Recently in Work Category
I'm the backup Rendezvous Officer for the upcoming STS-131 mission, which means I'll be working the rendezvous and undocking as backroom support. My shift hours are horrible, as per usual, but at least I'll be working the shift when the crew is awake and doing interesting things!
The primary job of the backup person in my area, in addition to the real-time flight support, is to be the Book Manager for the flight. The Book Manager is in charge of all the rendezvous and undocking procedures -- maintaining them, correcting them, etc. It's a lot of paperwork (both real and virtual) and it can be a headache sometimes, but it's a necessary part of the job to ensure that the rendezvous goes exactly as planned. The "rendezvous book," as we call it, is only one of dozens of books of procedures, checklists, and cue cards that make up the "flight data file" or FDF.
(What, you thought the astronauts just magically remembered how to do everything that has to be done over a two-week flight? They're smart people with good memory, but not THAT good!)
(Also, if you are curious for a closer look at some of the FDF flown each mission, you can view many of the documents on the NASA website.)
The final edition of the book gets published a month or two before launch, and my final act as Book Manager is to go over to the FDF office and check each of the actual flight copies of the book -- the ones that will be packed up, shipped to Florida, loaded onto the space shuttle, and launched into orbit with the crew.
For this flight, there were 6 identical copies of the rendezvous book, along with two sets of cue cards (which are concise checklists for certain activities that are velcroed into place in orbit) and overlays (which are transparencies that they tape over the camera monitor on the flight deck to help them judge their approach rate to the space station). This means 6 separate books to go through page by page to check for errors.
Three of the copies will be flown in space, and the other three stay on the ground as backups and for archival purposes. They're color-coded -- a prime and backup book each for the commander (red), pilot (yellow), and one of the mission specialists (purple).
It's a tedious process to be sure, but it's necessary. In the past, we've discovered pages that are missing, pages with print errors, graphics that didn't come out right, and overlays that are the wrong size. Much better to discover that type of thing on the ground than to be surprised by it in orbit!
I declare these books ready for flight!
I'm in the first day of a three-day class about Simulink and Stateflow. Those are two software/coding/simulation tools that have gotten a lot of use around NASA lately as we are (or were) designing flight software for a new vehicle. They're part of Matlab, which is a coding language I used extensively in my old job down the hall, but haven't touched in the four years since I moved to the Rendezvous office.
I'm encouraged to find that I haven't completely forgotten all of my Matlab skills, and that I'm pretty good at picking up Simulink. Simulink is all visual -- as in, you drag blocks around that represent equations and functions and inputs and outputs -- and I'm pretty good with all things visual.
I'm not really sure why I'm in this class except for the fact that they needed a civil servant to meet their headcount requirements. (As a cynical aside, the fact that I'm a civil servant seems to be all I'm good for these days.) I don't have any immediate use for these skills. But it's been more fun so far than I thought, and it's always good to have a new skill. Right???
Now for a complete topic shift, and to give the non-engineers reading this something that they actually care about, I will show you what I made for dinner last night: Pioneer Woman's meatloaf. I haven't had meatloaf in a very long time, and after we finished, Jose said "that was major comfort food." And it was. Meatloaf with a side of potatoes.
Meatloaf is totally easy to make. You just put everything in a bowl and mash it up.
We were generous with the parsley, yet I still wish we'd added more.
In addition to that stuff above (meat and cheese and spices), you also add eggs and bread soaked in milk. Then you get to mush everything together, which is easiest to do if you use your hands. I suppose this part would suck if you don't like touching meat. I'm not a huge fan of touching raw chicken, but for some reason ground beef really doesn't bother me.
The only hitch was that I couldn't find my loaf pan. I KNOW I used to have a blue pyrex bread pan. It matched the blue pyrex baking dishes I have in 2 different sizes. But last night it was nowhere to be found, and the only thing Jose could find was a small aluminum loaf pan that was not nearly big enough for all that meat. Let's just say we will be eating meatloaf for the next couple days as leftovers. See, something I have quickly realized is that Pioneer Woman's recipes make a TON of food. Enough to feed her family of 6 plus a few guests, I suppose. I really need to start cutting them in half.
So we used one of the baking dishes and had "meatloaf brownies." That picture shows the situation after I'd covered half the meatloaf brownies in sauce. Don't worry, I finished covering it with sauce before I baked them.
Meatloaf brownies. Try it.
