Hurricane Ida

Just when I thought we (Pensacola, Florida) had dodged any of the storms this season… Bam! Hurricane Ida looks to be headed this way, so if you are in her path, take note and get prepared.  This looks to be a small Cat 1 storm at landfall, which is projected for Tuesday, November 10, 2009.  That said, just the normal Hurricane supplies to get you through a power outage or flash flood.  I don’t plan on doing anything special, other than wearing rain gear to work.

I have, however, added a Weather.com widget to the sidebar of the website for the duration of the storm.

UPDATE:

• Local schools have been closed for Monday and Tuesday and a voluntary evacuation order has been issued for 7 am Monday morning.
• MONDAY morning. So far the rain hasn’t arrived yet, it’s coming though.  Pensacola is still the projected point of landfall.  Local schools still showing as closed, and some government facilities are closing today as well.

This is It

Michael Jackson

This is it.  The time has arrived.  “This is It”, the much anticipated Michael Jackson movie premieres today in theaters around the country for its two week run.  The movie is made from various rehearsal footage shot by Jackson’s team to provide a record of the rehearsal process in Jackson’s constant effort to provide the perfect show.

Will you be attending the movie tonight, or durning the initial theatrical run?  I would like to, but nobody wants to go with me, and I don’t do movies alone.  Instead I will be waiting for the DVD release which will have a ton more features and bonus content that you just can’t get at the theater.

Whether you loved him or hated him, most everyone agrees that his talent, above all the controversy has made him one of the greatest musical talents of all time.  His stage presence, dancing, and most importantly his voice, will carry his name on for many many years into the future, much the same as the late Elvis Pressly.

To those who are going out tonight, have fun, enjoy the show, and post your experience and opinions of what you see to the web.  I look forward to reading everyone’s thoughts.

(HQ) Michael Jackson “Human Nature” Piano Cover

I Went Tool Shopping

Tool Shopping

As I begin to write this post, I am freaking cold man!  I went into work early last night, wearing shorts, and by the morning the temp had dropped from the 70s to the 50s.  Yes, this may sound a bit whinny for me after I just spent five years living in North Dakota, but I am a Floridian through and through which means that even at 50 degrees I am cold.

So, no that I have some long pants and a hoodie on, I will continue.

I was supposed to provide a deposition yesterday at a local court reporters as part of an upcoming trail I am a witness in.  I witnessed an assault earlier this year and now have been subpoenaed to testify on behave of the State and Circle K as to what I saw.  The defense consul wanted a deposition from me, but when I showed up to the court reporters, I found out that the lawyer involved with the case has the swine flu.  I don’t know yet when this will be rescheduled, but I am sure it will happen at the worst time.

Since I had extra time to kill yesterday, I decided to go “pre tool shopping.”  With my new job comes the responsibility of providing most of my own tools.  I will need a lot of “common tools”; wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers, etc.  As a sheet metal technician in the aviation industry, there are a lot of specialty tools I will have to gather up as well.  I am going to be getting a nice new rivet gun, drill, grinder, hammers, and other tools that would seem special to the lam-in, but are very common and essential to me.

That brought me to my local Sears.  Their line of Craftsman Tools will meet just about all my needs.  I walked up and down every tool isle deciding and recording every tool I think I will need that they have available for purchase.  After scrutinizing each isle, I ended up with a list that tops $2400.00.  Mind you, that is just an estimate.  When all is said and done, I am sure the final cost will be closer to $4000.00.  Good tools are expensive and even though Sears has most of what I need, there are a good deal of tools they do not have, which I will more than likely find on the internet.

My quest to build my tool box is well under way.  I already have a rather large set of mechanics tools, which will give me a nice start.  Once I secure some funding, I will get what I would consider the essentials to round out the beginnings of my tool box.  I figure it will take me the better part of a year to fill up my tool box to have have everything I need.

Looks like I will be developing my own relationship with Sears, the Snap On guy, and the Mac Tools man.  I wonder if any of them are on Twitter or Facebook?

If you’re interested in learning more about the tools of my trade, or if you’re just really board, here are some links to some of the places where I will be buying my tools.  Enjoy.

