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When I was a kid, I often heard my parents tell me to think positive. It was a kind of declaration, much like “clean your room”: easy to say, harder to do. I remember thinking to myself, “Really? I don’t think I can change how I feel about this.”

And you know what? It’s true. I can’t change how I feel.

I can only change how I act. I’ll explain.

Encounter With A Stranger

Today, I took a break over lunch to go fly my model aircraft. It’s a fun pastime, and even though lunch tends to go a little long when I do so, none of my co-workers or boss has ever complained as long as I get my work done on time. I saw a few familiar faces — the community of modelers isn’t very large, after all — and then one new one. I flew my helicopter a couple of times, watched one of the familiar faces fly his helicopter, then sauntered over under the shade awning to chat until my lunch break was over.

Well, I got in a discussion with the new face. Let’s call him “Red”. Red was prepping a gorgeously-detailed, 30%-scale Sopwith Pup to fly. We talked about the plane, about some of his trials keeping the plane looking nice despite the toxic gasoline exhaust, and smoke systems. While discussing smoke systems, he mentioned he no longer had the cash to buy much of anything. The conversation drifted to what he was doing flying in the middle of the day on a Friday.

Turns out he’s unemployed as a civil engineer. And he’s been unemployed for the better part of a year. The housing bust, of course, has really had an impact on this industry. I immediately empathized. There was a time I’d gone through seven employers in as many years and experienced long droughts of unemployment in between. This made me grateful for my current job; despite the lack of growth of substantial raises, it’s been stable for the past six years. Anyway, Red’s wife has been picking up the slack, but his unemployment runs out in a few more months, and he’s not certain what he’s going to do. I learned a few salient facts about him during this conversation:

1. He believed himself to be in very high demand two years ago.
2. He has interviewed nine times for a job this past year. In several cases, they had narrowed the field, but typically down to as many at 10 applicants for the position. He believes they are discriminating based on his age.
3. He’s mad as hell about the lack of employment. He’d love to move somewhere with a better construction market, but doesn’t believe his wife would tolerate such a move.
4. When he learned that my employer has been having trouble filling an IT position in Salt Lake, he quickly listed his qualifications for IT — typical word processing, AutoCAD, and basic networking skills — but was utterly clueless what I was talking about when I described the open position. Nevertheless, he gave it the old college try and gamely explained how he was the guy to fill this position.

A few things stood out to me from this conversation, chief of which was that Red really let his unhappiness bleed into his conversation with a relative stranger. Here we are, both of us experiencing a recreational activity we enjoy, and he’s grousing to me about his situation. I analyzed the facts.

1. He was in high demand when the market for construction-related jobs had a very high demand. In the current housing slump, he’s wasted a year trying to get a job doing what he’s trained to do, unsuccessfully. What has he been doing with his time? This doesn’t speak well of his motivation. If I spent more than 3 months unemployed, you bet I’d find a job that paid better than my unemployment benefits just to tide myself over.
2. He thinks interviewing nine times is some kind of Herculean feat. The reality is, if you’re working your contacts like you should, you should be doing nine interviews a month at the very least. This tells me that he doesn’t know how to manage his time effectively while he’s unemployed. Age doesn’t matter to me, but motivation does; if you’re content to rest on your laurels and aren’t interested in tackling new problems, I’m not that interested in helping you.
3. If Red is letting his anger so clearly take control of an almost cost-free conversation with a stranger, how much is his anger bleeding into his personal and professional lives? I understand the desire to vent. I really do. But venting toward anyone who might be in a position to give you a job is a really, really bad idea. Angry outbursts, disrespectful judgments, selfish demands, and annoying habits will turn anybody off toward being around you. Despite his obvious modeling talent, within moments I was wishing I hadn’t engaged him in conversation due to this overwhelming negativity.
4. When you’re out of your depth on a technical topic, making stuff up to try to sell your abilities is also a huge turn-off. It makes me wonder what else you might make up down the road. Such bravado comes off as desperate, not competent.

