Metered myopia...

There's a feature in Windows 8 that lets you flag network connections as being metered (as in, you aren't on an "unlimited" data plan of some kind), and this has the beneficial side-effect of preventing applications (and Windows) from trying to download gobs of data and maybe costing you money. I had run across this a while back when I was in New York, when it took less than a week to run through most of my monthly allotment from Verizon over my iPhone's personal hotspot.

I had read the instructions on how to do this at the office and tried a few minutes ago to set this flag for my dial-up connection, hoping for a beneficial side-effect of a different type, one in which my machine is bit more responsive (my dial-up connection is downloading something—6 MB so far over the past 15 minutes—while it takes about 3 minutes for Semagic to show it's lovely face and about as long for web pages to show up).

Of course, my interpretation of what's going on may be full of holes and whatever it is that's dowloading for all it's worth is not affecting my ability to fetch other data at the same time, but it sure feels that way.

The long and short? There is no such setting for dial-up connections. Why am I not surprised?

Breakfast and so on, shortly.

My day off...

I was the "on call" interpreter today, although there really isn't much of anything going on. The French went into town last night, to a restaurant, after which they went to a club to dance, socialize, and consume adult beverages. My first clue to this came this morning, when I entered the hotel dining room at a little after 7, to find some rather strangely dressed campaigners singing "Happy Birthday" to nobody in particular while dressed in flowing robes and Kazakh hats.

At 10 am or thereabouts, the customer's representatives and I boarded a van and headed toward the Gagarin Museum. Normally, the museum does not work on weekends, but strings were pulled and a guide was found to lead us through the various exhibits. His name was Leonid, he is a retired officer who worked at constructing the Energiya–Buran complex back in the day, and his knowledge of the museum's exhibits was encyclopedic.

I noted with interest, as we passed through the rooms and I interpreted Leonid's presentation, that different guides have strongly different styles of presentation. Some like to emphasize personal stories, while others tend to talk more or less in different rooms, and about different exhibits.

Leonid was a stickler for dates and numbers, which soon had me scribbling in my notebook, because interpreting and keeping dates and numbers in short term memory is a really good way to get tired fast (not to mention a good way to make a lot of mistakes and waste time asking for the speaker to repeat what was said).

After the tour, which included the museum proper, the Buran mockup next to it, and the bungalows that had been occupied by Yuri Gagarin (and subsequent cosmonauts, up to 1967) and Sergey Korolev back in the day, we offered Leonid a ride back to town, during which he provided additional information that I found both interesting and something of a pain in the neck, as all of this also had to be interpreted for the other folks in the van (all while my vocal cords seemed to be approaching some critical failure point).

Perhaps the most interesting thing Leonid related had to do with a tradition attributed—unsurprisingsly—to Gagarin, of signing one's name on one's bedroom door as one departs for the launch pad. One of the other participants asked how that could be the case, as there was no such autograph on the door to Gagarin's room at the bungalow.

Leonid responded by saying that, according to Akeksey Leonov (the first human to walk in space, among other achievements), the tradition did not start with Gagarin, but with him, as he (Leonov) departed the "Cosmonaut" hotel, located on the main square in Baikonur. This gesture had such an appeal, said Leonov (according to Leonid), that it was immediately made a part of cosmonaut tradition, and at that time, all such traditions were rooted in Gagarin having 'done it first'. And so a story was concocted, attributing the absence of Gagarin's autograph on his bedroom door to an overly zealous cleaning lady, who had subsequently scrubbed the door clean.

Considering that the autographs of subsequent cosmonauts would also have had to have been "accidentally" scrubbed away, Leonid's explanation seems to have the ring of truth about it.

The rest of the day was spent downtown. I toyed with the idea of buying a 32 GB mini-SD card, but the price (RUB 1400 or somewhere around $40) seemed a bit steep. There followed a visit to the outdoor restaurant near the Rossiya hotel and then back out to Area 95 and home.

This would be a good time to get some sleep. The spacecraft is slated to be prepared for propellant loading over the next couple of days, and I'll be a part of that effort.

Cheers...