Blogging like a rock star!

It's been a good news/bad news day. Well, lets get the abd out of the way. It doesn't look like I'll get to see Susan this weekend. I was looking forward to spending some time with my lady, but for various reasons we're hoping to get together for a full weekend in a couple weeks. I do miss her and it sucks not gettign to see as often as i would like (or constantly).

OK, the good... I had a really nice day at work today. It was my last day of classroom training. The whole week has been focused on learning the flight planning software we use, and today wa spretty mucha free for all. The morning was spent just running random flight plans and seein if we could make the new "test" either crash or just figuring out if there were any issues or function we didnt understand. Then, the whole class, which consisted of the 4 or us normal dispatch types plus some IT types who do some of the tech support for our flight planning system and thought it would be a good idea to know what it does, went out for lunch to celebrate Julie's birthday. SO after a fun mexican lunch, we headed back to the classroom, and we found out we could go get some sim time if we so choose.

THe instructor being the laid back person he is realizes that getting time in a flight simulator at Brown is an accomplishment, and gave us a 2 hour class break to go play.

And play we did. If you ever get the chance, fly a full motion flight simulator. It's like a video game, only with full surrond sound, full motion, and full realism. I went first, we each got a take off and a short cruise around the Kentuckiana area, then they lined us up on approach and we got a landing. Between the four of us, 2 people have (or had) their pilots' licenses, I had lots of tim in a jumpseat and a couple landing attempts in a sime a few years back, and Julie pretty much took some flying lessons back in high school.

I managed to get the plane in the air, which is the easy part really. And then did a flyby of one of the taller buildings in town with the occasional warnings for over doing turns or flying to close to soiid objects. Then, the landing. Like i said, we were lined up on final approach and flew it in. Well.. most the way. Initially the auto pilot flew in, and we're only suppose to run the throttles. Unfortunately, the airplane wasn't quite set up for my trip down to the runway and Auto was not going to where it should be going. So it was all on me. ANd I must say, I impressedmyself. I didn;t crush the gear. I didn't overshoot. I didn't miss the concrete. And unlike last time i played ina sim, I was pretty much on my own (last time I ha da pilot running the throttles and backing me up). I won't claim it o be a pretty approach. SOme would even say it ws "unstable". To et a good idea, watch the beginning of Top Gun where the guy freaking out was landing the plane.. it probably looked a lot like that. The guy who was runing the sim swears I've had a lot of time doing this, beleiving my swerving on final was intentional. It weren't

So, I was the apparently the only one who could fly and play with the throttles simultaneously... yay for multitasking.

And even better, today was the last day of classroom training for me. I start 6 weeks of OJT next week. Thats something to look forward to. And then the big test to see if I'm competent. ANd I'll be stressing about that later. So look for it!

I saw an article on Yahoo! earlier about 10 little known jobs. Apparently blogging qualifies as a job. I have to ask, where's my money??? I gots to get paid!!! I want to blog for cash. Seriously, this can be a job?? And i wasted 8 years of college.

I'll be around Atlanta this weekend, stop by and say hi.