Chris​Hubbs​.com

I got the letter from the FAA today that officially notifies me that I will be a DER candidate pursuant to my attendance at an orientation seminar in February. Woohoo! It took about 7 months to get from “here’s my application” to “you’re approved”, but at least we’re there now.

Monday afternoon found me traveling to Wichita, KS, for my DER interview with the FAA. The wisdom that is American Airlines decided that the best way for me to get from Cedar Rapids to Wichita was via Dallas-Fort Worth. Hey, at least it gave me lots of time to cram on the plane. None the less, I made it to Wichita around 7 PM, got my rental car, and found my way around.

The interview was Tuesday morning, and wasn’t nearly as brutal as I had feared and been warned. It lasted a whole 30 minutes. It went very well. Then I had a couple of hours to kill before my flight back to CR. Fortunately, I was able to locate a Borders bookstore which allowed me to easily kill my time, and at the same time pick up a couple things for Becky and Laura. OK, so I picked up something for me, too - Johnny Cash’s The Man Comes Around CD. Good stuff.

I was scheduled to have a 4-hour layover at Chicago O’Hare on my trip back. Happily, though, I was able to catch a standby seat on a flight 3 hours early, which got me home closer to 4 PM than 7 PM. It was also a nice suprise to walk up to my departure gate and see my friend Steve sitting there waiting for the same flight! He had been in Vegas on business for a week, and just happened to be booked on that flight. We didn’t get adjoining seats on the flight, but it was fun to be able to chat at O’Hare and then when we got back to CID.

My only gripe of the trip was the little bitty regional jets that we flew in on each leg of the flight; one of those little Embraer jobs that has 3 seats across. Too small. You have to duck just to get in. One of these days I’ll fly somewhere in something big enough that I can stand up straight in the aisle. :-)

Well, so I still haven’t received the official “you’re invited for an interview” letter from the FAA. However, I got a phone call yesterday from them, wanting to schedule my DER interview. It’s gonna be in Wichita on December 13th at 9:00 AM.

I guess I should start studying up for the interview. I don’t know how much they’re gonna expect me to know, and how much it’s just a chance to have them get a feel for me. Hopefully more of the latter than the former. :-)

I got a letter from the FAA today inviting me to the DER seminar down in Wichita in January. Strangely enough, I still haven’t received a letter from them telling me that I’ve been accepted to come for an interview to become a DER. I’m hoping maybe that’ll come yet this week some time. Exciting times! Now I’ll have to get my books out and study some more for the interview. Gotta learn the alphabet soup that is our federal aviation regulations. :-)

Today was the third and final day of the conference here in Norfolk. The conference itself was uneventful; heard a few presentations on the committees that are meeting to develop new guidelines for software certification. I’m sure I’d bore every single one of my readers if I actually described the details of the presentations, so I’ll stop. :-)

After the conference, I walked over to St. Pauls Episcopal church, just a few blocks away. St. Paul’s has met on that particular location since 1639. Parts of the current building date back to 1690 or so. There are a bunch of graves surrounding the church; some of those grave markers date back to the 1690’s as well. It’s quite a fascinating thing to visit a graveyard anywhere; but in the midwest the veteran markers we see usually commemorate WW I or WW II, or in rare cases the Civil War. In this graveyard there were several markers of folks who were Revolutionary War veterans. Too cool. There is also a small cannonball (it looked to be about grapefruit-sized) still embedded in the bricks of the building that was fired by the British back during the Revolutionary War. I love the east coast of the US for all the history. I can’t imagine how blown-away I’d be by European history if I ever get over there.

Did a bit of shopping after the church visit (hey, gotta pick up *something* for the wife and kiddo while I’m here), ate dinner (Max & Erma’s again… tasty!) and headed back to the hotel for a soak in the hot tub and now Sportscenter on TV. Ah… nice to relax. Suppose I should turn it in now so I can get up early in the morning; oughtta be checked out of here by 7 or so for a 9:10 AM flight.

That’s the report from Norfolk. I’ll try to remember to post some pictures when I get back home.

