Friday there was a big radiation storm, coming from an X1.4 (that's a measure of the solar x-ray flux; 1.4e-4 Watts/square meter) on the sun, which happened on Wednesday. There was a coronal mass ejection, CME, that caught up with a previous CME and rattled our chains pretty much all day Friday. And then dropped off to pre-event levels over the space of an hour (like a 99.5% drop). Quite dramatic.
I wasn't on call, but we did shut down at the 7:30 communications opportunity, which means replanning the observing schedule, which in turn contains commanding for a real-time thing we want to do tonight (Monday). So they managed to do all that without moving our operation, which was good because it depends on the Deep Space Network (DSN) being available at the start of the test.
Right. So while the load review was going on, there was also the dress rehearsal for the final concert of the Summer Seasonals, an early music choir I've been singing with a couple summers now (and many of the same people formed Tactus, in the spring semester). As it happens there was a break during the actual telecon, so I got to listen in to much of it. And then sing until 10:30 or so.
For a while it looked like an imaginary internet friend would be staying at my house that night. They decided to drive up from the Philly area of Niew Joizy on Saturday. So I met them for dinner after their event (a rally for the legalization of marijuana, cough).
Late Saturday night I awoke to stomach pain, which never went further than that but did keep me awake.
Sunday, concert day, I was going to bake some bread to take to the after-party. Which I did, rising from my otherwise endless morning nap every hour or so to tend to the dough. Not recommended. I managed to scrape together enough wit to sing, hung out for a while after. Came home and went pretty directly to bed.
The concert went pretty well. We had a professional recording engineer making a recording, which should be cool to have. Our Director needs to finish his thesis (he's an astronomy grad student) and get a job this year, so this is his last season as a choir director for now.
Ten hours later, I remembered that even on that first night with the furnace running, setting the thermostat to 70 downstairs makes it too hot in the bedroom.
Monday, the usual round of meetings; our little group at 10; yet another review of the real-time operations procedure for tonight. That's at 2:30. Then I'm going home to sleep some more, so I can be up and more or less alert at 10pm for the real-time operation. Basically it's just turning on a heater that's been off since 2008, to verify thermal performance. I know, yawn. Eventually we'd like to turn it on again permanently, which will (we hope) mitigate the contamination on the optical blocking filter (any floating goo plates out on the coldest surface it can find, which would be the camera filter).
So I'm imagining getting off around midnight or a bit later, dashing home to bed, getting up early to be in the dentist's chair by 9:00. I've already rescheduled that once... Unless the heater gets stuck on or something else unexpected happens, I'm going home again from the dentist's office, more sleep if indicated, and then it's Writing Group night. Though if I don't feel better than this, I might call in sick for that.
And then... three whole days of uninterrupted vacation. Sit around home. Think about that novel I've been neglecting. Nap with the cat. Chill (what with it being suddenly fall).
I wasn't on call, but we did shut down at the 7:30 communications opportunity, which means replanning the observing schedule, which in turn contains commanding for a real-time thing we want to do tonight (Monday). So they managed to do all that without moving our operation, which was good because it depends on the Deep Space Network (DSN) being available at the start of the test.
Right. So while the load review was going on, there was also the dress rehearsal for the final concert of the Summer Seasonals, an early music choir I've been singing with a couple summers now (and many of the same people formed Tactus, in the spring semester). As it happens there was a break during the actual telecon, so I got to listen in to much of it. And then sing until 10:30 or so.
For a while it looked like an imaginary internet friend would be staying at my house that night. They decided to drive up from the Philly area of Niew Joizy on Saturday. So I met them for dinner after their event (a rally for the legalization of marijuana, cough).
Late Saturday night I awoke to stomach pain, which never went further than that but did keep me awake.
Sunday, concert day, I was going to bake some bread to take to the after-party. Which I did, rising from my otherwise endless morning nap every hour or so to tend to the dough. Not recommended. I managed to scrape together enough wit to sing, hung out for a while after. Came home and went pretty directly to bed.
The concert went pretty well. We had a professional recording engineer making a recording, which should be cool to have. Our Director needs to finish his thesis (he's an astronomy grad student) and get a job this year, so this is his last season as a choir director for now.
Ten hours later, I remembered that even on that first night with the furnace running, setting the thermostat to 70 downstairs makes it too hot in the bedroom.
Monday, the usual round of meetings; our little group at 10; yet another review of the real-time operations procedure for tonight. That's at 2:30. Then I'm going home to sleep some more, so I can be up and more or less alert at 10pm for the real-time operation. Basically it's just turning on a heater that's been off since 2008, to verify thermal performance. I know, yawn. Eventually we'd like to turn it on again permanently, which will (we hope) mitigate the contamination on the optical blocking filter (any floating goo plates out on the coldest surface it can find, which would be the camera filter).
So I'm imagining getting off around midnight or a bit later, dashing home to bed, getting up early to be in the dentist's chair by 9:00. I've already rescheduled that once... Unless the heater gets stuck on or something else unexpected happens, I'm going home again from the dentist's office, more sleep if indicated, and then it's Writing Group night. Though if I don't feel better than this, I might call in sick for that.
And then... three whole days of uninterrupted vacation. Sit around home. Think about that novel I've been neglecting. Nap with the cat. Chill (what with it being suddenly fall).
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