Silence of the Mind

I have officially completed a lifes dream and seen a shuttle launch in person.

I've posted a quick batch of launch photos from STS-129 yesterday.

http://www.davebrownphotos.com/Space/STS-129/

( A few select photos... )

We ended up not going to Seaworld on Thursday...got up late and just said to heck with it and went to DownTown Disney and hit DisneyQuest and Cirque Du Soleil's La Nouba performance. DisneyQuest was rather cool, and La Nouba was just mindboggling. I left the performance with dry eyes for fear of blinking and missing something...and I know I missed things. It was just mindblowing.

Friday we did Seaworld. It was ok, but not the highlight of the trip by any strech. angie_di managed to browbeat me onto the Manta roller coaster, which was tolerable except for the one negative G section(RedOut is no fun and sickmaking). The rest of the park was so-so, and I think I can honestly say I've done SeaWorld and won't care if I go again or not.

After Seaworld we came home, had dinner, and grabbed a 2 hour nap before heading for Port Canaveral to watch the Atlas 5 night launch. The viewing spot was surprisingly easy to find(just look for all the cars) and I got set up and shot several photos of the very spotlight lit up rocket. I wandered over to talk with another photographer and we chatted for awhile...until he heard on his scanner as well as from someone next to us that the launch was scrubbed. Apparently there was a power dropout on a component about 30 min from launch and they decided to scrub, pull it back and replace the part. So the launch will not be until Wednesday at the very soonest, and probably later than that.

Today we went to KSC, which I postponed until today so I could get the Up Close tour that takes you to several not normaly seen areas. I asked as we got there if it was worth going on the normal tour in addition to the Up Close one and was assured that I would not miss anything at all. After doing the tour, and looking at the map of the normal tour...I was fibbed to. The normal tour goes to 2 different locations that the Up Close does not, and while the Up Close gets us right in between the 2 launch complexes and gets great photos, it really did not feel like it was worth the extra money for it. I felt a little gypped in that regard, but all in all it seemed like a decent tour. I just really really REALLY wish that they'd have stopped pointing at things out the bus window as we drove by and not stopping to photograph them. I skimmed my photos and I have SO many shots with peoples heads in them or that are blurred or at strange angles as I tried to grab a shot without looking. Seriously annoyed by that, to the point that I'm likely going to write a letter to the tour company that has the KSC contract to complain about it. If I'm going to pay extra for a specialty tour the least they can do is pause for a moment for photos, even if they're not allowed to let us off the bus.

Tonight is the last night at the hotel, tomorrow we head to Disney. Monday is the shuttle launch..1 Day, 13 hours, 5 minutes left to go.

We spent today running around and scouting the Titusville spot for watching the shuttle launch. I think it will do nicely, and from the photos I'm seeing online I don't think being 4 miles closer is worth $230 for commercial tour tix. Has a nice view and you can see the VAB(all 52 stories of it) for comparison during launch.

I had a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee again for the first time since I was in Boston 4 years ago...the first sip was not near as good as I recalled(and angie_di noticed the expression on my face) but once it cooled a bit it was pretty good for store bought coffee.

We tested out the google maps nav app on my iphone, it was seriously handy as well travelled around but in the 4 hours we were using it it ran the battery down to under 30%. So its very useful, but need a car charger if I'm going to use it extensively.

Tomorrow, we take a shuttle from Seaworld to Busch Gardens in Tampa. Should be interesting, and I know angie_di will enjoy it.

Work took me to Kodiak just after Dutch Harbor, and these are a few photos from there. I didn't do much, just ran north to Monashka Bay and wandered the beach a bit, then went to Ft Abercrombie.


Full Set
http://www.davebrownphotos.com/Alaska/200909-03KodiakArea/9859046_z45MN

( Cut for photos... )

5 years ago Holly broke up with me.
4 years ago, after thinking it over I realized I was probably going to be single for the rest of my life.
2 years ago, I met Jess
1 year ago, I realized maybe I wouldn't be single the rest of my life
Today.....I proposed to her.

Still in Dutch Harbor. I did manage to get a room last night atleast, and the wind is no longer beating on my window, so I may have a fair shot at getting home today.

I'll be working on a data center move with a client tonight. Its going to be an all hands thing, the client's entire IT Dept plus all the breakfix techs and engineers from my shop as well as reps from IBM, Dell, and several other vendors. This is the first data center move I've done, there have been the usual "We're building a new data center and copying data from the old servers to the new ones in the new data center" but this is the first "We're going to unrack every server in this data center and move it to the new data center in the other building." that I'll have worked.

I've been in the IT industry for 17 years now, and this is a first for me...the last opportunity I had was when IAI moved all their gear out of the old Bank of America space into a Colo room at ATU(now ACS). Unfortunately they didn't tell me I was working that one till the day before and I couldn't get leave so I could work all night(I was still on Active Duty then). That was back in '99 some time...so its been 10 years since the last opportunity to do this came up.

Tonight is going to be "interesting". Atleast we got the services of someone from my company whos sole job is moving datacenters to coordinate all this(yes, as a company we do this often enough that we have a guy at headquarters that ONLY does DC moves for clients)

And posting is complete

2009 3 Barons Renaissance Faire is now posted

My photos are at...
http://www.davebrownphotos.com/renfaire2009


Jess's are at...
http://www.jjpervier.smugmug.com/

I got all the photos for Ren Faire rated and renamed now. I was expecting to spend the next 2 evenings resizing and exporting, but then i remembered a plugin for Lightroom called LR2TreeExporter that I'd read about, and checked it out. Its donationware, so I donated $8.11(5 british Pounds) and tested it.

It worked perfectly...exported the whole of RenFaire in less than 30 minutes. Now I just have to spend some time in StarExplorer creating galleries and sub galleries and albums and then upload the nearly 5GB of photos I decided to post. I culled out 200 completely out of focus/crap photos(and should have nuked another 800) and culled out another 5600 photos for a total of 2100ish photos for the year.

Heres to hoping they're all uploaded by monday evening.

Today is our second anniversary...not bad for someone that a few years ago was resigned to being single the rest of his life. :-)