Negative Encounters Affect You Negatively

Obviously Red is competent at his chosen profession, but what turned me off was his consistently negative attitude. I’ve heard the phrase “the power of positive thinking” my whole life, but I’ve learned something as an adult.

It’s not thinking positive that gives you the power.

It’s acting positive that gives you the power.

I’ll illustrate a few “don’ts” using Red’s position. I totally understand the depth of bitterness and humiliation that extended unemployment brings. But following a few simple action rules could have made me much more interested in helping him, rather than finding an excuse to get away from him.

• Never demand that people see things your way or try to educate them if they disagree. Instead, see how your demands can be turned into thoughtful requests that honor the time of the person with whom you are speaking.
• Never make a disrespectful judgment in order to get your way. You may think you’re just “telling it like it is”, but insulting all your prospective employers with allegations of discrimination isn’t likely to win you many friends… and in a job market as small as the one in Utah, most people in an industry know many others in similar positions and word gets around about disgruntled employees.
• Never resort to an angry outburst to try to get your way. It’s abusive and makes people dislike you.
• Dishonesty is never positive. If you’re out of your depth, own that fact. I’d rather know that you know that you don’t know something than try to make something up and look foolish.

Practice Positivity

Now a few things to practice:

• Open each conversation with a new person with a smile, a handshake, and a polite inquiry about them.
• Focus on the positive things in your life when talking with others. Help them feel good about what you are doing and what you want to do.
• Ignore your failures in the conversation. If you must discuss them, talk about what you learned from the experience… not how unfair things are.
• Ask positive questions. Almost everybody loves to talk about themselves. If you keep the conversation focused on what you can do about a situation, rather than what’s gone wrong, you’ll find a lot of progress.
• If you must discuss the negative things in life, talk to your dog. He’ll look on empathetically and appreciate you scratching his ears while you make those odd grunting and growling sounds. Or keep a journal to vent. Don’t vent at other people, particularly not at people who you have any reason to believe might be in a position to help you in the future.

If you’d like more tips on how to ensure that you treat every contact with someone as a potential for a rewarding relationship in the future, I cannot recommend more highly the book by the Arbinger Institute, “Leadership and Self-Deception“. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it’s basically a fictionalized account of how acting in new ways can radically and permanently improve your life. It’s difficult to describe, but reading it and practicing the concepts — all of which are presented in an entirely non-denominational way, with only the briefest advertisement for the Institute’s corporate services — changed my life for the better, and I know it can change yours.

Summary

To summarize, treat each person you meet with respect for their potential, and if you must discuss others, do so with respect for them and an assumption of positive intentions. Avoid the conversation-wrecking behaviors of demands, disrespect, anger, and dishonesty. Focus on asking plenty of positive and uplifting questions; if both of you engage in this behavior, you’ll find you both have plenty of time to talk about yourself.

You can’t control your feelings.

You can control your actions.

Act positive, and the world will treat you in a much more positive way!

Getting out of deep debt isn’t easy. It’s a process that takes time, diligence, and attention to detail. You can do it by yourself, or you can find a lot of people willing to do it for you… for a fee. I’m going to talk about building a successful strategy for your own debt relief, and then touch on available options for those who can’t – or won’t – do it by themselves. I plan to talk about some tools I’ve used to help with this in the past, and some simple strategies to help you achieve your financial goals without additional loans, grants, or commercial debt consolidation program.

Paying off debts – particularly if you need help paying off payday loans and other high-interest loans – requires a strategy. The very first step, before you start shopping around for debt consolidation, is to know EXACTLY where your money is going and where it’s coming from so you have an accurate picture of your financial situation.

