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It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity June 10, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs, She Blinded me with Science , 2 comments

I am seeing red. As in severe thunderstorms coming our way! YES! PLEASE!

Today’s high was around 97F. I was a sticky mess. My hair is curlier than Daniel Craig’s Short and curlies. Ugh. I hate the humidity. Tomorrow should be a balmy 87! (or one place claims 85!) But without the humidity.

I spent most of the day grueling away over a computer simulating a proposed observation for an upcoming Peer review. I am pretty sure of the outcome, but the pain of working on this is terrible. I need to finish this tomorrow, but I have a coordinate issue that I failed to document last time. Sigh.

Please let those thunderstorms take some humidity out of the air….I think I speak for the whole North east.

 

Fore! May 30, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Life...otherwise, She Blinded me with Science , 2 comments

My car was hit yesterday. It was the most unexpected collision. There a was driving down the road between Lexington and Belmont (which I never know the name of because each town here HAS to change the name of the street when it gets to them. “ooh! look! Main street!” “No! we want to call it “The Great Road”" “NO! It’s the “Really Nice, But Not So Great Road” in our town”) Anyway, Here I was, just driving along and THUNK… A golf ball came flying out of the country club and nailed my side door. Good Lord! Luna and I both jumped about 20 feet! I watched the offending object bouncing along in the road and all I could think was “Golf balls bounce?”

Sigh

 

I actually have 5 pages of my 8 page paper! I am so proud of myself. I need to add FIGURES because we all know that FIGURES make the difference. They fill space! And they are FIGURES! Because NOBODY wants to just read 8 pages of text on spacecraft operations. Trust me on that. We want to see FIGURES! Now I just have to find some…FIGURES! that is! 

I just spell checked this post and I had ONE WORD misspelled. Which one? and. Yes folks, I can not spell the simple conjunctive word and.

 

Watching Michelle May 6, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , add a comment

I have one of the best window offices in the building. My window overlooks a small courtyard. I can hear the busy Cambridge Streets, but I cannot see them. I can hear the children playing outside at the Catholic School. I watch when the local hawks land on the dome and I can see the trees and birds.

Today, I see Michelle. She is over welmed. I can see that. She has her headset on, ipod playing. I feel as though I am a voyeur, watching her try to relax.

 Michelle is one of those people who work their butt off here. And rarely does she get the recogniztion she deserves.

So Michelle, as I watch you there, I think I will go and give you a small token chocolate to remind you that some people do see how hard you work, and we appreicate you!

 

 

“Your worst Nightmare” April 10, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 3 comments

"Quaternions are the things that scare all manner of mice and men. They are the things that go bump in the night.They are the reason your math teacher gave you an F. They are all that you have come to fear, and more.Quaternions are your worst nightmare."-from cprogramming.com

I have just spent a marathon session of trying to debug my code that is heavily laced with Quaternions. This 4 dimensional, real and imaginary numbers have plagued my dreams the last few nights. I have been fighting and fighting. Delving deep into code that someone who no longer works for us had written. He did things in a manner that was difficult to understand and follow. He chose not to comment. He wrote in "matlab"(shudder). He counted starting with the number 1! (as opposed to all sane programmers who count from zero).

And today, after going on a chocolate run for the Mission Planners (if the planners ain’t happy, nobody is happy), I found the source of my hell.

I couldn’t make a unit vector to save my life. Oy vey! I need a drink!

Sigh…

A woman’s place is in the Dome March 19, 2008

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I am an astronomer ish type person (I still don’t know my official job title). I have observed at Kitt Peak, Cerro Tololo and the Whipple Observatories. I have spent nights in the warm room, days sleeping and having my dorm door attacked by a coatimundi. So I guess I count as an astronomer. I do have a BS and a MS in astronomy/planetary science. 

But I went into programming for several years. I even had my resume on Monster dot com for a while because I was unhappy with my position (Long story, needs a password if I go into it). But now I am back in science. I don’t have time for research because I work part time (4 days a week,32 hours), but I get to go to meetings and such…

I have been very lucky. Most of my experiences in the workplace are positive. The only gender issues I have had are with women (weird, eh?). Again, I would need to password protect things, but in short, I was once told I got my job because I was sleeping with Dr. Jay. Um, No. I was actually called in by another group, but I already had been hired. I was told that I wasn’t working as hard after the birth of Soleil. Um, yeah, it’s called parenting an infant. Somehow, the fact that I was working long hours before she was born didn’t count. Just the fact that I was suddenly needing time to be with my family. I have never had to experience what Susan at Toddler Planet had to experience.  In fact, while in college, the only indignity I had was the adviser who told me that because I had an A- in my first 3 physics courses, I must not be challenged enough. I dumped him and got a better adviser. One who understood how much I was fighting for physics.

I had very little trouble in undergrad. I worked hard, I was respected by the astronomy profs, and I held my own in the physics classes. I was no Victor ( the guy in my class who could do vector calculus with one hand tied behind his back), but I aced my thermal dynamics final and I passed quantum mechanics. I handled senior physics lab with only one broken condom (we were doing an experiment that involved a vacuum pump and the thin rubber diaphragm broke easily so we had to have condoms as backups. We broke it once and needed a backup condom…it was pretty funny at the time). I was with the group of guys who froze a pumpkin with liquid nitrogen and tossed it off the physics building to watch it shatter! (it smooshed instead. We waited too long sending someone downstairs to make sure we wouldn’t kill anyone). I was basically one of the guys.

