September 2008 Archives

Assorted space news from the weekend:

• Bad, bad news in Hubble-land. The telescope had a pretty major failure over the weekend that puts the upcoming launch (currently planned for October 14) in serious jeopardy. Figures -- the darn thing would start failing a mere two weeks before we're going to service it. STS-125 could be delayed until after the new year.
• SpaceX, one of the private companies working on developing the capability to get to orbit, successfully made it to orbit on Sunday after three failures in the past two years. Pretty cool. Congratulations to them.
• Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Sunday after a successful mission in which they completed China's first spacewalk. This is only their third manned mission ever. One of the spacesuits was Russian, while the other was a new suit designed by the Chinese. Congrats to them.

As for my weekend, it was full and fun. Months ago, Jose and I bought tickets to Austin City Limits this past weekend. But the lineup of bands wasn't particularly inspiring, and after two hectic weeks of hurricane crap we decided to sell the tickets and have a relaxing weekend in Houston. Turns out that we found plenty of fun stuff to do here!

We promised ourselves that we'd do something fun -- and outside of Clear Lake -- to substitute for not going to ACL, so on Saturday we went into town to see Bodyworlds 2 at the Museum of Natural Science. Jose had seen the previous version that was at the museum two years ago, but this was the first time I'd seen it. It was a little weird, and a little creepy (after all, they are real human bodies that were once real people), but overall it was quite interesting. After that we had dinner at Star Pizza (which I love, but I do need to find some new restaurants in that part of town -- I only go to the same three places over and over). We finished the evening back at Miller Outdoor Theater where there was a free taiko drumming show going on. It was a beautiful night for outdoor entertainment.

Yesterday Jose went flying with Becca, but they didn't get far -- the airport lost power again and therefore the gas pump didn't work. They had only the gas that was already in the plane, so Jose flew a few touch-and-gos and they called it a day. Because he was done early, we had time to go running together before meeting Jen, Jason and Debbie for the final game of the Astros season.

I was a pretty horrible baseball fan this year -- I think yesterday was only the 4th game I've been to all year. Compare that to previous years when I've averaged 15-20 games per season! The Astros had been mathmatically eliminated a few days earlier by a Brewers win, and the Braves were long out of contention, so the game was meaningless. Nonetheless, it was nice to see the Astros win. They ended the season 11 games above .500 and 3.5 games back in the wild card race. They actually only played 161 games -- they missed one due to Hurricane Ike -- but there was no need to make it up since it made no difference in the final standings. Oh well.

We finished the weekend having dinner with Nick, Heather, Melissa, Kelly and John. I spent only a few hours actually at home, so my apartment is still a wreck. Yep, cleaning is pretty low on my list of priorities. ;)

Random hurricane recovery observations:

• There are so, so many trees down. I love trees, and even though the ones we've got down here in Clear Lake tend to be scrubby, short, and sort of ugly, it still makes me sad to see them in disarray. I wish there was a way to fix trees. Reattach their limbs and nurse them back to health. (My favorite tree at work lost its top. But the funny part is how JSC is treating the trees that still have loose branches stuck up in them -- wrapping them with caution tape.)
  
  
• What is up with the stoplights? I understand that when we don't have power, they don't work. But why are they seemingly being repaired at random? On my way to work, I drive through 5 stoplights that are functioning normally. Then one that is flashing red no more than 1000 feet from the previous light. Then 200 feet later, the next light is working fine. At lunch today we had to go through the Bay Area / Space Center intersection and the light was out entirely. Bay Area / El Camino Real was out as recently as Sunday (and may still be out -- I've avoided the intersection since then). Those are both major intersections, which makes me wonder if there is any rhyme or reason to which lights get repaired in what order.
  
