Being a Landlord

I was a "live-in" landlord during my stay in Palm Coast which proved to be quite successful but my recent stint in managing and trying to be a friend to the students that lived there has been the opposite.  It was the first time that I did not make tenants sign a contract of any sort and I am paying for it.  Not dearly, but in the fact that now I will be forced to go back and forth to Daytona Beach to check up on the property and try to getting rented out as soon as possible.  I really don't have much to talk about except the fact that I learned the hard way.  Even though you want to be friends, there still has to be a line drawn in order to complete business.  Too bad.

Snowing in Atlanta!!!

After a really long day of flying and losing $200 on craps last night in Harrahs' Omaha, I came back to the crashpad and it started snowing!!!  Check out the pix.  All this snow fell within 1 hour of each other.

Okay, so it might not have been that much snow but it's the most that I have seen ever falling at once. It was so nice and calming. I just wish that my girlfriend was here to enjoy the moment with me. 

I also ended up heading out to a local bar called Bonz in off of Fairburn Road.  They had an awesome Triple Play Hamburger which was basically three different kinds of melted cheeses.  It was tremendous.  I'm probably staying here in Atlanta this weekend to rest and clean up all the stuff that I moved back from Daytona. 

Justin just told me about the Sundance Film Festival this weekend in Salt Lake so I might just hit that up.  Sounds like fun!

Mexico...(part 2)

I woke up early around 6:00AM Saturday Morning still in a daze from moving / driving the entire night before from Daytona to Atlanta.  I pushed the snooze button just once because I knew that I had to get going in order to get ready for a day's excursion to Cuernavaca.  Little did I know what I was about to go through.

Some people that I met in the terminal were quite nice and some advised me to drive, some to not drive and some just thought of how cool it was to be traveling the way I was doing it.  My day's itinerary went like this: Fly to Mexico City (9:45 Eastern - 12:45PM Local --> 4 hour flight), land and find the rental car place which I booked through Expedia, drive from the City to Cuernavaca without a map, somehow find my girlfriend, hang out till 3:00 in the morning, drive back to the City, catch a flight to Orlando and ten connect to Atlanta, take the shuttle back to my car, change into my uniform, head back to the terminal and operate my ship to that night's overnight. 

I got first class which was great but instead of sleeping, I messed around on my computer and read a book.  I should have slept especially with a long road ahead of me. 

Everything went as planned, but there were bumps in the road which included driving 24 kilometers in about 1.5 hours just to get out of the City, driving 1 hour to Cuernavaca, getting lost for about 30 minutes in the city of Cuernavaca and asking a police officer to draw me a map which he did so willingly.  I arrived around  hang out with Adelle and her friends, have dinner, go out Salsa dancing till 1:00AM and then get about 1.5 hours of sleep!  It was all worth it in the end!!!  Adelle's friend were so inviting and awesome to hang out with.  Driving around Mexico in and of itself was an adventure.  I did think though that I had it in me as long as I could be aggressive enough.  I drive a little 5 speed Chevy something that isn't offered in the US because i don't think that it'll pass crash tests it's so small. 

Here's a picture of Adelle and I about 1 hour later in front of a library of sorts in the Zocalo of Cuernavaca. 

He's is one of the few signs along the road of welcoming me back into the city after a 1 hour mountainous drive from Cuernavaca at 4:00 in the morning.  It was nice not having to deal with traffic but filling up the rental car was a hassle let alone trying to find the place that I had to drop it off of.    

I got onto the flight without any problems, first class, ended up in Orlando and saw that an AirTran flight was leaving almost immediately, so I was able to catch a ride on them also in 1st class but the savings in time was spent on the taxiway due to delays for weather.  I still arrived at the time previously planned for, shuttled, changed and headed right back out.  I also got to catch the last 5 minutes of the Chargers game in the rampers' lounge and what an ending!!!  GO CHARGERS!!!  Final Score:

Do you guys like these long blog entries or would you prefer shorter ones?

