Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

STS-132 Atlantis Last Ride – We are here.

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Well the last two days have been REALLY long days.  Tuesday I went to work.  I did such a great job of wrapping things up that I had nothing to do for the last hour that I was there.  Yeah fun times, I had to stay to make sure everyone saw I was there.  Then it was off to the bank, home to pack the coolers, load the car and get the dogs to the vet.  That didn’t go as planned.  Took 1 hour to get to the bank and home.  SUCK!  So finally at about 10 minutes until 6 pm we rolled out of our Arrington home south bound for the SPACE COAST!!  We drove until Macaon GA, which was midnight local.  Back up and on the road by 6:30 am in an attempt to get our KSC visitor center passes and spending some time there.  WHOO HOO we made it.  Oh but that presented a problem, my lack of clothes for this said event.  Oh well there is always a Wal*Mart close by.  So we spent the day at the space center then to our hotel, out to dinner back and some picture work.  We left this morning before 7:30 am and this included showers, repacking, moving rooms, and loading the car. 

So let me tell you about our facility and location.  We are in a large white tent, with air cond, wi-fi at a nice 6-top round table with POWER!!  The location, just a stones throw from the count down clock.  NO REALLY.  The other greatness, the car with our food and drinks is just a short walk away and there is a bathroom with FLUSHIES!! 

Bandwidth here is shaky at best so picture loads may have to wait until tonight.

STS-132 Atlantis Last Ride – PRE my departure post

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Well there is a lot of esplainin’ to do Lucy.  I miss blogging, I hate my blog’s look, I don’t have time to figure out how to make it pretty and I can’t find someone to pay.  So there you have the answer to the  mystery of where I have been.

NOW here we go starting back out with a blog series just for this little trip to Florida.  Let me tell you how it began.  KLT mentioned that @nasa was doing a tweetup for the upcoming launch and that we should register, but they were only taking 150.  He said we’d leave it in God’s hands.  I saw the tweet from @nasa saying today is the last day and you have 30 minutes to register.  So I did what any good woman would do and registered us both.  GUESS WHAT?  I won.  Yeah the first round draft.  On the second round KLT won.  So now we are going to NASA to watch the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis.

I am really excited to meet so many cool fellow tweeters that are going.  There are 2 ROCKET SCIENTIST who graduated from Purdue.  This will be amazing.

So here is what the schedule looks like

Schedule

Tuesday, May 11

3 pm — Tammy departs work and accomplishes the following: get dogs to vet for boarding, pack final clothing and toiletries, pack coolers, pack food and items for inside car, pack car, clean up & straighten house, lock all doors and windows and water the plants as needed.

?  until ? – DRIVE towards Florida, the more miles we do tonight the better.

Wednesday, May 12

6 am — the overnight stay and head for KSC!!  With any luck we can get there in time to get our visitor pass.

Thursday, May 13/L-1: Day 1

8-9 a.m. — Registration at the Kennedy Space Center Press Accreditation Badging Building

9-10 a.m. — Travel to the press site, set up, meet fellow participants

10 a.m. — Welcome and introductions by @NASA team members John Yembrick and Stephanie Schierholz

10:10 a.m. — Robert D. Braun, NASA chief technologist, NASA Headquarters

10:30 a.m. Jon Cowart (@Rocky_Sci), Orbiter Engineering manager, Space Shuttle Program, KSC

10:50 a.m. — Stephanie Stilson, space shuttle Discovery processing director, Shuttle Processing Office, KSC

11:10 a.m. — Astronaut Janice Voss <PURDUE GRAD!!

11:30 p.m.-12:15 p.m. — Break for lunch

12:30 p.m.-1:15 p.m. — Demonstration of the Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES)

1:20 p.m. — Instructions for launch day, board buses

1:30-6:30 p.m. — Tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, including visits to the International Space Station Center and Apollo Saturn V Center. Your tour will drive by the Orbiter Processing Facility, Vehicle Assembly Building, Mobile Launcher Platforms and Crawler-Transporter. The last stop on the tour will be Launch Pad 39A to view retraction of the Rotating Service Structure, scheduled for 5:20 p.m. and space shuttle Atlantis. We will have a short break at the press site at about 4:30 p.m. If you need to leave, you may do so at that time. For the tour, you must wear long pants and closed, low-heeled shoes. Tank tops are not permitted<- This means we are going into an OPERATIONAL Facility!!!!

Friday, May 14/Launch: Day 2

9:30 a.m. — Arrive at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 Press Site.

10 a.m. — Group picture beside the countdown clock.