Step 1: Figure Out Where You Stand Today

If you’re married or cohabiting, that means the much-dreaded budget meeting. Grab a copy of your bank statement. Write down your income and how much you can expect each month. Then write down all your expenses, down to the last penny, that you incur each month. Even if you got into debt due to irresponsible spending, document it here so that you know the truth. If you don’t know what you’ve spent your money on, take your best guess. You’ll revise it over the weeks, months, and years it will take to get out of debt, and eventually you’ll have a very accurate picture of where your money is going.

It’s always better to know the truth. Even if the truth is painful to bear! If your spouse has a lot of unexplained expenses, prepare yourself for the worst.

Step 2: Learn How To Manage Your Finances

Now, I’m not LDS, but the LDS church publishes a free pamphlet called “One for the Money: Guide to Family Finances” that is really useful to get you started in your road to financial freedom. The pamphlet outlines a strategy for paying off your debts that is guaranteed to work if you follow it – no pun intended – religiously. The pamphlet is available as a downloadable PDF file, and if you’re reading this, you certainly have a web browser that will do the trick! I think the only negative aspect of the pamphlet is its intense focus on religious values to motivate you to budget your money. But the positive aspect is that it outlines a successful strategy toward eliminating debt: pay the minimums on everything except for your one highest-interest loan. Once that is paid off, then apply that entire amount to your next-highest-interest loan. My wife and I have applied this strategy for the past decade, and have successfully paid off everything except for our home mortgages on two properties.

It works. Use it, if you can. I can testify to its usefulness, and our lack of significant debt besides our houses is a key to our ongoing financial success.

Step 3: Use The Right Tool For The Job

If the above pamphlet doesn’t quite do the trick for you – if you’d like a system to get out of debt fast – then I recommend YNAB, or “You Need A Budget”. The basic rules of YNAB will give you a successful strategy to live within your means… and the price for the tracking software is extremely reasonable (less than $50). I’ve used his spreadsheet-based product before, and within a few weeks of using it you’ll see exactly where your money is going and where you need to reduce spending to get your credit card usage under control. YNAB lives by the Four Rules:

Rule 1: Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck. Live only on the income you earned LAST MONTH, with this month’s income in the bank.

Rule 2: Give Every Dollar A Job. Plan exactly where each dollar will be spent. If you think you “never know”, that’s part of your problem!

Rule 3: Save for a Rainy Day. Even the tightest budget can find some room to put away a few dollars to cover those unexpected – yet common – big expenses.

Rule 4: Roll with the Punches. You’re never going to be perfect with your budget. Keep adjusting over time to try to meet your goals, but don’t expect perfection!

I have no doubt that everybody can find a way to live within their budget. It may require adjustments to your living conditions, but making and following a budget is vitally important if you don’t want to go bankrupt! You don’t have to live paycheck-to-paycheck anymore once you start following some simple budgeting principles.

But what if your credit truly is out of control? What if you’re so deep in debt that, after doing the budget, you have no money left to live on after paying your obligations each month?

Step 4: Credit Counseling and Preparing for Bankruptcy

There is help available, and you should really avoid ads for out-of-state debt consolidation programs. Debt consolidation can be a nightmare if done wrong! The Federal Government of the US offers a list of state-by-state approved credit counseling agencies. These organizations will often negotiate with your creditors to reduce your payments or forgive certain debts so that you have enough to live on. If you think you might need to file bankruptcy, these organizations are a required stop before you’re allowed to do so. The fly-by-night Internet ad you found won’t do the trick… you’re going to HAVE to see one of these agencies. But realize, there are important costs:

1. Paying less per month means you’re going to pay more – a LOT more – in interest over time.

2. It’s going to show up in your credit report. Agencies that claim that there will be no hit on your credit report are usually relying on fraud – like a false Social Security number – to achieve their ends. Expect a HUGE hit and an inability to obtain credit from now on. If your budget is so bad that you’re considering credit counseling rather than the free or low-cost alternatives above, you may not care at this point, but it’s important to expect it.

