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- Thu, 16:17: Work worky work work. You betcha. #WorkIsNOTWorkingForMeRightNow
- Fri, 06:59: Imma let chu finish, but Skylar was one of the best contestants of all time...
I'm watching American Idol, and Danny Gokey just got done singing the Carrie Underwood song, "Jesus take the wheel."
I'd heard the song before, but when Danny sang it, I could understand the words, which I'd never really paid attention to:
This reminded me of a story told to me once by a DOD contractor that I knew when I worked in the Air Force in the module where GPS Software was developed and tested.
This particular defense contractor worked for an aerospace company, (my rusty mind wants to tell me it was Lockheed Martin, so let's just go with that,) and they had sold a middle eastern government a number of fighter planes. (The timing of this tale, 1990 or 1991, makes me think it may have been concerning Kuwait.) Anyhow, several months after the sale, a number of the planes were involved in suspicious crashes, so the contractor I knew was part of an investigative team sent out to take a look at the software, which the engineers deemed to be the most likely cause.
The team arrived on site, tore apart the software and could not find anything out of the ordinary, so the team began looking in other places for the problem. After a while, they got around to interviewing the pilots, and they discovered the source of the issue.
When the young pilots started out, they flew in aircraft with specialized training software designed to self correct in dangerous situations. The team found that during training, when the trainees would get into trouble, they'd let go of the stick and appeal to Allah for aid. The training software would then level out the plane, and the trainee would grab the stick once more and continue to fly the plane.
The crashes happened when the trainees would graduate to the real fighters. They could fly for months without getting into trouble, but once they did, they'd be tempted to just let go of the stick and appeal to Allah. The fighters were not loaded with training software, so they wouldn't auto correct. They would just corkscrew into the ground at the speed of sound.
The software team reported this to the air force for the country involved, and the air force suggested that it would be much easier to install the self-leveling features on the fighters than trying to alter the "software" of the pilots involved.
So that's what they did, and the crashes stopped.
I'd heard the song before, but when Danny sang it, I could understand the words, which I'd never really paid attention to:
"Before she knew it she was spinning on a thin black sheet of glass
She saw both their lives flash before her eyes
She didn't even have time to cry
She was so scared
She threw her hands up in the air
Jesus take the wheel"
This reminded me of a story told to me once by a DOD contractor that I knew when I worked in the Air Force in the module where GPS Software was developed and tested.
This particular defense contractor worked for an aerospace company, (my rusty mind wants to tell me it was Lockheed Martin, so let's just go with that,) and they had sold a middle eastern government a number of fighter planes. (The timing of this tale, 1990 or 1991, makes me think it may have been concerning Kuwait.) Anyhow, several months after the sale, a number of the planes were involved in suspicious crashes, so the contractor I knew was part of an investigative team sent out to take a look at the software, which the engineers deemed to be the most likely cause.
The team arrived on site, tore apart the software and could not find anything out of the ordinary, so the team began looking in other places for the problem. After a while, they got around to interviewing the pilots, and they discovered the source of the issue.
When the young pilots started out, they flew in aircraft with specialized training software designed to self correct in dangerous situations. The team found that during training, when the trainees would get into trouble, they'd let go of the stick and appeal to Allah for aid. The training software would then level out the plane, and the trainee would grab the stick once more and continue to fly the plane.
The crashes happened when the trainees would graduate to the real fighters. They could fly for months without getting into trouble, but once they did, they'd be tempted to just let go of the stick and appeal to Allah. The fighters were not loaded with training software, so they wouldn't auto correct. They would just corkscrew into the ground at the speed of sound.
The software team reported this to the air force for the country involved, and the air force suggested that it would be much easier to install the self-leveling features on the fighters than trying to alter the "software" of the pilots involved.
So that's what they did, and the crashes stopped.
