Woodpeckers and Trainees

We've always had woodpeckers in our neighborhood. Many mornings I've awakened to the machinelike pounding on ours, or our neighbors homes. Most mornings I smile, for whatever reason I like woodpeckers, I suppose they're not doing that much damage to the house, and after all, they're really just marking their territory. Or to put it another way, trying to attract a mate. Something about pounding your head against a block of wood in order to attract a mate strikes a chord with me. I'm just sayin.....

Speaking of pounding your head against a block of wood... For years, we've had a developing shortage of controllers nationwide, national management kept assuring us that "trainees were in the pipeline, don't worry." Well, they're here. 15 trainees, brand spanking new out of the academy at Oklahoma City. Most of them have gotten two years of associate degree work from one of the aviation related universities before going to the academy. 15 trainees. Wow.

Guess what our training department has them doing. Sitting in the control room, taking turns watching 2 or 3 printers spit out strips. (Flight plan and informational). What do they do? Look at the strips, and decide if they need to be delivered to controllers. Maybe one in twenty has any pertinence, the rest get tossed. Keep in mind, that before the arrival of the trainees, a supervisor would wander by the printer every 15 minutes or so and check for usefullness. Now, a trainee (with 2 years college, and 4 months academy screen and training) sits... Rat-a-tat-a-tat......

It used to be that flight data (the position he's filling now) had a purpose, we used to process flight plans manually on occasion, relay flight information to surrounding facilities, and actually do things that made sense. I spent a year on printers, and in doing so I learned the area in and out. HOwever, we've gone digital in almost all ways flight data, so the human touch is taken out. Nothing to pass, no flightplans to copy, coordination to complete, nothing. nada. Sit and watch the printer..... Rat-a-tat-a-tat.....

Why??? Because the training department hadn't foreseen the arrival of trainees. They've got other training programs that just can't be postponed, so the trainees, rather than get denver center specific instruction and training that would get them on the track to start being useful in 3 or 4 years, sit and watch and wait for the phase 3 training class to start in 9 months. Rat-a-tat-a-tat.....

So yesterday I had to provide training to one of our new future controllers. He's bright, young, enthusiastic. He's had 2 years college in minnesota, and passed the academy ready to jump in. And I got to explain to him what it was that our managers and instructors want him to do for the next 9 months. I watched the hope drain out of his eyes, watched the despair fill them. I tried to find useful things for him to do for the next 9 months, practice on URET (digital flight plan information) so he'll be fluent in it's use when he actually starts training, suggested he spend as much time as possible observing controllers at work. I hope the training department wakes up and moves their class date up, though... Boredom leads to attrition.....

Anyway..... Rat-a-tat-a-tat.....

Clear skies,
Jim

Tornadoes and stuff

If you've read or seen the news lately, you've likely heard about the several tornadoes that struck northeastern colorado today. Most of them, including the most destructive one, were several to a few dozen miles northeast of us here, but one was spotted south of town. It lead to a challenging day.

First, the ludicrous. The tornado closest to longmont was spotted right around noon, and sirens went off town wide. I suspect many people around town were puzzled, many knew what was going on, and many just missed it entirely. Here at denver center, though, you would think that people who work on a daily basis with constant awareness of the weather and it's impact would understand. However, when the P.A. announcement went off telling all non essential personnel to proceed to the basement, and controllers to the control room (which is, I suppose, being in the center of the building and away from windows is a safe as one can be on the ground floor), what do a sizeable majority of staffers, managers, and other non-essentials do? Head for the windows or outside to LOOK FOR THE TORNADO!. Gah!!!!!

Anyway, the tornado sighting was just the mid point of a long and difficult day. Weather started building around 930 am, which is unusual. By 1100 am, there were lines of thunderstorms across eastern colorado, western nebraska and kansas forming up, much like the slats of venetian blinds. Thus far, aircraft could make there way through, but as the weather began filling in, the planes had to deviate further and further off course to get around it.

TMU, traffic management unit, tried to keep up. Once again, they seemed to be about an hour behind the real weather situation. As a result, they had sectors west of denver aiming aircraft at holes in the line of weather that had already closed. Nothing like a 120 degree about face and 100 mile detour to eat up gas.....

