Both presidential campaigns are exploiting the economic downturn.  Lefty claims that Bush caused this mess are implausible, as are Righty claims that electing Obama would launch the mess into some kind of Great Depression II overdrive.

The worry I feel about the market tanking is worry for other people.  58 year-olds, employees of cash-hungry startups, etc.

I don’t expect to lose my job, and if I do, I expect to find another one.  If the value of our home plummets too far to recover before we want to move, our first child can either live in a small apartment, or we can move somewhere way cheaper and keep the apartment as an investment.  If I feel some deep yearning to start a business at a time when no venture capital is available, then I’ll just have to build a great product for a market I know well, and be profitable almost immediately.  As the market continues to tank, I expect to funnel even more income into the riskiest-rated 401(k) funds on the menu.

And the thing is, my situation isn’t anywhere near the upper edge of the national “financial stability” bell curve.  Am I just willfully ignorant and/or mildly self-delusional, or is there something deeply rational about this feeling that I, and most other people under 45 or so, should listen to current financial news with an interest that’s fundamentally devoid of fear?

I looked at procon.org for the first time today, to try to fill in many gaps in my understanding of what McCain and Obama have actually said about their positions.

Issues where I prefer McCain’s position:
pro globalization, clear anti eminent domain invocation for non-public use, pro nuclear power, anti ethanol subsidies, pro migration away from social security

Issues where I prefer Obama’s position:
pro abortion choice, pro explicit and sustained sex education, pro “attacking Iraq in 2003 was a mistake”, anti “don’t ask don’t tell”, pro aggressive federally-funded stem cell research, anti immunity for telecoms complicit in warrantless wiretapping cases

Supposed differentiators that aren’t swaying me due to my own ignorance and/or the candidates’ lack of clarity, or (least likely) a personal sense that the universe lacks sufficient example data with which a totally informed, reasonably intelligent person of moral standing could possibly make a sufficiently-informed choice:
No Child Left Behind, timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, supposed difference of opinion on Mexican border fencing, medical marijuana (both candidates are anti federal raids in states with pro weed laws), Bush tax cut permanence, gun control, universal health care

One last Scheneir hat-tip post for the day.  Read this: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/09/secret_military.html

…then marvel at the high-quality snark in the comments.  A frothy blend of deadpan humor and real insight.

I wouldn’t say I “studied” for the FAA written test this past weekend, per se, but I watched a lot of digital videos to prepare for some of the final stages of my private pilot training.  Short field / soft field techniques, medical information related to flying, radio navigation, night flying, preparing / filing / executing VFR flight plans, using the E6B “flight computer” (slide rule), weight and balance calculations, obtaining and making sense of various types of weather briefings, and a LOT about weather itself.  Good times.

First, a big heart-felt thank you to my mom’s friends, who pitched in to help Erica and I enter the exclusive club of washer and dryer ownership.  Now part 1 of a related saga.

Previous 3 weeks: looking forward to Saturday delivery of our new appliances.

Thursday night: call from delivery peeps confirming delivery for “tomorrow”; Erica calling back but getting an odd and non-committal response to change plans; FC calling and getting ahold of someone less surly and more informed.

Saturday morning at 8am: doorbell; FC and delivery guy looking skeptically at rear basement hatch; refusing delivery of dented dryer (with full support of delivery guys, who gave me a hotline to the right person at Lowe’s to get things straightened out with no additional hassle); looking on amazed as the guys got the washer through the hatch, installed, and tested in under 10 minutes.

Sunday morning: heard the truck pull up, two more nice delivery guys with undented dryer.  More skeptical looking at the rear basement hatch, but the dryer went in with millimeters to spare.  Moving straps FTW.  No additional 30-amp outlet OR dryer exhaust port in the basement, so no full install/test yet.

Today: getting in touch with building maintenance dude to see when the power and exhaust situation can get rectified, since our original punchlist had “washer/dryer hookups” plainly specified and agreed-to.

In other “less need for quarters” news, I picked up an EZPass on our way back from Utica last weekend, and am surprised at the qualitative quality-of-life improvement.  I didn’t realize how much energy I was throwing away worrying about keeping cash for pike tolls in the car, and this morning I actually used my cup holder to hold…a cup of iced coffee.

Second dual flight in the 172SP yesterday morning.  I got some more of my confidence back on the radio, and overally things went well enough that my CFI said he’d talk to the head instructor about whether they’d let me solo again without another semi-formal stagecheck ride.  Nice gesture, I thought, but I wasn’t really sure I was ready yet.

Another lesson earlier this evening.  Looked a little cloudy leaving work, but the weather was great at Hanscom.  6500 broken, ceiling around 25000, light winds, cooling off but nowhere near dew point, nice light.  The air really starts to smooth out toward dusk, too.

