Those electrons up in the sky have been up to it again. They've gathered forces and in about a day, struck a girl sleeping in bed, a boy through his video game controller, and a worker at the National Weather Service facility. I for one welcome our new electron overlords. Partially because if I try to get rid of them, I'll die. I'm especially fond of the last one, since they were tracking a severe weather system at the time.
Back to the shameless self promoting that we've all grown to expect. I saw The Eels at the 9:30 club on Tuesday. My sister wanted to go, but didn't want to go alone, so she got me to go. She thought they'd be on later, for whatever reason I'll never know, so we didn't get there until 9:15ish. Unfortunately, they started around 8:15, so we missed a good portion of their show. We still got to see a good set, and they did three encores. A couple of which contained multiple songs. They'd disappear, and people would start to leave, or bang their hands together violently, and the band would eventually come back. My sister had some doubts each time that they'd be coming back, but if there's one thing I learned from working stage-crew in high school, it's that that whole fat-lady-singing thing is a myth; it's not over until they bring up the house lights.
I'm working some great hours this weekend. Here's a quick run down:
| day | begin | end |
| Saturday | 8:00 am | 12:00 noon |
| Sunday | 12:00 midnight | 6:00 am |
| Sunday Night-Monday Morning | 10:00 pm | 3:00 am |
| Monday | 12:00 noon | 5:00 pm |
| Tuesday | 6:00 am | 12:00 noon |
The actual encounter with Tempel 1 will be at 1:52 am EDT Monday morning. I'll be working at the open house then, but I've been told that I'll be able to see the data as it comes in. If you're bored, here's the UMD website for Deep Impact.
3 comments:
What do you actually do for the astronomy department?
And did you ever do anything about that multi-directional time experiment?
I write programs for the astronomy department. See, astronomers deal with a ton of data, and that data is contained in files. It would take too long for these astronomers to go through all the files by hand to get what they're looking for, so I work on utilities that allow them to get work done faster. I also design web pages for them, and try to bring all their data files up to the Planetary Data System (PDS) standards. Tech support, DVD burning, odds and ends... basically I'm a research bitch.
As for the time thing, I haven't done the experiment yet, because I don't have easy access to the materials needed and my background in Quantum Electro Dynamics (QED) is in want of a formal and detailed understanding. After I read a few books, and decide to invest in some expensive lasers, I'll get started.
Post a Comment