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Up, and away...
Oct. 19th, 2006 11:18 pmA group of us who had not gone on the bus to the Metop launch assembled in front of the Fili to face eastward at 10:25 pm to see what we could see. The sky, which had been clear at about 9:30 pm was now overcast, and as I grabbed my camera (to take an ersatz video) to go downstairs, I heard drops hitting the overhang to the hotel, which is just outside my window.
The sky was completely overcast, though by the time I got downstairs, the rain had stopped. A few minutes later, we saw a flash to the east as the overcast reflected the ignition of the Soyuz engines. A few seconds later, an orange point appeared just over the horizon and rose slowly - almost achingly so - until it rose high enough to be absorbed by the clouds, after which, the glow from the engines persisted for about a minute more until darkness reclaimed the night sky. Then the drops started again, and we all went inside.
In the interim, I managed to watch the first episode of Firefly with Dwight (while enjoying a martini) and massaged the macro I use to extract fundamental data from our former store's daily spreadsheet so as to populate two "master" spreadsheets (representing the second and third quarters) that summarize the store's sales and determine just how much sales tax we owe to the Powers That Be™ in Denver. My next step is to figure out how to communicate this information back to Pagosa, so that it may be reported in a timely manner.
But that will have to wait until tomorrow. Despite the fact that I believe prop load will be delayed until some "specialists" can be brought in to clean the solar arrays, the fact remains that until told otherwise, prop load is scheduled for tomorrow, and I'm on the hook to support it. In any event, believe me: I won't be disappointed if prop loading goes off as scheduled.
The phone system has been giving me fits again, but at least it's not broken. I'll try again tomorrow. It has been a long day, so I suppose I should do the right thing and get my carcass into bed.
Cheerd...
The sky was completely overcast, though by the time I got downstairs, the rain had stopped. A few minutes later, we saw a flash to the east as the overcast reflected the ignition of the Soyuz engines. A few seconds later, an orange point appeared just over the horizon and rose slowly - almost achingly so - until it rose high enough to be absorbed by the clouds, after which, the glow from the engines persisted for about a minute more until darkness reclaimed the night sky. Then the drops started again, and we all went inside.
In the interim, I managed to watch the first episode of Firefly with Dwight (while enjoying a martini) and massaged the macro I use to extract fundamental data from our former store's daily spreadsheet so as to populate two "master" spreadsheets (representing the second and third quarters) that summarize the store's sales and determine just how much sales tax we owe to the Powers That Be™ in Denver. My next step is to figure out how to communicate this information back to Pagosa, so that it may be reported in a timely manner.
But that will have to wait until tomorrow. Despite the fact that I believe prop load will be delayed until some "specialists" can be brought in to clean the solar arrays, the fact remains that until told otherwise, prop load is scheduled for tomorrow, and I'm on the hook to support it. In any event, believe me: I won't be disappointed if prop loading goes off as scheduled.
The phone system has been giving me fits again, but at least it's not broken. I'll try again tomorrow. It has been a long day, so I suppose I should do the right thing and get my carcass into bed.
Cheerd...
