I'm a Small Fish in a Giant Ocean

Needless to say, that is how I feel almost on a daily basis at NASA. It's not a bad thing, I'm just happy I get to share the same ocean as the whales, although I do like my friend Gary's version of "You're a big fish in an infinitely large universe". It really hits you that what you do is some of the coolest things ever when the NASA Facebook page shares something like this:

HOLY CRAP! It's Alan and Kevin!

And you see people talking about it and liking and what-nots you do on Facebook. Then you're like OH SHIT! I KNOW THOSE PEOPLE! Pony tail guy's my boss (told you ponytails were a thing)...and the other dude is my office mate! We're pretty damn cool.

I'm really picky about my work environment. I like my office to inspire me somehow. I like light. I get none of that at NASA. I went from having a good 80 sq ft office with windows and a small conference table in the office, to sharing a VERY small cube with 2 other people in a windowless room with printers outside. And being the new guy, of course, you get the bitch seat. It also smells weird and you have all of zero privacy. I would have expected that I would hate the situation, but then I step outside of my desk.

I step into the AMAZING stuff that's going on. I get to play with vacuum chambers and space simulators. I get to see what you've done go into space. And it's not that bad.

No need for a motivational poster.

Then you see something like this and you realize people actually care about what your doing. It's pretty amazing. It makes 4 hour meetings with a German guy, who ended the meeting with "Basically, you guys can not do what we've ask you to do", bearable.

I've also started to realize, I can still learn. I can still reinvent myself one more time. Though I am not your equal, I will be...shortly.

STOP PASSING ME YOU JERKS!!! A Story of My First Marathon

On 12May2013, I was recovering from my worst half-marathon (Maryland Half). This one sucked, mainly because I just got back from China and gained a good 15 lbs and this course was hilly as shit. On a whim, and hating my own fat ass, I signed up for the Baltimore Marathon. I was going to do one eventually, but thought, what the hell! It's 5 months away, I can train hard and get it down. So I did.

It has been a challenging process both mentally and physically, with challenges runner don't or forget to tell you about. Here's somethings you can expect if you decide to train seriously for running:

1) Body Glide and/or Vaseline is your best friend. NEVER leave home without it. Where ever there is skin on skin touching... you will chaff... and it will suck for days on end. Yeah no one wants butt cheek chaff. And when it rains, like it did for part of my marathon, you BEST hope you cover yourself in Body Glide.

2) Pasta is a close second. At the end, you will hate it with a passion and never want to touch it again. Beans are good too. I also turned vegetarian during the week, which helped me lose a shit ton of weight, but fuck any low carb stupid diet.

3) You will need more exercise clothes, especially during summer training. It will all smell of BO, ALL OF IT. All of your shirts will, at some point, fail the smell test, most of them need to be soaked for hours in detergent. You will sweat... a lot.

4) Say goodbye to toenails. They start receding and don't come back. Goodbye left index toenail...I barely knew ye.

5) Injuries will happen. I've gotten: planar faciitis, shin splints, a pain that won't go away in my left pinky toe, IT band inflammation. And I consider myself luck as shit!

6) There is no greater feeling than finishing your race and meeting your goals. It makes you want to do it again, and again, and again.

6a) There is no WORSE feeling than 3 hours after finishing. Death could not come soon enough. 

Of all the suck that has happened, I did lose a lot of weight. I will say, for the first time in a LONG ASS TIME, I'm ok with pictures without a shirt on, I don't disgust myself. I've also have a lot more mental fortitude to deal with shit, since at about mile 21 of my marathon, both knees with screaming in pain, and my calves where on strike, but I made it to the finish line. 

Lastly, I want to thank Chris Keller for being the inspiration to all this. Without you, I wouldn't have done this. I want to thank Cais Rasouli for giving me a reason to running and set deadlines for myself. Thank you to Kevin Kempter for being there every step of the way and forcing me to run when all I wanted to do is eat shitty shrimp from bad Chinese buffets. 

The next step for me is to jump in a pool, hop on a bike, and run some more. Triathlon here I come!!

 

The list of Congressmen/women that need to lose their seat

I will donate to the DCCC and to everyone of these peoples challengers in 2013. I would like these people gone!

Here's the shortlist (mainly because I don't have that much money to move around):

Steve King- 4th district Iowa

This fucker also went to Egypt with Michelle Bachmann and praised the military take over thinking that the Muslim Brotherhood=Al-Qaeda

Todd Rokita - 4th district Indiana

He keeps fucking saying that the Senate has not given a budget yet. HEY DIPSHIT! you have to give a budget to the Senate. Though the Senate has a budget committee, the House Ways and Means and Rules have to pass it through before going to Senate. YOU, and your House, are the FUCKHEADS in this situation.

Bill Cassidy - 6th district Louisiana
John Fleming - 4th district Louisiana

You two... Jesus... you are from the fattest state in the nation, with THE MOST UNHEALTHY people in the nation, yet refuse ACA's expansion of medicare. Last time I checked, both of you voted for Issac relief, but asked for spending cuts for Sandy relief. FUCK YOU!

