Geek Habitat

Somehow, after never having won any notable contest in my life, I am one of the 100 lucky Twitter folks invited by NASA to attend the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-129), currently scheduled to lift-off on November 16, 2009! Here’s my oh-so-professional first tweet on the topic (LOL!)

This Geek Gal is getting to live a dream come true–attending a Space Shuttle launch in person at Kennedy Space Center. I’m trying to be a cool cucumber, but considering I got the news 12 hours ago (per GMail) and my pulse still hasn’t calmed down, it’s apparently going to be a very long 27 or so days ’til launch.

I’m a huge space geek, so a large part of the excitement/stress is knowing that the Shuttle may not launch on November 16th as planned. In fact, they’ve already lost one of their launch days/windows (wait, make that two) in the span of time it took NASA to launch and close the tweetup contest. So, I’m already starting my prayers for good weather, no scheduling or hardware issues and no other constraints for launch. If they don’t launch Atlantis on the 16th or 17th of November, their next window isn’t until December ‘09. The good news is NASA holds its Flight Readiness Review on October 29 and that will (much more firmly) flesh out the hopeful launch date. Having watching so many missions live on NASA TV and, lately, Spacevidcast.com — and so many scrubs due to weather or hardware hiccups — I still remain cautiously optimistic that I’ll come home from Florida with my “I’ve seen a Space Shuttle launch in person” life list item gleefully circled, underlined, highlighted and checked off!

Where Am I Viewing the Launch From? Doing What?

From NASA via email:
“After checking in with your badge and clearing security, you will board a bus to the Launch Complex 39 press site at Kennedy Space Center…. Tweetup attendees will interact with NASA personnel while enjoying the use of an air-conditioned tent with video monitors, WiFi and tables and chairs. Attendees will have access to the grass area by the launch countdown clock and flag. Buses will return attendees to their vehicles following the post-launch briefing (approximately 2 hours after launch).”
*Woot*

Thank You!

All #nasatweetup attendees were responsible for their own airfare, lodging, local transportation & food. Donations were in no way expected and aren’t tax deductible, but I’m so thankful for those of you who helped a life-long space geek fulfill her life-long dream to attend a Space Shuttle launch in person, and on the 6th to last flight, ever, of the Space Transportation System at that! THANK YOU (You know who you are!)

Follow Along at Home

Useful Twitter accounts and #hashtags to follow if you’re interested in following the Kennedy Space Center tweetup and launch of STS-129 are:

• @NASATweetup (Official NASA account)
• @NASA (Official NASA account)
• @NASAKennedy (Official NASA account)
• @ExploreSpaceKSC
• @STS129 (Spacevidcast.com official feed)
• @Ageekmom (ME!)
• #KSCTweetup
• #STS129
• #NASATweetup

If you’re craving photographs, there are already some nice pics of Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-129 (rollout to the pad, etc.) on Wikimedia Commons — royalty-free and public domain. Enjoy!

Check out this inane marketing campaign currently running which was on Motrin’s home page (Motrin.com) for at least 24 hours. I’ve included a YouTube link (someone else uploaded it) since undoubtedly at *some* point rational thought will prevail and they will pull the ad… after the damage is already done (there were many declaring a personal boycott of Motrin and/or encouraging others to boycott as well.)

PROBLEM: It belittles moms (and dads) who wear their babies (in slings, pouches, backpacks and other baby carriers), and the gal narrating sounds like a total self-absorbed ditz. Of all the ways to sell your pain med, makes you wonder WHO thought that was a good angle to take. Geez. What’s their alternate ad pitch… a ditzy gal complaining about what a drag breastfeeding is, perhaps? /FAIL

More on the furor that’s spread(ing) on Twitter about the ad is available in this article.

And more here, in the form of a video that highlights some of the many comments shared about the ad on Twitter.com. You can follow the discussion in real-time, as well.

