Rigid FAA Forms

[Stubby]

I renewed my medical certificate yesterday. The secretary now uses some
software that guarantees everything is acceptable to the FAA. But it
choked on my hair color. I wrote "WHITE" but that isn't one of the
keywords that are allowed. She changed it to "GRAY" and said that would
get it through.

What do they do with bald people? Maybe I'll get my hair dyed a bit
when I can afford flying again.

[Bob Noel]

In article >,
Stubby > wrote:

> I renewed my medical certificate yesterday. The secretary now uses some
> software that guarantees everything is acceptable to the FAA. But it
> choked on my hair color. I wrote "WHITE" but that isn't one of the
> keywords that are allowed. She changed it to "GRAY" and said that would
> get it through.

just another example of stupid programming.

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate

[john smith]

In article >,
Stubby > wrote:

> What do they do with bald people?

"NONE"

[John Gaquin]

"Stubby" > wrote in message

>I renewed my medical certificate yesterday.

The Federal mindset at work. When I joined the AF many years ago, many
forms had to be filled out upon arrival at basic training. "You WILL enter
one middle initial in the box labeled 'middle initial'!" Like a naive fool,
I asked -- what if I have 2 middle initials? (which I do). Repeat: "You
WILL enter one middle initial in the box labeled 'middle initial'!" Someone
else asked -- what if you have no middle initial? "If you have no middle
initial, enter the letters NMN in the box!"

So,---- if you have one middle initial, you fit the mold; if you have two,
you're cut short; but if you have none at all, you get to have three.

Remember, life with a bureaucracy is nothing more than live whack-a-mole.

[Ron Natalie]

Stubby wrote:
> I renewed my medical certificate yesterday. The secretary now uses some
> software that guarantees everything is acceptable to the FAA. But it
> choked on my hair color. I wrote "WHITE" but that isn't one of the
> keywords that are allowed. She changed it to "GRAY" and said that would
> get it through.
>
> What do they do with bald people? Maybe I'll get my hair dyed a bit
> when I can afford flying again.
I don't know, but I found that I had black as my hair color for the
medical, but brown on my pilot's license. When I was getting my
rectal probing for the FRZ Airports, they made me get that resolved.
They didn't care which one I picked as long as they matched. The
FSDO is on the way to work, so I got a new pilot certificate.

[Paul Tomblin]

In a previous article, "John Gaquin" > said:
>The Federal mindset at work. When I joined the AF many years ago, many
>forms had to be filled out upon arrival at basic training. "You WILL enter
>one middle initial in the box labeled 'middle initial'!" Like a naive fool,
>I asked -- what if I have 2 middle initials? (which I do). Repeat: "You
>WILL enter one middle initial in the box labeled 'middle initial'!" Someone
>else asked -- what if you have no middle initial? "If you have no middle
>initial, enter the letters NMN in the box!"

When I enlisted, the guy filling out the form put "NMI" in the form, and
from then on all my official documents including my discharge notice say
"Paul NMI Tomblin". Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now that I'm older and more
cynical I think I should have made up middle names like "Norman Mailer
Issiah" to match the fake initials.


--
Paul Tomblin > http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
There are mushrooms that can survive weeks, months without air or food.
They just dry out and when water comes back, they wake up again. And call
the helldesk about their password expiring. -- after Jens Benecke and Tanuki

[Stefan]

Paul Tomblin schrieb:

> When I enlisted, the guy filling out the form put "NMI" in the form, and
> from then on all my official documents including my discharge notice say
> "Paul NMI Tomblin". Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now that I'm older and more
> cynical I think I should have made up middle names like "Norman Mailer
> Issiah" to match the fake initials.

A friend of mine always put R in. Asked why, he said "R" as in "required".

Stefan

[RST Engineering]

My dad was a paymaster for the Marine Corps during WWII. He said that there
was a story going around that some poor jarhead only had initials for his
first and last name. He kept getting his paperwork back with notes like
"need full first and middle name before we pay you" so he wrote R.(only) B.
(only) Jones on the form and sent it back in.

He was paid as Ronly Bonly Jones for the rest of the war.

Jim

[Grumman-581[_1_]]

On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 07:24:42 -0400, Stubby
> wrote:
> What do they do with bald people? Maybe I'll get my hair dyed a bit
> when I can afford flying again.

Hmmm... I always figured that field was a yes/no type of field...

[Grumman-581[_1_]]

On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 17:00:10 +0000 (UTC),
(Paul Tomblin) wrote:
> When I enlisted, the guy filling out the form put "NMI" in the form, and
> from then on all my official documents including my discharge notice say
> "Paul NMI Tomblin". Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now that I'm older and more
> cynical I think I should have made up middle names like "Norman Mailer
> Issiah" to match the fake initials.

Even these days, there are some programmers who are so clueless that
when they write the systems, they don't allow for hyphens in names...

[Paul Tomblin]

In a previous article, Grumman-581 > said:
>On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 17:00:10 +0000 (UTC),
>(Paul Tomblin) wrote:
>> When I enlisted, the guy filling out the form put "NMI" in the form, and
>> from then on all my official documents including my discharge notice say
>> "Paul NMI Tomblin". Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now that I'm older and more
>> cynical I think I should have made up middle names like "Norman Mailer
>> Issiah" to match the fake initials.
>
>Even these days, there are some programmers who are so clueless that
>when they write the systems, they don't allow for hyphens in names...

My favourite is the programmers who forget to escape single quotes when
they're inserting into SQL databases, so everybody with an apostrophe in
their name like an O'Rielly or O'Hara gets an error. Usually these are
the same web programmers who don't protect against "SQL Injection Attacks" -
they take the name you insert, and stick it into an SQL statement doing a
"insert into user_data values('" + name + "');"
which you can then do major damage by inserting your name as
"a');drop database;" or
"a');delete from user_data;"
or something similarly nasty.

