So if they pull out now, they could very well end up having a several hundred million dollar infrastructure sitting there to rot -- and rotting quite promenently as they situated it through very busy streets.
Seattle, or rather Washington State, has a history of letting projects rot in public view for long periods of time. ..
As a boy, growing up in Olympia in the 1970s, I well remember the drive up I-5 to Seattle and passing the on-ramps to nowhere that were the unfinished I-5 - I-90 interchange.
I guess they finally finished it - sometime in the 1990s.
a. Because Bushitler can't pronounce "nuclear" to my satisfaction.
b. Because I'm descended from fools too stupid to get on a boat a two hundred years ago.
c. Because I think I'd like to be forced to get on my knees and pray five times a day.
d. Because CowboyNeal is an American
My german is pretty poor, but it was simple to pick up the basic story line:
The show followed a family of Neandrathals as they attempted to cross the Alps.
A young female wandered off from the family. Nearby, three "modern" human males had a camp and were cooking meat over a fire. The female picked up the scent of the meat and followed it to the camp.
The males lured her into the camp with the offer of food. She warily accepted and while she was eating, one of the males knocked her down to her hands and knees and took her from behind (much to her distress). The other males then took their turns.
The last shot was of the female wandering up into the snow-covered mountains, obviously pregnant.
Again, my german is not very good, but the impression I got was the show was attempting to explain how a neandrathal female corpse, preserved by altitude and cold, was found in the Alps with an unborn child that contained "modern" human DNA. ..
Got to love those European documentaries - they leave little to the imagination.
I was hired by a defense contractor a year ago to work on a small time-and-attendance database using Oracle Forms as the front end. This was a complete career-change for me; my only previous related experience was two database courses in college and a part-time internship where I installed and configured an enterprise facility maintenance database on a development server. What got me my current job was 20+ years experience troubleshooting military avionics - a good number of the managers I work for are retired military themselves. I was hired primarily to install, configure, and maintain the Oracle database and application servers with software development/maintenance as a secondary responsibility.
Certifications were not required for my current position (a bachelors degree in MIS or a related field was), but I have been working on my own to obtain an Oracle OCA certification to:
Train myself on Oracle database administration for my own benefit
Provide something in lieu of the database administration experience I currently lack.
I also plan to begin a Masters in Software Engineering next year. But until then, if I'm laid off, I'd like to have something tangible to put on my resume.
With twenty years experience working military avionics in a mostly back-shop environment I was reassigned to the flight line as a Production Superintendent, responsible for the daily and periodic maintenance on a fleet of 3 (sometimes 4) USAF U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, as well as officially validating that all maintenance had been performed correctly and the aircraft was airworthy before a pilot accepted an aircraft for a mission.
I knew squat about the aircraft except for the few systems I had worked on. But the guys who worked for me - crew chiefs, jet propulsion mechanics, pneudraulics specialists, comm/nav weenies, etc. who did. I had to rely on them to not only do their jobs correctly but to give me correct information when I had to make a decision that could affect whether or not a mission would be canceled. That meant I had to ask a lot of, what were for my team, simple and obvious questions.
I was fortunate to have a motivated and competent team. In return for their assistance, I wrote their evaluations, submitted them for decorations, juggled schedules to accommodate their leave and provided personal counseling when needed, but most importantly I worked hard to keep the buffoonery generated by our maintenance officer to a minimum for them. I also made sure that when I was complimented for a difficult task the team had accomplished, the appropriate people got the credit.
In time, I picked up the basics of their jobs, and when short on hands or time could pitch-in and help. I would like to think that even though I never became as knowledgeable as they were in their respective specialties that I earned a modicum of their respect for providing the management that allowed them to do their jobs in a relatively stress-free environment.
If your manager is managing and doing the things necessary for you to do your job in a relatively stress-free environment, then thank your lucky stars because the alternative is much worse than explaining how you do task x, y, or z to him.
Honestly, I don't remember. He swung the back end around a couple of times with my boss hollering at him. Then he stopped and drove us a in a normal fashion to the overflow lot - with that grin on his face.
Giving a New Meaning to "Ops Puke"
on
10 Computer Mishaps
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Twenty-or-so years ago, I was a young airman maintaining the Transportable Ground Intercept Facility-II (TGIF-II) at Metro Tango, a site located about 10 klicks north of the former Hahn Air Base (now Frankfurt-Hahn International Airport) in Germany. TGIF-II was used by Air Force and Army intelligence operators to intercept communications from the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. The operators sat at "collection positions," computer keyboards used to "gist" (transcribe in shorthand) the transmissions they listened to through their headsets.
