Day 2 – Miscellaneous coolness

Our base of operations here at Dryden is Hanger 4823.  It’s an adjunct to a machine shop, a very cool, professional and accomodating machine shop I might add.  They’ve already turned out several parts for us on a moments notice.

When we here for Round 1 of testing, conditions were a bit more primitive then they are today.  There are bathrooms and water was available but Internet access was almost impossible unless you were lucky enough to have Verizon wireless data service (like I do).  For the testing this week, they have set up several tables; each with power and wired Internet access.  Lots of bottled water and Gatorade.  It’s all very civilized…

One of the new things added for this round is a Televison monitor.  We’ve seen CNN and the Weather Channel on it and today, they switched to Base Camera 8.  This monitors activity out on the lakebed.  We are now able to monitor the activities out at the lakebed testing location.  The picture isn’t all that clear (long distance, heat waves diffusing up from the desert floor and I think they are just retransmitting something they sent to uStream – add that all up and you lose some detail), but it’s very cool nonetheless.

And, a little while ago, I had a visit from the Geeky squad (aka the KCSP team).  They have purchased these ‘cool’ hats, complete with white LEDs.  Geekiness lives…

(I want one)

(Click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a larger version of the picture)