  
• The amount of damage people suffered runs the gamut. I know plenty of people who had absolutely no damage. Then there's the group that lost a fence or some shingles or had a tree fall down, but nothing major. Then there are people like Nick and Heather, who had a vent blow off their roof opening a hole that let rainwater pour into the vent system for hours. The vent system carried it throughout the entire house. The dining room ceiling collapsed from the weight of the water. They've had to rip out 70% of their ceilings and walls and are living in an apartment temporarily while they start the process of repairs. Then there's Amelia and Raul, friends from my tri club, who live in Seabrook. Their entire first floor was flooded and now has to be entirely gutted. They believe that in a few weeks they'll be able to move back into the second floor of the house while they also begin repairs. They are keeping a good sense of humor about it -- Amelia said her first thought was to just replace the first floor with stilts!
  
  
• The waterline from the storm surge in Clear Lake is still visible in odd places. You can still see the line of trash and debris that sits about 4 feet below my apartment, though the complex has been very active in cleaning up debris elsewhere. Down near Kemah, you could see how high the water got by looking at a chain link fence that still had trash stuck in it about 2 feet up.
  
  
• So Centerpoint owns the power lines and transmission system. And Centerpoint is also in charge of new connections, transfers in service, and disconnects -- a fact that I discovered when Reliant called to tell me that my power could not be disconnected in my old apartment because Centerpoint is not currently processing connects/transfers/disconnects since they're working so hard to simply restore power at all. (Whether I'm currently paying the electricity bill for two apartments remains to be seen.) So if Centerpoint any similar companies own the lines and handles connections, why does my bill come from Reliant Energy? What the heck do they do? Do they provide the power itself? I'm missing something in how this system works, I think.
  
  

Many of you know that I often run after work at the Gilruth Center, JSC's on-site gym and rec center. As long as you're a NASA employee or contractor (or family member), you can get the code that lets you in the gate that separates Gilruth from the rest of the space center. There's a nice running trail beyond that gate that I've covered countless miles on over the past six years. The first half mile is on asphalt and goes through the woods before opening up into a field. (Space Center Boulevard is the scenery in the other direction, but c'est la vie.) The last 1.5 miles used to run along the road through JSC, but earlier this year they added a new crushed granite portion that is set back off the road and behind a few buildings.

As I drove down Space Center Boulevard on my way to class on Monday night, I noted sadly that there were many, many trees down in the wooded half mile at the beginning of the trail, and several large tree trunks now blocked the path. When I drove up after work tonight, there were signs on the door saying the jogging trail was closed. But undeterred, I changed clothes and headed out to follow the trail in reverse. I was happy to find that it's really only that first half mile that's out of commission at the moment. (One of my runner friends that I saw there confirmed that it was impassable -- he tried.) So I was able to run in reverse along the loop for just over a mile and a half before turning around and heading back.

It was my first run in more than two weeks and it felt so good to get back out there. Between moving, the program book and of course Hurricane Ike, exercising had fallen by the wayside. I got plenty of exercise moving all my crap from one apartment to another, and I took a few walks while we were holed up in Conroe, but it was definitely time to get back out there running. Hopefully I didn't lose too much fitness.

I will now be jumping back into my training schedule for the Hi-Fi Tri at the end of October. It is scheduled for Moody Gardens in Galveston, so no one is totally sure whether the race will actually happen. Registration has been put on hold at the moment while the race directors assess whether the city and the venue will be recovered enough from Ike to proceed. I'm crossing my fingers that it will happen, because I was looking forward to it, but I will certainly understand if it's not meant to be this year.

I'm back at work today where things don't seem too worse for the wear. We'd heard that our building sustained a lot of roof damage, and maybe it did, but it's not apparent from the inside -- at least not in my office. Still, I've got to admit that my office was very, very far down on my list of concerns over the past week. Heck, my job entirely was very far down on my list of concerns.

Today I've already heard people complain about things such as the fact that the email servers were taken down when JSC powered down in advance of Hurricane Ike and all I can say is: seriously? We got hit by a hurricane but you're annoyed because you couldn't check your work email for 2 days? (And it really was only 2 days -- maybe even less.) I know we've got a mission coming up and all, but...

