Removing slashes from Word-generated PDF file bookmarks
This has been bugging the hell out of me for a while now. I write my user manuals in Word 2007, and export them as PDF files for inclusion on the HamGadgets web site as well as on the CD-ROMs I ship with each order.
Once in a while, I get an extraneous slash character in the PDF file bookmarks. This always happens on a page where I have a diagram or picture embedded. For example, this time it was the page of the ID-O-Matic manual that has the schematic diagram. I could play around with moving the picture, etc — sometimes I could make the problem WORSE, but never better. One time it showed up with a completely new bookmark, just a slash on a line by itself, which took me to the picture — not the page heading. Eureka.
Turns out — your embedded picture can have text format attributes set, just like text can. The picture in question got added with a “Heading 3” attribute, which made it show up in the PDF bookmarks. Since it was a picture with no text, it jsut had a slash for the bookmark. Depending on exactlyhow things were laid out, it could show up either prepended to the heading (like “/Schematic“) or on a line all by itself. I imagine it would have probably shown up in the TOC if I’d added one. I selected the picture, hit the Normal text format button, re-saved as PDF… end of problem.
Word Help was useless, as usual, and Google searches for this turned up almost nothing. There was a post to a M$ Office forum from someone in Holland with the exact same problem, posted in 2010 and with no replies posted. I’m not going to sign up to that forum so I can “necropost” the fix, but maybe this blog entry till get indexed and save someone else some trouble.
How many do we have to do??
My life has become a routine… work, sleep, touch & go. Yeesh. Last Friday it was an hour of crosswind T&G practice, with truly disappointing results. The landings were just horrible. Tuesday winds were calm and we did an hour of normal T&G, most of which were pretty good or better. Yesterday (Wed.) it was back to gusting crosswinds, but this time I had a much better handle on it. We did seven rounds, and most of them were passable if not the smoothest. I’m at 19 hours now, and I’m finally feeling that I can land without assistance. The last two we did yesterday ended up high and steep on final. If I hadn’t had an instructor in the plane, I’d have either gone around or shallowed out the approach and landed farther down the runway for a full stop. In retrospect, I should have said & done just that. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by trying to salvage a poor landing to the point where the CFI feels the need to assist.
I’m flying again today at 6. My goal is to keep his hands and feet completely clear of the controls for the entire flight.
Telemarketers getting entirely out of hand!
Over the past week it seems the number of illegal telemarketing calls we are getting has increased dramatically. We’re now getting several calls per day. The new ones are mostly live people, calling and asking for me by name, with some bogus crap about filling out an on line survey and winning some discount package or some crap. Bullshit. I don’t fill out online surveys, for one thing. Certainly nothing with a phone number, and I’ve also told them to stop calling.
The latest batch has been guys with heavy Indian accents calling with Florida caller ID. OK, first… Don’t call me if you don’t speak English, asshole. Second… I don’t know anyone in FL, and I’m sure as hell not answering your call if the CID just says the name of some shitty little town in Florida.
I’m going to move out land line to the Asterisk box and let the blacklisting and privacy extension features start weeding these slimy little bastards out. In the mean time I’m filing FCC No-Not-Call complaints for each and every call. It’s probably a waste of time and effort, but you never know. The last time I did that, people went to jail.
In Florida.
Touch and Go
I just got back from another hour or so just doing TnGs. By the time we called it a day I thought I was doing pretty well. On the second-to-last one the instructor said he’d gotten on the controls only for the last couple of seconds, because he thought we were going to be short. I told him, politely, that I had it and we’d have landed on the numbers… which we would have had he not added power, which gave us a nice little float. I’m getting to the point where it irritates me a little if he gets on the controls. I’ve got it, if there’s a correction to be made I’ll make it. Keep yer mitts off the yoke and pedals.
Anyway, the way he wants it done is WAY different than I have done it before, but it works. Abeam the numbers reduce power, first notch of flaps… and from there on it’s all airspeed. 90 MPH on downwind, 85 on base, 80 on final. Today we added 5 MPH to all three due to gusty winds. As with Jerome (CFI #2), I ended up just managing position and airspeed. This guy likes to come in steep, we are well above the VASI slope until we’re well over the fence and on very short final. No problem, with full flaps the Cherokee will sink like a rock if you want it to. I finally got the hang of “power for altitude/glide slope, pitch for airspeed”. John (CFI #1) and Jerome both had the attitude of “set the throttle at xxx RPM and don’t touch it again until you’re over the runway”. Today I used the throttle several times… and I finally quit trying to flare too early. Over the threshold I’d level off and just let it sink, bleeding off airspeed until we were just above the surface, then use the yoke to set off the stall buzzer just as we touched down. There’s a lot happening in about five seconds, but the mains set down nicely and the nose follows just a touch later. Off the yoke, flaps up, check mixture and carb heat, line it up, full throttle and do it again.
Overall, despite the winds (15G23, I think it was) I feel like it was a pretty good day. I know having that much variation in the wind on final gave me a lot of very valuable practice in managing speed and sink rate. The wind was slightly off the runway centerline as well, so there was some crosswind component to deal with. I still managed to keep the centerline at least between the mains… for the most part.
