Journal entries for May, 2007

You may have noticed (if you're not logged in) that I've added a few small ads to the site. I've tried to make them as unintrusive as possible — matching them to the site's color scheme, etc. Even so, I hate to do it. But the flight lessons I'm taking are putting pretty significant demands on my budget, and I'm trying to find ways to reduce my monthly expenses in any way possible. The $160/mo I pay to keep BinRock online was obviously one of the first things to look at. I've never considered adding ads to the site before, because I always assumed they'd only bring in $10 or $20 a month, and that just wasn't worth the clutter they add. But I've been talking with friends of mine who participate in Google AdSense, and I've been learning that actually, based on my monthly traffic, it's quite likely that I'll bring in something in the $80-100 range — over half of my monthly server costs. That's just not something I can ignore — at least for now. Once I've finished the flight lessons and my finances have settled back down, I may get rid of them again. And of course, if it turns out they really aren't producing enough income to be worthwhile, then they'll be gone much sooner than that.

Since I started flight lessons a few weeks ago, Bryan had occasionally mentioned coming along with me on one, but since my lessons are always during the day, he was always at work. Yesterday was a holiday, though, so he came along (after making me promise not to kill him). Fortunately, he brought along Cat's camera too, so he took some pictures and videos during the flight.

It was a relatively exciting lesson too, since we were practicing stalls and stall recovery. A stall occurs when a wing pitches up so high that the airflow breaks up and the wing suddenly stops producing lift. It tends to happen during slow flight, at times when you're flying just barely faster than the plane's minimum speed, such as takeoff and landing. The recovery involves adding full power and pitching down briefly to break the stall, then smoothly pitching back up to stop the plane from descending.

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My decorating style has always tended towards posters (and the occasional alien head and pretty rainbow-shaped rug). I have occasionally had friends create original works of art for me, such as "Pop-Tart Mural" by Amy or "Wax Sculpture Soaking Into The Carpet" by Anonymous (come to think of it, that was probably Amy too. What the hell, Amy?). But on the whole, my walls have generally been decorated by relatively "low-class" things.

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As anyone who knows me is well aware, it has long been my dream to fly. I've loved airplanes since I was a little kid. I first started to suspect I might need glasses in fifth grade when I realized that I could no longer focus clearly on the airplanes that I'd gaze at when they passed overhead.

When I was 15, my father took me to the small airport in San Juan to have a demo flight lesson. That cemented it — I was determined to get my pilot's license. I despaired over the several-thousand-dollar cost, but I was willing to set aside my puny allowance each week to do it.

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I'm about to fly up to Boston for the weekend for my brother's graduation. He now becomes a real psychologist and can now continue to make no money. Congratulations!

I've been into Irish and Scottish music for years, ever since Jeff first gave me a copy of a Battlefield Band CD back in Clemson. The more I've gotten into Celtic music, the more I've wanted to play it, but you really need to have bagpipes, fiddles, and flutes to really make satisfying Celtic music. As a result, I've been wanting to learn to play one or more of the above instruments for a few years.

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Man, I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted here. I've got this big backlog of things from the past month or two that I've been meaning to post about, and I've been holding off on making newer, shorter posts until I could write up the older ones. But I've been a lot busier lately as well (which is one of the things I've been meaning to post about), so the end result is that this site has sat stagnant for a month or so.

I'm just going to go ahead and start posting about recent events again, and then eventually I'll post the older stuff and maybe just provide a link back to it, since those posts won't show up on the front page.