Mike Rowe <--> Colin Ferguson
Anyone else see a similarity between Mike Rowe and Colin Ferguson or atleast the character Sheriff Carter he plays on Eureka? They've been playing Dirty Jobs and Eureka all day and I've been bouncing back and forth while working on this program. It's more than their sort of bumbling with science. Something about their mannerisms, facial expressions and even their voices. Of course I haven't gotten much sleep lately, so I could have finally broke my brain.
In order to keep my funding for next year, I have a project to work on this summer. I'm writing an Excel Add-in that will perform some of the commom functions and algorithms that ME's use. It's not bad since I can work at home and avoid the construction they're doing on campus and I'm will have a couple of articles to submit to ASEE. The article submissions are required as an indication of my work this summer. As for the construction, it's for the new buslines on campus to make it more of a walking campus. Given the University's record since I've been there, next year is going to be a disaster as far as parking and getting around campus. They've also managed to block every road to the ME building except one and which road is open changes from week to week. Pick the wrong route and you have to drive out to Birmingham and try again. My theory is that it's actually a psychology experiment being performed on the Engineering students.
And now the BamaSat recap I promised weeks ago.
I had a final that day so I wasn't on the chase team. The balloon reached 84,000 ft before it popped, but we lost the signals after it started descending. It should have landed around 10:00 but when I got back from my final at 2, they were still looking for it. We found out later that the cellphone hadn't been set correctly, so it wasn't giving a position. I'm not sure why the primary transmitter cut out this time, but eveidently the weaker secondary transmitter was still working, which is how they eventually found it. They went to the highest point near the predicted landing site to try to get a signal on the HAM radio. The next part of the story I'm not sure if they were trying whatever they could or if the EE's were just messing with the ME professor, but they lucked out. There isn't any picture evidence but supposedly the professor was using a beer can as a reflector around the antennae and a POSTED sign, shot full of holes, as a ground plane to improve reception. I'm not sure if this helped but they got a signal with the Lat/Long coordinates which lead them to the satellite. It landed at 32.83828, -87.41778 in the Southwest corner of the Talledega National Forest. It was in a tree (as always) but one of the guys had brought one of those cheap toy bows. He managed to shoot an arrow with a string tied to it through the parachute cords so they could pull it down without taking out the tree. So we're 3 for 5 for same day recovery of the payload. I think there's a launch planned towards the end of July from somewhere in Texas. I've been out of the loop since the last launch, but I think it's from some NASA balloon sat launch site and there's going to be a couple of different groups there.
In order to keep my funding for next year, I have a project to work on this summer. I'm writing an Excel Add-in that will perform some of the commom functions and algorithms that ME's use. It's not bad since I can work at home and avoid the construction they're doing on campus and I'm will have a couple of articles to submit to ASEE. The article submissions are required as an indication of my work this summer. As for the construction, it's for the new buslines on campus to make it more of a walking campus. Given the University's record since I've been there, next year is going to be a disaster as far as parking and getting around campus. They've also managed to block every road to the ME building except one and which road is open changes from week to week. Pick the wrong route and you have to drive out to Birmingham and try again. My theory is that it's actually a psychology experiment being performed on the Engineering students.
And now the BamaSat recap I promised weeks ago.
I had a final that day so I wasn't on the chase team. The balloon reached 84,000 ft before it popped, but we lost the signals after it started descending. It should have landed around 10:00 but when I got back from my final at 2, they were still looking for it. We found out later that the cellphone hadn't been set correctly, so it wasn't giving a position. I'm not sure why the primary transmitter cut out this time, but eveidently the weaker secondary transmitter was still working, which is how they eventually found it. They went to the highest point near the predicted landing site to try to get a signal on the HAM radio. The next part of the story I'm not sure if they were trying whatever they could or if the EE's were just messing with the ME professor, but they lucked out. There isn't any picture evidence but supposedly the professor was using a beer can as a reflector around the antennae and a POSTED sign, shot full of holes, as a ground plane to improve reception. I'm not sure if this helped but they got a signal with the Lat/Long coordinates which lead them to the satellite. It landed at 32.83828, -87.41778 in the Southwest corner of the Talledega National Forest. It was in a tree (as always) but one of the guys had brought one of those cheap toy bows. He managed to shoot an arrow with a string tied to it through the parachute cords so they could pull it down without taking out the tree. So we're 3 for 5 for same day recovery of the payload. I think there's a launch planned towards the end of July from somewhere in Texas. I've been out of the loop since the last launch, but I think it's from some NASA balloon sat launch site and there's going to be a couple of different groups there.