Buy an MTA Card for $19.05 or $22.30 after March 22nd, Trust Me

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Getting settled into the NYC life on reserve, you tend to have a lot of time to search and Google things. Toss in little bit of Yelp and various recommendations, it's easy to become inundated with awesomeness. But let's start off with a life little "hack." More specifically, don't give the MTA more money than you have to (leaving cash on a card) and load up a card with $19.05 or $22.30 after March 22, 2015.

Three quick options. But wait a minute. One button leaves you with the same $9.45 card, and gives a remainder of $1.95 after just three uses. The next one is even more frustrating: you end up with a $19.95 card, leaving a remainder after 7 uses of $2.45! That's right, the nickel we were talking about earlier. The last option does not leave you much better off. You'll get a $40.95 card, which leads to $0.95 on your card after you use 16 rides. So all three buttons presented leave quite a bit of "insufficient fare" on the card.

via I Quant NY

Now I just have to calculate how much to load on my card to zero it out since I was ignorant to this awesome information.

Lenting for You or Others?

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The dominant theme for the past few years that I can remember is when the priest first started speaking about not just giving up something for Lent to better yourself but to better others as well. Reiterated by Pope Francis in this awesome Time article, I'll try my best to do the same.

He often quotes the early Christian mystic John Chrysostom who said: “No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.”

Typed: Airbus A320!

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Add another aircraft to the list of ratings! Last Friday night, my sim partner Joe and I went into our Maneuvers Validation and killed it! It couldn't have gone any smoother. And just yesterday morning, we finished our Line Orientation Evaluation and passed! As I was making the final landing of the two leg trip, I started getting goosebumps of excitement and then when we set the parking brake and the instructor said we successfully completed our LOE, the relief could have been felt from miles away.

We prepared well throughout the last two weeks. I mean, it was around 4 weeks total after the initial indoc and such. Chair flying each event, going over callouts and non-normal procedures and studying our approaches over and over until we got bored. In the end, I couldn’t have asked for a better sim partner or instructors. Needless to say, I came out of the sim typed in the Airbus A320 Family.

In all honesty, I’ve been lucky throughout my aviation career. At CAPT, I got to meet three guys who would be my best man and groomsman and end up at ASA. At ASA / ExpressJet, I got hired with over a dozen friends and became friends with many more. Our new hire class was pretty awesome. When I transitioned aircraft to the CRJ 700/900, I had another guy from my new hire class during the same period and when I upgraded to Captain years later, I was partnered up with one of my best friends from CAPT.

Now at JetBlue, I was fortunate again to have a Captain going through requalification which allowed me to sit in my First Officer seat the entire time enabling me to really learn my flows and callouts. When you are in a paired setup, I feel like it’s the most productive as long as you keep working through the periods where the captain is getting instruction. When you’re paired with another new hire first officer, you get that seat half of the four hour allotment but then you are able to observe and watch the other guy. It just depends on how you learn I guess. Thanks again Joe for everything! Even though it was albeit on the small size, nine total, everyone in my new hire class has been awesome.

Now with a mandatory four days off, I’ll be released to Initial Operating Experience at JFK! I’ve included a few various pictures throughout the 6 weeks here at jetBlue University. Yea, that’s outgoing CEO Dave Barger, my favorite instructor Bob Stafford and the obligatory PBE picture. There’s also a picture of our raft, the no motion flight training device and of course the simulator.

The last picture in the gallery below is of one of the newest Airbus' in the JetBlue Mint fleet courtesy of Planespotters' Juan Carlos Aponte! The Transcon A321 Mint aircraft holds 159 passengers total with 16 in Mint class and 143 Core Expereince seats while the A321 Core Aircraft holds 190 passengers. Then there's the main A320 that holds 150 seats soon to hold more. Take a peep! It's sweet!

For details on all the aircraft, check out Our Planes!

WATCH: Fresh Off the Boat

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After watching the first two episodes of ABC’s “Fresh Off The Boat”, I’ll admit that I’m interested in giving the show a shot. It depicts some instances of my childhood and I can’t wait to see more. Particularly, Constance Wu's character Jessica shoots it out of the park! I’ll even pick up Eddie Huang’s book. Admittedly some of it is diificult to watch in that maybe because it was all true?!

