Lockheed Martin Ain't Whistling Dixie

From Market Place....

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Here's a workplace riddle for you: Say you work for a defense company that has a Coast Guard contract. You discover serious safety flaws with your product. You bring it up to the company and the Coast Guard, but they do nothing. Years pass. You go to Congress and the government. And they do nothing. So now, where do you turn? How about a Web site where people share their homemade videos? As Jeff Tyler reports, that's what one guy did.

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This is why ATK stresses Safety, Quality, Schedule, Cost, in that order. They also stress the seriousness of business ethics and their ability to investigate everything fully and try to avoid anything as dramatic as this. What's scary is that ATK does a lot of business with Lockheed Martin. I don't believe this has been addressed at work, I'll ask around though. Very interesting, and very close to home.

The Glass

Some say the glass is half full, others say the glass is half empty. As an engineer, I'd argue the glass is over designed, with a factor of safety of two, assuming the glass to be a cylinder.

Working is going well. I'll be celebrating two months as a rocket scientist, come Monday. I've already worked on three projects to some degree. The first being a three-dimensional model of an igniter grain to determine maximum temperature during firing, the second trying to determine the effect of fiber orientation in a test sample of a carbon/phenolic in regards to directional thermal conductivity, and the most recent, a model of a circuit board with a heat sink to determine the maximum temperature of the components before take off.

I'm glad I've been busy, this makes learning much easier because I need to learn for a particular application. I'm also busy learning other codes for future projects and problems that may come my way. In case you didn't gather, I'm a thermal analyst, dealing with temperature profiles and erosion rates. Problems I will encounter deal with rocket nozzles, valves, case insulation, and igniters. Not to mention other things as they arise, such as the circuit board problem mentioned.

Life here in Elkton is fairly boring, but starting to pick up. I'm making friends slowly but surely. I played on the men's softball team for the rest of the season because they had multiple injuries, so that was fun. Every Wednesday, I'm playing ultimate with guys/girls from work, people I see on an almost daily business. It's nice to be able to see people you know walking through the hallways at work. Gives you a sense of belonging and familiarity, I suppose.

This weekend, I'll be looking into furniture. I need a couch, bed and a coffee table. Right now, I've got a TV, but no cable. I'm also borrowing INTERNET. Keep that on the DL. I'm not sure whether to get cable or satellite. Any suggestions? I think I may also go for a hike this weekend. I also want to sit down and figure out what my 401k plan means. I'm signed up for it, but I don't really know what I have. I heard a story on NPR about pension plans vs. 401k. Pension plans are being phased out because of risk due to bad accounting done by businesses as well as the threat of losing your pension if the company goes under. The real threat with a 401k is that it does well when the stock market does well. Hopefully we won't have any stock market crashes any time soon. Knock on wood.

Have a good weekend, ROFLITES. If you're traveling, make sure to check for bed bugs, or says NBC on the Today show.

Sophie Milman

I think in a past life, I was the lead singer for a 1920/1930's big band and I married a beautiful jazz singer. If you haven't heard of Sophie Milman, you ought to check her out. She's amazing. Born in Russia, moved to Israel as a child and then Canada at age 15. I recently heard her sing Lonely in New York on WDUQ. I then looked her up on the INTERNET and bought her album on i-tunes. She's only 23, too. I ought to take a trip up to Toronto. Maybe engineering isn't my true calling after all. ROFLCOPTER, let's take an excursion.

Links:
Linus Entertainment
Official Website
Electronic Press Kit (EPK)

Delta Life

My life has been going through a lot of changes in the past few months and will no doubt continue to do so. I feel like I've been building bridges as fast as I'm burning them. Every time I get ahead, I feel like I make a mistake socially or mess up something physically. I'm under a lot of pressure to do well at my job, meet people, and take care of all of the operational/ administrative aspects of my life that were always done for me. I'm also all on my own out here. I'm discovering that I am now fully in control of my life, which seems like an obvious thing, but once you're on your own, you find every action and every inaction has a direct affect on your life. If I don't take the bull by the horns, so to speak, no one else will.

Also, I'm listening to NPR most of the time, and I'm also seriously thinking about getting a MAC the next time I get a computer. I'm not sure what's happening to me. At least I'm working for a comany that makes weapons, so I can take comfort in that. Git'R'Done ROFLCOPTER!!!1

Here Goes the Movie Theater

Let's say a group of individuals performs an act that one may say conforms to a particular stereotype that might be fit to characteristics of this said group. And let's say that this act is an annoyance, such that is provokes negative feelings towards this group of individuals. Is that racism? I would argue no. However, if the person in question has negative feelings towards the larger population of people represented by the sampling of individuals due to the acts of this group, then that is ignorance on the part of the person and therefore racism.

There is another question raised here. If this group who behaves to fit a stereotype in a negative manner, they are certainly not helping their cause and can not call into question the act of racism when the person accuses them of their actions. Unless of course this person uses words or phrases in which to characterize the group in question, that refers to the stereotype.

This is confusing, and I'll give an example.

I went to the movies last night and I saw Lady in the Water. It was a small theater and there were only a few of us in there when the movie was about to begin. Then, about 10 African-American teenagers walk in and sit in the rows directly in front of me and directly behind me. I only designate their race in order to describe their appearance. Because, honestly, it probably could have been 10 white teenagers, just as annoying.

Throughout the movie, they would have to give a play by play in order to figure out what’s going on, continually laugh at character choices made by the actors, and saying out loud how they weren’t enjoying the film. I honestly don’t know why they were there. Didn’t they know what they were going to see? I’m guessing Miami Vice was sold out or something. Also, there were two of them talking on cell phones throughout the movie.

I thought about yelling at them, but I don’t think it would have helped. It would have just exacerbated the situation. Next time, I think I’ll say something. There’s just always that fear of being racist, but sometimes you just want to enjoy a movie not deal with all of this social-psychological bull shit.