Aviation Tool Supply

http://www.aircraft-tool.com/shop/main.aspx

Sky Geek

http://www.skygeek.com/tools.html

Brown Tool

http://www.browntool.com/

First Job Fair Provides Opportunities

The Job Hunt

Finding a new job these days has proven to be a difficult task.  Aside from finding the time between my current job, current projects, and life in general to search for a job, there just aren’t many prospects out there.  For myself, I am looking for an opportunity in the aerospace industry.  I live in Pensacola, Florida, the home of Naval Aviation and the Navy’s Blue Angels.  We have a moderately sized airport, and plenty of small fields scattered throughout town.  The problem, however, is that there just isn’t any new jobs opening up very often that I am qualified for.  Because of this, I have begun to look outside of Pensacola. While I am still searching for a career path that keeps me home, I am open to a bit of a commute if the salary is commensurate to the daily drive.  This, and a tip from a friend, is what led me to attending the Panhandle Job Fair this past week in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

The job fair was only about the size of a high school gym, but it was packed with plenty of aerospace companies for me to choose from.  Among them, L3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, and BAE Systems.  The companies that I was most drawn to where Mobile Aerospace Engineering and Goodrich.  The services that these two companies provide to the aerospace community mirror the skill set on my resume.

Thanks to the job fair, I am now researching the opportunities available at MAE and Goodrich.  MAE, based and operated out of Mobile, Alabama, provides Periodic Phased Inspections and Maintenance on heavy jets including Boeing 747s.  They also perform major modifications to aircraft such as converting passenger jets into cargo jets for companies such as FedEx.  I have five years experience performing Phase Maintenance on heavy bombers thanks to the United States Air Force.  I understand the ebb and flow of a maintenance cycle, and I understand the attention to detail and commitment to high standards that work of this magnitude requires.  After talking with the MAE representative at the job fair, I am confident that I would be able to slide right into a comfortable, familiar atmosphere where I could really shine and possibly create a long term career home.  The only downside would be the commute from Pensacola everyday.  With the estimated salary however, I feel as though this can be overlooked.

The other company is Goodrich.  They have facilities in a number of locations, including Foley, Alabama.  Foley is a much shorter commute for me, and the job itself is still right up my alley.  Goodrich Foley assembles and maintains aircraft pylons and nacelles.  Looking at my resume, you would find that the majority of my experience is in nacelle maintenance.  The B-52H Bomber has four pods (pylons), each supporting two engines.  Each engine is covered by six segments of nacelle structure called cowling.  All totaled, that makes 40 separate pieces of structure per aircraft that requires inspection and repair every 450 flight hours.  Multiply that by 12 or more aircraft phases a year, and you can see how I have accumulated a lot of experience in nacelle maintenance over the past five years.  At this company I would most likely assemble brand new nacelle structures for various airframes.  Being able to create something with my hands and skills out of nothing, and getting payed well for it is a great prospect.

I plan on following up with at least MAE and Goodrich this coming week, and possibly looking into some of the other companies showcased at the job fair.  This was my first job fair, and I wish was able to have stayed for the many workshops that they had to offer.  Even without the workshops, this experience was very beneficial to me attaining my goal of continuing my career in the aerospace industry.

What would you do in my situation?  Could you handle a long daily commute?  Would you leave home for a job?  Share you thoughts with me.  Comment bellow, or send me a message on any of the social networks I am a member of.  Thanks for reading!

Where were you? Eight years later

Where were you on September 11, 2001?  I, like millions around the country was having a normal weekday.  I was in high school.  I remember finding out that something had happened in New York during home room.  We didn’t really think much of it at that time, and kept on with our day.  Very quickly, during the next period, that all changed.  I was in Law Studies if I remember correctly.  Our teacher came into the room a little late, couple minutes after the bell.  He turned on the TV and there was the CNN coverage.  At that point, I think that the second plane had just hit and people were starting to speculate.  I still hadn’t sunk in with me the specter of what was happening.  In fact, I was still trying to figure out what the hell the World Trade Center was.  I had never given it much thought, so I was having trouble for a second putting the World Trade Center as the twin towers.  For the rest of the day, I went from class to class where instead of doing school work, we were glued to TVs.

For those of you that were there too, help me fill in some gaps.  Did we go to the gym at some point for a bomb threat?  I don’t remember if that was part of that day, or if I am mixing memories of another day.

I remember that I went home after school and my Dad was there.  He is a truck driver and having him home at that time was really important.  He has taken loads to New York, D.C. and all over the country, so knowing he was no where near the danger was reassuring.

The rest of the day, my family and I stayed glued to the TV watching the coverage and speculating what this all meant.  On thing we knew for sure was that we [the USA] was going to war.

Something else I don’t remember; did we go to school the next day?  I don’t remember if I just stayed home or if we all stayed home.

Feel free to leave your comments, memories, and thoughts about the events of that tragic day bellow.

Never forget those whose lives were taken, and those who have given there lives to make it possible to be reading this now as a free person in a free country. Always remember.

