And it listens, too. And usually understands. 

Usually.

Even before I left Microsoft, I was never an angry Apple-basher. Any grumbling I did about them was usually motivated by a slightly begrudging envy about how intuitive their products are and how miserably spot-on they were with their "Mac vs. PC" ad campaign, especially when it came to the classic Vista-basher, "Cancel or Allow."  While I confess that I'd really get shoe-tossingly frustrated at their ads that tout all the things you can do with an iPhone, because I've been doing all of those things and so much more with my Windows-based phones for several years, even that was envy-based. Apple repeatedly "wins" in three key areas: branding, marketing, and usability.

However, their key marketing message around the latest version of the iPod Shuffle is, not to put too fine a point on it, wrong.

One of its cool new features is a text-to-speech function that they call VoiceOver. According to their marketing site, VoiceOver is "...the feature that gives iPod shuffle a voice. With the press of a button, it tells you what song is playing and who’s performing it."

Because of this, Apple touts the new Shuffle as "The first music player that talks to you."

But it isn't. It's not the first at all.

And I don't get that - Apple doesn't need to lie. All they need to do is show some vaguely hip Gen-Z half-slacker smirking at the chrome and rounded corners of whatever they're selling while the next Feist or Ingrid Michaelson sings plaintively in the background, and they'll sell more of the next iAnything than there are people on the planet.

I've had a long and tumultuous relationship with my Windows Mobile gadgets.  I love what they can do, and I find that I actually, if masochistically, enjoy the ridiculous amount of tinkering required to make them do it. On the other hand, I hate what a bad job Microsoft, the hardware manufacturers and the cell carriers have done over the years in giving them useful names and then telling people about them. For example, I currently carry an AT&T Fuze, aka HTC Touch Pro, aka Raphael, aka P4600, aka Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Device.

See what I meant about branding?

In addition to being my phone, my phone is my mini-laptop, my GPS, my ebook, my web browser, my camera, my barcode scanner, my inventory tool, my camera, my game system, and my media player - music and video. I use it with headphones or in a cradle wired to the stereo in my car.

Anyway, one of the indispensable components of my Fuze (and of my Tilt, my 8525, my 8125, my MPX220, my SMT5600, and a host of Compaq-then-HP Ipaqs before it) is a Microsoft application called Voice Command. It comes standard with some phones and PDAs these days, but I've been using it since it came out as a standalone product.

And, just like VoiceOver, if I want it to,Voice Command will tell me the name of the song that's playing and who's performing it. And it's been doing this, as I said, since 2003.

What's more, it'll do this if I simply ask it to by saying "what song is this?" It'll also play music that I ask for by artist, album, or genre, even genres that I've made up: "Play The Beatles," "Play Pet Sounds," "Play 80's Hair Band Crap That I Wish I Didn't Actually Own." I can control other functions by voice as well, launching programs, making phone calls, asking it to read my email aloud, tell me the time, etc.

The recognition itself is surprisingly good, though, like all such applications, when it misunderstands, it does so  in ways that most humans would not. Humans that have some interest in maintaining a polite and orderly society that is.

A few years ago, just after the film Walk the Line came out, my ever-malleable consumerism sent me on a Johnny Cash kick.

<tangent> It was around this same time that, for a brief period, I had two WinMo devices. One of them was playing music, Johnny Cash singing "Folsom Prison Blues." The other one, in my pocket, was making phone calls without my knowledge. It had decided, for some unfathomable reason, to call a friend and colleague of mine who works at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum. I'll call her "Victoria Portway", A) because that name has a certain Jane Austen ring to it and sounds like someone who would work in an important place, and 2) because that's actually her name. It was only after leaving more than two minutes of me singing at the top of my lungs along with the late Mr. Cash on her voice mail that I realized what had happened. Now, to this day, Vicki insists she never got any such message. At the time, I suspected she was just saying that because we were just good enough friends that she didn't want to humiliate me. Now, a few years on, I suspect it's because we're considerably better friends, and she's waiting for just the right moment. I live in constant fear. </tangent>

Anyway, in addition to picking up some Cash CD's, I bought the soundtrack to the film, because I thought Joaquin Phoenix did a pretty credible job with the singing. (This was back when Phoenix himself was somewhat involved in polite and orderly society and not reinventing himself in awkward Letterman moments.) I'd ripped the soundtrack to my media player (my phone, probably the 8125 at that point), and wanted to listen to it next time I was in the car. I keyed the mic and said, clearly, "Play Joaquin Phoenix."

Voice Command confirms your choices with an audible response in a vaguely female voice. In this case, then, "she" said "The Wondermints" and started playing one of their albums.

I tried again. "Play Joaquin Phoenix."

"The Beach Boys" she said, and off she went.

"No", I said, then keyed the mic again. "Play  Joaquin Phoenix."

"Fruit Bats", came the response, and the music.

I laughed at that one and dove back in. "Play  Joaquin Phoenix."

"Please repeat."

I thought this was a good sign. "Play  Joaquin Phoenix."

"Death Cab for Cutie."

What?!?! "Play  Joaquin Phoenix!"

"Oasis."

"Play  Joaquin Phoenix!"

"The Moody Blues."

"Play  Joaquin Phoenix!"

"Apples in Stereo."

"Play  Joaquin Phoenix!"

"The Flaming Lips."

At this point, I started to lose it a little, wondering just when the passive-aggressive little woman who lives in my phone had started to hate me.

"For the love of all that is holy, PLAY JOAQUIN PHOENIX!"

"The Carpenters." (Yeah, I know, shut up.)

I could have given up. I could have simply said "Play Walk the Line - Soundtrack" and gotten the music I'd asked for. Instead, I thought it might be helpful to start giving Mr. Phoenix middle names.

"Play Joaquin ***ing PHOENIX!!!"

"Fountains of Wayne."

I tried other additions, profane and scatalogical, to no avail. She kept coming back with seemingly senseless choices, delivered with icy digital patience. She listed artists that I didn't even know I had. At one point, she launched a game of Solitaire, which I read as her playing HAL9000 to my Dave Bowman and suggesting that I "...take a stress pill."

