Daily: October 2007 Archives

It is owl cookie day! In honor of Halloween, last night I baked up a large batch of owl cookies. They are a family tradition, and I can't remember a Halloween without them. When I was a kid, my mom gave them out to all the trick-or-treaters that came to our house (this was obviously before parents got paranoid about razor blades and poisoned candy). They are quite cute, and pretty tasty as well. I brought them to work and half are already gone.

Engineers love cookies.

All that talk about watching the shuttle and station pass over, and I completely forgot to go outside. Well, Wednesday night I couldn't because I was stuck in class, but last night? The night with the pass nearly straight overhead? With the vehicles docked for extra brightness? And the full moon out to add to the display? Yeah, I forgot.

Instead, I was inside watching the baseball game. I fell asleep in the 7th inning, but see that the Red Sox prevailed again (albeit in a much closer game than the first one). Has anyone else noticed that the Red Sox are no longer the scrappy underdog? I think they fully played that card in 2004. I hope the Rockies can come back and win some games, if not the series.

So I missed the space station and space shuttle. Chalk it up to another day of strange sleep and a fuzzy head. Yesterday afternoon I dreamed that my sister had a baby and named him Bart. When I woke up, it seriously took me about 3 minutes to figure out whether my sister was actually pregnant in real life. I concluded that she is not, but if she ever has a kid named Bart I will be sufficiently weirded out.

I was sleeping during the day after going in to work at 3 a.m. to watch the rendezvous. Everything went well, unless you count massive headaches with the shuttle's network of laptops and software. It's the most complicated vehicle in the world, and yet the thing driving everybody crazy yesterday was trying to get a computer hooked up and a wireless network operating correctly. It was also the first flight with the laptops running Windows XP. (Yes, XP. We're slow here at NASA.) Coincidence? Hmm...

Tonight, if you can get a clear view of the horizon to the southwest, there is a very cool viewing opportunity. The International Space Station will be visible for two minutes starting at 8:20, but it will only rise to 19 degrees elevation so you've got to have a good view of the lower part of the sky. The reason this viewing is particularly cool is that just after the space station passes, you'll be able to see another, fainter point of light chasing it -- space shuttle Discovery! Yes, the space shuttle will be chasing the space station on its way to a docking around 7:30 tomorrow morning. Pretty cool.

I am now two-for-two in on-time shuttle launches. I watched 116, which launched a day late, but that one doesn't count since it wasn't my flight. Heh.

I'm dealing with the aftermath of my crazy sleep schedule, and preparing to do the late night/early morning thing one more time. Yesterday I fell asleep on the couch from 3:15 until 4:00. I woke up for a little while, and fell asleep again from 5:30 until 7:30. I got up to watch the station and shuttle pass over, 10 minutes apart, at 8:00. I went back to bed again at 9:30 and slept straight through to this morning. All in all, it made yesterday feel like a very long and fuzzy-headed day. By the time I went to sleep for good at 9:30, I could hardly believe that I'd helped launch a space shuttle not even 12 hours before.

Yet here I sit, 24 hours removed from working my second launch, and already starting to suffer post-flight letdown. I have no more involvement in this flight, and will now sit in the quiet office for two weeks while everyone else is off working the flight.

Docking is tomorrow morning at about 7:30, which means the crew enters their rendezvous procedures at about 2 a.m. I've watched the past four dockings, but I'm still reluctant to pass up the opportunity to watch another one, especially since there have been so few sims lately. So I'll be at work during the wee hours of the morning once again on little sleep, since I'll be in class until 10:00 tonight. My class is sort of annoying me lately. I want to just stay home and chill. Besides, the World Series starts tonight and I wish I could watch it. I almost forgot that baseball is still even happening. Stupid postseason schedule.

I haven't run since Saturday thanks to my crazy schedule. Every time I leave work, I'm too tired to even think about running. I'll be doing the Houston Half on Sunday, but I'm not expecting much. The way things have gone lately, I'll be happy if I can even manage 12:00 pace.

