Le Yummy

Tuesday was my birthday (yup, Virginia day) but at least I didn't get stuck in Atlanta where the weather was bad and flights were being cancelled. Thankfully the bad stuff moved through earlier in the day and the evening flights were still on. But I made it home and my birthday present requested from John was waiting... a shiny new Flame Orange Le Creuset dutch oven. Yay!!

Now I'm trying to decide what to make first. Hmmm... made chili when it was cold recently so that's out. Maybe my favorite roast with spicy roasted tomatoes or a big pot of soup. Time to surf the Pioneer Woman and Food Network sites for some new and fabulous recipes.

A picture for Alicia. Notice PW has her green Le Crueset in the cover pic. I've wanted one of these for awhile, tired of having to sear in one pot and then transfer to the croc and stuff. Our new oven has a slow cook feature too, so I want to try out a true "1 pot" slow cook meal.

Sleep Away

In about 30 minutes I am headed to Hobby for a trip to NASA Langley, a very last minute trip. I got a call Friday telling me I should plan a trip for this week, only I didn't know the test rig I am going to work on is being packed for shipping Wednesday and Thursday, so I have to be there tomorrow to test or not at all. This test is for the crew laptop application for the STORRM (can't remember the acronym) test that is flying on STS-134 (a.k.a. the LAST ever shuttle flight). The test is for the new docking sensor that Orion is using or at least plans to use assuming we don't get put down the toilet by our "bold" and "game-changing" new NASA direction. Given how high profile this experiment now is, I've been directed to take over all the application testing to make sure it works and we have a very short timeline to complete everything.

But besides the work stuff, this is my first night away from Zara. I'm taking a pretty awful set of flights to minimize time away since we are still feeding. Given the last minute details worked out this morning to go, I am on a 4pm flight arriving at 10pm EST in Newport News, VA. I will work tomorrow and then catch a 6pm flight back to Hobby arriving at 11pm tomorrow night. Ugh. Incidentally, sorry Heather, totally would have called you to get together but there is literally no time. But I'm fairly certain the next 36hrs will be harder on me than her, but perhaps hardest on John who will experience night time feedings for the first time. LOL.

Here's a picture of Zara I took this weekend that I liked. Seems like a lot of pictures since they catch her mid motion end up with awkward facial expressions, or a startled deer in the headlights look. But this one is the face we see most often, direct and interested in what's going on, like she has something to say just doesn't know how.

Too Slow Joe

As a fan of Top Chef, we've been watching some of the cheftestants fawn over their sous vide slow cooker for endless challenges. For the uninitiated, sous vide is when the food is vaccum sealed in plastic and then cooked for hours in a tepid water bath. Supposedly, it seals in the flavor but for me it always kinda seemed like you forget to add flavor. I mean really is plain chicken good? No, you have to add salt, pepper, and other stuff to make it really tasty.

Well now they are bringing sous vide to home cooks. Me, I think this is a kitchen electric I can do without. I think grilling and what not does more to add flavor then it loses in juice.

Sous-Vide Home Cooking: Really Slow Food

Kick Me

John was on his way from work to pick up Zara Wednesday and never made it. He had exited 45 at El Dorado when someone leaving the shopping center there decided they wanted to be in the far left lane. So they crossed three lanes of traffic and plowed straight into John (driving my car) since they must not have had their eyes open. It's not like there was anything there for John to hide behind.

But poor Helga. I think she must have an invisible kick me sign on her. I've only had her a year and a half and she is my first new car ever, but someone has it out for her. So far she has been tagged in a parking lot and had her left front corner dented (no note obviously from whomever the jerk was), dented by someone who must have been very angry when they opened their car door (again no note), and now she's had her right side rather brutally bashed in. This time John had to follow the woman who did it all the way to Baybrook Mall before she pulled over. Today she goes to the shop and the person's insurance adjuster is examining her. They wanted us to take her to their preferred shop, but she's going to our guy Mike that we've used to do our performance upgrades and is really good. Fat chance I'm going to take her to someone else's insurance shop. I hope this is the last time Helga gets dented.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Grab-n-Go

Time to post some new picks for Z instead of just "I hate the new NASA budget" posts. Zara started really grabbing at toys and shoving them in her mouth. She is figuring out what her paws are and how to use them. In particular, she likes the orange monkey hanging in her gym which is getting most of her attention. Since she is sleeping alone now, we've had to dress her more warmly at night and we also get to use the super cute present from Remi and France. She is happily counting sheep in her fleece outfit and loves to grab at the faces on her toes.

