For those who don’t know, I have been training and studying for my Instrument Rating for my pilots license.  When you first get your license you can only fly in weather conditions that allow you to see the ground and or the horizon.  You need to maintain this visual reference to ensure that the plane stays in the proper attitude.  When you loose this visual reference, the forces of three dimensional flight can trick you in to feeling like up is down and left is right.  The next step in the piloting progression is to become instrument rated.  This teaches you how to fly by reference to flight instruments alone.  This is critical if you are going to be flying in and out of the clouds.

There was a lot of reading, learning, and flying that went in to gearing up for the rating.  I took the written test and passed with flying colors a few weeks back.  Today I took the flight test and aced that too.  It certainly doesn’t mean I am invicible or an expert pilot.  I am still not going to go fly in to bad weather, nor do I think I am suddenly capable of handling any scenario.  It does however mean I have reached the next level of proficiency and has removed several restrictions.  Now, I basically have to rely on my own good judgement.

Anyway thanks to Glenn, my instructor for doing a great job, and Lisa for putting up with my stress level.

I am well into the semester at San Diego State. Things are going well. I am enjoying both my algorithms as wells as my artificial intelligence class. I’ll keep you posted on any interesting developments.

However, I can already tell you that at least in my algorithms class, my peers will be hating me for ruing the grading curve. I managed to get a 107% on the first assignment. The funny thing is that there was no premeditated extra credit. I just did such a complete and thorough job, the instructor decided to give me a little bonus. Yeah, I am that guy. Sorry.