Musical Baton

I've been passed the musical baton by Becca. Here goes...

Total volume of music files on my computer:

3.18 Gb down from ~5 Gb. I've been having to delete music off my work computer because the stupid hard drive isn't big enough to hold everything I'd want it to. :P


Last CD I bought:

Hmm... that's hard. The last music I bought was Ciara "One, Two Step" off Napster. The newest CD music I have is Green Day "American Idiot", but that's really one of Gavin's birthday presents. I think the last CD I bought for myself was probably Gretchen Wilson "Here For the Party", but that was last year.


Song playing right now:

Green Day "Welcome to Paradise"


Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

"As Long as You're Mine" from Wicked. This is a kick ass song that often brings my co-workers into my office looking for the source of the faint singing.

"This is Ponderous" by 2NU. This is a completely random song from my childhood that my sister and I used to laugh at all the time, which is probably why I like it so much now.

"You Thought Wrong" sung by Kelly Clarkson and Tamayra Gray. This was on Kelly's first CD and was never really on the radio. I don't understand that because it's my favorite track on that CD.

"Buckbeak's Flight" from the Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban soundtrack. I think the Harry Potter music is John Williams' best work in a long time, and this track is my favorite from all three movie CDs.

"El Tango De Roxanne" from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. I like this MUCH better than the Sting original. Weep all ye lovers!


Passing the baton to:

My husband, because he always comes first with me. (Aww)

Cari, because she deserves some distraction from work.

Melanie, to see if she still reads up on us Houstonians now that she lives somewhere cool.

T Minus 21 hours

T minus 21 hours and counting. Productivity level at work today 0.01%. Figures.

I got my hair cut last night. I like it OK, but I can't seem to describe the amount of layering that I want correctly. I didn't get enough layers in my last cut and I have too many now. At least this cut should look better when I don't blow dry than my last one. My hair was doing really weird things when it dried naturally in the last month. The solution to all of this is to stick with one hairdresser. There are a couple that work in the place I get my hair done that I like. The problem is that if you actually request them, you get charged for their "level" of haircutter. And it's a bit steep. Maybe I'm just living in the past, but I don't think a basic cut should cost more than $30. My hairdresser in Wyoming charged $23, and she was awesome. Sigh.

Solar Sail Mission - Cosmos 1

The Planetary Society launched a mission to test out a solar sail today on a Russian rocket. Updates on the Cosmos-1 mission can be found here.

So True

Baseball

Last night I went to Minute Maid Park (I still think that's a terrible name) for the first time this year to see the Astros play the Rockies. I feel very privileged to have seen not only a win, but a game with quite a bit of offence. Lance Berkman hit a homer (yea!), the 'stros scored 7, and Andy Pettite pitched 7 shutout innings (one day after his 4th child was born on Father's Day). I was expecting a pretty empty ballpark, but that crowd of 28,000 seemed even smaller than I expected. In fact, I don't know if I've seen the place so empty before. They didn't ever open the roof, which was too bad because even though the daytime high was over 90 deg the humidity was incredibly low for some reason last night. It was really nice out.

This morning, I was up at 5:30AM. At 8:03, I'm now waiting for my sim to get started. It's ANOTHER EVA sim, so I am going to be bored, barring extreme unforeseen circumstances. I'm working late through the handover so that a coworker can get his kids to their stuff. Then I'm going to try to go get a haircut before going home to pack for Hawaii. I can't believe we're leaving the day after tomorrow.

Weekend REcap

Melanie is in Seattle for the summer. I love Seattle. It's pretty interesting to me that I often find blogs that I'm interested in and after reading archives for a while, I realize that the author lives in the PNW. There must be some sort of psychic connection.

I spent most of Saturday running around buying up stuff for our trip to Hawaii. After dropping Sarah at the airport for her flight to Charlott, I went to REI. I got a new daypack, hydration bladders for the new pack and the old pack, a ThermaRest for Gavin, and an extra pair of zip-off pants for Gavin. Then I went to Academy and bought snorkeling gear for both of us, along with some new shorts for me. Then a few hours later I went to WalMart and bought a fleece sleeping bag liner (so that I don't have to take my mummy bag), batteries of odd shapes and sizes, and gloves to protect us from lava.

