Random Thoughts

Preview for documentary on space-based solar power, aimed at high school students. Our robot arm (and its autonomous capabilities, thank you very much!) has a couple of seconds of air time.

The FREND program did not actually address assembly of large-scale structures in space, but something that looks like the FREND arm will probably play a role in that, when we get there. (Unless they go with self-assembling structures.)

The preview didn't address some of the concerns I've heard aired about space-based solar power, namely, what will beaming that much energy through the atmosphere do to it? I don't know if that's because 1) it's only a preview, 2) those concerns have been addressed or debunked elsewhere, or 3) it doesn't fit the goal of the documentary of getting HS students interested in math and science.

I suppose I could go find the NRLers in the video and ask them...

I've made some very small changes to my office, per my last post about that. I bought some brass upholstery tacks (about $3 worth) to use as pushpins, and they actually work well and add something. Brass paperclips ($2) have replaced the old tin ones; I don't use them that often, but now they sit in their little jar right by my monitor and give me something shiny to look at. I've covered my Government Ugly metal bookshelves (with drop-down doors) with printouts of Phil Foglio's clank sketches, done on cream-colored paper (< $1). There's a color photo of our real robot arm right in the middle of all the sketches. :)

But the biggest changes have all been free. Since I spend most of the day on my computer, I've been collecting Mac icons that fit my theme. My Xterm is now a wooden library drawer with an "X" on it (it's really "for" Mac OSX but who cares?) MS Office is three bubbling beakers in blue (Word), green (Excel), and yellow (PowerPoint). Mail is a retro radar box, Terminal is Futurama's "What If" machine, and Preview is a pinhole camera. TextEdit has a fountain pen. Firefox is a little clank, more scifi than steampunk but only if you look too closely. I have a black steamer trunk for my backup drive and the cushy red chair from the Matrix for my computer. I've changed the desktop background to a Cordovan leather red.

It ain't as cool as this stuff but it's something. :)

Oh... so the problem's not necessarily in my software, it's in my testing software, but I'll have to spend a few hours fixing the POS testing software to make sure my real software is working.

When you subscribe to a message, see, it's like a magazine: it keeps coming in and piling up even if you're not reading it. Only in this case, there isn't an especially easy way to glance at the covers and realize that the top six are all outdated and throw them away. Grr...

No, seriously. I'm not asking in a snarky, "You can't handle it!" sort of way. I'm just wondering how the workplace might - might! - be different if the normative sex could have babies.

I mean, imagine if humans had a mating season. Don't you think most non-essential businesses would close down? Nobody's mind would be on work; it'd probably be an ancient and ingrained habit that we all ignore everything but food, shelter, childcare and mating during (say) a month in the spring. And as we developed culture and civilization, we might enshrine a long holiday around that time. And the college kids would agitate on behalf of the oppressed working poor, who had to take jobs during the mating season and were thus deprived of their own best chances to reproduce. And the entrenched upper classes would sniff that there were plenty of other hours in the day for mating, even if one did have to work for six or eight of them.

The sense I get right now is that "You got yourself pregnant. Many of our other workers, male and female both, have avoided this. Now, while we are willing to bend a certain amount to accomodate you, because we like the idea of a new generation paying into Social Security and we're not total bastards, the norm is non-pregnancy and our rules go to upholding the norm. You're a special case and we can't go around making exceptions for special cases."

A disclaimer: the people I personally work with have actually been great, and I think if I'd asked my boss for some under-the-table considerations - like if I'd had truly wretched morning sickness or something - I might have been able to get them. I mean the official rules, which put a week of contagious stomach trouble from the flu in with two months of non-contagious stomach trouble from the baby. And a lot of people get bristly if it's suggested that these two things should be treated differently - that pregnant people deserve some sort of "special" treatment, because it's not fair. You feel sick, you use sick leave. Period. Heck, I admit a certain sympathy with that position myself. It's certainly easier.

I just have been wondering if our definitions of "fair" and "normal" and "special" would be different if men, or men and women both, could get pregnant.

You would think that, it being a not-uncommon occurrence, maternity leave would be fairly simple to arrange.

You would be wrong.

First, there is the Sick Leave Question. To wit: how much, if any, sick leave may one use? The commonly accepted wisdom in federal circles is, "Six weeks." But the regulations jump up and down to say that you may only use sick leave for "disability."

The third or fourth government website you hit finally lets you know that most doctors will consider the six weeks after delivery to qualify as "disabled." Oh, OK. I've asked for a medical note to document this.

So, first you burn up all your sick leave, then all your annual leave. Then you may finish out that six week period by using advanced sick leave. No, you can't have six weeks of sick leave advanced, unless you were totally out of leave to begin with. You just get enough to finish the six weeks.

Now, there's a leave donor program, where my co-workers can pitch me an hour or two to help dig me out of sick leave debt. I believe that I qualify (for the leftover bit of the six weeks) but the personnel admin does not. I must arm myself with Paperwork and go and see her.

After that, it's (relatively) simple: advanced annual leave (as much as I'd earn between now and the end of the year) and when that's gone, leave without pay until my 12 weeks of Family Medical Leave are gone.

The spreadsheet became necessary to track which kind of leave was being burned when, in the first or second six week period, and what was happening to the leave that I was earning even as I was spending other leave.

Whew.

I mean, I'm glad I have leave to spend, but damn, why does no one seem to be able to agree on if or how I can spend it?

Check it out: AP Science covers Alan Schultz at the Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence. I wasn't on the hide-and-seek project, but I've watched them do that demo.