Author Topic: Lightning (Read 16703 times)

lightning · « **on:** May 08, 2007, 09:48:43 PM »

Time to start a thread here for myself...since I'm going to be here a while! I'll start off with a few pics and fill in bio stuff later...

Me and my fianc?e at San Diego

Lightning

Velvet "BucketHead" Anatolian Shepherd Dog

Lightning

lightning · « **Reply #1 on:** May 08, 2007, 09:58:06 PM »

Coming back from Sedona, Arizona

Lightning

lightning · « **Reply #2 on:** May 08, 2007, 10:28:05 PM »

Pics from the USS Midway in San Diego -- for those who haven't been, there's a rather large collection of full-scale full-motion flight simulators on board, as well as tourable cockpits of various aircraft and a decent collection of vintage ejection seats (no ACES-IIs, though)...plus all kinds of other touristy goodies. You could spend many hours on board and not feel like you've seen enough.

Lightning

Killn · « **Reply #3 on:** May 08, 2007, 10:52:00 PM »

David, cool post!

Cheers,
Jason

Boomer · « **Reply #4 on:** May 08, 2007, 11:58:44 PM »

Nice Pics, Thanks David!!!

Boomer

101-douxx · « **Reply #5 on:** May 09, 2007, 12:59:18 AM »

Great!
Nice to meet you!

Hope to see you somewhere in Montreal and/or Tremblant.

Nice pics, thanks!
Stephane.

Nikolas_A · « **Reply #6 on:** May 09, 2007, 01:50:34 PM »

Quote from: "lightning"

Velvet "BucketHead" Anatolian Shepherd Dog

Lightning

Whatever you do, don't let her out in the rain

Welcome aboard

Cheers,
Nikolas

lightning · « **Reply #7 on:** May 09, 2007, 01:55:40 PM »

Good thing we don't get much rain in Arizona!

AiRdAncE · « **Reply #8 on:** May 09, 2007, 02:00:27 PM »

Welcome aboutd, Lightning. Nice doggie... gooood doggie... doggie wanna cracker ? (Or was that in another context ?)

lightning · « **Reply #9 on:** May 09, 2007, 03:05:30 PM »

Thanks, Kim! I hear ya... the mailman's been delivering a lot of parts packages to me lately, and trust me, he doesn't stick around to see if the 110-pound dog is going to take a liking to him...He pretty much drops the package, rings the doorbell, runs like h3ll back to his truck. I tried to tell him that Velvet doesn't eat postal employees, only missionaries...but he was already halfway down the driveway.

lightning · « **Reply #10 on:** May 12, 2007, 07:23:37 AM »

Thought I'd post a little background on how I wound up in this nuthouse to begin with...

The story begins back in childhood. Back when I was in grade school! (1st grade), American public schools began to acquire desktop computers, thanks in large part to a campaign run by Campbell's Soup and Apple Computer. How it worked was that students collected Campell's Soup proofs-of-purchase labels, which schools were then able to redeem for rather steep discounts on Apple Computers.

Campbell's sold a lot of soup, and Apple got a virtual monopoly on school computers (and hence, the hearts and minds of students who would later grow up to become software developers and PC consumers), virtually overnight. In addition to schools, public libraries were also able to obtain computers this way. A few of Apple's competitors (mainly, Commodore, Laser, Atari, and IBM) caught on to this campaign too late, but managed to sneak enough free gear into schools and libraries to ensure that their brands would be represented in future markets. Federal, state, and local governments also heavily subsidized educational/library PC purchases during this era.

As a result, I had access to computers from early childhood, though not at home, since PCs were still quite expensive for families to own at the time. Since I was a newbie to computers at the time, I did as much reading as possible to figure out how they worked and how to make them do what I wanted.

In a short time, I taught myself to program in Applesoft BASIC from reading back issues of "3-2-1 Contact" magazine, and later learned Microsoft GW-BASIC (a clone of IBM BASIC, and the predecessor to Visual Basic). As my teachers quickly discovered that I had these skills, my services were highly in demand...and opportunities for learning new skills were plentiful. All through grade school, then, I became the go-to guy for anything PC related.

