Today, I learned about what's called a CG envelope, which is a range in which an aircraft is loaded so that it is properly balanced. I learned, also, how to tweak the CG envelope to make it larger or smaller as needed, and why you'd want to make it smaller. (To make life easier on the flight crew and let people sit all over the aircraft willy nilly.)

Today, I learned about the OEW of an aircraft, and the ZFW. I've spent my day immersed in the nitty gritty of aviation and I've found that it's absolutely fascinating.

Not that I didn't find this stuff fascinating before. I'm an airplane nerd. I grew up on Langley AFB, home to the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing, who are pretty much the USAF's Rogue Squadron(s). Or Skull Squadron, if you prefer Macross to Star Wars, which I do :p I find the sound of god-awful noisy fighter aircraft to be amazingly comforting.

I'm considering looking into getting a dispatcher's license now. Well, I looked into it; I didn't do much considering of looking into it. The courses run about $4000-$5000.

Oi vey.

Right, so not gonna run out and sign up for it now. In a year or two, though, after I get my student loans paid down a little, I think I may spring for it.

So it turns out that when you're a real employee, and not a silly new hire, Continental doesn't make you share a room with someone when you're traveling for the company. So I get the hotel room to myself-- this is a good thing.

Got up at 0400 this morning, dug out my business casual clothing, and hopped on the plane for Houston. Landed and spent the next 6 hours or so learning about the horribly outdated mainframe-based system that we use-- ran on an emulator on a windows machine now-- and typing in large amounts of commands that appear to be mostly random letters with little rhyme or reason, and trying not to stare at the bespectacled, drop-dead gorgeous girl from Costa Rica sitting at the computer next to me.

Learned some nifty things-- like the logic behind runway numbering, which I sort of understood but didn't truly grok-- and I now maybe actually have a clue on what to do for a flight. Maybe. I will after tomorrow, anyways.

Sammmy, who is the bagrunner currently, over the radio: "Josh-- any more Cleveland bags?"
Me, from the bag room: "Clear on Cleveland."
Sammy: "Clear on Cleveland?"
Me: "Clear. Zero bags."
Corey, over the radio: "Josh, how many more Cleveland bags?"
Me: (slightly annoyed.) "None. Zero. Clear on Cleveland."
Corey: "Are we clear on Cleveland?"
Me: "Clear on Cleveland."
Mike, the ops agent today, over the radio: "Josh, the ramp wants to know if you have more Cleveland bags."
Me: "No more Cleveland bags. Zero. Clear on Cleveland-- Though, I suppose, in a broader, spiritual sense, we all have Cleveland bags."
Mike: "Copy. One more bag."
Jeremy, the weekend lead, over the radio: "Josh, is that bag a heavy or standard bag?"
Me: "Only as heavy as my soul."
Jeremy: "Copy that. Three heavies."

Josh is going to operations training. This is a good thing.

What does this mean for Josh? Several things:

-It means that Josh will be able to pick up overtime that he wouldn't normally be able to pick up.
-It means that, should the operations agent be ill, and call off during the wee hours, the ramp isn't quite as screwed, because Josh will know how to do weight and balance and communicate with load planning via normal channels instead of frantic phone calls.
-It means three days paid in Houston for training, per diems, paid hotel room and flight time on the clock.
-It means that Josh is more useful to his company, which is a very good thing for someone during Scary Airline Times.
-It also means that Jodi, the oh-so-wonderful supervisor who went to bat for him when he was trying to get days off to see his sister graduate from Basic Training in San Antonio, once again went to bat for him.

There's a lot of inter-station politics going on here. Continental (and presumably most airlines) divide the station grunts into two categories: Ramp workers (CSAs, in CO parlance. "Luggage monkeys" or "ramp rats" to jerky pilots.) and Ticket counter/ Gate workers. (ASAs, in CO parlance. "Hens" when I'm frustrated with them.)

Now, in some stations, Ops is considered an ASA position. In others, a CSA position. Here, in Columbus, it is a CSA position. But yet, last year, when they scheduled CSA couldn't make the class, they sent an ASA instead of sending me, to appease the hens upstairs, who were upset that someone who recently switched from being a CSA to ASA was still considered qualified to work ops.

So I resigned myself to not going then. (The ASA sent is a complete jerk, by the way, and I'm not normally judgmental like that, but this guy is a sleazeball, lazy, and rude. Anyways.) I spent the last few months harping on the supervisors: "When am I going for ops training? I want ops training!" and then, the GM turned around and scheduled another ASA to go.

