I missed this video before, and a version posted by someone other than the director/animator has over 38 million views.  I’ll give the director/animator credit and post his version here (this one only has 3.5 million views).

There are two other Charlie the Unicorn videos as well (Episode 2, Episode 3).

Here’s another by the same director:

Here’s his YouTube channel.

I hate myself for doing it really, but I pre-ordered Windows 7 Professional yesterday.  It was just too good a deal to pass up as Microsoft cut prices for the pre-order of upgrades to the new operating system slated for release on October 22.

The pre-order prices are half price or less from the retail price.

I’m committed to running it on this PC as I’m currently running Windows 7 RC1 64 bit and I like it but admittedly that’s just mostly due to the geek in me.  But there are plenty of issues with it (I’ve got work-arounds for all of them but one).

I won’t however, convert over any of my other PCs from Windows XP, primarily because Windows 7 isn’t compelling enough to do so (no more than Vista in fact).

The reason I hate myself for pre-ordering is because I’ve knowingly now taken part in a marketing survey for Microsoft.  With pre-orders they get to know what the demand will be for Windows 7 for existing PC users well in advance (the special prices are only for upgrade versions of the OS).

They can already speculate on the number of copies that will be sold with new PCs as new PC sales are tracked, but the number of existing PC owners that are willing to pay to upgrade from either Windows XP or Vista is unknown.

The pre-buy scheme will give them a rough idea of the demand for Windows 7 in advance, and how much to spend on advertising, etc.  And as the period of time the pre-order is available is indeterminate, once MS gets what they want it will end.

So I’m a whore.  I helped give them that information for $100.

The facility where I work as an FAA air traffic controller recently began using the Air Trafic Safety Action Program (ATSAP) I blogged about here.

We all got “training” on the program and how it worked and how to file safety reports.

Within an hour of receiving my training I filed my first ATSAP report on the the interim altitude data block problem I detailed in the same blog entry noted above.

Here’s a summary of that issue:  in April my facility decided to start using an alternate method of coordinating altitudes on aircraft with adjacent center air traffic facilities via our computer system.  Unfortunately under certain circumstances this altitude information doesn’t successfully transfer to the next controller, so he may or may not know what altitude the aircraft has been given.  The real problem is that there is no indication one way or the other if the altitude was successfully transferred from one computer to the next controller’s computer.

This potentially means that the new controller doesn’t know what altitude the aircraft is assigned.

A week after I filed my report I got an email from the ATSAP Event Review Committee (ERC) asking if they could release the information in my report back to facility.  Apparently they thought it was an important enough issue to follow up on in short order.  Since I had already brought the issue to local management’s attention, I figured it was no big secret anyway so I agreed.

For a brief moment it seemed that they might actually discontinue the use of the interim altitudes between facilities.  But the person who had the authority to discontinue the procedure was the same manager who instituted it in the first place.  In other words by discontinuing the procedure he would implicitly admit it was a mistake in the first place.

But managers in the FAA don’t make mistakes (at least not that they’ll admit to).

So that meant we would continue to use the procedure, even if it doesn’t work sometimes.

But it’s fine, because the manager who decided to use the procedure has another procedure that ultimately transfers responsibility to the air traffic controllers so if something goes wrong it’s the controller’s fault.  That’s what FAA managers are really good at:  passing the buck.

So much for the safety culture the FAA talks about.

It just proves that ATSAP isn’t going to change the FAA and its approach towards safety issues.  The FAA has a long history of ignoring safety recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and they’ll do the same with the ATSAP ERC; they’ll be ignored too.

The ATSAP program is good for one thing:  it protects air traffic controllers who have operational errors from arbitrary treatment/punishment by their facilities if they file an ATSAP report about the error.

In the past if they liked someone and they had an error (a “deal” in air traffic lingo) it wasn’t that big a thing.  But if they didn’t like someone they used an error as an excuse to beat them around a bit as punishment.  ATSAP (at least according to the MOU signed between the air traffic controllers’ union, NATCA, and FAA management) prevents that from happening.

