Current event applicable to Colorado

I live in Colorado, and as some of you readers may know, there’s a rather large fire in the northern part ofColoradothat is less than 25% contained.  ((I think the value is 20%, but I’m not entirely sure)).  The fire was started by lightning, which is good and bad.  It’s good in the sense that some idiot didn’t try to burn love letters in a barrel and then never verify that the fire was out. ((Slightly fuzzy memory of what caused a massive fire a decade ago)) But, there’s no one to blame for the damage and devastation, sort of.  One of the things being tossed around by people with knowledge is that the rise in “super fires” is a result of people not letting nature run her course.  At least inColorado, there are thousands of acres of trees lost to beetle kill, and because the weather is so dry, no one is going out and clearing those trees.  So the first has plenty of fuel.  Logging isn’t being done as much, so forests are thicker, with more trees together, which mean the fires keep spreading.

So this becomes one of those situations, where we police things so heavily that we are forced to deal with devastating losses to wildlife, buildings, and even people.  On the one hand, people want to protect the environment, but at the same time, nature has been “trimming” the fat for significantly longer than we’ve been around, and by preventing the natural course of things, we end up with even larger problems.  I’m not advocating that laws change and entire forests get leveled by loggers, so that we don’t have “super fires”, but I’m not sure I’m such a fan of people deciding how forests should be maintained.

I’m reminded of engineering classes where we learned that the universe tends toward equilibrium.  We shift that by interfering, but at the same time, we can’t avoid interference.  So what do we do?  Or do we just shrug our shoulders and consider this a casualty (of war)?

Did you know about the unmanned space station?

Chinais getting ready to launch a manned rocket to dock with their unmanned space station in orbit.  Not only is that a major accomplishment, but they might have a female in the 3-person crew.  I’m a little confused on why the female taikonaut is going to be chosen last minute though.  That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.  I know, from my internships at JSC, that astronauts go through at least 1 if not 2 years of training, for one mission.  If the astronauts have a space walk, they spend 10 hours in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL) for every hour of the space walk.  Everything is rigorously planned and rehearsed and practiced, well in advance, so why would someone pick the crew last minute?  Perhaps everyone has already been training together and it’s a matter of which person will fill that third slot, or maybe that’s just how the Chinese have chosen to do things.  I’m not in the minds of the decision makers, so I can’t say what they’re thinking of, but I can say that to me, it makes no sense.

However, that one of the crew may be female is wonderful news.  I hope it remains true, and thatChinasends a female taikonaut up on this ground-breaking mission.  What do you think?  Do you have an opinion on why the decision may be so last minute?  Or perhaps you have something to say aboutChina’s space program.  Let us discuss!

Resume Software

It’s no secret that many companies have switched to using software to pick out the qualified applicants for jobs.  I believe I’ve written about this before, and how I struggle with just copy and pasting directly from the job, into my resume, so I can get through the software and actually have a chance at interviewing for the job, but I want to bring it up again, because my Mom was telling me about a story she had heard on the radio about this very thing.  She said, that in the story, the engineer was looking to hire someone for a position, and there were (I’m guessing) 1200 applicants for the job.  After running the applicants through the software, he was told there was no one qualified for the job.  Out of 1200 applications there was no one qualified?  That seems absurd, and frustrating, especially for someone like me, who has applied to job after job, and discovers that I’m not getting through the door.  But I still have issues with butchering my resume, just to be noticed by the software.

This engineer goes on to say that he was curious about the results he had received and applied for his own job.  He was told by the software that he was not qualified.  If someone who’s got the job currently cannot get through the software system, what hope do the rest of us have?  Why are companies relying so heavily on this software that isn’t working properly?  For that matter, going back to the first part of the story, where he had no qualified applicants, what happens next?  Do all 1200 get tossed and they keep the opening going until the system finds someone qualified?  Does the guy try doing less rigorous of a search?  At what point does an actual person get involved and figure out why out of 1200 people, no one came out qualified?

Ramblings on overcoming frustrations

In searching for topics to write about, a friend sent me a link to an article about getting over the “I suck at this” barrier, when trying new things.  The article, found here: http://lifehacker.com/5914207/how-to-get-over-the-i-suck-barrier-when-learning-a-new-skill , gives about six different approaches for getting stuck in trying something new.  I agree with all six of the points, but I’ve only managed to try a couple of them.  Usually, when I get stuck, I struggle and struggle and then walk away frustrated, or finally get so desperate, that I ask for help from someone, and feel lame.  I pride myself on being a problem solver, so sometimes I can step back and reevaluate things, but not always.

This brings to mind an example of using those different methods.  I play a word search game on my tablet.  The searches aren’t all that difficult, but there are a lot of words.  My first attempt is to go in order, and find the first word, and then the second, and so on.  This can be a logical approach, but not efficient.  Another approach is to just search for words at random.  My problem with that approach is that the list of words is quite large, and not all the words are visible, so at the beginning, I’m not able to see all the words at once, and so may stumble on words, but not knowing if they’re a word or not, means I waste time searching for the words I know, only to come back later and realize I had found one before.  I managed to circumvent that, by checking every time I find an actual word, and trying to highlight it.  Sometimes, it turns out that I’ve found only part of the word, and when I get to the actual word, I realize that I had been on the correct track.  The most interesting thing though, if I’m struggling to find words, and look away from the screen for a short period of time, and then look back, words that had hidden before, will jump out at me suddenly.  I find it fascinating that just a brief respite from the searching will allow my eyes to refresh and find things that had been missing before.

