Incredible: 1100 Sea miles Racked up by Camera in Ikelite Case

Just read an incredible story about a Nikon camera that was lost on sea in Aruba and watched an awesome video filmed by a sea turtle (filmed accidentally). The said lost camera was in an Ikelite case that protected it from the elements and aided its travel from Aruba to Florida.

The credit for the full story goes to Technology Tell (story here)

The youtube video is embedded in this post but the direct link is here in case there is an error or embedding is removed!

Enjoy folks! I was surprised that Ikelite's facebook page did not show this yet!

Disclaimer: I do not own any Nikon COOLPIX or Ikelite products and I have not been paid anything to write this post up! If you want to help, you can always buy your Nikon COOLPIX or Ikelite products through those links in this post.

Airline Incident in 2010, News Comes out Now (2012)

A budget airline in Australia had a human error (pilot error) incident in May 2010. The gist of the story is that, the pilot forgot to lower the landing gear while making a landing approach, because he was distracted by incoming cellphone messages. At about 392 feet from the ground, the pilot realized the mistake, aborted the landing and then landed safely thereafter on a subsequent approach. (full report over at yahoo travel). The incident took place on a  220-seat Airbus A320 and the Australian

According to news reports, the pilot was no rookie with over 13000 flights hours experience and the co-pilot had over 4000 hrs as well.

Full Yahoo Travel Coverage

My biggest concern here is not the incident itself, but the huge delay (almost two years!!) since the incident for this news to come to surface. The issue of fatigue is also raised in the article, but the bigger reason is clearly the cellphone distraction. The fact that airline pilots are allowed to have cell phones on and active during take off and landing is a matter of huge concern - especially when passengers are repeatedly asked to switch them off.

Read Full ATSB Report Here (pdf)

Apart from the yahoo travel report, we dug further into the report published by the ATSB (pdf here) and found further mentions of communication issues between the FO (first officer) and the Captain.
Here are some excerpts from that report:

"Phone records showed that there were no texts sent or answered by the captain during the approach."

"By the time the captain was interviewed as part of this investigation, he had erased the messages from his phone. The investigation was unable to obtain the exact timings of the mobile phone messages."

The pilot(s) as well as the airline were not fined or charged over the incident.

http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/distracted-pilot-forgets-to-lower-landing-gear.html

New Offers from United: Hawaii

Just posting for fun:

	Hello Flyer MileagePlus # XXXXXXX
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Spellcheck

It would be nice if the so-called self proclaimed "professional writers" use spell check without rushing to voice their opinions. Or if they are using obscure words which a common man like me would not know and cannot find in m-w.com, they could at least provide a glossary entry.

ps: At this point, I am a "childless"/non parent human too, but I don't whine and complain about it on Time.com and take up valuable space.

How to Use Listia efficiently - it is not a scam

When you hear you can get stuff for free, sometimes it seems too good to be true. In the case of Listia, an online site to "sell" your unwanted items to get credits and "buy" other items on the site that you may like using credits, it might seem like a complicated method and almost even like a scam. But it is not. It is essentially a "barter site", you get to give away your items or item to different people and get back goods in return. (To read tips on How to use Listia smartly, jump down two paragraphs)

I say that because, some people are against the practice of listia also selling credits for people to top up their account before they go on buying spree. Now, I don't think that makes it a scam. Airlines "sell" miles all the time nowadays and also make you pay surcharges in many cases or take additional fees for so called "free" airline tickets. Have we been able to do anything about it? Not really, except for even more careful planning and using premium airline credit cards etc to avoid fees.

Which brings me to the point here: You can use listia and get stuff free, but remember that this is similar to an ebay site but with lesser protection and no direct payment portal/or shipment confirmations - unilke amazon or ebay. 

How to Use Listia Smartly:

• If you are a seller, always charge for shipping (more on this below).
• For safety, use a PO box or other safe address, not ur home address (unless u live in a fort!)
• If you offer local pickup (do not ever give out your address) meet during safe hours at safe locations to give away your item (this goes for both buyers and sellers).
• Communicate with your winning bidders or even other bidders at least within 24 hours.
• Be smart and pick exact price shipping if you want to be on the safe side. Then you can charge for exact shipping and any small handling charges.
• Sometimes shipping first class may be cheaper than the "flat shipping rates" on the webpage. You can make small profits here.
• Other cases, your shipping cost (+going to post office etc) add up to more than the flat shipping, so be careful here.
• You can receive your shipping costs via Paypal etc.. but seriously, Paypal charges a ton of commission if you want to take ur money out. So, instead I recommend using (as of Feb 16, 2012) Amazon Payments. It is free to sign up and use, and free to withdraw money once you cross a $10 threshold. ps: Sometimes you can also use to make payments using your credit cards and earn points or miles in the process! This is mentioned only for people who manage their credit well.