One morning, as the operators entered the facility and began their pre-mission checks, an Army E-4 sat down at Position 11, close to our places at the maintenance terminal. He didn't look well, and sure enough, within a few minutes he promptly barfed his breakfast onto the keyboard in front of him.
He apologized and we said hey, no problem, get yourself to sick call dude and we'll clean up the mess. Thanks to mil-spec, the WWW III-grade circuit board under the keypad only required a quick rinse in the sink and a few hours to air-dry before it was reinstalled and the position checked good.
One of our civilian contractors was ex-Army, and when we told him the story, he got pissed and said "That guy did it on purpose - he's trying to get kicked out." We looked at the contractor in disbelief. Why the hell would anyone do something like that? But we were Air Force guys and had no clue to what lengths some people will go to escape the Army.
The next day and another mission, the operators filed into the facility and took their places to begin their pre-mission equipment checks. The same guy sat down at Position 11, looked at the terminal for a minute, and blew chunks into the keyboard. The kicker was the little grin on his face after he deposited his stomach contents into the keyboard.
The guy apologized again (still with the grin on his face) and excused himself from the facility. We disassembled the keyboard, washed, rinsed, dried and re-installed. To his credit, they guy didn't eat much either morning.
We don't see the operator for several days, but within a week he returns, sits down at Position 11, and within three minutes regurgitates on the keyboard. This time, we tell him to get the hell out and then we call his duty section. We explain what's happened and tell them since they keep sending the guy back to work, it's THEIR turn to clean the abused circuit board. They send a warrant officer (I guess he was the only technician-type the Army had) to whom we hand over the circuit board.
The next time I see the E-4, he's on the site's Goon Squad, folks assigned to jobs outside the compound while they await administrative or disciplinary action. He's driving the military-issue Volkswagen 9-passenger van used to shuttle workers between the site and an overflow parking lot a quarter mile down the road. It's winter, there's snow on the roads, and my boss, an Air Force master sergeant, and I are on our way to the main base to run errands on our lunch hour. The E-4 slams the van into gear, hits the gas, and power-slides down the small two-lane road, fishtailing back and forth as my boss yells at him to stop. I'm sitting in the back seat and in the rear view mirror I can see that little grin on the E-4's face.
If you're on a heading of 220 degrees, it's Runway 22.
If you're on the reciprocal heading of 40 degrees, it's Runway 4.
After approaching from the west-southwest and making it's 196-degree turn, the shuttle was on a heading of 220 degrees and therefore landed on Runway 22.
Interesting off-topic bonus factoid: There is a story told at Edwards that the runway is *officially* 20,000 feet long. In reality, it's closer to 19,999 feet long. When it was being lengthened years ago, the Test Wing commander directed the last foot of concrete be diverted to his house to build a swimming pool. Somebody ratted him out to the Inspector General for fraud, waste, and abuse of government property and he was relieved of command. His old house is now used by the local chapter of the Civil Air Patrol for meetings; in the back yard is a swimming pool - filled in with concrete at the direction of the commander who replaced him.
Slashdot Mirror
So if they pull out now, they could very well end up having a several hundred million dollar infrastructure sitting there to rot -- and rotting quite promenently as they situated it through very busy streets.
Seattle, or rather Washington State, has a history of letting projects rot in public view for long periods of time. . .
As a boy, growing up in Olympia in the 1970s, I well remember the drive up I-5 to Seattle and passing the on-ramps to nowhere that were the unfinished I-5 - I-90 interchange.
I guess they finally finished it - sometime in the 1990s.
"C'mon baby, Global Warming is irreversible and we're all doomed. We should get it on now before the ice caps melt and we all drown."
"You don't want to drown without ever knowing the joys of physical love, do you baby?"
Hey - it worked for a lot of guys during the Cold War and MAD. . .
. . . hook-up with fat, balding forty-something high school principals posing as teenage girls in AOL chat rooms for hot nasty cyber-sex action?
Oh God I Hope So
a. Because Bushitler can't pronounce "nuclear" to my satisfaction.
b. Because I'm descended from fools too stupid to get on a boat a two hundred years ago.
c. Because I think I'd like to be forced to get on my knees and pray five times a day.
d. Because CowboyNeal is an American
. . . is I hope the guy with the backpack sits down next to you.
