Madlibs

Earlier today I was looking around online to find the entry downranges for the various Apollo missions - actual, not design constraints. (By the way, no luck there, so if anyone can point me in the right direction, I'll send you cookies in the mail.)

I did, however, come across the Apollo 15 Flight Journal for the last day of the mission, which appears to be just a transcript of the communication between the astronauts, flight controllers, and various recovery teams. Some sections have better comm than others, though, so in some cases the words were unintelligible and are just left out:

Recovery: Apollo 15, this is Recovery. Roger your [garble] on 243.0.
Scott: Recovery, 15. We're in good shape.

But it gets worse. Which, of course, means that it gets funnier.

Recovery: We're in contact. We're in contact.
Recovery: [garble] copying you loud and clear, [garble]. Okay, ARIA 1.

After a while, whoever's doing the transcription just gives up.

Recovery: [Garble.]
Spacecraft: [Garble.]
Recovery: [Garble.] Over.
Recovery: All right. [garble]

Googleable

My site is result #11 on Google! Haha, probably because I keep Googling it to see if it shows up, rather than anyone else actually looking for it. Oh well.

Maryland

Free trip to DC! The only catch is that I have to go to an interview. Just kidding! I'm interviewing with a company in Maryland at the end of next month, and I just got off the phone with their travel office to make my arrangements. It seems like a really good company to work for - their representatives at the career fair were incredibly nice, and they couldn't stop talking in these amazed voices about all the benefits that their company provides. It's a relatively small place, which I like, and they're a non-profit, which I also like.

The only downside is that I think the work may be a little too established for my taste. The projects seem to be very long-term, at least in the fields that I'm interested in, and due to the nature of the work, relatively inflexible to big innovations or other things that might gamble with the reliability of the system. But this is all what I've heard from other people, so it'll be interesting to find out what the deal is for myself. I'm just not looking forward to the 8 hours of interviewing.

The last time I flew to an on-site interview was three years ago, and it was really stressful. Spending the afternoon, evening, and following morning in a hotel room by myself was really unnerving, and I spent the entire time just getting nervous about everything that was coming up. It was a half-day affair in which each of the interviewees got passed around between several different employees, but I completely relaxed by about the third interview when it became abundantly clear that I didn't want to do the types of jobs that they were hiring for.

I'm hoping the Maryland interview will go well, but I'm also hoping that I might be a little more relaxed, considering that right now I don't think it's the job that I'm dying to have. But I'll have to try hard to remember that when I'm sitting in my hotel room alone, getting nervous.

My homework

It turns out that I have nothing more interesting to write about than my homework solutions. I have two midterms this week, so all I've been exposed to since Friday night are the walls of my bedroom and the inside of the grocery store. And, of course, the internet. Which brings me to my story...

The professor for my aircraft controls class recently hired a TA, a Korean grad student of his, so the homework solutions from weeks ago were just posted over the weekend. The first question on the first problem set was, "What is your favorite airplane and why?" I had decided to write about the Embraer 145 Regional Jet. Kinda lame, right? Well, I chose it because it's one of those planes that has two columns of seats on one side of the plane and only one column of seats on the other side, so by sitting on the one-column side, you can be sitting in a combination window/aisle seat. So there's no one to step over when you have to go to the bathroom, no sticky drink that gets dumped on you when the flight attendant passes the window person their Coke, and you don't have to jockey for a position on a shared armrest.

I was partially serious, but I also knew that everyone would write about the F-22, the SR-71, or some other military jet, so I wanted to be a little different. And furthermore, if the prof's going to ask a semi-ridiculous question, I'm going to give a semi-ridiculous answer.

Turns out I wasn't the only one. I was looking at the TA's solutions on the class website, and instead of skipping the "solution" to this question like any boring person would have, he writes: "T-50 advanced trainer, because it is the first jet fully developed by KOREAN technology."