It certainly didn't bother me that I couldn't check my work email account or that my office might get wet. Maybe I just don't care enough about my job. Who knows.

Mike and Meg sent us a few photos of our various activities in Conroe which included eating, playing Clue the day after the storm, hanging out on the tiki torch-lighted patio, and more eating. (Oh, and drinking.)

All in all, I'll be happy when September is over. It's been a rough month with the move, the Miss Bay Area pageant program design work, and Hurricane Ike all converging on a single two-week period. I'm sure all the people along this part of the Gulf coast will agree with me when I say I look forward to months or years from now when this storm is behind us.

All of the windows in my new apartment face Clear Lake, and while I didn't get flooded (a small miracle), the wind from Hurricane Ike blew the rain in sheets against the windows for hours. As you can probably guess, apartment complexes don't exactly splurge on the highest-quality windows and frames, so I ended up with quite a bit of water seeping in through the windows. You could tell the carpet was damp as soon as I walked in, and while it has dried a bit over the past few days thanks in large part to being able to run the air conditioner (which in turn is thanks to the awesome incredible power repair people), I got a visit this evening from a disaster recovery company the apartment complex hired to dry things out and repair roof damage to a few of the buildings.

They had these cool sensors to detect humidity and sure enough, poking them into the carpet and window grout and holding it against the drywall set the sensors beeping in a frenzy. All of the carpet within about 5 feet of the windows and most of the drywall immediately surrounding the window frames are damp. So they rolled in these large dehumidifiers as well as a bunch of fans and now I'm sitting here listening to the loud hum of fans whirring.

Normally I'd complain, but at the moment I'm happy. This is one of the times I get to appreciate the fact that I still live in an apartment -- someone else owns the place and takes care of all the maintenance and repair!

JSC will officially reopen on Monday, so I've got another three days of "vacation" before going back to work. Not that I've had a problem staying busy the past few days.

After two trips on Tuesday, two on Wednesday and four today, I am finally moved out of my old apartment. (Jose suggested that next time, I should rent a truck! To which I responded that next time, I'm paying someone to move it all, not just the furniture.) I can't say that I'm really moved into the new place yet since my stuff is scattered all over the floor and needs to be organized and put away, but at least I turned in the keys to the old place.

They still don't have power over there, which made it difficult to clean -- couldn't vacuum, so the floors are a mess, and I didn't have much light by which to scrub the bathroom. The office lady said they wouldn't charge me for any of it, since they understand why I couldn't do a great cleaning job. And the carpet is desperately in need of replacement anyway, so who cares if it's been vacuumed?

I also had to have the maintenance guy break into the garage so I could get the last of my stuff. I pushed the opener button at least three times before realizing that DUH, the power was out.

Among the things I left in the dumpster was a whole rubbermaid bin's worth of notes from all the classes I took at Georgia Tech and Stanford. It was both fun and painful to watch those sail into the dumpster (which stunk of rotten food). The trash is where they belong, since I haven't looked at them in 6 years and don't plan to ever again. But those notebooks represented 6 years of work! Hours and hours of class and studying and problem sets. But I've got the two pieces of paper that really matter -- my diplomas.

Now that the move is done, I've got two days to put together an entire event program for the Miss Bay Area pageant. After doing the program for Miss Houston back in March, I was hired to do a smaller program for Miss Bay Area coming up next weekend. The original deadline was Wednesday, but Hurricane Ike and not having power for three of the days leading up to that deadline meant that it was completely unattainable. Now the print shop has told us they can have it done if we get it to them by Saturday afternoon. So I've got to get it done by then, which will take up most of my time over the next couple days.

Jose and I ventured out this evening in search of an open Target. The one in Kemah is closest, so we drove over there only to find that it must've closed early. As we headed back around Clear Lake to hit up the Target on Bay Area, we got our first look at the damage to Kemah and Seabrook. Even from our vantage point on 146, the amount of debris and damaged buildings and homes was sobering. It will take quite some time for this area, and for Kemah, Seabrook and Nassau Bay in particular, to recover from the hurricane. The most obvious traces of the storm are piles of debris and boats strewn around like toys.