Graduate school was a little different. I applied to several places and was accepted into 2. I decided to stay where I was (Stony Brook, SUNY- WOOT!) because Jay was there. Was this a negative? I decided to give up a PhD to stay with Jay. I knew this at the time. We had several women and men in the grad department. I heard some negative things about the professors from some women, but I didn’t see what they did. I found that the staff treated men and women the same.

Now that I am in one of the largest employers of astronomers in the US, I see the subtle signs of discrimination. Women have smaller offices in general. The salaries for women are slightly smaller. Fewer women are at the top.Those women at the top fight for other women. Just this year, we finally got a designated lactation room for nursing moms.

I am both saddened and thrilled to see that Susan has started a new blog:Women in Planetary Science . I am sad that we need such a blog to deal with basic issues such as bringing children to meetings, lactation rooms, and childcare. The American Astronomical Society has been wonderful at allowing children to come and trying to arrange childcare co-ops between the parents who request it. Unfortunately, the planetary science branch has always been male dominated and with more women of childbearing age coming into the field, this had come to a head. Thank you Susan, for working on this and organizing this. Thank you to all of the women in planetary science who are working at this. If you are a scientist, male or female, please stop over this new blog and offer some support to these parents and women.

I think I am back… March 17, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : Current Affairs, She Blinded me with Science, Ghost in the (sewing)Machine , 1 comment so far

Man, it’s been a long two/three weeks. I have been fighting fires at work and in my personal life. It’s been crazy. My experience last week is just a sampler!

I’m on call this week, and it does seem like we are looking at another crazy week. There’s a celestial object that is in X-ray outburst and may be observed this week with our telescope. We’re waiting to see if the scientists are going to trigger their TOO (target-of-opportunity) and if they do, the week is shot to hell. Oh well.

I got time this weekend to finish Luna’s dress. I want her to wear it for Purim. It’s a princess dress for a costume, but it should hold up better than most costumes. It came out really well. I hope to post some pictures of it after Purim. Now Soleil wants HERS done (I started making two of them) and I had to run out tonight to get the fabric for the skirt. I under estimated the amount of fabric I would need because the pattern specifies the fabric for the dress AND a cape. Screw the cape. As Edna says in "The Incredibles", NO CAPES!

Still trying to find a sitter for April 5th. The Sabres are in town and the next day is my birthday, so I would love to go to the game. The trick is getting a sitter! :)

We bought a play set for the kids this weekend. It will be installed in May. This will bring on another post about how horrible I am as a parent… :)

Okay, gotta run, but I think I am back in the blogging spirit!

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA March 12, 2008

Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 2 comments

To do:

Jury Duty

Find bulge in tire

Spacecraft anomaly

review new mission guidelines

Fix tire

Parent teacher conference

Write to blog

 

 

Sorry- no time!
 

YAWN…. December 13, 2007

Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 1 comment so far

At 12:02am, my cell phone went off.

This is never a good sign. Being the good little operations scientist, I checked. Frick! We were in a telemetry format that indicates our spacecraft has safed itself!

Goodness! ICK! Jay and I both got up, I dialed into the telecon number, Jay got the computer and we examined the situation. Sure enough, the bird was in a safed position, something we call "Normal Sun". The "normal" in this case refers to 90degrees, not something ordinary. This "normal sun" orientation puts the spacecraft in a position so that the solar panels keep charge. We may have some other issues, but we won’t lose power.

After 20 minutes or so, we all decided this was real and not some garbled data from the Deep Space Network (DSN). It looked like my instrument was in a safe position, so we could only listen.

For awhile, it got scary. Operations Controllers were sending commands to the spacecraft, but with no command echos. Finally, the she began to reject commands. This is good because it inidicated that at least the spacecraft was getting the signals.

At 1:30am, I kicked off the telecon. There was nothing I could do, so I was going to sleep.

At 2:00am Luna woke up

At 3:45am Luna woke again. Jay got her this time and when he came back he said "it was a sim"

A sim? a SIM? We did an Unannounced Safe mode Simulation at midnight?

Yes, the telescope never was in danger, and never went into Safe mode or Normal Sun. It was fine all of the time. This was a training exercise. 

I just wish they hadn’t had done it at midnight! 

So you want to be an astronomer? December 4, 2007

Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 3 comments

Watch this first, then decide if it is worth it! (yes, all of these things I have experienced EXCEPT a flat tire…. I can’t work on Mauna Kea because I get altitude sickness)

 

Leopard is making me see spots November 7, 2007

Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 3 comments

I am fighting with leopard! Oy!

Now, if you are a regular mac user, please don’t be afraid. Leopard is amazing! I love it, EXCEPT I am having trouble with my Xauthentications. What? What the hell is she talking about? If you don’t know, then don’t worry, But if you are a mac/unix/linux geek, I am going to slam my head into a wall. Somehow, I have lost the DISPLAY environment variable…so no windows will show.

Sigh….

Oh well! I will figure it out. Instead, I will listen to Jimmy Buffett and the steel drums transport me far away from the cold of Boston. I will figure out what is going on with X.. I will.

ETA: A few Fruitcakes with Buffett and I am doing much better. Now to print out more things to review!  I will survive today!

(I WANT MY JUNIOR MINTS! GIVE ME MY JUNIOR MINTS!!!)