Here are some pictures of Adelle making it to the top of the mountain / pyramid.  Yeah for buddy!!!  Oh yeah, for those who don't know, Adelle is on volunteer mission where she helps out in an orphanage and also gets to tour around Mexico at the same time.  She's been there for two weeks now so communication has been sparse.  Can't wait till you get back babe!

Moving, Mexico, 4-day (part 1)

Well, I decided to go on an excursion this past weekend all beginning with a notion that I wanted to surprised my lovely sweetheart in the city of Cuernavaca in the state of Merelos just one and half hours south of Meixco City.  The whole notion was originated by spontaneity like most of my "less than 24-hour excursions." (refer back to London) 

Of course, I had to do this all in the middle of a full four day trip followed by two days off then back to work for another four day trip.  In between this all is where I was to take a flight to Daytona Beach, move out, drive back to Atlanta, take an early flight to Mexico City, somehow get to Cuernavaca, drive back up to Mexico City at 3:45 in the morning, make a flight back to Atlanta which connects in Orlando, take the shuttle back to my car, get dressed then head back out for work. 

It all began like this...

"Hey dood, I'm going back to Daytona to vacate the master suite so that I could rent the entire house to students." -me

"I could help you out..." -Kurt

"Sure..." me

Well that's when we made the plans to fly down, rent a one way SUV pack all my stuff in and drive back to Atlanta.  Kurt and I could moved an array of affections that I've collected since I first moved there in 2005, loaded up the 2008 Ford Explorer from Avis Rental Car then headed out.  We stopped by our old flight school, CAPT, and caught up with some instructors and students and also found one of our favorite ground / flight instructors, Cary Green,  at his own facility called Avia Aero Services.  It was great reminiscing about all the times that we had and learning about a few of our other colleagues and just getting reacquainted.  I do miss the kind of educational, promoting, environment that we had at CAPT. 

We drove back making minimal amount of stops which included eating at Woody's BBQ, getting Starbucks' Java Chip Fraps with Red Velvet Cake and fueling up.  We made it back to Atlanta around 12:00AM, upacked and drove back to the airport to drop off our rental.  I got home around 3:00AM due to van time confusion which forced us to wait 30 minutes but needless to say, I was tired when I got home...wake up time for Mexico, 6:00AM.  Thanks for coming along Kurt and helping out.

Finished...

I just finished the task of updating all the assignments that I had for Phonenews.com I'm now very tired, but here goes for a quick summary of the day: I woke up around 4:15AM this morning after only have 3 hours of some deep sleep, but of course it wasn't enough. Flew for 6.5 hours for a total duty day of 9.5, ended up in Chattanooga, TN where I had some pretty good Mexican Food. Im' staying at the Wingate by Wyndham which had a happy hour downstairs, but the wings and beer wasn't anything that I felt like consuming at the time. It was free, and free is always good, but I needed meal.

The flight to CHA is about 21 minutes in flight, so things go by really quick. By the time you level off at 16000', you end up coming back down almost immediately and set up for a quick approach. We also had a new hire who was on Jumpseat IOE and it was cool to show him around a little bit on a walk around and go through the loads of paperwork that you get to deal with as an FO. They never teach you the stuff in training. It was just cool to know that I'm just a little ahead of the curve to look like I know what I'm doing. :-)

I enjoyed helping him out a bit and I'm sure that he'll do fine. It kind of peaked my interest though to know that I feel good about the job that have. I'm still waiting for my first big second year check to come in on the 15th, but till then, I'll keep my chin up because my view will always be better than yours except for if you're stationed on the International Space Station!

Updates....

Well, if you have been crawling all over the site lately, you'll see that I have just included all the previous posts from the last 3 years here and imported them all.  All the pictures and whatever all have backlinks all over the place and I want to simply tidy things up a bit.  It's going to be a long work in progress as some of my overnight don't have adequate Internet connection.  Luckily, Newport News is an exception. 