10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. — Free time and visits from guest speakers, including

- Astronaut Dave Wolf <-PURDUE GRAD!!  I met him while working in Alumni Relations @ Purdue

- Lt. Col. Patrick Barrett, weather officer with the Air Force’s 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron

- Chris Meinert, STS-132 Closeout Crew member

- Madi Sengupta (@msengupta), Space Station Robotics instructor at NASA’s Johnson Space Center

- Amiko Kauderer, @NASA_Johnson team member leading STS-132 mission Tweetup

2:20 p.m.Launch of space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-132 mission  <-Our view is from the press site!

~3:30 p.m. — Post-launch news conference on NASA TV

Product Review – SanDisk 8gb SD cards – OH HELL YEAH!

Monday, April 6th, 2009

I am pretty sure that there are a couple of companies out there that just know how to pull my credit card out of my pocket and get me to hit check out.  SanDisk knows the way to this girls hear OMG buy 3 SD cards, free shipping and mail in rebate.  Earlier in 2008 SanDisk ran a sale on 4 gb cards, I bought 3 and got a $75 rebate.  So honestly I am pretty set on SD cards I have 3-4gb cards, a 2 gb and 2- 1 gb cards.  Wonder what happened when right before Christmas I got an email alerting me about a 3 card deal on 8 gb cards?  Well of course I bought 3 SD cards for me and 3 CF cards for KLT.  I had no issue with the first rebate and it’s not been long enough to worry about the additional rebates.  :)   So I say if you run across an opportunity like this DOOOOO EEEEET!

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 I want to tell you what I think about my SanDisk cards. OMG !!!  378 raw plus jpgs on one card and I have 3 of them.  That is ~1100 pictures with out ever dumping a card.  Don’t forget I get 1 jpg and 1 raw so really that’s 2200, If I only shot RAW it would be more like ~1400.  The only downside is that this ruins all of KLT’s plans to throw the pictures across our own little network and duplicate them on the spot the next time I did a wedding.  ;)

The little pouch that comes with each card is nice, I like to toss it in my purse so I can work on photos at work.  My earlier purchase also gave me 3 USB SD card readers so that is incredibly awesome.  I am fully equipped with enough SD space to actually keep pictures on them as a back up until all files are copied from the laptop to the media server.  :)

I am currently using one fo the cards in my purse lappy for extra storage.  You can believe that when they offer the next size for this good of a deal I will be buying them!!

a tale of internet tech support

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

Oh I am going to go ahead and post two post in one day because 1. this is funny 2. I am terribly behind and 3. it’s my blog and I said so.

Last night around 6:30 pm I lost my connection to the outside world.  OH NOES that can’t happen!  KLT was on he phone and we worked through troubleshooting the DC, which had died.  That didn’t solve my problem.  After a good 30 minutes it was determined that Comcast was no longer giving me an IP address.  :(   So I decide to run over to the neighbors and check to see if they are still connected to make sure this isn’t a global issue.  Here is were the fun begins.  My neighbor Kate is about 7.  I approach her to ask if her dad is home so I can see if they are on the internet currently and here is what transpires.

Me: Kate is your dad home I would like to ask him if you guys are still connected to the internet
Kate: He is.  We are.
Me: Really I mean like right this second is someone on the internet?
Kate: Uh huh.  Do you have Comcast?
Me: Yes just like you that is why I am aksing.  So can we go ask your dad?
Kate: He’s not here just mom.  Is your internet Windows?
Me: Uh, Kate internet is not windows, my internet is comcast like yours?
Kate: (very seriously) Yeah but is your interent Windows?
Me: No it’s not that is the OS.  So can we go talk to your mom?
Kate:  Did you turn it off and on?
Me: (thinking really big words would scare her off) Yeah I did, I restarted the domain controller, the modem, the wireless router and the laptop, I have ipconfig release/renew, done trace routes and pinged but it’s just not working.  Where is your mom?

I return home to find that the stupid paper phone books don’t have much of a listing for Comcast so I tweet from my phone hoping someone will give me a support number to call.  Great scott!  Here is how this went down, please note these are my rough notes taken while on the phone with comcast support and filled in now for more detail.

-tech support – answers, everything looks ok but I am having trouble let me transfer you

-Hi this is random guy in sales, then sales guy (can’t find that I have an internet connection)
     – Tammy Says PU pays for my internet then on-hold on let me look that up for you(13 mins on the phone)

-click – tech support lady OH let me get corporate on the line – on hold
14:13(on phone)  SO transferred to billing – No really BILING is on the phone. He says that he can’t help

18:13  He’s gonna try and find  me in the system =he’s going to try and put me through to somebody who may be able to help
   your device is a residential device and not a corporate one.  Me Yes this is correct this is a residential connection.

