The Secret

This post is going to seem very cryptic to some and very obvious to others. Please forgive the cloak and dagger, but that is why I’m writing about it after all.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail about a SECRET event. Something very cool has been arranged for myself and certain other people that meet a very specific condition. Not everyone who could be considered worthy to attend this event has been invited due to attendance limitations. Those of us who are invited to the SECRET event are not supposed to spread the existance of the SECRET event around, as it may cause jealosy.

As much as I would love to attend the SECRET event, there are a few things that bother me about it.

The condition of invitation is a rather random one. It made sense at first, but the meaning has now become rather skewed due to some scheduling issues. Many people that you could argue very much deserve to be invited are not getting in on this. It does seem somewhat unfair.

The SECRET is going to get out. This is big and someone will spill the beans. There were already rumors before the e-mail came out, so I don’t see it staying quiet forever, or even until after the SECRET event.

We are not allowed to bring guests to the SECRET event. This is due to the attendance limitations. However, as a certain person very close to me would also think the SECRET event is very cool has not been invited, I really can’t see myself going.

Now, I realize writing a blog entry about SECRET events in all-caps is probably not conductive to keeping the SECRET. Well, tough noogies. If it needs to be SECRET, there’s probably something wrong with the concept in the first place. If it’s going to seem unfair and unappreciative if (when) it gets out, it probably shouldn’t be happening in the first place.

Baseball Blues

So I wrote a pretty substantial post at work today, but Blogger was broken when I tried to publish. So, you have to wait until tomorrow for the good stuff.

I was pleasantly suprised tonight to discover a Mariners game on FSN tonight. Then I was immediately unpleasantly suprised to discover that the Rangers were already up 5-0 in the 4th. This is going to be a very fustrating year in my baseball world. It would be so much easier if I liked a team that won consistantly. (As the Rangers put men on 2nd and 3rd with 2 outs). This is made worse by the fact that I'm watching a Rangers broadcase, of course.

Gavin gave me his cold, but I'm still holding out hope that I'm not going to get as sick as he did. I had a sore throat yesterday, and I'm draining some today. (Thank God, 3 down.) He was absolutely miserable stuffy and coughing, though, and so far I've managed not to get to that stage.

I also just ordered new phones from Cingular for Gavin and I. Whoohoo! We ditched the Sony Ericssons and went back to Motorola. They're also both flip phones. We'll see if Gavin's survives. He's pretty hard on cell phones.

Dumb User

Did you know that Honduran mahogany weighs 35 lb/sqf and costs $6.25/ft (or at least it did in 1995)? This is one of the random facts that can be looked up in my US Navy Reserve Pocket Reference. I “won” this little book at the Society of Women Engineers luncheon last week. It is much cooler than anything else that came in the basket with it. Everything from material properties to geometry equations to airport codes is listed in this thing. It is something that any engineer will fully appreciate. :)

I’m not doing much work today because I can’t log into the computer system that I need to work on my code. So far I have read all the blogs in the world, found Sarah an airplane ticket to Atlanta, looked up Chihauahua adoptions at local shelters (also for Sarah), and written work instructions on creating e-mail templates in Outlook. I think I would actually be pretty productive today, if I could only get onto the system! I think I have finally convinced the fix-it people that there is actually something wrong with the system. They were playing “it’s just you, dumb user” all morning. Last week I had a similar problem with a different system, and the help desk guy was giving me some SERIOUS attitude. It was 8am, and I understand being grumpy in the morning. But, I really try not to take that out on co-workers, let alone customers.

Once again, a crew has returned safely to Earth from the ISS. Hopefully, the next changeout will be accomplished with the Shuttle. T-26 days…

Feeling Blah

This week I travelled to Hampton, Virginia, to join a meeting related to the Mars precision lander work I used to do a few years back. The guy who's the wiz with entry guidance is retiring in a few months, and Sarah and I are going to split his workload. Unfortunately, the current travel budget doesn't split -- they barely had enough to send one so they sent me. I was pretty impressed with the Langley work presented, plus I got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in years or haven't met yet. So that was good.

Meanwhile I realized how inadequate my current understanding is of the entry guidance. I think I can use it pretty well; I think I know enough to teach Sarah how to do it. But a lot of the guys have good questions about the mathematic derivation and there I am sorely lacking. So, guess what I'll be doing the next few weeks. And I don't have a freakin' clue what an influence coefficient is. Should be fun! The JPL guys are really sharp but lifting entry is waaay out of their experience, and I'm finding it difficult to explain some simple things like how an entry vehicle can't change its azimuth quickly until it's slowed down to Mach 5 or so. (It's a question of momentum, really, but I didn't think of explaining it that way until the flight home.)