Outside of that though, ATSAP is another FAA red herring.

I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again.  Talk is cheap.

The FAA loves programs like ATSAP, because it makes it look like they’re really committed to safety issues.  Unfortunately they’ll ignore ATSAP just like they ignore the NTSB.  And safety will suffer because of it.

The news are filled these days with banks, automakers and other major companies that are having financial difficulties.  Many of these difficulties are directly due to poor decisions by the managers and executive/financial boards of those organizations.

A recent CNN business headline was that amusement/theme park giant Six Flags was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy “in an effort to shed $1.8 billion in debt.”

Six Flags President and CEO Mark Shapiro further said in the same article that:

…the company actually performed well in 2008, attracting 25 million visitors and making $275 million…

But apparently things aren’t as rosy as the Six Flags leadership would have you believe.  This website states that:

Six Flags has lost money every year of this decade. Its shares, which closed at 19 cents on Tuesday, will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange on April 20.

But what struck me most in the CNN story is the statement made by the President and CEO of Six Flags:

In an online letter to employees, President and CEO Mark Shapiro said Six Flags inherited a $2.4 billion debt load that “cannot be refinanced in these financial markets.”

“Inherited?!”

How does a company “inherit” debt?  Did someone die and leave it to them?!

According to the article on Financial Times (FT.com):

Mark Shapiro, chief executive, characterised the bankruptcy filing as “cleaning up the past” by restructuring the debt load built up by the company’s former management, which was ejected in late 2005 after a shareholder revolt led by Daniel Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, and backed by Bill Gates’ Cascade Investments.

So the previous management team allegedly created the problem, which was “inherited” by the current management team who couldn’t improve upon the situation.

Now the current President and CEO is going with the, “It’s not my fault; I’ve run the company for years; couldn’t fix what ailed it, but it’s the previous guy’s fault.”

Short term I’ll let them use that excuse and blame the other guy.

But over three years after “inheriting” the problem, at some point doesn’t it become the current management teams’ problem if they fail to address or fix it?  How long do you get to blame the other guy?  And how long does it take to address problems within an organization?

Mr. Shapiro wasn’t forced to take the President and CEO job at Six Flags.  He took the job willingly and then when he failed to fix what ailed the company, he blamed the previous leadership.

That’s not leadership, and it’s certainly not accepting responsibility for the leadership position he accepted.

There’s a reason these organizations are in trouble if they have leaders of that caliber.  Leaders accept responsibilty for an organization’s successes and failures, as they’re the ones who set policy and make decisions that guide those organizations.

This entire story struck a chord with me because I work for the FAA and we have the same sort of “leaders.”

FAA management likes to come up with rules and policies that don’t make sense.  And often they try to blame others as the source of those rules and policies, especially when they’re indefensible.

And just like Six Flag’s Mr. Shapiro, our managers don’t really accept responsiblity for much of anything.

(This is another long one, so grab a drink and settle in if you choose to continue…)

On Labor Day in 2006 the FAA imposed work rules (IWRs) on the controllers.  Part of the new work rules made it much more difficult for the union to negotiate policies at a local level which in turn meant that the managers at those facilities pretty much got to institute whatever policies and procedures they wanted without opposition, no matter how silly or misguided they were.

Even before the IWRs were in place years ago our managers decided that during the “midshift” (from midnight to 5 AM) the three controllers that had been assigned that shift to work weren’t all needed anymore.  They instead decided they needed an extra controller on the evening shift (the night shift proceeding the midshift).

Since we don’t have lots of extra controllers lying around, they decided to simply move one of the controllers off the midshift to the evening shift.

Mind you, there wasn’t really any research done on whether or not this was a good idea; they just simply decided they were going to do it because they had a staffing shortage they wanted to fix on another shift.

