, like turn it uncoordinated, see how much rudder I'd need to do a turn. So I did that for a bit, did a standard rate turn to the left, and we switched to some 30° turns, leveled off then did two 45° turns, back to back. I hit my prop wash at the end of the second one, that always feels great. The first few turns were gross, this plane has old cables for the ailerons, so there's a lot of play when turning, so it took a few tries to be able to maintain altitude and find that comfortable dead spot with cable tension. The last plane (M20J) I flew, everything was much stiffer for turning. + +After the few turns, he said "oh no, there goes your engine" and throttled to idle. I looked around for a place to land, and didn't see one immediately. One thing I could have done better is look out the back window, because the 152 actually has one! Well I found a spot to "crash land" so I brought the plane to Vglide (60) and slowly descended towards the place to land. I guess in my "everything is okay" did the A B part of the emergency checklist, but I didn't do ABCDE, so we did it again. This time I: + +* A- pitched for best airspeed (60kts) +* B- found the best place to land +* C - Checklist, pretended to check fuel, master, key, primer, etc. +* D - pretended to switch to 121.5mHz and declare an emergency +* E- executed the landing, and prepared to exit (opened the door, turn off mixture, etc so the plane doesn't blow up and I can get out) + +and found a cute little field to land in. That was successful so we headed back towards the airport. + +At the airport everything was standard traffic pattern. There were three of us in the pattern, one tail dragger that was always just behind us, really friendly guy who liked chatting on frequency, and one low wing - maybe a warrior? - I can't remember. Well I did six landings. One normal landing, three short field (the last one I did great, landed on numbers and was done before A2 taxiway entrance) and then a few more normal. +Luke said that I was death gripping the yoke, so he did one lap around the airport - where he trimmed and only used his two fingers lightly to move the yoke. Watching him do that, I copied and did a lap around the pattern the same, much easier this time. + +We then landed, taxied back and went to park. Parking is WILD, you sit on the tail and then back then walk backwards to get the plane in place. I guess when your plane's max ramp weight is 1675lbs, that's easy to do! Three times as much as my motorcycle… After we chatted, he said he feels safe with me flying it, and I agreed. "I feel safe, but not super comfortable, but that only comes with time so I feel safe to take it up and get more comfortable". + +I then had to fill out the quiz, and scanned it, then emailed it to him. + + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/08/04_me-being-weird.jpg + :alt: Picture of me in the cockpit being a weirdo with a big smirky mouth + + Picture of me in the cockpit being a weirdo with a big smirky mouth + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/08/04_cessna-152-cockpit.jpg + :alt: The cockpit of a Cessna 152, yokes, gauges, etc. Outside you can see other planes on the ramp. + + The cockpit of a Cessna 152, yokes, gauges, etc. Outside you can see other planes on the ramp. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/08/04_3d-track-1.jpg + :alt: Just a 3d diagram of the flight, not sure what I was focusing on here. + + Just a 3d diagram of the flight, not sure what I was focusing on here. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/08/04_3d-track-2.jpg + :alt: Just a 3d diagram of the flight, not sure what I was focusing on here. + + Just a 3d diagram of the flight, not sure what I was focusing on here. diff --git a/content/blog/2021-08-08_two-flights-and-some-nice-weather.rst b/content/blog/2021-08-08_two-flights-and-some-nice-weather.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ccd80f --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2021-08-08_two-flights-and-some-nice-weather.rst @@ -0,0 +1,57 @@ +Two flights and some nice weather +################################# +:author: tyrel +:category: flying +:tags: flying +:status: published + +The other day there was a call to action on the Wings of Carolina slack. "Is anyone able to help this pilot get one of our planes back?" Seems this newly licensed pilot, (Congrats!) passed his check ride on Friday and the weather was not great so had to leave N69012 at Asheboro. I said I would be glad to help out if the IFR weather cleared by 9am, I could give him a ride over in N8080A. + +I booked a 9am-12pm block, and got to the airport at 8:55am. Grabbed the 80A book book and went to the lounge to check weather. Luckily the fog had burned off and the skies were clear! The pilot met me in the lounge, I wrapped up the weather briefing (nothing of note) and we went out to preflight. The left red nav light was out, but that's only required at night, confirmed by asking the other pilot. The fuel