CUSat Testing and Debugging

This year, I decided to cut my winter break short by going back to campus 2 weeks early and helping out with the CUSat work (I was bored at home anyway). The work has consisted mainly of testing the flight code on the simulator(s) and debugging any quirks that appear (debugging can get quite frustrating). Here are some highlights of my CUSat winter break experience during the past 5 days:

• Pouring liquid nitrogen from a metal pail into a kitchen-sized plastic funnel because we forgot to refill the supply tank in the lab on time. I wasn't the guy who actually poured the liquid nitrogen, but apparently his gloves weren't very good at insulating. Don't worry, no one froze their fingers off (but came kinda close).
• Testing the GPS receivers on the rooftop of Thurston/Kimball Hall in a single-digit wind chill. We were outside for at least 3 hours, and my toes were not very happy about being outside for that long. The GPS test failed to work correctly due to then-unresolved (and hopefully now-resolved) software bugs, but being on the roof was pretty cool.
• Patrick Conrad's visit. He really knows what he is doing, and that is a very good thing. I have had the opportunity to meet both Kris and Patrick now.
  
• 1 free meal per day (starting today). I volunteered to place the food orders.

More to come later? Possibly. We'll see how things turn out over the next 7 days. The flight software gets loaded onto the satellite next Friday.

Greetings 2009

Farewell 2008. It was nice knowing you...not. It was not the best of years, for various reasons (but it could have been worse).

Happy new year.