I guess the quickest way to explain why the ad’s offensive is they’re belittling something NATURAL to sell a DRUG PRODUCT.

POSTSCRIPT: As of 10:40 PM CST, Motrin.com is OFFLINE/unresponsive — coincidence? Doubtful. And an apology email has already been dispatched to some of the first folks to write in to Motrin.com and complain about the tone and content of the ad. Here’s more on the continuing saga. Apparently the ad is also part of a current print ad campaign, but Twitter proved to be the focus group that Motrin’s brand seems to have lacked when it conceived of and executed the ad. It didn’t have a sympathetic tone, a genuine “we feel your pain” (their slogan… meh) and instead veered headlong off the precipice of “we have absolutely no idea who you are.”

Guy Kawasaki. Cool guy, if you don’t know of him you’re not hanging out on Twitter and the Net in the right places!

Anyway, he just posted a wonderful blog entry about his 26 hours aboard USS Stennis, a nuclear aircraft carrier. Yes, he even got to arrive via a carrier-arrested landing. *jealous*  Enjoy his post with 130+ photos, 5+ videos, and lots of terrific factoids celebrating our US Navy & Marine Corps and the technology that supports them. Kinda buried in his post is an interesting external link about how to land on an aircraft carrier.

Minor knock: Guy says he didn’t post them to Flickr because “he can’t figure out Flickr.” Guy’s too smart not to be able to figure out Flickr. Methinks the pageviews to his ads and such are killer ($$+) on that post. Just sayin’ … If he truly wanted the widest dissemination on the photos, he’d upload them to Flickr and license them via Creative Commons so others could use and share them.

Note: This entry was actually started on MONDAY, July 28 –

It’s clear from my infrequent blog posts that I’ve been fighting “the crud” (sinus infection and, for awhile, lower respiratory infection) for months, really. About the time I’d get so fed up with it that I’d entertain going to the doctor, it would seem to abate, but only long enough to sneak up on me by the following weekend. When you have bad allergies (forget “seasonal”–these are omnipresent) you sometimes forget when you’ve crossed the line from “Geez, this is a horrible allergy season and I can’t remember the last time I felt really GOOD,” to “Geez, I feel really, utterly awful…the worst I have in a long time. And I don’t seem to ever being getting WELL.”

I woke up Monday morning feeling especially crappy, and finally decided it was time to drag my sorry carcass to the Texas MedClinic. I’ve known I was dealing with a full-blown, tenacious sinus infection. (It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to correctly identify a rocket!) However, by Monday morning my left eye was painful and the area around it was swollen, red and purple, itchy and… numb, like I’d been shot with Novacaine. I know, how can you be numb and in pain in the same area? Go figure!

Anyway, the sinuses in the left side of my face have been especially angry, so much so for several days prior to Monday’s “eye opening” experience (*groan*), I’d been unable to chew food on the left side of my mouth because my furthest molar in my upper jaw couldn’t handle any pressure without sending shockwaves of pain through my head. Think exposed nerve. Think the kind of pain you imagine you’d feel if the dentist forgot to numb an area of your mouth before setting to work on a root canal.

All the pains, and now numbness, were puzzling and setting off alarm bells, but the eye is really what made me go straight to the doctor. As I posted on Flickr, “More than four weeks of recurring sinus pain and congestion and it took this to finally make me haul my ass in to the doctor. I’m not playing around with something that could turn into orbital cellulitis.

To make matters worse, Justin is out of town from midday Tuesday through much of Saturday, shooting photos at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh (the world’s largest airshow) for General Aviation News. Not only would I be on my own with our beautiful, full-of-energy 16-month-old, but I’d be on my own and potentially in need of an emergency doctor visit if I didn’t act a *little* proactively! The fact that Jus had taken Monday off to prepare for Oshkosh turned out to be doubly beneficial, since it meant I could go to the MedClinic and he could be with Sara, removing one more mental “obstacle” I’d set up for why I didn’t want to go to the doctor.