Father's Day was nice. Gavin's parents got a new kitten - Shamal. She is very, very cute and much more sociable than the other cat they had. We took a lot of pictures, but they're still on the camera. They are also in the middle of a major outdoor improvement project, which is going to be absolutely wonderful when it's done. Going to spend a weekend up there is going to end up like taking a vacation to a really nice hotel.

I forgot that I'm going to the baseball game tonight. So much for getting my hair cut today.

Busy worker bee

I've been really busy at work since the end of April, working on several different projects with deadlines that thankfully have not yet coincided with each other. I'm working on two JPL projects plus some last-minute return-to-flight stuff. I had to work hard to get up to speed on the JPL projects, which I think I managed to do.

Although there have been a few days where I've felt stressed, I haven't been this satisfied with work since the huge amount of work my group did after the Columbia accident. It's pretty cool. Now I have to head into work for an hour or two today to make sure my computers are working hard on things I need for next week. Only a few more days before we leave for Hawaii!

The Root of All Evil

It’s absolutely clear to me now. Software is the root of all evil. Not for the reasons usually stated like “you don’t have to understand the problem anymore” or “you shouldn’t believe the computer’s answer”. It is evil because it gives rise to Process and Documentation. Because it takes more time to decide why, if, and when to change software than to do it. And because I have to sit through the meetings discussing why, if, and when. Because I will be retired before anything will really be fixed.

I’m so glad it is Friday. It is my highest hope that I will go on vacation next week, allow myself to completely let go of all the mundane work details, and then return on July 4 to discover that the launch is still on and I only have a couple more weeks to spend grounded. Please!

Productivity Lull

I am terribly unmotivated this week. I think this is due to three factors.
1) I have a vacation coming up and I’m ready to go RIGHT NOW.
2) I have been feeling off all week, and usually spend my mornings wishing I was still in bed.
3) I haven’t had any interesting office work for weeks and my sims have all been boring.

Today, I had one e-mail with some meeting minutes I needed to get out. That’s pretty much all that anybody is going to notice that I have to do today. I just finished that task; it took 15 minutes.

So, I find myself wondering. I am obviously underutilized as a resource in my job. If I were being used to my potential, I wouldn’t have days where 1 e-mail (or less) is the only thing that I absolutely HAVE to do. And I’m not the only one. Is it like this everywhere? How many people in the world are sitting at their desks today wondering what use it is to be sitting at work when nobody would really notice if they went home. How underproductive are we as a nation? As a world?

It’s not that I want to be overworked either. I have no interest in a job that will constantly require me to work 60 hour weeks just to stay afloat. I don’t mind the occasional long week, but really, I just want a nice, pleasantly busy 40 hour work week. I don’t even care if some of what needs to be done is uninteresting stuff like documentation. Just as long as not all of it is.

It’s really about the variety. I can’t do the same thing all day, every day. I am not wired for that. It can even be something that I find really interesting, but if it isn’t mixed up with other kinds of work, I get restless. I can’t document, or code, or read, or train, or discuss anything for months. A month ago, I was having a lot of fun with my coding project. Now every time I open it up, I have a strong urge to see if there are any storms brewing in the tropics.

This must be why they call it work.

Why am I so tired?

I think there’s something wrong with me. I am SO tired. Monday, I couldn’t get up. Then I fell asleep on the sofa at like 9:30 and moved into bed at 10:30, which was OK because I had to get up early. But then last night I took a two hour nap again and then slept for 8 hours, and today I’m STILL tired! It makes me want to listen to depressing music all day, and I can’t concentrate on trying to figure out what this code I’m working on does.

