Twenty years at SNL - and an uncertain path forward

Bldg. 802 - my "ivory tower" office indicated by red arrow

Today, July 6, 2012, marks my 20-year service anniversary at Sandia National Laboratories. It's sort of a bittersweet milestone in my life: on one hand, SNL has been a great place to work in terms of lifestyle and benefits; on the other, my career hasn't been precisely as rewarding in a larger personal or professional sense as it might have been. And now that I have disabling health issues that impede my holding down a job -- never mind jump-starting a career that stalled out about twelve years ago -- I think only about managing to put in another five years so that I can retire plausibly and at least somewhat gracefully.

What's my opinion of SNL? Well, that depends whether you're asking about the technical (i.e., scientific/engineering) side of the company, which generally does great work and consists of extremely intelligent and capable individuals, or the administrative side of the company, which has gradually become a "laboratory" of a more sociological sort, the "experimental results" from which have been, shall we say, somewhat mixed. I have mentioned previously that I ended up at SNL out of some desperation, as I absolutely hated the three-plus years I spent practicing law in 1989-92. Given that I, like a lot of my peers in those days, fell into a career at SNL -- whereas most business professionals hiring on now are recruited and often aspire to work at SNL -- I was never completely able to take seriously the administrative milieu at SNL, even in the early days.  And, to the extent I've been forced by circumstances to take it seriously, I could never take myself seriously as a part of the picture.  All of that, together with my innate laziness and preternatural aversion to sucking up to upper management, perhaps made it inevitable that I would never make the jump into management or "distinguished" status.  Luckily, I'm a sufficiently bright individual to provide value down in the trenches, despite my not being overly versant with the increasingly complex electronic applications we use for financial reporting.

However, it's difficult to do 100% of any real job when one is 40-50% disabled from persistent mal de debarquement, and that's by far the biggest issue I face moving forward.  Perhaps Cha, et al., summed it up best in this excerpt from their article "Clinical features and associated syndromes of mal de debarquement" (Journal of Neurology (2008) 255:1038-1044):

I'm fond of saying that if the people close to me could experience life for one day as I have to live it every day, they'd be clamoring to facilitate my retiring on a disability.  However, given the non-obvious origin, nature, and extent of my symptoms, I'd be viewed as a slacker and a hypochondriac if I pushed for it, so all I can do is try (a) to find the least-stressful job available, (b) to sleep and exercise to the extent I'm able, and (c) simply to ride out the storm.

(It's notable that my starting at SNL in 1992 coincided with the last year in which AT&T operated the company, when all employees were still being given 192 hours of vacation time per year from day one on the job.  After Martin Marietta [now Lockheed Martin] took over management in 1993, all new hires were given significantly less annual leave -- I'm not sure anyone else ever gets up to 192 hours -- which still sticks in the craw of many people who have otherwise passed me by on the career ladder.  Those are the breaks, I guess.)

My New Guitar

Leo Kottke? I think not....

I recently bought a new Ibanez 12-string acoustic guitar on eBay.  (It's a factory second -- I guess the finish isn't perfect, although I haven't really spotted a flaw -- which made it an absolute steal for $250, including shipping and handling.  It even has electronics and can be plugged into an amplifier.)  I hadn't played a 12-string guitar in ages, so I'd forgotten how hard they are to play, but this Ibanez is an incredible guitar for the price I paid.  I can't say why I felt the need to have another guitar; however, I learned the basics of guitar-playing on my brother Kelly's 12-string back in the early 1970s, and it's a real throwback for me to have one after all these years.

