Posts by Berck

The promised snow didn’t really arrive until last night. I still rode the bus yesterday so I didn’t have to worry about getting stranded at school on Yoshiko.

The calculus exam went pretty badly. It was just overwhelming. The 2 hours, 40 minutes allotted simply wasn’t enough time for me. It seemed more than twice as long as a normal exam, and my brain seemed sluggish as a result of lack of sleep. Other people seemed to think it was on par with her other tests, so maybe it was just me. That said, there were a dozen of us who hadn’t finished at the end. There were a couple problems I didn’t even get to.

I have no idea how she’s going to calculate the grades. If she uses the system she specified in the syllabus, I calculate that I’d get an A for the class as long as a I got a 60% on the final. But she seemed to indicate she was going to place even more emphasis on the final, so I don’t know. I suspect I got somewhere around an 80% on the exam. I just hope this doesn’t destroy my shot at an A in the class.

It feels good to be done with the semester, but now I have a whole new source of anxiety.

On Thursday, a FedEx delivery guy showed up on my doorstep with an envelope he wanted me to sign for. Somehow I immediately knew what it was as there’s only one entity in my life that FedEx’s envelopes around: Mesa Air Group.

Inside, I found a recall notice. I immediately freaked out. How could I be getting recalled? I’m too far down the list, Mesa’s still in bankruptcy, it’s not like they have new airplanes showing up… The letter was very misleading, but it mentioned there was more information online, including the furlough list. I read the letter a little more clearly, and while it did say things like, “Welcome back to work!” it did mention that they were only recalling 16 pilots. After checking the list online, I determined that out of 492 furloughed pilots, I’ll be #275 to be recalled. Clearly, some of those have found other work and won’t be coming back, but I suspect most will. It appears that Mesa sent the letter to all furloughed pilots. We have 7 days to reply with our intentions or be removed from the seniority list. I replied with my intention to accept the recall.

After trying to get as much information as I can, it appears that Mesa has been losing 15-30 pilots per month. It seems that Delta, Airtran, JetBlue and Southwest all hiring a bit, now. If these numbers hold steady, I could find myself with a training date in less than a year from now.

This is good in that I want to return to work, but bad in that I really want to finish a computer science degree. It seems that I will be able to graduate in May 2012, but it looks like there’s no way I won’t be recalled at some point in 2011. At this point, I’m definitely committing to continuing at school through the spring semester, but I’m not sure what to do beyond that.

I’m torn. As much as I want to finish my degree, giving up my spot at Mesa might be a dumb move. Hiring is likely to pick up quite a bit about the time I graduate, but I’m not sure how competitive I’ll be for a flying job without having flown in the last 2 years. Airlines like to see several hundred hours in the last 6 months. I could possibly get a job flight instructing before moving on to other things, but then I’d also be faced with starting at the bottom again. If I return to Mesa, I’d be making slightly more than $30,000/year, which is a lot better than the $19,000/year I’d make starting at any other airline.

On the other hand, I’m not sure how exciting returning to flying at Mesa would be. Denver is no longer a base–the best I could hope for is probably Chicago, and I might get stuck in Dulles for awhile. Commuting to sit reserve is a miserable existence.

You’d think Mesa might let me wait a little while before returning. It would require a leave of absence, and they’ve said that’s not a possibility at this time. Mesa wasn’t even granting leaves of absence when they were busy furloughing people, so I don’t think that’s likely to be an option. It’s frustrating that requests that would be almost certainly granted by normal employers are simply unheard of in the airline industry.

On the other hand, a year at UCCS will cost close to $12,000, and I’m not sure that it’s worth it if I don’t come through with a degree in the end.

In the meantime, it’s good to be done for the semester. I can do anything I want for the next month! Ben and Amanda will be here in a week, so there’s much whimsical fun to be had!

It’s going to snow tonight and tomorrow. Says the people who get paid to say such things.

This is annoying news for me, as I’m taking my final two finals tomorrow and snow will complicate my transportation plans. To make things worse, my calculus exam is scheduled at 8am, which is an incredibly stupid time for any sort of exam, particularly for a class that normally meets at 9:25am. This means I need to get up early enough to drive my car to the baseball fields in order to catch the bus to the campus. Thus far this semester, I’ve managed to motorcycle to class every day except one.

This isn’t because I’m crazy, but because we’ve had the warmest winter in Colorado Springs since I’ve been here. It’s only snowed twice this year. Last time was the Sunday after Thanksgiving which turned out to be incredibly inconvenient. Sydney was flying out on the redeye back to New York, so the snow didn’t really get going until about the time we left the apartment. Denver was clear, but I had to drive at about 30mph through a near white-out as soon as got south of Castle Rock. I didn’t get home until 2am, and then had to get up a few hours later to go to class.

Normally I’d be seriously excited about the snow. In a past life, snow used to mean that I got to sleep in and Jonah and I would get a late breakfast at Chic-Fil-A as I took her to work. Now snow means getting up early to ride a bus, so I’m a bit less excited.

In other news, I checked my beer yesterday and it’s only dropped to a specific gravity of 1.020. It should be down to 1.010 by now, but it’s pretty cold in the apartment. I was hoping it’d be ready to rack last weekend, but no such luck. Maybe this weekend…

Sydney gave us beer making equipment for our wedding. (Yes, our wedding was a long time ago. But that’s okay, because as Sydney said, the longer she waited, the better the gift.) I picked out a lot of swanky beer making stuff rather than going with some kit.

I activated my yeast on Thursday afternoon. Friday, I made a starter for the yeast. Today, I brewed.

Things went mostly as planned. I was astounded at how bitter an ounce of hops was as I tossed it into the pot. The recipe kit I was using came with 2 ounces of bittering hops, and 1 ounce of aroma hops. They say it’s 36 IBU’s, which I think is more bitter than I like. So, I only used 1 ounce of the bittering hops. It still smells ridiculously hoppy, so we’ll see how it comes out.

The initial specific gravity was 1.051, which is right on spec: it was supposed to be 1.049-1.053. If all goes well it should be about 6% alcohol by volume.

It’s got to spend about a week in the primary fermenter, then another week in a secondary fermenter. Then I bottle it, and it takes a couple weeks in the bottle to carbonate.

Here’s some pictures.

I think Sydney’s probably just been instructed to fasten her seatbelt. Her flight’s about 10 minutes longer than it should be because of an absolutely solid and very long line of thunderstorms. They took the first hole they could find: