Flying, Finally

There is time for a Seagull flight before I go home, but the chief pilot has been up most of the night at the hospital, and says he is not fit to fly. This scores more points with me, because it indicates the company's safety culture. The boss doesn't press him for a moment, despite the fact that it is pretty inconvenient, and the boss says he'll take me flying, at which point the chief pilot elects to go along as a passenger.

We go out to the flight line, walk around the airplane. It has a pilot relief tube, something I've coveted for a few years of landing cross-legged. The boss hasn't hired a female before, and this is one of those rare cases in employment where having the boss think about your personal anatomy as part of the hiring process actually makes sense. I know I can manage with products like the TravelJohn, but he's come up with a solution that he thinks is better for everyone. The airplane type already has one passenger seat that hides a toilet, so he's going to re-install those. Zipper placement on the flight suits might be more of an issue if the manufacturer hasn't thought of anatomical variations. Mr. Seagull indicates that the flight suit manufacturer has placed safety over anatomical convenience, giving as an example the fact that the forward hip pockets are actual pockets not open at the bottom. "Ah yes," I indicate my understanding, "So you can't get at the things in your regular pockets." That, too, he admits, but the primary inconvenience is that when you're a guy, sitting for any period of time, sometimes things need adjusting, and that's difficult to do in a flight suit. Flying is a full body job. It's a feminist cry that unless a job actually requires a penis or a vagina it should be open to all, and I don't disagree. I'm just amused that I am coming on board in an operation where the equipment I will be operating actually has a penis-to-airframe interface. I think I can improvise a female-to-male adaptor for it, though.

I take the left seat and we go for a short local flight, where I do some standard manoeuvres and I would discuss the rest of the flight but instead I will report a conversation from the day before.

Me: I guess I have one more question. You know I keep a blog. I don't name companies, coworkers, customers or anything that I think could place the company in a bad light, are there any aspects of your operation that ...

Him: No, you can't blog about this.

That also explains the Xs, Ys and Qs you might have wondered about in the previous post about potential work locations. I'll still tell you stories, I'll let you know what I'm learning, and perhaps the friend of Mr. Seagull who connected me with this company will have a chance to explain that my style reveals nothing, and get my leash loosened, but as a show of good faith I'm cutting off here, even though it was an interesting flight.

I went back to the passenger terminal and flew home, expecting to be called for a contract in a month and a half or so. My houseguest has forgiven me for abandoning her, but hasn't been as successful this week as I have. And there waiting for me at home is a very polite rejection letter from the previous company that interviewed me. That's good in a way. Never being told is like never finding the body.

Seagull Versus Eagle

Most people spent their whole lives waiting for an opportunity that was good enough, and then they died. While seizing opportunities would mean that all sorts of things went wrong, it wasn't nearly as bad as being a hopeless lump.

The morning dawns with miserable drizzle and low ceilings, too low for training. It's forecast to clear up later, so we'll wait on it. Boss picks me up and then the chief pilot comes into the office and we're introduced. He's francophone so I speak a few sentences in French because again I think it's polite. It's like you go to the boss's office rather than asking him to come to yours. It shows my willingness to do things his way, and also demonstrates what he's working with in terms of my ability in French. The company operates in English, I checked that out before I came, and our conversation switches quickly back into English. We go over the exams, he answers some more of my questions, and then we all go for lunch. The weather may be good enough to fly after we get back.

We've all travelled enough that no one is left out as our stories and hangar flying ranges all over the world. In fact the chief pilot is from a French-speaking European company, not from Québec at all, and it turns out that most of the pilots are. I knew I was an outsider in Québec for being an anglophone, but once you speak French you're still an outsider because you're not fluent, and then it's because you're not a native speaker, and then apparently it's because you're from France or Luxembourg or Belgium instead of from Québec. My boss has a stable of pilots who have had trouble getting jobs elsewhere in the province because despite their fluent French, they are not "one of them." It's pur laine or nothing, apparently. When does cultural and linguistic pride veer into insularity or racism? I think true pride in ones culture and nation includes enough confidence in its strength to welcome newcomers and teach them to embrace what you do, and make them one of you, rather than holding them forever at bay, one of "them" living among you. I notice myself that I may have a slight "them" feeling about someone whose accent doesn't match that of some region of my own country, but when they care about the same issues I do, not necessarily even supporting the same side, just understanding them in a Canadian context, that they become Canadian to me.

The sky opens up blue, but the wind is picking up and they nix the training plans again for today. I think it's odd at first, who doesn't fly in wind, but then the wind becomes quite extreme. I worry about a Tim Horton's sign coming down on me in the parking lot. So instead we massage my resume into the format in which he presents pilot résumés on proposals. My experience is now a resource for him to use. And yes, this is not all an elaborate ruse. He does want to contract my services, probably starting a month and a half out. He's confident that I'll get along well with clients, not get into fistfights with my coworkers and have the maturity to make good decisions. And he figures I can probably fly an airplane, too.

We quit for the day. There may be time before my flight home tomorrow for a flight, but I really have to give a decision to the other potential employer. I've already held them off and I know their timeline is tighter than here. I'm going to call that job "Eagle" and the Québec-based one "Seagull" in recognition of the fact that the real life company names are similar, and there are certain aspects of the jobs that match up. I like both eagles and seagulls; neither term is intended to disparage or praise the company I've attached it to. I just need to stop saying "this one" or "the other one."

It's a difficult decision. I should be savouring this more. After all both potential employers have called me "perfect" to my face. I'm in demand. But that's stressful. I make myself a spreadsheet comparing schedule, aircraft, pay, travel opportunities, coworkers, organization, stability, gut feelings, and everything else I can think of. It gets really elaborate with me rating each company on each aspect, and then going through and rating how important each aspect is to me, to create a multiplier. I know without doing the math that Eagle is the sensible job that gives me almost everything I could ask for at this level of the industry and Seagull is the slightly crazy one that could be terrifying or miserable. I can't believe I'm being such a hopeless lump. I haven't quite finished the elaborate spreadsheet but I find I've made up my mind.

I e-mail Eagle with thanks for their patience, to let them know that I will be taking the offer from Seagull, but that as they won't be needing me for a few weeks that if there is anything I can do for them in the meantime, I'd be happy to help. Yeah, that's right. Who says I have to choose just one company?