Mexico Trip, June 16-21, 2012

Kiley and Sam

At Pollo Lucas in Puerto Peñasco

Eating lunch at Pollo Lucas

Dion and Nolan

Cait and Darren

Easton and Devery and kids

Kristy and kids

At Pollo Lucas

Darren and Cait on the beach

Dorine and I at the Super Ley

Devery, Easton, Mason, Noelle

Kristy, Maddison, Hailee

Zach

Nicole walking on the beach

Nicole

Heidi, Dion, and kids

Margarita, Don, and Rosita

Dorine and I on the beach

Kristy and kids on the beach

ON the beach at dusk

Darren helping to make dinner

Easton and Noelle

Dion

Cait helping to make dinner

Sam slaving over a hot stove

Looking upstairs from the kitchen

Looking downstairs from the kitchen

Kiley

Looking out the picture windows

View off the back patio

Maddison

Kristy with Hailee

Dorine in Puerto Peñasco

Cait and Darren in Puerto Peñasco

Sam and Kiley

Dinner

Darren and Cait having dinner

Nolan and Zach

Dorine and I traveled to Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico with almost all of our family, arriving on Sunday afternoon, June 17 (after spending Saturday night in Tempe, Arizona), and staying until Wednesday, June 20 (spending another night in Tempe on the way home).  We stayed at "Casa Alhaja," the beach house of which our son-in-law Easton's parents, Steve and Jeannie Hamblin, are part owners.  (The last two summers, Dorine and I had gone down to Mexico to spend time in Puerto Peñasco at Steve and Jeannie's invitation; this year Dorine had her heart set on taking all of our kids and grandkids down, and we owe the Hamblins a great debt for facilitating things and getting us a screaming deal on the house.)  It was an arduous drive from Albuquerque for a "mere" three nights at the beach, and it's always a bit of an adventure to drive into Mexico, but otherwise things worked out great and I think everyone had a great time.  Among other people, our party included: (1) Devery and Easton and their kids, who first spent time with the Hamblins at "Casa Alhaja" and then stayed a couple more nights with us; (2) Dorine's brother Don and his wife Margarita and daughter Rosita, who actually stayed two more nights in Puerto Peñasco (in a hotel) after we left; and (3) Darren and his girlfriend Cait Brobst, who flew into Phoenix from Utah to drive into Mexico with us (and then flew back to Utah from Phoenix on the return trip).

Hike to Nowhere and Everywhere, 5/28/12

Looking back down the Three Gun Spring Trail

At the "Eye of the Sandias," after all the toil

Looking back at the "Eye" from a distance

The route, starting from the lower right and coming back around to the lower left

Yesterday, on Memorial Day, John Brewer and I took an unusual hike in the Sandia Mountains.  I'd been thinking about routes for hikes for some time, and, when neither of us wanted to spend an entire day hiking on the Monday holiday, I suggested an offbeat route that (a) started on the lower part of the Three Gun Spring Trail, where I hadn't been in twenty-plus years, (b) covered trail-less ground where I had never been, and (c) passed by the "Eye of the Sandias," which John had never seen.  We were able to accomplish the hike, although, because much of the route devolved into bushwhacking and boulder-hopping, it took longer -- and was more of a physical challenge -- than I'd expected.  At 7:30 am, Dorine dropped John and me off at the Three Gun Spring Trailhead, which is north of the Monticello Estates subdivision in Tijeras Canyon.  Right off the bat I was having mild difficulties, which got worse once we hit the steep switchbacks that climb up to the head of the canyon.  Then we went down the top of the Embudo Trail to the cut-off to Post Pass, a prominent saddle in the ridge, which was the beginning of a couple of miles of off-trail scrambling, entailing much elevation change (up and down), our passing through a lot of very abrasive vegetation, and our having to negotiate quite a few large granite outcrops.  With the help of John's GPS and my knowledge of the rough location of the "Eye," we were finally able to get on the correct ridge, which describes a fairly well-traveled trail, even if there was no clear route through the steep, boulder-strewn peak just northeast of the "Eye."  Once we found the "Eye," however, it was an easy matter to hike down to the car we'd left at the east end of Copper Avenue, although my lower back took a pounding that I'm feeling pretty acutely today.  The entire hike took about 5 1/2 hours total, and we spent over three hours of that time on the segment between Post Pass and the "Eye" (see map).

I don't know if we'll be able to do any of the longer hikes this summer that I've thought about, but it was nice to do something over the long weekend.

[Update 2/24/13: Here are two views from Google Earth showing a larger view of the terrain covered by this hike and a fairly close-up view of the boulder patch where the "Eye" is located:.]

Annular Eclipse in Albuquerque - 5/20/12

The Ring of Power

Are we not men?

The title and photos above should make obvious to anyone that we were able, for the first time in my lifetime, to view something approximating a total eclipse of the sun this evening in Albuquerque.  It wasn't, properly speaking, a "total eclipse," inasmuch as the moon did not obscure the entire circumference of the sun; rather, it was an "annular" eclipse that produced a "ring of fire" during the few minutes in which the moon was directly in front of the sun.  We watched it at Mike and Judy's house, where Dorine's brother Don set up his telescope on the second-story deck.  (My son-in-law Sam took the "ring" photo above through the telescope with his iPhone.)  Dorine had obtained a couple of pairs of "eclipse glasses" from someone at work, and I'm wearing one of them in the "Devo" pose above.

It was just a little other-worldly to have the sun appear to dim, and for the temperature to drop noticeably, an hour or more before nightfall.  The last time I had a similar sensation was last summer, when smoke from multiple forest fires in Arizona blew in to Albuquerque and, on a couple of cloudy days that I remember, lent an eerie yellow cast to the sky.

Looking through Don's telescope

At Mike and Judy's House

On another planet last summer

The smoke last summer