Space debris

I was doing some research this afternoon on the company that I'm interviewing with on Tuesday, and they have a short animation on their website that shows all the tracked objects that are in orbit around the Earth. It's really crowded out there! Okay, yes, I understand that it looks more crowded because it's a 3D projection onto a flat screen, but still! It would be interesting to know which ones are actually in use and which ones are just space junk.

Can't sleep

My head is swirling and I can't shut it off. I don't know how to put it on a shelf for the night so that I can get some sleep. My mind is racing, but I can't focus on one thing long enough to understand it, to solve it.

I'm worried about everything. I'm worried about how I'm doing in my classes, I'm worried about my research. I'm worried that I won't graduate in time, I'm worried that I won't get a job. I'm worried that my eyes will never get better. "At least you have your health!" they always say. But I don't. It's not terrible, but it's always there, in the back of my mind, giving me an unsettled feeling that I haven't been able to shake, even when I can't always put my finger on it for a few seconds. Why do I feel weird? Oh yeah... that's right.

You should never go back to grad school after working full time, because when you work, you get tricked into believing that you have free time. How do I meet these people who say that grad school was the time of their lives? I do research all day and homework all night. A break for running, sometimes, and a break for dinner, maybe a whole day free on Saturday. I don't mean to complain because I think many students handle this better than I do. I'm not sure how they do it. I'm 24 years old and I make ten dollars an hour. I'm not looking forward to becoming a slave to corporate America, but at least then I can go on vacation.

My mom has a "critical mass" theory about stress - you can handle a certain number of things for a certain amount of time, but then just one more thing gets piled on top, and the whole thing comes tumbling down like a ton of bricks. Suddenly all the things you were so expertly juggling become debilitating.

My alarm clock is making crackling noises. I hope it doesn't die and/or explode in the middle of the night.

1992

Remember the group Positive K? Of course not. Nobody does, I think, except for me. Back in 1992, they had a one hit wonder with "I Got a Man." I remember taping that song off the radio, B96 in Chicago, when I was, jeez, 10 years old, because I liked it so much. Anyway, we never had MTV growing up, so I never saw the video for this song. That is, until just now. It's on YouTube, and it's hilarious. It looks like it was filmed in someone's backyard, it showcases nearly every awful clothing style from the early 90's, and the lyrics are just ridiculous.

As a side note, I can't believe some of those fashions are actually coming back. I am officially old. But for the record, 14+ years does NOT make the clothing look any better.

How to annoy me

First, walk around the office with the loudest shuffle imaginable, almost as if you are a gorilla who was accidentally let loose from the zoo to wander among computers and normal human beings. Second, take every opportunity while scuffling around the hallways to clear your throat. Use high tones and low tones, many times together or just one at a time here and there, but never use this opportunity to clear your throat hard enough OR ACTUALLY COUGH so that you don't have to do it again in 30 seconds. Just keep making the wimpy noise at irregular intervals. Third, listen to your iPod at 8am and SING ALONG TO IT AT WORK. Everyone knows you have a terrible voice, so why not let everyone hear it? It's not like you'd ever shut your office door to protect the innocent from your screeching.

We've all grown accustomed to respecting each other's personal space, right? Why isn't audio space included? Why do people think it's okay to whistle, hum, or sing along to the music in their head while surrounded by other people?

What I learned in school

Nerd alert!

Yesterday in my optimization class, we learned about the integer knapsack problem. The basic idea is that you have a fixed volume to fill and you want to maximize or minimize, depending on your problem, the total cost of the items that you choose to fill the volume.

Okay, seems logical enough, although maybe a bit abstract. To help us understand the problem better, the lecturer gave an example. Here's where it gets weird - instead of using any number of generic examples to explain the problem, he starts out like this: "Imagine you're a thief."

Hmm.