3. There’s usually a substantial fee for the services of the credit counseling service. If they offer free credit counseling, they are usually making their money on the back-end: taking a fee from your payments before handing them over to your creditors.

4. Beware of “balloon” offers. They’ll suck you in with a very low payment, but at the end of a certain number of years – typically five to ten – you have a very large payment that you need to pay off, and a need to obtain new credit to finance it if you don’t have the cash to pay it off. With the hit on your credit history outlined in #2 above, you have a good chance of being denied a reasonable loan!

5. Beware of “variable rate” offers. They’ll offer you a very low rate at first to suck you in, but as payments expand over time often these very low-cost loans turn into an unimaginable nightmare to pay off.

You Can Do It!

Look, I think you have the skill set to do this yourself. Grab a copy of YNAB, grab that pamphlet for how to manager your money that the LDS church publishes, and figure out your strategy. You can do it! Credit Counseling – and “debt consolidation”, as bad of an idea as it is – is really your last stop before declaring bankruptcy. If you’re overwhelmed by medical bills, you can make a good case for declaring bankruptcy on that basis. But avoid those two options unless you really, truly have no other choice.

Jay Barnson again brings us a new independent game review of a title called “Swords and Sorcery Underworld“. Nice to hear about a game that revitalizes a genre while accounting for modern gaming sensibilities.

it embraces the retro-hardcore western RPG style with a vengeance, the “bailout” function isn’t the only concession it makes to modern audiences. Like Bard’s Tale and the early Might & Magic games, the streets of the starting city are not safe for newbie adventurers. However, unlike the frustratingly challenging early game of Bard’s Tale, early encounters aren’t quite as likely to prove immediately lethal to your fledgling characters. A game mechanic I really like is that characters get a “second chance” when otherwise fatally wounded. Another hit while they are thus disabled will kill them fer real, but a quick healing spell can come in handy to save the day. This really helps make death a bit less random, but fights remain challenging and dangerous.

I also like that the game features a colorful automap. While there’s a part of me that fondly remembers my careful use of pencil and graph paper to play the old games, I can’t say that it was a part of the old-school experience I’d like to see return.

And – so far as I can tell – Underworld is Big. It’s not something you are going to conquer in a couple of days.

Well, here’s a breakdown for you.

Typical setup for a Pantera 50 — mine — follows. Format is "retail/new & discounted/used" for prices. Leaving out the transmitter.

Bone stock:

• Pantera 50: $199/$150/$100

• OS .50SX-H Hyper (or YS 50): $199.98/$150/$80

• Mavrikk or Align 50 pipe: $60/$40/$20

• Futaba GY401 & S9254 rudder gyro/servo combo: $209.99/$175/$100

• 3x Hitec HS-5475HB servos for cyclic: $75.00/$63.42/$40

• Cheap analog throttle servo: $15

• Spektrum AR7000 Rx: $99.99/$99.99/$80

• 2S2P A123 M1 4600mAh Rx pack: $65/$45/$25 ("build it yourself" rather than "used"…)

• Perfect Regulator tail step-down prr-5vgt: $14/$10/$10

• Blades, CF, 600mm: $44.99/$35/$20

Recommended upgrades:

• AUD3078 Elevator Bearing Set: $11.99

• AUD0063 Air Filter: $29.99

• PDR0016 Header Tank: $9.99

• PDR0003 Fuel Shutoff: $6.99

• PDR0004 Fuel Filter: $7.99

• Hayes Clunk Line: $4

• Multi-Gov Pro: $125

So your total is going to be, minimum, around $475 if you go with all used gear from forum folks or locals, and bone-stock Pantera frame picked up used from some seller online who got one as part of the BOGO deal. All the way up to around $1179 for a mostly-stock config, new, with all the recommended upgrades, and higher from there if you want to go with the big-block conversion or something.

