A little lighter August 8, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Kids, She Blinded me with Science, Home wreckers , 1 comment so farSorry it’s been so heavy around here lately. It is hard to deal with Jimmy’s death still and work is funny right now. We are all still in a daze. I am frustrated that I will miss his funeral. It will be next week while we are on vacation.
Right now, I am a bit frazzled between home life, mommy life and work life, even without the complexity of Jimmy.
Home life: We are at it again! We ripped up the carpet in the living room, hallway and stairs. While we are away next week, we have a crew coming in and refinishing the floors. The carpet had been a Wookie orange color. Lovely, eh? And we kept it in place while our children were still learning to walk and fall down, etc. Now we are finally comfortable that they will not kill themselves walking in the living room without a carpet. So bye bye carpet, hello oak floors! There’s been some prep work needed. Sunday we need to move our couch into the kitchen, but it will all be done soon. That just leaves the master bedroom floor to be redone.
I also planned out Soleil’s closet for Elfa shelves. Now I am just waiting for their end of summer sale. The Container Store generally has two sales, one at the end of summer and one after Christmas. We had the Container Store plan out Soleil’s closet and I removed $131 of equipment (all drawers) for now. Once the sale happens, we will go and get what we need and then install when we are ready. Then she’ll be able to reach her own clothes! What a concept!
Mommy life: The 3s suck. I forget this. Luna has been a fricken fruitcake with nuts. Last night, she screamed for ketchup on her mac and cheese. But apparently, I didn’t put it on right, then I took it off, more sobbing, finally the evening ended with her smooshing the mac and cheese all over the table. Sigh….
Note to self: This will pass. It has to. Otherwise I will lock myself into a small room with padded walls and try to play solitaire til dawn with a deck of 51*.
Work Life: I have been napping at work. My bosses are encouraging it to help heal the mono. That’s good, right? But I am so damn unproductive. I hate that. I am one of those people who need to constantly be doing something. I don’t care what, but something. I will pace while watching TV. Sad, I know. Right now I have four projects:
- Boresight angles and bright X-ray sources in C++ code
- Reorganizing the webpage of internal notes
- Planning and writing the code for a flight software patch (someone else wrote the patch, I need to write the commands to send the patch to the spacecraft and then in a few months we will send it up)
- Working on a large change to the observation database that our team requested in December and the software team is just getting to.
That’s a bit on my plate to deal with mono. But I have to get through everything, because this is what we do here!
*With apologies to The Statler Brothers.
Mac Developers Toolkit–update June 9, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 3 commentsOkay folks, I am a geek. Can anyone help me? (D- I’m talking to YOU!)
I am having trouble installing the Mac Developer’s Toolkit. I can download the binary, but then what? The About file assumes you have a CD. (unless I am a complete moron and can’t find this on the disk)
Help?
Update- I am a complete moron. I was on the disks that came with my mac. Duh. More on this later!
This is just sad April 25, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 3 commentsDudes, This is sad. Like really really really sad.
I just went down the the bowels of the observatory and pulled "Textbook on Spherical Astronomy" by W.M. Smart out of the library.
I have to do some Spherical Trig.
The saddest part of all is that I could actually DO this stuff without a book when I was 16. 16!!! Now, at 36, I can’t even remember how to calculate the angle based on a chord….
Barely keeping my head below water* March 14, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Life...otherwise, She Blinded me with Science, Depression , 5 comments* The title comes from a song called "W3t Dream"
Okay, this is my third attempt to write this post. Damn firefox keeps crashing!
I am trying to come up for a breath of fresh air. Fortunately, it is warm today (almost 70!) and the air smells sweet!
The early part of the year is always busy and stressful. The major space telescopes have their proposals due this time of year. HST is due in January, Spitzer is due in February and then Chandra in March. Tomorrow is Chandra’s due date. Thank goodness because all of the scientists hide away in their offices at this point and are busy explaining why their science should be done on these telescopes and what great exciting discoveries will be found. Ya, what-evah!
Jay is one of these scientists who hides away. Grrrr
On other fronts, my depression is being a royal pain in the ass and coming in and painting my world black. So bad that I am avoiding calling a certain blogger because my cell phone died while I was talking to her and I am too embarrassed to call her back. Sad? yes… I hide in the kitchen at night…
My soul is tired of everything right now. I need some free time, like time to be nothing… but it isn’t happening right now! Nor does it look good for later..
I am having issues with Soleil and Luna. Internal issues. Like being upset that they are who they are. How stupid is that?
Sigh…
oh yeah, I’m on a roll here!
