Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 22:21:16 -0700
Subject: August 6 - August 9: A SHORT Update
Greetings from Palo Alto on a Saturday night. This will be a short update because my time is limited here, my journal basically covers it all any way so you'll be able to read about it when I get back, and quite frankly, I don't feel like writing a long message. ONLY THREE WEEKS left. Three weeks from now, I'll be in Great Falls at 3916 6th Ave S sitting out on the deck getting my face licked by Freddy with Sophie doing the squirrel for me, getting bit by mosquitoes and enjoying the fresh, clean, pure, Montana air. The next day, I'll be in Old Yellar driving it for the first time in over ten weeks down Montana 200 rounding the curves at a comfortable 75 miles per hour. Not to mention getting to see the faces of the people I love. I'll also be going to a store and not have to worry about sales tax. Oh boy oh boy is that going to be the day. The day when I come home and get back to the big sky. California is great, with it's weather, abundance of stores, high tech stuff, and its beach, but it does not even come close to comparing to the Big Sky. You folks that think that Montana's got nothing and that it can not compare with some thing like California had better open up your eyes and wake up. You've got natural beauty all around you. California has a lot of man-made beauty. I'll take the natural over man-made any day. I'll take uncrowded to crowded any day too.
With that piece said about California, let me say I am still having the time of my life down here, but it is not because of the land. It is because of the people and the events that have been happening. Let me demonstrate by a brief summary of the week:
WEDNESDAY:
Got the printer working after about four days worth of trying. Still need to do some work on it, but my PI was really excited. Heard Dave Morrison, Director of Space at Ames speak to us about the danger of comets hitting earth. This was time number three that he spoke to us. This time it was informal, back at the French House.
THURSAY:
Worked on the group presentation for part of the morning. Had another presentation the other part of the morning. After lunch, we had one more presentation. During lunch, I talked to Bob Rubin, my PI about my Mid-Term presentation that I had to give on Friday. He taught me a lot about Orion and gave me some slides to use for the presentation. After that final presentation (DR Emily Holton, big shot with medical experimenting), we toured Loral Space systems. After dawning robes and caps, we entered a clean room to view some satellites. That night, we prepared for group presentations.
FRIDAY: Mid-Term presentations. All PIs and some other big shots were invited. I went in early to set up the computer projector. I did my presentation in html and presented it in netscape. I had a tough presentation to give. Most of the other RAs were giving specific information about their project. What could I say? I had done nothing on Orion. I has worked with linux the whole time. Some how, I managed to work my slides so I could get the point across that I wasn't wokring on Orion, but do so in a way that was did not seem inherently obvious to my PI. I couldn't openly come out and say that I was working on Linux and should have been working on Orion. I could not openly insult my PI. I had to insult him, but in a way that it wouldn't seem like I was insulting him. Some how, some way, I was able to do that. It was an impropmtu presentation. I basically worked off the overheads and worked a few other things in. Every body really liked it and I had them laughing. After that presentation, I hard a loud long applause that I did not hear at any of the presentations i've been at this summer. There were a few good questions afterwards too. One was by Bob Zimmerman, one of Doug's friends. He said he though Tex and LaTex (see slides) were availabe for Windows 95 and was wondering why Bob needed Linux. I forgot how I answered that. The best comment came from Lynn Harper, our curriculum director and another big shot at Ames. Lynn said she remebered that she was going to talk to me about doing some web stuff for her, but to forget about it and work on Orion. If that doesn't send a stron message to Bob, I don't know what will. Afterwards, I apologized to Bob for insulting him. He said I didn't insult him, but did do a great job at presenting. The RAs loved it. The staff loved it. Doug called it goleden. Lynn said it was great. Juliet, another staffer, liked it. One of the other RAs said her PI liked it and said that I'm a really smart guy. Her PI told her that installing Linux is really tough and that I could easily get paid $100,000 around here for doing that kind of stuff. The day clearly belonged to me. My presentation was the talk of the day. The other presentations were great too, but mine was the one that got talked about. If you guys have ever heard me give one of my better presentations (like CS 346 or one of the conferences), this was just that style. I was better than that. I made them laugh. It was The Don at his best. Felt great!!! We also heard Byron Lichtenberg talk at lunch about his two flights as an astronaut. Byron is the dad of Kim, who is one of our resident assistants and van drivers. We also talked informally with him a little. Between presnetaitons and lunch, we heard another guy speak. After lunch, two presentations and then an academy wrap session on how the academy was going. Lot of useful stuff came out of it. Juliet Wiersemma (staff) stayed with us last night.
SATURDAY:
Karen Geiser, a big shot at Lockheed, drove a van and we took two other cars to Sonoma, wine country. Juliet also came. We visited three wineries and tasted wines. I went for the ride and did not partake of the wine tasting. I did get to go on a twenty minute train ride (model train). Kinda neat.
As you may or may not know, I've changed the plane ticket to Saturday August 30 at 6:25 AM. This means I will be flying directly to Great Falls from Salt Lake and will not be stopping in Missoula. I will hit Great Falls at around 12:25. I'll e-mail you all the exact schedule as time gets closer so you can meet my plane if you want to. Laurie, don't worry about the fifty bucks to change it, I picked it up out of my pocket - the only right thing to do. I thought it was worth coming back early. The academy ends one day sooner than I thought.
This turned out to be another long one. Sorry. I tend to get carried away with e-mail. As you can tell, I'm real excited about how well my presentation went. I will try to get those slides on the web this weekend (tomorrow). Once again, my homepage is www.mcn.net/~dolinger. Look for major updates and modifications to happen to it the first week after I get home and actually have some time to work on it.
Hope all's well in Big Sky country. Always a pleasure to e-mail. I heard rumors that NAU is picked to win conference this year. I don't think so. I think I'm going to have to go with DA GRIZ. See ya laters!!!! —DON