Dog Days

August. Last post, (I know, I'm sorry) was last June. Perhaps I can claim that July doesn't exist, since there's no blogging proof... ;-)

It's been a weird and difficult thunderstorm season at work. I've done little writing as a result, though I will admit to some wool-gathering about storyline ideas for Imperfect Hope. I've not given up on it, just sidelined it for a time. Same with Ole the Weatherman, ran into time issues. September will be better. I promise myself...

I did get selected to appear for jury duty. Conventional wisdom here at denver center is that Air traffic controllers never get past the first round of questions, assuming you even get selected. I can't think of another controller here that has actually served on a jury. So, summons in hand, I showed up at the courthouse, expecting a "thanks, we don't need your type here".

Surprise.

I ended up serving on a 4 day criminal trial. It was an eye-opener. At first (and probably like every other person on the jury) I felt like "Oh, great, what a burden. Lets get this over with"... Opening statements painted the defendant in a very bad light, and at first, it seemed like it was going to be easy. After all, the prosecution had numerous witnesses, a 911 call, police reports, and cell phone tapes to back up their claims. However, I was careful to not prejudge (even though the defendant "looked" like a thug...

My optimism for an easy verdict fell to pieces as the prosecutions first, "star" witness began to open her mouth.

In a nutshell, she contradicted herself several times in the first few minutes. She contradicted her statements to police minutes after the crime, she contradicted her later statements to investigators months later, and she even began disparaging the next upcoming prosecution witness before she even got to the stand.

There followed witness after witness whose statements the day of the "event" matched statements made to investigators over the next few months only rarely. The most believable testimony came from a 16 year old girl, who basically said to police the day of the event, and on the stand last week, "I didn't see a bat, there was a lot of chaos". She did tell investigators about a bat 6 months back, which backed up her mom's (Star witness #1) claims.

The 911 call was odd, in that for the first 30 seconds of the recording, the witness was calling everything out in real time... "He's chasing us with a bat... He just ran his car into a house... He's attacking my husband with his car..." The next 2 and a half minutes were a past-tense narrative. There was no vocal transition between the two stages of the call. Initial police reports, told of the witness claiming she made the call from the dead end street where the assault was taking place. She told investigators she made the call when the defendant first pulled out a bat. On the stand, her husband contradicted her statement by stating that "they made the call from the house".

There were many other discrepencies.

Defense witnesses, amusingly enough, consisted of police officers called to the scene.

Unfortunately, the DA (or ADA) was very articulate, and the public defender was much less so. When we the jury got the case, there were only two of us who had "reasonable doubt" about the prosecutions version of events that night.

Two days of logic presentation, argument, and discussion later, we found the defendant not guilty of the 5 most serious charges (including 3 felonious assault), and guilty of one count of "reckless endangerment" (Police found tire tracks of his car cutting across a lawn at high speed).

The "thug" began to cry when the 4th not-guilty verdict was read.

During the pre-trial brief, the judge defined reasonable doubt for us. Among the legal descriptions, she included the observation. "You can be assured that reasonable doubt exists when, two days after the trial, you wonder to yourself what really happened, or you have a bad "feeling" about your decision. (odd commentary from a judge at the time)".

I feel good about our decision. And, interestingly, I came away with a sense of accomplishment.

I won't discuss my feelings about the legal system in general, however. I'm still a cynic. Most of the time...

Clear skies,
Jim

June's bugs

Another month almost gone. I'll not bore you with more tales of FAA madness, suffice it to say that it's still an ugly summer thunderstorm season. Writing wise, however, I feel like it's time to get back to the future job. I suspect a week off from work last week has a lot to do with the improved morale.

We did go on a vacation last week, 8 days in Alaska, as well as attended our nieces wedding while we were up there.. Not Irma or my first trip, but we brought along Claudia, Gerardo, and our 6 year old Granddaughter for their first Alaska experience. Tatiana (the granddaughter) was one Meghan's (the bride) flowergirls. It was both a wonderful wedding (though more than a little odd to be at the reception, nearing midnight, and still bright daylight (though the shadows were quite long)), and a great relaxing vacation. We stayed at a condo in Girdwood, beautiful, restful, with a mountain stream burbling outside our balcony. I'll post some pictures in the near future.

