xxmikexx

I'm going back to the Aircraft Customization forum where, for the most part, peace and harmony reign. A year ago I promised myself not to get involved in other parts of this site, or any of the other usual sites. While this thread has been peaceful so far, I can see the controversy from here and I want to avoid it.

tellis, I know what the glory days were like. I don't need to check because I've been simming since the days of Bruce Artwick's ATP. So all along we've had both payware and freeware. While the coimponents of my favorite aircraft are mostly freeware, the fact is that these days the aircraft I acquire are almost exclusively payware. I go to the file library for gauges and utilities, and sometimes I'll download an aircraft just to get at its gauges, but for me the glory days of freeware have been replaced by the current glory days of payware.

I purchase a lot of payware. However, my favorite aircraft, which is a frequent topic of discussion at the FlightSim.Com Aircraft Customization forum, is a fusion of a $10 payware aircraft with I-haven't-counted-how-many freeware aircraft and utility components -- gauges, an airframe. I would not -- could not -- have my favorite aircraft without the work of so many dedicated developers who offer their work for free to the rest of us. That said, when someone decides to give huge chunks of their life to the hobby, why should anyone expect them to work for nothing? If it weren't for the payware aspect of the hobby there are many excellent FS-related products that simply would not exist in anything but rudimentary form, if at all. Mike McCarthy

Installing addon aircraft is a manual process but a simple one. Here's what to do, assuming that you've done a standard installation ... 1 - Go to the author's website, accessible via the Help menu item. 2 - On the left side, scroll down to "Model, Scenery and Other Downloads". 3 - Download the zip file of interest. 4 - Using Windows Explorer, navigate to C:\Program Files\Transcendental Technologies\PRE-FlightSEJ\models 5 - At that location create a folder, giving it the same name as the downloaded file, minus the zip extension. 6 - Copy the downloaded zip file to the new folder. 7 - Do an "extract to here". 8 - Click on the "model" menu item and then click on "load". 9 - Open the folder you just created by double-clicking on its name. 10 - Select the .3dm for the downloaded model. This will add that model to the list of models available under the "model" menu item. This sounds complicated but, trust me, it's really not, and after you do it once you'll remember the procedure.

I’ve had a life-long interest in radio-controlled model aircraft (R/C) but I’ve never done anything about it in the real world other than to a) continue to read R/C magazines, and b) occasionally visit, as an observer, an R/C club based in nearby Boulder, Colorado. Nevertheless I’ve been aware of the PRE-Flight simulator of R/C aircraft for several years though I didn't buy it until yesterday, 28 July 2010. (From this point on I'll refer to PRE-Flight as PF.) What prompted me to finally act was the PF developer’s announcement of his Gee Bee Model R racer addon. You can read about it here, https://www.flightsim.com/main/notams10/pref0728.htm. This is just one in a long line of free addon simulated R/C aircraft created by the PF developer. Last night I bought the download version of the product from the Pilot Shop, https://www.fspilotshop.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=226&products_id=1721. In spite of minor product problems I was so delighted with it, and so convinced that other people will want to work with it, that this morning I asked webmaster Nels Anderson if we could have a forum dedicated to this unique product. He agreed, and here we are in that brand new forum. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The product isn't perfect -- no product is -- and making it work with a joystick sometimes will take some hacking, and addon aircraft must be installed by hand (it's very easy). Those things said, if you want a program that will teach you how to fly R/C model aircraft from the simplest to the most advanced, PRE-Flight is for you. Not only does it work with joystick+keyboard, if you buy a certain expansion module from the developer you'll be able to drive PRE-Flight using actual honest-to-goodness real R/C transmitters, as long as they have USB capability. This means that PRE-Flight solves the long-standing problem of learning to fly R/C without having an unaffordable series of crashes. In the past, a beginner usually would partner with an experienced R/C flyer. Today, after using PRE-Flight for a while, you would be able to solo with confidence on your initial flight in the real world. A free PF demo is available at the developer's website, http://www.preflightsim.com/. (I have not used the demo and don't know anything about it.) The developer's own free downloadable aircraft also are available at that site. While you can purchase the base system at this site, I hope that you'll instead buy it from the FS Pilot Shop, see the link above, since this will help support FlightSim.com while also helping support the PF developer. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx All those things said about R/C, PF today goes beyond basic R/C simulation. Scenery addons are available, and a free one from the developer models a small region on the surface of [a moon of Saturn?]. Similarly, one of the free "aircraft" available is a simulation of the Apollo program Lunar Lander. Furthermore, if you like hand flying, PRE-Flight presents a challenging but fun flight simulation environment even if, like me, you have no plans to do R/C in the real world. Trust me, if you intend to land on the same "runway" you took off from, this is usually more difficult than in FS because in PRE-Flight

