Say What?

I couldn't keep my days straight over the weekend; Friday was Saturday and Saturday felt like Sunday to me but it was fine because the weekend seemed longer than normal and not the other way around. We had a dozen people or more from my side of the family over for Christmas Eve and had an enjoyable evening seeing them all. We were a little worried that the heavy snowfall we got would cause most everyone to have to cancel but they all made it and we were happy for that. We let technology fill in the gaps and bring us together with those who were separated from us by too many miles. Melody, my niece in Portland had the idea to connect with us via Skype and a good idea it was. I downloaded the 1.9mb file and tested it the night before with my brother who also lives out there. The connection worked much better than I figured it would. Here's the result from his end and from ours . The only issue we had was the lighting on our end but I found a quick fix for that. Tammy got me...

Let me frame this entry with a simple question: What is a leader? A simple answer: Someone people choose to follow. The FAA has very few leaders while we're top-heavy with managers. What's the difference between a leader and a manager one might wonder? Simply put, a manager says 'go' while a leader says 'let's go'. A leader is somebody you respect and try to make look good. You have their back and they have yours. Christmas is just a few days away and I want my thoughts in a different place than where they are. I wish they were of family coming to visit and gifts under the tree with the anticipation of a late Christmas Eve service at Hosanna during a huge snowstorm we're expecting. Instead, they're stuck in a 5-minute episode that unfolded during a holiday dinner at work with our crew the other night only to be tweaked once again in a Quality Assurance briefing this morning. Our crew's supervisor (to me and others, a leader) orchestrated a po...

Tammy's comment from ten minutes ago, "If that dog lives another year I'll be surprised". We just got back from the mall to find the remains of Rachel's Hershey's Kisses candy-cane on the couch in the basement. A quick check with Rachel told us that she hadn't had any of it yet and had left it on the couch after watching TV where we're assuming Charlie got into it. I can't figure out how he was able to separate the foil from the chocolate but he did...well, most of it anyway; I'm sure he ingested some of that as well.  There's nothing left but the plastic tube the chocolate came in.  Tammy looked online and found that a dog his size would have to ingest twice the amount he did before it would be hazardous to him.  The fun that little guy has while we're away!  I'm half tempted to set up a couple webcams around the house just to check in on his antics from time to time. We gave up on trying to teach him to leave the ornaments on ou...

We had our annual neighborhood house-hop on Saturday and as always, it was a late but very fun night. Somebody said there were 32 of us. We started at 6:00pm and worked our way to four homes throughout the evening with ours being 3rd on the list. We usually offer up our place every other year as a host house. It's fun to have that many people over and seeing them enjoying our digs as Tammy and I don't do a lot of entertaining. Here's a set of photos from the party that I posted to my Flickr account. I'm enjoying having a heated garage for a change but it comes at a price and I'm not just referring to the additional cost to heat it. Many of our side streets are full of slush from an 8-inch snowfall we had last week and that slush sticks to the underside of our cars where it eventually melts in the 40-degree temperature of the garage leaving lots of water on the floor. I was squeegeeing it out onto the driveway to be scooped up and thrown on our snowbanks but with...

Rachel sent her application to the University of Minnesota at Rochester a few weeks ago with plans to send out at least one other to Northwestern College . I know in her heart that she really wants to go to Northwestern but because it's a private school it will be more expensive and we're not sure that the curriculum is going to be strong enough for what she wants to study. We're still looking into that. So it was a little bittersweet this past week when she received an acceptance letter from UMR. Tammy and I aren't sure that she's fully bought into the idea yet and we want it to be her decision. We were actually surprised that she received her acceptance letter so quickly as the deadline to submit applications was the end of November; the date of her letter. Last Thursday night found the three of us tree trimming and home decorating. It was the end of an era of sorts because next year when we break out the decorations Rachel will be off to college and it will be...

This is a continuation of a series of writings about my time in the Navy. The first in this series of posts can be found here or go here for the most recent. A lot of my friends had cars and apartments off base and would be able to escape shipboard life after work if it wasn't their 'duty day'. I didn't feel the need to have to get away, in fact, I found a nice routine living on the ship that worked for me and I was able to save a fair amount of money by not having all the added expenses my friends were taking on. Meals were provided on the boat but occasionally I'd head out into the city on my bike for some fast food. Once each week I'd load my laundry into my duffel bag and sling it over my shoulder for a two-mile bike ride to the laundromat on Highland Ave and 16th Street ; what is now Italy's Beauty Salon. I remember being inside there one night in October 1977 doing laundry when I learned of the plane crash that would be the demise of the Lynyrd S...

I spent Sunday morning reformatting Tammy's Dell laptop. She picked up a nasty bug of some sort off a link from eBay that rendered her computer useless. A search for 'Antivirus 2009 Pro' let me know that I was in for a challenge as it was rated 8 on a scale of 1 to 10 for severity. I worked what little magic I could before throwing in the towel and reaching for the start-up disks. After a few hours of babysitting the process, I now have a happy Dell laptop as well as a happy wife. Rachel and I both had issues with our new Motorola Droid cellphones and had to have them replaced. The keypad is covered with a thin vinyl that was beginning to separate on Rachel's phone. She's pretty sure the protective cover we bought for our phones were put on backward and a small tab was catching on a few of the keys whenever she'd slide the cover closed. My phone simply quit working after six days of use. The battery was showing that the phone had at least a 60% charge but I co...

