I have been hunting for a house out of town for some time now.

Since “some time” is measured in months, one might become frustrated with the slow rate of progress. Lest you think better of your humble correspondent, you’d be wrong: I am becoming frustrated.

There have been several close calls, where a promising looking property was snatched up just before us. There was one where a property turns out to be grossly and intransigently overpriced, and thus unsold for many months. There are some that have only the slightest teaser amount of information posted on the public realty databases.

To that one or two real estate agents that might happen across this weblog, please consider when selling a home:

• posting detailed floor maps, such as on this service or this one
• being flexible with showing a property to out-of-town visitors, even if they might come unaccompanied by their buyer’s agent

• paying attention and responding to email

With GXRP back in glorious operation for a month now, more elaborate trips are happening. I came across this good writeup on turbulence by a Southwest jet captain. I plan to pass it on to first-timer passengers to help them relax when it gets bumpy.

Along with many colleagues, I attended our company’s mini-tradeshow: the Red Hat Summit in Nashville, TN.

The flights in GXRP were lovely, the Gaylord Opryland hotel was huge, my talk went all right, the food was great … but I want to comment a bit about the music. Particularly, the variety show at the famous “Grand Ole Opry”.

I haven’t been much of a fan of country music, but there are plenty of them out there, and I’m starting to see why. Where else can one hear crooning earnestly about subjects like:

• the changing relationship between father and daughter as she finds a boyfriend
• ivory-grip Colt ’45
• one’s favorite pickup truck
• a collection of virtues: honesty, simplicity, family love
• unabashed patriotism (“Stand up for the USA”)

• joy of baseball

All sorts of sappy stuff, if one comes in with the grey-tinted glasses of modern cynicism. It might even twitch pretension sensors like my own reservations about 1960s anti-war folk music, or its icons. And yet, the values being sung about tend to be so positive and gentle and human.

This article points out an interesting tendency amongst some social engineers.

The article discusses the likely aftermath of a motorcycle accident where the rider was found to be … gasp … un-helmeted. Some blame the US state in question for not legislating helmets. The article observes:

I wonder how many women who piously preach that the government can’t tell us what to do with our bodies typically vote for helmet laws that tell people, uh, what they can do with their bodies.

It reminds me of an analogous though more obvious pair: the concurrent promotion of free speech (such as to protest some out-of-favour politician) and the demonization of “hate speech” (any repugnant ideological expression). Or that peculiar spectacle of some environmentalists: do-as-I-say (use a horse & buggy) not-as-I-do (use chauffeured SUVs and jets to hop from speech to speech).

In the news last few days: a possible North Korean long range missile test.
In the news the day after, if the US military had a sense of humor: a live test of the missile defense system shooting down the North Korean test missile.

This year’s visit to the canadian aviation expo was absent of gaffes but also of gawks.

We squished five-and-a-half people into GXRP on Sunday morning, and headed over to the Oshawa municipal airport for this annual event. While in previous years we drove over, this time we took the plane, just for the change.

Special air traffic procedures were in effect to guide the expected hundreds of visiting airplanes into a single slow arrival queue. GXRP has rarely flown as slowly (at “blue line” speed, at the point of safety discomfort) as during the last ten minutes of this flight. The expected hundreds turned out to be just a few dozen this day, so we did not have to negotiate Oshkosh-level aerial crowds.

Unfortunately, the trip rather than the destination was worthy of note. The expo event itself was disappointing:

• steep cash-only admission fees, not discounted for fly-in or COPA-membership visitors, like in previous years
• lack of well-signed ticketing/entry/exit points
• burly-acting air cadets on security guard duty
• no baby-needs facilities, despite a good number present
• entire exhibition small enough to cover it in two hours at a slow (infant walk limited) speed
• not enough airplane traffic to wow fans

• no special staple displays: old or large airplanes; perhaps they all left on Saturday

As much as it pains me to pan anything aviation related, this just was not worth the time. It was neither as cute & social as weekend fly-ins at many small airports, nor as meaty as the US events being grasped toward (Oshkosh and Sun&Fun).