Readiness? We Don't Need to Be Ready!

Next week, I will be attending a 4-day review for our next flight test. Today, I sat through the entire 4-day review. Well, not the whole thing. I left at 6:30. They were still going, and I think they're going back tomorrow morning. It was scheduled to be done today, but no one actually thought it would be.

The review is called a Readiness Review, and it's actually important. You don't just light the back end of these missiles and hope everything works in a major test like this. The problem is that with anything this major, there are known issues, unknown issues, and tons of pressure to get everything right.

It also looks like I'm going to be in Colorado Springs for the test event, possibly up to two weeks before the test. I don't mind the travel, but being gone for two weeks would bother me.

Just saw this: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html. It explains why writing my thesis went the way it did.

Well, that's my quick update. More eventually.

Chicks Dig the Longball

The Major League Baseball Homerun Derby is going on tonight in St. Louis, MO. As such, I'm distracted. More tomorrow.

Mmm, Steak

Lee and Jennifer came over tonight, and we grilled out. They brought chicken, and I cooked a New York strip steak. I made enough mashed potatoes for everyone, and they brought garlic bread. Dessert was homemade cookies and cream ice cream with Oreos.

The weekend overall was nice. I got some rest and got some work done in the yard and around the house. I still have more to get done, unfortunately. I have clean dishes in the dishwasher that need to be in the cabinets and dirty dishes that need to make it into the dishwasher or get washed.

I'll be in the office tomorrow, then I have three days of training. Friday, I'm taking comp time for a much-needed day off. I'll be in Memphis for some business, then a trivia competition at CBU Friday night. I suppose I'll also see my parents.

I don't think anyone even remembers this page exists, except the aforementioned Lee R. Allen, Esq., who only remembers it because it's linked to his own rarely-visited blog. Oh well, I guess it's better than other wastes of time I can think of. More tomorrow.

I Passed

After the second (and final) test, I now have enough points to definitively say I passed my training course. I still have to show up tomorrow because there's an attendance requirement (no more than 2 hours missed), but I can't fail based on score.

For the record, I was the first one done both days. On my first test, I got the 25 / 25 I mentioned yesterday. Today, I put forth much less effort and got 22 or 23 / 25 (I don't remember which).

Tomorrow is only a half day of training, then a half day of nothing. I'm going to try to go by the bank, then maybe a nap. More tomorrow.

200%

Today was the first of two tests in my training class. The grading breaks down to:

Test 1: 25 points
Test 2: 25 points
Presentation: 10 points
Participation: 40 points (8 per day)

I need 80 total points to graduate. The participation and presentation scores are gimmes, so start with 50. Then add the perfect score on the first test (I rock), and all I need to do is show up and write my name on the second test.

The title comes from a policy one of my professors at CBU: if the first person to turn in a test scored 100%, he was awarded a score of 200 / 100. I achieved this on the second test, so for the final I could not make a score that would cause me to fail the class. I only needed about a 15 to get an A.

Since this class is pass / fail, there's no promise of passing, but it's nice to take the pressure off for the last test.

In case it's hard to tell, school is my wheelhouse. I can take classes and pass tests in my sleep. It's not that work is harder than school, but the expectation is different. On a test, there's an answer, and I've spent close to 20 years developing skills to get to that answer. At work, there isn't a single answer. Sometimes, there's no answer at all. I'll develop that skill, too, I'm just not there yet.

I should explain the recent increase in blogging. Part of the reason is that training is different from real work. Real work is governed by all sorts of non-disclosures, classifications, and stories about people being fired for complaining about bosses. Real work is also tiring, and when I get home, I want to leave work at work. Training isn't work. Training doesn't have homework, and like I said, it's in my wheelhouse.

For the record, 4pm isn't 2400 hours; it's 1600 hours. If you're going to try to refer to military time, get it right. More tomorrow.

Mad Props, Yo

I had a better title, but I forgot what it was. This one works, though. Explanation to follow.

Training today wasn't awful. Well, it was awful, but less awful than real work would have been. The general format of the class is to discuss the topics then do an exercise related to the material. The discussions during the teaching segment tend to drag on a little bit, but the exercises seem to fold time trying to get everything into a PowerPoint for the presentation.