What I’m trying to say is that, it’s okay to be stumped, and working from a different angle, or perspective can sometimes help, but actively doing something else and then coming back to the problem will give you a fresh set of eyes.  I highly recommend reading the article, and taking from it what you will.  I’ve learned some new methods to combat frustration, and gotten affirmation on some of the methods I’ve used.  Do you have any methods you use when frustrated and stuck?

And we have liftoff

The SpaceX Dragon capsule launched today, and as far as I can tell, is well on its way to attempt docking with the ISS on Friday.  A successful docking and mission would signify that SpaceX is ready, and that commercial spaceflight isn’t just a pipe dream, but on the horizon, chomping at the bit.  When I first heard about commercial spaceflight during my first summer internship at NASA, I was extremely skeptical.  I didn’t think that companies would be in it for the right reasons; they would be in it to make money, and not care about the lives of the people who took rides on their rockets.  I had heard there were no safety regulations for commercial spaceflight, and that just didn’t sit well with me.  That being said, it’s silly to think that no one would take safety into consideration, so I’ve been trying to give commercial spaceflight a second chance in my mind.

I came across an article that talked about how SpaceX is trying to make space cool again, and get theUSback into business of launching astronauts from home soil, instead of renting seats on the Russian Soyuz.  The thing that struck me was the comment about how SpaceX had managed to spend a third of the money NASA would have spent, on the launch.  Private industry is about making money, and somehow that translated negatively into my mind, but it really isn’t.  If NASA spends a third of what they had been, on launches, the rest of that money can be used in other areas.  I don’t think private industry will ever make NASA obsolete, but I think private industry and NASA can work together to make spaceflight exciting and fun, and not a source of contention between space geeks and everyone else.  I understand that the majority of Americans don’t see a purpose in spaceflight, when there’s all this other stuff going on in the world.  However, the spinoffs generated by NASA have helped everyone in some way or another; so perhaps if NASA continues its research, but private industry does more of the heavy lifting, we as a country can be less divided on the practicality of spaceflight.  Maybe.  What do you think?

Inserting my opinion in the mix

Among the space geek crowd, there has been a lot of talk about the upcoming SpaceX Dragon launch.  It was supposed to go Saturday morning, but in the last moment before liftoff an abort was called.  There has been a lot of speculation about whether this was the correct response, whether the mission should have still gone on or now.  I wasn’t at the launch site, I wasn’t in launch control, and I don’t know a lot about Dragon, but I thought I’d throw my two cents into the internetsphere, because I can.

Aerospace is risky.  Rockets can blow up due to very small issues, or very large ones.  When people get comfortable, mistakes can happen and lives can be lost.  The Dragon launch was unmanned, so in this case, human life is not something that would be a casualty, unless the rocket explodes and debris rains down on the people watching the launch, but typically the launch watching sites are picked because if that were to happen, the location would lead to the least amount of casualties.  (At least I believe I heard someone mention that when I was out at KSC for the GRAIL Tweetup)  The reason for the abort was high pressure in engine #5.  It’s very possible that the rocket could have completed the mission with that engine offline, but at the same time, “it’s better safe than sorry”.

They were able to abort the mission at the last second, that feat in itself is pretty impressive.  If I remember correctly, had the same thing occurred with a shuttle launch, stopping the shuttle would not have been an option.  (Now the shuttle did have an escape system, so it would have been possible for bail-out.)  So SpaceX managed to shut the engines down and save the mission.  They will try again on May 22, and I applaud them.  It’s not an easy decision, calling for an abort.  There’s a lot of pressure to have the rocket launch anyway, and being safe, instead of having an explosion, is commendable.  Yes, if it had launched, it may have made it to ISS without problem, and it may have exploded.  There’s no way to know what would have happened, and calling an abort gives SpaceX the chance to figure out the problem, fix it, and try again another day.

Besides, if you think about it, many NASA missions were scrubbed multiple times.  The GRAIL launch was scrubbed.  Aerospace is risky business and anyone who forgets that is going to learn the hard way.

That’s my two cents.  How do you feel about it?

The waiting game

The “waiting game” is something that happens to everyone.  It could also be called “Hurry up and wait”.  Basically, it’s that time where something is going to happen, and no one knows when it’s going to happen.  That’s where I am right now, or at least I hope to be there right now.  I had my phone interview earlier this week, and the end of the week is nearing, and the first job is potentially going to be filled by the end of the week.  Well, the person in charge of making the decision will have made a decision by then, but then HR takes over.  Since this is a government position, HR probably moves at the speed of snail.  So how long do you wait?  How long should a person wait to hear back on a job, before contacting someone to ask what’s going on?  I know that 1 of the 2 positions is hoped to be filled by the end of this week, and the second probably by the end of next week, but will HR contact the person immediately, or will they have to do some reference checking?  All I know is that the phone interview was it, that there is not another opportunity to impress them, so if chosen, that’s it.  So how long do you wait?

My gut says that I wait until a week or two after the point when I know all interviews are over, and the choices should have been made.  I’d prefer not to have to contact anyone, but at some point, I’ll have to suck it up and send an e-mail.  It’s really hard not to get into the mindset of “I’ve got this in the bag”.  I have a lot of positive qualities, and a lot of experience and background that would make me a great fit.  However, there are 12 candidates, so there could be other people with the same level of qualifications, or better, or gave a better phone interview.  So in the end, I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but I’m also trying not to squash my hopes as well.  It’s a hard thing to balance?  Have you ever been waiting to hear back on a job, and you felt confident, but you just weren’t sure?  How did you pass the time during “The waiting game”?