The Cost of Unpaid Experience
07/13/2013
By now, most of you have probably heard about local news station KTVU’s gaffe involving the names of the Asiana 214 pilots. If not, you can
aviation
Armchair Airplane Analysts
07/08/2013
In the wake of the Asiana 214 accident, it’s been interesting to observe the differences in how the government media response, mainly through the NTSB, has changed since the last large-scale aviation accident in the United States, the Colgan 3407 crash. In short: the NTSB, largely via its Twitter feed, has been communicating directly with Read More
Communicating Through the Eye of a Storm
06/04/2012
Blogger and fellow Planet Mozilla colleague Robert Accettura tweeted last week: It amused me because just a few days earlier, I was on a flight to Denver where rain showers over the airport necessitated air traffic control doing exactly this. Channel 9 was available this particular flight, and it was amazing to listen in1: Many Read More
A New Approach
04/03/2012
My first experience with release engineering was almost fifteen years ago: I did a stint with Netscape’s release engineering team for a summer. I know I didn’t quite get why at the time, but I was hooked immediately. My professional focus has been on build/release engineering ever since. At various times, it’s been a difficult Read More
The Chicken-Ship Method
12/15/2011
A friend sent me this yesterday: Passengers on a plane are waiting for the flight to leave. The aircraft entrance opens and two men walk up the aisle, dressed in pilot uniforms. Both are wearing dark glasses. One is using a seeing-eye dog, and the other is tapping his way up the aisle with a Read More
The Elevator Storyteller
08/30/2011
I recently read FastCompany’s interview with John Lilly. I knew John from my time at Mozilla1, so it was interesting to hear him talk about the developments after my tenure at the Corporation. One thing he said stood out to me: [W]hen I was at Mozilla the activity I did mostly was to tell the Read More
Last Minute Wikileaks Present
12/24/2010
Looks like the Wikileaks isn’t taking the holidays off, and has released one more secret document from the United States government, just in time for Christmas. Unlike the previously released diplomatic cables, this document was released without much fanfare or press attention. While it’s understandable that the government wouldn’t want to publish this information1, this Read More
The Cost of Failing to Brief Your Approach
10/28/2010
One of the blogs I follow, the Aviation Mentor, recently wrote a fascinating post about the Oakland VORTAC1. For the av-geeks in the crowd, I definitely recommend the couple of minutes’ reading. For those not here for the av-geekery, there was some road construction2 done at the Oakland airport about six years ago. Since that Read More
The L Word[s]
10/01/2010
Today marked the end of an air traffic control phraseological era: the clearance instruction “position and hold,” used when controllers want a plane to enter the runway environment but hold for the takeoff clearance, is to be used no longer. Most people probably wonder what the big deal about a few changed words is. It’s Read More