Virginia Foxx - 5th district North Carolina

Let's see your old granny ass fuck ups:

1) You voted NO on Katrina relief
2) YES on Pres. Bush's TARP
3) Said we've had the best economy in 50 years
4) NO on hate crime designation on crimes against LGBT
5) You tried to introduce legislation that would not give children born in the US to undocumented people citizenship (THAT is unconstitutional and fascist!)

I don't say this as a joke, I'm hoping these decisions were made because you have Alzheimer or ALS, if you don't, feel free to get both of them.

Eric Cantor - 7th district Virginia

It shames me that I share a state with you. It makes me feel dirty and unclean. Please never set foot in Northern Virginia.

That is my short list... I will donate $10 per candidate to the DCCC in 2013 and $100 to ANY Democratic challenger that goes against these people. There are so many more, like 90% of Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma need to go... but I'm not rich

27 votes

As of 9:38PM 30Sep2013, the House of Representative tabled the Senate CR to continuing funding the federal government with no riders and/or amendments. The voted failed by 27 votes. Now, I'm sitting at home hoping that this thing doesn't last too long because I need money... to pay the rent... to buy food... to pay back a college loan. But there are 27 people out there, 9 of them Democrats, thinking that it is somehow more responsible to shut down the federal government because Obamacare is law, than to allow people to do their jobs.

27 votes. Out of 435 people, the final gap was 27.

In what world does the Republicans live in? What possible benefit can be had from this? All of a sudden they want to stand behind principles. I'm not going to list out Republican "principles", but let's just say they are wrong, immoral, and severely out of place for a 21st century developed nation.

I have no problems with compromise. We are a federal representative democracy. We do not run a parliamentary system where there is a majority governing party and an opposition party. But what kind of compromise is this that the Republicans have dished up? Let's rehash:

You, Dems + Obama, must delay Obamacare for 1 year, and we will give you 15 days of funding. In 15 days, not only will we be back here again, we'll make more demands on raising the debt ceiling. Then, we will keep spending at this shitty lower rate, and you give us more cuts. Republicans, full heartily FUCK YOU and the horse you rode in on.

This is no compromise. 1 year delay over major legislation for 15 days of running the government. As if, we the Dems, are the only people that have a vested interest in keeping a functional nation.

The sad thing is, the Republicans that have voted for this bullshit come from states like Ohio, Kansas, Alabama, etc. Those states are the burden upon the federal government. They repeatedly need federal funding to keep their governments solvent. Yet, these states, and the idiots that vote for these representative somehow think the government is the problem. Irony. At it's best.

It's hard to voice the anger that I'm experiencing. I'm a fucking federal subcontractor. Civil servants will probably get paid. Contractors get 40 hours vacation fronted to them. Us, the subcontractors? We get nothing. I have no vacation and my health benefits will probably run out in 2 weeks. So, instead of complaining some more, I say call John Boehner's office and yell random obscenities to him and his staff. Here's his number: (202) 225-6205   

The 1st Annual NASA Basketball Championship

The NBA is only 30 days away! But if you're antsy for some fast paced basketball action, come to NASA!

Our company had a BBQ on Thursday at NASA Goddard Rec Center. Let me preface this place for you:

1) It looks like the place where NASA buried the dead astronauts that were lost in freak accidents back in the 60's.
2) There's a creepy shed in the back that has caution tape strewn all over it.
3) The basketball court probably looks like it belonged in Silent Hill than a government compound.

Granted, it was much less creepy in the amazingly nice weather we had on Thursday. Company picnics are a time were people that normally see each other gather and fraternize. Sometimes, there are team building activities. This was not that time.

This time, some decided it was a good idea to bring a basketball to play on the court with grass growing out of it. Oh yeah... it's as epic as you can imagine NASA basketball to be. Here was the starting line up:

Center: Ponytail guy, late 20's early 30's, wearing black shirt and pants with a red skinny tie.

Forward: Indian dude that seems confused as to why we're not throwing the ball at a wicket. And why there's no paddle involved...

Forward: Your stereotypical corporate guy. Regular fit (read: baggy) purple dress shirt, shelves rolled up, black slacks, and sport sunglasses

Guard: Checkered shirt tucked into jeans guy with a goatee

Guard: Guy with cargo pants

There was also a guy who just stood under the basket to retrieve the "shots".

So the game starts with our goatee'ed guard shooting the ball from what I will loosely call the three point line. And what happens?? On the VERY FIRST SHOT...VERY FIRST! The ball gets wedged between the hoop and the backboard. Yup... it's like some bad 80's movie about nerds was coming true.

You might ask, "How did they get it down?" First, you shouldn't ask that questions, it will only lead to disappointment. Second, you'd think with all this brain power and corporate know-how in once place this wouldn't be much of a story... Yeah...well...what had happened was...

The two forwards stand still in a defensive stance as to box out anyone that may want to get the "rebound" from this shot, while the ball CLEARLY IS NOT MOVING. Our other non-goatee'ed all star thinks that it is a good idea to throw his shoe at the ball. His shoe gets stuck.

