The morning funnies...
Jul. 21st, 2008 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI was awakened at 4:27 am by what seemed to be an insistent, steady tone coming from somewhere nearby, but couldn't figure out what it was. After a few seconds, it occurred to me that perhaps it was a fire alarm, so I rose quickly, pulled on some trousers, and went over to the charger to get my radio.
Along the way, I passed the air conditioner - which had been apparently replaced yesterday during the trip to town, as the old unit had been wheezing along and providing indifferent cooling for about the last week - and it seemed to me that the tone didn't quite have the insistent and widespread quality of a fire alarm and that it was, in fact, local and close, so I held off keying the mike to notify our duty security officer.
I glanced at the air conditioner, and then reached out and turned it off. It was not the source of the tone. I went to the door of the room, put my hand on it as a precaution before opening it, and then stepped out into the hall. The noise was very definitely coming from inside my room.
I stepped back inside and closed the door. After turning my head this way and that to get a bead on the source, I concluded the noise was coming from inside my closet, but what could it be? The only thing inside my closet that could possibly be making such a racket was the safe. I opened the closet door and, sure enough, the tone became louder. I tapped in the combination to the safe and opened the door. The tone stopped. Very strange, I thought to myself, as I got undressed.
As I drifted back to sleep, I theorized that since the safe is battery operated, perhaps the tone was an indication that the battery had drained down to a critically low level. (Of course, sounding a loud, continuous tone when voltage reaches a critical level seems to me to be an ideal way to accelerate complete battery discharge, but maybe I'm missing something.)
I went back to sleep, only to be called by the duty operator in the Russian control room at shortly before 7 am. Were we, came the question, actually going to start operations at 7 am, per the schedule? I said I'd call back, pulled on some clothes and went downstairs to see if any managers were lingering over coffee before catching the 7 am van to the полтинник. They were getting up to leave, but I got an answer and relayed it back to the caller.
So it's been that kind of day, so far, balanced by having a phone call go through successfully to Galina at around 7:15 am. We spoke for just about 20 minutes and I think we both hung up the phone in better spirits.
Currently, I've got a load of laundry going in one of the the new washing machines whose operating panel has been designed using a peculiar collection of hieroglyphs presumably intended to allow people familiar with such technology to use it. I'll go down in a little bit to check whether I deciphered those arcane symbols properly. Then I must get ready for a trip out to the "vault," which adequately describes a heavily reinforced underground room within a stone's throw of the launch pad that is used to house electronic equipment that will monitor the satellite up until shortly before liftoff.
Cheers...
Along the way, I passed the air conditioner - which had been apparently replaced yesterday during the trip to town, as the old unit had been wheezing along and providing indifferent cooling for about the last week - and it seemed to me that the tone didn't quite have the insistent and widespread quality of a fire alarm and that it was, in fact, local and close, so I held off keying the mike to notify our duty security officer.
I glanced at the air conditioner, and then reached out and turned it off. It was not the source of the tone. I went to the door of the room, put my hand on it as a precaution before opening it, and then stepped out into the hall. The noise was very definitely coming from inside my room.
I stepped back inside and closed the door. After turning my head this way and that to get a bead on the source, I concluded the noise was coming from inside my closet, but what could it be? The only thing inside my closet that could possibly be making such a racket was the safe. I opened the closet door and, sure enough, the tone became louder. I tapped in the combination to the safe and opened the door. The tone stopped. Very strange, I thought to myself, as I got undressed.
As I drifted back to sleep, I theorized that since the safe is battery operated, perhaps the tone was an indication that the battery had drained down to a critically low level. (Of course, sounding a loud, continuous tone when voltage reaches a critical level seems to me to be an ideal way to accelerate complete battery discharge, but maybe I'm missing something.)
I went back to sleep, only to be called by the duty operator in the Russian control room at shortly before 7 am. Were we, came the question, actually going to start operations at 7 am, per the schedule? I said I'd call back, pulled on some clothes and went downstairs to see if any managers were lingering over coffee before catching the 7 am van to the полтинник. They were getting up to leave, but I got an answer and relayed it back to the caller.
So it's been that kind of day, so far, balanced by having a phone call go through successfully to Galina at around 7:15 am. We spoke for just about 20 minutes and I think we both hung up the phone in better spirits.
Currently, I've got a load of laundry going in one of the the new washing machines whose operating panel has been designed using a peculiar collection of hieroglyphs presumably intended to allow people familiar with such technology to use it. I'll go down in a little bit to check whether I deciphered those arcane symbols properly. Then I must get ready for a trip out to the "vault," which adequately describes a heavily reinforced underground room within a stone's throw of the launch pad that is used to house electronic equipment that will monitor the satellite up until shortly before liftoff.
Cheers...
