Said Prittard:

To be honest, there’s only so much relaxing you can do. I’m only young and a bit of hard work never did anyone any harm.

Lottery Winner Goes Back to Work [BBC via HowardStern.com ]

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I am captivated and horrified by aircraft in the first place, so this video of Lufthansa Flight LH44 from Munich landing in Hamburg—full, I’m told, of technology folk going to the big CeBIT gadget convention—is the sort of thing that will be running on a loop in my mind as I take a flight this weekend to Austin.

After they abort—and there’s a wing touching the ground at one point, I believe—they came around to Hamburg’s other runway which is perpendicular to the first and touched down safely.

John Biggs of Crunchgear is at CeBIT and told me that he met one guy who had been on that flight sitting in a booth on the busy show floor, sort of quietly watching the crowds go by, too sullen to interact.

YouTube commenters are the dregs of internet feedback, but there are some quotes from some folks in the video’s comments that seem at least possibly true:

He should never had tried to land in those conditions!!
Very dangerous guy .I am an airbus( a330) pilot myself :the go around should have been done much earlier: luckily the main gear did not touch the runway otherwise Speedbrakes would have extend automatically and go around would have been deadly. Very bad approach very late wind correction:xxxtremely dangerous!!

For all those with comments like “good save”, and “excellent job by the pilot”, save it. They were lucky to have extracted themselves from a precarious situation which they alone are responsible for getting into. Also, a 30 knot crosswind and no rudder? WTF?

Klar, dass er die Situation trotzdem noch gerettet hat zeigt, dass die Piloten der Lufthansa über hervorragende Fähigkeiten verfügen – keine Frage. Ich finde nur, dass man den Landeversuch schon viel früher hätte abbrechen müssen. Gott sei Dank ging alles gut.

(I don’t actually speak German so I just cut-and-pasted that one in because I thought it looked pretty.)

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One thing we’re already sure to see more of than we’ve seen on other shows of this type: missing limbs. One of the loggers in the preview video is missing a toe, while another has lost most of his hand.

Preview Page [History.com via Toolmonger]

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There is no beer here.

Seriously, do not mess around with me. Where is the beer?

Oh, you’re good.

(Thanks, Chumford!)

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My workplace has decided to have a night out on Saturday. Usually, it’s a rowdy 150 people or so in a bar (or bars) on the night after payday. This time however, they’ve decided to go upmarket, and take advantage of the hospitality of a local business intimidated by a new arrival. A Casino.

Now, I know full well I am going (It’s a rare opportunity to socialise with my fellow co-workers without them almost passing out from alcohol poisoning), but sadly my knowledge is a combination of playing a bit online and watching reruns of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Add to that the fact that this is the UK and therefore is more stuffy than Las Vegas, and the fact that I have no idea what the hell I’m doing in most work-related social situations, this means I need help.

What the hell do you do in a UK Casino, without (a) looking like a fat and badly dressed James Bond-alike, nor (b) ruining anyone else’s gambling with casino faux pas aplenty…

This is going to be a tough 48 hours…

First of all, don’t fret. Casino’s are never as classy as they may seem, even if they are in merry ol’ England.

Dress sharp, but don’t overdress. Bond is a casino, despite your worry, is about right. A jacket and an open shirt, perhaps, but ditch the tie. (And I figured you weren’t even considering the tux.)

Work related social situations are all about letting your co-workers get drunk before you do. Head in, order a scotch and soda—heavy on the soda—and begin your slow sip. Walk around, giving everyone a couple of hours to get loosened up while you retain your wits. Hell, you could even show up a couple hours late. You’ll look cooler and will still have a spring in your step while they’re drooling all over each other telling stories about the sale that got away.

If you don’t know how to gamble, don’t. Most casinos don’t mind you standing at the table along with someone else, allowing you to enjoy the drama without risking any money of your own. All the better to be the guy with a few pounds in his pocket when some poor upset co-worker loses all her cash and could really just use a drink.

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It may be hard to ascertain from this picture alone why this crane operator is swinging two iron wrecking balls between his knees, but it’s not just because he’s methodically removing the very bricks that support his multi-ton digger. It’s also where those bricks happen to be. (All will be made clear if you click the link.)