...and I have proof in the form of my Motorola Droid smart-phone. The capabilities of this phone are so far beyond what I'd ever imagined something so small could provide that the only way of wrapping my head around the 'hows' of this thing is to resign myself to believe that space aliens are among us and they're the ones responsible for this thin rectangular box of magic that fits neatly in the palm of my hand. I mentioned in my previous post about giving serious consideration to taking the plunge on a Droid; I did it or rather, we did it. Rachel and I got Droids while Tammy went with an Envy 3 which is what I'd have otherwise gone with had it not been for my perceived need for a smart-phone. Droid has nowhere near the number of apps (short for 'applications' that can be downloaded to enhance the phone's capabilities) the iPhone has but there are plenty available to get me started and there will soon be tons more no doubt. One of the more fascinatin...

Rachel met me out at my work yesterday morning to do a job shadow for a couple hours as part of a school assignment. She'd like to have shadowed somebody in the medical field, ideally our family doctor but with all the doctor/patient confidentiality requirements it wasn't going to happen. Not that she wants to be an air traffic controller but coming in and seeing where I work and watching me during a session in the sector proved interesting for her, or so she said. Some of the guys at work have read enough about her in my blog so I thought it would be fun to have her come in and meet them, and it was. The sector was pretty quiet as we first sat down but traffic levels built nicely and she was able to get a good idea of what it is I do. We talked about what it takes to be a good controller and wondered out loud if she could imagine herself working in this sort of environment. I told her that she definitely has qualities about her that are necessary to do the job (attention to ...

In the next few years we're going to see lots of people retire from our ranks in the FAA as the huge bubble of people who hired on after the PATCO strike in August 1981 become eligible. We've already seen quite a few leave but nowhere near the amount that will retire in the next 3-5 years. A friend from work, Rob, was telling me that there's a study of air traffic controllers that says for each year a controller stays on the job beyond age 50, they lose one year of life. I tried to find the study online but wasn't able to. I suppose that for some there's truth in those numbers but I'm not going to make any plans based on them. My intention has always been to work until age 56. Bob retired last July but any sort of retirement party for him must have been overshadowed by vacations and warm, sunny weather. Rex organized a small , somewhat surprise get-together for Bob yesterday at RJ's in Hastings. There were maybe a dozen of us who showed up for lunch and...

There are two times each year when I'm never more proud, in a humble sort of way if one can be just that. Our lead pastor at church takes time each year on Father's Day to ask all of the dads in the congregation to stand in recognition of their role as fathers. It's an incredibly meaningful moment for me. I may only be Rachel's step-dad but I stand because I'm both proud and blessed to be in her life and to be a father-figure to her. Pastor Bill also takes a few minutes each year around the time of Veterans Day to ask former and current members of the military to stand and be honored for their service. This is also a very proud moment for me although I don't feel that my service comes anywhere close to that of those who put their lives on the line in a dangerous combat environment. Still, I'm moved by the recognition. Those of us who have never experienced the hardship of war and the tormenting damage it can do to the psyche can't possibly appreciate...

I was checking out Facebook Thursday morning as I contemplated whether or not I'd gotten out of bed too early after the all-night shift; it was going on 11:00. Before I could give it much thought I got a chat message request from a friend to go riding. That was definitely on my list of things to do but so soon? I needed to wake up first. Maybe it was the kick-start my day needed. My riding for me has and I think always will be primarily a solo endeavor. I'd say I'm a bit unusual in that way because it seems most cyclists enjoy the company of others when they're out riding for hours at a stretch; maybe it's a safety in numbers thing. As for me, I don't mind spending time with myself and actually prefer it when I'm riding. I'm a loner at heart. I've done enough group rides to know that conversation with others isn't what works for me but rather, the solitude of the road; it's the main reason I'm out there. Still, an occasional break from...

There are way too many sick people at work to avoid catching this junk that's going around and it finally caught up with me last week. I'm still sneezing and hacking but it could be worse. I'm not sure if that's because of the zinc tablets I'm taking but I'd like to think I'm not wasting my money on them. Don't get too close to this post; I don't want you to catch it. I took a couple sick-days from the salt mine last week and used the time to resume work on the stained glass project that I'd put away when the weather turned warm last spring. We're so close to finishing it that I think another 8-10 hours should be all we need. I'd really like to get the entire project completed this winter. We've got some neighbors who would like us to do some work for them but I don't want to take on anything until these six panels are done. Here's what a completed panel looks like and here's where I was with the current one as of a fe...

The Northwest flight (NWA188) that missed its mark and overshot MSP airport last week continues to be in the news. I still can't get over how both pilots could disassociate themselves from the task at hand to the degree they did, especially considering that in a job such as piloting an aircraft, multitasking is a necessary ability. The pilots have lost their licenses and have been suspended and now the focus has turned to the FAA and why we were so slow in notifying the military of the situation. There's a bit of disinformation in the news today with respect to who failed to notify the military as our protocols require. You'll likely hear that controllers failed to do this when in fact controllers did everything they should have. When it became apparent that the flight was no longer responding to radio calls, controllers notified management. In situations such as this, a controller will ask the supervisor in the area to contact the flight's operations desk and give ...

I got up from laying down after the all-night shift Thursday morning and figured I'd better get a ride in while I could because the forecast wasn't looking so good. The temp was just above 40 with a northeast wind steady at 15 mph under overcast skies. 40 degrees is very reasonable cycling weather but the key is to be somewhat chilled when you start out. Being warm and toasty at the beginning leads to being sweaty, cold and clammy before the ride is over. While putting air in my tires before leaving I could tell that I needed a lighter top layer. I'm glad I made the switch. I loved the ride  ( Strava link ) and would like to have gone further but David Crowder was playing at our church and I didn't want to be late getting in line for some good seats as it was general admission. I considered a quick detour by Hosanna on the way home to get a pic of their tour bus but I figured I should really act my age. The concert was worth every penny and better than any of the o...