Among the highlights (beside the wedding), we took a day cruise out of Seward into the Kenai Fjords national Park. Even with a little drizzle, it was a great day, saw sea otter within 5 minutes of leaving the dock, Orca, Porpoise, Humpback Whales, innumerable sea birds, including Puffins too stuffed with fish to get airborne, and house sized hunks of ice falling off the Holgate Glacier. It was exhilarating.

Of course, we ate far too much (even cooking in the condo a couple of times), but hey, that's what vacation is for. If any of you are ever in Anchorage, and crave pizza, however, I'll strongly recommend Moose Tooth, probably the best pizza I've eaten. It didn't hurt that he brews his own microbrews and sells (half-gallon?) sized growlers to take home with you. Yummm. Wonder if they deliver to Longmont...

Anyway, as always more to come.

Clear skies,
Jim

June? Already?

Okay, somebody stole May.  I blinked, and it was gone.  Local police have no suspects, but I have a feeling that it was either the illuminati, or the Boulder County Commissioners.  Either way, I'll never get it back now...

     Work at the FAA has been brutal, our thunderstorm season hit early, and the patterns we've faced have been ugly.  Nothing like a line of thunderstorms 600 miles long to mess up the system.  I have had an opportunity to see the control room from a different viewpoint lately...

     I work on a crew that butts up against a senior crew on one end, and a junior crew on the other.  I'm senior on my crew, could have been on the senior (A) crew, but chose to avoid working mids and hence selected B crew.  That means that one night a week  (Tuesday), I'm working with more experienced controllers, and on Wednesday I work with mostly junior.  The way the evenings run on either day show the differences between 20 years experience, and 7.

     Tuesday nights, when we've had bad weather, we've gotten through with much less drama and panic and screaming than similar weather on Wednesday nights.  It's not that the senior controllers are all that much better, individually, the b crew controllers are almost as skilled with routine operations.  The experience shows as the senior controllers handle the pressure, coordinate with each other, and keep coming back for another round.  The juniors get clobbered, and tend to be gun-shy the rest of the night.

     There are other differences, junior controllers tend to use one or two main "outs" when confronted with a difficult situation, senior controllers have a much larger 'bag of tricks'.  Sometimes the one or two outs that the junior has learned just can't be applied.  Also, senior controllers work faster, even though they speak more slowly (which increases pilot comprehension and hence reduces repeating instructions). 

     On the other hand, the junior controllers aren't jaded.  They'll come back the next day fresh and ready to try it again.  Senior controllers have a "been here, done it too many times before, gonna get clobbered again and it's gonna hurt, oh well.." almost Eeyore-ish attitude to another day of thunderstorms. 

     Anyway...  One year, ten months...  Not that I'm counting...

TTFN
Jim

sleeping addenda

Good Morning, I'm well rested and ready to go... Uhhhh. At least, as much as possible when my sleep schedule has been disrupted for 23 years...

I won't blather on about the current ATC crisis much more, but at least the news media is finally recognizing something I've said for five plus years, there's a shortage of conrollers now, and it's going to get worse. I did want to comment on sleep-gate one more time. Our fearless leaders continue to nod their heads at the media ("yes, yes, safety was never compromised, we're addressing the problems, don't worry, those lazy-ass controllers will be dealt with...") This in the face of more and more evidence showing up as to how fearless leaders have ignored the problem for 25 years+.

I recently read an opinion piece that seems to address the problem from a reasonable and intelligent point of view. Charles A. Czeisler, Ph.D., M.D., is Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine and director of the Divisions of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, he posted an opinion on CNN referring to his long history with the FAA and sleep studies. The full text of his article is ... http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/26/czeisler.sleep.air.traffic.controllers/

Some of the key points he addresses are that he advocated reforms to the FAA's controller schedules way back in 1983. Ignored by our administrators. In 1989, the NTSB (national transportation safety board) cited the FAA's response to air traffic controller fatigue as "unacceptable". In 2001, an advisory committee recommended schedule reform and fatigue management programs. Ignored. In 2007, the NTSB strongly recommended the FAA change it's scheduling practices and implement the fatigue management programs that had been recommended following a series of fatigue related air traffic control incidents. Ignored.

