Bytes of News

• Some things never change. During the winter break 2009 rush for CUSat, I volunteered myself as "food lead," gathering everyone's dinner order everyday, then calling in the order for delivery. I think we tried every delivery restaurant in Ithaca over the course of 2 weeks. Yesterday at work, we decided to order Chinese food from down the street, and once again I went around the office asking people what they wanted, then called in the order. < / coolstory >
• After a 4-year hiatus of reading a book for fun (last book I read for fun was Message in a Bottle, back in 2006), I've picked up reading again, starting with In the Lake of the Woods. Like what many of the reviews say, the story can become quite chilling at times, but is very well-written and tends to keep you guessing and reading. Then there's the fact that the author leaves the central mystery of the story unresolved, and instead offers a few different hypotheses for what might have happened, with plenty of evidence to back up all hypotheses while simultaneously not refuting any of them. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book, especially its ideas regarding human nature.

• I'm starting to realize that I can relate to more and more of the media that I immerse myself into (movies, books, etc.). It's like a wake-up call for myself to recognize my perceived shortcomings and do something about it.

Spring Break Commences

After three weeks of exams, labs, projects, ridiculous homeworks, CUSat babysitting, trying to find a job and such, spring break is now upon us. Since I haven't updated in over a month, I'm going to try something new and do this in pictoral form.



CUSat testing at Cornell has ended, and the satellite is now at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. Launch is currently slated for February 2010.



I finished the short stack at Hughes again yesterday morning. The pancakes were filled with bananas. However, Nicole is still a beast because she arrived 15 minutes late and still finished the short stack first. As seen in the picture, the pancakes are as big as Nicole's head.



Today was Dragon Day at Cornell, where the architects try to show that they're better than engineers. The dragon looked like a dragon this year. A major disappointment was the lack of large fires (aka burning the dragon). Apparently Cornell is trying to be more environmentally friendly or something like that.

CUSat - Part II

We are currently in the third week of classes. I've found that I'm busier this semester so far than I was last semester, even though I'm taking less classes. This could be because the pre-ship review for CUSat is approaching, and there is lots of work to be done in preparation for that. So, here are some more highlights of things that have happened during the past month in CUSat:

• More GPS receiver tests on the roof of Thurston Hall (and out the window of Upson 205, but that's not very exciting because it's indoors and the window has to be open during the test, which makes the room super cold)
• Ordered 1 meal per day for the team before classes started. Because I took everyone's orders everyday, I now have an idea of what everyone on the team likes/dislikes in their food, which I'm sure is something that not many other people can claim.
• Ran a hardware test in the clean room. This means wearing the clean room coat, hairnet, gloves, and electrostatic discharge wrist strap for 4 hours. After the test, I took a very satisfying leak.

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.