What a whirlwind.....

Last Thursday very late in the afternoon I found out that I was going to a meeting in Sunnyvale, CA for work. On Monday of this week a little voice popped up with 'JetBlue' has really cheap tickets from the Bay Area to Long Beach'. After some quick checking with my boss and the travel folks I had them change my return flight from San Jose to LAX and grabbed myself one of those cheap tickets and here I am :-)

Certain little curly haired tot is napping right now but we have been very, very busy with going to the park and the zoo and reading books. She sure is a cutie but I wish that I had brought a camera.

And now we return to "real" life

Well, last weekend was pretty darn good. This weekend.....sad to say more normal. And six hundred dollars later the Suburb has a brand spanking new radiator. Guess I know where my ballooning budget just went. Sigh.....maybe next year will be better.

WOW!!

Two flights in two days!! My dear wifey does love me :-)

And Mother Nature has decided to behave. Nick and Ruthie mentioned last night that a week or so ago that they flew six nights in a row. But I will gladly take my two nights in a row. Other than Alice we had a completely different crew from the night before. And if I was going to be trying for a third night in a row (which I can't) it would probably be yet another crew. It is good to be flexible I suppose.

This flight we actually went over Morse reservoir. The other three balloons all went low and played with the boats. I heard a rumor that Gary tried washing the bottom 18 inches of his basket. I stayed high because I wanted to get west of the water so that I could practice a couple more approaches. I ended up landing about 200 yards to the right of where Nick landed (of course he was 500 yards further downwind) so my staying high didn't buy me much. But I did get a couple of approaches down to inspect the soybeans from close range.

The landing wasn't as smooth as the night before but this landing site (another new subdivision without houses) had a lot more obstacles in the form of lot signs and stakes. I was kind of indecisive about where to put it but when I put it we stuck it pretty firmly. With more experienced crew I would have been less hesitant to use my drop line but these guys were pretty much rookies all around. So we just "crash landed" with a thump. But we didn't come close to hitting anything either. Alice did a nice job of "spotting" the one stake during the deflation and we packed it up and headed that a way. But not before watching Geoff give his passengers the full flying at dusk experience. But that is another story....

So I am almost caught up for now. Of course, in a couple of weeks I'll be "itching" again.

Also, one of the Friday night crew guys and his 15 year old daughter took a BUNCH of photos and posted them at http://www.pbase.com/dowleyk/jaydotyballoon . Go have a look.

Back in the air!!

HOORAY!! For only the second time this year Trouvie got to get out of her trailer.

It was a very good flight with a very good "new subdivision" landing site.

Man! But it is neat to glide along, chat with the folks out in their back yard and with only a small pucker when I came up over a tree line (lining up on a great side yard for a landing spot) only to discover that the field between the trees and the side yard has four horses in it. I was already burning to get up over the trees. I just burnt about 10 seconds longer than I had planned and hoped that was enough to let me "coast" past the horses. Of course, it scrubbed the yard as a landing spot but none of the horses got "jumpy" so that was a good thing.

SMILE!!

The State Fair Balloon Race with out me...

Well the Indiana State Fair Giant Hot Air Balloon Race has come and gone for another year. And, unfortunately from my point of view, it came and went without me. :-( Since I have had a grand total of ONE flight this year I didn't meet the "eligibility" requirements that Nick and Ruthie were forced to add a couple of years ago (long story). So I went this morning and crewed for an out of town pilot who came without any crew (not even a driver - strange, that). For those who have been around awhile it was the guy who years ago flew the Early Times Whiskey Bottle special shape. But this year he was flying just a regular balloon. He was impressed however when his crew picked out a landing site for him before he got there. We told him about it and he flew right to it.

The amazing part was that every pilot that flew threw their baggie and had it scored. Well except for Nick. He was the last one over the X and he just landed even though Ruthie warned him it would mean he was disqualified. If I remember correctly the furthest baggie was something like 131 feet from the X and there were only two or three over 75 feet. Two years ago I was sixth at 75 feet and last year not a single baggie was scored because we all missed the field where the hare landed. This year fifth place was 68 inches.

Finally, the first flight of the year.....

Yeah, so the title of the blog isn't so "true" right now. With me being down here and the balloon being up there (and for example, the weather being great right now and a crummy forecast for Saturday - the only day when the balloon and I are in the same place) it makes it difficult to get flights in. In fact, last Friday was my first flight of the year. The sandbags enjoyed it as much as ever and I REALLY appreciated that Ann, Sarah and Dan served as the primary crew with my lovely wife as the driver. Raley and her Grandmother came along as "interested observers". And, Jamie and James came for the launch.