An ASA who won't work past 1 PM, who trades off most of her days. I haven't seen her in weeks, and the whole point of sending people to this training is to cover when the normal ops agents don't make it in.

And when Jodi found out, she was pissed. I was pissed. The guy who was supposed to go last time but couldn't make it was pissed. Several people began emailing HR about it.

And now Jodi just called me (I'm over in the bag room, hence the posting from work) to tell me that there are still two open seats in the class, so I'm going, along with the ASA (Grrr.) and the guy who was supposed to go last time.

This is why my job is awesome:




Sitting next door to where I work this morning, F/A-18s. I ask you, is there a cooler aircraft than an F/A-18?

Well, actually, yes. But they are very few and far between. It's like saying that there is someone cooler than Bogart: He should not be faulted because Toshiro Mifune was born.

(Coworker throws a bottle at trash can and misses. Josh picks it up and throws it out.)
Coworker A: I think Josh got an assist. Er, no, Josh got the points and I got the assist.
Coworker B: Yeah, Josh got the points.
Josh: o.O
Coworker B: You did a good thing. That's all you need to know.

Today, I worked hard. This is unusual in the airline industry. Generally, my shift consists of long periods of reading or conversation of varying intelligence interrupted by minutes of complete panic.

Every incoming flight was early today, and most of the flights leaving were late for one reason or another. Long story short, I've been out in the sun, without a break, since the sun came up.

The plan now? It's Josh-Friday. I'ma get a pizza. And something cold. And I'm gonna flop on the couch and watch Babylon 5 until either, A), it's time for me to log on to World of Warcraft and raid Ulduar, or B), I hit an episode I don't really care for*, causing me to get fidgetty with a badly aged, greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts TV show.


*These episodes generally include installments with a lack of aliens (The actors for aliens are almost universally better than the actors for humans), filler episodes that are not amazingly funny, and episodes in which the aliens are just Christian Scientists with funny noses (Someone digging through Star Trek's alien dumpster!) who don't want their son to have a blood transfusion. Also, most episodes that center around Dr. Franklin. He annoys me for some reason, and has for fifteen years.

• There are no keys to the aircraft.
  
  
• There are no keys to the tugs.
  
  
• There is no such thing as a bin stretcher.
  
  
• Embraer and Canadair Regional Jets do not have bypass pins.
  
  
• Bin stretchers do not exist.
  
  
• The company will not ask you to obtain an air sample from the engine.
  

These, are, however, fun things to send a new hire after. Most rampers will know what's going on and play along, too. One of my coworkers was telling me about a new hire they had when he worked in Newark that spent two hours being sent around the airport chasing an imaginary RJ bypass pin. (Bypass pins disconnect the steering from the nose gear of the aircraft, which is important when you are pushing an aircraft, since that nose gear steering can snap the towbar in half and break legs with the shattered towbar.)

Today, we were going to have our spacy new hire empty the lavs on a Dash-8, but were thwarted when it turned out that the Dash-8 was one that actually had lavs. In two years here, I've never seen a Dash-8 with a lavatory, much less dumped the lavs on it.

Instead, when he was running the cargo over to the freight house (About a fifteen to twenty minute round trip, depending on whether or not there are aircraft in the way or not. It's on the other side of the runway, and you have to go all the way around it.) they asked him to get a bin stretcher to help in loading the cargo bin.

The freight house then sent him to the Southwest Airlines Ramp, who referred him to the Northwest Airlines Ramp. They sent him about 40 minutes ago, and he just now came back, all huffy.

All well. What are new hires for, anyways?

Dumping lavs and wild goose chases :)

And so, when the appointed time had come, Josh petitioned the Lion for armor with which he might stand unmoved. Four score and eleven days did the Lion labor upon the armor, and only when the Lion was ready was the armor brought unto Josh.

Lo, the time came upon which Josh saw the darkening skies and knew that the hour had come round at last. With a solemn joy, Josh girded himself in the Lion's armor and cried unto the skies,

"I defy you! Come, ye pagan gods of wind and rain and wrath! Fall upon me, spirits of the storm, for I shall stand unmoved and we shall struggle until the end of time!*"

Thus did the storm fall upon Josh. In truth, Josh was unmoved by rain, by wind and by wrath, and long did he contend with the storm. The armor of the Lion proved impenetrable indeed, but, alas, Josh was not without weakness.

