This is just an announcement that my blog is migrating to a new home.  It will still be public, and I invite everyone of you to please follow me to this new home.  The URL is flyinghawkers.com/trovan.

Your patience during this time of transition is appreciated.

So, my one year anniversary as a blogger was March 12.  I knew it was coming up, but I didn’t realize I had missed it until today.  Oops.

Oh well, it was to be a lonely celebration anyway.

To be totally honest, I have toyed recently with making my blog private.  Creating more of a journal than a regular blog.  However, I fear that this would put a nail in the coffin of my writing (which is already dying grotesquely).

I love writing in my blog.  I love putting my thoughts out there to be shared by the world.  The world, however, doesn’t reciprocate.  And I wonder, would making my blog more exclusive create more motivation to write, or would it kill it completely?

I think, for the most part, that I have found a voice for my online writing.  I have been striving for a long time to make my blog sound like me, instead of a high school essay on photosynthesis.  It’s hard to do, for me at least.

My saddest days are when I write what I feel is blogging gold, only to find that no one reads it.  Or when I share some emotional sparkle from my past, it isn’t even glanced at.  If blogs were like car wrecks, I would have lots of readers, or, at least lots of people slowing down as they passed, hoping to see a corpse or something.

I have some good plans for my blog, in the near future.  I have some short stories I pan on sharing.  They’re original works that aren’t really very good, but I enjoy writing them, so I might as well make you suffer as well.

I also have more sordid details from my past to share.  Things such as old relationships and horrible battles I’ve fought.  I may even explain the awesome brutality of the car accident that turned my face into a Picasso.  If you abandon me, you will miss this wonderfully juicy blogness.

I promise something exciting for tomorrow’s update.  With pictures.

I have decided that having air-traffic controllers train air-traffic controllers is a bad idea.

Then again, who else could?

Here’s the problem:  Air-traffic controllers have very specific personality make-ups.  They are, almost without exception, controlling and impatient.  If you do not immediately grasp a concept, it is your fault, not theirs.  There is never any excuse for deviation.  Ever.  And not just if you are a pilot.  Air-traffic controllers seem to have pretty active god complexes.

Pilots have god complexes too.  That explains the ongoing battle for domination.  It’s Zeus vs. Hades, battle royal.  Which side is which depends on your point of view.

Ahh…but, I digress.

We, as air-traffic controllers in training, have been chosen for the exact same personality traits that our predecessors have.  We are impatient, intolerant, intelligent, and incontinent.  Well, maybe not that last one.  Not most of the time, anyway.

We don’t make good teachers, or good learners, and we butt heads on occasion.  Sometimes, too very humorous effect, if you are not the one butting heads with the instructor.

So, here I sit, a warm bowl of Stove Top stuffing in my lap.

Tauni and I have spent very few nights apart in our marriage.  And this trip alone will more than double the count.

It’s a little saddening, and a lot lonely.  And they just left me a few hours ago.

Man, are we pathetic or what?

We have kind of built up our entire lives around our family being everything.  So, I guess it is really no surprise that separating us from each other is like a part of yourself is missing.  A lot of who we are is tied into each other.  And I don’t just mean Tauni.  The little’uns too.

To be honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Sometimes I see the single folk and their party scene.  It does have it’s glamor and appeal.  I almost wish I could share a little in their fun.  But I gave it up for something far more fulfilling.  And I’m glad I did.

Now, with my family gone, is the perfect opportunity to go out and party with the guys.  But I don’t want too.

Way back when Tauni and I were engaged, I went out with my best friend while she was on a trip with her family.  It was a horrible night.  All I wanted was to be with her.  That is still all I want.

Speed back to my my love, and my little sweeties.  I miss you.

In the meantime, have fun, and lots of it.  And bring me back something nice.

Just before my sophomore year in High school started I was roped in to running Cross Country, because my older sister was doing it, and my mom and dad wanted me there with her.  Training started a few weeks before school started, so we started running and lifting weights every day.

It was kind of amazing.  I was a really skinny kid to begin with, but over a two week period I lost 20 pounds.  At that point, I was more of a broom handle.  But then, over the following few months, I gained all of that back, and more.  And it was all muscle.

