On Tuesday and Wednesday the test team makes good progress. We have a lot of visibility from our customer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as well as NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. I take control of the test and continue to explain everything that we are doing and what we expect during the tests. When we start getting the exact results that I am claiming the customer representatives gain a lot of faith in our team. Since Northrop Grumman has been on a hiring binge for a while, I've invited the newer people to come and witness the test. At times we have up to 10 new hires following me around as I show them the facilities, the test article, how we process the data, and what it all means. And they ask intelligent questions and I walk them through the answers. I hope the new hires are learning things. My older co-workers keep saying how great that I am doing at explaining things and helping out the "new kids".
For the second day in a row I wake up at 3 or 4 am and cannot fall back asleep. On each morning I just get up and get to work very early and get ready for the days of testing. On Thursday we buzz through the last axis of testing and finish up near noon. I rush on out the door to go to the motorcycle dealer where I have pre-arranged to have two new tires installed. It's good to see the same mechanics at this shop since I bought the motorcycle in February 2002 and they allsay they've only seen one motorcycle with more miles than mine has. And I just tell them that they are the ones that keep it running so well. When I get home I go walking and stop in at the ATM and the grocery store before cooling off with a quick shower and catching up on some financial paperwork, doing more web programming, and relaxing.
I sleep late on Saturday and start with British Grand Prix qualifying from Silverstone, England. Near 8 am I start out on the mountain bicycle and run into Terry and his friends at the lighthouse. So we ride together down to the old yacht club and back towards home. It's a good recovery ride after Friday's long ride. I grab a quick shower and Person Ti_Ca go to a nearby park for a 4th of July celebration across the street from Person T_U's house. We hang out for a while and Person Ti_Ca's sister comes by and eventually I get back home to have a quiet 4th of July afternoon. I'm in bed reading before 9 pm and I put earplugs in to allow me to sleep while everyone else is setting off fireworks a bit later.
I expect Monday to be a blah day, but I'm awake before the alarm goes off and at work finishing up the test report from last week's testing activities. Soon my boss comes into my office and asks me to do something because "The troublesome co-worker will say that she doesn't have time and can't get to it". So I work away and get believable results to my boss shortly after noon. I continue to make progress on tasks and before I know it it is time to go home. When I get home I do another high repetition workout with the weights and then wipe down both bicycles with a damp sponge and rag. Both bicycles look..um...new. Almost. After a cooling shower I setup my laptop with email accounts for soon retirement travel and then do some web programming for the non-profit.
The jump in working out doesn't start on either Wedneday or Thursday. I have some good ideas on ways to solve this very difficult problem at work and my mental energy has been engaged to that. I do get out for a good walk on Wednesday after work and a high repetition weights workout on Thursday before mowing the lawn, but these aren't "performance jump" workouts. I'm just mentally tired right now and will try harder on Friday.
I meet up with Derrick at the Whittier Narrows dam and we start south towards Long Beach. I pull Derrick for a while and then we pick up some other riders and they tag on. When we get within 8 miles of the ocean the other riders start to increase the pace. Well, they've wheel-sucked for 10 miles so I'm not going to let them get away. And it turns out the increased pace blows up their group and soon they all slow down and it is just Derrick and me getting down to the aquarium. After a break we head back up the Los Angeles river and I toss in a few extra miles to get close to 50 miles for the day. When I get home I get a quick shower and get to the library and pick up lunch and get in a few other errands before returning home. The rest of the day is very lazy watching some movies with Person Ti_Ca (I'm just a vegetable so I go along for whatever is on) and trimming the backyard a bit and watering the impatiens. For some reason today's ride really drained me.
On Monday I work away on some things that I have to do at work. At 10 am there is a big meeting and as the meeting is going I'm realizing how messed up some of the self-derived requirements and shock levels are for this spacecraft. I pull a co-worker aside and tell him what I'm thinking and I vow to call a friend or two at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on Tuesday to try and give them a head's up as to what is going on. I cannot run it up the chain of command in my own company because a certain person has vowed to squelch in dissent against her opinion. How pathetic is that? And peer review? Don't make me alugh. This lady has squelched all oversight and peer review. This satellite is headed for disaster. When I get home I lift weights with the same workout as last Friday. And I notice that my right shoulder, which has hurt for the longest time, doesn't hurt at all but the left shoulder is hurting some. What's going on here? And in the evening I fill out more health flexible spending account forms because the idiotic company that reimburses us with our own money has now rejected my claim twice. I figure I have the paperwork all set to go, so I'm going to keep sending in the same claim once a week for eternity until it gets reimbursed because it only costs me a stamp and a few minutes to do but costs the idiotic company time and effort to read through it and process it.