Target on Bay Area closed at 7:30, a short 15 minutes before we arrived, so we'll have to try again tomorrow. It sounds like most stores are resuming regular hours over the next few days if they can. We hit up HEB again and found milk and meat, which made me happy. I'm thankful that we have power so that we can store perishables! We also stopped at Best Buy -- yes, Best Buy. They were open. But alas, all the area's Starbucks (and we passed at least 5 of them) remain dark.

After 5 days and nights in Conroe, I am back in my apartments -- both new and old. The new apartment came through the storm unscathed, which is nothing short of a miracle. Ike's eye went more or less straight up through Galveston Bay, which spared the west side of the bay (which includes Clear Lake) from the worst of the storm surge. In Clear Lake the water rose 11 feet. Another few feet and the new apartment would have been underwater. You can see the waterline in this photo below that I took with my phone on Sunday.

Seven of us evacuated to Conroe -- Gavin, Jen, and Carina along with Jason, Debbie, Jose and me. Gavin's parents, Mike and Meg, were amazing. We will never be able to thank them enough for letting us crash in their house and for the way they treated us. They fed us great meals even when the power went out and made sure we were all comfortable. They are just awesome, awesome people.

After the storm passed, five of us piled into Debbie's car and drove down here on Sunday to check things out. All of our homes made it through the storm with minimal damage. Jason, Debbie and Gavin and Jen all lost at least parts of their fences. Gavin and Jen lost a few shingles. But all windows were intact and no one had significant water damage. My old apartment has quite a few new water spots on the ceiling but oh well -- I'm moving out.

The weather for the past two days has been unbelievably good. It's gotten as low as the 50s at night and hovers around 75 during the day. This is late October/early November weather for Houston. It's not natural for September, but it's much appreciated since so much of the area is still without power and air conditioning. The hurricane came and went and there's nothing we can do about it but pick up the pieces, so it's nice to be able to do that without sweltering.

We came back today, after talking to Becca yesterday and finding out that our area of League City had power again. I walked in the door this morning to find power, cable, and internet. It's unbelievable and a bit surreal. On Saturday I was preparing myself to return to a flooded apartment. But Ike took a slight jog to the east, just a few short miles, and suddenly I'm able to return to "everything as usual." We found plenty of non-perishable food at HEB (which regained power as we roamed the aisles, to much clapping from the customers) and there were even some restaurants open, though we cooked at home. It's almost as if Ike never happened, or as if the storm was just a bad dream.

But unfortunately many of our friends and coworkers were not so lucky. I've heard about and seen people who have trees on their roofs, water in their living rooms, and water damage on a large scale -- enough to collapse ceilings and ruin interiors. It seems so senseless that they have so much damage to deal with while I'm sitting here typing a blog entry. Heck, Gavin's parents don't even have power back yet! After all they did for us, they certainly deserve power more than me.

When I return to work remains a bit uncertain. JSC is closed until Monday for sure. On top of that, the status of my building at work is still questionable. According to the emails I've seen, it sustained "considerable roof damage and leakage" and since my office was on the 3rd (top) floor, I don't really know what that means for my group. Maybe we'll be cleaning up our office, maybe we'll be put in another building temporarily. I don't know.

I haven't run or biked or done anything like that in a week in a half, so I'm looking forward to a relaxing run tomorrow.

Thanks for all your emails and comments and phone calls.

We taped up the windows here in Conroe, just in case, and I decided to leave Ike a little message from me.

It's dark, so none of the newscasters can really show us what conditions are like. Earlier I did see a Weather Channel reporter standing on the shore of Clear Lake in Nassau Bay. The camera panned left and I could see the giant Endeavour highrise. It panned right and I could see the South Shore Hotel, about a half mile from my new apartment.

