Tavern Journals
Maggie's Corner » Maggie learns about airplanes some more
I am flying back and forth across the Pacific again, and this is a mixed bag of nuts. On the one paw (almonds, yum) I get to fly with James more often, and I don’t have to ride in that gosh-darned commuter plane. On the other paw (pecans, which I do not like!) it has been very exciting learning about how airplanes work, sort of, which I do because I have also been chauffeuring Ms. Garcia, who you will recall (because I am reminding you) is the Vice President in charge of Operations for Garcia Aerodyne, the people who are making Cathay Pacific a new airliner. I get the impression that Ms. Garcia is being patient with me, even though … [Link]
Burn Notice » UPDATE.
NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT BIGFOOT. Comedy out of the way, on to news. Acquired and defeated another sickness recently. Since I … burned myself, I find my body being caught off guard by things that once never affected me. It is an unpleasant and unfamiliar experience. How do you mammals survive living like this? It’s kind of morbid, with the intensity you go about stumbling from one ailment and sickness to the next. It’s almost as if you look forward to them at times, and it makes me a little sick I share blood with you. The prices you pay for maintaining a steady body temperature, I suppose. Elsewhere in life I am finding myself becoming increasingly displeased with … [Link]
Maggie's Corner » Maggie MacKenzie has a Very Important Day!
As I expected, I am now flying the commuter route from Los Angeles to San Francisco. On the one paw, this means I get to spend much more time at home, and this is something I do sort of like. On the other paw, there is nothing appealing about the flight, the scenery, the airplane, the journey, nothing. Today we were delayed because a plane taxiing behind us blew a tire on some debris and we couldn’t move. This irritated our passengers, and our pilot. I thought I would start an advice column for people (you are free to send me letters I will answer!) in my little newspaper corner here and to pass the time, I asked anyone if … [Link]
Maggie's Corner » Oh darn! Another long layover in Hawaii!
Well, hello again everybody! I think they are going to wind up scrapping the plane I normally fly on, because the whole right wing is just causing nothing but problems and people are starting to get fed up in the maintenance department. I am starting to get fed up a little bit too, even as I’m not a pilot or a mechanic, on account of I do not want to crash into the Pacific Ocean. Two days ago, flying back from Hong Kong, one of the coolant pumps failed on the first engine on the right wing, and so we had to go slow so it didn’t melt. This made the passengers agitated, because it was taking so long, but … [Link]
Into the Fox's Den » New Blood
“The regulars”. That group of people who frequent a business time and again. Be it on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, they are the faces you can expect to see over and over again. A large number of the customers a business sees are one-timers, or people who may come back, but only irregularly [...] [Link]
The Parlour » Etiquette
Hey there! After much prodding and nudging and frowny faces *ducks*, I decided to go ahead and make myself a journal. I wasn’t really quite sure what to talk about that people wanted to hear until I realized I don’t much speak about my place of work all that often. Now, I love my job and it’s something I’m terribly passionate about. But, like any job, there are people that come and go that make it unpleasant and it’s something that’s been happening the past few days. I’m not exactly sure how deep some of you folks are into the whole tattoo/piercing business, but you don’t have to do my job to know these types of people. I may still … [Link]
Maggie's Corner » Sitting on the edge of the end times
We had a long layover in Honolulu when one of the engines on the right side of the airplane wouldn’t start (this is on account of magnetos, apparently) and for some reason nobody wanted to fly from Hawaii to Hong Kong with only three engines (how silly! But Maggie was one of them). Anyway, that was ok, because it just meant that James and I could go down to the beach and relax for a few hours. It was nice. The flight was also nice. I only like Italian food sometimes, on account of the tomatoes which I don’t enjoy all that much and it’s got so much garlic, but something about the way it was prepared was just absolutely … [Link]
Capitol Hell » Lightning bolts from an orbital Olympus
As a businessmen working in defense, I believe it’s my responsibility to terrify people. I draw a certain pleasure, you know, from the knowledge of a job well done. But! Let’s back up. ENIAC was a revolution in computing. It measured 680 square feet, but it could compute—the Internet tells me—the equivalent of 500 FLOPS: floating point operations per second. It was never intended for peaceful use; they planned to make it calculate artillery tables, and wound up using it for the H-bomb. In this way we learn the importance of vision. Modern computers, of course, do different things. Some of them measure weather, or at least the atmosphere. At the McMinnville campus for Baird Aircraft Systems, we maintain—I am … [Link]
Undead Relations » It’s been awhile.
See, it’s been longer. More than I’d like. Gather round, children, and I’ll regale you! See, you would think being dead that means I’d be immune to malaise? I’m not–really not. Now I can’t get your head cold, no. So no sniffles or the like. Instead, however, it seemed like .. I don’t know. I died again? I think it’s the way I repair myself now. It’s still new to me (and there isn’t a “How to be Dead–For Dummies!” guide laying around). Needless to say, though, it still laid me up for a bit. But hey! I’m better now. And with less holes! Anyways, working has also tied me down. Work, you ask? Sure. Despite not having a pulse, … [Link]
Burn Notice » Travels
Returning home recently I have attempted to reunite myself with friends. A few still remain, most have moved on. Physically or mentally, few friends I still have. It makes exploring my childhood home like wandering an excavated graveyard. Coffins of memories with no bodies to claim them. It’s a little depressing, but at the same time a relief. So little of my past to come back to me. The time has left me without much to say to you, here. I’ll try to find something more interesting to do to tell you takes once I write again. I think I may volunteer for a small patrol duty. [Link]
Into the Fox's Den » Secrets
Everybody has secrets, and the more someone claims otherwise, the more they’re actually hiding. There’s always something about us that we don’t want someone else to know. Sometimes it’s part of the job (people who work for the CIA or government defense contractors, for instance). Sometimes it’s something you don’t want to tell your parents [...] [Link]
Maggie's Corner » I remember things about my childhood and kind of miss it.