The lead quote is, rather embarrassingly, from Harry Potter fan fiction, but I'll defend myself with words from aviation philosopher Richard Bach's Illusions

"You are quoting Snoopy the Dog, I believe?

I quote the truth wherever I find it.

Decorating

I'm in the back of a jet, flying as a passenger to a city in La Belle Province, where I'll meet a potential employer. We got along well on the telephone. I know I have experience he can use, and his operation goes to places I'd like to see. I want to know that it's safe and that I'll fit in with what sounds like a testosterone-charged crowd. He says to call when I get in, but that we'll meet tomorrow. And yes, I still have that friend visiting me. Social events are sort of like laundry in aviation: put a load in the washer or have someone over and you will get called out to fly somewhere. There's food in the fridge and I left her with my home and my car, and explicit permission to drive it wherever she likes. She drove me to the airport and assured me without prompting that she would take good care of it, and not give my car a reputation for being driven rudely. I feel like I've matured a notch, because I'm relaxed about it. I was never good at sharing my crayons.

The airplane has seat-back TVs and I'm watching a show called something like Take This House and Sell It, in which the experts come into someone's house and make it more marketable for a quick sale. The featured house looks pretty good to me, not to cluttered, interiors nicely painted in warm colours. The furniture is a little worn, but not a difficult-to-show house. Then the team come in, rolling their eyes and snickering at the cinnamon-coloured walls, a nude painting in the living room (you can see one female nipple), and what they call disastrous kitchen cupboards. "Is there some story behind that?" they ask the homeowner about the painting. They had the restraint to check their mockery slightly when informed that a niece had painted it, but it still had to go. They repainted the walls white, hauled off most of the furniture, and replaced the doors on the kitchen cabinets with ones that didn't really look better to me. I knew why it all had to be done, but I disagreed. I didn't get to see what else they did, or whether the house sold immediately at the asking price, as we landed and I headed out with my gear.

I called the prospective employer to tell him I've landed and he says he'll come by. So I'm standing on the curb, with my stuff, dressed in the manner of my occupation, waiting to get into a vehicle with a guy I don't know, so he can take me to a hotel. Is there anyone who is not a prostitute who has done this so many times they couldn't say how many? It's a part of my job. I have a moment of realization that seeing as this meeting was set up through my blog, it could be a kidnapping. Sure I've looked at the company website, but did I check with Transport Canada that the company even owns those planes? It could be a fake website. Or a real company but how do I know the guy is who he says he is? And I've just stepped off an airplane with no checked luggage so I'm totally unarmed.

Someone in this conversation with myself watches too much Law & Order. The truck he described arrives, we thrown my bag in the back and go to the hotel. He has a couple of company manuals for me to look over and we set a meet time tomorrow morning. He asks about the flight, and right there I make a decision that just as I'm not selling my body on streetcorners, I'm not a house to be renovated either. You get me or nothing. I tell him about the decorating show, and that it's just like interviewing for an airline job, really. You have to whitewash over all your colourful spots, hide anything about you that is different or quirky in the garage, and replace some perfectly functional opinions with the ones designated for you. I tell him about the airline interview prep course where they told me what my hobbies should be, because mine weren't correct. I let him know that I am structurally sound, well-maintained and in a good neighbourhood, but that I just might have cinnamon walls. I'm not such a rebel that I'm not willing to put a couple of coats of paint on my personality to hold a good job, but I'm going to let you know what's underneath.

Some of you readers probably think I'm an incredible idiot for this. But it's worth rather a lot to me not to lie about who I am. And I've judged him correctly. He doesn't need that.

The hotel is comfortable, and across the parking lot from a Thai restaurant, which turns out to be mostly a Chinese restaurant, with some Thai dishes. There is adequate but not amazing food and friendly service. I saved my fortune cookie fortune to share with you, and moments ago I swear it was on this table, but now I can't find it. I think it said, "A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance" on one side and something like "Un coeur joyeux rend le visage serein" (the same thing in French) on the other. I initially assumed it was something they made up in fortune cookie factories, but a bit of research shows that it's a bible quotation, and really only half of the message. It finishes "... but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken." It's probably not even the original source of the 'positive thinking' message but it's notable that it doesn't promise success from positivity or even threaten failure from negativity, just states that if you feel good you're going to smile and that it's hard to fight on when you're sad. It might as well say, "A good night's sleep makes you rested." I try for that.

Illogical Hope

I'm still holding out faint hope for the employer that never called back. The first aviation job I ever got was offered to me after the "expect a call by" date. Sometimes it takes longer than an employer anticipates to make a decision. Maybe I'm not their first choice, but they don't want to tell me to foad yet, because the first choice candidates might go to Air Canada before they get on there. I left a polite "could you please let me know if all the successful candidates have been notified" message on the chief pilot's voicemail, and I'm a little surprised that they didn't at least e-mail, because they seemed to be more respectful than that.

I get home from grocery shopping and there's a phone message. Oooh, lovely phone message. I press the button. It's from a charity that wants to come and pick up used clothing, furniture and small appliance donations. Hey, disabled people, if I get that job you can have bags of it, as I move across the country again. I realize what I've been doing wrong though. I bought a little electric grinder, for grinding spices, because they taste so much better fresh, and I decided I wouldn't open it until I got the job and moved to the new town. That's not how superstition works! I have to open the box, throw the packaging away, and then I will get the job and have to pack it up and get cinnamon or cumin all over my towels. I take it out and use it.

I found this story (many of you have probably already seen it on Bruce Schneier's blog) interesting twice. First, there's the idea that the logic of "If P then Q; P. therefore Q" or "If P then Q; Not Q. Therefore not P," is difficult. I really didn't know that most people found it difficult to follow.

When I was in university there was a third year philosophy course that math majors took for an easy arts credit. (I never grasped the concept of paying for useless courses, so I didn't take it, but I trust the accounts of my friends). It was trivial logic problems. All you had to do was memorize the names of the different types of actual logic and logical fallacies and it was an easy A. You didn't even have to attend the classes. I guess I hang out with logical people. Perhaps I should have followed the logic that if they could get As without trying, there must be other people who were getting the marks at the other end of the scale, but then we also laughed at the kinesiology students whose hardest course was a special version of first year physics that allowed them to understand skeletal structure and musculature in terms of basic Newtonian physics of levers, mass and energy.

