It’s finally here; The Simple, Modern Sorapot by Joey Roth.   Mr. Roth sold out the first 300 and with the 2nd batch, he included a pack of some of his favorite tea from The Simple Leaf; a sample 1 oz pack of Honeybee Nepal Oolong.  That to me was more than worth the wait.  He had the kindness to notify me and ask if I could wait, and I agreed.  What else could you do as a customer but accept his reward for not minding to wait?  That’s customer service right from the top.  Now, for the details.  I arrived home after a long 4 day trip not expecting anything except my Surefire G2 LED Replacement Flashlight and low and behold, something else was awaiting my unwrapping! 

The first picture is of the Mr. Roth Seal on top of the outer packaging.  Not much to say here except that the package weighed in at 5 lbs.  Next, compensation for the long wait was a 1 oz. bag of tea and a coupon for my next order at The Simple Leaf which was perfect because I haven’t found a great place in Atlanta to buy some fresh leaves just yet.  I faintly remember that there was a place in the Lenox Square Mall, but it’s just too far to go check out.   Here’s are two more pictures before you have to click on more to keep on reading.  Check out the string and the innards! 

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Surfing around the web today, I came across a couple of interesting sites. 

Health: Avoid These 9 Worst Food in America by Lifehacker

It’s always just interesting to read about the various foods that are out on the market.  One of my friends recommended that I check out the Men’s Health’s website that is dedicated to what to eat and what not to eat conveniently called, “Eat This, Not That!“  It has quite a few interesting comparisons.  One that I was a little shocked by was the listing of 15 Secret Restaurant Swaps where they compared the McDonald’s Big Mac to the Burger King Whopped with Cheese.  Guess what?  You’re better off eating at McDonald’s.  (I’m not sure if that’s with or without the secret sauce but if you are trying to lose some weight, I’m sure that you are better off without it.)  Oh yeah, Chick-fil-A was the only A+ on their list of fast food chains being that they don’t have any one sandwich cross the 500 calorie mark.  That’s of course if you don’t add on the awesome tasting special honey BBQ sauce on top of your Chargrilled Chicken Club with bacon included…my personal favorite!

Another neat thing that I found after getting annoyed by not being able to read the Wall Street Articles in their entirety was a Firefox add-on that enables you to spoof a website such as digg.com.  Directions and more details can be found at the link provided below.  Now, I’m able to peruse the WSJ without having to pay!!!   I just cut and pasted the directions here.  You could just also skip it and go directly the the link below for the full article. 

Remember that the Journal is set up to disarm its pay gate if it thinks you’re coming from Google News or Digg. In order to get free access, then, you’ve got to convince the Journal that you’ve clicked on a link on one of those sites. How to do that?

The technical name for this is “referer spoofing” (with the misspelling). Spoofing is an easy thing to pull off in Firefox — all you’ve got to do is download this add-on, refspoof.

Now follow these steps:

• Go to WSJ.com.
• In the refspoof toolbar’s “spoof:” field, type “digg.com.”
• Also in the refspoof toolbar, click the R icon, and select “static referrer.”
• That’s it. Click around the site; the WSJ thinks each click is coming from Digg. The WSJ is now yours for free!

Here’s the link that I promised if you want to read the whole article. 

The Wall Street Journal’s Web site is already (secretly) free by Machinist at Salon.com

Leave a comment below on what are some of your interesting sites for the day!

Well, today is day one of the 45 days until my second 10K.  It’ll be here in San Diego around Fiesta Island (without hills) so it shouldn’t be that punishing compared to my first one.  Today’s quick “back to workout” mode consisted of a 20 minute light jog (treadmill speed 5.0 with a little speed increase during the last few minutes) followed by some stretching and quick weight lifting.  I’m not trying to get bigger, just lose some weight, tone up and shape up.  I don’t want to end up hurting for an entire week. 

Today’s flight were pretty nice a long and uneventful.  Remember that these ones are the best!  So far my food intake for the day has consisted of water, a Triple Threat Power Bar, and a couple dips into my trail mix bag.  Time now is 12 hours after I’ve waken up.  I think I better replenish. 