I thought about throwing the phone out the window. I thought about just unplugging it and listening to the radio. I thought about pulling over and having a good cry.

Then it hit me. (Not literally, though I wouldn't have been surprised.)

I'd been pronouncing the name properly. "Wah-keen Fee-nix."

What if ... what if I said it wrong?

I took a deep breath, and, as clearly as I could, said "Play Joe-Ackin Puh-Ho-nix."

I'll swear to my dying day that I heard her smiling as she said, perfectly clearly, "Joaquin Phoenix."

I tried it a dozen times to be sure, and it was conclusive: she knows how to say it, she just doesn't understand it when she hears it.

They say the biggest challenge in any relationship is communication, and that was a watershed day for us.

So, Apple, there you have it. My music player talks to me, and it was doing that 6 years before yours.

And it listens.

And, sometimes, just once in a while, it drives me into fits of screaming apoplexy.

Let's see your fancy new Shuffle do that.

Thanks to David @ FuzeMobility for the post that brought this to my attention: http://www.fuzemobility.com/the-future-ipod%E2%80%A6today-no-ipod-needed/ And for his closing sentence in that piece that I so desperately wish I'd come up with first: "Voice Command has been out a few years now and comes standard on the Fuze so it’s nice to see that Apple finally invented it."

I'm unemployed for the first time in 12 years.

My group, the Microsoft studio responsible for Flight Simulator, Train Simulator, and ESP, was closed in January. My severance package included 60 days' paid leave with recruiting support to find a position elsewhere in Microsoft. I looked at a number of job descriptions, most of which started with a question, something like "Are you passionate about integrating SQL server with dynamic .PHP calls and cross-referenced bubble-sorted data groups with an eye for increasing performance as much as 4%?" At this point, my answer to that is a respectfully sighed "...no, I'm just not." (But ask me again when the money runs out.)

Yesterday was day 60, and I turned in my cardkey, my parking passes, and my belov'd corporate American Express Card, sauntering off into uncertainty with a distinct lack of fanfare.

My last break was a mere 18 hours (I had to formally quit one job before the next company could make me an offer without violating a non-compete agreement) back in the summer of '97. If you don't count that, then my run was even longer - about 21 years.

If you include part-time work, then my history goes further still: I got my first job when I was 14, which was 26 years ago.

Instead of working in a field and "picking berries and building character," my dad's suggestion, I was a professional musician, believe it or don't. I was a drummer, accompanying my friend Tom Gire, a piano playing prodigy who remains the best keyboardist I've ever heard. We worked the restaurant circuit, entertaining diners eating Sunday brunch at Andy's Auburn Station and dinner at Jabingo's, playing for tips, and, in the case of Jabingo's, barbecued pork sandwiches.

Tom and I threw ourselves into the rock star lifestyle with rebellious teenage abandon. After our moms dropped us off, we'd jam sedately through a set list that included Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and, when we thought we could get away with it, Bobby Hebb. And the groupies ... I can still feel that tingle at the base of my neck that I'd get whenever some babe would catch my eye, and, with a wink and a smile, send her great-grandson up to the piano to drop a quarter in the jar.

Since then, I've held the following positions (many of which have overlapped):

• Actor
• Security Guard
• Day Care Worker
• Radio Voice Talent
• Mailman
• Emergency Medical Technician
• First Aid / CPR Instructor
• Police Officer
• Emergency Communications Specialist
• Database Developer
• IT Consultant
• Senior Technical Support Engineer
• Toy Store Proprietor
• Technical Support Instructor
• Sr. IT Technician
• Software Test Engineer
• Beta Coordinator
• Notary Public
• Software Test Lead
• Subject Matter Expert
• Software Design Engineer in Test
• Community Evangelist
• Business Development Manager
  

The last two blend together a bit and describe my final two and a half years at Microsoft, and, in combination, encompassed a lot of different roles: writer, editor, web publisher, public speaker, media spokesman, networker, researcher, amateur marketeer, etc.

Clearly, I don't know how to do just one thing.

I'm utterly baffled by what my friend Jim calls the "40 years and a gold watch" crowd. Barbara Sher's books call me a "scanner", Ned Hallowell's books tell me I have Attention Deficit Disorder*, conventional wisdom tells me that I just lack discipline and my friend Glenn simply calls us "Swans." My personal favorite came from my friend and "other mother" Donna who has no idea the gift she gave me when she called me a "Renaissance Man."

The tagline on my résumé closes with "...I’m looking for a new place to hang at least some of my many hats." And therein lies the challenge, and the promise.

While I am seriously considering a couple of "real jobs", the kind where I'd be employed by somebody and paid by them to go to where they are and do the things they tell me to for eightish hours a day, those are the exception - not many places are actively advertising for world-class-hyphenates.

In the meantime, then, I'm trying an experiment: As of today, I am now officially a full-time part-timer, a freelance thinker working from a home for which I hope to continue to be able to keep paying.

I'm consulting (in some cases as a volunteer at this point) for groups like the Museum of Flight, the National Aviation Hall of Fame, the BRAVO 369 Flight Foundation and Topgun Simulations, as well as a couple of other ventures (including one that I'm starting with two close friends) that aren't quite ready to be discussed. And, above all, I'm finally, and I hope fully, committed to writing, something that the universe has been patiently screaming at me to do more of for years.

Yesterday, I came up with a daily schedule for my new job, one that specifically delineates periods of writing, as well as email, mucking about on Facebook, and semi-aimlessly surfing the web. I wasn't sure if it would work, but, as I write this, I'm actually 19 minutes ahead of schedule.

Not bad for my first day.

*-For the record, it's not that I have a deficit of attention, it's that I have a surplus of tangents.

More proof that the smartest thing we (Microsoft) ever did while building the Flight Simulator series was to build it as a platform, enabling third-party developers to build things like this.

Or at least do our best to stay out of their way ... enjoy this utterly stunning before and after footage of a virtual Austraila.