Conventional wisdom is not always right
Let’s take a quick look at 401(k) loans. Some people are not aware of this, but if you have a 401(k) retirement account you can borrow money from yourself. You can take out a loan from your own retirement account for pretty much any reason. The rules about how much you can borrow and how soon it needs to be paid back are a little different for mortgages on your primary residence, but let’s stick with the more usual case for now.
You can borrow up to half of the value of your 401(k), or a maximum of $50,000. Interest rates are fixed and generally pretty low, and the loan term cannot exceed five years. The loan must be repaid by payroll deduction, and this leads to the first potential “gotcha”… if you leave your job or get laid off, the entire loan balance is due and payable within 90 days. If you can’t pay it off in 90 days, it’s treated as an early withdrawal from your 401(k) and there are some pretty unpleasant tax implications — not to mention the money doesn’t go back into your retirement account as it should. So, in general you really only want to consider a 401(k) loan if your employment situation is stable, and/or if you have the cash reserve or other assets (like a stock brokerage account) you could liquidate to pay the loan off within a couple of months if you have to. If you decide to change jobs while you have an outstanding 401(k) loan, you’ll need to figure out how to take care of that because loan repayments have to be deducted from your current employer’s payroll.
So, the convention wisdom, the advice you will usually hear, is that 401(k) loans are a bad, bad idea. All kinds of analysis and predictions of financial doom are easy to find, and all seem to make some basic assumptions. The most consistent assumptions seem to be that you’re desperate for the money, and that while repaying the loan you’re not going to be contributing to your retirement plan. That of course means you lose any employer matching funds. A lot of the advice I’ve read also assumes you’re making some kind of mad return on your 401(k) investments — something which just has not held true lately, though the days of 10%-plus returns may return before long. If you don’t meet those assumptions, though, you can make it into a pretty good deal.
Let’s assume you have a couple of car loans, which you’re paying on schedule. Let’s also assume that you have about $40K between the two, and are paying around 5.99% as seems to be about average now. Your two car payments add up to a little over $900 per month, and all the interest is of course going to your lender. Now let’s assume you could:
- Drop $300 a month off your payments
- Get a lower interest rate
- Get the car loan balances off your credit report
- Show both loans as paid in full
- Have clear title to your vehicles
- Give yourself all of the interest on the loans from now on
Sounds pretty good, right? Enter the 401(k) loan. This can work out very well, assuming you don’t stop contributing to your retirement plan while you’re paying off the loan. Keep contributing what you have been; certainly enough to at least get your employer’s full matching contributions. All of the monthly principle and interest on your loan goes directly back into your 401(k). The interest rate is usually lower that what you’re already paying on your car loans — and what do you care what the interest rate is, anyway? In fact, a higher interest rate can work in your favor! It’s all going into your own retirement account.
If your 401(k) investments are doing significantly better than the interest rate on your loan then, yes, you’re losing a little bit of investment income that you might otherwise have. It may or may not equal or exceed the money you’re paying your lender in the form of interest. Your individual rate of return can tell you that; if it’s more than the rate you’re paying on your car loan and what you’d pay on the 401(k) loan, you may want to think about whether the other aspects make it worthwhile or not. And, yes, there is a little risk of things going south if you lose your job and can’t pay off the full amount of the loan. Even that’s not a crushing blow, though — you still have unencumbered title to your vehicle(s), and there is no adverse credit report information, no collection agency. You simply pay the tax penalty on an early withdrawal from your 401(k).
So the next time you’re looking at financing a car or other major purchase, you might want to do a little research. See if a 401(k) loan is a good idea for you or not. Don’t blindly take anyone’s advice — mine included — without doing your own research and running the numbers.
Exhausted!
Yesterday I flew with Tyler for the second time. When we finally landed back at Millard I was worn out, sweaty, and felt great! We covered a lot of ground in an hour and a half — literally and figuratively.
After flying to the west practice area, we started with slow flight. At 65 MPH he had me do turns — more than I had done before; we did 360 degree turns to the left and right. The airplane is wallowing and barely flying at that speed, and getting it to do what you want is a real balancing act. I’ve got a much better fell for it than I did before.
After slow flight we did power-off and power-on stalls. I greatly improved my power-off stalls to the point where we lost very little altitude and stayed on heading, even after letting the stall break. Power-on stalls are really a non-event. Wait til you feel the buffet, then drop the nose… duh.
Then it was on to steep turns; 360 degree turns left and right at 45 degree bank angles. Again, not bad, after the first one I was able to hold altitude plus or minus 50 feet. Then it was down to 2000′ MSL for ground reference maneuvers. We started at 4500, so he had me do a forward slip to dump altitude. NO problem there, John had me do a slip on every crosswind landing… which is to say, every landing we ever did. Full aileron, full opposite rudder, hold heading and sink like a rock. Ground reference was not a problem with the very light wind, in fact it felt a little like cheating. I want to practice in higher winds, but I hope it’s that calm for my checkride.
After turns around a point, rectangular course and S-turns, he told me to head back to Millard. As we were climbing back to 3000 he reached over and pulled the throttle back to idle… engine failure. I didn’t need the checklist, but I could have picked a much better field (like one on our side of the river, and where I could land into what little wind there was). Then it was back to the field for some pattern work and touch & gos.
