Darrell's weblog

I am now, officially, an FAA-certificated* Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic. I just flew back from a two-week crash course in Nashville (and boy are my arms tired!) and I have to say that I have never studied for anything so hard in my entire life. Ever. I must have gone through 30 Tylenol tablets. I aced the three required written tests (total of 250 questions), then I memorized about 700 oral questions before finishing up on Thursday and Friday with a nine-hour oral and practical test. As it turns out, it was an extremely difficult two weeks for me. Not the tests, those turned out to be a piece of cake. The studying, however, was the most grueling thing I think I have ever done. Ugh. But I’m all done now, since the license never expires.

*The FAA uses the term “certificated” rather than “certified”, and I have no idea why. Probably some long legal reason. But they seem to mean the same thing.

No, I have not become a fan of the Florida Gators. Apparently, some of my wife’s coworkers do not believe her when she tells them that I have alligators at work. Well, we do. We have two small retention ponds on the property, and this particular one is about 20 yards behind one of our hangars. There isn’t a fence or anything, but the gators seem content to stay in (or at least very near) one of the two ponds. We actually have two gators, but when I went to snap some pictures, this was the only one that wanted to pose. Oh, follow this link to the pictures!

I just finished my first week at my new job in Florida. The work isn’t harder than I expected, but it is a lot harder than my previous job. That’s probably because I’m not just the new guy at the new job, I’m also way behind the power curve with regards to my skills and knowledge. I’m not used to being behind the curve like this, it’s very frustrating and gives me a great deal of anxiety. On the bright side, I love the company so far, and I’m having a lot of fun working. In a way, it’s like I never left the aviation business. Many things at work just feel familiar, so it’s sort of like coming home. I already feel like I’ve been here for a lot longer than just a week (well, two weeks if you include the “move in” week).

On the personal side, everything is pretty much taken care of. We still have a ton of boxes to unpack, but I suppose that’s normal. The cable company here sucks. Comcast is the big carrier here, but my apartment complaex has some smaller company for cable and they are just horrible. The fastest Internet speeds I’ve gotten are around 512 kb/sec, but it’s usually much, much slower. I may end up just switching to DSL, but we’ll see. I have my new license (feels weird not to have a Texas license) and I already have my new license plates (goodbye Nazgul!).

My next big hurdle is to get my Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic’s license. It was very unusual for me to get hired without it, but now I’m here, and I’m reminded almost daily of how much I really need to have it. This is my single largest point of anxiety for me right now. Since I don’t have my A&P yet, they don’t even want me to work on the helicopters (for which I was originally hired). Instead, they have me working on a smaller fixed wing aircraft. Its not because they don’t trust me, but the A&P test covers fixed wing aircraft and piston engines, so it will help me to start by working on those until I get my license. Once I get my license, I’ll hopefully move to helicopters.

Heather and I left San Antonio this morning, finally. I’m writing this from a hotel just outside of Lake Charles, Louisiana. Heather and I are taking our time getting to Florida, so we have planned to spend the night in Louisiana and Pensacola along the way. We went to a casino in Lake Charles tonight, and Heather won a couple hundred bucks. Well, at first it was a couple hundred bucks, but what good is having money if you aren’t spending it, right? By the end of the evening of gambling, we were back to our starting point, but had used our winnings to buy dinner. So we basically spent no money at all and got a couple of hours of entertainment and a free dinner. Not bad, I suppose.

The last couple of days have been pretty crazy. My friends from work had an official meeting in my (and Heather’s) honor in our company’s “Rally Room” complete with a little slideshow of pictures and Justin Timberlake music (I’m bringing sexy back, bitches!). There a few speeches and some laughs and then a bunch of people visited with me to say goodbye. It was a great sendoff. I’m gonna miss that place. My boss (now former boss, I guess) determined that I was employee #48 at Rackspace (we’re around 1200 now). It’s neat to see the company grow like it has, but I’m also very excited about starting my new job.

Did I mention that I hate driving? *snore*

Moving sure does suck, but I can’t even begin to imagine how much more it would suck if I actually had to do any of it myself.

On Tuesday, the packers (not the ones from Green Bay, the ones from my moving company) came to the apartment and started packing up all of my stuff in boxes and whoatnot. We didn’t even get things ready for them, other than cleaning up a bit. It was really amazing to watch them work. It was just two people, and they each went into seperate rooms and silently went about their business. In total, it took them a little more than 5 hours. So at the end of the day Tuesday, we still had a bed to sleep in and a TV to watch, but we were surrounded by cardboard boxes. Oh ,and since we didn’t take the batteries out of our alarm clocks, they both went off early Wednesday morning and I had to find the right box and rip it open to turn the damn things off. So much for sleeping in.