Update (9-11-09 — 11:41 am)

Traci mentioned that the bomb threats started the next year.  I am going to take her word for it, still don’t remember.

Tori (@_Just_Tori_) and Traci both mentioned that there was school the next day. I still don’t remember if I went.  I think I stayed home.  Keep the comments coming!

The Job Hunt 2

Thankfully, at the time of this posting I am gainfully employed. I am currently working at a local Circle K gas station earning minimum wage. The biggest problems I have working there are that they do not pay enough for me to be able to live on my own and like most people, I do not want to work at a gas station for the rest of my life. That said, even with its downsides, Circle K is a good steady “in-between” job for me while I search for my next career job. I am an aircraft mechanic by trade, and a web/graphic designer by passion. I can also write, report, film and photograph pretty much anything if given the right tools. I have a lot of skills that could help me land a really good job somewhere. The only problem is finding that job. I recently applied for an aircraft maintenance job on NAS Pensacola, but was turned down for the position. I have also attempted to apply to Coca-Cola as a merchandiser and to yet another aircraft maintenance opening for a different company on the Navy base.

A good while back, one of my regular customers came into the store and told me about an open position for an airframes/hydraulic mechanic for aviation company L3 Vertex. This job would have been a good for me. It pays 25.50/hr, benefits, payed vacations, the whole nine yards. On top of that, I would have been working on the aircraft that Naval Aviators become pilots in, helicopters, and even on Blue Angels. The best part was I would have been working in the Blue Angels hanger doing a job that I truly love to do… work on airplanes.

My interview went pretty well. One of the interviewers was the father to some friends of mine from high school. I had the experience, the skills, and the willingness. What I didn’t have, however, was a collective bargaining agreement. Turns out that the L3 Vertex H-60 helicopter program is scaling back. That means that some of those employees would be moving, or leaving the company. Since there was an availability in the trainers section, my spot went to one of those guys. Bummer. At least I developed a report with the company that I feel left a good impression for latter down the road.

That opportunity closed, I tried to apply to Coca-Cola as a merchandiser. Merchandisers are the workers that come into a grocery store between shipments to restock and arrange product. They also deal with the grocers to order more stock and handle breakage and set up displays. Not a glamorous as working on Blue Angels, but still a step up from where I am now. I am still working on confirming whether or not my application is loaded into their system. Getting a hold of a human resources representative is proving to be rather difficult.

Going back to aircraft, I have also applied for a new posting with L3 Vertex, and hopefully this time they will choose me. Additionally, a new civil service contract for Air Force training aircraft is about to post job openings as well. That too would be on NAS Pensacola, just down the road from the L3 Vertex hangers. I will be applying for that as soon as it becomes available.

If all of the current opportunities turn out to be fruitless, I will once again start applying to print shops, and send out resumes to graphics studios. The truth is that even though that is where my passion is, I don’t have the certification, formal training and experience to be competitive. I have that with aircraft maintenance.

Whatever the case, I plan on continuing to search for my next career job. It is out there, waiting for me, and soon I feel that I will be out on my own once again.

Look, School is Back

School started back up here in Pensacola today.  I was on the roads when kids were being picked up by the busses.  I will keep this short and sweet.  Watch out!  Stop for ALL busses, and don’t speed!!! Let’s make sure all the kids get home safely today.

The Zoo Closed :0(

Today I was taking a look at the wiki site for Pensacola, FL, Pensapedia.com.  I was looking at events from Pensacola’s history on August 22.  Not much happened on this date, but after taking a glance at the site’s front page news section I noticed that something rather signifigant happened on August 16, 2009.  The Zoo Northwest Florida, also know as the Gulf Breeze Zoo, or just The Zoo, closed it’s gates, perhaps for good.  It is yet another sign of the times in a world where small business struggles and now a new flock on employees are jobless.

I feel very lucky to have been able to take my girlfriend and her kids to the zoo this past June before it closed.  It was a really fun day.  We saw all the animals, took pictures, went to the petting zoo, and took the train ride.  The only downside of the day was the Florida heat, but it didn’t stop us from having a great family day at the zoo.  That is something we may not be able to do in this area for a while.

Our zoo was small by the standards of most.  It was only 300 acres or so and had a various, if small, selection of animals to see.  It suffered from all kinds of problems in it’s recent history mostly after sustaining a lot of damage from Hurricane Ivan in 2004.  A place that had been operating in the red since it opened in 1984, the zoo was only given $59,000 from insurance to cover the $600,000 in damage.

After the hurricane, the zoo suffered from a series of animal deaths in 2007, animal escapes, loss of accredidation, and a high school fundraiser scam.

