Recently in Thinking Category

On Triathlons and Training:

I had a great 4 mile run last night as the sun was setting. My training is picking up this week as I prepare for the Lonestar Half Ironman at the end of April. I'm about a month late in adding swimming and biking to the mix, but it's now or never. I've struggled quite a bit with training over the past year and a half. At first it was understandable, since I was swamped with wedding planning and house buying. But now it's more confusing. My motivation is...uneven. I find myself spending a lot of time comparing myself to others instead of concentrating on myself and what I want to accomplish.

I don't have a good group to train with. Many of the people in my triathlon club have gotten more serious about the sport than I am interested in becoming, rising as early as 3:30 a.m. to participate in 4-hour long spin classes. I am not at a point in my life where I am interested in getting up that early or spinning that long. This means that I am back to training by myself. Sometimes I don't mind training alone, but sometimes it gets lonely.

On Social Media:

The NASA tweetup last week was great, and I loved participating in it, but after tweeting for a solid 2 days and following dozens of new people on Twitter, I found myself feeling overwhelmed by the amount of social media I was trying to keep up with. When I'm feeling stressed out because I missed the last hour of tweets, something is seriously wrong. So I unplugged from Twitter and Facebook for the whole weekend. A couple times while we were watching the Olympics, working on the bonus room, or enjoying dinner with friends, I thought "oh, I should post this or that." Then I shook my head and groaned at myself.

Yesterday, I unfollowed about 50 people on Twitter whose updates I realized I had begun skimming past anyway. Then I logged onto Facebook and hid a whole slew of people. If the answer to the question "have I communicated in any way with you since high school graduation" was "no" then bye-bye. You can be my Facebook friend, but I do not have to read your updates. Unfollowing and hiding people probably sounds like an insanely obvious thing to do to some of you, but it was long overdue in my life. I feel less overwhelmed already!

(And don't worry -- if you're reading this blog at all, that pretty much guarantees that you are not on either of the lists above.)

On Major Life Decisions:

It's three weeks later and I still don't know anything about what NASA's new direction means for me. Overall, people are worried, scared and unhappy, and listening to the din is stressing me out. For the moment, I've tried to tune out most of the commentary and opinion and just read what's officially released by the people at headquarters. I'm planning to stick around through the end of the shuttle program this fall, since I'm the lead Rendezvous for the last shuttle flight, STS-133. After that? Who knows.

I have many ideas of what I could do. Jose has many ideas of what he could do. A lot of those ideas are compatible. The sticking point is that it will be nearly impossible for us to move into new careers without taking a very large pay cut. That isn't the end of the world, and though it would change our lifestyle, if we must do it, we'll do it. But I feel like we just got settled. The NASA uncertainty makes me feel unsettled. And I like settled better.

There's a fairly long list of things I have backlogged to post here, mostly involving trips and other fun occasions. I'm going to try to squeeze everything in at some point, but figured I can give you a look at what's coming. Then you can hold me accountable! In no particular order:

• Wedding recaps. We got our CDs of all the photos from Christine last week! I'll be posting these over at the wedding blog. In fact, I just made my first post in 7 weeks over there tonight.
• Finish the Belize honeymoon report. I've still got to tell you about scuba diving!
• Finish the Alaska trip report. I never did the final part. Never even posted the pictures. And it was almost a year ago.
• Write the Japan trip report. Since it was 8 months ago.
• Talk about my upcoming plans for running/biking/swimming.

I've also been meaning to make the switch to Wordpress for quite some time. That might take quite a while longer though.

So, long story short:

At this time last week, Jose and I thought we were moving to Washington DC. He had a great job offer there, and I had...well, I had some good ideas of what I'd do. There were life-related reasons to stay in Houston, of course, but we'd decided that moving was the right decision for us right now. It was a decision we'd agonized over since November.

Then the situation changed in a way we never expected. In 24 hours, we went from absolutely knowing that we were moving to DC to absolutely knowing that we are staying in Houston.

Making the decision to move to DC involved picturing where we might live, imagining what I might do, and planning for living in a more expensive city on a much lower combined salary. I started to see us there, riding on the bike paths, going to visit the museums, camping amidst the rolling hills and the green, green trees. I liked the idea of being in the same city as my brother, in the same city as many of my old high school friends, two hours away from my dad's side of the family and within driving distance of Charlotte again. I grew up on the east coast, and I miss it.

So while I know that staying in Houston is also the right decision for us, the rapid shift in life plan has left me reeling. I can't totally explain the feeling to myself, much less to Jose, which sucks because it makes him think that I'm upset that we are staying here -- and that's really NOT it. There are some really great things about staying in Houston. We have many good friends here, Jose's family is only 4 hours away, and we're both very happy with our hobbies and activities here. We can buy a house this spring or summer, and really settle in.