On Wednesday (yesterday) the movers (seperate crew, same company) showed up to load the truck. Since the moving company is an agent of North American Van Lines, they showed up with a huge semi truck. It took them about 4 hours to load up all of our stuff on the truck. *whew* It looked like hard work, and I’m so thankful that I didn’t have to do any of it. Of course, it means that my hiring bonus will be a little smaller, but that’s okay.

And finally, I cancelled the shippers for Heather’s car. My aunt is offering to drive it to Florida for us. I offered her $700, which is $438 cheaper than the shipper, plus we have a much smaller (and more predictable) window for pickup and delivery.

Heather didn’t want to go without a TV for our last few days in town, so we bought a new TV. Heather wanted a new TV anyway, to put in our “home office” since she will be working at home for a while. Win-win!

We’re still in San Anotnio until the weekend, and then we drive off to Florida. So close!

Well, it’s been a month since my last update, and it’s been pretty busy for me. Once the whole holiday thing ended, it was time to get to work! Heather and I have decided to forego the stress of packing up all of our stuff and just let the movers do it. It’s a win-win, everything will be insured and we don’t have to worry about finding time or material for packing.

The movers will be at my apartment on January 23rd to pack up everything, and then they will come back on the 24th to load it on a truck and start driving off to Florida. This could make things a touch uncomfortable, because we are still going to be working until the end of Friday, the 26th, and we don’t actually drive out of San Antonio until the morning of the 28th. So basically we’ll spend 4 days and nights on an air mattress in an empty apartment.

Then there is the trip to Florida. Since we are taking Kitty (our cat) with us in the car, we are taking our time and plan to spend nearly three days (two nights) on the road. We will arrive at our new apartment on the afternoon of January 30th, but the movers aren’t scheduled to arrive until at least the 31st, and maybe as late as February 3rd! So we have several more nights of air mattress/empty apartment to look forward to upon arrival.

Speaking of cars, we’re just shiping Heather’s car. It was a hassle, and Heather really didn’t want to drive. Naturally, the window for the pickup/dropoff of the car are even wider, so we may have to drop off Heather’s car with a friend in town to get it loaded and on it’s way/ It could be as late as the 10th of February before it gets delivered! Oof.

At least the cost is a little less than expected. The total cost of packing, shipping and insuring our stuff, plus shipping Heather’s car, comes to $4,193. I had originally expected this to be closer to $7,000, so I’m pretty happy for the lower price. My new company is not reimbursing me for the move, but they are paying me a decent hiring bonus that more than covers all of our moving expenses.

Heather and I have spent the last couple of weeks getting rid of stuff. I didn’t realize that we were such pack rats! We have sold/donated so much stuff, I’ve almost lost track. Well, I know that we’ve taken eleven trash bags worth of stuff (mostly clothes) to be donated, plus we’ve sold a couple of boxes of books to a local Half-Price Books, and I’ve given away and sold quite a few things to coworkers. Ugh! No matter how much we get rid of, it looks like we’ve hardly made a dent! We still have so much stuff! At least it’s more manageable now.

The only thing left to do is all the little administrative things, like stopping/starting services, and packing what we’ll need for the week (or so) that we will be without our stuff.

I’m really just looking forward to getting the move over with and starting my new job. It still doesn’t feel “real” yet, but I’m sure that will come soon enough!

This was supposed to be my long, bi-monthly blog post, but I just can’t remember anything before last week.  Perhaps that’s because I spent last week in Jacksonville, Florida looking for a place to live, since I start my new job as a helicopter mechanic on February 5th.  For those that are interested, they finally managed to get a website set up (although it takes a while to load and is 100% Flash):  Pegasus Technologies, Inc.

Good news is that Heather and I found a really nice place to live and the lease is signed and everything.  Now we just have to get there.

Well, it’s been two more months and I’m still too lazy t post regular updates “as they happen.”  I’m sorry about that, really I am.  But anyway, at least I’m predictable, yeah?

• My birthday is coming up on October 12th, and I’m going to be 35.  That feels weird.
• I flew back to Washington, DC in the middle of September for another “interview” for my (hopeful) new job.  October 15 will mark my 1-year anniversary since my initial interview in Florida.  Ugh.  Anyway, at this most recent “interview” I learned that the process (at least, the only part of the process I care about) could be over very soon.  With any luck, I will be getting some good news sometime in the next month or two.  Hey, that may even motivate me enough to warrant a blog post all on its own!
• Heather and I have made plans to visit Seattle for Thanksgiving.  I like Seattle, even though it’s a bit gray for my taste.  More importantly, it’s an opportunity to spend some time off with Heather’s mom and generally just hang out in a nice town.
• Heather, a big fan of the Community Education program here in San Antonio, told me about an Arabic class that was being made available.  Eight classes for $90.  So I’ve signed up for that.  I’ve gone to three of the eight classes so far, and it’s been pretty fun.  The only downside is that the person teaching the class isn’t a trained teacher or linguist, so she isn’t really all that great at teaching a language…but at least she is a native Arabic speaker, so that’s a big plus.

