- news -

so i went to the warehouse to pick up my mattress. when i asked the guy about a ups delivery for me he said 'oh no, we didnt get anything like that. there is no way that could possibly be here' and then some intern looking dude pointed to the box that the guy was standing right next to and said 'i am pretty sure that this is it right here' to which the first guy reponded 'oh yeah, we got that box, it is right here' and pointed to the box. so i dragged it outside and attempted to cram it into my car. it would not at all fit and was also 130 lbs. soon a steady parade of loading dock employees started to show up with suggestions as to how i might cram it into my car. and then a bunch of questions started to arise such as 'which lab are you taking this to, i can just bring it over on my forklift for you' to which i had to respond 'oh, i am taking it off-site for something'. and then there were a series of questions along the lines of 'man, this thing is heavy, what exactly is in here?' to which i said 'oh, that is just some high density foam.'if i got any further questions i could say that it was space foam that nasa developed (according to the tempurpedic commercial anyway). eventually, when nobody was looking, i just opened the box and form-fit it into my back seat. i was not entirely sure what to do with the box so i folded it up and threw it in the dumpster, but then it unfolded and expanded enough to open the lid to the dumpster which i am pretty sure went against a number of signs stuck to the side so i ran away.

i ordered a memory foam mattress from costco and had it delivered to my office. the ups tracking info says that it has already been delivered but i havent received it so i asked some dude in my office about it. he said 'oh, you are not supposed to get personal packages shipped here. especially if it is big and bulky. it probably got flagged and intercepted and is being scanned and x-rayed.' if anyone asks me about it i will say that it is a large block of space foam that i need to test for various properties. the problem is that it is vacu-packed into some small box so if they open it up it will expand to mattress size and nobody will ever be able to get it back into the box again and i wont be able to fit it in my car and will have to sleep in the conference room.

the cube i am in had been vacant for some time before i started so it was the 'storage cube.' as a result all available surfaces were covered with random junk when i got here, which i have been slowly removing over the course of many weeks. one of the more curious items was a plastic scientific looking container with a silicone wafer suspended in it and some wires sticking out of it. it was covered in some oil like substance and was leaking all over my shelf. my theory is that the oil like substance did not originate from there, but instead from one of two opaque plastic tubs, each full of a slightly different looking oily substance. i was pretty content to just let it sit there but today someone else noticed chemical smells wafting from my cube and saw it and freaked out. so i had to call some sort of haz-mat team to come deal with it - which turned out to just be some guy with a bucket. fortunately, most of the junk on the shelf had been 'contaminated' which meant that the guy took it all and effectively cleaned my shelf off for me.

I am down the hall from the hubble group at work. on one side of the hall they have all these articles framed from journals and magazines about the hubble. on the other side of the hall they have framed an assortment of articles from tabloids such as "Hubble photos proves existence of Heaven", "Hubble telescope finds ghosts in space" and, my personal favorite, "NASA Scientists find image of Jesus' face in distant galaxy"

all the water fountains at NASA say that if you are the first one to use it in the morning you need to let it run for at least a minute before you drink the water that comes out of it. assuming that nobody else ever uses them due to the obvious contamination, i usually let it run for a minute no matter what.

i started work at goddard today. in true nasa fashion, the coke machine, instead of dropping the soda into some bin where i retrieve it, has a robotic arm that goes up and grabs the soda i select and then places it in some soda shaped compartment where i can pull it out. it probably cost a million dollars.

last night some japanese dude threw up all over me. i went to a tour for this italian thruster company and we had this dinner with a lot of wine and the asian contingent got all tore up. the guy was passed out on the bus and woke up just long enough to puke onto the window and it all bounced on me since i was right behind him. it was all over my face and in my hair. then he threw up in between the seats in front of him on some other dude and then that dude started puking everywhere and then they were both at it all over the place. i wanted to take a picture of it, but by this time i was fairly close to puking myself so i had to get up and walk to teh front of the bus.

on my way back from san diego i saw my first LA police chase. there was a triangle of about 25 police cars tearing down the highway behind some car. the car turned out to be some 80's toyota that could not go more than 50 miles an hour so it was a bit of a low speed chase. the dude driving also appeared to have his whole family with him.

i went to san diego over the weekend and in the morning this chick who was with us went into the bathroom with an armload of products looking like she would be in there for about an hour. but i really had to go to the bathroom so i went to the lobby. there was this religious conference going on in the hotel so there were all these conservative people everywhere. i had just woken up so i was all disheveled and my hair was all everywhere and i wasnt wearing shoes and when i came out of the bathroom there was this old woman standing in the hall and when she saw me emerge from the bathroom she put her hand over her mouth and exclaimed 'oh my word!' it was hillarious.

some water pipe at the lab ruptured, probably from bombs. so we have this port-o-potty in the parking lot now and it is on this plywood trailer thing. it sits at about a 30 degree angle and when you step into it it rocks about 15 degrees in various directions. i was in it for about 5 seconds when i recalled all the warnings about the wind tipping over trucks and then decided i would rather drive a mile to take a dump at the gym than tempt fate any further.