Lenting for You or Others?

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.”

Men Lactating Doesn't Mean We Breastfeed!!!

This latest ruling is baffling. Not only is it just unbelievable but crazy?!?! What is our world coming to? Nationwide is definitely not on your side.

Part of the court's reasoning was, according to Galen Sherwin of the American Civil Liberties Union, “that even if Angela had been fired because she was breast-feeding, that was not sex discrimination, in part because men can lactate under certain circumstances.”

via Slate

Dashcam Captures TransAsia ATR72 Plane Crash!

This is a ridiculous video from a taxi cab dashcam of the TransAsia Flight GE235 that just crashed moments ago. We'll be hearing a lot more of this accident throughout the day and I'll be including updates as well. Almost surreal.

Unfortunately, today's accident takes place just less than a year after another TransAsia ATR 72-500 crashed near Magong Airport (MZG) Taiwan last July resulting in more fatalities.

Here's another view from another car further back.

Update from Popular Mechanics:

What we know: - TransAsia flight GE 235 crash landed into the Keelung River near Taipei. - The aircraft lost contact shortly after takeoff. - Reuters reports at least nine were killed.

Update, Wednesday, 12:46 AM ET: Rescue efforts are underway in Taiwan after a TransAsia flight GE 235 hit an elevated bridge and crashed into the Taipei River around 10:45 AM local time. At least 9 were killed so far in the crash, according to Reuters.

The flight had just taken off from the Taipei Songshan Airport, headed toward the Kinmen island chain. The cause of the crash of TNA 235, an ATR-72 propeller plane, isn't yet known. Dozens of passengers still await rescue — 58 total were onboard the flight. The dramatic video and pictures cropping up on social media are staggering; footage of the crash was caught on several drivers' dashcams.

Aviation enthusiasts chiming in posting their observations on twitter: 

@thatjohn In Frame 1 of the dashcam stills it does appear the prop on engine 1 is stalled while the prop on engine 2 is still spinning.

— Bryan Herbert (@KE6ZGP) February 4, 2015

Do You Actually Fly the Plane? →

And a copilot becomes a captain not by virtue of skill or experience, but rather when his or her seniority standing allows it. And not every copilot wants to become a captain right away. Airline seniority bidding is a complicated thing, and a pilot can often have a more comfortable quality of life — salary, aircraft assignment, schedule and choice of destinations — as a senior copilot than as a junior captain. Thus, at a given airline, there are plenty of copilots who are older and more experienced than many captains.

One of the best paragraphs that sums up who the "co-pilot" of an airliner really is or can be. I had no choice whatsoever in my progression. It took me seven years to the day to where I was able to hold a Captain seat at my previous airline and now that I've moved on, I'm back to being a First Officer / Co-Pilot / Co-Captain / Right Seat by virtue of my hire date. It will take pilots above me leaving or retiring and / or the airline expanding with more aircraft and routes before I can hold the title of Captain again. Even at that point, it'll also depends on where I am in my life in terms of having to be away more since I'll be on reserve. More on that later.

Back to the topic, I've known Captains downgrade to First Officer due to a lifestyle change where they wanted more time at home. Some are able to afford to take the 35% pay cut but in all circumstances, their skills did NOT degrade just by switching seats or epaulets. The media needs to get this right and do a better story overall on a pilot's life. I'm starting to get rather annoying. Just my Tuesday rant.

Make sure to read the entire post via Patrick Smith's AskThePilot

Lowering Your Expectation of the Cuban Cigar

With the potential influx of Cuban Cigars, maybe they aren't that great anyways.

In the view of some experts, the appeal of Cuban cigar tobacco has been overtaken in recent years by stogies from Nicaragua, as well as the Dominican Republic and Honduras, many made by Cuban exiles.

In fact, the best cigar of 2014, revealed on Thursday by Cigar Aficionado magazine, is Nicaraguan, the Oliva Serie V Melanio Figurado.

via NYTimes

On top of that, this month's Cigar Aficionado is loaded with some great articles. Check it out!

Customer Service Goes Above and Beyond

I have to applaud the Apple retail lady who picked up my phone call yesterday at Fashion Valley, San Diego. She truly went above and beyond. I inquired about an order that I was placing online for "In-store pickup". Specifically, I had an iPhone 6 Plus in Gold 128GB AT&T for my wife in my cart but ran into a small problem. Apparently by the time I had connected with her on the phone, she advised me that they had just run out.

I told her that I was flying out to work and she continued the awesome service by asking where. It was a little odd at first but after I told her Dallas, she found two different Apple stores that had the 128GB in Gold AT&T and Silver AT&T around town.  She told me that if I placed the order I would have 7 days to pick them up so that wouldn't be a problem at all. You're asking why AT&T? I'll talk about that in a later post. Yes, I'm still heavily contemplating T-Mobile but yeah… in a later post.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel like flying around the country for the next few days with $2k worth of phones on me after my iPad debacle in Miami so I politely thanked her and said that I'd continue to play the game in San Diego when I get back.  I also thanked her for her amazing job and told her that she was awesome.

Kudos again to Apple Fashion Valley. Happy October!

Worst Restaurant Best Ever

By now, if you haven't heard about the restaurant Botto Bistro  you have to head over and read their Yelp Reviews. Trying to achieve the opposite of the highest rating via Yelp!, owner David Cerretini is arguing that it's the best business move he's made in years. If you give it a 1-star rating, you get 25% off your meal to boot!

