A Question for FAA Management

Lance Armstrong will take 3rd place overall tomorrow when the Tour de France finishes in Paris. He did about as good as I was expecting him to considering his age and the broken collar bone injury he sustained a few months before the race. His presence in the Tour made for quite a bit of added interest, certainly for me anyway. He'll be back next year and this time with his own team, Team RadioShack. I admire what the guy does for cycling.

The long, frustrating, disingenuous and hypocritical road FAA management has had us air traffic controllers on for the past three years may soon be coming to an end. Our union met with FAA management last month (thank you President Obama) to try and reach agreement on all things contract-related. The issues that matter most (at least to me) were sent to arbitration and are out of both ours and management's hands. I'm speaking of pay.

There were several items/articles where we reached agreement but I have a difficult time getting very excited about any one of them in particular. I'll be able to wear jeans and tennis shoes to work. Wow. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm diminishing the work of those on our contract team because that's not my intention. These are simply my feelings on what's been made public to this point. It's the culture we've been working within that needs serious change and no contract can fix that. Removing some key people from positions of management can. A simple following of the Golden Rule would also help as it's been absent for far too long.

For people in management who think controllers are whining let me ask you this; would you be upset if controllers were made whole and given back the pay that was taken from them? You may not be happy for us but I doubt you would lose sleep over it. Now, let me ask you this; suppose we were made whole but then you had your pay frozen for three years as we did while we continued to get raises...would that upset you? I thought so. And no, your job is neither more responsible nor difficult and deserving of more pay than a controller earns. In fact, I would argue that the work you do is both considerably easier and carries less responsibility. Rest assured that the closest you'll get to ever having to live with the scenario I've described is me posing a hypothetical question; how nice. Walk a mile in my shoes please before you dismiss my frustration as whining. Thank you.

The sheetrocking job in our garage got delayed a bit because of too humid conditions last week which kept Joel and John from being able to do the final sanding until this Monday. I'd intended to use my weekend to get the space painted but I'll be pushing that back a week. No hurries.

I've decided against a do-it-yourself epoxy application for the garage floor and I'm going to hire the job out. I'm not convinced that any epoxy I put down will hold up more than a few years and then what do I do...pay somebody a bunch of money to come in and remove it? I don't think so.

Tammy and I met with Skip yesterday who showed us samples of some of the applications he does. We're sold. I was fine with one of the cheaper finishes but Tammy gave me the go-ahead to do something more. We're tentatively planning to have him come in and do the work the week after next. It's a messy job which involves abrading/roughening of the surface before the finish goes on.

Video to follow. Aren't you excited?