It's hardly the end of the world but Phil Taylor announced early today that he would be leaving ACES studio and that tomorrow would be his last day. I was hoping that the people of the wolf packs on the various major FS-related websites might stop feeding on the entrails of living creatures long enough to pay tribute to the man who has helped so many thousands of us enjoy FSX. They could, for example, have said things like "Well, Phil, I may hate you but you surely did give me many hours of the pleasure of barking at you, and I'm grateful for that." Such is not to be. As of a few minutes ago, about twelve hours after his announcement, the number of in memoriam posts on the various FS sites was ... FlightSim.com --- 5 for, 1 against Avsim -----------16 for, 1 against Sim-Outhouse --- 24 for, 0 against SimFlight -------- 0 for, 0 against That's it. Period, end of subject. The result of his having held down an extremely demanding job, with product manager of Flight Simulator being just part of that job, and of his having voluntarily given hundreds of hours of his personal time to helping thousands of people ... ahem ... The psychic reward for having done all this product support directly by the product manager himself was a grand total of 45 "Thanks, Phil" posts. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx One of the reasons Phil and I have become fast email friends is that we each noticed that the other does not back down when the wolf packs attack, that we each defend helpless underdogs, and that we each stick to our guns when we know that one plus one equals two rather than a traditional value of three, for example. You see, forum decorum requires that even the heavy hitters, if they are to avoid being boiled in oil, say things like "Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. One plus one equals three is just as valid a viewpoint as any other, and it goes a long way toward explaining why you're convinced that [insert attacker technobabble here]." Dat's a fact, Jack. Those things plus our each having the habit of sticking up for underdogs when the schools of pirhana fish attack, hoping to strip their victims of flesh in public, aided and abetted by moderators who also won't tolerate anything but mediocrity. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Phil hasn't said so -- would never say so -- but he has been driven from the forums several times and now has decided to leave even the Major Leagues FS Development community -- ACES Studio -- perhaps because no amount of positive stroking at ACES can make up for the horrible way he and his (and my) kind get treated on the forums. Phil is not the first person to say "That's it, time to go do something else." I don't want to furnish a long list of names and details. Instead I'll simply cite the example of Mike Stone, a builder of low-fps airframes that run well on dinosaur computers. (to be continued)

I went grocery shopping yesterday afternoon. (Call Sixty Minutes!) While I was being checked through, the bagger, a young man named Matt, stepped behind me in the line and unloaded the remaining groceries in my cart onto the checkout conveyer belt. "In all my years of grocery shopping nobody has ever done that for me before", I said to him. "Keep it up and you'll make manager." "I don't want to make manager" he said. "I'm in college to make petroleum engineer -- it pays a lot better." "Well", I said. "That's a great career. You'll never get laid off, you'll have your choice of working indoors or outside, and you'll get to travel the world if you want to." He finished bagging my order and I then headed for the door. Tim Smith, an assistant manager who I've come to know over the years, flagged me down. "Mike, I heard what you said to Matt. That was nice. Very nice." We do work for money, folks, but we work even harder for attaboys that have real meaning.