All in all… a lot of work, but a good flight. I’m certain that if I had been able to fly with ONE instructor since I started, I’d have soloed by now. Other than having a much better than average grasp on ATC communication, picking FNG as my flight school turned out to be a really bad idea.
A re-adjustment and re-start
Last week I showed up for my scheduled flying lesson with Flight! Nebraska Group. My CFI wasn’t there, and I found out after making the drive down to Eppley that he wasn’t going to be able to make it that day – wasn’t feeling well. Then the admin told me the really great news — the school was going bankrupt and closing its doors, as of the next day. And of course I had only recently written them a check for a block of hours, so they still owe me several hundred dollars.
I’m now flying out of Millard with Pro-Flite. My new CFI, Tyler , seems pretty good; we flew on Friday and I have more training time scheduled for this week. I’m going to try to accelerate the training to finish up as soon as I can. It was pretty windy and gusting the other day, which dind’t make for the best landings — but takeoffs were pretty good, and once I get used to the trim and throttle in the new plane I think I’ll be fine.
Experiences with the Gigaset S675IP
A few months ago I replaced out old Uniden phones with a Gigaset S675IP and all new DECT 6.0 handsets. I liked the S675IP because it offered something I couldn’t find anywhere else — VOIP service with automatic failover to a POTS line backup. After using it for a few months, the result has been half rewarding, half frustrating. The Gigaset product is pretty impressive when it works. Sadly, the software seems to have been written as a freshman project and support from Gigaset is completely useless.
The handsets are sleek, very nice, and work well. Battery life has been great; they will last for days off the charger, and I don’t think we’ve ever managed to kill a battery yet. It’s also nice being able to have two simultaneous phone calls going at the same time. The ability to set up a dialing plan to route local calls via the POTS line and anything long distance via the VOIP server has saved us money in long distance charges — we went from .05 per minute for long distance, to .0098. Intercom voice quality is excellent, as is voice quality during calls. I’d like a little better volume with a call on speaker.
The software has been a horror show. While the dial plan feature is nice, what they don’t tell you is that if your dial plan specifies that a call goes out via VOIP connection, and that VOIP connection is down, your call just simply doesn’t work. The dial plan also allows for only one destination for a call — you can’t have backup routes. My solution will eventually be to just route everything via VOIP and let a real dial plan handle it, but it’s certainly a disappointment.
I’ve also had more than one occasion where a corrupted voicemail is stored in the internal answering machine memory. Once there it can’t be deleted or managed in any way… the only solution is, apparently, a complete wipe of the base unit. ALL settings are lost. There is NO way to back up the setitngs, so you have to start completely from scratch and set up the system. VOIP accounts, dial plans, all settings — everything. Again, Gigaset support has been completely useless. They tell me the settings can be backed up, but apparently are talking about the directory stored in each handset. Gigaset has stopped releasing new firmware for this product, and after a couple of emails they simply stop responding to help requests. It is the poorest support I have ever gotten from a vendor, bar none.
I honestly cannot recommend this product. It’s a really cool idea, with the crappiest implementation I have seen in a long, long time. Add to that the fact that their support is effectively nil, and you have a product that looks nice but just simply doesn’t work as it should. It looks like the newer model might be better — but apparently they have abandoned the US market, which is probably not a bad idea. Maybe the EU customers will tolerate this kid of junk.
More landings (some happy)
Well, I managed to get through a lesson with the aircraft intact. On Friday morning Jerome and I took my old reliable friend, N5533F, up to visit its sick sister at Blair. We did several touch-n-gos. I tried Jerome’s advice for flying the pattern… 100 MPH on downwind. Abeam the touchdown point reduce power to 1800 RPM, one notch of flaps, one crank of up trim, 500 FPM descent, 90 MPH. After the base turn, one notch of flaps, one more crank of up trim. After the final turn, drop the last notch of flaps if needed, one more crank of trim, get on slope, cross the numbers at 85 and pull power back to idle. It worked. Landings were improving, but my TnG takeoffs were pretty gnarly.
This is where I really wish I had video in the cockpit. As soon as the wheels touch my mind is trying to process the landing — but I’ve got only a couple of seconds to clean p the airplane (flaps UP, carb heat OFF, check gauges, fuel pump ON) then full throttle for the takeoff. It would be nice to completely ignore the landing and focus on the takeoff.
Anyway, visibility was getting worse when we headed back to Eppley. Jerome wasn’t sure if we’d even have a VFR approach, but as it turns out we did. We got a left downwind for 32R, Tower cleared us to land, and I did a dead-on approach and a very nice landing — best of the day by far. Either I figured something out or just got lucky, I don’t know, but it seems I usually land better at OMA than BTA. Don’t know why. I’ll have to explore that some.
So I’m working on brushing up my knowledge test stuff so i can get that out of the way. I had hoped to have it done while John was out of town, but there are just too many other things to deal with. I should be back up to speed before long, though. And I’m approaching a tiny little milestone… two more flights, and I get to total up and sign my first full logbook page.