Go fuck yourself.
Forget your wedding anniversary.
Works every time!
I've never worked with Siebel, but if their customer support is worse than Oracle's then you have my utmost sympathy.
An Air Force guy showed me this trick:
He said it worked wonders at keeping co-workers off his machine
I'm too f*cking cheap to gamble.
Hell, I won't even pay for a golf cart when the heat index is 107F.
The neandrathal female in the program WAS very ugly.
But boys will be boys, won't they?
;D
My german is pretty poor, but it was simple to pick up the basic story line:
The show followed a family of Neandrathals as they attempted to cross the Alps.
A young female wandered off from the family. Nearby, three "modern" human males had a camp and were cooking meat over a fire. The female picked up the scent of the meat and followed it to the camp.
The males lured her into the camp with the offer of food. She warily accepted and while she was eating, one of the males knocked her down to her hands and knees and took her from behind (much to her distress). The other males then took their turns.
The last shot was of the female wandering up into the snow-covered mountains, obviously pregnant.
Again, my german is not very good, but the impression I got was the show was attempting to explain how a neandrathal female corpse, preserved by altitude and cold, was found in the Alps with an unborn child that contained "modern" human DNA. . .
Got to love those European documentaries - they leave little to the imagination.
What was it, overpopulation in the '60s? 5 billion humans and not enough Soylent Green for everyone?
Then it was the "new" Ice Age in the '70s. . .
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were going to kill us all by starting WWIII in the '80's. . .
The 90's was the decade of Holes in the Ozone and let's not forget Y2K and airliners packed full of screaming passengers falling from the skies. . .
Now it's Global Warming(TM) and OMFG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!
Some folks just aren't happy unless they're being scared half to death.
No batteries required!
So we're going to have everyone in running around in brand new bodies and Alzheimer-afflicted brains. . .?
</sarcasm>
. . . was this lousy certificate
I was hired by a defense contractor a year ago to work on a small time-and-attendance database using Oracle Forms as the front end. This was a complete career-change for me; my only previous related experience was two database courses in college and a part-time internship where I installed and configured an enterprise facility maintenance database on a development server. What got me my current job was 20+ years experience troubleshooting military avionics - a good number of the managers I work for are retired military themselves. I was hired primarily to install, configure, and maintain the Oracle database and application servers with software development/maintenance as a secondary responsibility.
Certifications were not required for my current position (a bachelors degree in MIS or a related field was), but I have been working on my own to obtain an Oracle OCA certification to:
I also plan to begin a Masters in Software Engineering next year. But until then, if I'm laid off, I'd like to have something tangible to put on my resume.
Personal anecdote:
With twenty years experience working military avionics in a mostly back-shop environment I was reassigned to the flight line as a Production Superintendent, responsible for the daily and periodic maintenance on a fleet of 3 (sometimes 4) USAF U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft, as well as officially validating that all maintenance had been performed correctly and the aircraft was airworthy before a pilot accepted an aircraft for a mission.
I knew squat about the aircraft except for the few systems I had worked on. But the guys who worked for me - crew chiefs, jet propulsion mechanics, pneudraulics specialists, comm/nav weenies, etc. who did. I had to rely on them to not only do their jobs correctly but to give me correct information when I had to make a decision that could affect whether or not a mission would be canceled. That meant I had to ask a lot of, what were for my team, simple and obvious questions.
I was fortunate to have a motivated and competent team. In return for their assistance, I wrote their evaluations, submitted them for decorations, juggled schedules to accommodate their leave and provided personal counseling when needed, but most importantly I worked hard to keep the buffoonery generated by our maintenance officer to a minimum for them. I also made sure that when I was complimented for a difficult task the team had accomplished, the appropriate people got the credit.
In time, I picked up the basics of their jobs, and when short on hands or time could pitch-in and help. I would like to think that even though I never became as knowledgeable as they were in their respective specialties that I earned a modicum of their respect for providing the management that allowed them to do their jobs in a relatively stress-free environment.
If your manager is managing and doing the things necessary for you to do your job in a relatively stress-free environment, then thank your lucky stars because the alternative is much worse than explaining how you do task x, y, or z to him.