I am just a barrel of laughs today, aren’t I? I should just go find myself a nice rock to hide under…
A day… March 2, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , add a commentMy parents are in town. I took today off. Well, 4 hours off. And I have been spending a majority of the day working on a disaster… UGH!
I am going insane. Why do science disasters have to happen when I want to relax and visit?
Why Why why????
So, you want to be an astronaut! February 7, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 5 commentsOK, if you haven’t heard about Capt Nowak yet, you are living under a rock. So, I’ll spare the links and get to the guts.
(disclaimer…these are MY views. If you disagree, FINE, but this is based on my experience)
A female working in the physical sciences is often a minority. We are surrounded by egos that often exceed the normal size and need to work daily with this. When a woman works in this sort of environment, a certain mentality develops. We are "one of the guys". We learn to work with the crude jokes and sometimes even like them. Like most women working in a man’s field, there are subtle levels of discrimination, intended and not. To work in a man’s field, you learn to suck up more. Yeah, I wish there was equality in all places, but let’s be realistic for a minute.
Now take a woman who goes into a high risk field, like, oh firefighting, military, astronaut. She has to have a certain attitude towards risk. I don’t have it. I find space travel to be too risky for my family. I respect the men and women who do it, but I don’t have what it takes to be able to do it. She (and the men) are already slightly "nuts". Like the mountain climbers who tackle Everest. There’s a certain level of insanity that lives in those people.
NASA screens the astronaut corps in the beginning. What they really need to continual screening. Working in tight quarters with others is difficult. It is true with men and women. Any high stress job needs to not only make the facilities available, but to also make it mandatory to allow people to get help.
NASA work is STRESSFUL. I can’t imagine the stress of working with people in space. I know the stress of working on a problem when it’s just equipment involved.
I can see how this woman snapped. Really. I can even understand her justification for wearing diapers (come on guys, she was in space. Think there are toilet breaks while you are on the launch pad?) But I can’t comprehend the things she had in her car. The perfect items for subduing, killing and dismembering a human.
NASA needs to work on this. It may piss people off, but there needs to be more mental health care available and required for all of the astronaut corps. I see that NASA is having a press briefing on this right now.
It is something to be taken seriously.
Note that Ms. Nowak’s husband is in mission control for ISS (international Space Station). Yeah, that’s not stressful either…
Life in the fast lane February 6, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Life...otherwise, She Blinded me with Science, Depression, Fun with Crohn's Disease, Travel, I dream of sleep, In A Family Way , 2 commentsOy! Some days, the dragon wins. Today is not one of those days, but it started like it.
First, I have to fix the photos above. For some reason, they came out funny and three photos are on top of each other…
Let’s see, last night, I went to work out at the gym. Jay and I came to an agreement that I could work out on Monday nights and Saturday mornings (and I am going to add Thursday nights in there too). When I came home, Soleil was at the door to the garage screaming, reaching for me. Oh shit, what is this? I picked her up and Jay told me that her ear was bothering her. After 20 minutes of ear piercing screams that had MY ears hurting, I got the on-call doctor to tell me that giving her Tylenol and motrin 3 hours apart overnight was the best thing and to get her in to get checked in the morning. Sure enough, she has an ear infection and will start the evil, yet needed antibiotics tonight.
I really hate the over use of antibiotics, on the other hand, I can’t stand to see my girl in pain. It’s a double edged sword…
Jay and I had a long time deciding what to do last night. You see, there are 4 people on my operations team at work. And this is my duty week. I am on call 24/7 this week. I have a 9am meeting every workday and I have to review the spacecraft command load to make sure it is safe for our instrument and that we are completing the science we want. I also need to be available to deal with any changes to the parameters for an observation and to build new commanding if needed. We have an agreement that I will take any child to the doctor/dentist/ stay home if needed UNLESS it is my duty week. So, Jay should have taken her to the doctor. Except he had a meeting this morning at 10 that he had to be at. Sigh. I was able to do some work at home last night and get things worked out so I was ok to get her into the doctor. It is hard when life and work collide.
We have a busy week. Jay’s mother is visiting on Thursday-Monday. Yes! We have a sitter for a weekend night! 
Nance is very happy! Hopefully the girls will be as excited and let mommy get some stuff done this weekend!
Jay is not doing as well with his new Crohn’s management as we had hoped. The doctor is also not thrilled. The next plan may involve a very nasty drug, given via IV, once a month. I don’t like the sound of it, nor the side effects. I am trying hard not to put my head in the sand on this one, but for the moment, I am hiding from this.
Not even Dr. Google is allowed to talk to me about this until we decide this is to be done.