But some part of me is in mourning for DC. And not for DC specifically, but for the big change it would have been, for the big life shake up that -- while completely over-the-top stressful in the short term -- might have been really cool.

Moving was scary, and staying is not. It's easy. Maybe too easy. A week ago my whole life was about to change, and now I feel like nothing is going to change.

But I need some change.

So now I have to figure out how to get it here.

I'm brainstorming for a project:

If you were tasked with creating a new board game, what would the game be?

In the spirit of reminding everyone that the world is just awesome, I give you this video that I found at the same time I learned that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.

I got an email today from the Park Hotel Tokyo, where we stayed on our last night in Japan. It was a little bit of a splurge, but it was also an awesome place with incredible views of the Ginza neighborhood from our room on the 32nd floor. The email is all in Japanese except for the title ("Park Hotel Tokyo Digests") so I actually have no clue what it says. All I know is that it makes me want to go back. Yes, it's my second day back at work and I'm already aching for vacation.

Mainly, I'm just impatient in the knowledge that 2009 is going to be a big year, and I'm ready to get on with it.

I first set foot on-site at Johnson Space Center in August 1997. I did five cooperative education tours as an undergraduate and another as a grad co-op over the summer of 2001 between graduating from Georgia Tech and starting at Stanford. The way the government calculates "time worked" is a bit complicated, but when all was said and done, my "effective" start date as a civil servant became August 1998. After finishing at Stanford, I moved to Houston permanently and started full-time at JSC in July 2002. So that's 11 years since I first pledged my allegiance to the government (yep, you have to do that), 6.5 years since I started working full-time, and many semesters as a student thrown in.

If you can even remotely follow all that, you are now ready to hear my point: this afternoon I walked over to building 1, sat down with a group of others for a short ceremony, and was given my 10-year government service award. It's not much -- just a tiny pin, a handshake, and a photo with the head of Mission Operations -- but still. Whoa. 10 years.

Left is the 5-year pin, right is 10-year. 5 more years and I'll get a gold one! ;)

I've been thinking a lot lately about my future. I'm no longer early career, but not quite mid-career. It's time to start thinking more long-term and give myself more direction than I've had in the past. What do I really want to do? Do I want to stay in flight control (which will be going through quite a lull soon, as the shuttle stops flying)? Do I want to try to move elsewhere within mission operations, or within JSC, or within NASA elsewhere? Then there are the harder questions: do I want to stay at NASA at all? Do I want to even stay in the aerospace field?

So I've got a lot of thinking to do. But I'm happy to report that today, just before I got my 10-year award, I found what should obviously be my next job for the short-term: Wienermobile Driver.

Wienermobile spotted in Galveston almost 4 years ago after the Mardi Gras 5K

Yes, Oscar Meyer is taking applications to be a hotdogger, aka to travel the country in a giant vehicle shaped like a wiener.

AWESOME.

Big kudos to the Houston Marathon & Half Marathon, which announced yesterday that they will allow full refunds on entries through the end of this month.

I blogged earlier about the change in transfer policy that was announced immediately after the race sold out in July. The story was that bib transfers would be allowed (for instance, if you bought your bib but got injured and could not run, or your plans changed, or you just didn't train enough), but that those who turned in their bib would only get a partial refund. I found it sketchy that the race waited until they had sold out to announce the change of policy.

The second issue arose a few weeks ago, and I never actually blogged about it. This was a decision by the race to begin strictly enforcing the 6-hour time limit for the marathon (and the 4-hour limit for the half marathon as well, I think). While the time limit has always been in place, in previous years the organization had looked the other way and tacitly allowed walkers to start the race as early at 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. (the official start is at 7:00) in order to make it to the finish line by 1:00 p.m. This year's decision to strictly enforce the time limit didn't bother me much -- time limits are a part of nearly every major event, and allowing large groups of walkers to begin the race early clogs the course for the elite runners and associated race traffic that must then try to get past them once the race is officially underway. But again, it was sketchy for the marathon to have waited until after the event sold out to announce their renewed interest in adhering to the 6-hour time limit. Many people certainly bought bibs intending to start the race early, as they've done in years past.

So there was a lot of hubbub about these two announcements about policy that came after the race sold out, and that marked a significant departure from policies of years past.

Yesterday, the marathon announced that they will offer full refunds through the end of August. I think it's a great move on their part, and is fair to all involved. If you can no longer run the race, if you're hurt, if you just changed your mind, if you had your own sketchy plans of selling your bib for a profit like last year, and if you know you need more than 6 hours to finish 26.2 miles -- well, all of those people can now turn their bibs in and not be out any money.

Great move by the marathon organizing committee. Can't wait to get out there and run the half in January!

