Unexcused Absences

Spring golf in Virginia!

A group of friends celebrates the start of golf season by hosting an informal tournament on Cinco de Mayo. This year, about the 10th year of the tournament (they have trouble keeping track of the precise details; this tournament is more about tequila than golf), we had 36 golfers show up for a 9am start at Penderbrook out in Fairfax. It’s always better when May 5 occurs on a weekday, because there’s a surprising amount of satisfaction gained from knowing you’re out drinking tequila playing golf while everyone else is slaving at the office.  So, even though I’ve been nose-to-the-grindstone at NASA almost continuously since we got back from Colorado, I was able to arrange a free day to join in the festivities.

Speaking of work, I love NASA. I especially love they way they talk because they’re so efficient. When talking to a fellow rocket scientist, I can say I work for GPS as a sub to SGT to automate the DES-OCF of the MMS/FPI mission, and they know exactly what I mean! The US Government may have invented the TLA (Three-Letter Acronym), but NASA has perfected it. For those of you who are real people, not NASA geeks, DES is “Dual Electron Spectrometer,” OCF is “Optical Calibration Facility,” MMS is “Magnetospheric Multi-Scale,” and FPI is “Fast Plasma Investigation.”  SGT is “Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies,” who have a large support contract for NASA, and GPS is my company, “Global Programming Solutions.”

In the cleanroom at NASA; one person working (me), 8 people supervising

NASA has so many acronyms that any official report now starts with 2-3 pages of an acronym dictionary.  They make acronyms out of acronyms. In the early 1990’s I worked on the “MBA,” which stood for the MOLA BCE ATU, which in turn stood for “Mars Observer Laser Altimeter, Bench Checkout Equipment, Altimeter Test Unit.” And as a proper government entity, we don’t have screws, we have “fully-slotted, manually-activated, fiber-intrusive material securing units.” Ok, sometimes we do just refer to “screws”, but it’s fun to play along.

Anyway, back to golf. The previous venue for our tournament, Fairfax National Golf Club, is in the process of being turned into a 200+ unit housing development (because Northern Virginia clearly does not have enough housing stock). So we had to move the festivities to Penderbrook. Someone must have clued them in to our group, because the beer-cart girl was waiting for us on the first tee! Normally the beer-cart girl is out on the course making the rounds, but someone at the club knew that it was important to get our group started off properly, right out of the gate. This is the sign of a good management team.

The beer cart started the day with two giant coolers, one filled with beer, and one filled with gatorade, soda and water. The beer cart ended the day with two giant coolers, one empty, and one filled with gatorade, soda and water. I was impressed with my fellow tournament participants, who were able to play 18 holes on a warm, sunny spring day, stick strictly to alcohol, and not consuming any of the lesser drinks. Oh, and the lunch counter had a Cinco de Mayo special, a quesadilla and margarita for $8. Fantastic!

I’m very glad I was able to get away and play at least one round of golf this spring. Friday it was back to NASA. I had to put in one more day in the office before heading to France Monday for the beginning of Phase II of our Unexcused Absence!