Ramblings...

Well I didn't think that we'd get THIS much rain and bad weather when I got down here. I was thinkin sunshine and great weather all the time. Maybe it's on its way...God I hope so...

Monday was cool...I got to view a sim from a test room in mission control. I was with Zorba(a fellow aerospace engineer, the only other one in ODIN), and he let me mess around the displays on the ODIN console. (Again, I wasn't in the real flight control room, just a test/support room). So that was really neat; he kinda tested me with some question on where stuff was, and I was able to do pretty good. I learn so much more when it's hands on.

Tuesday, I woke up early to get to the Sim that Zorba was involved with. They were simming(that a word?) a situation where, upon inspection, the crew determines that the orbiter is not safe enough to return to earth with due to its damage. They have a procedure for undocking the orbiter, and the ground control here attempts to land it in one piece(hopefully). When I went to the sim at MCC this time, however, I REMEMBERED MY HEADSET. So I got to be all cool and use my headset. We were the sim backroom(mpsr) support, call sign RAVEN. My call sign was LOKI. Funny thing, both ODIN and LOKI are Norse gods. Interesting.......anyway, I got to talk to ODIN here and there(Tracy was workin ODIN), and it was just the coolest thing......."ODIN LOKI, talk to me"........yeh, I said that. You say who you are calling first, then say who is calling, then you say what you need to say. SO COOL. I had a blast tuesday.

Today, I finished up pretty much the bulk of my busy-coop-office work. So now I get to start on my real project. Basically, what they want me to do is write some code(or alot) that will automatically read what the ODIN/RAVEN console people input into the Caution and Warning Log. The CW Log is just a list of events that have caused a caution or warning on the ISS. We have to document them, cuz alot of the times they tell us what's going wrong with the station if there is a problem. My code/program will then transfer what is input at the console and transfer it to a clean, crisp, well organized database that we can study back at the office. To do this, I have to learn a new programming language, WOO HOO. It's called SQL(sequel). It stands for Structured Query Language. It's basically a database/server language. I started reading up on it today. IT'S SO BADASS. I cant wait to get to work and go over some more of it.

well that's it for today. I'm SO tired.