Optery To Reduce Your Online Footprint - A Review

Unfortunately, anytime you use a service online, especially a free service like Facebook, and also often when you buy stuff, your name and data ends up in the hands of data brokers.

The data brokers then sell your personal info to anyone, including scammers and scammers.  You then get inundated with spam and scams calls and emails.  This doth suck.

Without using a service like Optery, Incogni, Cloaked, or others, you would have to find these myriads of data brokers, fill out their removal request forms yourself, and keep an eye on them to stop them from putting your info in their system again - which they do, a lot.

I'd say nobody with a life has time for that.

Is it ridiculous and unfair that you need to pay a service to remove your personal data from data brokers before they provide it to spammers and scammers?  

Of course it is, but here we are.

I decided after looking at various services to give Optery a try.

Since signing up, the amount of spam and scam emails and calls has declined most impressively.  Spam/Scam calls have declined dramatically from one per day to almost none per month, and the amount of spam and phishing emails has declined impressively, but not stopped completely, and let's face it, it likely never will no matter what service you use. 

Anyway, I'm having a good result with Optery, with my info now removed from over 100 data brokers where it was found (yikes!) and they Optery kept removing the info when the data brokers added it back in. And I get to see the status on my dashboard with the, which is rather satisfying to see where my data was and how it has been removed. 

So, I do recommend Optery as I'm having a good result with them, and they are not giving me anything for this review, and I'm fully paying them their regular price for the service. If you want to check them out to reduce your online footprint and scam and spam emails and calls, a referral link for them is right here.   

The Return From Toronto

As usual, you file a flight plan to depart Toronto Island Airport, it gets accepted, and then it gets changed when you ask for your clearance.

I had asked for a simple plan that had been approved before - Depart direct DERLO and from DERLO to Port Huron. 

Nope.  Instead I got the PERL4.08 Departure, to ANCOL, to DERLO, To MARGN and then Port Huron.  The controller first mistakenly said White plains airport and I asked that be clarified and she changed it to Port Huron so that was good at least.

MARGN is past Port Huron, but that was the required plan. 

Why Port Huron? Because Customs and Border Patrol is not open at Oakland County airport on the weekends, but Port Huron is Open 24/7 assuming you file the requisite paperwork and make the proper arrival intention call, which I had.

So I did the run up and got in line for departure and was soon off and on my way.

Again, very nice weather but windy with a good gusting crosswind on takeoff and very much during the initial climbout. 

Got put over the Lake Again, climbing to 3,000.  Got turned out farther into the lake and climbed up to 4,000 then 6,000 and finally 8,000 as I was then told to turn direct to ANCOL.

I then flew the route and got handed through the Toronto Control frequencies and then handed over  to Selfridge ANGB before the Border.

Selfridge then changed my plan to have me go direct to Port Huron which was great, and the controller was very much on the ball, and descended me perfectly, in plenty of time to be on track to get to pattern altitude at Port Huron. 

I had already picked up the automated weather, which was reporting a shifting and gusting crosswind that would wander near the heading for Runway, 4 so Runway 4 it was.

Selfridge had me descend to 2,500 and once I had the airport in sight, and then had me switch to the CTAF.  I listened for traffic, made my calls, crossed over the airport and then dropped down into the downwind for Runway 4 and made a darn nice pattern and  excellent landing. My first landing at Port Huron.

I then taxi'd over to the CBP building, cancelled my IFR flight plan with Selfridge,  got out and cleared customs. The officers were very friendly and made it a very easy experience with no issues.

I then went back to the plane, taxi'd back to the runway, did the runup and departed heading for Pontiac. I contacted Selfridge and requested VFR flight following as the weather was nice and clear and they obliged, alerting me to a ton of traffic around Romeo.  I stayed above it at 4,500 feet.

I then got passed to Detroit Approach and requested the RNAV 27L approach as the setting sun was right in my eyes, making the approach almost IFR-light and making it hard to see the airport, much less the runway.

Using the RNAV approach guidance it5 was easy to be on a proper glidepath and I was able to make yet another very nice landing.

Then taxi'd back to the hangar and that was then end of a very nice weekend trip. Using Poet Huron makes a weekend trip to Toronto and back a lot more doable and convenient, which is great.

That's a 1.7 and a .6 flight, and 2 great landings.

The Toronto Weekend Trip

On Friday, I prepped the Archer and then left Pontiac and headed to Toronto.

After all the necessary filings, I got my clearance and took off. 

Flying IFR,  Detroit Approach had me fly north for awhile and climbed me up to 7,000 as filed, and then got me heading east to Toronto.

 Weather was nice and the air was very smooth. Had a 9-knot headwind .