29:09  scott trying to find my stuff (residential account is the only thing returned)
no outages
device is answering

plug direct to modem – renew release NO  — here is the point where he is assuming I am a NOOB and trying to make me crazy.
are you sure me YES
reset gateway
43 min later INTERNET

Product Review – Lappy drive enclosure

Monday, January 12th, 2009

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So amongst my deliveries the other day I received my package from monoprice.com Included were 2 more HDMI cables, a auto charger for the Sansa and a external HD enclosure for a 2.5″ lappy drive.  I have now on more than one occasion needed to gather data off when the machine had died or the boot partition croaked.  Since I was ordering a replacement HDMI cable and a cable for a friend I decided to check out monoprice and see if they had any ribbon cables or hell just anything to salvage my data.  They had this little number who’s comments were “concerning” (cheap and plastic) but for the 1 time use I wasn’t worried.  I was impressed that the case was metal and the USB was a regular USB to mini.  Awesome as I have a dozen of those cables.

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Isn’t cute?  And coming in at just over $6 dollars how can you not like it.  Oddly enough there were no instructions.  No warnings and no tags or labels to remove.

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Here is the HD connector at first glance I was puzzled as the connector was a receptical for pins and the harddrive had some sort flat connector with gold tabs on each side. So with no instructions and not a clue. I start poking at the hard drive and realize that there is a plastic “cap” on the end and once I pry it off there are the pins I was looking for.

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^See here is the cause of my issues.

After we had everything in the enclosure it was time to hook her up and pray to the data Gods that my drive was not the cause of the lappy death. TADA! Look my drive and all it’s contents. It took NOTHING! to grab the data and then format the drives. All in all the the best $6 dollars I have spent in a while and it comes with a cute little pleather case to store it in.

Product Review – The Sansa e280

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

If you’re looking for a great little MP3 player, stop here! Enjoy 8GB of internal memory with the Sansa e280 MP3 Player 8GB from Sandisk. The Sansa e200 Series MP3 players are the flagship products of SanDisks audio line. Created by the leaders in flash memory, this flash-based player provides everything you need for music, photo, and video clip playback. The very attractive, sleek design includes a 1.8 TFT color screen with advanced navigational features and an easy to use interface. You can also avoid scratches and cracks with the durable metal backing. The Sansa e200 provides superior sound playback and supports Microsoft PlaysForSure subscription music. The SanDisk Media Converter supports most image formats to enjoy photos and small personal videos. Your Sansa e280 has expandable memory via a MicroSD memory card slot (cards are optional). It is tiny (44.1mm(w) x 88.9mm(l) x 13.2mm(h)), thin, light, and durable. Get ready for big things in MP3 with the Sandisk Sansa 280. It’s the player for you. User replaceable and rechargeable Lithium Ion battery for up to 20 hours of battery life Includes the Sansa Media Converter to support all picture and video formats Features microSD expansion slot for additional memory capacity Supports SanDisk TrustedFlash and Gruvi content cards Digital FM tuner, on-the-fly FM recording, and voice recording Supports Subscription Music Stores Minimum System Requirements – Windows XP; Windows Media Player 10+; CD-ROM drive; USB 2.0 port required for hi-speed transfer. -Amazon

Well when I picked out this little electronic do-dad for my step-dad for Christmas it may have been wise to check out the specks for it’s actual size.  This little guy, is LITTLE! 

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So being that I play tech-support for most of the electronics in my family and this one does connect to the computer I should get familiar with it and get it set up ready to go.  I figure I will dump how many Eagles songs I have laying around to it along with a video clip and a couple of family photos.  Who knew that was going to take so much of my time but I have to admit I am glad that I ran into issues and not my step-dad. 

So the first task was an easy one delete the current content and set the date/time and language.  Can handle those without the instructions.  Step two was to find the user manual and related software.  As a REFURB unit it didn’t come with either of these items.  That was fairly easy however the install of Sandisk’s media converter and the firmware update was not.  I am a multi-tasker and decided to install the media converter while I was still working on other things.  BAD idea!  As soon as that was installed Windows and or the Sansa decided to switch from  MSC (Mass Storage Class) to MTP (Media Transfer Protocol).  The first is where the device needed to be to do drag and drop of files and to install the firmware update.  The problem is that the device needs the firmware for the option to switch is listed in the settings.  Wonderful!  After several pages of forum post I finally found instructions for changing this; switch the hold/lock button to on and then press and hold the << button, it was the off or on that didn’t appear to work until FINALLY!! After this small set back all was right with the world and we began adding files.