People are going to see Batman Begins tonight. I’m not all that interested - I’ve never been impressed with any of the Batman movies (even the first one). I’ll hang out with the dogs instead, or I’ll sleep. :P

One more thing on the LotR exhibit, and then I promise I’ll shut up about it. Rivendell and Lothlorien were both wrong on the maps at the front of the exhibit. Now, I noticed this because I’ve spent way too much time looking at the maps in the books. However, it didn’t take too much to convince me I was remembering right because they actually had both locations MARKED IN WORDS on the maps in the right place, but then they had the wrong area highlighted. The area highlighted for Rivendell was up above the Grey Mountains, and they highlighted the Gap of Rohan for both Isenguard (correct) and Lothlorien (incorrect).

And, yes, I’ve read those books too much.

From the Flight Deck

Last night I was cruising the blogs of my friends, and I wandered onto some of the total stranger blogs they have linked. I found a neat one, from an airline captain. Pretty good. Spent a half hour reading his posts of the last six months. Feel free to visit him and see how he's doing. :) He has some great stories in there.

AARGH - Ceiling Fan

Humph - so far today only Sarah has posted anything. (This from a chronic late-afternoon poster.) So, I guess I’ll have to write something of my own.

First off, I’m surprised at the lack of envious comments on my Hawaii preview. ENVY ME PEOPLE. I’m going to paradise in 9 days! I need that emotional energy flowing my way to survive endless software test plan reviews for the next week. Becca complained about writing a test plan, but I have to review ALL of them in the next couple weeks. There’s only one thing worse than having to write a plan, and that’s reviewing other people’s. :P

I was having some sort of bad dream right before I got up this morning. I don’t remember anything at all about the dream, but I assume that is why I freaked out when I saw the ceiling fan moving this morning. Seriously, it scared the bejeezes out of me. Then I got all jumpy and had to turn on all the lights in the main part of the house.

Hot Peruvians

Two things:

First, I rearranged all my blog links that I visit on a daily basis in order of posting frequency. Notice to slackers - you have been demoted. :) Hopefully this will help with the stalling problem I was having when I'd looka at Chris, George, Nick, and Melanie and they'd all be old posts.

Second, I'm sure Sarah has noticed the reference to hot Peruvians on dooce already. I love how these things are universal.

Hawaii here we come!

I spent a lot of time working on our Hawaii itinerary this weekend. Here's a preview...

Day 1 - Kona
Arrive in Kona at 3:00pm. Get the car, check into Kona Seaside Hotel. By 5:00 make it to the Island Breeze Luau.


Day 2 - Kona to Punaluu
Drive south along the coast, stopping to see beaches and stuff along the way.
Green Sand Beach (maybe - it’s a hike!)
Punaluu


Day 3, 4 - Volcanos National Park
We have two days to explore Volcanos. The first day we’re planning on hiking through the main crater of Kilauea.
The second day we plan on visiting the lava tubes and (hopefully) an active flow.


Day 5 - Manau Kea
Arnott’s Lodge will drive us up to the top of the island for hiking and stargazing.


Day 6 - Hilo
Explore Hilo and environs.


Day 7 - Hamakua Coast to Honokaa
Drive north from Hilo stopping at lots of waterfalls.
Akaka Falls
Umauma Falls


Day 8 - Waipi’o Valley
Backpacking is no longer an option because they’ve closed the valley to camping, so we’ll have to day hike.

Day 9 - North/Central Kohala
Pololu Valley

Day 10/11 - South Kohala and Kona
Our luxury night is going to be in the Hapuna Beach Prince hotel. The itinerary at this point kind of degenrates into whatever we feel like - probably relaxing after the last 9 days.

Photos from Lord of the Rings

I did my best with the pictures we took on a disposable camera at the Lord of the Rings exhibit opening. The Houston Museum of Natural Science just opened this exhibit last Saturday. Cari and I went down to the "Midnight Madness" grand opening. It was somewhat of a let-down. There weren't as many costumes as I hoped, but between the pictures in my album and the pictures Cari got from her cameraphone, we got a few good ones.

We went to the actual exhibit yesterday. Everyone else played hookey from work in the afternoon; I was already not going in by virtue of working all night. The exhibit is pretty good, although I'd seen most of the videos they were playing because they're on the DVD special features. It ws really cool seeing the costumes up close, and they had some neat demos of the computer/camerea techniques used to create the effects.

