I might be the only American to have applied for a light sport flight instructor certificate on physical paper, and I believe I caused an update to the IACRA system.

For those unaware, IACRA is the system for applying for airman certificates online. Instead of mailing a paper 8710 to Washington you fill it out on one of the US government’s many shitass fuckchild web 0.8 websites. The FAA isn’t as bad as the FCC on that front but shew buddy.

I was applying for a light sport flight instructor certificate. One of the prerequisites for this is a credential in the Fundamentals of Instruction. Per the FARs, this can be:

• A passing score on an FAA FoI knowledge test (70 or better) within the last 24 months
• Holder of at least a Basic Ground Instructor certificate
• A state issued teacher’s certificate for grade 7 or higher, or
• A job as a college professor

I had taken and passed the FoI test, but the 24 month mark was rapidly approaching before I could arrange the practical test, so I took the BGI test (which is another knowledge test) flew to the FSDO in Greensboro, filled out a form, and one clammy government handshake later I was a ground instructor. Ground instructor certificates don’t expire so that effectively eliminated the time constraint on the FoI test result.

Checkride time approached, it was time to fill out the 8710…IACRA had no way of accepting a BGI certificate number as the FoI prerequisite. It was designed to only accept a LaserGrade test result, there wasn’t a way to use the other legal prerequisite types. So I had to print out a physical 8710 and mail it to Washington. Last I heard of the matter, my DPE let me know she had contacted somebody at the FAA about the matter, so teachers, professors and ground instructors should be able to correctly apply for a flight instructor certificate now.

I watched every minute of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” in a movie theater.

Injected LSD

This is a lame burn, and a crappy post. If you don’t like the movie why not just say that instead of a half-assed attempt to be witty? What didn’t you like about it?

I used to think that all the times I had to survive drowning were unique, until I met my coworker who almost drowned to death in the same wavepool as me, despite us growing up in two seperate states a few hundred miles apart.

I still hope drowning three times is fairly uncommon, but at least one of those pools is just hella dangerous I guess.

What a coincidence, I was just at a Megalopolis watch party last night haha. There were like two dozen of us hatewatching it. True kino.

Cool? Definitely not, or at least I don’t think so. And I very seriously doubt anyone would be jealous.

I used to go up in the mountains by myself. Bare minimum supplies, like a knife, the clothes on my back, and an emergency pack for “in case shit”, that if I had to touch, the trip was over. I also went armed because shit can happen.

Now, I did this for years, and it was very rare for anything bad to happen at all, and the worst stuff wasn’t life threatening except once. I’d run across bears, a few crazy people, maybe twist an ankle or some such.

But that one time.

So, there’s a feral dog problem. They’ve interbred with what’s called the eastern coyote, which itself is supposedly a mix of coyote, wolf, and a little dog.

The eastern coyote is rarely a problem. Small family groups, avoid people. If you see them at all, it’s unusual.

But when they mix with dogs, and those dogs are feral, the packs get bigger and they tend to not be scared of humans.

Well, I was cooking a fish I caught during one summer when the weather had been dry, and small animal populations were low.

The smell brought a pack in. Enough of them that they tried to circle me in and come at me after the fish I threw to them wasn’t interesting enough.

I had 14 rounds on me, and I needed most of them. The first couple of shots missed because I was fucking terrified. At that point, I’d never taken any training for shooting under pressure, so I was panic breathing and shaking hard.

You’d think the sound of a 45 going off would have scared them off, but it didn’t. I dropped a couple of them, swapped mags and dropped two more before the rest ran off. One of them, I had to finish because I didn’t get a clean shot because it was early in the half a minute it all took.

I hiked my ass back out as soon as I could stop shaking and keep my legs under me. And I did the hike with a nice wet spot because I pissed myself a little.

Went to the ranger station, reported it, did all that crap and went home.

Now, there was also a less dramatic event not maybe ten miles away where I found a body. Suicide, shotgun vs head. That was not fun either; but plenty of people have found dead bodies. Those were the two worst things I ever had happen up there on my own.

Hmmm, for something that very few other people on lemmy have?

For the general world?

I tried to talk someone out of suicide and failed. Can’t think of something less cool or envy-inducing.

Broken neck and back. Don’t recommend.
★☆☆☆☆

I attended a 1-on-1 meeting that a billionaire scheduled with me but that they themselves did not attend.

Drank breast milk straight from the source as an adult. I highly recommend it if you get the opportunity though.

Played the game Me And My Shadow. It’s an abandonware open source 2D puzzle platformer for windows that apparently was last updated in 2021, with source package last updated 2 years prior according to the last github nightly build release. Repo was archived January of this year. Not really a cool and exciting game at all compared to other open source games like Mindustry or SuperTuxKart or SRB2.

I saw the entire original broadcast run of Clerks: The Animated Series. All both episodes.

Only six episodes were produced, and they eventually aired, but I did not find this out until years later. The internet ended a longstanding era where you could be aware of and interested in something, but know fuck-all about it, and have no sensible way of learning more. So I’d heard of Kevin Smith movies - but never seen any. Watching the Clerks movie would have taken a trip to a physical video-rental store, with my parents, and then convincing them (and myself) to rent a vulgar black-and-white movie for all of us to watch together. Wasn’t happening.

I was more likely to rent and watch any of the R-rated films that somehow got cartoon adaptations - which were part of that same impotent awareness. Robocop and Ghostbusters and fuckin’ Starship Troopers were advertised anywhere and everywhere, and kids liked the shallow cool parts in the trailers, so executives said “fuck it” and licensed no-budget G-rated spinoffs to sell toys.

Anyway. The Clerks animated series exists because Disney wanted an adult-ish show to compete with The Simpsons. Everyone did. Disney knew they had a gap in their demographics for twenty-something dorks with disposable income. Aaand then they handed the finished episodes to ABC, who used a focus group of old farts and children. Of course it bombed. The premiere was the fourth episode produced, which stuck the characters in a courtroom drama, and ended with a wacky consequence-free style change wherein the outsourced animators rebelled and delivered a lolrandom dance party. The second and final episode aired was a fake clip show full of flashbacks to episodes that did not exist.

At least Clone High got an entire season.

I once fell out of the attic of an abandoned house because an owl scared the living crap out of me - it was huge and it made itself look even larger, must’ve been the largest bird I’d seen IRL by that age. Does that count?

I have been ‘interviewed’ by the Secret Service 2x in my life.

Both times because I was a young dumbass, and both times I am sure they wrote in my official file: ‘harmless dumbass’.