My union, NATCA, protested this move as during the midshift we run skeletal staffing, and the support staff for controllers that is there during all other times is notably absent during those shifts (including controllers in the respective facility traffic management units that manage traffic flow across the country).  Also, there is a single manager/supervisor on the midshift for all the areas instead of one for each area like during other hours.

This means that controllers are pretty much on their own on the midshift.  The support staff that is there during the rest of the day is absent, being replaced by a single manager who sits over a hundred feet away from the area where the radar scopes are located and is thereby pretty disconnected from what the controllers are doing.

For those reasons the union believed it was “better to be safe than sorry” and prudent to have a third controller available should they be needed to help (in other words for safety reasons).

But management didn’t believe this was necessary.  So they simply reduced the staffing to two controllers on the midshift, regardless of the opposition from the union representative.

And after the staffing was reduced I worked several midshifts where we were deluged with lots of aircraft all deviating off their filed routes through the one gap/hole in the several hundred mile long line of thunderstorms with both of the controllers plugged in working for hours.  The traffic was complex enough and busy enough that there is no way they would allow controllers during other non-midshift hours to work under the same conditions.

But on the midshift the rules don’t apply.

Granted, most of the time the third controller wasn’t necessary.  But a few midshifts it would have been nice to have a third person to give us options to deal with the traffic loads.  Call it a plan “B”.

The way air traffic controllers work is that they formulate plans to separate and sequence aircraft and try to make those plans work to get the job done.  Plan “A” is the first plan controllers use.

But sometimes the original plan doesn’t come together as planned.  Because air traffic control is a highly dynamic job, controllers are trained to always be thinking of alternate plans.  And they learn to recognize when a plan isn’t working and when to switch to an alternate plan to get the job done.  Our alternate plans to work traffic (our “Plan ‘B’”s) are almost always developing in the backs of our minds.

When we switch to an alternate (Plan “B”) plan, we formulate another Plan “B” to replace it as then our old Plan “B” has become Plan “A”.  But as the air traffic is constantly moving and changing so must our plans to work that traffic.  None of the “plans” we implement or think of are static; they’re constantly changing.  It’s part of the mental gymnastics air traffic controllers do every day.

The only time we don’t formulate a plan “B” is when there are no other options, and it’s generally not comfortable for controllers to know they only have one plan available considering what we do.  It doesn’t happen often, but once in a while the traffic circumstances don’t offer us alternatives, so we simply have to make the first plan work.

But all other times controllers are always formulating alternate plans in their minds should they need them (a  Plan “B”).

On the midshifts when both controllers on the shift were plugged in, there is no Plan “B”.  There are no other options.  We simply had to do the best we could, knowing that if something were to go wrong we would be blamed for our mistake, regardless of the fact we had no other options to deal with the traffic.

So every year after that when it came time to develop the next year’s schedule our union representative would request that the third controller be added back to the mid for safety reasons.  Eventually last year the staffing permitted the addition of a third controller to the midshift during the summers this year when we had the potential for more traffic and bad weather.

But our area manager told our union representative at the time that he was going to mandate two controllers be in the control room working at all times.  I have my own ideas about why the manager made this mandate, but it was arbitrary nonetheless.  No other area in my facility has such draconian staffing requirements.

So the union argues we need a third controller for safety reasons; management agrees to add one, then institutes an absurd staffing policy.  You do the math.

Anyway there wasn’t much the union representative could do about it as “assigning work” is a non-permissive subject so he didn’t contest the new policy.  A non-permissive subject is one that management doesn’t have to negotiate with the union.

Since the FAA imposed its work rules they haven”t negotiated much of anything, even when they should.  So based on that alone it it would be absurd to believe that they would have negotiated this issue.

Fast forward to this year when we actually starting working the three man midshifts again.

At first, there was no direction whatsoever about how many controllers had to be working on position during the midshift.  This was odd because controllers get briefed on every little thing that has nothing to do with our jobs as air traffic controllers, including who the “Civil Servant of the Year” is and when some office staff are going to be on vacation.  That sort of information is considered “mandatory briefing items” that we are required to read.

