morrowlife

As promised on Friday, here’s Germany’s version of the Ron Jon tower. Although there’s a chance this one has been around a little longer. Compare and contrast.

It’s late on Monday night and I just got home from work (stopped on the way to pick up some Chinese food at Ginseng, which is excellent) after 13.5 hours at the office. Fortunately, about an hour and a half of that was spent on the phone with Reader Number Four, so the day wasn’t a total waste. We’ve got some Big Exciting Things in the works – stay tuned!

It was a tough day at work. We’re moving along, but not as quickly as we’d like. Hence the long day. And another very long one tomorrow, most likely.

At least the weekend was nice. I worked five hours on Saturday and took Easter Sunday off. I spent the day going to church (nice ward – good Gospel Doctrine class and friendly High Priests group), barbecuing my lunch, washing some clothes, reading the scriptures, reading my book, watching a couple of movies, and chatting with Reader Number Four. It would only have been better if I had been at home.

Gotta get to bed, so this will be short tonight. Let’s hope for a shorter workday tomorrow. See you then.

Here’s my last picture from Ron Jon’s (unless I run out of Blog Fodder, of course). See next Monday’s post for its German counterpoint.

It’s a beautiful Saturday evening and I’m leaning back in my chair with a nice glass of Smoothie. Note that this post is dated on Friday; through the miracle of Blogger, I’m able to travel to the past and get the right date in there. Why is this bit of trickery necessary, you ask? Simple: I forgot. I had kind of a late night last night and just dropped into bed without taking care of my obligations to my Loyal Readers. Mercy.

I went out at about 7:00 this evening to wander around aimlessly until I came across a restaurant that looked appealing. My colleague Joe passed me on the road and signaled me to follow him, so I did. It turns out he was meeting a group at Bernard’s Surf restaurant, so I invited myself to join them. The meal was great but expensive. I had some excellent seared Ahi tuna as an appetizer, a very nice filet mignon for dinner, and creme brulee for dessert. We split the bill evenly, so it cost me a great deal more than it would have otherwise, since my beverage choices tend to be much cheaper than those of my colleagues. Doesn’t matter – it was a great meal and the company was pleasant.

I’m looking forward to Easter Sunday. We will NOT work that day, so I can go to church without getting a last-minute call to come to the office. I’m just sorry to not be home. No jelly beans, no Easter baskets, no family fun, no nothing. Pity my solitary loneliness. And pity my poor family members who have to endure the holiday without me. Those are the ones I really feel sorry for.

Sorry to end that last sentence with a preposition. I guess I just got carried away. Or was that caught up? You be the judge.

Anyway, Happy Easter to each and every one of my Loyal Readers. Hug your family members and thank Heavenly Father for your blessings. See you on Monday.

Here’s the little surfer guy from the Cocoa Beach Surf Company, Ron Jon’s arch nemesis. They’re right across the street from each other and they’re both going for the throat.

There’s a TON of news today! First and foremost, a big morrowlife welcome to Julie, Reader Number Eight! Actually, I kind of talked her into becoming a Loyal Reader, but morrowlife mania knows no limits. She’s in. Send me a picture, Number Eight!

Let’s see, what was secondmost? Oh yeah, a little update to the morrowlife book club, over there on the right. I finished Psmith in the City a few days ago and forgot to note the fact. As previously advertised, it was delightful. It was a bit more subtle than much of Wodehouse‘s other work, and I’m thinking the Jeeves books here in particular. Psmith is more eccentric than hilarious, but I found myself liking him and his friend Mike. The story moved quickly, it was Veddy British like every other Wodehouse novel (but in a charming pre-WWI way), and it was amusing. It left me wanting more Psmith. Luckily, that’s exactly what I’m reading! I started Psmith, Journalist this afternoon. It’s obviously more of the same, which is a good thing. I simply can’t recommend P.G. Wodehouse to my Loyal Readers enough. Try any of his stuff, but it’s a safe bet to start with anything in the Jeeves series. I encourage any Loyal Readers who actually take this advice to let me know what they think. I’ll be waiting right here.

Okay, it seems to me that there was a thirdmost here, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. I always think of these things while I’m walking up the stairs to the condo, and they don’t bother writing them down as soon as I get inside. Inevitably, they disappear long before I get around to writing. Well, maybe I’ll ramble on a little bit and see if anything comes to me.

Had a great dinner tonight at a place called A Taste of Goa. It’s advertised as an Indian-Portuguese restaurant, but it looked and tasted to me like just a plain Indian place. That’s not a bad thing though – quite the contrary, in fact. I had a mango lassi that was so good I ordered another one for dessert. I also got some shrimp in a coconut milk/spice sauce and some vegetable soup. Outstanding. I might go there again. It’s pretty close to the condo to boot.

The campaign proceeds in good order. Last night’s launch resulted in a healthy satellite in a very good orbit, so there’s no ‘splainin’ to be done there. I’m cautiously optimistic about next Thursday for us. If so, I’m home on Saturday! If not, I’ll be home one of these days.

