Catching up

Hanging out at Hobby airport but cant post it because no internet. Well yes internet, but I am not paying $7.95 for a day's worth of internet when I will only be here for a half hour. Lame.

Anyways I realize that I haven't posted in a really long time. Things are going awesome here.
1. Sims...
I wrote after the first sim... since then I have done sims numbered 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 14. Haha they started rearranging due to some technical difficulties. Sadly that pushes out certification date out til February. Happily (for me, not the people who WILL be working those days) that means I will not have to work Christmas or Thanksgiving this year. But anyways, so the minisims have been really cool. I haven't always done great (7 was particularly not so pretty) and then 14 was emergency day. We have 3 types of emergencies, designated for their danger to the crew. Things that just hurt the vehicle are called warnings and are serious, but not nearly as serious as an emergency. As I learned in this sim, things move really fast in an emergency. The crew has a memorized response to safe themselves with the lifeboat (Soyuz). Its so different than failures in my system (although these CAN BE failures in my system... more on that later). When the power system or external thermal control system fails that OUTSIDE, 99% of the time. And being outside, we can send all those commands from the ground. We dont need the crew's help. But with emergencies, you have to have the crew's help. So ok the three emergencies are: Fire, Rapid Depress, and Toxic Atmosphere. Fire is in fact a failure in my system... theres no matches or cigarettes so the fires are most likely to be electrical fires. And I provide the electricity. So if something trips (like the circuit breaker in your house would) you send the crew to smell for smoke, unless the life support people find the smoke first (according to one of my instructors, you should always beat the life support person to the fire...I did not, better luck next time!) So then you have to work with this giant confusing table of fire ports to direct the crew to take CO2 readings and see if theres a fire. Fire is scary... for me. But we got through it ok.
Rapid depress... eh I dont really care too much. Thats at least not my system. But imagine you are in a giant space bubble and suddenly it gets a hole in it. Scary, yes? So the crew first leak checks their Soyuz cuz if thats leaking its bad bad bad news. Then they proceed to try and close hatches until they find the module with the hole and isolate it. And depending on how big it is, maybe you patch it, or maybe you lose that module... and any others forward of it.
Toxic atmosphere... there are various levels. But the worst in when ammonia from the ETCS breaks through the heat exchanger and gets into the cabin. 100% pure ammonia at 2000kPa going into water at a much much much lower pressure. And as you probably know, even a tiny bit of ammonia can give you physical symptoms... and a little bit more (200 ppm if you ask NASA) can kill you. So ammonia is bad. And again, kinda my fault. Not much you can do about that though, once the ammonia's in its pretty hard to get it out.
So the end result of emergency day is hopefully your crew is alive. Probably your space station is not happy. Maybe your crew is going home. Its kinda a depressing day. Thankfully they have never had an emergency on board but you train and train and train because 6 or more lives depend on how you perform if ever there is an emergency.

Ok, next subject... 2. Austin!!!
Fact: Austin is way better than Dallas.
Austin is a really cool crazy city with lots of stuff going on. And its surprisingly driveable- unlike stupid Houston. Things Meg and I did in Austin: Went for tex mex and had the creepiest waiter and terrible "guacamole," toured a winery, shopped downtown, got chocolate truffles, ate a fantastic dinner, saw a bunch of crazed Texas fans in burnt orange, got really drunk (repeatedly, actually), stayed in a fancy hotel, went to a fabulous brunch, fed the peacocks and their babies, saw 150 year old homes that people still use!!, went to a huge antique mall in a barn, and then sadly, I went home. But I saw baby cows along the way.
(Continued from the Orlando airport... yay free internet here!)
Things we did not do in Austin: get pulled over, fear for our lives at some sketch parking lot, freeze to death, almost get my car towed. It was generally awesome. So far, Austin is my favorite town in Texas. Fuck Dallas. And btw, I LOVE YOU MEG!


3. Nostalgia. To get there I had to take I-10 west out of the city. The same stretch that Ali, Gregg, and I drove back in the day when we went to Santa Fe. Again the traffic, is the overwhelming thing I remember. And I put on the CD he made for the trip, for old times sake. Just made me think about the old days and think about where we are now... did we ever think, back then, that things would end up this way? Could we ever have known? I certainly never planned to be living in Texas, never planned to be working for NASA (hoped, yes), never expected to stick myself in the same kind of long distance relationship that they hadn't at that time even started. Never expected any of this. But you know what they say about God laughing while we make plans.

4. Other stuff: Before that was Labor day weekend in Orlando. And before that my 23 birthday making me officially old. I am starting to like life a little better in Houston... I went to ikea and bought some new plates for my new apartment. And I've started cooking from this awesome little cooking magazine my mom started sending me. Now that its getting cooler again I dont loathe leaving the house (until next summer.. the summers are truly brutal) and hopefully my electricity bill will calm itself down. And work is getting cooler by the second. I am not always amazing in those sims, but I enjoy it and I have fun and I can tell I'm getting better as time goes on... I don't need to be perfect today, just better than yesterday and have I mentioned, its really freaking fun.

5. In summary... So thats my story. I'm off to Fort Lauderdale for Rosh Hashana with the family. Should be fun even if they are a little crazy. :-)