Daily Archives: January 28, 2019

A Worrisome 46 Minutes . . .

Today is the 33rd anniversary of the Shuttle Challenger explosion.

I was working at Johnson Space Center and had just come off a 16 hour night shift that ran long due to some equipment problems. And since I was dead tired, and the launch was not for another almost three hours, I went to bed. I was planning to get for this one, but slept though it, the first launch I had ever missed.

But as it turns out, our daughter Brandi, who was12 had stayed home sick that day, and was watching when the Shuttle exploded. So she called Jan at work and said, “Mommy, the Challenger broke!” So Jan told her to go wake me up.

And that kicked off six months of long hours and confusing requests from Washington, doing video support for the Rogers Commission inquiry into the Challenger .

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.” – President Ronald Reagan.

Early this afternoon I went to the Amazon site to check on the delivery status of my rig oil filter and filter wrench that were supposed to arrive today.

And I found something new – A button on the Track Package page that said “Click To Track Your Package in Real Time”. And here’s what I saw.

Track Package 1

And a little later I saw this.

Track Package 2

A couple of minutes later I saw the map icon on my street, so I walked outside, and about 10 seconds later, this pulled into the parking lot.

Amazon Delivery Van

And I have a couple of more things arriving tomorrow that look to be coming the same way. Neat.

A little after noon, and after the office manager said she was finished processing last night’s website orders, I took the server down to move it over to the new UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) that came in last week. I had plugged it in after it came in last Tuesday to let it marinate before I put it online.

So this morning I first shut down the website and then the server and moved the plug over to the new UPS, and booted the server back up and waited for it to initialize and come back online.

And waited . . . and waited . . . and waited.

Becoming more and more anxious as the minutes elapsed.

The reboot time does vary though. Sometimes it’s back up in 5-10 minutes, and once it was a little over 20 minutes. But it has never taken 46 minutes before.

And since it’s a Centos 6 Linux server, there’s not a lot you can do but wait. So I don’t know if it was checking the integrity of, or repairing the databases, or what, but it finally popped back up and was working fine.

Whew!

Several readers asked what the girl was holding in my niece Stahlie’s Blood Moon artwork.

Stahlie Blood Moon Pic

I’m not absolutely sure, but I think it’s a telescope. You know, for looking at the moon. Though it is kind of bent, I guess.


Thought for the Day: 

If you’ve never met the devil on the road of life, it’s because you’re both heading in the same direction.

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