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Not sleepy, yet...
Apr. 22nd, 2007 12:31 amIt's just midnight as I start this post, and I'm 885 words away from finishing the item due in 14 hours. I feel pretty good about it; better, in fact, than I felt in translating the aerospace job last week.
A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I had received the order of MOO minicards from the UK, where they're made. In the interim, I got to thinking about where I could carry them, since (a) I'm not really used to carrying business cards and (b) they are of a somewhat unusual shape (28 mm x 70 mm, or about half as high and four-fifths as wide as a standard US business card).
They have a good "feel," meaning that the paper has some stiffness to it, and I intend to use them as business cards, if for no other reason than to separate my card from everyone else's (and I should probably mention that there's a photo on the non-message side of each card).
It occurred to me (and, as it turned out, to many others, apparently) that these cards might be just the right size to keep inside of an Altoids chewing gum tin, and guess what: they are! (So here I am, chewing on some gum, as my only other such tin contains my USB 5V power source.) If you've never seen a MOO card, the photo should give you some idea of what they look like (along with their new home).
The Expedition 14 crew came home today with Charles Simonyi, who had gone up with the Expedition 15 crew as a "Space Flight Participant." I was in the MCC this morning throughout the whole process, and what I found particularly interesting was the real-time video from the search-and-rescue helicopters that were flying to the actual landing site to help the spacefarers get out of the descent module and get ready for life back aboard this big rock.
The quality of the video reminded me a little of the way that landscape was rendered in the original "Doom" game, at least while the chopper was flying low and fast over the flat Kazakh landscape. Still, it held everyone's attention all the way through the impromptu news conference that takes place with every returning crew (at least I think it's a news conference... maybe it's just the first of a long series of debriefs?).
I managed to get through the night okay and went out with Galina for breakfast this morning. On the way back to the house, we hit a couple of garage sales; I bought a Galilean thermometer with 5 floats in it for $1, which I figured was a pretty good deal. The device (which, as the name implies, has a long history) consists of a sealed vertical cylinder mostly filled with water, in which float some number of objects, each with a temperature tag. Each object is of a slightly different density, so as the density of the surrounding water changes with the temperature (i.e., goes up when the temperature goes down, and vice versa), the objects will rise or fall. It won't beat a traditional thermometer for accuracy, but it looks cool, in my opinion.
Upon returning to the house, I hit the sack, hard. When I got up around 3 pm, Natalie was already here and Galina was shopping. We all had a nice dinner and watched The Pursuit of Happyness, which deserves all the good things people have said about it.
In other news, I filled my antique Conklin fountain pen with ink the other day, only to have it sputter all over the paper when I tried to write with it, so I emptied the ink and filled the pen with water, hoping that whatever had dried in the pen would loosen up. Today, the water in the pen is the color of fine ink, and it writes like a champ. Who could know?
I don't want to disrupt my sleep cycle too much (although there might be something to say for not un-shifting myself completely, as I have another all-night session on Tuesday morning), so I might just go ahead and finish the translation and then hit the sack.
Cheers...
A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I had received the order of MOO minicards from the UK, where they're made. In the interim, I got to thinking about where I could carry them, since (a) I'm not really used to carrying business cards and (b) they are of a somewhat unusual shape (28 mm x 70 mm, or about half as high and four-fifths as wide as a standard US business card).
They have a good "feel," meaning that the paper has some stiffness to it, and I intend to use them as business cards, if for no other reason than to separate my card from everyone else's (and I should probably mention that there's a photo on the non-message side of each card).
It occurred to me (and, as it turned out, to many others, apparently) that these cards might be just the right size to keep inside of an Altoids chewing gum tin, and guess what: they are! (So here I am, chewing on some gum, as my only other such tin contains my USB 5V power source.) If you've never seen a MOO card, the photo should give you some idea of what they look like (along with their new home).
The Expedition 14 crew came home today with Charles Simonyi, who had gone up with the Expedition 15 crew as a "Space Flight Participant." I was in the MCC this morning throughout the whole process, and what I found particularly interesting was the real-time video from the search-and-rescue helicopters that were flying to the actual landing site to help the spacefarers get out of the descent module and get ready for life back aboard this big rock.
The quality of the video reminded me a little of the way that landscape was rendered in the original "Doom" game, at least while the chopper was flying low and fast over the flat Kazakh landscape. Still, it held everyone's attention all the way through the impromptu news conference that takes place with every returning crew (at least I think it's a news conference... maybe it's just the first of a long series of debriefs?).
I managed to get through the night okay and went out with Galina for breakfast this morning. On the way back to the house, we hit a couple of garage sales; I bought a Galilean thermometer with 5 floats in it for $1, which I figured was a pretty good deal. The device (which, as the name implies, has a long history) consists of a sealed vertical cylinder mostly filled with water, in which float some number of objects, each with a temperature tag. Each object is of a slightly different density, so as the density of the surrounding water changes with the temperature (i.e., goes up when the temperature goes down, and vice versa), the objects will rise or fall. It won't beat a traditional thermometer for accuracy, but it looks cool, in my opinion.
Upon returning to the house, I hit the sack, hard. When I got up around 3 pm, Natalie was already here and Galina was shopping. We all had a nice dinner and watched The Pursuit of Happyness, which deserves all the good things people have said about it.
In other news, I filled my antique Conklin fountain pen with ink the other day, only to have it sputter all over the paper when I tried to write with it, so I emptied the ink and filled the pen with water, hoping that whatever had dried in the pen would loosen up. Today, the water in the pen is the color of fine ink, and it writes like a champ. Who could know?
I don't want to disrupt my sleep cycle too much (although there might be something to say for not un-shifting myself completely, as I have another all-night session on Tuesday morning), so I might just go ahead and finish the translation and then hit the sack.
Cheers...