P.S. I in fact do own some pirated MP3 tracks -- maybe ten in all. But would I have bought these absent their having been given to me on request by a friend? (An attorney no less!) No, I would not have. I cite as evidence the fact that I haven't purchased any music at all in the past ten or so years. Furthermore, not only is what I did fair or close to it, or at least did not harm the music industry, it's probably effective advertising. You see, now that I have high quality copies of "Pick Up The Pieces" and "Cut The Cake", I may very well go get "The Best Of Average White Band", and so on. Is there complete 100% total justification for what I've done regarding these ten or so MP3 tracks? No. Certainly not. But then I'm not the music industry equivalent of an axe murderer either. Even though I may have spat into the street while I had a serious case of the flu, in contravention of City Of Lakewood ordinances, and even though I got a traffic ticket in Wheat Ridge to which I pled guilty, I'm a law abiding citizen who stands proud in front of family, community, and the readers of this thread of tig's. On rare occasions I'm a misdemeanent as discussed above, as are we all. But I've never been a felon, convicted or otherwise.

Thank you. In a parallel universe I'm a well respected and widely feared prosecuting attorney. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Let me clarify what I mean by unenforceable clause ... Let's suppose that you release a payware utility, WhizBang. You include a statement in your license to the effect "If you plan to run WhizBang you must stop breathing. If are not willing to stop breathing, do not accept this license agreement." What would I do? I would accept the agreement because, while the rest of the agreement might be legal and moral and enforceable, the requirement to stop breathing is absurd on its face, and to continue to breathe while having accepted the license agreement is both legal and ethical even though it runs completely counter to the developer's stated demands ... ... And I did not have to go to law school to make that determination. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The fact is, I don't even read license agreements anymore. I don't care what they say. I know the difference between Right and Wrong, Fair To The Developer and Unfair, and so on, and I will always Do The Right Thing regardless of what a license agreement does or does not say. This is reasonable, for the same reasons that my not walking around with a copy of the Ten Commandments to be consulted everytime I do something also is reasonable. That is, in neither case do I need An Agreement From On High to tell me what I may and may not do. Now you might say "Wait a minute. Not every culture accepts the Ten Commandments." That's true but irrelevant. The culture I grew up in, the culture I operate in, and the culture in which I made the purchase of WhizBang, DOES recognize the validity of the Ten Commandments, albeit implicitly. (Well, eight of them I suppose.) It's like the Social Contract. Nobody gave it to you in writing to sign. By virtue of your having been born into your society and not having left it, you have agreed to be bound by its terms. You have also agreed not to commit Crimes Against Humanity, and even if somebody shoved a paper in front of you and demanded that you agree in writing to kill ten Rastafarians, you not only are not required to do it, the unwritten and unsigned Social Contract forbids you to do it.