truck came and filled us up to the tabs (34 gallons) and we were off. + +My flight plans were from KTTA -> KHBI (drop off pilot) -> KEXX then back to KTTA. Just under a 2 hour round trip, which took a bit longer because when we got to the hold short line for RWY03, I realized my iPad wasn't connected to the GPS, so we fiddled with it for a few (no one was behind us, but oof Hobbs running) and couldn't get it working. That's fine, we had our GPS and the pilot knew what KHBI looked like form the air. We took off, departed the pattern to the north, got to a little bit higher then turned west. + +The pilot was super helpful, having a copilot be able to put in the radios for Siler City as we passed, and the AWOS/CTAFs in for KHBI was actually a really big load off my plate. It's the little things! Flew at about 3000ft over to KHBI because It was only a 20 minute flight so I stayed low. We get to the airport and he lets me know that RWY24 has a papi, so we chose that runway to land on. Land pretty okay, didn't grease it, but it is what it is. Taxi over and get him to his plane. I shut down so he can get out safely, then realize after he got out, I CAN'T OPEN THE DOOR. I had to yell him over to make sure I could open the door again, the bottom latch was stuck! I recorded a video, then instagrammed a `fellow pilot who is famous in his circles for getting stuck in his plane and having to call someone down in the area who landed and helped him out `_. Told him he's not alone, hah. + +Anyway, I was able to open the door so I felt like it was okay if I crashed and had to open the door myself. I turn the plane back on, plug in my Stratux for ADSB on iPad, and get ready to take off. I taxi over to the runway (took 24 again out) and hold short for a taildragger and another plane to land. I then take off and woahh there were like 80 birds at the end of the runway at like 300ft up. Luckily I was able to scare them and flew above them, then departed to the right (west) and headed to KEXX. Luckily thr CTAF is the same for both (122.8) so I was able to hear the traffic without fiddling with the radio. I set the AWOS beforehand, so I checked that when I was close, and still winds calm, not bad. + +Got 10 miles, out, announced position, 5 miles out, announced I was entering the downwind at a 45. I was on the down when a pilot to my right asked if I was on base, kind of weirded out because I wasn't so I was vigilant and said I was on downwind (again…). Then called base, and final and landed. Final was neat at Davidson county, had to fly over a factory, which was kind of cool. + +Landed, taxied back to the runway and lined up and waited again. The taildragger had followed me! Saw him land as I was at the hold short line. Waited for a jet to land and then off I went! I climbed out, departed to the east, and climbed up to 5500msl. Held 5500 very well this trip, the air was super calm and I'm getting better at electric trim, much easier than just wheel trim. + +At one point I turn the auto pilot on, with it set to 109° and 5500msl, but for some reason it made me descend and banked me left 45° and I wasn't liking that so I disengaged it. I climbed up back to 5500' for the rest of my trip. By the time I was back to KTTA, the winds still favored RWY03, so I joined the pattern on a 45° entry, and landed smoothly. At around 3000msl descending near Ashbury it was a bit bumpy, but that's the only turbulence I experienced. Such a nice morning. + +Well I get back to the airport and land and shut down… I'm stuck again! Door won't open. There was no one around I could yell to, so I called the front desk, no answer. I tried again, using different pressures and trying to see if there was like a little latch that didn't hook. I fiddled for a few minutes and was able to get out, I guess I got it just right. + +I then cover the plane, and squawk the door not opening, and posted the video on slack. The next pilot replied to my slack post later that evening that he had no problems. Maybe I'm just door cursed. + +Lauren and I then went to lunch before my next flight where I was taking her up in a Cessna 152 (N89333). Well we do the preflight dance, go taxi and take off. At like 300' above the runway, the damn pilot side door opens up! It's fine but I don't want to worry my wife, on her second flight with me ever, so I have her hold the door closed while I go finish the pattern loop (I was doing that anyway). Well MORE fun happened the pilots PTT(push to talk) button got stuck off, so I had to use her microphone to talk, (I could have just switched the plugs, but we were in the base turn). I kind of overshot base so had to over correct a little bit, but we landed okay, taxied back and agreed we were discontinuing our flight. We could have gone back up and carried on - we had the allotted time - but you know what? The rest of the flight wasn't in the cards. + +Video of me trapped in The Warrior - `https://youtu.be/0uAL30nCuYE `_. + + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/08/08_cockpit_selfie.jpg + :alt: Selfie in the cockpit, me wearing a blue shirt. + + Cockpit Selfie + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/08/08_behind_left_wing.jpg + :alt: A look at the ground behind the left wing + + A look at the ground behind the left wing + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/08/08_behind_right_wing.jpg + :alt: Looking at a runway in the distance, not sure which one now. + + Looking at a runway in the distance, not sure which one now. