STS-132 Atlantis Launch

It’s all over and I’m in the 4-hour traffic jam leaving the causeway for Cocoa Beach. I’m overwhelmed and even a little melancholy – it all happened so fast did I miss anything?

I woke up at 5:00am. I was nervous about the traffic, so to be cautious, I left 90 minutes before the pick-up time in Titusville. I arrived with time to spare, so I went to a McDonald’s for pancakes. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could take. I was nervous and excited. I stopped and talked with some people who were working a 2-hour shift to keep people off private property with a view of the NASA facility. Miles of the roads through Titusville were lined with tape, parking areas and vendors setting up for the launch day. The radio was reporting they expected 300,000 people to view the launch – double the normal number.

I arrived at the pick-up point early, but there was already a very long line. It moved quickly and in 20 minutes I was on-board the bus.

Traffic to Kennedy Space Center (KSC) was slow. We were dropped off at 8:30am at the Visitors Center and had to be back in another line by 9:30 to board the same bus that would take us to the causeway viewing area. This strange drop-off and pick-up seemed to be so that the KSC Visitors Center security could check everyone before we were bussed to the causeway.

We arrived at the causeway around 11:30 – about 3 hours before launch. I got off the bus and all but ran to the rope to set up my chair. I was getting hungry so I chanced it that no one wold take my chair and ran to buy a hamburger, banana and a drink. I got my food before the 100+ foot line formed behind me.

The next 2.5 hours were spent baking in the Florida sunshine, testing out the lenses I rented from Lens Rentals Canada. When the count picked up at T-5 minutes, the crowd behind me stood up and everyone got very quiet. There were possibly as many as 17,000 people on the causeway and no one was talking.

At T-2 minutes, my heart was pounding – I was so excited.

T-1 minute – Oh My God, this is it.

T-11 seconds and I start the camera, trying to take some good photos without filling the buffer of the camera too soon. The buffer is only 14 full-size RAW photos, and I am shooting full-out at 8-frames per second. I wanted the better quality of the RAW, and the trade off was the small buffer.

Main Engine Start
Space Shuttle Main Engine Start. T-4 seconds

T-5 seconds and I can see the SSME – main engines starting. The view through the Canon 100-400mm L IS lens is amazing.

T-1, T-0 seconds and the shuttle disappears in the steam cloud from the sound suppression system. I paused shooting for a second to allow the buffer to clear while the shuttle was obscured.

When the vehicle climbed above the cloud, I held down the shutter button again for the most picturesque moments.

I was so engrossed in everything, I could not hear the NASA PA announcing the “Tower Clear” and “Roll Program” or the “Throttle Up” calls. I do remember hearing “Negative Return” – the point where the shuttle can no longer glide back to Kennedy for landing due to the height and velocity attained.

Shuttle clearing the tower
Space Shuttle clearing the tower. T+7 seconds

I was alternating between watching over the camera (watching and experiencing the event) and looking through the eye piece to take pictures. Once the shuttle was far enough away, it made more sense to focus on using the camera with the zoom lens as I could not see as much without binoculars.

It took a number of seconds for the sound to arrive from the launch. It started low, and not so loud. I guess that is because of the sound suppression system and because the thrust was focused at the ground. As the shuttle rose, the sound grew very loud with that crackling and popping noise you hear in good videos, but much stronger. The deep rumble of 7.4 million pounds of thrust lifting a 4.47 million pound (2000 ton) vehicle pounds the air – the forces at work are immense. The flames are so bright, even in the direct Florida sun – much brighter than I expected.

Solid Rocket Booster Separation. T+2 minutes 16 seconds

At T+2 minutes, I knew the Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) separation was moments away. I focused again (the lens was hunting a little for focus at this range), and was terrified I would miss it. Take some pictures, look up, take some pictures, look up. I could see the SRB separation with my own eyes, even though they were already at 150,000ft/46km. I could see them flame out and tumble through space; the vehicle was already above the standard definition for the edge of space. After that it was harder to focus the camera as the SSMEs do not produce smoke – only water vapour. All that was visible was the very bright dot of the vehicle accelerating away down-range.