Yesterday I got to officially use Twitter for work! I was one of 13 NASA Ambassadors for a NASA Tweetup (#nasatweetup) held at JSC. If you're not a Twitter user, this may not make much sense, so here's the quick explanation: space enthusiasts active on Twitter were invited to submit their name for one of 100 spots available to come to JSC, meet some astronauts, and take a tour of some of the coolest facilities here in Houston. The visitors, or "Space Tweeps," came from all over -- various places across the US as well as Canada, Mexico, and even Brazil! They paid their own way, but in return NASA provided them with a day full of awesome tours and activities and "insider access" to JSC.
I've been active on Twitter for a while, and often use it to share some of the fun things I get to do in my job, so JSC Public Affairs asked me and 12 others like me to serve as "NASA Ambassadors" for the event. We got to participate throughout the day, chatting with the visitors and answering lots of questions about what we do. I only took a few crappy iPhone pictures, but hopefully those will give you a sense of what went on!
The group began their day at Space Center Houston (@SpaceCenterHou), where they were welcomed and got to participate in a live Twitter session with astronaut Cady Coleman (@Astro_Cady) who was on travel but set aside a half hour to take virtual questions.
After a short welcome, the day's events got underway with a Q&A session with astronaut Bobby Satcher (@Astro_Bones or @ZeroG_MD). He was a Mission Specialist on STS-129, so he began with an extended highlight video of that flight narrated by the whole crew. I didn't go to the 129 crew's debrief, so I had never seen the video, and it was a lot of fun to watch it after serving as their lead Rendezvous Officer.
Afterwards, he signed some autographs for the visitors, and then everyone was free to explore Space Center Houston and have some lunch. At that point I headed back to the office for a few hours while everyone went on tours of both the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL, aka the big pool where the astronauts train for spacewalks) and the shuttle and space station training mockups.
I rejoined the group when they arrived to see Mission Control. The Tweetup organizers planned things perfectly so that all the visitors were in the shuttle viewing room when the shuttle crew got their wakeup call. I think they all got a kick out of that, and it was good that there was some action to watch -- because honestly, watching people sit at their consoles gets old kind of quick. ;)
The next stop was the historic Apollo control center, which is always a highlight for any visitor.
From there, they went directly downstairs to the ISS viewing room, and were able to stay there and listen to President Obama's call to the STS-130 and ISS crew. That was completely a freebie -- I don't think even PAO knew that Obama would be calling the crew until yesterday. I guess when you're the President, you can talk to space pretty much whenever you want. ;)
All in all, it was a really fun day. I love sharing NASA with visitors, and this kind of thing always makes me feel refreshed and reinspired about my own job. Even with all the uncertainty about NASA's future that's been swirling around since the budget announcement on February 1, NASA is still a great place to be.
Here are my photos of the STS-130 launch early Monday morning. For those interested, I had my camera on a tripod and used my 70-200mm lens, fully zoomed of course. I framed the image prior to launch, and set the camera to f/8 and 1/125 based on the advice of this site. Sure, the launch was in the middle of the night, but it's also bright. Very, very bright.
The launch pad lit up a few hours before launch
I also had my remote, which let me take pictures without viewing the launch through a viewfinder. I got to watch with my own eyes and still get a few photos. In retrospect, it would have been cool to try a long-exposure, but I wasn't entirely confident I'd get the settings right, so I decided to go for single shots.
For those not familiar with all the details of a shuttle launch, this photo shows the moment of main engine ignition. The shuttle's three main engines (the ones on the back of the orbiter) are actually lit 6 seconds before launch. Mission Control has 6 seconds to make sure they're functioning properly, before...
...the solid rocket boosters light. The exhaust from the main engines (which is actually just steam, since the gas is just oxygen and hydrogen) billowed up between the orbiter and those of us on the causeway, which led to a cool silhouette of exhaust that the shuttle rose out of. When the solid rocket boosters light, there is no doubt -- that thing is GOING somewhere, and fast.
It's the solids that are so bright, and they light up the entire sky.
As soon as it clears the launch tower, the entire shuttle stack rolls on its vertical axis to better orient itself for the climb to orbit. This is what the "Houston, roll program" call that you hear from the astronauts means.
The shuttle is really zippy. It jumps off the launch pad like it's been shot out of a cannon, and well, it kinda HAS. A launch is nothing more than a carefully controlled explosion.
