The long awaited new system that I was supposed to get in September finally arrived this week, and I finished configuring it today. The thing that took me the longest was messing with the color settings on the two new flat panels that came with it. I don't know why, but one is a Dell 1906FP and the other is a 1907FP. The 1907 is just a little ( Read more... )

On Tuesday, I was awarded a nice certificate for my work before and during the Arizona trip. The text read: "For successfully developing and demonstrating advanced technologies on the SCOUT vehicle that made the 2006 SCOUT Meteor Crater field test an outstanding achievement." It has a picture of a robot hand grabbing Mars on it. I'd take a picture ( Read more... )

What journey is complete without a trip report at the end ( Read more... )

At the beginning of September NASA is having a field test in the desert. They've severely restricted the number of people going, so initially we didn't even try to get a spot for me on the mission. However, a while ago it was pointed out that I might be able to get a spot anyway. I've been trying to get a decision made one way or the other on this ( Read more... )

I've been working on making some changes and fixes to my SCOUT project code. I couldn't remember how I had set up one of the methods I was using so I checked the documentation that I have been pretty good about keeping up. I found this:

Allows addition of systems to the backups Map@param nameToBackup This is the name of the system that the system ( Read more... )

Part of working with NASA is dealing with acronyms. At some point my boss told me to write a design document for the project that I have been working on. Because I find writing documentation boring, to amuse myself I decided to try to use as many acronyms as I could, and try to stack them. I  have a lot of help since the project I'm working on is ( Read more... )

Now I get to truncate my age to a higher integer. I just looked back at some of my past entries for birthdays and learned that this year is no different than the last few in that I didn't really do anything special. Actually, compared to 2003 and 2004 nothing is much better so I'll count this one as a win. Later this week Frank (from work) will ( Read more... )

I can finally feel like I have moved in here at the new place. The cable installer girl just finished the job of "installing" our cable. This seemed mostly to involve just plugging the box into the wall, giving us a splitter to plug the cable modem in and turning on the TV. She was here maybe 15 minutes total. One wonders why it took them 10 days ( Read more... )

The new system arrived on Wednesday, but I've only really finished setting it up most of the way today. I'll still be finding programs that I need to install for months, but that's not a big deal, I've installed all the ones that I use the most. I've set up the flat panel that showed up with the laptop next to me. It's very nice, though I wish that ( Read more... )

Blake convinced me some time ago that I should buy a laptop. While I know that I don't actually need one, I figure that it is somewhat like my experience with the cell phone. At first, I didn't use it much, but eventually it was my only phone service. I still don't use the cell often, but it's so useful that I's miss it. So, since I now have a ( Read more... )