Today included an eleven hour duty day with about seven hours of flying block time.  It was rather on of the longer days but I got a lot of reading done, ate some Quiznos during a 1 hour break which is almost never had, and basically just tried to fly a lit.  My landings were quite as good but it was also one of those days that I had a chance to sit back and be thankful that I'm a freaking pilot!  I'm flying people around!!!  It's still a great feeling and I wish that everyone could have a chance and fly in the flightdeck with me. 

The latest excursion that I have is the the final move from Palm Coast to Atlanta.  I have a couple of items that I need to bring up so that the master bedroom could start being rented out.  It's going to stink to say goodbye, but hey, its only temporary and the fact of the matter is, I need to break even already!  It's costing me too much!

I have to wake up at 4:00AM, so CYA!

Hotel Internet

Well, I'm at an awesome overnight but it's too late to do anything and I have to duty in really early in the morning, so that leave me with chilling in the room.  Of course, being an Embassy Suite Hotel, I'm forced to pay $9.95 per 24 hours for access.  It's a bunch of bull I tell ya!  Why isn't wireless internet, cable internet, or anything else for that matter free?  Why hasn't free internet access been included with the "hotel criteria" for airline crews?  We are so dependant on the internet and personal computers these days that's its just savage.  =)  I'm updating this via my mobile phone's connection to my computer which is at 115.2 Kbps. For those out there, its about 2 times modem speeds.  Not fun but at least its something. 

PhoneNews.com is currently revamping its website and I have been tasked to complete tagging and categorizing a bunch of past posts.  I was able to complete 16% of the project this afternoon and was hoping to do a little more, but now its just too slow! 

I can't study nor can I do anything that requires a broadband connection.  Oh well, time to sign off and go to sleep. 

6 Guys and a Little Lady

We finally have a picture of all of us that live in the Atlanta Crashpad. 

We have a nice little family and it was nice to finally get a picture.   It's too bad that we never had one of the original bunch.  This is already the second generation of housemates.  We lost two guys (one to SkyWest and the other bought a house with his wife down in Grantville, GA) and gained a wife.  In the photo starting with the back row from left to right is: Manoj, Justin and Myself then in the front from left to right is Lindsay, Matthew, Eric and Michael. 

The dynamic is quite awesome and I wish that I was around more to enjoy everyone's character.  I live in a loft on the second floor which is quite spacious, but without walls.  It's fine really just either really hot in the summer or cold in the winter.  Because I commute from San Diego, I haven't been spending that much time there at all and this weekend ended up being a blast. 

Last night consisted of many drinks into the early morning followed by yet another night (tonight) going out for drinks in Buckhead.  Good times guys!  Tomorrow will pretty much entail watching football all afternoon so that should be fun as well.  Go Chargers!!!

Smooth Beginnings in 2008

My first landing of 2008 was so awesome, I didn't even know that I was on the ground.  I can't say that the approach was handsome, but I got the plane down and safe while greasing the runway.  Why do FOs care about this kind of stuff?  I have no idea but I think that 1) it might be the fact that we aren't that grumpy yet being 'stuck' in this industry 2) we still care just a little or 3) we're just nerds and its fun.  Tomorrow should hopefully prove to be a lot prettier in terms of flying a nice approach but either than that, I'm excited for my career in 2008.  It's going to be a good one with good schedules, more pay coupled with ludicrous expensive loan payments and a good old time with family being that I'll be home more often.  I'm definitely looking forward to every minute of it. 

I think that I'm settled one way or another with my template, so now I'll just see to adjusting certain things here and there.  I'm still debating much of what I want to write about in this personal blog being that I really just like writing about everything.  From my own life stories to tech news and flying.  I hate being all over the place but maybe that's what makes this website ME!

Also of note, PhoneNews.com is or should be completing a redesign as we speak and being that I haven't contributed as much as I would have liked in the month of December, January is looking up to me reporting full time on my days off and whenever I can while I'm stuck at a hotel in some random city. 