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/08/08_hazy-highway.jpg + :alt: Looking in front of the left wing, at a highway, the sky is hazy + + Looking in front of the left wing, at a highway, the sky is hazy + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/08/08_hazy_runway.jpg + :alt: Hazy sky with a runway a couple miles away. + + Hazy sky with a runway a couple miles away. + diff --git a/content/blog/2021-10-17_back-above-keene.rst b/content/blog/2021-10-17_back-above-keene.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e22f73e --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2021-10-17_back-above-keene.rst @@ -0,0 +1,78 @@ +Back Above Keene +################ +:author: tyrel +:category: flying +:tags: flying +:status: published + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/10/17_me_mom_n43337.jpg + :alt: Mom and I hugging in front of the right wing of N43337 + + Mom and I hugging in front of the right wing of N43337 + +It's my brother's wedding weekend and he asked me to take him and his new father-in-law flying. On October 16th I get to the airport, very well knowing that it's still too foggy for my 8am-10am flight that I was about to cancel in person. I still went in, because I haven't seen Beth in almost a year and wanted to say hi. We caught up, talked about how I've been going to Monadnock Aviation since I was in college - after my first flight on March 17, 2010! I called Levi and told him that we weren't flying, so he should just go finish getting ready for his wedding at 11:30. + +The next day I had booked for my mother to go up the first time with me. We get to the airport at 9:55 and the FBO is locked up, Uhhhh. I email/text some people and no one knows how to get a hold of the desk attendant. We had apparently JUST missed David, one of the CFIs, who was getting into N44836 with a student I presume. So we waited a bit and it seems he was called away to do some fueling with the fuel truck. No fault of his at all, Sundays can get a little rough with only one person being at the FBOs desk. + +We finally grab the book and keys and I go out and preflight. I'm in N43337 today, my favorite plane. I'm even wearing my "WARRIOR 337" shirt I got for soloing, for good luck! Preflight was easy as usual, once you've done it a hundred times in the same plane, you know what you're looking for from the checklists. + +I waved to mom and Lauren to come over and we got in, I showed mom and Lauren how to set up the headphones and get into the back seat. Following a safety briefing we were off! + +We taxied over from the Northwest ramp (The FBO area) to the East ramp and I did my run up there, the winds were 340° at 7kts gusting to 17, so the other planes were using runway 32. Waited around a bit for a radio check, the PTT button was sticky and no one was replying to my ask for radio checks, even though there were a few planes around, oh well. + +We took off on runway 32 after waiting in line (it was busy today, wow!) and I did a lap around the pattern. It was not clean, I haven't flown in just over two months, and we had the added weight of a back passenger, so I was a little nervous the first pattern loop. But I will always do one pattern loop with a new passenger - just to give them a chance to bail out! + +I'm not fond of runway 32, it has a high hill over Marcy Hill in Swanzey, NH and it always throws me off (probably because I have like 300 landings on runway 02 and maybe 15 on runway 32). The landing was fine, Lauren was taking pictures from the back and my mom said it was "wicked smooth, and you barely even felt the tires hit, I thought it was great, especially with the wind and everything" which as a first time passenger in a "oh my god I didn't know it was quite this small" airplane, I feel good about! + +We then taxied back to 32, and took off again, this time it was a west departure out to Spofford Lake and over my mom's house in Chesterfield. I probably should have headed to Brattleboro first after Spofford. Had I done this, we would have been in position to fly Brattleboro, VT north to Putney, VT west of the Connecticut River and my mom would have gotten a MUCH nicer view of her house. Instead we flew over the lake and through a little valley over Westmoreland and went south along the river. + +At one point I saw a dark cloud above and said "Okay we're about to go under a dark cloud, I'll try to avoid it but it might get turbulent", so mom and Lauren would know to hold on and probably 