His shoe gets stuck.

With the ball.

That that sink in for just a bit....

Our all-pro team center, then, has the BRILLIANT idea to get a chair. To do what? Stand on it and jump off, trying to knock the ball lose. This made White Man Can't Jump look like a highlight reel of Michael Jordan's greatest jams. The guy BARELY got 8 inches off the chair.

They can send a satellite 1.5 million miles from earth, but getting yourself more than 8 inches off the ground...impossible.

At this moment are corporate guy is standing there in his corporate super hero stance, with his hands on his hips all alpha like and is looking at the ball, giving the all so corporately ubiquitous "looks like we got a problem here, team" look. If you don't know what that looks like, go to a regional manager of ANY company and present him/her with a problem. They all give the same goddamn look, and then proceed to do nothing.

At this point, I'm done eating and really REALLY can't handle this type of fast paced excitement, especially after lunch. As we leave, our skinny tied center finally got the brilliant idea of poking the ball AND the shoe out with the chair that he was using as a launch pad. YAY!!! Order restored!

Now we can all go back and shoot air balls so the only person that gets any exercise out of this is the guy standing under the basket. He is my game, year, and finals MVP.

DON'T EVEN BREATH ON IT!

I am the guy that, at almost every meeting, takes frantic notes. Not really because I per se care about what the person is talking about, but because I write down things I need to Google later. This is week 3, and I'm finally out of the "jaw dropping" phase, but have entered the "actually doing work" phase. For the past little bit, I've been reading up on vacuum physics and Googling things like "quartz crystal microbalance", but now it's time to do work.

One of the things I'm doing is a satellite that will be shooting lasers at the north pole to see ice thickness. Most of it is being built in the "why humans suck" building. I recommend this building to anyone that denies climate change or that humans are behind it. It gives you many MANY images of earth over time and the decrease in arctic ice, deforestation, desertification, and explosions in human pollution, CO2 and other emissions. If you ever want to a) depress yourself or b) get motivated to recycle, I recommend this building. 

The other thing I'm doing looks like something out of Star Wars. It's large. Tennis court sized large. I'm working with a team of people that will be in charge of making sure instruments are clean and free from contamination. This is much harder than one would think. Especially when you're assigned to an instrument that's so high tech, I'm pretty sure it's the only one in the world. 

The idea is awesome, I'll spare you the details, but it's basically hundreds of micron sized shutter that can capture light at a whole bunch of wavelengths. The problem with this is the shutters. They are small... couple hundred microns small. So, while I'm working to take samples off the cover and shit, the guy in charge of assembly gives me the background. Apparently, the damn thing is so sensitive, that if you tighten the screws in from the wrong side, you'll mess it up. So, if you go in on it's left side, instead of the right, IT'S FUCKED! The best though, THE BEST thing about this amazing piece of equipment is you can't breath on it. If you come close, hold your breathe. I feel like if I stare at this thing too long it'll just destroy itself. The project lead on this has a long pony tail that he start growing when this project started, 8 years ago... I am convinced that this is his version of the Fidel Castro beard... it's like he won't cut it until this thing goes into space VIVA LA REVOLUCIóN!!

So, you're not supposed to breath on it...check. I can do that... except for today when I was inspecting the compartment this instrument was supposed to go in, I almost ram a UV flashlight right through it. Yay...new guy...

Good thing I didn't... good thing it still works

My coffee break involves watching a rocket launch

Today, there was a rocket launched at Goddard's site on the eastern shore of VA, at Wallops Island. The launch was between 10:30 and 11:15, the "launch window". We had a meeting until 10:15 and right after people just started going onto the roof top. I remember hearing on the radio that Orbital Space Science was launching today and will be the 2nd private company, first being SpaceX, to send a rocket into space to dock with the International Space Station.

In about 10 minutes of the launch, every roof top at Goddard had people standing on it and people outside watching 2 small puff of smoke go up in the eastern sky. People were streaming the launch countdown on their phone and giving live commentary...yeah NASA. It all ended in about 10 minutes, which is really crazy considering we can send something into space in less than 10 minutes.

So today's coffee break...rocket launch.

I've stated noticing that at NASA there's a couple of trends. Here are some:

1) Ponytails are a thing. The number of people with ponytails...is surprising.
2) Hawaiian shirt Friday? It's a thing at NASA...for realz
3) We love stickers and signs. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! You will never forget where you work or what project your on.
4) We have an ultimate team...go figure
5) I work with a guy that I would nickname Jebadiah  or Ezequiel. The weird thing is... he has the start of a beard, but it's more like a really thick chin strap, without a mustache. It's kinda weird. Also, he walks around all day with a visor. It's like the Amish Bro...without the mustache.
6) People love to accessorize their cars with NASA stuff, it's kinda crazy. This makes sense, since working at NASA is pretty awesome. The funny thing is...one car... a blacked out Escalade, had at least 5 mission stickers and then this:

     Yeah... there's a NASA engineer or scientist that <3's sushi....

I love my job.