(And watch for the blink-or-you'll-miss-it Rapide!)

The latest ephemeral film added to my personal collection is this classic from the U.S. Air Force about an obsessive airport kid. Animated by the well-respected Gene Deitch,  in a Chuck-Jones-meets-Quisp-Cereal sort of style, the film is a love letter to the airplane, showing how it allowed the rest of the world to come see how we live. (The " ... and bask in our obvious superiority!" is mercifully left unspoken.)

Listen for the "Roger, Roger" joke at least 30 years before Airplane!

This post, like the film,  was produced by the Jam Handy Organization.

Click the pic.

In my continuing quest to vent my irritation at the mistakes of everyone in the world but me, I've written here about strange messages from machines (mojay and NO2), and, more recently, about things that are printed backwards by people who should know better. Sitting here in my glass house, it's my duty to throw more stones, this time at yet another Swiss watch company.

The culprit today is Torgoen watches, though given their propensity to reverse things, they may actually be called Neogrot, which is much more fun to say. They first caught my eye in this month's issue of the Smithsonian's always enjoyable Air & Space Magazine. They have a full page ad, scanned and shared here, that shows one of their watches in the foreground with a grainy, monochrome, slightly fish-eyed airplane  behind it. I'm about 95% certain that this is a CP-121 Tracker on display outside somewhere (note the anti-bird mesh riveted over the engine ... maybe the museum at Trenton or Comox?) though the distortion makes ID a little tricky. I am about 104% certain, however, that the image is ... wait for it ... backwards: note the words "RESCUE" and "DANGER" in the detail blowup, not to mention the pitch of the prop.

To make matters slightly worse, when I went to their website to snarkily try to find some text about how proud they are of their attention to detail, I found no less than three other pictures that were also reversed. I don't make watches, nor do I make advertising, but, in the words of laymen everywhere ... come on, why not just do it right?

Oh well, at least Torgoen watches cost about 98.5% less than their IWC counterparts, about which I ranted previously.

And now back to all the things I was supposed to be doing.

I'm not normally a big fan of writing something here just to tell you to go look over there, but in this case, I'm happy to make an exception. My friend and esteemed once-and-future* colleague Mike Singer has written two great pieces that deserve all the attention they can get. In the aftermath of the closure of our studio at Microsoft and the fact that our jobs "went kablooee", as he so eloquently put it, Mike offers some fantastic perspective.

First, he reminds us what every pilot needs to remember when faced with a crisis: Fly the Airplane. When things go bad, you have to prioritize, and his insights are a wonderful and I daresay inspirational refresher course.

In his follow-up, It’s a game, it’s a simulation, it’s a … platform!, he offers the best and most concise encapsulation of what this whole Flight Simulator thing has been about for the past 27+ years that I've come across.

With both of these articles, it's as if Mike took the words right out of my mouth. Then, after taking them out of my mouth, it's as if he dried them off, looked them over, replaced them with good ones in a different order and then published them.

Do give them a read if you haven't seen them already.

*-Mike and I have too much fun scheming about things for this to be the end of our professional collaboration!

Earlier this morning (and, by "earlier", I mean "much earlier than I would have liked") I had trouble sleeping. (It seems there's a lot of that going around lately.) Because of the way my mind works (and, by "works" I mean ... well, I don't really know what I mean) trying to get (back) to sleep is usually an uphill battle between a body that wants to crash and a brain that wants to go sprinting off in every direction at once like a dog chasing a swarm of bees. This isn't always a bad thing, as I get a lot of ideas this way.  Unfortunately, this is also when I tend to do my best worrying, with visions of unemployment and dead franchises dancing in my head.

So, I have a number of revolving strategies that, if they don't actually keep my mind in check, at least restrain it from getting too wildly unchecked. These usually involve math problems of some kind, my current favorite being stepping through the Fibonacci sequence in my head, which works fairly well: there seems to be about a one in three chance that I'll start dozing by 4181 or so. This morning, though, it was more like 0,1,1,2,3, how am I going to pay the mortgage in March, 5,8, what was the number of that truck driving school, 13, 21, do places actually buy blood, 21, no, wait I did that one, blast, 0,1,1, etc.

Clearly, it was time for plan B: external distraction. Television wasn't an option - my eyes were too tired, and there's only so many times I can stand hearing people say "Sham-wow!" before I run the risk of believing it. So I grabbed my AT&T Fuze / HTC Touch Pro Windows Mobile Phone (I hear WinMo is hiring!), fired up the RSS reader and decided to listen to a podcast - in this case, it was today's Aero-Cast special feature from Aero-News. 

And what I heard was ... me.

In the wake of all of the things that have been euphemistically going on lately, they decided to air an interview that my colleagues Brett Schnepf and Mike Singer and I did with ANN back in 'Ought Six. So, instead of an interesting story that would distract the front of my mind (while the back of it snuck up from behind, threw a bag over its head, and smacked it until they both dozed off), I listened to myself. (And the other guys, of course, but that wasn't nearly as weird ...)

It is perhaps needless to say that I didn't go back to sleep,  but maybe you will. Click the banner image just south of here if you'd like to give it a listen, and enjoy the sounds of three of us waxing optimistic back in what we had no idea were the good old days:

Or, if "Star Trek" is more your cuppa ... "All Good Things ..."

So there's an email floating around the Intertubes that purports to show a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress being transported on an aircraft carrier. The image is accompanied by the following text:

While this may look like a gag shot, it is actually a "transport of a transport" necessity. The B-52 was in Beirut, Lebanon undergoing routine fuel tank cleaning. Workmen accidentally damaged the bladder system and had to install the bladders from smaller C-130s temporarily. The plane was flown to nearby McCollough air base where it was lifted upon a barge bound for Tyre on the Mediterranean. Once there it was off-loaded onto the carrier deck for transport to Crete where the appropriate tank bladders were installed. It was then flown back to Beirut. Military cooperation in action.