So I dragged my arse to the MedClinic down the street on Monday morning shortly after they opened at 8 AM. From my Twitter feed on Monday:
“Going to medclinic. Sinus pain unbearable and now eye is swollen. Sigh 07:18 AM July 28, 2008”
Other than going to the doctor and picking up my prescriptions on the way home (10 day course of antibiotics, corticosterioid nasal spray and prescription eyedrops), the only thing I did other than SLEEP was post a couple illness-related photos to Flickr -> http://flickr.com/photos/wildtexas/tags/sick/. What a gripping life I do lead, eh? {Bridget Jones’ Diary reference}

Anyway, it’s now THURSDAY at 10:30 PM and I can report I have been feeling progressively better since the meds started coursing through my system. I am still not 100%, but today was the first day I felt up to dropping Sara off with her other grandfolks’ (Justin’s parents) so she could play with her cousins who were also there for the day. With Sara safely and happily ensconced in games with her cousins, I came home and made a whirlwind attempt to catch up on all the things I had fallen behind on during my sickbed days:

• laundry (even WITH Justin’s help before he left for Osh, I was still depressingly behind on laundry loads & folding/hanging the clean stuff.)
• mowing & edging the front lawn which was starting to make the (not good) neighbors’ DEAD lawn look somehow “nice and manicured”
• dropping off recyclables and donations at their requisite spots
• an impromptu visit to my folks’ to chat with Mom (who had a very rough day) & grab lunch
• checking our business P.O. Box
• decluttering, etc.

I was also eager to indulge in some World of Warcraft, but my desktop computer was slightly out of commission–slow as molasses. Last night, right after Sara fell asleep, I managed to complete the initial installation of our business’ shiny new HP MediaSmart Home Server (shipped with one 500 GB drive and upgraded with two 1TB drives; still with one hot-swap HD bay free) and I didn’t pay attention to its default backup routine so it started dutifully backing up my desktop computer. Problem — MOST of the 850 GB of data on my desktop computer actually is migrating *to* the server, so I don’t really need/want a backup of it made on the server…. certainly not when it takes from midnight to 3 PM to reach 3% completion. So anyway, I let it run but killed it when I got back home with Sara this evening. I will start the data migration soon, maybe tonight? Sara’s down for the night; she blissfully went to bed without any crying and without fighting, even though she slept an amazing 2.5 hours with her grandma & grandpa Moore today.

PS: Sara is amazing and I really wish I could find the time to blog about her every single day because there is something to share–a photo or video or anecdote or new thing she’s doing–every single day. She has her domain names still, like any good geek gal over the age of 12 months. She has seemed to know I’m not operating at full efficiency, and on Wednesday she even cuddled me in bed early in the day and indulged me as I watched Fraggle Rock with her (normally a nighttime routine for us).

I’ll try to resume a more predictable blogging schedule, but I am insanely behind on the sites I own and manage that generate actual income, so forgive me if this site remains a forgotten stray for awhile longer.

Last message to Justin this evening, sent via my Blackberry to his and repeated here because it’s so true: “Love you hon. I wasn’t built to be a single gal. Miss ya.” I don’t mind him traveling, and before Sara joined us a one or two night business trip was kind of exciting–a change from the norm. But almost a full week away, and with Sara now, and with being on the mend from illness? Gah. Bring my babe home… when they’re done with him, anyway.

Both of these are from Twitter, with thanks to soultravelers3:

Dewitt Jones, a former National Geographic photographer, on why we should “celebrate what’s right in the world.”

And an inspiring travelblogue (travelogue + blog; did that as a typo but leaving it because it fits!) from a couple who retired early and are now traveling the world with their young daughter. They’re presently in Spain on their 20th month of a multi-year trip — http://www.soultravelers3.com/

Moo!

Now I definitely have to get myself some Moo cards–finally a sleek, simple way to carry them in my purse (read: diaper bag)!

Reposted from geekgal.vox.com