House

We are now the proud (?) owners of a nice, new (only 40 years old!) house in south Anchorage. The lot is full of trees and little woodland creatures such as the mosquito and the gnat. We’ve finally got storage space (a nice dry crawlspace) inside and a large shed out in the yard where I’ll stow all my wonderful home-ownership gear like the lawnmower, edge trimmer, leaf blower, rakes, ice-chipper and snowblower. I’ve already decided that my first purchases shall be a barbecue grill and a lawnmower. Very exciting.

Flightseeing Tours in Ketchikan

This is really spooky to me. Despite having flown thousands of times in all manner of aircraft – helicopters, 747s, 737s, DC-10s, Caravans, floatplanes, etc… – I’m always rather leery of the entire LIFT>GRAVITY principle. So I take special precautions when flying in the smaller planes (know your pilot, know your terrain, be prepared). About 6 weeks ago I was down in Ketchikan, Alaska and as it was sunny with almost no clouds in the sky (which is quite rare given that Ketchikan is in the middle of the largest temperate rain forest in the world) so I went on a flightseeing tour that took off from the Taquan air float plane dock. See what happened yesterday.

Tourists, pilot killed in Southeast crash identified
By WESLEY LOY
Alaska State Troopers have identified the pilot and four tourists killed in a plane crash Tuesday near Ketchikan.

The pilot was Joseph H. Campbell, 56, of Ketchikan, the troopers said.

The passengers were William F. Eddy and Jeanne J. Eddy, both 59, of Jacksonville, Fla., and Paul J. McManus, 60, and Marianne M. McManus, 56, of Cherry Valley, Mass.

The troopers were notified at 4:39 p.m. Tuesday of a missing de Havilland Beaver floatplane in the rugged Misty Fjords National Monument about 40 miles east of Ketchikan.

The aircraft, operated by Taquan Air of Ketchikan, was on a 90-minute flightseeing tour from the town. The four passengers were from the cruise ship Sun Princess, which was on a weeklong cruise out of Seattle.

According to the troopers this morning, the Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad located the missing aircraft and reported that it had crashed. Troopers reached the scene at 8 p.m. Tuesday and found that all aboard had perished.

The troopers and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating, and there was no word this morning on what caused the crash.

the crashed Taquan Air de Havilland Beaver floatplane

de Havilland Beaver that I flew after landing in a remote alpine lake in the Misty Fjords National Monument

the view from the float plane I flew in over Misty Fjords – absolutely beautiful

I feel so bad for the McManus and Eddy families. Apparently Marianne M. McManus was the sister of Jeanne J. Eddy so now a family has lost 4 loved ones in such a short amount of time.

Alaska Bar Exam

Well, the final week of July is upon us. Like a Biblical plague of locusts (I like the Old Testament God – he was so mean!) the recent law school graduates will soon descend on a small church in downtown Anchorage to take the Bar Exam. I always found it incredibly appropriate that the Exam was administered at a church. Given the difficulties of the Exam, one needs all the help they can get and who’s more helpful than Jesus? Seriously. Raising the dead. Water into wine. Lumbering down a crappy Jerusalem street with a massive wooden cross on his back. That’s one helpful dude.

The Alaska Bar Exam sucks. Plain and simple. The Alaska Bar Exam is a two and a half day test. Days 1 and 3 of the Alaska Bar Exam consist of nine essay questions including three long essays, six short essays, and two 90-minute Multistate Performance Test problems. On Day 2 of the Exam, the Multistate Bar Exam is administered. In order to pass the exam you must understand how it is graded. First off, a combined score of 140 is required. Scoring is broken down as follows: The MBE is worth 50% of the scoring; 3 long essays are worth 15%; 6 short essays are worth 22.5%; and the MPT is worth 12.5% combined.

When I took the Exam I flew-up from Washington State the day before the Exam started and I stayed at the wonderfully decrepit Days Inn on 5th Avenue. As the last week in July is the HEIGHT of tourist season, my crappy first floor room set me back about $145 a night. I could hear the sounds and smell the food of the Mexican restaurant next door but that was about it for noise distractions. The weather was nice so the 12 block walk to the church on 15th Avenue was rather soothing. I didn’t know anyone else who was taking it at that time. I’d taken the study-at-home BarBri review course but most of the others took the class together in Anchorage.

In the end I passed but lots of others did not. If I remember correctly only 60% passed the Exam that time. That’s about average for the Alaska Bar. Some people just don’t ‘get’ the Exam and will never pass it. I (and a whole bunch of others) ‘got’ the Exam and it wasn’t much of a problem for me. If you study hard, apply yourself and retrieve the knowledge that you crammed into your brain during the Bar review course you’ll pass the test.

I’m rather ambivalent about the Bar Exam right now. It’s not something I think about anymore. I remember celebrating passing it. I had a judge and a clerk of court dancing on my coffee table at the party my coworkers and roommate threw for me. That was the highlight of the Exam for me.

New Boss

For the past three weeks I have not had a boss. Yes, I’ve had a supervisor but no one was fully in charge of the office. As such, several things that needed to get done weren’t done because there was no one in the corner office. Now we’ve got a new boss and I think it’s awesome.

Internet Explorer still sucks

Well, for one reason or another that I can’t possibly understand despite me being able to code HTML since 1995 and using computers since 1983, IE no longer places the sidebar at the bottom of the page. It remains stupid and I hate IE for being both a memory hog and unstable at any speed (just like a Corvair!). I have a guess it has to do with placing images inside a paragraph BUT I removed the images and it still screws-up.

God, I really don’t like Ralph Nader.

EDIT: wait! now it does work! this is just plain retarded. everyone needs to ditch IE

Stupid Internet Explorer

IE still refuses to properly execute HTML coding. My sidebar remains at the bottom of the page in IE and that bugs the hell out of me.

So, because IE sucks, I’d recommend that you go use Firefox and be happy.