I wish there was more of interest in my life right now, but there just isn’t. I hate to say it, but Cocoa Beach is getting kind of old. I’m clicking my heels together three times and saying “there’s no place like home” several times a day, but without result so far. Maybe tomorrow. I want to go home and see my family – and my little dog too!

I’m listening to an old Leo Laporte podcast and heard one of his callers talk about an application called SeaMonkey. It’s a Mozilla project that includes a web browser, email application, chat client, newsgroup client, and HTML editor. It’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux and looks like it might be pretty cool. It is beyond version 1, so it ought to be stable at this point. I think I’ll download it and try it on my Mac when I get home. Maybe a loyal reader would like to download it first and let me know what he/she thinks.

Well, Big News Item Number Three never materialized in my mind, so I’ll end with a bang.

Here’s another picture of Ron Jon’s. I took those on a beautiful day, and the colors turned out to be really interesting. I’m starting to run out of blog pictures, though, so it’s time to get out there with the camera again.

Another mostly uneventful day. I went over to the launch complex right after lunch for a checkout task, a tower visit, and a meeting. That was pleasantly different. I need to stay in the office tomorrow, though. I have a lot of little things to get done before we get much closer to launch.

I’ve been watching the web broadcast of the JCSAT 9 launch on Sea Launch this evening. I was about to go out to dinner at 7:00 when I remembered the launch was scheduled for 7:30. So I stayed home, cooked a couple of burgers (yum!) and watched the launch on my computer. It looked beautiful. As I write this, the upper stage final burn has completed and they’re about four minutes away from spacecraft separation. That will mean we’re up next!

It was yet another windy, cool day. I think it got only into the mid-70’s. It’s 71 right now. Not that I’m complaining. My sliding glass door is open yet again and the condo feels absolutely great.

Disaster! I’m out of ice cream. What will I do for dessert tonight? I know – I’ll run out to the store and get some more. I’m out of Cocoa Krispies too, so there’s an urgent need to shop. I don’t think I need any other groceries at this point, with only eight more days until our planned launch date. If it ends up going longer, I can always go resupply.

Separation is about a minute and a half away. Keep your fingers crossed.

My hamburgers were on toasted English muffins. They’re really good that way. I recommend the recipe to my loyal readers. No charge (warning: this link has been rated Y for yuckiness).

Spacecraft separation was just confirmed! Congratulations all around! That used to be pretty much the end of the mission for me, back when I was a launch vehicle guy. Now that I’m on the spacecraft side, most of the hard work is ahead of us. We have to get the orbit raising done, make all the deployments, check out the payload, and make it productive for at least twelve years. Fortunately, our folks are pretty good at it.

Happy birthday to my sister Julie! I need to call her on the way to the grocery store.

Well, it’s time to go out and buy that ice cream and cereal, so I’ll just say cheery bye.

Cheery bye.

Whoa, dude. Gnarly. Like, totally awesome. Here’s the cement surfer in front of Ron Jon’s. Far out, man. Sorry about the light pole. I tried to get them to move it in the name of Art, but the Ron Jon dudes turn out to be Philistines. Who would have guessed? I suppose I could Photoshop it out (well, actually Gimp it out), but that would be inconsistent with my Artistic Vision. And inconvenient too.

Had a pretty good day today. I got out of the office at about 6:00 this afternoon, having arrived at 7:00 this morning, which was actually a pretty short work day around here. Had lunch at the NASA KSC Headquarters Building cafeteria with Joe and John. If the food had been just a little bit better it would have been absolutely mediocre. I believe my hamburger was cooked sometime today, but I couldn’t swear to it. On the plus side, I got tater tots. On the other plus side, their ATM was working, so I’m resupplied with cash.

Dinner was on my own tonight. I had Chinese food at Ginseng. They’re owned by the same people who own Yen Yen, and they told me as I was walking out the door that they can make anything you can get on Yen Yen’s much larger (outrageously large!) menu. Maybe they should have mentioned it before I started eating. Maybe I’ll go back. Maybe that’s what they were trying to get me to do.

We had mainly pleasant weather today. It only got up to the mid-seventies, and the wind was still blowing pretty hard, but it felt good to be outside. My sliding glass door is open even as I type this, giving me comfortably warm air and beautiful ocean sounds. Aah, this is the life. If only my family were here, it might be hard to get me to go home. But it might not.

I washed some shirts this evening – they’re drying now. I’m hoping I don’t end up regretting that decision. I could have taken them to the Cape Laundry, of course, and gotten them washed and pressed by Professionals. I suppose if they come out looking terrible, I can just take them over to the Professionals tomorrow morning and have them done again (as opposed to ironing them myself, which is beyond unthinkable). Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!

I’m listening to the dl.tv (formerly Digital Life TV) podcast from March 16th, featuring Patrick Norton and Robert Heron. It has become one of my very favorite podcasts (right up there with James Lileks, Click and Clack, and Leo’s KFI weekend show. Highly recommended. I’m on podcast number 20 of the 53 shows on my iPod right now, hoping to get through all of them by the time I get home. Then I can load the ‘Pod back up with all the new shows that have arrived during my month-long absence. I can’t catch up!

Time to go. See you tomorrow.