Good flight but I sure could tell my "skills" were a little rusty for the first approach or two.

Now, if I could just figure out how to get the weather to cooperate so that I could get another flight in.

And the new job continues to "amaze" me...

Yesterday I learned yet another new term. Administrative leave. Yeah!! Apparently, The Captain (doesn't matter what his real rank is as the commander of a Naval installation his title is "The Captain") has the discretion to award all of the people that work for him up to 59 minutes of administrative leave. One hour or more requires at least one layer higher in the chain of command. So yesterday, if you had clocked in to work you were awarded 59 minutes of leave (to be taken yesterday only) as a "thank you for working hard and let's kick off summer". So my "short" day (every other Friday I work eight hours - Mon-Thur I work 9) got even shorter. I won't argue. If yesterday had been my RDO (Regular Day Off for you non DoD folks - that would OBVIOUSLY be the Department of Defense) like several of the folks in my group, I would have "lost out" on the 59 minutes. Of course, I wouldn't have been working either :-)

The other news is that, in an apparently very unusual twist, I may get to help a department that works in the building across the street out of a bind. Seems that usually the various departments don't mix at all, especially not at the project level (due to the way things get funded). However, this department is in a bind because the main guy who had been working on the VHDL for this particular FPGA was notified recently that he was being deployed to Iraq. I am not sure if he is National Guard or Reserve but, not surprisingly, there are a lot of both on the base. They thought they still had it "covered" but his backup had a heart attack and died last weekend. Suddenly, they have no one in their department that knows VHDL at all. I don't have a lot to do right now, they have funding to pay me (my boss likes that aspect a lot) and I get to learn FPGA design by doing. And, in a few weeks, I will be able to add FPGA design to my resume. Sounds good to me. Now if I can just make the FPGA work. I have casually looked through some of this guy's code and it appears that there are some holes big enough to drive a truck through (shall I say software guy with little hardware experience writing what he considers software - they always seem to forget that the objective is to make hardware). But, alas, I HAVE seen this kind of stuff before and the chance to play with the FPGA programming software is just too tempting.

Now my desk can be happy!!

I have now received new pictures of my lovely daughters and their handsome husbands and the cutest grandbaby in the world to put on my desk!!! Hooray!!!

Now if I just had enough work to do to. Hmmmmm.......

In the meantime I also hauled my bike to Bloomfield and back this week so that I could start riding a little more often. What I have discovered so far is that there is nothing resembling "flat" around Bloomfield that isn't a U.S. highway. And that while I can't do anything about the "old" part, I am working on the out of shape part. But, boy, am I out of shape. And hills don't help my ego.

I am sad...(eeyore voice)

I have a new desk and the only picture on it of my girls has Sarah in her wedding dress.

No pictures of son-in-laws.

And, no picture(s) of Raley.....


VERY SAD!

Well, durn......

Or something like that.

Going into the game none of the "pundits" gave Purdue a chance but they hung in there and had several chances to tie or even take the lead but could never get over the hump. The Boilers needed to do several things well to win the game. They needed to play their normal really tough defense and they did that. They needed to hold their own in the rebounding but they got out rebounded by a fairly large margin (48-33) and they needed to shoot a pretty good percentage of their shots but they missed several open shots (that they normally hit) and had a lot of shots influenced by UConn's big center. They ended up shooting only 36% and they needed to be in the mid forties. They also fouled too many times (UConn out scored them 19-6 from the free throw line) which was a direct correlation with the fact that the UConn players were just bigger and stronger than the Purdue players.

Given all of that the guys showed that they were really competitive. And they have the advantage that their top six players are all underclassmen and will be back next year. And they have some pretty good looking recruits coming in. Things are looking good for Purdue basketball.

And on to the Sweet Sixteen!!!

Whew!!

Just barely! The Boilers built a big enough lead and then hung on at the end. Washington came back to within two points on several occasions but Purdue always found a way to push it back up to 4 or 6. And then they made enough free throws towards the end of the game and JaJuan Johnson had two very timely blocks to hang on. And, oh yeah, there was a GREAT story in the Indy paper about how JaJuan's mom's co-workers in the kitchen at one of the schools here in Carmel took up a collection and bought her (a single mom) an airplane ticket and a hotel room so she could go to the games in Portland, Ore.

And now they get to play the team from U Conn. Hmmmmmm.....

I guess you have to beat the really good teams if you want to win the tournament.

Big Ten Tournament Champions!!

After an up and down season (looking pretty good on occasion and down right terrible on others) the Purdue Boilermakers won the Big10 tournament today. They played three very good games and even though they fell behind in the second half today they came back and won. WooHoo!!