Around the time I started 7th grade, IBM-compatible computers began to saturate the home PC market, replacing Apple and Commodore on many desks. Commodore struck back with the Amiga (home of Falcon 1.0), and flight sims as we know them came into vogue. I began my simming experience on the original Commodore 64, but flight sims in general were very primitive at the time and not much fun at all -- still, the promise remained that one day they would mature into something that convincingly resembled the real thing.

In the process of learning how to run games on IBM-compatible PCs, I wound up learning about pretty much all aspects of the IBM/Intel PC architecture, including networking and more advanced programming. I'd already had experience in assembler programming by this time thanks to Commodore and Apple essentially requiring assembly programming whenever any non-trivial operation was desired (graphics, sound, communications, etc.)

By the time I got to high school, I'd aquired enough knowledge of PC and network infrastructure to be able to act as the systems engineer, network engineer, and all around I.T. guy for my high school, which was quite small and which didn't have the money to pay high consultant rates. The deal wound up being that I got out of attending a lot of classes I would have otherwise been bored to tears with, and they got free I.T. services.

Even still, I did not even own a PC of my own until I inherited one in 1995 (a Kaypro 286), since as a student, I had no money...Up till then, and for a lot longer, I wrote all my software on scrap legal paper, and later keyed it into a system when someone would let me take their computer home to fix it overnight. I'd taken up a number of hobbies to fill my free time over the summer breaks between classes and in the evenings, but of all the various hobbies, music quickly became my main interest. Since I had a lot of free time on my hands (as do most teenagers over their summer breaks) I used that time to teach myself to play guitar and saxophone.

Along with my newfound musical interest came the desire to meet other musicians. Around this time, the 9600-baud modem was becoming affordable, and since I'd just inherited my first PC, I was finally in a position to combine my musical interests with my computer interests.

Here's how: My parents ran several businesses out of their house, and as a result, we had about 12 phone lines coming into the house, of which only about 3 to 5 were in use at any given time. I decided to use my inherited computer and a few of the spare phone lines to set up a bulletin board system that would help musicians locate other musicians (sort of the first BackPage.com, but pre-Internet era). The idea was that I would use my own service to find other people to jam with and learn from.

As a new sysop, I published my bulletin-board system's phone numbers in the Computer Shopper magazine (a widely-read Ziff Davis publication at the time, which provided free listings to BBS operators). I was soon deluged with inbound modem calls from musicians and other sysops. One of these sysops turned out to be a retired Navy SEAL who happened to live close by. He also happened to be a private pilot, and an entrepreneur who owned his own computer consulting business.

He quickly discovered that my I.T. skills would benefit his company, and he gave me my first professional I.T. job. Not only did I get an hourly rate that was excellent by comparison to the minimum-wage slave job I had at the time, but the added perk was that my new boss, as an airplane owner, volunteered to teach me to fly. He'd fly into the airport on my side of town, and I'd take the bus from my house to meet him at the airport. I'd fly the plane on the way to his side of town, do work for his clients, and then in the evening, he'd let me fly the plane on the way back to my side of town as well. He'd then fly home by himself, and we'd repeat the process the next day. Summer didn't last long and I soon had to return to school, but my love of flying became permanent.

Sometime later, I met Bill "Cowboy" Wilson at a local coffeehouse jam session. Bill and I quickly became friends, and our jam sessions started taking place at his apartment, as he had a lot of space available and a lot of gear, too. I soon realized that Bill and I shared a lot of interests -- computers, aviation, music, and others. Bill was particularily active in the flight simulation community, having written many of the popular macro files for the original Thrustmaster FLCS/TQS and F22-Pro setups. Bill also had a private PC repair business going on, and I helped him solve a lot of problems for his clients. Eventually, Bill and I formed a business together to do IT consulting. Bill's sales and client-service experience, and my technical skills, made a solid team. In the evenings after working together all day, Bill and I would get a break from the day's stresses by flying flight sims -- European Air War, Israeli Air Force, and of course Falcon 4.0, equipped of course with our F22-Pro's, TQS's, and Elite Rudders.