I'm feeling very restless today.

I went to bed on Saturday night around midnight and woke up Sunday morning at 9:00. "Bed is comfortable," I thought. "I'll just lay here for a while longer." Suddenly it was noon, and I was still lying in bed. Yep, I slept for 12 hours, which of course has totally ruined my sleep schedule. I had to be at work at 5 this morning but couldn't fall asleep last night. I tried and tried, but finally gave up and just watched the baseball game and finally fell asleep at 12:30. For those keeping score, that's 3.5 hours of sleep. And now I'm just sitting here waiting until 1:30 to go home.

On the positive side, all my L-1 checks went swimmingly and the ARD is in tip-top shape. Now if only the weather would clear up, because right now it's not looking so great. Clouds and storms in Florida, in Europe at the trans-Atlantic landing sites. Even Edwards is in danger of being covered in haze and smoke from the wildfires plaguing southern California. I'm crossing my fingers though. October 23, 10:38 a.m. Central. Find a TV!

This is Mission Control at daybreak. It looks even darker at 4 a.m. Obviously. As I walked in this morning, it occurred to me that I have not seen 3:30 a.m. in quite a long time. Perhaps not since college. And then I was certainly seeing 3:30 a.m. as the end of a day rather than the beginning.

During the last mission, I made fun of Becca because she was working the middle-of-the-night shift and for a week or more, all her blog entries talked about was how tired she was. I suppose I should apologize to her now, because the truth is this: when you're tired, pretty much all you can think about is how tired you are. And how good it would feel to sleep. And how comfy your bed is at home. And how tired you are. Did I mention tired?

I had class last night so I didn't even get home until after 10:00. My best efforts got me in bed by 10:45, but it took a half hour to fall asleep. At 3:00 when my alarm went off, I was surprisingly awake...but that lasted for about 15 minutes. Although I know I'm destined to end up with crappy hours in the future when I start working rendezvous and supporting some part of flight other than ascent, this is the first time I've had to deal with these hours. And after only two days, I can't think about anything but sleep.

Oh, and baseball. I can think about baseball. Speaking of which, why wasn't there a game last night? This post-season schedule seems totally bizarre to me. Have there always been this many off days? I know four of the six series have been sweeps, but it seems like there have been more off days than on days. ESPN.com had a commentary about it today, something about wanting the World Series to start mid-week for ratings. Everything is about ratings. I bet MLB is just loving the prospect of a Cleveland-Colorado World Series. I'm excited about it though. From the start, Rockies-Indians is what I was hoping for. Two underdogs, two teams that haven't seen October in a while. Even Manny says it's no big deal if the Red Sox lose. What a wacky guy.

In summary: I'm tired.

The Comcast lineup switch made the Chronicle: Comcast Switch Leaves Baseball Fans in the Dark;. Grr. Yes, I'm still mad about that. I did watch another great ALCS game last night. Crazy how the Indians just keep pouring on the 2-out hits. Crazy that the Red Sox had back-to-back-to-back home runs. Crazy that Manny Ramirez didn't realize that he looks like an idiot when he showboats about a home run that still leaves his team four runs down.

This morning was, well, interesting. And stressful, yet educational, yet crappy, as I'm forced to concentrate on issues with STS-122 data while I really should be concentrating on the launch that's, I dunno, next week.

Yesterday it was the discovery of an error that has been in the software for 10 years. Today was a rejected piece of data that brought the entire trajectory database generation to a screeching halt. What grenade will greet me tomorrow?

I ran last night with the express intent of proving that Sunday was a fluke. The weather was a little warm and humid, but I did four solid miles at 11:15 pace. There was one bit of weirdness, and the best way to explain it is to say I felt like I had butterflies in my lungs. Sort of a tingly feeling. I have felt it before, but only when running very hard. The feeling has persisted a bit today. I'm sure it sounds more worrisome than it is.