Here's an excerpt from Eddie Huang in an interview that was posted in the New Yorker.

I didn’t understand how network television, the one-size fits-all antithesis to Fresh Off the Boat, was going to house the voice of a futuristic chinkstronaut. I began to regret ever selling the book, because Fresh Off the Boat was a very specific narrative about SPECIFIC moments in my life, such as kneeling in a driveway holding buckets of rice overhead or seeing pink nipples for the first time. The network’s approach was to tell a universal, ambiguous, cornstarch story about Asian-Americans resembling moo goo gai pan written by a Persian-American who cut her teeth on race relations writing for Seth MacFarlane. But who is that show written for?

We are culturally destitute in America, and this is our ground zero. Network television never offered the epic tale highlighting Asian America’s coming of age; they offered to put orange chicken on TV for 22 minutes a week instead of Salisbury steak … and I’ll eat it; I’ll even thank them, because if you’re high enough, orange chicken ain’t so bad.

He's hilarious so just give it a shot. If you can believe it, it's the first Asian TV family in over 20 years!

Coffee: How to French Press

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Sometimes I use my Hario V60. Other times, I French Press. If you needed a proper introduction to the French Press, check out the video below by Todd Carmichael.

Just remember the 1g of coffee to 17g water golden ration and you're set. Other details: I heat my water to around 196°F and use a 24 grind setting on my Baratza Virtuoso. I also have two presses; first the standard Bodum Medium Press and just a year ago Kickstarted the Espro Press which keeps it awesomely warm for continued goodness.

JetBlue Adds Apple Pay for InFlight Purchases

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With many airlines accepting only credit cards these days, I'm glad to see jetBlue getting onboard with Apple Pay. Bravo! And in a few months, we'll be paying with our Apple Watches! ^_^

Starting next week, passengers on select JetBlue Airways flights can use Apple Pay on their iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets to buy food, drinks and certain onboard amenities when the plane reaches cruising altitude. You'll be able to upgrade to available premium seats, too.

Update: Looks like a new app will go along the iPad minis too! Way to utilize tech jetBlue!

Apple Pay in the air, JetBlue will deploy iPad minis and NFC-enabled cases to more than 3,500 inflight crewmembers. In addition to the cases with Apple Pay compatibility, each iPad mini will be loaded with a custom-designed iOS app — The Inflight Service Assistant — which will give inflight crewmembers access to customer manifest and flight data to provide the best experience possible to JetBlue customers.

Hello 2015 Padres!

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AJ Preller is going bonkers! Supposedly, just a few minutes ago, we signed James Shield! If you don't know who that is, just watch some of the KC Royals of last year. Awesome pitching and offense set up for this making a huge run for 2015! Go Padres!

The signing of Shields caps off a remarkable offseason for the Padres, who have revamped their club with the additions of Wil Myers, Justin Upton, Matt Kemp, Derek Norris and Will Middlebrooks. Shields joins Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross, Ian Kennedy and Odrisamer Despaigne in the team's rotation mix, pitching in a city in which he currently owns a home.

via SBNation

Sapporo Snow Festival Results in Amazing Star Wars Sculpture

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This is just one of many reasons to add Sapporo to the bucket list. You can always check out the Japan Guide too for a more formal introduction.

Geeks like to go all the way with their projects, and Japan is a country full of geeks. That‘s why they spent a month (and purportedly enlisted the help of the Army) building a giant Star Wars snow sculpture for the 66th Sapporo Snow Festival. And is truly enormous: 3,500 tons of snow went into making this 23 meter wide, 15 meter tall piece of geek art.The centerpiece of it all is a giant bust of Darth Vader, beckoning Luke to join the Dark Side. Vader is accompanied by three Stormtroopers and two TIE Fighters (one of them being his personal TIE Advanced).

via Demilked

Jihad vs. the Crusades

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Only because our President brought up the comparison of the current world to what Christianity did centuries ago, I decided to take it up and learn a little bit more. Dr. Bill Warner, PhD does a fabulous video on showing the many different battles between the two religious groups and explains the differences. Ultimately, Dr. Warner points out, yes, the crusades were years ago, but jihad is constant and ongoing as in today’s world.

Visit his website PoliticalIslam for more info. Also, diving further into the Crusades, check out a book by Steve Weidonkopf, The Glory of the Crusades.