I imagine most of my readers will also find that type of logic simple, because the logical elite hang out with me. but I'm fascinated that even those of you who would fail the "if someone is going to Boston he takes a plane" card-flipping test nevertheless have no trouble with the exact same logic in the "has to eat vegetables to get dessert" card test. And I'm now mature enough to realize that people have different skills, and if I hurt my abductor hallucis (which I think I may have) I'd be better off consulting a kin grad than a mathematician.

In case you're wondering, there's no connection between my waiting for an employer to respond and taking a plane to Boston, eating dessert, hurting my foot, or minding my logical Ps and Qs. They're just the top things on my pile.

Prior Spaceflight Experience is a Plus

Here are two pilot jobs that amused me, but which I must admit I didn't apply to. The first one is a modification on the usual tactic of hiring people at starvation wages to throw bags and check in customers, while dangling "if you show a good work ethic we'll put you on the airplane" in front of them. It works fairly well for the companies. They get a relatively sober, intelligent and obedient workforce for the price of dumping them in a remote location and ensuring they don't starve to death. Promote a few into the airplanes every spring and the supply of new suckers keeps pace with the ones you have to fire for going crazy.

Need IT pilot with extensive experience in servers and software to help with our computer system and be in line to move up to be trained as first officer. If you have over 1500 hrs you might be eligible for immediate consideration.

There are so many pilots out there that if an employer has specific needs, they might as well ask for what they want. Pilots who do not meet the qualifications will apply. Reader Chris Thompson sent me the second one requiring more than just IT experience.

Virgin Galactic seeking private spaceship pilots

MOJAVE, Calif.—Virgin Galactic is seeking people with the right stuff. The Antelope Valley Press in California says the spaceline founded by Sir Richard Branson has put out a call for pilots to operate its SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and WhiteKnightTwo mother ship. Those selected would fly during development testing currently under way and commercial operations at some point in the future. The company is looking for test pilots who graduated from a respectable flight school and who have a minimum of 3,000 hours of flying experience. Prior spaceflight experience is a plus, but not required. Virgin Galactic plans to fly tourists on brief suborbital flights at a cost of $200,000 per person. SpaceShipTwo is based on the design of SpaceShipOne, the first private manned craft to reach space.

That's the first time I remember seeing the word 'spaceline'. We have airlines and bus lines, railway lines and cruise ship lines, and had stagecoach lines (my great-something grandfather ran one). I wonder what the first thing we called a transportation "line" was.

Spring Rains

Now not only have I made progress towards the aforementioned job opportunity through a blog reader, but another opportunity came up through an arm's-length Facebook contact, a friend reported that a business owner posted a status of "I really need to hire a pilot!". Vive social media! They are both jobs similar to the one that I have so enjoyed these last four years, both with interesting new challenges and different things to recommend them. I have spoken to both potential employers by telephone and both want to talk to me in person.

I'm trying to simultaneously be prepared, be calm, not get my hopes up high enough to hurt should they be dashed, but be enthusiastic about something I know I can do and that employers should have no trouble seeing that I can and will do. I'm trying to decide now which job I would want if offered both, but it's hard to say without more information. Some I have sought from friends and some from personal research. Both people want to show me their operations and let me meet them, so I'll keep an open mind. I'm driving to meet one and then the other is flying me to another city. I still haven't heard from the company that most recently interviewed me, but it's two weeks past the date they said they expected to make their decision by, so I think that ship has sailed. It seems odd, but people in aviation can be that callous towards the candidates they don't want. I'm sure the non-aviation people are starting to think that there must be something terribly defective about me, but what are you going to do? Airplanes ask tough questions with no warning, and they don't give you a chance to say goodbye if you answer incorrectly.

It's always the job you want less that calls you back first, but of course it is, because the employers know the pecking order just as well as the pilots.

The post title is with reference to the expression "it never rains but it pours," with a reminder that rain can be a good thing. My thoughts go out to those of you suffering from floods this season. There seem to be more than usual this year. Everything is turning green here as spring arrives. In fact right across Canada, and even as far north as Whitehorse, temperatures are creeping into the teens. That's a big change for the prairies and a smaller change for the coasts, but for a fortnight or so everyone in the cities has comfortable light jacket weather. I wonder if spring is perhaps my favourite season. I do like beginnings, and new opportunities, and it's a great time for hiring in aviation.

Never Enough

I've played some more phone tag, called some more people. I'm not working as hard as I should be working in order to be working. I'm going in spurts. I make a lot of contacts, then slack off, but while I'm slacking off the previous contacts pay off. Then when the dust settles and I still don't have a job, I go back to applying for work.

I'm glad I took the break to learn some linguistics. It was interesting and complex but showed me that I can still jump in and learn things. I'm not stupid. I feel stupid sometimes, and unfortunately sometimes I act stupid. I had an interview for a job I really wanted and the questions showed that the employer really cared about the same things I did.

He threw in some technical questions on the aircraft I've been flying lately. Really easy questions and for some reason I sounded like this woman. My brain was full of Screaming Weasel numbers and I either couldn't answer, or worse gave incorrect answers to basic questions about my own airplane. Please Mr. Chief Pilot, please, please overlook that and somehow see though to someone who will do a good job for you. What's the use of being smart and knowledgeable if I can't even look like someone who is when it counts? They weren't hard questions. It wasn't like the sixth guy story from these interviews.

I got my very first job on technical questions--I know because I sucked on the HR questions. Now I have learned how to act like a human being on the HR side but apparently I don't know anything. I'm so disappointed in myself. They said they might take two weeks or so to select the candidates, but it's been longer and still no reply. I kind of like it when an employer has the decency to tell you they don't want you. Unfortunately this kind of thing is common in aviation.

Somewhere, in a parallel universe, there's a copy of me that didn't screw up that interview. Maybe there's a copy that put a lot more work into the right things in the right place and is an astronaut. An astronaut went to my school, a few years before me, and had a lot of the same hobbies.

I'll go back to some technical aviation posts, to try and be ready. In gratitude for your tolerating all those linguistics posts, I'll respond to your requests for technical subjects.

Stress and Focus

It's a challenge to find some of these classrooms. By this point in the term, everyone else has figured out that Room B141 is behind the door marked B140 and in the building marked C. I have to wander around a lot. I miss a couple of classes this way, because I don't want to walk in late and disrupt a class I'm not paying for.

