4 ms·

Well I have an oddly specific contribution to this thread: My first boss was absent all the time. He'd show up to the office and lock himself away, leave and

Well I have an oddly specific contribution to this thread: My first boss was absent all the time. He'd show up to the office and lock himself away, leave and then not come back for another 6 months. He hated software and computers and didn't want to be a part of the software product we were building-- which is self evidently strange. He used to race experimental cars. He was in a horrific crash on one of those salt flats and his personality was permanently changed. He went from being pleasant to the person I knew him as-- cold, strange and reclusive. Turns out he was coming in to the office just long enough to use Excel to run a calculation. He was designing a helicopter where the jet engines were on the tip of the rotors and you stood in a can above the whirling blades. We called it GarbageCopter. Anyways, he eventually gave up and bought a gyrocopter. He flies that thing all day, every day. Just circling in the pattern at our airport at 1,000 feet and 20 knots. He is very old and blind on one side. I have no idea how he got his health check. I am pretty sure he will be a statistic someday, but at least he's doing something he likes.

julian_ap 6y ago
Fascinating. I have so many questions. How did this manager manage to not get his position terminated? Was he able to run Excel calculations for the GarbageCopter outside his office machine? I will stop here for now. Thank you.
BuildTheRobots 6y ago
Tip jet [1] helicopters have been a thing, but it's never taken off commercially. The Fairey Rotodyne being a good example. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_jet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_jet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Rotodyne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Rotodyne
- yesenadam 6y ago
  Gee, [1] says they were invented by Wittgenstein! I never knew about that.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    “ If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done”
    - yesenadam 6y ago
      I don't see the point of putting that quote here, sorry. Inventing the helicopter was a silly thing, or what?..
- brudgers 6y ago
  Tip jet helicopters have been a thing, but it's never taken off commercially. Sort of like Wittgenstein himself.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Kolibri! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b-h8NgsieQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b-h8NgsieQ
rtkwe 6y ago
For a Gyrocopter you only need a Thrid Class Medical certificate or to comply with BasicMed neither of which list eyesight as a disqualifying condition. https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/medical_certification/faq/response6/ https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/medical_certificat... https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airmen_certification/basic_med/ https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airmen_certificati...
- tjohns 6y ago
  The standards for a FAA third-class medical go beyond just what's on the official "disqualifying" list. It's not a walk in the park. From personal experience, they care a great deal about your eyesight. To start, you'd want to look through the AME Guide [1] and the rules in 14 CFR 67 Part D [2]. [1] https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/aam/ame/guide/app_process/ https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/av... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-67/subpart-D https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-67/subpart-D
  - getpost 6y ago
    This reminds me, when I had my 3rd class medical exam at age 16, the examiner didn't have equipment to test hearing. So, he went into the adjacent room and whispered, "Can you hear this?" Then loudly, "OK, cover your left ear." Whispering, "Can you hear this?".... I passed.
- danaliv 6y ago
  It might be an ultralight. Don’t even need a pilot certificate, let alone a medical.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    I thought you didn't need a license for a gyrocopter but when I looked just now it seemed like you did. Guess it's based on weight class so yeah he might be in the ultralight class, didn't mention it because I thought I was wrong about it being a no license class.
sbierwagen 6y ago
Traumatic brain injury is perhaps underappreciated. https://www.gwern.net/Questions#psychiatry https://www.gwern.net/Questions#psychiatry (Maybe as death rate from other accidents drops, it rises in relative importance?) Among other amazing numbers from that page, it quotes one study that shows 45 percent of the residents of a homeless shelter had a positive screening result for TBI: https://www.gwern.net/docs/www/cmajopen.ca/03aff85438a2597870b575911fc35e69e6ac91c5.html https://www.gwern.net/docs/www/cmajopen.ca/03aff85438a259787... Notoriously, Stanislaw Ulam and Steve Wozniak had major personality changes after head trauma.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  Great comment. Was curious w/ regards to Ulam. Found this on Wikipedia: In January 1946, he suffered an acute attack of encephalitis, which put his life in danger, but which was alleviated by emergency brain surgery. ... Another friend, Gian-Carlo Rota, asserted in a 1987 article that the attack changed Ulam's personality: afterwards, he turned from rigorous pure mathematics to more speculative conjectures concerning the application of mathematics to physics and biology; Rota also cites Ulam's former collaborator Paul Stein as noting that Ulam was sloppier in his clothing afterwards, and John Oxtoby as noting that Ulam before the encephalitis could work for hours on end doing calculations, while when Rota worked with him, was reluctant to solve even a quadratic equation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Ulam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Ulam
- emmelaich 6y ago
  and Michael Hutchens of INXS who got punched in the head while riding in Stockholm. And even more famously, Henry VIII, who fell off a horse.
- DavidAdams 6y ago
  It's posited that Howard Hughes' increasingly strange behavior and eventual withdrawal into reclusion was precipitated by a series of TBIs he suffered in test pilot crashes.
  - walrus01 6y ago
hutzlibu 6y ago
" He was in a horrific crash on one of those salt flats and his personality was permanently changed. He went from being pleasant to the person I knew him as-- cold, strange and reclusive." If it was not traumatic brain injurie, like others mentioned, I can maybe give an other point of view. I guess it is the struggle of acceptance. Everyone knows accidents happen, but before you were in a bad one and have high self esteem, you likely believe, this won't happen to you. That would be unfair. "Those things cannot happen to me" - well, yes, they absolutely can happen to you. Why not to you? Why not to me? I had that with a actually not so serious sport accident, which still meant I could not do sport for years - which was a very serious crisis for me. WHY ME? Well, why not me. In hindsight I would rather think I was very lucky, to not have that accident, while being somewhere far off. Today I can even do (moderate) extreme sports again, ... but much more aware of what I am doing and how easy it is, to loose it all. So I can allmost say, today I am thankful for that accident, but I can also see, how such a accident can bring you to a very dark place of where you cannot get out. Your former boss seems to need his flying to get out of it at least for some time. I guess there are worse ways to cope with it.

julian_ap 6y ago

Fascinating. I have so many questions. How did this manager manage to not get his position terminated? Was he able to run Excel calculations for the GarbageCopter outside his office machine? I will stop here for now. Thank you.

