This is a new post

ouch!

That is a broken wrist.

Dancing in the Zombie Zoo

This week has been advertising itself in my mind as a very exciting week - full of lots of work, but also lots of fun. I've been right so far, except for the fun part. I'm now putting the finishing touches on the accompanying power point presentation to go along with the paper I wrote. I needed to work on Huygens stuff all day today, so the presentaion has been an after-hours project. Hopefully it will be well received. That will make the work worthwhile.
My Dad broke his finger a week ago, and finally got around to sending my his x-rays today. Bones look pretty neat. I dont think I've ever really looked at one in great detail before.

End of the three week wait

Tonight M.S. comes back after being home for a couple of weeks, and then in Colorodo for another. Unfortunatly she gets back rather late tonight, and she and I have school and work tomorrow respectivly, but at least I'll get to see her.

I'm trying to finish a paper today for the National Radio Science Meeting in Colorodo, which begins on 05 Jan. Originally, my master plan was to write a paper for the conference, go a few days early so I could meet up with M.S. while she was in town for a wedding, go skiing, present my paper, listen to the other interesting stuff, and then go back to JPL. Well, that didn't work out so well. Instead I'm getting sent down to Parkes, Australia to help with the direct to earth recording of the Huygens landing signal. I guess the compromise isn't all that bad, but I still get stuck writing this paper which I wont be able to present. The paper is a case study of communications during spacecraft critical sequences, which I've done a couple of times while at JPL, and is the purpose of my visit to AU later this week.
Still a lot of work to get done this week. On my adjenda are frequency predicts, hardware configuration, network connections between JPL and Parkes, and antenna pointing files. Oh, and packing clothes, etc. So that's why this paper has to get done today. While writing this is a great pocrastination technique, I should get back to it.

To follow up on what I said yesterday about the weather - it is indeed raining here today.

This post needs no introduction

Some days it's the sun, others it's the birds, most days it's my alarm. Today, however, I was awakened by the sound of a B2. That can mean only one thing: the start of the Rose Parade, and a new year. I live less than a block away from the parade route, so all these people are camped out in front of my house in RVs. The rest of the people are in sleeping bags on the curb. Even though it has been raining for the past week just about constantly, and it is predicted to rain the next four days as well, the sky is bright blue today. Amazing how that always works out. Unfortunatly, I missed the JPL float coming by my house. I guess I'll have to see it on lab later this week.