Going Home

Today is our last day in Wyoming. It's always sad leaving knowing that I won't see my family again for months. Somebody needs to get on the ball and invent that instantaneous transporter so that we can visit any time we like. Work on that, would you?

Puerto Rico, My Heart's Devotion

For Christmas, I bought Gavin the board game Puerto Rico. I'd heard it was really good. I think it is, but boy is it complicated. I spent a couple hours mock playing a game this afternoon, and I think I have the basic concepts down. Now we'll just have to convince somebody else to learn to play it with us. I think it will be a very fun game, though.

Uncle Putz

So in case you didn't know already, Jen's niece Caroline is very cute. She's quite the gabber, trying often to say things. She can say "up" and "help", both of which are very useful. She can say "ma" and "da" for Mom and Dad. She can say "ba" for bedtime when she's sleepy. When we all are not trying to get her to dance to Mexican or 70's funky music, we try to teach her words or names.

"Caroline, this is Aunt Jen."
"Je!"
"Hey, that was pretty good! Can you say Uncle Gavin?"
"Putz!"
(much laughter ensues)

And in case you thought it was a one-time affair, she's called me Putz about 3 or 4 times now. :)

Christmas in Wyoming has been fun so far, although there is no snow and it's been in the 50s every day. Jen's family have been great hosts, it's been very relaxing amidst much stuffing of one's face. And we still haven't finished all of the Christmas cookies yet!

The Day After Christmas

We had a great Christmas with my parents and family. We got one present that we're going to have to ship back to Texas because it's too big and heavy to take on the airplane. It's pretty cool, though; a really nice dart board from my brother. We've been hanging out at my folks for the last few days, and we'll probably go spend a few days out at Jessica and Pat's during the week.

On this December 26th, I only have one complaint. Our copy of Serenity, which I pre-ordered from Amazon and had shipped to Wyoming, hasn't arrived yet. According to USPS tracking, it arrived at a partner facility in Haywood, CA on Dec. 19. That's all the tracking form has to say. Gavin is working on plans to have a vigil to pray for its arrival.

Boobs

I told a couple of people about the boob post yesterday. As it turns out, I had the site wrong. It was actually on Mighty Girl.

Check it out. If you chin doesn't hit the floor at first, you have a higher suprise quotient than I.

Wherein I discover my techno-dependence

I'm at work struggling through the last five hours before taking off for Christmas. Honestly, nobody does anything the week before Christmas, anyway. Why don't they just send us home? Although, I suppose if they sent us home the week before Christmas, then we wouldn't get anything done the week before the week before Christmas.

Yesterday while I was bragging to my co-workers how great my Iriver is, I dropped it on the floor by trying to get too far from the desk with the headphones on. Shortly thereafter it started freezing up every three or four songs. I looked on the web site, and it said that sometimes the data can get damaged if the player is dropped, and to just reload music. Shortly thereafter, the player started complaining of missing systems files. I looked that up on the web site, and it said to download new firmware drivers. I did this, and initially it seemed to have worked, but then when I tried to reload my music the computer couldn't see the player at all. I tried to download the new firmware again, and now the firmware updater couldn't see the player.

At this point I started thinking about how I was getting on an airplane today for Wyoming. I started panicking a bit. What if it was broken? I bought the replacement plan, but there are no Best Buys in Casper. If I couldn't fix it, I'm looking at a WHOLE WEEK without my MP3 player. I started getting butterflies in my stomach. I decided to bail on the whole thing and see if I could get a replacement player from Best Buy immediately. Fortunately, the old player was accepted back with no issues and they still had the Iriver H10 players in stock.

Whew.

It does disturb me a bit that I've become that dependent on this technology in only a month. After all, had I not gotten a new one I would have still had all the music on my laptop, and I could have used my 128 MB stick player like I have been doing for 2 years. Nevertheless, I was actually panicking at the idea of not having the big one for a week. White-showing-around-the-eyes, quick-shallow-breathing, run-to-the-store-at-7:30-the-night-before-leaving-town panicking.

