Monday, August 04, 2008

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

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