No running today, since I have no time between work and class. But tomorrow I'll get in an afternoon run. Yes, afternoon. Because I will be going home at 2:00. Because I have to be in at 4:00 a.m. for STS-120's final ascent sim. Sigh. Better get used to it -- on launch day I get on console at 3 a.m.!

The Soyuz that launched on Wednesday docked to the space station today. We watched the last couple minutes of the docking here in the office. Man, that thing goes flying in! They docked at about 0.15 meters per second -- that's more than 4 times faster than the shuttle, which docks at the comparatively glacial paces of 0.1 feet per second. Try to walk at 0.1 feet per second sometime. It is slow. Then again, when you're in the shuttle (or the simulator) watching the giant space station coming towards you, it feels really fast.

I am dragging like nobody's business today, and walking like an old person. A few months ago, I discovered that playing softball -- and specifically, catcher -- after running was not such a good idea, since it was basically the equivalent of following a run with an hour of squats. Last night I discovered that it doesn't really work so well the other way either. Play catcher (i.e. hour of squats) and then run? Yeah, it still makes your legs feel the same amount of wobbliness the next day. Oof.

I had a good run thanks to the lovely weather, but it doesn't change the fact that I've been a slacker lately. I haven't been posting all my runs, so I haven't been as much of a slacker as my blog might indicate, but suffice it to say that I have been slacking all the same. We will see how Sunday goes. I know I can make the 10 miles, and I know I can make it under 2 hours, but I don't know how much. My ideal goal would be 1:50, but I don't think I'm going to be able to maintain 11:00 pace the whole way. Thus, I am not setting a goal. I'm just going to treat it as a long run, not a race, and thus I don't care what my time is.

Matchbox Twenty's new "How Far We've Come" is an ideal running song, by the way. Perfect pacing.

My brother Brian found out recently that he passed the 4th and final part of the CPA exam, so he is now officially a Certified Public Accountant. Congratulations to him!

It took every ounce of my self-motivation skills to get out and go running last night, but I did. I thought about driving straight home, but I forced my car to Gilruth. After the run, I was glad I did it. It's been a good week; I've hit the pavement four times: 10K last Saturday, 3 miler on Monday, 30-minute tempo run on Tuesday, 3-miler last night. Small runs, and I want to ramp up at least one of my weekday runs to 5-6 miles. But it's a start. On tap for this weekend is a 9-miler, and next weekend is the USA 10-Miler. Some days I think I might actually be able to pull off doing this marathon thing again.

Some people have told me they have had trouble commenting since I upgraded and switched to a default Movable Type template. Maybe that's why I've had so few comments (or maybe I'm just boring). Once you click "Comments" at the top of each entry, there should be a "Comment anonymously" link at the bottom of the resulting page. Try that. Overall, I'm not loving the new Movable Type. This is partially because I haven't taken the time to really explore it, and I know that they have added a lot of functionality. But at the same time, I'm not sure I need that functionality. And it runs slooowly. Pages take too long to load -- maybe not for you the viewer, but for me the blogger, when I'm dealing with the backend. I played around with Wordpress a few months ago; I may be switching this weekend. If you experience blog-weirdness, that'll probably be the cause.

It's a three-day weekend for us government folk. Thank you Christopher Columbus. I plan to spend it doing nothing but fun activities, because the next two weeks leading to the STS-120 launch are gonna be nothing but busy.

Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957. That makes today the 50th anniversary of space exploration! It is sort of amazing to think that my job (heck, a large part of my industry) did not exist a mere 50 years ago.

Today, we fly space shuttles every day. Sometimes for real, and sometimes in sims. Last night I worked a crazy, crazy undocking sim. So crazy that people have been talking about it in the office all day. It's not unusual to talk about sims in the office, especially since I am in training and always have questions about the ins and outs of certain procedures. But when the talk lasts all day... Yep, it was a crazy sim.