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Included in the WHITE unmarked box:

  • USB Cable
  • Sansa
  • inexpensive ear buds

Pros:

  • The screen has great clarity when playing a video.
  • Sounds good to this girl with untrained ears.
  • Is small and light weight.
  • Does Audio recordings, FM radio and recordings, plays video, mp3 and pictures. 
  • Has a microSD slot. 
  • Holding 8g with a 2g expansion slot you should get ~2500 mp3s

Cons:

  • You have to use their media converter to add files, WHAT? you can’t just put a .jpg on there.
  • Uses a proprietary cord to connect via USB (WHY not use the USB mini like so many other things?  I am tired of keeping track of all these stupid cords.
  • Don’t seem to be able to “rotate” images or video. 
  • The plastic “wheel” is difficult to operate, it works like a direct rip off of the iPod.
  • It finger prints and looks bad quickly.
  • REFURB is stamped into the back, come on you couldn’t of put that inside? or made it less of a OMG LOOK it is a REFURB?

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I wish I had more time to play with the little guy but I purchased it as a gift and really just wanted to get it set up and working.  I do think that if I were in the market for an MP3 player Sandisk would be the first place I shop.  The only issue I have is that the current iPod has ALL my music on it.  Good bad or otherwise that is a lot of music.

it’s saturday

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

I have been a little side tracked this week, there is just a lot going on.  I have been testing an application and having to do things out of order.  Also had to let someone know at the exact moment that I broke anything due to the timing and urgency.  This means that my test summary document will be incredibly screwed up.  :)   But I did find something really interesting.  Our security department implemented a new auth page to run on Apache Tomcat, that’s really nice of them.  It’s called CAS auth.  Well funny some moron decided to set the login to only >2 are valid.  Nice since about 64 people have 2 character logins.  ;)   W00T! for me.

Gwen has had a minor issue this week, anal glands.  She started acting down about Wednesday so on Thursday I took a stab at expressing them myself.  OMG for the love of all things good and holy.  I choked and gaged for about 10 minutes after that 30 second ordeal.  Poor thing, she’s still not better and no one can see her on Saturday.  :(   So we must wait and watch her lay around in pain.  Maybe she’s not in pain but you can sure tell it is uncomfortable. 

Last night there was an ARS mini-meet for the Indy crew.  Some geeks are in town for Gen Con.  We met at the Broad Ripple Brew Pub, it is nicely situated near theMonon Trail.  After that a trip to ??? for some geeky Karaoke.  It was lots of fun.  Unfortunately I slept all the way home, I mean it was good for me but not the KLT.  The best part of last night?!  On the drive down we used my phone as the internet connection to KLT’s lappy and shut down servers while on the interstate doing 70+ mph.  I was playing server admin!! 

Well I think I need about 4 days off and it to rain all of them so I can get some work done.  The house is in dire need of cleaning, I need to update some software, rebuild by phone, transfer photos and perform a back up.  I am sure that isn’t even 1/2 of it. 

random things

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

So there is a flood light, actually a pair at the corner of my house in the back yard.  I have been here for 4 years now and have never been able to figure out how to turn it on.  Sure I found a random light switch that did nothing but I never figured out this light.  New bulbs and everything.  GUESS WHAT?! Tonight as I walked into the house the light came on and I was able to turn it off and on with the random switch.  Please pray that I don’t burn up in a house fire tonight.  :) Thanks.

I need to update my blogging software and learn to make templates.  Great stuff! Except that I did all the reading and research well over a year ago and have forgotten the basics.  I really don’t want to do it all again.  :(   What a lazy geek I am.

Scope Creep.  Do you know what that means?

Scope creep (also called focus creep, requirement creep, feature creep, and sometimes kitchen sink syndrome) in project management refers to uncontrolled changes in a project’s scope. This phenomenon can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled. It is generally considered a negative occurrence that is to be avoided. 