Now our FAA administrators are acting surprised at the revelation of tired air traffic controllers making mistakes.

I'm, sadly and cynically, not surprised.

Reading more on the sleep experts, I've come to realize that the fatigue that the article talks about seems to affects everything I do. My friends in the IFGS have often wondered why I poke my head up so rarely to join in on the fun and games, others observe that my schedule, though it gives me a full weekend off (except when I'm assigned mandatory overtime...), still seems to prevent me from socializing regularly. Irma's been a saint, more often than not we'll make plans and I'll back out at the last minute, mostly because of just a deep, probably subconscious, fatigue. I'm used to being tired at home, knowing that on my next shift, I've got to fire it up and be ready. It's been this way for 23 years. You get so used to it, you don't even notice it.

Announcement: Jim retires in 25 months. Mandatory. Even if the FAA changes the rules, I've decided. April 2013, I get my life back. Counting down.....

Who wants to help me plan the retirement party...

Here's to 2013...

TTFN
Jim

Time for a nap

Probably a few of you have noticed the recent firestorm surrounding the actions of a few air traffic controllers of late (or more appropriately, the non-actions). As is typical, our friends in the media tend to bloviate without any understanding on what is really going on, as well as tend to jump on the "lets find any dirt we can on them as long as we're looking" bandwagon. Keep in mind, there have always been a few who screw up, in this case 3 or 4 controllers out of some 7000 nationwide. Some of you probably wonder what I think of all of this...

I'll tell you after my nap... ;-)

Seriously, the media is turning this into a circus (but hey, that's their job). The fact is that on a midnight shift, there are long periods of extreme boredom. Because of our short staffing, many facility managers have made the choice to reduce staffing on the midnight shifts in order to have more controllers on duty during the busy day and evening shifts. That's fine, except if you're one of the mid shifters who is stuck in the control room alone. (Thankfully, I don't work many mids, since I've the seniority to pick a better schedule most of the time)

Here's the recipe for the scandal, though. A few years back, one administrator or another, (who likely never worked a minute past his 6:00 pm work-day end), decided that the control room was filled with too many distractions on the midnight shift. Yes, the lone controller often brought a radio into the control room, perhaps he brought a crossword puzzle book to work on between flights through his sectors, maybe there was a chess set set up on the supervisor's desk for an adjacent area controller to swap moves with. Said this administrator, "BAD DOG, No biscuit! Get all distractions out of the control room". Now, the lone controller gets to sit in a semi-dark room, staring at empty radar screens, for hours at a time. Nobody to talk to, because the facility manager stripped the mid crew of staffing to avoid paying overtime on the day shift. No planes for dozens of minutes at a time. Absolute. Utter. Boredom.

Now, you stay awake at 2:00 am, during your second shift of the day.
Really! I mean it. Stay awake!
NOW! Stay awake, dammit.
Okay, your turn for a break, here's your relief. You have one hour before your next turn in the control room. Go ahead, watch tv. Read. But, DONT take a NAP, the public will see you sleeping while you're on the job. That will make the administrator look bad!
Back into the control room. Still no traffic. Stay awake some more. WOnder how long the coffee will keep you alert.
Repeat all night until the morning crew shows up at 6:00 am.

And that's in the center, where we staff 2 controllers for the shift, allowing them to alternate breaks. The small towers often only schedule 1 person all by themselves for the entire night. No breaks. No allowed distractions in the control room. Did I mention no breaks?

A few years back, we had three controllers working the mid shift here each night. Two would be in the control room at all times. That extra person isn't so much to handle the busy workload, instead he was there to help you stay awake.