After the solid rocket boosters separated two minutes into flight, we were able to see Endeavour's main engines moving through the sky like a star. I think we would have been able to watch them through main engine cut-off at 8.5 minutes, except she went flying over the horizon and out of view.
By the time the crew performed the burn that truly puts them in orbit a half hour later, we were already in the car on our way back to Orlando. I watched the rendezvous from my laptop in an Alabama hotel room.
Photo from Mom's camera (forgot to bring my card reader to FL, so my pics will be later)
At 4:14 a.m. this morning, STS-130 launched on its mission to the International Space Station. And we were watching from the causeway! The second time was the charm, and the weather was obviously more clear last night. We spent the pre-launch hours snug in the car, where it was warmer. There weren't nearly as many people as the night before, and although I still don't totally understand the massive decrease in crowds, I'll chalk it up to a combination of it being a "schoolnight", plus the Super Bowl, plus people not wanting to spend another 4 hours waiting in the cold.
The launch was spectacular. This was the third that I've seen, but the first two were in 1997 and 1998 so it had been quite a while. I'm so glad I was able to see this one with Jose, my parents, and my brother. That made it extra special.
It is difficult to describe what viewing a launch is really like, especially a night launch. I can say things like "it was as bright as the sun" and "the sound crackles and pops and creaks," but that doesn't do it justice. Even the pictures don't do it justice. You really just need to be there yourself, see the light, hear and feel the sound.
So instead of continuing in a futile attempt to describe what seeing a space shuttle launch is like, I will simply encourage any and all of you who are able to make your way to Florida for one of the last four shuttle flights, currently scheduled for March, May, July, and September. It is a trip that is well worth your time.
We left at 3:45 on Friday, stopped in Spanish Fort, Alabama for the night, and arrived in Orlando at 8:15 last night. After a few hours of chilling out with my parents and brother David, who drove down from North Carolina, we headed to KSC. We met my brother, his girlfriend, and her son, who drove up from Miami, just after midnight at the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Packed into two cars with two car passes, we scooted on site and by 12:45 we were parked on the causeway.
The view from the causeway was actually far BETTER than I expected. The launch pad was perfectly aligned with our viewing spot, and the orbiter was in full view. You could easily make out the shape of the orbiter on the stack with your eyes, even though it was more than 6 miles away, and the view through binoculars was awesome.
I was feeling really good about things, but alas, clouds moved in towards the end and scrubbed the launch. Traffic moved quickly off the first part of the causeway, and I optimistically thought we'd beat the rush. But it slowed to a crawl, then a dead stop, and it took 2.5 hours to get back to our hotel next to the Orlando airport. At that point, we all crashed for some much-needed sleep.
I found the scrub far more disappointing this time than other times, perhaps because this time we drove 16 hours to see it. Although I know it's completely irrational, I also feel like it's somehow my fault, because my family drove all the way here and they didn't see it! And Brian and Cindy and Danny were only able to come last night. They drove up from Miami and got little sleep all to see a launch scrub. :(
The five of us will be back again tonight/tomorrow morning. I'm crossing my fingers that it goes this time!
STS-129 Launch last November. Only 5 more to go.
As I mentioned yesterday, it has been an...interesting...week here at NASA. President Obama's proposed 2011 budget, introduced Monday, effectively instructed NASA to make an almost 180-degree turn from what it has been doing for the past 6 years...and you could make an argument that it represents a complete shift from what NASA has done for its entire existence.
First of all, a thought that has nothing to do with the change in direction, but with how it was announced. With the budget. No separate announcement championing shifting priorities in the United States' spaceflight program; it was just thrown in with the federal budget. And from what I can tell, the high-level powers-that-be at NASA had little-to-no warning of the all of the major changes that budget proposal would entail. This means that they had no time to prepare, which means they have no idea how to answer all of the questions being asked of them by the thousands of NASA employees and contractors. If you need an example of how NOT to announce a major policy shift, this might be it.
So here's are the three big highlights of the new budget promises, taken straight from the overview put together by NASA management, followed by my reactions, in order:
Top line increase of $6.0 billion over 5-years (FY 2011-15) compared to the FY 2010 Budget, for a total of $100 billion over five years.
Really? Well that's great! More money is what we need! More money is what the Augustine Commission said NASA would need in order to successfully complete our new vehicle and rocket within a reasonable time period. Since the Constellation program was announced in 2004, with the intention of building a new space transportation system to carry American astronauts to the space station and beyond, the budget police have consistently stripped more and more money from the program, leading to delays and a decrease in both the technology used on the new vehicle and its performance capability. More money is great!
"Significant and sustained investment" in:
Hmm. Ok...this seems pretty nebulous to me, but it all sounds good enough. I wonder what destinations are included in the robotic precursor missions? It'd be cool to go to an asteroid or something. And I'm glad to see that the ISS will be extended, since it'd really be a shame to abandon it in just a few years.
Cancellation of the Constellation program; and $600 million in FY 2011 to ensure the safe retirement of the Space Shuttle upon completion of the current manifest.
Wait. What? WHAT?!? Cancellation of the Constellation program? The whole thing? As in, no more new rocket, no more new spaceship? But what are we replacing it with? Will we build another vehicle? No? We're just going to do all those nebulous, undefined things in the list above? And NASA will no longer have a vehicle of its own? But that's...that's...well, that's something NASA has never done before. We have never not had either 1) our own vehicle flying or 2) the next vehicle in development. That feels like a punch in the stomach. Do we even care about exploring space anymore?
"Most important, we are not ending our ambitions to explore space. In order to explore new frontiers, we are launching a vigorous new technology development and test program that will pursue game-changing technology development that can take us further and faster and more affordably into space."
But that's just a bunch of political speak and cool-sounding words! Game-changing? Technology development? To me, this translates as "we have no clue what we're going to do, but we'll do something and call it game-changing."
And so three days after the budget was introduced, morale at NASA has reached a new low. Many of my coworkers and friends are contractors, and will likely either lose their job or, at a minimum, need to relocate. Jose and I are both very lucky to be civil servants, and therefore cannot be laid off without an act of Congress, and yet our jobs have just completely changed. Jose's entire job was working on the Orion vehicle being developed. But it is being developed no more. My job is to be a flight controller for the space shuttle and help develop operations concepts for Orion. The space shuttle only has 5 flights remaining before its retirement, and Orion, as previously mentioned, is dead in the water.
Despite the obvious career and life implications for myself, my husband, my friends, and my coworkers, here's the thing: I'm not opposed to NASA providing financial and technical incentive to commercial space companies to independently develop new human-rated vehicles, in fact, I believe it's in NASA's best interest to help develop commercial space technology. At the moment, spaceflight is extremely expensive and there is little profit to be had; commercial entities are unlikely to push to develop human spaceflight capability without government assistance.
And, surprisingly, I'm not actually opposed to the cancellation of Constellation. It was a program that had many flaws, and while I do believe that we would have successfully developed a new vehicle to carry our astronauts into orbit, if the decision is that we are better off starting over, I accept that and even somewhat agree with it.
What I'm vehemently opposed to is the apparent complete lack of vision on the part of the administration with this proposal. While this is not "the end of human spaceflight," as I've heard many moan, it does feel like the end of NASA as we have known it -- in some ways good, but in others very bad. I've been saying for a while that NASA needs an overhaul, but this proposal only goes halfway. It shakes things up, but has no idea where they could or SHOULD land. It cancels the Constellation program, our future vehicle, and replaces it with....what? Because I don't see an answer to that question. We are continuing the progression of Americans in space from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo to Space Shuttle to Space Station to...nothing. To NOTHING.
NASA, and JSC in particular, has 50 years of experience flying and operating MANNED space vehicles. There are plenty of other entities that have operated robots and satellites, but there is no one else in the country -- heck, no one else in the entire western hemisphere! -- that has this experience with sending real, live people into space. 50 years. Half a century. With the new direction, we seem to be poised on the brink of losing that, which is a fate I desperately hope to avoid. But I have not yet figured out what a NASA flight controller like me is supposed to do when there are no NASA vehicles to control. Perhaps I'll eventually move on to be an operator for a commercial company. Perhaps NASA will end up operating the commercial vehicles.
But it seems most likely at this moment that when I finish my role as lead Rendezvous Officer for STS-133, the last space shuttle flight, my life in Mission Control will be over.
On Monday morning, President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2011. Embedded in that budget were changes for NASA, including the termination of the Constellation program begun in 2004. With the space shuttle program coming to an end after the last shuttle flight this fall, the Constellation program was the next big thing: designing a new vehicle to carry astronauts to the space station, and eventually beyond. That program has now been cancelled. By the end of this calendar year, NASA will have gone from three major programs (space shuttle, space station, and Constellation) to one. NASA will not be designing or building anything to replace the space shuttle under the President's proposed plan. Instead, NASA will focus on developing new technologies, while we will rely on commercial companies to develop new ways to take humans into orbit.