This was the start of my cockpit-building adventures. Since gaming at a desk was not so fun, we mounted our sticks to the side of our desk chairs, strapped on some big speakers to the back of the chair for bass effect, and enjoyed the (limited) added realism that such a setup provided. Of course, at the time, we both shared the dream of building out a full replica cockpit, but there was no ViperPit.org at the time (that we knew of! -- only Frugal's, SimHQ, and a few other similar sites), and there weren't many cockpit builders with home pages then either, so there was little to base our work on...plus, neither of us really had the time or the financial resources, let alone the tools, to attempt such a project.

Sadly, I only got to know Bill for a very short time. Bill's death in 1999 left me not only with the loss of my best friend, but as Bill was also my business partner, and since I was hardly qualified to run the business on my own, I found myself without an income. Fortunately, one of our clients offered me a job. In this job, I learned Web programming and all about databases, but due to crazy work hours (it was a startup dot-com company), I found myself with little time for flying or simming. I was advancing in my software knowledge, though, and this was a new challenge for me that was also financially rewarding.

Eventually I saved up enough money to finance a relocation to New York from Arizona. I did not plan this trip very well, and soon discovered that upstate New York was a lousy place to find an I.T. job in the aftermath of 9/11...Fortunately I was able to live off my savings for quite some time (about 9 months), during which time I focused my attention not only on finding a job, but on getting back in touch with my personal interests that had taken a back seat for a couple of years. Since I could not afford to fly then, I focused on music and flight simming.

I quickly grew frustrated with my F-22 Pro/TQS setup, and the limitations of the Thrustmaster programming language, and decided to do something to improve on the situation. I could not afford to buy the newly-released HOTAS Cougar, but I wanted the added functionality that the Cougar provided. So, I set out to implement that functionality purely in software. In doing so, I wanted to honor the memory of Bill Wilson by continuing in his footsteps and contributing to the flight sim community.

With Ulf "DonULFonso" Muckel as my chief idea-man, I wrote a complete in-software clone of the Cougar macro language, which would work with any joystick. I called this project "ThrustMagic", which I felt pretty much summed up the concept. Ulf and I had come up with so many new features that the Cougar couldn't even dream of, we eventually wound up with an entirely different animal altogether. After writing the new language, compiler, editor, and various related tools, I was quite sure it would not be long before I would be able to release this software to the public.

However, I ran into one major problem -- I didn't have a way to get "virtual" axis data from the software into the sim, since the sim software was looking for a physical device. To emulate a physical device, I needed to write a custom Windows device driver, and that proved to be too challenging for me, given my technical abilities at the time, combined with the very arcane Windows 95/98/ME/NT device driver model, and the fact that I only had one PC to work with. This limitation eventually killed the ThrustMagic project for the time being. I did manage to keep all the ThustMagic code archived, in case I decided to try to resurrect the project in the future.

Fast-forward to today -- after a long financial recovery from the impacts of the post-9/11 economic disaster that affected all of the U.S. information technology industry, I'm finally in a position to continue pursuing my dream of building a Viper pit, and in the process, I'll be attempting to resurrect the ThrustMagic software, since I've learned how to work around the limitations I encountered previously that put a stop to that project.

lightning · « **Reply #11 on:** May 12, 2007, 09:17:28 AM »

Today is starting out to be a very difficult day. I just received word that one of my few best friends in this world passed away Thursday night. We'd known each other for nearly six years. I am in complete shock. He was very young -- just a few years my senior. He'd recently lost his father to cancer, and he has two young children, both boys, that have now lost their grandfather and now their father both within a very short time period. Your prayers for peace and comfort for his family and friends are greatly needed and appreciated. Nathan, you are loved and missed so much, buddy!

Flareless · « **Reply #12 on:** May 12, 2007, 09:32:05 AM »

Terrible to hear about the loss of your friend David. Thoughts and prayers go out to all.

Ka-Bar03 · « **Reply #13 on:** May 12, 2007, 09:33:44 AM »

Sad news

lightning · « **Reply #14 on:** May 12, 2007, 09:43:23 AM »

Thank you so much for your words of comfort, Rich. We're all just totally stricken right now. It is just so eerie that I was just writing about one friend lost, and I look up to read my email, and find another has gone.

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