Stumbling through the day...
The photo and fingerprinting session started out slowly this morning - the badging office at JSC was packed when I got there - but the crowd thinned out in a hurry (it was a group) and I settled down to wait for whoever had taken my passport and birth certificate to invite me into his work area.
The folks in charge yesterday made a point of telling us that we would require two forms of ID, one of them with a photograph, and in a new wrinkle on "the name must match the name on your ticket," we were told the names on the two pieces of ID must match exactly.
Now one might think that this is no big deal, but in my case, my mom tacked a middle name onto me sometime after birth and before starting school, which I used all through my school years and for a while after I graduated, through my stint in the Marines. My unfortunate middle initial appears on my driving license, too.
However, since no middle name appears on my birth certificate, it's not legally part of my name. Over the first half century or so of my life, the only grief I ever experienced with regard to my nonexistent middle name was the first time I applied for a passport. (Come to think of it, the only time I was ever fingerprinted in that same time frame was when I joined the Marines.)
Since then, I've been asked to give up my fingerprints a half dozen times, and of course, along with most of the country, I dare not go out without a photo ID lest some overzealous type assumes the lack of same to be prima facie evidence of Being Up To Something Bad™.
Anyway, I sure am glad I brought my birth certificate with me to Texas (and pleasantly surprised that I did, actually, as I did not intend to specifically do so). It's the first time it's come in handy since... I applied for my first passport a generation ago.
* * * I wanted to go hang out at Starbucks after the badging office, but felt I didn't have the time. I had two more files to translate, and as they were of the noneditable variety (someone embedded scans of typed pages in the slides of a PowerPoint file, which actually makes a weird kind of sense, as it cuts to the essence of what is being attempted), I wanted to have a time buffer in case something strange came up.
What do I think of as strange? Good questions, seeing as how I've seen a lot of, uh, variety in the files clients send me. How about the 50 or so equations that had me invoking the Microsoft Equation Editor like a madman for most of one document's 12 pages?
Time to wind down. Some time, when I've really got some spare time, I need to find out what one can do with a Tivo box other than record video.
Cheers...
The folks in charge yesterday made a point of telling us that we would require two forms of ID, one of them with a photograph, and in a new wrinkle on "the name must match the name on your ticket," we were told the names on the two pieces of ID must match exactly.
Now one might think that this is no big deal, but in my case, my mom tacked a middle name onto me sometime after birth and before starting school, which I used all through my school years and for a while after I graduated, through my stint in the Marines. My unfortunate middle initial appears on my driving license, too.
However, since no middle name appears on my birth certificate, it's not legally part of my name. Over the first half century or so of my life, the only grief I ever experienced with regard to my nonexistent middle name was the first time I applied for a passport. (Come to think of it, the only time I was ever fingerprinted in that same time frame was when I joined the Marines.)
Since then, I've been asked to give up my fingerprints a half dozen times, and of course, along with most of the country, I dare not go out without a photo ID lest some overzealous type assumes the lack of same to be prima facie evidence of Being Up To Something Bad™.
Anyway, I sure am glad I brought my birth certificate with me to Texas (and pleasantly surprised that I did, actually, as I did not intend to specifically do so). It's the first time it's come in handy since... I applied for my first passport a generation ago.
What do I think of as strange? Good questions, seeing as how I've seen a lot of, uh, variety in the files clients send me. How about the 50 or so equations that had me invoking the Microsoft Equation Editor like a madman for most of one document's 12 pages?
Time to wind down. Some time, when I've really got some spare time, I need to find out what one can do with a Tivo box other than record video.
Cheers...