Visit from Anonymous

Just before I took off for Florida and the SDO launch, we were lucky enough to get a weekend visit from everybody's favorite anonymous blog commenter, down from the Canadian tundra for some time off in CA.  We had a good time playing board games and poker.

Unlike last time he visited, Ari did not take all our money in poker (on the contrary, actually).  It wasn't all bad though, he did win $1 for accepting a whimsical challenge to drink a gulp of sludgey beer yeast trub.  Apparently it wasn't as completely and utterly disgusting as it looks.  I guess.  I didn't taste it.  Are you kidding?

Banjo definitely was happy to see Ari, so I guess he forgives you for taking him on walks in Frisco last December when it was less than freezing outside and he was forced into the indignity of wearing those booties.  Thanks for visiting us, Ari!  Sorry if I blew your cover.

SDO Launch!

Belated but still interesting - the Solar Dynamics Observatory, with two instruments I worked on (HMI and AIA), finally launched last week from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  I got to see it in person with the parents and many other Lockheed folks, and despite the one-day delay it was quite an exciting experience!  It worked out great for me, as I got to visit parents, grandparents, and my aunt and uncle, not to mention catch the final night launch of the shuttle ever*.  Here's a couple photos and links to many more:

 

  

  

* - Final shuttle launch in July may well end up being a night launch if it gets delayed more than a couple days.

Links:

Official launch video (Media Player)

Youtube showing cloud ripples from shockwave blasting away sundog

Spaceflight Now page
SDO NASA page

Encapsulation!

SDO is (almost) encapsulated!  Only a few weeks until the Feb. 9 (or more likely Feb. 12-16) launch. Cool picture from yesterday:

HMI (which I worked on mostly) is the one with the two wedge-shaped white radiators visible in the top right of the spacecraft.  EVE is next to it on the left, and the 4 AIA telescopes are opposite them and not visible.

1/26/10 - a couple more pics as SDO is now sitting on the truck waiting for the ride over to the rocket...

Avahontas, or maybe Pocatar?

Kate and I decided to succumb to the Avatar hype with some friends last night and saw the movie in its full IMAX 3-D glory, and yes it was pretty breathtaking.  I agree with all the people who are saying the amazingly lush and creatively designed visuals - especially in 3D - make all the difference here.  The plot was, well, predictable, as pointed out by this pretty funny FailBlog bit.  (Warning - Spoiler alert I guess, not that you wouldn't know the story after the first 5 minutes of the movie anyway.)

Haiti Earthquake Relief

If you are looking for a way to help with the Haiti earthquake relief efforts from afar, here's a charitable donation option that I think is a good way of doing so - Doctors Without Borders.

They have been working in Haiti for 19 years and are providing some of the much needed medical services that is one of the most urgent of a long list of the country's needs right now.

Is this necessary?

Really?  Is this actually necessary to be a front-page headline on MSNBC.com?  Sheesh.  That is kind of depressing.  Well, on the bright side, maybe some people will read it.

SJSU Master's Program

I have unofficially started my master's in science education at SJSU. I figured I would probably want to get another degree some day and SJSU is nice enough to let me transfer a bunch of credits from my credential program, so although I wouldn't have minded a little time away from school, I jumped right back into the pool this fall and took another class.

Lest you think it is all sunshine and roses here at the tommenkate household, it basically took all my willpower to make it through this course. The professor was incredibly confrontational - it seemed like she took every opportunity to antagonize each of the four students (myself included). She routinely wrote comments on our papers along the lines of "No one cares what you think", and "why bother?" One of the women in the class broke down crying a couple of times.

At any rate, it's over now and I passed the class, which is a relief. I did learn a few things along the way, and picked up a bunch of pointers about how not to teach. And all four of us provided plenty of constructive feedback on the evaluation forms, so hopefully this class will improve in future semesters...

SDO has a launch date!

  Old news for those that follow this sort of thing, but it's exciting that the Solar Dynamics Observatory (the satellite that holds the instruments I worked on) has a "definite" launch date now after a year-plus of delays and schedule shuffling!  It's supposed to blast off on Feb. 3rd from Florida.  Hopefully I will get to go see it in person.

There's a neat video of the project with sound bytes from a lot of the NASA people I worked with over the last couple years on the SDO website.  Look at the right under "SDO Engineers Create What Never Was" because I guess that's what we do. (?)  The video direct link is here.  Bonus points for anyone who can spot the 2-3 occurrences of yours truly in the video.  I think I'm pretty obscured in a couple of them (ie @ 0:53 I'm behind the red metal piece).

Here's a cool picture of SDO's ride (an Atlas-V) arriving at the launch pad for vertical integration.  I'm just keeping my fingers crossed the thing doesn't blow up while getting the thing up to 7,000 mph...

New Party Games

We learned a few fun new party games. You all probably know that we play a lot of board games, but every now and again we like to shake it up by playing something a little less competitive. Thanks to Cara and Alex for these two suggestions…

1) The Telephone-Meets-Pictionary Game

Everyone sits around in a circle and gets a blank piece of paper and a pen. Each person writes a sentence on the top of their paper, and then passes it to the person on their left. The new person “illustrates” this sentence, then folds the paper so the original sentence can’t be seen and passes it on. The third person writes a new sentence based on what they see in the drawing, folds the paper again, and passes it on. This continues until the paper gets back to where it started, by which point it is probably unrecognizeable. Much laughter ensues when the paper are unfolded.

2) “Babbies” 

This game is kind of like a group-think version of Taboo. Before the game starts, each person writes 5 objects on small slips of paper and puts them in a hat. Then, people divide into two teams. On each turn, one team nominates a “guesser” who will have 2 minutes to guess as many of the clues as possible. The rest of the team collaborates to give a clue. This is the tricky part - each person on the team can only say one word at a time, and the team must create a complete, gramatically-correct question for which the answer is the object on the slip. So one person will start with "What", the next person will say "animal", then the next person says "smells", then "the", then "worst", then "Question Mark" to end the sentence. After the sentence has ended, the guesser can guess "skunk", of course. The challenging part of this game is coming up with a cohesive sentence - usually different group members will have different ideas of how the clue should go, so it gets derailed several times.

Anyway, we've had a great time playing these games in the last couple of months and thought we would share them in case anyone is looking for a fun evening activity with a large group!

Birthday Photo Scavenger Hunt Redux

Last year was the first annual Tom's Birthday Photo Scavenger Hunt. It was so successful that we expanded this year and made it the 1st annual Tom and Dustin and Adam and Mikey's Birthday Photo Scavenger Hunt, since all four of those guys have birthdays within a couple of weeks of each other. The rules are simple - each group has 3 hours to come up with a photo entry for each of 15 open-ended categories. This year we had four groups competing, and each group submitted some gems. Without further ado, the winners* in each category were as follows:
1) Best interpretation of a song title
2) Best Oxymoron
3) Most unusual Perspective
4) Do something naughty
5) Best use of a balloon animal
6) A wild critter
7) Spell something (and no, we don't have any announcements... we just thought this photo would terrify our respective spouses)
8) I can't believe we all fit in here
9) Most likely to be picked up hitchiking
10) Can you find us (and no, the person in the middle isn't the one hiding...)
11) Best use of a beer
12) Best re-creation of an Olympic sport
13) Friendliest stranger (I believe some monetary funds were involved in this transaction)
14) Most Holiday Spirit

15) Freestyle!And so, a good time was had by all! Looking forward to round 3 next year!

* Note that some of the winning pictures cannot be shown on this 'family' blog... although they may make an appearance as blackmail at some point in the future