Crane demolishing a chimney using an excavator [ScaryIdeas.com]

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A two-engine commuter plane made a “wheels up” landing in New Zealand this morning after circling for half an hour attempting to get the landing gear to work.

“I’m absolutely amazed at the quality of the landing,” he said.

“Watching from the side of the runway, he was right down the centre, he didn’t deviate. It was an extremely good landing in the circumstances.”

Flt Sgt Gee told Radio New Zealand the landing was fairly uneventful, given the circumstances.

“The propellors disintegrated and the aircraft just slid along the runway, right down the middle until it came to a stop.”

Stricken aircraft belly lands at Blenheim [Stuff.co.nz]

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In the meantime, I wanted to congratulate my girlfriend, Susie Stalker, for getting the best present for me I could possible think of: she’s accepted an open-ended internship at Six Point Craft Ales, where she’ll be learning how to brew beer commercially. (And learning how to scrub out giant fermenters, I’m sure.) Finally, a job that I don’t mind her bringing home with her.

Way to go, Stalker!

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I can’t watch these corporate grin-and-bear-it videos without literally cringing with the thoughts of all the people who were harmed in the making: the employees roped into forming the choir, the horribly white woman and her band “breaking it down,” or the thousand of employees who had to watch this video and continue to work for the company without setting the entire place ablaze.

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You know we love our Deadliest Catch around here, so you can imagine my delight at this post on Fecal Face from Corey Arnold, who apparently was on the show, but is more notable for being a great photographer. He’s got his Alaska story online, how he made his way into the lucrative King Crab fleet, and lots more detail about what it’s like to be a fisherman.

4. Go to Dutch Harbor anytime. There is always something going on. The plane ticket will cost you $800 one way. There is no escaping that. It’s far cheaper to fly to China then the Aleutians. Don’t expect to land a crab job. There are way too many experienced crabbers out of work these days. Last season, the place was swarming with wannabe crab fisherman because of Deadliest Catch. I didn’t hear of any landing good jobs. Most just milled around for months.

How to be an Alaskan Fisherman [FecalFace.com]

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But I leave you with this topic of discussion, should you choose to accept it: Someone I know recently commented that he’d been thinking about his younger, teenage self and what that kid would think of the man he’d turned into today. He thought his younger self would be pretty happy with his grown-up self, which prompted a nice sense of self-satisfaction and euphoria.

Charming, but of course the inverse applies, full of loathing and sick sweats. If you met a younger, more ideological version of yourself today, would young you be proud of what you’ve grown up to be?

I’d say that I’m already doing more and less than I’d expected out of life. I thought I wanted to be rich, and while I’m not anywhere near it, I’ve come to realize that money is only really important as fuel for freedom—I don’t know if Younger Me would have bought that. And I hadn’t anticipated being a writer at all, but I think I would have been okay with it, after I got done punching myself in the balls and calling myself a fag.

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Cool business cards are highly advised, but many of the examples shown in this survey are of such odd shape that I can’t imagine anyone being able to carry around more than a few—nor anyone receiving one to do anything but pitch them in the trash. If it can’t fit into my wallet, I don’t want it. If someone tried to hand me a block of lucite like the one pictured above, I’d have to politely decline or ask for some cocaine to go with it.

Still, better too creative than not creative enough, I suppose.

Cool business card designs [CreativeBits.org]

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Apparently this sort of slide is called a “helter skelter,” and this one is installed at a office building museum in what must be Europe, because no workplace in the U.S. is legally allowed to be awesome. In case it’s not obvious from the picture, that big metal snakey thing is the slide that you get inside of to reach the floor.

The Full Gallery [Baraskit.se via Digg]

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Last night’s episode couldn’t hold up to last week’s, as evidenced by the fact they recapped the rescue from last week for the first ten minutes of the show. But that’s okay—seeing that man they plucked out of the waters lose it and start hugging the skipper was powerful television. And the good fishing afterwards was heart-warming enough to make you almost question the possibility of good karma.

The season is winding down, obviously, which means it’s almost certain that Captain Blake is going to end up near the bottom of the catch rankings, which is great, because that dude is a dick. Every time he gets that smarmy look on his face and cracks a joke to his crew it makes me cringe, especially when it’s so obvious from their responses that they don’t respect him. Maybe every captain goes through that in his early years, but I sort of doubt it.