Another day in Norfolk, more of the conference. Fun fun. Today was “breakout sessions”, which means they had 4 different sessions going at the same time on different topics. I attended mostly the “policy and guidance” sessions, which were an overview/intro to the tasks of a DER. Once again, they were mostly presented by engineers who apparently have lousy public speaking skills. I’d better watch out; if I get a few years of DER experience under my belt, they’ll start asking me to present!

The other thing that has surprised me a bit is just how small a community it is. The conference was limited to 300 participants; that is basically all of the software DERs in the country. For the most part, they’ve been in these roles for a long time, so most everybody knows everybody. It will take a little bit of time for me to fit into and gain the respect of that group.

After the conference was over, I shelled out my $17 and took a 3-hour tour of the Norfolk harbor. It was pretty cool. We saw the huge container ships, a whole bunch of destroyers and missile boats, a few submarines (well, just the tops of the submarines), and then an aircraft carrier. The pictures don’t do justice to just how immense that ship is.

Got back from the tour, had a late dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack (I know, it’s lousy chain food, but it was the closest restaurant to the hotel and I was tired and hungry), and then came back to my room and talked to Becky and then my folks on the phone. I should really be getting to bed… it’s nearly 12:30 here. But I’m still on CDT, which means it only feels like 11:30, which is about my normal bedtime. Oh well, the conference doesn’t start until 8 in the morning, which will give me back my hour… unless I want breakfast. I haven’t eaten a breakfast yet this week… slept through them all. Maybe tomorrow.

Today was the first day of the DER software conference (excuse me, the official title is the “FY2005 Software/Complex Electronic Hardware Standardization Conference”) here in Norfolk, VA. (It’s at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott, if you’re really interested.) It started out pretty boring today. Most of today’s topics were on the certification of Complex Electronic Hardware (i.e. FPGAs, ASICs, PLDs, etc). Since I’m mainly a software guy, this hardware stuff wasn’t that interesting.

I found that the other danger of having an engineering conference with presentations by engineers is that, for the most part, engineers have lousy public speaking skills. The one presentation I thought I’d really be interested in was at the end of the day; the guy works for Honeywell (OK, they’re my competitor, but I can forgive him that) and has been a DER for 15 years. He was giving “perspectives on being a software DER”. Now, I’ll give him credit, the material was insightful. Unfortunately, his presentation skills were sub-par. He basically read/mumbled the content from his slides in such a quick, low tone that most of us wouldn’t have understood him if it wasn’t that the text were on the screen. Why is it that the good engineers can’t have some social skills, too?

I wandered around the waterfront plaza here in Norfolk during the lunch hour. After the conference finished for the day, I jumped into that shiny gray Mustang (sweet rental car!) and headed out to Virginia Beach (about 15 minutes away). I’d never been to the Atlantic Ocean before. I found an empty spot on the beach (a tough trick when it’s 100+ degrees outside) and just sat and absorbed for a while. There’s just something incredible about the ocean; the immenseness of it all, I suppose. The continual pounding of the waves, nothing but water as far as the eye can see; the knowledge that if you head out that direction, the next land you’ll come to is Europe.

Back to the hotel to get cleaned up, then I walked over to a restaurant called Max & Erma’s for a late supper. It was nearly 9:00, and the place was pretty empty. I had just talked to Becky on the phone and was feeling kinda lonely sitting in a booth all by myself staring out the window at the cars on the street. On the upside, though, I had one of the nicest servers I’ve ever had; she was very friendly, service was excellent. I ordered the “Garbage Burger”, which came with Bacon, 4 kinds of cheese (American, Cheddar, Swiss, Mozzarella), onions, mushrooms, guacamole and marinara. It was tasty. It was nice to walk the 4 blocks back to the hotel; unfortunately, it was so swelteringly hot that I wasn’t motivated to walk any further.

The one task I should still complete tonight is to prepare some slides for Sunday; I’m teaching Sunday School, and we’re discussing stem cell research. I think I pretty much know what I want to say, I just have to get it compiled and put some pretty slides together. But I know how to do that. :-)

It never fails. I start working on a not-approved-yet-but-probably-OK change request today, and after about an hour of code modification the requirements guy sticks his head into my cubicle.

“Hey Chris, don’t know if you’re working on those changes yet, but they should all be OK except for Oil Pressure - there’s some big changes coming for that one.”

What have I been working on for the last hour? Oil Pressure. :-)