This site is largely defunct and remains for historical purposes.
Once upon a time,
there was a girl who loved dogs
and wanted to fly.
That was me.
The end.
“Flight is freedom in its purest form,
To dance with the clouds which follow a storm;
To roll and glide, to wheel and spin,
To feel the joy that swells within;
To leave the earth with its troubles and fly,
And know the warmth of a clear spring sky;
Then back to earth at the end of a day,
Released from the tensions which melted away.
Should my end come while I am in flight,
Whether brightest day or darkest night;
Spare me your pity and shrug off the pain,
Secure in the knowledge that I’d do it again;
For each of us is created to die,
And within me I know,
I was born to fly.”
— Gary Claude Stoker
| BE BRAVE ENOUGH |
| TO SUCK AT |
| SOMETHING NEW |
Just a wishlist of different ukuleles I would like to own if money was no object
- Koaloha Red Label or Black Label Concert Ukulele w/Lr Baggs 5.0 pickup
- PIGEON TREE CUSTOM ADIRONDACK SPRUCE MACASSAR EBONY TENOR – this is a one of a kind, a real beauty
- Rebel Livingston Tenor Uke – either the spruce top or cedar top version, no longer in production, only available used
- Blackbird Clara eKoa Concert Ukulele with an Anuenue Air/Air pickup installed after the fact, strung high-G
- Asonu Tahitian Whale 4-String (tahitian stringing)
- aNueNue aNN-UC3K Bird Series Koa Concert Ukulele w/air air pickup
- Petros Custom – Cedar Top, Macasser Ebony body, with the usual polynesian inlays. Unlikely to ever own one, though. I saw one for sale at HMS once, and it was $6K. Neck and neck for most beautiful sounding and looking uke I have ever seen/heard alongside the Pigeon Tree mentioned above.
Delighted to see my recent IEEE conference paper finally show up in Google Scholar and the IEEE Digital Library. I truly believe that the next wave of innovative technology solutions will embrace Affective Computing, i.e. computing systems that understand and adapt to human emotion.
I walked outside this morning after the first good night’s sleep in years, and watched birds flit around the trees, singing on a beautiful sunny morning. My eye fell on the small dogwood tree in the front yard, where a colorful litle fabric airplane is hanging, its wind spinner turning in the breeze, and I started to cry.
You see, that little airplane has come a long, long way. Many many years ago, on the day I passed my private pilot check ride as a 17-year old high school senior, I flew from Gainesville to Cedar Key for my first flying adventure. Edna (the grizzled old crazy taxi lady) gave me a harrowing ride in her battered station wagon from the airport to the downtown Cedar Key area by the docks. While there I saw a little fabric plane sold by a local artist in a shop, and thought to myself “one day, when I have my own house on an airport and my own little seaplane, I will hang that little airplane in the yard and remember this day.” I knew the day that little airplane would commemorate would be a long time coming, and already I was worried how I would afford to continue flying.
For years I carried that little airplane with me in a box of precious things, and would take it out to look at it. There were some long dark years when I didn’t get to fly, and my whole world seemed awful, and I couldn’t even stand to look at the sky. That little airplane stayed hidden in a dark closet corner, buried, like I buried my memories of flight. And yet still I carried it with me everywhere I moved.
A few days ago, as I was looking through items stored away that I had not yet unpacked, I found the box with that little airplane, its colors still bright despite the long passage of the years. I hung it from a little tree in my yard, on the path to the hangar, and now every time I look out my office window, or step out the front door to go flying, it is there to remind me that sometimes dreams do come true.