Some of the friends I made that summer before high school remained some of my best friends all through high school.  Suffering together can forge some pretty tight bonds, I guess.

I never got to be particularly fast at running.  I was pretty good, and one of the top runners on the team.  But, it was a new team, so that wasn’t really saying a whole lot.

Cross Country races, for those of you who don’t know, are 5 kilometers, or 3.2 miles, long.  That is a long time to mentally battle yourself.  And while you are running, it can seem like an eternity.

On day, about halfway through the season.  We were having a race against another school on our home course.  It was a hot day, and I hadn’t felt completely up to racing that day.  But, after school ended, with the rest of my team, I went and got ready.  We ran a few miles and did some stretching to warm up.

Then, the race started.  I ran as normal, my body working like the well trained teenage machine that it was.

But soon, my mind was ready to quit.  Your legs and lungs and arms get sore pretty fast in a long race.  Then you have to push through it.  That day, my mind wasn’t in it, and I quit the race with less than a mile left.  I walked back to the finish line and fed my disappointed coach a line about not being able to breathe.

The next day at practice I saw on the team scoreboard that the coach kept a big DNF next to my name.  Mine wasn’t the only one on the board.  It wasn’t even the only one for that race.  But, it stabbed through my heart.  DID NOT FINISH.

I tried to pretend like it didn’t bother me, but I was ashamed.

I could have completed the race.  Maybe my time wouldn’t have been as good as usual.  Maybe it would have been my worst time ever.  Anything would have been better than a DNF.

After that day, I never again lost a race.  I finished every one.  And that means I won, no matter what place I took.  I finished out my sophomore and junior years running, and no additional DNFs appeared by my name on the chart.

But that one…that one DNF…it brought me shame every time I saw it.

By the way, if you click here, you can see my name at the very bottom under the best times for the old course (3rd and 10th places)

Today I feel much better about my future skills as an Air-Traffic Controller.  After work yesterday, I almost stopped at Burger King to pick up a job application.

I recieved some praises, and a lot of criticism.  Which is a long shot from how things went yesterday.

Yesterday was quite depressing.

Each day we work with a different instructor, all under the assumption that this will help us learn more.  My instructor yesterday was loud and blunt.  He freely dished out critique but was slow to congratulate success.  So, despite doing relatively well, I ended the day quite depressed.

And it made me dread the next day for the first time since I started with the FAA.

However, after today’s successes, and despite my many failures, I am excited to return to work once more.  I didn’t even kill anyone today.   But, I did have to planes crossing a fix (a point over the ground) at the same altitude just 2 minutes apart.

On top of all that, we got out of training a few hours early to go the the “Welcome to the ATO” meeting.  It was an orientation type PowerPoint presentation.  As soon as it started my eyelids turned to lead.

Oh, and today was pizza day.  I almost forgot.  Pizza day is the day that training managers from different facilities come and visit the trainees that will soon be working for them.  My training manager came last month, and skipped out on us this month.  I still got the free pizza though, which is all that really matters.

So, today was my first day of actual air traffic control simulation. Up until now it has all been book learning and theory.

But today…today we got our hands right down into the crap bucket. Well, virtual crap bucket. Now actual aircraft were harmed in the process, but lots of virtual airspace was busted, lines were crossed, wrong radio frequencies were given. I said ‘nine’ instead of ‘niner’. A lot.

Overall, it was a pretty humbling and discouraging day. And as bad as I had it, there were some that made out a lot worse. By the end of the day, everyone’s deodorant had been brutally tested. Visible pit sweat was a common sight by the end of the day.

Good news though…we do it again tomorrow…and the next day…and the next…

Ughhhh…

At least I didn’t create any head on collisions, like I did on the pre-hire aptitude test.

It has been a while since I’ve posted anything on my blog. Tauni has been practically begging me to post something for the last few days.

I have tried. I sat down and started several posts, all of them ending up in my drafts folder, incomplete.

Lately I have had a little writers block when it comes to blogging.

You see, my life lately has been a series of tests and studying, for the most part. I still spend lots of wonderful time with my girls, but I feel Tauni covers that subject pretty well in her blog.