But there’s apparently a midshift staffing policy that controllers are expected to follow and that’s a big secret.

If anyone asked for guidance from their supervisor (called Front Line Managers: FLMs since the IWRs) they were told the story that the union representative had “agreed” to the policy requiring two of the three on duty be working in the sector.  And apparently because of that everyone was just supposed to know what the policy was and/or apparently that the union representative briefed all the controllers on the policy.

That’s avoiding the fact that the staffing policy was a non-permissive/non-negotiable item that the union didn’t even have the authority to contest, even if they had wanted to.  So it’s irrelevant whether the union representative “agreed” to the policy or not.

Management’s whole approach to the policy was a dodge regardless.  They had developed a policy, hadn’t really briefed anyone on it officially or properly, and if anyone asked about the policy told a fabricated story alleging  that the union representative was responsible for the policy.

The reality was that our “leaders” in the FAA didn’t want to brief controllers on the issue as they knew they would get controllers complaining about it and asking questions they couldn’t answer.  So they avoided the issue, instead choosing to imply that the issue had been negotiated when that was simply not the truth.

Eventually we badgered the FLMs enough that they asked for written guidance from the person who had actually mandated the staffing policy to begin with: our area manager.  And eventually he gave it in a memorandum.

Here it is (dated April 20, 2009).

The amazing thing is that the document is fairly accurate.  Notably the first line of the second paragraph  states:

“For the mid shifts when there are three CPC’s working, Area 5 management is requiring that a minimum of two CPC’s from 2300 local to 0500 local are plugged in to an open sector position.”

Open and shut, right?  “…management is requiring…”

Wrong.  Since controllers didn’t like the policy (we hadn’t had it before when we had three controllers on the midshift years ago, and no other area out of the six in our facility has a similar policy) they complained about it.  The union representatives told those controllers to complain about it to the man who instituted the policy: our area manager.

So they invited the area manager to a team meeting this week where they asked about the midshift staffing policy, and surprise, surprise.  Apparently he was back to the old story that it wasn’t his policy after all and that the policy had been “pseudo-negotiated” with the union representative and that he would have to meet with the union representative again to talk about the issue.

That assertion totally contradicts what it says in the written memorandum he authored that clearly says, “…management is requiring…”

If the manager wants to change the midshift staffing policy he created he simply has to do so.  But he chooses not to, and then publicly and openly blames the other guy (in this case the union) for the policy.

FAA managers hate putting anything in writing.  That’s mostly because they know that if it’s not documented they can deny or contradict what they said later.  Maybe our area manager forgot he wrote that memorandum…

It’s just another “leader” who won’t accept responsibility (just like Mr. Shapiro of Six Flags).

I guess maybe the FAA is “running like a business…”

And I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the FAA management “business” mindset mirrors the amusement park management mindset…

My wife wanted to see the new Star Trek movie at the IMAX theater.  Unfortunately for her by the time we actually got out to see it, it was no longer showing on any big screens.

I’m not a huge fan of watching normal movies on an IMAX screen.  I recall having seen one of the Harry Potter films on IMAX and getting annoyed by having to swivel my head all around to see the picture.  I think in doing that one misses more of the periphery of the film on an IMAX screen.

IMAX is great for sweeping scenic vistas and panoramas.  But outside of that I can do without it.  I want to watch a film moving my eyes and not my entire head to see the picture.

But it’s all the rage these days to show normal 35mm movies on IMAX screens.  Apparently viewers believe “bigger is better” and are willing to pay more to see movies in IMAX theaters.

But it’s not as simple as just throwing the film into the projector to show it on the big IMAX screen.  There is an involved conversion process that is explained here.

I don’t intend to mock the gravity of the situation as two workers died and more were critically hurt, but does it disturb anyone else that a factory that makes a food product (Slim Jim’s) can explode?