It's only Tuesday but it's already been a weird week. I find myself trying to get certified to work a position that, for now, is specific to the space shuttle. The space shuttle, however, is going to stop flying in two years. There are lots of decisions being made about how to conclude flight controller training for the shuttle and begin to transition a large part of the NASA workforce to the new Constellation program. And I feel pinched. I really, really want to finish the training flow I am about to begin, and I really, really want to be able to work a shuttle flight as lead rendezvous officer before the program ends. I feel like I need this certification, and the ensuing experience, in order to put myself in a decent position to make contributions to the future vehicle -- and to position myself for a fulfilling job after the shuttle program ends. But upper management is trying to figure out how to reduce the number of sims that we run. This is necessary to free up people to work the new program, but it also adversely affects people like me who are still in a training flow. It's a race against time, but many of the factors involved are beyond my control, and I'm afraid that I might not win. So I feel very anxious about my future career.

I swam 1800 yards last night and I can feel it in my arms and back today. It was a good swim, three sets of 500 yards freestyle, each followed by 100 yards of breaststroke. There was a crazy guy two lanes over from me. I couldn't figure out what he was doing. As I left, I noticed his bag had tags hanging off it that read "Speedo" and "Athlete" and things like that -- they looked like athlete passes from some kind of event. But his behavior in the pool was just strange. He never swam more than 50 yards without taking an extended break. He swam each of those 50 yards all-out, but his breaks were so long that it didn't seem as if he was doing any sort of structured workout. At one point, he wore flippers on his feet and paddled backstroke furiously while his body was angled in the water at about 45 degrees. I can't even describe well what he was doing but it was strange. Basically, everything he did seemed designed to produce the maximum amount of splash and noise. Weird.

I bought two more orchids last night at HEB. I know, HEB! A grocery store. Seems like a strange place to buy orchids, but they were only $9.99 and they looked very healthy. Plus, they were both still blooming, so now I've got some new flowers to enjoy while my purple one goes dormant for the year -- or whatever it is they do.

After two up-and-down years, I surrendered the HARRA webmaster position to someone else. I enjoyed working on the website, and being a part of the HARRA board, even if I wasn't very active as a board member. I enjoyed redesigning the site and getting things up and running with a new system. But after two years, I needed a break from the day-to-day maintenance work, and from the emails from members asking questions that were new to them, but that I felt like I'd answered a thousand times already. I think I'm a lot more interested in website design than in website maintenance anyway. It will be good to have fresh blood working on the site.

Today is the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th birthday. It was launched aboard space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. After some growing pains in the first three years, the 1993 repair mission turned the telescope into a fully-functional and very clear-sighted window on the universe. I saw that mission on the launch pad in Florida as a 9th grade student, and that visit to Kennedy Space Center was the single biggest force in driving my future and my decision to become an aerospace engineer.

For more awesome images, visit the Hubble Gallery. Happy Birthday Hubble! Hopefully the final servicing mission later this year will give you many more years of beautiful picture-taking.

On Saturday, a Soyuz landed in Russia carrying three crewmembers home from the International Space Station including two females: Peggy Whitson, the first female ISS commander and new American record-holder for the most time spent in space, and Yi So-yeon, South Korea's first astronaut. This was the first time the number of women onboard any space vehicle has outnumbered the men.

The Soyuz had a guidance problem during entry that resulted in a downmode to the ballistic entry -- a steeper trajectory that resulted in the crew experiencing up to 10 times the force of gravity (much more than the normal 4 g's) and a landing more than 250 miles short of where the Russian Space Agency expected them to come down. It took half an hour to locate the crew (who were all ok), which was much improved from the landing in 2003 where a similar error occured and the crew's whereabouts were unknown for two hours. This time, the crew had a satellite phone which essentially allowed them to call and say "ok, we're back, here we are, come get us!"

This is not the first time this has occured. There have been at least 2-3 ballistic entries in the last 5 years. Obviously there are still a few problems with the Soyuz entry guidance -- although I will fully concede that the Soyuz is perhaps the most reliable of all space vehicles. In the grand scheme of things, it is definitely a good thing that the vehicle has an entry guidance downmode to the steep ballistic re-entry that, while rough on the crew, is still survivable. However, there's certainly no excuse for the quotes in this Associated Press article:

"The most important thing is that the crew is healthy and well,'' Federal Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov told a post-landing news conference. "The landing occurred normally, but according to a back-up plan -- the descent was a ballistic trajectory.''

He did not elaborate.

I usually try to let stuff like this roll off my back, but COME ON. This is a high-up manager in the Russian Space Agency, NASA's #1 international partner. To imply that having multiple women onboard a spacecraft is bad luck, or leads to any kind of strange behavior -- or to even imply that part of the reason the Soyuz landed off-course is due to the two women onboard -- is simply unacceptable.