tig, I'm guilty as charged. Over the years I've committed numerous acts in violation of written license agreements. But have I broken any laws? Absolutely not -- I'm a law-abiding citizen. Everything that I've done in violation of license agreements has been, in my opinion, fair use. I, me, moi, Mikey will decide what is fair use. A court will either sustain me, or it will not, but I don't view myself as legally bound by unreasonable or unenforceable contract provisions simply because the licensor says that I should be. It's like when a restaurant check room has a sign up saying "Not responsible for stolen articles". Well, it depends. Usually they ARE responsible. But whether or not they're responsible, their SAYING they're not is completely irrelevant. It has no bearing whatsoever on the legal issues. I'll stop here and then re-read your blog entry to see if I want to add more comments. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Changed my mind. Before I do that re-read I want to give an example from my professional life ... We are either honest people or we are not ... or so we like to think. Am I guilty of even a moral traffic violation when I tell you the following true situation? I'm the owner of a Y2000 suite of Microsoft software purchased for $3,000 as a consultant's package. Never mind what privileges accompany the package, the main feature of interest is Visual Studio 6, which I use every day for work on my AirBoss utility. One day last year I broke the CD containing the base VS6 installation. Regrettably VS6 had been out of print for a couple of years and Microsoft was unable to supply a replacement CD. They had stopped supporting VS6 and therefore stopped reproducing the master disk when VS8 was released. So I poked around on the internet and found a download package containing exactly what I needed -- a no-key-required download of the VS6 CD that would otherwise have cost me $1,000 (or whatever the seller might have chosen to charge) to purchase on eBay etc. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Does that make me a pirate? Technically yes. Morally no, just as you are not a pirate for selling your licensed software CD at a garage sale. Morally I'm entitled to a replacement CD provided by Microsoft. They are unable to give me what I need (and it would have been "free plus postage") so I simply have engaged in what attorneys call self help. Would a jury convict me of piracy? No way. What I did is obviously fair use, and if somebody from Microsoft happens to read this and wants to make a court case out of it, be advised that I would engage the ACLU and take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Even attorneys can't tell you what the law is. All attorneys can do is make predictions about how judges are likely to rule on various points of law. The law is what judges say it is, not what attorneys say it is, and certainly not what software developers say it is. Those things said, I am 100% opposed to piracy yet 100% in favor of common sense and fair use. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx So, for example, when I buy a software utility that is not copy protected -- one that simply uses a registration key to be entered at installation time, I have zero compunctions about installing it on every machine on my LAN. Unless the developer specifically tells me that I may not, I will do it for sure. And even if he tells me that I may not, I just might do it anyway. The reason is that I have the option of deinstalling the utility from machine A and reinstalling it to machine B, so the real issues are convenience, of multiple copies (and what about backups, hm-m-m-m?), and simulataneous use. And I don't use them simultaneously. If I'm scrubbing my development system I'm not simultaneously scrubbing my flight system, though I might very well be defragging it, a capability that I have also installed to the development machine. And so on. I'm exercising self help, common sense, and fair use. And I have no moral qualms about this whatsoever. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx And I'm not going to be bothered by Microsoft unless they want to go through the motions just for the sake of formality -- in which case I'll have a lot of fun advising my attorneys. :D I'm a brand-loyal Microsoft fanboy -- I've been using their software development tools since 1981, and their operating systems since 1984. I would never do anything to violate the spirit of being a fair customer -- I want Microsoft to prosper. (Because I want them to keep laying golden eggs.) But a license agreement is not a suicide pact. I'm going to do whatever I need to do provided that it's ethical and legal, decisions that I will make for myself unless and until a judge corrects me. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx EDIT of 26sep-08 ... I should have said that I'm not an attorney and I am not giving legal advice in either this post or my posts below to this same thread. Anybody who is concerned about matters like these should consult a suitably qualified attorney.