This is bad for NASA. Very bad. Career-altering. Life-altering. Many people will lose their jobs, and many people who still have jobs will wonder what they're supposed to be working on. If you had asked me on Friday if I would still be working for NASA in 2 years, I would have said "yes, certainly." On Monday, my answer changed to "I highly doubt it."
I'm still formulating my thoughts and will post them soon. But on Monday night I needed to distract myself. I did that by cooking a lasagna.
I've never cooked a lasagna before, and let's face it -- it's far easier to buy a frozen one from the store. They taste good and involve a lot less work and a lot fewer dishes. But I've been enjoying cooking much more lately, and for some reason I just really wanted to be able to say that I made lasagna. It seems like something that would be hard to make, and I wanted to see if I could do it. (FYI, this was another recipe from The Pioneer Woman's cookbook, but the same recipe, slightly simplified, is also on her website.)
It turns out that it's not difficult to make; it's just time-consuming, i.e. we didn't sit down to eat until 9:00 pm, at which point I was pretty dang hungry. I knew it would need to bake for 45 minutes, but I didn't read closely enough to realize that making the meat sauce also required simmering for 45 minutes. I REALLY need to learn to read the full recipe first, but alas, I didn't.
It was delicious. I love eating something delicious for dinner and knowing that I made it. Totally cool. This recipe made a TON of lasagna, so be warned. Next time I might consider cutting it in half. Fortunately, lasagna stills tastes great as a leftover. We've already enjoyed some for lunch yesterday, and I may be having it again tomorrow!
There are so many things that I want to share from my 36 hours in southern California that I barely know where to begin! It was really a fantastic trip. Each of the previous times I have mentored Vomit Comet teams, there hasn't been enough money available for us to travel to visit our schools, so I didn't quite know what to expect from this trip. I was a little nervous about "clicking" with the teachers and the students, and covering the questions about their experiment that we needed to discuss. But of course I shouldn't have worried at all. Every teacher I have ever met who has a relationship with NASA...well, they've all just been exceptional and inspiring people.
My day started at my hotel, which you will hear MUCH more about tomorrow. I got in late on Monday night after my flights were delayed due to bad weather out west and I had to get up super early to get to the first of the two schools that make up my team. The two schools are about 60 miles apart, one in Huntington Beach and one in Moreno Valley. I stayed in Riverside, which was much closer to Moreno Valley, so I had to make the drive down to Huntington Beach and still get to the school by about 8:30 am! Fortunately I managed to time everything wonderfully, and traffic cooperated, and I arrived right on time. The drive was actually kind of pretty, despite the weather -- it's just sooooo darn nice to see some hills!
I arrived at the school and immediately saw this sign next to the front door! That was so cool; I loved it! It immediately put me at ease, and I was no longer worried about whether the trip would be productive. It's always nice to feel welcome. I spoke with the principal for a few minutes (she will be traveling to Houston along with the two teachers) and then went down the hall to meet the kids and see their experiment! There are about 20 5th graders participating from this school, and they are investigating buoyancy and static electricity while learning about the periodic table and concepts like atomic mass.
I spent about 20 minutes just answering their questions about NASA and space, and then they showed me their experiment. It involves four balloons each filled with one gas: carbon dioxide, nitrogen, argon, and helium. Helium is the only one that floats in normal gravity, while the others sink to the ground because their atomic mass is heavier. The kids are predicting how things might change in zero gravity, and whether the balloons will float or sink, and whether they'll do so faster or slower. It's a simple experiment (one for which I'm sure you can all guess the outcome), but it's perfect for elementary school kids. After they headed off to recess, I was able to talk to the teachers to take care of all the technical details and paperwork-type stuff that NASA needs.
After an hour and a half at the school, it was time to drive back towards Moreno Valley to visit the second school. I stopped for lunch at a VERY crowded Panera, mainly because I wanted their free wi-fi. It started to rain while I was there, but I didn't think much of it. I left with 25 minutes to spare, knowing that the GPS had told me I needed 15 minutes to get to the school. I hopped in the car and got on the highway and immediately hit a snag. Traffic was just crawling -- and it wasn't even raining that hard! I was mentally making fun of the LA drivers who can't handle the rain when all of a sudden, it started POURING. As in: torrents of water gushing out of the sky, covering the roads, and making it next to impossible to see anything.