Even before seeing the picture, I was skeptical - and not just because it came from the Internet (over and over and over.) There's a lot wrong in just the text - the US has no military bases in Lebanon (in Beirut or Tyre), there is no McCollough air base as far as I can tell, I highly doubt that anyone could or would install C-130 fuel tank bladders in a B-52, etc.

An inspection of the picture yields even more evidence: the shadows are incorrect - the B-52 is lit from the upper right, while the rest of the scene is lit from a point closer to center or lower right. Then there's the height problem – there’s no way that the (mysteriously unshadowed) F-14 would fit under the right wingtip of the B-52, nor would the F-18 fit under the nose like that, not to mention the EA-6B and the S-3 just outboard of the #4 engine. This led to the single biggest giveaway which was one of scale: according to some organization that refers to itself as the United States Navy, the width of CVN-68, the USS Nimitz, is 252 feet. As anyone (and by anyone I mean my brother Chris, who is a bubbling cauldron of B-52 trivia, among other things) will tell you, the wingspan of a B-52H is 185 feet, which means that, as pictured, the airplane is roughly 36% too big (or the ship is the same percentage too small.)

Oh, and finding the original, undoctored photo didn't hurt either.

Last year, I was beset (if something happens twice, I can say it beset me, right?) by strange messages from vending machines - a gas pump that asked me to remove my NO2 and a stamp machine that prompted me to insert more mojay. This year, the universe is expressing its contempt for my stability by (among other things) occasionally showing me things that are backwards.

Thank You For Flying Arganap
First, there was the Antonov AN-2 biplane in the film Indiana Jones and They Should Have Quit While They Were Ahead. The magnificent Russian biplane was decked out in Pan American-Grace Airways colors and was shown in a traveling shot, superimposed over a map. For some reason, I was completely willing to forgive the fact that Panagra never flew AN-2s, even though the idea is every bit as preposterous as pretty much everything that happened before and after that scene in the film. What I couldn't forgive, however, is that the scene was printed backwards. I can almost understand a lazy editor thinking that the "PAA" logo looked fine as "AAP", or even that Arganap was a real-sounding name for an airline, though I have more trouble with the use of the word "Ecarg" in the "PAA Grace" logo. But certainly the reversed letters would have jumped out at ... anyone?

As an aside, here's a bit of trivia from the same scene that is coincidentally flossy, in a spine-tingling sort of way: The registration number used on the AN-2 in the film is N48550. In real life, that number belongs to a 1939 Grumman Goose, currently owned by Larry Teufel of Hillsboro, Oregon. Larry's Goose was the one that we used for the majority of our photo shoots, sound recordings, and flying research for Flight Simulator X. His airplane's beautiful blue and gold paint scheme, complete with prominent "N48550" on the fuselage and in the cockpit, is the default livery. Click here for a screenshot, and here for an article about this airplane in particular.

Why I Won't Buy a $14,000 Watch
The next incident happened in Orlando, Florida (watch this space for more on that trip shortly.) I was in a shopping mall, looking for a watch, and I happened on a display case featuring a number of watches by the plainly-named International Watch Company (IWC) of Schaffhausen, Switzerland. I remembered IWC from their peculiar nine minute commercial starring John Malkovich as a pretentious bellhop, and featuring some nice flying scenes with two (real) Spitfires and an awkwardly CG'd Ju-52. You can watch the film here, and even (speaking of pretentious) a "making of" featurette here.  IWC used the film to launch their collection of pilot's watches and they continue to use an image of a Spitfire in their advertising and store displays.

Did I say "image of a Spitfire?" Sorry - I meant "backwards image of a Spitfire!"

This is a company whose "undisputed specialty" lies in crafting "unmistakeable (sic) originals of chronometry", a company who promises watches that take you "...from the No-Longer to the Not-Yet," and enable you to "...experience the Right-Now in the form of a mechanical work of art" without a hint of irony ... prints their advertising materials backwards. Click the image for a closer look at the not-great camera-phone picture I snapped.

Swiss watchmakers are stereotypically synonymous with precision, quality, and detail (and, in my mind, most of them look like Charlie Watts, but that's neither here nor there.) If they can't be counted on to get things just right, especially when they're trying to sell me a watch that costs more than I make in ... a while, who can?

Et Tu, Disney?
Apparently not the Imagineers behind the Mission: SPACE ride at Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center. (Note: Yes, I know they changed the name and call it "Epcot" now, but, as far as I'm concerned, it's still an acronym, and will always be the Experimental Prototype Community Of To-MORROW!) I'm sure most of you (both of you?) are gasping in disbelief as you read this, but it's true: Disney made an ekatsim, to coin a term.

In the queue for the ride, there are a number of stage-setting props and displays that, admittedly, do a pretty good job  of melding real history with the fictitious future (is that redundant?) timeline of the ride itself - pictures of astronauts from the early '60's through 2038, a real lunar rover on loan from the Smithsonian, etc. One of the display cases shows plausibly mocked up spacesuits with the "Mission: SPACE" emblem patch on the front. Just below the patch on the suits are switch panels for "environmental controls" and the text is, as you've no doubt surmised, backwards. (Another grainy camera-phone pic to the right.)

Granted, this didn't ruin the ride for me (the fact that I was *not* selected as Pilot in my four-person crew did that), but still ... Disney should know better. In fact, Leonard Mosley's thoroughly discredited biography Disney's World states that Disney's apocryphal interest in cryonics was based on his desire to be revived " ...in time to rectify the mistakes his successors would almost certainly start making at EPCOT the moment he was dead."

Should Walt be thawed and return to clean things up, this should be tops on his list ... right after shutting down every incarnation of the horrific "It's a Small World" attraction, but that's neither here nor there.

The latest post from Fearless Widget, a video homage to an airplane I know well - the lovely Miss Gloria!
 

