Moving along smoothly...

Wednesday was a pretty slow day, up until about ten to 5, when the mailbox of the RPE I work with began to overflow with radiograms from Russia. RPE (pronounced "rippie") stands for "real-time planning engineer, who proceeded, in real time, to give me all of these files and ask, "Can you stay and translate the important ones?"

Well, one of the things I've noticed about working at NASA (and in the rest of the world, come to think of it), is that short of some earth-shatteringly important previous engagement that everyone (including people like the RPE) knows about, the only proper answer is "Sure!" Additional comments noting how, technically, your work day ends at 5 pm are optional, and not repeatable.

At any rate, I got out of there at 7 pm on Wednesday. Yesterday, it took basically the whole day to catch up, and I was able to quit the MCC at about a quarter to 5. When some additional files were e-mailed over to the MCC at around 4:10 pm, the RPE made jolly well sure that they would be translated in Moscow, and not by me (resulting in another late night). What he did, by the way, is called Looking Out For Your People, and is a good indication in anyone you work for (and a good talent to develop if others work for you, but I digress...).

The Execute Package work is not terribly stressful most of the time, and nobody hangs over your shoulder waiting for things to come off your computer. Or at least, I've demonstrated a work style that causes translations to be completed effectively and in a timely manner. The only thing that bothered me yesterday was that I really didn't have the time to do a thorough job checking the translations after I was finished with them, although I did review them for obvious goofs.

I continue working with the ops planners on the Execute Package today, and then tomorrow, I'll be working the air-to-ground channel to provide a simultaneous interpretation of what the heck is being said between the control center in Moscow and the ISS. Fortunately, I will have a leg up on the proceedings, having worked with the documents that (in theory) describe exactly what the crew ought to be doing.

In practice, however, things do not always go exactly as planned, which is what all the chatter between the station and the ground is all about, but as I said, knowing what's supposed to happen is a help.

Cheers...

You've got to love Microsoft...

Just kidding.

The new computer is a real hummer. Too bad I can't say the same thing about the operating system it came with (Windows Me). I don't think I've been able to get through an entire day without having the software go south on me, and pretty much all I use is Word.

Take today, for example. After entering nearly a page of backbreaking equations using the "Equation Editor," I get up to stretch my legs and get a drink of water. Upon returning to the machine, I find it's locked up tighter than an Alabama tick on a bloodhound.

Relying upon my accumulated experience wrestling with Windows-based computers, I give the animal a few minutes so that the auto-save feature of Word has a prayer of triggering, and then I reboot the machine. Needless to say, I got to review those equations a second time as I entered them using Microsoft's cumbersome editor. (It is apparently so cumbersome, that after a little while, an ad pops up in a dialog box informing me that a superior product for entering equations is available commercially. Yikes.)

So today, just to be on the safe side, I rebooted the machine three times.

It seems I did better using Windows 95. Personally, I'd drop Windows and use Linux all the time, but there are just too many good programs out there for the Windows platform...or at least enough of them to make the constant operating system quirks seem tolerable.

Don't get me wrong. I'm far from being one of those "I-hate-Microsoft-on-principle" people. I personally think that, all things considered, my life is most certainly a lot easier today because of Microsoft, and I know I've made a considerable amount of money using Microsoft products to sell my services to others. Having said that, I'm also not a blind apologist for the company, nor will I use products just because they're put out by the Redmond giant. My approach to computing today is the same as when I started so very long ago: if it works, use it.

Tomorrow should be a pretty easy day. I've seen the crew's schedule, and when they're not eating, they'll be exercising or just enjoying some time off. I expect the air-to-ground conversations tomorrow to be rather on the light side, but you never know.

On the home front, I shall have to confront - finally - the prospect of packing stuff for the move to Colorado. Oh, go twist my arm, why don't you?

Cheers...