**Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 22:51:12 -0700
Subject: July 21: The 12+ hour day **
Greetings all. Hope all is going well in Snohomish (WA), Missoula, Columbia Falls (?), Great Falls, and Bozeman. This list has Don's favorite lands covered (yes, even Bozemann isn't all that bad).
Today was hopefully one of the longer days I'll have. It began when I took the "late" van in at 8:15 and arrived at ARC at around 8:30 PDT. I won't go into the details of the some what "fabulous" (??) breakfast at the Ames cafeteria. After that learning experience, I proceeded off to do work on my wonderful project. That was what I worked on until five. Then we went to the St. James Infirmary (a van of us) for dinner, followed by a trip back to Ames Research Center, which no adjective can possibly describe. Once back, we had a presentation by the chief of space science or some division about the adaptations living organisms have to make when going into a zero G (no gravity environment). He talked a great deal about some of the stuff done on board the space shuttle in the space lab missions. Then we had a lovely and extremely productive group meeting to discuss our project and read the weekly summary, which will be coming online soon on my home page or the academie's depending on how fast I can cut through that buereacratic red tape. Then we sadly, but swiftly left Ames Research Center and headed home. Time at that point was 9:30 PM PDT. Long day? Perhaps.
My research project is progressing nicely. At least the computer part of it is. I've still done nothing on Orion, but I'm hoping after I get his laptop all set, he'll give me some to do. If not, I'll complain to Doug real quick. The laptop is almost ready to be turned over. Last night, before I went to bed, I made it easier to switch between Linux and Windows 95. Basically all I have left is to test the printer out and do a whole bunch of network configuration and test that out. This is an area that I'm a little more familiar with. I'm hoping to get all that done by tomorrow or Wednesday.
If you will recall, my PI was a little "dissappointed" last week. Since he didn't come in until 11:30,I didn't get to see him until after lunch. I e-mailed him first thing this morning and defended my position and let him know of how well things were doing, which was no lie at all. After lunch, I did get to talk to him after we both talked to Doug. Doug assured me that he was totally happy with my work. I talked to him and he seemed a lot better today. We got along today. Everything cool's with him. I think he was really upset Thursday with me because I made that dumb mistake. I can understand. It was a dumb error, but I learned from it. It turned out for the better. Things are looking pretty good on the project. I had to actually tear myself away from my work at 5:00.
At the group meeting tonight, we organized ourselves into groups. And added structure to the project. I'm in the hardware department and am the "data collection specialist". There are only two in our group. Since I'm going to be the webmaster for the academy, I opted for the other guy to be the chair of the group. All is progrssing nicely on that. Keep the e-mail rolling on the suggestions or contacts you may have, if any on this project. We will look into them. Thanks.
That's it for today. I'll try to send another update tomorrow before we leave for Reno and Tahoe on Wednesday. You can also check my web page out at www.mcn.net/~dolinger. It's still very primative, but I'm trying harder and harder to keep the academy up to date. It basically consists of these messages for now but will have the weekly summaries in the near future if I can't get them on the academy page. Talk to ya later. Love the e-mail I get from all of you. Keep it coming!!!!!