That isn’t counting, of course, building materials that I would expect you to have laying around for any heli:

• Green, red, and blue loctite ($18)

• Thin & thick CA glue ($10)

• Fuel tubing ($10)

• Tie wraps ($3)

• Foam padding ($3)

• Sticky-back Velcro ($5)

• Double-sided Velcro straps ($10)

• Gasket maker ($6) (just a tiny dab does it to replace the metal gasket between engine & muffler)

• Good Allen wrench set ($30)

• Dial Indicator ($20)

• Grease ($6 for a lifetime supply)

• Tri-Flow Lube ($8)

• Mini bubble level: $5

• Good Lexan scissors: $20

• X-Acto knife: $5

• Extra X-Act blades: $5

• Cutting mat: $10

Building supplies total: $174

Then your flight supplies (guesstimated):

• Good 7-channel or more radio: $200+

• Starter: $35

• Starter battery: $25

• Fuel: $22/gallon for 30% Magnum (12-16 flights per gallon, depending)

• Heli start wand: $25

• Glow igniter: $20

• Paper towels: $1

• Windex (or denatured alcohol, or Simple Green, whatever): $3.50

• Toolbox: $20 (or more $$$ if you go nice and not cheap Wal-Mart brand stuff)

• Fueling supplies (pump, attachment, etc.): $30

Flight supplies total: $381.50

You can also find SCREAMING deals on tail gyro/servo combos these days. I mean, crazy, insane, stuff that was $300 just months ago selling for less than $100. I just picked up two brand-new, full-warranty, retailer-provided LogicTech gyro/servo combos that usually retail for $250 for $75 apiece the other day.

This is why I shop sales, shop for used gear, and generally try to keep my stuff nice, but not top-of-the-line. One way or another, you’re going to be into your heli at least $1000 eventually. If you can pick up some used nitro starting stuff from someone getting out of the hobby or getting into electrics, then a used Pantera, and some cheap building supplies from Harbor Freight or overseas, you can save a bundle… but in some cases, you get what you pay for?

So there you have it. The total cost of a decent nitro helicopter. And we wonder why more people don’t want to get into the hobby…

Warning: Science ahead! Close your eyes and turn away, you’ve been warned!

Many radio-control enthusiasts experience disappointment with the cycle life of their Lithium-based batteries in electric aircraft. Often this is because they’re not entirely sure what’s going on inside the battery, and choose a capacity or voltage that’s inappropriate for their application. Ultimately, this manifests itself in “swelling” or “ballooning” of a Lithium battery. This editorial attempts to explain what’s actually going on when this happens.

Chemically, there can be three causes for the swelling of a LiPo battery, and one exacerbating condition that makes it worse across the board. These occur in hard-shell Lithium Ion batteries, too, but the hard shell can withstand several atmospheres of pressure before expanding.

Note: This is MY understanding of the chemistry involved. I may be off-base, after all, I’m a college dropout. But I did love chemistry class!

Cause #1: WATER in the mix.

EDIT: Lithium manufacturers who’s products are implicated in this assertion (read: Hextronik et al, circa 2006-2007, Thunder Power circa 2008) will dispute the assertion of contaminated Lithium. The most common contaminant is water, but there are many others that will cause lithium oxidation in the cell. Basically, any other substance containing oxygen that can be freed by electrolysis or heat will become a contaminant, and any substance that isn’t the expected anode, cathode, or separator is a contaminant that will reduce the performance of the cell and cause swelling in other ways. Manufacturers have a fiduciary responsibility to claim that there was no product defect, otherwise they’re responsible for a recall. I’ll talk about the science and let you draw your own conclusions.

This was the common problem with many cheap Chinese LiPos of around 2005-2008. Most are better now, but it’s the #1 cause of premature LiPo failure: water contamination in the plant. Many of China’s LiPo factories are on the coast, where the altitude is very low and the humidity is high. You can’t run the humidity too low on the assembly floor, because you’re working with volatile chemicals that could explode in the presence of a spark, and you can’t run it too high because then you end up with a worthless LiPo that swells on first use.