If with its pitfalls, the zoo was still a great place to spend the afternoon.  Cool animal exhibits, cheap prices, friendly staff, and a great family atmosphere are what I will remember from the zoo.

I hope that it will come back soon, and if not, I hope that a new zoo will open in our area.

Pensapedia.com — The Zoo Northwest Florida >> http://bit.ly/HO0XW

Penapedia Twitter >> @Pensapedia

Official Website >> The Zoo Northwest Florida

Photos from @_Just_Tori_

Changing Servers

All three readers of my blog, and whatever visitors to my website will soon notice that I will be moving over from my self hosted website to WordPress.com.  I would love to keep my self hosted site, but my financial situation will not allow me to for now.  It is more important for me to keep my two primary domain names, danielvining.com and thespeedzine.com.  I also want to register a couple more here soon so utilizing the free hosting features of WordPress.com is my best option for now.

The WordPress.com route does have it’s draw backs.  I will not be able to use some of the widgets that I would like to due to unauthorized codes within the WordPress.com framework. I also do not have as many choices on my theme, at least not without added cost.  Thankfully, I really like the theme I have chosen.

The most important thing above any of the visual elements is my content.  I know I don’t have the best content, but I like to have a place where I can share my thoughts, ramblings, opinions, experiences and anything random that I want to.

I am done saying the famous blogger’s failing quote that I am going to try my best to post everyday, or every week, and keep up with my blog more regularly.  That is just setting myself up to look like a dummy.  I have been around this technology to know that I will have phases where I will be blog crazy, and times where I will all but forget that it exists.  Life doesn’t always afford me the time to work on this site, and sometimes I am just not into it.  As addicted as I am to social media, blogging is not that high on my list.

This is however, the place where I can come and go as I choose, write almost anything I want, when I want… and I am happy with that.

Psst….. Store Inspection Tomorrow

“Psst…. Store inspection tomorrow.” That was a status response from my friend and co-worker Heather on Myspace from last night. I didn’t give it much thought, since I really haven’t had to deal with inspections working in the middle of the night. This time, however, would be a different case.

When I got to work, I was greeted with a sizable stack of boxes, cases and totes left untouched from the morning shipment from our grocery vender. Mind you, I helped receive that shipment some 15 hours earlier. A good deal of the order was taken care of, but there was still a lot left. I guess day shift got busy and couldn’t finish, and I wouldn’t expect swing shift to have time to do anything. Ok, no big deal. I go into the office to clock in, and there is a new note from the boss to 3rd shift.

Our boss, for that matter our store, likes to leave notes to us on a semi-regular basis giving us tasks to do. This note was basically a carbon copy of the checklists we already work by, but it had a few extras as well. Most notably, finishing the grocery order, scrubbing all the cabinetry inside and out, and that our boss’ boss’ boss would be inspecting the store in the morning. It said that if the store wasn’t perfect, then we would receive disciplinary action. Kinda annoying to be honest. I feel like if I just do my job, and do it right, I shouldn’t have anything to worry about. It is rather irritating to have people down your back, worrying about things to the point of making you nervous to. I don’t care about the inspection because I know that if we just work like we should we will be just fine. At any rate, we had what had become a rather long list of tasks to accomplish during the night.

Erick, my partner in crime for the better part of the last three months showed up, and we started to rock and roll. By the time he showed up for his shift, I already had a large chunk of my tasks either done or started. About 1 am, a man showed came into the store and headed toward the bathroom. I said hello and turned my head down. I then realized that it was my boss, in street clothes and he was headed straight for my register. Of course. At the time he choose to count down mine, I hadn’t dropped any money in a while. Opps. I got a write-up for having way too much money in my drawer, mostly due to the 70 bucks in ones I didn’t realize I had.

So we spent the majority of the night working our tails off with the boss there too. Every so often our paths would cross and something would be added to the list of things to do, making for a long night. Our night got even longer when three customers decided that they wanted to smell our selection of fragrances and put a scent cloud in the store. Erick and I both have allergies. The smell burned my eyes a little, but I had taken Clariton before work so I was okay. Erick, other the other hand, was a mess. Blood shot red eyes, trouble breathing, dizziness. He ended up being out of it for about 2 and half hours. That back logged the whole night, and put a rush on us getting our tasks done in time. We pulled it together and by the time I left, I felt like the store was in awesome shape. I think the inspection will go just fine, at least on our end.

Wow, what a night. They aren’t usually that busy. We got a lot done, and did a good job at what we did, distractions and all. I felt good about what we had accomplished. Life is Good.