Got passed over to Selfridge ANGB Approach, and crossed the Border right by the Blue Water Bridge as usual.

 Then I got passed off to Toronto Control and after various frequency changes got to Toronto Approach.

The new GPS was fantastic, making changing frequencies and entering the route and route changes en route very easy.

The approach for Toronto Island Airport  was all sorts of busy. 

I was number 5 in sequence and got held over the water for awhile, and was  being assigned a continuously declining altitude to stay under Toronto airport's traffic.

So at 3,000 feet, I was way out over Lake Ontario/Lake America:

After holding for awhile, that felt longer than it was,  I was then in sequence for the Runway 8 RNAV Zulu approach and was told to keep my speed all the way up and stay at 2,500 until the Final Approach Fix due to traffic.

This led to a chop and drop at the FAF, but I got it in and made a very nice landing, shedding speed and altitude as much as I could at the same time. After landing I was then told to keep my speed up on the runway, run it to the end and taxi off, while staying with Tower the while way.

That was fine and I got to the FBO, shut down, notified Canada Customs of my arrival and got my clearance number. I then could get out of the airplane and get things handled.

 On the way into the FBO there was an aircraft with a most suitable tail number:

 

 A little pilot humor there.

After checking in with the FBO and asking for the plane to be fueled up, I headed into town.

Then I met up with family, celebrated a relative's 90th birthday at a very nice party, and headed back yesterday evening with a different return procedure that I had not used before. 

That was 2.2 and 1 very nice landing. 

So Macklemore

In a feat of both self-promotion and historical amnesia, has announced he's going to hold a series of "Free Palestine" Concerts.

An interesting choice.

Particularly so for he is promoting the cause of those whose relationship with music festivals and concerts has been, shall we say, somewhat less than harmonious:

Apparently, irony is also a feature of his tour.

Abdul El Sayed Signed Declaration Supporting Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt To Purge Media And Police

Abdul El-Sayed's support of the Muslim Brotherhood is wide and deep, as is his contempt of free speech when it does not support himself and Islam.

In 2012, when Egypt was under the control of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood prior to Morsis removal form power, El Sayed was a doctor in New York.

He then signed a public, published statement in support of Morsi's actions to purge the media and police from those who dared oppose the government and insulted Islam.

Washington Free Beacon: Abdul El-Sayed Called on Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood To 'Purge the Media and Police' Shortly Before Islamic Government Arrested Reporters for 'Insulting Islam'

At least he's been rather consistent about "defunding the police" in both Egypt and the USA, so he's got that going for himself.

That is who the Democrats have running for the US Senate in Michigan right now. 

What They're Teaching Kids At University of Michigan These Days

I have a friend who has a kid attending University of Michigan as a freshman.

His English class had this as his first required novel reading: 

My Lesbian Novel 

Described as a "genre-bending novel exploring queerness, art and desire through an interview interwoven with a developing lesbian romance".

Because of course they do.

Now, making freshmen read lesbian erotica is standard stuff to Épater la bourgeoisie to show how stunning and brave and progressive they are, along with making students read the article  If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? Without giving freshmen the viewpoint to challenge the claim. Quick note - It linguistically isn't. At most its a bastardized dialect of English, not a separate language.

Yep, its a progressive incubator with carefully curated curriculoum to push a singular leftist viewpoint. 

Now I'm not objecting to My Lesbian Novel  just because it is Lesbian Erotica that students are paying to be made to read to open their horizons ina politically correct manner (the horizon is only off to the left for some reason).

I'm objecting to it because it's really badly written lesbian erotica:

 For example:

 

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculously disappointing, with such an opportunity lost. 

You do not write a paragraph discussing miso where the woman is anticipating sex and miss the chance to have her reflect: "Miso horny".

Like I said, it is bad genre-bending lesbian erotica. 

Tuition at University of Michigan is $1,150 per credit for instate students and 3,158 per out of state students.  Neither taxpayers nor students are getting their money's worth out of the reading.

UofM: Strong in the sciences and business, but the  "liberal arts" have sadly gone progressively woke - and dumb.

Abdul El Sayed Wouldn't Say It

Michigan progressive Democrat Islamic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed had an opportunity.

He deliberately decided to miss it.

He was asked straight out yesterday at a townhall meeting by an University of Michigan student who his family in Iran ,who have suffered under the Islamist regime, a very, very, simple question:  

Does he stand "unequivocally against the IRGC?"

Fox22Bangor: Michigan student confronts El-Sayed over Iran stance in tense exchange: ‘Do you stand with us?’ 

He refused to answer and instead dodged and switched to saying the USA acted too often as the world's policeman.