Here’s the science. You have three ingredients that are functional in a LiPo battery. The rest is wrapping and wiring attachments.

• Cathode: LiCoO2 or LiMn2O4
• Separator: Conducting polymer electrolyte
• Anode: Li or carbon-Li intercalation compound

I’m going to be a little vague in my language here. The chemicals involved vary according to manufacturers, so I don’t want to make any assumptions.

Remember your chemistry class? Note the absolute lack of any hydrogen atoms in the reaction. None, zero, zip, nada. If you have water inside your battery — and virtually all batteries have a little bit — you’ve got problems. When the chemical bond of H20 is broken by electrolysis and heat, you end up with free oxygen. You also have free-roaming hydrogen that typically ends up bound to your anode or cathode, whichever side of the reaction it’s on and depending on the state of charge of your battery.

Now, this is a pretty unstable situation that’s exacerbated by any over-discharge or over-charge condition creating metallic lithium in your cell. The end result is Lithium Hydroxide: 1 atom of lithium, one atom of hydrogen, and one atom of oxygen.

But you still have a free oxygen atom floating around inside the battery casing, that typically combines with one other oxygen atom — O2, or what we sometimes think of as “air” — or two other oxygen atoms, to form a characteristic tangy, metallic-smelling substance called “ozone”, or O3. Gases expand with heat and contract with cold. Chuck a swollen battery in the freezer and it might come out rock-hard again… until it heats up. It’s not frozen, it just got cold enough that the gases inside didn’t take up much space at all.

And that free O2 or ozone is just waiting to pounce and oxidize some lithium on the slightest miscalculation on your part. The modest over-discharge during a punch-out, or running the battery a little too low or letting it get a little too hot, or running the voltage up to 4.235v/cell on a cold day when the actual voltage limit per cell is more like 4.1v. All of these create the perfect storm for a puffy battery to quickly turn itself into a ruined battery or an in-flight fire.

Understanding the role of free oxygen in your battery, from water and other causes, is CRUCIAL to understanding why batteries fail, and why sometimes you can get by with flying a puffy battery, and sometimes you can’t.

Cause #2: Formula degradation from over-charge/over-discharge

If a Lithium battery is overcharged or charged too quickly, you end up with LOTS of excess free lithium on the anode (metallic lithium plating), and free oxygen on the cathode. A free oxygen atom is small enough to freely traverse the separator without carrying an electric charge, resulting in lithium OXIDE on the anode. Lithium “rust”, in reality. Useless to us at this point, just dead weight being carted around inside your battery’s wrapper.

But lithium oxide uses fewer oxygen atoms than existed in the ionized state, so you end up with, again, FREE OXYGEN. And people wonder why if you over-charge a LiPo underwater, it still ignites despite the lack of open air…

If it’s over-discharged or discharged too quickly, the reverse is true, but you end up with Lithium Oxide on the cathode, but at a lower rate because there’s simply less there. Basically, an abused battery quickly develops corrosion on both poles of the battery inside the wrapper. And the more it’s abused, the worse it gets as the resistance goes up and it still gets driven hard.

This, by the way, is the most common cause of swelling today for our aircraft when flown with a high-quality pack (not knock-off eBay leftovers from expensive Chinese mistakes of 2004-2009). The reality is, these kinds of cells, regardless of their ‘C’ rating, are built for use where they last for several hours… not several minutes. While the chemistry if used as designed is good for thousands of cycles, we’re driving them so far out of spec that we’re lucky to get hundreds of cycles out of them.

In most cases, too, our batteries are under-specced. If slow-charged and slow-discharged, many of these packs would often hold considerably more mAh than we think they do. That’s one of the reasons we get the performance we do from them. Higher-C-rated packs also often introduce gelled electrolyte into the separator, and carbon or phosphorous nano-structures on the anode and cathode mixtures rather than the “pound it out thin and hope it’s mixed right” approach used with sheets of anodes & cathodes today.

