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Work? Kinda boring. Lunchtime I had a manicure, this time I went with silver nail polish.

A little more sparkle than I wanted, but their flat silver looked more grey.

Email from the senior of our two Belgium QA team members wishing us well - they were laid off the other day. Boo Hiss. When I got home I sent a supportive reply, which is what he did in 2009 when Moto laid me off.

Verifying bug fixes got more futile, as we have added yet another product release after this one is out, which means re-testing them all again in a few months.

Left work at 5:30 hoping to get to NASA by 6, but I got caught at the first red light by stupid drivers and my tummy decided I really needed to go back to the office and use the facilities. Which I did.

Next time, went the other way, a much wider intersection, but the guy in the right lane almost got himself killed by jumping the light in a place where at least three cars run the red coming down the left turn lane. This is an intersection which needs much longer delays between  one light turning red and the next turning green. And probably could use traffic police during rush hour.

Got to NASA about 6:15, in plenty of time to make the rounds of the several bnooths which were set up outside to hype educate abou Ames projects, then go inside and see the plane with the IRIS satellite/Poseidon rocket lift off from the SoCal AFB. Vandenberg, I think. Then it was about an hour's wait till airborne launch, so I hit the gift shop and bought a couple of cute T-shirts for the grand-nephew, and went outside to collect a lanyard & IRIS mug and put all that in the car.

Back inside, I couldn't get close to the big screen (so many TALL people standing) but they had a smaller screen toward the gift shop which I watched, though someone had set up a professional video camera on a tripod in front of it, so I had to watch from an angle. At about 2 minutes to launch the child started screaming, and his stupid parents would not take him outside. He calmed down at about 20 seconds to launch.

The local MC led a countdown off the clock on the video feed, but it was fast by about 10 seconds. Then the mission control countdown started at 3, and at 0 nothing happened. There was a gasp from the crowd, but then the rocket dropped away from the plane (cheers)  and in a second or three the rocket fired (huge cheers). I stayed for another half hour, as the stages of the rocket fell away and they announced it was in orbit.

Somewhere after the first stage dropped, the MC noted that many people were in the room who had built the thing, and they got a good 2 minutes, maybe 3 of cheers and applause. It's rocket science, and it warms my heart that there are still people who appreciate it.

Home, a modest dinner of lasagna and green peas. I guess I also read another chapter out on the patio with the cats. And decided I had made the right choice going to the launch party instead of band practice.

Plans for tomorrow:
Laundry - sheets & pillowcases which used to be bright yellow
Work
Nothing on the calendar, maybe hang out at the new-ish Starbucks across the street from my UPS box.

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howard stateman

September 2022

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