After SRB separation, I was very disappointed that almost everyone around me started to pack up. It was only 2.5 minutes into an 8 minute climb to orbit, and I could still clearly see the bright light from the shuttle as it moved down-range. I could still see the light as the NASA PA announced Atlantis was already 290 km away. When else could one see a vehicle that is 290 km away and over 300,000 feet in altitude? Amazing!

I stayed in place trying to listen for the MECO (main engine cut-off) call, but the noise of everyone folding their chairs meant that I missed that important announcement – that the Atlantis climb was complete. I did hear the External Tank separation call right after MECO. At that point, they make only a minor adjustment to place Atlantis in orbit.

Today was so amazing, and overwhelming. And fleeting. All this preparation work to travel to see about 4 minutes of the climb to orbit.

There is no truly complete way to capture such a moment. Today is something I will treasure always.

The plume from the launch. T+6m17s

Preparing for STS-132

On Friday, I will be attending the STS-132 Space Shuttle launch, the final scheduled flight of Shuttle Atlantis.

Over Christmas, Rosa and I talked about following our desires. Too often, I miss opportunities to do what I want to do because I don’t take the steps necessary to secure them. Out of inertia, I miss life passing by.

So I decided that I have wanted to watch a manned space launch. This desire has grown over the last year as I started reading more and more about the Apollo program. In North America, this means the Space Shuttle, as it is the only man-rated launch vehicle. Looking at the schedule, the STS-132 mission to the International Space Station was the best fit for my schedule and racing activities.

Once decided that I would go, I began to make plans.

There was a seat sale on Air Canada that covered the May launch window, so I immediately booked for May 13-17. That provides me more time to see the launch on the 14th, visit the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), and also account for any postponements or scrubs due to weather or other minor issues.

Next, I began to research how to get tickets for viewing. It turns out, there are three ways. The first way is to Twitter, which will enter my name into a lottery pool for the VIP viewing area that is not open to the public. Alas, I did not win a VIP ticket. Next, there is a tour operator that was accepting bookings. Third, tickets are also available from Kennedy Space Center.

The tour operator, Central Florida Tours (CFT) has exclusive access to a set number of tickets, and they start selling them before the KSC ticket sales start. CFT will pick you up at a designated spot, bus you to KSC, then bus you out to the causeway viewing area and return you at the end of the day. Other tour operators apparently get their tickets from CFT.

I bought tickets for the causeway (the nearest public viewing area – about 6 miles away from the launch) from CFT, which meant I was guaranteed to have a seat. The price is higher that directly from KSC. And the pick up for me is 7:00am in Titusville, which is very early, but others are being picked up in Orlando as early as 5:30am. The launch is 2:20pm.

I also waited to buy a ticket directly from KSC. It costs less and is more flexible from a timing point of view. Both include a 2-day pass to Kennedy Space Center, so I can see the museums.

The KSC tickets went on sale on a Thursday in April. However, the KSC ticket web page was not ready for the influx of people. On the day of the ticket sales, their web servers crashed. The sales were postponed from Thursday to Monday, and they moved to another server cluster would be able to handle the traffic. Everyone wants to get to see one of the final three launches. It is not likely that anyone will be getting in to see the final flight, as it will mostly be VIPs. It will be the end of the nearly 30-year flight program.

On following Monday, I tried again, but was not successful. There are only about 5,000 tickets for the causeway, and they were sold out in 20 minutes. So I will stay with the ticket I bought from CFT.

Next, I needed a place to stay. I waited too long and many of the hotels were already booked. I managed to get a room at the Super-8 in Titusville. I also contacted some dear friends that Rosa and I met during our trip to Eastern Europe over Christmas. They live in Cocoa Beach, about 30 minutes south. They were very amenable to have me stay with them in their guest suite. I am really looking forward to meeting them again – they were so good to talk with in December. I cancelled my Super-8 room. I also rented a car. Strangely, the price was higher when I tried to book through Ericsson‘s travel agency. I had assumed that there would be a corporate discount.

Now comes the part that I spent a lot of time thinking about and investigating. I want to capture this very special day somehow. I starting thinking about photography, but I also considered video. If I wanted to record video, then I would need a Canon 7D instead of my current Canon 40D. I spent hours and hours and hours investigating renting the 7D, lenses, microphones and tripods. I investigated rental agencies in Orlando, by mail in the US and also the Canadian alternatives.