My new apartment, the one I lived in for two days, is likely under a few feet of water. I don't have flood insurance, because I just moved and I didn't need it in my previous place. It could be worse; my furniture in total is probably still less than $5000, and I haven't moved everything yet. I'll be able to replace what I need to.

Mainly I'm trying not to think about it because the whole thing sort of makes me want to cry. It's not the material stuff -- I can replace that. But it's my home. It's the place I come home to, the place where my memories are. It's intangible but real. This hurricane is attacking it and I'm helpless to stop it. I don't like being helpless.

Well, the news hasn't gotten any better. Hurricane Ike is coming, and it's coming straight for us. While there's still a chance of it taking a last-minute jog to the east and sparing us the worst of the storm and associated surge, Ike's had a bead on Houston for the past 24 hours.

Jose and I packed up our important things last night and got up at 5 a.m. to check traffic. Everything still looked good so we went back to bed for an hour, but neither one of us could fall back asleep at that point. We eventually just got up, put our stuff in the car, and left Clear Lake shortly about 7:20 a.m. figuring we'd rather hang out north of town for a while than be stuck in traffic trying to get there later. My old apartment (where half my stuff remains) is in the 77058 zip code which was put under mandatory evacuation orders as of noon. JSC also closed at noon. We were glad we left early, since we didn't hit any traffic other than normal rush hour backups.

We arrived in Conroe around 9:00 and spent the next couple hours at Starbucks, Target and Best Buy just wandering around and killing time. Gavin and Jen left Clear Lake at 9:00 and once they got up here, we headed to Gavin's parents' house. Just like three years ago, we're now killing time in Conroe awaiting the impending storm. Unlike three years ago, it seems that we're actually going to get hit this time.

We're about 50 miles inland, so we're safe from the storm surge that would/will affect Clear Lake. We expect high winds and to lose power, but we'll manage. Cross your fingers for us. We're all very worried about the storm surge. Anything more than about 15-18 feet and my new apartment (and my friends' homes) will almost certainly be underwater.

Well, they flipped the switch on the Large Hadron Collider last night in France and I woke up this morning to find that the earth was not swallowed by a black hole and we are, in fact, still here. So that's nice.

What's not nice is a stupid old storm called Hurricane Ike. It can't quite decide where it'd like to make landfall, and keeps inching closer and closer to me. And I just moved from a second floor apartment to the first floor. And I'm now in Evacuation Zone A instead of Zone B. And Clear Lake is now 100 feet from my apartment. (Wow. When I say it like that, it seems sort of stupid to have moved there.) So I'm just super excited about hurricanes.

The interesting thing is that Ike's current predicted track is very much like that of Hurricane Rita three years ago. And we all evacuated for that, in part due to the recent memory of Katrina. But no one seemed to be too worried about Ike until today -- and it's supposed to be here Friday night. I think there's a pretty decent chance I'll find myself at Gavin's parent's house in Conroe again this weekend, just like three years ago.

If only the rest of Houston could remain rational. We'll see. I've got class tonight, but now I'm wondering if I should skip it in favor of getting my stuff in order for a potential evacuation tomorrow morning. (Making things more complicated is that my stuff is currently split between two apartments.)

Hurricanes are stupid.

The end.

School started again two weeks ago, making my schedule quite hectic again. I'm taking two classes this semester as I begin to close in on my masters degree in Digital Media Studies. It's only 6 hours of class time per week (and often less, if we get out early), but it seems to consume a lot more than that since it renders two weekday evenings pretty useless for doing anything else. That said, I'm doing it because I like it, so I don't usually mind.

This semester I'm taking Desktop Publishing, which is really a means of learning how to use Adobe InDesign and prepare documents for printing. It should be a lot of fun. The projects look cool, and we get to take a "field trip" to a print shop one week. I'm already looking forward to that. Our final project is to create a booklet which our professor will then have professionally printed for each of us. Super cool. I already have some experience with printing but this class will teach me a lot more of the little details.