At least I was able to combine that trip with purchasing a toy for Caroline. I went to the Imagination Toys and Shoes store over by DSW. It was a pretty cool store. And, no, I didn't buy baby shoes. I bought a curvy slidy whistley tower thingy. I forget what it's called, but it looks like it would be fun for a 18 month old. Oh, and they had the coolest toys there. They had this one display with remote control construction equipment that could drop little balls onto this conveyer belt tower thing that ran them around a assembly-line looking thing...

It was cooler than it sounds. Check it out.

Early Christmas

We had Christmas this weekend with Gavin's parents. We drove up Friday night. The dogs are starting to get excited when we first pull into the neighborhood. I think they're starting to remember the place with the nice yard.

By Saturday morning, I was not feeling too well. This is already my second cold of the season. But, better now than on February 17th! No more being sick in South America.

Saturday night we opened the bulk of our presents. My mother-in-law had planned presents for "Christmas Day", Sunday, but her children whined until she let us open almost everything on "Christmas Eve". I think my favorite thing I've gotten so far is an FM transmitter for my Iriver. I can now listen to all 1500 songs I've downloaded on my car stereo. This is closely followed by Napster gift certificates from Lauren and Melissa.

Speaking of the FM transmitter, I have a funny story about that. About a week ago, I got a call from my mother-in-law.

"Jen, this is Meg. I have to tell you to take something off your Amazon list, because Gavin was supposed to but he didn't. And now he's in California. Anyway, you remember the thing you bought at Thanksgiving? It was called an I-riva or something. Anyway it was the thing you got from Best Buy that you were really excited about; I can't remember its name. Anyhow, you put something on your Amazon list; it's a transponder or something... I don't know what it is, but it's for the thing you bought at Thanksgiving and I already bought it because Melissa said that you'd really like it. And I need you to take it off because I bought it already - you know what it is."

Halfway into this I was giggling at the voicemail. I turned to my co-worker and said, "My mother-in-law just bought me something, and she totally doesn't know what it is, or what it does, or what it's called."

Anyhow, I had a full day at work today. I think it went pretty well.

Oh. My. God.

Radio contest

Patagonia

Yesterday, we dropped ~$2K on plane tickets for our next adventure. We will be going to Patagonia in February. Don't know what that is? See Sarah's very good 30 second description of our trip.

So, I'm very happy to have a big trip on tap again. For a while there, it was looking like we weren't going to be going anywhere this year. Gavin's potential JPL trip looks like it will be March - June, so we went ahead and committed to this one.

Yea for travel.

Service Complete

I had my last jury duty session today. I'm glad I won't be missing work so much anymore, but all in all I had a good time serving. It was interesting seeing a bit of the legal system at work. I also enjoyed getting to know my fellow jurors.

On my way home, I got stuck in one of the heaviest rainstorms we've had all year. I actually pulled off to the side of the freeway for several minutes because I couldn't see where the lane was. The field next to the road turned into a lake.

I decided to forego the couple hours of work I'd be able to get in and finish my Christmas shopping instead. At the mall, I found out that Casual Corner is going out of business! What's up with that? Every time I start consistently shopping at a store, it closes. I still miss Paul Harris, and that's been gone for four years now. The silver lining of this cloud is that everything they have left in Casual Corner is 50%-60% off. I'll have to go back at least once before they close in January.

Bad News for Space Elevators

Boo

quite the balancing act

Amusing distraction courtesy of Dave Barry's blog: http://www.vectorpark.com/Levers.html

How long do you take before the crowd bursts into applause for you? I think I took about 5 minutes.

Science vs. Pseudoscience

Interesting article here at the SF Chronicle. The title of this post indicates how I feel about it.