In mathematics there is a proof strategy known as "proof by exhaustion". It works like this: First you prove that the only possible answers are, for example, A, B, C and D. It being, say, very difficult to treat case D on its own, you could still prove it is true simply by proving that A, B and C are false. This is called proof by exhaustion because at that point you've exhausted all possibilities. D simply MUST be true whether or not the detailed workings of D are immediately obvious. My point here is that mathematical reasoning can lead to correct conclusions regarding situations about which we know nothing at all. In physics this is called "dimensional analysis" -- because all we have to do is to make the units (the dimensions) on the left side of an equation match the units on the right side of that same equation. You will see this in action below. Note that D having been proved to be true, any assertions by others that D is false, or that a proof exists that D is false, or that D can be shown probably to be false by virtue of [whatever] -- these "facts" can be rejected out of hand, just as perpetual motion machine designs and circle-squaring proofs can be rejected out of hand. Note also that on the forums, proof by exhaustion usually means something quite different. It means that a claim-counterclaim dispute goes on till one or the other party drops out because he/she has become exhausted, leaving the last man standing to crow his victory as signifying the truth of his position. :D Let's call these people "A" and "B", and let's have the dispute go as follows ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Let Person A make a non-obvious but nevertheless correct assertion, such as "All theories of lift must reduce to the downward acceleration of air, since F=mA and there is no reason to suspend Newton's Laws Of Motion for purposes of aerodynamics studies". By this he means, "At a suitable angle of attack an airfoil will generate an upward force we call "lift". (The F part of F=mA.) By Newton's Laws this upward force must be counterbalanced by the downward acceleration of air. (The mA part of F=mA.)There are no other possibilities." The key point here is that the downward-acceleration-of-air viewpoint must be true for ALL theories of lift. The mathematics of Newton's Laws compels this. This is not a matter of opinion, or of design preference, or of wisdom of the ancients, or of forum courtesy, or of somebody's possessing all kinds of advanced degrees in aerodynamics. It is inescapable mathematical truth. Worse still, Person A's assertion will be true regardless of whether Person A knows anything at all about airfoil theory. He could know zero about aircraft yet still arrive at the correct conclusion solely through the combination of dimensional analysis and Newton's Laws. In other words, whatever theory of lift Person B may present, in the end it must reduce to the case just proved using dimensional analysis. This will be true regardless of whether Person A is willing -- or even able -- to show where the downward-momentum-of-air fairy is hiding in Person B's theory of lift. (Note that this often results in Person B believing Person A to be very unfair because Person A usually will not want to take the time and trouble to track down Person B's lift-by-momentum fairy.) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Person A may then go on to make another outrageous statement that also simply MUST be true ... If there is any benefit to having curved airfoils, it can only be for purposes of drag reduction, i.e. for delaying the onset of turbulent airflow, hopefully to past the trailing edge of the wing. We will prove this one not by means of dimensional analysis but instead by exhaustion. Our having earlier proved that the shape of the airfoil has nothing to do with lift, we now note that either the shape of the airfoil has to do with drag reduction, or it does not. There are no other possibilities. So ... If the shape of the airfoil has nothing to do with drag reduction, we should prefer flat plate wings since, even though turbulent flow sets in immediately behind the leading edge, the flat plate wing is trivially easy to manufacture. But this immediate onset of drag-creating turbulence makes the flat plate wing inefficient, so we don't prefer it. Therefore the shape of the airfoil must in fact have to do with drag reduction, and only with drag reduction, whether or not the airfoil designer chooses to adopt this viewpoint. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Person A may then go on to make the most outrageous statement of all, which is ... I don't have to give you a detailed theory of lift, and I don't have to give you a detailed theory of airfoil shape drag analysis. I only have to give you Newton's Laws, and I don't have to prove those either. :D xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Exactly this happened in Outer Marker during the Winter/Spring of 2008, with me being Person A and two dozen other people being Person B. I stuck to my guns and was roundly criticized for Refusing To Play Fair, and for Refusing To Respect The Opinions Of Others, and for Arrogantly Believing That He Is Always Right, and for the comission of a half dozen other Forum High Crimes And Misdemeanors That Ought To Result In The Expulsion Of This Terrible Person. With that background in hand, let's now summarize the forum dispute ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Person A presents his proof by dimensional analysis that all theories of lift must reduce to downward acceleration of air. Person B then says "Person A cannot possibly be right because everybody knows that wings are sucked up into the sky by the Bernoulli effect. This is because wings are curved on the top and flat on the bottom, and the air pressure is lower on the top, sucking the wing up." Person A will then point out that a flat plate wing will exhibit lift, deflecting air downwards just as required by Newton's laws, even though the plate is flat on top and flat on the bottom.. Person B may then say "Sorry, Bernoulli's equation clearly shows that wings are sucked up into the sky. This is because the air is flowing faster over the curved top of the wing than it is over the flat bottom of the wing." Person A will then point out that symmetric airfoils are curved on top and curved on the bottom, and that they exhibit Bernoulli flow on both their upper and lower surfaces, so by Person B's reasoning these wings must be being sucked both upwards and downwards, resulting in zero lift, which clearly is not the case. Person A might then even point out that aircraft with wings that are curved on top and flat on the bottom are capable of inverted flight which, from the Bernoulli viewpoint, ought to result in the aircraft being sucked downward to earth instead of upward to the sky. Person B may then say "You are dead wrong, Mister A, because I've believed all my life that wings are sucked up into the sky" ... ... Which is proof only of an unwillingness to process new information.