Anyways, Wednesday night I started having a really bad sore throat, which Thursday grew into a runny nose and a somewhat miserable pair of flights back to Houston. I was napping hard on the planes and in the airports. In fact, I almost missed both of my flights from napping. One of the gate agents came by to wake me, which I really, really appreciated. I was able to wake myself up for the final boarding call to Houston.

So, blah traveling on my birthday, woo. At least I made it back home before midnight. But I felt like crap so I stayed home on Friday, despite having all these new ideas and realizations as to what I need to start doing at work. And then I skipped out on a Saturday party with Ben, Farah, Greg, Michelle, Chris, and Monica (mostly old high school friends) because I still feel blah.

After two days of staying home, I'm starting to feel a little stir crazy. Jen got me some megacool new speakers (with subwoofer!) for my computer since my old speakers were shot. So last night I softly blasted the upstairs game room with Lord of the Rings music while I surfed the internet. The dogs actually didn't mind it as much as I thought they would. Lauren and Melissa got me a Green Day CD and two books, one by CS Forester (one of my favorite authors) on the Barbary Pirates and another on the collapse of societies by Jared Diamond. Diamond wrote "Guns, Germs, and Steel", which assessed how the environment and available resources play a factor in developing societies.

But being said stir crazy, I having trouble sitting still to watch Star Wars, Episode II, Attack of the Clones let alone read books. You know, watching it years later I actually appreciate it a lot more. I was a little disappointed when I first saw it, mostly because the romance scenes really seemed lame and contrived. But I liked it better this time -- Anakin and Padme are two teenagers and god knows I was pretty awkward and lame with my romance attempts back then too. But in watching the deleted scenes, there was a couple that I think they should have left in. Yeah, it would have slowed the movie down a tad, but it really helped developing the Anakin-Padme relationship. The best one was when she takes him home to meet her parents, and then tries to convince her family that he's NOT her boyfriend.

I hope Episode III is good.

So. That's been my life for the past few days. Jen's been busy with bridal showers and she should be back from a bachelorette party anytime soon. Which is probably for the best, the less time here the less chance she has of catching this blahness. But I still miss her after travelling for a few days and being stuck at home.

Blah.

I hope I feel better tomorrow. :)

Chihuahua!

Just for you, Sarah.

Slow Internet

How come once you’ve had a part of you day that was boring with nothing to do, you can’t muster any ambition for the rest of the day? This morning I had a sim that was really slow, and so now I’m sitting at my desk staring numbly at my computer screen. I tried working on my code for a bit, but I seem to be too dense to solve any problems. I’m hoping that when on of my co-workers comes in at 3 to help me with a problem I’ve not been having any luck at, the human interaction will snap me out of my funk.

To make things worse the internet has been really slow here today ,which makes the typical productivity killer, web surfing, very annoying.

2:30 - I only need to make it until 4pm today since I was in at 7am. For the last couple days, I’ve had an extra tugging on my mind towards home. You see, whenever I’m really engrossed in reading a book (or series of books) I wake up in the morning wanting to start reading, think about reading all day, start reading as soon as I get home, and continue to read until I can’t stay awake any longer. It’s a problem. So here I am at work, trying to figure out why my widgets won’t map (seriously, that’s actually my problem - I’m not making it up) and thinking about how Harry Potter is about to fight the dragon. This makes it harder to concentrate on widgets.

(They really are called widgets - people that are smart enough about computers to create programming languages have weird senses of humor.)

Nerd Rebuttal

Jo wrote a pretty long rant about nerdiness today. I can’t say that I totally agree with her on this one - I think maybe Jo was never in the truly nerdy social class enough to appreciate it’s inner workings. In my experience, there is indeed a interior caste system in the “nerd world”. First of all, you have different categories like band nerd, Star Trek nerd, academic nerd, etc. Although you may have to examine the subtle differences between the words “nerd” and “geek” to truly classify some of these categories correctly.

To answer Jo’s basic question “why are people proud of being nerds”, I believe that it is because some of us are proud of the differences that others point to when derisively applying the label “nerd”. Certainly, I think intelligence isn’t something to be ashamed of, and that the catagorization of the most intelligent into a derogatory class is mainly based on jealosy. And as for social ineptness, things like inattention to fads, kindness to other unpopular people, lack of innate athletic ability, and so forth are not inherrantly bad things either. So, I think people that are proud to be nerds are simply happy with who they are and chose to view the label others thrust on them as a affirmation of their personal choices rather than dwelling on what other people think.

