This is a factory picture - a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. I trained in the C152 two-seater but haven't been back inside one since the day I passed my flight test. The C172 is a four-seater, but if there are four people on board the weight-and-balance has to be done really carefully and you almost certainly can't take a full load of fuel. Where I trained in Victoria there was an unusual variation to this - all the C172's had extended and/or long range fuel tanks added since much of the flying was over water. Of course, fuel weighs, so if the tanks were full I usually couldn't take off with four on board. So the trick was to emphasize to the line crew to not refuel after the previous flight. 

CAVOK - or ceiling and visibility OK - is music to a pilot's ears! When I first flew out of Atlanta's Peachtree DeKalb airport in the summer, I thought I had heard the ATIS report incorrectly - ceiling unlimited, visibility three miles. In other words - no clouds but you can't see anything! Now, that is not at all unusual for Atlanta in the summer as the humidity traps massive amounts of pollution and the visibility is limited. 

These days I am not flying regularly, but do try to get up for short flights when I am in  new city. Actually it works well - I fly and sight-see and the required IP does the navigation and radio work. Unlike with driving, in flying if you aren't checked out and current at each location and aircraft you can't go up alone. In Chicago, a neat trip out over the Lake and Navy Pier Amusement area and an approach to Meigs Field, which is the lake front field that was featured in Microsoft's Flight Simulator for so long. They charged $28 just to touch-and-go so we aborted the approach at the last moment and headed back to Palwaukee. In San Francisco, a thrilling trip [in a Katana with a joy stick instead of half-wheel control!] from San Carlos, up the Peninsula past SFO and the two Stadiums, over the Bay, Alcatraz, Sausolito, the Golden Gate, Pacifica, Half Moon Bay, San Jose, east side of the bay and back over to San Carlos. Frankly, even if I was current to be up on my own, I would have gone with an IP - there is a lot of traffic in that area and ATC simply reports it as "multiple targets from your 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock".

Panama City Pipes & Drums

Tenor drum corporal, I have competed solo and with the band. Flourishing [swinging the sticks] looks easy - but you can sure wrap the strings around your fingers real fast!
 

At work, the computer is a tool. The applications it is used for have to have some sort of cost/benefit justification. Away from work, it is nice to be able to create - art, crafts, stories - whatever. I have sometimes used my creative time to come up with applications for work situations that would otherwise not have been justifiable. In the early days of word processors [yes, that is real gray hair and I was around when they first came into widespread use!] I adapted various of the forms we used in business valuations into a combined questionnaire and working paper index. A complex valuation could run for over six months with several files of working papers as I gathered and sorted out information. They were not worked on continuously so the "start and stop" time could add up to a lot of wasted time just figuring out where to restart after several days away from the file. This organizer saved me countless hours. Consolidating seven branch budgets and comparing them to actual was a monumental task on 14 column paper worksheets. But the early electronic spreadsheets weren't great at consolidation, and even getting them balance down and across was not a slam-dunk either! Once I created a working model it felt as satisfying as if I had created a masterpiece - and I was able to enjoy it month after month, especially when I thought back to how much drudgery was involved in doing it manually before my new model was built. Building the Wizards Kingdom and bringing it online is similar in that I can create and operate something that otherwise would not have been practical, at least for me.