What I’d like to see next year is more talk about how the pots have to be reset to catch the migration of the crabs. They showed one graphic early in the season that implied how the whole crab hunt happens, but then hardly mentioned it again, leaving viewers to infer from the comments of the captains. I want to see a bunch of deep sea camera crews in the water filming this “biomass” of crabs shuffling across the ocean floor. I wouldn’t mind hearing more about how the business side of things work as well; it was clear from yesterday’s episode that there are some real jerks working on the docks.

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While Vocation Vacations has several pre-selected careers for you to sample (”animal lover” is intriguing for a variety of reasons), it doesn’t appear you can pick anything; they need to have a mentor on hand before they can plug you in. (Although I get the feeling that if you asked nicely they’d be happy to at least look. Be specific, though. You don’t want to put in “want to make the trains run on time” and find they’ve resurrected Hitler.)

As for price, well, they don’t actually put one on the website, so my guess is that it’s probably not cheap. But it might depend on what career you choose to sample. One would think “Florist” would be cheaper than “Pro Wrestling – Ringside Manager.” (I don’t actually know if they offer the former, but they definitely offer the latter.)

If nothing else, these vacations give you a way to defuse that niggling doubt that you’d be happier doing something else, which is worth a lot. So much of contentment is just removing worry.

Company Page [VocationVacations.com]

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Dethroner was created with one over-arching goal: to create a business that would allow me to do what I want with my life, which is to travel around the country and planet, learning new things, and document them in writing and pictures. I’ve lost the plot a bit over the last few months, falling too easily into patterns I learned while working at Gawker Media as a blogger, instead of making smart decisions in pursuit of the goal as a business owner. 4-Hour Work Week comes on the heels of several hand-delivered slaps to the face by circumstance. Which is great—it’s time to stop wallowing that things haven’t worked out as effortlessly as I’d hoped.

Atypical optimism after the jump.

Ferriss’ concept can be summed up easily: establish self-sustaining sources of revenue, such as internet-based retail operations; minimize both your reoccurring fiscal and informational expenses by cutting fat and outsourcing responsibility at every opportunity; use your new-found freedom to travel, learn new things, and enjoy life’s adventures.

For me, as a writer, I’ve learned that diversifying is the secret to a strong freelance life. I have regular magazine work, occasional long-form/front-of-the-book pieces, and Dethroner. That works primarily because I want to do all those three things, but I’m doing the two former things to pay for the latter. (Making Dethroner pay for itself is an ongoing project, the ups-and-downs of which are best saved for another post.)

What I should now, according to Ferriss, is to add businesses unrelated to writing, or at least aligned in parallel to my skill set. (Technical knowledge, dick jokes.) I already have about half-a-dozen ideas waiting in the wings, which is frightening. What if one of them turned out to be a success?

There is a sense of guilt I get when I start thinking about living this sort of lifestyle, not just using currency disparity to hire Indian personal assistants, but even having people work for me at all. If I’m able to live the lifestyle I want because other people are working for me, shouldn’t I, too, be working as much as I ask of them? I haven’t quite figured this one out, but I think I’m going to put that aside for the moment to worry about until after I’m fully self-sufficient. (To paraphrase Nathan Rolf, I’m hoping trickle-down economics can be more than just paying a bum a dollar to let me piss on him.)

Even if you aren’t already self-employed, Ferriss has several ideas for regaining control of your time from your employer, mainly involving mild duplicity to slowly weasel your way out of your office, culminating in complete remote working that will allow travel, etc. (I suspect this will be difficult for those who work in steel mills or bordellos.) Again the middle-class guilt appears: why should I let myself live this lifestyle when it isn’t available to so many others? Another opposing-but-unrelated defense: Lots of rich people are assholes.

Anyway, a lot to think about, but I wanted to pass on my tentative thumbs-up. It’s a competently-written and practical read (and occasionally and surprisingly crass, which of course I think is awesome.) I can’t give it my full endorsement until I am writing one from the deck of a chartered dive boat steaming through the Caribbean.

The 4-Hour Workweek [Amazon]
Audiobook [Amazon]
Ferris’s Blog [FourHourWorkweek.com]

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