<sarcasm>
. . . when you can just go to McDonalds/Burger King/Taco Bell and get the "special edition" cup or toy?
Saves you about $10 and you get just as much as you would from sitting in the theater for an hour and a half.
</sarcasm>
I still have 48 invites to go!
Don't pay your bill.
Works every time.
Working and living around Edwards AFB should qualify as a remote tour. . .
(Hint: keep zooming out until you find Rosamond, Lancaster, and Palmdale, California. Then zoom out some more until you find Los Angeles)
"Gets splashed with shit and fecies [sic]. . ."
<deadpan>
Shit AND feces?
You mean there's a difference?
</deadpan>
Honestly, I don't remember. He swung the back end around a couple of times with my boss hollering at him. Then he stopped and drove us a in a normal fashion to the overflow lot - with that grin on his face.
Twenty-or-so years ago, I was a young airman maintaining the Transportable Ground Intercept Facility-II (TGIF-II) at Metro Tango, a site located about 10 klicks north of the former Hahn Air Base (now Frankfurt-Hahn International Airport) in Germany. TGIF-II was used by Air Force and Army intelligence operators to intercept communications from the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. The operators sat at "collection positions," computer keyboards used to "gist" (transcribe in shorthand) the transmissions they listened to through their headsets.
One morning, as the operators entered the facility and began their pre-mission checks, an Army E-4 sat down at Position 11, close to our places at the maintenance terminal. He didn't look well, and sure enough, within a few minutes he promptly barfed his breakfast onto the keyboard in front of him.
He apologized and we said hey, no problem, get yourself to sick call dude and we'll clean up the mess. Thanks to mil-spec, the WWW III-grade circuit board under the keypad only required a quick rinse in the sink and a few hours to air-dry before it was reinstalled and the position checked good.
One of our civilian contractors was ex-Army, and when we told him the story, he got pissed and said "That guy did it on purpose - he's trying to get kicked out." We looked at the contractor in disbelief. Why the hell would anyone do something like that? But we were Air Force guys and had no clue to what lengths some people will go to escape the Army.
The next day and another mission, the operators filed into the facility and took their places to begin their pre-mission equipment checks. The same guy sat down at Position 11, looked at the terminal for a minute, and blew chunks into the keyboard. The kicker was the little grin on his face after he deposited his stomach contents into the keyboard.
The guy apologized again (still with the grin on his face) and excused himself from the facility. We disassembled the keyboard, washed, rinsed, dried and re-installed. To his credit, they guy didn't eat much either morning.
We don't see the operator for several days, but within a week he returns, sits down at Position 11, and within three minutes regurgitates on the keyboard. This time, we tell him to get the hell out and then we call his duty section. We explain what's happened and tell them since they keep sending the guy back to work, it's THEIR turn to clean the abused circuit board. They send a warrant officer (I guess he was the only technician-type the Army had) to whom we hand over the circuit board.
The next time I see the E-4, he's on the site's Goon Squad, folks assigned to jobs outside the compound while they await administrative or disciplinary action. He's driving the military-issue Volkswagen 9-passenger van used to shuttle workers between the site and an overflow parking lot a quarter mile down the road. It's winter, there's snow on the roads, and my boss, an Air Force master sergeant, and I are on our way to the main base to run errands on our lunch hour. The E-4 slams the van into gear, hits the gas, and power-slides down the small two-lane road, fishtailing back and forth as my boss yells at him to stop. I'm sitting in the back seat and in the rear view mirror I can see that little grin on the E-4's face.
Looks like our contractor was right after all. . .
The runway is designated as Runway 4/22.
If you're on a heading of 220 degrees, it's Runway 22.
If you're on the reciprocal heading of 40 degrees, it's Runway 4.
After approaching from the west-southwest and making it's 196-degree turn, the shuttle was on a heading of 220 degrees and therefore landed on Runway 22.
Interesting off-topic bonus factoid: There is a story told at Edwards that the runway is *officially* 20,000 feet long. In reality, it's closer to 19,999 feet long. When it was being lengthened years ago, the Test Wing commander directed the last foot of concrete be diverted to his house to build a swimming pool. Somebody ratted him out to the Inspector General for fraud, waste, and abuse of government property and he was relieved of command. His old house is now used by the local chapter of the Civil Air Patrol for meetings; in the back yard is a swimming pool - filled in with concrete at the direction of the commander who replaced him.
HTH