It was truly a very simple question.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has killed at least  100,000 pro-democracy Iranians in the latest uprising against the theocratic Iranian dictatorship. The same folks who lead crowds in compulsory chants of "Death to America". The ones who beat women who don't wear hijabs. The models for the bad guys in Margaret Atwoods's Handmaid's Tale. Those guys.

It would have been very easy, and indeed reassuring to moderate voters, for him to have said that yes he does. Verily, any normal person would be against a massacre of 100,000 pro-democracy innocents.

He would not. 

Because both he and his base are for the IRGC and support their despicable acts.  

This is the same Sayed who would not comment on the death of Iran's dictator Khamenei because per his words "there's a lot of sad people in Dearborn" -- namely himself and  his supporters -- who were so sad about it.

Note well, neither the Detroit News nor the Detroit Free Press covered this exchange, which is rather interesting.

So we now know that El-Sayed stands firmly with America's and indeed the Free World's enemies. 

A Nice Day For An Instrument Currency Flight

Flying like shooting. It is a perishable skill. Instrument flying even more so.

Instrument currency can also be a pain to maintain as it is like herding cats to find a safety pilot sometimes, and you need a safety pilot for those practice approaches to count.

So I got up early this morning and headed to the airport to meet Scott who I had convinced to be my safety pilot.

It was a beautiful sunny day to fly, if a tad windy, with gusting winds at 10 knots from 100 degrees.

 After the preflight and adding some oil, we got ready to go.

I got flight following and let then tower know I would be doing practice approaches and they got me all setup.

A nice takeoff and tower had me initially turn on course for Flint and then changed their mind and had me go due north for traffic, and then handed me over to Detroit Approach, who almost immediately handed me over to Great Lakes Approach. 

This led to lots of good practice switching frequencies quickly with the new Garmin 650XI GPS unit.  We have just replaced the 23-year-old GPS 430Ws units that were in the planes with nice new 650XIs.

We went from this:

 to this:

 

 

Some serious improvements in 23 years, including a touchscreen, better integration with the autopilot, much easier entry of Arrival and Departure Procedures and T-Routes, and a much more intuitive process -- that does take some training and study to get used to and take advantage of to use it safely.

I had studied and used a simulator of 650XI, and had used it for a VFR flight, and this would be my first time using it for IFR approaches. 

So we headed to Flint and I put the foggles on, and we started doing approaches. Unfortunately Flint's main runway is closed so no ILS approaches were available, and it would be an RNAV day.

The first approach quite frankly sucked. 

The controller dumped us to join the approach right on top of the Final Approach Fix for the RNAV 36 at 3,500 feet and it was chop, drop, and try to get on glideslope and glidepath time.  The plan was to make it a missed approach even if it was good. This one truly was not and was blown from the start and was missed pretty much as soon as it began.

Went missed, climbed out, got a little bouncy at 2,500 feet in light chop from the wind shifting all around, and tried again and had a much better result.  The controller had us vectored in from a much more doable distance from the final approach fix rather than past it.

Then tried it with the 650 and Autopilot flying the vectors and then the approach to the final approach fix and that went well as I manually adjusted the altitude as we reached the waypoints.  Then hand flew it in the rest of the way. Then did it one more time.

After that it was back to Pontiac for two more approaches. 

The last approach I hand flew and was right on track on the glidepath and glideslope both, even with the crosswind. Landed it like butter and it was a great finish to some very focused practice, and I'm now instrument current again.

That's 1.9, 6 approaches, and 1 great landing. 

The Yom Kippur Islamic Hostility Scoreboard

As unfortunately expected, there were several attempted terrorist attacks on Jews worshiping during Yom Kippur.

First, in Belleville Ontario, a courageous police police was shot while engaging a terrorist shooting at a synagogue.  The officer is critically injured but will hopefully make a full and complete recovery, but thanks to him and another responding officer, the attacker will not.

An attempted attack in Manchester, United Kingdon was foiled by counter-terrorist police who captured two men of undisclosed ethnicity who were plotting to attack a  synagogue there on Yom Kippur. This on the anniversary of last year's attack in Manchester.

The FBI interdicted an ISIS-backed terrorist attach on a Pittsburgh synagogue before it could take place, arresting the terrorist who had pledged himself to ISIS in a hotel room.

In Germany, a disaster was averted when a member of a synagogue in Wuppertal saw an Afghan national throw three firebombs at the synagogue lighting it on fire just before Yom Kippur.

This doesn't even count the multiple terrorist attacks that took place in Israel.

Yes, Islamics do like to attack people on their holy days and on Islamic holy days as well. Happily, authorities managed to stop quite a number of them.

 Expect more attempts on the anniversary of October 7, and during Christmas and Easter.