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Showing posts from June 9, 2013

Expidite the expidited

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I am headed to the passport office this AM to get a new passport. I didn't have time to do the expidited renewal after getting back from Japan. So I made an special expiditing appointment with the passport folks in Atlanta. I am glad I only have to drive into Atlanta, not fly up to NY or Washington DC. It seems I have had to do some expiditing everytime I have renewed my passport. Passports are good for 10 years. When you get a new passport it is a time to ponder where you will be and what the passport will look like in 10 years. The pic belows shows the wear on my now cancelled passport. it was a 50 page book (the extra pages version) and 46 pages are fully used. Many countries require 3 empty pages to enter their country. So, I got full use of the larger size passport. If you need more pages, you send the passport in and they will "sew-in" more pages. The thickest passport I ever saw was at the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan border. A truck driver I saw had a Uzbekistan passpo...
Some of the earliest mentor advice I ever received was "Easy on the controls!!" Picture this- you are watching a friend of yours (maybe 12 years old) learning how to use a piece of machinery, (enjoying Man's natural lust for "Amplifier"), a tractor or a truck. He jerks the thing and the hydraulic lines strain and all the components look/sound/act stressed, maybe to the point of failure. The owner is of course very concerned with stress and potential damage. The shout comes... "Easy on the controls!" Why would we not use this comparison on our everyday life experiences? The skill in this understanding is something the pilot is constantly trying to perfect. The plane gives everything back, just like in life. We all control. The baby, the child, the adolescent, the teenager, the parent, the pilot, the executive. It is not about the control, it is about how the control --controls us. I managed to get some flying in this past weekend. I could have done bett...