Cause #3: Poor separator construction

A number of cheap LiPos also use a bad separator formulation. Ultimately, it often boils down to using a dry separator with way too high of an internal resistance to hold up to manufacturer “C”-rating claims. The internal resistance grows over time because a higher and higher percentage of the LiPo is simple Lithium Oxide, and the balloon grows bigger as more oxygen atoms are freed.

I’d also lump “poor anode or cathode chemistry” into this category, too. Ever get a bad battery out of a batch of good ones? Often it’s because the mixture of chemicals was inconsistent, and you end up with too much or too little lithium on one side of the battery (well, in certain plates, you get my drift).

Exacerbating factor: HEAT.

A little heat makes everything work better for a Lipo. If you could fly your battery right at 140 Fahrenheit all the time, it would make fantastic power and be operating right in its happy zone. But it generates heat when charging, and when discharging. Hitting 150 results in significant metallic lithium generation, which as we can see from above is a major cause of puffing and cell destruction.

Similarly, the maximum 4.235v/cell limit is only at that mythical 140F. It goes down steadily from there, to about 4.2v/cell at room temperatures, and around 4.0v/cell below 50F, beyond which the over-abundance of electrons will again break chemical bonds and free lithium to bond with oxygen and create lithium oxide… which is just a disaster waiting to bond with humidity in the air if the LiPo ruptures, to create Lithium Hydroxide.

Conclusion

Chemically, there are no LiPos that will not puff under certain circumstances. But tightly-controlled humidity, a superb gel separator, nano-structured anode and cathode, and careful charging and discharging within manufacturer limits should also prevent puffing. Similarly, putting a pack that has been abused into a lower-discharge aircraft, even when puffed, often serves the purpose of stopping the puffing in its tracks because no more metallic lithium is being created in the cell by abuse.

And now you know the answer to today’s geeky topic. Why lithium polymer batteries often puff up.

My brother Jay posted a great story we watched on Sunday: Old 666. Excerpt:

Zeamer and his misfit crew seized the plane, and worked to restore it and make it airworthy again. Not just restore it – they decided to customize it. They added nearly 50% more guns to the bird, including a forward-firing machinegun so Zeamer could also shoot, like a fighter pilot. They replaced the .30 caliber machine guns with bigger .50 caliber guns – or, in some cases, twin .50 caliber guns. When they were done, their aircraft – number 41-2666 (or 12666, depending on the account) was the most heavily armed bomber in the entire Pacific theater of World War II.

They never added customary nose-art to the bomber, leaving it unadorned. So it became known by its serial number on its tail – “Old 666.”

These guys were nicknamed “The Eager Beavers” because they consistently volunteered for the most dangerous, crazy missions. They’d frequently come back shot full of holes, but they made it home. Zeamer and crew of renegades gained a new reputation for courage and incredible airmanship. In one night mission, for example, the enemy troops managed to fix the entire flight of bombers with large searchlights, illuminating them so they could be shot down by anti-aircraft guns. Zeamer used his giant aircraft as a fighter, diving on the searchlight positions and using his forward-firing machine guns to destroy three of them and damage two others, saving the other planes and their crews…

Check out the rest of the article. Jay even has a link to the History Channel documentary on Old 666 and its renegade, typecast crew of misfits who really existed. Why hasn’t this been made into a movie, anyway?

Be careful about blowing your Vuvuzela at your dog in the house.

Just ran across a great tutorial on how to use the Pingback module for Drupal.

I’ve been a little bit out of the latest tools for blogging & social media lately, and Pingback as a replacement for Trackback is a really good idea. Basically, it’s Trackback with a vengeance: it forces that the site placing the pingback actually link to the article in question, and places limits on the number of links available on the destination pingback. Pretty sweet!