 
Last summer, I had the good fortune to meet Rob Kostecka while I was visiting the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, ON. Rob noticed my Tiger Moth lapel pin (yes, I'm aware that I have a problem) and introduced himself. It turns out the Rob flies Moths as well - in his case for Vintage Wings of Canada out of Gatineau, QC. VWOC's collection also includes a Harvard, a P-51, a Spitfire, a Fairey Swordfish, and a de Havilland Fox Moth, and they fly the lot, which is, of course, fantastic. Anyway, Rob has written a wonderful piece for the VWOC web site called "On Yellow Wings", about his summer as a Moth pilot. It's a great read, and, like all of the rest of the site, it's beautifully photographed and presented. Click the image and have a look.

From L-R: Me, my wife, Muffy, and my dad, Hal. (Photo by Al Gay.)

Earlier this month, my wife Muffy and my dad (who also goes by "Hal" but I'm not "Hal Jr." - it's complicated) and I spent the weekend in Guelph, Ontario, my home-away-from-home-with-better-airplanes. Among other things, we celebrated the Canadian Thanksgiving with an outdoor feast, the sort of dinner that starts before noon, and gets bigger and bigger as more people showed up and / or flew in. In addition to Thanksgiving, I was celebrating having flown my first Moth passengers - my wife and my dad. They'd both flown with me a number of times before over the years, but giving them rides in a Moth let finally and fully claim the title of "barnstormer."

In addition to the usual suspects in Guelph, my friend Al Gay of Flight Ontario came out for a visit, and was kind enough to take the picture that kicks off this piece.

There were, as always, lots of other adventures on that trip - starting with AVIS having no record, whatsoever, of me having reserved a rental car (they even let me use their computers to try to prove them wrong) and ending with a sunset that was maddeningly beautiful, almost offensive in its brilliance. Here are some pictures to tell a bit more of the tale (photos by Muffy and Hal Bryan):

An AVIS Preferred Customer at work.	Giving my dad the 50-cent (CDN) tour.	A Fleet Finch and Woody the Tiger Moth holding short.	Miss Gloria overflying the circuit.
Me on takeoff.	Me slipping in on very short final, while dad snaps pictures.	Tiger Boy Steve Gray beating up the field in the 5/8 scale Hurricane.	Aeronca-tack! Rotten and Tiny on a low and over.
	Rotten - Over the moon.	On final with dad.
The aerodrome at dusk.	The moon rises over the Yale.	Debriefing at Tim Hortons: (L-R: Dad, Glenn, Bob, Don, Michelle.)	Snapped out the car window, this picture perfectly fails to do the scene justice.

First of all, here's a clip of a 747 doing a "low and over" in Portugal. Not quite "acrobatic" as the original YouTube post suggests (though the climbing turn at the end might break through 60 degrees of bank ...), but certainly right down in the weeds, as they say:

Next up is an airplane, a Tiger Moth, as it happens, that ended up stuck in some trees after an engine failure on takeoff. The pilot (according to the story he's one year older than the airplane) looks to have done everything right - landing straight ahead, even though "straight ahead" was full of trees. It worked - the pilot and the passenger came through unscathed, and the airplane suffered only minor injuries. Click the pic for the whole story, including the local news broadcast.

Comes Sky King!

Sky King was a television series that ran in the US in the 50's (see the Wikipedia link above for the convoluted history of networks and run times) that was based on a radio series by the same name. It featured the adventures of the titular character, a rancher and pilot, and his niece Penny, a pretty and blonde Robin to Sky's Batman. The plots usually involved some wayward criminals passing through the area, the local sheriff needing help, and Sky flying his airplane (first a Cessna T-50, then a Cessna 310) to the rescue, landing on a dirt road in the desert and punching the bad guys in the head.

I have a soft spot for the show since the first airplane I ever flew was a Cessna T-50, and, as my friend Glenn hates me pointing out, at Oshkosh in 1989, I not only got to fly one of the T-50's used in the series, I waved an original screen-used Sky King cowboy hat out the window when we taxied by the crowd.

The whole series is now available on DVD, or, thanks to the good people at American Flyers, you can watch most of the episodes online here - click the logo above to watch the first episode right now.

My thanks go to my friend Bruce of BruceAir for sending the link, and for undoubtedly giggling quietly to himself about my use of the word "titular."

If you're inspired by the flying in the show and want to take a virtual T-50 around the patch, Alphasim's version is now freeware and can be had at Simviation. (Note: the red one is our family airplane (though ours has never been on floats to my knowledge.))

In the meantime, why not reach for Nabisco?!? After all, the bright red seal on the package end means mighty good cookin' inside, my friend ... Or at least have a look at the NabiscoWorld web site, which is almost certainly the only place on the whole Interweb where you can download a recipe for Crunchy Stuffed Zucchini Boats whilst playing a spirited round of Nut Vendor.

That question opens (and recurs in) a book called Atlas Shrugged, by novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. Galt is described, indirectly, as the “…man who said that he would stop the motor of the world—and did.” In the story (does a 51 year old book, touted as the second-most influential of all time, need a “spoiler alert?”), Galt is initially presumed to be a myth, but turns out to be quite real. As the story unfolds, it’s revealed that Galt has created a haven, a gathering spot for the like-minded to meet and live and interact according to their own standards of value.

More on that in a second.

I first read Atlas Shrugged in 1987, when I was 19 years old. At that same time, I also dove into the flying stories of Richard Bach – Biplane, Nothing By Chance, A Gift of Wings, etc. Both authors became favorites of mine, joining Ian Fleming and Douglas Adams on the short list.

More on that, too, in a second.

Jumping ahead to 1989, my dad and I flew our 1944 Cessna T-50 to Oshkosh for my very first trip. I spent most of my time at the show gawking at Moths, and, on the way back, I got to taxi one in Bozeman, MT. I’d loved the airplanes all my life (so far), but this was first contact, and, even stuck to the ground as we were, I knew I was hooked. When I got home, I started really digging into Moth lore, and caught wind of some guys in Ontario, Canada called the Tiger Boys who were really into Moths, and even had a flyable Thruxton Jackaroo. I was fascinated by this and wrote them a letter, and got a very nice postcard with a picture of “TJ” from a man named Tom Dietrich,  suggesting that, if I was ever in the area, I should stop in.

Naturally, I took him up on it, though it took 17 years to do so.