After much consideration and playing with the finance numbers, I decided to buy the Canon 7D and sell some older equipment, such as the 40D. This will allow me to either take great photos or shoot full 1080p HD video. If I rented the 7D instead, then that money would be wasted as I did assume I would eventually move to the 7D. The money I would have spent on the rental of the 7D body instead could be spent on the purchase.

For the rest of the equipment, I continued to investigate all the options for rentals. In the end, the best price and convienence was through Lens Rentals Canada. I ordered a Canon EF 100-400mm L IS USM lens. According to the extensive research I’ve done on the web, lens that are longer risk being impacted by the turbulent, hot air of a sunny Florida afternoon. I rented a Canon EF-S 10-22mm wide angle zoom too. I have been thinking about this lens for some time now, but it is expensive – about $1000. By renting the lens, I can see if I like it. Unlike renting the 7D body, I am not sure about this lens, so renting first was a good idea. I was 100% sure I would eventually get the 7D.

I also rented a Gitzo aluminum tripod and video head. I am torn between wanting to video record the launch with the 7D (the reason I bought it in the first place), or taking still photos. A video would be a great record and I would not need to keep the camera to my eye. HD video is only about 2 megapixels. Stills will be higher quality (the 7D is 18 megapixels) but would mean I watch the launch through the video finder (or the back of the camera). With video, I would keep use the Live View feature and only need to glance over to just track the action.

I still don’t know what I will do.

The two lenses and the tripod arrived on Friday. On Monday, I bought an external microphone and a Kata backpack camera bag at Henrys.

To keep track of what to do and where to go, I joined the Facebook groups for the Kennedy Space Center and for the Attendees of Launch of ATLANTIS STS-132 May 14th 2010.

I also signed up for Twitter to follow information about ticket sales from KSC.

Looking today at the weather, NASA indicates that the weather is 70% for a launch. And the count-down clock has started.

I am so amazingly excited about this trip. I hope I don’t forget something. For our trips, Rosa has been there as a backup “fact-checker” to double check. This time, I’ll be alone as Rosa will be in ballet classes.

Craigslist

Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens
Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens

I’m in the process of selling some camera equipment, and thought I would use Craigslist as one of the resources. I am also trying the local camera club and Ebay.

But I’m not sure I understand what value Craigslist is providing. It seems more like a list of thieves, scammers and the like.

The first person contacted me by email a few hours after the posting went up. I said I wanted to meet in person. He replied that he was out of the country and would be able to send me a cheque for more than the amount I was asking. Yup, a scam. I deleted all the emails and stopped responding.

The second person seemed like a real person. He was negotiating a lower price and wanted to meet to test the lens. Great I thought. I suggested we meet in a Starbucks or something like that. He replied a few hours later that some financial issue came up and would have to back away from the deal.

This concerned me a little. One issue is that I was using my personal email to reply, and I realized that it also had my phone number at the bottom in my signature. I grew concerned that perhaps the reason for contacting me would be to gather personal data. I never gave out where I lived or worked, but the phone number can be used for a reverse address look-up. I also realized that my address is also on the domain ownership for my personal email address.

So I created a new gmail account that has no connection to me, which I will use in the future. It does not have my full name or my phone numbers in the signature either.

I was contacted by another person after that and had the same issue happen – contacted me and then almost immediately bailed on the deal. But this time I was using the new gmail account.

Because of my concerns, I also opened an account at Equifax to allow me to check on my credit information and credit card applications. Rosa and I have discussed this many times in the past. We travel frequently, and both of us have had problems with unauthorized withdrawls on our personal bank accounts and credit cards. After returning from Russia, where my camera was stolen, I also lost $1500 from ATM withdrawls, starting 2 weeks after I returned home. The bank was able to restore my losses.

Which brings me back to Craigslist. If these were the problems I’m facing when using Craigslist, this must also be impacting all the other users. Why would anyone consider Craigslist helpful? I know that I won’t be using it anymore, if the only people who contact me are scammers.

Snow

Snow on the Bimmer
Snow on the Bimmer

Snow at the end of April? What the hell? At least there was no accumulation on the roads, since I had already mounted my Bridgestone Potenza RE-11 tires. There is minimal tread, just enough to channel out the water on the road, but useless in any amount of snow.