Letter Rip

Given the previous three posts, I am sufficiently ticked off enough to write a letter to my elected representatives for the first time ever. I hope you are too. But, if you aren't ticked off enough to author a letter yourself, maybe you are enough to take my letter change the names and addresses and send it in. I hope you can do even this much because our space program is important whether you know it or not and surely it's worth a piece of paper and a stamp to you to save.

Download my letter here at Google Docs.

Find your representative's and senator's addresses here.

Save Spaceflight!

The Quest

It's been 3 days since "The News", that being the wholesale cancellation of NASA's manned space development efforts. Yes we still have the Space Station and we will still have astronauts in space, but we have no way of getting them there other than paid seats on Russian rockets for the indefinite future after the last 5 shuttle flights.

So what do I think about this. On a national level, it means this country has been put in a very precarious position and, while I'm not normally prone to quoting Lord of the Rings, this thought came to me and its pretty much how I feel.

“The quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail. But hope remains, if friends stay true.”

Honestly, the chances of success in our new direction are not good. We are going to rely on companies being willing AND able to commit the resources and execute a very, very difficult task which is developing a safe and reliable system to both launch and fly humans in space. Let me be clear, you can argue that this is something NASA hasn't really done well either, but they did it with the legal and financial security of being the government which is why the government does things like this. To ask unproven companies to now do this with no "backup" in the form of Orion, we put ourselves in a position at all odds to fail. Even the slightest hiccup will doom our nation's dominance in spaceflight.

Those of us in this business never did it for glory, money, or recognition. For people like me who don't have the security of a gold badge (civil servants), we even do it as we lurch from one company to another with our paychecks on the line any given day. We've scrapped for every last dollar we ever got and spent it well in the best interest of this nation regardless of the politician's and public's disinterest and short-sightedness. But even while I face great uncertainty in what my own personal job opportunities are, I still only want to help make this thing called space exploration happen.

The only chance we have is if everyone else does as well.

Make Room for Space!

Directions for the following:
1. Watch this video
2. Get sufficiently ticked off about the $9 Billion dollars we've spent developing this technology over the last 5 years that is now being squandered.
3. Get even more ticked off about the (I'm low balling) 6,000 to 7,000 jobs being lost
4. CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSPEOPLE and TELL THEM SO!!!

Snowglobes

In case you missed it in the Presidential Budget request yesterday, there is a page near the end that requests the full termination of the Constellation program. This includes Ares, Orion, and every other aspect of NASA's plans to build vehicles to put Americans in space anywhere in the near future. And, yes, that is true. If you believe these "commercial" companies can do it sooner than Constellation, I have a large sum of money from a prince in Nigeria that just needs someone to help transfer it to the US if you only give me your bank account number. In case you didn't know, I work on the... Constellation Technical Support Contract, so you can guess where that is going too.

And oh by the way, no one knew this was going to happen and by no one I am including upper NASA mgmt who have said so specifically. Word was Ares was going to get cancelled but no one knew Orion (my actual project) or the overall direction of NASA was going to be cancelled. And normal protocol includes notification of the major contractors in advance, that also did not happen. Real nice of the administration to treat us like this.

I have a lot of opinions on this, but am not ready to vent them all. As for my actual job with my company, it's not greatly threatened. We will have some work somewhere, Houston only has about 100 people in a 20,000 people company worldwide. We will work on other things and do remote work for other projects, but it may not be at NASA anymore. This will also be developing and the gist is I really don't know what will happen, but I'm not going to be fired tomorrow at least.

Today, my day in the office is like being in a snowglobe that someone just violently upended. The snow is flying and no one knows where it is going to land.