successful weekend

On many levels...

During the day, I got a lot of work done and things accomplished in the CAO.

• donated a 5-legger office chair for the kitchen / living room computer
• brought up 4 new incandescent red light bulbs
• installed 1 new incandescent red light bulb in the THO
• installed and tested a new Linksys wireless N Ultra router
• documented the new SSID for the other supervisors
• installed an extra ethernet cable to the wireless router
• changed the D-Link di-704 administrative password from its default to a strong password
• tested all 7 of the available ethernet ports in the GBO
• created a new administrative account for myself on the GBO tower computer
• configured laser printer access onto the GBO tower computer
• configured laser printer access onto Ian's XP and Vista laptops
• documented the printer profile setup for addition to the facilities manual
• printed new pages and reassembled an updated version of the on-site facilities manual
• dropped off a new ream of laser / photocopy paper
• removed and shook the laser toner cartridge to extend its life span
• documented the toner information for a future purchase
• temporarily connected the Davis Instruments Vantage Pro 2 weather station house computer so to test the USB DataLogger cable and the WeatherLink software
• submitted a request for the WeatherLinkIP package with ethernet DataLogger
• dropped off the Sony laptop materials for storage at the CAO
• read all the weather station and software documentation
• corrected the time setting in the weather station
• cleaned the air filter in the Panasonic digital projector

I found and viewed a lot of objects, mostly during the evenings:

• 14 Messiers
• 2 NGCs
• 4 planets (Venus and Saturn during the day)
• 3 double stars
• a young Moon
• dozens of satellites (most during the day, actually)
• ISS, twice
• many meteors, no doubt many Perseids
• learned a couple of new constellations
• faint stars down to 13th or 14th magnitude

Other miscellaneous things accomplished:

• helped Randy get going with his Celestron GOTO telescope
• helped Angela align her finder
• helped Jean add her full name to her Yahoo! profile
• viewed an "icebow" in wispy clouds with Angela (unfortunately, the digital photos didn't turn out) [these are popularly known as fire rainbows]
• added TFOV figures to my viewing circles template
• charged up my new portable UPS for future use in my home office
• test drove Mom's unbirthday gift!
• got to know some RASC members much better