I'm also taking Digital Media Law, which is another lecture class. The topic should be obvious from the title. Even though it's rough to sit in class for 3 hours straight just talking and listening, I've enjoyed the two classes thus far. I've already learned a lot more about the US legal system than I even knew before, as well as the Constitution. Since it's a seminar, we're each expected to participate by sharing ideas, asking questions, and brining in news stories that we've seen or heard that apply to the class. I think I will end up enjoying this one much more than the other two lecture class I've taken as part of this program.

I don't tend to discuss politics for many reasons. One reason is that I live in Texas, and thus I disagree with the vast majority of people here about how the country should be run. (This is one of the many reasons it'd be nice to live in Austin.) I've never been much of a debater, so I don't choose to engage in them, especially when in a place where I'm almost guaranteed to be in the minority. But the primary reason is simply that politics has become such a personal issue to people, often approaching the level of a religion. It's very difficult to have rational discussions about an issue that has become so personal.

Anyway. I had hoped to watch Sarah Palin's speech last night at the Republican National Convention, but I had class until 10:00 and missed it. I did, however, read the transcript to get an idea for what she said. I think it's probably impossible to get the full impact of any speech from reading the transcript -- so much is conveyed by the speaking tone and body language of the speaker that obviously doesn't come through in writing.

Her speech read well. Looks like she held nothing back in attacking the criticism that's already been levelled at her, and in going after her Democratic opponents. Some of her claims may not have been entirely accurate, but that's certainly not something specific to her. Every politician, on both sides, stretches the truth and twists it to fit their agenda. The idea that one party does it more than the other is simply absurd.

I like John McCain for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, for making an interesting choice, for shaking things up. It's nice to see a woman on a major ticket. It's nice to see someone from outside the typical political establishment have a shot. I don't even care that she is relatively inexperienced (just like I don't care that Obama is relatively inexperienced). Unlike a lot of people, I'm ok with someone becoming President without having been a senator or governor for twenty years. And I don't think family concerns such as her daughter's pregnancy (though ironic) should be considered in whether she is fit to be VP.

So I like Sarah Palin, and I wish I could vote for her. The problem? I disagree with her (and McCain) on basically every major issue.

Oh well.

p.s. A brief question about Palin to the guys in my office turned into a rather interesting discussion on bias in the media. But I'll save that for another day.

On Friday I booted up my computer at work just like I do every day. Click-click-click-click. Pause. Whirrrrr. Pause. More clicking.

Yep, the hard drive is quite obviously going bad, though it hasn't given up the ghost just yet. Everything seems to function fine, except for the intermittent clicking and whirring. Having had a hard drive failure at work about 4 years ago (and losing half my data because we didn't have backups -- long annoying story), I immediately called the help desk.

Six hours later, a tech showed up. He took off the case, listened, and said "it's your hard drive." Which I already knew, seeing as how I am not completely computer ignorant. He then asked if I had backed up my data. I responded that I had backed up some of it, but that it's not all covered because we (STILL) don't have a great backup solution. He helpfully pointed out that I could go buy a memory stick for about $30. "Yeah, I'd need about 5 of those," I said, because I have 25 GB of data on my computer at the moment.

"No you don't," he said. "Yes I do," I responded, ignoring for the moment the fact that the dude was outright questioning my intelligence about my own freaking computer.

"Show me," he said.

It took a lot of restraint to not say something very rude. Instead, I simply went for the properties and watched as it counted, and counted, and counted, and settled just below 25GB of data.

I couldn't believe the attitude of this guy. He never apologized. After that he simply smirked and said I'd get a new computer on Tuesday.

So now it's Tuesday, and a new computer is sitting on the floor of my office. Sitting, sitting, and doing nothing while my current computer with the failing hard drive continues to click and whir and click and whir. Why, you might ask? Because the person who delivers the computer is not the same person who installs the computer. I could probably install it myself, but then I'd get yelled at and would probably have to fill out all sorts of paperwork that would cause me to forego getting any service should something else go wrong with the new computer.

Ah, your government at work.