Cancer scare

I had a cancer scare starting last weekend. I had a tenderness for 2 days and self-examined while taking a shower and discovered a pea-sized mass where there shouldn’t be one. I booked an appointment to see the doctor as soon as I could, and was able to see him Monday afternoon.

Today, I went in for an ultra-sound of the area. The examination took about 30 minutes, longer than I expected. The room lights were very low so I just lay there with my eyes closed basically ignoring what was going on, except for when I was asked to breath-in deeply and hold my breath. I asked the ultra-sound technician what which frequency the ultra-sound operates – he replied that it’s about 12. I asked 12Khz? No, he replied, 12Mhz.

The results will be reviewed by a radiologist and sent back to my doctor to give me the diagnosis, but it is possible that it is not cancer but rather just a blood clot. That would seem to fit the evidence, as the tenderness that triggered this adventure only lasted 2 days instead of persisting. I hope that is the case. I am hopeful of a simple explanation. If it is bad news, then at least there is a very high (>98%) survival rate when caught early.

Pneumonia

I’ve been feeling really crappy over the last number of days. It might have started on Tuesday with a general lethargy at the end of the day. By Thursday, it had changed to a migraine headache, fever, muscle aches and what seemed like a chest cold. The migraine lasted almost 2 days and was the worst I’ve had in about 15-20 years. I believed that the cause of the migraine was that my back muscles were cramping because I was shivering due to the chills induced by the fever.

Once the migraine was reduced to a reoccurring pounding headache (Tylenol 3), I hoped I would get over the other symptoms. I even started feeling pretty good for a few hours on Friday.

My condition did not improve over the weekend. I had much difficulty sleeping due to my lungs being filled and continued muscle aches. Sometimes the fever would come back.

So this morning, instead of going to the doctor, I went straight to the emergency room. The theory was that if I would need chest x-rays or blood work, then they could all be done at once, instead of seeing a doctor, then going somewhere else for the tests, then back to the doctor.

Once I signed in, I was put into a separate waiting room with a sign outside indicating that it was an isolation room and only people who were asked to sit there should even enter the room. I was given a mask to wear.

Mask
Mask

I waited about 2.5 hours, catching a nap, and doing some light reading. Around noon, I was finally admitted into one of the examination rooms. There was a sign posted on the outside indicating “droplet warning” and that anyone entering the room had to wear a full face guard. Upon later reflection, this was likely because of the H1H1 flu policies.

The doctor came in and briefly checked me out and then sent me for chest x-rays to confirm the suspicion that it was pneumonia. I was beginning to suspect that might be the diagnosis because a chest cold does usually include a fever.

After the x-ray, the blood work was taken, and I was hooked up to an IV system. I wasn’t expecting the IV, but was interested in how it all worked. I could feel it when it started as my arm started getting cooler – the IV would be room temperature (say 25) but body temperature is about 37. I later heard the doctor outside my room indicating that she ordered the IV because my heart rate was 115 bpm. I didn’t realize it was so high. Adding saline solution will dilute the blood and lower the body temperature and bring down the heart rate (which it did).

The final diagnosis confirmed pneumonia. I was possibly still contagious, so I was told not to go to work for the rest of this week. I finally left the hospital about 7.5 hours after checking-in.

Overheard from the sign-in desk next to the waiting room:

1. “I have an infection on my (elbow/leg) and I am on antibotics. I was told to come to the emergency room if it got worse in case I needed IV antibotics.” I heard this twice in 2.5 hours. Is it really that common?

2. “I just returned from Cuba, where I was raped. Do you have a rape kit? Is a rape kit useful after 24-hours?” The woman left immediately after. It really got me thinking about what a terrible time she must be having. Can you imagine flying home with that on your mind? And I can’t understand why some men are so awful. I just don’t understand people.

3. “My father was in earlier and was sent to go get an MRI. I just wanted to let you know that they found a 5-centimeter growth in his brain. I wasn’t sure if you needed to know that for your records.” Again, another tragic story told in three sentences.