I'm on time for a fourth year course called something vague like Topics in Linguistics. It's a little sparser in pupils than most of the classes I've been in, but there was nothing else on in this time period. We start with a class presentation by three students who are up at the front of the class looking nervous. They draw a couple of trees on the board, just like the ones from the last class. Damnit, I'm going to have to learn this tree stuff. There's a handout. I take one as they are passed along, only later realizing that they wouldn't have made enough up for me to have one, but someone must have been away. There were enough. The title of the presentation is "Topic and focus as linear notions: evidence from Russian and Italian." They're reporting on a particular paper they have been assigned. The first student speaks fluent English with a Russian accent. She explains the sample sentences with terms like c-commanded and with reference to the "right edge" of the tree. When her bit is done, the next woman in the group speaks. She has a Canadian accent but mumbles a bit and it takes me a few phrases to adjust to understanding her. My ear seems to be 'tuned' to the Russian accent. It's clear that the first student did the work and the other two are coasting off her. The guy actually has to interrupt himself to ask the Russian woman for the name of the author of the paper they've been studying. And no, it's not a complex pronunciation issue. I wonder if all three of them share the group mark. I used to hate projects like that.

Then the professor starts the lecture proper. I'm not yet sure to what extent linguistics is a process of cloaking the obvious in obscure terminology. After ten minutes or so of "givenness calculation," "F-marking" and "F-projection" I divine that we're talking about the way languages use verbal stress and other strategies to emphasize part of a sentence, the focus. Givens are information already introduced, in contrast with new information. The lecture assumes I know some rules for focus projection, like normally stress on the final element in a phrase 'projects' focus over that whole phrase. The research the professor is discussing looks for things that go against these general rules. Here are some examples.

(a) John drove Mary's SUV today. What did he drive before that?
(b) He drove [her red convertible]_F. (c) John drove Mary's red convertible. What did he drive before that?
(d) He drove her BLUE_F convertible

Say sentence (b) as you would if you were just saying that sentence in isolation, then say it again as an answer to the question in (a). For the latter your stress is probably on "convertible," which projects over "her red convertible." But in (d) as a response to (c) the stress is on BLUE because that's the new information. That's okay, because convertible is old information, so the projection doesn't have to go to the right.

Then we meet the sentence "The success of our ventures depends upon the mood of the markets and [the mood of the markets]_F depends upon [the state of the economy]_F." The second "mood of the markets" is stressed even though it's not new information, because it's new as the subject of depends on. It dawns on me that a "topics in" course is just the professor babbling on about his or her research. This has been interesting, however. I'm slightly amused by the way the little I managed to learn about trees in the previous class got called immediately into use here, and how my musing about stress differentiating between the two meanings of "Who did John wrong?" for a speaker who doesn't use whom, was echoed here in serious scientific study of stress in English prosody. I'm starting to get how linguistics is a science. Linguists study the data they have, formulate theories and then either plan experiments or seek out structures in existing languages to gather data that supports or forces change in their theories.

I'm also remembering why I got out of academia. I realized at the time that I was in a position to stay in university forever, on scholarships, grants, and fellowships. It's such a comfortable place to hide out. Learning things is really fun, as is explaining things, and the need to relate them to the real world is negligible. But I liked having real world results to my actions. I wanted to be useful. So I need to focus on being useful again, even though it's a little stressful.

The telephone tag guy is still away, and the company I interviewed with said that it would be over two weeks before they made their selection, so I have to relax about that for now.

Future Predictions

This book was originally published in France in 1911. Aviation was a daredevil sport, conducted in open cockpit single engine aircraft with negligible carrying capacity and unreliable engines. The artist Xaudaro mocked the pursuit of aviation by cartooning ludicrously implausible activities involving aircraft...

.. such as transporting sixteen passengers at once. Note the flight attendant, all the passenger baggage in the rear hold, and the baggage attendant. Both the transit time and the fare on Concorde were at least double that 'predicted' in the caption. And how many hundreds do we cram into one airplane now?

Here he has correctly demonstrated the importance of proper loading and baggage securing on a cargo flight. And I'm sure I told you that there was a dog on my first revenue cargo flight, moving house from one province to the next for a family, including a large dog. The dog rode in the passenger cabin, not on the horizontal stabilizer.

I've carried the mail, and I've picked up objects using a hook attached to my plane, but not quite this way. I love future predictions, whether or not they ever come true. I received e-mail from an editor at Popular Mechanics the other day. He was looking for the author of the information on Landing During an Earthquake. I couldn't help him, but I let him know how much I enjoy the visions of the future in his magazine. Someday I'm going to get my flying car.

The skydiving guy e-mailed back to say that he had just hired everyone he needed. I guess the combined delay of tax guy passing the information on to me and and skydiving guy getting my resume was enough for the pilots to be hired. That's how it goes. I would have liked that job, I think. Simple constraints, people having fun, an operation where I know I can operate safely, and lots of scope to excel in efficiency and customer service. It's kind of wry how quickly I imagine myself in a position. I'm mentally deciding which street I'll live on in the city of another job I've applied to and haven't heard back from. I can't help it! I predict I will get the job.

Opportunity Calls, Among Others

My tax guy calls me. It's not about my taxes. He talked to one of his other clients, a guy who owns a skydiving business. I name his name before the accountant does. He's been in business in Canadian skydiving a long time, owns places across Canada. My accountant mentioned me, said he couldn't understand how a pilot could be overqualified. Skydiving guy explained in terms he could understand. "Return on investment." I thought I told him that, but I guess with accounting people you have to use the exact words. He's calling to tell me skydiving guy says he'll look at my resume. I send him one. Dropping meat bombs is generally an entry level job, but I think the company has some larger airplanes, and there might even be an opportunity to travel to big skydiving meets. I've never jumped, but I used to work with a guy whose wife was a pretty well-known skydiver, well known in that community, I mean. I'm not sure there are any generally famous skydivers.

The maybe job guy doesn't call me. Maybe I should call again. I'll call again tomorrow.

A charity calls to ask me if I have any used clothing or housewares to donate. I tell them not this time. Try again some other time. It's convenient having people haul off your stuff, and if I get a job out of town I'll have give stuff away rather than store it.

