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So, naturally, I can't fall asleep...
May. 22nd, 2008 01:54 amStopping to make my earlier post may not have been a swift move, because I was not able to go back to sleep, but it turned out to be a pretty good move, because I've been able to finish the job for which I had allocated this past evening and tomorrow evening.
The job turned into Easy City once it became clear the client didn't want me to transcribe something like 75 pages of intricate tables (where the tables generally weighed in at 350 words or so... nice work in slow times, but time-consuming as well), but just the headings. (It also helped that the document consisted of several sets of the same report, so once one set was done, the rest followed quickly... I just need to check to make sure I caught all the changes among the reports.)
The group I'm supporting is over at the Software Development & Integration Lab. which is right next to the NBL. The work has settled down into a kind of routine, although I have been given to understand that we are changing our venue on Friday, from the simulator lab to somwhere else.
Watching these folks work reminds me a little of a job I did back when I worked as a control systems engineer in Florida. For that job, I wrote a program in Turbo Prolog that simulated the devices in a municipal water supply system (including the local programmable controllers that our company was installing) in order to test the programming of both the local programmable controllers - I could configure them into and out of simulated existence pretty easily - and the water system's master programmable controller. That program was the basis of an article that was later published by Dr. Dobb's Journal.
The software at the SDIL is for a system orders of magnitude more complex, providing insight into the behavior of the ISS. The software for the simulated US Orbital Segment is what you'd expect, with a lot of graphics and a GUI interface. The corresponding software on the Russian side runs in a bunch of text-based terminals distributed over several virtual desktops, and the Russians seem more comfortable with that kind of setup, as it packs more detail in the same real estate, and they are pretty good at grokking the displayed hex code that reflects the status and bahavior of the simulated Russian Segment (think of the console operator from The Matrix).
Anyway, I think I'm going to try to get back to sleep. If I manage to drift off in the next 10 minutes, I can bag 5 more hours, which is good.
Cheers...
The job turned into Easy City once it became clear the client didn't want me to transcribe something like 75 pages of intricate tables (where the tables generally weighed in at 350 words or so... nice work in slow times, but time-consuming as well), but just the headings. (It also helped that the document consisted of several sets of the same report, so once one set was done, the rest followed quickly... I just need to check to make sure I caught all the changes among the reports.)
The group I'm supporting is over at the Software Development & Integration Lab. which is right next to the NBL. The work has settled down into a kind of routine, although I have been given to understand that we are changing our venue on Friday, from the simulator lab to somwhere else.
Watching these folks work reminds me a little of a job I did back when I worked as a control systems engineer in Florida. For that job, I wrote a program in Turbo Prolog that simulated the devices in a municipal water supply system (including the local programmable controllers that our company was installing) in order to test the programming of both the local programmable controllers - I could configure them into and out of simulated existence pretty easily - and the water system's master programmable controller. That program was the basis of an article that was later published by Dr. Dobb's Journal.
The software at the SDIL is for a system orders of magnitude more complex, providing insight into the behavior of the ISS. The software for the simulated US Orbital Segment is what you'd expect, with a lot of graphics and a GUI interface. The corresponding software on the Russian side runs in a bunch of text-based terminals distributed over several virtual desktops, and the Russians seem more comfortable with that kind of setup, as it packs more detail in the same real estate, and they are pretty good at grokking the displayed hex code that reflects the status and bahavior of the simulated Russian Segment (think of the console operator from The Matrix).
Anyway, I think I'm going to try to get back to sleep. If I manage to drift off in the next 10 minutes, I can bag 5 more hours, which is good.
Cheers...