My backup strategy

Because of the problems with loosing my MBP, I am glad I have a solid backup strategy, which is detailed below.
I perform the backups on the first Friday of every month. While my MacBook Pro is running, I will clean out all of the browser caches, as it is not neccessary to backup cached data. As I switch between Google Chrome and Apple Safari, I sometimes need to clean up the caches for both browsers. If there are any temporary downloads that I don’t need to backup, I will delete them, or move them to an external drive. I also do this for any in-progress iMovies, as they can be many many gigabytes in size. I will also delete the Aperture rejected photos; if any photos are deleted, I will also sync the Aperture vault (see more below). All of this will reduce the disk usage, meaning that there is less data that needs to be in the backup.

software icons

Next, I boot to an external WD My Book, using the firewire interface. I have installed a bootable copy of Snow Leopard on the disk. I have also installed TechTool Pro 5, so once I have rebooted to the external hard drive, I will use TechTool to do a hardware and software check of the system, and then perform a file system check or repair of the internal MBP drive.

software icons

Finally, just before going to bed, I will launch Disk Utility and make a disk image of the internal drive. I keep the last 2 images, plus I might keep an image from before any particularly important change (such as upgrading from 10.5 to 10.6 or upgrading the internal hard drive). I create the image as a read-only image. This backup image creation will take a few hours, which is why I start just before I go to bed. Should I require information from that image (such as when I needed to grab files when my machine died), I just double-click the image file to mount the image. I can then just grab any file I need.
Between these monthly images, I will also copy any updated files to two external drives. I keep one drive at work and one drive at home. I also keep a large number of files on these two external drives that I do not need to keep on the laptop. This would include all my race videos, as they take up a lot of space. For these videos, I also burn a DVD copy – meaning I have three copies of all my race videos
The most important files are my photos. I use Apple’s Aperture software to manage my photo library. I use the built-in vault function to keep backups. I have created a vault on both external drives (plus the original on the internal drive). Meaning I keep three copies of my photos, which are stored in two different locations so that a fire will not destroy all the copies.
I also own a PC with Windows XP. There is very little valuable data on that machine. In the past, I have just burned it all to a single DVD. However, with the various external drives I have been collecting, I think I will start doing backups to a small external drive over USB. I will do this once a month too, as I am not regularly doing a backup on the PC now. However, the backup tools I have for Windows XP are far from ideal. I will be moving to Windows 7 x64 Professional in the next month, so perhaps there are better backup tools I can use.
One last backup I do for both machines is to keep the most recent copy of the installers for all the software I use. Should a machine fail, I should have all of the latest installers ready to start restoring the software. This only really impacts me if I need to perform a clean installation of the OS. This has happened three times on my Mac in the last 20 years but I’ve needed it many times on the PC. I keep local copies in case I am not able to connect to the internet when performing the restore.
In summary, for most of the important files, I keep two or three backups in two physically different locations. Once a month, I will also perform a cleanup of the system and then a full-system backup. I will keep multiple backup copies.

Carling Place

There is a new sign at the Carling Campus, which was installed last week. It replaces the old Nortel signage, which is understandable due to the divestiture.

Carling Place
Horrible Carling Place Sign

But the sign is really hideous. The former Nortel Carling Campus is a beautiful location, with interesting architecture, surrounded by forests with wonderful walking paths. I like working at this location because of all of these reasons.

First, I don’t like the name. It’s too similar to “Carleton Place”, the town just outside of Ottawa. It is a non-descript, meaningless name. The name could have been more apt, like “Carling Campus”, which sounds like a place of higher learning. Or perhaps “Technology Park”, which echos places like RTP and includes the nature around the campus, even if the actual name is a little boring.

And finally, the font. I can’t believe the height of design for the sign was an Arial font. Arial is the most boring font in the world. It is completely without character (no pun intended). It is the font of last resort when there are no other fonts available. It is classless and boring to look at. A 6-year old could have designed the sign. I could have designed the sign better than what we got. Instead of spending $100 to hire some Algonquin College Graphic Arts student to do a nice sign (and support the local schools, which is a good news story for the papers), someone decided it was more important to give hundreds of millions of dollars on executive bonuses.

I am so incredibly disappointed in what Nortel will come to represent in the future. It’s a horrible misrepresentation of Nortel that more people will remember the bonuses to executives instead of to pensioners than for the technology that made the company as important as it was a decade ago.