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Update for the week ending 7/22/2006 I came in for the swing and took a few minutes to finish up the computer on the 4th floor. It is now available to you complete with WiFi Internet connection. There were a number of reasons that I set it up that way but the two main ones are
That being said, please, please, please – while in the cab – realize that EVERYTHING you type, look at, download, whatever is being looked at by big brother. The agency has installed software controls that enable them to watch your every key-stroke. If you don’t mind them knowing the account number and PIN to your online bank account, then feel free to use the cab computer for that purpose. I had a conversation with a fellow FacRep regarding some utterly stupid things his atm is doing. We exchanged ideas and, to say the least, his battle is on-going. Tuesday was the day that ZLA lost power to their radar, radios, landlines, everything. Everything was quite weird to say the least and, when everything started coming back online, it didn’t take long to get those that had been waiting “out of town”. Steve wrote a letter to the editor that got published in the 7/24 edition of the LA Times that talked a bit about the outage. Good work, Steve. I got word that evening that everyone that had a tentative selection for transfer had been sent a firm offer letter. I heard that mine for SCT was for 12/7/08 with about a 12-13% increase in salary. This was a big surprise to me as I hadn’t expected the agency to offer salary increases to transferees. I am seriously considering accepting the offer. I’m not completely clear regarding who is selected for where and when, because DD was sick last week but I’ll find out this week. On Wednesday everything was going good, we had adequate staffing, so I took some time to do some work for you, the Local. I exchanged a couple e-mails and looked through some draft schedules. I was informed of a meeting to take place at 1100 at the tower regarding our R-ACDs (Remote-ARTS Color Displays) so, of the 3 hours and 34 minutes time that I spent exclusively representing you, I spent roughly two of them doing “NATCA Time”. As is turns out with the R-ACDs, we are on hold pending the installation of the FTI (Federal Telecommunications Infrastructure) lines. These are dedicated data lines that handle critical information like ARTS and Radar. This install is “scheduled” for the first of October. No one really knows if this will or will not happen. If it does, then the R-ACD install will follow shortly thereafter. If it doesn’t, I told them that they will have to wait for the middle of January because of Holiday schedules. When this wheel does start to turn, we will have two controllers attend a day-long cadre training session and then those two will train the rest of the controllers and supes. During the training, Back-fill Overtime is authorized and will be scheduled as soon as we know when the equipment is to be installed. If you’d like to be cadre, let me know. Speaking of R-ACDs, Whiteman will have their’s up and fully operational on the 27th or 28th. They don’t know what their position symbol will be yet but we’ll find out soon enough. I finished Thursday and my Thursday night mid without incident but staffing was slim. This concerns me that we seem to be operating shorter and shorter. If you feel that we’re operating too short on a shift, please let me know. My cell phone number is 310-696-1166. On Saturday, we had a power failure that knocked out our ASR-9. The good news, delay-wise, is that we were already heavily flow-restricted so that the impact to traffic was fairly minimal. I didn’t know about this until 7/24 – if something like this happens, please call me! This is virtually the same thing that happened to critical systems at ZLA and something needs to be done about it. I’m just two days behind already . . . That’s it for now. Be safe. JK |
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