Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on January 13th, 2023 in Main, Work 
Not all stories are mine to tell, and some are told better over a beer than through a blog, but roughly six months after she applied for early retirement based on a disability, Susan received a phone call Tuesday afternoon informing her that Wednesday would be her last day of work with the FAA. I’ve been to plenty of retirement parties over the past few decades. In fact, just last year Susan and I attended a retirement dinner for a coworker of ours. Roughly forty people came together at a local restaurant to eat, share stories, and toast a guy… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on May 2nd, 2022 in Main, Work 
In President Biden’s most recent State of the Union address, the president called for the “vast majority” of federal employees to begin transitioning back to the office, citing “significant progress fighting the COVID-19 pandemic has made it safer to do so.” While Biden’s motivation and the current state of COVID may be debatable, what is not debatable is that I fall into the category of “vast majority of federal employees.” Last Wednesday I returned to the office for the first time in approximately two years. Here are a few random pictures and thoughts I had while returning to the office.… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on February 29th, 2020 in Main, Work 
Through what can only be called a comedy of errors, “we” (not me) managed to brick nearly 1,000 laptops at work. The details aren’t particularly important (nor am I in a position to discuss them), but let’s just say that a unique combination of outdated operating systems, older third party disk encryption solutions, and Microsoft’s latest patches combined to create the perfect storm for these specific machines. All of these things came together in a way that left the machines in a non-bootable state, effectively turning them into “bricks.” A quick response was needed, so management requested that those machines… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on January 26th, 2019 in Main, WorkAs suddenly as it began, after 35 days, the furlough ended on January 25 and the government reopened. I have received guidance to report to work on January 28, 2019. The last time I was in the office was on December 21, 2018. While delivering the news to the American people, President Trump referred to federal employees as “fantastic people” and “incredible patriots.” “You are very, very special… people,” he added. I don’t feel very, very special right now. In fact, right now I feel like little more than a pawn in a big game of chess that’s being played… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on February 5th, 2018 in Main, Work 
Last Tuesday Susan and I were able to have dinner with Susan Wood-Butorac, a person who directly changed the course of both of our lives. In the winter of 1995 I was twenty-two years old. I had been working as a contractor at the FAA for eight months, and had only been married to Susan for four. Beginning that fall, I started travelling all over the country, performing hardware upgrades on workstations and servers. If you really want to date this story, the objective of those trips was to make sure every 386 computer met a “minimum baseline” of 8MB… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on January 20th, 2018 in Main, WorkFor the second time in five years, Susan and I have been furloughed. What that means is, until a budget is passed by congress, all non-essential federal employees — that’s us — are prohibited from working and will not get paid until the furlough is over. We can’t even volunteer to work for free. The first question everybody asks is, “yeah, but don’t you get back pay?” The answer is, “probably.” It’s not guaranteed, but historically, I don’t think it’s never not happened. That being said, our back pay will arrive on the first full paycheck following the furlough. The… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on October 3rd, 2016 in Work 
Facebook has a feature called “On This Day” that shows you posts you made this date in previous years. Over the weekend, Facebook reminded me that I got a new job on this day back in 2009… and 2010, 2014, and 2015. And now, 2016. October 1st is the first day of the government’s fiscal year. That’s when our budget is approved (except in 2013 when Susan and I were on furlough). Because of this, that’s when a lot of federal jobs open up. In 2009, I left Lockheed Martin and became a federal employee, taking a job with security.… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on July 20th, 2012 in Computers/Tech/Games, WorkMonday evening after hours I got a call informing me that one of our most important servers at work was offline. I’m not officially “on call” like I used to be years ago, but when something like this happens you throw your shoes back on and go see what’s up. What was “up” — or technically, what wasn’t “up”, was the server’s RAID card. No RAID card meant no hard drives. Being a relatively old server, I didn’t have any spares of the same make or model available at my disposal, and the RAID card was attached to the motherboard… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on April 7th, 2011 in WorkABCNews.com recently ran a story that began with the following statement: How would a government shutdown impact Americans far removed from the partisan wrangling in the nation’s capital? Most Americans are unlikely to feel a direct impact — seniors will likely continue to get their Medicare and Social Security checks, as will veterans. But a government shutdown could hurt consumer confidence and further roil already volatile financial markets. You would think a news organization such as ABC would know that Washington DC is not the only employer of federal workers. Although I consider myself to be “an American far removed… (read more)
Posted by RobOHara ( @Commodork) on January 24th, 2011 in WorkBeing a Federal Employee means being a part of something much bigger than many people, including myself, can really comprehend. The FAA employs about 50,000 people, with ~5,000 of them working here in Oklahoma. Susan supervises people in a dozen different states; her supervisor lives in a different state, too. My supervisor works in Oklahoma, and while I don’t manage other people (Thank God; I’m not all that great at managing myself!), I deal with networks and servers and people spanning across all fifty states and into five or six remote countries. Sometimes what I do feels pretty important, although… (read more)
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