By early afternoon, the line had closed up, and nothing was getting through... Except tmu kept trying pathfinders, who would fly 100 miles east of denver, then head 125 miles north or south to find a way round. Oh well. (I'm sensing a pattern, and it's not just my cynical attitude)

Anyway... We got through it. Afterward, we began getting the reports on the damage in Platteville and points north. It wasn't pretty. Guess we had it pretty easy after all.....

Getting my writing back in swing, though I mostly have just done some exercises trying to get my rhythm back. Blurbs will follow soon. I promise.

Keep those cards and letters and comments coming....

Clear skies,
Jim

May showers and such

May. Writing wise, I still haven't gotten back into the rhythm I had up to march, though I have actually done some rewriting. Word count is still about the same, and to be honest, I'm paying no attention to the deadline right now, I just don't need any new pressures. The inner critic has been happy though, he got to dump another entire scene and rework it, it came out tighter and much more relavent.

Why did I let him out? The scene in question seemed very weak, and it's content will directly impact future scenes and chapters, so I felt that I had to rework it in order to keep my continuity going once I do charge back in. It feels better, so I"m happy with the IC's work.....

I"ve started rereading some older novels in my library, still haven't found any of my old darkover books, might still try the library. Anyone have any suggestions for new writers I might find enjoyable?

I mentioned pressure. The fact is, sometimes life gets dirty. I've had to focus full time on work challenges (o/t is going to be a fact of life very soon, with our staffing shortages reaching a critical level.) YOu know it's bad when your Traffic Management Unit puts out a restriction on surrounding centers, not because of bad weather, but because an area is understaffed and can't handle normal traffic. Guess the airlines are going to start putting pressure on FAA management to DO SOMETHING FAST. Like they didn't have 10+ years warning that the retirements were going to peak in the next two years.....

Besides work, it's spring yard fix up time. ANother round of handymanitis had me digging up some cracked irrigation pipes in the front yard, stuff the original house builders really didn't do a good job on. Front yard is mostly dont and ready to go, I've a pair of sprinkler heads in the back to repair (One got whacked by the turf-aerator guys, despite the yellow flag marking it). Thankfully, we've had rain (and snow) the last couple of weeks, so I"ve not had to rush the repair jobs.

Oh. New Truck. Vaquera, my 9 1/2 year old ford ranger, has been replaced by a brand new nissan Frontier club cab. I"m still contemplating the name.....

Anyway, more to come soon. Drop me a line and say hello.....

Clear skies,
Jim

News from the front

Writing continues at a slow pace, only put in 5k words last week, and that after dumping about 3k due to terminal dullness. It happened when I went through what I'd writtien som far, and realized that one scene was totally without point. I left a placeholder, in case I can think of some way of reworking the scene, but mostly, it was missing relevance to the rest of the plot. More to come.

On the non-writing front, things are back to going mostly well. Other than work and misc. crisis floating about. We did start looking for a new truck, Vaquera, the 99 ford ranger I've driven for nearly 10 years, is starting to show it's age, so we started looking around a couple of weeks ago. Because the ranger had been a very reliable truck, I looked at ford first. I was disappointed, in part at the selection of rangers that they had at the local dealership, and in part with the salesman who "helped" me.

I came on the lot with a clear idea of what I wanted to look at, a new 4wd club cab ranger, nothing too fancy, good gas mileage and trustworthy. The salesman apparently decided I needed to see something else, and took me immediately to see a used Ford F-150. Absolutely the wrong thing to do, if he doesn't even listen to my first list of 'wants', I doubt he'll do anything right from there on. I politely let him show the used ford to me, then tagged along while he pointed out the rangers that they had. Nothing like what I wanted. I haven't gone back...

Meanwhile, both Nissan and Toyota have treated me well. Nissan's Frontier and Toyota's Tacoma are neck and neck, but Toyota seems to be a bit higher end. Or, to put it another way, Nissan is more economically priced. Since I'm not looking for a massive off road toy or powerwagon or whatever, I'm leaning toward Nissan, assuming I can find the features that I want. So far, none of the salesmen have tried to show me used alternatives..... ;-)

Gardening time is near, so I've been working (not on the railroad, but) on the sprinklers, fixing the last of the original system that the house builders put in so incompetantly. My knees may never be the same.....

More to come later, Clear skies,
Jim