Friday, July 10, 2009

Worker Bee

Just me the regular old worker bee. I've actually been coding this morning for a while, without interruptions. Well, I had been. About 11:30 (it's always just before lunch), Casey calls me for an impromptu meeting.

So turns out I have to go down to our office in San Jose for a couple of days, leaving Wednesday! They've got a new guy down there, and they have their own mirror site there, hosting our stuff as well as well some separate stuff that is still specific to their biz. Truth is we bought them out and they still haven't integrated everything to our system. But having them mirror most of our site is helpful in case of an outage up here.

But anyways, I'm supposed to go down and spend two days with this new guy, cause the other guy (Jim) had quit a couple of weeks ago. You'd think they might have known that someone would be replacing him (I certainly knew) but nobody also thought far enough ahead that they would want to send me down to train him (or her). Hey maybe it's some hot chick - no I think I heard it's someone named Manuel. So it's either a really hairy chick or a guy. But anyway, I'd have thought that they would have thought ahead and could have given me more than 24 hours notice about flying down to California. Oh well - at least I get a trip out of it.


Last night I was watching some shuttle mission television, cause everything else was lame-ass reality TV crap and re-runs. It was pretty boring, but still engaging. Just some guys floating around inside the shuttle as they get ready to dock with the space station. I don't know why that's entertaining, but it's better than watching some strutting, goatee wearing asshole on that reality show. Ever notice how every second phrase out of Americans on reality shows is either "Step up" or "Baby"?

I swear there's going to be some new reality show where all the dialog is just going to be...

"Baby, are you gonna step up baby?"
"I stepped up baby, it's that don't step, up"
"Well whose stepping up now, baby. Y'all ain't stepping up, I stepped up."
"Nuh-uh. I stepped up, you don't wanna step up, I'm gonna win without you baby"
"Hey Baby wanna form an alliance and step up together?"
"Okay, yeah baby."


Anyway, the shuttle stuff was better. The Swedeish guy is a hoot - he's very professional, but always has a joke in there. Sharp wit - what's his name Jorge Pederson says the website - jeeze he's also 58 years old. Well really experienced. The youngest guy on the crew is Michael Bradley at 38. When those two talk it sounds like the 38 year old is a youngster taking direction from a kindly uncle.

I'd love to be on one of those missions. The lift-off must be awesome, so much power and a real kick in the ass. I guess they don't need a web-guy on the mission. I could see it...

"Atlantis, Houston...
"Go ahead Houston."
"We've got alarms on your registration page. Can you check your perl scripts and confirm that the page loads okay from your end."
"Roger that, Houston, checking perl scripts... Houston, confirmed page is active and loading correctly. We suggest a re-boot at your end, and probably changing browsers to Firefox."
"Atlantis, Houston. We copy that and concur. We're dropping IE and running Firefox. Be advised Atlantis that flight control is now suggesting we de-install Windows and cut over to Linux, so we'll be offline for a few days. See Ya."

Oh well, not a lot of web hosting involved in payload specialist work

It's always neat to see the doors open up after orbit and see the CanadArm there. They've been showing a shot of the payload bay occasionally, and it's great to see the view. Just as the suns coming up, the bay is dark and you can see stars. It must be amazing to be up there in the dark and see the stars. When I think of how bright they are inside the atmosphere when you're out in the bush up north, or that time out on the prairies when Dave and I were camping on the way back grom our trip out to BC and Washington... They must be blindingly bright in space. I wonder what the milky way looks like out there.

Shit, I'd better take off work early and get some stuff for my trip, I probably won't have a lot of time tomorrow. Wednesday, I'm off to San Jose.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of my friends is Jørge Pedersson's neighbour a few years ago. He really is a nice man, I am so glad he got to go into space - he's a real hero here in Sweden!

Anonymous said...

Hey - I watched that liftoff too. It was great. And old!? That's not old some of us are even older (ha ha).

Enjoying your blog - lifes not so boring is it!?