The "Ring" is in a room all to itself. The ambiance is pretty good, but the ring was disappointing. It was "floating" in a column of water. It didn't even have the script on it. If I was putting the exhibit together, the ring would be wreathed in "fire" with the inscription glowing. And the background sound would be muttering of the Mordorian words, like in the Council scene from Fellowship of the Ring when they're all fighting. That would be cool.

Don't you love when software "helps" you?

This is my new favorite parenting blog. I like how he refers to his kid as “The Squirrelly”.

We just upgraded our PCs at work to Microsoft Office 2003. Since I happen to know that someone who works for Microsoft and reads this blog, I feel that the following rant may more constructive than most of the complaining I do on here. I often compose my posts in word and then cut/paste them in to Blogger because sometimes Blogger does weird things and loses posts that I’ve spent more time than I should at work writing. Word 2003 has a feature in it that automatically reformats quotation marks and ellipsis somehow so that it screws up the Blogger posting. The result of this is that if I just cut and paste like I used to, the picture links on my photo blog are screwed up. Grrr. Anyway, I kept yesterday’s photo post up because people couldn’t see the picture yesterday.

(And yes, I know that you can turn all that stuff off but, I always have a hard time turning off only what I want off and ending up with stuff on that I still want on. I’ve decided typing in plain text is the easiest answer.)

I spent most of my day today feeling like I have a hangover from staying up all night Wednesday and then turning back around to a normal schedule today. I think I’m getting my second wind, though.

Crash

4:30AM

I didn’t get much of a nap before I came in tonight. I wasn’t all that tired in the first place, and then the dogs got bored and woke me up for good. I’ve been struggling since about 3:00. It doesn’t help that all the “excitement” tonight came from simulator crashes.

5:00AM

One simulator crash later, and pretty much any meaningful contribution I could have made to things around here has been nullified by a warp drive through space and time. I am really, really tired. I’d like nothing more than to be going home right now. 2 hours to handover.

Sucker

I get roped into doing things because am incapable of resisting with every bone in my body when I know that a thing needs to be done. So I take on undesirable but important tasks, because SOMEBODY has to. And then I do a good job, because this is also something that seems to be ingrained into my very soul - if you’re going to do something, then do it well. I’ve noticed over the years that this tends to entice people to want to give you more and more undesireable tasks. Because they trust you to do them well and they don’t trust others to do the same.

You can see where this is heading. I usually have to throw a minor fit at some point to redress the balance. And that shouldn’t be the case. I know that all this is pretty much just human nature and probably won’t be solved ever. Still it bugs me. Reward my good work with interesting work, not crap!

So, now that’s off my chest... I’m working a night sim again tonight, so expect a random wee hours post or two. Tomorrow, I’m sleeping it off and then we’re going to see the actual Lord of the Rings exhibit at the museum. No, I’m not going to dress up again. Although it does say on the web page “costumes encouraged, but no weapons toy or otherwise”. I’ve earned my nerd points for the week, though.

Becca linked to an intersting story about spy astronauts, although the story would have been more interesting if the spynauts had actually flown.

Chinese Food and Walking

Last night, Becca and I went out to exercise. We proved the concept that I can walk as fast as Becca runs. I took Zoya, who was a bit annoying when she’d stop to smell something on the other side of the sidewalk from me. However, by the time we got back to Becca’s, the dog was thoroughly winded. For the rest of the way back to our house she actually dragged behind me. I didn’t even bother to put her leash back on because she wasn’t interested in exploring at all.