On a completely different topic, this quiz is fun - I think it nailed me, although I wasn’t quite sure how to answer the “Y’all” question. I’m really trying hard not to pick that one up. If I ever get to move back west, I’ll get teased for that mercilessly.

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

15% Upper Midwestern

10% Yankee

5% Midwestern

0% Dixie

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Lots of Zs

I slept a lot this weekend. I napped Saturday for about an hour and was so out of it that when Gavin woke me up to go to dinner I thought it was Monday morning and I’d been asleep for 24+ hours. Then on Sunday I pretty much slept all afternoon - from about 3pm to 7pm. I still went to bed at reasonably normal hours both nights, so hopefully I’m all caught up on sleep at this point.

I started reading one of Gavin’s books about Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe, but a couple chapters in I dedided that I need something a bit more frivolous for the next few days. So, I decided to re-read all the Harry Potter books first. I’m on Prisioner of Azkaban now. It would be so cool if magic was real!

I’m going to have another lazy night at home reading tonight, I think.

East Beach Run

Today we grabbed a few towels, 4 bottles of water, sunscreen, a couple of hats, and Roxy and Zoya and drown down to the East Beach at Galveston to meet Becca and Cari, plus Apache and Bennet. All the dogs had much fun running through the surf. Zoya and Roxy really loved chasing the seagulls and a few smaller birds that would just hover over the surf in the wind. The wind was nice but pretty strong... there were several times where we had to go down the beach after a dog since they couldn't hear us calling for them. And then they were so excited and distracted by birds or surf on the way back that they'd make a detour. It was fun, although I think our voices are a little hoarse.

Now the dogs have had their baths, coughed up whatever sea water they swallowed, and are napping contently. So is Jen. It was a beautiful day for a few hours on the beach.

I just checked Sarah's homepage, where she can remotely send cellphone pics. Looks like she finished the MS150! One of her pic titles is "my butt hurts", but, well, I think we all sort of expected that. :)

How Not to Bar-B-Que

Friday was beautiful outside, not a cloud in the sky, I'm leaving work at 5pm and I stop by Jen's desk. She looks a little frustrated with her code. So I think, hey, let's bar-b-que. She loves it when I do that, and I like it too. And it's been several months (at least since October) since I last bar-b-qued.

So I had quite an evening of accomplishments in my quest to bar-b-que for the first time in 2005.

1. Broke the electric charcoal starter.
2. Discovered that I can't remember which corn is better: canned or frozen.
3. Discovered that frozen corn is, in fact, better.
4. Also discovered that spicing the pork chops with garlic salt and too much cheasepeake bay spice doesn't really taste good.
5. Nearly burned my right index finger and thumb.
6. Did burn my left index finger and thumb when I went back outside to put the chops back on (they weren't done).
7. Consequently overcooked one side of the chops.
8. Discovered that trying to use a knife and fork to cut overcooked chops, when suffering from burnt fingers, is not pleasant.
9. Discovered that my wife loves me enough to not comment on the poor state of the pork chops until I do. :)

So after all that, I really needed a good laugh. Wil Wheaton pulled through for me, check out his post on humorless Star Wars ubernerds. To summarize it in one line: "I lined up at the wrong theatre for Star Wars, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."

Blogaversary

Happy blogaversary to me,
Happy blogaversary to me.

That's right, this blog is one year old today. I've never kept any sort of journal for so long before, and I'm pretty proud of myself. Here's my first entry from a year ago - sounds pretty familiar, huh?


So, I promised myself I'd start a web blog after Yuri's Night was over, so here it is! My first entry. I stole my page format from Sarah (props), but I'm not as good at web design so I'm sure it looks much worse. Who can guess what I modeled the color scheme on? :)

Yuri's Night went really well! Although, I'm convinced that people who like schedules should never try to plan anything like this. Flexibility was the name of the game. We had about 300 people, which is about 100 more than I thought we'd be able to get. Everybody seemed to have a great time, although parking was horrendous. My friend Lia got in a little wreck on the way out, which pretty much ruined her night.

We're going to Becca's to watch the last episode of Apprentice tonight. I missed last week's because my VCR didn't record. I read the recap on the web, but I feel less into it than I would have if I'd seen it. Sarah, Jo, and I still managed to talk about it all the way around the pond on Coke break today, though.

Yuri's Night is Over!

Yuri's Night is over for 2005! I think you can say that I'm pretty much burned out on planning this particular event. The good news is that I think I found somebody to pass the tourch to. This is really great - I was NOT doing it again no matter what. Our events all went pretty well. There are pictures from all over the world, including the Houston party, at the main Yuri's Night site.

