Celebrity Death Watch: James Wright was the president of Dartmouth College from 1998 to 2009. Dick Ellsworth was a pitcher, primarily for the Cubs. Michael Callan originated the role of Riff in West Side Story on Broadway. Charles Sherrod was a civil rights activist. Mary Adelia McLeod was the first female bishop of an Episcopal diocese. ( Read more... )

Dreamwidth cross-posting appears to have failed. My apologies if this shows up twice ( Read more... )

Back in October, fansee asked me (in response to my retirement) how I came to be a satellite systems engineer and, more specifically, about my experiences as a woman in that field. I have plenty of other catching up to do, but I’m in the mood to write about this.

As far back as I can remember, I was interested in science. As a child in the 1960’s ( Read more... )

Elections: Most of the election in my district was uninteresting, since I live in an area that is so blue that it is practically indigo. The Republicans no longer bother running candidates for Delegate or State Senator here. But we did have an interesting race for our representative to the County Board of Supervisors, with a Republican candidate ( Read more... )

Work is busy but frustrating ( Read more... )

Celebrity Death Watch: Aaron Hernandez played football for the New England Patriots before his arrest in a murder case. Lawrence Hogan served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, where his son is currently the governor. Cuba Gooding, Sr. was a soul singer and the father of actor, Cuba Gooding, Jr. Erin Moran was an actress, best ( Read more... )

Two quick notes before getting into the main subject: 1) Disco singer Donna Summer has died. 2) We get various alerts on our computer system at work. Most of them have to do with things like a fire alarm in some corridor or a ceremonial flyover at Arlington National Cemetery. Yesterday, however, there was one that was new to me. We got an alert ( Read more... )

I have plenty of things to write about but I won't get to them for a few days.

I did, however, want to put out a reminder that the USA Science and Engineering Festival is this weekend at the D.C. Convention Center ( Read more... )

I had an incredibly busy week (mostly preparing a briefing for a high muckety-muck), followed by an incredibly busy weekend. Much of that activity had to do with the
USA Science and Engineering FestivalThere had been a previous, smaller event in San Diego, but this was the first national event. Apparently, there were satellite events in several ( Read more... )

This is one of my hodegpodge entries - basically everything but cake.

Follow-ups: Ron solved the mystery of my "303/357" note to myself. That's a battery size and I wrote it down when I needed to replace the batteries in two of my travel alarm clocks ( Read more... )