After that we went out to the standard Chinese place for dinner. The manager or assistant manager there, I’m not sure which, used to deliver. It is a comment on our take-out habits that he knows us all by sight and feels comfortable enough to joke with us as we were leaving that he “knows where we live”. Which is entirely true. Once, a couple months after that place opened, we were over at Becca’s and I answered the door when the food came. He took one look at me and said “this isn’t your house”. He even recognizes when the dogs are in the wrong place. :)

After that I paid bills, messed around on my laptop, and read myself to sleep with the help of my headphones to counteract the sounds of roll playing coming from the game room. One thing I’ve come to realize in the last couple months is that maybe in our next house we should look for NOT having the master bedroom right below the game room. I kind of knew that before, but I was always thinking in terms of kids that wouldn’t be playing at 2AM. I forgot about the big kid.

Big Geek

I had a pretty good weekend. Friday night I went to a work party. It was actually not as interesting as work parties often are, which I blame on the fact that the organizers didn’t announce it until last Tuesday. After that we went to dinner at a Mexican place we hadn’t tried yet, Anita’s on NASA Rd 1. It was OK - very spicy salsa. Then Cari and I convinced each other that we really did want to go to Midnight Madness for the Lord of the Rings exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural science.

It was actually kind of disappointing. The description of the events made it sound much better than it was. I was especially disappointed that most people seemed to have just gone into their closets and put on their Renissance festival clothing rather than making an effort to have Lord of the Rings costumes. (Yes, after Becca reminded me that I owned a LOTR costume, I went in costume. I was one of two Ringwraiths there. And people I don’t know took pictures of me, which was kind of cool.) There was a very good Frodo, a very good Aragorn, and a pretty good Gandalf. The other Ringwraith costume was better than mine, mostly for not being as frugal with the material. Anyway, both Cari and I forgot to bring our cameras, so you have to wait until I get the CD from the disposable camera back from the photo shop.

Becca thinks going to this in costume means that I can't tease her for being a nerd because she once went to a Star Trek convention in costume. While I admit that going to any event except Halloween in costume is pretty darn nerdy, I still think Star Trek beats LotR in dorkiness. Reasons:
1) I bet HS aged students (the arbitors of social labels like this) would admit going to see LotR, but not Star Trek. May have something to do with hot actors, but still.
2) Star Trek is the very movification of nerdiness and can never be supplanted.
3) My costume was way cooler.

Saturday I lazed around all day and slept off my late Friday night. Then Saturday night was a graduation party for Nujoud. I realized Saturday, that she’s the oldest friend I have that I actually still see. That made the inevitable party question “so, how do you know Nujoud?” question much more interesting to answer. The party was fun, and I convinced Gavin to drive so I had a really good time.

Sunday was cleaning and hanging out with the dogs. I’m re-reading Melanie Rawn’s “Exiles” series. I read them in college, but not since. It’s been enough time that I don’t remember exactly what happens, which is pretty cool.

Update

Also, for those of you who care, I actually updated the photoblog today. I know, shocking.

Morning

I’m sooooo not a morning person. Seriously. Gavin convinced me last night that it would do me good to come in when he did this morning. After waging a silent war with my alarm clock for 1/2 hour more than I could and still get here when Gavin said he wanted to, I finally got up. Zoya stood up and looked at me hopefully, but I’m not a nice enough person 30 seconds out of bed to think about anybody’s desires but my own. So she had to wait for Gavin to feed her. I grumped myself into the bathroom where I examined my eye in the mirror because it hurt a bit. Turns out, it’s also swollen near the corner of the bottom lid. Having had this symptom before I’m not overly worried, but it does mean I can’t wear my contacts today, which is going to make playing softball interesting. Hope we aren’t counting on my hitting tonight, let alone me catching any fly balls.

Anyway, I managed to get into clothes without murdering anyone. The good part about getting up “early” with Gavin is that he drove into work, which allowed me to recline my seat and pretend that I was still back in bed. I’m annoyed by everything in the morning, but the walk from the parking lot into the building was particularly irksome. I’m not sure if that’s because I had to walk or because I was going in to work

Now, my stuff has stopped executing for some unknown and probably unknowable reason. And here I am, still thinking longingly of my bed. Staring at my vacationing co-worker’s empty chair and wishing I were in his shoes. Or maybe not - he has two small children. God help me when I lose my mornings entirely to a screaming baby.