There are logical solutions out there. Sleep experts will tell you that a power nap would make all the difference, pilots are allowed to alternate short naps while they are flying, so long as one of the flight crew up front is in charge of the plane. Firefighters don't sit up all night playing cards while waiting for an alarm, they have beds and they use them. Returning to an extra person on the mid shift would do wonders as well, having a second person in the control room at all times would pretty much eliminate controllers falling asleep at the sector.

Shame the administrators put a higher value on saving money rather than flying safety.

Anyway... This firestorm of media attention is, as usual, annoying, but in the words of my louisiana born and raised supervisor, "It don't mean a thang..." We'll keep grinding through the heavy traffic during the day with 33 percent fewer controllers than we really need, and the mid shifters will grind away at the boredom as best they can.

Otherwise, the country will stop flying.

Clear skies,
Jim

Spring Break

Not the kind of spring break you may have been hoping for. I took a break from blogging in March. Work continues, writing continues, and soon we'll see how our government runs with all the non-essential personnel sent home because our leaders in Washington can't come up with a compromise. Cue the cynical boo's...

What comprises "non-essential" personnel? Among others, the folk who process the essential personnels paychecks. The ironic thing is, they'll go home for a week or two, and when they're called back in, they'll probably put in overtime to catch up. However, I'm willing to bet you they won't lose any pay for the time off, either. Just the way our govt works. Meanwhile, if this lasts more than one week, expect to see the "essential personnel" like the military or air traffic controllers face delayed paychecks. "No one to process them, sorry folks. Just keep showing up, and we'll pay you, eventually..."

Did I cue the cynical boo's yet?

Good thing our health care system isn't under this program. Oh... wait... More cynical boo's...

On the positive side, It's grillin season. Going to be doing some "Three Day, Margarita-chipotle ribs" soon. Mmmmmm.

TTFN,
Jim

Grinding away

     I've been working (with my brother) on a short story for the Grantville Gazette these last couple of weeks.  It is a different world working on a project for a targeted audience, inside a pre-defined world.  I've actually been doing a fair amount of historical (or hysterical?) research as I go, trying to keep both characters and locale accurate, historically, as well as fictionally for the series 1632. 

     We started by bouncing ideas off each other, looking for something that hasn't been done in the world yet, as well as trying to play to our strengths, we eventually started on "Ole the Weatherman" (Tentative Title).  Ole, a norwegian student and part time fisherman, ends up learning how to forecast the weather.  We'll see where it goes.

     On the research side, I've found it necessary to track some historical characters from that era, both those mentioned in previous books, and those as yet unknown.  We eventually selected the historical character, Evangelista Toricelli, an Italian scholar and occasional correspondent of Galileo.  Galileo played a part in the novel 1634 The Galileo Affair, which runs takes the up-timer Americans (from the future) to Venice and eventually Italy as Galileo's trial by the catholic church comes to a head.  It's a good read, really well researched and fun.

      Toricelli eventually became known for inventing the Toricelli Barometer in 1643, but there is an interesting gap in his real history from 1631, when he wrote Galileo in support of his theories on planetary movement, just prior to his incarceration by the inquisition ("No-one expects..."  <wince> (sorry, inside joke)) until his publication scientific papers and reappearance in 1641, when he returned to the public eye.  We're going to take him from 1633 or so and run with it, having him end up in Germany, where he gets tapped by the future-americans to help establish a weather forecasting office.  There are other twists we're working is, so...  Stay tuned.

     Why a weather forecast unit? That has to do with my observation that in the series, though weather reports are mentioned by many writers, none have taken the time to define the how, where and why.  Weather forecasting without computer models or satellite feeds was in real life far different that the forecasting we have now, and in the 1632 universe, that's exactly what they'll have to do.  Though there was some beginning research into weather data back then, forecasting didn't really take off until much later, at least on a scale other than locally.  We'll see if we can turn it into an interesting story.

     Imperfect Hope has been tabled for a while.  However, it's not forgotten, and every so often I think of something and write a note to myself.  A growing folder of random thoughts awaits me when Jeff and I finish our project.

At any rate...
CLear skies,
Jim