Daylight Savings: Good for you, BAD for me!!

While most of you are getting the opportunity to get an extra hour of sleep tonight, I'm in about the only position that is not benifiting from this glorious event. You see, I'm working a night shift tonight. So when the clock strikes 02:00, the magic of daylight savings will rewind time back to 01:00!

And this is a weekend shift, which spans 12hrs... so tonight will actually be a 13hr shift!! And then thanks to the glorious thing called "Salary" I wont be seeing any extra dimes as a result. Oh well... can't win them all I suppose.

I notice a couple of comments have surfaced.. thanks Garmy and the mystery typer... please, if you're going to leave a comment, leave a name at the end of it!! Otherwise I don't know who it is.

Brrr... it's getting cold tonight.. might just snow!

Windshield Crack!!!

Yup, nasty big crack in the windshield which I discovered this afternoon. I now exactly when it happened too. Driving home from work this morning, a semi passed in front of me and I heard a big bang on my windshield and I knew it was a rock. But I couldn't see the impact point anywhere and had just hoped that it was fine. WRONG. It hit right at the top of the windshield and because it was dark I couldn't see it. Then sometime over the next 8hrs, the impact area cracked down about 10 inches. Now I'll have to get that replaced. Thankfully I got the extra glass insurance on my car, but still, what a pain.

Aside from that I've put some more money into the car. No, not a mod, more of a Calgary necessity. I had a blockheater installed to combat some of the -30 days that will soon be approaching... brrrrr... how I look forward to those.

This past week I had zero flights, we haven't been very busy so there wasn't anybody for me to fly! So I had 5 days off. Got some errands done so it wasn't too bad. Still, would have liked to have flown somewhere. There'll be plenty of time for it though, as we roll into the busy months at AirSprint.

I'm officially an Albertan!?

I now have an Alberta drivers license and Alberta license plates and insurance for the wrx. I guess it's kind of official that I live here now. Not like when I was in Castlegar and it was only "temporary". This is pretty permanent. Even though I'm still kinda living out of boxes and suitcases. Now that winter has started hitting, it's going to be tougher and tougher to finish off this stupid basement. Can't wait until it's done and I can finally have my room set up nicely.

When I'm on layovers I've got a better room set up then at home!

Just counted the calendar days to Halloween. Thank god I'm working and my car will be in a secure parking lot at the airport. Our neighborhood has a lot of kids and I wasn't feeling too great about having them all walking around my car, banging into it and maybe even lighting some fireworks off nearby too. But no worries being at the airport. Then the next day it's off to superstore to buy some discounted candies.. =D Shelley (my roommate's girlfriend and co-owner of the house I'm living in) came back from the store today with Halloween decorations. It should be interesting when I get home in the morning to see what has happened to the house.

That's all for now, feel free to post comments if you'd like. You don't have to be a member. Updates when there's stuff to say, hopefully it'll be something along the lines of "I'm going to Arizona for 3 days!". =D

Medicine Hat

Ooooo... a 45 minute flight and I got to stay overnight in the fabulous Medicine Hat Best Western. =D

It actually wasn't too bad, the hotel room was quite nice and the food was excellent at the little Mediterranean grill that was next door (kind of reminded me of Olive Garden). But being on call, I was unable to enjoy a nice red wine with dinner, so a Coke had to suffice.

Not much to say about Medicine Hat, we didn't travel around very much, went for a walk in the freezing cold after dinner and found the cemetery by accident. When flying in though, I did make out one of the biggest "attractions" as it stood tall over the prairie landscape. Medicine Hat is home to the world's biggest tepee. Yup, that's right... 20 stories tall to be exact. Other than that, nothing much to right home about.

Upon leaving though, it had started to snow, and I had to continually brush the snow off the wings while we waited for the passengers to arrive. It was cold and snowy and not a pleasant setting. Finally we get everyone on board and took off into the clouds, we never did get on top of them and we were in the clouds all the way to the ground in Calgary. On the approach the Calgary tower gave us the current surface condition reports at the airport which were quite nasty: "braking action reported as POOR entire runway length, only 100' wide plowed down centerline of runway, taxiways and runway exits very slippery". But we landed without incident and I went about my business of scraping off the car and driving home in the winter weather.