In this blog post we saw that lift derives from the downward acceleration of the relative wind, which has mass. Thus for any given value of indicated (repeat indicated) airspeed, the angle of attack must be the same regardless of altitude. This is because indicated airspeed is a direct measure of the ram air pressure -- of the rate of air mass flow over the wings. Some confirming experiments in FS will be found here. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Now ... Proof by simulator generally doesn't count as a proof at all. However, the results do support my argument. They make the chief assertion more believable in the eyes of those who are unwilling or unable, for whatever reasons, to follow the mathematics of the proof. So let's say that you know nothing of the lift-as-momentum assertion, and that you know only about the simulator results. If you're willing to accept those results at face value, you would be able to DERIVE the origin of lift from the angle-of-attack-versus-indicated-airspeed results alone ... Because the mathematics of the situation again are inescapable. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx If lift is a function only of angle of attack and indicated airspeed, as the simulator results say, this can only mean that lift is a function of angle of attack and the rate of air mass flow over the wing. There are no other possiblities. So one is then compelled to investigate the reason that lift relates to air mass flow. One is then led immediately to F=mA and the proof is trivial to complete.

That's how Lenin put it -- "The world is divided into the 'who' and the 'whom'." As a speaker of Russian I must say this: One of the things that fascinates me about this remark is that it means EXACTLY the same thing in Russian as it does in English. "Ktaw ee ktawm" has the very same sense that "who and whom" does. Translation neither adds nor takes away from this meaning. (Indeed the phrases are linguistically related, though you have to go all the way back to the Indo-European mother tounge to see this.) (to be continued)

Thread taken offline for editing.

Paxx, You thought this thread was disrespectful but you are oh so very wrong. It is you who have trashed the victims and their families -- by disturbing the peace of this cemetery of words. This being my blog and not the forums, I will say that you are clearly part of a huge problem called Political Correctness. You are unable to analyze (I already knew that) but you are also unable to read. When you see a red flag word you can only play the tape that you have been taught to play. Who gave you an exclusive on the use of the term 9/11? Is it because you know someone who has a friend whose brother died in WTC2? What makes those families more special than the family of the army sergeant out of Fort Carson who recently threw himself on a grenade so that his buddies might live? Where are the foundations raising millions of dollars to put up a skyscraper museum in memory of this man? Well, I have news for you. Most of my family died in the Nazi death camps, and there are people in the Middle East, and in Chechnya, and in Indonesia, and in a number of other places all around the world -- who want to wipe out the rest of my genetic heritage. It is in honor not just of we Americans but also of the people with whom I share a set of genes that I have these nightmares. That's why I called the Israeli embassy, because I'm a very good shot and was all set to become a paramilitary sniper in the conflict that may still lie in our collective future. You see, Paxx, after they come for me they will be coming for you, again, even though you aren't Jewish. That's what I was writing about. In relative terms the people of Israel, including the Arab citizens, face a 9/11 every week, sometimes every day. How dare you come into this thread.

I guess alexm doesn't want to come out and play. That's fine, I'll just have a conversation with myself ... Is the work of Andy Warhol art? You bet it is. Is the work of the lead animator who oversees the Erin E-surance commercials art? Absolutely. But these things are not traditional art. To understand them does not require a PhD in fine art, not that any art really does. I'm getting tounge-tied here. What I mean is, art critics and gallery owners get to decide what will sell for high prices and what won't, but pop art doesn't need any high priests, it only needs good artists. (to be continued)

FOJ, There is a long tradition in blues-rooted music of playing whole songs without ever getting out of D or whatever -- no chord progressions at all. So while I might have a different opinion were I familiar with the particular piece you guys had been playing, I have no problem with the one-key concept in principle. I'll cite as an example a funk oldies number I was listening to just last night, Play That Funky Music. The (very long) verses are all in ... what ... D sharp? Similarly the (long) second halves of the (very long) choruses are all in ... been so long ... what's the IV of D sharp ... B flat? This kind of thing works when the emphasis is on rhythm and melody rather than on harmony and melody. Over to you ... No ... One more thing. If musically speaking it sounds good and feels good, do it. As you must know by now there's a joy in playing that transcends simply listening. I'm also very familiar with hypnotic long songs. In fact, I have a James Brown track, 14 minutes of Rapp Payback, entirely in E I think -- and they simply faded it out. The actual recording could well have gone on another 14 minutes.