Oh, well, I am back! I didn’t mean to be gone so long, but I have been a terribly busy collie so I do hope you all forgive me. As soon as I got back, the robot man pulled me into the back and told me to write, but… but I don’t know what to write about! Ok, I went and told the robot man that and he made a face and said I should write about the first thing that came to mind. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is nostalgia, to tell you the truth. I grew up on a little farm in Indiana, and I had to walk uphill to school both ways in the … [Link]
Capitol Hell » Leonardo di Caprio will not play me in the movie
Some fox I know wrote a pretty cogent overview of what he does, and since I’m slightly bored–didn’t go into work yesterday, seeing as how I’m supposed to be vacationing (see?) so I’m getting caught up, but of course nobody is really working this weekend so it takes some time. I have the good fortune to run a company Mother Jones once called “the scariest little company you’ve never heard of,” and as an entity known for their quality, unbiased reporting MoJo should probably be trusted. The more staid folks at Jane’s say this: Baird-Marhoff Airplane Works was founded in 1946 as an aircraft maintenance firm that later developed into a small civil aircraft company. Its current form, Baird Aircraft … [Link]
Burn Notice » Time to think.
Been thinking. Nothing troubling me, just thinking for the sake of doing so. My mind seems to move glacially at times and two steps ahead with laser precision, others. I think a lot, contrary to outward appearances. I spend time considering, evaluating, guessing, second guessing, and planning things. Important things I give the most consideration, and ample preparation and thought have given me a wealth of practiced reactions to many situations. Lacking the same range of social skills as most, I have to go about things in a roundabout way. Trying to be impromptu ends up in me leaning too heavily on instict. That almost never ends well. To the point at hand, I merely went somewhere almost too hot … [Link]
Into the Fox's Den » A Little Tavern in a Big World
Hello. My name is Vulpecula, and I’m a bartender. This is how most people know me. But while tending the Foxtail Tavern may be my favorite part of running my business, it is not the majority. People ask how my prices can be so low, and I try to explain that it’s because the rest [...] [Link]
Capitol Hell » I hate Mondays
“But, hey,” you’re saying. “This is being posted on a Tuesday”. Yes. That’s true. It is however being posted on a Tuesday because I’m going into work late today. This is because Monday didn’t end until 6 o’clock this morning. This is because halfway through Monday (e.g., 7PM) one of the project leads came into my office with a grave look on her face. “We have a problem,” she said. My heart sank. “A serious kind of problem?” I said. She works on a project to develop a guided missile; these differences are important. “Probably not,” she said. The gist of it: if there’s enough moisture in the air to partially “diffuse” the data the optical sensor gets and the … [Link]
Rat a Tat Kat » I am a Machine Gun
You know what I hate? headphones.. Headphones you ask? Why hate such delightful devices that give you private listening to wondrous sounds and music to jubilate the other wise stressed and over worked soul? Oh.. you my poor friend are not privy to my hell. my personal headphone hell.. the portal which in lays the untapped idiocy that only in which that a venue of face book and myspace can provide. Now imagine facebook in one ear, and my space in the other. I saw you cringe.. and now you get it, I get the whining, drooling idiots of society en mass, in stereo.. non-stop. I feel like.. like a tiger.. in a cage? So yeah, headphones. hate the things, … [Link]
Burn Notice » Getting up
Everything has to start somewhere, right? Might as well be from the ground up. This probably won’t be updated too frequently…important events and thoughts are few and far between for this one. But hey. Interest of science, and all. And I’m nothing if not for the interests of science. [Link]
Capitol Hell » The working life
I’ve been thinking about my own mortality. This–in large part–comes from somebody telling me I should read RD Baumgartner’s new book Working Stiff, which spent some time last year on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s not a good beach book, but it is interesting. In the fourth chapter, which he calls “Working the 9 to 6-feet-under”, he goes on about the health risks of working too hard. Apparently the Japanese do this all the time. But he says: Of course, it would be shortsighted to regard karōshi as a uniquely Japanese problem. Inheriting the Protestant work ethic and laconic demeanor Garrison Keillor might associate with Norwegians, Border collie immigrants from Scotland and England have demonstrated a peculiar affinity … [Link]
Maggie's Corner » I am a stewardess so you do not have to be
I have been mentioning things related to my work before, but I never explained what, exactly, it is that I do. Well! Now I am going to fix that! I am a stewardess for Cathay Pacific airlines, which is based in Hong Kong. Right now, I am the only American stewardess, because the rest of them are British people from Hong Kong or else they are from Australia and have just the most adorable way of talking. I hope they think the same thing about me but Indiana is a far cry from the Out Back, as they call it. I fly on a route between San Francisco and Hong Kong. “Gosh, Maggie,” I just bet you are wondering, “isn’t … [Link]