We’ve heard of grain elevators exploding from dust and natural gas or propane explosions, but outside of that I would like to believe that generally the stuff that’s put into food and/or the processing that’s done on the food that I’m eating doesn’t have the capability to cause explosions.

That and the news story says:

Search efforts for those missing were slowed by ammonia leaks<snip>

Ammonia?!

Exactly what’s in the Slim Jim meat stick?!

I’ve been running 64 bit Windows 7 RC1 for about a month now and have nothing notable to report.

Surprisingly (at least to me) I’ve had very few complaints with it. Using the compatibility mode has solved any issues I’ve had so far while running applications.

If I have problems running an application I first attempt to run in a Vista compatibility mode, and if that fails to correct the problem I revert back to a Windows XP compatibility mode.

However, if one runs a program in XP compatibility mode, the User Account Control (UAC) window pops up every time the program is started. It’s a bit annoying, and I’m not sure why this doesn’t happen for programs run in Vista compatibility mode.

I did have to add the Virtual PC/ Windows XP Mode Betas to my installation to run my Delphi 7 programming IDE as it wouldn’t even install in Windows 7 (or Vista for that matter).  Apparently there is a way to install Delphi 7 in Vista and it’s assumed the same procedure might work for Windows 7, but I opted to check out the Virtual PC add-on instead.

The Virtual PC/XP Mode runs a bit sluggishly/slowly but does what it’s supposed to do.  It’s certainly another way to address program compatibility issues under Windows 7, although I would only consider it for unique/specific cases such as 32 bit programming compilers like Delphi 7.

The only program I’ve yet to be able to run successfully at all is the USB Hotsync utility for my Palm Treo phone.  But then this is a known issue, as there is no 64 bit driver support in Vista for the same program either.  The workaround is to use a non-USB connection such as the Infrared (IR) port or a Bluetooth connection, but I don’t have either one of those for my desktop so for now I’m out of luck with being able to sync my Treo on that computer.

I just ordered two new larger hard drives to be RAIDed (mirrored) together too, and I’d like to move/migrate the Windows 7 installation from the old hard drives over to the new ones.  I’ve found a few message threads with suggestions about how to accomplish this task, but none of them seem simple or easy so I’m sure that project will be an interesting one if I get around to trying it.

In many ways it would probably be easier to simply start fresh and install a new copy of Windows 7 on the new hard drive but it would be a learning exercise and I challenge I would normally welcome to try to copy the existing installation.

Unfortunately it’s summer time and I have plenty of outdoor projects I’m working on so I might not have the time to get geeky on this one.

As I previously blogged German media artist and film maker, Matthias Fritsch’s description of his Technoviking project content in part reads, “Real or set up? <snip> Reality is stranger than fiction and more bizarre than any art imaginable.”

That same sentiment applies to the following video on Liveleak, with a description that reads:

I..this…

…the words escape me.

You probably shouldn’t watch this.

Enjoy.

Since I recently installed Windows 7 RC1 64 bit I decided that I’d add another 4G of memory to my desktop PC that I happened to have sitting around as a 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate can apparently address up to 192G of memory.

That brings my system memory up to 8Gs.  I also wanted to add a Blu-Ray burner to my PC.  The extra memory, coupled with my nvidia 8800 GTS video card (yep, I know: obsolete!), two optical drives and four hard drives seemed like it might be pushing the limit of my 500 watt Antec Earthwatts power supply, even though it handled the extra memory without any problem.

I think it would have been fine to simply leave in the 500W supply, but instead of taking the chance I chose to be conservative and decided to buy a bigger power supply just to be sure.  The last thing I wanted while trying a new operating system was to add another unknown and not having enough power can result in an unstable PC.

I chose a 750 watt Corsair power supply from Newegg.  If you haven’t ever ordered PC parts from Newegg you’re missing geek heaven.  They have fast affordable shipping, good prices and overall fantastic service; I rarely order from anywhere else.  (Newegg, please send cash to this email for this endorsement!)

