SYNFORMATION is an enterprise web application framework

One of our girls visits the 7th grade (13 years, secondary school) right now. In geometry, they are talking about the congruence rules for triangles and triangles in general. Yesterday’s homework included a geometrical problem: construct the space diagonal of a cube geometrically and specify its length (side length of the cube is 5.3cm).

While this might be an easy problem for grownups, it seemed not so easy for her. She drew a grid model of the cube, connected the opposite vertices, and measured off the length of the resulting diagonal. It seem logical and right for her. When I asked her about the actual angles in a cube, and how they relate to her projection, it became quite clear, that some angles in the drawing weren’t quite what they should have been.

In my opinion, kids have to learn how to ask the right questions, and how to find answers. And then they should explain it to somebody else. As a freshman I earned some extra money by giving private lessons for juniors and seniors. I quickly learned, that I was only able to explain a problem and its solution in depth, when I was able to answer all kinds of questions they were throwing at me. It didn’t have anything to do with knowledge, but with the ability to express it. And that is quite harder. So whenever you want to make sure you truly understand something, talk to someone about it for a couple of minutes, and have her or him ask you questions.

Finally, she was able to find a solution to the problem. I didn’t explain it to her, but I asked her some questions. She had to explain it to me.

Yesterday, I received a phone call from someone who asked me to meet aircraft N279WA in Frankfurt on a cargo mission. It came from Chicago and went back to Atlanta. This aircraft has been converted to a cargo plane only recently. And it has a new livery now.

Before, it was a passenger aircraft. I knew it mostly from Air Mobility Command missions. On several occasions, I flew with it from the now defunct Rhein-Main AFB to Al Udeid AFB in Qatar. Most flights went thru Bahrain airport, because the commercial air carriers need a place to change crews and get catering. This is difficult to accomplish on some Air Force Bases, but certainly in Al Udeid. The AMC missions are still going on, but without this aircraft.

While I was there, I took some pictures, one from the main deck after unloading of the inbound cargo. The main deck alone on this MD-11 can hold more than 150,000 lbs of cargo. Loading teams in Frankfurt regularly load an entire MD-11 cargo aircraft in 45 to 60 minutes.

Here you can see a portion of the N279WA cockpit from that night, with me in the captains seat. Although I know how to read and use some of the instruments, I can barely fly an aircraft with Microsoft’s Flight Simulator. But then, this isn’t my job.

For our family car, a 2006 Mercedes-Benz C-class station wagon, I wanted to be able to connect a MP3 player to the car audio system. We have an iPod and the girls have some other MP3 players as well. Although the CD player in the car can play MP3 CDs, it doesn’t always work. It seems to depend on the manufacturer of the blanks as well as the software the MP3 CD has been recorded with.

I have considered the iPod Integration Kit for USD 299 plus cost of installation. But with it you can operate the iPod only from the steering wheel. And I don’t want to be the DJ while driving. The front-seat passenger should do that if needed. Because of that, I bought a simple cable harness from Mercedes-Benz to setup the AUX input of the Audio 20 for connecting directly to the iPod. The Mercedes-Benz cable harness part no. is 203 540 61 07 if you order it in the US, or 210 440 50 05 for Europe. It should cost approx. USD 30. Installation is easy and should take around 30 minutes if you do it yourself. If you’re using an European iPod, you should uncap the iPod volume. Otherwise, it will not be loud enough.

Everybody is happy now as we’re able to connect any MP3 player to our cars audio system. And because the connector is hidden inside the glove compartment, no cables are hanging around. Thanks to playlists, there’s no need to access the MP3 player very often.