For anyone that is drinking tea, wants to start drinking tea or for anyone that is even slightly interested in the world of teas, you can jump start your hobby with this new tea pot designed by artist Joey Roth.  After almost a full year of constant retooling, Joey Roth has finalized the design and has made the Sorapot available with an initial run of 300 pots.  There’s not much else that you can say about the pot except for the fact that its beautiful!  It’s something that you can display, converse about and even watch as your tea leaves unfurl in the glass tube.  Not ever has tea been brewed this elegantly.  Some people are already referring to this pot as the one that would have been if designed by apple.  What do you guys think?

Below is a picture of the final design for the Sorapot. 

Well, after being late in the morning due to boarding, late out of the Bahamas due to a malfunctioning left pack, and late in Atlanta due to maintenance on a tire repair, what else could have went wrong?  Well, as it turns out, after I competed my walk around 40 minutes prior to departure, right before we closed the door, a ramp agent came up the stairs and said that I should inspect some liquid that was leaking from the aft fuselage body.  I approached the area, touched the fluid, smelled it and knew that we were going to be a while.  I called the captain outside to inspect the issue and from there on, it was only a matter of time before we were require to deplane, and re-board another aircraft, get it ready to fly, fuel it up and preflight it. 

The issue that I had was that we were being told that the APU could be deferred because it had its own separate fuel line and therefore if we did not operate it, we should be fine.  Now, let me just ask, would you be fine if you knew your plane had a leak and they still wanted you to ride in it.  I mean, yeah, we wouldn’t use the APU, but maintenance wasn’t even sure, at the time, exactly what the problem was.  Kind of sketchy eh?  The maintenance guy told me that their policy had a loophole in it and it was 1) They were not allowed to defer anything on the aircraft if it was leaking any type of fluid but 2) If the item was leaking and stopped leaking being tagged inoperable, then the aircraft was okay to go. 

That’s that really besides that we got to the overnight (White Plains, NY) 2 hours later than scheduled and the captain and I went to an awesome Italian Restaurant in downtown Armonk call La Scala where I had some Veal alla Scala.  It was tremendous!!!  So fresh and so good!  It cost a pretty penny but as I’ve always said, good food has no price.  You can’t eat your money either so at least enjoy it!

I read an interesting article tonight on Star-Telegram.com about the state of the the airline industry in reference to hiring pilots.  I think that you might find it disconcerning, but I don’t blame you.  I want to assure you that I got some of the best training, but I did pay heavily for it. 

The flight to Montgomery, AL was pretty packed but for a change, it was nice to walk in a terminal without physically running into people left and right.  I definitely understand that a full terminal is a good one, but sometimes it just gets too ridiculous!  You have to wonder if fire marshals approve of some of the airport terminals with all the record breaking passenger traveling that is being these days.

It was also particularly pleasant because I got the chance to grab dinner without having to wait in a line for more than 10 minutes at one of the busiest restaurants.  I got to eat it my chicken salad, french roll and banana nut muffin top from Atlanta Bread Company (all for just under $4.00 –> a trade secret of regional pilots) right next to my gate and just relax.

I only had two legs today and the last one from Atlanta to Montgomery was quick being only a 27 minute flight.  Taking off to the west and landing to the west, it all just makes for a nice way to end the work day.  Why couldn’t this ever be on the 4th day of my trip!?

It’s my 5th year anniversary with Adelle!  Happy Anniversary babe!  Time definitely has gone by fast huh!?  Sorry I couldn’t be there, but Christmas and New Year’s this year will top last years for sure!

Here’s a picture of us on Halloween 2002!  We weren’t actually going out yet, but this was the beginning of it all! Who knew back then that I would end up a pilot?

Oh yeah…there’s a really cool website too that is a basic dictionary but it serves the words in record lightning speed!  Check it out at http://definr.com/ and try typing in anything!  It’s awesome!

The schedules were released yesterday and I updated the link to the right to reflect my latest flight schedule.  Take a peek and if you happen to be in the same city as me, give me a ring. 

I’m not sure what happened to my website last night, but it seems like the additions were erased and a couple of other things were made unavailable.  I think that its back up, but you tell me if there are some missing links. 

I’m in Providence, Rhode Island for Thanksgiving just sitting in a hotel room.  My captain bought us lunch during our 2 hour layover in Columbia, SC and we called it an early night because we all woke up around 4:00AM!  What an awesome holiday!!!