Now, to say that what I have been doing lately is boring is only a half truth. Actually, my class has seemed almost sitcom-ish since I started the second phase of my training.

We have the smart mouthed New Jerseyian of Italian decent, the token black girl, and the nerdy know-it-all. I’m not sure where I would fall in this show. I would like to think that I would be the protagonist, but I have a feeling that I am one of the nameless extras, just there to fill a chair.

In contrast to that, I am finally starting to feel like a real player in my own life story. For several years now I have been somewhat adrift.

Years ago, before I was married with kids, even before I was out of High School, I made a big decision about my life. I had always dreamed of being a professional pilot, like my dad. But, after a significant amount of reflection on the subject, I decided it was not for me.

I had an even bigger dream. More important than my career, I wanted to be a good husband and father. I wanted to be home every night with my family, instead of being alone on the road for days or weeks at a time, leaving my loved ones without me.

I didn’t yet have a family of my own, but they were already the most important thing to me.

That created a problem. I no longer had any idea what I wanted to do with my life, vocationally. It was important to me to make enough money to support my family, but after that, I had no real aspirations.

I tried several different courses of study at college, prolonging my education by years. I struggled through classes that did not interest me to prepare for a career I did not want.

It was all suffering. I always felt adrift, like I was in a little raft with no paddles.

I loved aviation. I loved flying. That is what I wanted to do. I tried my hand at several jobs, and even broke into a profession or two.

At one point I almost became an officer in the Secret Service. I ended up dropping that option because I would have to spend about 5 months in training away from my family.

Well, to make a long blog short, ATC is finally somewhere that makes me feel like I belong. My personality, interests, and talents are well fitted to the occupation. And, more than anything, I enjoy it.

And, even more than that, I get to be home with my family every night, or day, depending on my shift.

*If I happen to fail out of training, this post will disappear and we will pretend like it never happened. Got it?

**The title of this blog means (roughly) “It has been a while, dude” in Portuguese.

I just saw this video for the first time.  I know it has probably been on the internet for a while, but I’m slow.  Watch it anyway and we can all laugh at the retardation of some people (other than at me, for a change).

The other day during lunch I was unable to secure a seat at the cool table.  So I settled for one close.  Maybe some of the coolness would transfer via inhalation, or radiation.

I didn’t.

But we, my nerdy classmates and I, were able to meet an interesting fellow.

You see, when we sat down, a lonely man was already in residence.  We did our best to ignore him, but he soon found his way into our conversation.

I never got his name, but he is a technician that repairs navigational aids for the FAA, here for some additional training.  He has been in the industry for a long time.

In the FAA, there is a big push, however underfunded, to move towards better technology for air-traffic management.  Better tracking, better collision avoidance systems, better overall coordination.  And, most of all, less employees.

I asked this man if he was worried about his job disappearing within the next 20 years, or so.

He flipped out.

My question was founded in the possibility of a sharp decrease in the need for Air-traffic Controllers, once the technology is in place.  Most of the navigational equipment would be in space or in teh aircraft themselves, not on the ground.

These ground based devices are what he repairs.

Somehow it launched a several minute long tirade about how the FAA will never replace the current system.  Never.  They can’t do it.

Apparently we have reached the apex of technology here.  We have the iPhone, what else could we need?  Right?

I mentioned, perhaps to stir the pot with my new buddy, that a new set of radar programs are going live soon in En Route Air-traffic Control Centers all over the country.

“It will fail!  It won’t work!”

It does work.  It has been in testing for at least a year, probably much longer.

And, yeah, they are upgrading from 50 year old technology to 20 year old technology.  So, it’s been a long time coming.

In retrospect, I have decided that this man is in fearful denial of progress.  He knows his job will disappear one day.  His beloved VORs will be shut down.  He won’t be qualified to work on satellites or other more sophisticated equipment.

While, I do understand the fear of obsolescence, why not embrace progress, rather than shun it?

Paper checks, fax machines, analog TV…why do these atrocities need to continue?

Why don’t we have video cell phones yet?  We should.  I want one.

If you roll with it, you won’t get left behind.