We're in groups of 6, and there will be a total of 6 presentations, so we each present once (I didn't want anyone to have trouble with that math). I chose to present this morning. It was the second set of presentations, so I had a lay of the land but didn't get stuck with something terrible. The topic was risk, which is really hard to do in a real program, but really easy when you can make up the answers. I felt I did a good job, and I think the instructor agreed. My group later pointed out that on at least one slide, I said essentially, "and here are a bunch of acronyms . . . moving on." I don't remember doing that, but I very well could have. My presentation had the most information (including a ton of individual risks that were asked for, but no one else went to the trouble to list) and looked pretty good (for the time I had to make it). I also answered all the questions the facilitator asked, mostly by making things up as I went.

This afternoon was another lesson and exercise. I didn't have to present, but the entire group works together to answer questions and prepare the material before the "leader" makes the presentation. As part of this exercise, we had to answer several questions and build a work breakdown structure (WBS). For those who aren't familiar with government contracts, a WBS is a detailed hierarchy of tasks required to complete a project. It's often very similar to an organization chart. The standard operating procedure is that the government provides the first (top) three levels of the WBS, and the contractor develops any additional levels (and usually there are several additional levels). Getting back to the story, for this task we had to answer several questions and build a sample WBS for the fictional project. I started right away building the WBS because I'm a formatting weeny, and I knew it would take a significant amount of time. I built the first draft of the WBS then got input from others in the group to finish it off. I gave it to the leader, and he incorporated it into the final presentation without looking at it much (he was still finishing another section).

During his presentation, he got his first good look at my WBS and remarked, "that's really good," and looked over at me, giving me props in front of the entire room and the teachers. The teacher also commented that it was a very good WBS for the time we had and especially liked some of the details we'd added. One was suggested by another group member, so it wasn't all me (and I gave him props, though not as loudly because it would have been impolite in class).

Tomorrow afternoon is the first test. It's open book / open notes, so it's just a matter of finding the answers in the materials. I could probably pass the class without looking for the answers, but why not spend the few extra seconds? If I do well on the first test, I can mostly ignore the second one with even less risk.

I want a bacon chocolate bar. More tomorrow.

You Know?

I'm in training this week, you know? You know, training like this, you know, requires some form of, you know, presentations. Not everyone is practiced at presenting, I understand, you know. There are some things that, you know, people should control during presentations.

I, um, realize that, um, President Obama isn't so, um, smooth without TOTUS (Teleprompter of the United States), but, um, er, at least he can, um, turn on the silver tongue, you know?

I shouldn't be so hard on people, but when it becomes distracting, I'm easily distracted. Especially when it comes to something like this that I don't want to pay attention to anyway.

I have the same feeling about written documents. For our review that just occurred, I read a ton of documents. Most were pretty well written. One in particular was terrible. I think I had over 500 comments, mostly relating to grammar. I'm a grammar snob (and even more so for an engineer), but these were things I couldn't let go. One of the other reviewers made the comment that he wasn't a grammar teacher, but he felt like one reading these documents. This was from a front-line defense contractor. The quality control on the documentation was not where it needed to be. These errors don't need to show up in documents for government review.

Back to my training, I'd like to say things about all the stupid stuff the government is doing, but the big thing now in these classes is "non-attribution," meaning "what's said here, stays here." Hear, hear! Also, I don't really pay attention.

I wonder if they'd take off points if I took a pillow tomorrow? More tomorrow.

#@&! Training

I'm due a week of training, so that's where I'll be this week. I signed up to take this course in May but was bumped because someone didn't bother to meet their own training requirements and took precedence over me. I was upset more because it changed my planning than because I wanted to take the class. For each of these classes, there is some stupid introductory thing that I hate. The last class ntroduction was 3 Facts - 2 True, 1 False - and the group was to guess which was false. I know that for this class, there is an introductory engineering project that I've already been given the lowdown on. The answer, as it usually is on these projects, is to go simple. I'll try to write up my group's success or failure tomorrow night.

This three-day weekend has been disappointing in its TV marathons. More tomorrow.

Independence Day

I read this concept somewhere else, but I'm claiming it as my own:

Celebrating today by wishing others "Happy Fourth of July" is the equivalent of wishing others "Happy Holidays." You are taking out the entire meaning of the holiday. We aren't celebrating some day in the early summer. We are celebrating the Independence of our nation, and by extension, the freedom we have spread throughout the world.

Don't take our Independence out of Independence Day.