Those of you who are of of the loop (reading this blog rather than following me on Twitter) are probably unaware of the fact that I went out and bought a plane.
I've been rotating my training using my plane (N8031W) and the flight school's aircraft, and recently switched over to mine full-time. I've been slowly working down my list of squawks and stuff I want to do to the plane.
Since it might be of interest to the one or two people who read this who are also into aviation, I figure I'll throw a few figures and numbers out there.
Purchase price of the aircraft (1965 PA28-180 "Cherokee 180C"): $35,000 (including getting it from TX to NY).
Misc. parts, maintenance, etc. since I bought the plane: About $3,500
Cost difference in training since switching to my plane: $0 (because of maintenance, buying parts, and because I've been flying more often).
As I write this all of my domains are in the process of being transferred from GoDaddy (who I've used since they first hit the scene years ago) to NameCheap (I considered going with Gandi, but wanted to avoid pricing in Euros because my credit card company sucks so hard they blow).
Most of you know that I've been generally dissatisfied with GoDaddy from an image standpoint, but have generally let the inertia of "I don't want to go through the domain transfer process" carry me along. That all changed today -- I can overlook their shitty business practices. I can excuse their slut-tacular commercials as "sex sells (even domain names)", but I draw the line at supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3621) - This is an absolute piece of shit legislation that threatens the most fundamental principles of free speech by stripping away even the minimal end-user and content-provider protections of the DMCA. Further in chosing its technological weaponry SOPA also manages to jeopardize the DNS system, one of the most basic technical underpinnings of the internet as we know it.
That anyone can support this legislative disaster in the making baffles me. That a technology company can do so is unfathomable. Mr. Parsons has literally gone to congress, pointed an elephant gun at his testicles, and said "Go on, pull the trigger. I like the pain."
I am not usually a fan of Reddit, but they have a nice thread about GoDaddy supporting SOPA, and the ensuing mass exodus of even folks like me who were sticking with GD because of inertia. I have also reproduced GoDaddy/Mr. Parsons' statement supporting SOPA in its entirety below the break. They also mention the BYEBYEGD NameCheap coupon that inspired the title of this post.
Holy Hairballs - A Blog update! Dayum it's been a while!
So, what the hell do I want to talk about? Well, I want to expound for a bit on the FAA/AeroNav proposal to start charging for digital chart data. And, because this is my blog, I can!
Really everything I want to say can be said by an appropriate LOLCat:
Those of you who are of of the loop (reading this blog rather than following me on Twitter) are probably unaware of the fact that I went out and bought a plane.
I've been rotating my training using my plane (N8031W) and the flight school's aircraft, and recently switched over to mine full-time. I've been slowly working down my list of squawks and stuff I want to do to the plane.
Since it might be of interest to the one or two people who read this who are also into aviation, I figure I'll throw a few figures and numbers out there.
Purchase price of the aircraft (1965 PA28-180 "Cherokee 180C"): $35,000 (including getting it from TX to NY).