10 seconds later the plane went "woomp" down a bit because of turbulence - so they were prepared. After that small cloud we found a tiny patch of clean air and I turned to the right a little bit above Exit 3 and headed north again towards moms house, staying a little bit west of the river. I paralleled I91 again for a minute or two and then we got in line that I could fly close enough to mom's house that she could see it. + +After that fun bit we headed back, directly over Spofford Lake for some more sights, and onward to KEEN. + +We flew over Yale Forest, and I saw a cool cliff face I had never seen before - as we were entering RWY32 on a 45° entry. Entered the pattern and found myself VERY high (900msl at at 488msl airport) on final, on a 4000' runway with a displaced threshold so I executed a go around there. I probably could have made it, but with the wind and avoiding Marcy Hill, I figure it's always safe to Go Around. + +The next loop I had my sight pictures again at runway 32 and we landed, rolled out to Taxiway Sierra and parked the plane! + +Mom said it was fun! + + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/10/17_back-of-my-head.jpg + :alt: Back of my head while turning a bit + + Back of my head while turning a bit + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/10/17_cloudy-sun-view.jpg + :alt: Cloudy and Sunny View off the right wing. Monadnock in the distance. + + Cloudy and Sunny View off the right wing. Monadnock in the distance. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/10/17_hannaford-kmart.jpg + :alt: Turning over route 9 near Home Depot and Hannaford + + Turning over route 9 near Home Depot and Hannaford + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/10/17_landing-32-14-on-final.jpg + :alt: Cockpit view, a mile out from runway 32/14 with the runway in sight. + + Cockpit view, a mile out from runway 32/14 with the runway in sight. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/10/17_landing-32-14-short-final.jpg + :alt: Cockpit view, a 1/4 mile from runway 32/14 with the runway in sight. + + Cockpit view, a 1/4 mile from runway 32/14 with the runway in sight. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/10/17_left-wing-looking-at-airport-and-monadnock.jpg + :alt: Looking off the left wing at mount Monadnock. + + Looking off the left wing at mount Monadnock. + +.. figure:: {static}/images/2021/10/17_sun-above-right-wing.jpg + :alt: Just pretty sky views, out the right window above the right wing at the sun and clouds. 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b/content/images/2021/10/17_me_mom_n43337.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..17c27f1 Binary files /dev/null and b/content/images/2021/10/17_me_mom_n43337.jpg differ diff --git a/content/images/2021/10/17_sun-above-right-wing.jpg b/content/images/2021/10/17_sun-above-right-wing.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ecb30bd Binary files /dev/null and b/content/images/2021/10/17_sun-above-right-wing.jpg differ diff --git a/content/images/2021/10/17_turning-from-backseat.jpg b/content/images/2021/10/17_turning-from-backseat.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4d8f8ee Binary files /dev/null and b/content/images/2021/10/17_turning-from-backseat.jpg differ diff --git a/content/pages/about.rst b/content/pages/about.rst index 5fc736c..679b13e 100644 --- a/content/pages/about.rst +++ b/content/pages/about.rst @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ About Tyrel Senior Software Engineer with a back end focus. Specializing in Python and Go. -I’m a very infrequent blogger. I will go months without any posts, some time years. +I'm a very infrequent blogger. I will go months without any posts, some time years. Licenses diff --git a/content/pages/blogroll.rst b/content/pages/blogroll.rst index a5bdf50..e00eadc 100644 --- a/content/pages/blogroll.rst +++ b/content/pages/blogroll.rst @@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ Blogroll * Reading * `Imaginary Worlds `_ - * `Tor.com Original – Tor.com `_ + * `Tor.com Original - Tor.com `_ * Games @@ -88,7 +88,7 @@ Blogroll * `Laurence Tratt: Blog `_ * `Marc Brooker's Blog `_ * `Paul Khuong: some Lisp `_ - * `Random ASCII – tech blog of Bruce Dawson `_ + * `Random ASCII - tech blog of Bruce Dawson `_ * `Scattered Thoughts `_ * `The ryg blog `_ * `Writing - rachelbythebay `_ diff --git a/content/pages/resume.rst b/content/pages/resume.rst index 2f83026..1767114 100644 --- a/content/pages/resume.rst +++ b/content/pages/resume.rst @@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ Addgene — Cambridge, MA — Software Engineer >>> March 2015 - March 2018 * Released my own custom Django module as a result * Trained non-developers in Python -* Helped start and expand a “non-developer developer” club +* Helped start and expand a "non-developer developer" club Akamai — Cambridge, MA — Sr. Software Engineer >>> July 2014 - March 2015 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~