A telemarketer calls. I can tell it's a telemarketer because they use a weird version of my name. But this one not exactly a telemarketer. What? She says she's calling from "Computer Maintenance Optimizers" and they have detected a "Junk Malicious Virus" in Microsoft Windows on my computer. The bafflegab is so fluent and hilarious I let her keep going for a while before I interrupt to ask.

"How did you get my telephone number?"

"We have a research department."

"What kind of scam is this?"

"It's not a scam. We are calling to tell you about a junk malicious virus detected on your computer."

"And you're calling me from India to tell me this?"

"I am calling from 'Computer Maintenance Optimizers'."

Eventually she admits that it is in India. They want me to download some software to allow their 'technician' access to the computer to remove the virus. And replace it with spyware, or recruit my computer into a botnet, no doubt. I ask what their revenue model is, and she says it's not my concern, or maybe not her concern, I missed it in the accent.

At one point she asks,"Are you really interested, or are you just wasting my time?" I tell her truthfully that I'm absolutely fascinated by how this all works, and to learn more about this virus, but you know times are tough everywhere and if labour and telephony is cheap enough for them to use human beings making phone calls as a malware vector, she can't be making much. I ask her, if she is paid an hourly wage, per call, or by how many people she entices to download the information. She assures me somewhat indignantly that she is PAID. I tell her I actually use Linux, so their Microsoft Windows virus detector isn't working, but I'm still interested in what she is doing. She ignores that, or doesn't understand Linux and continues. I'm truthfully very interested in this whole scam, or whatever it is. It's hilarious. Are we going to get personal phonecalls from Nigerian princes next? She won't tell me at what point money is extracted from me, or anything more about the company, so eventually I've had enough. I really don't know whether or not she knows that she's peddling a scam, or at best a useless service. I admit that I am wasting her time, because I'm not going to do it. She says this is my choice, but I really should, because the virus may harm my computer. I tell her the Linux story again and she buys it this time, but doesn't seem to be in a hurry to hang up. I tell her I hope she is paid well for her work, that she and her family are well, and that she is enjoying her work. I'm usually civil with telemarketers, but how bored do I have to be? That was so weird, though.

A little internet research turns up their business model. This has been going on for a few years now, and they're doing it all over the world. They sometimes pretend to be from Microsoft or your ISP. They direct you to look at Windows Event Viewer, which always contains a long list of scary looking events, and tell you that's proof of the infection. They have you download a program to give their 'technician' remote access to your computer, and then they charge you a whack of money for it.

Actually, this is the second time I've had this call. I hope I didn't blog about it the first time. Sorry for the repeat if I did. The thing is, when you're job hunting, you have to keep answering the phone.

---

In breaking news, it looks like the French have found the wreckage of AF447.

Weathered In

I dreamed last night that I was in a large glass-walled airport terminal. It was a boxy shape, and may have had glass ceilings, too, or at least floor to high ceiling windows, giving an unobstructed view of the tarmac. (One of my colleagues hates that colloquialism. It's almost always concrete. I think heavy airplanes would punch holes into tarmac on a hot day). It's not a hot day in my dream, though. It's snowing, with snowflakes swirling everywhere then heavy rain, visibility not any better. I'm inside, not flying. I see some of my former colleagues, and former students, one I remember in a in a really dirty white shirt, but going flying. I'm not flying. I don't know why I'm there.

I'm starting to feel that I'm never going flying. All I want is an FO job with a good company. A King Air would be great, even a piston twin if you've got good two-crew SOPs and a company culture where your status doesn't depend on how much you can drink or deadlift. I don't want anything I can't do. I don't want a free ride. I just want to fly airplanes in a safe environment where my skills will be appreciated.

I applied to a job like that. I really wanted it. I had ten times the listed experience in each category they asked for, so of course they didn't call me. While sorting out last year's taxes the accountant can't understand why having too much experience is a minus. He knows tax law, though. God knows I don't.

Mad Woman

I call back about the job, after waiting a day. I get voice mail and leave a message. I wonder if we're going to enter a passive-aggressive battle over this.

I look through what is available on Netflix. The Canadian selection is really terrible, because we have different copyright laws than the US, and the content providers are afraid to let Netflix licence their shows in Canada. Most of the "movies I'd like to see" list is not available, and it suggests some laughable substitutes when I search for them. It does turn up some suggestions I like, but they are movies I already own. I start watching the TV series Mad Men, because I've heard some good things about it.

It's a meticulously crafted period piece about the 1960s, and not the Vietnam War or the flower children, but the buttoned down conservatives of the era, at an ad agency. They have a lot of fun with establishing identifiable, fairly timeless situations and then smashing the viewer upside the head with anachronisms we weren't expecting, like when they get up from a picnic and just leave all their trash behind. I keep wondering whether it's a clever social commentary or just an an excuse to produce misogynist, racist television, glorifying old fashioned attitudes. Its redeeming feature is perhaps that it will remind some people that the good old days never really were, and by removing the role of advertising to another era, perhaps show people how easy it is to be manipulated.

But the weird thing about psychological manipulation is that it often works even when you're aware it's happening. Just watching this darn show makes me want to mix an old-fashioned martini. If I watch another season I may get the urge to vacuum in pearls and high heels and bake a meatloaf for some man. If you watch people doing something, even if it's only fiction, even if you don't approve, it makes it more likely that you'll accept that behaviour as normal. That's why the conservative right objects to gay couples being treated unblinkingly as normal human beings on television, why my wacky relative (please tell me everyone has one) believes that shows about friendly space aliens are Hollywood grooming us for when the aliens come to help us, and why some parents don't let their kids play violent video games. Or maybe those parents just want their kids to stop playing video games and help make dinner.

Those of you who read comments will remember the calorie counter discussion from a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to tell the non-comment-reading people about this too. If you like to keep an eye on weight, fitness and nutrition all in one little app, I recommend myfitnesspal. You don't even need an iPhone/iPad Touch to use it, because it has a web interface too. You may not be into counting calories, or eat weird stuff that is never in calorie look up tables, but this app has almost everything I've eaten in a month, and allows me to specify the ingredients in a recipe or just tell it the caloric value, if I know. It lets you log exercise, and automatically adjusts your remaining calories for the day. It didn't have "plumbing" as an exercise, but it had automobile maintenance, which was about the same level of physical activity. Its strength is that it is completely effortless to use. You just have to resist the temptation to round out your caloric allocation for the day with a few tablespoons of chocolate chips. They're high in iron, I justify.