I took all day yesterday off work to try to get back into equilibrium. I slept in, went to the bank and the pharmacy, got my hair cut, and shopped a bit.

I've turned into someone who really, REALLY likes shopping. How did that happen? I never hated shopping, but I didn't used to do it to relax. Now, if I need to bleed off some tension I just go to the mall. As long as it's not Saturday or Christmas time, it totally calms me.

I'm doing some programming at work. I actually like programming, but it is also really fustrating. I'm learning a new language and brushing up C skills I haven't used in years, so that doesn't help the fustration factor. It is progressing slowly, though, and as long as I keep getting somewhere I'll be OK.

Pedernales Falls Photos

I'm a bit behind on photo publishing. I finally got our camping pictures from April 1-2 off the camera tonight. Pedernales Falls is a pretty nice park. See the photos here.

Drought

So, I just changed the trip calendar under the blog title. This blog is almost a year old now, and in all that time, there's never been a time where I haven't had a trip on tap in the next couple months. When I changed the Up Next line, I realized that I don't have a clear idea what my next trip is going to be. Gavin and I have been talking about Hawaii this year for a while, but due to shuttle flights starting up again, I don't know when I can leave town for a week. We're pretty sure that we're going to the Seattle area for some camping/hiking sometime in August or September, but I can't commit because of the flight schedule. I also want to go to Wyoming to visit Caroline (and everyone else) sometime soon, but I don't know when I can go. So I had to put a ? on the Up Next line. That is freaking me out. I have been out of town at least once a month since last June. That was starting to feel normal. That is making a 5 month period with no definate plans seem very, very long.

Lazy Sunday

Well, Yuri's Night is 2/3 over. The race and the museum event both went quite well yesterday. I'm celebrating by taking care of the rest of my life today. I have done four loads of laundry, am still in my PJs, and am currently surfing the internet and watching the Mariners on TV, which is a rare enough event that it is always cause for celebration.

We have Tang (cat) with us this week. We decided to put his litter and food in the laundry room, rather than the upstairs bedroom we've used in the past. This has made him much more social. After the first night, he's been out in the house pretty much the whole time. The dogs got used to him quickly, too, and haven't shown more than a mild interest except when he perches on the 2nd story railing. I think that's more of a "how does he do that" interest than a "mmm, cat" interest anyway.

Rollout

This afternoon the space shuttle Discovery began its slow rollout to the launch pad. Launch is still at least 6 weeks away, but this is one of the more dramatic moments a mission has prior to liftoff. After months of work, I feel a thrill imagining the scene down at Kennedy.

With a rumble that has not been heard often over the past 26 months, the massive doors of the assembly building swing apart. The crawler stubbornly creeps forward at 1 mph, bearing the heavy weight of Discovery plus the solid rocket boosters and the brown external tank -- well over a hundred tons. Slowly the spaceship emerges from the cavernous assembly building into the bright sunlight. Workers who have meticulously prepared the shuttle for launch gather around its route. The launch pad is several miles away, a miniscule amount compared to the mileage Discovery will accrue during her two weeks on orbit. But it's an important step of the journey.

Days like this make me feel very lucky to do what I do. I'm sure Jen feels the same.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good: Yuri’s Night is coming together nicely, and I think everything is humming along fine in my absence this week.

The Bad: I got stopped by security on my way out of work this afternoon for going 41 in a 25. In my defense, the speed limit had JUST gone down to 25 after a 35 stretch. I wasn’t paying attention and kept going for a bit (yes, I was speeding anyway).


The Good: I arrived safely in Colorado Springs to find that my hotel has free wireless internet.

The Bad: I pulled a real bubblehead today and went to the wrong airport for my flight. Seriously. I got out of the parking shuttle at the terminal and noticed that United DOESN’T FLY TO HOBBY! This is about an hour before the plane is scheduled to depart so there’s pretty much 0 chance that I can make it to the other airport in time.


The Good: The nice lady at CI Travel was able to find me a flight from Hobby so that I could get to Colorado tonight.

The Bad: My flight back is still going to IAH, but my car is now at Hobby so Gavin is going to have to drive up to IAH on Wednesday, pick me up, and take me to Hobby to get my car.


The Good: The Mariners won their season opener today. Richie Sexton hit two homers in his first two at-bats as a Mariner.

The Bad: The first game I could possibly see on TV in Texas is during Yuri’s Night next Saturday. These are the times I wish for TiVo.


The Ugly: I've had a not-so-great couple of weeks. The day before the first bad day I remember Gavin broke my hand mirror. I wonder if I got the bad luck from that event even though I didn't do the breaking.