Last Flight for 2007

I just finished my last roundtrip from Atlanta to Roanoke back to Atlanta the other day and after thinking about it, I have to admit that it was exhilarating just thinking about it that way.  What a way to finish up my 1st year at ASA with a down to minimums then approach lights in sight approach at Roanoke to a beautiful clear afternoon the following day.  We even did a short field full thrust takeoff to top it off.  Landing was alright, but not one of my nice squeakers, but it'll have to do for 2007. 

I have a lot on my plate for 2008 with my first loan payments coming in, which I can now just barely afford with my 2nd year pay, and a goal of flying as much as I can so I can start being more qualified to apply at other airlines.  Here's to you 2008!!!

Christmas -- Red Eye due to Dry Cleaners

I hope that everyone had an awesome holiday.  Being a first year airline pilot, you don't expect to have Christmas off, but I did and it was great.  Family time and time with the girlfriend, couldn't be any better. 

My post season holiday commute lengthend by the fact that a certain dry cleaner lost my uniform pants in San Diego.  This caused me to have to head back to the Atlanta crashpad via a redeye flight on AirTran and retrieve a pair.  I ended up flying half way across the country just to deadhead back to Wichita, Kansas.  On approach into the Wichita airport, the ground was completely covered with some white powder stuff.  I think that they call it snow or something.  It's going to be really cold in the morning from what I can tell!

Now, I'm just chilling here watching Journeyman which is on NBC online but also plays too many commercials, very disruptive by the way.  It's all the same too.  The one same commercial interrupting my online viewing experience.  I understand that they have to make money but they aren't sharing the ad-revenue with their writers.  These overnight are going to at least be a little bit more productive now that I don't have any shows to catch up on. 

I'm Baaack!

After a long week without having a computer and going through some recurrent training, I am back in San Diego reconfiguring the T43 that conked out two weeks ago.  IBM sent it back to me mentioning what they did, but it didn't say exactly if they changed out any parts, etc.  I'm really disappointed in their summary, but I guess you can't expect that much from a formally awesome laptop corporation.  Their warranty turn around and service is still top notch, but I can't help but be disappointed that it's not as great as Apple's Customer Support.  I've had much better times with my Ti Powerbook than any other PC Laptops.  Well, I'm here till Christmas Day, then I start another four day! 

I should be around for New Year's Eve so give me a ring.  I don't think that I'll be doing anything near spectacular this year, although I'm looking forward to not spending it in Atlanta like last year!  Who knows, maybe that's where I'll end up again. 

Fort Wayne Overnight / Discover kwiry

Well, with Fort Wayne being one of my favorite overnights in the ASA network, I was unable to hit up the 412 Club as we came in rather late.  I really wasn't that disappointed but I did have work to do such as bid for my January schedule.  I'm now #213 on the CRJ 200 with another 262 first officers behind me.  It's definitely kind of ridiculous after only being here for just under 1 year.  (Anniversary date = 27 December 2007)  I still won't necessarily get the choice of a premium line, but I'm hope that it works out.  I might end up heading out to the Gyro place just behind the Fort Wayne Hilton Convention Center Hotel.  It's close proximity to places that I know of and like make it a premium choice for destination but the biggest draw back of this overnight is the hotel where the Internet registers at 128K speeds.  It's record slow speeds make it too painful to browse the web sometimes. 

Not much has been done on the side of my other project, but of note comes the introduction of kwiry.com  I just started one today but its features are rather interesting.  First, you send a text to your profile, for instance a reminder of the song that you just heard or the artist, and then it shows up in your kwiry homepage.  You then are introduced to multiple links regarding the txt that you sent to yourself from web searches, favorites and even shopping.  It's basically an expanded post-it / sticky type deal but online.  It's quite useful really.  You should check it out and add me to your friend list. [my kwiry page]