Here's that part where I must pause to mention my rental car. I had a reservation for a compact car, but when I arrived, the agent asked me if I wanted to upgrade to a full-size car for only $1 more. "That's ok," I replied, "a Yaris or Aveo is fine, it's just me." She typed for a minute or so. "Are you suuuure?" she asked again. It was late. I was tired. And I just wanted to get to my hotel and get some sleep. "Ok, fine, I'll take a full-size car," I said.
And here's the part where she said "oh, I tell you what I'll do -- I'll give you a new 2010 Mustang! It'll be great."
And that is how I ended up in a convertible that 1) I couldn't use because it rained both days I was there, 2) was so low to the ground that I could barely see anything when the rain came pouring down and 3) had a canvas roof that sounded like it would be ripped apart when the hail began.
Hail? Oh yes. While I was driving 20 mph down the highway because I couldn't see 10 feet in front of me through the rain, it started HAILING.
At that point, I stopped making fun of California drivers.
I finally got to the school only a few minutes late, except my arrival coincided with school letting out for the day, which coincided with a hundred parents wading through the rivers of water flowing down from the foothills to pick up their kids. I sat outside the school in traffic for a full half hour before I made it into the parking lot. WHEW.
Finally, I made it out of the car and into the library where the 4th and 5th grade science club was anxiously awaiting me. After another Q&A session, they showed me their experiment, which involves taking some toys into microgravity and predicting how they will behave. One of their toys is a balloon rocket car, which they were testing on a wooden track. Another simple experiment that's well suited for elementary kids.
I ended the day by going out to dinner with four teachers from the second school. They have flown a couple experiments in years past and have a solid group of teachers that have developed a great relationship with NASA and with their school district. They actually have a WAITING LIST of kids who want to be in the science club but can't because there's no room -- how awesome is that, that the demand for science is so great?! One of the teachers even talked about how she had come up with a new project for the wait-listed kids to work on.
It was so cool to see teachers who are so excited about getting their kids hooked on science and math. I can't wait till they get to Houston to fly their experiments!
I'm in the Los Angeles area for two nights and one day to visit with a team of elementary school teachers that I'm mentoring for their upcoming flight on the Vomit Comet this spring. I flew out last night and landed in Ontario, California, a city I had never heard of until I discovered that it was much closer to Moreno Valley, and thus would save me the 90-mile drive from LAX! I am actually working with two schools, one in Moreno Valley and one in Huntington Beach, so I still have some LA driving ahead of me today.
I flew Southwest, an airline that I seldom even consider for personal travel since 1) they don't fly to one of my common destinations (Charlotte) and 2) I greatly dislike their "cattle call" boarding policies. If you don't check in 24 hours before your flight, you risk getting in boarding group B or worse, which pretty much means you'll be stuck in the middle. And people in general are just unreliable and annoying when faced with having to make a quick choice of seat after actually getting on the plane. In any case, I prefer being able to actually select my seat online well before the flight.
But on the flip side, if you do manage to check in early, there are advantages. I only made it into group B for the first flight from Houston to Las Vegas, but made it high into Group A for my connecting flight from Las Vegas to Ontario. The result? I snagged what is the best seat on the plane, in my humble opinion: window seat, exit row, with no seat in the row in front of me! Hellooooo, leg room. That was nice to have, since my legs are still recovering from the half marathon and were starting to bark at me after the cramped quarters of the first flight.
(Observation: people travel to Las Vegas in packs, and are quite chatty. Everyone on the plane seemed to know at least 3 other people, and the volume of conversation was higher than any other flight I can remember being on. It wasn't annoying, but I did find it interesting.)
I should also give Southwest credit for one of the most comfortable airport terminals I've seen in quite a while -- their terminal at Hobby. All flights into and out of Las Vegas were delayed due to bad weather, so I spent almost 2 extra hours sitting in the terminal. I found myself a nice spot in a plush armchair next to a stand full of power outlets, got 2 hours of free wifi, and went to work. It was the most comfortable flight delay I've ever experienced.
As for the weather, I fully recognize the irony of coming to southern California for 36 hours, only to find that it is expected to be rainy with a temperature in the 50s the whole time.