BuildTheRobots 6y ago

Tip jet [1] helicopters have been a thing, but it's never taken off commercially. The Fairey Rotodyne being a good example. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_jet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_jet [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Rotodyne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Rotodyne

yesenadam 6y ago
Gee, [1] says they were invented by Wittgenstein! I never knew about that.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  “ If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done”
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    I don't see the point of putting that quote here, sorry. Inventing the helicopter was a silly thing, or what?..
brudgers 6y ago
Tip jet helicopters have been a thing, but it's never taken off commercially. Sort of like Wittgenstein himself.
jacquesm 6y ago
Kolibri! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b-h8NgsieQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b-h8NgsieQ

rtkwe 6y ago

For a Gyrocopter you only need a Thrid Class Medical certificate or to comply with BasicMed neither of which list eyesight as a disqualifying condition. https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/medical_certification/faq/response6/ https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/medical_certificat... https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airmen_certification/basic_med/ https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airmen_certificati...

tjohns 6y ago
The standards for a FAA third-class medical go beyond just what's on the official "disqualifying" list. It's not a walk in the park. From personal experience, they care a great deal about your eyesight. To start, you'd want to look through the AME Guide [1] and the rules in 14 CFR 67 Part D [2]. [1] https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/aam/ame/guide/app_process/ https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/av... [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-67/subpart-D https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-67/subpart-D
- getpost 6y ago
  This reminds me, when I had my 3rd class medical exam at age 16, the examiner didn't have equipment to test hearing. So, he went into the adjacent room and whispered, "Can you hear this?" Then loudly, "OK, cover your left ear." Whispering, "Can you hear this?".... I passed.
danaliv 6y ago
It might be an ultralight. Don’t even need a pilot certificate, let alone a medical.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  I thought you didn't need a license for a gyrocopter but when I looked just now it seemed like you did. Guess it's based on weight class so yeah he might be in the ultralight class, didn't mention it because I thought I was wrong about it being a no license class.

sbierwagen 6y ago

Traumatic brain injury is perhaps underappreciated. https://www.gwern.net/Questions#psychiatry https://www.gwern.net/Questions#psychiatry (Maybe as death rate from other accidents drops, it rises in relative importance?) Among other amazing numbers from that page, it quotes one study that shows 45 percent of the residents of a homeless shelter had a positive screening result for TBI: https://www.gwern.net/docs/www/cmajopen.ca/03aff85438a2597870b575911fc35e69e6ac91c5.html https://www.gwern.net/docs/www/cmajopen.ca/03aff85438a259787... Notoriously, Stanislaw Ulam and Steve Wozniak had major personality changes after head trauma.

phobosanomaly 6y ago
Great comment. Was curious w/ regards to Ulam. Found this on Wikipedia: In January 1946, he suffered an acute attack of encephalitis, which put his life in danger, but which was alleviated by emergency brain surgery. ... Another friend, Gian-Carlo Rota, asserted in a 1987 article that the attack changed Ulam's personality: afterwards, he turned from rigorous pure mathematics to more speculative conjectures concerning the application of mathematics to physics and biology; Rota also cites Ulam's former collaborator Paul Stein as noting that Ulam was sloppier in his clothing afterwards, and John Oxtoby as noting that Ulam before the encephalitis could work for hours on end doing calculations, while when Rota worked with him, was reluctant to solve even a quadratic equation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Ulam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Ulam
emmelaich 6y ago
and Michael Hutchens of INXS who got punched in the head while riding in Stockholm. And even more famously, Henry VIII, who fell off a horse.
DavidAdams 6y ago
It's posited that Howard Hughes' increasingly strange behavior and eventual withdrawal into reclusion was precipitated by a series of TBIs he suffered in test pilot crashes.
- walrus01 6y ago

hutzlibu 6y ago

" He was in a horrific crash on one of those salt flats and his personality was permanently changed. He went from being pleasant to the person I knew him as-- cold, strange and reclusive." If it was not traumatic brain injurie, like others mentioned, I can maybe give an other point of view. I guess it is the struggle of acceptance. Everyone knows accidents happen, but before you were in a bad one and have high self esteem, you likely believe, this won't happen to you. That would be unfair. "Those things cannot happen to me" - well, yes, they absolutely can happen to you. Why not to you? Why not to me? I had that with a actually not so serious sport accident, which still meant I could not do sport for years - which was a very serious crisis for me. WHY ME? Well, why not me. In hindsight I would rather think I was very lucky, to not have that accident, while being somewhere far off. Today I can even do (moderate) extreme sports again, ... but much more aware of what I am doing and how easy it is, to loose it all. So I can allmost say, today I am thankful for that accident, but I can also see, how such a accident can bring you to a very dark place of where you cannot get out. Your former boss seems to need his flying to get out of it at least for some time. I guess there are worse ways to cope with it.