More on that … well, you know.

Backing up just a bit, in 1993, a fifth favorite author was added to my top four – Richard Bach’s son Jonathan. When I read his book, Above the Clouds, I had the thoroughly non-stalkerish feeling that we’d be friends if we’d ever met. Six years later, when we were both working at Microsoft (and his sister was setup on a blind date with my boss), we did, and we are.

In 2004, Jon introduced me, via email, to a family friend he hadn’t seen since he was about 4 years old, a man named Glenn Norman. Glenn pops up in A Gift of Wings a couple of times, and features prominently in the movie version (yes, there was one) of Nothing By Chance.  Anyway, Glenn is also one of the Tiger Boys, and he and his partner Michelle Goodeve owned the aforementioned Jackaroo before Tom and his partner bought it to restore, beginning their collection.

Still with me? Sitting comfortably? Excellent.

When Jon made his email introductions to Glenn and me, we each rolled our eyes and said to ourselves “yeah, right” - this friend-of-a-friend business never works as well as the common denominator thinks it will.

We could have been precisely none more wrong – just like Jon, Glenn and I have been brothers ever since.

Knowing my love of the airplanes, Glenn immediately started inviting me to come visit and do some flying.  So, in 2006, when a business trip took me to Oshawa, Ontario, I extended my stay and made my first pilgrimage to Guelph. It was there and then that, after a mere 38 years of wishing (and doing next to nothing about it, frankly) I flew a Tiger Moth for the very first time. (Not to mention the Jackaroo…)

More importantly, I got to know Glenn and Michelle, met Tom Dietrich and his fellow head Tiger Boy, Bob “Knock, Knock” Revell, and, just like that, my family-by-choice expanded yet again. I not only met the Tiger Boys on that first trip – I became one. I’ve described the group as being somewhat like the Mafia (the Mothia … ?) only nicer, with Tom as the godfather, and me, at the time, becoming the newest “made guy.”

Since that first trip, I’ve been back every chance I could. I’ve obtained a “Foreign Licence Validation Certificate” from Transport Canada, so now, when I go (after a flight or two to clear out the cobwebs) I can legally fly their Moths on my own as pilot-in-command.  My last trip was just last week, right after Oshkosh, and, like all the rest, it was as much of a homecoming as it was a vacation. (I even tried to make myself useful by getting checked out on the Cyclo-Blast machine and prepping and cleaning doors for an Aeronca C-3 and a landing gear assembly for a Heath Parasol.)

In his way, then, Tom Dietrich is a real-life John Galt, and the world he’s built with his friends in Guelph is precisely the haven that Rand and Bach, each in their own way, sent me hunting for when I first read their books way back when.

What I didn’t learn until my third or fourth visit, however, was the name of the original founder of the town of Guelph: John Galt.

Things like that truly put the “Coincidental” in “Coincidental Floss.”

Now, instead of asking me what the "Floss" bit means, have a look at this low-res version of a video I assembled from pics and raw footage courtesy of Glenn and Michelle.

If you read the cleverly titled (because I titled it) blog Information Mike, written by friend and colleague Mike Singer, you'll see that, earlier in the Oshkosh week, we took a trip to a place called Fisk and watched the controllers there do their thing. If you haven't read it, click the link and give it a read now. I'll wait.

Anyway, while we were out at Fisk, politely conferring with the controllers, asking intelligent research-related questions like "Hey, Mister - can I look through your buboculars?", the idea of a visit to the control tower at the airport itself came up. And, by "came up", I mean we said "Hey, mister, can we PUH-LEEZE go up in the control tower?!?!" Foolishly enough, they promised to work something out. At which we point we gave them their binoculars back.

My turn in the tower came on Saturday. As it happens, they close the control tower during the daily airshow (the airspace is handed off to the show's "air boss"), so the best time to visit the tower also just happens to be (thanks to the view) the best time to be in the tower. It's a heady feeling, to say the least, watching an airshow from above - especially given the dramatically increased height of the new tower.

Two of my colleagues, Brandon Seltz and the aforementioned Mike Singer, went up that day as well, quite a bit higher than the tower ... and, at times, considerably lower! Brandon and Mike have been the driving forces behind some of the work we're doing with Dale "Snort" Snodgrass and American Topgun Productions (yes, I know, and no, I won't tell). Dale wanted a chance to say "thank you" to the two of them in particular, and, ignoring my jealousy-driven suggestions of memberships for each of them in the Jelly of the Month Club, decided to give them each a ride in a Mustang. North American, not Ford. The real thing, the one that Christian Bale points at frantically in the movie Empire of the Sun and calls the "Cadillac of the sky!" They each truly got the ride of their lives, and my therapist has told me repeatedly that the seething, bitter envy I feel is far outweighed by my happiness on their behalf.

Then again - they actually earned their flight, the chumps, while I, in good Socialist fashion, chatted my way into my hop in the Soviet Yak-9 by claiming that I needed it.

Saturday night afforded one last photo run through Aeroshell square, snapping sunset pics, before everyone started heading out on Sunday. I can't quite articulate why, but somehow, the image of the V-22 guys loading up a ladder they bought from the ladder guy really captured the spirit of AirVenture perfectly. So perfectly, that, even though I thought I had, I don't seem to have taken a picture of it.

You'll just have to trust me.

Sunday rolled 'round, and, thanks to some threatening weather, the grounds were all but empty. I knew a number of people (such as friend-of-friends Fern Villenuve, first team leader of Canada's Golden Hawks flight demonstration team - the first person I've met whose face is actually on money) who figured if they didn't leave Saturday, they'd be stuck in Oshkosh (not always a bad thing) for another week. Of course, I couldn't be absolutely certain that the grounds were empty without seeing it for myself, so I went back up in the control tower. Because I could.

Other exhibitors were quietly (and some not so quietly) packing up and shutting down throughout the day, but we kept ours going until the very end. You should assume that we did this because of our near fanatical dedication to reaching every last customer we possibly could, and not because we'd contracted with a company called The Production Network who, in the person of the incomparable Steve Mallinson, was completely responsible for the teardown of the booth.

