Sadly, we never made it to the stories.

Doug had many questions to answer, it was kind of one of those rare times you get to talk to the man behind the curtain (oz ref). I was very interested to know that he spends a fair amount of time attending SAE airline safety committees, because "thats how he can help the most people at one time." A cogent thought. He'll be at the SARscene in Canada doing some cool stuff there, but thats his story to tell.

Just learning what he did and why was a full dinner topic which was worth hearing.

I did get to ask him "ok, so what does DOUG RITTER carry in his kit" which I just couldn't help asking like some kinda tourist. To give you a hint, he arrived with a backpack, a fanny pack, and pockets full!

Ok, actually, his kit just fit in his pockets, just kidding on that one.

I think he said that most of the foundation's income comes from products, which I'll be buying a couple of since I actually got to hold almost all of them in my hands.

Anyway, please support the forum you love, if you can. He did not bring this up... I did... I asked him a lot of questions about the foundation and after hearing the answers I think both Blast and I felt a bit sheepish, but I think thats because Doug is a very unassuming, no pressure guy as you can see by the incredible lack of pressure he puts on fundraising for the foundation. Hats off to him for that. I don't care to see a lot of ads, but the help Doug provides to the public at large is quite valuable.

He drops the unassuming act if you are Boeing and you are sitting in a 3 day airplane safety meeting. Then he is a real bear to deal with.

Yea I did kind of mean 'stories' when I said 'stories'....but listening to him answer questions was meant as part of that.....

Bah. *runs my hand over my shiny and high forhead* These are just continuously deployed active visual signals- the signal mirror you can never lose.

Don't forget that an extremely painless way to support ETS Foundation is to use Goodsearch instead of Google for your default search engine (see sticky near the top of the forum list for link/instructions).

Goodsearch might not be a huge source of income for ETS, but if you can't afford direct donations or a new knife, or PSK #3, or a leather jacket, or... you can still help.

It works just fine for 99% of my everyday searches - the only time I use Google anymore is Google Scholar at work looking for specialized journal articles.

ETS only made a little over $50.00 last year and $32 and some change so far this year from Goodsearch - I'll throw down the gauntlet and challenge everyone to help break $75.00 by the end of the year (and double that for 2009). Any takers?

"powered by yahoo" thats a dealbreaker there. For example I'm on a work computer at the moment so I'm stuck on windows and don't have any popup stopper or anti spyware so anything yahoo based is out, a few years back they decided to take the AOL route and start forcing crap down on people use used their site and I've had to clean up enough damage from them espically on family members systems. Sorry Doug buy playing with Yahoo is something your not going to get an IT person to do.