Top Ten Biggest Differences Between Working at NASA and in Orlando
10. The temperature feels much higher in Orlando. For the past eight years, I’ve only really “lived” in Orlando during the day on the weekends, and I’ve got a nice pool in which to dip if the feeling tempts me. Out on the coast during the week, the sea breeze is nice, sweet, and alleviates the 96+ temps. In Orlando, the wind is a hair dryer, blowing stifling sandpaper-like air over your skin. It’s more painful than pleasurable.
9. I never realized how much energy I expended with my commute. In two days at my new job, I’ve driven as much as I would’ve driving one-way to my old job, and my energy-level is much higher than it normally is.
8. I had lunch at home today, foshizzle. Leftover ribeye steak with Hellman’s and tomato on white bread while saying hello to the 100lb puppy-of-love. I was back at work in the less time than it used to take me to fetch lunch from a restaurant in Cocoa Beach.
7. If I posted my gas-cost savings, you’d perform a bodily function (ejection) with a clay-based building material.
6. When I got an alert from the National Weather Service about a thunderstorm, I ran out to my car to grab my umbrella, then hot-footed it back inside to warn everybody. The trip took 30 seconds as I can park my car 20 feet from an office door. The same trip at NASA? Four security points with gate-access requirements and a 100-yard dash to and from my car each way, assuming I got a good parking spot. Total time, about three hours, (a rough estimate).
5. I had a cell phone on my desk and the electronic device was not being threatened by the Explosive Ordnance Disposal folks with termination with extreme prejudice.
4. My chair, frankly, sucks. I miss my 93-degree of lean.
3. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, not OSF/2, vacuum tubes, and punch cards.
…
OK, 9-track tapes and 4mm DATs, but still.
2. My office has one wall. The building management team is working to get me more walls, but really folks, I know the new guy gets the crappy office, but d@mn. I should bring my son’s Matchbox mat and just charge people to watch me play.
1. Freedom. Glorious, precious, wonderful freedom. I don’t have to check in, check out, announce I’m going to lunch, ask permission to leave the building, move a dot on a board to announce my location, or anything else that resembles a kindergarten classroom.
I hear you on #9.
I recently switched from a 1.5-2h commute twice a day, to a 20 minute roundtrip. Pretty soon you’ll realize that your new job has saved you a full weeks worth of office hours just in time saved commuting. It’s great, and you’ll never want a job with a commute again.
Amazing. Get yourself a better chair, though – at your advanced age bad chairs can kill.
Sounds like things are going great!
I can’t wait to be able to move closer to where my job is, 45+ minute commutes every morning and afternoon are a pain.
And yes, go get you a new chair, with all 93 degrees of glorious lean!
“I don’t have to check in, check out, announce I’m going to lunch, ask permission to leave the building, move a dot on a board to announce my location, or anything else that resembles a kindergarten classroom.”
AMEN!
Sounds like things are going well from the perks side. I know the few times I’ve changed jobs, the culture shock is always the biggest adjustment. As far as fuel costs, I used to work 45 minutes away, now my commute is just 5 minutes!
Sounds like an overall plus! Get a good chair, even if you buy it yourself. You can afford to, using gas savings!
Lunch with puppy-of-love? Pure win.
That Matchbox mat has WIN written all over it.
*however* a business card that says “NASA” is, well, pretty cool
I knew you would love your new job but…
WHY THE H3LL DIDENT YOU TAKE THE CHAIR YOU BUILT BACK FROM NASA?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
congrats. how does your office have 1 wall?
#10 Cities are heat sinks. Orlando gave up orange groves for concrete and tourists. “Hot time summer in the city. Back of my neck gettin’ dirt and gritty…”
#9 I hope it stays that easy for you. I live 2 miles from my office. In the past, if I had to work Saturdays, I often walked. It started out, 9.5 years ago, as a 5 minute commute. Now, it’s 10 minutes with the increase in traffic.