Just as it has done the other nine times I've been, the end of AirVenture came too soon. Once we'd abandoned Steve shut down the PCs and headed out, we took one last end-to-end run on the golf cart, reluctantly returning it to the EAA, just as the first real storm of the week kicked in.

From Oshkosh, it was on to Toronto for a week or so but that's another story.

A room with a view ...	X-Plane's Austin Meyer poses with us proving that we can, in fact, all just get along.	Is there a word that means "the opposite of advertising?"	The Walking Taco seemed like an unnecessarily smug dig at the handicapped corn dogs of Reno.	Good night, Panchito.

I decided to go ahead and finish the story and just replace the previous post with this one. This event was clearly the most notable of my Day 5, so I think it deserves its own full-ish post. Congratulations to those of you who read the first version - it is now, officially, mega-rare, the rocket firing Boba Fett, the Beatles' Yesterday and Today Butcher Cover, the inverted Jenny postage stamp of blog posts.

On Friday the 1st, after a couple of days of false starts and missed connections, I met up with my new (best) friend, Jim Cook out of Auburn Alabama, and we had an absolutely beautiful flight in his Yak 9. "How did this happen?" I hear you asking (though it sounds suspiciously like "big deal!") Well, it went something like this: Jim came by the booth earlier in the week and introduced himself, and, thanks to my desire to go up with him in said Yak, we found common ground very quickly. As it turned out, we have mutual friends in people like Snort Snodgrass and Sean Carroll (not there actually are people like either of those gentlemen), and, while Jim was telling me a bit about his background as an Army aviator flying the Blackhawk, I was kicking him in the shins and demanding a ride.

When I met Jim at the airplane, we did a test fit. Jim describes the Yak as a "1.75 seater", and the backseat doesn't go out its way to favor anyone over about 5' 11". I slid down in, and found that my knees were about one inch too high to fit under the back of the seat in front of me. This kept from sitting down fully, and would have meant that the flight was a no-go unless I was willing to consider surgery. (I was.) Then, magically, my right foot slipped a little, and my right knee popped under the seat back. I figured out what I'd done, repeated it with my left leg, and, Yuri's-your-uncle, I was in. Wedged in, but in nonetheless. Then, just to show off a bit, I got back out.

After waiting about an hour for the fuel truck driver (Slacky McLostington) to show up, we gassed up, and it was time to commit aviation for the glory of the Rodina. I worked my way into the seat, repeated my knee adjustments, then affixed the four-point harness. Once I was set, Jim started the engine, and, after whining for a few blades, 12 cylinders of 1600+ horsepower Allison goodness came to life, the relatively small Yak rocking back and forth in time with the idle. Taxiing out, we S-turned along (like most of the best airplanes, you can't see straight ahead in the Yak 9 when you're on the ground, so you weave, veering left and looking right, then reversing that) behind the EAA marshallers on scooters. There was quite a crowd lining up along the taxiways, jockeying for position to take a picture, or just wave, especially the little kids. I waved back to as many as I could, not because I was deluded for an instant that they were waving at me, but because Jim had his hands (and feet) full, and because the airplane had no hands. "Stay in school and off the crack, kids, and one day you might be randomly lucky like me, sitting in an airplane like this through no particular hard work of your own, though probably not."

After the runup, we were cleared for takeoff on runway 36L. The power went in, the tail popped up, then the mains, and we were in a climbing right turn heading east over Lake Winnebago. Jim had cautioned me about the noise, recommending earplugs under my headset, but I was glad I'd forgotten, because the noise, the confident growling power of this machine was, in a word, glorious. The views were every bit as spectacular as you'd expect, and the the weather was "severe clear" in almost every direction. The only exception was at twelve o'clock, level: there was a "cloud street" around a mile or so long, with a string of small and obviously fascist cumulus puffs that were, simply put, asking for it. Jim wove us in and around and through the edges, doing loops, rolls, wingovers, and cuban 8s, the long forgotten pressure on my knees relieving any time we were inverted or went negative. The clouds knew when they'd been outclassed, and quietly did their part providing an all-too-rare sense of speed at altitude as we tore past. At one point, we nudged through 5 Gs, I clenched a little, grunted a little, and smiled a lot. 

All too soon, it was time to head back to the airport. We entered a long, curving right base for 36L; the curving approach keeps the runway in sight in a taildragger like this for as long as possible, right up until the point when you actually need it and touch down. By then, the theory is that the runway is probably where you think it is, and, if not, it's fairly close. Rolling out at idle, the engine popped, the short stacks clearing their throats for attention they already had. The tail came down, and we turned off, once again following an orange vest on a red scooter with a volunteer in between who led us straight back to where we started, then proffered us each a bottle of ice cold water once we'd opened the canopy. The water was welcome, a cool jolt that unfortunately wasn't quite enough to wake up my legs, which had dozed off somewhere over the lake. I clambered up and out, and didn't so much hop down off of the airplane as bounced on lifeless legs that, thankfully, remained straight.

Then it was time for pictures and handshakes, promises to stay in touch (we have, so far), and a blurry golf-cart trip to our booth for a few hours. I'd literally come back down to earth at this point, but part of me was still up over the lake, giving the imaginary Luftwaffe a bit of what for.

I took a lot of pictures of the airplane before and after the flight, got a few pictures from one of Jim's friends of us departing and arriving, and snapped some stills and video on my phone during the flight, then put these things together as short video, linked below. Now, I'm not a photographer, and, if there's one thing worse than a non-photographer taking pictures, it's a non-photographer taking pictures with a camera phone. And, if there's one thing worse than that, it's that same person shooting video with said camera phone. I'd apologize for the quality, but I think the images that need to will apologize for themselves.

Like it says in the clip, Jim - Spaseba, Tovarisch!