The water still comes out of my tap really straight, and that potential employer doesn't return my call. Plus it's apparently open season on B737s in North Carolina. Would you have found it on your preflight walkaround? If they hadn't found the bullet on board I might have believed it had been there a while. The airplane would probably have pressurized without a problem. The Screaming Whippet groundschool instructor described an incident where he did a flight, warm and happy up in the flight levels, only to discover after landing at destination that an entire window had blown out right after take-off. It had accidentally been left unsecured after routine maintenance.

Getting Things Flowing

I received a phone message regarding another job I applied to. Odd, as I applied maybe two months ago, and it wasn't a large company. Why the long delay? Does the guy plan that far ahead for his employment needs? Did the first two candidates not work out? I'm glad I was out getting plumbing supplies and didn't have to field that one cold. It's a job that could be interesting and right for me, given certain constraints, but it could be a backwards step that would look bad on my resume. I had a list of questions to ask about it by the phone for a while after applying. In fact I just threw my notes on that out the other day.

If the potential employer took two months to think about it, I can take a day. For now the plumbing issue is more pressing. I have already replaced the ball and washers, but the old tap has rotted inside and spews water all over the counter when I turn it on. Under the sink the associated plumbing is crazier than the wiring on a thirty-year-old airplane. It's a mismatched mess of PVC and copper with shutoff valves I run into some difficulty removing the old tap. There should be a nut holding it on underneath the sink, but I can't find it. It's very difficult to see or get any purchase under there because this is a double kitchen sink installed very close to the back wall of the cabinet, so everything is hidden in the sink's cleavage. I do some internet research, trying to figure out if there is an alternate way this might be fastened in, and rein in my urge to just shred it into bits and tear out the bits. There are old copper lines coming directly off the underside of the faucet assembly, and I've already destroyed them looking for what is holding it in place. Besides rust.

Delta, the faucet manufacturer has a toll-free line, so I call for advice. The rep is excellent, listening, understanding, suggesting, then putting me on hold to consult with an expert on older models. He comes back and asks if I have any need to reuse the old faucet. Hell no. He doesn't come right out and tell me to remove the sucker by any means necessary, but I got the idea. The sink is stainless steel and I do need to keep that, preferably untorn, so I destroy the old faucet with tinsnips and a big pair of vice grips so that I can pull its shredded remnants down through the hole in the counter. The new tap goes in easily and the water comes out of it in an attractively coherent stream. When you have done work involving open plumbing lines you need to open the tap up and then turn on the water from below and let it run to flush out any junk from the lines before operating the faucet mechanism. I probably would have run it for a while even if I didn't know that, just to watch the pretty water coming out into the sink and not onto the counter.

And then I signed up with a free trial with Netflix. If I'm going to be off work I might as well get free movies. It's also a way of ensuring I won't get to use it. I should sign up for a gym membership and enroll in a CPR renewal class, too. Every time I do either of those things I have to move halfway across the country for a new job.

And still on the topic of stopped up plumbing, here's a nice job of handling a recalcitrant nosewheel. It looks like a combination of a firm landing on the mains and slowing down enough to reduce airflow pressure was enough to get the nosewheel down and locked.

Not Being a Chicken

The Statistics Canada people called back to follow up on my employment status. Did I work in the last 30 days? Well, yes and no. I got a job offer. I went somewhere on my employer's dime and I worked hard at learning things, but I didn't get paid and I didn't get a job out of it, so no. I just tell them the story and let the interviewer encode it the way they want. He probably had a training course on it, and everything. I was looking forward to being a positive datum in the survey. I redouble my efforts to make that happen next month.

I hate online application forms that require me to enter "expected salary" and won't let you go to the next page without it. At least with a paper one you can enter a range or write something vague. Some of the ones I've hit lately ones verify that I enter one proper number. I apply to a couple of jobs at my current level, jobs I should be able to get, but not jobs that advance my career.

The phone rings, I answer with my name. The person actually listens to what I said, then uses my name as he asks to speak to someone else, a male name. There's no one by that name who lives here. I tell him that and he thanks me and hangs up. I psych myself into believing that he bailed because he didn't like the way I sound. I try to knock myself out of that headspace to in order to write sincere, enthusiastic cover letters.

When I run spellcheck on what I've got and it complains about my e-mail address, the non-blog e-mail on my resume, not the cockpitconversation one. It suggests I replace it with one of:

magnetohydrodynamical
electromagnetically
recrystallization
buckminsterfullerene
inapproachable

If you can reverse engineer that, send me an e-mail!

I make a note of that for the blog, then read some e-mail and write an unrelated blog entry. Now what was I doing? Oh yeah, I was revising my resume.

I didn't apply for a job in Yorkton. Nor to another one in the north, posted by an employer who doesn't know the difference between the shift and the caps lock key, for a company that ten years ago had a 'don't bother applying' reputation where women were concerned. The guy probably thinks ovaries interfere with the operation of the rudder pedals. You can picture him, in a tractor hat, typing with two fingers and a pained expression on his face. He can skin a moose, load it into a plane, fly bush IFR and finish off a mickey of rye on the way home. Be assured I'm not implying anything about the particular operator. I don't know him, and for all I know the shift-key-challenged person is a twenty-five year old female. It just amuses me to construct a picture of the boss I'm not applying to serve. The job is in a town where I really don't want to live, and I don't have the particular time they favour, anyway.

Actually, I always summon up a picture of the person I'm writing to. Sometimes I know what they look like, and I usually know what their airport and hangar look like. I imagine them reading my e-mail and looking at my resume and being pleased with what they see. I also picture myself there. I'm not doing it as some kind of New Age visualization process, it's just what I happen to do. I commit to things.

It's irritating the number of little changes I made in my life because I thought I had a new job, and now I have to undo them, or just feel their reminder all the time. They were tiny things like changing the default airports and towns I see the weather for when I check my iPod touch, and rearranging my sock drawer to make it easier to grab the black ones when I get dressed in the morning. The black ones used to be at the bottom, or permanently in my suitcase. I did a bunch of menu planning and associated grocery shopping to make flight bag lunches, so I have to use that up, and kick myself every time. It's also harder to settle down and apply to okay jobs when I can still taste the fine one that got away.