Ere the dawn broke, an oracle's words had sang sweetly in Josh's ears. "Sun," whispered the oracle, "Sun and pleasant weather." Thusly advised, Josh essayed into the world, feet unarmored save for canvas sneakers. It was not the spirits of rain, nor the gods of wind, which proved to be Josh's end, but the lowly puddle-sprite. The puddle-sprites found the canvas of his sneakers weak, and took advantage of the error.

And Josh cried unto the heavens, "I spit at thee, rain and water and wind! I am undone, my feet wet and my socks laden, but know this! You have failed, and I have been beaten not by thee, but by thine lowly brother, the puddle-sprite!"

---

*It is believed, by evidence in another record, that the end of time was to take place on June 3rd, 2009. Consider the following exchange:
Supervisor: "Are you going to be here Wednesday?"
Josh: "Nope, why?"
S. : "I just need to talk to someone who's going to be here then. It doesn't matter."
J. : "No, now I'm curious. Why is it important? Does the world end on Wednesday?"
S. : "Stericycle is coming."
J. : "And we don't know what happens when they come? Is it like the end of the Mayan Calendar?"
S. : "No, they take away our hazmat garbage."
J. : "And we don't know what happens after that? It's a horizon beyond which we can't see?"
S. : ".....June 4th happens after that."

Quote of the week month year:

Upon asking Sir, my nerdy, black co-worker, about Resident Evil 5 and it the media's claims that it is a racist work*: "Nah, dude. I've been killing white guys for years."



*RE5 takes place in Africa, and, thus, you kill black zombies.

Also, topical image of the week, via Instapundit:

Winter is officially here; airlines are now spraying heated glycol on their aircraft in order to strip off the frost. Soon, we'll be doing it to rid them of snow, and the glycol will be on everything, and it will a pain to get into vehicles without slipping around.

And it will stay this way until round about April.

<3 winter.

Actually, I seriously do love winter. Though, next year, I think I'm going to try to get a temporary Leave of Absence from Continental and apply for the ramping job with Raytheon in the Antartic. They hire rampers (The guys in orange vests who flail at aircraft with little orange sticks and throw your bags around.) for about four months, Nov-Feb, and fly supplies into their locations in Antartica-- namely McMurdo and South Pole Station. I want to go and I want to go to SPS pretty badly; it's the southern most continually inhabited spot in the world.

The irony is that I will skipping winter for a second summer that will be colder than winter will be <3

Antartica, though! How many people can even say they've been there, let alone lived there for four months while working for a defense contractor? How cool is that?

My mom freaked out about the idea; my dad's statement was, "Careful. The Antartic is full of hostile alien parasites. Also, you probably have that dormant Ancients gene, so keep an eye out for Stargates."

It's funny to think that I am actually qualified for a job with a defense contractor; I have more than a year of experience working with aircraft now, and have passed about 85 billion background checks.

Subject change!

I work with more than a few people who were not born in the USA. It's smart, on their part, since they can visit home for a reasonable price on a regular basis. Most of these people, I have found, are pleasant and likable, but there is one woman here (She works ramp, the only female ramper we have.) who just grates on my nerves-- and everyone else's. She is... unpleasant.

It's hard to pinpoint what, exactly, makes her so, though the fact that she is willing to play every card she has-- race, gender, and nationality-- to get what she wants doesn't help. She can't, for instance, lift heavy bags. (Which are bags weighing more than 50 pounds.) A requirement for the job is being able to lift 75 pounds, and she can't. Just to be clear, a ramper who can't lift 75 pounds is just about useless. That sounds harsh, but it's true. We get a lot of heavy bags. We get a lot of boxes of mail and freight that weigh around a hundred pounds.

And she's nigh unintelligible. Most of the time I can just deal with it, but I am so not a morning person, and she seems to be one of those people who just can't get that through her head, even after I flat out told her that getting up at 3 AM is one of the most difficult things I do on a daily basis. Not because I'm lazy-- it's just hard for my brain to function enough to realize that I'm supposed to be getting up.

Add to that the fact that it's really easy to tell when I am not happy/out of it. I'm generally pleasant and relatively cheerful, and most people can look at me, notice the fact that I am barely coherent and relatively withdrawn for the first hour or two here, and know that they should leave me alone. When I worked at Speedway, they used to tell new hires, "We love Josh. But we don't talk to Josh until he talks to us in the mornings." Even the regular customers new and didn't engage me in conversation when it was early.

Yet she insists on talking to me at 4 o'clock in the morning, when I just want to be tossing bags. I do my best to be unfailingly pleasant, as I strongly feel that no one deserves to be treated badly-- except maybe liberal socialists ;)-- but dear lord, she is striking more than a few nerves.