It actually makes a lot more sense that way though. Imagine you're a thief. You break into a store and you want to steal as much stuff as you can, but you only have your backpack to carry stuff out in, so everything you steal has to fit in there. Obviously you want to turn a profit, so you're going to grab expensive stuff. But you're not going to steal the big TV because then you won't have room in your backpack for anything else. Given a fixed number of items each with a fixed cost, there's actually an optimal method for filling your backpack.

The funny part was that there are numerous examples that the lecturer could have chosen that would not have involved explaining the optimal way to commit a felony. Filling a backpack with the most essential items for a hiking trip, grocery shopping on a budget with a fixed amount of cabinet space, filling up your iPod with songs... but no, he chose the thief.

Long day

This has pretty much been the longest day on record. This will be followed by the shortest weekend on record, all courtesy of the fact that the boyfriend is arriving today and staying for the weekend. The extreme highs and lows of long distance dating really suck, so to make it through all the emails, phone calls, and weeks without seeing each other, I suggest you pick the best person on earth as your significant other. And no, you can't have mine.

Yesterday I got a new officemate. Yay! The only real perks to having my own office were that I could make personal phone calls whenever I needed to and no one tsk-tsk'ed if I watched movie trailers at lunch. But over the summer especially, days would go by where I wouldn't talk to anyone while I was at work. I don't work with other people on my project, and I felt a lot of pressure to get all my work done in such a short period of time, so I didn't have a lot of time for miscellaneous chitchat with my coworkers. Things are still really hectic, but at least now I have more of a social outlet here.

Well, I have nothing else interesting to talk about because I babysit Matlab sims all day, and it's almost time to go home. Happy Friday!

Amazing

Last week in Brazil, a Boeing 737-800 collided in mid-air with an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet. In a collision between a big plane and a small plane, you'd expect the big plane to fare better, but incredibly, the Embraer 600 survived and the 737 did not. What's even more incredible is that the pilots of the business jet were able to safely land the plane, and all the crewmembers and passengers walked away completely unharmed. Joe Sharkey, a New York Times reporter and a passenger on the Embraer jet, wrote this article about the collision and its aftermath. I know I keep saying this, but it's incredible.

My idiot day

Yesterday I brought my gym clothes to work, like I usually do, because I often go to the gym after work. But yesterday I had to run an errand at the mall before going to the gym, so I gathered up my stuff when I left work so that I could go straight to the gym afterward. Except when I got all the way downstairs and outside, I realized that I left my shoes in my office. *sigh*

Not a big deal, I'd just stop by my office on the way back - it's mostly on the way anyway. So I went to the mall, didn't find what I was looking for, of course, so then I biked back to work. Picked up my shoes, got back on my bike, headed over to the gym. After locking up my bike, I failed miserably at trying to cross the street - some other girl and I managed to hold up four lanes of traffic as we crossed. So then I got all the way into the locker room and realized that I had left my rear bike light on. UGH. So I trudge all the way back to the bike rack (no traffic hold up this time), and discover that I had, in fact, turned the light off. Yay! But boo for wasting all this time and energy walking back and forth.

So I get back to the locker room, get changed, go to the mirror to put my hair in a ponytail, and realize that I didn't bring a hair tie. ARGH! I shuffled through my backpack to find my extra in-case-of-emergency hair tie, but alas, it had served its purpose during the last one of these moments and had promptly made its way out of my bag, onto my head, and then safely home. Out of my backpack. I looked around the locker room to see if there was another girl who might have an extra one that I could borrow, but today of all days, the locker room is completely empty except for one girl who's in the shower. And I'm not interrupting anyone's shower.

So I shoved all my stuff back in my backpack and headed home. By the time I got home, I realized that the reason I hadn't left my rear light "on" was because the batteries died, and I had just biked all the way home, in the middle of traffic, with no rear light. Lovely.

Party

I've decided that if I can ever wear contacts again, I'm throwing the biggest, craziest party ever. Lots of food, tons of alcohol, insane amounts of music and dancing, kisses at midnight, sparklers, party hats, cake, candles, pinatas - everything. Everyone's invited!