Today I was thinking about my management training trip to LA next week. I was thinking about how I would have more time to visit Grandma during the day Tuesday after I get in. I could drive from the airport to the beach and then on to Grandma's by lunchtime. I could even stay through dinner. After that I could check into my hotel, up in downtown.
And then I got to thinking about visiting El Camino and maybe stopping in and surprising Perry. I poked and found out that he appears to be teaching his telescope making class on Tuesday nights, 6 or 6:30 until 9pm. So, hypothetically, I could eat dinner with Gram early and then drive back to Torrance, stop in on the telescope makers and then head downtown. I poked around some more on the El Camino web site and discovered that one of their observing sites is listed as Pinto Valley Observatory. I dug further and discovered that Rick Hedrick was involved in founding this observatory. So I dug even further and found that Rick had co-founded a company called PlaneWave Instruments and they make and sell large amateur telescopes, on the order of $10,000-30,000 and up telescopes. These are not backyard telescopes! These are only for the serious amateurs. Serious amateurs with money.
Wow. I've been out of touch. I don't like the feeling of being out of touch. I am happy for Rick. He's married with three kids now. And he is still playing guitar. And Stevie Ray Vaughan. All of this according to what I have found on the web. The Pinto Valley Observatory web site seems to be several years out of date, but Rick's family pictures seem to be within the past year or so. The PlaneWave Instruments web site is current.
And it is raining in Baltimore.
Yes, at this very moment, I see the raining falling outside my window and into the street below. I have such mixed feelings at this moment. I'm happy for Rick. I feel left out of the fun. I feel jealous of his success. I feel ignorant of the optics. I am too far removed from amateur observing. How many years has it been? I can't count them. It's too painful. I don't even know where the ecliptic is anymore. A month or two ago I was daydreaming about hosting a micromini-Messier Marathon. How can I do that without knowing the sky? And I don't know the sky. Not anymore. It makes me sad.
Sad. Jealous. Ignorant. Excluded. Behind. Apart. Sad.
And it is raining. I can't even go out and observe, even if I were setup to do so.
But now George Hartig comes to my office asking for the ETU test data. I have it! I know about it! I have purpose! After some extensive discussion of the status of the data on the witserv, George indicated that he didn't think he had access to it. Then I indicated that the disk on my desk has almost everything. He said he was most interested in the stuff taken late on Saturday. So I looked on the witserv disk and found the 04.10 backup directory and read through the directory names that had been created by the analyst. George identified one directory as the stuff he was looking for. I traveled down the directory and saw that it was all zip files and then recognized that this was the same set of data that both Randal and John had asked me for. And even better the fits files were made and zipped, sitting on the ftp server. So, I forwarded my email to Randal to George so that he could also retrieve the tarball of that data. Hurray! I do have a purpose and I do contribute!
George, you have no idea how useful your timing was.... Thanks. I needed that just then. A reminder of what I am doing here.
No comments:
Post a Comment