I also ordered a LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray burner to put in the PC to archive some of my own video files as well.

They both arrived at the house Thursday and I decided to install both right away when I had a chance.

The Blu-Ray burner was an OEM model, which means it came in a plastic bag with a CD inside the bag.

The Corsair power supply was an entirely different matter.  It came snugly packed in a colored cardboard box with a foam insert, and the power supply case was enclosed in a black flocked cloth bag with a drawstring and logo silk-screened on it.

Who the heck needs a computer power supply in a cloth bag?!  Talk about over-packaging!  Next time skip the bag and just throw in something useful like a pen, Corsair;  anyone can use a pen!

Anyway, both went into the PC case without problem.  And I now have a nice flocked bag for anyone who feeles they need a Snuggie for their power supply!

I continue to have good luck with Windows 7 RC1 testing.  There have been a few programs that were flaky unless I ran them in compability mode for either Vista or XP (notably Quicken 2009) but otherwise I’m still happy with my choice.

I’ve found that often if the file open/save dialog windows don’t work properly in a program it’s a sign there may be other issues running that application under Windows 7.  If that occurs, or there are other odd problems running a program, a quick fix is to right click on the application icon/shortcut and select Properties | Compatibility tab and check the box “Run this program in compatiblity mode for:” and select an appropriate operating system.  For older programs select one of the Windows XP’s; if the program is supposed to run properly under Vista select that.

I just started installing a couple of games as well but haven’t had a chance to mess around with them yet.

The only niggling complaint I have so far is that the file browser/explorer window doesn’t show digital photo thumbnails based on their EXIF orientation.  That means my photos taken with the camera turned 90 degrees from normal show up sideways as thumbnails.  Maybe there’s a setting somewhere to correct that; I haven’t looked yet but it should be the default setting regardless.

Curiously enough I tried to find a way to send feedback about this to MS but can’t seem to find how to do that.  That makes it clear that they’re not really interested in feedback or they would have made it easier to send it to them…

Other than that, I’ve yet to encounter a serious problem with Windows 7 RC1.  More to come on this subject…

One of the cool things about YouTube is that anyone can put a video online about just about anything.  One can learn how to do things, get other people’s viewpoints, or simply be entertained.

I try to be open-minded about what shows up on YouTube, but I just discovered there someone I can only consider to be a real wacko.

Last fall I put a video on YouTube that documented how to set up Wippien, a virtual private networking (VPN) client that we were using to play some LAN games over the Internet with.

VPNs can be a hassle to configure, so they’re not for everyone.

The other day I got a comment from a YouTube user named problmslver88 responding to my video:

You explain nothing on how to actually use the program to connect once you have it open. Without that info this program and all programs like it and any tutorials are totally fucking useless.

Nice going jackass!

Um, OK, so he’s clearly frustrated.  But those sorts of comments tend to happen under the blanket of anonymity on the ‘Net.  No big deal.

But he posted a video response as well that I checked out (CAUTION! Strong language in video!)

I mostly laughed at this guy because it’s absurd how angry this guy is at not being able to play games online using a VPN.  Notably this is the second in a series he’s made about how mad he is about the various YouTube videos explaining how to set up VPNs (CAUTION!  He’s more pissed off in his first VPN video!).

This guy apparently needs a gaming fix badly!

But he’s also found time to rant about what he considers useless videos on YouTube (all the while adding his own videos into the mix).

I get the impression that many of this guy’s problems are everyone else’s fault (including his inability to understand what a VPN is and/or how to use it).  But if he calmed down and did some reading about VPNs and stopped yelling at, blaming everyone else and making demands, maybe he’d figure out some of his problems (and stop scaring the kiddies in the process).

I found his angry rants laughable, but I’m also a little scared that this is the kind of guy who randomly guns down people on the street too…