After we finally finished our last separation burn, my coworker turned to me and said "did you know the space station is passing over in a couple minutes?" Done with our job for the sim, the rendezvous team stepped outside and watched the ISS slide across the dark sky. Fifty years since a little metal ball called Sputnik, we stood on the ground and watched a huge orbiting complex float by with three people living there. Blows the mind.

You've got a chance to see the space station tonight yourself, on the 50th anniversary of spaceflight. In Houston, it will only rise 13 degrees above the horizon so you'll need a good view unobstructed by buildings. My parents in Charlotte will have a most excellent view, with the space station passing nearly overhead at 85 degrees from the horizon. My sister in Seattle will have a view similar to Houston, 19 degrees above the horizon. And my friends in Atlanta will have a view as it crosses the sky at 76 degrees.

Look for a bright white dot, unblinking, and moving fast.

And then think of how it all started only 50 years ago.

Fall is knocking on the door. Houston is still squinting through the peephole, trying to decide if it's safe to let Fall come inside. But Fall is definitely knocking. It's still hot during the day, in the sun, but in the shade it's cooler, and the evenings are lovely.

I'm working a late sim tonight so I took the morning off. I spent most of it in one of my fake plastic Adirondack chairs on the balcony waiting to see Jose fly over in the little yellow airplane. But I never saw him; I don't know how, but I missed him. He went on a long cross country flight; in fact, he's still out there flying, somewhere between Brenham and Pearland.

While waiting, I read a lot more of my book. I don't read nearly enough -- instead, I go on reading kicks. If I get into a book, I read it quickly and then unless I have something else to start, I stop reading, instead passing my time with computer stuff and watching TV. But the impending autumn makes me want to curl up with a book so I'm reading again. I'm currently about three-quarters of the way through "Bringing Down the House," a book about a group of MIT students that won big in Vegas (and elsewhere) in the 1990s by counting cards in blackjack. I remember Melanie reading it a few years ago, and finally got around to picking it up myself. It started off slow, but the action picked up once the main character joined the team and began winning big -- much to the chagrin of the slow-to-notice casino managers. It's been a good read.

My next reads are waiting for me at home. Jose loves to go to Borders, which I don't mind -- it just means that I end up buying more and more books. Last time I picked up "The Mole People," about people living under New York City, and "Isacc's Storm," about the 1900 Galveston hurricane. Apparently I'm on a non-fiction kick.

Maybe after that I'll read the books that Gavin loaned me more than a year and a half ago. I've gotten the feeling he wants them back...

Yesterday when I arrived at work, I found the main entrance to my building (one of three) roped off with caution tape. They have been resurfacing all of the sidewalks because apparently someone felt they were too much of a slip, trip, and fall hazard. They really weren't slippery before. Nevermind the thought that people simply take responsibility for themselves and be careful walking when it's rainy.

Anyway, they are resurfacing the sidewalks to make them less slippery. Ironically, the intermediate step in this process is to basically varnish the whole sidewalk, presumably to even out the surface from its old rocks and pebbles feel. The varnish makes the sidewalk far more slippery than it ever was before, so they put up caution tape preventing access to the main entrance of the building. At first most people were simply ignoring the tape and walking (carefully) into the building. Around lunchtime, someone put an additional barrier in place so that we were reduced to slipping through a break in the bushes and trekking across the grass.

Today the resurfacing was complete, and we could all enter the building without fear of slipping, tripping, or falling.

Sigh. Such is life at a government agency.

Not a whole lot going on. Went to bed at 10:30 last night, the earliest in ages, but was still tired when I got up early this morning for a sim. The times aren't going to get any better either as the launch gets closer. There's a test next week that means I'll have to come in at 5 a.m. The week after that is our last ascent sim before launch and I'll have to be in at 4 a.m. Then of course is the launch itself (on October 23) that means I'll have to be in at 3 a.m. We launch at 10:30 in the morning, which is what drives all these events as the crew begins to sleep shift in preparation for flight. Anything the crew is involved in moves earlier and earlier. We will be a cranky bunch by the time the launch shift rolls around.