Edmonton

Went to Edmonton for the first time today. Flew into the City Center Airport which is just north of the downtown area. The international airport is quite a ways south of the actual city. We took up some ppl who were all dressed up to go to some huge retirement party. While we were in the executive terminal area waiting around for them to finish at their party, there were a few other planes that had done the same thing, come for this guys retirement. From what I could gather it was someone pretty high up at Telus. We got to chat with some of the other pilots that were doing the same thing as us. Watched some tv there too.. and guess what was on?! Poker! I had about 3 other pilots all watching it with me and they were skeptical about watching poker (ie. boring to them) but by the end of it they were hooting and hollering at some of the plays being made.

Tomorrow I'm off to Medicine hat. I will log a crappy 1.5 hrs in my logbook and have to stay there for 2 days!! It's great to go long distances and stay the night somewhere, but it's freaking Medicine Hat.. it's a 45 min flight or 3hr drive away! Oh well, the hotel looks kinda decent. They've got full fitness facilities there, so I might just have to go and make use of them. Gotta kill quite a few hours in Medicine Hat.

Updates upon my return!

Poker Update

Hmm.. this site is turning into more of a poker tracker! Well.. that's not the intention, but I tell you that's what been most exciting in my life most recently. Well.. the flying is great and all, but it isn't paying off like the poker is.

Below I commented that I've made close to $2,000 USD and as you can see that was just on Sunday. Well, today I surpassed the $3,300 USD mark. And I've finally started to use some free online software to "track" my poker earnings with more detail.

Most of that new found $$$ came from a single game last night at higher limit table. I bought in for $200 and my one opponent had $400. He was playing VERY aggressively and I was barely calling anything, I've never seen so much money move so quickly. The crazy thing was that I just kept making hands and calling on his bluffs. I was starting to take some serious money off this individual. Everytime he was down from his $400 max buy in amount, he re-bought; I could tell he was just itching to take all the money back. I ended up walking away from that table after about 30 mins and was up to $700, for a profit of $500. It was very rare occurrence and I'll not be likely to do that again for quite some time. Especially when I saw my opponents today sitting down at THE HIGHEST limit tables on the poker site. So that $500 loss to me was pretty much just pocket change to this guy.

So there you have it. It's all good.

Hopefully my next post will be unrelated to poker =D

Poker isn't "Gambling"

I'd just like to take the time to mention this fact to everyone. While a lot of you know I play poker online for real $$$, I just want you all to know that it's not as bad as some of you might perceive it to be.

The variation of poker that I play (for those that don't know) is "No Limit Texas Hold-em". The game is described in fairly good detail here: www.texasholdem-poker.com

It is a game where there is a lot of number crounching and stratagizing involved, as well as knowing your opponents method of play. It's not like say 5 card draw poker which most ppl are familiar with - that game has more luck and bluffing involved.

I now consider myself a seasoned player online. I currently play online at www.ultimatebet.com and started there in January 2004 with a simple $25USD deposit. To date it has grown and grown and my earnings today sit at 12 dollars short of $2,000USD. Yup! I'm doing ok. I encourage other poker players to give it a try if they feel comfortable with it. There are lots of small limit tables and fun tournaments to play in. If you do decide to join a poker site, and choose Ultimatebet.com then use my poker account name "Drifting" as a referral and you and I are susceptible to a bonus on your deposit.

So that's my little schpeil. I realize some of your concerns with online gaming and things of this nature, but I did my research before getting into it and so far it has paid of quite nicely.

Until next time!

First Blog

I know a few ppl that have gone this route and I feel it could be prudent for me as well. Seeing as how I've moved away from most of my friends and relations, this seems like a good way for ppl to keep up on me, seeing as how I can't possibly keep everyone updated all the time.

So yeah, nothing really to report except hello. Welcome to the Blog. Check back often, I'll try and use this site to talk about my adventures in travel around north america with AirSprint. That's right... most of you know that I work for a company in Calgary flying to nice locations like Vegas and even the Arctic Circle was pretty cool. In any event, if you want to take a little look at the company I work for it's www.airsprint.com

The plane I'm flying (for everyone that hasn't a clue) is a Pilatus PC-12 Single Engined Turboprop aircraft. It's capable of flying at alitudes of 30,000 ft at speeds of 520km/hr. And we travel in style, these aircraft are completely decked out in business configuration (7 seats) and the cockpit is state of the art with a "glass cockpit". Too many bells and whistles to speak of.

So check back often and I'm sure they'll be some good stuff here.