Some of you out there may be familiar with the term “shift bid.”  For those who are not, it’s where you work at a place with a wide variety of shifts available.  Every so often–every three to six months seems to be an average–management decides to rearrange people’s work schedules.  This is done by listing out all of the possible shifts to work and letting people pick them based on seniority.  So the non-management person who has been there the longest gets the first bid, followed by the second longest, etc.  Each succeeding person picks from whatever is left until all have chosen.  The most junior person doesn’t get any choice, but after the choosing is all done management sometimes allows people to trade around before they set things in stone.

I have worked at my new job for three months now.  During that time, the department I work in has hired a lot of people.  I was hired roughly in the middle of a lot of hiring.  Now that the hiring is done (for now), management is having a shift bid.  It hasn’t worked its way down to me yet.  I am personally hoping to keep my current shift, which is Sunday through Thursday, 1400 to 2230.  I like this shift a lot.  It typically starts out a little busy (except on Sundays) and then later quiets down quite a bit.

That means today is my Friday.  The calendar may say it’s Thursday, but my days off are tomorrow and Saturday, so it’s Friday as far as I am concerned.  I have one Interesting Event planned for today:  NASA is holding a teleconference at 1000 Pacific time (1100 my time), and I hope to listen in.  I don’t think media credentials are required if all you want to do is listen in.  The information page for this tells how to get access to the conference as a media professional and then separately gives a link for the streaming audio of the conference.  I am hoping I can use that link without logging in.  I went there last night and the page it linked to gave time information on the conference and the subject, nothing more.

The subject of the conference is the Kepler Mission.  This was launched last June with the purpose of finding planets outside of our own solar system.  Specifically, it hopes to find Earth-sized planets.  Planet-finding efforts to date have found only larger worlds, mostly Saturn / Jupiter-sized or bigger.  After over a year of operation, it has found seven-hundred larger candidates.  Other planet-finders are working to confirm these results.  This is an astounding number of discoveries as the current confirmed number of planets outside our solar system is (as of this post) four-hundred eighty-five.  Kepler’s results stands to easily double that number and then some.

NASA has released no details–that’s what today’s conference is for–but they have said among Kepler’s recent discoveries is “an intriguing planetary system.”  So I am going to tune in if I can.  I find astronomy fascinating and hope (however distantly) to see interstellar travel in my lifetime.  There are faster-than-light propulsion theories which, if true, could make it possible.

So tomorrow I may add a bit after my poetry about what they announced.  Perhaps tomorrow’s poem will be about the discovery; it wouldn’t be the first or last time the stars have inspired a bit of verse.  See you then.