It’s certainly been a while since I’ve spent any time thinking about updating this blog! So here’s what has been happening.

I passed my first semester of law school! Some classes went well, some classes didn’t go so well, but overall it looks like I am in about the middle of my class (by my guess, official rankings don’t come out until the end of our second term). I did some things well on my exams, and I made some mistakes on my exams.

Here’s to making new mistakes while fixing the old ones.

96 recalls at Express. I’m around 190 deep on the list, but with the number of people likely to defer I’ll very likely have a recall letter soon.

Not exactly the distraction I was hoping for during finals.

BBC News – New iPhone worm can act like botnet say experts.

SSHing into iPhones, who woudla thunk it eh?

15 days until classes end and the heat is really on…as if the heat isn’t already on.

This is lifted off of a post over at the Airline Pilot Central Forums (http://www.airlinepilotforums.com). I’m one of those 335 at ExpressJet right now, and if ExpressJet doesn’t get some more flying soon the rumor mill is saying that there will be another couple of hundred guys from ExpressJet on the street.

These furloughed pilots are the reason I’m working in law school, so I can get in with ALPA and help get their jobs back.

Alaska – 60
American – 1979
CAL – 400
UAL – 874
USair – 227
Air Cargo Carriers – 1
ABX – 254
AirNEt Cargo – 40
Arrow Cargo – 30
Atlas Cargo – 62
Centurion Cargo – 5
Empire Cargo – 4
Kalitta – 130
Key Lime -4
Omni – 40
Ryan Air – 36
Southern Air – 71
Tradewinds – 92
World – 34
Xtra – 15
Amr Eagle – 71
ASA – 136
Air wisky – 22
Comair – 298
Express Jet – 335
Frontier – 56
Gulfstream – 50
Horizon – 84
Island Air – 10
Mesa – 136
Mesaba – 39
Midwest – 270
Penair – 15
PSA – 55
RAH – 104
Spirit – 78
Sun Country 36
Trans States – 158
USA 3000 – 11
NetJets – 500

Total = 6762

Deseret News | One dead in Provo plane crash.

Ben was a good friend, and one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.

He didn’t deserve this.

Interracial Couple Denied Marriage License By Louisiana Justice Of The Peace.

Somebody should clue this Justice of the Peace into the 14th amendment.

You’d have to have been in a drumline to really understand this, but I think this guy is hilarious.

I should clarify something about this whole being furloughed thing, how it affects my life and the perspective I have on it.

Being a pilot isn’t a job, it’s a lifestyle. That’s an incredibly cliche phrase, but it hits very close to the truth. I didn’t know many guys at Express who woke up one day when they were 22 and said, “Huh, I think I should be a pilot! The return on that investment would probably be pretty good.”

Almost everybody I worked with was just like me; they had wanted to fly airplanes for a living from a very young age. For me I was around 6 when I first started spouting off about airplanes.

More so, I started flying airplanes when I was 16. I’ve been a pilot as long as I can remember, and I can’t think of a time in my life when flying wasn’t the primary focus of my life. Put simply, it’s all I know. My identity as a person is largely as an airline pilot. The SIC type on my certificate will always be there, and that career will always be forefront in the way I identify myself and invariably how people identify me.

You see, when somebody meets me and they find out what I used to do for a living they’re taken aback. “An airline pilot!?” It’s such a small group of people that fly jets around for a living that it sticks out on your resume like a sore thumb.

It’s something I’ll never escape, but not just because it’s so rare. When you’re living the life of a pilot, it’s not glorious; it’s grinding. But at the same time, you are largely married to the company you work for, being unable to leave for seniority reasons. Because of that, being furloughed is an incredibly strange experience.

You’ve very likely worked your entire life to get to a job at an airline, and once you finally get there, you’re thrown back onto the street.

In the end it’s strange, and that’s the best way I can describe it. I can’t think of many other jobs that take over your life with such totality than flying does, and when you’re spit out of the system it’s strange to be working towards a new goal when for 20 years all you’ve known has been pressurized tin cans that burn JetA.

Unlike being laid off from so many other jobs, you’re not just laid off from your job; you’re laid off from an entire lifestyle, the way you eat, sleep and interact with those around you.

It’s just…strange.