Saturday

A couple days ago, I went to check on the NCAA volleyball tourney, and realized that there's a regional in College Station. Not only that, but this is the regional Washington's in. So, I made some last minute plans to drive up there tonight to see the Elite 8 matchup between Washington and Wisconsin. I'm pretty excited about this, even though it means driving from Conroe to CS and back by myself. I'm using Gavin's parents' place as a staging area, though, so it shouldn't be too bad.

So, today we're hanging out in Conroe until 3pm. The dogs are having the time of their lives in the backyard. They think the Mendeck hotel is quite a place, too. I wish we could get a yard like this for them. They'd love having this to play in while we're at work. Instead, they have to stay in our boring backyard until all hours of the night.

Bugs Suck

If I have to read one more software anomaly report today, I may start beating my coworkers with my rubber wrist rest. I've basically been working on this all day. I'm on page 13 of 19 printed pages of small-type spreadsheet lines. Forget the rubber wrist rest, I may graduate straight to strangling people with my plastic slinkey.

Plus, it's the first cold day of the year in Houston. High today was 38 deg, with a windchill of 25 deg. In my office, I think the windchill is somewhere around 55 deg. My little desktop weather station is resolutely showing above 70 deg for a temp on my desk, but I think it must be picking up some residual heat from the computer speakers.

review after review after review...

So I've found myself unexpectedly at JPL this week. There's a preliminary mission and systems review for the project I'm working on, and the project lead asked me to attend even though I'm not presenting. I'm guessing it's for two reasons: one, to answer any really detailed questions that comes up and two, to show others that I (and my center) am involved and dedicated to supporting this project. I think it was mostly for the second reason. Anyways, the reviews have been okay. Some of it has been new to me, some not. After this morning's review I decided to head back to my hotel room and do some work using the wireless there. There's a mission design review later today that should be neat, plus I'll finally be in town for the happy hour that most of these guys go to every Thursday.

Life's good. Now if I could just get the damn altitude rate gain to work correctly. Stupid FORTRAN...

Damn it!

I took my water bottle home last week to put it through the dish washer. I still haven't remembered to return it. The result is that I now have to go buy water to get a bottle to use for the rest of the day. *grumble*

Welcome to the new Millenium

Earlier this year, Becca stayed at our house for a weekend to take care of the dogs while we were out of town. I don't remember exactly why she came to our place rather than taking the dogs to her place. Probably there were a bunch of extra people at her house for some reason.

Anyway, when we got back home she berated us for our technological backwardness for not having TiVo.

"Jen, I had to WATCH THE COMMERCIALS! It drove me crazy! I had to go buy DVDs because I couldn't watch TV!"

Well, Gavin and I finally took the plunge and ordered ourselves at TiVo for Christmas. Forget that we'll enjoy it, now we don't have to feel guilty for people that have to stay in our house and watch COMMERCIALS.

But, wait, it gets better. The sales lady from TiVo told me that with the new units, you can set it up so that the TiVo will actually go through the programs you've recorded and TAKE THE COMMERCIALS OUT FOR YOU. So, you don't even have to be bothered to push the little button on the remote to skip them.

Dude.

Oranges and Tangerines

My husband and I are both aerospace engineers. We both work at NASA. We both specialize in trajectory. He does entry and I work in orbit, so there is a bit of separation in our areas of specialization. A bit. It’s not like apples and oranges. More like Red Delicious and Granny Smith. Or like oranges and tangerines.

This can be very nice. We can talk about our days at work without dumbing down all the lingo. We can skip lengthy explanations because we both know what’s going on. So, tonight as we’re walking out to our car, I’m complaining about getting a call at 4pm for some data due Monday afternoon. Suddenly, he starts talking to me about this Mighty Girl post.

Me: Are you saying I’m boring you?
Him: Yeah, a bit.
Me: Well, it’s not like I haven’t heard “Oh, Jen! I bet I just need to filter drag!”
Him: Hey, that was cool!