Ultimately, controlling spam while publicizing a site is one of the great challenges of running a long-standing blog. The spammers attack, and attack, and attack, wearing you down. I plan to implement this pingback utility just as soon as I get the spare time to update my Drupal install, too.

I’ve recently begun doing some research into how I can improve traffic to my web site. Yeah, I know, long-term readers would say “Uh, dude, start writing again!” I hear you, and I’m working on it, starting today here & now.

One of the sites discussing driving traffic to blogs mentioned one of the basics is being aware of “hot keywords”, where advertisers pay top dollar for click-through ads. Now, a lot of these, I feel like I’d have to sell my soul to capitalize on them. I’m talking about the ads for cheap viagra & cialis, payday loans, debt consolidation, and Nutrisystem eating plans. Well, OK, Nutrisystem is just a diet plan under the hood – and a well-advertised and above-board one at that – so I guess I’d be OK about that, but the rest seem to be largely the province of people who constantly try to spam my site with comments to try to boost their ad revenue, offshore pharmacy, or extortionate loan scheme.

I feel as if I need a shower just after mentioning those keywords! The people who hawk them online using spammish techniques are just that scummy that I can get second-hand scumminess by just saying the words they try to abuse.

One that stood out to me, though, was the huge number of links for people asking about how to buy a substance called “Tramadol”. I’d never even heard of this stuff before yesterday. So, as usual, I hit the web to do some research and figure out what’s going on. Like most things, you can find out the basics from Wikipedia. Tramadol is an analgesic for treating pain. People use it for a wide variety of pain-related therapies. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, headache, sores, difficulty breathing, seizures, and hallucinations. Why would someone want to take this stuff unless they absolutely needed it for managing pain?

In the description I found the answer that immediately stood out to me amongst the sea of other uses: “Premature Ejaculation”. You see, from long experience being the victim of spammers on the Web, I’ve learned that there are at least a few people are willing to pay top-dollar for anything that “enhances male performance”. From Viagra to Cialis, and now apparently to Tramadol, men seem to believe that lasting longer in bed, being better endowed, or otherwise enhancing their maleness will get them the babes.

Unfortunately, that these substances will solve the problems in your love life is a lie that the drug companies would like to you to believe.

And this relentless focus on self-medication – particularly, non-prescription self-medication from offshore pharmacies – really bugs the heck out of me. Do you guys have any idea how dangerous it is to try to buy this stuff from the kind of place that would sell it to you without a prescription? If you really need Tramadol to manage your pain, by all means, go see your doctor, have it prescribed in an appropriate dose, and have it filled at a reputable pharmacy. But if you’re self-prescribing it to try to last longer in bed, you’re taking a huge risk with your life, sanity, and health.

The reality, men, is that if you’re really wanting to do well with women, you need to learn how to be the man that woman is really looking for. Working on your level of physical fitness helps make you more appealing – that’s a topic for another entry later – as does improving your mental acuity and sense of humor. Most women’s needs, though, are not usually for a guy with the biggest muscles or longest schlong. That’s a myth perpetuated by the adult film industry, among others. Most are looking for the guy who knows how to meet her emotional needs. A guy who knows how to seduce a woman by appealing to those needs. And usually, those needs aren’t what the women say they are. And they aren’t what the pharmaceutical companies want you to believe they are, either.

Educate yourself to be the man of her dreams. Don’t medicate yourself into oblivion.

Because I’ve started writing my soliloquies again, I’ve changed permissions again for new users. Anonymous users are allowed to post again, as are recently-authenticated users, but all posts are moderated unless you’re part of the “Contributor”, “Barnsons”, or “Moderator” groups.

There’s only one moderator besides me. If you’re an honorary Barnson, you know who you are. There are no Contributors yet… those will be any folks who I don’t want to be able to host a blog here, but who are active enough to warrant posting without moderation.

Also going through and deleting massive numbers of spam accounts from my system. At a rate of approximately 6 to 10 new spam accounts per day since 2001, the user database has gotten huge.