Some Backstory

Do you play video games? Sometimes while I am playing video games I realize a moment too late what move I should make and then make that move anyway. So I shoot the wall, instead of the enemy, wasting ammunition. I jump after the door has closed, and slam into the wall. I turn around right after the Pac-Man ghost stops being blue. It's not slow reflexes, it's more of a "no! I meant to do this!" It's the action of a pilot who moves the gear lever to the "extend" position after landing gear up.

I'm wondering to what extent I do that in my career. There are jobs I would have killed for years ago that I shouldn't take now, but the instinct is that I still want them. What should I aim for? Do I have enough power dots left on this level to try and lure the ghosts to me, or should I just sneak around and get all the little dots to get through without dying?

A few weeks ago I realized I was sending out job applications without much of a plan, or a really clear idea of what it was reasonable for me to expect to achieve. I needed some help sorting out my career. I needed someone who knew me, who knew the various aspects of aviation in which I have participated, and who had realistic knowledge of the Canadian aviation scene. I know a number of wonderful people The name of the right person came to me one morning and when I e-mailed him, I discovered that he had moved back to my part of the country since I'd seen him last, so his home was only a couple of hours drive away. And he was happy to counsel me, declining my offer to pay for his time.

I brought my logbooks, my resumé, and a big box of kleenex, but I'm proud to say that I didn't burst into tears the whole time. He listened, he nodded, he told me my aspirations were not unreasonable for my age and experience and then as a bonus he rattled off a list of potential employers along with inside information on their hiring. It was encouraging and enjoyable, and I kind of wish I had built on that in a more stable fashion, but the next day I received the job offer that launched the most recent round of Aviatrix rides the roller coaster.

I'll go back to reading manuals at you in a few days, no doubt. Or I'll get a job and move across the country and you won't hear a thing for weeks.

Sarah linked to the above picture yesterday in a comment and it made me laugh so hard I had to share it. What is that eagle doing? Is the image upside-down?

Another Day

Now I'm feeling madder than yesterday. They aren't going to call me back. I'm in some kind of No Fly database that I can never know about or escape from. Once when I left one job for a better one, the owner of the old company called the manager of the new company to say that I was a terrible pilot and a non-trustworthy employee. Fortunately the new boss already knew me, so realized that the last desperate ploy to stop me getting the new job was actually a compliment about my value as a pilot. Sometimes I picture a vast conspiracy wherein that boss has made it his life's work to sabotage my career, finding out wherever I try to go and poisoning them against me. Hey, some of you thought it was paranoia last week when I had the premonition this job was going to fall apart.

But for now, I'm just fed up. I hate airplanes. They're stupid. I'm going to go buy some chickens and look feed them and collect the eggs. No, I'm going to rent an incubator and buy some fertilized eggs and hatch my own chickens so they imprint on me and I can raise them and train them to fetch, or cluck on command, or not to drown in the rain, or whatever the pinnacle of chicken learning is. And then I'll collect the eggs, and then when the chickens stop laying eggs I will tell them that I have rescinded their job offer, and I will eat them. And yay for the circle of life.

I found a big pile of partially completed to do lists today; I never throw out uncompleted to do lists, it seems, just abandon them half done. And they all seem to have the same things undone, things that always need doing even though I do them fairly often, things that come around again and again. I'm going to do them all. I'm going to go through all my lists and do them until they are done once and for all, and not have any fun because I don't deserve any. Except that feeding my chickens might be fun. I'll let you know.

I turn on my computer to find out where to buy chickens and somehow end up on an aviation job site. I haven't checked it for a week, on account of thinking I had a job. "Hmm, this job looks good." I could raise chickens there instead of here. I start to compose an e-mail to the chief pilot, when the phone rings. It's an ex-chief pilot, in town flying a medevac to here. I go out to dinner with the crew, good to catch up. One of the flight medics observes, "I never knew before this job how difficult it was to be a pilot." I thought she was talking about physical tasks like loading, de-icing, or the hours, but she continues to say, "You can't just decide where you want to work, apply and get a job. You have to work really hard to find a job, and go wherever that job is." She gets it. And it's not just me. It's the industry. I come home and finish the e-mail. And send another to another company. And make a list of more people to contact. Life goes on.

I hate airplanes. At least when chickens shit on you, you can use it to fertilize the garden. I think the worst part is that I know every fricking circuit breaker on this airplane I'll probably never fly. All those brain cells faithfully holding information that I may never use. Who wants me to finish telling you all about the airplane for which I received free groundschool and training manuals, and who wants to skip it and learn about chickens?

Do Not Pass Go. Like Ever.

They rescinded the job offer. It's not my personal hygiene, but the usual thing in aviation: they had a number of captains interviewing with bigger companies and expected to lose more than they lost. So they don't need everyone in the class. Specifically, they don't need me. My paranoia was correct. The chief pilot bounced my e-mail over to HR and the HR person called promptly to deliver the bad news.

The company was completely professional throughout. They sent me all the right documents, flew me to the training base, put me up in a good hotel, provided a car for our use, and treated us with respect. It's possible that they intended all along to only train their favourites from the class. Maybe I said or did something they didn't like. The ones who were trained were younger than me, but had more turbine and more two-crew SOP experience. It's the same thing at every step: you need experience to get experience, whether it's your very first flying job, your first multi job, a two-crew job, a turbine job, a 705 job, a jet job ... whatever you want you can't get it because you don't have it. I just shake my head.

So yeah, sucks. Sorry for leading you on, but well, welcome to my experience. The HR guy had the courtesy to say sorry too.

I've figured it out. I'm expecting my life to be a movie where the protagonist triumphs in the end, but instead it's some sort of weekly sitcom. I can't succeed, because then the story wouldn't make sense in syndication. I have to be forever beaten back, the status quo preserved, every advancement rescinded and reset for next week's episode. It's all I can do to keep from getting cancelled.

I'm surprisingly okay with it. I guess I've stopped believing anything good is ever going to happen, and was so careful not to believe too hard in this, so as not to jinx it, that when it didn't happen I was expecting it. I promise I'm not making this stuff up just to entertain you. This is really the way it works. I don't even think it works worse for me than average. I have met plenty of people in my travels with similarly disastrous career paths. Most of them aren't in aviation anymore.