That’s all I’ve got for now.  Hopefully something interesting will happen in the near future so I don’t wait another 2 months before posting.

I’ve not posted anything to my blog in two months, so my life must be pretty boring, eh?  Either that or I’m terribly lazy.  I’ll let the reader decide.  Anyway, working up from the past, here is what has been going with me:

• Heather and I went on Vacation to Playa del Carmen again.  We went to the same place (in fact, we even got the same room at the same hotel!) that we went last year, but we stayed for a little longer.  This time it was 7 days (6 nights).  For those of who who are geographically-challenged, Playa del Carmen is in Mexico, about an hour-long bus ride south of Cancun.  Nice place.  Very relaxing.  Took pictures.
• While we were away, my job prospect called me to verify that I am still interested in the job in Florida.  Duh.  They are still waiting for my packet to get back from my last “interview.”  I’ve expanded my original (and wildly optimistic) expectation of 6-8 months to a more pragmatic approach, and have therefore lengthened my expectation to 12-24 months.  Depending on how you calculate the start date, it’s been either 9.5 months (my way) or 7.5 months (Jim’s way).
• I got motivated at work.  Not that I wasn’t motivated before, I just wasn’t moving along at light speed like I am now.  In fact, I have been so motivated this last couple of weeks, that I am routinely working several hours per day after I get home.  This episode was spurred by a relatively motivational team meeting where some actual plans were laid out to get some very important “house cleaning” done.  It’s something that I’ve been wanting to take care of for a long time, and now we have the framework of a plan in place to get it done.  Also, I think I just got tired of being slow.
• Heather’s friend Carly (and Carly’s dad, Richard) stopped by to spend the night on their road trip from Arizona to Florida.  It was nice to catch up with them and see how they were doing.  Although the pictures taken were too numerous to count, Heather was able to settle on these three.  Hey, at least I’m not in them!  Hah!
• I bought some new headphones a few days ago.  This is really only noteworthy because they were a bit on the expensive side, but I’m good to my headphones, so I expect them to last for quite a while.  We also got our bonuses at work on our last paycheck, which helps with the excuses.
• Finally, Heather and I have been going to the movie theater much more often than in the past, so we’re catching a lot more movies when they come out.  I won’t list them here (because I’m a fat, lazy bum, that’s why!), but I will say that the Alamo Drafthouse is the best place to watch movies!  And not just because those bums over at Entertainment Weekly said so.
• Okay, this is really the last thing.  Go here and send all your pals a personalized audio invitation from Samuel L. Jackson to see Snakes on a Plane.

That’s it, that’s all I’ve got!  Maybe next time I won’t wait two months.

I’ve not posted recently, even though things have been happening.  Shame on me!  So here’s a quick update:

• I went to Washington, D.C., for a couple of days at the end of May to take care of another requirement for my possible new job in Florida.  I also got a heads up from a friend of a friend that figures that the process should be done in 2-6 months.  Hopefully I’ll hear more soon.  Also, I was privileged enough to hang out with Chrizto and Gary, and Gary’s new wife Erin (congrats!).  Heather was able to go along with me for this trip as well, and she posted about it over a week ago. So check out her post for more details (because I’m lazy, that’s why).
• Heather and I went to see Nine Inch Nails live for the first time in about ten years last week.  The show was awesome, and I’m really happy that we were able to go.  We were not originally going to buy tickets, but the opportunity to get our hands on a pair of tickets in the VIP section was something we just couldn’t pass up.  Again, Heather posted about this a week ago, and she even posted the picture I took on my phone!
• Finally, I’ve completed modding my old XBox.  It probably cost a total of $80, not including the wrong/extra parts I have yet to return.  (Oh, who am I kidding…parts that Heather has yet to return.  I’m far too lazy to return things.  I’d rather just pawn them off to someone at work or something.)  Anyway, the old XBox now has a much bigger hard drive and has Xebian (A Linux distribution for the XBox based on Debian) installed on it.  The video quality sucks, but I’m hoping that the HD cable kit for the XBox will fix that.  So far I’ve just been using it to mount Samba shares from my PowerBook to watch videos I’ve downloaded, such as The Marines of Lima Company.  So it’s not a full-blown PVR like the MythTV setup I hope to have someday, but it’s a start.

Well, that’s all for now.  Hopefully I won’t be so lazy in the future (fat chance!) and update more often.