The good new of the week

I don't have to go to hospital! That was one huge reliev when I was laying on the couch at the doctor's.

It all startet on Tuesday late evening when I almost puked my guts out. No sleep at all that night, but on Wednesday - I stayed at home that day - things seemed to improve a bit. On Wednesday evening the pains in the guts came on big time and I thought I just had an occlusion. But in the night I got diarrhea and the pain in the guts got worse.

The very next day a pharmacist refused to sell me medication against occlusion since the symptoms led him to the assumption that I had appendicitis.

DAMN!

I don't want to go to hospital! Not in this wonderful springtime. Not when they need every single employee in our company. NOT AT ALL!!!

But since my health condition got worse throughout Thursday I had to face the fact that there was probably something going horribly wrong in my belly. So this morning I called the doctor's and declared an emergency. They booked me at 9 in the morning - and I was alone with no car. The doctor is in the next village, and I couldnt possibly walk or sit on a bicycle.The pain got worse...

Fortunately my brother went to work late gave me a ride to the next Mobility car. So at least I could drive to and from the doctor's, how I would get back home was not of a major concern to me then.

So there I was on the couch, telling the doctor where it hurts - and believe it or not: 'That's just a flu...' She subscribed me some strong medication on a biological basis and told me to come again when I start to get high fever.

Lucky me. I'm home, and now that the pressure is off the pains are slowly disappearing. Walking is good, just sitting around triggers the pains again.

Humor in the logbook

Every registered aircraft in the world - especially those belonging to an airline - has a logbook where the pilot reports failures or occurences during the flight. In airlines these logbooks are called 'Gripe Sheets', and whenever the plane reaches its homebase mechanics check these sheets, deal with the problems quoted by the pilots and confirm and explain the solution for the problem in the gripe sheet.

For quite some time abstracts from Qantas gripe sheets occur in the internet, and the mechanic's solutions somethimes are really funny. I don't have any evidence of the accuracy of these quotes, but I had a lot of fun reading them. Have fun too!

(P = The problem logged by the pilot.)
(S = The solution and action taken by the engineers.)

P: Left inside main tyre almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tyre.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on backorder.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what they're there for.

P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget.

Bird causes mayhem at Zurich Airport

A runaway-bird from the zoo at Zurich causes sheer chaos at Zurich Airport - furtunately only a movie. The story: An american software-company soon releases a panel / cockpit for the Airbus 320 in Flight Simulator X. For the teaser they asked two Flight Sim buffs from Switzerland to make a movie in Flight Simulator. Here's what they came up with.



Expecially funny: The swiss accent of the controller of Zurich Aiport. Watch and laugh...

Flightforum Fly-In 2007

Imagine the Swiss Airforce Base at Lodrino (Ticino) with the mandatory barbwire-fence and tight security-checks at the gates. And now imagine 60+ civilian General Aviation planes landing at this Airforce Base. Impossible? Let's see...



I flew from Birrfeld LSZF (Argovia, close to Lupfig) to Lodrino. here are some sample pics, below's the link to the large file with 55 pics.

Mellingen

Dramatic views near Brauwald:

Brunnen

Rigi

Staufen

And here's the link to the complete file:

http://www.pfriedli.ch/sternflug2007/sternflug_2007_e.htm

Have fun!

Faithless

Music is a strange business, and I’d like to think of the business-part of it for a moment: Living in Europe you get loads of American bands travelling through Europe, but many European bands – although super-stars in Europe – are mainly fresh water as soon as they leave the continent.
Roby Williams is such an example, that kid’s been trying to get into the American market ever since he left Take That in the early nineties. Another – though less famous – example is Faithless. The duo from London – with a third man behind the scenes – that’s been around for some 10 years now has revolutionized Trance, Tecno and Trip Hop with their sound-experiments. For years Faithless have been the only Techno-Trance band who played their songs live on stage with a complete band. Every album has a different key, and the new one ‘To All New Arrivals’ makes no difference: The loud Tecno-Sound known from songs like ‘Insomnia’, ‘Salva Mea’ or ‘God Is A DJ’ is gone, and the music is very relaxing now – almost with a touch of Pink Floyd. And again they’ve had a good hand in choosing the additional musicians: Where else would Cass Fox’ voice fit in better that in Faithless – and the footprints left by names like Dido didn't make that an easy task.

Last night Faithless played in Winterthur. The hall wasn't all too big, only about 2000 people. This gave the concert more the ambience of a club-concert. Maxi Jazz was at his peak again, Sister Bliss showed her typical British coolness all through the show. And as usual the show was breath-taking! Audiences in Switzerland tend to be rather standoffish, but Faithless is one of the few bands that get the laziest crowd jumping. I guess the example – taking from a show a couple of years ago – says more than a thousand words...

The blogger-system played a trick on me: Although I submitted the GMT-post on April 1 early morning, it was still displayed as March 31. I leave it up to you to figure out what that means... ;-)

But here is something a bit more real: Isn't it amazing what you can do with houses...

http://www.geogreeting.com/view.html?zdMgAOiq+g7p4ngS+mM4UViA+gE0J.7S+ciWY

Anyway, have fun trying it out on http://www.geogreeting.com

Greenwich Main Time

Time is a strange thing, as Pink Floyd already remarked in their song with that very title. The moments come and as you still try to hold them they’ve become only memories already. No-one has ever been able to conserve time, not even a single millisecond.


Some egg-heads once thought a couple of decades ago that you might save some energy by setting all clocks forward one hour in spring just to set them backwards again in autumn. Normally these time-jumps result in rising accident-rates the day after the collective clock-setting, but no-one has ever been able to count the saved energy.


Another funny thing about time is that we don’t seem to have the same time all over the world. In Zurich it might be 9 in the morning when I pour my second cup of tea at work, while in Vancouver people are just laying down for sleep. Or in Singapore the masses are heading home from their job.


But now scientists in Switzerland have come up with an idea to really save energy by re-setting the clock. Energy that’s uselessly wasted for calculations concerning different time-zones. The thought was: Why can’t Switzerland being the country with the most accurate watches and clocks be the zero-point of time?

That would make it easier to calculate different times in the world, e.g. for communicating with Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo or Vancouver. Being in the time-zone of Central Europe you first have to look up the time-difference between Greenwich in England and the desired destination-time, and then add or subtract on hour, depending in which direction the destination is. So if Switzerland was on Greenwich Main Time this adding or subtracting wouldn’t be necessary and would save just a little bit of energy.

And now this: Our beloved federal government has decided to connect Switzerland to Greenwich Main Time! In order to avoid another wave of accidents this time-switch will take effect on Easter Sunday, since Monday is public holiday in Switzerland. What seems to be a rash decision was actually planned for a long time. Just to give you an example: Microsoft has already announced that there will be updates for both Windows XP and Vista, where the Swiss capital Bern is mentioned along with Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon and London. And of course these updates will be available from Sunday, 8 April, in all four languages of Switzerland – German, French, Italian and for Vista also in Rumantsch – and in English.

So, just one week after the ‘regular’ switch to summertime we will have another switch to Greenwich Main Time over the Easter Weekend, which will give us back the hour they took last weekend.

Good for all Easter Bunnies in Switzerland: They can sleep one hour longer this year before they have to hide all the Easter Eggs.