Oral: Done.

And for you gutter-minded folk out there, I'm just talking about the ground portion of my instrument checkride. I met with the examiner today at 2:30, as the weather deteriorated, and after we got done with the paperwork, and checking through my log book to make sure I qualified, and then BSing about alternative energy and various other unrelated topics, we got down to questions.

The first was about maintaining currency, and I immediately stumbled. I eventually had to find a copy of the FAR and figure it out; the examiner complimented me on my ability to interpret the FARs, but also made a point of noting that "most people already know the rule." I knew the basics, just not the intricacies.

We moved on to aircraft systems, what a vacuum failure would look like, what to expect from the airspeed indicator in a pitot ice situation, and what the gyro instruments are. He also asked me about RAIM and what to do in the event of a RAIM failure. I stumbled here, too, but he helped me think about it and I came up with the right answer.

He asked me to explain the difference between a localizer and a VOR, and I was doing alright until at one point I was looking for words, and he said, "A localizer's a totally different technology; it's not a radial" but I heard "not a radio" and was very confused for a while. Eventually we figured out the misunderstanding, and what he wanted to know was how a localizer indicates that one is left or right of the course line, which I knew.

We talked about my planned flight, from Truckee to Palo Alto, and I explained about the obstacle departure and the climb rate. We used this to discuss alternate airports and rules for selecting them, and also weather concerns.

Then we went and checked the now-fully-deteriorated weather -- it was borderline, but ceilings were showing between 2900 and 4000, which would've made it very difficult, if not impossible, to conduct the checkride in VMC. So the flight portion of the ride has to be rescheduled. I'm not sure when that's going to happen, but in any case, at least I'm through the oral.