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Greetings:
An engineer friend of mine, Mike C., wrote to me from Colorado Springs
a few days ago. I worked with him there at a defense company, where we both worked as
outside contractors, back in the late 1990s. He was the digital design guy and I handled
the analog and RF for doing a modification for some satellite earth station equipment
test racks at what is now Schriever Air Force Base (Falcon AFB then). To make a long
story short, we were hired to fill an urgent need to satisfy a contract by the prime
contractor, and after about four months, the contract went away. Anyone who has worked
in the defense contracting business is very familiar with the scenario.
Anyway,
the consulting company that Mike and I worked for was named Systems Technology Associates
(STA). They specialized in government contracting and had a staff consisting almost
exclusively of retired Air Force and Army officers from the nearby Peterson AFB and
Ft. Carson. The head of the HR department was a retired Brigadier General. Probably
the only reason we got hired was because their people were computer systems and logistics
specialists, and knew not much about hardware. Mike is a whiz kid at digital design
and software, and I knew my way around RF stuff pretty well., so we were hired.
Mike is a brilliant guy – the type that effortlessly made straight-As in school
and seems to be able to figure out just about anything. He is also quite the wit and
is not afraid to tweak people to see how far he can go with them until they catch on
to his taunting. It is hilarious to behold. After witnessing him in action on a few
occasions, I can easily believe his stories of past episodes, especially those that
were brought on by people attempting to tweak him first. His straight-faced approach
is a trademark.
One instance involves the need most companies seem to have to
formulate a company mission statement, or “vision.” That one in particular is a long-running
joke between us. Mike tells the story of how, while working for one company in California
years ago, there was an inordinately high emphasis placed on memorizing "The Vision.”
After getting fed up with the inanity of such an irrational focus on the utterance of
one simple sentence that was nothing other than a slight modification of every other
company’s vision statement, he began mocking it by feigning being a staunch advocate
of the importance of memorizing it. At every opportunity, he would walk up to new employees
and tell them not to look at the back of their ID badge (where The Vision was emblazoned)
and to recite The Vision. More often than not he would be met with a frightened blank
stare. If the victim did not know The Vision, which of course most did not, he would
lecture them on the importance of being a team player and the necessity of knowing The
Vision. It subject came up initially because the company where we were doing our consultancy
happened to have their own Vision on the back of badges that were issued to us.
One more thing. This might not be as funny to you having not been there, but he
took a parting jab at STA as he resigned to work for another company after the debacle
at Allied Signal. During the exit interview with STA, he kept referring to the company
by pronouncing STA as “stuh.” Of course, they never even considered that someone might
try to use the phonetic pronunciation of STA, rather than saying the three letters in
succession. So, after talking about working for “Stuh” a number of times during the
exit interview, the lady there stopped him to ask, “What is this Stuh you keep referring
to?” His response was a feigned serious, “Us, you, you’re Stuh,” to which the lady responded
in amazement, “We don’t say Stuh, we’re S-T-A.” I can just imagine the sly grin on his
face after that exchange. As usual, Mike got exactly what he had intended.
That’s
why I still keep in contact after lo these many years. He always has a good story to
tell.
_________________ - Kirt Blattenberger
 RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster
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