When I got there, my CFI (Ben Wilder at EFA, recommended) said the head instructor gave him the go-ahead to let me solo at his discretion, and basically left it up to me.  The rest of that conversation went something like this:

FC: “How about tonight?”
BW: “Sure.”

So I pulled out my medical / student pilot cert, Ben scribbled in the necessary magical incantations, we did some work in the pattern [touch and go's, unintended no-flapper approach, short approach (blown, went around), simulated engine-out at pattern altitude (glove save), etc.]

So then we landed, went back to the ramp, pulled off the taxiway, and Ben got out.  I called ground control, taxied to runway 29 via Sierra and Echo, re-ran the engine runup checklist, switched over to tower frequency, taxied up short of the runway threshold, called the tower, and sat there for a few minutes while mad peeps came in for the evening.  After like 5 or 6 planes landed, tower homepiece thanked me for my patience (dude please, you’re all doing me a favor) and cleared me onto the runway.

Two touch-and-go’s and a full stop.  I wish I could say there were no alarms and no surprises, but I actually got confused about who was ahead of me in the pattern queue at one point, and turned base (the turn before you turn ‘final’, or onto the runway heading) a little earlier than I should have.  There was plenty of room between me and the dude I was supposed to follow, so it wasn’t dangerous per se, but had I been looking at the right aircraft I definitely would have waited to make that turn.

The thing is, I had a slight twinge of doubt as I started to make that turn.  I looked behind the dude I thought I was following, to see if there was anyone there I missed, and I didn’t see anybody.  Turns out I wasn’t looking in the right place, because the dude I was supposed to follow hadn’t really been in the pattern.  He got sequenced in on a longer base/final leg, so he was on like a 3 mile final.  Even though I’d extended my downwind leg a bit for spacing, I wasn’t 3 miles east of the field yet, so if I’d turned base a lot earlier I might have actually cut the guy off.  Not scary, really, just worth learning from.  Trust that twinge of doubt.  Check three times, and if you’re still not sure, ask.

Anyway, good times.  Maneuvers were silky; radio work wasn’t perfect but pretty good.  Prolly one more supervised solo before I can just schedule solo time on my own.  Within sight of the furthest I’ve ever been with this.  When I pass the written, I’ll probably be less than 15 hours away from my license.

ps - totally awesome Navy jet landed while we were flying dual in the pattern.  The guy even used the radio like a badass.

“…for when that brilliant plan you had the night before to balance a plate of quiche on another plate of pie, while navigating your narrow back staircase, in the dark, (n-1)(mod n) sheets to the wind, didn’t really work out how you’d hoped.”

Thanks to all for an awesome birthday party!  The food, beverages, and conversation were so good that the lack of music was a feature.

The “it’s cool, I’m not going to keel over or suddenly decide to crash on purpose” button:

Renewed my FAA Class III airman’s medical certificate yesterday, combo’d with a new Student Pilot cert.  My eyesight has gotten a little worse since last tested; the doc opined that by my next renewal I’ll probably need corrective lenses.  If I were going for a Class 1, I think I’d need them right now.  So within the next five years, I’ll probably be able to live my dream of wearing totally hot eyeglass frames.

The “I’m local; please dip the broomstick in lube first” button:

Today, received a reprint of a January 2008 utility bill to facilitate residential exemption discount for FY2009 real estate taxes.

1. Tom Waits show in ATL was awesome, and it was great to spend the weekend with Erica without thinking about work once.
2. My locationLogger iPhone app is now successfully communicating (via JavaScript) with a Google Maps API object embedded inside a UIWebView, and mapping/badging the coordinates returned by the iPhone Simulator’s CLLocationManager instance.  It’s trippy to be programmatically generating JavaScript inside a compiled, client-side application, which controls objects defined in a static webpage that was served from the cloud.
3. I was using Coda’s FTP slickness to work with the local/remote Google Maps API stuff, but I decided to stress it: upgraded the version of WordPress serving this blog.  That mostly seems to have worked out, but now I’ve got weird unicode-looking stuff in all my previous posts.  Not Coda’s fault.

Went all the way out to the office and back yesterday, probably about 21mi total.  Definitely tired; lots of coasting on the way back.  Also, somewhat disconcerting hand tingling / mild finger numbness afterward…a sign of bad cycling posture or technique, resulting in higher-than-healthy stress on the nerves running through the middle of the palm, between the two pads.  Seat angle could actually be a factor; I may be putting extra stress on my bands and wrists to push my body back onto the wider part of the seat.  Cycling posture is also helped by stronger back muscles (gained by guess what, more cycling) and by providing more force from the legs (ditto).

So, not surprisingly, I’ve got a ways to go before clicking off 10 (healthy) miles every morning and evening (especially with work gear aboard), but it seems pretty doable.