#4 Yes, to echo kunukia, go get yourself a decent chair. Your boss ought to understand that bad chairs are a productivity drain. I got a new chair when I banged my knee on the edge of my desk three times in a row because the rollers on the one I was given wouldn’t roll. (I’m not a klutz. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
#2 I have a corner office with windows. I also have carpenter ants that I’ve been yelling at building management to kill. I might trade you.
#1 Gratz. Methinks the wattage on your evening smile got brighter.
“you’d perform a bodily function (ejection) with a clay-based building material.”
Interesting way to say shit bricks… I might have to use that.
@Blank: Taking large pieces of anything out of a NASA building is a non-trivial exercise. I found at JPL that it was easier at 3AM but still non-trivial. [That's a theoretical observation only of course]
Ugh, I wish I had #1 at my job. I work for my state’s Dept. of Transportation and every morning I have to: 1) Email my supervisor on or before my start time (a minute or two over is ok) stating I’m actually here, 2) Move my dot on the board from the out to in position 3) we can’t even leave work until at the earliest 5 minutes before our time even though we could be sitting here with nothing to do for a good 10-15 minutes. I miss the freedoms.
I think i’ve seen this somewhere before…but it’s not bad at all
I was in Orlando this weekend, and dude… your airport SUCKS haha!
Really, that was all of Orlando I saw… we had a connect there to Miami. I like Florida and the craziness of the storms out there!
@ #9. Yup
2 years ago I quit my really nice, high paying job in San Francisco, to take a job with a 30% pay cut, and love every minute. Why you ask? Because the office is now 3.4 miles from my house. I go home everyday for lunch, see the kid, play with the dogs, sometimes hop in the pool.
Never again will I take a job with a 64 mile commute into the San Francisco Bay Area.
Considering his customized chair isn’t standard NASA-issue (for someone not a General) you’d like to think he wouldn’t have had much trouble getting it out.
“Whadda ya mean I can’t take my personal chair with me? It’s MY chair! Does it look like a NASA-issued chair? Yes, I know it looks like a General’s Chair. Have any Generals reported their chair missing? No, they have not, because this is my own, personal chair!”
Then again, the people you’d be arguing with are charged with guarding a secured military installation and all its secrets (including chairs) and apparently they have guns.
I’d still be disappointed if I found out that “Airman Howell” didn’t even try
rofl I have #9 backwards
I went from having a 45 second walk to school both ways to a half hour bus ride to high school meaning I have to wake up an hour earlier how about that for a graduation present? Turns out I have #1 backwards too! I went from being in 8th grade and being able to do anything I want (as long as I didn’t get caught) to being a freshman in the strictest school on long island!! and at #4… YOUR AIRMAN HOWELL FOR GOD’S SAKE! Knowing you you’d probably take a grappling hook to your window and scale the wall to get that chair… I’m shocked! 
#1 absolutely rules.
#2 Look on the bright side. If you angle your desk right (assuming you can move it), you never have to worry about people sneaking up on you. I currently have only one wall as well, but the fact that nobody can sneak up on me now has made the transition from my little rear-entry cube all the more worthwhile.
@Andrew: Be glad you didn’t have a hour long buss ride to both middle and high school. I use to have a permanent bruise on the side of my forehead from my daily routine of falling asleep and bashing my head into the window.
@ Capn John:
I dunno – MY matchbox mat has things like “gas station” and “police station” written all over it…..
*grin*
I enjoy my commute into work every morning. A 12-mile drive that takes 8 minutes because of my start time and my excessive need to go fast. Granted, it’s all down hill from that point and every day I have to say “I Quit” out loud just to make it through the day.
Glad you’re liking the short commute in Orlando – although when I lived there I had to drive 5 miles, and it used to take me 15 minutes at a quiet time of the day. And don’t get me started on my first commute there – about 20 miles and it used to take me about 70 minutes – I4 is a nightmare!
Fortunately, I’m now half a mile away from work and it takes me 5 minutes to saunter up there on foot, heh
Hi-Five @ Zippy. You made me chuckle
So…would I type that as COL ?