The Coal Mine Road store -- The Train Wreck -- was what Radio Shack calls a Z store. This is the smallest kind of store that the chain operates. Villa Italia was a Y store. Southwest Plaza was an X store, the largest kind operated by the chain. The terms X, Y and Z have something to do with square footage, X having the most floor space and Z having the least. But there is no predictable size for a given class of store, and certainly no standard layout. At Tandy headquarters in Fort Worth, TX the Radio Shack division maintains a "model store". This is an idealized X store with optimal square footage, and an optimal layout, and with the shelves, bracket racks and piers being fully stocked so that the model store displays at least one of everything in the catalog, which contains about 7,000 items. (!) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx But Coal Mine was small even by Z store standards. It had only a small stockroom in the back, and the front of the store had no more square feet than a large apartment bedroom. The store was laid out as a narrowish rectangle so its length made it seem larger than it actually was. Space was tight at Coal Mine. As a result only a modest subset of all the stock could be held in the front, and it required constant maintenance to keep the front stocked with the fast-moving items. Everything put out up front meant that five other things were not being put out. Furthermore, the store normally was staffed only by the manager plus a part timer (me!) from some other store, and normally only one of those people was on duty at any given moment. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The manager of that store, Tony, had run into some problems in his personal life and had begun leaving the store unattended, locking it up during the day while he was absent. Also, he had mostly stopped maintaining the retail aspects of the store. Unpacked boxes of small parts were everywhere, the large item stock was dusty, the floor un-vacuumed, the items not priced, and so on. It was a mess not just to the trained eye but also to the customer eye, and that's why I called it The Train Wreck. Before I was transferred to Southwest Plaza the Coal Mine manager was being backed up by one of Big John's employees. However, shortly after my transfer this person was let go and the job of supporting Coal Mine fell to me. So there I was, working full time at Southwest Plaza, but usually the late shift because my early shifts mainly were spent at one of my other regular stores, Villa, 6th & Federal, or Coal Mine. Because the managers of those other stores were willing to repay Big John for my extra hours and my overtime pay, I was actually working more nearly 60 hours a week than the normal limit of 35. I almost never got a day off. This was fine with me because I was getting exactly the attention and training that I had hoped for when I first walked into Big John's store back in November. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx EDIT 18sep-08 ... You know what folks? I'll finish the story some other time and go directly to the ending. To make a long story short ... Little John and I saved Big John's job one evening. To do it we had to break the rules Big Time. By then I had been offered a high paying job with MCI, a job that found me rather than the other way 'round. So I had already given notice when the Tandy security people came into the store and started asking a bunch of hard questions regarding what Little John and I had done while doing the financial close during the evening of Big John's screwup. Therefore I had nothing to lose ... I told Security that the whole thing had been my idea, that Little John did not know what I had done, and that their quarrel was with me and not him. I don't know whether the security people took me at my word. I do know that they asked me why I had done it, and I told them that Big John was a terrific store manager, and that Tandy would be shooting themselves in the foot if they gave this big store turnaround artist and ultimately good guy the boot -- for what amounted to taking the bank deposit home with him. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I've no idea whether Tandy would ever hire me back. I don't know what happened to Little John. I don't know what happened to Big John. I don't know any of these things because a day later I started work at MCI in Colorado Springs -- a commute that took me south instead of north. I do know this: When I told Security that it had been my idea, in a way this was true. Little John and I were doing the financial close together with me operating the corporate network computer. When I spotted the discrepancy I immediately called it to Little John's attention. "Oh God" he said. I looked at him, he looked at me, and we both nodded our heads meaning that we each understood what had to be done. I cooked the books that evening, unwinding the fraudulent transaction the first thing the next day. It never occured to me that HQ might monitor each store for exactly this kind of transaction, debooking a sale the night before and then rebooking it the next day. You see, if you were to keep doing that you could walk off with the proceeds of the initial sale transaction and nobody would ever be the wiser -- unless The Great Computer In The Sky spotted the activity. In my case it was spotted the next day, and the Security people were in the store the day after that. I don't regret what I did. It was the Right Thing regardless of company rules. And I thank both Pete and Big John, and the other store managers in the district, for giving me the opportunity to earn back my self respect, and for trusting me with their jobs. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I see that the back story needs to be closed out. When I told big John that I would be moving on to MCI, he told me "Gee, that's really too bad. We [the district] were thinking about giving you the Z store." By which he meant Coal Mine.