I was sad to see that ChicagoMom is still struggling with her depression. It bites. It really does. If you visit her site, go give her a cyber hug, will you? I am starting to get a better handle on it by taking the cymbalta early, but… It comes and goes. This weekend I was with a group of wonderful people and I had a long day with Soleil and I was just apologizing for living by the end of the day. It was terrible. Everyone kept saying they understood, but MAN was it hard….
Finally, a big group cheer for Johnny, who finally got his referral for his son! Congrats Johnny and S and M!!!!
Comet! January 12, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 3 commentsTwo very nice comet series from last night. These are copyrighted by Dr. Jay, so DON’T STEAL THEM!
Summary: Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) is plunging toward the Sun and brightening dramatically. It is now visible both at
sunset and at dawn. In the morning, the comet emerges just ahead of the rising sun. In the evening, it pops out of the western twilight as soon as the sun sets. In both cases, a clear view of the horizon is essential. [finder charts: morning and evening] [ephemeris] [3D orbit]
Clouds on the Horizon January 4, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , 3 commentsI am trying to remember the last warm year. I know we had one about 7 years ago. And we all worried about global climate change (aka global warming). This is a warm year as well, and Soleil constantly asks about where the snow is. I miss it too.
Friends and family often ask how I feel about the Global Warming Debate. To be honest, it is clear that humans are affecting the natural cycle of warming and cooling. We are emitting many more greenhouse gases than the Earth can contain. We are carnivores and instead of eating the meat already here, we grow more meat to satisfy our desires. These animals contribute more to the greenhouse grasses.
We destroy flora, which helps balance out the gas equation without planting enough in return. I cringe whenever I see an evergreen on the side of the street waiting for pick up. At least my town will mulch
them for town projects and residents can also purchase the mulch.
I want to do more. I try.
We recycle what we can. We reuse items many times. I recycle the girls toys to other kids if I can. I keep the "junk" in our house to the minimum. I debate items like florescent bulbs. Are the lower energy
costs worth the flickering that cause migraines? Are they worth the amounts of mercury that are in the bulbs that eventually end up in our streams and ground? (this coming from the girl who got to PLAY with mercury in 3rd and 4th grade, but in 5th they took it away…It was so cool to play with mercury in your hands.)
The fireplace insert I mentioned yesterday is part of this. The efficiency of the insert is 75%. The efficiency of our heater is closer to 50%. So we would be more efficient to use the fireplace insert to heat the upstairs instead of the heater. In addition, the exhaust from the insert is much cleaner than the heater. They both use
a non-renewable resource, natural gas, but hopefully, we will see our gas usage go down this winter.
We got a high efficiency front loading washing machine. Our water usage has dropped by 1/3 since we started using it. My car is not a hybrid, but since I do most of my driving on non-city streets, I can get some
very nice mileage out of it. On our recent trip to Buffalo, I got 33MPG for the highway sections. Not bad for a family sedan.
We carpool to work and daycare. The four of us go in together. We tried public transportation when we first moved here, but it is not time efficient.
What do you do to help reduce our impact on the Earth? What do you think about when you purchase items and think about tossing something?
How can we help more?
I also need to work on getting our town to change to more efficient street lights. Have you ever noticed how much light the traditional street lights put up in the sky? Why waste the electricity? You can install fixtures that direct the light ON THE GROUND which illuminate the roads just as well and reduces the amount of energy you need to use AND prevents light pollution….
New Year? New Start? January 3, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : She Blinded me with Science , add a commentI am at work today. Yippie! Sad, I know, but after a while, I do miss my work. Plus Luna is being a total pain in the ass lately and I am trying very hard not to strangle her (yes, I love her, no I am not a child abuser, yes, every two year old is a royal pain in the ass at times and she’s in one of those phases).
I spent 1/2 hour cleaning my desk, removing the 2006 day of the year calendar and replacing it with the 2007 one. I bought in my descaled and cleaned coffee machine, my news pens. I recycled a small tree and then attacked my email, which I had not cleaned up since September.
There is something quite cathartic about a new year. It happens at a dead time in the natural cycle, but allows for hope of new and exciting things. I have a piece of software that I am completely revamping. I am printing out the 1500 lines of code (yes, one program, can you say Spaghetti code?) and starting the redesign today. I am rewriting several cron jobs into daemons and I am cleaning my work station so I can start anew!
This makes me very happy to start fresh.
In other news: the plumber came to our house this morning. The gas lines are being plumbed for the fireplace insert. We are having both the upstairs and down stairs fireplaces plumbed, but we are only doing the upstairs fireplace with an insert right now. By the end of the month, we will have a gas insert upstairs and we will be able to turn on the fire with a flick of a switch. Very excited by this. It is cleaner than the furnace and we can set it on a thermostat so we can have it come on by itself to warm the upstairs before we come home from work…Nice…
