I know yesterday was Halloween, yet somehow I was still surprised to wake up and discover that it’s November. Seriously! November? Where did the year go?
I’ve been playing around with Google Reader lately as a new way of reading the many blogs and news sites that I like to keep up with on a daily basis. Despite loving the web, I’ve never used a feed reader until now. And while it certainly makes things easier and faster — I don’t click through a long list of blogs when only a quarter of them have actually been updated — I find that I miss the blog itself. I miss whatever template the person has used, and whatever colors used to greet me on the screen. I find that without seeing the blog template, it is not as easy for me to identify whose blog I’m actually reading.
Halloween was a rousing success, if by “rousing success” you actually mean “complete bummer.” I’ve had class on Wednesday nights all fall, and last night was no exception. Instead of trick-or-treaters, I was learning about home video, digital audio, and watching a Science Channel show about the development of the iPod. It was interesting, but not the most exciting way to spend Halloween. When I left at 10:00 it was foggy and a little spooky though, so I’ll take what I can get.
It’s been sort of a weird week so far. Work is slow, with most of my officemates off working the mission, which has turned into quite the ordeal. First it was the finicky solar array rotation joint, which has been vibrating and showing electrical spikes. When the astronauts checked it out, they found metal shavings inside, apparent indication of grinding. Not good. Then, while redeploying another solar array, they found a rip in the seam of the panel. Also not good. The torn solar array has now become the biggest priority and people all over are scurrying around coming up with fixes and procedures. Nothing much for rendezvous to do except try to figure out when we’re going to undock, but there’s still a lot going on. To add a bit of time, they have also decided to land on a descending opportunity — i.e. the shuttle will pass over Canada and the continental U.S. on its way to landing, instead of over the ocean, Mexico and the Gulf Coast like it does for an ascending approach. That means a lot more work for all the entry folks.
As for me, I’m just sitting around, listening. President Bush (the first one) visited Mission Control today, but I missed hearing him talk to the crew because I was in the cafeteria eating lunch. I thought he was coming later in the afternoon. Oh well. Apparently one of my coworkers got to give him a pin, and explain what we do after he stopped at our console and asked “what does rendezvous do?” Pretty cool.