--
Paul Tomblin > http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
"This was, apparently, beyond her ken. So far beyond her ken that she was
well into barbie territory." - J.D. Baldwin

[Grumman-581[_1_]]

On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 18:33:16 +0000 (UTC),
(Paul Tomblin) wrote:
> My favourite is the programmers who forget to escape single quotes when
> they're inserting into SQL databases, so everybody with an apostrophe in
> their name like an O'Rielly or O'Hara gets an error.

On my first SQL based system, I did that, but I soon realized my
mistake during testing with real user names...

> Usually these are the same web programmers who don't protect
> against "SQL Injection Attacks" - they take the name you
> insert, and stick it into an SQL statement doing a
> "insert into user_data values('" + name + "');"
> which you can then do major damage by inserting your name as
> "a');drop database;" or
> "a');delete from user_data;"
> or something similarly nasty.

Hmmm... Interesting... I don't think I tried that one... I tended to
use stored procedures that would get called from the web interface and
the insert would be of this format:

insert MY_TABLE (
FIELD_1,
FIELD_2,
FIELD_3
) values (
@VALUE_1,
@VALUE_2,
@VALUE_3
)

[Matt Barrow]

"Richard Riley" > wrote in message
...
> On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 17:32:11 GMT, Grumman-581
> > wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 07:24:42 -0400, Stubby
> wrote:
>>> What do they do with bald people? Maybe I'll get my hair dyed a bit
>>> when I can afford flying again.
>>
>>Hmmm... I always figured that field was a yes/no type of field...

Turquoise blue and primer gray.

>
> Like when they want to know sex.

AOAP.

[Robert M. Gary]

Grumman-581 wrote:
> Even these days, there are some programmers who are so clueless that
> when they write the systems, they don't allow for hyphens in names...

Names with hyphens are not as common in India. ;)

-Robert

[Robert M. Gary]

Grumman-581 wrote:
> > Usually these are the same web programmers who don't protect
> > against "SQL Injection Attacks" - they take the name you
> > insert, and stick it into an SQL statement doing a
> > "insert into user_data values('" + name + "');"
> > which you can then do major damage by inserting your name as
> > "a');drop database;" or
> > "a');delete from user_data;"
> > or something similarly nasty.
>
> Hmmm... Interesting... I don't think I tried that one... I tended to
> use stored procedures that would get called from the web interface and
> the insert would be of this format:
>
> insert MY_TABLE (
> FIELD_1,
> FIELD_2,
> FIELD_3
> ) values (
> @VALUE_1,
> @VALUE_2,
> @VALUE_3
> )

That's a good thing. The example above (with the ""+ name + ") is very,
very bad practice. Basically it makes every SQL query unique causing
the SQL Hash is always miss and a complete statement parse necessary.
The method you mentioned (using variable fields) results in the
statement hashing to the cache of the last time the statement was
called (because the field hashes as "@Value_1" everytime vs. the
hardcoded value, actually I believe its %1 but either way...). In the
second (and correct example) the variables of the query are just added
as payload so the statement itself is the same for each query, just the
variables are different.

-Robert

[Robert M. Gary]

Stubby wrote:
> What do they do with bald people? Maybe I'll get my hair dyed a bit
> when I can afford flying again.

I actually called the FSDO to ask that while filling out an 8710 with a
student for his private. They told me to list his hair color as "bald".

-Robert

[Scott Draper]

<<I actually called the FSDO to ask that while filling out an 8710
with a student for his private. They told me to list his hair color as
"bald".>>

If you had read the directions, you would have discovered the same
thing.

[Grumman-581[_1_]]

On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 17:27:09 -0700, Richard Riley
> wrote:
> Like when they want to know sex.

Well, I did have this female doctor once that was *very* nice
looking... As such, if she had been filling out the form for me, it
would have had a 'yes' for an answer...

[Grumman-581[_1_]]

On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 17:56:40 -0700, "Matt Barrow"
> wrote:
> Turquoise blue and primer gray.

Hmmmm... Sounds like someone has been doing some painting lately...

I wonder what they would put for the hair color for someone like
Dennis Rodman... Is it supposed to be their natural hair color or what
it happens to be *this* week?

[Martin Hotze[_1_]]

On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 17:32:11 GMT, Grumman-581 wrote:

>Hmmm... I always figured that field was a yes/no type of field...


that's the 'sex' field.
I always answer this field with: "yes, please!"

#m
--
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<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5297822.stm>

I Am Not A Terrorist <http://itsnotallbad.com/iamnotaterrorist/>

[[email protected]]

Lately, I've encountered various types of bureaucratic forms where
'Race' and 'Ethnicity' are asked. It tends to blow their minds when
those two get filled in as 'Human', and 'English', respectively.

[Robert M. Gary]

Scott Draper wrote:
> <<I actually called the FSDO to ask that while filling out an 8710
> with a student for his private. They told me to list his hair color as
> "bald".>>
>
> If you had read the directions, you would have discovered the same
> thing.

Its only obvious when the student is naturally bald.

-Robert

[Grumman-581[_3_]]

> wrote in message
oups.com...
> Lately, I've encountered various types of bureaucratic forms where
> 'Race' and 'Ethnicity' are asked. It tends to blow their minds when
> those two get filled in as 'Human', and 'English', respectively.

When I went into the Navy, they ask you what your religion is so that they
can put it on your dog tags... Being someone who enjoys messing with
people's minds, I said, "Druid"... The guy just gave me a blank stare and it
turned out that "NO RELIG PREF" ended up on the tags...