A quiet day...

Today was the first day of fuel loading, during which just over 1000 pounds of monomethyl hydrazine (MMH to its friends, of which it has none, really) was transferred into stainless steel tanks aboard the spacecraft. Tomorrow will be a repeat of today, after which activity will focus on getting ready for combined operations, in which the satellite is moved over into the Russian processing area to be mated with a so-called payload adapter, then with the upper stage that will place the satellite into a delivery orbit. But I'm sure I'll repeat all of this as the campaign proceeds, so I'll cut it short.

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The Logitech keyboard that I brought along with me to work in my room died earlier this afternoon, and initially, I thought it had something to do with a keychord that I had inadvertently pressed, because such events have had unpleasant and unexpected results in the past (especially with MS Word). It eventually occurred to me to go downstairs and plug the keyboard's IR controller into the USB port of one of the office computers to see if perhaps the keyboard fault lay somewhere else.

The keyboard still refused to function with the machines downstairs, even after taking out the batteries and reinserting them, apropos of which it occurred to me that I ought to try replacing them and when I did, everything started working again. It sure would've been nice to receive a low-juice warning, but you can't have everything in this life. Still, this one chalks up as a success and further testament to the basic principle of "check batteries first" that is so easy to lose track of.

Cheers...

Computer fun... (not!)

I just spent a disappointing hour or so combing the web (since the Help feature is very nearly unusable) making pretty sure that Word 2007 got rid of a feature that I find invaluable, and that is the ability to search through a text and selectively convert upper-case letters to lower case using wildcard notation. This is because, as I probably have mentioned before, so many clients insist on providing glossaries with entries capitalized (e.g., Maximum Design Operating Pressure), where there is absolutely no need to do so, interspersed with entries where capitalization is necessary (e.g., Kennedy Space Center or Cape Canaveral Air Force Base).

SHIFT+F3 doesn't quite do the trick, as it works on selected text, which means either highlighting the initial letters of "Maximum Design Operating Pressure" and pressing the combination, or simply highlighting all four words at once and then pressing the combination twice to cycle it through "MAXIMUM DESIGN OPERATING PRESSURE" to the desired "maximum design operating pressure."

I said it before and I'll say it again: Word 2007 appears to have been designed to seriously impair the productivity of legacy users. I'll probably have to waste more time to figure out a workaround, and waste more nervous energy kicking myself for not installing Word 2003 before leaving for this trip.

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In other news, the amazingly fast DNS server swap at Network Solutions is not working the way I had expected. I had (I thought) switched the names of my "work" domain's DNS servers to those of the new hosting company's. A little while later, I got a confirming email from Network Solutions telling me that I had successfully switched them to... DNS servers belonging to Network Solutions!

As yet, no response to email, and calling tech support from here is going to be... interesting. Grrr.

UPDATE, Monday 8:40 am (GMT+6): I succeeded, mirabile dictu, in getting hold of Network Solutions tech support last night, and got things ironed out. While entering my domain name in the browser still gets an "under construction" page from NS this morning, both a confirming email from them and an email from my new hosting company indicate the desired change has been effected, so this behavior is likely the result of waiting for the change to propagate fully.

UPDATE, Monday 9:00 am (GMT+6): Apparently, when I went in to do "advanced" DNS management at the NS site, I missed the part - explained in great detail - on how continuing on my quest would automagically repoint my DNS servers at NS machines. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! (On the positive side, I didn't miss it this time around!) In the end, it turns out MX records are managed from my hosting company's control panel, and I've just completed that step. Now, all that's left to do is let the dust settle.

Cheers...