In a post in the FSX forum I said that good art is whatever good artists say is good art, and that good music is whatever good musicians say is good music. alexm responded by saying ... No way, no how! I mean this in a friendly way... but you've crossed way over a line with me with that statement! Music and art are so incredibly subjective, I don't see any way to defend that, although I will respect that many will attest to its veracity. Even good musicians/artists will disagree on what is "good." Music happens to be my area of expertise, btw. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx alexm, I was paraphrasing what I really meant in order to make my point to Herk. What I really mean is ... Art is whatever good artists say is art. Music is whatever good musicians say is music. Now ... I disagree that the terms "good art" and "good music" are 100% subjective. They are largely subjective but far from 100% subjective. Before moving on to the subject of music, I will say that I'm not an artist in the normal sense because I lack the mechanical skills. I can't even draw stick figures. Even if I had the technical skills, I don't have the mind's eye ability to hold a vision in front of me as a layer superimposed over reality so I could paint the vision. But I know good art when I see it, just as I know good music when I hear it. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I'm a former musician and a former producer of cover music for computer bands. If you scrounge around in my blog here you'll find relevant threads. However, I can only talk about oldies. This is because I basically stopped listening about 1985 or so when the record companies began hyping the likes of Rick Astley, and when early hip-hop and rap, both of which I love, began their descent into the degenerate filth of gangsta music. My professional experience taught me that there is a difference between "good" and "like", and between "bad" and "dislike". So as I wrote elsewhere in my blog, there is plenty of bad music that I love (like "Shotgun"), and plenty of good music that I hate (like "Every Breath"). Yet in the end all music is, at some level, good. It all has some kind of redeeming quality. If it didn't, it would be cacaphony and not music. So even though I detest "Walkin' On Sunshine", which is dreadful music, there is a level at which it's not dreadful. It's the arrangement that was dreadful, and the recording was badly produced on top of it all. I could do a slow light jazz arrangement of this song that would be okay. Not great, but okay, and certainly much better than what hit the airwaves. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Anyway, I'll turn the floor over to you now, and then we'll talk, yes?

No posts to this thread, please.

Don't be afraid, Amy, it's not going to hurt. Not like the fire hurts. And we'll be able to breathe again. Just pretend it's a dream, okay? Hold my hand, it'll be just like flying. Time to go now. See? Just like flying. Keep your eyes closed. I'm squeezing your hand as hard as I can and I'm not going to let go. Just enjoy the wind. Take a deep breath. Just enjoy the wind. Listen to the wind. It's such a nice

How about those Mets, Joe. Did you catch the game last night? By the way, hit 76 for me, will you? Thanks. As I was saying ... ... ... ... What just happened? Did you feel that? Did you hear that? Geez, I think the building's going to fall over. And the automatic car retarders took hold. Did you feel that? Why is the ceiling on fire? Why is somebody trying to put the fire out with kerosene? I'm soaking wet with that smelly stuff. What's going to happen if the flames