Archive - 2004 - Blog entry

I was chatting with my friend Dave today and he asked me when Fredericton got the nickname Freddy Beach and why? I guess he figured since I spent my entire life up to age 23 there that I should be able to answer a simple question like that. Well, I couldn't answer him, and even after spending a bit of time on Google, I came up with nothing.

In my memory, the first time I heard the nickname was when the Freddy Beach Clothing Co opened. I'm not even sure about that name to be honest. That would have been probably when I was in junior high / high school, or the late 80s, early 90s.

Well I had my first experience with comment SPAM today. Starting sometime after 9 am this morning, and continuing until around 10:55 or so, I got hit with some comment SPAM. They seemed to arrive at the rate of about one every two minutes. I received around 55 in total, all from the same place. Deleting them was a huge pain in the ass, so if this happens again, I think I may be re-evaluating permissions of anonymous users.

I'd just like to take a minute to thank my instructor Brad and the rest of the Ottawa Flying Club for teaching me so much about flying and helping me to get my private pilot license.

Yes, I did my fair share of bitching and moaning when things didn't go as I would have liked them to, but I'm going to chalk that up to my own frustration at not being able to get things done quicker. Hey, they can't control the weather and as for the planes...you can only work with the budget and resources you've got.

At any rate, despite my complaining, I'm still very happy to have done my training at such a great club.

Well that's it! I'm done! Well actually I should say that I've only just begun since I plan to continue on with my training. As one instructor said to me, "Now you've got a license to learn" If you can't tell what I'm talking about, I had the rest of my flight test today and I passed! I'll put it on the record that my forced approach was VERY ugly but I managed to make the field and pull out a pass so I'm trying to put it behind me.

All I need to do now is fill out the appropriate paperwork and send everything off to Transport Canada and then I get my license. In the meantime, once I've got all the paperwork filled out and checked over, someone (Andrew or Gerry) will stamp the back of my student pilot permit and that will serve me until I get my license in the mail.

Well iTunes Music Store is finally open in Canada. I'm not sure when exactly it opened, but I think it was sometime today, although it could have been yesterday...

Anyways, I did try it out and I bought and downloaded a song. What song? Toby Keith's "Stays in Mexico" which I liked the first time I heard it. It actually reminded me a lot of something a friend of mine, Troy Jones, would write / sing. I've been meaning to ask him if he's heard the song.

Yes, the first song I downloaded from ITMS was a country song. Hey, I like country and I'm not afraid to admit it. :)

The process was super easy. I logged into my account and basically bought the song with one click. It was actually two clicks, one click on 'buy song' and then one click on 'proceed' when they asked me if I was sure. There was an option for that question to not be asked again, but I made sure that it would be asked again. It would suck to click on something accidentally.

Well after a night and a morning of stressing out about my flight test today, I can breath a sigh of relief. Obviously (well only obvious if you were in Ottawa today) I didn't get to do the flight portion of the flight test today, but I did get the ground portion done. That means...if the weather cooperates on Monday and I don't completely suck, then I may have my license by Monday afternoon!

The test today went really well. Bill is a super nice guy and puts you at ease for the test. Kind of reminds me of Andrew (the club's CFI) in that respect. I wont say too much about it, except that I'm glad Brad was so hard on me and made me worry so much. Thanks to him, I had the answers to all the questions that Bill asked me. You da man Brad!

Holy crap! Flight test is scheduled for tomorrow! I'm freaking out a little bit here...

Must make sure to get everything done tonight that I can, and then get all the variable stuff done nice and early tomorrow so I'm ready. I may have to take the day off work.

Went flying with Brad again today. Talk about a beautiful day! The club still hasen't got their new fuel tank straightened out so that caused a bit of a delay, but they got the esso truck to come down and fill us up, so it was all good.

Started the flight with a soft field takeoff and then went out to the practice area for...practice - how about that! Started with a little slow flight, followed by a few stalls, and then a forced approach and also a precautionary approach. After that we did a couple of spiral dives and then a forward slip before heading back in. For the landing, it was a short field landing.

They said that ITMS would be available in Canada in November. Well it's November 29th at 1615...that only leaves them a day plus a few hours to meet their deadline.

I, for one, hope they make it - but like I said to Dave earlier today, I'm not holding my breath.

Friday was a beautiful day! I couldn't believe it when I woke up and looked out the window. Clear blue skies and a light wind. I thought to myself, I'm definitely getting my cross country in today!

Unfortunately, Friday was also a somewhat crazy day at work. I was told the night before, just before I left work, that I had to do some regulatory testing on Monday at a location on River Road. I was also told that I needed to get the equipment gathered together and tested before it was shipped out to the location on Friday afternoon. That meant a lot of running around and no time to do my pre-flight planning that was necessary. Not good. I did manage to get some of it done, but not everything. In the end, turns out that the testing got pushed back to Thursday so I was able to leave without any worries. Whew!