F + 4 Days Furlough Report
October 5, 2013 Leave a comment
Another note of explanation for the non-NASA folks: The time stamp in the title stands for Furlough (F) plus ‘x’ days. At NASA, we put a clock on every important event. Proximity to launch dates for spacecraft is tracked as L (for Launch) minus ‘x’ months/weeks/days. If there’s something significant happening counting down toward an event, we put up a clock in mission control to track it. We track mission elapsed time, time to morning and evening crew conferences, elapsed time on spacewalks, and dozens of other things. If something can be counted up to or down from, we’re your agency to do that. So, these reports come out after 24 more hours elapses on the furlough clock.
Yes, I know I’m a dork, but it’s been ingrained in me for 14 years.
Furlough beard – now with 100% less neck beard!
UPDATE: We’ll get back pay! Congress, I dislike you all just a little less right now!
Duration of Furlough: 4 days
Work not done: Friday, October 4th was going to be a day off for me regardless of the shutdown. With the local school district having an in-service day, our kids were home, my wife had to work, and I was on Dad duty. Fridays are usually my most lightly scheduled day of the week and I try to turn my attention to what I can do to make improvements to our organization. Over the past few months, I’ve used this quiet time to revamp our branch meetings to align with the concepts outlined in Death by Meetings, drafted a career progression white paper to follow our directorate “Top Gun” philosophy – the best flight controllers train the next generation of flight controllers – to help our young engineers understand their potential career paths, and pushed to modernize our knowledge capture practices by using blogs and wikis to share project status information and better store all the information our flight controller and instructor teams need to do their jobs. I try to use Friday time to make us more efficient so that we can spend our time on what we really want to do – flying spaceships and exploring space. But as I said, I was planning to take the day off anyway, so in the end, I didn’t miss out on much yesterday.
Outlook for Continuing Resolution passage by Congress: Still poor.
I make more forward progress on the stair climber at the gym than Congress is making towards finding a solution. That this could be over if Boehner allowed a vote on a clean CR is incredibly aggravating.
Have I showered today? Yes! Date night with the wife. I’ll even have to clean up the scruff a little. Don’t panic though! I’ll just be getting rid of some neck beard so I don’t look like this. Although I have to say my wife is a far greater threat to the existence of furlough beard than my job (or lack thereof).
Chores done/Wife-Requested Tasks: I get a belated birthday pass!
Video games played: Injustice: Gods Among Us.
Exciting news – Kirby’s Return to Dreamland is on its way from Gamefly! I try to get some games that the girls might enjoy.
Mood: Brief moments of relief surrounded by extended periods of head-shaking.
My status was officially changed on Friday at 5 pm from non-excepted to on-call! The agency has decided it needs to press ahead with the Increment 38 Flight Readiness Review, so I have to come into work for a couple hours next week to make sure we’ve got our piece of that puzzle pulled together. I’m not going to get paid for those few hours until the shutdown is over, but still.
Furlough Fun Fact: Federal workers on furlough cannot take leave (vacation time) to compensate for the furlough.
Once the shutdown is over, even if I wanted to take this past week (or two or three for whenever this ends) to cover the time off, I would not be allowed to. I have a top employee who went on maternity leave in the beginning of September. She’s not scheduled to return to work until December. Federal leave laws say she can take 12 weeks of leave. With the shutdown, her leave stopped on the day of the shutdown and will pick up after the shutdown ends. She can’t apply any of her leave to the furlough. Her husband is also a federal worker and they have another toddler. This whole situation is terrible for many people.
Song of the day: Never Go Hungry – Hole
If you asked me in college which bands I would still be buying albums from 20 years later, Hole would not have been on the list. I recognize Courtney Love essentially has new band mates for every album so it’s not exactly the original group, but it’s a wonder that she’s still alive.
Questions? I’m happy to answer furlough or NASA questions. If you’re so inclined, leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them in posts as this drags on.
Next update will be Monday. I may tweak my approach slightly in order to provide updates Monday through Friday.
If you missed it:
Hutt Space 
