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The Plane Done Gone

andy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 02:50:45 +0000

Upside down over New Hampshire

As some of you may know, I’ve been in an intimate relationship with two airplanes over the past 9 or 10 years. While they’ve given me some trials and tribulations (like women, they’re generally high maintenance), over the years I’ve had many fun times with them. That has included various aerobatic competitions, competing at the US National Aerobatic championships (I didn’t win), flying down to Texas and back in an unheated, cramped, 2 seat airplane with barely enough luggage space for an anorexic flea, flying up to Canada, formation flying over most of New England, and various other insane aerial adventures.

Sadly, however, over the past few years I’ve pretty much lost interest in the airplane – not in flying as

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I Hate Smartphones

andy — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:30:15 +0000

There. I’ve said it.

Droid Eris

I hate smartphones. Actually, I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship with them, considering that I have one of the “hot” or “cool” smartphones of the moment – the Droid Eris by HTC. All on the nation’s number one wireless network. As smartphones go, the Eris and the Android operating system that runs on the Droid is pretty darned cool. For all of you that ran out and got an iPhone the moment they came out because you’re all hopeless Apple fanboys, in my not-so-humble opinion the Droid Eris and HTC’s sense UI blows the iPhone out of the water and you don’t have to deal with Steve Jobs. While I’m thinking of it, there’s that little concept called multitasking

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Why I love The Japanese

andy — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:55:28 +0000

Andy's Pitts S-2B

I’m holding a little airplane fire sale – I’m selling my little toy that I’ve had for a couple of years – the one right over here that just looks cool as all hell. Go on, admit it, you want one too. Sadly, the reason I’m selling it is that I’m just not flying it enough – I’ve competed in aerobatics for about 10 years, and I’m kind of looking for a different kind of airplane, one that is a little more comfortable and not quite so purpose-built for aerobatic competition. The Pitts is a great airplane if you want to turn upside-down a lot (which I did); if you want to go from point A to point B and just have

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Disappointment Day

andy — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:58:59 +0000

Today was somewhat unsatisfying and somewhat annoying.

First off, the annoying part – coming home I thought I’d be diligent and get on the trainer to do a 1hr easy spin. Of course that also provided me with the opportunity to play with my new-to-me (i.e., used and purchased off of eBay) PowerTap and continue to see just how badly I suck at this whole bicycle riding thing. To make the time pass a little faster I thought I’d watch some bad TV while spinning on the bike, so I put on some old episode of NCIS (yes, it’s bad, but mindless). Of course 3 minutes into it I realize that I’ve already seen this episode, so I hopped off the trainer and put on another

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Guess What I Did Today

andy — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 03:23:56 +0000

Apart from go to work, that is.

We’re Building!

andy — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:23:42 +0000

Yup, you heard it here first: we’re building. When I say “we”, I really mean “I” but kind of in that whole “royal we” vein. The thing is, if I said “we” and really meant Kerry as well, we wouldn’t be doing this because, in case you hadn’t noticed it, she hates building or doing anything constructiony. “We”, however, sounds so much more fun than doing it on your own.

But I digress, so back to the whole building thing. I’ve decided that I’m going to embark on a little project that involves some amount of assembly, some amount of screwing things together, some amount of cutting, sawing, hacking and shaping, and a considerable amount of oh shit moments.

No, I’m not going to build a deck.

I’m

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Item Of The Day

andy — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:27:19 +0000

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve moved hosting providers. As part of that I’ve decided to try blogging more regularly again. Since I’ve uniformly lacked inspiration in pretty much every single way possible, I’ve decided that I’m going to just post some really random things on my site.

Yup, I’m going to do “Item Of The Day”. Mostly it will be a picture, but sometimes it may not be. With that, here’s my first Item Of The Day for 2010 and yes, it just happens to be a picture.

Feldman displaying the Inverted Sleeping Cat Pose

Feldman is a cat of many poses. We’re pleased to be able to display for the first time on the interwebs a new cat position: the Sleeping Cat Pose.

My New Home and Other Trivia

andy — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:43:34 +0000

Welcome to my new home on the internet. The same as my old home, only different.

Why, you ask, would I do something as mind-numbingly tedious as uproot my old web site and move it to a new web site just to make it all look pretty much exactly the same? It really boils down to one thing: money. The old hosting provider was charging me $150/year for their service. The new one is charging me $24/year for the same service. So, while I didn’t have any technical problem with the old site – they were available 24×7, their support was good, and they only decided to screw me out of one feature that was present when I first signed up with them – I just

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Why I love Kerry

andy — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:21:07 +0000

She does things like this for Halloween

Halloween Catwoman

And I get to keep her.

Permanently.

Lucky me.

Providence Cyclocross Day 1

andy — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:44:22 +0000

Continuing with my study of cyclocross as an art form, I was dragged by Her Imperial Majesty down to the Providence Cyclocross Festival. This brief adventure yielded some more pictures of nut jobs. Take, for example, running up a hill. Not content with the fact that running up a hill in and of itself is a little stressful, these nutters take it to a new level – they shoulder their bikes and start running.

Why, you may rightly ask, don’t they simply ride up the hill. Well, that’s because they put freaking stairs in the way. Like this:

Naturally I’m a little confused why they feel the need to crawl up the stairs.

In an attempt to be all-inclusive, the course designers also seem

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