December first. I just have to make it to December first, when the new bid takes effect. I will be going full time, so, at the very least, I'll be able to wait until 5 AM to clock in. Coming into work at 5 AM is much, much, much easier than coming in at 4. That extra hour of flexibility makes all the difference in having a life and/or getting more sleep. As it is, I operate on about 4.5-5 hours of sleep a night.

[13:59] BadgerSensei: Woo, surprise bag room assignment.
[13:59] Ryn Valyn: Sounds suspicious!
[14:00] BadgerSensei: The shadow management is plotting something, I'm sure.
[14:00] BadgerSensei: Their plans are far reaching!
[14:00] Ryn Valyn: I'd watch your back, it could be a set up.
[14:01] BadgerSensei: They infected the agent scheduled to be in here with a virus weeks ago, and left him ill for two weeks, all to manuever me in here...
[14:01] Ryn Valyn: Oh my God.
[14:01] Ryn Valyn: Badger? BADDDDDDDDDDGGGERRR!!
[14:03] BadgerSensei: Dun-dun-dun-duh, duh-duh-DUH! *bang*
[14:08] BadgerSensei: I should call Coast to Coast tomorrow on my way to work, and make sure that they are aware of what the Shadow Government and the Sons of Non-union are planning.
[14:08] Ryn Valyn: HAHAHA
[14:33] BadgerSensei: The red pepper seeds...
[14:33] BadgerSensei: Are gone :(
[14:35] Ryn Valyn: WHAT. THE. HELL.
[14:35] Ryn Valyn: There is something dreadfully evil afoot here.
[14:36] BadgerSensei: What could the shadow management want with them?
[14:37] Ryn Valyn: Okay, it's far-fetched, but my theory is: when Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, they only had time to grab one thing: a pile of pepper seeds. THAT pile of pepper seeds. One seed probably holds ridiculous divine power. Wars have been fought over it, millions of lives lost. THAT is what the shadow management wants with it.
[14:38] BadgerSensei: Oh my.
[14:38] BadgerSensei: Of course.
[14:38] BadgerSensei: The fabled Edenic Red Pepper.
[14:38] BadgerSensei: Capable of uncountable miracles.
[14:39] Ryn Valyn: You let it slip, right out of your grasp.

Barack Obama is about 1000 feet away in his aircraft right now. I saw him wave. *twirls finger in air* Whoop-de-frigging-doo.

More cool, three or four of my coworkers got too close and were chased away by the secret service.

I wrote like thirteen pages in "A Shadow of Her Former Self" and then hit a road block. I know what I want Felicia to do, but the path is not making itself clear. In retrospect, I am wondering if there is too much technobabble... and not enough literary. Essentially, I went from a psychological horror to science fiction. Which... Is what I want, in the long run. But I'm really trying to write primarily literary SF-- Aiming for a hybrid of Wolfe and Simmons, generally-- and technobabble isn't normally a component of literary SF. So I'm wondering if I should rewrite like... five pages? Out of thirteen?

eh, I'll have to reread it at home.

4.5 hours to go before I get to clock out.

So, last night, I forgot to pack lunch for today-- and I am at work literally all day, from 0400-2030. I didn't want to just buy lunch, as I don't want to get back in the habit of eating at the airport everyday-- waaaay too expensive-- so I just grabbed my lunch meat-- roast beef and pepperjack-- and tossed 'em in a bag with my bread and a can of Pringles-- then got here, threw them in the fridge and went to work.

Later on, I go to make a sandwhich, and, lo and behold, it is not the rosemary-crusted bread (only $1.50 at Walmart!) I thought I had grabbed, but cinnamon-raisin bread.

*sigh*

Ugh.

I try not to complain about missionaries and their bags, as they are out Doing Good (presumably) and I am not, but the last thing I wanted to see this morning was an orange tag labeled "Hearts to Honduras."

Seeing such things on a bag generally means you're in for flood of very heavy bags bound for an airport I've never heard of.

Funny thing: The previous sentence sounds perfectly fine to me, said aloud, but looking at it, the "of" on the end is like.... a welt on my eyeball or something. The sentence ending-preposition.... Ugh.