Of course, the NCAA tournament committee didn't exactly reward them. They must have watched the games last week. Purdue pretty well stunk up the last week of the season. So they have no one to blame but themselves. They ended up as a fifth seed (the tournament has a record of 5 seeds losing to 12 seeds in their first games). And if they win their first game they will likely have to play the Univ. of Washington in Portland Oregon. That's only about a three hour drive from the UW campus. And a plane flight from W. Lafayette. Ah well. If you are going to do anything in the tournament you have to beat good teams. They did at least get Thurs/Sat games so I don't have to worry about missing the game to go to the airport :-)

And now a couple of GIANT steps....

and then maybe we'll see how long it is until we can take the next one.

Last Friday I called and accepted a "tentative job offer" to be a Department of Defense (usually called DoD) employee working at Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center. It is a HUGE facility located about 25 miles southwest of Bloomington, Indiana. Step one...

And, last night I finished filling out a huge form of background info for the first part of the process to get my security clearance. Step two.....

I am not sure after talking to the nice lady in the security office this morning when they will actually start the process of doing the background checks. I thought before that they had to complete at least the first round before I could start working but she implied that they would only look at the paperwork itself but that I had to physically present myself (and get fingerprinted - I've never done that before) before they could actually start the background check. They stressed over and over again that I should present myself for that on the first day of work. So, anyway, at some point several folks are probably going to be getting phone calls.

So, as I understand it, the security folks will now give the HR folks a green light and then the HR folks have to send the paperwork back to the regional office (in Philly I think) and they have to do what ever it is they do and THEN we have to mutually agree on a start date. Which means in the meantime that I get to march in place for a while. Hurry up and wait.

Back to baby steps...

So being the pushy kind of guy that I am I invited myself down to visit them. Yesterday I drove down to get a tour and an hour or so of the guy who would be my branch manager's time. He would be my boss's boss. We discussed the workings of the federal pay system and a tour of the facility (including the cubicle that my future boss has already claimed for me). They have lots of expensive toys that our tax dollars have paid for. But not enough parking.

So now it is back to waiting for the machinery of government to get around to the next step(s). Sigh. I sure wish I was more patient.....but I am not.

...and if we aren't careful we will take a full step!!

I had my phone interview today. Of course, being the government they can't officially offer me the job, only HR can offer me the job. But, we spent nearly 45 minutes talking with him doing most of the talking explaining what they do and a little bit about how they are organised and asked if I had any questions. I asked a couple that I had written down ahead of time and got pretty much the answers that I had expected. Though the salary that he "proposed" isn't quite what I was hoping for it is sufficient. It said right in the job description that they would not pay any moving or relocation costs however we did discuss the possibility of a "signing bonus" that we could apply to the moving costs. It seems that moving costs come out of the HR budget while he thought that he might be able to get them to figure out how to get the signing bonus out of his department's budget. It is strange to contemplate taking a job when I have never seen the place....maybe I should have broached a "tour" as a possibility...

So now the ball is in HR's court and we wait until we hear from them. No rush, of course......arrgh.

...and another tiny step....

Well, I got confirmation today that I am having an official phone interview on Friday morning. Not the first (I have had a several others with recruiters and one for the contract position in Longmont that "went away") but this is the first with a hiring manager of permanent position.

I also learned that only one other person applied. Here is hoping that one other person isn't a disabled veteran :-)

Think positive thoughts for me on Friday!

A tiny baby step...

Well, it is said that a journey begins with a single step. So on Thursday (delayed from Wednesday because they hadn't plowed the street yet on Wednesday) I mailed off the application "package" for the job that was posted last week. I am expecting a call some time this next week to talk about the next step.

Meanwhile, I am trying to fan a flame out of another tiny spark that occurred about a week ago. This would be for another job here in Indiana but I suspect that the company is balking at how much they feel they would have to pay me (based upon what I was making at Thomson). Of course, they haven't asked me yet. In fact, I am not even sure that the recruiter who I talked to has even presented my resume to them yet. And when I tried to call him I got a call back from another recruiter in his office with the lame "well, he's been out sick". And, she didn't even know what job he and I had been talking about. Hopefully, I can fan that one into some sort of flame so that I can have an "option" to consider.

Bottom line is that things are looking up but there is still a loooooonnnnnnggggggg way to go to get to that first paycheck. But ya gotta start somewhere.

And now, it is back to work...

Well, the travelling was a pain in the rearend but the time spent with my girls (and their hubbies) and especially with Miss Raley was WELL worth it. There are some who say little Miss Raley has her Grandpa wrapped around her little finger. Not quite. But almost :-)

And now it is back to the "grind" of trying to find a job. Sure hope that more pops up now that the first of the year has arrived. Only time will tell.