Systems, Day 1 

 Drinking from the firehose X2

First day of systems, and the rote memorization of numerical data starts now and increases as the days go by. We were supposed to have gotten most of the limitation data memorized by now, and I had done so, but we weren't warned that time limitations were always a part of the answers to any questions. Knowing that, I now know I should put down on systems quizzes and tests everything I know about the question. This is nearly the polar opposite of the Indoc questions, for which a bald "Yes" or "No" was the preferred answer, since you could hang yourself by explaining away your otherwise correct answer.

We started doing flows today. A flow is a physical procedure that has a set physical order, and it is practiced in a "paper tiger", a fake paper cockpit that is the same size as the real thing, but has only a two-dimensional paper picture on it. Keeping a good mental picture of the cockpit in mind seems to me to be a good way to get these flows down.

Tomorrow, Systems continues. More numbers, more flows, more mechanical details.