And, I was just informed that flight 506, Columbus to Newark, is delayed this morning and potentially canceled due to sharp eyed rampers noticing something that the rampers who unloaded last night apparently did not-- not to mention the captain, who should have been performing his walk around with a flashlight, and so has no excuse, unlike the guy who parked the plane last night, though his excuse is flimsy at best, as the ramp is pretty well lit-- Blood and feathers in an intake. Which means...... BIRD STRIKE! Woo. Bird strikes r serious bizness.

Should 506 be canceled, that means that there will be forty bags that need rerouting. I'm glad they're all rampside, and not here in the bag room, with me.

I'm really frakking tired. I worked thirteen hours Thursday, with a three hour break between the shifts, so I was at the airport for sixteen hours. Friday, I worked sixteen hours straight through. Today, I am working a mere nine hours, but I am so exhausted that I just want to curl up and die.

I could have sworn I posted these before, but I guess not. Ah, well. Maybe I just uploaded them to photobucket... Er, no, I did neither. Odd. These are awesome sauce. At least, I think so; and I definitely wanted to share them.... Oh well, here goes:






Are these clouds not totally amazing? They look like a Hubble image of some deep space nebula. This was some morning in June. The airport is THE best place for sunrises/sunsets.

Kenny: Hey Ops... What time is it?
Vandall(Teh Ops guy.): Hammer time!
Kyle: Peanut Butter Jelly Time?
Vandall: Time to make the donuts?

Maybe it's just the time of day, or maybe it's the boredom as I sit here, away from the ramp, trying to fight enough battles in FFVI to turn the Cursed Shield into the Paladin Shield (256 of them!), but I found that profoundly amusing.

So, Continental is cutting 3000 jobs.

I'm not too panicked; that's less than ten percent of our staffing, it's not all coming from one area, and even if it did, if they were to do strictly involuntary cuts based on seniority, there's six people below me... And they're offering early retirement packages and the like first, to get people out of the way voluntarily.

At any rate, I don't think I will be losing my job.

However, for those of you who are the praying type, I could use the prayers in regards to continued employment.

Also, at least at the moment, it has kinda kicked me in the ass in terms of writing motivation. In theory, if I were being published, I could supplement my income nicely. So. While those of you who pray are praying, keep my motivation in mind, too. And creativity. And all that jazz. ;)

Domo, domo.

It occurs to me that I have an awesome job, as my primary complaints, at least right now, are as follows:

-The WiFi signal sucks.
-OMG everytime I fall asleep, a bag comes down the belt and makes a lot of noise and wakes me up. ZOMG, how unfair.

I'm getting paid just about ten bucks an hour for this, with a $1 an hour raise coming June 30.

Did I mention I'm alt tabbed from playing Final Fantasy VI? Which, for those of you like Kyle, who have no idea about FF numbering schema, was FFIII in the US when released on the SNES, and now, since all the other FFs we never got originally have been released over here, is FFVI. Kyle is convinced that there is some other FFVI out there. Ah well.

Back to the magitek factory!

Incidentally, The Highwind's first approach to the city of Vector is probably one of gaming's most impressive visual moments, 16 bit or otherwise. Pixels and sprites and hardware limitations aside, it's really damn impressive.

Woo. So, my sister is graduating from USAF Basic Training Friday, in San Antonio. I will be heading down to see this with my parents and my aunt.

I wasn't going to go with them; short on money right now, for a several reasons, till my mother was like, "Well, I was gonna pay for you..." (I guess being responsible for getting four people from Ohio to San Antonio for less than the cost a single person would pay to fly otherwise has its rewards.)

So I'm going. Which means I had to wrestle the days off.

Found a guy who wanted extra hours, and who had a schedule that'd permit him to pick up my days... except... he's a new hire. Which, even though in training, and in the company manual, they said new hires can pick up all the hours they want, they just can't trade days off for the first six months... (It's a training issue, they want them getting exp.) And even though I picked up days for senior agents like a week out of training, the GM was all like, "Nope. Can't do it! You're a senior agent" (since when!?) "and they're new hires."

So, Jody (one of the supervisors.) went and dug up the manual, printed out the page that says new hires can pick up shifts... to which the GM responded by highlighting the part that says "At management discretion."

Finally, Jody called me into her office and said, "Those days are my shifts, I can do whatever the hell I want with them."

At which point we sat down and hashed out shift coverage so I can head off to San Antonio.

Also, it is my Friday today. And I don't have to be back at work until the equivalent of my Friday again; I essentially have a week off. And I am gonna spend four days or so in Texas, being away from work, and, more importantly, irritating coworkers.

Yay. First vacation, first trip out of state except for training, since last March, the last time I saw Jenna.

I feel.... relieved.