Here's a favorite review of mine.

Also, here's a pic of the board that they have up in the restaurant.

The whole story here via SFGate.

Texting In-flight via T-Mobile & Gogo Air

Want to keep in touch while you fly—for free? You got it. Starting September 17, T-Mobile partners with Gogo® Air, making T-Mobile the only wireless company whose customers can text, picture message, even check T-Mobile Visual Voicemail at 30,000 feet. The sky is now unlimited.

- via www.t-mobile.com

Part of John Legere's Uncarrier 7 announcement today unveiled this awesome benefit for all his loyal fans and subscribers. You can bet that when November 15th comes, I'm taking my business over. I'm done with throttling.

Also as part of the announcement, coupled with Apple's iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus launch, T-Mobile will be offering everyone free Wi-Fi calling. They'll even give you a T-Mobile Personal CellSpot free of charge!

https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/509808691185340416

'More Filipino Women are Employed Than Any Other Community'

Just some highlights from the latest data that the United States Department of Labor recently published on how different Asian - American groups are fairing economically. Here are some good bullet points from the recent NPR's Codeswitch:

"Overall, 53.4 percent of Asians over the age of 25 have a bachelor's degree or higher — the highest percentage by far among the major race groups."

"More Filipino women are employed (57.1 percent) than any other community; Indians had the smallest share of employed women (36.8 percent.)"

That's not surprising being that many of the women I know who came from the Philippines in the 70s are nurses who still work to this day; my mother and mother-in-law included. A lot of the men who came over enlisted in the Navy or another military branch, continued their service till retirement then continued to work. Don't get me wrong, my heritage stems from the Philippines so this is only one nation in the many Asians and Pacific Islanders that immigrated here.

One bullet point that I have a little contention with is:

"The AAPI community has the second highest share of unemployed workers who are long-term unemployed (41.7 percent) ... Asian Americans who are unemployed, are without work for longer than whites and Hispanics."

They don't mention that it's because of how our network at home really is: from my personal observation within my network, we tend to take care of grand children more often thus electing to stay home. We also are a hot headed people who won't necessarily volunteer for a lesser paying job than the one that we might have gotten laid of from. Pride, especially in the Filipino community runs a little high sometimes leading to longer droughts without a job. Just my thoughts.

Comixology Kills the Impulse Buy

Just barely one month after Amazon acquired Comixology, Jeff Bezos and team managed to screw the pooch. From Co-founder and CEO David Steinberger on the initial sale to Amazon:

ComiXology will retain its identity as an Amazon subsidiary and we’re not anywhere near done “taking comics further.” We are confident that – with Amazon by our side, who shares our desire for innovation and a relentless focus on customers – we’ve only just begun.

Flat out, he lied or didn't know what was coming. Taken from past buy outs, this isn't something new to Jeff Bezos and company.

Comicbook author and creator Gerry Conway posted a great article on comicbook.com on his views of the latest development.

You don’t make quick entertainment hard to access. You may it simple and easy — an impulse buy.

Comixology’s in-App storefront did that. It provided quick and easy access to comics from the majors to the indies, one-stop shopping at the point of sale, at the moment where the customer is most vulnerable to the casual pitch: while he or she is actually reading a comic, and is in the comic-reading frame of mind, and is mildly (or intensely) interested in another nibble of brain-candy.

I wholeheartedly agree that this change voids my impulse buys. This app was the medium that lead me to discover great comics and various new indies. Browsing a store front without the hassle of leaving the app, going onto the web, buying, then going back to the app, clicking on a "Cloud" tab then downloading it, was the way to go.

Impulse is still the best way to find the latest and greatest or even those that might pique your interest. Now, I'm heading back out to my local comic shop. It's not that I'm going to boycott Comixology, but who am I kidding… delete.

Don't Listen to Them! iPad Sales Don't Disappoint!

MG Siegler is concise and right on. iPad sales this quarter was only disappointing to those who thought that Apple would sell more than 19 million units. Seriously though, think about it… Apple still sold 16 million iPads... in 3 months! The fact that this product category is only 4 years old and in total have sold over 210 million, that's quite a feat!

As a standalone business, just based on the last 12 months of revenue, the iPad would be in the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500. Think about that for a second. The iPad alone is bigger than almost all Fortune 500 companies.

For a full breakdown of sales, head over to 9to5mac.

Halo 2.0

Nows the time to take advantage of the Halo 2.0 with only a few days left is a VERY successful Kickstarter campaign. I wouldn’t be posting this if I didn’t back it!

Goes great on kids too especially around Disneyland at night!

Specifically for my motorcycle friends and enthusiasts, this is a tremendous product!

http://youtu.be/kpYClk58iR0

AT&T's Fiber Bluff

AT&T up to their usual antics again. Scamming, promising and under delivering. I'm just glad to have gotten off their internet and television service. Can't wait to disconnect my mobile phone service from their crappy "unlimited" LTE plan.

Before you get too excited, you need to understand that this is a bluff of immense proportion. It's what I affectionately refer to as "fiber to the press release."

Ever since Google Fiber came on the scene, AT&T's response has been highly theatrical in nature. What AT&T would have the press and public believe is that they're engaged in a massive new deployment of fiber to the home service. What's actually happening is that AT&T is upgrading a few high-end developments where fiber was already in the ground (these users were previously capped at DSL speeds) and pretending it's a serious expansion of fixed-line broadband.

via DSLReports