Graveyard Shift Tonight

Another late night at work for the FAA. They're hooking up a new system to their air traffic system which could affect my feed to their air traffic system. So I'm here to make sure my stuff doesn't break. I'm only needed at the start of it to take my system offline and at the end of it to make sure it goes back into operation. In between I twiddle my thumbs. Actually, I brought a DVD, Ecks vs. Sever. I heard bad things about it, but I get to look at Lucy Liu while getting paid for it, so it can't be too bad.

I don't have to do these late night sessions too often. Just whenever the FAA makes a major change to one of their systems. The work has to be done in the dead of night to lessen the safety risk for the air traffic controllers should something go very wrong. I don't mind doing this once in awhile, it's a nice change of pace, keeps things interesting and reminds my superiors that I'm dedicated to the job. I've had worse shifts than this. I used to be on mids permanantly at one point. It wasn't too bad, but I never could figure out if I should go to bed as soon as I got home or stay up and sleep later, waking up just before I had to go in. I also had a shift where I worked ten days in a row, followed by four days off then do it again. That was probably the most interesting shift I ever had to work. It was tough but I was in my early twenties then so my body could handle it even if my mind was all screwed up. I had another shift where it was four ten hour days with a three day weekend. Doesn't sound bad but I had to be here at 5a Sunday morning, 5a Monday then switched to second shift 2p Tuesday and Wednesday. It sounds odd but the switch in shift between Monday and Tuesday was the easy part. The hard part was being able to sleep in five days out of the week then have to be in on Sunday and Monday by 5a. On those days, I sometimes didn't even remember the drive in to work.

Anyway, we're about to get started. Time to start my movie.