In the fish bowl

The most interesting thing that happened today was actually what we did during lunch. Bob brought all of the interns down to the fishbowl (a semi circular room with a huge projector screen or presentations) and we listened to Dr. Easton describe his work in document restoration. He has been to places all over the world and uses different spectrums of light to draw out the faded text in important historical documents. One that he has been working on for ten + years is the Archimedes Palimpsest; a book written by Archimedes about his theories which was written over again to become a Christian prayerbook. I was shocked anyone would destroy something so important. It was extremely interesting to me, I already love ancient history and if I did not want to be a software engineer I think I would enjoy the field of document restoration.

Wait for iiiiit...

THE COLLECT IS FINALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nothing more need be said.

Almost there!

No collect today, again. Currently our team is on standby for sometime tomorrow and hopefully the collect will happen sometime this week. Right now all there is left to do is wait until the plane comes down from Canada and the weather decides to cooperate. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

More asd

The second part of the data collect did not happen today (not really surprised) due to a slight landing gear difficulty the team coming down from Canada to take our pictures had. For some reason when they had their camera on then turned on the landing gear, they lost power in the plane. Luckily the problem should be fixed now and no one was hurt. Despite this delay though still more people wanted asd data, so out Nina and I went AGAIN, and spent another hour and a half taking measurements of tarps and the backgrounds they were on. Now all I want to do is sit. But the freeze pops afterwards did help and I know how to work the asd machine now. What was learned today? AFTER WHITE REFERENCING MAKE SURE TO MOVE THE BLOCK!

So very very tired

Even though the entire collect didn't happen as planned, WASP still flew today for the experiments that needed it. After an 8am meeting with all the research groups I helped Nina and Rolando haul everything out to H Lot and we began setting up tarps. A few of the other non-RS interns came to help, which was good. After setting up and sitting in the lot as the plane made its runs it was time for the asd measurements to be taken. Starting around 1pm it took us till around 2:30 to get the data we needed, and we still haven't gotten it all. When all the other interns left I stayed and continued helping Nina for at least another hour if not more. The second half of the collect is probably going to be done tomorrow. And of the 10+ targets we collected data for we may need to do any number of them again, and then more. I am so tired right now!

Rain, and lots of it

Just like Wednesday it started POURING today. It wouldn't have been that bad though, had Nina not given Sean and I the task of trying to calibrate a few of her GPSs. We couldn't find signal anywhere so she told us go go outside to Sean's car and try it there. So we run out, first going under the building people use to wait for buses, but there was a puddle of water at least two inches deep covering the entire floor. Finally we bolt across the parking lot, a tiny umbrella the only thing to keep us both even semi dry, get into his car, and set the GPSs by the window so it can hopefully get some sort of signal. "To few satellites found." We ran all that way and got completely drenched for nothing! My shoes still arnt dry. After that little adventure we set more stuff up for the collect. I copied about 300 pages worth of maps and charts for the different research teams and then helped Sean attach pens to clipboards. What was learned today? TGIF!

Setting up

As anticipated, the collect didn't happen today. Now the people on the RS team are saying Sunday, but even that probably wont work due to weather so tentatively the date has been rescheduled to Monday. During the afternoon today I went out and helped Nina tape markers and get some target locations planned out in H Lot. We also got to go on the second layer of the roof! The ladder is very steep and you kind of have to vault yourself over the wall, but we got there none the less. What was learned today? EVERYTHING CAN CHANGE!