So I asked for 1 week to test something and was given about 3 days. Magically last week I was given an extra 2 but they were plagued with downtimes of critical systems needed to do my testing.  For 2 days this week I was in training getting a full dose of why I don’t want to be a test script writer and that brings us to Wednesday, yes that is TODAY.  (and the light just went off) Between all my meetings I discovered that “requirements” had changed.  The system had been updated to remove some functionality and a new piece of functionality was being built.  Upon my questioning I was told it was in the requirements.  UH MY ASS!  And now things I was counting on (oops! light on, this would be great if it were a clapper!) are no longer there.  So does anyone really know what the crap is going on? Does anyone understand that I HATE REGRESSION TESTING? Oh wait they don’t cause they didn’t think I needed to test anything later, you know just testing that one piece would be fine.  Furthermore my boss has stated that we don’t have time to do it all and that we will need to decide what is good enough and call it done.  Doesn’t that make what I am doing a waste of time?  I mean you are not going to fix anything I tell you is broken cause it is really “good enough”.  Maybe we can go back to omitting testing, I mean the developer did unit testing and checked it out in DEV so that should be “good enough” right?  You did let the “architect” do all of the integration testing and determined it was good enough.  Really what is it you want me to do here? I know I will learn new skills for my next job.  ;)  

Today was a pretty bad dog day.  Gwen seems to be hurting again, which is bad!  She won’t give me a high five but when I extended her neck to look straight up she could.  Also she’s been inside since 8 ish and we have been outside, there has been no barking.

Ok, that is all for the night.  Time for bed – too bad there was no hot tub time in there.

****this post brought to you by record high and recorded high

The top 10

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

A short while back some krannert guy decided that in order to create a better work enviroment and have a team of high performers we needed to rank our employees.  While this strategy has worked for many years successfully at many companies success is entirely dependant on implementation.  Guess what itap does poorly?  Give up?  IMPLEMENTATION!  Yet again we have implemented something, sucked at it and created more heartache than good. 

First our super duper non-elected VP (recenlty changed to exectutive director) decided that the bottom 10% was not enough we need to list our bottom 20% or something stupid like that.  But the real problem lies in the top 10 see we have about 100 people working here in our division meaning that 10 people get to be TOP.  This has been such a demotivator that I would imangine that productivity has gone down since the implementation of this system.  The general feeling is that most of the people on the list are just ass kissers, yeah you heard me I went there.  Sure there are some on there that truely deserve it.  But the down fall is that the top 10 get special “rewards”, get to be on special committies, and go to special meetings.  Hey doesn’t having your best performers out of the office mean that like 2x the amount of work is not getting done?  HAHHAHH! Only if they were truly preformers and not ass kissers.  I guess that my biggest beef is that there are a FAIR chunk of people in that middle 80% that care more, do more and are better qualified and suited for their job.  This group of people are being discriminated against, treated like below average citizens and get lower % of raises. 

 So how did we go wrong?  IMO it started with not clearly defining what the expectations and criteria are for being a top performer.  But let me give you the list

  • No plan to help the bottom x% move up, no training, no mentoring NOTHING!
  • No clear expectations
  • No reprocussion for doing bad when you are a top performer – I mean our top 10 yelled at the boss in a meeting, was deeming and disrespectful.  She excused it with “everyone has a bad day”.  (this has happened a lot lately)
  • Improper treating of the work horse group – the 80% I mean if all the 80% people left you’d be up shit creek
  • It is a seeekrit list, but we all “know”
  • Being discriminated against be cause I am not the bosses “friend” is one thing doing it publicly is another
  • No plan as to what this means, what we are going to do with this or why it is important
  • Apparently if you are top 10 then the big guy wants you to stay working here so they are trying really hard to retain them, uh … what about those actually doing the work?

Ok I guess it is time to end my lunch time rant.

Last Night

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

Ok well here we are on the glorious flight from IND to MCO.  Well little did I know that leaving in the middle of the afternoon was a bad idea. Why?  Well that is the “family” departure time.  I shall never book flights at this time again. And for those of you who thought of this and ddin’t mention it a flight to Orlando is a flight full of CHILDREN.  You know my rules about only bringing as many kids as you have adults.  That is also now a rule of flying.  HAHAHHAH!  So far they are quiet, with the exception of the singing and cheering. 

So the captain and first officer have had a real since of humor which is great.  They are predicting us to drive through a storm and are asking the flight attendants to sit down and buckle up also.   GREAT SCOTT!  GOD really does hate me. 

So about some technology things.  Xobni has been uninstalled.  It was killing my machine or so I think.

Hey the thought just came to me.  I can’t bring a nail file, cuticle scissors or anything else that might be a weapon on to the airplane but they give you these rather long drink stirs made from solid plastic with a point on the end with your beverage.  What gives?   I mean I could put your eye out with that.  I am currently sipping vodka #2!