STS-119, BSG, and Jayne mk. II

2009.03.15 in personal

Lots and lots of bits and pieces:

Just before I headed home for spring break, Mom and Dad decided that Dad and I should go to Florida: STS-119 was supposed to launch on Wednesday night, and there's only a year's worth of shuttle launches left before we never get a chance to see one. We decided to fly down Wednesday morning, and back up Thursday afternoon, and stay overnight at my grandfather's house, in Fellsmere.



Our flight out was at 6 AM, so we had to get up at 4 and head on over to BTV; the security people were irritating as usual, and decided to pat me down in order to find my entirely non-metallic wallet (or is it? duct tape? I don't know... Dad got through with his without any trouble). The flight was mostly uneventful; my ears aren't horribly happy with me, with the pressure changes while I'm coming off a little cold... We had a layover in JFK for an hour, and then the remainder of the flight. Again, uneventful.

We got to Pepa's after a long drive down the highway, just in time to discover that the launch had gotten scrubbed. DARN! Apparently it's a good thing they scrubbed it, though, apparently there was so much hydrogen leaked around the engines that it would have caused an enormous explosion...

After we all took a nap, we heard that it was delayed more than a day (initially they said they'd try again the next day), so we couldn't delay our flight and hang out in Florida until it went. NOOOO! So, unfortunately, that part of our trip was lost. Still, we decided to go to Kennedy Space Center the next day, take the tours, look around, see what we could see...



That's Dad in front of the next-generation Orion capsule (part of the Constellation program that's replacing the Shuttles). There are lots of other cool pictures of stuff over on Flickr, including a picture of Discovery's fuel tank peeking over the scaffolding out on the pad, which was, unfortunately, all we could see.

We flew back Thursday afternoon, after a many-hour delay due to the plane we were supposed to leave on having hit a duck on its way into Orlando... they found us another plane, and we left at about 10:30, though we were supposed to leave at 7... got back at some time after 1 AM...

All in all it was a fun trip — an adventure off in Florida with Dad, and I got to visit Pepa's new house in Florida, and hang out with him and Bernice for the evening.

Battlestar Galactica: everyone at school has been raving about it and watching it, Reddit is obsessed, the Internet is up in arms, and I hadn't watched any of it up until recently. During the past week, I've run through the whole first season, and most of the second, and I have to say: if you haven't been watching it, you must. It's not a TV show, or a movie, or a book. It's a story, and it's amazing.

Jayne mk. II is up and running. I decided not to change the name because coming up with a new name is really hard, and because it shares so many parts with the original Jayne that it really doesn't deserve a new name. All is going well, and I've not yet had any more temperature/power/whatever problems. Awesome!

Anyway, it's back to Troy for me, tomorrow...

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