This one began with something that began a few years ago as a nice gesture, evolved into a tradition, and now, thanks to me and my soulless corporate approach to things, has become mandatory: the patented Hal Bryan AirVenture End-to-End Golf Cart Experience. As I wrote in my official guide to the show that I handed out to all of my fellow boothizens (as part of the care package that my friend and colleague Mike wrote about here), AirVenture is big. If you've never been, it's bigger than you think, if you haven't been in a while, it's bigger than you remember, and, if you have, you know I'm right. By giving them the lay of the land, the tour helps people decide in what direction to stagger during their precious free time in order to see what interests them, and also helps them become a little more self-sufficient when it comes to getting back and forth between the booth and the hotel, etc. We start in front of the Super 8, work our way around the north 40 camping area, then pass through the warbirds and across the taxiway to the experimentals. From there, we pass the tower(s) and the government pavilions, then straight across Aeroshell square. Next comes the light sport aircraft, the past grand champions, and then the antiques and classics. Continuing south, we head past the vintage campground and the ultralights, then, finally, to the southiest end of the south 40 camping. Then it's back north for a spin up through Aeroshell square, a look at the sponsor facilities behind Hangar C, a quick look at the Fly Market, and, finally, a trip round the two best-kept secrets of AirVenture, the EAA AirVenture Museum and Pioneer Airport.

I love giving these tours, because I love seeing this place, my home for 1/52nd of a year, through new eyes. Not to mention the fact that I love having an audience; when I'm narrating, I'll catch myself starting to gesticulate, making broad, expansive hand gestures that put a little bit of pontiff in my pontificating. Day 4's tour customers were Rick Hudson and Shawna Williams. Paul Lange was supposed to be there as well, but he was in a meeting that I can't talk about.

And speaking of which ... at noon, Mike Singer and I met with 8 of our colleagues from the EAA to talk enthusiastically about something that I shouldn't mention here. Just picture a lot of people in blue shirts nodding and trying not to interrupt each other.

After that, I met with a colleague and potential partner at the booth, gave her a demo and then met with her in the air-conditioned "Exhibitor's Comfort Center" for about an hour and a half. I won't mention who she works for, but it was the kind of meeting that started with "do you think we should look at working together" and ended with "well, yes, but, once we've actually dominated the entire world, what do you propose we do with it?" At one point, I actually used the word "synergy" and, to my shame, I meant it. Then I apologized, unnecessarily. One thing I can say without apologizing is that this company (I know her boss and one of her colleagues as well) is doing things that are undeniably brilliant. We're still not sure exactly *how* we'll work together, but we're all convinced that it's the right thing to do. If I could hire them to handle our marketing in the aviation community, I'd do it yesterday.

A bit later on, I stopped in at Flight1's booth to catch up with my friend Jim Rhoads, and he showed me their new Citation Mustang add-on (utterly gorgeous, and the first FS add-on I've come across with an opening toilet seat) and their new instructor's console. This last was running on ESP, and, after about 30 seconds, I came away convinced that this was the "killer app" the platform needs to get the attention of flight schools of all kinds. While I was busy being impressed, an older gentleman came up, followed by a few of my colleagues. The gentleman's name was John, and he'd come to Flight1's booth from ours to buy a copy of RealAir's Spitfire add-on (one of my personal favorites.) John and I had a wonderful conversation about his flying history, and about the role that Flight Sim plays in his day-to-day life. He enjoys it with the sort of passion that I'll happily remember any time that I find myself a little slow to get out of bed and head out to work. His gratitude was energizing and humbling. I hope I'm half as sharp as he is, when I'm half his age ... in 3 and 1/2 years.

Not a bad day's work, especially since it was my day off.

Wait ... listen ... do you hear that? It's the sound of me not complaining!

The view out my window, first thing in the AM	Because if you're John Travolta, you fly your 707 to Oshkosh	So many toys, so little time ...	The party was going fine until these guys showed up

No, I wasn't, as it happens. You see, I'd been invited to an executive luncheon to discuss some partnership opportunities best left undetailed. It was a great meeting, but the meal itself was jarring. It started with a fruit salad - a bit of pineapple hollowed out with a couple of spoonfuls of sweet rice, some strawberries, and some sliced mangoes. The word at my table, including that of some new friends from a company that makes Very Light Jets (friends, but not great friends - no stick time was offered at any point in the meal) was that the presentation was sans pareil. As it turned out, the meal was also sans main course, since the next thing to arrive was dessert. I was a bit nonplussed (not to mention nonfull), but I shrugged it off and focused on the meeting itself, which was considerably more substantial.

Later that night, I ran into a couple of people who'd also attended,  and tentatively broached the subject of lunch with "Now, was it just me-" only to be met with an immediate "Oh my god, no! We couldn't believe it!" Vindication was satisfying, though a ham sandwich would have been more so.

The most notable customer at the booth that day was a guy who was kind of enough to point out that he was a real pilot with literally hundreds of hours who was just about to give up on our little video game. He went on to explain that, in some of our aircraft, our gauges just "go nuts." I had him show me the problem on one of our demo stations. We started at Denver in the Beech Baron, and he took off and started pointing out problems as he climbed out. First, as he moved the yoke all the way fore and aft to try to maintain a particular pitch attitude, he pointed to the Vertical Speed Indicator, which was indicating momentary climbs and descents ... as the airplane climbed and descended. Then he showed that the altimeter was moving as well, as if the altitude was changing ... which, conveniently, it was. I pointed out that everything was happening exactly as it should with a diplomacy that was, well, sans pareil.

Then he went on to point out that the airspeed indicator was broken, because he was only making 90 knots at full power. At 10,000 feet, with mixture set to full rich. I suggested that he either lean the mixture or just turn on the Automixture feature in FSX, and he said "Why on earth would I want to lean the mixture?!?!"

"Because of your altitude...? It's common practice to lean a piston engine above 3,000 feet, otherwise it will continue to lose power as you climb," I replied.

"Well, I've never heard of such of thing. I never touch the mixture when I fly, and I've flown for years!"

What was there to say to that?

We'll leave that in the rhetorical category, and close with a few pictures:

Not the Super 8	Norah and Aaron await their driver	3 Yak 52s at the bottom of a loop	Harrier than thou