I was working towards improving my efficiency so I could get everything at home done despite working fourteen hour days. I'd even timeshifted my daily routine to get ready for the early mornings. I'll run with that, be more efficient without having to work 14 hour days. Imagine what I'll get done!

I hadn't had a chance to put in the new bricks that I got from the cow bits guy until today, because it snowed again and covered everything up. Today I could find the garden again so I placed the last bricks. It looks good. I might as well get it to look good before I leave it all behind and go find another job. Maybe I should go on a road trip.

The Airplane Moves Even Faster

If you're looking for a job right now, take heart. The incubation period for resumés can be long, but eventually things start to happen. My life is like popcorn right now. Within twenty-four hours I've had a "come and see" type groundschool invitation, a phone interview, another interview scheduled somewhere else, and a job offer for a job I didn't apply for. Imagine that all going past in a montage now, me at a groundschool, and you hoping I'll have time to explain how I got here in a flashback, later.

This industry is fast. So is the airplane I'm learning now. I shall dub it the "Screaming Whippet," because it is loud, fast and needs attentive management or it will escape and start digging holes. (I think the dog sort of whippet is more likely to chase cars than dig holes, but all metaphors get snagged somewhere). Some of you will recognize the aircraft, and I will much appreciate both your e-mailed advice and your not naming it or providing further hints to its identity or that of its operator in the comments. You all know the drill.

My other comment for the day is "Oy, new employment ... so many forms!" The provincial, and federal tax forms, confidentiality forms, payroll deposit forms, emergency contact and all would be terrifying in themselves, but they pale next to the brain flattening terror of the draconian training bond. The lizard part of my brain tells me the correct response to risk is to curl up under a rock and hold really still, but its input is not really applicable now that I am no longer a lizard. I'm climbing out from under my rock to do this right.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

I have a little bit of lawn and a little bit of garden, such that I can plant herbs¹ and then come back from work and discover that the lawn and the herbs have all gone to seed, plus that the lawn-garden interface has lost any kind of delineation. I'd been toying a while with the idea of enforcing some kind of separation of chervil and sod: dig a moat, put up a fence, deadly slugs², that sort of thing, and had even gone so far as to stop off at a closed garden store to look through the car window at a display of different kinds of bricks available for purchase as garden edging.

While I was in Cambodia I was inspired by the local creativity in making handbags out of out of old feed sacks, crafts from broken motorcycle seats, homes and even fishing trawlers out of what would be landfill in Canada. I decided that I would reduce what I bought and edge my garden in some cleverly crafted reused item, maybe jars or tin cans from the recycling bin.³ I met a friend for lunch and enthusiastically explained this plan. Before I could get into my musings on the aesthetic possibilities of empty pickle jars, she pointed out that there was a pile of interlocking bricks in the alley behind her house, and she'd be grateful if they went away. Well, that would work too. Work better, in fact.

Her bricks turned out to be exactly the sort I had tagged as my favourite at the garden store, so I dug them out of the snowbank beside her garage and hauled them home. When the angle of the sun on the planet cranked around enough that it was possible to work in the garden, I hacked into the grassroot-matted mess around the perennials, dug a brick-sized trench, and filled it in with a line of bricks. It immediately looked better. The only problem, which I discussed with my neighbour while carefully avoiding having my fingers crushed by her two-year-old's enthusiastic assistance with the brick laying, was that I had not quite enough bricks. "Oh you'll find some more somewhere," my neighbour assured me, after attempting to explain to said two-year-old the difference between passing someone a brick and throwing it at her.

I finished up with what I had and drove off to the cow guy's⁴ farm to get a hundred kilograms of frozen cow bits. Parked in the farmyard I noticed a pile of bricks bigger than my car. Some of the bricks were just like the ones I had run out of. "What are the bricks for?" I asked. They were for an abandoned project, and were unneeded. With the meat, there was just enough room left in the back of the car for ten bricks.

And then when I got home from delivering the meat there was an e-mail inviting me to groundschool for one of the jobs I had applied for. It's not a job offer, but it will get me off the couch, allow me to meet some other pilots, learn about a new airplane, and I hope will lead to a job offer. I think I will go.

1. Being that I'm Canadian, I'd better specify that I'm talking about the culinary rather that the 'medicinal' variety.
2. Being that I'm Canadian, I shouldn't have to specify that I'm talking about the gastropod, not the lead kind.
3. Having travelled to places that don't routinely recycle even office paper or aluminum beverage cans, I should explain that in many places in Canada there is curbside pickup or drop-off depots for many recyclable items: glass, plastics, metal, compost, paper, so recycling is mainstream, not a wacky hippie pursuit.
4. I'm in a sort of mini co-op where we bulk buy farmgate meat, and I volunteered to drive this time.

Tailor-Made Job

An advertised job caught my eye because the requirements spanned experience gained at every phase of my aviation career. Writing a cover letter was suddenly easy because I could knock everything he asked for out of the park. I did some research on the company to find out more about what they were doing and I realized I had more skills that were relevant. I swear if you sat down with my resumé and my life history you could not design a job that was more perfectly targeted to hire me. There was no way the guy was not going to look at my resumé and say, "Wow! She's perfect!" I had friends that way I haven't seen in a while, so I closed with an offer to come out and meet him. Proofread, attach, send.

I was almost concerned whether this job was the aviation equivalent of the Red Headed League, a tailor made job designed to lure me away from something more important. I'll just have to keep my eyes open. My real concern was whether I would enjoy working with the person, and whether the job would afford me the opportunity to get a PPC on a particular type I was interested in. I quickly found people who knew the employer and reviews were mixed. I waited for a call.

The job evidently isn't directed at me, because there was no immediate answer, then a weeks-later, "apology for the delay, we are assembling a shortlist of candidates." I felt amusingly affronted, thinking that if they can't see I'm perfect right off the bat, or at least be a little more personal in a response, then they don't deserve me. Job hunting is such a peculiar pursuit.

Lots of Canadians are pursing it right now. I received a flyer from Statistics Canada saying that my household has been randomly selected for inclusion in a survey on employment. It's actually kind of cool, because they ask how many hours I worked for pay in the last four weeks, and when was the last time I worked for pay, and then they are going to follow up regularly over a six month period. I hope my own personal fortunes get to contribute to data that shows that more Canadians find work this year. And of course if you are in another country looking for work, I hope you land a tailor-made job, too.